Mass Criminality & Authoritarianism in England

Clapham Junction by flickr user bayerberg

“What an utter admission of failure, that after 50 years of the most lavish welfare state in the solar system, you cannot govern your country without soaking the citizenry in cold water and bombarding them with missiles from a safe distance.”

Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday, 14th August 2011

It is perhaps fitting that just prior to the mass criminality that struck across England two weeks ago, the Government announced its intention to consult the people of the UK on the prospect of introducing a UK Bill of Rights.

After more than a decade of New Labour’s succession of freedom-infringing laws and diktats, the present Government could perhaps be forgiven for being unaware of the English Bill of Rights, one of the last and most vital pieces of legislation passed by the Parliament of England. However, it is precisely this kind of historically illiterate ignorance of the fortitude of ancient legislation, and the English history of appropriate legislative measures to ensure social order and justice, that has led to the frightening, authoritarian and dangerous reaction of Parliament and the Government in the wake of the wanton destruction, looting, violence and murder that spread across England from London.

Outraged by the shocking scenes, the general public perceived that these events were the very manifestation of the ‘broken society’ that David Cameron had used as his calling card since becoming Tory leader. Two days ago, YouGov reported that

“74% of British people think that Britain as a whole is a ‘broken society whose social problems that are [sic] far more serious than they were ten or twenty years ago’”

As the days passed, and the violence continued with little sign of relenting – spreading across the country instead – many wasted little time in calling for a draconian response. In the midst of the turmoil, YouGov (for The Sun) reported that

“Curfews are backed by 82 per cent, using tear gas 78 per cent support and Tasers 72 per cent…90 per cent support using water cannons.”

Unfortunately, rather than realising that these were measures appropriate for quelling a civil war rather than retaining law and order, forgetting – or perhaps not knowing – that tactics such as water cannons were wholly alien to England, would require new training of a Police force that is increasingly an odd, neutered yet powerful paramilitary organisation and were tremendously oppressive, and disregarding the measured approach he had taken to gun control in the aftermath of the marauding gunmen Raoul Moat and Derrick Bird – which in fact killed many more people than did the mass criminality – Mr Cameron and his cabinet approved many of these draconian measures with unquestioning ease.

After agreeing these physical limitations to our liberty, the Prime Minister went an astonishing step further in supposedly ‘proportional’ measures to regain control. Standing in the House of Commons, he proclaimed that

“… everyone watching these horrific actions will be stuck by how they were organised via social media. Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill.

And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So we are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”

Yes, a Conservative Prime Minister is wilfully endorsing the prohibition of freedom of speech of members of his own nation. Not only is this a frightening over-reaction to the problem, and evidence of how out of touch our political elite actually is, but the simple fact that the Police could easily have used Twitter, Facebook and other mediums of mass communication to prevent trouble before it ever happened. I was seeing and retweeting photographs of youths gathering and marauding across Enfield Town before there was ever an appropriate Police presence in such places.

Perhaps most worryingly of all, he casually stated that

“I have also asked the police if they need any other new powers.”

Asking the British Police ‘services’ whether or not they would like more powers is much akin to asking Rupert Murdoch if he’d like to buy back Sky. Quite why an elected Conservative representative – the Conservative Prime Minister of the country, no less – is asking such an undemocratic, bureaucratic monolith for more powers beggars belief. See the powers that it already has at its disposal – the tremendously powerful Terrorism Act 2000 and its infamous Section 44, for example.

The saddest fact of all of this is that there is a precedent in England’s legal history for truly appropriate legislation in the wake of these outrages – legislation that, wholly unsurprisingly, was only recently abandoned.

Take, for example the Riot Act of 1714. Famed for its iconography, the Riot Act was intended as

“an act for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies, and for the more speedy and effectual punishing the rioters.”

The Riot Act’s key tenets would still be fair, logical and easily applicable today. A verbal warning about gathering in groups that appear to be ‘going equipped’ and then the use of force if the warning is not heeded. This immediately gives the power to the Police to act appropriately; force would be proportionate to the size of the problem. It also sets clear boundaries as to what is appropriate and what is inappropriate in terms of the use of force and the punishment as a consequence; a matter about which consensus could be reached easily in Parliament, particularly in these days of agreement politics. This is the logical solution to this problem. And it was there all along – not a water cannon in sight.

The key essences of both the English Bill of Rights and Riot Act have been retained by former colonies, dominions and other free societies across the world. In their country of origin, the people from whom they originated seem to have forgotten what it is to truly be free; to have freedoms guaranteed by the state without fear of reprisal from the state; to know how to maintain a system of law, order and justice without the need for unethical, dictatorial and draconian measures or punishments.

