Tag Archives: Political Correctness

Will there always be an England, whatever the origin of its people?

The title of this piece is taken from an article by Charles Moore in the Daily Telegraph (16 April 2011 – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/charlesmoore/8454662/Will-there-always-be-an-England-whatever-the-origin-of-its-people.html ). Moore’s article addresses a fact which to most, probably all, people is obvious , namely, that human beings are not interchangeable units who can be moved from and to societies in large numbers without having effects which change the nature of the society which receives the immigrants. The article is noteworthy because this profoundly important truth has been resolutely censored by the mainstream British media for over forty years and denied by mainstream parties of all political colours.

Moore was prompted to write the article by an experience on 14 April. He was due to attend an St Georges Day dinner at the Honourable Artillery Company (held early so not to clash with Easter) where he was to give the toast to “England”. The venue was in Sussex and he went by taxi only to find that his driver was very much at variance with the theme of his intended evening, viz;

“ In these days of satnavs, few drivers really know where anything is: this one got slightly lost. Eventually, I had to stand in a central London street in my white tie and tails, waving my arms and calling in the driver on my mobile phone. He was a friendly man, who quickly endeared himself to me by saying that I had a “lovely accent”. He spoke somewhat fractured English and when I asked him where he was from, he said Bangladesh. It turned out, however, that he was born and had spent his entire life (about 40 years) in England.

“He asked where I was going after dinner. I said Sussex. He had never heard of it.

This experience caused Moore to ask a question forbidden by the commissars of political correctness:

“What, I asked myself, was his “England”? If he had had the misfortune to sit in on my speech that night, would he – even if he spoke the language better – have picked up any joke or reference that I made? Would names like the Duke of Wellington, Tennyson, or William Blake have rung even the faintest bell? “And did those feet…?,” we sang. “What feet?,” my driver might have wondered. Anyway, what is “England’s green and pleasant land” to a man who lives 50 miles from Sussex but has never heard of it? He told me he finds our climate horribly cold, so that when he wants to get out in the country, he flies “back” to Bangladesh. “

Having trodden deep into the treacherous marsh of political incorrectness, Moore attempts to rehabilitate himself by placing his feelings within the realms of political correctness:

“These thoughts made me brood. Part of the pleasure of the England which I was trying to talk about is that it is shared. I am English-English (with a little Irish thrown in), but England is not the special possession of those like me, and I wouldn’t want it to be.”

England as a special place for the English? Heaven forfend! However, having made his obeisance to the god of multiculturalism, he blots his liberal credentials copybook further by continuing

“The point about a country is that it belongs to all its settled inhabitants. I don’t think that the driver felt excluded from an England which he wished to possess; rather that he simply had very little idea of it. He had an idea of London as a place (and of Tottenham Hotspur as a football club), and Britain as an entity that issues passports, but England? Little more, perhaps, than a geographical expression, and, as I say, his geography was vague. “

Moore than sways back into politically correct mode with

“Yet I could not possibly claim that I am a better citizen of this country than he. He works and, I expect, pays his taxes. He has a family. He patiently and politely drives businessmen to meetings and even takes men in white tie and tails to incomprehensible ceremonies. What I was on about that evening probably has less to do with the way we live in this island now than does this pleasant Muslim doing his bit to make London the most successful and cosmopolitan commercial hub in Europe. “

I was particularly struck by Moore’s grovelling and defeated acceptance that the Bangladeshi taxi driver was more representative of England than Moore and the people with whom he was about to celebrate St George’s Day.

Moore than goes on to retail the massive immigration since the advent of Blair in 1997 – the population of the UK has risen by more than two million through net immigration since then. He then breaks the liberal omerta on immigration by pointing out the salutary fact that net immigration only tells us “about overall numbers, but not about the composition of the population. It conceals the fact that hundreds of thousands of British-born people left and many, many more non-British people came. “

All well and good. He then adds

“Most of us do not want immigration on this scale. That is shown by every poll. But, in another sense, most of us do. You and I want someone to serve us in a bar and clean the hospitals and make cheap clothes. I want someone to drive me across town so that I can make my Colonel Blimp remarks to a friendly audience.

Here Moore continues to swing backwards and forwards between honesty and political correctness. He confuses the fact of immigration and the jobs done by immigrants with what the native population wants. All immigrants do is displace native workers by a mixture of taking lower wages than the natives (which they can afford to do because the savings they make are multiplied several times in value when they take the savings back to their own country) and colonising areas of work especially those which are organised by gangmasters who themselves are often foreign and generally only employ people from their own ethnic or national group. Moore’s view is that of the white middle-class liberal who would cannot conceive of immigrants ever competing with him for jobs, healthcare or housing.

Moore also shows a remarkable lack of imagination when it comes to breeding rates:

“Above all, we show, in our obsession with birth control, that we do not want to provide a big enough next generation of people like ourselves. Demographic projections now show Britain overtaking Germany as the largest EU country in 30 years or so. None of that growth will come from the indigenous white population. “

I doubt that it has ever occurred to Moore that much of the cause of native English families having children at below replacement rate is directly or indirectly due to the mass post 1945 immigration and its consequences. These plausibly may have reduced the willingness of the native population to have children from a mixture of demoralisation through seeing parts of their land colonised and the competition for jobs, housing, schools and welfare which immigrants have brought. It is also a fair bet that many native white families have left England because of the immigration. There is also the point that demography is notoriously unreliable at making accurate predictions. Without the post-war immigration it would not matter very much that the native population’s breeding rate was below replacement level because a new equilibrium would gradually emerge. With mass immigration the lower breeding rate of the native population is of the greatest importance because it is conceivable that within 50 and certainly 100 years the native English could be a minority in their own land through a mixture of continuing mass immigration to the UK (the vast majority of which comes to England) and higher breeding rates amongst immigrants and their descendant populations.

Moore ends by flying the white flag as he accepts the end of England as inevitable:

“All this need not be a total disaster. It is possible, though hard, to forge a United Kingdom made up of many ethnicities. Leaders like Mr Cameron are right to try to insist on common standards and better rules, rather than to despair. But whatever it is, and however well it turns out, it cannot be England. Perhaps when I am very old, my grandchildren will ask me what England was. It will be a hard question to answer, but I think I shall tell them that it seemed like a good idea while it lasted, and that it lasted for about 1,000 years.”

Moore is a defeatist when there is no need to be one. The dissolving of England and the English in a multicultural immigrant soup is not inevitable. The size of non-assimilated populations is not yet so vast that nothing can be done. Most of the immigrant populations is compressed into the larger towns and cities. Geographically, most of England is still occupied by the English. Mass immigration could be ended if Britain recovered control over its own borders by withdrawing from the EU, repudiating all other treaties and conventions which facilitate immigration to the Britain such as the UN Convention on Refugees and throwing over the globalist ideology which currently holds sway. Having stemmed the flow, a British government could then start reducing the numbers here by removing illegal immigrants, followed by the departure of those without work, followed by the removal of those without British citizenship whose work is not absolutely necessary . Native Britons could be given the right to take a job occupied by an immigrant if they had the ability to do it. The benefits of the welfare state (barring emergency healthcare) could be denied to first generation immigrants. British citizenship should be withheld from those who cannot or will not assimilate. Those actions would allow meaningful control over the size of the ethnic minority populations in England.

What Moore does not address is his own position and the position of those of his class and position. Moore has spent his life as a journalist (over 35 years). Between 1984 and 2003 he was successively editor of the Spectator magazine, the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Telegraph. Never at any time in his various editorships did write or speak out forthrightly against the malign effects of mass immigration or allow any of the publications he managed to forthrightly promote such views. Instead, he was if not content willing to play the politically correct game when it came to race and immigration. If doubts were expressed they were always couched in terms which attempted to place them within the parameters of politically correctness. Immigration was not bad per se, it was merely a question of numbers. When immigrants misbehaved, stories which dealt with the misbehaviour were placed on a pc cushion along the lines of “immigrants are generally a great boon to the country”. This latest article shows Moore is still trying to do the same thing. Nonetheless, it is a significant breach in the carapace of political correctness which has grown over England in the past fifty years and should be welcomed for that reason.

The truth about social housing and ethnic minorities

To an English public incessantly bombarded with politically correct propaganda on the evils and illegality of discrimination based on race, religion, nationality or culture, it will come as a surprise to learn that in one of the most vital things in life, a secure home, it is quite in order to discriminate generally against people who are white and particularly against those who are English.

The most blatant examples of this discrimination are housing associations whose properties are either specifically for reserved for Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) tenants or have practices which result in most of their tenants coming from BME groups. How is this possible in our politically correct world in which discrimination on the grounds of race, ethnicity or nationality is a cardinal sin? Section 35 of the Race Relations Act 1976 (RRA (1976) does the trick:

“ Special needs of racial groups in regard to education, training or welfare—Nothing in Parts II to IV shall render unlawful any act done in affording persons of a particular racial group access to facilities or services to meet the special needs of persons of that group in regard to their education, training or welfare, or any ancillary benefits.” (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1976/74/section/35)

Here is how the statutory code of practice on racial equality in England interprets section 35:

“2.41 Section 35 allows housing organisations, including ethnic minority housing associations, to make special provision for certain groups; for example by developing temporary hostel accommodation catering especially for newly-arrived Somali refugees, who may have needs arising from shared traumatic experiences; or sheltered housing schemes for Chinese elders; or by providing wardens and carers who speak a particular Asian language; or by meeting certain dietary and religious requirements. Individuals should still be assessed according to their needs” (http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/code_of_practice_on_racial_equality_in_housing_england.pdf)

The definition a racial group under section 1 of the RRA (1976) is very broad:

“Meaning of “racial grounds”, “racial group” etc.

