| The Decline
and Fall of Britain
By Brian Cloughley
December 09,
2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- It is sad to have to have to acknowledge that the
country of one’s birth is in decline, but there are
signs that Great Britain has fallen on the slippery
slope of moral deterioration. The recent surge in
nationalistic jingoism and xenophobia in Britain is
lamentable and obnoxious.
In October the
British Home Office
reported that the number of racist hate crimes in
the country had increased by 41 per cent in the month
after the June referendum about UK’s membership of the
European Union, the so-called ‘Brexit’ vote. The
Equality and Human Rights Commission
noted that “the figures make it very clear that some
people used the referendum result to justify their
deplorable views and promote intolerance and hatred” and
there were other expressions of regret and revulsion —
but not from many of the mainstream media outlets,
because several newspapers rejoiced in the rush of
intolerance that they had done so much to encourage.
The reasons for
lack of regret, alas, are that many Britons are
inherently racist and most of the print media play on
that appalling aspect of the British character in order
to attract readers and make money. In the facile and
attractive guise of patriotism the papers seize on
instances of supposed non-Britishness to encourage their
readers to engage in hatred and contempt of foreigners.
It is unlikely that any writers of such fascist hokum
are familiar with the works of one of the greatest
English essayists, poets and moralists, Dr Samuel
Johnson, who wrote so perceptively that “patriotism is
the last refuge of a scoundrel.”
Britain has had
a race problem for many years but of late it has become
severe because of a spiteful nationalistic campaign to
leave the European Union, an organization that is
bureaucratically absurd but seeks to benefit Europe’s
citizens by promoting free trade and freedom of
movement, protecting human rights, encouraging
harmonization of legal processes, increasing
effectiveness of counter-terrorism cooperation, and
promoting economic and social progress.
These
objectives are considered abhorrent by a surprising
number of Britons who believe that alliance with the
other 27 nations of the European Union helps movement of
undesirable people to their country and that European
legal covenants, agreed by their own governments during
the past forty years, are inimical to the British way of
life. They claim that leaving the European Union will
save vast sums of money, especially in health care,
while preventing abuse of ‘British Law’ by continuing to
abide by European human rights standards.
It is the
contention of those who wish to leave the European Union
that future trading arrangements to be negotiated at an
unknown date with potential but unnamed countries will
be of more financial benefit than continuance of
existing European Union agreements with current trading
partners. (The hastily-arranged November trade-promotion
visit to India by Prime Minister Theresa May — a
civilised person — was sadly barren. As
reported by India’s Financial Express, she
returned ‘Empty-Handed.’)
The seeming
rise in anti-European fervour was taken into political
account by former Prime Minister David Cameron who
announced in February 2016 that a referendum would be
held in June to ask the simple question: “Should the
United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or
leave the European Union?” It was made clear that the
referendum result would not in any way oblige the
country to leave the European Union, because the
Parliament did not specify legal consequences of a vote
either way. It was an “advisory referendum”, and the
British Parliament was and is in no way bound by any law
or precedent to accept the result as mandatory for the
country to ‘Brexit.’
It was intended
that the referendum result would be an expression of the
non-binding feelings of the British people and that the
elected members of Parliament would take due notice of
this when debating the complex matter in due course.
There are
46,501,241 people of voting age in the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Ireland. Of these, 17,410,742 voted to
leave the European Union. Another 16,141,241 voted to
remain within the European Union. Let me repeat that in
a plebiscite of 46 million people, 17 million — 37 per
cent — voted to leave the EU and that their choice was
in no manner or by any interpretation of law an
instruction to the government to do so.
The laws of
Great Britain are determined by its members of
Parliament. Many of both may be stupid, but no matter :
Parliament is sovereign and its decisions are binding.
Some of those who objected to the stance that the
country should immediately leave the Union without
Parliament discussing the matter took the matter to the
High Court where three distinguished judges
ruled that Parliament must vote on whether the
country can begin the process.
Then Britain’s
media sprang into action. The Daily Mail, whose
editor, a foul-mouthed vulgarian called Paul Dacre,
received “£88,000 in subsidies from the
European Union for his country houses in Sussex and
the Scottish Highlands in 2014” ordered his minions to
produce one of the most disgusting front pages in the
long history of British journalism. It depicted the
three judges with the banner caption ENEMIES OF THE
PEOPLE.
Even more
despicably, the newspaper emphasised that one of the
people who brought the High Court action was a coloured
citizen of Britain (who
was sent threats of rape and murder for her
actions), and one of the judges was “openly gay.” It
declared that two of the judges had sat on the
European court of human rights, one being ‘fluent in
several languages’ and the other ‘steeped in EU laws and
tradition.’ One of them — shock, horror! — had ‘worked
for a Hamburg law firm shortly after leaving Oxford.’
These spiteful,
malevolent and thus most effective tirades were straight
out of 1930s Germany, and there was not a shred of
criticism of the newspapers by the government.
Other garbage
newspapers, such as the formerly admirable Daily
Telegraph, carried headlines such as ‘The Judges
Versus The People.’ The Mail
removed one abusive headline from its vulgar
website, but the damage had been done and the bigots of
Britain had been given yet more backing to express their
hatred of foreigners, which extends to the media’s
relentless anti-Russia campaign, intended to
portray President Putin and the Russian people in
the worst possible light.
One declaration
of President Barack Obama that will be remembered is his
wise
warning that in the United States “we are going to
have to guard against a rise in a crude sort of
nationalism, or ethnic identity or tribalism that is
built around an US and a THEM.”
In Trump
America it is possible that this crude nationalism might
become dominant. But in Britain it seems it already
rules, as those judged (no irony intended) to be
‘different’ in any way to native Anglo-Saxons are
considered to be undesirable. This has been so for very
many years, unfortunately, and, as
recollected by one young person so affected in the
1960s, it was insulting, when looking for lodgings, to
“find notices galore that said ‘No Irish, no coloureds’.”
Although
repulsive racist prejudice and casual bigotry are far
from new in the United Kingdom, it had been thought that
in the New Millennium there might have been some advance
towards tolerance and acceptance of minorities. The Race
Relations Act was supposed to eradicate racism, and had
some mild success, but its aims have been set back or
even destroyed by the bigots of Brexit who won their
dubious victory largely because they appealed to all
that is most base in mankind : the idea that superiority
depends on race and especially color.
The country is
declining. At this rate, the fall won’t be long in
coming.
A version
of this piece appeared in Strategic Culture Foundation
on November 28, 2016
The views
expressed in this article are the author's own and do
not necessarily reflect Information Clearing House
editorial policy. |
