Dalrymple writes of Sir Roger Scruton’s appointment to an architecture commission that it was
a wound to the predominant faction of the British intelligentsia, one that could be healed only by his dismissal. The hideousness of most of what has been built in Britain over the last few decades (so apparent that only an intellectual could miss it) was no excuse for having allowed Scruton to sully the corridors of power even for a few months. In the great work of ridding the body politic of the stone in its shoe, any slur would do, any libel or slander that came to mind was acceptable.
A man at the Leftist New Statesman periodical called Eaton
counted on the pusillanimity of the British government.
Eaton
had himself pictured swigging Champagne directly from the bottle immediately after the government dismissed Scruton.
In the published version of the interview, Eaton
gives an impression of Scruton as an anti-Semite, hater of Muslims, and despiser of Chinese. These accusations are false and defamatory, as any reader of Scruton would know — he often quotes Islamic writings knowledgeably and with respect, while maintaining that Islamophobia is an invented category to shield the religion from rational criticism.
But
if you sling enough mud, some of it sticks, and enough mud stuck for the British government to lose whatever little nerve it ever had and to sack him.
Dalrymple’s view is that there is a reason Scruton was hated in his role, other than the fact that the existence of the commission, by its very name (‘Building Beautiful Architecture’) brings attention to the ugliness of what progressive social-engineering architects have wrought. Namely, Scruton was
unpaid. This set a bad precedent, for those who truly have the good of the country at heart, such as progressive social engineers, should surely be well rewarded. Scruton was letting the side down by working for nothing, and had to be punished.