(1)In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires—

“racial grounds” means any of the following grounds, namely colour, race, nationality or ethnic or national origins;

“racial group” means a group of persons defined by reference to colour, race, nationality or ethnic or national origins, and references to a person’s racial group refer to any racial group into which he falls.

(2)The fact that a racial group comprises two or more distinct racial groups does not prevent it from constituting a particular racial group for the purposes of this Act. “(http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1976/74/section/3)

That definition does not exclude the native white population of Britain in theory , but in practice it does because no one in a position of public authority or influence would dream of suggesting that the white Britons, especially the English, are suffering discrimination and should have HAs which cater to their special needs. However, British courts have ruled that, for the purposes of the RRA, Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers and Jews, constitute racial groups

The overwhelming majority of BME HAs are found in England. Over one hundred were created at one time or another since the 1970s, although the number has been reduced through mergers. The first Scottish one was not created until 2004 http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/first-scots-bme-association-seeks-support-for-set-up/444544.article . Wales was even slower off the mark (http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/wales-moves-closer-to-first-bme-association/445683.article)

The Federation of Black Housing Organisations was the umbrella body representing BME HAs until it closed due to financial problems in 2008. (http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/end-of-an-era-as-bme-umbrella-group-closes/6502330.article) . The representative role has been taken over by BME National which is allied with the National Housing Federation. This organisation represents 65 BME HAs in England (http://blog.bmenational.org.uk/about-2/). The mission statement of BME National runs:

■Be the umbrella group for BME housing associations that provides a consultative and promotional platform for BME housing issues.

■Represent and positively promote BME housing associations.

■Collaborate with the NHF to influence national housing policy.

■Promote equality and diversity in the delivery of housing and support services.

■Promote the needs and aspirations of BME communities in addition to their contribution to successful, vibrant and integrated communities.

■Work with the NHF to influence local and central government, the Tenant Services Authority, the Homes Communities Agency and other relevant statutory authorities in establishing and implementing policies and procedures affecting the housing, support and wider interests of BME communities. “(http://blog.bmenational.org.uk/about-2/terms-of-reference/) .

BME covers a wide range of minorities. It includes blacks and Asians of all varieties, but also white groups such as Jews, the Irish and those from Europe especially the recent immigrants from the East like Poles and Czechs. The one group which does not appear is, yes, you’ve guessed it, is the English. The BME Housing Associations (HAs) which cater for them may be based on race, nationality or religion.

The official definition of a BME HA is one where 80% or more of its governing body is chosen from BME communities. In 2009 the proportion of BME housing associations governed by boards consisting entirely of BME people was 31 per cent (http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/mixed-messages/6503767.article).

Further de facto BME privilege arises in the employment of staff and the granting of tenancies. Staff are largely drawn from BME populations, either from a particular group such as Muslims or the Irish or from various BME groups, for example, Clare Winstanley, the chief executive of Innisfree, an HA set up to cater for the Irish (although it now takes a more varied clientele) says “The majority of staff and board members are Irish or of Irish descent” . (http://blog.bmenational.org.uk/2010/12/01/the-modern-role-of-bme-housing-associations/).

Where a language other than English is involved the exclusion of white employees will be close to complete. As Bashir Uddin, chief executive of London’s Bangla housing association, explains “Our staff speak Bengali, Hindi, Urdu,” (http://www.housing.org.uk/campaigns.aspx).

Do tenancies in BME HAs normally go only to members of particular groups? In the past the BME HAs were happy boast about their discriminatory letting policies, but they have become coy about them over the past decade because they realise that nakedly preferential treatment of racial and ethnic minorities not only goes against the central tenet of political correctness (no discrimination), but will also give cast iron grounds for resentment and political action by those discriminated against, in this case the native population. Some BME HAs remain closed to all but the groups they were set up to represent; others have expanded their lettings to take in a more varied set of tenants. However, these HAs still have a strong predominance of the groups they were set up to represent and the variety in the tenants is heavily slanted towards members of other BME groups, for example, a n HA originally set up to supply housing to West Indians may take in Africans. There has also been a trend for BME HAs to be absorbed by mainstream HAs.

Why is it important to have staff and board members who come from the ethnic group? ‘[Winstanley] cites the example of Clochar Court in the London borough of Brent, as an “incredibly happy place” that houses older and elderly Irish tenants. She believes it would be different if the staff and most of the tenants weren’t Irish. “Memory becomes very important when you’re older,” she says. “It therefore becomes important to be with people for whom those memories are relevant.” (http://blog.bmenational.org.uk/2010/12/01/the-modern-role-of-bme-housing-associations/). That privilege is of course denied to the white native population who live in areas with large numbers of BME people.

There is also official government encouragement to give BME people in housing associations generally a privileged position. The official regulator for social housing The Tenant Services Authority (TSA) states ‘Housing associations should focus on meeting the needs of the ever more diverse black and minority ethnic (BME) communities, particularly hidden or emerging migrant communities, where this is appropriate.’ (Good Practice Note 8 http://www.housing-rights.info/housing-associations.html) and ‘…develop and deliver allocations processes in a way which supports their effective use by the full range of actual and potential tenants, including those with support needs, those who do not speak English as a first language and others who have difficulties with written English’. (http://www.tenantservicesauthority.org/server/show/nav.14715).

In allocating tenancies to BME groups Housing Associations have had a considerable advantage over local council housing because HAs can allocated tenancies are criteria they design themselves rather than operating the type of open waiting list points system driven used for council housing. This allows them, for example, to offer places to immigrants who would not otherwise qualify for social housing, for example, asylum seekers. However, this may change because the Coalition Government has stated it intention to allow local councils to develop their own criteria as well. (para 4.8 http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/pdf/1775577.pdf) .This has the potential to increase the ability of councils to show special preference to BME groups.

More generally, section 19B (1) the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 placed a general duty on those providing public services not to discriminate: “It is unlawful for a public authority in carrying out any functions of the authority to do any act which constitutes discrimination.” This covered those providing social housing whether that be council housing or Housing Association properties. That Act and the politically correct atmosphere of modern England generated a statutory code of practice (which had legal force)_on racial equality in housing which not only required all landlords, private and public, to not discriminate but prove they had not discriminated in the allocation of tenancies and the treatment of tenants. This involves the usual pc rigmarole of “Training, monitoring, and race equality impact assessments” which puts pressure on councils and HAs to be ever more biased towards BME applicants. (http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/code_of_practice_on_racial_equality_in_housing_england.pdf).

Do BME groups take a disproportionately large number of social housing tenancies? A Race Equality Foundation Briefing Paper of February 2009 Looking to the future: changing black and minority ethnic housing needs and aspirations is unequivocal that they do. “Many BME groups are already over-represented in social rented housing, and recent statistical evidence suggests that even those groups that have been traditionally under-represented in this sector are now entering it in growing numbers. (see Conclusion http://www.better-housing.org.uk/files/housing/housing-brief11.pdf#search=”access”)

The Briefing Paper highlights the fact that BME members seek the larger property disproportionately: “Large properties of four or more bedrooms form only 2 per cent of England’s social housing stock (SEH, 2005-2006), making it difficult for large households to access suitable properties in the social rented sector, especially via mainstream service providers… the demand for large family homes is addressed mainly by black and minority ethnic housing associations (BHAs) that work with certain communities in which large households are common. As BME populations grow, the need for larger family homes in the affordable housing sector may increase significantly, even if acculturation will eventually lead to smaller family sizes among the British-born generations (Penn and Lambert, 2002). This need should also be reflected in the mainstream sector provision.” ( see section 4 http://www.better-housing.org.uk/files/housing/housing-brief11.pdf#search=”access“)

The Race Equality Foundation also asserts that BME people require special needs beyond the massive privilege of living in an environment populated and run by people drawn from their own ethnic/racial group: “The extent to which cultural needs and preferences influence people’s housing aspirations in terms of interior design vary between and within different BME groups. Black and minority ethnic housing associations, which house large numbers of Chinese and South Asian people, listed several elements that are of particular importance to their clients (HC, 2008a). Many of these preferences, such as kitchens that accommodate stir fry cooking, bathrooms with showers rather than baths and living rooms that can be partitioned, derive from people’s religious and cultural traditions.

