Transcription
I think it's likely before 20 before the next election. It's very likely within 5 years and almost inevitable within 10.
My name is David Oldroyd Bolt and it's a pleasure to be here speaking at the second New Culture Forum Literary Festival. It's a particular pleasure to have with me today Professor David Betts of King's College London. Professor Betts is Professor of war in the modern world and he's going to talk to us today about why he thinks civil war in the West is not only probable but has probably already begun.
Uh David Betts I'm sure is known to you through his writings beginning in 2019 with Britain's dirty war he came to prominence beyond the academic uh cur- beyond the academic sphere and in recent years has become well known at conferences here and around the world for expounding this idea in the face of a great deal of opposition both from his colleagues within the academy uh and from the wider historical community. So, I'm going to ask David to give us a sort of pre- see of the of the theory and its practice. We'll talk for about half an hour and then it'll be over to you for some questions. So, please do think about what that might be. But for now, please welcome Professor David Betts.
Thank you.
So, Professor Betts your idea is that civil war which has generally been being considered to happen in failed states uh is not only occurring or is about to occur in the West but through things like breakdown of law and order, uh the breakdown of consensus policing, the breakdown of the political system is already occurring. Would you give us the outline of why you think this to be the case?
Uh okay. So, the basically my argument is that the conditions which civil war scholars tend to suggest are uh permissive or likely to produce civil war are all uh very visible throughout uh many Western states, uh perhaps particularly uh here in Britain. Although, it's a rather dismal race with a number of close competitors. Uh See, conditions are essentially these. One is factionalism. So, a fact a highly factionalized society is uh one that is uh uh uh reckoned to be a strong indicator of the potential for some sort of civil rupture. Factionation in itself is uh not untypical in any political system. You can have issue factionalism, for example, where people disagree very strongly on certain issues, say abortion or the death penalty or the like. But, we're not in that sort of uh factionalized state. We're now in a rather more rather more advanced state of factionalism known as polar factionalism, which is where people are no longer disagreeing so much over the issues as they are disagreeing um or they are adopting the what they believe to be the beliefs of their tribe. Which means that what lot of people are are doing now is essentially uh subordinating their individual conscience to a collective one. Which is a rather unnatural act for I I for almost everyone in the audience, right? It is something that one you you don't really do. To care anybody goes to a literary festival probably fancies themselves to be a free thinker. Uh and objects to that idea. So, it's an unnatural reaction, but it is occurring and it's occurring and it it occurs essentially when people fear for their security. When you feel that you're coming close to the edge in some way, you have a security concern, is when you start to look to your your friends, your allies. Who is on my side? What side am I on? One of the things that's all evident about factionalized societies and you can see it is uh you tend to get uh s- performative acts where people are uh encouraged or forced sometimes essentially to declare their affinity. Most obvious one in recent days would be the taking of the knee. The taking of the knee is not a neutral political act. It's not a polite nod. It's a it's a physical demonstration of uh an ideological position. You take the knee, you join one tribe. You don't take the knee, you join the other tribe. There are many other examples one one could give of this. Anyway, factionation is is a problem. It's very obvious in in our society.
The second is uh essentially a narrative. It's an idea. It's very powerful idea when it takes hold. It's called in the literature it's tends to be called the downgrading narrative. Uh more popularly it is known as replacement or displacement. The downgrading narrative is very simple. It's it's an idea held by a formerly dominant majority that it is losing its status in that that society. This is a very powerful propellant to civil conflict because it's not a one-time sort of, you know, election loss. It's a permanent status loss. It's not a simple change in um this or that policy. It is a It is a permanent change to the political rules of the game and to the cultural rules of the game. This is obviously highly impactful and highly frightening. So, it tends to animate people to con- to conflict in a very powerful way. If you think about it uh uh a bit, the important thing here is uh that the most vulnerable condition to be in is one where you have uh a uh a majority or which is losing its status, but still has the wherewithal to revolt. It has sufficient size. If the society is very, very fractured, then it's quite hard to mobilize uh people. The the um the coordination costs of getting multiple groups to coalesce in a in a mass is usually too great, right, for that society. So, highly highly fractured societies tend to be paradoxically a bit secure. Uh the really dangerous part is the is the is the place where we are. In the middle. So, downgrading is uh the second factor.
