The demoralization of Britain:
The greatest success of the drug decriminalisation campaign has, from the start, been its respectability. Though it is true that a handful of open revolutionaries put their names to the 1967 cannabis manifesto, they were overshadowed by the long lists of the grand, the famous and the established. Most people, when they see a former editor of “The Times” or a former Defence Secretary or a distinguished doctor endorsing weaker drug laws, think this means that sensible, responsible, conservative people have come round to this view.
It is my contention that it shows something quite different — that a formerly conservative establishment has been demoralised — a possibility I explored in “The Abolition of Britain”. Readers of this history will have to make up their own minds which view they accept. One problem for anyone dealing with this subject is the strange fate of the British Conservative Party, which, having for some years believed in nothing at all, then embraced fervent economic liberalism under Margaret Thatcher. Economic liberalism is of course closely allied to political and social liberalism, and Lady Thatcher’s government, whether it meant to or not, pursued or at the very least did not thwart these forces.