“Other design preferences that appear to be particularly important to some BME households include a desire for large communal areas and separate kitchens and living rooms. These are important especially for Muslims and relatively recent migrants from Africa (HC, 2008a). Instead of being regarded as cultural preferences, however, these would probably be more accurately described as lifestyle choices. Nevertheless, it is possible that Muslims and recent migrants feel more strongly about these, or are more likely to prefer entertaining at home due to, for example, limited access to suitable communal facilities. As qualitative data reveals, cultural preferences are less important to most BME parents than their children’s needs and the desire to bring their children up in a safe environment (HC, 2008a). Although safety is an issue that affects all households with children, this may be even more pronounced for BME social tenants – partly because so many of them have children and partly due to the concentration of BME populations in urban areas and (often socio-economically deprived) neighbourhoods where anti-social behaviour is a bigger problem than in smaller towns or more rural residential areas.” (see section 4 http://www.better-housing.org.uk/files/housing/housing-brief11.pdf#search=”access“)

Are there any hard figures on the total number of BME people in social housing? The answer is no for those born in Britain. For those born abroad we do have some solid statistics. These involve very large numbers . In 2007 the Daily Telegraph reported that “… after an investigation by ITV’s Tonight With Trevor McDonald programme, the Government has admitted that 200,000 of Britain’s social homes – five per cent of the total – were given to immigrants last year.” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1556229/200000-social-homes-given-to-immigrants.html) . The official position for 2007 is “… there were 191,185 general needs social rented lettings across England in 2006/07. The nationality of the named tenant was recorded for 170,363 of these lettings. Less than five per cent (4.54 per cent) of these 170,363 lettings were recorded as being to foreign nationals… “ (http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/aio/1138584). A report prepared for the Equality and Human Right Commission found that “some 90 per cent of those who live in social housing are UK born” , that is, ten per cent were immigrants. (http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/ehrc_report_-_social_housing_allocation_and_immigrant_communities.pdf – see p 64 ) . The giving of social housing to immigrants is indefensible when there are millions of native Britons either homeless or living in inadequate accommodation is indefensible. If British born BME people are also getting more of the social housing than their numbers suggest they should then the white native Briton is doubly disadvantaged.

What is clear is that the native population in Britain and especially the English is being left without a voice while BME groups are having every support from politicians who pass ever more draconian laws to enforce “racial equality” and publicly funded groups which campaign on their behalf. The mentality of those with power in Britain is demonstrated nicely by a passage in the Race Equality Foundation Briefing Paper:

“Exclusively white areas and areas that are known to have problems with racist harassment, however, are not regarded as safe by ‘non-white’ BME tenants and are thus seen as undesirable. As a result of active avoidance of areas known to be racist, many people from minority ethnic groups in effect minimise their chances of being subjected to racist abuse (HC, 2008a). In many instances, fears about racist harassment are well founded, since racist hostility remains a problem in many parts of the country (Beider, 2005; Hemmerman et al., 2007; Law, 2007; HC, 2008c). Racism, and the restrictions it places on BME households’ locational choice, is an important consideration that ought to be taken seriously by housing providers.” (see section 3 http://www.better-housing.org.uk/files/housing/housing-brief11.pdf#search=”access“)

The authors of the paper are so biased in their mindset that they can only see the formation of BME ghettos as a the result of white racism. It would not occur to them to ask why whites flee areas with large BME populations let alone conclude that the whites who do flee do so because of the racist attitude of BME residents.

The position of minorities

Robert Henderson

All our historical and contemporary experience tells us that the more homogeneous a society, the greater its stability and peace. History and our present world also tells us that the common experience of minorities everywhere is persecution. Not all the time nor with the same intensity, but sooner or a later any substantial minority which is seen as radically set apart from the majority will suffer. An uneasy peace may reign for a time, sometimes for generations, but sooner or later racial strife reappears. Ask any Jew about that.

Directly opposed to this reality, is the liberal internationalist theory of Man. Modern liberals ostensibly believe that human beings are blank sheets on which anything may be written and that the “Old Adam” in men which leads them to politically incorrect notions such as a sense of nation is simply a matter of social conditioning.

This profound misinterpretation of Man has led them to develop the pernicious doctrine of multiculturalism. In its most advanced form, this claims that a racially and culturally mixed society is positively superior to the homogenous society. Moreover, the logic of the multiculturalist is that the greater the diversity, the more desirable the society.

The misfortune of the minority

Judged by what actually happens rather than what liberals would like to happen, to be born and raised as a member of a racial or ethnic minority in any society is to be unfortunate. Even where the minority is, exceptionally, the ruling elite, as were the whites in Apartheid South Africa, the members of the minority are always psychologically insecure because they are invariably dogged by a fear that they are resented by the majority population. There is always the knowledge stuck in the back of the mind of minority members that they are outnumbered and that the majority may exert itself at any time against the minority.

Even after fifty odd years of growing liberal internationalist power in Britain, our minorities feel insecure. They know they can antagonise the majority up to a point because liberals are in power. But they also understand at some level that they must not go beyond a certain limit or the game will be up. Thus Asians riot in their own areas not white areas. They instinctively realise that if they did riot in white areas that would drive a fearful liberal elite to act against Asians to placate the indigenous population.

Minorities also fear in their heart of hearts that “multiculturalism” is a sham and will last, even as a public sentiment, only for as long as the liberal elite retain their power.

The loyalties of minority groups

The loyalty of a first generation immigrant is at best split between the receiving country and the country of origin. That is natural enough, for however willing the immigrant is to assimilate into their new society, any adult human being will bear for life the cultural imprint of his or her childhood.

The situation of the immigrant’s children and any subsequent generations is entirely different. Whereas the native population may be tolerant to a point of the immigrant’s difference, they are understandably intolerant of those born and raised in the country who nonetheless insist on remaining separate from the cultural mainstream.

All minorities are not equal

Legal definitions of nationality based on birth or residence are practically irrelevant in the context of nationality for the instinctive emotional commitment and sense of oneness, which are an essential part of a coherent nation, cannot be gained so mechanically. And that is often true even where a conscious decision to migrate has been made by a person’s parents.

A sense of national place is demonstrably not simply derived from living in a country – as Wellington said to those who insisted on calling him an Irishman, ‘If a man is born in a stable it does not make him a horse.’

The natural criterion is surely the sense a man has that he is naturally part of a nation, What is it that gives a man such a sense of place and a natural loyalty? There are, I think, three things which determine this sentiment: parental culture/national loyalty, physical race and the nature of the society into which the immigrant moves. Their relationship is not simple and, as with all human behaviour, one may speak only of tendencies rather than absolutes. Nonetheless, these tendencies are pronounced enough to allow general statements to be made.

Where an immigrant physically resembles the numerically dominant population, the likelihood is that his children will fully assume the culture and develop a natural loyalty to their birthplace. For example, the children of white immigrants to Australia and New Zealand will most probably think of themselves as Australian or New Zealanders. However, even in such a situation, the child’s full acceptance of their birthplace community will probably depend on whether his parents remain in their adopted country. If the parents return to their native land, their children, even if they have reached adulthood, often decide to follow and adopt the native national loyalty of their parents. Where a child’s parents (and hence the child) are abroad for reasons of business or public service, the child will almost always adopt the parent’s native culture and nationality as their own.

Where the immigrant is not of the same physical type as the dominant racial national group, his children will normally attach themselves to the group within the country which most closely resembles the parents in physical type and culture. Where a large immigrant population from one cultural/racial source exists in a country, for example, Jamaicans in England, the children of such immigrants will make particularly strenuous efforts to retain a separate identity, a task made easier by their physical difference from the dominant group. Where a child is the issue of a mixed race marriage he or she will tend to identify with the parent who comes from a minority group, although this tendency may be mitigated if the father is a member of the racially dominant national group.

The rational behaviour for minorities

Multiculturalism encourages behaviour in minorities utterly at odds with their long-term welfare. It combines advocacy of the behaviour which has always led to persecution of minorities, deliberate cultural separatism, with something new – the promotion of the interests of minorities over those of the majority. This is done by the passing of laws such as the Race Relations Act, and the incessant promotion of the creed of multiculturalism by politicians of all the Parliamentary parties, through Government policy in areas such as education and a general support for the idea within the mainstream media.

The pernicious general consequence of multiculturalism for minorities is that they are given grossly inflated expectations of what they should expect from society. Constantly told that they are living in a racist society, they develop a sense of being discriminated against even in circumstances where they are demonstrably favoured, for example in their considerable over-representation (in relation to their proportion of the population) in the British legal and medical professions.

The sane behaviour for any member of a minority is to recognise what everyone in their heart of hearts knows, namely, that any minority will suffer a degree of discrimination and resentment simply because that is Man’s tribal nature. Those who can achieve it have an obvious path to follow if they choose to take it: assimilate to the point where they are indistinguishable from the native population.

Where assimilation is impossible for whatever reason, the minority’s obvious best course is to keep as low a profile as possible to avoid inflaming the resentment of the majority population or the jealousy of competing minority groups in the society.

The bottom line for any member of a minority is this, he or she must judge whether the experience of being a member of a minority in a particular country is a better bargain than living in a country where he or she is in the racial and/or cultural majority. The vast majority of those from ethnic minorities who were born in Britain or who have come to Britain as immigrants vote with their feet by staying. If their experience of racial discrimination was really intolerable they would have emigrated to places such as the sub-continent. An unsurprising choice because Britain with a bit of discrimination is a vastly more attractive proposition than the Third World with its war, poverty, political turmoil and hard-core racial strife.

The problem of minorities for the majority

The mass non-European immigration since 1945 has introduced a wholly alien racial tension to Britain. To control the situation our elite has introduced laws which have no place in a free society, robbed our children of their history and cultural confidence, suppressed public outrage about immigration through their control of the mainstream media. In the process they have removed from Britain of what it had only half a century ago, namely, a sense of security in its cultural and physical territory. This pattern is repeated throughout the historic nations of Europe.

Conclusion

The elephant in the room that no mainstream politician will openly acknowledge is the fact that large minorities within a country ensure psychological separatism and lay the eggs for everything from racial discord to treason to hatch.

Our elite is presently desperately trying to square the circle of ensuring national cohesion and safety whilst still calling for tolerance of other cultures within our midst. The two are mutually exclusive.

