Britishness Day

I am delighted to announce the return, after an unwarrantably long delay, of Mr Liam Byrne to the pages of this blog. In his latest stunningly wise pronouncement, the Sage of Hodge Hill has proposed that the August bank holiday should become "Britishness Day". On "Britishness Day" people will engage in a "celebration of what we like and love about living in this country", and will hold street parties and carnivals. Sounds fun, doesn't it?

Well, no, actually. Personally I find the idea of participating in some completely artificial celebration of Britishness, instituted by a New Labour apparatchik whose other major contribution to cultural debate has been the prediction that compulsory ID cards will become a "great British institution", thoroughly nauseating. After all, whatever is celebrated on this day, you can be sure it won't be Britishness in any meaningful sense, but rather a watered-down, plastic "Britishness" of empty and meaningless platitudes about "tolerance", "fair play", and the like.

Besides which, I regard all the expressions of patriotism that come from this government as the grossest hypocrisy. This is, after all, the government that has done more than any other to erode the British identity, through its policy of open door immigration, which has transformed large parts of the country, without the consent of the existing population. It is also the government under whose rule perfectly innocuous displays of patriotism have become increasingly frowned upon by those in authority - just consider the number of cases in which displaying the Union Flag and (especially) the Cross of St George has been banned.

To me, Liam Byrne's proposal has the look of a pressure valve. This government, which has done so much to undermine the British (and, particularly, the English) identity, hopes that by giving over one day a year to overt but phoney patriotism, it can keep in check the disquiet engendered by the fact that genuine, albeit often understated, patriotism is taboo the whole year round. Thankfully, I think that the vast majority of people will see through the charade.

Hideously white, part 94,000

If members of the public were asked to identify one thing that embodied British culture, many would pick the Proms. Weeks of classical music; the Royal Albert Hall; Union Flags and Land of Hope and Glory on the last night - what could be a better modern symbol of the nation? And it's certainly popular: hundreds of thousands of people attend the the thing itself, and millions of people across the World tune in to watch.

This, however, is not enough for Margaret Hodge, who holds the post of culture minister in one of the most uncultured governments we have ever seen. Delivering a speech on "Britishness" to the left-wing Institute for Public Policy Research, Hodge complained that the Proms were insufficiently inclusive:

The audiences for some of many of our greatest cultural events - I'm thinking particularly of the Proms - is still a long way from demonstrating that people from different backgrounds feel at ease in being part of this.

I know this is not about making every audience completely representative, but if we claim great things for our sectors in terms of their power to bring people together, then we have a right to expect they will do that wherever they can.

By contrast, the BBC reports that

...Mrs [sic] Hodge praised other institutions for "creating the icons of a common culture that everybody can feel a part of" - such as the Angel of the North, the British Museum and the Eden project as well as TV and radio shows "from Coronation Street to the Archers" and shared public holidays.

Quite how one can "feel a part of" the Angel of the North is unclear, unless one is speaking literally. But, generally, Hodge's preference for Corrie over Elgar speaks volumes about Labour's philistine outlook on the world. It evinces an instinctive preference for popular culture over high culture, purely because it is popular. The actual artistic or aesthetic merit of a thing is irrelevant to Hodge: all that matters is how many people tune in.

How many people tune in, and how many of the right sort of people tune in. Because, aside from the philistinism that Hodge's comments betray, there is also an evident racial subtext: when she talks about "inclusiveness", she is quite clearly complaining that the Proms are just too hideously white. This is not the first time that a Labour culture minister has attacked the arts for this heinous crime: in 2005, David Lammy accused arts organisations "of being 'too exclusive' and not doing enough to promote black people in senior roles".
The fact is, that events like the Proms tend to attract white people, in much the same way that rap concerts tend to attract a disproportionate number of blacks (albeit balanced out by middle-class white teenagers attempting to be edgy). Classical music is white music: it is our cultural heritage, not that of non-whites. This is not to say that non-whites can't enjoy classical music, and no doubt some do, but it does explain why the audience at events like the Proms is overwhelmingly white. Non-whites aren't being excluded: they're just not interested.