The third factor is loss of faith or l- legitimacy. Loss of legitimacy. Loss of Loss of belief of the society in the validity of the political system. People start to believe that their government, their national government, is not a national government. They don't They don't think nationally. They are suspicious of people who think nationally. Um So you know, in that sort of environment where people are talking about two-tier justice, about you know, basically the key thing is the uneven application of the law. And the people and the the idea that politics is the natural way for the society to solve collective action problems uh is eroded. That doesn't mean that politics goes away. It just means that the the way in the ways in which uh politics uh are enacted move to a different mode. In this case, it's conflict to violence. Uh I can talk about what later perhaps what how I see that coming about. So there's three really strong indicators.
There are a number of barriers or like uh reasons to argue against. So generally wealthy societies are pretty free from uh the threat of civil war. It tends to be that wealthy societies are well-run societies, right? Uh they're peaceful, they have working political systems, they have competent government, they have competent bureau- bureaucracy. Uh you get this kind of virtuous circle. High trust, for example. High trust is probably the most important thing actually in terms of um high-functioning economies. You You You can have all the gold and diamonds you you want, but if you've low-trust society, you probably have a uh poor economy. Uh on the other hand, you can have almost no uh wealth, but if you've got a high-trust society, you can probably generate um So, wealthy societies are um are pretty secure. But, our society is not a wealthy one. It has the trappings of wealth, but a lot of it is fake, essentially. Uh it's not really, I think, a controversial argument to say at this juncture that we are on the edge of some kind of economic collapse.
Okay, collapse is the word that came. I I don't think that's unfair.
So, that assumption of wealth, I think you need to take off the take off the board. Another really strong barrier to the outbreak of civil war is a culture of obedience. So, if you have a you know, if you have a society like this one that you know, basically doesn't have the habit of revolt, that doesn't have the habit of civil war, uh this kind of stiff upper lip, the flagm- kind of British or English flagmatism. Um that culture of obedience itself can be very powerful um uh force against the rise of civil conflict. The problem there, in my view, and I think probably of many people, again, I think this is now obvious. Much of what I'm saying, frankly, is obvious. Uh that culture has eroded. The The country has The culture of the country has been radically transformed very openly uh over the last 30 years. Primarily through migration, uh but also through simply through education, Uh uh, indoctrination you might say, more fairly, in fact. So, if your idea is that we will not go into civil war or anything like that because this is a country that doesn't have people who go crazy in that manner, uh, I think you're probably that's a false assumption. That's, uh, a kind of normalcy bias. Uh, it's saying something about the culture of the country which is no longer true. It's rapidly It mean it sits in our head because it changed relatively recently. Uh, so people can remember different times when, you know, it would be, you know, crazy to suggest what I am suggesting. Um, but that's changed.
The third, um, really important, um, barrier to the outbreak of civil conflict is the existence of a competent and unified elite. Again, I don't think it's controversial now to suggest we do not have a competent elite. Uh, right? We have a competency crisis not just in government but across, um, basically all of the political economy I would I would suggest. In virtually every institution, um, but politics is very very, um, strong contender for the gold medal in the incompetency, uh, game. Um, it's also not unified. Historically it seems to be the case often that if your elite can hold together, um, and they they can often prevail, the weather hard times. But also not unified. It's fracturing, which is why you see elite defection uh at various in in various forms. Um There are many examples which one could give, but I think actually the strongest one, although he was even he was forced to backtrack on this, was uh when you know, the richest man in Britain said it you know, effectively what I'm saying. Uh Now, that's a pretty strong indication that at the elite at the very top, very uh elite level, it's it's fracturing.
So, those six reasons structural conditions basically there, and the reasons that uh that you might uh expect it not to occur are all um are all attenuated. Uh and I think fairly uh rapidly uh worsening.