This can only have come about because of an arrogant, ignorant ruling elite and an historically illiterate populace. But there is hope, there is time and the situation can be rectified. We must demand that the English Bill of Rights is the centrepiece of discussions about the rights of people in this country – as well as their responsibilities – and that we look to the ingenuity of our predecessors in order to balance our response with our strong traditions of law and order.

David Starkey, Enoch Powell and the BBC

I have deliberately not spoken on the matter of the mass criminality in England, despite some accusing me of what appears to be tantamount to dereliction of duty.

The reason is very simple. I do not feel that it is fitting to add yet more conjecture to the avalanche of assumptions and gargantuan guesswork that has so far constituted national soul-searching. Furthermore, I do not necessarily know enough about the matters from the perspective of those who took it upon themselves to disgrace the nation; as I do not want to fall into what Dreda Say Mitchell rightly calls the bracket of ‘anecdotes and golf-club chatter’ I feel I must research more before commenting.

In addition to this, what is far more interesting is the fall-out; a calculated, cynical political spin game from which no party or individual has emerged with their dignity intact. Left and right alike are desperately clasping to appear self-deprecating and humble so that they will then appear the voice of reason when party politics and politicking resumes.

However, the left-liberal consensus that masquerades as a three-party democracy was shaken out of its faux-calm by BBC’s Newsnight; specifically the appearance and words of ‘telly historian‘ – as the Mirror so deliciously titles him – David Starkey. Why? Because he clumsily and inaccurately paraphrased Enoch Powell.

Alone in a field of platitudes, mumbling and vague finger-pointing, Starkey seized his opportunity – like Powell before him -to inject controversy, inspire outrage and provoke heated discussion.

This was the lighted touchpaper that the left had been looking for. Ed Miliband – the master condemner – labelled the comments

“racist comments, frankly, and there is no place for them in our society”…. “absolutely outrageous that someone in the 21st Century could be making that sort of comment”.

“There should be condemnation from every politician, from every political party of those sorts of comments.”

From others, the reaction was similarly ridiculous. Histrionic lefty Owen Jones stated – bearing in mind that this came in the aftermath of mass criminality in which people’s lives were threatened and in a couple of tragic cases actually ended – that this ageing historian’s words on a BBC2 show watched by comparatively few were ‘downright dangerous’. Ironically, he promptly ends his article by warning of precisely the same fate as Powell, predicting that

If we fail [to address 'issues' in the 'communities'], last week’s riots could be a dark foreshadow of far worse to come.

What the whole affair actually was was an unwittingly fascinating insight not into the ‘kind of society’ we’ve become, or even as Starkey attempted initially to assert, about the ‘profound cultural change’ which has taken place (an indisputable fact) – it was into how matters of paramount importance are debated in public forums in this country.

The Newsnight stage that evening was, as it almost always is, ordered in the form of consensus that the BBC propagate. As one would expect, Starkey was the only person in the debate to be known for holding views of any other description than those of the host and of his fellow guests – and, as with most right-wing guests, equally well known for controversy.

Here was the problem; in a field of almost total political and ideological consensus, it was almost inevitable that Mr Starkey would say something for deliberate effect. Every syllable of his proclamation that he had been reading ‘Enoch Powell’ and particularly the ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech was saturated in a melodramatic assonance intended to shock. Which it did. Starkey made the most of the dramatic pause he created and by the time he referred to Powell’s ‘prophecy’, which he called ‘absolutely right’, his embarrassing attempt at gravitas was already seriously undermining his credibility.

His hasty effort to assert that somehow Powell’s speech was applicable to this scenario, and his thoroughly bizarre replication of Powell’s diction (the word ‘literally’ stressed almost identically) was as trite as it was transparent – it was obvious that he had only used Powell in order to make an entirely different – partly insightful, largely embarrassing – point about Afro-Caribbean-influenced culture. Powell’s speech was about something altogether different; the potential for unrest, violence and civil war because of mass immigration.

Had Mr Starkey undertaken proper research, and not been quite so focused on the shock value of his ideas, he might have noted this phrase from a speech of Powell’s in 1971:

“… millions of people believe they are watching, helpless and not so much unregarded as positively derided: the deliberate dismantling of the frontiers of decency, morality and respect, with a view to producing far-reaching and indeterminate alterations in society itself. They do not believe that these and other phenomena, such as the spread of drugs or the undermining of the universities, are simply reflections of a change taking place spontaneously and generally. They believe that intention is at work, and that it is the intention of a small and elusive but powerful minority.”

And perhaps then, people would be walking around and daubing on walls sentiments that assert that ‘Starkey was right’…

Unfortunately, this was not the case. Simultaneously grossly misrepresenting Enoch Powell and almost all black culture in one sitting is a spectacular error of judgement. This, unfortunately, seems to pass for debate on the BBC. Poor David Starkey – whether he was prepared or not for what he had to say or for the reaction to his comments – was a caricature of an alternative on a news medium that is patently not interested in hearing right-wing views.

