Sir: I heartily agree with James Monteith in his recent blog (‘We Want our Country Back!’) that we are seeing the beginnings of a popular uprising. The awful question, however, is where we go from now.
The authorised BBC view (‘Why shouldn’t we celebrate flying the national flag’, Amanda White & Holly Phillips, 23 August) illustrates perfectly why we are headed for deep trouble. For righteous liberals Amanda and Holly, it is all a matter of ‘pride or prejudice’ – or good and evil. When flying the flag is ‘a symbol of respect and celebration’ (respect for what is not specified, but I think they mean ‘tolerance and diversity’) that is a good thing, but when it is associated with ‘the rise of far-right demonstrations across the country’ – just think of all those local mothers dressed in pink in Epping – it is bad. The idea that people might be angry, and have very good reason to be angry, especially in areas being transformed into outposts of foreign lands by mass immigration, is merely a racist narrative stirred up by the far right. The liberal elite’s denial of reality is complete.
But even Robert Tombs, eminent historian and defender of our nation’s history, does not quite get it. In an otherwise excellent article in today’s Telegraph (‘Is this the beginning of the English Revolution?’ 25 August), he cautions that it is wrong to emphasise the connection between Englishness and ancestry. The challenge is to properly integrate our immigrant populations, while recognising that our idea of Englishness might shift in the process, as it has across the centuries. Wise words indeed and most befitting of a responsible member of the conservative establishment. But the Telegraph comments, the vox pop, tells a different story.
The problem is that if integration is to mean anything, immigrants would have to adopt, publicly at least, the customs, manners, dress, loyalties and values of the host nation, the English, as they have done in the past. That means an end to multiculturalism, an end to segregated and religious schools, an end to animal cruelty in the preparation of meat – the list goes on and on. But for Muslims living apart in parallel communities under Sharia law, this would be a declaration of war. The alternative is segregation, where people of different cultures and ethnic groups, including the English, live their lives and develop separately. A South African apartheid model, perhaps? The division of Britain into separate kingdoms as in the sixth and seventh centuries? Neither of these alternatives is likely to be achieved peacefully.
That is the awful and the tragic truth of where we now are.
Harry Black
Salisbury, Wiltshire
