Britain’s Labour government is just one such a government. No, it has not set up any gulags, work camps, etc., nor is it executing people. It is subtler, more patient. Its plan of social engineering will have reached absolute fruition in fifty years, not five, but at the end of that time brave new Britain will contrast to traditional Britain as Communist China contrasted to Imperial China.

Sooner or later, all revolutions must deal with their contradictions, and Labour’s radicalism has led it to the point where it is necessarily immersed in contradictions. Contradictions in society appear when there is a breakdown of accepted norms. The 18th century – often referred to as the Age of Enlightenment – which was supposed to be the century in which reason replaced religion, was effectively the age in which an extraordinary proportion of Europeans were engaged in mystical pursuits, and in which séances and mystical healing were regulars even behind the closed doors of some governments.
Modern political revolutions are aided by the fact that Western society is inherently contradictory. I do not refer to the idea of multiculturalism (though there one can detect contradiction by the use of “cultural” and “ism”), but rather to the stuff of daily life – diet chocolate bars; walking machines in gyms for people who refuse to walk 3 blocks before hailing a taxi; lipsticks given away with magazines aimed at eight year olds; etc. Small coffee is “Tall,” and “collateral damage” indicates, as we all know by now, not damaged building, but the number of people killed during a military strike or campaign.

We are all becoming fluent in Newspeak, the language of the party George Orwell called “Ingsoc,” (an abbreviation of “English Socialism”). In Newspeak, words no longer have their familiar meaning. Hence Labour’s “multicultural” revolution is, like China’s Cultural Revolution, absolutely anti-culture; it works in the name of Britain and the British, but is fundamentally anti-British (and especially anti-British establishment).

Another accomplice to modern political agitation and revolution is, as I have already alluded to, that our modern individual-orientated “culture” is in league with government, sometimes, though not always, literally. We are busy creating our own 1984s. Think of the social networking website, MySpace. Once signed up on Myspace I set up a photo, some blurb about me (whether true or not) and collect “friends” like baseball cards. I also delete my friends as I like, leaving no trace of them in my life. The messages they have posted to me – once viewable by all – disappear. When I send a message, my photo goes with it for all to see, but when I change my photo on my page, it changes everywhere. Messages I posted a year ago suddenly have the new photo. The old one is gone, erased. It never existed. And I can be anyone I want, it would seem. Oscar Wilde is particularly active on MySpace, as are a number of other dead people.

Overhauling a society has rarely been easy, but today in the West it seems as about as easy as it can get, because, despite his suspicion of “government,” the Westerner (the white man or woman) has an uncomfortable feeling that he is in a sense a member of the elite, and – through his train of P.C./Ingsoc thought – the government, the wrongdoer. He is cyber Big Brother controlling his personal profile Web-world, and with abbreviated web-speak – “lol” – and an inadequate grasp of the English language he speaks Ingsoc naturally – “my bad,” “it’s like so you know,” “just doin’ my thing,” “that’s cool;” throw in the usual liberal platitudes – “I think everyone should just get along,” “we’re multicultural” – and your home – with the door left unlocked and the windows wide open.

The more we become our own personal Big Brother the more we want to identify with the victim. It’s Stockholm syndrome. We buy coffee for five dollars a cup knowing full well that the African farmers get next to nothing for it, and then complain about the injustice of the world. Westerners are the only people who would march in the streets to get illegal immigrants permanent residence of their country, but won’t march to help the nation’s poor, whose jobs the newcomers end up taking. Similarly, the British seem to routinely take it on board themselves to reenact (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6490625.stm) the hundred mile marches that slaves were forced to endure, unable to admit that their ancestors were enslaved too. And all the while there are women and girl slaves sold into prostitution all over Britain.

Predicting our current situation, Aldous Huxley spoke of a society populated by abnormal people who act normally because they are immune to the outrageous perpetuated by society itself, because of their social conditioning:

These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted, still cherish ‘the illusion of individuality,’ but in fact they have been to a great extent deindividualized.  Their conformity is developing into something like uniformity. (Brave New World Revisited, p. 20)

Perfectly illustrating this delusion, I saw a young man, recently, who was wearing a tee-shirt bearing the slogan, “I am an individual,” underneath which ran a list of qualities that supposedly made him, the wearer, an individual. ‘Fashion’ – which has replaced style – is itself predicated on this delusion. It says I am an individual who can express himself like everyone else. My individuality is endorsed by big business, big brands, so I can’t be wrong – right? We have finally reached the age in which we are so cut off from tradition and continuity that, stranded in the unbearable now of an insecure existence, we crave the endorsement of the mass that we supposedly reject.

Contradictions run through Western and especially British society. In Britain, religion (especially the Christian religion) is thought of as primitive and superstitious, because it has, it is claimed, been disproved by Darwin’s theory of evolution. Yet, at the same time, Western society rejects the implications of evolution: dog eat dog, the survival of the fittest, adapt or die, et cetera. Instead, it legislates against the strongest, the established, etc., taxing the middle classes, or establishing “positive discrimination” (note the contradiction). It is the inversion of Darwinism.

In the West the very notion of the “nation” is eroding. Most troublingly, the cultural language of manners, and established social norms, have already been worn down. Look at a photo of young men or women of a century ago and compare it to one of today’s young men and women and the contrast is shocking. All nobility (and this is a quality that was once found in the working class as well) is gone. Most young people seem so lacking in self-control or self-awareness that they can’t even stand or sit straight. Problematically from a governmental perspective, gone too is the natural allegiance to the nation. There is only an allegiance to Me, Myself, and I.