The other main reason for Hodge's attack is that the Proms, and particularly its famous last night, are proudly, openly, and traditionally British. Its white attendees wave the Union Flag and listen to Land of Hope and Glory, with nary an emblem of multiculturalism in sight. Watching the last night, one could almost imagine that the war that the left has waged against this country's heritage for many decades had never happened. For the left, which delights in the damage it has done to this country in the name of multiculturalism, this is just unacceptable.

I'm a professional...get me out of here!

Britain is experiencing the worst "brain drain" of any country as highly qualified professionals settle abroad, an authoritative international study showed yesterday.

Record numbers of Britons are leaving - many of them doctors, teachers and engineers - in the biggest exodus for almost 50 years.

There are now 3.247 million British-born people living abroad, of whom more than 1.1 million are highly-skilled university graduates, say the researchers.

More than three quarters of these professionals have settled abroad for more than 10 years, according to the study by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

No other nation is losing so many qualified people, it points out. Britain has now lost more than one in 10 of its most skilled citizens, while overall only Mexico has had more people emigrate.

The figures, based on official records from more than 220 countries, will alarm Gordon Brown as tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money is spent on educating graduates. The cost of training a junior doctor, for example, is £250,000.

There are, of course, particular problems with emigration and immigration in relation to the medical profession. The fact that we are importing large numbers of foreign doctors, while simultaneously telling thousands of British-trained physicians that they should look to other countries for employment, for example. In these circumstances, we shouldn't really be surprised if doctors take that advice.

More generally, there are an abundance of reasons why people might choose to leave Britain. Some will leave for purely personal reasons, and others will have more political motives. As examples of the latter, the shadow immigration minister Damian Green cites taxes and government interference, and he's probably right, although I would guess that the present excessive levels of immigration into Britain might also play a very significant role in encouraging people to leave. As would crime levels. And plenty of other things too: just read a few posts from this blog, or any one of a large number of others, to see some examples.

People do not, by and large, move, unless they think that their quality of life will be significantly improved by doing so. The fact that so many British people do believe this is a colossal indictment of the manner in which Labour has run Britain for the past eleven years. They may have won the last election, but large numbers of Britons are voting with their feet, and this vote is not going Labour's way.

The Dhimmi Mindset

One of the strongest indicators of a dhimmi mentality, both on an individual and a societal level, is the willingness to anticipate Muslim outrage, and to act to remove the potential source of offence, even in the complete absence of any actual complaints from the Muslims. An example would be the recent craze for prohibiting images of pigs, or stories about Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. Well, today has furnished us with two paradigmatic instances of this same phenomenon of voluntary submission. First, via Dhimmi Watch:

A BRITISH children’s author who named a mole Mohammed to promote multiculturalism has renamed it Morgan for fear of offending Muslims.

Kes Gray, a former advertising executive, first decided on his gesture of cross-cultural solidarity after meeting Muslims in Egypt.

The character, Mohammed the Mole, appeared in Who’s Poorly Too, an illustrated children’s book, which also included Dipak Dalmatian and Pedro Penguin, in an effort to be “inclusive”.

This weekend Gray said he had decided to postpone a reprint and rename the character Morgan the Mole even though there had been no complaints.

“I had no idea at all of the sensitivities of the name Mohammed until seeing this case in Sudan,” said Gray. “As soon as I saw the news I thought, oh gosh, I’ve got a mole called Mohammed this is not good.

“I feel incredibly sorry for that teacher,” added Gray. “Luckily for me, I’m in a position where I can avoid this.” The book has sold 40,000 copies in Britain and abroad since 1999.

And Exhibit Two:

Shepherds dressed in old sheets, Christmas carols and the competition to see who will play Mary and Joseph… nativity plays have been a feature of British primary-school life for generations.

But a survey has revealed that headteachers are watering down or ditching the centuries-old Christmas story in favour of secular tales to avoid upsetting pupils of other faiths.

Only one in five schools are ­planning to perform a traditional nativity play this year. They are now outnumbered by schools that say they will be either putting on a non-religious play, such as Scrooge or Snow White, or giving no performance at all.

