Travelling back from London with my eldest child on the tube today, I enjoyed one of those moments in which we enjoy ‘the pleasure of recognition’. I could tell that the girl sitting opposite me, whose gaze lingered fractionally longer on me than on the others in the carriage, was thinking the same thought: ‘Someone else in this carriage is English!’ Her bewildered expression was that of someone lost in a foreign city – a city far from home.
She reminded me of the solitary rather awkward looking white boy in a large inner-city school contingent I saw visiting the Globe Theatre in the summer. For all I know, this pupil might have been utterly at home in his diverse cosmopolitan environment, and I was a fossilised relic of a vanished world. But I could not help but feel pity for him. Did he too not have a cultural inheritance (albeit it now a minority culture), a birth-right, a right to innocent friendships untainted by the debilitating baggage of identity politics, the charge of hateful whiteness, historical injustice, casual microaggressions, and, of course, institutional racism? Not much fun for him I suspect being subjected to the rigours of a multicultural diverse curriculum whose purpose is the deconstruction of Western civilization. Not very educational either: ‘Has anyone in the class heard of Charles Dickens? Yes, he was a sexist racist homophobe …’
The replacement of the English in London is now so far gone that one views it almost with detached scientific interest as a botanist might when viewing the displacement of a native species. There will be a day when the only moments of recognition occur on visits to the national museums, the custodians of the past, and to Madame Tussaud’s – which is where we had just been. In Madam Tussaud’s they have laid on for tourists a ‘Spirit of London’ experience in which one is trundled round in a black taxi on rails and treated to a glimpse of London through the ages – the age of Elizabeth, Shakespeare writing his plays, the Great Plague and Fire, Wren’s rebuilding, Nelson, Victorian London, the Blitz, and the swinging 60s. It’s surprisingly well done and does the job – though I would have thrown in some burning French ships in the Nelson display. But one can’t help wondering, ‘What was it all for?’ A thousand years of history, of organic development, the spirit of a people, dissolved in a generation. Why?
One is tempted to answer, ‘Because some academic, fired by vicarious resentment, instituted the ideology of diversity’. But perhaps it is deeper than that. The new ideology could only take root because the old civilization was finished, decadent, rotten. Yet I feel sorry for the next generation. Somehow, they will have to live us down.
Our civilisation has rotted because of the decline in religious faith. Christianity is the core of Western civilisation, but Christian Britain is now just a memory at best for most,
Without religious faith there comes liberalism, because there are no standards to live by except those of the ;; anything goes variety. .Political Correctness is an attempt to impose ‘tolerance’ for anything and everything. Except opposition to itself, naturally.
Since it has quite literally no foundation in anything since it is based on an atheistic nihilism, it will survive just so long as those in favour of it have the power to enforce it. Then what? The likeliest scenario is that an ethnic wedge which believes in its own religion will supplant it – Islam, so help us,
Indeed Colin. Peter Hitchens has a great analogy in that we are living from the warmth of the dying embers of Christian civilisation. What happens when those embers finally die out?
A prospect similar to what you describe is the most likely, since neither atheism, nor liberalism have any real muscle behind them, and are wholly dependent on the philosophy of the self.
Exactly right. ‘English born but not English bred’. There is almost literally, a world of difference.
The commonwealth has now colonised us.
Time for us to decolonise then. Civil disobedience? Armed revolt? A popular front? The more pertinent question is why a nation should want to commit suicide.
I will not use grand descriptives to describe what has occurred, what has been done. I don’t wish to pass comment on nations or races nor rank cultures as better or worse. I will simply repeat, loud and clear, what the message is to every one of us.
You merely exist here. This place does not belong to you. You have no right to self determination, no right to decide what is acceptable, no right to determine a future for your children. To show you how much we hate you, we will embrace everything that you are not. We will pretend that people who are a threat to you are really your friends. We will undermine your identity and self-worth by finding fault in your culture’s history. We will make you feel ashamed so that you will be compliant. You will have no strength left to fight for your rights and your norms. At the point you question what it means to be British we will already have stolen it away. You won’t know. You won’t be able to answer. You will only be able to answer as to what you are not. No! You are not African. No! You are not Muslim! You are nothing!