Increasingly Orwellian, the Labour government has found a solution to this problem, it would seem. Indoctrination must be everywhere and from the moment of conception. Labour is now trying to push through legislation that will require daycare centers, nurseries, and child minders to evaluate and aid the development of babies and young children from birth to the age of five, so that they (the infants) meet targets in no less than 69 categories. For example, babies up to 11 months of age will have to show proficiency in gargling, cooing, etc. According to information posted online by Britain’s National Literary trust, at the age of 3, children should be able to perform a number of very specific tasks, including “pinch some food into a fish tank to develop manual dexterity.”

So far innocuous and idiotic. However, Labour’s political agenda will be introduced to children of 3 years and 4 months (notably an age when most children still believe in Father Christmas), at that point being taught lessons in “citizenship,” meaning, in reality, not British culture but the cultures of recent immigrants to Britain. Information posted by the National Literary trust suggests that by the age of 5 or 6, children should be “aware of their own needs and sensitive to those of others’ cultures and beliefs.”  Note the wording. British children are to be aware of “their own needs,” e.g., the need to use the bathroom, or to get a drink of water.  It is fundamentally secular and individualistic, rooted in a culture of “me.” British children are to be made aware of the culture of others, not their own. As Melanie Philips of the Daily Mail newspaper has said, “it has turned citizenship into a programme to remake not just national identity but to create a new type of human being from whom all politically incorrect views have been removed.”

As ghastly as this seems, we are less likely than ever before to see the public outraged enough to act. Our brave new world will not be imposed on us by the government, but will be a social contract between the citizens and the government, and it will have been bartered in a firm but friendly manner. Thus the government is currently trying to push through the Equality Act, a law that would make it illegal to discriminate against homosexuals. Significantly, the government has refused to allow Catholic adoption agencies to opt out, and, as such, they will be legally required to adopt out babies to homosexual couples, even though it may – and almost certainly would be – against the wishes of the mother. Conservative MP Bill Cash has said that the Labour government has “given more preference to those who stand for gay rights than those who are concerned with conscience, with family and with religion,” but he is missing the point. In the new social contract, ‘conscience,’ ‘family,’ and ‘tradition’ will all have a line drawn through them.

Our relationship to family, and especially to children is changing for the worse. It used to be said that children should be seen but not heard, and this sentiment was eventually seen as indicating that the children were not valued. Today children are valued – though this “valuing” of children has tragically turned too many of them into a product in our consumer-driven, “me first” society, with wealthy women from Britain and elsewhere buying babies from Mafia organizations on the European continent. Apparently babies sell for about 20,000 pounds (approximately 40,000 U.S. dollars), and are produced to order, with the criminal leaders impregnating vulnerable women in countries such as Romania, then feeding and housing them until they give birth to the product. Natalie Clarke of the Daily Mail quite rightly says this “sounds like something that might have happened in Hitler’s Germany.”
Having a baby is, of course, becoming less of a miracle or a natural joy, and more of a consumer choice. Some fertility clinics in the U.K., Australia, and the U.S. have begun to offer an egg-freezing service for women. Most commonly eggs are frozen by women undergoing cancer treatment, and who want to preserve their eggs so that they can have a child or children once the treatment is over, and the body in a normal state of health. That is perfectly understandable. However, it is reported that about 1 in 5 women are freezing their eggs in order to have a baby later on in life for “social reasons.”  Sadly, with babies being manufactured through the abuse of women (out of sight and out of mind to the consumer), or British women storing their eggs for “social reason” on the one hand and the government planning to indoctrinate babies from birth and up, we are seeing the social contract that is ushering in, if only abstractly, the baby factories of Huxley’s Brave New World, through which Huxley’s society is engineered. As Britain erodes its culture, and abandons teaching its history, and its citizens reach not for the euphoric highs of Soma but for alcohol at every opportunity, living for the rootless cool, “living for the weekend,” brave new Britain is a world leader – alas.

A united Europe has long been an aspiration spanning the political spectrum. The leader of the pre-Second World War Fascists, Sir Oswald Mosley, called for “Europe a Nation,” while, only slightly later, the British Independent Labor Party worked toward a “United Socialist States of Europe.” Again, in 1945 Prime Minister Winston Churchill called for a “United States of Europe,”  though he believed that Britain should not be part of it, apparently because of its “insular” quality.
Britain, it is probably true to say, has long had a difficult relationship with the European nations, and with the idea of being a part of Europe, having thought of itself as an island protected by sea, with a “special relationship” with the U.S. When a rail tunnel was built, joining Britain and France a decade or so ago, many British people protested that the country’s natural defenses had been breached.

Now, it would seem, even the many of the once-ardent supporters of a united Europe have turned Euro-skeptic. In 2005 France – which had once been one of its main promoters – defeated the European constitution, as did the Netherlands. Perhaps most surprising of all, nationalist political parties have recently made significant inroads in Euro-politics (especially since the introduction of several Eastern European countries), with several having banded together to for the European National Front. Ironically, with few exceptions these parties do not appear to be calling for “Europe a Nation,” or promoting the sort of all-encompassing political and cultural hegemony that is typically associated with at least earlier far-Right parties, but rather are promoting the idea that individual nations to retain their own historical characteristics, while forming some sort of working relationship.