I'll I'd like to begin if I could with the final point about the lack of a competent elite. In the first chapter of the book you kindly shared with me, you begin with a vignette adapted from a novel of 1935 depicting a conversation between a civil servant, a top lawyer, a member of parliament, um uh and a police uh police constable, during which essentially those you would expect to make the argument that everything is fine because we have wonderful institutions and so on, do so, and completely ignoring uh the man in the corner who keeps still because he knows that they wouldn't listen. I think this is one of the most striking things um that one sees across the West, that there is a cadre of the elite which is fully aware of the degree to which societies have fractured, the degree to which the elites have failed in their role of guardianship, and yet feels uh in a way restricted from saying this. Why do you think that has occurred? Or why is it occurring?
Um There is I could give a probably a long answer, but I'll give a short one. And the most important thing is you you'll be punished uh for speaking out. In in almost then every uh certainly if if you're if you're in in the police service, uh this is probably career ending. Uh in the wider security services. And you know, for so primarily my career has uh my main interlocutors in government are in the military, in the Ministry of Defense. Um and part of the reason I when I wrote these papers, I addressed it to that sort of audience more so than than police, which I've come to learn a lot more about but in uh more recently. Um And I know there are lots of people in the military who absolutely understand this. They spent 25 years trying to figure out, you know, how to do insurgency. They know what it is. They know what it looks like. They can read the tea leaves. Uh it's not but it's it's career ending to say, you know, "Minister, we need to prepare for civil war. We need to prepare for infrastructure protection, not against foreign threat, but against our own people smashing things because they are so angry." Um So, certainly in government, there are very strong consequences for speaking out. Uh As far as politicians go, I mean, there are a handful, but just apparently 2 weeks ago, but it was just reported yesterday that Kami Badnok could uh uh sort of come to come on side as it as it were to say, "Look, yeah, this is a possibility. Maybe it's 10 years down the road. It's not inevitable." I mean, clearly she's probably you know, kind of being a bit softer about it than than I am but they recognize it, okay? So, the main thing is you'll be punished. Um
But forgive my interjection. Surely the role of an elite is in part one of having a strong character that doesn't really care for such tawdry things as rejection and expulsion. If you are fulfilling that role, you should be speaking the truth nonetheless. So, this speaks to a lack of character as much as it does to a failure of general competency competency, I think.
I think that's fair, yes. I don't I think I can't I I would yeah, I agree. I think it shows poor character, low character. Uh there is you know, we have a political culture that is uh just uh I think characterized by low dishonesty um and corruption. Uh And that you know, that is amongst other reasons why people have lost faith, why people don't feel that it's legitimate, that they don't feel that you know, voting matters. That is the most most That's basically the the most commonly stated political position in the country is neither left nor right but that actually political system doesn't work. Uh which is why this really isn't so much a left-right issue. Um Yeah, uh so, I think you're correct. It does speak to low character. Um Uh absolutely. Uh you know, in times of crisis or at any time, you you should expect more from your governing class than you are receiving.
But I think this leads on to your further point about the complete misplacement of faith in institutions. That because these elites are people of such low character and based on dishonesty and corruption, those institutions basically built on clay that they will collapse at the merest push. How close are we to that collapse, do you think?
Uh, it's um, well, I first wrote about the trajectory that I thought we are are on um nine years ago. Uh, so Um, then I did paper in 2019 on Britain's road to dirty war, um, which nobody read. Um, but well, a few people read, but not as many. Um, so basically I think it's close, right? I think that the fact the factors that I've just described were apparent then. The key thing for me was the the absolutely suicidal way in which the British government reacted to the Brexit referendum by destroying its own legitimacy through its open behavior. Um, and as someone who had studied insurgency for 20 years or so at that point, in which subject area legitimacy is like that's the secret sauce. That's the magic thing that everybody is is uh, you know, whenever you talk about counterinsurgency, how you put a state back together or you know, a state that is falling apart, how you try to buoy it up, you talk about legitimacy. I thought, well, this is crazy for a government to to to do this uh to itself. It's going to be very very damaging. And that came to be. I think that came to be true. So, in answer to your question, I won't waffle on. I think it's likely before 20 before the next election. It's very likely within 5 years and almost inevitable within 10.
