By Frederick Dixon:
In August I wrote a short piece about the Rotherham child sex grooming scandal, and wondered if at last the left/liberal ice which has kept us in a political and intellectual deep freeze since the sixties was beginning to thaw. As the months go by I become more and more optimistic that the ice age is, at last, drawing to a close; I know that it doesn’t always seem like it when schools can be punished for being too English, and elderly football club chairmen hounded for off colour remarks about Jews (whatever happened to freedom of speech?), but only a few days ago we saw another split in the ice.
I refer, as you may have guessed, to the great Emily Thornberry gaffe. This lady, previously unknown outside of Parliament and North Islington, earned her fifteen minutes of fame with that tweet of a house festooned in England flags and with a white van parked outside. (When you think how many public figures get themselves into hot water with “Twitter” it does make me wonder why any of them would use it, but at least it adds to our entertainment). Her tweet has been interpreted as condescending, snobbish, as demonstrating the great gulf between the ruling elite and we plebs, and – much, much worse – as showing contempt for patriotism.
It is this last which is so interesting. It is a mystery to me why patriotism, that love for our own place, for the settled way of life and the ancestral population which it shelters – so natural and wholesome an instinct one would have thought – should be so alien to the Left, but so it is. So pervasive has hostility to patriotism become throughout the Establishment that love of country can be expressed, if at all, only in a watered down, apologetic, ironic way. In the schools curriculum it is wholly replaced by “British Values” – but as no-one knows what “British Values” actually are the Department for Education is reduced to reaching for the Equalities and Diversity agenda – you know, all that “tolerance”, “human rights”, “gender equality”, “valuing diversity (except diversity of opinion)” stuff. Which means presumably that if you are, say, an American you can’t believe in “tolerance” because it’s a “British” value.
No more. Thanks to the evidently well fed and expensively housed Ms Thornberry, to be dismissive of patriotism is “snobbish” and no-one wants to be thought to be a snob. So all of a sudden being patriotic has become one of those protected characteristics like being black, or Moslem or gay – for a politician or an opinion former to be anti-black or anti-gay is career death, so now with being anti-patriotic.
Of course, the Left (and that includes you, Ken Clarke) will go through contortions to appropriate patriotism for itself – that it is somehow “patriotic” to be in favour of mass immigration, but few will be fooled. Nor should we fool ourselves that Racial Nationalism is about to come in from the cold, it’s a big jump from a few England flags on an ex-Council house in Strood to a national revolution. But it’s a start, love of country is a natural and indispensable foundation for the more abstract and sophisticated concept which is love of race, and so there we have it – another crack in the ice.
By the way, it’s interesting that the flags in question were all English flags. Whatever happened to the Union Jack? Those of us old enough to remember England’s victory in the World Cup in 1966 will recall that Wembley was a sea of Union Jacks, the Cross of St. George was nowhere to be seen, and I suspect that many English people back in 1966 would not have known that it was the flag of England; it was rarely seen except on Church of England buildings. Now it’s the Cross of St. George which is everywhere and the Union Jack which is rarely seen except on official buildings or when being waved by the BNP or Ulster Loyalists. What might this imply for the future of the United Kingdom and for the future of our movement?
Max Musson
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Thank you Frederick, a thought provoking piece.
Matt
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I am a unionist but I recognise that the identity of the English, Scots, Welsh and Ulster is stronger individually than the British identity.
Of course in the grand scheme of things making the National identities of the Scots, Welsh and English could be there to bring in regionalism, just as the EU wants. Reading a newspaper the other week I read how the likes of Boris Johnson are supporting greater regional governments as the Scots gain greater fiscal autonomy. We have a Government racking up debt so why not below that have a regional government racking up debt as well…
Viewing English identity in particular there is though a certain quirkiness in the English identity. That does not mean the Scots and Welsh have less of an identity. There’s are more purer, blood and soil kind which come from their celtic routes and sadly being given the scraps in comparison to say the South of England. There just is something rather quintessential and somewhat humorous about the English identity as it is so unique.