Notably, Nick Griffin of the British National Party (not a member of the E.N.F.) has commented in this regard, that, “Unless the nationalists of Europe cooperate, the internationalists of Europe - the Eurocrats - will destroy all our national freedoms and identities separately.” Though the B.N.P. remains a party on the margins of British politics, Britain’s fourth largest political party is The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which, ironically, has ten members in the European Parliament. According to its mission statement their aim is to, “expose the true nature of the EU and… campaign for British withdrawal [from it].” Although they are usually denounced as “fascists” by their opponents the B.N.P. and other far-Right political parties in Europe do not echo, then, the historically fascist aspirations for national expansion and homogenization of occupied territories. The undoubted irony of Europe’s political dynamics is that the far-Right now consciously stand for the opposite, while secular Eurocrats seem intent on homogenizing the nations of Europe, even though this against the historical and cultural reality on the ground.

Europe is increasingly “a Nation” rather than a “United States,” such as Churchill called for. Despite any diversity that may appear within it, a nation is one, standardized, uniform in manner, customs, monarch or prime minister, weights and measures, etc. Churchill was American on his mother’s side (though his mother’s family was of English descent), and he made much of his American background when he promoted himself and the cause of liberty to the people of the U.S., prior to the latter’s involvement in the Second World War. Churchill understood what it was to be American, and her knew what a “United States” meant.

The U.S.A. contrasts sharply with the European Union precisely because it is so self consciously a union of states, each of which has not only a very distinct culture, but, often, distinct laws regarding the drinking of alcohol, sex, assisted suicide, etc. Some counties are “dry” because the sale of alcohol is illegal, due to long held religious sensibilities, while cities in other states, such as Las Vegas, thrive on gambling, drinking, and other sorts of nightlife. You would think that as the U.S.A. is so diverse, the European Union would embrace the historical and cultural diversity of its member nations, yet individual cultural identity has long been undermined by the legislators of Brussels, and continues to be, much to the chagrin of Europe’s people.

The first opposition to the E.U.’s encroachment upon British independence came in the form of tabloid headlines proclaiming that the Eurocrats were intent on denying the status of our “prawn cocktail flavour” crisps (or what Americans call “chips”). Later, ironically, the French wanted us to refer to our chocolate as “chocolate flavour.” Regulations banning the use of the term, “prawn cocktail flavour” or some such thing, seems a trivial matter to me, and a sacrifice worth making for a real United States of Europe. Yet, E.U. regulations have continued to damp down British traditions, as well as the traditions of some of its other member nations. Recently, for example, regulations pertaining to the measurements of pints of beer have threatened the use of the British crown within Britain, which has appeared on pint glasses as a marker of correct measure since the late 17th century. In response nine different breweries complained to the then prime minister, Tony Blair.  There is no good reason why a real, and long-standing tradition such as this should be eradicated by the European Union. Indeed, its function should be to protect the cultures of different European countries, or at least to allow them, by law, to keep their traditions, such as we find in the U.S.

Unfortunately Europe is uniting at a point in time when tradition, religion, and national sovereignty are concepts that are anathema to its prevailing intellectual culture and the bourgeois of several of its nations – perhaps especially Britain – and this can only affect any E.U. treaty. In 2006 Liberal Democratic Euro-M.P., Baroness Sarah Ludford condemned Poland’s stance on rights for homosexuals, which are exceedingly limited in comparison to other E.U. member countries, in part because of the country’s Roman Catholic heritage. Regardless of the merits of her position, Baroness Ludford commented that it was not a matter of Poland’s culture, clarifying a moment later, suggesting that it would not affect the nation’s language, food, music, etc. That these are held up as a nation’s culture, while its religion and moral foundation are designated, by implication, as ‘not culture’ is problematic to say the least in countries where tradition is still so alive. Would we apply this absurd notion to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? Unsurprisingly, Poland seems to consider the E.U. a threat to its traditional, Christian way of life, and as attempting to impose liberal secularism upon its people. Against the trend, in 2003 Poland led a campaign to have the Judaeo-Christian roots noted in the E.U. Constitution.

If traditional, national culture has been undermined, complaints have also arisen, regarding more practical matter. Leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron has noted that Britain was influential in the wording of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), which guarantee among other things, “freedom of thought, conscience and religion; freedom of expression.” Yet, these rights, Cameron has also pointed out, have been increasingly undermined under Labour. Sometimes, the erosion of basic rights has come from the government and at other times by the modern brand of Liberal-intolerance that the government’s followers have created (and which certainly does not deserve the name “liberal”).

In regard to freedom of thought, in 2005 the Labour government proposed the Religious Hatred Law, making it illegal to condemn, criticize, or ridicule any religion – thus effectively making free speech, or “freedom of expression” illegal. The law was voted down in its original form, though it was instituted in an amended form making it illegal to use threatening language in regard to any religion. Personally, I do not want to see religion attacked, though I do not want to find myself in a country where I risk imprisonment if I dare to condemn terrorist acts, for example, carried out in the name of a religion. Liberal intolerance has, of course, a trickle-down effect, and we are constantly affronted by an extreme though vocal minority, who promote turning freedom of speech into their own brand of politically approved form of speech under the banner of liberalism. Recently, then, we have seen people revealed as members of the B.N.P. by the press with – if it had any foresight whatsoever – the clear knowledge that they would be (and later were) attacked, with unions, demonstrators, etc., calling for them to be fired from their job, prosecuted, etc., even though they had not even promoted the party or spoken of their membership or political views – whatever they may be. (It is a cliché, I know, but the exposure of political opponents by newspapers became a part of the zeitgeist and semi-official policy of the early years of Germany’s Nazi Party.)

