If you’ve read A. Millar’s excellent piece on the assault on British nationhood being conducted by its ruling elites, who use ethnic minorities as a wedge to “divide and rule” the populace through bureaucratic diktats, you’ll know why I was so moved by “Roots,” a song by the British folk/rock band Show of Hands. It’s about time that Englishmen were permitted to feel patriotic again—and it’s particularly healthy to see a patriotism arising from a love of what Chesterton called “Little England,” instead of a vanished (and ultimately self-destructive) Empire.

It’s a brave, moving, entirely positive song about the need to love one’s native land and culture—even if you happen, horror of horrors, to be descended from the people who brought the world parliamentary democracy, the Magna Charta, Shakespeare’s plays, Donne’s poems, and the end of the slave trade. Watch the video yourself…

Here are the lyrics:

“Roots”

Now it’s been twenty-five years or more ‘
I”€™ve roamed this land from shore to shore
From Tyne to Tamar, Severn to Thames
From moor to vale, from peak to fen
Played in cafes and pubs and bars
I”€™ve stood in the street with my old guitar
But I”€™d be richer than all the rest
If I had a pound for each request
For “€˜Duelling Banjos”€™ “€˜American Pie”€™
Its enough to make you cry
“€˜Rule Britannia”€™ or “€˜Swing Low”€™
Are they the only songs the English know?

REFRAIN:
Seed, bud, flower, fruit
They”€™re never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoots – they need roots

After the speeches when the cake’s been cut
The disco is over and the bar is shut
At christening, birthday, wedding or wake
What can we sing until the morning breaks?
When the Indian, Asians, Afro, Celts
It’s in their blood, below the belt
They”€™re playing and dancing all night long
So what have they got right that we”€™ve got wrong?

Seed, bud, flower, fruit
Never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoots – we need roots

Haul away boys let them go
Out in the wind and the rain and snow
We”€™ve lost more than we”€™ll ever know
Round the rocky shores of England

And a minister said his vision of hell
Is three folk singers in a pub near Wells
Well I”€™ve got a vision of urban sprawl
It’s pubs where no one ever sings at all
And everyone stares at a great big screen
Over-paid soccer stars, prancing teens
Australian soap, American rap
Estuary English, baseball caps

And we learn to be ashamed before we walk
Of the way we look and the way we talk ‘
Without our stories or our songs
How will we know where we’ve come from?
I”€™ve lost St George in the Union Jack
It’s my flag too and I want it back.

Seed, bud, flower, fruit
Never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoots – we need roots

Haul away boys let them go
Out in the wind and the rain and snow
We”€™ve lost more than we”€™ll ever know
Round the rocky shores of England.