damnedenglish

PROLOGUE

In the normal state of affairs, the English regard themselves as a nation of tolerant individuals. Charitable, welcoming to foreigners, who either arrive on these shores for commerce, as fugitives from oppression or visitors to experience for themselves the culture and way of life. Intolerance is not regarded as a trait of English character. Let us now admit that this is a contemporary fiction.

England, under the veneer, is an angry island, despite the still held belief in good manners, orderly queues, deference to authority, sporting fair play, and so on. The historic stability of the state has much to do with tolerance, patriotism, pride and a de facto class system where people knew their place in society, and built traditions around these principles. The benign notion of “a green and pleasant land”, has like the homespun hymn from which it originates, become a apocryphal footnote to past sentiments.

A Realpolitik is now the home truth, and the truth is England, and the English, have undergone a demonstrable shift in character, identity and outlook. Hatred and anger often prove to be only restrained emotions, becoming woefully apparent when gross injustice, “unfair play” are experienced in fact, or in the wider sense, in terms of the well-being and security of sections of society and the Realm itself. If justice is perceived to be done, then the populace may return to relative passivity and, as in the well used cliche, “go about their business”.

However, a seething resentment may remain, and when conditions are such that, the very core of social and cultural stability is under threat, from interior or exterior forces, then restraint may , as has been historically shown, no longer stay dormant. Fostering overt rhetoric, social unrest, vandalism and, in the extreme, reactionary violence. In the case of England, changes in daily life have been no less than dramatic, and comparable with the events in the industrial revolution of the18th century. The outcomes are are far from clear, yet there are events still in living memory which may explain the new challenges that await the nation.

The disintegration of The Empire, clearly inevitable after the events of two World Wars and the struggles for independence in the former colonies resulting in unforeseen dilemmas for the political establishment. Immigration from the former administered territories and “Internationalism” with the changing face of capitalism, it’s new power-brokers, and how these influences would have on the nation as a whole. In the main, these twin developments were to inflame tensions and in the course of a average lifetime change the face of England.

To begin with, the indigenous population did not, for whatever reasons, respond to this changing climate and remained largely complacent, or frankly unaware of the governmental policy decisions, which may have ended with the upheaval of all democratic processes and, as was widely rumoured, a coupe d’etat against Parliament. The initial events are well documented, so in summary, what the country witnessed was the arrival of black economic migrants from the West Indies and thereafter expelled people, predominantly “coloured” Asians, from the continent of Africa. This, arguably, gave rise to a new notion of “communities”, which meant them keeping to their own way of life, reluctant to fully integrate outside the narrow boundaries of their traditions, laws and customs. The wider implications of housing, welfare and employment were to ignite the initial flame of resentment that would last for nearly three decades and that dampened fire may still be smouldering today.

“In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time-lag of fifty years or a century intervening between the perception that something ought to be done and a serious attempt to do it.” - H.G. Wells.

INTERLUDE

John Tyndall was always a key propagandist and thoughtful campaigner for the rearguard nationalist camp, in the late 1950’s, throughout the cultural revolution of the 1960’s and into the crisis years of the 1970’s. A protege of A.K. Chesterton, the advocate of racial superiority, anti-semitism and fearless opponent of American expansionism, wealth and global power.Tyndall was to activate a new generation of right-wing thinkers, discarding his earlier stormtrooper image and maturing into a much respected spokesman for the various schisms within the nationalist front. In many ways he was the backroom politician who guided the movement through it’s many marginal successes and also predestined failures.

Not an proclaimed intellectual, nor a megaphone rabble-rouser , nor a agent provocateur for vested interests, Tyndall above all was a passionate patriot, a plain-speaking orator, qualities which were not fashionable in the changing face of England. In the aftermath of the humiliation of Suez, the creeping corruption in post-colonial Africa , the rebellions in the Indian sub-continent, the height of the “Cold War” with the Soviet Union, Trade Union militancy and increasing racial tension in the inner cities,the Irish “troubles”, Tyndall would use a measured, albeit extremist platform, which would in time elevate him into the chairmanship of the National Front (NF).