And this you give um statistical methodological uh examples of how this comes about using essentially the methodology of Barbara Walter, who's one of your greatest critics, who accuses you of misrepresenting the statistics. And there are some complex mathematics in here, but essentially you put it down to I think 85% within the 4 years. How do you come to that figure? What are the things you are weighing up in order to uh get essentially have a statistical basis for your arguments?
Okay. People are often kind of comf- people like it when you throw numbers at them. They find that it's you know, somehow this is more convincing. Um it's it's it it it it's not necessarily that you when you hear a quantitative argument that it is a superior argument um as for for being quantitative. Uh I'd rather, as I said, to be a bit like a bit looser, a bit more of the humanities rather than the social sciences when I talk about likely, very likely, almost inevitable. Uh but people like numbers. So, I took a number. It's not my own invention. It's from Barbara Walter's book um Civil Wars, How They Start and How to Stop them. In which she concludes that in a state in which the conditions for civil war, preconditions for civil war, uh exist, the actual likelihood of one uh occurring in any given year is 4%. Um so I just took that 4% uh and you imagine if you roll the dice five times in a row, you get to about 18 and 1/2 percent, somewhere around uh there, of a likelihood that you're going to roll come up under a four. Then, however, you have to consider that uh that it it's the whole of the Western system, which is So, it's not just one country that is in this uh in in this condition. It's multiple countries, and they're deeply interconnected. So, if it kicks off in one place, let's say Ireland or France or Britain or Belgium, Sweden, uh one could go along through a a fairly lengthy list of places where the conditions as described are apparent, um it's likely to transmit to neighboring countries. Here, I had to depart from the existing literature because there isn't such a convenient ex- existing number to say what that transmission rate. So, I just said arbitrarily, let's say if it breaks out that it's got a 50% chance of transmitting somewhere else. And if you simply play that out in a system of interconnected states over a period of 5 years with a transmission uh certain uh potential of transmission, you get to a much larger number. What's you know, I think in the paper I said uh I might have said 80%. Um off top my head, I I don't have it in front of me, but I think it's a big number. It's certainly more than 50%, okay? Um So, that's that was the that's the mathematics of it. I'm not a mathematics you know, I'm not a statistician. It's fairly simple uh logical extrapolation of a number existing in the literature just measured over 4 years with a potential transmission factor. That's what you come up with.
So, given that you're using Barbara Walter's own numbers, own statistical methodology, and own extrapolative methodology, why she so unwilling, in fact, to draw the question on a broader basis, why is the majority of the academy working in your area so unwilling on a basic fact of analysis to accept what you propound?
That's a good question. Yeah. I can't speak for them. I I honestly don't know. I would like to know. I wish she was here and she could explain what I mean, does she not believe her 4% number? Is those three factors that I mentioned to you, that's from chapter two of her book. Right? That's if you rewording a little little bit of rewording on my my part, but these are not This is this is not a new concept of David Betts. This is So, I'm perplexed. I I think it's very odd for someone to write a book about Her whole book is essentially set and focused on the United States and the potential for civil war in the United States. So, it's perplexing to say the least, and I don't I have a good answer for it. Um I think people are frightened. Um and I think academics are um you know, I think they're frightened. I think they're frightened by reality. They're frightened of punishment. Uh and if I I I would say also I suspect for what for what it's worth, she's not here, I don't know her, but I suspect also essentially it has to do with political positioning. Essentially uh there is a strong feeling on the I'm going to say the left, even uh though I just said, you know, that's not the right framework, but there's a strong feeling that currently the right is using civil war as a kind of threat to push the political agenda. So, it's not really it's not real. What it is is a is a political gambit. Uh So, I hear this uh criticism often. And uh I I think they're completely wrong, obviously, but if I understand where they are coming from, I think that's or I do understand where they're coming from, because that's exactly how they state it. So, I think it's possibly also related to that.
