Britain Did Not Lose an Empire...It Simply Moved In!

“When my country, into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir” Thomas Paine

Chinon, France. 17 August, 2011. As I write this I gaze upon the noble ruins of Chinon castle, once the hub of an enormous twelfth century English empire that spanned more than half of France. The regions around Chinon even spoke early English! This enormous monument to permanence is on first sight the very embodiment of power and might. Below Henry II’s great bastion the river Vienne flows serene, a ribbon of velvet across the sun-baked golden landscape of ‘eternal’ France. In the fields sunflowers bow their heads in proud penitence, whilst ripe, purple grapes drip from ancient vines like ruby jewels, awaiting their moment to serve Bacchus. And yet this empire of certainty lasted but one generation before it too crumbled and died like so many before and after. Chinon is in fact a monument to uncertainty.

In many ways Chinon is thus the perfect place to reflect on the events that singed London’s fringe last week. A million miles away, maybe, but even here change and uncertainty are never far from the gilded surface of la France profonde. Coping with and adapting to change and uncertainty has been the genius of a France often besieged on all sides. Coping with change and uncertainty is also the truth we are all facing as the false certainties of the twentieth century fade from this very twentieth-first century present.

What happened in England could befall all Western states if the state fails the people. The riots, what the French call les emeuts, were ended not so much by the state, but by ordinary people of all colours and creeds who sensing the failure of the state began to act. It was as though instinctively the duties of the citizen were recalled and acted upon.

My subject here is hyper-immigration because even if the Whitehall bubble/village does not want to hear it the English street is putting much of the blame for the riots on the frictions caused by uncontrolled hyper-immigration. Clearly, not all of England’s many ills can be blamed on the hyper-immigration of the last fifteen years that was so strangely imposed on the English people by what became known in England as Labour’s Scottish Government of Occupation. Indeed, it is said that Gordon Brown was the best Prime Minister Scotland ever had! This is probably a little unfair but given his obsession with the developing world Brown clearly forgot that development begins at home. In fact Brown was simply at the end of a long-line of left-liberal experimenters who whilst well-meaning to all intents and purposes destroyed the balance between rights and responsibilities upon which all democracies rely.

The first challenge therefore will be to grasp the true nature of the problem. Stopping immigration is not in and of itself the solution. In any case, preventing people seeking a better life is like trying to stop gravity. No, the real challenge will be to deal effectively with the uncertainty engendered by the change hyper-immigration has come to represent.

Rather hyper-immigration has become an easy metaphor for all that is wrong with a deeply divided society. England is a country divided by class, divided by race and dangerously divided between those who pay taxes and those who live off said taxes. Hyper-immigration is also part of Britain’s story. The last chapter if you will of a grand story of empire. Many of the states that were born of the British Empire are corrupt and in some cases close to collapse. They are assailed collectively by massive population growth that their under-developed institutions are simply unable or unwilling to cope with. As a consequence they export people to Britain.

Taken together with the massive influx of Eastern Europeans since 2006 the loss of social cohesion is plain for all to see, save those in the Whitehall village determined to look the other way. The challenge now must be to a) better prepare immigrants to succeed in British society; b) prevent further immigration en masse further adding to the legions of welfare dependents; and c) alleviate the marked fear across much of the indigenous population that is becoming daily more apparent. White flight is a reality in England today.

To do this will require of the elite a political courage they have lacked for a generation. It is a mark of the thought fascism that pervades much of the chattering class, who by and large do not have to live with the consequences of their social engineering, that only ethnic minorities may talk about race. The fact is that race is intrinsically linked to culture and identity.  Endlessly and disingenuously talking up diversity as though it is strength whilst at the same time failing to confront the negative consequence of difference has led to millions of people leading parallel rather than connected lives. The disconnect between policy and reality has thus become starkly dangerous. David Cameron, employing one of the endless metaphors politicians use to avoid using ‘race’ or ‘immigrant’, likes to talk about Britain’s ‘communities’. They are in fact more like ghettoes and becoming ever more so.

So what lessons do I now draw from the les emeuts. First, it is not too late to rebuild English society. However, government must realize that having seen their sense of fair play and tolerance exploited ruthlessly by both Left and Right over hyper-immigration the English are reaching the end of their tether. Second, whilst multiculturalism as a social entity is a fact the way multiculturalism has been enacted as policy has created the impression immigrant cultures are promoted at the expense of English culture and identity. The Left likes to say England has no culture as such to justify this. In fact, England has a rich tapestry of regional cultures that need protecting. Third, the left-liberal experiment by which all malfeance is either forgiven or explained away is so denuding the individual of responsibility that society is rapidly subsiding into an abyss Fourth, it is time to stand up to all those on the Left who accuse of racism anyone with a point of view on hyper-immigration not of their own ilk. This has cowed the majority into an angry silence over what is one of the most profound changes to English society ever seen.