Almost half the schools said they planned to put on modern reinterpretations of the Christmas story, with extra characters, new songs and modern themes, such as The Bossy King, Whoops-a-Daisy Angel or The Hoity-Toity Angel.

The findings will add to fears that Christian teachings are being abandoned by schools, despite the wishes of parents. Recent surveys show an overwhelming majority of families would like the nativity play, telling the story of Christ's birth, to live on in schools.

Of course, since they (or at least, the majority of them) are only white British Christians, their cultural sensitivities can safely be ridden over, roughshod.

One point common to both these cases (and to the various pig ban cases as well) is that no Muslim, or virtually no Muslims, have actually complained. Certainly, I've never heard tell of a Muslim objecting to a nativity play, and Kes Gray himself acknowledged that, for 40,000 books sold, no one had complained about his fictional mole's name. But that doesn't stop either Gray, or the legions of do-gooder headteachers, from behaving in this utterly craven manner. They have become so well-indoctrinated into "cultural sensitivity" that they are now more sensitive to perceived "Islamophobic" slights than all but the maddest of mad Muslims. Were it not so utterly contemptible, one might actually be rather impressed with the capacity of multiculturalism to so completely brainwash its adherents.

Islam is a threat to Britain, and to her cultural identity. If present demographic trends continue, then it will, before long, become an enormous, potentially overwhelming, threat. But, as Klein Verzet wrote last month, for the time being, the threat posed by Islam, significant as it is, is as nothing against the threat posed by the little Vichyists of the politically-correct, pro-multiculturalist, liberal-left.

Syria's man in the Cabinet

Lord Malloch-Brown, the controversial Foreign Office minister, was in a fresh row last night after telling senior members of the Syrian regime of his willingness to speak for them on the world stage.

The remarks were reportedly made last week at a reception hosted by Sami Khiyami, the Syrian ambassador.

One witness said the minister told the Syrians: "Think of me as your man in the Cabinet." Lord Malloch-Brown denies making the comment.

The reception was held to mark the visit of Abdullah Dardari, Syria's deputy prime minister. He and Lord Malloch-Brown are said to be close friends from when they worked at the United Nations in New York.

The Arabic newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi, whose correspondent attended the reception, said Lord Malloch-Brown gave an "emotional" speech, recalling how he had considered himself to be "representing Syria inside the UN". The minister also spoke warmly about Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president.

An "emotional" speech? Hmm. I wonder whether the good Muslims of the London Embassy of the Syrian Arab Republic serve alcohol at their receptions...

In the meantime, the people of Britain can only envy those of Syria. Wouldn't it be nice if we also had someone in the Cabinet looking after our interests, rather than the present disreputable bunch of lying, back-stabbing, cravens?

'tis the night of Halloween...

...and strange and inhuman creatures are out and about.

Oh yes indeed. And none stranger than the beings that dwell deep in the offices of the left-wing think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). For the IPPR is about to publish a report on the subject of "Britishness" and race relations, which, from its content, one might suppose more suited for the first day of April than for any other day of the year. Calling for a "multicultural understanding of Britishness", the report graciously concedes that immigrants to the UK should learn to speak English

...if - but only if - the settled population is willing to open up national institutions and practices to newcomers and give a more inclusive cast to national narratives and symbols.

Note to those unfamiliar with leftyspeak: "settled population" means the native population of this country, while "open up national institutions and practices" means "give up national institutions and practices", and "give a more inclusive cast to national narratives and symbols" means "recast our culture into something unrecognisable, in order to please those immigrants who refuse to make any effort to integrate".

In order to "give a more inclusive cast" to Britain's unspeakably evil culture, the authors of the report propose a number of changes to our way of life, including:

"Birth ceremonies", at which state and parents agree to "work in partnership" to bring up children.

Now, I don't like to overuse cliches, but this really is like something out of Brave New World. Raising children is not a "partnership" between parents and the state, it is the right and - more importantly - the duty of parents to raise their children as they see fit, with the government only stepping in where the parents prove themselves incapable of doing this for themselves. Otherwise, the state has no business interfering in the manner in which people raise their offspring.