Which plays into the failure of the elites. Uh go back to one of your other points of fracturing. People like numbers, as you say. One of the numbers that um I think we're all aware of is that we're now 13 years past the point at which the indigenous population made up the majority of London. Uh we saw in recent statistics about social housing that in the 10 inner London boroughs, 2/3 of social housing is taken up by people not born in this country, of which 2/3 are economically inactive. These are significant numbers. How uh important is the demographic change of this country over the past 30 years to the likelihood of this civil breakdown?
On its own, it almost explains everything. Uh it's it's the most important. If you lined up Uh it because it underpins everything. Uh you you in just the preface to your the part of your question was a premise that you mentioned the economy, right? Economically inactive. I I think that basically all of it connects in one way or another, you usually directly, uh to some extent indirectly, uh to the issue of of migration to and to demog- and to uh demographic change.
You quote in the chapter that you sent me, um from the Luton riots in 2011, a man who became something of an internet sensation, uh and one and one who was held up for mockery talking about Moslemic rayguns, uh which I'm sure everybody remembers. What you point out is that the man was extremely drunk drunk, and what he was trying to talk about was Muslim rape gangs. Um which is a perfectly reasonable extrapolation, I think, of a drunken sentences. Which is amusing in itself, but actually this problem of largely Pakistani-based rape gangs across the north and Midlands and some parts of the south has been known about for 30 years. Has, I would say, materially contributed to the breakdown of the trust of, as it were, the the everyday voter in his politicians, in the police, in other institutions. And yet there is still vast official reticence to deal with it. Are there other such instances or is this to your mind the most important instance of how uh fractured society has become?
Um Yes, there are there are there are other factors. Like fairly obviously, there is terrorism. Uh so, Lee Rigby Anyway, you know what terrorism is. You you can see it in the environment. It's not literally things going off. You can you can see the changes in the urban landscape as a result of I mean, I think my book is out there uh on specifically on uh changes to the urban landscape on account of of of this. It's very visible. So, terrorism uh is uh is uh uh contributory factor. Uh the uh par- the rise of parallel societies, parallel economies is uh a factor. I could go on, but really to get to the the main point is the rape uh I don't know what what should we call it? It's called crisis. It's ridiculous term. It's a mega crisis. It's a uh its impact is so much greater than even the terrorism issue. Like the numbers involved. Uh and I actually don't believe the the I don't believe the numbers. Uh, I think every time you turn it every 6 months it sort of gravitates a little bit further up. I think now we're at sort of semi-open acknowledgement that it might be about a quarter of a million girls. Um, I think it's probably more than that, frankly. Uh, because I'm intensely suspicious. I think that we're being we have been lied to and um, we are still being lied to. But anyway, I think it's it's absolutely gigantic and it's almost irreversible in its in its effect. It's so it's so destructive of the potential of the society to hold itself together. Yeah? You know, if you're if your neighbor if your neighbor is someone who can you know, summon 21 friends to rape your daughter or your your neighbor's daughter on a Well, there's no way I don't I can't conceive of any way back from that. So, this it's like a it's basically an atom bomb, but it's slow in its explosion. But it's it's it's destructive on that kind of level. Yeah. Which is why the Moslemic Ray Guns guy I I think is so so poignant, basically, because he's clearly, you know, it's almost kind of stereotype of the work, you know, of the working class. These are people who formerly were like respected, who who formerly had a whole political party that represented them that now detests them. And he spoke the truth. You know, and what happened? It It was pilloried. Uh he was made a joke of. You go on to YouTube now, you can you can see the Muslim McRagan's guy. It's a It's this It's a video parodying him. It's a song. I think it's a moment of national shame. And you know, I I don't know pe- people in this room, but I I think if you are a person who saw that and laughed, you should be ashamed of yourself. Um if you brushed it off, you should apologize. You should take the knee. Um Yeah.