James Delingpole, who himself avoided being in Starkey’s position, notes how the debate was set up to stifle open discussion;

Starkey’s debating opponent was Owen Jones, the BBC’s new pet angry young socialist whose default position is perpetual umbrage and righteous rage on behalf of the poor, working class, oppressed and – since Friday, apparently – black people. It’s a cheap trick but one that goes down very well at the BBC, which is why they have Jones back so often. What it achieves, while cleverly avoiding the need for debate on facts (never the liberal-Left’s strong point), is to imply that anyone on the right is evil, selfish, bullying, wrong or – that ne plus ultra of Lefty insults – raaaacist.

The BBC’s debate programmes – already riddled with condescending attitudes, rude interruption and impoliteness – are not, and have not been for some time, places wherein proper, reasoned, polite, appropriate and impartial political debate takes place. BBC shows sometimes contain entire sections given over to left-wing political analysis that is without a hope of balanced analysis from someone of any other political belief.

We, as people of this country, deserve better from our forums of debate. We deserve better than ignorant tirades from people of any political perspective. We deserve better than rude, uncivilised shouting. We deserve better than asinine political consensus. We certainly deserve to know the facts of the matter rather than endless opinionated conjecture and guesswork.

Now we must demand it. It is too important at a time when the mooted solutions are so muddleheaded. The soft-left’s wish to fix the problem by expanding their utterly disastrous social policies and the ignorant-right’s wish to curtail all our liberties to prevent the problem are both as ridiculous as the other. News coverage that is impartial and rigorous is the only way to appeal to easily-swayed politicans – we have a responsibility to ensure that it is.

The Left, the left and the English

It is not every day that this humble blogger is called ‘indomitable’. It is still less frequent that his writing is described as being ‘tosh’ (this is not to say that all my work has been met with universal praise… far from it, in fact!) But seeing as it’s a respected fellow blogger, Mr Michael Merrick, I may let him get away with it.

In his recent post, ‘The Left and the left‘, he cited an observation of mine from an entry titled ‘The Left’s Fear of the English‘ in which I stated

“Since the time of George Orwell, the hatred and fear of England by the left has been a decidedly unguarded prejudice. My documentation of the phenomenon is merely a brief synopsis of some of the permutations that it has taken recently. Now, the logical conclusions of devolution – a scheme entirely concocted by the left and advised and warned against by anyone with a modicum of common sense – are provoking new swathes of histrionic fear and implicit anti-Englishness.”

In making a distinction between the sort of sweeping generalisation of ‘The Left’ and ‘the real left’, as it were, Mr Merrick asserted that I was misguided in my synopsis:

“['Most' ordinary lefties] take pride in being English, and are quite often supporters of the monarchy. They fight for their country and their Queen when asked to, partake in public displays of patriotism and pride for which they are routinely ridiculed, and make little effort to hide the identity that is the source of such pride – the flag of St. George is more likely to be draped out of the windows of Labour strongholds than it is in the quads of Oxbridge or the sleepy villages of the Cotswolds.”

I understand Mr Merrick’s point. I agree that some lefties are very keen to assert their national identity – though it is usually British rather than English. I also agree that I have seen Crosses of St. George flying above Labour Clubs across England- but it must be stated, however, that ‘Labour strongholds’ are very different places in the twenty-first century than they were even in the late twentieth century.

However, I do believe that Mr Merrick failed to grasp the wider concept of the aforementioned blog.

For example, I cited the example of devolution for a purpose. It is apparent that due to the imagined spectre of an unConservative Party hegemony, the Labour Party and its acolytes do legitimately fear the possibility of an independent or devolved England. I will repost the quote from George Eaton’s article in the original blog:

“Finally, the Tories and the Lib Dems introduce a cap on party donations, depriving Labour of much of its trade union funding and bankrupting the party. Labour is consigned to permanent opposition and a new age of Tory hegemony is born.”

By the same token, leftist writers do express a constant fear of the potential of a rising, organic English nationalism or national sentiments. I have quoted Madeleine Bunting before on the left’s perspective on Englishness, but here she insightfully exposes her flagrant fear of a resurgent English identity:

“British is seen as the inclusive, accommodating civic identity for a multicultural society and, by default – dangerously so – English has become a racialised political identity of resistance, resentment and grievance.”

Quite aside from the matter of The Left making convenient ideological distinctions between the glorious resistance & struggle of some political movements and the ‘unsavoury’ struggles of others, their first question is “How do we solve this?” They then answer their own question. “We stipulate how English people can express their Englishness! We must model how English people can be English!”