I also wonder whether these ceremonies will be compulsory? If so, what is going to happen if parents refuse to take part? Prison? Forfeiture of the children to the state? And if such ceremonies are not to be compulsory, how many cretins do they think they are going to persuade to take part?

Action to "ensure access" for ethnic minorities to "largely white" countryside.

It's true that the countryside is "largely white". A bit like the country as a whole really, only more so. It's a shame that the IPPR are so offended by the sight - or even the mere thought - of large numbers of white people. Still, the way some people go on, you'd think that the British countryside was some hotbed of Nazism, and that any black person who ventured into it would be lucky to escape without being lynched. This is, of course, rubbish. If black people want to go for a day's hill-walking, they need only jump in the car and drive, the same as the rest of us. If they want to buy a house in the country, then they only need to raise the necessary funds and it's theirs. The same as the rest of us. And as for the threat of "racism": well, I'd bet that it's a lot safer being a non-white person in the depths of rural England, than it is being white in some such centre of vibrant diversity as Brixton or Brick Lane. There is simply no need for any action along the lines proposed.

An overhaul of Britain's "imperial" honours system.

Why? Because Benjamin Zephaniah gets upset that we have the phrase "British Empire" in some of our honours?

The fact is, that the honours system reflects our history and our heritage. To seek to alter our honours system because it has become politically incorrect constitutes an assault upon the heritage that the system represents. It is an attempt a) to make the British people ashamed of their cultural heritage, and b) to, in the long-run, engender the belief that we have no cultural heritage at all.

Flying flags other than the Union Flag.

I assume they refer to the flags flown on public buildings. I don't know what other flags they mean, but I'd guess it's not the national flags of Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland to which they refer. Nor even, in this instance, the EU flag, although I don't suppose that the IPPR would be wholly averse to seeing that replacing the Union Flag at some point in the future. I assume, therefore, that the flags in question are those of the home countries of the UK's major (and most vocal) immigrant groups, such as Pakistan.
Clearly, this proposal should also be opposed. This is Britain, not any other country, and if the IPPR and the government really want to induce enhanced civic unity and loyalty to Britain then they should be aiming to strengthen our traditional symbols of nationhood (which, incidentally, also includes our honours system - see above), rather than undermining them. But, I'd guess that the real reason for encouraging the flying of foreign flags is that it will further promote the cultural deracination of the native British people, leaving them more willing to accept the destruction and replacement of their culture and way of life.

Other proposals include the removal of Bishops from the House of Lords (a further attempt to strip us of our cultural heritage) and making school religious studies classes "less sectarian" (personally, I wasn't aware that they were sectarian - I mean, it's not like they're teaching from the Chick Tracts, is it?). However, there is one proposal which seems to be getting rather more attention than all the others:

Christmas should be downgraded in favour of festivals from other religions to improve race relations...Labour's favourite think-tank says that because it would be hard to 'expunge' Christmas from the national calendar, 'even-handedness' means public organisations must start giving other religions equal footing.

Given the place in the national psyche that Christmas has acquired, this is, more than any other part of the proposals, an attempt to undermine and destroy our traditional culture, heritage, and sense of national identity. I'd particularly point out that, from the phrasing the IPPR have used, it appears that their preferred option would be to "expunge" Christmas altogether, but that, knowing this to be impossible, they have instead opted to seek its dilution, and the dilution of the Christian heritage which it represents.

And that, really, is the theme running through all of the proposals that the IPPR has come up with: dilution. Dilution of our culture, heritage, and identity. Our national flag, our history, and our national religion will all be belittled, while the flags, heritages, and religions of the immigrant groups in our society will be given enhanced status. The aim, I believe, is to create the impression that Britain has no history, that it has no religious or cultural heritage, that it was, in fact, an uninhabited and unclaimed land until about 1948, when all the ethnic groups now inhabiting it arrived together, all with an equal claim upon it (that it is, in fact, a paradigmatic "nation of immigrants"). Thus they hope to lay the foundations for the creation of some gloriously unprecedented multicultural utopia. They won't succeed in this, of course, but if they get their way in other matters then they will succeed in utterly annihilating our British way of life. Which they probably want even more than they want the multicultural utopia.