Where that leads rather unhappily though neatly to my final question. We are by all tenants of your analysis on the precipice of of this conflict, this civil breakdown, this disorder. Um how serious is it going to be?
That I think is uh is something that can perhaps be uh mitigated. Uh uh uh all wars are escalatory in their in their nature, right? So, there is the potential within any given conflict for it to get to escalate, to get out of control. Once you unleash people's passions, it is quite and violence begins to uh to be uh employed, it is possible for things to get very out of control uh and to rapidly exceed whatever the political purpose of the war seemed to be at its at its outbreak. Civil war has that potential, uh possibly in spades. One of the things about civil war I would I I in my opinion is that they tend to be miasmatic because of the intimate quality of them. You know, if you live with a person you know how to hurt them. You know where their soft spots are. Um and uh so when a whole society falls apart in that way, then you tend to get some pretty grotesque and painful uh behaviors occurring. So I think it could uh be very very bad. Um The most important thing in terms of mitigation is uh you want it as short as possible. The longer it goes on, the worse the the greater the costs. So if it's going to happen, you know, if I would think that the main thing is to try to limit its duration. I honestly don't know really I don't I'm not very confident in that that's I don't know how to do that. Uh but that's what I have been thinking about. The um The way I think it's going to lose so I'll I'll I'll conclude then just to say I I've I've talked about the civil war or a civil war. Uh uh actually it's the way I understand it is is this it's there's actually two. There's two it's one conflict with two different vectors. One is of the nature of a peasant peasant revolt. It is that just that that uh uh it reflects a desire of the native population to punish its post-national elite for having betrayed it essentially. And I think that is going to take the form of what is often called a dirty war. It's characterized by kind of assassinations, that sort of thing. Targeted uh effects, probably you know, politicians obviously, but I think more generally at uh elite figures. Frankly, if you're a judge, uh I think you probably have an outdated expectation of security. Um Uh so, that's one vector of conflict. Kind of peasant 21st century peasant revolt. Uh And the other vector is uh essentially intertribal. You're And you can see that um You can see that building uh already in the sense of uh as I said earlier about these uh kind of increasingly openly open demonstrations of tribal affinity. Um And uh that has the potential to be quite um quite ugly.
Well, we saw it a couple of weeks ago in in London with the Unite the Kingdom march on the one hand and the pro-Palestine march on the other Sure. uh occurring these these gatherings, these mass uh demonstrations of allegiance. Though, as you point out, only one side seems to be policed heavily and the other is allowed to get on with its business. Yet, by posing the greater threat.
Ladies and gentlemen, I've done my Cassandra act as long as I can bear. So, it's your time to ask questions. Um gentleman in the green shirt in the middle there, please. Do we have a microphone or do you have to shout?
Um my question would be uh about how the impetus of the civil war would kick off where I fully appreciate there are a lot of things the public are angry about right now, but I'm not sure what can make them uh compared to say sort of like all the stuff that kicked off the Arab Spring where it all it took was a Tunisian fruit seller self-immolating. Whereas even in Britain stuff like the grooming gangs that you mentioned, I remember talking to Keith Woods a couple years ago and he noted that if we weren't going to revolt about that, we weren't going to revolt about anything else. So, my question is one, how much of this can be attributed to sort of Alexis de Tocqueville's ideas about the government being the shepherd, how easily contained one can be, how you whatever wealth we have people still like their comforts and they're not going to you know ditch that for possible violence and uh second question is um whatever does kick off, won't it be essentially just akin to sort of like race riots that we've seen in stuff like the United States and so on where there's not necessarily some war aspect to it and even then they're put down pretty heavily as we see in um you know, Southport and uh more recently Southampton. Thank you.