“English history is littered with material that can be fashioned as a backstory for a confident, small, multicultural nation…”

“The nationalism that urgently needs definition is Englishness…”

“If we don’t start shaping an English nationalism – just as the Scots started doing in the 1970s – that is outward-facing, optimistic and progressive, we’ll end up with a traumatic politics of decline.”

‘Fashioned as a back story’? Orwell would be proud of writing such a line.

But only are these points wholly inaccurate – quite how Bunting equates questions of nationalism with tangible national decline is beyond me – but they evince a fear of the potential for an identity that is not micromanaged by the state, not easy to pigeonhole alongside the imported cultural identities of the other myriad ethnic groups in ‘Britain’.

So. To use Mr Merrick’s distinction, there is a clear difference in views on Englishness between ordinary people who hold leftist views and the out-of-touch, paranoid, hateful political institution that is ‘The Left’ that perhaps I did not make explicitly clear in the original article (despite using the appropriate capitalisation in the blog’s title).

But it is clear, in my view, that due to ‘threats’ from the possibility of a devolution that will improve this country’s democracy and from a rising English identity that the left and right cannot or do not know how to control, The Left fears and thus reviles the ordinary English people who wish to express their national identity.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/15/nationalism-scotland-redefine-englishness-britain-england

The BBC, English Identity & Scottish Independence

Courtesy of flickr user stephenmorris

Since the SNP’s various victories in the elections on 5th May of this year, the topic has never really been out of the news. In one way or the other – whether falsified ‘statistics’ or exaggerated hyperbole – the notion of a Scotland desperate to break free of the United Kingdom has stalked the mainstream media. Alex Salmond has at times appeared to emulate the bogeyman role previously held by Nick Griffin – a ‘dangerous’ cloak-and-dagger type, revelling in his role as non-specific aggressor against a way of life so routine and banal that most people barely notice it.

To keep the topic in the news at a time when YouGov report that the economy, immigration, health, pensions and tax are the most important issues of the day, this week, the BBC ran a Newsnight special on Scottish independence.

A good deal of it was stereotypical blathering – vaguely Scottish, vaguely Conservative MP Rory Stewart fumbling his romantic metaphors being a cringe-inducing highlight – though Peter Davies raised some good points about why the Labour Party undertook its moronic hack-job of devolution.

Any kind of programme of this sort is going to have its drawbacks – for a start, greater emphasis was placed on people’s opinions of facts rather than constitutional expertise, such is the BBC’s populism. But there were so many elephants in the room that I was surprised that Mark Pritchard hasn’t yet lodged a complaint. The most notable was, predictably, English identity; equally predictable, no Englishman discussed it at length. The only serious attempt to discuss the matter was from Irishman Fergal Keane. His supposed ‘report’ was simply reductionist, revisionist nonsense – propaganda of the very worst sort.

Keane wasted no time in reeling out all the usual asinine cliches; an ‘imagined England’, tiresome pity for an un-named group only titled ‘the colonised’, ‘working-class values’, ‘right-wing extremism’. Stock footage of Windrush and the EDL were notable for their visual impact among other vacuous left-wing interpretations of our history. Keane’s report was nothing more than the typical socialist assertions, built on manifest falsehoods and nonsenses, that attempt to assert that Englishness has always been a pampered figment of the imagination of working-class labourers turned into thugs by a political and capitalist elite. In other words, arrant nonsense.

Keane’s report failed fundamentally because he failed to realise the fact that had been staring him in the face – Englishness is as complex as any other national identity. His report, astonishingly, entirely failed to recognise the significance of the aristocratic elite in English national identity. There was, for example, no mention of the people who built and lived in the castles Keane tried to assert were built to hide cowardly Englishmen from rampaging, valiant Scotsmen who were secure in their national identity. This contrast was re-written time and again, entirely omitting the knights, Lords and visionary clergymen who over time forged a rich, invaluable and distinctively English architecture that still defines every hackneyed image of ‘England’.

He mentioned Shakespeare only in an effort to assert that England had the luxury of never having been invaded or colonised by a foreign invader since it became what we now assert is ‘England’. Aside from the fact that this is baldly historically inaccurate, it also fundamentally undermines the valiant heroism of the men who died to make sure that this was the case – whether at sea in wars against European aggressors, on land against foreigners in distant lands or in the air against all comers in the late twentieth century.

No effort was made in the slightest to praise the thousands of Englishmen who had a hand in creating a Parliament so expressive, so articulate and so just that scores of other nations have had it at the fulcrum of their own success. No effort was made even in passing to praise the Englishmen and women whose likenesses are revered by grateful men and woman across the world for their pioneering work of incalculable value. Not even the merest nod was made to the creative geniuses who have populated this isle since time immemorial, bequeathing a wonderful language to the world – many of which, thousands of miles away, have it as their de facto or official language.