While I believe the majority of the Welsh and Scots are political unionists the people who they see as their own are more linked to their individual nation than the political union.
Maurice
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The left’s contempt for patriotism was originally due to it’s exploitation by conservative parties to dampen down class struggle by joining exploiters and exploited in an imaginary community which they called the nation. However, in the last thirty years the social democratic parties have abandoned their belief in socialism and replace it with globalization which in their eyes is terribly with it. This new transnational capitalism may seem to be promoting equality with it’s relentless drive to standardize everything including wages, but it will be like a new feudalism with CEOs of multinationals becoming the new lords and masters (which they already are in secret). Hardly an enticing prospect for a progressive minded person.
Max Musson
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Our global masters seek to commoditise everything and this is why they try to convince us that we humans are fungible, standardised production, consumption, excretion units, differing only in our surface features. How willfully blind they are!
Walter Greenway
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The English will take no more of the new world order cross bred bull manure. We want the best, the cream, that only pure bred pedigree cows can produce.
Dispater
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If I may be pedantic, it is the Union Flag rather than the more commonly used ‘jack’. Something which was drummed into us during military service.
An interesting article, and I pray that the hope offered is true. That we are at a point where UKIP is our current best hope of progress could be seen as disappointing in general, but I see it as another opportunity for cracks to develop in the ice.
With regard to the Whelan witch hunt at Wigan (lots of ‘w”s there) it appears that political correctness is still a major obstacle to us as it discourages freedom of thought and speech – I’m only surprised that works such as The Merchant of Venice have not been banned due to the money grabbing nature of Shylock.
I still fear that however many cracks develop in the ice, our nation is going to require one or a series of cataclysmic events in order to awaken people – whether it be another round of race riots, another financial meltdown or major terrorism caused by the ever growing army of fifth columnists inhabiting our island.
Keep up the good fight.
Max Musson
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You are quite right, it is the Union Flag, which when flown from a ‘jack staff’, i.e. a flag pole held by one man, becomes a Union Jack.
Steed
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‘Britishness’ is a civic, political identity, whilst ‘Englishness’, ‘Welshness’ and ‘Scottishness’ are identities based on ancestry and culture. Immigrants who were born here or have attained a British passport can, with some sense of rationale, call themselves ‘British’. They cannot call themselves ‘English’ with the same level of credibility. There is no such thing as an English passport.
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That’s why so many English patriots have swapped their UJ’s for CoSG’s (and, to a lesser but growing extent the White Wyrm, which has deeper ancestral undertones).
Max Musson
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No Steed, British is an ethnic identity just the same as English, Irish, Scots and Welsh. British is to English, as European is to British. All are ethnic identities except British encompasses more people than English and European encompasses more people than British.
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Non-Whites who have a British passport are not British, they are simply British passport holders.
Steed
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Upon further consideration Max, you’re quite right. The main point I want to get across though is that a non-English person (or non-Welsh, non-Scots) can have a British passport and that gives them something they can point to, to claim that they belong (as incorrect as that is). But there is nothing they can point to in order to claim English identity.
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This and the fact that (probably because of the above reason in part) immigrants claim to be English far less readily than they claim to be British is the reason why people are finding solace in the CoSG and their English identity.
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Why do you thinki that is Max?
Max Musson
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I think you already have the answer, Steed. More immigrants claim to be British than Scots, Irish, Welsh or English, because the government tells them they are British citizens and gives them a British passport and there is no pressing reason for them to question this or seek a more precisely defined form of identity.
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I have on occasion seen non-Whites on TV claiming to be Sots and English though.
Michael Woodbridge
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As the great Jonathan Bowden once said, “The more English, Welsh, Scottish, Cornish or Irish you are the more British you are. The more British you are the more European you are.”