Let me try to answer uh these questions as I understand them. Um sorry to be dense about it, but it's very hard to obviously it's very hard to predict. It It It's I know I I've studied enough wars at their beginnings not to um uh not to be uh blithe about predicting how they're going to go. They're just intrinsically unpredictable. Yeah. In their In their details. Um I think you'll How do we put this? Firstly, I think we're already past the tipping point. So, when when historians a few decades from now sit down to write up this uh this story, they will not point to uh they chapter one will not begin in 2026. Chapter one is somewhere already behind us. Yeah. Uh in the sense that the conflict the kind of things driving it towards conflict you know are already they're already done. They're decisions that were made or decisions that were not made already in our past. I picture you know uh Wile E. Coyote. You know Wile E. Coyote? You know when he runs off a cliff there's a kind of cliché where he runs off the cliff and he hangs suspended in the air for a while, looks down, and then 3 seconds later you're Wile E. Coyote. Uh that's where we are. We're suspended already past the precipice. Where I think you're going to where everybody where it will be demonstratively the case of the kind of Fort Sumter moment for Britain I think is uh likely to be you're going to have a politically motivated killing. Probably a judge. I if I was to if I was to bet uh a judge, media influencer, something like that. There've been a couple I mean we've had assassinations of of politicians already not in in arguable exception of Jo Cox but not in this vein uh but I think Well, they You know when perhaps Uh David Amess. Yeah, of course. Uh but I think when that happens you'll have on page one Britain civil war. You know, everybody will say well, that's where that's where we are. It's going to and um So, I think that's that's a moment which uh is likely to occur I think uh and is characteristic of that first factor. The second in the kind of intertribal rioting, what have you, the most important way that that's going to manifest, like when it will be very very obvious that we have uh crossed over and can't really can't go back is when um someone uses essentially infrastructure attack on city to cause a cascading set of crises within maybe a city like London uh or Birmingham, Manchester, there are plenty of places you can think of um uses infrastructure attack possibly on like something like petrol stations um electrical transmission, something like that essentially to produce um a series of cascading public order crises in an urban a large urban center with the view essentially to provoking um widespread riots. And the logic of that is pretty straightforward. Tactically, it's not very difficult. Um the mechanics of it are well understood. It's a thing which people in urban studies have been talking about for 50 years at least. You can find people in that field talking about the kind of intrinsically kind of unstable quality of the modern urban condition. So, I think that's that's those are the two two events that will um be very very symbolic of at
Thank you. Gentleman right at the back of the room. Yes, thank you.
I will. Thank you. Dr. Betts, I'm grateful to you actually with this talk because when people have spoken like Enoch Powell in the past over civil war, I always thought, well, civil war usually means two armed camps meeting on a battlefield. We have images of English Civil War, the American one, the Spanish one, etc. But what I think you're driving towards explaining is essentially Ulsterization. The example I think you're giving, I may be wrong, is that of Northern Ireland, certainly between the 1960s and the late 1990s. Is that correct? Have you based your analysis upon Ulster? There are other examples like Algeria, which are also interesting in that sense of civil strife, where a million and a half left the territory very shortly after independence. But it does strike me as this is a society that we've all seen on television, I've seen in person, and you may have seen in person. It's very much Northern Ireland during the Troubles with a capital T.
Yes. That's That's precisely correct. I I do use the term from time to time, Ulsterization. Um sometimes Lebanonization Lebanonization or Balkanization to you know, uh not quite interchangeably, but I'm I'm I'm very much um informed by the Northern Ireland case. Many of my interlocutors in police and government and military, for perfectly obvious reasons, uh use that example also because it's their experience. Um and uh I think it in terms of kind of extrapolating the costs, the length, and so on, that it's a convenient starting point. Uh if you, you know, take the worst year of the Troubles, for example, and multiply that by some amount to represent the larger British population, you get to Anyway, so I do Yes, you're you're correct. I really suggest, you know, that for people trying to get their head around what this will look and feel like, um that you can If you don't If you have some Yougo ex-Yugoslav friends, that would be a a good discussion to have, particularly to have a discussion about how things went from normal to completely nuts very, very quickly. There's a absolutely striking poll done in Yugoslavia in 1990 on essentially interethnic relations, which found like 80% of Yugoslavs said they had good or very good relations with their um uh their other ethnic um compatriots. These are the same people who 2 years later were kidnapping each others' children, slaughtering, you know, putting them into camps. Uh it it astonishes. It and it astonished people how quickly when it happened it that all uh developed. So that's a good thing, I think, to have a discussion with people about. Also, fiction, I think, is quite helpful. There's a a book that I very much recommend is called uh Random Acts of Senseless Violence. Random Yeah, Random Acts of Senseless Violence. It's by an American author named Jack Womack, and who wrote it in 1990, if I recall correctly, 91. Anyway, uh uh read uh read Random Acts of Senseless Violence. It's set in New York in the United United States You know, New York's in the United States. Uh and it's told from the perspective of a young girl, essentially of her in her diary. Uh and it's very compelling um a picture of what a civil war in a 21st century Western post-affluent uh state is uh likely to look like.