Including religion as a sop alone to the true complexity of the English identity, Keane’s questions only attempted to assert the supposed tangibility of the British identity and ‘value system’ over the alleged elusiveness of the English equivalent.

Quite why the BBC elected to couch a discussion over English identity in a wider narrative about the future of Scotland and Britain is unknown, but it is could be suggested that the BBC fear the very real certainty in England and Wales over the future of Scotland. Far from Keane’s assertion that Wales is part of some imagined Gaelic union of secure national identity, recent YouGov polls suggest that 40% of people in England and Wales believe those nations would be better off without Scotland in the Union,  and that 54% believe Scotland benefits more than England & Wales in the Union. A fairly secure perspective, it seems.

Ultimately, Keane and the BBC have underestimated, or are ignorant of the fact that one of the hallmarks of Englishness is an unruffled pragmatism. The English do not fret about what someone else wishes to label them; they simply are who they are. They have no need for the superfluous and vacuous trappings of national identity – most of which are embarrassingly outdated – that some of their fellow Union members cling to. They have no desire to constantly re-evaluate themselves. They’re simply English.

During Keane’s piece, Zaiba Malik asserted her desire for an ‘easy Englishness’. There is a great allure about this kind of identity; uncluttered by fretting over ‘extremism’, unburdened by a prescriptive interpretation of very recent history and simple in its expression. In other words, an old-fashioned Englishness. After the piece, Don Letts spoke eloquently on his own struggle for national and racial identity, correctly noting that British minority communities have only discovered and been comfortable in their double-barrel identity label fairly recently. Perhaps in the context of this brave new Britain, the formulation of a more facile and simple English identity is something that will require a lengthy and concerted period of ‘claiming’ from historical revisionists, the ill-informed and the ignorant.

If Scotland elects to go its own way, England will soon find its own way of presenting itself to the world. There’s overwhelming historical evidence to assert that England has always forged its own path and known who it was. Was there hysteria over the trappings of nationhood after Henry VIII’s reformation? Far from it; the King took the opportunity to formalise a distinctive new Englishness of his own incentive. Free from Rome, he asserted that England was in itself an empire; then had this fact enshrined in law!

Perhaps freedom from the Union would be equally liberating for England. And perhaps that makes the British Broadcasting Corporation a little nervous…

The Blood of the English

Courtesy of flickr user 'wolf359'

At the end of last month, a headline appeared in various newspapers boldly proclaiming that genetics had ‘proven’ that ‘the English’ are ‘largely German’. The various permutations of headline conveying this new ‘science’ were, if nothing else, tremendously revealing about the projected opinions of the audiences of those newspapers.

Guy Walters of the Mail, for example, elected to title his interpretation of these ‘facts’ with the heading:

‘As it is revealed half of Britons have German blood… Time to embrace your inner Jerry!’

The Telegraph opted for a more restrained title:

‘Half of Britons have German blood’

The Sun, however, did not hold back, with a brazenly moronic ‘quiz’ to ascertain ‘how German you are’.

This story is by no means the first of its kind. Various stories have emerged of late that have ‘proven’ that ‘Britons’ (here read ‘English’) are <insert almost any other nationality here>. The key science and ideas have been expounded by the likes of Professor Bryan Sykes (whose book Blood of the Isles I will eventually get round to reading) and Stephen Oppenheimer, who argued that Britons were descendents of Iberians. Or ‘Spaniards’ and ‘Portuguese’ as we now know them.

Whilst the aforementioned authors have at least used scientific evidence to attempt to vindicate their ideology, the majorities of these stories as reported in the press blithely simplify some extremely complex disciplines, they are prone to being nonsensical not only in their phraseology but also deliberately misleading in their intentions.

The study itself is probably the first I’ve looked into that to all intents and purposes appears to be crafted for the benefit of the tabloid media. The website of UCL, who it seems the newspapers credit for the study, hardly mentions the study. Bizarrely, it only links to the tabloid newspapers that reported the findings in a haphazard fashion.

The story also credits Der Spiegel with a more detailed study of the matter; specifically, for stating that

“… there is no use in denying it. It is now clear that the nation which most dislikes the Germans were once Krauts themselves.”

The title of said article , ‘Britain Is More Germanic than It Thinks’, would appear to assert this point still further.

However, this is entirely ideologically incoherent and anachronistic. Germany is a recent invention, for a start, not truly existing until the late 1800s. Even after this point, ravaged by wars and political ideologies, it took many forms and sped through several very different, fractured and unstable identites. Furthermore, genetics do not make nationhood. It is wilfully misleading and nonsensical to claim that Britain is more ‘Germanic’ because of a genetic ancestry that dates back into prehistory.