Generally, elites in the West do not know what to do and veer between preaching an ever more frenzied multicultural gospel and engaging in anti-immigrant rhetoric in a hopeless raging against a poisonous situation which they have created.

If Western elites suddenly saw that their only hope of survival was to embrace homogeneity, could they, with the full power of the modern state behind them, save the situation by stopping all further mass immigration of those who are difficult or impossible to assimilate and restart the assimilation train successfully enough to mitigate the effects of the divisions their societies already suffer? I would hope it could be done but I fear that it may be too late, for the minorities have now reached a size where they cannot be meaningfully controlled in terms of loyalties and culture. They are now self-sustaining cultural entities.

Fifty years ago Britain had no race-relations problem, now it is traumatised and dominated by the consequences of post-war immigration. It is a self-inflicted wound.

Middle England Murders

The producer and co-originator of the long running ITV series Midsomer Murders Brian True-May has entered the pantheon of liberal villains. His “crimes” were the capital ones of having, by implication, defined being white as part of being English whilst unashamedly relishing and celebrating Englishness.

This un-pc atrocity was committed in an interview with the current issue of the Radio Times. (http://www.radiotimes.com/blogs/1215-midsomer-murders-producer-brian-true-may-no-ethnic-minorities-suspended/) . True-May first pointed out that black and brown faces would have been inappropriate in an English village because ‘”it wouldn’t be the English village” that viewers know and love” …We are a cosmopolitan society in this country, but if you watch Midsomer you wouldn’t think so. I’ve never been picked up on that, but quite honestly I wouldn’t want to change it.”

‘Asked what he meant by “cosmopolitan”, Mr True-May, 65, replied: “Well, we just don’t have ethnic minorities involved. Because it wouldn’t be the English village with them. It just wouldn’t work. Suddenly we might be in Slough. Ironically, Causton [the town in Midsomer Murders] is supposed to be Slough. And if you went to Slough you wouldn’t see a white face there.

‘”We’re the last bastion of Englishness and I want to keep it that way.”’ (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8381769/Midsomer-Murders-creator-suspended-after-calling-show-the-last-bastion-of-Englishness.html)

The show has a steady audience of around six million and is sold to 231 territories around the world, a popularity True-May believes rests on its Englishness: ”When I talk to people and other nations they love John Nettles, but they also love the premise of the show. They love the perceived English genteel eccentricity. It’s not British. It’s very English.” (Ibid)

True-May’s behaviour has (natch) led to an eruption of liberal posturing of Tambora proportions as the usual media suspects queue up to insist the man is thrown into the outer darkness. ITV solemnly announced: “We are shocked and appalled at these personal comments by Brian True-May which are absolutely not shared by anyone at ITV. We are in urgent discussions with All3Media, the producer of Midsomer Murders, who have informed us that they have launched an immediate investigation into the matter and have suspended Mr True-May pending the outcome.” (Ibid).

Why are liberals so fanatical in their suppression of English self-expression? To the proverbial Martian it might seem very odd because they are constantly saying how weak a plant is Englishness . Here is a good example:

“Six hundred kids in schools in four English towns were asked about their identity in a Joseph Rowntree Foundation study to be published on Wednesday. Those from ethnic minorities didn’t hesitate with their answers – black, Pakistani Muslim, Muslim, Asian – while the white majority were left stumbling. “I’m sort of tanned,” said one. “I’ve aquamarine eyes,” said another. Some of the white kids could describe their heritage – “I’m a quarter Scottish” or “I’m an eighth Japanese” – but they couldn’t label the identity it gave them. Being “English” meant nothing to them.” Madeleine Bunting (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/mar/14/britishidentity.politicalcolumnists)

It is a question of protesting too much. You do not attack that which is weak. Liberals attack Englishness and the English because they fear its strength. Here are a few choice examples of such elite hatred and fear:

‘English had used their “propensity to violence” to “subjugate Ireland, Wales and Scotland”. He said: “Then we used it in Europe and with our Empire, so I think what you have within the UK is three small nations in terms of their population who’ve been over the centuries under the cosh of the English….”

“There is a particular problem with some people’s view of Englishness. There is a distorted, incomplete idea of what it is to be patriotic for those in England, which is different from that in Wales or Scotland or Ireland.”

“We’ve had all the global baggage of the empire and a lot of jingoism here. And I think it’s very important that we redefine not only what it means to be British, but also what it means to be English.” Jack Straw when Home Secretary on BBC Radio 4′s “Brits about what it means to be British” (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/distorted-view-of-englishness-causes-racism–straw-707325.html)

“I think English nationalism is the most dangerous of all forms of nationalism that can arise within the United Kingdom, because England is five-sixths of the population of the UK.” William Hague when Tory leader (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/hague-and-straw-warn-of-dangers-in-aggressive-english-nationalism-728492.html)

“I don’t care whether pandering to English Nationalism is a vote winner. The very fact that in my two years as leader I haven’t ripped open the Barnett Formula and wandered round England waving a banner shows you that I am a very convinced Unionist and I’m not going to play those games. — David Cameron Speech in the Scottish Parliament, BBC, 14 May 2010”

“…it has only been in the last five years or so that I have heard people in my constituency telling me, “I am not British – I am English”. That worries me. British identity is based on and anchored in its political and legal institutions and this enables it to take in new entrants more easily than it would be if being a member of a nation were to be defined by blood. But a democratic polity will only work if citizens’ identification is with the community as a whole, or at least with the shared process, which overrides their loyalty to a segment. “ Gisela Stuart German-born Labour MP from Birmingham in 2005. (http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-opening/trust_3030.jsp)

A catalogue of further anti-English comments by politicians and mediafolk can be found at http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/the-british-elite-express-their-hatred-and-fear-of-england/

To acknowledge the power and strength of Englishness and England’s dominance within the UK threatens three prime positions supported overtly or tacitly by Britain’s political elite: membership of the EU, unlimited immigration and the imposition of the totalitarian ideology which is political correctness. In addition, Labour and the LibDems have the venal reason of not wanting an independent voice because so much of their electoral strength is drawn from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

If the English were allowed a Parliament this would begin the shattering of the liberal internationalist consensus and that would mean the questions of Britain’s sovereignty, the reality of what mass immigration has meant and the tyranny of political correctness would become truly live political questions and politicians elected in England would have to address, just as the assemblies in the Celtic Fringe do, the interests of England not the UK as a whole. This would include reducing or wholly removing the subsidies England sends to the other home countries each year. (Simply reducing the Treasury per capita payments to the Celts to the same level as those in England would save England around £16 billion pa at present rates).

But an England with its own Parliament and government would be a very different beast from the other devolved assemblies. Because of the great predominance of wealth and population in England (around 84% of the UK population) the English Parliament and government England would in practice be the determining political power in the UK. The Celtic Fringe would not be able force the continuation of the subsidies English taxpayers are currently forced to pay; if England wished to leave the EU it would happen; if England decided there was to be an end mass immigration it would happen.

Such things would be far from improbable if there was an English government, because the very existence of politicians having to concentrate on English interests would produce a political class with a different mentality to either that of the present UK national politicians or those in the devolved assemblies. Unlike the existing devolved assemblies, these would be politicians representing a country which paid its own way rather than held its hand for subsidies from outside its borders. Nor would they have to concern themselves with placating the peoples of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as the present UK government is forced to do. Most importantly, those forming an English government would, even if they only had the present powers of the Scottish Parliament, spend the large majority of the UK budget.

It is the prospect of these possibilities which makes the British political class and their fellow travellers in the media and all other positions of power and influence within the country so determined to prevent the English having a political voice.

There is a gross imbalance in the latitude permitted by Britain’s political elite to ethnic minorities and to the English in their self-definitions. Non-white ethnic minorities are allowed to define themselves as they wish. If someone is black it is not frowned upon if they define themselves as African, Jamaican or Nigerian even if they have been born here. A person whose antecedents lie in the sub-continent can define themselves as Asian, Indian, Pakistani without fear of being described as racist. . A person born of Chinese parents will routinely describe themselves as Chinese. Those are all de facto racial descriptions, because the people who describe themselves so do so on the basis of belonging to broad racial types. That is all True-May has done.

How do ethnic minorities view the programme? The British Film Institute (BFI) funded research which produced a report in 2006 entitled “Media Culture: The Social Organisation of Media Practices in Contemporary Britain” (http://www.bfi.org.uk/about/pdf/social-org-media-practices.pdf). This found that amongst ethnic minorities “popular dramas like Midsomer Murders and A Touch of Frost are strikingly unpopular, and – although this is not shown in the Chart – more so on the part of those born in Britain.” (p26) and a “ lack of interest in television programmes with strongly white, middle-England associations (Midsomer Murders, A Touch of Frost)” with a “ strongly negative reaction on the part of minority groups to the classic signature of ‘quality’ British cinema – costume dramas and literary adaptations”. (p34)

The democratic spirit and the English civil war, Commonwealth and Protectorate

Stuart society was a world on the physical, economic and intellectual move and waiting to move faster if the right engine appeared. The civil wars of the 1640s was that machine.

Representative government is one thing, democracy quite another. That did not come to England in its formal form of a full adult franchise until the twentieth century. But for a brief period in the 1640s a franchise for the House of Commons broader than any used before the late nineteenth century was more than a pipe dream.

