Page 12 - Community Living Magazine 34-3

ethics
The persistent stupidity of intellectuals

Why have the apparently intelligent and well educated for so segregate those so classified in special
long held the unintelligent or the disabled in such contempt? colonies or have them sterilised.
Political supporters included socialist
Why does eugenics refuse to die? asks Stephen Unwin firebrand Will Crooks, who described
“mentally defective children” as
“absolutely useless”, comparing them to
he last year has been quite a year “human vermin” who do “absolutely
for eugenics. nothing, except polluting and corrupting
T First there was the news that everything they touch”.
Andrew Sabinsky, one of Dominic Meanwhile, Julian Huxley asked
Cummings’ new intake of “weirdos and plaintively: “What are we going to do?
misfits” to act as government advisers, Every defective is an extra body for the
had claimed that eugenics was about nation to feed and clothe but produces
“selecting for good things” and that little or nothing in return.”
“intelligence is largely inherited”. A bill for the compulsory sterilisation of
Then Richard Dawkins, evolutionary certain categories of “mental patient” was
biologist and author, popped up on proposed, with Labour MP Archibald
Twitter claiming that since eugenics Church wanting to stop the reproduction
“works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs and of those “who are in every way a burden
roses”, there was no reason to think it to their parents, a misery to themselves
would not “work for humans”. and in my opinion a menace to the social
He conceded there might be grounds life of the community”.
for rejecting the practice before claiming, Soon, a government committee
absurdly, that “facts ignore ideology”. recommended legislation to ensure the
It was the distinguished English scientist “voluntary” sterilisation of “mentally
Francis Galton who, fascinated by his half The relation of eugenics to other sciences: defective women” – a move welcomed by
cousin Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of image based on a 1932 conference paper the Manchester Guardian but, thankfully,
Species, asked: “Could not the race of never passed into law.
men be similarly improved? Could not the Commission on the Care and Control of Confronted by a “long line of imbeciles”,
undesirables be got rid of and the the Feebleminded, recommended the novelist Virginia Woolf insisted that they
desirables multiplied?” compulsory sterilisation of the “feeble- should “certainly be killed”. Birth control
In 1883, he coined the term “eugenics” minded”, describing them as “social champions Margaret Sanger and Marie
and set out to improve the human race by rubbish” who should be “swept up and Stopes were both confirmed eugenicists
“better breeding”. His supporters soon garnered and utilised as far as possible”. – championing not just contraception but,
linked “undesirables” to a range of social Darwin’s son Leonard presided over the as Sanger put it, sterilisation for “that
problems and called for government first eugenics conference in 1912 and grade of population whose progeny is
action to improve “biological quality”. lobbied the government to establish already tainted, or whose inheritance is
In 1907, Galton co-founded the squads of scientists, with the power of such that objectionable traits may be
Eugenics Society and, in 1908, Sir James arrest, who would travel around the transmitted to offspring”.
Crichton Brown, in evidence to the Royal country identifying the “unfit” and Some of British socialism’s most
celebrated names agreed, including the
founders of the Fabian Society, Sidney and
Eugenics: desirable versus disposable Beatrice Webb, along with Harold Laski,
later Labour Party chair, who predicted
The theory of eugenics was developed Proponents of eugenics believed that the time was coming “when society
by Francis Galton, a half cousin of criminality, disease, immorality, “feeble- will look upon the production of a
Charles Darwin. mindedness” and prostitution resulted weakling as a crime against itself”.
His 1869 book, Hereditary Genius, from what they saw as unrestrained These views were echoed by economist
argued that heredity rather than the breeding in the lower orders. They John Maynard Keynes and, in 1931, the
environment was largely responsible for advocated birth control, sterilisation left-wing New Statesman magazine asserted
human difference. and even euthanasia. that “the legitimate claims of eugenics are
In 1883 he coined the term “eugenics” Eugenics was discredited by the not inherently incompatible with the
from the Greek, meaning “good” or horrendous extermination of people outlook of the collectivist movement”.
“well” born. This advocated controlling with disabilities by Germany’s Nazi
human reproduction to eliminate government during the Second Lethal suggestion
“undesirable” characteristics and World War. Philosopher Bertrand Russell proposed
encourage “desirable” ones. Undesirable Nevertheless, eugenic ideas survive in colour-coded “procreation tickets” to
qualities included all types of disability, disguised form today, particularly prevent the elite’s gene pool from being
most of all “mental deficiency”. among the intellectual elite. diluted by inferior stock, while George
Bernard Shaw insisted that “the only

12 Vol 34 No 3 | Spring 2021 Community Living www.cl-initiatives.co.uk