Update: I have now posted an abridged, and hopefully somewhat less repetitive, version of the above over at ATW.

SIOE demo in London

Just a brief note to let readers know that the next demonstration organised by the campaign group Stop the Islamisation of Europe (SIOE) will be held in London on Friday, 26th October, with an especial theme of resisting Islamic Kuffarphobia. Those taking part are asked to assemble in Whitehall Place at midday, with a procession to Temple Place beginning at 1pm. Full details and rules of the demonstration are available here.

Failing the Citizenship Test

In The Times, I read that one of the government's shiny new citizenship tests for immigrants was administered to a hundred people - an official from English Heritage among them - in a London pub, and that not one of them managed to gain the 75% score necessary to pass. Having seen the questions, which The Times helpfully reproduces, I can quite see why - some of them look bloody hard!

So, does this test, and, more specifically, the abject failure of the pubgoers who attempted it, mean that "Britishness" does not exist, or that those immigrants who take such tests - two thirds of whom pass - are in fact much more British than the natives will ever be? No doubt some on the left would like to think so. However, I would suggest that the reason that so many people failed the tests is that they bear no relationship to what it is to be British. Indeed, looking at the questions, I can see only seven which have any real place in such a test (numbers 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 16, and, at a push, 24). Of those only question 9 ("What type of constitution does the UK have?") is of essential importance in understanding our culture or history. As for the remaining seventeen questions: they are merely a set of random general knowledge questions, the answers to which could easily be learnt in a few days by anyone possessed of even the meanest intellect.

Certainly the questions contain absolutely no reference to any major events in British history; the events that gave birth to the nation as it is today are passed over in silence. There is no reference to King Alfred, to the Battle of Hastings, to Magna Carta, the Peasants' Revolt, the Hundred Years' War, the War of the Roses, the Reformation, the defeat of the Armada (not even to the role of the Turks!), the Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, John Wilkes, the development of the Empire, the Napoleonic Wars, the Great Reform Act, Catholic, Jewish, or female emancipation, or either world war. However there are three questions on the history of immigration to the UK (possibly in an attempt to promote the myth that "we are a nation of immigrants"?), as well as this one:

When was the first census carried out in the United Kingdom? A 1785 B 1801 C 1851 D 1912

Now, censuses may be important, but I hardly think that the date of the institution of the first one is a matter of vital importance. Knowing it might help you to win a pub quiz, but it won't give you any real understanding of British history. The same goes for the following question:

What year did women in the UK gain the right to divorce their husband? A 1810 B 1857 C 1901 D 1945

While British history is largely turned into a matter of immigration and quiz questions, British culture fares far worse. Insofar as it is covered at all, that coverage consists of questions like the following:

How might you stop young people playing tricks on you at Hallowe’en? A Call the police B Give them some money C Give them sweets or chocolate D Hide from them

Now, my first objection is that the options exclude my personal choice, "give 'em a clip round the ear". Beyond that, however, I would point out that Hallowe'en, at least in its present form, is not a British cultural event at all, but an American one, imported into this country in the 1980s. One might as well include questions about The Simpsons, or Hollywood.

But, more important still, is the fact that, while questions about Hallowe'en and Mother's Day are left in, British literature, art, music, and philosophy is entirely excluded. There is no Shakespeare, no Fielding, no Dickens, no Hogarth, Constable, Turner, or Millais, no Byron or Wordsworth, no Elgar, and no Locke, Hume, or Burke. And as for our national religion - the only question on that is one about the number of Catholics in the UK.

I have listed a number of areas which I believe that citizenship tests should cover. If the test were reorientated around these areas, would we see an improvement in the results achieved by our pubgoers? Possibly not. But we could at least be sure that those immigrants who did pass the test had passed because they had some real knowledge of our history and culture, rather than because they had memorised a set of unrelated and largely irrelevant facts.