The Civil War and its republican aftermath, the Commonwealth and Protectorate, changed English politics utterly. It brought the end of claims by the English crown to Divine Right and absolute monarchy. It promoted the political interests of the aristocracy and gentry as a class. It forced those on the Parliamentary side to exercise power on their own responsibility. It created a political class which saw politics as something they could control rather than merely be part of as an adjunct to the crown. It raised the idea that there should be a law superior to that which even a parliament could pass. It began the constitutional process which resulted in cabinet government. It laid the foundations for the formation of political parties as we know them. In short, it planted the seeds of modern representative government.

Into this new world were cast men whose political philosophies ranged from acceptance of the divine right of kings to unyielding communists. In the middle were those, such as Cromwell, who though socially conservative, realised that power and political interest had shifted not merely from the king to Parliament, but also in some sense to an appreciably broader circle of people than before. Such people were willing to extend the franchise to a degree, although still restricting it to those with property for fear that the poor would dispossess the haves if they had the power to elect and that those with no material stake in the country would have no sense of responsibility and duty.

But that was insufficient from many, especially those who fought on the Parliamentary side in the wars, and something else occurred which was to be even more momentous in the long run. The belief that men generally should only be ruled by those they had themselves elected became a serious political idea.

That the idea should find expression as a serious political idea in the 1640s was, of course, partly a consequence of the disruption of society by civil war, but that was more an opportunity rather than a reason. Innumerable civil wars all over the world have come and gone without the democratic spirit being given rein. What made the England of the time unusual was the long-existing ideal of individual freedom which had reached a high degree of sophistication, including the notion that free debate, the sine qua no of democracy, was of value in itself. Here are two passages which give a taste of the way minds were working in the 1640s. First, John Milton writing in the Areogapitica in the 1640s:

And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose upon the earth, so truth be in the field [and] we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter…

The second statement comes from the Leveller Richard Overton’s ‘An Arrow against all Tyrants’ (19th October, 1646). It contains as good a refutation of the power of authority without consent over the individual as you will find:

No man hath power over my rights and liberties, and I over no man’s….for by naturall birth all men are equally and alike borne to like propriety, liberty and freedom, and as we are delivered of God by the hand of nature into this world, everyone with a naturall, innate freedom and propriety….even so are we to live, every one equally and alike to enjoy his birthright and privilege…. [no more of which may be alienated] than is conducive to a better being, more safety and freedome….[for] every man by nature being a King, Priest and Prophet in his own naturall circuit and compasse, whereof no second may partake, but by deputation, commission and free consent from him, whose naturall right and freedome it is. [An Arrow against alltyrants].

These were not odd voices crying in the wilderness. The democratic spirit was widespread in the 1640s. By this I do not mean that men were commonly calling for full manhood suffrage, much less the emancipation of women. Even the most democratically advanced of the important groups which evolved during the Civil War, the Levellers, were unclear as to whether those who were deemed dependent in the sense of not being their own masters – servants and almstakers – should be given the vote or, indeed, who counted as a servant or almstaker.

Rather, there was a sense that the social order had been rearranged by the war, that men were on some new ground of equality and had a right to a public voice. In particular, there was a belief that those who had fought for Parliament had won the right to enfranchisement. There was also a widespread feeling, which penetrated all social classes, that the existing franchises (which as we have seen varied greatly) were frequently too narrow and that the towns, particularly those most recently grown to substantial size, were grossly under-represented.

Ideas of social and political equality had, as we have seen, existed long before the Civil War, but never before had large swathes of the masses and the elite seen anything approaching representative democracy as practical politics under any circumstances. The political and social elite of the period after 1640 may have been desperately afraid of a general representation of the English people, but they did not say it was impossible, merely feared its consequences. They may have loathed the idea of every man his own political master but they were forced by circumstances to admit that a Parliament elected on a broad franchise was not a fantasy.

The Putney Debates in 1647 provide a vivid record of the political fervour and mentality of the times. Parliamentary and Army leaders including Cromwell and his son-in-law Henry Ireton, met with a variety of people on what might broadly be called the democratic side. A substantial part of the debate was taken down in shorthand. It is a most intriguing and exciting document, despite its incompleteness and some confused passages. The sheer range of political ideas it displays is impressive. It shows clearly that the 1640s experienced a high degree of sophistication amongst the politically interested class and that this class was drawn from a broad swathe of English society. The ideas run discussed from the monarchical to the unreservedly democratic, epitomised in Col Thomas Rainsborough’s famous words:

… I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to lead, as the richest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it’s clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do not think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he has not had a voice to put himself under… (Col Thomas Rainsborough Puritanism and Liberty The Putney debates p 53).

Democracy, the revolutionary idea

Why was the idea of every man being an elector so revolutionary? There was of course the age-old traditional fear, known to the Greeks, that the masses would dispossess haves if they had control of who was to hold power. But the matter went much deeper than that. The enfranchisement of a wide electorate is perhaps the most fundamental political change a society can undergo. It forces the elite to take note of the masses in a way that no other system does. Even the humblest man must be considered as a man in his own right, a person with a vote and needs and wishes. Those needs and wishes may be heeded and met to varying degrees according to the success an elite has in subverting the representative process through such tricks as international treaties and the development of disciplined political parties, but what the majority needs and wants cannot as a matter of course be ignored completely when each man has a vote.

A form of male-only democracy existed in the ancient world, but it was never inclusive because the citizens were only a part of the population of a Greek civis and the large numbers of unfree men and free men who were not citizens were excluded. The Roman Republic had enjoyed in varying degrees at various times democratic expression through plebeian institutions such as the concilium plebis and offices such as that of tribune. But that was a class based representation which arose to oppose the Patrician class, not a self-conscious representation of individual men.

Received wisdom it may be now, the idea that every man (but not woman then) should have an active voice in choosing those who would represent and govern them was to most people, poor and rich, a truly novel and disturbing concept in the middle of the 17th century.

The Levellers: the first English radicals

Radical has a special meaning in English political history. It describes those whose instincts were democratic although they did not espouse the idea of a full male adult suffrage let alone a suffrage which included women until very late in their existence. But what they all had was a desire to see political power taken from the few and given to many more. Their means of doing this was not to overthrow Parliament but to make it responsive to the interests and needs of the general population, something which was to be achieved by devices such as broadening the franchise, ending rotten boroughs, annual parliaments. As for the monarchy, this might be allowed or not, but if it was to continue the powers of the crown had be emasculated. With few exception such as Gerrard Winstanley and his Diggers, they were not socialists or egalitarian in a general sense. The sort of people who became radicals were typically men with some material independence and education such as tradesmen and those educated at non-conformist colleges. Constitutional reform – in which they had a naive trust as a panacea for all the ills they wished to mend – was what they sought, not social revolution.

The English radical emerged in the struggle between Charles I and Parliament. The group which gave the strongest voice and effect to the new radical was the Levellers. They were a disparate and ever shifting crew, drawing their support primarily from the ranks of the Parliamentary armed forces (especially after the New Model Army was formed in 1645), small tradesmen, journeymen and apprentices. However, they also included those from higher social classes, their most famous leader, John Lilburne, being the child of minor gentry.

What the Levellers were most certainly not, were the thorough going democrats and proto-socialists portrayed by the likes of Tony Benn and Bill Bragg. Rather they were men who would have fitted much more comfortably into the ideological sleeve of Margaret Thatcher than that of social democracy.

Their opponents attempted to portray the Levellers as social revolutionaries who would take the property of the rich, most particularly their land, and give it to the poor. Hence the epithet of Leveller which originated as a term of abuse. But the Levellers consistently denied that they had any such programme and were staunch defenders of the right to property. They might best be characterised as radical democrats with a very strong libertarian streak. Indeed, so far were they from being proto-communists that they had an almost sacramental belief in the individual’s right to personal property.

Intellectually, they started from the view that all Englishmen had a birthright which entitled them to have a say in who should govern them, although at times they accepted that the birthright might be breached through dependence on a master or by receiving alms. More importantly, their ideology contained the germ of the idea of a social contract between the people and those who held power, an idea which was to come to dominate English political thinking for the next century or so through the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.

The Levellers were, with one or two exceptions such as Richard Overton, who was a deist at best and an atheist at worst, or John Wildman, who was a libertine and chancer, religious. But their belief had a strong vein of rationalism in it. They saw God not as the often cantankerous and domineering supernatural being of traditional Christianity, but as a rational intelligence who entered every man and allowed him to see what was naturally just and reasonable. For the Levellers, it seemed a natural right – a rational right – for a man to have a say in who should hold power and what they should do with the power.

The Levellers were happy to use historical props such as Magna Carta and the legend of Norman oppression when it suited them, but their rationality led them to question how men were governed from first principles. One of the Leveller leaders Richard Overton actually called Magna Carta a ”beggarly thing” and went on to comment:

Ye [Parliament] were chosen to work our deliverance, and to estate us in natural and just liberty, agreeable to reason and common equity, for whatever our forefathers were, we are the men of the present age, and ought to be absolutely free from all kinds of exorbitancies, molestations or arbitrary power. (A Remonstrance. Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution)

More balanced was his fellow Leveller William Walwyn:

Magna Carta (you must observe) is but a part of the people’s rights and liberties, being no more but what with much striving and fighting, was wrested from the paws of those kings , who by force had conquered the nation, changed the laws and by strong hand held them in bondage. (England’s Lamentable Slaverie, Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution.)