The harassment campaign against ballerina Simone Clarke for her membership of the B.N.P. is well known. A similar situation had occurred even before this, however, when architect Peter Phillips ran for presidency of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2006, and won 60 votes, Sumita Sinha, founder of the equal opportunities campaign Architects for Change, called for him to be expelled from the organization and for those who had voted for him to be named. Calls for people to be fired because they support a legal political party, or for overturning secret ballots, are entirely undemocratic, and un-British. Place them in an earlier time, and we would call them fascist. Such tactics will also ultimately backfire. Note for example Rod Liddle’s confession in the Times that he laughed at a “mildly racist joke.” “I used to find racist jokes dismally unfunny,” he notes, “ but these days, because I’m not allowed to find them funny and might even be visited by the police for committing a hate crime if I did, they’ve taken on a samizdat quality.”  Such an editorial would not have been published if it did not speak to its readers, and it probably would not have ten years ago.

When trade minister Margaret Hodge dared to say that British families had a “legitimate sense of entitlement” over immigrants to government-provided housing she was denounced as “using the language of the BNP,” which is usually code for “racist.” The Left-wing Guardian newspaper may write of fears of the rise of the far-Right, but when centrist politicians (or even those on the Left, such as Hodge) and parties cannot raise the concerns of their constituents (as Hodge claims she was doing) it is quite obvious that ordinary people will eventually vote for whatever party is addressing their concerns. Indeed, it is fairly frequently remarked that Britain’s main political parties, though ostensibly Left and Right, have effectively the same policies on nearly everything, and disagree usually only on minor details, so sanitized has the country’s politics become.

With increasing intolerance toward political dissent, and the harassment of the dissenter, it is becoming increasingly clear that Britain needs a Constitution, like that of the U.S. Constitution, to guarantee its citizens such human rights as we once took for granted, e.g., free speech. Notably, while the government has been criticized for giving away to much power by signing the new E.U. treaty (designed to replace the defunct Constitution), it has attempted to moderate this opposition by amending the treaty before signing, and obtaining “an opt-out on a charter of human and social rights.” In Britain the Magna Carta is not a historical document enshrining Habeas Corpus, it is merely history – forgotten history, at that. Law, it would seem, is something that depend very much on the whims of the day, and that is a very dangerous situation for the British.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, calls for a formal British Constitution have begun to surface. The minor political party, the English Democrats, has called for “a modern and wide-ranging Bill of Rights founded on traditional English civil liberties,” for England, and Cameron has taken the initiative to charge the Conservative Party with producing a Modern British Bill of Rights, which, he has said, “needs to define the core values which give us our identity as a free nation.” He goes on to say:

It should spell out the fundamental duties and responsibilities of people living in this country both as citizens and foreign nationals.

Greater clarity and precision in the law, as opposed to vague general principles, which can be interpreted in many different ways, is more in accordance with this country’s legal tradition.

Of course, a Constitution is only as strong as the political will of the governing class to respect it. The Iraqi government has recently written its Constitution, as has a military-backed commission in Thailand – after the elected government was ousted in a coup nearly a year ago. It seems that every emerging nation writes one. I am always struck by the thought that this represents an ersatz political tradition, that there is in effect a “beginning again,” a year zero. There is something socialist about it. Frequently they fail, either by vote or in practice, because their contents are often artificial, creating an ideal nation on paper rather than presenting a conscious of the nation’s historical culture while establishing equal human rights. (Thailand has had no fewer than 17 Constitutions in the last 75 years.)
At the very root of the various nations we find the idea of its sacredness (expressed, for example, in such myths as that of Romulus, the mythical founder of Rome, in (traditional) monarchy, etc.), and the Constitution must be an affirmation of the sacred nature of both the nation or states and citizenship within it. Such a document could only be produced by those who are conscious of history, cultured (in a traditional sense) and learned – wise, even. It remains to be seen whether an authentic British Constitution can be written in the modern age by professional politicians with one eye on their career and the other on the clubs wielded by various pressure groups.

The vague and mysterious quality of religion must have impressed me because I developed a curiosity and eventually an insatiable appetite for anything religious (ones where had to do something that is, even it was just turn up). Roman Catholicism, Zen Buddhism, Tantric Hinduism, even plain old Zoroastrianism – I flirted with them all. Of course, I celebrated Christmas, Easter, etc., with my family, but, as with the vast majority of English families, these events were not religious per se. It is an uncomfortable confession, but I must admit, I believe that I was envious of the ethnic minorities. They not only had their customs, they had their religion. No one could take away their Holy Days.

You will imagine how delighted I was recently when I discovered that I myself have become a member of an ethnic minority, and, better still, have joined the lofty likes of the “aborigine Australian” and the “native American;” yes, I am no longer British, but am rather “Indigenous British.” How did I discover this? By cracking some Davinci Code like puzzle? No, I simply kept hearing this strange phrase, “indigenous British,” on B.B.C radio. It flowed so naturally, and from so many different types of people, but I wondered if I had heard correctly at first. Perhaps they had said “ingenious British.” True, it is an unusual day indeed, when the British are praised by the people of Britain, but still I wondered. To confirm I entered the phrase into the B.B.C. website, and lo and behold, there I was! Indigenous-British-me. My outlook on life has been entirely altered. Naturally, I am sad that I shall not live to see the reservations or casinos that will undoubtedly be granted to our descendants by a future British government, though I am looking forward to the revival of our culture, albeit on a smaller scale.

