What it was that made Britain the country we once knew and loved?
In response to a Tweet, Craig (who I do not know) asked me to help him understand “what it was that made Britain the country we once knew and loved?”
In normal circumstances, I would have ignored Craig, not least because I think anyone who fails to use their full name on Twitter forfeits the right to debate in the public square. However, I found it an intriguing question, not least because Craig chose to describe the Reform UK Party as ‘a grist’. A typical insult word reintroduced into common parlance by the wokerati in their effort to discredit those of us who refuse to bow to their pernicious groupthink.
Unfortunately for Craig, to describe the UK’s fastest-growing political party as engaging in petty or small-scale swindling shows either a staggering ignorance of the English language or of Reform UK and possibly both. The fact is that Reform UK now regularly polls over 14% in most opinion polls on voting intentions at the next General Election.
With over 600 men and women voluntarily spending their own time and money campaigning to be elected as Members of Parliament at the next General Election, Reform UK can hardly be described as petty or small-scale. Further, the publication of Reform UK’s draft Contract with You, which contains the policies on which it will fight the General Election, means these are well elucidated. There is no swindle involved.
Culture, Heritage, History & Way of Life
But back to Craig’s question. Cream teas, the sound of leather on willow at village cricket matches, warm beer, the banter over football scores and the good-humoured jokes about the Scots, Irish and Welsh all remain quintessentially English. Images of rural village life sold to us repeatedly in TV detective series such as Mid-Summer Murders and Morse.
But against this veneer, Reformers are seeing their culture, their heritage, their history, their comedy, and their way of life threatened. They decry the loss of tolerance, of respect for others, the rule of the law and, above all, the loss of our democracy, all of which are far too apparent.
These features of British life, which Reformers once took for granted, are all slowly but surely being denied for reasons which, like soap in the bath, are difficult to grasp. Even when they are grasped, they become almost impossible to hold as the onslaught from our new elites, ‘the expert class’, becomes overpowering. Too often, we wonder what the hell is going on, as the edicts from the experts appear to run contrary to basic common sense.
The loudest shouts today, fed up with the failures of our Conservative government, are undoubtedly for the policies of the new ‘Liberal Progressives’. Like much of what is said, we think we understand the individual words for who would not want to be seen as progressive – up to date, trendy, liking change, progress and new ideas. However, when these words are combined into a political philosophy, we find we are being tricked by the most dangerous of wolves disguised as sheep.
Progressive Liberalism
We know liberalism well. Its political and moral philosophy are well understood for they comprise the foundations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and before that in the Constitution of the United States (1788). Liberalism supports political and legal equality, the rights of the individual to freedom of expression and speech, the rights to own private property, democracy and government with the consent of the governed. Everything Reformers take as their birth right
It is the political philosophy of progressivism that provides the trap as it seeks to improve human societies through political reform or government mandates. In other words, old-fashioned totalitarian socialism of the kind espoused by the like of Jeremy Corbyn, Alastair Campbell and much of the Labour Party.
As a result of the politics of the ‘liberal progressives’, we have the bizarre situation of the SNP in Scotland passing the most puritanical Hate Crime laws, which directly attacks our freedom of speech. At the same time, Police Scotland lists Luke and Jack’s, an LGTB sex shop in Glasgow, as a centre in which to report hate crimes under this act.
It is as though, as a man, I can dress up as a woman and demand access to women only dressing rooms and yet, should I misgender someone I am, for some inexplicable reason, guilty of a hate incidence that requires a police record.
If this were not bizarre enough, we have Police Scotland running an official hate crime training event using an offensive parody of JK Rowling, well-known for her campaign for women-only safe spaces. During the course, a fictional trans-hating character called “Jo”, who has a large social media following, becomes ever more radicalised until she eventually posts on social media that trans people should be sent to the gas chamber.
Non-Crime Hate Incidents
There is so much wrong with all this that it makes me feel as though I am in the land of make-believe.
For a start, the actions of Police Scotland in setting up a register to record non-crime hate incidents have already been considered by the courts in the case of Harry Miller v Humberside Police and the College of Policing and held it to be illegal.
Mr Miller had been reported to Humberside Police and had a non-crime hate incident recorded against him for using Twitter to comment during the gender self-identification debate. In one tweet, he innocently asked: if a trans woman raped a woman, under which sex does the police categorise the attacker [for record-keeping purposes]?
In a damning judgement, the High Court held that Mr Miller’s rights under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights had been contravened by Humberside Police. The judge stated: “The effect of the police turning up at Mr Miller’s place of work because of his political opinions must not be underestimated”. He continued: “To do so would be to undervalue a cardinal democratic freedom. In this country, we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi. We have never lived in an Orwellian society.”