To call the Levellers a political party in the modern sense would be misleading. Yet they were the closest thing to it both then and, arguably, for several centuries. Their tactics and organisation were modern – the use of pamphletering and newspapers, the ability to get large number of supporters onto the streets (especially in London) at the drop of a hat, the creation of local associations. Much of this was the work of Lilburne, a man of preternatural obstinacy, courage and general unreasonableness. It says much for the restraint of the English elite of the day and respect for the law that he was not killed out of hand. It is difficult to imagine such behaviour being tolerated anywhere in Europe in the seventeenth century.

Lilburne by every account of him was a most difficult man – it was said that his nature was so combative that he would seek a quarrel with himself if he were alone – ‘Jack would fight with John’. Yet this man, who came from a very modest gentry background, remained alive despite challenging the authority of first the king and then during and after the civil war, Parliament, Cromwell and the Commonwealth. He thus carried on this mortally dangerous behaviour for almost a generation. To the end of his life in 1657, he was thought dangerous enough to imprison.

Lilburne first came to notice for seditious speeches and writings in the 1630s. For that he was whipped from the Fleet to the Palace Yard where he was stood in the stocks. Whilst in the stocks, he removed copies of the pamphlets which had caused his punishment and threw them to the crowd. That little episode will give a good idea of the Lilburne’s general mentality. He was an extreme example one of those necessary unreasonable men without whom nothing great gets done.

From the time of his flogging onwards, Lilburne’s career was one of studied defiance of authority. He was one of the most potent pamphleteers England has ever seen. For more than a decade, he produced a flood of writings guaranteed to inflame virtually anyone in public authority in the land. He faced down judges in the most powerful courts in the land. He controlled the London mob consummately. He treated the greatest men in the land as equals. In any other place on the planet at that time, he would have been dead meat before his career as an agitator began. But not in England. He might be flogged. He might be put in the stocks. He might be imprisoned. He might be tried twice for his life. But what 17th century England would not do was unreservedly murder him.

The Levellers developed an increasingly sophisticated political programme in a series of documents known as The Agreements of the People. These Agreements dealt extensively with political representation and structure. They were also very successful in creating a sense of historic grievance and an enemy. They did this by portraying 1640s England as having declined from a golden age of freedom to an oppressed land and people under the heel of the Normans and their French successors.

The Levellers time was brief. They were a serious political force for, at most, the years 1646 to 1649 and that is probably being a mite too generous. They failed utterly in the end, not least because they were unable to carry the army, especially the junior officers, with them. But they were important both for giving voice to the ideas and creating many of the practices on which modern politics is founded.

The Free-Born Englishman

It may have taken until 1928 for full adult suffrage of English men and women to arrive, but the essential sentiments which feed the idea of democracy – that human beings are morally equal and enjoy autonomy as individuals and a natural resentment of privilege and inequality – are ancient in England.

If there is one outstanding trait in English political history it is probably the desire for personal freedom. This might seem odd to the modern Englishman who sees the large majority of his country men and women consistently welcoming the idea of the most intrusive forms of ID cards and who stand by dumbly as many of the age-old and ineffably hard-won rights which protect the individual, such as the abridgement of jury trial and the right to silence, being swept away by modern governments. But it was not always so and that “always so” was not so long ago. The great Austrian political and economic thinker Friedrich Hayek put it forcefully during the Second World War:

“It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that only in English society, and those societies deriving from it, is the notion of individual liberty built into the social fabric. The English have been free not primarily because of legal rights, but because it is their evolved social nature. They accept liberty because it seems natural to them.” (The road to Serfdom – chapter Material conditions and ideal ends)

In short, individual liberty has been and is part of being English and part of England. It would be going too far to claim that the English masses have ever had any highly developed sense of liberal with a small ‘l’ sentiments, but throughout English history there has been both a widespread resentment of interference, either public or private, in the private life of English men and women and an acute awareness that privilege was more often than not unearned and frequently cruelly used to oppress the poor.

Most importantly, over the centuries the elite gradually adopted the ideal of personal freedom into their ideology. Here is the elder Pitt speaking on the notion that the idea that an Englishman’s home:

The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail – its roof may shake – the wind may blow though it – the storm may enter – the rain may enter – but the King of England cannot enter! – All his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement! (Quoted in Lord Brougham’s Statesmen in the time of George III)

The desire for liberty and a freeman’s due is seen in the constant demand by mediaeval towns for charters which would free them from aspects of royal control, most particularly taxation. In some respects it helped fuel the barons’ demand for Magna Carta. It drove the Peasant’s Revolt. It provided the emotional engine for the decline of serfdom once circumstances were propitious after the Black Death.

The Levellers made it their ideological centrepiece in the 1640s, their leader, John Lilburne, revelling in the name of “Freeborn John”. “Wilkes and Liberty” was the mob’s popular cry in that most aristocratic of centuries, the eighteenth. The Chartists held tight to the ideal in the nineteenth.

The idea that liberty was part of the birthright of the English survived until after the Second World war. Indeed, the English remained in their daily lives, once the wartime social controls such as rationing were removed, very free from until the 1960s. Apart from the laws of libel, slander, obscenity and the Lord Chamberlain’s censorship of the theatre, there were no legal bars to what might be said or written. The concept of “hate crimes” was unknown. Employers might employ who they chose; those providing goods and services whom they would serve. The ideas which we now call political correctness had no hold on any but small groups of people who were at best considered eccentric and at worst fanatics.

That precious natural liberty began to be eroded in the 1960s. The mass immigration of the post-war years provided the excuse to pass Race Relations Acts (RRAs) of increasing severity in 1965, the second in 1968 and the third in 1976. The passing of 1965 RRA provided the breach in the dyke of English liberty. Through it climbed the gays and feminists to obtain, sooner or later, legal protections from equal opportunities legislation. From that has grown the immense state apparatus – all public bodies have to by law preach the political correct gospel – of enforced “equality” (in reality the granting of privileges to those approved of by the politically correct) which binds us today.

In 1972 a further lance was driven into the side of English liberty with the Heath Government’s abduction of British sovereignty as he happily gave it to what is today the European Union (EU). This has destroyed the ability of electors to hold governments to account because the British mainstream political class overwhelmingly supports British membership of the EU. That institution constantly thrusts on Britain ideas which are wholly at odds with England’s traditions of freedom, for example the judicial abomination which is the European Arrest Warrant, a legal device which allows any person to be extradited from Britain to another EU state without any meaningful test of the evidence against them.

Come the 1980s and a more diffuse and slippery weapon to undermine English freedom was introduced by Margaret Thatcher. This was a fanatic ideological commitment to laissez fair economics at home and abroad which lingers to this day. What became known as globalisation destroyed employment in Britain, especially mining and manufacturing, and provided the excuse for another great flood of immigrants from the third world. The institutionalisation of mass unemployment (the real figure has been in the millions since the late seventies, much of it disguised as long-term sickness, a device instituted by Thatcher when the employment figure soared to over three million and cynically continued by all governments since). The mass unemployment made people dependent on the state at a level never previously seen and the increase in immigration both increased the competition for work and drove the social fracture already made in the priceless homogeneity of the country massively wider.

The final nail (to date) in the coffin of English freedom is the devolution settlement which granted power to parliaments or assemblies in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales whilst denying England any such privilege. The English were left with no political voice , while watching vast amounts of English taxpayers’ money being shipped to the Celtic Fringe (around £16 billion pa at present) and MPs from non-English seats making laws for England which would not apply in their own constituencies.

The upshot of sixty years of gradual squeezing of English freedoms is that an English man or woman may no longer say what they thing about race, immigration, sexual equality or sexual predilection without at least risking the loss of their employment and quite possibly being subject to criminal prosecution; employers live in fear of any member of an ethnic minority, woman or gay suing for sexual or racial discrimination; political correctness is the watchword of anyone in public life and history has become next to dead as a meaningful subject in English schools because all the parts which would embarrass immigrants or make them feel excluded from “our island story” have been excised from the curriculum.

That is the sad state of the once free-born Englishman. Is he gone for ever? Not yet, but in another generation or two he probably will be lost forever. We can revive the mentality provided we act now. The first necessity is to leave the EU and throw off any other treaty restraints which undermine democratic control. After that the stripping out of political correctness from our legal system and institutions can begin; mass immigration be ended; a judicious protection for vital industries introduced and the pandering to minorities cease. That will provide the soil in which English freedom can revive.

Is it in the blood? and the hypocrisy of the media

The death of the great England all-rounder Trevor Bailey prompts me to take down and dust off a classic example of the discrepancy between what mainstream mediafolk privately believe and their public obeisance to political correctness.

In 1991 I wrote to a group of sports journalists who specialised in cricket. Some such as E M Wellings and E W Swanton were at the time amongst the best known of the breed. All wrote or broadcast for the national media. My subject was the influx of foreign players into county cricket and the employment of foreigners in the England cricket team, both of which I deplored. On the grounds that foreigners in county cricket denied opportunities for English players and the use of foreigners in the England side made a mockery of the idea of national sides.

The letter I sent to the sports journalists was published as an article in Wisden Cricket Monthly in 1991. I have posted the article at http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/a-fundamental-malaise/

Bailey was one of those I wrote to. He replied in March 1991 with this:

Dear Mr Henderson,

Thank you for your letter and interesting comments on the effect of having so many overseas mercenaries representing England, and playing in county teams.