Aside from these future advantages, however, there is something utterly ominous about this designation. A few decades ago, politicians promoted the idea that immigrants in Britain would assimilate into traditional British culture. Today such an idea would now be considered terribly politically incorrect, if not openly racist, but it was also a proposition that was also entirely factually wrong, and one that had been disproved since time immemorial. Far from being given a place of honor, by and large it is the indigenous people that are assimilated if not disappeared into the foreign culture. Despite the literal meaning of ‘aborigine,’ ‘native,’ and ‘indigenous’ connecting the people indicated to the land, these words connotes ‘inferior,’ ‘backward.’

Not so long ago Australia waged a secretive campaign to assimilate the natives of that country to the point where their race would no longer exist. Native Americans suffered what they have referred to as “genocide” by the hand of white Europeans (though we white Europeans love to pretend that it was the Americans who did it). Still today, the Zoroastrians – once native to Persia – live mostly in India, and number only a few million. More depressing, still, is the fact that the Ainu, Japan’s indigenous people, now count for only about fifteen thousand. We worry about polar bears – and rightly so – but according to UNESCO over 50% of the world’s 6000 languages are endangered and one dies out completely every two weeks.

Language is a particular problem in Britain. Many immigrants to the country do not learn English, which marginalizes the new immigrants, which, after a period of time, is likely to create ghettos of the non-English speaking. It also downgrades the English language in the very country that created it. Indeed, England seems to have no pride in the English language, and consequently the level of spoken and written language among the youth seems to be at an all time low, with too many teenagers lacing their sentences with “like” and punctuating them with “man.” With many teenagers learning the English language primarily from gangster rap, “Bling” has become so pervasive that in 2003 Tom Watson was forced to attempt to correct the situation in a manner that could seem effortless only to a Labour M.P.: “Cut it with the bling bling and do something for the community, man.”

I understand. We need our languages to keep pace with the times. We need words for “computer,” “internet,” “MySpace,” etc., so why the fuss? So what if young English people cannot speak English properly? What if they can’t read the newspaper or Taki’s Top Drawer? So what if they think a semicolon is a disease? After all, English is spreading all over the globe, becoming the language of commerce. Well, there are several good reasons that have nothing to do with commerce. First of all, a common language has been one of the defining factors of the nation generally, along with a common religion, etc. A lack of appreciation for language ultimately disenfranchises one from the deeper culture, because language encapsulates that culture. It is for this reason that the Scots and the Welsh are so passionate about keeping their languages alive.

Modernity creeps in at the most unexpected places, however. Cockney rhyming slang, (a language made by substituting English words for other English words or phrases that rhyme with it, spoken by persons living within an area of London in which the sound of bells of Bow church can be heard), has been updated in a way that many of us might find objectionable. Yes, as if she’s not in the news enough with her newly shaven head, that ambassador of rock ‘n’ roll suicide, “Britney Spears,” is now Cockney Rhyming Slang for either “tears” or “beers” depending on your preference. Next time you’re in a bar and it’s your turn to buy a round of drinks, you can use it like this, “no, no, it’s my turn to get in the Britneys” (abbreviation is used a lot in Cockney Rhyming Slang).

There are other indigenous languages spoken in Britain Cornish, Norman French, and Manx for example, though these are spoken only by a few hundred people, and are consequently on the UNESCO endangered list. Sadly, one rarely meets an English person who has even read so much as a single line of Old English, and, on being questioned, most insist that Shakespeare’s writing is Old English (it is actually early modern, of course). Recently I heard a British national of African decent moaning on the B.B.C. that not only had his ancestors been enslaved but that the English education system had not even taught him his ancient language – Yoruba. Now, that’s a man I can relate to. We indigenous British are in exactly the same situation, except in England we increasingly see the English language spoken poorly or not at all. In response to this growing problem, Conservative leader David Cameron has said:

[The ideology of multiculturalism] lies behind the growth in the translation of public documents and signs into other languages. What ought to be about helping people to access essential public services has in some cases become an end in itself… making it less of an incentive for people to learn English and participate fully in our national life. All of these things just create resentment and suspicion. And they undermine the very thing that should have served as a focus for national unity - our sense of British identity

I believe that the Government should redirect some of the money it currently spends on translation into additional English classes. This would help people integrate into society and broaden their opportunities. But the Government seems to be going in the opposite direction. Recently it announced that many new immigrants will no longer be able to get free English lessons. Quite how that helps bring the country together I don’t know. We must make sure that all our citizens can speak to each other in our shared national language.

Perhaps because the English – unlike the Scottish or Welsh or even Cornish – have lost all memory and knowledge of their ancient language, and have only a vague idea of their ancient culture, that England more than Wales or Scotland can be equated with liberalism. The Welsh and the Scots want to preserve their language and culture, while the English, in a feeling of intellectual superiority, feel that the tiny island of the United Kingdom should be multilingual, just as it should be multicultural.  Or, at least that has been the trend.

In his paper, “When Was Wales” (published in Nationalism in Europe – 1815 to the Present), Gwyn A. Williams notes correctly that the old Welsh language is entirely accessible to the Welshman, while Old English is entirely inaccessible to the modern Englishman (if he has even heard of Old English). He makes a poignant and depressing statement:

“The British nation and the British state are clearly entering a process of dissolution, into Europe or the mid-Atlantic or a post imperial fog. Britain has begun its long march out of history.