What’s next? The way out of this mess – for that is what it is – will require enlightened conservatism (with a small ‘c’). There must be a new concept of citizenship promoted actively and ruthlessly across the school system and beyond, driven by a bipartisan political consensus with roots deep into civil society. The duties of citizenship will be listed and communicated – loyalty to the state; respect for the law; respect for others and their property. Above all, political leaders must not only stop talking in metaphors about hyper-immigration and its consequences, but recognize that it is precisely that issue that concerns society above all others. That debate must be legitimized once and for all.

Finally we must not only face up to the fact of hyper-immigration but begin to build a new country around it. For then we will be better placed to cope with the many uncertainties that lie before us all and only then can we finally take race out of the social equation.

Former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson once said that Britain had lost an empire, but had yet to find a role. He was wrong. Britain did not lose an empire…it simply moved in.

Julian Lindley-French

"About Time, Mr President" . The Atlantic Charter Then and Now

Blois, France. 14 August, 2011.  Seventy years ago today President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill met for the first time off the Canadian coast.  “About time, Mr President”, said as the two men met.  What emerged from that fateful meeting was the “Joint Declaration by the President and the Prime Minister”, which was soon to be termed “The Atlantic Charter”

The Charter was agreed at one of the darkest moments of a dark world in a dark and dangerous war.  This single document not only created the transatlantic relationship but it quite simply galvanised the democratic saved.  It words might sound quaint to a modern audience but its spirit should not.  If today’s transatlantic leaders can share even a part of grand vision the two statesmen laid out then the transatlantic relationship has every chance of being as influential in our world as theirs.  Therefore, at this dangerous moment, with a world in turmoil, with western societies torn from within, with a West losing its self-belief and its political ambition and with a transatlantic relationship weaker than at any time since 1941 it is worth pausing to recall the words of that simple but world-changing piece of political paper.

“The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, being met together, deem it right to make known certain common principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future for the world.

First, their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other;

Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned;

Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them;

Fourth, they will endeavour, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment by all States, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity;

Fifth, they desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the object of securing, for all, improved labour standards, economic advancement and social security;

Sixth, after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want;

Seventh, such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance;

Eighth, they believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea or air armaments continue to be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential. They will likewise aid and encourage all other practicable measures which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments”.

If Churchill were with us today he would doubtless be urging both American and European leaders to re-visit the grand vision of 1941.  He would be impatient with the small-mindedness of today’s small leaders and would have chastised the doom-mongers and nay-sayers who say it is too late to save the world the West built. 

It is not too late for America and Europe to lead this uncertain dangerous world to a safer place but it soon will be.  It is not too late for America to regain the self-belief that made the American century possible.  It is not too late for Europeans to regain the spirit that created a free and just Europe our grandfathers would scarcely have believed and to organise effectively to influence their world.  However, it will take leaders of vision.

Seventy years on from the Atlantic Charter it is, as Churchill would have put it, about time!

Julian Lindley-French

London's Burning

9 August. “London's burning! London's burning! All across the town, all across the night”. So goes the song by The Clash from the last time London burned in the early 1980s. Last night I watched aghast as streets I know were torched by a mindless, criminal mob. People were robbed in their beds before being burned out of their homes. Businesses were torched and looted, livelihoods smashed forever. As ever, the BBC was full of the speculators – apologists for the thugs vying with the hang’ em high and long brigade; although being the BBC the emphasis was very much on the former.

The simple sad truth is that for over a decade I have been watching my once great country descend into this multicultural hell-hole led by a political class so complacent, so lost in its political correctness that no issue can now be addressed properly or objectively. Every act, every deed, every tension has to be presented through the stupefying lens of pretence. Policy is thus pretend policy in a pretend Britain; a fairy-tale Britain with a foreign capital at its heart. Indeed, London stopped being an English city some years ago and is now a dangerous cocktail of competing races, creeds and ethnicities on the front line of a new class war that one had hoped banished to the past.

There will be much wringing of hands by the politically guilty who either through design or neglect created the conditions for this mayhem. They will pretend that the causes are hard to discern. Working groups will be established and no doubt a royal commission set-up to kick cause and effect into the long grass in the hope it can become someone else’s problem. Spin has replaced leadership in Britain.

This is not a Left or Right thing – both are guilty. In the past two days I have been in contact with two friends, one black the other white, who operate at the extreme ends of the policy cycle. One is on the Left and advises the highest of the high on these matters and recently spoke out against the progressive elite and their disconnectedness from contemporary British social reality. The other works on the front-line of inner city youth despair and has for years been warning of precisely this mayhem and been studiously ignored. Nor is this simply a ‘black’ v ‘white’ thing. The term ‘black’ has now become utterly misleading as it has come to mean any non-white, non-indigenous group thus masking much more complex social challenges and issues.