What perplexes me still further is the matter of ‘national blood. If the new nation of  Germany does has its own ‘blood’, why does England not? If anything, surely the ‘tribal diversity’ of the English blood makes it quite unique in and of itself.

Also, I am yet to discover the scientific source of the Spiegel’s claims. A previous UCL study, titled ‘A Y Chromosome Census of the British Isles’ – possibly the one alluded to in the Spiegel article – appears to suggest that myriad sources, including Iberian, Danish, Irish and German genetic backgrounds were ‘feeders’ to Britain. This was detected by analysing ‘haplogroups’ – a key aspect of the science of DNA – in order to ascertain how results of blood tests may infer areas of particularly high or low migration of peoples across time. Thus, the nonsense of a ‘national blood’ is merely a much-reduced analysis of the science of haplogroups; variations of a genetic blueprint that spreads across Europe and further afield, uniting many diverse peoples and populations.

It could be argued that such studies -scientific or not – were in some way damaging for English nationality and nationhood. Some infer that they are further evidence of Englishness ‘dying on the operating table’, as JuliusWhacket would have suggested. I would move to disagree. Englishness is precisely nothing to do with scientific data. England and its uniqueness have never been grounded in biological ethnic origin and never has been.

Englishness is the shared culture, values and historical experience of a group of people who were, with consideration of fair amounts of inward and outward migration, in possession of a coherent national identity that developed in a linear fashion across centuries. This identity was shaped and strengthened by events happened upon them, fittingly enough, by external circumstances, individuals and nations.

Would England be England without Christianity, a religion with its origins in ancient Palestine? Of course not. Does the dominance of a religion of foreign origin preclude two millennia of distinctly English Christianity, with its own architecture, hymns, inclusion into law and governance and contribution to our language? Not in the slightest.

What would the foundations of our culture be if not for William Shakespeare’s knowledge of European stories? Does that diminish his astonishing literary achievement, his genius or his contribution to a unique and demonstrable Englishness? Not in the slightest.

What else captured the English imagination like the exploration of strange new lands and their people? What else strengthened the English – and British – sense of self than the wars against France? Did these cultural exchanges lead to a less definable Englishness? Perhaps you should read Rudyard Kipling or T.S. Eliot for answers to that question.

I digress. But the facts remain. Until someone can substantively prove, using scientific evidence accumulated from nations across the world, that people’s blood is in some way affected by the physical soil of their homeland, I should encourage people to allow poets and poets alone to make comparable claims.

Let us disassociate notions of who we are as a people – our values, laws, history and the events that shaped our nation’s history – from biological happenstance of prehistoric times. Let us also be wary of populist efforts to undermine our sense of ourselves through the flimsy conclusions of calculated, deceitful media hacks, who are liberal with facts.

We are English not because of genetics, but because of our character.

The Importance of Patriotism to Aspiration

“I believe that, in order to live a full and satisfying life, a man needs to have a picture not only of the community to which he belongs and of his place in it, but also of the place and destiny of that community in the outside world.This is, as it were, the frame of reference within which his life is lived, which gives it… a meaning and a purpose beyond the narrow confines of place and date.

If you care to call this patriotism, so much the better.”

Enoch Powell, from ‘The Nation in the World’ in Freedom & Reality

Today, much hand-wringing, many desperate sounding semantics and industrial quantities of political bravado is or are given to thoughts on young people’s place in the world in England. I myself have documented the plight of England’s NEETs - or those not in education or training.

I have always found Enoch Powell’s aforementioned statement on what constitutes happiness fascinating. Taking Powell’s thinking as a framework, I shall endeavour herein to demonstrate how current political, educational and cultural thinking has failed young people, and empirically attempt to suggest possible solutions for these sophisticated problems.

So firstly, what are the factors that are prohibiting the ‘full and satisfying life’ that Powell believes is possible? Primarily, it is a chronic lack of aspiration; a key factor in the inability to perceive a place for oneself in the community in which one lives.
Studies emerge on a regular basis as to the root causes of a perceived ‘anti-aspirational’ culture that permeates English society. In 2008, the BBC noted on a report by The Association of Teachers and Lecturers that poor, white boys

“… have the lowest aspirations of all ethnic groups.”

One aspect of the report was particularly depressing, but nonetheless fascinating…

“The areas with the lowest educational aspirations, termed “low horizons” by the researchers, were characterised as deprived, close-knit cohesive communities with high levels of social housing and a history of economic decline.

The areas also tended to be inward-looking. with low population mobility, and few wider connections with people outside the immediate area.

The report said: ‘Residents may lack broader links with people places outside their immediate neighbourhood.’”

A resounding vindication of Powell’s viewpoint.

