A modest proposal (with apologies to Jonathan Swift)

In the land of wokes and snowflakes Hope & Glory are to liberals what a crucifix is to Count Dracula. Demolishing the BBC and sowing the ground with salt might help.

Published: 28 August 2020 by Mick Hart

‘Come on now, play the white man!’ Now, there is an expression that you do not hear every day. Back in the 60s, my friend’s father, who never passed up a chance to remind us what a true ‘English gentleman’ he was, often used to say this in circumstances where standards were lax or propriety compromised. It always produced a good titter from we children.

‘Ooohhhh, but you couldn’t say it these days!’. Well, I’ll let you into a secret, we do now and again, and it still raises a chuckle or too. The laugh comes not from the so-called racist connotation but from the jingoisticism of it. It is funny because it echoes and epitomises the arrogance, stuffy, and overbearing colonial mentality in which it is rooted. It is, in short, like many such sayings, a delightful and whimsical anachronism.

John Cleese, a master of satire, exploits similar examples of the British colonial mindset in the award-winning comedy series Fawlty Towers. The humour lies in the fact that it is self-deprecating, self-effacing. It demonstrates how the British, the English in particular, are able to send up their own national foibles and laugh at them. As our friend Victor Ryabinin would say, if you can laugh at yourself then you can laugh at others.  Poking fun at one’s own national character is as British as a pint at the local and the age-old tradition of Yorkshire pud and roast beef on a Sunday. So, hoorah for the likes of Cleese and hoorah for Fawlty Towers.

Thus it was sad, nay deplorable, to learn on 12 June 2020, that the ‘gutless and cowardly’ BBC, as John Cleese called it, had removed an episode from the Fawlty Towers series for what The Guardian referred to as featuring ‘racial references’. Although, he was perfectly right ~ it was gutless and cowardly ~ it was not entirely unexpected, as more and more people agree that the BBC is the most institutionally liberal organisation in the UK, second only perhaps to the UK education system.

Fawlty Towers is just one of many classic TV programmes that have come under the BBC’s prissy PC scrutiny of late, although it is worth remembering that a lot of these condemned programmes are readily available on DVD. I recently watched a  wonderful episode from Steptoe and Son on DVD in which old man Steptoe sings ‘Enoch’s dreaming of a white Christmas’, and, believe it or not, you can still buy the liberal anti-Christ of all 1970s’ comedy series Love Thy Neighbour and watch it at home in your Englishman’s castle. “Sssshhh, is the drawbridge up, Ethel?”

Knowing what the BBC is, knowing how it operates but wondering why anyone who does not read The Independent pays its license fee, it came as no great surprise when I heard this week that its latest PC purge was a suggestion to drop Rule, Britannia! and Land of Hope & Glory from its televised account of the Last Night of the Proms from the Royal Albert Hall.  Apparently, the BBC lovies had been impelled to consider this in fear of reprisals from the Black Lives Matter mob. What was it John Cleese called the BBC? Aaahh yes, ‘cowardly and gutless’. Thankfully, the response of the real British public to this blatant publicity stunt was such that the BBC did a double-fast U-turn. Had it not, I think we could safely say that the writing, which is already on the wall for it, would have been summed up in two short words ‘F… Off!!’

It is appropriate that the BBC, which is at the forefront of historical revisionism, advocates that Land of Hope & Glory is dropped from the Last Night of the Proms, as revisionism and PC-groveling has been a cornerstone of its programming philosophy for some time now. I believe it must have a slogan on its foyer wall, soon to become an integral part of the BBC logo, which reads, ‘If the left don’t like it we’ll rewrite it!’ They are particularly assiduous in this respect when it comes to creating parallel worlds, especially out of historical dramas; who recalls their not so finest hour with the sad and sorry remake of that superb old series Upstairs, Downstairs?

Oh, dear, who is really sick to death of all this liberal-left diversity-inspired political correctness gunk? Alright, let’s rephrase that question, who isn’t?

For years now the poor old tolerant, long-suffering British nation has had to sit back and watch as this once great country of ours is dragged into oblivion by two-party seesaw politics and the self-interested jobs worths and subversive lobby groups who run it ~ or rather, who are running it into the ground. No wonder the bods in Westminster did nothing when the adherents of BLM tried to remove Churchill’s statue. I should think it is a constant reminder to them of how gutless they have become. Come on lads (and the lady quotas) Tony’s been gone a good while now!

