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What has happened to our country?
Terrorist fundamentalists on the loose; a Home Secretary who hasn’t a clue who is entering
or leaving the country; an Education System that scorns British identity and history;
an England that in places resembles the Islamic world - what future do we have in these
islands?
Stuart Millson examines the issues at stake
London in July, 2005…
The morning of the 7th July was like any other for hundreds of
people cramming onto the tubes and buses. Squashed into the airless compartments at King’s
Cross underground, or trying to look at the morning headline in the newspaper held by the
person opposite, it was a typical moment in the rush-hour. Then, disaster. A series of
explosions left havoc, chaos, and nearly 100 people dead - ordinary people, perhaps looking
forward to a holiday, or a meeting at work, or seeing a friend - just obliterated.
As the day wore on, it became clear that London was in the spotlight of the Islamic
terrorist network which so paralysed and shocked the West on the 11th September 2001. What
was started at the World Trade Centre four years ago, was now being followed through in
England. We were next on their hit-list. As ever, the emergency services rose to the occasion
magnificently, and it is not romanticising the situation to say that there were many
individual cases of people “keeping calm”, or helping others, and generally holding firm in
the face of terror. However, what happened on that July day, revealed just how unstable,
uncertain, unsafe and un-British Britain has become in modern times.
The bombers, of course, represented a particularly radical form of Islam, which sees the
world as a battleground between the infidels (the decadent West - us) and pure Muslim
orthodoxy. Yet what was interesting about these individuals (something discussed in many
reports and media enquiries) was the fact that the evil young men had all been born in
Britain, and so, presumably had absorbed the “British way of life”. The Tory MP for
Henley-upon-Thames (an area not known for its ethnic diversity or mosques) seemed appalled
and perplexed that this should be so - asking how someone as “British as Tizer or the
Changing the Guard” (a reference to the adopted background of the bombers) could possibly
have turned against “their own country”.
To readers of this journal, such a statement by Henley’s MP (Boris Johnson) would seem
fairly amusing - rather like claiming that because Mr. Johnson was born, say, in China, he
automatically becomes as Chinese as the Great Wall! And here is the crux of the problem: the
strange, wilful delusion which our political class and establishment have had since the early
1950s, that British nationality doesn’t really mean anything; that anyone can simply become
British by virtue of a stamp on a passport; that nationality is merely a matter of residence,
rather than ancestry, history, indigenous ethnicity, and true belonging.
And the delusion shows no sign of fading, even after we have seen so clearly how
dangerous and dysfunctional the multicultural experiment has been. In The Daily Telegraph
on the 27th July, for example, the leader-writer proclaimed the indispensable core values
of Britishness to be: “the pluralist state, private property, and personal freedom”. Not one
word about being able to trace your family back to the country’s distant past; not one word
about roots or real identity; or proven loyalty to the nation. To the Telegraph, to the
modern Tories, to the Blair Government - the nation is simply a collection of individuals,
generally “united” by nothing more than vague legalistic concepts, and American-style civic
aspirations.
The Times also took a similar line. Their leading columnist, Libby Purves, stated
(on the 26th July) that “middle Britain [despairing of crime, disorder and social decay]
should walk hand-in-hand” with British Muslims - the latter being the very models of
traditional values and family loyalties. Naturally, one can see the point that Miss Purves
makes: the idea that if one had to choose between a yob-generation “white” family as next door
neighbours, and a civilised, professional Muslim gentleman, you would probably opt for the
latter! But why should we be presented with this Hobson’s Choice - an Islamicised England on
one hand, the contemporary yobocracy on the other?
For those of us who believe in a traditional Britain, we seek serious answers to the
dreadful problems foisted upon us by the self-deluding multiculturalist politicians. For
decades, traditional teaching, accepted rules, authority and identity have been dismissed,
scorned, laughed at, abandoned. The whole social structure has weakened, and people seem
less able to deal with each other in a civilised and respectful way. Meanwhile, those in
“high office” (such as the supposedly Tory Prime Minister, John Major) sat by whilst the
National Curriculum Council was taken over by the multicultural Left - Major and the
Conservatives being more interested in “cost-efficiency” and the management of schools,
than in the content of education, and who was actually shaping the system. Immigration
continued, a mass-influx under successive governments - every politician (save for Enoch
Powell and a few others) beaming with liberal joy at the prospect of an England that no
longer had a true and authentic identity.
Today, as the nutcases, maniacs, extremists, fundamentalists and bombers do their work,
turning Britain into a miniature Middle Eastern battleground, the words of Enoch Powell’s
prophecies come back to haunt us. But another prophet also speaks to us - the English poet
and patriot, Rudyard Kipling. Perhaps as we read his poem, The Stranger, we may reflect on
those people, described by Boris Johnson as being as “British as Tizer and the Changing of
the Guard”…
The Stranger within my gates.
He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control -
what reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
May repossess his blood
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