New Culture Forum

With free speech increasingly under threat on our university campuses, it is encouraging to note the start of a resistance movement amongst the student populations. James Oliver is a Ph.D. student who co-founded a Free Speech Society at the University of Buckingham in 2019 after learning that conservative writer Peter Hitchens had been "no platformed" at the University of Portsmouth by that university's student union. Given Mr. Hitchens' long commitment to free speech and academic freedom, Mr. Oliver thought the time had come to take a stand in defence of universities' age-old position as the pre-eminent forum for exposure to all manner of ideas and opinions. Peter Hitchens was the keynote speaker at their inaugural event.

The UK's most quoted sociologist, Frank Furedi is emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent, and specialises on the sociology of fear, education, therapy culture and paranoid parenting. As explained in his 2018 book, "How Fear Works: The Culture of Fear in the 21st Century", fear has now assumed the commanding moral position in society. Over the past 20 years as society's basic values, beliefs and ideologies have declined or disappeared from public life, so increasingly fear is used to legitimize their arguments and causes. Virtually every moral, political or economic position is justified in terms of scaremongering. And this transcends the ideological divide as both the left and the right put forward a message of fear rather than hope. As our children grow, instead of teaching them about good, positive values like prudence, courage or loyalty we instill fear in them as well as teaching them tricks to avoid dealing with their fears. Children must be constantly validated and cannot be criticised or disciplined. This is leading to a generation who are unable to deal with life and who describe insignificant issues as "stresses" and "challenges". So many normal problems, which were once described as being shy or introverted or awkward, are now regarded as medical conditions, whereas in reality these are due to not being normally socialised, kept protected from confrontation & failure, and taught how to deal with challenges.vThe UK's most quoted sociologist, Frank Furedi is emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent, and specialises on the sociology of fear, education, therapy culture and paranoid parenting. As explained in his 2018 book, "How Fear Works: The Culture of Fear in the 21st Century", fear has now assumed the commanding moral position in society. Over the past 20 years as society's basic values, beliefs and ideologies have declined or disappeared from public life, so increasingly fear is used to legitimize their arguments and causes. Virtually every moral, political or economic position is justified in terms of scaremongering. And this transcends the ideological divide as both the left and the right put forward a message of fear rather than hope. As our children grow, instead of teaching them about good, positive values like prudence, courage or loyalty we instill fear in them as well as teaching them tricks to avoid dealing with their fears. Children must be constantly validated and cannot be criticised or disciplined. This is leading to a generation who are unable to deal with life and who describe insignificant issues as "stresses" and "challenges". So many normal problems, which were once described as being shy or introverted or awkward, are now regarded as medical conditions, whereas in reality these are due to not being normally socialised, kept protected from confrontation & failure, and taught how to deal with challenges.

On 9 Dec. 2019, Dr. David Starkey delivered the New Culture Forum's annual Smith Lecture to a sold-out audience in central London. The theme was "Brexit & Our Constitutional Crisis: History's Lesson & Its Historical Patterns"

This week's guest on "So What You're Saying Is..." is actor, singer & songwriter Laurence Fox, who made newspaper headlines several times last month for various comments criticizing "leftisim" at R.A.D.A., identity politics in the arts, and the hypocrisy of "woke" celebrities who support MeToo and ExtinctionRebellion movements whilst wearing revealing dresses and travelling on private jets. Mr. Fox, part of the famous Fox dynasty of actors (which includes his father, James, and uncle, Edward), is perhaps best known for playing the leading role of DS James Hathaway in the Inspector Morse spin-off TV series "Lewis" (2006-2015) and from his roles in films such as Gosford Park and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. More recently, however, (in 2018), Mr. Fox joined the ITV series Victoria, playing the role of Lord Palmerston for its third series, which first aired in 2019. A singer and songwriter, Laurence Fox's latest album includes a song ("Dead in the Eye") that targets politically correct woke culture, which he likens to a new religion.

Simon Heffer is an English historian, journalist, author and political commentator. He has published several biographies and a series of books on the social history of Great Britain from the mid-nineteenth century until the end of the First World War. He was appointed professorial research fellow at the University of Buckingham in 2017. He worked as a columnist for the Daily Mail and since 2015 has had a weekly column in the Sunday Telegraph. As a political commentator, Heffer takes a socially and constitutionally conservative position. Heffer's most recent book is "Staring at God: Britain in the Great War"

This week's guest on "So What You're Saying Is..." is Theodore Dalrymple, the English writer, doctor and psychiatrist. Dalrymple is a contributing editor to City Journal, published by the Manhattan Institute, where he is the Dietrich Weismann Fellow. In addition to City Journal, his work has appeared in The British Medical Journal, The Times, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, The Salisbury Review, National Review, New English Review, and Axess magasin. He is the author of a number of books, including Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass; Our Culture, What's Left of It; and Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality. In his writing, Dalrymple frequently argues that the socially liberal and progressive views prevalent within Western intellectual circles minimise the responsibility of individuals for their own actions and undermine traditional mores, contributing to the formation within prosperous countries of an underclass afflicted by endemic violence, criminality, sexually transmitted diseases, welfare dependency, and drug abuse. Much of Dalrymple's writing is based on his experience of working with criminals and the mentally ill.

