Saint Thomas More (7 February 1478 - 6 July 1535), also known as Sir Thomas More, was an English lawyer, author, and statesman. During his lifetime he earned a name as a leading humanist scholar and occupied many public offices, including that of Lord Chancellor from 1529 to 1532. More coined the word "utopia", a name he gave to an ideal, imaginary island nation whose political system he described in a book by the same name published in 1516. More is chiefly remembered for his principled refusal to accept King Henry VIII's claim to be supreme head of the Church of England, a decision which ended his political career, sped along his beatification and led to his execution for treason.

The term "Utopia" has come to mean an idyllic, visionary Shang-ri-la type of community. However when Sir Thomas More derived the term from the Greek, it literally meant "nowhere". In essence, both meanings are as exactly correct: Utopia can represent both a mythical, impossible retreat and a great, guiding, social ideal.

Much of More's book was extracted from and influenced by the Bible, especially from the "Christian Humanist" biblical interpretations that formed a vanguard of social criticism in his time. Along with Erasmus, More yearned to change his world for what he saw as the better. He saw that wanton greed and terrible poverty were often irrevocably bound to one another and he argued vehemently for the closing of the separation between classes.

In More's book, the character Raphael Hythloday is a world traveller and witness to Utopia. Thomas More meets with him and dines with him. After dinner Raphael begins his descriptive tour of the land that is Utopia that he saw:

First of all, Utopian Society was uniform, with all critics sharing the "same language, customs, institutions and laws." Its economy was guided by one fundamental rule: "All the Utopians, men and women alike, work at agriculture." Additionally, everyone worked at a trade of his own choosing, provided the trade proved useful to society. Although every citizen was required to work, each laboured only six hours out of twenty four. While to many such liberal conditions might seem untenable, Raphael pointed out that "the actual number of workers who supply the needs of mankind is much smaller than imagined," considering the many noblemen, beggars and others in contemporary society who produced nothing. For Utopians, the chief aim was to allow everyone enough free time to develop his or her mind.

Food on island Utopia was distributed equally, with the sick tended to first. The rest of the population ate together in vast, communal halls. If the people harvested or produced any surplus goods, these were shared with neighbouring nations who might be suffering from plague or famine or else used in trade. The Utopians imported nothing themselves, but traded only for the wherewithal to hire mercenaries in times of war. Rather than store their precious metals in vaults, Utopians used gold and silver to make chamber pots and stools and "for the chains and fetters of their bondsmen". In this way the citizenry held gold and silver "up to scorn in every way."

Idling was despised and never tolerated. No gambling was allowed and there existed no brothels or taverns in which Utopians might while away their time. When Utopia's inhabitants were not working, they were expected to pursue worthwhile activities such as reading and learning, or, if they preferred, to practice their trades. Anyone who proved especially adept at learning was allowed to forego physical labour in order to pursue scholarly work.

Utopia's laws encompassed "no fixed...penalties, but the senate (persons elected by the citizenry) fixed the punishment according to the wickedness of the crime." Serious crimes were punished by bondage. If a bondsperson refused to work, he was put to death; if, on the other hand, the slave proved hardworking and repentant, he was freed. The islanders believed that bondage, as a form of punishment, was "more beneficial to the commonwealth" and that the sight of bondage "longer deters other men from similar crimes".

Nothing in Utopia was so "inglorious as the glory won in war." The community would "go to war cautiously and reluctantly," entering into combat for two reasons only: either to protect their own territory or that of their friends....or to free some wretched people from tyrannous oppression." For the most part, when war was deemed necessary they hired mercenaries to do the fighting. If the mercenaries were defeated, then Utopians (men and women alike) would take up arms. In victory, they were "more ready to take prisoners than to make a great slaughter."

In all, Raphael was convinced that Utopian society was far superior to any other he had observed. He added particulars concerning Utopian marriage customs (prospective spouses were advised to see each other naked before they were wed, so that each would possess a full knowledge of what he or she was getting), fashion (all dress in simple attire to correspond to gender and marital status), religious observances, foreign relations, health practices and rules of the marketplace - each aspect of the island society having as its aim to make life better for everyone. In Raphael's estimation, Utopia was the only commonwealth which could accurately be called a "commonwealth"; all citizens there were treated equally and given equal opportunities and possessions: "When no-one owns anything, all are rich."

As the author of Utopia, More has attracted the admiration of modern idealists - most notably socialists. While Roman Catholic scholars maintain that More's attitude in composing Utopia was largely ironic and that he was at every point an orthodox Christian, Marxist theoretician Karl Kautsky argued in the book Thomas More and his Utopia (1888) that Utopia was a shrewd critique of economic and social exploitation in pre-modern Europe and that More was one of the key intellectual figures in the early development of socialist ideas.

