Tag Archive for Britishness

The British want to teach Britishness in English schools again

June 12, 2014 Britishness, Education, Propaganda 19 comments

War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is StrengthThe British Minister for English Education, Michael Gove, has called for British values to actively promoted in English schools.

Gove says that promoting British values in English schools will stop the illegal indoctrination of children in schools run by Islamists and David Cameron thinks it’s a jolly good idea.

The British values that the British Minister for English Education says English children must be indoctrinated with are:

  • How citizens can influence decision-making through the democratic process
  • An appreciation that living under the rule of law protects individual citizens
  • An understanding that bodies such as the police and the army can be held to account by the people, through the democratic organs of government
  • An understanding that the freedom to hold other faiths and beliefs is protected in law, and an acceptance that other people having different faiths or beliefs to oneself (or having none) should not be the cause of prejudicial or discriminatory behaviour
  • An understanding of the problems of identifying and combating discrimination

Now, let’s just examine these British values a little more closely from the perspective of an Englishman.

How citizens can influence decision-making through the democratic process

It wasn’t all that long ago that we had a British Prime Minister who was elected in Scotland with a cabinet stuffed full of MPs elected in Scotland spending roughly three quarters of their time making laws for England. Nobody in England could influence their decisions making because the British govern England directly from London. It’s also not all that long ago that we had Tony Blair’s former flatmate, the unelected Lord Chancellor England, Lord Charlie Falconer (a Scot, naturally) telling us that we would never be allowed to have an English Parliament. I also recall the murmurs of discontent when the big supermarkets in England went to Alistair Darling (who of course is only accountable to voters in Edinburgh) to ask for Sunday Trading laws to be abolished in England like they are in Scotland but he said no. I don’t think many people who take an interest in politics or the English question will ever forget that we only have university tuition fees and foundation hospitals in England because MPs elected in Scotland overturned the slim majority of MPs elected in England who voted against them. Nobody in England has any influence over those MPs elected in other countries or the unelected lords and bureaucrats that make laws for England. And don’t even get me started on the EU which makes 75% of our laws. Seriously, don’t.

An appreciation that living under the rule of law protects individual citizens

This is an interesting one this. “If you don’t do anything wrong, you have nothing to fear” is the rallying call of fascists and big state activists alike. The fact is, it’s virtually impossible not to break the law nowadays because there are just so many of the damn things and of course problematic people need only commit a minor offence to get them into the system and ruin their lives. The book “Taking Liberties” is getting a bit old now having been written (and turned into a film) during the despotic reign of Prince Tony but most of the oppressive laws and the abuses of our hard won rights and freedoms mentioned in the book are still in force and taking place now but they’ve become so commonplace now, nobody bats an eyelid. Remember the woman who was arrested under anti-terrorism laws for reading out the names of dead soldiers outside Downing Street? How about the man charged with terrorism offences for knowing somebody who was friends with someone suspected of terrorist offences, found innocent by a jury and then put under indefinite house arrest by the Home Secretary because the jury got the “wrong” answer? This is the law that supposedly protects us by essentially stripping us of the automatic right to liberty that we’ve had for centuries.

An understanding that bodies such as the police and the army can be held to account by the people, through the democratic organs of government

Another interesting one. How do we hold the police and army to account? The police force is now heavily politicised with the introduction of elected Police & Crime Commissioners which has put nominal control of most police forces in England into the hands of political parties. Since the Police & Crime Commissioners have been in charge have we seen an increase in accountability? No. Have we been asked what we think the police are doing wrong and what we want them to do better? No. Are people unhappy with them? Yes. There is a campaign to oust the Kent Police & Crime Commissioner, Ann Barnes, to resign after bringing the police force into disrepute in an appearance on a TV documentary, the first youth crime commissioner she appointed resigned for making racist and homophobic comments on Twitter and the second youth crime commissioner she appointed was suspended just 3 months into the job for having an affair with a married police officer. She is refusing the stand down. As for what’s left of the army – how do we exercise any control over them? And more importantly, why should we be able to?