You certainly have a point and I may well do an article about if the Essex middle order is Malik, Hussain and Shahid. It would have such a county ring about it!

Yours sincerely,

Trevor Bailey.

Most of the journalists replied. All were in at least partial agreement with me and many were wholeheartedly with me. There is a selection of their letters in the appendix below.

The support was still there three years later. Here is the then editor of the Cricketer magazine, Richard Hutton, writing to me on August 17, 1994:

Dear Mr Henderson,

Thank you for your letter of August 14 and the accompanying article about overseas players in the English game, which I read with interest.

I feel what you have submitted is too lengthy for use at it stands and also contains too much restatement of existing laws and regulations. However, I will promise you immediate publication – in October’s issue – if you rework the piece without any loss of argument or point into a 200-300 word letter. Otherwise, if it is to be considered as a feature article we will still require a substantial reduction, because we would not be able to allot more than one page to it in view of the demands on our space. Even then I cannot say when the space will materialise and by the time it does topicality may be lost.

You will probably gather that I very much favour the former option, and I await a revised submission.

Sincerely,

RICHARD HUTTON Editorial Director

And here is the editor of the Wisden Cricket Monthly, David Frith, writing to me on 30/3/94:

“Let me just assure you that I was one of the earliest to feel a sense of unease at the number of foreign players piling into the England XI. It’s hard to separate oneself from the personal side of it all I know all of them – even the reclusive Caddick – and like them almost without exception. But the principle seems wrong, and I think that there has been some sort of dislocation in the national psyche. How can a true Englishman ever see this as his representative side despite all the chat about the commitment of the immigrant?”

The following year Wisden Cricket Monthly (WCM) published an article by me in the July issue entitled Is it in the blood? (The title was chosen by the editor – I submitted the article under the title ‘Racism and national identity’).

The article again questioned the appropriateness of foreigners playing for England. In this I also questioned whether ethnic minority players raised wholly or substantially in England would be moved by feelings of English patriotism when playing for England both because of the way in which ethnic minorities tend to live lives segregated lives and the victimhood industry which eggs ethnic minorities to view themselves as being persecuted and used by ol’whitey. Sometimes the evidence comes from the mouths of top sportsmen who have played for England. Here is the footballer John Barnes making his anti-English feelings very clear in his autobiography:

I am fortunate my England career is now complete so I don’t have to sound patriotic any more.(P69 – John Barnes: the autobiography)

I feel more Jamaican than English because I’m black. A lot of black people born in England feel more Jamaican than English because they are not accepted in the land of their birth on account of their colour, (P 71)

Was I more patriotic for England than I would have been for Scotland? No. To keep everyone happy throughout my international career, I always said that my only choice was England because England is where I settled, but that wasn’t true. (p72)

When I played for England, I could never declare that nationalism is loathsome and illogical. I couldn’t say that if I played for France, I would try just as hard, which I would. I tried hard for England out of professional pride not patriotism – because I never felt any. (P72)

Is it in the blood? produced the most tremendous furore which ended with David Frith telling a direct lie by denying that he shared my views, viz:

“I tried all along to make it clear that I did not support the majority of the sentiments expressed by Mr Henderson (and a paragraph on page 1 of each issue of the magazine supports this). But I also believed that it was an editor’s responsibility to tackle difficult issues, to bring them into the open so that solutions might be found. My particular hope in respect of this article was that the plight of foreign-born cricketers in this country and those with immigrant parents — whether from West Indies, Australasia, southern Africa or Asia — might be better understood when their difficulties were considered. Publication of this particular article was, I now realise, not the best way to have gone about it. The national-identity element was drowned out.” WCM August 1995

What parts exactly of my article did not agree with Mr Frith? As for the national identity side of the debate being overwhelmed by race, how could it be that the man who declares himself wanting to investigate the question of national identity changed my title from the national identity focused “Racism and national identity” to the racially suggestive “Is it in the blood?”? It is also worth noting that in the edition of WCM in which the article was published Frith put this on the contents page: “Is it in the blood? Robert Henderson studies the foreign-born England players. No mention of concern for “those with immigrant parents”.

As the row evolved and Devon Malcolm, Philip DeFreitas and Chris Lewis issued libel writs against WCM, despite the Professional Cricketers Association taking counsel’s advice on their behalf and his opinion being that no libel existed. (Extraordinarily no writs were issued against me as the author, most probably because I made it clear from the outset that I would take any libel claim to the floor of a court). After the issue of the writs Frith distanced himself ever further from the article until this statement was read in court following an out of court settlement with Malcolm (none of the cases was never brought to trial)

‘Mr Rupert Elliott, counsel for Wisden Cricket Magazines Ltd and for the magazine’s editor [David Frith], said they disassociated themselves entirely from the allegations made by an independent contributor’ Guardian report 17/10/95 . Bearing in mind Frith’s true feelings, that strikes me as a deliberate attempt to pervert the course of justice.

Frith humiliated himself in this fashion because the management of WCM put the wind up him. Here he is writing to me on July 14 1995

Dear Mr Henderson,

In reply to your letter of the 7th, I have to say that in view of the furore (an understatement) which has followed publication of your article in our July edition, I have been told by the management of Wisden that I should not accept anything further from you. I hardly needed telling, for the past fortnight has been probably the most difficult of my life.

I hope you are successful in persuading the Daily Telegraph to run your latest offering.

Yours sincerely,

DAVID FRITH Editor

So much for editorial independence and the first rule of being an editor: stand by your contributors and what you have published.

Frith added insult to injury by publishing 4 pages of criticism of me in the issue of WCM which followed then publication of Is it in the blood? whilst refusing me any opportunity to reply.

Firth found that his Maoist confession of guilt was not enough to save him and was forced out of WCM within the year.

What did those in the media who had privately agreed with my ideas from 1991 onwards do? They all refused to support me or even help me to get a hearing in any mainstream media outlet. One, Matthew Engel, then editor of Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack, was ion such a panic that he even went as far as to publish in the Guardian that he had never heard of me, despite having written to me a couple of months before the publication of Is it in the blood? congratulating me on continuing to push the question of foreigners playing for England.

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Appendix

1. Tony Lewis 6 2 1991

Dear Mr Henderson,

Thank you so much for writing. I really enjoyed your letter which contained so many good points.

I did write about David Gower that I would have docked him his day’s pay but I do understand that many believe an up-country match between the Tests is as sacred as the Test matches themselves. I quite agree with you about the need to exclude overseas cricketers and those with the passports of convenience. How else will we ever grow our own cricketers if the way is blocked by late entrants into the system.

Can I add to your other points the thought that we lack true leadership. I have never believed that control can possibly come from off-the-field, i.e. through Mickey Stewart. Graham Gooch is very content to leave a lot of things to Mickey. In fact true leadership can only come from someone who is actually playing in the match. This is why Stewart, who is probably selector-in-chief fits your bill as someone who is too closely involved with the players to be objective.

A major thesis is there to be written. Kind regards.

Yours sincerely,

A. R. Lewis.

2. Matthew Engel March 20 1991

Dear Mr Henderson,

Thank you for your Interesting letter re cricketing nationalities, Up to a point – but only up to a point- I agree with your arguments, I could argue at length with you here but I think your suggestion of addressing the subject in a column or article is a good one and I shall try and do that shortly,

With best wishes,

Yours sincerely Matthew Engel

3. E W Swanton March 8, 1991

Dear Mr Henderson ,

Thank you for your forceful and interesting letter. I would have had time to respond at greater length if I had not returned from holiday to find a desk full of unanswered letters.

Briefly, I have sympathy for your point of view, but, of course, its implementation is unattainable. A considerable body of men cannot suddenly be deprived of their livelihood.

I think the integration of disparate groups is largely a matter of leadership. I would however include in Test teams only those who have been educated and learned their cricket here: for instance Lamb no, Ramprakash yes.

With best wishes,

Yours sincerely,

Jim Swanton

4. DAVID FOOT

Freelance Journalist

4th March 91

Dear Mr Henderson,

I have today received your letter, forwarded by WCM. You make a number of unquestionably valid points, not least the very first one (loss of pride). I’m not too sure that, based on recent events, the X1 can even be called a team of All Stars, though!

I have some minor reservations. On practical level, county cricket without even a hint of overseas talent (it was always so – think of Ranji) would today be painfully bereft of skills that go beyond the ordinary and mundane. I’d like to accept – but cannot- that our cricket would automatically improve, at least gradually, with a team of ‘locals’. Your remarks about cultural background are academically sound but are partly overtaken by necessary practicalities and a shifting society.

Over the past couple of decades I have become more concerned about the declining interest in cricket at school level (the State system rather than the public schools). This, I believe, is the root cause of our depressing problems.

Thank you for writing at such length. As an overworked freelance and full-time cricket writer in the summer months, I have scope and time only to contribute a monthly column for WCM on regional prospects. But I do feel your well argued letter deserves a genuine ‘airing’. Would you like me to send it to the editor?

David Foot

5. E M Wellings 1991

Dear Mr Henderson,

Thank you for you most interesting letter. I enjoyed it greatly and agreed 99% with what you said. I am also grateful, for the letter crystalised my thought and ideas on cricket.

Like you I have always thought Australia’s selection method much superior to ours. It avoids the sort of blunders caused by captain’s preferences in England, including the omission of Bowes and Paynter from the 1936-37 team for the Australian tour. Gubby Allen was very anti Yorkshire and Lancashire. And they thought less than nothing of him off th field. There have of course been several instances since the war, Bill Edrich left out of the 1950-51 team which Freddy Brown packed with immatures.