The Prince’s Trust recently published a fascinating survey, entitled ‘Broke not Broken’ into this problem. Its key findings were startling. According to the results, 26% of young people from deprived homes believe that few or none of their career aspirations are achievable. Furthermore,

“The survey of more than 2,300 people aged 16-24, also revealed that young people from deprived homes feel that “people like them don’t succeed in life”, and are significantly less likely to imagine themselves buying a nice house or even finding a job in the future.”

In addition to this, it stated that

“More than one in six of those from poorer homes, surveyed in the ’Broke not Broken’ survey, said their family and friends had made fun of them when they talked about finding a good job.”

This sort of negative attitude, which actively creates a psychological barrier to work and thus deprives the individual of the meaningful social function of work within their community, is a root cause of anti-aspirational thinking. The Prince’s Trust’s proposed solution? Very simple indeed.

“… I set up and ran a weekly ’Job Club’ from a youth centre.  During this weekly club, unemployed young people would come together for a morning, work on their CV, interview techniques, job application forms and find out about education and apprenticeship opportunities.  It gave them a reason to get up in the morning, and provided them with encouragement and motivation, something not all of them got at home.”

Whilst I would not usually hesitate to suggest that the state should not take over the role of the parents and family in promoting positive attributes, here we can see the tangible benefits to communities of this service. Thus we can see that Powell’s notion holds water: the importance of a place in the community to aspiration and leading a satisfying life is not to be underestimated.

But there are wider reaching rationales and a broader malaise in our culture that informs our perspective about ourselves as English people; our lack of faith in our nation. In January, leftie defeatist – and noted for her disdain for England and Englishness – Madeleine Bunting, suggested that it is not only imperative for Britain to accept its irrelevance, but that it has already taken place.

“It’s particularly hard for Britain, still suffering from post-imperial withdrawal, where political leadership requires claiming a prominent role on the world stage. Nick Clegg’s brave foray proposing a realistic national modesty during the election proved brief: irrelevance is a concept the British have yet come to terms with.”

Of course, my own input and analysis is here nearly superfluous. If there has ever been another quite such a devastating knockback, such a clear disincentive to all peoples of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, I have not yet seen it.

Simon Heffer picked up a very similar thread shortly afterwards. It is clear that the language and ideology of decline has a powerful impact upon its populace – particularly if we take the Powellite definition of patriotism to hold elements of truth.

For a start, to say that we are ‘irrelevant’ or ‘in decline’ is, to use a Powellism, arrant, manifest nonsense. Our scientists are constantly in the news for their innovations for the betterment of all mankind, whether it be cancer tests and research, analysing dinosaur skin or researching hardier crops for the third world. Our people – particularly our architects – hold positions of significance and are involved in important work across the world. And that is to say nothing of the historical significance and unquantifiable wealth of our exports of democracy, buildings, infrastructures, justice, technology, ideals, settlements, values and much more besides.

The good news? Wide ranging and comprehensive research says people that recognise these things about their nation are actually happier! A Gallup Organisation poll says:

“In the study, more than 130,000 people in 128 countries answered questions posed by the Gallup Organization about how satisfied they were with life, country, job, home, and other areas. People with good feelings about their country also tended to have a rosy outlook on their personal life.”

And to defy Mrs. Thatcher and her New Labour acolytes…

“And a high GDP doesn’t necessarily buy happiness: People in poorer nations feel especially good about their lives when they are satisfied with their country.”

All in all, we see resounding evidence that Mr Powell’s notions of happiness are substantive and a viable basis for improving the lot of many millions of our countrymen. It’s even good news for the major political parties. While they’re likely to avoid anything connected with Enoch Powell, Labour and the Liberal Democrats needn’t deviate from their core notions of community and the Conservatives’ (or David Cameron’s) much vaunted and much maligned ‘Big Society’ could be said to have a practical and wide-ranging meaning.

So rather than being defeatist, rather than being negative about our role, our people, our prospects and our nation, let us celebrate. Who we are, what we have done, where we are now and the kind of people we already and wish to produce. Let us be taught to seek meaning in our communities and in their part in the fabric of the nation. Let us take pride in ourselves.

Above all, let us shrug off the arrogance of those who would say that national pride is divisive. Let us recognise the importance of patriotism to aspiration.

The Left’s Fear of the English

‘England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during God save the King than of stealing from a poor box.’
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941), Part I : ‘England Your England’ by George Orwell

Since the time of George Orwell, the hatred and fear of England by the left has been a decidedly unguarded prejudice. My documentation of the phenomenon is merely a brief synopsis of some of the permutations that it has taken recently. Now, the logical conclusions of devolution – a scheme entirely concocted by the left and advised and warned against by anyone with a modicum of common sense – are provoking new swathes of histrionic fear and implicit anti-Englishness.

