Impossible to teach ethics

✒ I AM old enough to remember voting in the Parliamentary election of 1945, when the Labour Party offered Britain a new choice based upon moral principles of Collective Ethics, to establish Universal National Health Care, fiercely attacked by Tory Press and politicians.

Because of the sacrifice of their fellow citizens in war, most British voters of that time shared that principle, for just a few years, until following generations chose to revert to the beliefs of pre-war, feudal Conservatism, preferring class privileges to principles.

The same choice is here again for British citizens, after the EU was formed on similar moral principles, that nations should cooperate for peace, and environmental action, to safeguard the land, sea and air of this world, for everyone’s grandchildren. The EU unites in the principled belief of nations sharing action against crime and terrorism, so Brexiteers are eager to damage the present working links by leaving, because they are totally opposed to all cooperation, while pretending to value those very bonds of shared information which they are breaking. Brexit is bitterly hostile to all efforts to unite our world in justice.

The British fishing industry is completely disinterested in the health of the world’s oceans, which demands nations working together, but they lack any grasp of principles about the planet, with short term Tory business pragmatism, which must destroy the whole industry eventually.

It is probably impossible to teach ethics to children, if they grow up in a Conservative/US Republican society, that there never was a superior class of persons, but principles are a superior form of human thought, high above present pragmatism.

Neville Westerman

by email