“How ironic it seems then, that in Referendum, General Election and European Election in 1979, it was the Welsh who registered their country as the most passionately and totally British of all the regions of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and about a half of Northern Ireland. We Welsh look like being the last of the British. There is some logic in this. We were, after all, the first.”

I do not suggest that the indigenous British will be physically eradicated, but the term, in my mind, is a very definite marker of things very unfortunate to come. Noticeably, the indigenous British seem to display some of the symptoms of the traditional “native” population. Alcoholism and binge drinking are widely associated with both.  Depression and defeatism seem also a common characteristic, undoubtedly in part because there is a palpable sense of loss and decline – loss of land and decline of social, cultural, and political significance. The Native American, Australian, Ainu, etc., have lost ‘their’ land, while the British have lost their empire, and feel squeezed at home by the recent waves of immigrants. Between 1991 and 2001 immigration accounted for over half of Britain’s population growth.

French intellectual Dominique Moisi has said recently that Europe suffers from a culture of fear, brought on by the devastation of the First and Second World War, and propagated today by a fear of immigration, terrorism, and a deference of control over one’s life to the politicians, among other things.  Moisi’s diagnosis of the reasons for our angst is doubtless largely correct.

In regard to terrorism, there appears to be a far greater penetration of radicalization among British Muslims than among American Muslims. It is generally suggested that this can be accounted for by the fact that the majority of British Muslims are either the poor who came from Pakistan to make a new, more economically prosperous life, or their children, while American Muslims were generally more affluent and educated even before they arrived. This might be so, but there is surely another reason. American culture remains religious (mostly Christian) to a very large degree, while Britain is by and large atheist. A religious ethos is so evident in American politics, emanating from the Republican Party (which has won the last two elections, no matter by how small a majority). While President Bush’s core constituents may be born-again Christians, he has not couched his ideas in a specifically Christian verbiage. President Bush mentions ‘God,’ not ‘Jesus’ in his speeches, and they have, as such, resonated with conservatives of different religions, including, undoubtedly, Muslims.

While this may be an electioneering strategy to some extent, the U.S.’s self perception as a “melting pot,” undoubtedly necessitates this approach within public politics where religious ideas are invoked. As Britain is now learning, immigrants tend to preserve traditions that derive from their motherland, while the motherland over time may allow, or even encourage, its own folkways to disappear into history. As a nation of immigrants, America is, ironically, a more traditional and religious country than Britain, even though it is often considered more progressive.

In regard to Moisi’s observation that people are at least beginning to feel disenfranchised from politics, one must likewise consider culture. One might think that, now we have attained “indigenous” status, liberals will grant us the same sort of respect that they would any other native culture. Yet, the Indigenous British political leaders constantly infer that “Indigenous British” culture is either irrelevant, offensive to newcomers, primitive, or not really culture at all. Such openly expressed contempt—once expressed widely, and crassly against other indigenous cultures—now seems reserved for the pale-skinned tribes alone.

Though our politicians are willfully unaware of the fact, “indigenousness” is more than a matter of one’s ancestors having stayed on the same land for longer than later arrivals, and the erosion of one’s culture is far more destructive than the threat of terrorism. In its positive sense, the term “indigenous,” is to be understood as a matter of culture, and particularly of being the most direct and authentic link to the culture of that land through the ages. Native people have been treated sickeningly throughout history, but where they have been revered they have been so for their culture, not for their location on the map.

Indeed, just as we have become the “Indigenous British” we are told by our politicians that “that Britishness… is not based on ethnicity and race” (meaning that of the Indigenous British), but is rather a set of values so nebulous that any ethnic or racial group, country, or religion could lay claim to it – which, of course, is precisely the point. There is no British characteristic, history or culture, so we need not wonder why we are celebrating Dawali rather than Guy Fawkes.  Britishness, according to Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, is founded on “a commitment to liberty for all, a commitment to social responsibility shown by all, and a commitment to fairness to all.” After the terrorist bombing in the U.S. and Britain Muslim leaders said exactly the same thing about Islam. But the description applies just as well to nominally communist China, France, America, or elsewhere.

It is perfectly obvious that a culture is not “based on ethnicity or race.” Culture is developed over time – usually a long time – but culture and ethnicity generally go hand in hand: even in regard to religion we can think of Taoism and the Chinese, Zen and the Japanese, Zoroastrianism and the Persians, Hinduism and the Indians. Culture and peoples create each other. As the German philosopher Oswald Spengler once said, “… the ‘people’ is a unit of the soul. The great events of history were not really achieved by peoples; they themselves created the peoples. Every act alters the soul of the doer.” It is quite possible for immigrants to come to Britain and become model British citizens, but that cannot detract from the fact that the indigenous British created over a millennium or more that culture which we call “British,” and that must be allowed to remain a matter of pride for the indigenous British, just as the Chinese person should be proud of Chinese culture, and the Indian or Indian descendant should be proud of Hinduism and Indian culture generally. And so on.

