In Defence of the Stiff Upper Lip and Traditional British Values

It is time to make the argument once again for the stiff upper lip. The country at large is becoming drippy.

We're all becoming a nation of wet wipes, snowflakes if you prefer.

When you have the brother-in-law of the king writing a misery memoir for his sister and the House of Lords saying that you shouldn't wear ties, you begin to think that we really have lost all our backbone, our sense of duty, and our sense of propriety.

And I know I've got a reputation for being old-fashioned, but actually I think there is a great deal to be said for old-fashioned virtues, and it's time to speak up for them.

What do I mean by a stiff upper lip? Well, I mean not showing undue emotion, recognizing that some things in life are difficult but need to be done.

Not worrying too much about things that happened in childhood when you're a grown man and trying to trace back every issue that you face, every problem to some syndrome or to some misery of childhood. P.G. Wodehouse used to say that, um, in some of his novels that something had happened to

some poor fellow because his all-day sucker had been taken away when he was baby- a baby. This, of course, was satirical, but now we seem to think that if people have had some difficulty in early life, it is an excuse for bad behavior in adulthood.

It isn't. You've got to grow up. You've got to get over it.

You've got to say, "Well, that may have happened to me when I was a child, but now I am a man, and therefore I will behave as a man." St. Paul says, "When I was a child, I spake as a child." But once one becomes a man, it's different, and there is no excuse for complaining endlessly about difficult childhoods.

Many remarkably successful people who in fact had terrible childhoods and overcome it.

I think it was John D. Rockefeller, whose father was a complete monster, one of the most successful men in history, and his father, to teach him not to trust people, when he was a three-year-old, got John D. Rockefeller to stand on a table and jump off it, and his father caught him,

and he caught him again, and then he dropped him, and he said, "Son, you've got to learn not to trust anybody."

Cruel thing to do, a nasty thing to do. John D. Rockefeller's father, I think, classifies as a bad man, and that's just one example of it. But it didn't stop Rockefeller becoming enormously successful, the richest man in the world, and somebody who made his mark in society. So I think not complaining about your past is a good thing.

I think misery memoirs are tiresome beyond belief, and that people should stop writing them, and successful people who moan deserve no sympathy at all. I'd say the same about the Duke of Sussex. If you're a royal duke, you haven't had too hard a life in reality, though of course you've had some things that have been hard to

overcome. That's going to be true of everybody.

We need to be more robust. We need also to do our duty.

What do I mean by duty? Well, if you're the brother-in-law of the king, you don't criticize your sovereign.

You have a duty to your sovereign. You also have a duty to discretion, that you should not leak, reveal secrets, that things that you are told in confidence should remain confidential, that that is part of your duty. It's a duty to your sovereign when the king is involved, but actually it's a more widespread duty.

It's a duty of ministers who should not leak endlessly.

It's a duty of people who are told secrets when they're running banks not to tell them, as that former head of the NatWest did, to a correspondent from, uh, the BBC.

Duty requires people to do things that they do not want to do, to get out of bed in the morning, to attend to business when they would rather lie abed and attend to viewing the backs of their eyelids.

And it's fundamental to how society runs, particularly in a society that's becoming more dangerous and more at risk.

It is not impossible that in the next few years we may face a war, and if we face a war, we will need people who will join the armed services and who will go out and do their duty.

We may even face circumstances where people have to die to save their country, as they did in the First and Second World Wars and in many other wars before and since.

That is something that makes a country survive.

If people are not willing to do their duty, then the country will be taken over by another country, ultimately, one way or another.

This is part of the reason that ancient Rome fell, that people were no longer willing to fight for what they believed in, for the system that they had. They paid others to do it.

They had mercenaries who fought for them, and eventually the mercenaries decided that they could run it for themselves. Duty is a noble thing. I think if you talk about the, um, Duke of Sussex and the Prince of Wales walking behind their mother's coffin,

that was a wonderful and uplifting and inspiring indication of duty, the highest tribute they could pay to their deceased mother. It wasn't a cruel thing to ask them to do.

It was suggesting to them that they did their duty, which they did, and I hope they both feel very proud that they did it.

It was a remarkable thing to do, a hard thing to do.

Duty is not always easy, but it is the right thing to do. Duty means not overindulging, not being self-indulgent to one's passing passions, but putting them aside for a higher good.

It's something that should be encouraged in our society, but at the moment it isn't. Instead, people are allowed to go with the flow, to follow the latest ism, to diagnose themselves with ADHD or some other syndrome that means they are excused responsibility for their actions.

But we must all be responsible for our actions and not blame others.

That is what civilization is about. We are not beasts.

We are not brute beasts. I can hear the dog scratching at the door.

Pongo is not responsible for his actions.

He is not thoughtful in that way. But I am, and therefore I should be held responsible, and so should we all. And the stiff upper lip is part of this.

Frankly, we don't want to hear about endless emoting from other people. We want them to get on with their lives whilst we get on with theirs. That's not to say we shouldn't support and help members of our family and our friends if they're facing difficulties.

That's a different matter. But the people don't need to spread their emotions all over the newspapers and all over the television.

They want to grit their teeth and get on with life.

Really, this is what made our country great.

It was that determination, that spirit which I love in Carry On Up the Khyber, when the ceiling is falling in and the bombs are raining down on them and the musicians are getting plaster in their hair.

And Sid James, rough diamond as I think he was in the film, carries on as if absolutely nothing is happening.

I know it was again mobbing up this approach to stoicism, to the stiff upper lip, to a sense of duty.

And perhaps there was a point in our history where people went too far and were insufficiently emotional.

But we have gone so far the other way, excusing every form of bad behavior, allowing people to be utterly self-indulgent, and really losing our sense of purpose as a nation.

You may say the Lord's taking off their ties is trivial in this context, and you'd be right. It is.

It's not the most important thing. It is just another symbol of unutterable wetness, of putting yourself above the institution that you serve.

Actually, if you're a peer in the chamber of the House of Lords, it's not about you. You aren't relatively insignificant in this context, my noble Lord. It is about a great historic institution serving a noble people.

And to show your respect to that, you should wear a tie.

And if you're a bishop, you have to wear your robes.

And that's just how it is. Grow up. Stiffen your lip. Do your duty.

God save the King.