See for example an article by George Eaton published late yesterday in the New Statesman, entitled ‘The Tory plan for a permanent majority gathers pace’. Herein, the writer attempts to assert that the Conservative Party are plotting the demise of the left through political gerrymandering, capitalising on the supposed naivety of their coalition partners and other such tosh:

First, the coalition’s proposed boundary changes are approved, depriving Labour of an estimated 25 seats (the Conservatives would have won 13 fewer seats at the last election and the Lib Dems would have won seven fewer).

This is insubstantial. Border changes have been happening since the demise of the rotten borough. I also fail to see how equalising border changes affects Labour adversely; the programmes of building swathes of affordable housing in affluent areas continue apace, bringing Labour votes to former Tory strongholds.

The writer continues:

Second, Alex Salmond holds a referendum on independence and Scotland votes Yes. Of the 59 Westminster seats in Scotland that would be automatically lost, 41 are Labour-held but just one is Conservative-held.

Hmm. That is all very well, but is there even a vague likelihood that this will happen? The most recent YouGov poll on the matter indicates that a vote on Scottish Independence would return an overwhelming majority ‘No’ vote (and that it has higher support in England & Wales than Scotland). It would mean that Alex Salmond would have to work utter miracles in the months to come for that to change. So, the reality? The SNP won in Scotland because Scottish people had lost faith in Labour. So what it is is a transparent attempt to divert attention away from Labour’s failings and blame the Tories instead.

The writer surmises his argument on the ‘perfect storm of Tory evil’ by stating that:

“Finally, the Tories and the Lib Dems introduce a cap on party donations, depriving Labour of much of its trade union funding and bankrupting the party. Labour is consigned to permanent opposition and a new age of Tory hegemony is born.”

This is so impenetrably illogical as to beggar belief. Labour is already bankrupt. The New Statesman ran with the story, as openly professed by John Prescott, almost a year ago. Again, the blame is passed to the Tories for the ludicrous situation of Labour being incapable of running their own finances. If Labour are to win again, they must look at themselves. To me, it is very obvious that people not wish to support a party that is funded by antequated Unions that have no positive impact on people’s lives, led by a hugely uninspiring man and still underpinned by people who believe that their arrogant monetarism was the way to run an economy.

Furthermore, the problem with the writer’s perspective in the event of these three almost entirely unrelated – and in one case extremely unlikely – events coming to fruition is that he is entirely wrong to imply that England would be perpetually Conservative if devolution occurred. When Labour won in 1997, it had a clear majority in England: William Rees-Mogg here quotes the margin of victory as being 3.5 million votes. Again; passing the blame for failure.

Despite this fact, the writer devotes a good deal of attention to regarding England as an inherently conservative country, and therefore something of a lost cause.

To many Tories the prospect of an independent England – economically liberal, fiscally conservative, Eurosceptic, Atlanticist – is an attractive one. The Conservatives have not held more than one seat in Scotland for the last 19 years – there is little political incentive to preserve the Union. As Michael Portillo told Andrew Neil on This Week in 2006, “From the point of political advantage, the Conservatives have a better chance of being in government if Scotland is not part of the affair. You are continuing to assume the Union is sacrosanct. That is not an assumption I make any more.”

Quite why the writer is content to gauge the opinion of the MPs, councillors, employees, members and voters of a political party on the basis of one five-year-old quote from a man who has not been in a position of significance in that party for fourteen years is quite beyond me. Furthermore, he could equally have been commenting upon the political reality of an SNP that was gaining momentum and local assemblies, councils and cities calling for greater autonomy from central government.

So does the author provide solutions that Labour can get to work on in order to win in England, to snare the English people once more, to make them believe in the possibility that Labour might lead the English people the way they deserve to be led? No.

“… Labour must broaden its funding base as a matter of urgency… But the wider challenge is clear. If history is not to record Gordon Brown as the last Labour Prime Minister, the party must show as much ruthlessness, cunning and ingenuity as the Tories.”

Just when I thought that Blue Labour was a genuine movement for change, the writer seems instead to favour the Labour Party taking the approach of deliberate duplicity, manipulation and innovation in its misdeeds.

It is no wonder whatsoever, therefore, that the Party struggles. This writer has demonstrated no solutions whatsoever to the problems he has stated; there is no tangible way to solve the fact that Labour should be aggressive in either preserving the Union (and thus its Scottish & Welsh MPs) or advocating full devolution by discussing English matters. But above all, this writer treats England with contempt. Contempt for its conservative instincts, giving no credit to the ability of English people to discern between two political parties. Contempt for the true matters of such dire urgency as to be blatantly obvious. Contempt even for those who are trying to actually address these matters, preferring to play the same old political game without improving anyone’s lot.

We must expose this duplicity between thought and deed wherever possible.