An understanding that the freedom to hold other faiths and beliefs is protected in law, and an acceptance that other people having different faiths or beliefs to oneself (or having none) should not be the cause of prejudicial or discriminatory behaviour

This is a good one because I bet the person who went to court arguing that it was religious discrimination for British Airways to allow Sikhs to wear a bangle but forcing her to remove her cross and lost doesn’t think that her religious beliefs are protected. When Muslim street patrols are out in force in Tower Hamlets abusing and threatening women who aren’t covered from head to toe and men who are drinking while the police turn a blind eye, how is that helping to prevent prejudice and discrimination? When the British government pressed ahead with legalising gay marriage in the full and certain knowledge that the EU courts would rule that it was discrimination for the established church to refuse to marry a gay couple despite it being contrary to their beliefs and teachings, how is that helping to protect the freedom of Christians to practice their religion?

An understanding of the problems of identifying and combating discrimination

This is great. Finally, our children are going to be told about the institutional discrimination against England that prevails throughout the British establishment. They’re going to be told about the British government refusing to allow the English a say on how their country is governed whilst allowing the Scots and Welsh devolved government. They’re going to be told how the British are breaking up England – starting with London and its regional assembly, then Cornwall and now a revival of the regional local government reorganisation that they planned with regional assemblies but are now targeting at cities. They’re going to be told that it’s morally wrong and unconstitutional for MPs elected in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to vote on laws that only affect England which are devolved in their own countries. They’re going to be shown the list of attendees of the British-Irish Council so they can see how England has less democratic representation on supranational bodies than the Channel Island, the Isle of Man and Cornwall. They’re going to be told about the laws that only affect England that MPs elected in England voted against but which became law anyway because MPs elected in Scotland voted for them. They’re going to be told about the Barnett Formula and the eye-watering sums of money that are given to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to pay for superior public services. They’re going to be told about the life saving cancer treatments and cures for blindness that are freely available in Scotland thanks to the extra funding the Scottish NHS gets from the English taxpayer that we can’t have in England because there’s no money left to pay for them.

Except they won’t be told any of the above because of the British values they didn’t include in the list:

  • The English are an inferior people
  • There is no cost too great to keep the Scots and Welsh happy as long as the English are paying
  • Englishness must be suppressed at all costs
  • An English life is worth less than a Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish life
  • War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength, England is Britain

Census reveals rise of Englishness and death of Britishness

December 13, 2012 Britishness, England 11 comments

The 2011 census results have been released and they make for interesting reading.  I didn’t take a constructive part in last year’s census (not so much on ideological grounds but because I don’t trust the British government with the information) but it’s interesting reading nonetheless.

England

For the first time, the census allowed us to say if we identified ourselves as English and an overwhelming majority of people did – 37.6m people (67.1% of the respondents) identified themselves as English with 32.4m (57.7%) identifying themselves as solely English.

I have said many times that Britishness is not just in decline but fatally wounded and the census figures bear that out.  Only 16.3m people (29.1%) identified themselves as British and just 10.7m people (19.1%) identified themselves as solely British.  Even as a dual identity Britishness is dead in the water.

The ethnicity figures are a little worrying – only 59.8% of people in London identify themselves as having British ethnicity.  Ignoring the fact that there is no such thing as a British ethnicity, this isn’t a healthy statistic.  London is the political and media capital of the UK, the place where policy is formed and in no way does London give a realistic view of the UK which is one of the reasons why so much British government policy makes no sense.

In 2001, 9% of the population identified themselves as immigrants (ie. born outside of the UK).  Last year it was 13%.  Since 2001, something like 3.8m immigrants moved to England and Wales.  When we are so short of jobs and housing already, this level of immigration is simply unsustainable – it’s over 5% of the population.

The census data is supposed to drive British government policy and provision of services – that’s the reason given for compelling every adult in the country by law to complete the census – so it will be interesting to see how the 2011 census results drive policy.  The promotion of Britishness clearly has to stop, it’s a minority identity which costs tens (if not hundreds) of millions to promote and British government policy is geared around its exclusive promotion.  Most people in England identify themselves as English but this identity is subject to official policies of marginalisation and suppression.

An awful time for an English monarchist

June 3, 2012 Britishness 7 comments

The last few weeks has been pretty awful for me as an English monarchist.  I’d love to get involved in celebrating the Queen’s diamond jubilee but the politicians have made it all about Britain and Britishness and big business has happily gone along with it seeing pound signs in front of their eyes.  As a result, instead of seeing pictures of the Queen everywhere, we’ve got British flags.  I just can’t stand seeing the British flag everywhere, it irritates me immensely and it’s effectively precluded me from joining in the festivities.