Anyone who was naïve enough to believe that things might change when the Conservative party got back into power need look no further than the humiliating paralysis that settled over Westminster during the BLM riots to prove how wrong they were? Was it not Nigel Farage who asked, what is it that the conservatives are conserving? I mean if the BBC is as anti-conservative as it is constantly claimed to be, then why does not the Conservative government do something about it, and, whilst it is at it, why not replace Ofsted for Instead (Investigating Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills), a department tasked with rooting out the liberal bias entrenched in the UK education system?

Ahhh, somewhere over the rainbow. It is obviously far easier, and possibly agenda fulfilling, to back down, give in and accommodate ~ I mean, think of what might happen at the ballot box! But the sad truth is that each time a concession is made in the false names of tolerance, fairness and equality, because one ethnic group or another demands it, another little piece of British history and its way of life is chipped and scraped away.

When terrorists attacks occur in the UK we are immediately told by the powers that be and their ideologically motivated media, that a few individuals, a minority, are trying to drive a wedge between us ~ ‘us’ being some fantasy co-operative who all live happily together in Pleasantville. The usual community leaders are rolled out, inadequate apologies muttered and, before you know it, we are off down another candle-lit vigil road. 

As a friend of mine once said, he was surprised some budding entrepreneur had not cashed in on this process. Considering the way this country is going, someone could make a fortune selling candle-lit vigil kits wholesale.

This wedge, sometimes referred to as the thin end, is, in fact, the fat end. It is up there with the numerous acts of street violence, murders, muggings and the latest moped crime trend that has earned London the unenviable sobriquet of stab-fest capital of the world, and which plague many other big cities and towns in the UK.

The thin edge of the wedge is reflected in the fact that the old British way of life is extinct. It is  goodbye to leaving your front door unlocked and evenin’ all Sergeant Dixon, and hello to bolts and barricades and where’s that bloody SWAT team when you need it!

The thin end of the wedge, which is more like a very annoying and painful wedgie done whilst wearing Y-fronts, can be estimated from the following occurrences and their psychological and societal impact on a nation that has never been more unsure of itself, more identity insecure, more unstable and more divided.

Let’s roll some of these thin wedgies out:

😆We must rename the Christmas holiday to Winter Lights because as Christmas is a Christian holiday it might offend the sensibility of certain migrant groups

😆We must not fly the Union Jack, because to do so is racist

😆We must not fly the Union Jack, because it is a fascist symbol

😆We must not fly the English flag, the St George flag, because it is racist, and because it is a symbol of colonialism

😆Serving members of our armed forces, who risk their lives in defence of the realm, are spat at in the streets by certain migrant groups

😆Serving members of our armed forces are refused service in shops run by people of particular migrant origin

😆Serving members of our armed forces are told that they must not wear their uniforms in public for fear of violence from certain migrant groups

😆State-run institutions and some private companies instruct their staff to remove crucifixes as it may offend migrant sensibilities

😆Remembrance Day poppies are burnt by sensibility-challenged migrants; liberals on social media urge for the poppy symbol to be dropped

😆Individuals who cry racism are awarded very large sums of money, often from the taxpayer’s purse

😆 Every day, the printed, televised and internet media is saturated with tales of a politically correct nature

This is a just a handful of rather unpopular and perennially irritating issues that clutter up and weigh heavily upon the life of every Briton. Perhaps you would like to add more of your own.

Until Nigel Farage burst upon the scene, one mention of immigration and you were immediately branded as racist. In fact, you are still  branded as racist whatever you say. For example, if you were to say, I don’t think much of this engineered society of ours perhaps we’d all be better off if immigration was controlled, what would that make you? Concerned about your country, your traditions, way of life and a stable future for your children? Of course not. You would obviously be a racist, fascist, extreme right wing, far right, intolerant, a Nazi … in other words a threat to the liberal status quo.

On the opposite side of the coin, the liberal-owned and democracy-managing media continually refer to the extreme left, the neo-marxist and the various brownshirt organisations that masquerade as humanitarian groups fighting for ‘justice’ and ‘equality’ as anti-fascists and counter-protesters. Sounds good, does it not, if not a tad one-sided?