Nevertheless, traditional British culture is being slowly whittled away from above, sometimes with the best of intentions and sometimes with the sole intention of replacing the indigenous traditions altogether. The annual midsummer’s day Druid festival, celebrated at Stonehenge, was banned by the Thatcher government, because the Druid followers were perceived to be ‘scruffy hippies.’ Prime minister Winston Churchill had once been a member of a fraternity of Druids, but perhaps by that point they were scruffy hippies – but, at least they were keeping alive at least some knowledge our ancient heritage (albeit in a revived form).  It is ironic indeed that, after the discovery of the New World, British scholars – and later the British public – believed they saw in the figure and culture of the native American the life of their own ancestors, the Celts and the Druid priests, and accorded each quite a bit of respect partly for this reason.)

Count forward to 2006: the London borough of Tower Hamlets replaced the traditional indigenous British celebration of Guy Fawkes with that of the Bengali festival of Dawali.

A less dramatic, yet more thorough erosion has beset Britain’s Christian tradition, especially that of the eternally innocuous Church of England – to which I have already alluded. Just before Christmas 2006 I heard several very nice people debating on B.B.C. radio whether the visible celebration of Christmas (in our traditionally Christian country) was offensive to Muslims, or others (including atheists) in our multicultural society. The conclusion seemed to be no, though largely because, it was suggested, Christmas really was not a religious celebration any more, and was now all about gift giving – they neglected to mention that the tradition also includes getting as drunk as any scruffy hippy. Their observation was largely, sadly, correct. Ten years ago or so the seasonal shopping sales started on Boxing Day (December 26th), now they begin on Christmas Day (which, in case any British politician is reading this, is December 25th).

Most Americans are unaware of it, but in the country which gave birth to the rights which they take for granted, the home of the Magna Charta and the Mother of Parliaments, free speech is not what it used to be. Under the seemingly innocuous guise of preventing racial violence, the British government in 1976 passed the Race Relations Act, which made it a crime to “incite racial hatred.” Students of bureaucracy will not be surprised to learn that the definition of “incite” and “racial hatred” used in enforcing this law has proved extremely elastic—and served as a tool for government functionaries and activists to suppress legitimate debate. In a country whose culture and character have been suddenly and irrevocably changed in just a few short decades by mass immigration, which now hosts dozens of radical imams inciting acts of terror and calling for Islamic law in Britain, the Race Relations Act has been and continues to be used to intimidate Britons who wish to defend what is left of their homeland’s continuity and culture. What is more, the devotees of the new religion of multiculturalism are quick to sling opprobrium on their opponents, and even attempt to end their careers—for committing such “crimes” as belonging to a perfectly legal political party.

Witness the case of Simone Clarke. This lovely young woman, principal dancer for the English National Ballet, had her political affiliation “outed” to the public by the left-wing Guardian newspaper. Using an undercover reporter, the paper infiltrated the right-wing British National Party and gained access to private membership lists—then published them in a screaming expose entitled “Exclusive: inside the secret and sinister world of the BNP.” This story sparked a vicious campaign against the now dubbed “B.N.P. ballerina” or the “fascist fairy.”

The B.N.P. emerged as a far right party in the early 1980s, taking over elements of more extreme organizations, and under the leadership of Nick Griffin softening its image with the intention of attracting votes. Nevertheless, according to the B.N.P. website it is committed to the repatriation of illegal immigrants, and to reversing the mass immigration seen in recent years by offering financial incentives to both individuals and their nations of origin to take them back. In 2004 Griffin was arrested for inciting racial hatred, after a B.B.C documentary on the party depicted him inveighing against the Islamicization of Britain. He was acquitted at trial in 2006.

After the publication of the article, the leftist group Unite Against Fascist Action activists descended on the London Coliseum where Clarke performs, booing, hissing, and waving placards outside, while one of its activists interrupted a performance of Giselle, shouting at Clarke as she tried to dance, before police led him away. Protests against Clarke were also made by Bectu (the broadcasting workers’ union) and race relations adviser to the mayor of London. Dissatisfied with its results so far Unite Against Fascism is waging an online campaign calling for (1) Simon to be investigated by the English National Ballet, and (2) for her to step down as principal ballerina. In a sense, all of these campaigns are premised on ‘guilt by association;’ the English National Ballet is guilty of racism because it is associated with Clarke, and Clarke because she is associated with the B.N.P., which it regards as fascist. Thus its reason for its activism is that “historically fascists have destroyed freedom of speech, expression, artistic expression and other liberal freedoms,” yet it justifies its campaign against all of these, saying, “However there is no such thing as total freedom of speech.”

These leftists are quite correct in pointing out that incitement to racial hatred and violence is a crime in Britain. However, Clarke has never incited anyone to any such thing, as they realize. She simply joined a legal political party—and had her membership exposed against her wishes. Scrambling for some legal ground on which to condemn her, Unite Against Fascism asserts that by defending her right to belong to the B.N.P.—in quite mild terms—Clarke has broken the law. It is no exaggeration to call this charge Orwellian. A law which was passed to prevent racial harassment at the workplace is now being used to attempt to have a distinguished artist fired from her position for belonging to a political party.

To their credit, some Britons are speaking up in defense of Clarke’s right both to ply her trade and to vote her conscience. Some reporters have editorialized that her party membership is a private matter, not grounds for a criminal investigation, while several Liberal Democratic politicians have agreed that Clarke should not lose her job because of her political affiliation. Some fellow members of the B.N.P. have attended her performances in support of Clarke and of free speech—one of the English liberties Edmund Burke defended so eloquently. One imagines him weeping from heaven at the sight of what has become of his beloved homeland. 