Queen of EnglandWhilst the Queen is, of course, the Queen of the UK she is also the Queen of 16 other countries worldwide without counting the member states of the UK.  This weekend’s celebrations are supposed to be for the Queen’s 60 years on the throne, not a celebration of the British state or even her reign as the Queen of the UK.  Her diamond jubilee has been celebrated in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and other countries she’s Queen of although of course none of them put in quite so much effort as England.

The BBC have naturally been banging the drum for Britishness.  At one point during their coverage of the jubilee I did wonder if presenters had been set a target for the number of things they should declare to be “British” or if perhaps they’d adopted a new version of the game Bullshit Bingo using only the word “British”.  The weather was “British”, the people were “British”, queuing up all night was “British”, the pageantry was “British”, the whole event was apparently quintessentially “British” according to the BBC who were at their most Britishly British on this most Britishly British of Britishly British occasions.

Over the last few years the British flag has declined into virtual obscurity, only really making an appearance on government buildings and hotels whilst the English flag – the Cross of St George – is commonly found hanging from bedroom windows, fluttering on cars and flying from flag poles everywhere else.  This pleases me immensely because it means that English people are finally recognising the difference between England and Britain, between the British imperial government and the English colony.  Up until now that is because it seems that all it takes is for the shops to start selling red, white and blue tat and for politicians and the media to tell us how great it is to be British and English people start flying the butchers apron instead.

Maybe I’m being a little unfair on my fellow countrymen and women and they’ve simply been taken in by the British Flag = Queen rubbish.  Maybe they’ll take down the British flag and get the English flag up in its place in time for the football and I won’t have to see quite so many of them again.  I already know England is the last colony of the British Empire, I don’t need (or want) constant reminders from people who don’t seem to know any better.

Of course, most of this overt Britishness is far from spontaneous.  I know British flags have been handed out at lots of places to ensure it outnumbers any of our national flags (this is par for the course at the Proms, for instance).  Children (my own included) have been made to make their own little flags to wave for the Olympics and the jubilee and the Sun newspaper have been giving away free union flags for this weekend.  The fact that so many companies have had to start mass producing British tat, school kids have had to make their own British flags and a newspaper has had to give them away free speaks volumes.  You can buy a Cross of St George easily any time of the year and nobody needs to give them away for you to see them everywhere. Perhaps there’s hope yet for this nation of sheep?

Jubilee Flag Guide for confused English people

June 1, 2012 Britishness No comments

Intending to fly a flag for the Diamond Jubilee?  The first two of these flags represent the Queen, the third one is the British imperial flag in England.

Queen Elizabeth II's Personal Flag

Queen Elizabeth II's Personal Flag

Royal Standard

Queen Elizabeth II's Royal Standard

British Flag

Flag of the British State

Special offer for this week only: a free face-palm for every English person flying the flag of the British imperial government to mark the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen of England.

The British have lost Wales

August 29, 2011 Britishness, England, Wales 4 comments

There is a misguided belief in “Britain” amongst the political classes, a belief that below the surface there is a common British identity that unites us all and will stave off the forces of celtic nationalism.  Their obsession with celtic nationalism and indifference to English nationalism will come back to bite them in the arse but that’s a different topic.

I’ve just got back from a fortnight’s holiday – the first week was spent in Somerset and the second week in Ceredigion (or Cardiganshire as it used to be called).  There was an abundance of English flags in Somerset (Burnham-on-Sea to be exact) but not to the exclusion of the British flag, just a lot more St George’s Crosses than the butchers apron.  Wales was different though (at least the part of Wales we stayed in) – the only British flag I saw was, ironically, outside the Welsh Assembly building in Aberystwyth where it occupied one of the “other” flag poles to the side of the Welsh flag, the other “other” pole sporting the ring of stars logo of the EU.

Flags aren’t the only symbol of nationhood and cultural independence of course and this is where the Welsh have the English at an advantage: the Welsh language.  People in the street, in cafés and shops spoke Welsh to each other.  Not just old people who grew up in a time when Welsh communities were often isolated and the Welsh language survived simply because they weren’t exposed to English, it was people my age and most importantly, young people.  Welsh kids sitting in cafés with their family quite easily swapped and changed between English and Welsh depending on who they were talking to without hesitation and they are the ones who will decide what the de facto first language of Wales is in a decade or so.

Road signs are an indication of the change in the status of the Welsh language.  Dual-language signs were permitted in 1965, a national roll-out started in 1972 and until relatively recently they have generally been in the form of English road signs with Welsh translations.  The opposite is now true in most of Wales – the road signs are in Welsh with English translations.  English speakers are accommodated alongside Welsh rather than the other way round such as you might find in arab countries where the latinised version place names are included underneath the arabic.

