Goodbye to All That?

The Abolition of Britain: From Winston Churchill to Princess Diana, by Peter Hitchens (Encounter, 332 pp., $22.95)

BACK in the 1970s I spent two very pleasant months lecturing to American audiences on the British dis-ease, making their flesh creep about the unconstitutional power of labor unions, the misdirection of investment by government, over-manning in British factories, the punitive levels of taxation, and many other social and economic ills. Americans were curious about these symptoms because British social democracy was seen by liberals as a “future that works” (to quote a book by the then London correspondent of the Washington Post, Bernard Nossiter) and consequently by conservatives as an awful warning about socialism.

About the Author

John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

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The Abolition of Britain: From Winston Churchill to Princess Diana, by Peter Hitchens (Encounter, 332 pp., $22.95)

BACK in the 1970s I spent two very pleasant months lecturing to American audiences on the British dis-ease, making their flesh creep about the unconstitutional power of labor unions, the misdirection of investment by government, over-manning in British factories, the punitive levels of taxation, and many other social and economic ills. Americans were curious about these symptoms because British social democracy was seen by liberals as a “future that works” (to quote a book by the then London correspondent of the Washington Post, Bernard Nossiter) and consequently by conservatives as an awful warning about socialism.