Also like you I deplored the decisions to abandon county qualifications. I looked at the matter from the supporter’s viewpoint. How could he feel the same about his county team when players were gathered from distant parts of the world and other counties without having to belong to the county? It did not occur to me that the ‘not belonging’ could in part account for the decline of our Test capability, but I am sure you are right.

In fact I propose to write along those lines. How many of those who have been letting us down in Australia think of themselves as English. Off hand I should say only Gooch of the seniors has been consistent in belonging to his county and country. Gower is a fly-by-night. Hemmings has also switched allegiance. Russell looks like remaining constant, and his reward is to be dropped.

We are thus back to the days when Jim Parks, a very fine batsman but a hack behind the stumps, made some very costly mistakes.

As a bowler myself I know the importance of the stumper to the bowlers. Of course in my time the wicketkeeper stood up to all but the very fastest bowler. He probably would not stand up to Malcolm, because the fellow seems to concentrate on pitching the ball just eyond his font foot to send the ball flying high overhead. But Russell showed the value of the stumper standing up to the other when he brought off his brilliant leg side stumping off Small.

That brings me to what you said about the reason behind the picking of so many black fast bowlers to the exclusion of whites.

It has been done to excess, as became very obvious when a fifth rate quickie from Middlesex was bought into the alleged England side. Of course selection is mainly done, as it has been for many years, by batsmen. Hence the dropping of Russell behind the stumps and as you point out, the neglect of Atherton’s potential as a leg spin bowler.

Failure to understand spin bowling is one of Gooch’s faults. Another, in my view, is his insistence on super fitness, track suit and gymnasium training. Which is probably why his players break down so often. Trueman, Statham and company never trained in that way, and they did not break down.

General overall fitness, such as comes from the playing of games, is what cricketers need. That is all the training I ever did. Yet at the age of 18 I bowled 36 overs out of 40 at the Pavilion end at Lord’s, and in the remaining time, upwards of 2 hours, that day I carried my bat through our innings. It was very slow scoring, for the soft pitch was becoming more testing. I wonder how many superfit performers today would have the necessary stamina, i should say that my bowling pace was medium.

Your comments on the ass Dexter and the cocky Stewart amused me greatly, I followed Dexter’s Australian tour. He was surely England’s worst ever captain. His was a see-saw tour, bewildering to players and onlookers alike. Yet he proved an excellent vice-captain to Mike Smith in South Africa. I still remember my first sight of Dexter in the School games at Lord’s- two beautifully struck fours followed by impetuous dismissal. Out for 8.

Would that the plan you have advanced for the revival of English cricket could be adopted. What you said about absorbing the native culture is so true. How many foreigners in the England side have done so? 1 knew two such cricketers of the past, Duleepsinhji and Pataudi, very well, in fact I played two full University seasons with the latter. They both absorbed our culture. Duleep was at Cheltenham College before going to Cambridge and while here was essentially English. So was Pataudi who so absorbed our culture, sense of fun and humour that in 1946 he was out of tune with the Indian team he captained here.

I fancy we shall go on muddling through, soon perhaps to be surpassed by Sri Lanka. I do not expect the TCCB to return to the use of clay soils, instead of slower producing loam, to give us again the fast true pitches which produce good cricket and good cricketers.

Surely the experience of Robin Smith this winter should make them think about our conditions. Smith’s defence always locked a trifle suspect, but on pitches lacking true pace he prospered. Faster conditions on most Australian grounds – not Adelaide – found him wanting . Give us fast pitches here again and he will have to work on his present jerky defence.

Normally at this time of the evening I would be watching TV news, but there isn’t any. Of all the great events war is the least productive, both sides producing false news, and at best half news with much contradiction in official statements. Anyone who was adult from 1939 to 1945 could have told the Media that. Yet it went overboard about the Gulf war.

The BBC were so besotted by their many correspondents and home commentators that on day one, when there was very little hard news, and that only in outline, BBC1 kept the Gulf going with speculation, guesswork and fiction for nearly 12 hours until the triviality of ‘Neighbours’ was deemed important enough to break into the War flow Again thank you very much for your letter, which I have already read twice and will surely read again.

Yours sincerely,

E.M.Wellings.

6. Peter Deeley Mar 21st 1991.

Dear Mr Henderson,

First may I apologise for this extremely belated reply to your letter of mid February concerning the loss of our national cricketing identity.

As I hope you will appreciate, I was in Australia at the tie and that tour was followed by the short (suicidal) visit to ^’ Zealand. After that I followed Australia n the Caribbean and after a short holiday have only just started sifting through my mail.

I agree wholeheartedly with much of what you say, though I would add a caveat in the instance of players born elsewhere who arrived in this country with their parents when they (the players) were but babes-in-arms. I would think that in this case they have a right to look upon England as their true (if not natural ) home.

You outline practical steps which you think could be taken. Counties are now down to one overseas player on their hooks – though perhaps this is not going far enough.

But you are right to raise the question of a new “invasion” – that of players from within the EEC. I suspect however that even if counties did take a self-denying ordinance towards such talent that in itself could be a reach of the Treaty of Rome (as amended) and that cricket could be accused of applying a closed shop by the EEC.

It is a complex issue. Like you, when I go to see a county gain I would like to think that not only were all the players British (English is too narrow a word in this context) BUT that they actually came from Kent or Worcestershire, etc. Yet Yorkshire, remaining true to this rule for so long, have paid the penalty in terms of results.

Yours Truly,

Peter Deeley

7. Richard Streeton 15 3 91

Dear Mr Henderson,

I am afraid I have only just received your long letter dated Feb 24. I have been in Pakistan and Sri Lanka with the England A team and only returned the UK this week.

You certainly made some extremely interesting points and there is a lot in what you said.

It was the sort of letter that must have taken you some time to compile and I am returning it is case you want to send the gist to somewhere else. I would have thought The Cricketer magazine or Wisden Monthly might use it in their columns.

I do not think there is any way that I can reproduce it in The Times as it is, as I have readers’ letters on our sports pages and if at any time you want to write to the paper, may I suggest you address your remarks to the Sports Editor? We correspondents do not like to pass things on to him for publication when it has been addressed personally to us and the writer might not wish it to appear in print.

It is certainly a bit cooler in the UK than it was in Sri Lanka. It’s exciting to think of a new season “round the corner.”

Again thank you so much for writing and I apologize again for not replying sooner.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Streeton (Cricket C) writer)

Cameron’s “British values” enshrine political correctness

David Cameron’s definition of Britishness contains within it the three central tenets of political correctness: racial equality, gay rights and sexual equality. That means anyone, indigenous or immigrant, who does not agree with political correctness is, in NuTory Boy’s eyes,not British.

This is decidedly sinister. It means that the official Government position now makes illegitimate those who, for example, wish to object to mass immigration on the grounds that it is a surreptitious form of conquest, anyone who refuses to accept that civil partnership is equal to marriage or those who reject the idea that sexual equality means there must be women in equal numbers to men in every form of employment.

Cameron is also being disingenuous. Just before the last general election the Equalities Act 2010 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/4) was passed with all-party support. The Act has jurisdiction over what are termed ”protected characteristics” . These are: age; disability; gender reassignment; marriage and civil partnership; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; sexual orientation

The key characteristics are “race” and “religion or belief”. The whole apparatus of UK public service (including schools) are required to “protect” all the categories. “Protecting” race and religion or belief means in practise that multiculturalism will be preserved. To take one example, it will be impossible to teach British history honestly because it would be deemed either insulting or excluding to ethnic minorities. Disability and marriage also offer opportunities for the reinforcement of multiculturalism.

The cultural fragmentation of the UK also has the devolution dimension. Where do ethnic minorities actually stand in a devolved UK? German-born Labour MP Gisela Stuart writing in online magazine openDemocracy.net in December 2005 described the problem, whilst also gaily insulting the English: “It has only been in the last five years or so that I have heard people in my constituency telling me ‘I am not British – I am English’. That worries me.

“British identity is based on and anchored in its political and legal institutions and this enables it to take in new entrants more easily than it would be if being a member of a nation were to be defined by blood.

“But a democratic polity will only work if citizens’ identification is with the community as a whole, or at least with the shared process, which overrides their loyalty to a segment.” (Quoted in Birmingham Mail 18 11 2005)

The problem for people such as Ms Stuart is that Britishness was destroyed by devolution. There is no longer a comfortable overarching label of British under which everyone can be placed. All that is left for the people of Britain to cling to are emotional ethnicities.

The situation is most acute in England because that is where the majority of ethnic minorities in the UK live. There is hard evidence that ethnic minorities in England routinely do not think of themselves as English. In 2005, the CRE commissioned from the research firm Ethnos a poll designed to discover how Britons identify themselves (http://www.cre.gov.uk/downloads/what_is_britishness.pdf). A couple of passages are particularly telling:

“In England, white English participants identified themselves as English first and British second, while ethnic minority participants perceived themselves as British. None identified as English, which they saw as meaning exclusively white people.”

“Britishness was associated with great historical and political achievements, but only amongst white participants (whether from England, Scotland or Wales), not those from ethnic minority backgrounds”.

This tells us two things: ethnic minorities in England routinely reject the idea of Englishness and ethnic minorities everywhere in the UK have no identification with Britain’s past. So much for Britishness.