The causes are not hard to discern:

1. Hyper-immigration and multiculturalism: The hyper-immigration of the past decade was cynically promoted by the Left to create a new working class. This led to the import of some 1.9 million over the past decade from some of the most socially and religiously conservative places on the planet. The ghettos that resulted either pushed out traditional communities or created tensions with long-standing immigrant communities. Consequently, multiculturalism, i.e. lazy government, has led to the creation of fortress communities, with no sense of national or social obligation. Last night several were at war with each other.

2. Unemployment and loss of control over borders: Britain has lost control of its borders far more than any other member of the European Onion, which is quite an achievement for an island. The Right has exploited this by flooding the labour market with cheap labour from Eastern Europe. Job opportunities for Britain’s young have dried up. Last year 400,000 new jobs were created in Britain with 87% going to foreigners.

3. Loss of control over legal sovereignty: The transfer of legal sovereignty to European institutions, particularly human rights legislation has emaciated English law. This has led in turn to police and judicial forces wholly uncertain as to how to deal with minorities in particular.

4. The failure of education: For years now education has been an ideological battleground. Educators have retreated into a fantasy land of pointless qualifications that fail utterly to prepare much of Britain’s youth for today’s world. There are now whole swathes of modern British society unable to communicate effectively in English.

5. White fear and the submerging of racism: White flight from many British cities has left many city centres full of poor whites and often even poorer minorities, erroneously blaming each other for their wretched condition. After the riots of the 1980s the rampant racism of the time was rightly targeted. For a time it worked but with the hyper-immigration of the last decade or so white fear has re-fuelled racism. However, today it is now an underground movement whispered in corridors for fear of being overheard by the thought police of political correctness. Paradoxically, such racism has been compounded by the appalling political correctness of the mainstream media that at times has made the 80% majority feel like a threatened minority.

6. The fact of discrimination: Minorities are still discriminated against. Fact.

7. The loss of respect for authority: With the break-down of social cohesion over the past twenty years neither institutions nor authorities are any longer respected. The England of the past survived on the basis that rights were balanced by responsibilities. Today, it is only rights that are discussed, never responsibilities. The trust that once bound the fabric of society has gone.

8. Criminality: With the failure of education, the break-down of the family and loss of opportunity and social cohesion a new gang culture has emerged in many inner-cities, often driven by the drugs trade much of which is targeted on Britain. That criminality is plain for all to see, not just in London, but in other British cities.

The solutions will be slow and difficult:

1. No nostalgia: Some commentators implicitly hark back to some mythical golden age in British society. There was no such age. I grew up in the 1970s and it was pretty rough. We British have the society we have and we must start from where we are.

2. Scrap multiculturalism as policy: The officially sanctioned ghettos of multiculturalism must over time be replaced by much greater efforts at integration. Indeed, government must painstakingly begin to rebuild a British identity through integration. Yes, it will be a ‘British and…’ identity. British and West Indian, British and Pakistani etc. etc. And, no, it will not be the British identity of old. The key will be citizenship.

3. Regain control of the borders: There can be no more hyper-immigration until society has coped with the last surge. If that means scrapping or adjusting human rights legislation that immigration lawyers exploit then so be it.

4. Regain control of the economy: ‘British jobs for British workers’, was a slogan invented by Gordon Brown that was much ridiculed. Why then do Britain’s continental neighbours seem able to strike a much better balance between opportunities for home-grown and imported labour. In Britain today there is now an entire generation condemned to welfare dependency by the structure of the economy and its reliance on imported foreign labour. It is precisely in such groups that resentment breeds.

Above all, leaders must now finally lead by confronting Britain's tortured reality.  That in turn demands they remember their first duty; to act in the interests of all the British people. Right now the task must be to stabilise the situation.  It is self-evident that the planned 20% cut in the police force cannot proceed. It is self-evident that far more needs to be done to engage Britain’s lost young. Indeed, the Government needs to take a much more sophisticated view of cuts as it will be utterly pointless to reduce Britain’s mountain of debt at the expense of social chaos. Sadly, one cause of that debt was a Labour Government fully aware of the social mess it had caused and which sought simply to buy off the consequences.  It is a Labour Party still in denial. 

The Britain I knew is dead. It has gone forever, is no more and will never return. It is hard for an Englishman of my age to accept that my country was given away without my permission. And yet I am prepared to accept just that it if it means that a new Britain emerges that honours its heritage of tolerance, fairness and justice for all in a new age.

My challenge to the political elite is simple; which of you will have the guts to withstand the progressive elite and the vested interests to break the political correctness that for too long has denied reality and which has turned Britain from one of the great nations into a Potemkin’s Village. It is village that is now in flames.

David Cameron? We will soon find out!

Julian Lindley-French