Uh gentleman in the front row here. Thank you. I was at the Trooping of the Colour this morning, and it was very pleasant to see that at least one British institution still works extremely well. Now, these generals and officers and other ranks, they all are profoundly proud of defending the institution of the monarchy and state, the establishment of the rule of law. So, whether we have a peasants' revolt, or whether we have a march on Rome, or whatever happens, what are the military going to do?
Yeah. That That is the That's the proverbial uh million-dollar question. Um the um strictly speaking, with respect to the literature on revolutions and whether they succeed or not, uh there's a strong kind of um uh apprehension in scholarship that the most important thing is which way the army goes. If the army supports the regime, usually the regime can survive. I think And so, what I'm about to say is controversial in the sense that I depart from depart from that. In the case of Britain, I think it's likely to be not a significant player. It's too small uh relative to the domestic the domestic population. And I s- increasingly strongly believe that it is not politically reliable. In terms of regime ex- regime expectations. I know if you're in the government, you're upset because I just used the word regime. Um but I don't care. Um I think that the that the you know, a government which so openly has conducting lawfare on its own army that has a tradition of local recruitment on a regimental model, even if that's very attenuated in the 21st century, is not is I think is not going to be a tool that government can um utilize um in the way that some other states probably could. So in the case of Britain, I think I think most likely occurrence is that the army is going to try to preserve itself. It will try to it will possibly have the wherewithal to keep order in a few places. Um you know, what stuff like this, you know, probably neighborhoods like this one. Uh but otherwise, it's it's not going to be a major factor, I think.
So no General Monck in 1660 bringing the king back.
Yeah, I don't think it's Yeah.
Um ladies and gentlemen, we run short of time, so I'm going to use chairman's privilege and ask the question on your behalf, which is when these breakdowns occur, when we have riots uh spreading contagiously, when civil infrastructure is attacked egregiously, what can the people in this room and watching online do about it, if anything?
Nothing. Nothing. Uh you should, you know, uh What can you do? You're uh you should know your neighbors. Know your neighbors. Uh you I mean, it's a fairly I see some young people out there, but it's I mean, the average age This This is not a a room full of John Rambos, yeah? And even if you were Rambo, you still have to sleep. You know, you only have eyes in the front of your head. Uh you can be you can be a very very tough and prepared guy. You can be an American with, you know, more guns than one could imagine. Uh The most important thing, I think, is to is not to be not to be alone. Uh don't be atomized. If you you you you must know your neighbors. Uh have strong Have your eyes open. Be real Be a kind of be Be a realist. Uh have appropriate situational awareness. Uh Well, I'll actually just add one thing if one one piece of advice for people who are worried about this uh this issue and want to take sensible steps. It's not really my field. Uh That I'm not a tech That's not my area of specialism. I'm not a prepper. But there is a very good uh website called Metropolized Society. Uh and Substack. They goes along with that. If you Google metropolized society, you'll come across the writings of a young uh English guy um who has written a number of um handy guides to things one can do sensibly within the law and within the means and capabilities of your average kind of middle-class, middle-aged person uh to prepare. But fundamentally, you know, it's a disaster. It's a dis- it's a disaster. It's going to be extremely frightening. People will be hurt, and you might be one of them.
Well, Professor David Betts, thank you for that intensely sobering and very necessary series of remarks. Thank you.
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