Despite the inflammatory policies, the political gamble was always to draw the feeble and moderate Conservative Party into the fold, and to discredit the established two-party system as weak and ineffectual. This would be achieved through the democratic ballot-box, by targeted propaganda and well organised “happenings” that would, he believed, eventually win over a disgruntled electorate. A firm believer in the Commonwealth and the rule of law, his views had a ready audience. The paramount challenge was to convince an increasingly affluent and middle-class consciousness, liberated from post-war austerity, experiencing sexual and financial freedoms. As with traditional right wing activism the evidence of symptoms of a nation’s spiritual sickness were quickly identified as functions of a wider degeneracy. Crime, the reforms in divorce, the abortion and homosexuality laws, the relaxation of censorship in the arts, and the arrogant assertiveness of youth cultural life-styles were all subject to specific attack. Of course, the position of the new technological instruments, especially television, were to play a pivotal role in any political game plans and propaganda. If anything, it was this medium that sounded the death knell of nationalism, as a political force, as the tool of television was becoming all powerful; the edited newsreel, the choreographed interview, the commercial imperatives, the oft repeated ”impartiality” of broadcast media, all drew ranks, to undermine, or mute, any dissident voices or as a counter arguement to revisionist rhetoric. The NF was effectively neutralised by the new power of television, the institutionalised liberal-leaning BBC in particular, which is a story yet to be written.

Looking back, the exodus of “aliens” from Eastern Europe, accelerated by pogroms and persecution, had been in place for over a century, specifically Jews fleeing social and economic repressions, and the general mistrust felt, that they had become too powerful and influential, establishing roots and branches in key areas of legislature, finance, retail and the arts and sciences.( Bankers, such as the Rothschild dynasty, were often accused as the dark hand of subversive machinations.) It is worth remembering that the Jewish presence in England is very much older. Even in the Middle Ages, before the term “anti-semitism” was invented, there was a militant antipathy towards their ways and means.

In more recent times the forced exile and subsequent arrival in England went largely unnoticed as the numbers were not substantial to create alarm, or at first, resentment. With America, England had become the sanctuaries of choice. But early in the 20th century questions were already being asked as to the loyalty of these immigrants to the nations that generously accepted their presence. By nature the Jewish diaspora was considered as “internationalist” and too “intellectual”; as an uprooted cosmopolitan people seeking a land to call their own, and using any means to fulfil the promise of their forefathers, whether through capitalism or communism. This suspicion was more audible in America , with the likes of Henry Ford, the motor-car pioneer, but also gathering adherents in England, with Lord Rothermere, press baron, voicing their opposition to the now expanding Zionist cause. The affair of the bogus publication “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” added to the intrigues and insecurities. The repercussions are well documented and do not necessarily play a part in the events taking place in England, although the question of Zionism and internationalism did feature in the policies formulated by John Tyndall and other nationalist reactionaries. The “Jewish Question” is never far away in the politics of the far right.

The underlying discontent was to propagate the politics of betrayal and a bitter struggle was about to begin both on the streets and in the debating chambers of power. Organisation was the main object, and in the 1930’s Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirt movement entered the political arena, an overt replication of the dynamic developments in Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. Again the historical details are extensively documented, and for the purpose of this condensed piece only offers a reference point for the more inquisitive reader.

EPILOGUE

Throughout the 1970’s the momentum gathered pace with encouraging results in key working class constituencies, but the overall outcomes were neutral, and the hard fought gains gradually diminished as the voters turned to the new populist entertainments and more personal preoccupations, away from political ideologies. England had become a melting-pot of multi-racial, multi-cultural uncertainties, not through choice but for convenience and compromise. Patriotism was thereby doomed and only periodically re-surfacing when national pride and endeavour was demonstrated in the sporting arena, or bizarrely when a “royal” got married. The recidivist notion that England still had a national character and true identity had long past, only the theatricality remains. Tyndall was an immutable and consummate politician, guiding the NF through their many successes, but in the end even his hold on power within the movement diminished and, after the receeding polling returns in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, cleverly orchestrated by the Labour Movement, the Churches, the Trade Unions, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and other mobilised opposition groups, his influence and that of the NF faded, being gradually replaced by a new umbrella organisation, The British National Party (BNP). But that is a continuing element of English politics, as yet unresolved. The burning question of loyalties still persists in certain quarters, further complicated by the Black and Asian “communities”. Political, religious, social as well as cultural agendas which many in the indigenous white, and “working class”, population consider as getting preferential treatment, in extreme cases perceived as looting the state both economically, through separatist lobby groups and associations. The demographic of England has irreversibly changed, albeit fear and loathing remain, and in the future it will need an acceptably radical and maybe unpopular political departure to maintain the balance of ethnicity within these shores.

The epilogue to John Tyndall is best left to the man himself, who in September 1975, perhaps aware that the game was up, wrote: “The day that our followers lose their ability to hate will be the day that they lose their power and their will to achieve anything worthwhile at all.”

John Tyndall died 19 July 2005.  History, it is said, is written by the victors. 

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