Stealing our heritage

I see that everyone's favourite race baiter, Trevor Phillips, has told a fringe meeting at the Labour conference that British history is insufficiently "inclusive", on account of the fact that it is dominated by white people, and has said that it needs to be rewritten, to rectify this fault. Thus, whereas in the past it has always been thought that the Spanish Armada was defeated in part by Lord Howard of Effingham's fleet, and in part by the vicissitudes of the weather ("God blew, and they were scattered", etc), children will now learn that, to quote a noted historian (T. Phillips, Esq), "it was the Turks who saved us". Whether or not this is actually true is irrelevant as far as Phillips is concerned: all that matters for him is that non-whites (and, in this particular instance, Muslims) should be represented as having made a sizeable contribution to the development of British society, throughout the last thousand years or more. Perhaps he will also suggest that, as the 100 Great Black Britons website has laughably claimed, Edward III's wife, Queen Phillipa, was in fact black, and that, accordingly, her son, the famous "Black Prince", was a half-caste. Maybe we will now be told that Shakespeare was black. And perhaps that Queen Victoria was Chinese, Dickens Indian, and the Duke of Wellington an Australian Aboriginal.

The fact is, that, regardless of the specifics of what happened to the Spanish Armada, it is simply not true to claim that non-whites have made a substantial contribution to British history. Rather, their contribution has been completely negligible, because their numbers have, historically, been negligible. Our history is overwhelmingly dominated by white people, because we are a historically white country, and those non-whites who now live here are unlikely to have roots in this country stretching back any more than sixty years. This simple fact, of course, is not one which finds favour with the likes of Trevor Phillips. After all, it does tend to undermine the repeated assertion that Britain has always been a "nation of immigrants".

Trevor Phillips' demand that our history be rewritten is yet another example of the willingness of many on the liberal-left to abuse the education system in order to further their own ends. It does not matter to them whether what is taught as being British history is true or not. Rather than schools teaching our children what is true, they want our children to be taught what they think ought to be true. And since they think that it ought to be true that Britain was historically multiracial and multicultural, that is what they want other people to believe. I very much doubt that they will actually succeed. No matter what people like Phillips may claim, I think (and hope) that the majority of ordinary people are sufficiently intelligent and well-informed to realise that our society has historically been neither multiracial nor multicultural. But for Phillips and others in the race relations industry to claim that one of our greatest naval victories was in fact someone else's victory, or that our national heroes, or our greatest writer, were in fact black, constitutes nothing less than a racist assault upon the cultural heritage of the native white British.

Cross-posted from ATW, where David Vance has added his own comments regarding Trev's somewhat, ahem, dubious grasp of history.

Goodbye Britain!

References to the Queen could be taken out of British passports in a bid to make them more European, it has emerged.

The new documents, which could be in place as early as 2010, would bear reference to the EU constitution in order to remind UK citizens that they are part of Europe.

The first page of the British passport has historically featured the royal coat of arms with a message from the Queen beginning: "Her Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State".

The words go on to outline that the citizen has a right to travel freely and has the right to protection and assistance.

Under new changes, however, it has been suggested that the coat of arms are scrapped and replaced by the EU emblem of 12 stars with the message underneath reading: "Every citizen of the Union".

Well, at least it's honest. Some Tories may pretend that one can be "in Europe but not run by Europe", but the fact is that they are either liars or idiots. As long as one is in the EU, one is part of a proto-superstate, which is now well on the way to being a fully-fledged superstate. The laws of the EU take precedence over British law, and have done since the arch-traitor Ted Heath took us into the EU (or the EC, as it then was) back in 1973. Having the Queen on our passports won't change that; the only thing that will is EU withdrawal.