A number of modern writers, such as Richard Marius, have attacked More for alleged religious fanaticism and intolerance (manifested, for instance, in his persecution of heretics). James Wood calls him, "cruel in punishment, evasive in argument, lusty for power, and repressive in politics". Other biographers, such as Peter Ackroyd, have offered a more sympathetic picture of More as both a sophisticated humanist and man of letters, as well as a zealous Roman Catholic who believed in the necessity of religious and political authority.

It is pointed out, as a serious point for consideration, that "More is the only Christian saint to be honoured with a statue at the Kremlin", which implies that his work had serious influence on the Soviet Union, the irony given its intense hatred towards Christianity and all other religions.

More's Utopia seems backward today while in its time it seemed, well, utopian. The time since its publication has seen some of its ideas advanced, many never taken up and none actually attributed directly to More. While in its time it could ride on the waves of religiosity, today religiosity is passé and great, guiding, social ideals are presented in sound bites dressed up with spin, avoiding God altogether; keen not to offend minorities so rarely written for the majority. Publishers today would not allow More's text to pass as read, as now its time and phrasing has passed - just as the waves of Communism that floated Orwell's 1984 have long since dispersed (though the latter is making something of a comeback in the age of Big Brother).

It is a great tragedy - for those lovers of colourful society - that the only idealists in Britain and the West today with any kind of a voice or view of their own Utopia are the Islamists - whether Hizb ut Tahrir with their Caliphate, the Tablighis with their own version of a global Islamic state and other sects spawning yet other sects who seem only able to disagree with yet more sects about how their Islamist state will be formed. It is a great tragedy that the only Utopias on offer are those based on Sharia law - the equivalent of pitching for architects for a great design and ending up with drawings of concrete bungalows.

Our societies are now wholly dominated by realists who get on relatively pragmatically with living, striving for progress (whether they know it or not), donating to charities by direct debit and paying their taxes at source whilst enjoying their lives. Societies run by mostly unelected apparatchiks split into divisions of labour but united by the desire to meet the mortgage repayment or get those two weeks in July in Gran Canaria. If many of the Utopian idealists around today were not so dangerous and, more importantly quietist, they'd make society seem that much richer - just as peacocks can enhance the beauty of a fine garden (of course their awful squawking prevents most from allowing them in their gardens in the first place).

Certainly there are remnants and signs of other Utopian factions in Europe:

There are the Marxists (who are still remotely successful in France) - but even they have been reduced to siding with the Islamists as few others will share marches with them; their numbers now down to a few former LSD lovers, knitters of bobble hats and owners of badge machines.

Then of course there are the extreme Greens who wish for us to spend our days embracing trees and collecting the emits of wind from cows in recyclable bags - not to be mixed up with the pragmatic environmentalists who cleverly embrace the mainstream and share some of Science's optimism about current society developing brilliant, progressive (rather than extremist, regressive) solutions to stave off environmental doom.

One wonders what Raphael Hythloday would make of the island that is modern Britain today - part of Europe. What would he make of the lack of starving people? Free healthcare for all? On the other hand, what would he make of so many mere cautions for thieves? Or the great majority who now forego physical labour? Would he describe Britain as Utopia or just aspects of British ways utopian? Would he have time to stand back and judge or would his time be otherwise consumed by Western toys?

The sixteenth Century was a harsh and brutal place, wherever you found yourself on the planet - whether in England, somewhere in the Caliphate or just on the beach. No doubt Hythloday would see that what we have here in modern Britain is heavenly in comparison to those days - in comparison, moreover, to More's Utopia (meant ironically or not). No doubt Hythloday would view plans for huge steps back in history - those of the Islamists or the Marxists or the extreme greens (happy to curl up at night under leaves on moss chewing on berries) - as madness and as a return to relative barbarity. 

History is littered with the carcasses of failed ideological gambles, whether Communist, Islamist, Maoist or Socialist - consumer society borne of liberal democracy is no longer an experiment or a gamble; imperfect but brilliant in the way it provides people with head room and a system so multi-layered, multi-faceted and flexible that it does not even need to describe itself to vanquish its utopian foes.

Let us face the reality - the Utopians are dead. Today's Islamist terrorism is the last putt-putt from a vehicle called Utopia whose head gasket has just gone; resigning it to the scrap heap where it was always headed. Modern day Utopias like Taliban Afghanistan or pyramid Albania are best forgotten catastrophes where too much ideal suffocated natural human instinct. Long may progress march on and ever spew the flawed dreams of Caliphate - and other violations of purer individualistic freedoms - to the sidelines from under its ever-swift-spinning and invincible wheels.   

Dominic Whiteman is European Director of the VIGIL Network - an international network of terror trackers, including former intelligence officers, military personnel and experts ranging from linguistic to banking experts. He edits the Westminster Journal.

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