At the entrance to the hangar-like Olympia conference centre is a huge, framed drawing, showing a design for an imagined triumphal arch. It depicts the intellectual, scientific and cultural contributions to the world made by Western civilisation, from the abolition of slavery to shipbuilding and the caravel.
‘Civilisation’ – and how to defend it – was the primary concern of those attending the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference this week. Over three days, 4,000 attendees pondered the ‘civilisational moment’ at which we stand. Down one fork in the road lies freedom, prosperity and flourishing. Down the other: stagnation, division and managed decline.
Since being set up in 2023 by Baroness Stroud, Jordan Peterson, Sir Paul Marshall and Legatum, ARC has grown into perhaps the highest-profile conservative gathering in the country. The Guardian call it the ‘anti-woke Davos’. And this year both the country’s primary challengers for conservative hearts and minds attended to make their pitch.
We have for too long, Kemi pointed out, taken for granted Britain’s status as a rich country – giving away money we don’t have in international aid and bankrupting ourselves through net zero
Kemi Badenoch reflected that our culture is not, as this government seems to think, just arts and music – backed up by government schemes and pots of money. Rather, culture is ‘norms, behaviours, expectations’ and it is in those things that we would find the quintessence of our national identity; and find what we need to defend. There was applause when she declared that Britain is not a dormitory or a hotel; it is our home.
We have for too long, Kemi pointed out, taken for granted Britain’s status as a rich country – giving away money we don’t have in international aid and bankrupting ourselves through net zero. She aimed her pitch squarely at young people – ‘hope is coming’ she assured, but they had to be shown that Britain was a country worth fighting for.
Nigel Farage said we were in danger of losing the sense of who we are. It was the values of family, community, country that had brought him back to politics. He was encouraged by the growing numbers of Gen Z looking for a sense of purpose. To re-establish social cohesion, we needed to rid ourselves of two-tierism across the state. And we should unashamedly make the argument that living in a stable family and with a genuine sense of community makes for the best way of life. We had moved away from a way of living where everyone ‘speaks the same language, they all have something in common, they all know their neighbour’s Christian names and they take part in community events’, to one more selfish and atomised.
Farage spoke wistfully of his own upbringing, in a village in the North Downs where everyone knew and looked out for each other. Neighbours met in the church, the shop and the pub. ‘It was a great way to live’, he reflected. There was a sentimentality to Farage that he doesn’t often show – it was genuine, and it worked.
Despite being founded here, ARC feels as international – and especially American – as British. There were stalls for US liberal arts colleges along with Academics for Academic Freedom and History Reclaimed. Americans ate treacle tart and Eton mess, Aussies walked around in safari hats, and Israelis remarked that the temperatures were higher than Tel Aviv.
Our shared Judeo-Christian inheritance suffused the programme. Some 500 people turned up for a prayer breakfast. It was the first conference I have been to where speakers brought their whole families with them, and attendees who were mothers pushed their children around in prams. Psychologists inspired by Jordan Peterson jostled with retired American farmers and Tufton Street think tankers, all seeking intellectual sustenance and a community of ideological bedfellows.
Attendees discussed how to recover confidence in the story of the West, how to restore abundant energy as the foundation of prosperity and how to enable human flourishing. More prosaically, sweaty American attendees asked over lunch why there wasn’t air-conditioning on the Tube, and why London was plastered with LGBT+ flags when the woke high water mark was meant to be behind us. All were concerned by the UK’s current plight.
In scale ARC now rivals political party conferences. The media – GB News, Talk, Times Radio – came too, though the BBC clearly couldn’t spare anyone, what with Andy Burnham’s coronation to cover. But several thousand people – including several hundred young volunteers – debating the defence of Western civilisation felt rather more important than the latest political psychodrama happening in SW1. As she closed the conference Philippa Stroud found inspiration in Tolkien, recalling Aragorn’s battle cry in defence of the West delivered at the Black Gate of Mordor: ‘By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand’. It was one of those events that left you feeling just a little bit hopeful.