Nonetheless, while this proposed alteration to our passports does not of itself signify any increase in the power of the EU, it is a sign of an increased propaganda drive by the EU, and of increased efforts to suppress the national identities of individual EU states. One of the problems the EU faces at the moment is that no one, bar a handful of the most fanatical pro-EU elements, feels any loyalty whatsoever to the EU. Some members of the public may have been tricked into supporting the EU, but most of those do so, not because they wish to see the creation of a United States of Europe, but because they erroneously believe that EU membership is in Britain's best interests. Although inaccurate, this judgement does still indicate that the first loyalty is to Britain; not to the EU. All of this is somewhat problematic for the tiny minority - I doubt they even account for 1% of the total population, although their influence is vastly disproportionate to their numbers - who actually want to see Britain (and the other 26 EU nations) completely subsumed within a European superstate. After all, if their superstate is to work, then they'll need to inculcate loyalty to the superstate in at least some of its prospective citizens.

In order to do this, it is necessary to undermine and ultimately destroy the existing loyalty those citizens feel to their own countries. And one of the ways in which the EU and its supporters are seeking to do this is by stripping its constituent states of their very symbols of nationhood, and replacing them with symbols of the superstate. The proposed removal of our identifiably British passports, and their replacement with ones which, while filled with references to the glorious and benevolent EU, make absolutely no reference to Britain, is just one example of the EU's attempt to destroy this country's identity. As the Europhiles push ever harder for their long-dreamt-of superstate to come into being, we will see many more such attempts.

Proud to be British?

Pride in Britain has fallen sharply over a generation, researchers said yesterday.

The percentage of people declaring themselves "very proud" of the nation fell from 55 per cent in 1981 to 45 per cent now.

The shift is attributed to younger people being less likely to have the "strong attachment" of older generations, the study by the National Centre for Social Research found.

It said generational change had been more rapid in Wales and Scotland than in England, suggesting that young people may be more receptive to appeals from nationalist parties.

Yes, that will have played a part. I should imagine that the continuous attacks on British culture and history waged by the liberal-left had a part to play as well. In his recent report on community cohesion in schools, Sir Keith Ajegbo wrote:

"Many indigenous white pupils have negative perceptions of their own identity."

"White children in areas where the ethnic composition is mixed can often suffer labelling and discrimination.

"They can feel beleaguered and marginalised, finding their own identities under threat as much as minority ethnic children might not have theirs recognised."

Sir Keith quotes the example of one white pupil in her early teens who after hearing in a lesson that other members of her class originally came from the Congo, Portugal, Trinidad and Poland said she "came from nowhere".

Surely cases like this, where white British children increasingly grow up either entirely ignorant of the fact that they have a cultural heritage at all, or being taught that their heritage is evil without exception, cannot be unrelated to the fact that they also increasingly feel no identification with or pride in that cultural heritage, and the nation from which it grew.

St George's Day

And two poems for the occasion:

G.K. Chesterton, "The Englishman"

St George he was for England,

And before he killed the dragon

He drank a pint of English ale

Out of an English flagon.

For though he fast right readily

In hair-shirt or in mail,

It isn't safe to give him cakes

Unless you give him ale.

St George he was for England,

And right gallantly set free

The lady left for dragon's meat

And tied up to a tree;

But since he stood for England

And knew what England means,

Unless you give him bacon

You mustn't give him beans.

St George he is for England,

And shall wear the shield he wore

When we go out in armour

With battle-cross before.

But though he is jolly company

And very pleased to dine,

It isn't safe to give him nuts

Unless you give him wine.

A.E. Housman, "The Recruit"

Leave your home behind, lad,
And reach your friends your hand,
And go, and luck go with you
While Ludlow tower shall stand.

Oh, come you home of Sunday
When Ludlow streets are still
And Ludlow bells are calling
To farm and lane and mill,

Or come you home of Monday
When Ludlow market hums
And Ludlow chimes are playing
"The conquering hero comes,"

Come you home a hero,
Or come not home at all,
The lads you leave will mind you
Till Ludlow tower shall fall.

And you will list the bugle
That blows in lands of morn,
And make the foes of England
Be sorry you were born.

And you till trump of doomsday
On lands of morn may lie,
And make the hearts of comrades
Be heavy where you die.

Leave your home behind you,
Your friends by field and town
Oh, town and field will mind you
Till Ludlow tower is down.