On this week's episode of So What You're Saying Is, Peter Whittle interviews Andrew, Lord Green -- founder and chairman of the independent think tank Migration Watch. He was for 12 years a board member of Christian Solidarity Worldwide (a human rights organisation which speaks for Christians and others around the world who are suffering persecution for their religious beliefs). Lord Green was a career civil servant prior to founding Migration Watch in 2001. Joining the Diplomatic Service in 1965, he spent half his career in the Middle East where he served in six posts. The remainder of his service was divided between London, Paris, and Washington DC. He was HM Ambassador in Syria (1991–94) and then Director for the Middle East at the Foreign Office, before serving for four and a half years as ambassador in Saudi Arabia. He retired in 2000. He was appointed to the Order of St Michael and St George as a Companion (CMG) in the 1991 Birthday Honours and was promoted as a Knight Commander (KCMG) in the 1998 Birthday Honours. On 21 October 2014 it was announced that Sir Andrew Green was to be created a life peer on David Cameron's personal recommendation for Green's "proven record of public service." He was duly raised to the peerage as Baron Green of Deddington, in the County of Oxfordshire on 28 November 2014. Lord Green sits on the cross benches in the House of Lords.

In this full-legnth interview, Thatcher's Official Biographer reveals for the first time some remarkable facts from his new biography, including: * Sir John Major's role in Thatcher's overthrow, * Thatcher's early commitment to climate change * Thatcher's desire whilst in office for the British public to decide on Britain's place in EC through both a general election and a referendum * secret channels opened up between the British government and South Africa's ANC * remarkable exchanges between Nelson Mandela and the British Prime Minister The Three decades after Thatcher left office, why does Britain's most successful Prime Minister remain such a divisive figure? What will history deem her greatest achievement, failure and legacy? Ultimately, was she a radical or a traditionalist? This week's guest on "So What You're Saying Is..." is Charles Moore, Official Biographer of Margaret Thatcher and former editor of The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator and The Sunday Telegraph. Charles joins Peter Whittle to discuss the third and final volume of his bestselling and definitive biography of Britain's first female Prime Minister, 'One of the great biographical achievements of our times' (Sunday Times) This volume tells the story of her last period in office, her combative retirement and the controversy that surrounded her even in death. It includes the Fall of the Berlin Wall which she had fought for and the rise of the modern EU which she feared. It lays bare her growing quarrels with colleagues and reveals the truth about her political assassination by her own MPs. Moore's biography of Britain's most important peacetime prime minister paints an intimate political and personal portrait of the victories and defeats, the iron will but surprising vulnerability of the woman who dominated in an age of male power. Charles Moore notes that "Whenever I go on the BBC they always start: 'Margaret Thatcher was the most divisive P.M....' rather than stating 'Margaret Thatcher was the most successful P.M...." "Whatever one thinks of her as a leader, it is factually true that she was politically successful: * The longest-serving prime minister won every election.. * She won them all with big majorities * She brought in most of the measures she wanted to. * She has a set of doctrines are named after her. * She was the first female prime minister. * She was a hugely prestigious global figure by the late 1980s, having been the senior world leader by as early as 1982. * She helped end the Cold War and was celebrated as an heroic figure in central and Eastern Europe. She also correctly forecast that the European Community's plan to tie post-reunification Germany down and stop it being a threat by placing it at the heart of an increasingly centralised European Union, tied to other European states also through a common currency, would backfire & lead to Germany dominating the continent.

Melanie Phillips is one of Britain's leading political journalists and cultural commentators, and as a champion of traditional Judeo-Christian culture and values, she is famed across the Anglosphere for her trenchant views. The first person to ever address the New Culture Forum upon its foundation in 2006, Ms. Phillips has written at various times for The Mail, The Guardian, The Spectator, The Times, The Jerusalem Post and The Jewish Chronicle. She is familiar to many in the UK from her appearances on BBC's "Moral Maze", "Question Time" and "Politics Live" and in the wider world as the author of numerous best-selling books, including "Londonistan" and most recently "Guardian Angel". In this interview with Peter Whittle she explains how Brexit has seen Parliament attempt a coup against the people. She comments on the defeatisim and lack of resolve in the west, which for too long has failed to stand up for itself. Brexit and some of the more palatable forms of populism she believes are a backlash against that. Never a member of any political party -- she has only subscribed to two "isms", journalism and Judaism -- Melanie explains in her recently published personal and political memoir "GUARDIAN ANGEL", why she moved from left to right -- and to Israel. Anti-semitism played an important part in this and Melanie Phillips comments on the disturbing rise of anti-semitism on the left (as in Corbyn's Labour Party) For Ms. Phillips, the horror of the second world war and the holocaust occurring in a cultured continent, did something terrible to the Western / European idea of progress, civilisation and believes the nation state unfairly got the blame for this. Herein lie the roots of so much of the loathing for the nation state among many members of the modern liberal elite.

In November 2018 the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims, chaired by Anna Soubry MP, published its report, Islamophobia Defined, to establish a working definition of Islamophobia. Subsequently the definition has been adopted by local councils and political parties, even before the Home Affairs Select Committee concluded their assessment of the proposed definition. In the wake of this our guest, Emma Webb, produced an anthology that brought together concerns about the APPG definition of Islamophobia from a variety of perspectives. It included atheist, secularist, religious and academic assessments of why the Islamophobia definition is not only unfit for purpose, but also poses a danger to civil liberties in the United Kingdom, particularly freedom of expression, and journalistic and academic freedom. It may be downloaded here: http://www.civitas.org.uk/content/fil... Emma Webb is director of the Forum on Integration, Democracy and Extremism (FIDE), a project of Civitas. She was formerly a research fellow at the Centre on Radicalisation and Terrorism (CRT) at the Henry Jackson Society. Her published work focuses on Islamist extremist networks and their abuse of civil society, the education and charitable sectors, and domestic funding. She has been published in The Times, the Telegraph, Independent and Spectator, among others and has appeared on international media discussing the risks posed by terrorism and extremism in Europe. Emma holds degrees from the University of Cambridge and King’s College London.