English being the lingua franca of international trade and diplomacy has many advantages on the world stage but at home it takes away one of the most obvious things that unites a people and sets them apart from their neighbours.  If England had a unique language of its own in everyday use – pockets of Old English speakers, perhaps, that could be used as a starting point – then the English identity would be a lot stronger than it is now and we wouldn’t be facing problems such as the threat from Britification and the public’s willingness to accept institutional discrimination as the price of the union.

Wales, like Scotland, has been lost by the British.  The symbols of British cultural imperialism that you see in England just don’t exist in the celtic nations.  The companies and political parties investing in Britishness are limiting themselves to an increasingly narrow section of English society who still believe in Britain.  Support for English devolution is consistently falling just shy of the 70% mark whilst support for English independence has jumped to 36% in a Comres poll published in July this year.  A TNS-BMRB opinion poll published in June this year showed that support for Scottish independence has risen to 37% (51% in people under 24) and in Wales the most recent opinion poll I can find is 2007 which shows support for independence at just 12%.  Support for devolution in Scotland was 70% in a 2009 Populus poll, the Welsh referendum on extending devolution this year was 64.5% and the last poll I’ve seen in England was 67%.  Support for devolution in England is higher than in Wales and almost as high as Scotland.  But the independence figure is the one that is most interesting – almost as many English people support English independence as Scots do for Scotland (and significantly more than support Welsh independence) but the rate at which support for independence is increasing in England far outstrips any increase in support that Scotland has ever seen.

Companies have already realised that Britain is a toxic brand in Scotland and Wales which is why you will rarely find anything overtly British in shops and supermarkets outside of England.  The same goes for political parties – there is not a single -England arm of any UK political party but they all have -Scotland and -Wales arms.  Charities and non-profit organisations are the same – there is an Age Scotland, Age Cymru and Age UK; there is a British Medical Association (BMA) Scotland, BMA Wales and plain old “the BMA” for England.  What they have failed to notice is the increasing irrelevance and even opposition to “Brand Britain” in England and that will cost them dearly in the very near future.

The union could still have a place in our future, albeit in a significantly different form to the current union but it will only survive the next few years if it is reconfigured on the basis of fairness, equality and respect for all the people of these four nations.  There is a small (and I mean small – a couple of years at the most) window of opportunity for the British to save their union but they will need to put their imperial past behind them and start thinking the unthinkable: most of “Britain” isn’t British any more.

Union? What union?

April 29, 2011 Britishness, Bullshit, England 2 comments

Ok, the wedding is over and done with and we’ve got our new princess.

Watching the wedding made me feel quite happy really – I love the royals and I’m sure William and Kate will turn more than a few borderline republicans into monarchists.  The run-up to the wedding has been absolutely horrendous though – days of inane chatter, clueless hypothesising and utter bollocks from people trying to imply they have some inside knowledge of the wedding because they know the Middleton’s gardener’s milkman’s postman’s next door neighbour.

The big downside of the royal wedding, though, is the proliferation of the union flag and people declaring their pride in being “British”.

The resurgence of the English flag over the last few years has been great.  Passing rows of houses with English flags in their gardens and hanging out of their windows is a gratifying sight but the last few days has seen English flags taken down and replaced with the flag of our imperial masters.  Even St George’s Day has been largely ignored by shops who decked out their stores with red, white and blue bunting weeks ago.  There is a very real danger that people will fly the BNP flag now that they have bought them instead of the Cross of St George, putting back the cause of progressive English nationalism by years.

And as for this ridiculous pride in being “British” – how does that work?  How can English people – the citizens of the last colony of the British empire – feel any pride in a non-country that has failed to build an inclusive national identity in over 300 years of existence?

The so-called “United” Kingdom is anything but.  The union between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has been superficial from day one and we are no more united now than we were in 1707.  This union of four nations has five governments, five flags, four languages, four constitutions, three legal systems, two judiciaries and two royal families – Prince William will be King William V of England and William III of Scotland.   “British” is a three century old failed experiment in social engineering that is as irrelevant now as it was before the Act of Union.

I used to describe myself as English first and British second.  Now I’m just English.  And isn’t it time we had a Prince of England?  A much better title for Prince William that Duke of Cambridge!