Clearly, Mr Justice Knowles felt strongly about the issue because he opened his judgment by referring to George Orwell’s unpublished introduction to Animal Farm (1945) when he wrote: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
The seeds of the UK police forces taking on the Orwellian role of the ‘Thought Police’ originate in the Macpherson Report, which followed the killing of Stephen Lawrence. As a result of this report, the College of Policing concluded that there was a five-stage path from insulting speech/tweets, through hate, to violence and beatings, then murder, eventually creating the socio-economic conditions which could result in genocide. – remember how, in the case study, Jo advocated using the gas chamber.
Free Speech
The College of Policing argument was that without necessary intervention at an early stage, the trajectory was from trans-tweeting to the creation of a trans-Auschwitz. They claimed that intervention at an early stage required an intelligence-based policing approach, which builds a vital database of intelligence to inform police operational priorities. They argued that it was vitally important to keep an eye on those likely to ‘escalate’ into criminality.
What makes this most egregious is that the reporting and recording of hate incidents has been introduced into our society with no evidential basis whatsoever. Nine years after the College of Policing first issued its guidance, it has not made any study to support or verify its claims. And this is an academic institution with a £50m a year budget employing 650 people set up to bring academic excellence to policing.
In essence, we have a bunch of faux experts setting policy on hate crimes, which continues to be blindly followed by UK police forces, albeit they have been roundly criticised by the courts.
So Craig, what was about the Britain I once knew and loved? It was a Britain where common sense prevailed over the, so called, expert. Where lawfare was not a part of civic life. Where, outside of the gossip columns of the red-top newspapers, no one cared about what went on in the bedrooms of consenting adults. A Britain where one’s sexuality was a private matter not to be celebrated over 30 days and certainly not to be taken into the primary school classroom.
Causing Offence v Taking Offence
It was a Britain where there was no deemed right to take offence. A Britain where the rule of giving and receiving offence was simple and well established. A rule that says offence can only be taken by the receiver if the giver intended to give offence. The reason for the rule is simple. The giver can have no idea what was in the receiver’s mind when he made his remarks. However, all can see what was in the giver’s mind from his speech and actions.
It was a Britain of tolerance. where Islamists are not deliberately provoking its peaceful secular / Christian culture by holding their prayer meetings on the consecrated ground of Christian churches or beam their hate messages on tower of Big Ben.
A country where a teacher at Batley Grammar School would not be forced to leave his home and go into hiding with his partner and four children, where he remains because of the teachings of Islam.
A country where a 14-year-old boy at Kettlethorpe High School in Wakefield would not be forced to genuflect and plead for forgiveness in front of the local Muslim community for bringing a copy of the Koran into school which got slightly damaged but not at the boy’s hand.
A country where the head of one of its best schools serving children in a deprived area of London would not be taken to the High Court in an attempt to make it provide an Islamic prayer room in the school.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
We used to be a country where, in our municipal cemeteries, each person lay side-by-side with a stranger, each under their God or no God at all. The tramp by the side of the knight, the murderer alongside the hero, the suicide victim alongside the social worker, for in death, we are all the same. But no longer. We now have cemeteries which reserve areas for Muslims only. How long will it be before Black Lives Matter demands separate areas for Black people too?
We used to be a people where the creed of Martin Luther King Jn ran through us like the name in Blackpool seaside rock – that we would judge people not on the colour of their skin, but on the content of their character. But now the dogma is for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion which does exactly the opposite as it divides, excludes, and creates inequality.
Above all, it was a country where our police once policed us without fear or favour, malice or ill will, to protect life and property and to uphold the law. Instead, far too many examples of two-tier policing now abound, but perhaps two are the most striking.
Charlie Gilmour, the son of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, was sentenced to 16 months in prison for swinging from a Union flag attached to the Cenotaph before throwing a bin at a car and kicking a window, albeit no criminal damage was done. Yet the same Cenotaph can be occupied by Palestine supporters of Hamas, an acknowledged terrorist organisation, as police watch on and with complete impunity.
True Equality
Meanwhile, we have a van driver with pictures of those kidnapped by Hamas on 7th October 2023 being told by the police that if he continues driving around Westminster Square, he will be arrested for causing a breach of the peace at the same time as tens of thousands of Hamas supporters take to the streets every weekend calling for Jihad and the genocide of the Jews living in Israel.
So yes, Craig, I want us to prioritise our compassion for our families, our neighbours, and our community ahead of those largely male economic migrants who, living in France (a safe country), decide to take a small boat to get here. I want to target our compassion for those directly in urgent need. Not those with their mobile phone and expensive trainers who pay tens of thousand pounds to human traffickers.
I want a competent government which doesn’t waste millions on HS2 or net zero schemes. I want a country that protects young girls from Pakistani rape gangs. I want a country which does not wrongfully prosecute hundreds of postmasters and mistresses, and a country which ensure that a tragedy such a Grenfell Tower never takes place.
Above all, I want a government made up of people with common sense who listen and take advice from all the experts and then decides for the benefit of all. A parliament which put their constituents and their country before party. In short Craig, I want a country with a Reform UK Government. I don’t think any of this is too much to ask.