In 2016, the leader of Britain First, Paul Golding, narrowly avoided jail having being convicted for wearing a political uniform. Was he wearing full body armour like the black Forever Family activists that marched through Brixton this month (did anybody get arrested for that?) ~ no, he was wearing a fleece with a Britain First logo on it. I see so many T-shirts, sweatshirts and fleeces adorned with logos and slogans which, if there was any justice, should get the wearers sectioned, but hey ho and freely around they go, why? Because it is one rule for one and one for another, depending, of course, on the establishment’s patronage.

The internet, that once-trumpeted doyen of free speech, of which it was famously said could never be governed or censored, is governed and censored in the UK~ only the British establishment, who have always done a good line in misnomers, whenever they take down someone’s ~ wait for it! ~ social media account, explain the act of censorship away by stating that the person concerned, predominantly white British, was inciting racial or religious hatred. And watch out for those mean tweets, you could have plod at your door! But only some doors and not others …

The list of politically correct follies goes on and on and on, and yet still the UK has the gall to present itself to the rest of the world as the crucible of democracy, where freedom of speech is sacrosanct. The reality is, however, that freedom of speech in the UK is a lot like rights, ie there are rights for some and not for others. In other words, there is freedom of speech for some, as long as you stick to the establishment script, but woe betide you if you stray from it!

How many of you are old enough to remember Britain as it really was, in the days before PC-enforced diversity? Be honest, when you think of it, does it not make you want to sing, “Oh, but it was all so simple then …”?

How complicated, stifling, suffocating, tumultuous, frustrating and just downright stupid it has all become. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to round up all the racisms, tolerances, civil liberties, freedoms of this and that, rights, discriminations, equalities and all the other infectious isms and bin them, and then make further references to them unlawful! Imagine the tables turned ~ found guilty of being politically correct. Good stuff, ay!

When you stop to think about it ~ and they would rather you did not ~ how awful it is that Great Britain, which was once as its name suggests Great, has been reduced to this. And whilst you are at it, spare a moment to commiserate with the hapless lot of legacy Britons, those Britons whose families go back generation  upon generation. What have these legacy Britons had to put up with? ~ the oppression, the intimidation, double-standards, bullying. The only people who believe they have benefitted from so-called progressive liberal values are those who are, bless them, really nice but naive people who want desperately to be thought of as tolerant or enlightened, and are used as democracy fodder as a result, or self-culture loathing anarchists.

Whenever I see or hear the phrases celebrate diversity, champion diversity, show more tolerance, or hear references to ever-increasing levels of enrichment, I am  reminded of the conditioned response of the villagers in Patrick McGoohan’s TV series The Prisoner. The villagers, the brainwashed citizens of the Village, run around with rainbow-coloured umbrellas like performing poodles,  pretending that life is harmonic, whilst Number 6 warns them through a megaphone that “Unlike me, many of you have accepted the situation of your imprisonment and will die here like rotten cabbages”.

What do you want to be a rotten cabbage with a rainbow umbrella or a realist? Either respect the history of your country and uphold its importance and rule of law or else denounce it once and for all. You cannot have your Yorkshire pud, roast beef, tats and eat it. Either value your traditions and celebrate them, set them in stone and let those who want to live here know that if they do not want to live by the rules and values of the host country don’t bother coming (or even better, just close the borders) and for those already here who violate our laws demand that your government take suitable punitive action. It really is time to draw the line and to say that this line must not be crossed. If not, simply cave in, admit defeat, wave the white (oh, sorry) flag and give the country away.

I understand that we are going to hell in a handcart, and the trick is to leave the brake on just enough so that hopefully the complaining oldies drop off naturally one by one, thus  leaving the way open for the softened generations processed in the jelly mould of the liberal left’s compliance factory, otherwise known as the British education system, to carry the future can. But, if that is the plan, why wait?

Why not just call it a day? Give away your heritage, history and ancestral home in one fell swoop; commit cultural suicide and become second-class citizens in your own country; anything has to be better than this slow, painful and humiliating death via cringing appeasement and craven capitulation.

It really is time gentleman please, or as dear old Leonard Cohen might say: “It’s come to this, yes it’s come to this and wasn’t it a long way down …”

Either play the white man and resuscitate the patient or switch off the life support machine, and then perhaps whoever is left can get on with their lives. Perhaps … Land of Hope & Glory? Hope, as they say, dies last!

Copyright © 2018-2020 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.