A spokesperson for the English National ballet said after the Guardian revealed Clarke’s membership of the B.N.P., “We pride ourselves on the [ethnic] diversity in the company,” and that it is “an equal opportunities employer.” Indeed, so equal are the opportunities that only two of the twelve principle dancers (including Clarke) are British-born, with the other dancers being drawn from Cuba, Japan, Russia, Estonia, etc. There is as much diversity in multicultural Britain as there is in the world, and, there must be plenty of Black-British or Asian-British ballet dancers, etc., for the company to choose from, and train further if necessary without looking abroad. Surely a company that has “English National” in its title, and which receives public money, has a duty to promote English culture, dancers, and dance schools, rather than, implicitly, those of other countries. After all, how many of us would be happy to pay to see an Iranian, Israeli, or other such dance troop perform its traditional dance, just to find that its dancers were all British, French, and American? I’m sure we would all feel a little cheated.

It is not immigration but ‘mass immigration’ that lies at the heart of this unhappy spectacle. Clarke had joined the B.N.P. because she believed that this was the only party that was opposed to the mass immigration which Britain has experienced in the last few years and looks set to experience in the foreseeable future, and, which is irrevocably changing Britain. Its culture and heritage has, it is increasingly perceived, been given a back seat to those of other countries in the name of ‘multiculturalism,’ and it was the pressure of multiculturalism that Unite Against Fascism used to its advantage as it chanted at Clarke, “We are Muslim, black, and Jew, there are more of us than there are of you.” No less than 7.5 percent of people living in Britain today were born abroad, and mass immigration, as Clarke herself pointed out, worries a great many people in Britain, and, it might be added, with good reason.

Opposition to mass, nation-changing immigration is not fascism, nor is it unreasonable, even if it is portrayed as such by those who have a vested interest in silencing all dissent. If there were a mass exodus of white Europeans to a tiny island like Mauritius anti-fascist campaigners would undoubtedly call it colonialism, and perhaps they would be right. Only twenty years ago it was common to hear people in Britain say that we lived in a “free country” and were entitled to “free speech” even if we didn’t like what was being said. Today, however, Unite Against Fascism can rebut the English National Ballet’s policy position, i.e., that Clarke is entitled to her private opinions, with the assertion that “There should be no difference between a private racist opinion and a public racist opinion.” While this statement has been lambasted in the British press as, essentially undemocratic and perhaps plain stupid, Unite Against Fascism’s stance merely reflects the actions of the Guardian newspaper.

In revealing Clarke’s membership the paper not only violates, in spirit, the right to keep one’s vote private, it also sends a message that anyone supporting the B.N.P. runs the risk of exposure, and, perhaps, ruin as a result. Nor does it seem reasonable to equate either Clarke’s opposition to mass immigration or motivation for joining the B.N.P. with racism. Not only is she apparently quite capable of working professionally with immigrants of different backgrounds, her partner and father of her child (a fellow ballet dancer at the English National Ballet) is himself Cuban-Chinese.

Of course, the charge of “racism” and the even more damaging epithet “fascist” are thrown around irresponsibly with great regularity—even more so in Britain than in the U.S. Here are just a few examples from the press:
“…can we call that fascist pluralism or secular fundamentalism?”  On the banning of the headscarf in French schools

“…It is something that has been imposed on them by the liberal fascists in London.” Kilroy-Silk on immigration in Britain.

“…reviving the spectre of fascism.” Labour leader, Shlomo Ben Ami on the campaigning of Netanyahu and his Likud party.

Given all that crimes that real fascists committed in the last century—six millions Jews killed, as well as other ethnic minorities, disabled people, homosexuals, and political prisoners, not to mention the millions of allied soldiers that died fighting in battle—one might think that this would be one word we would use cautiously. Yet, like a suit that fit us in the 1940s but which we have insisted on dragging out for every wedding and barbeque since, we insist on using this term at the most inappropriate moments, and often for the most trivial reasons. A politician need only suggest that identity cards might be a good idea, or that there should be more security cameras in public, or that mass immigration may not be all good, and someone on the opposition will deem him a “fascist.”

However, this term is not meant to offer us any information, to enlighten us, or to allow us a peak into the mindset of the person referred to. Rather, it would seem that it is used as a sort of preemptive Ace up the sleeve. We pride ourselves on our rational political process of argument and counter argument, but this term is meant to simply end debate. It seems to have shed its original meaning and seems to infer, now, something like “bad man” or “bad people.” (Notice how Bush has migrated from referring to Islamic terrorists as “evil men” to the more technical-sounding “Islamo-Fascists.”)
It’s hardly scientific, I know, but just to get a sense of how pervasive the words “fascist” and “Nazi” are in the West, I decided to enter a few Web searches with such improbable phrases as “wine Fascist,” “fast food fascist,” “hip hop fascist.” They all showed up. My favorite, however, was the term, “cupcake Nazi.” On one blog there was a complaint about a “cupcake Nazi” at one of New York’s most famous bakeries (which shall remain nameless). I have been there, and surrounded by hundreds of sweet, pastel pink, blue, and yellow-colored cushions, I can’t say that the Third Reich came to mind at all—although now I come to think about it, they were lined up in suspiciously neat rows. Another Web site also expressed a definite distrust of one of the staff at another bakery: “I almost got a cupcake-nazi vibe from the guy serving me”
Perhaps it was only a matter of time, then, before the term, “fascist” became appended to the equally unlikely “Sugarplum Fairy” now gamely attempting to dance in the face of a howling mob. My prayers and good wishes are with her.

A. Millar is a British expat and author.