And whilst we look on in confusion, wondering why the New British are so much more worthy than ourselves we fail to notice that we have something in common with them. The New British fail to notice it too. In their smug arrogance they believe they really are better, more worthy. They do not understand once the Old British are gone, the elite will subjugate the New British in exactly the same way. We thought we had won the Cold War. We thought we had beaten communism. But no, the Left kept fighting subversively. This is what communism feels like.
“To show you how much we hate you, we will embrace everything that you are not. We will pretend that people who are a threat to you are really your friends. We will undermine your identity and self-worth by finding fault in your culture’s history. We will make you feel ashamed so that you will be compliant.”
Very well said Peter. It is a demonic inversion what has been imposed upon us.
This left a sad feeling of hopelessness inside me. It is exactly how I feel, not because I’m racist but because we all need our own identity, our own heritage, if I want the wonderful chocolate drink I had in Italy then I want to go to Italy to get it. I dont want a global community in my own county.
You are indeed a fossilised relic of a vanished world … probably a very large % of those ‘foreigners’ sitting in your tube carriage are English born … you need to get out more !!
They might be English born but they are still not English.
Western people born in China don’t become Chinese.
Nor do people born in stables become horses!
They are born in `England but that doesn’t make them English, either racially , culturally or religiously,
To be `English is to belong to an ethnicity.
U are indeed a fossilised relic of a vanished world … probably a very large % of those ‘foreigners’ sitting in ur tube carriage are English born … u need to get out more !!
English born perhaps but sadly not English bred. The 2011 census figures revealed that of the official population, over a third of Londoners were foreign born. The real question though is how many would ‘self-identify’ as English. ‘British Somali’, for example, does not quite do the trick with me. David Goodhart, of impeccable liberal credentials, had it right when he wrote in ‘The Road to Somewhere’ that ‘for many of its inhabitants, both old and new, London is already an insecure, congested, transit camp’, the result of ‘unmanaged mass immigration’.
What revelence does British born have on the equation,it only amplifies the mistake our politicians made,and the fast breeding rate of them !
@Richard Calhoun. Oh dear another numpty who thinks the civic idea of English identity is actually an identity. Being born in England doesn’t make you English, full stop. England was named after the English, not them after it – and they themselves were born out of the amalgamation of several white, Germanic Northern European tribes. It was they who created England. Do you think, for instance, Chinese people born here don’t see themselves as Chinese any more? More to the point would you tell them differently, and tell them that their ethnic Chinese identity is a sham – one of mere location at the point of birth? No, you bloody well wouldn’t! You are classic case of either someone who is non English who hates the English – and with a name like Calhoun I wouldn’t be at all surprised – or a self-hating twat who has no semblance of pride or interest in your own people’s history, culture, way of life, or indeed survival. We don’t need the permission of scum like you when it comes to determining our own self preservation. Sorry, but I don’t do niceties when it comes to the likes of you. The one thing I will take exception to in the article is the usual ‘thousand years of history’ mindset when it comes to the English. We had at least 600 years of English history before William the Bastard arrived on our shores in 1066. Well, Calhoun
Do you read as well as write, Richard?
It is not just London that is losing its unique identity to mass migration. I visited Vienna in 2001 and it was still a city with a distinctly Austrian character. When I visited again in 2018 things were very different. The central city, the part that the tourists come to see, still retained its character. Away from the centre things were very different.
A large migrant population of mainly Middle Eastern / North African appearance have transformed the place into just another European migrant neighbourhood. Just like London the streets are filled with tatty little shops selling the same array of cheap and shoddy goods. There are the same scruffy little cafes, bistros, internet cafes and (of course) secondhand tech stores promising to unlock any phone.
That’s cultural diversity and enrichment for you!