The past six or seven months have seen interesting traits
appear ever clearer out of the British. After all, no-one can deny that 2012
was a bumper year for celebrations what with the Diamond Jubilee and the
Olympics, and suddenly, British flags were flown across every street, balcony
and shop-front. At the same time, however, we have experienced a cultural
revolution, and I feel that the idea that the United Kingdom is a progressive
nation, continuing to open its arms to the former fringes of society and
willing to accept new trends, is disintegrating, and quickly. Young people
smoke and drink less, whilst in fact consuming fewer drugs, whilst the tabloids
maintain that the ‘news’ is that it is in fact the opposite, and the notion of
Britishness, once seen unilaterally as unimportant is being flown around in a
frenzy. The following events, talking-points and commonly spouted opinions
provide the evidence to support this statement: this country can be compared more and more to the nineteenth century, and
that this is bad.
Firstly, the War in Afghanistan, or the Fourth Anglo-Afghan
War. I think that, eleven years after the first soldiers arrived in
Afghanistan, most of us agree that the war will not be won – In just over
one-hundred years, the Afghans beat the British at the height of Empire, the
Soviets, and now they can add to the trophy cabinet of military victories that
they’ve beaten NATO forces. Personally, I am now trying very hard to see how
this war is not the classic ‘civilisation’ project, to try and impose upon
people, who are at the opposite end of the Westerners on the civilisation spectrum,
concepts and values that are simply alien. This mission is comparable to those
similar civilisation missions carried out by the Empire across the globe, in
Africa, Canada and Australia. The misery that was endured in the reform schools
of the indigenous populations, and in the lingering aftershock of continued
isolation and deprivation, lives on. And like the people back home were unaware
of the hurt caused, even today, with increased means of communication, we are
blissfully ignorant of those same miseries today, whereby we hear rather little
about soldiers who let loose on innocent men than of a minor attack on an army
camp, and about the skewing of the figures by major powers who say that men ‘of
fighting age’ are considered a fair target.
All the while, we are at home, writing the abridged versions
of what happened through our adulation of soldiers and through the pride we had
for the past, as overseers of the world – for yesterday we were ‘civilisers’ over
the ‘savages’; today, we are the ‘freedom fighters’ over the ‘terrorists’,
holding the moral high ground.
Speaking of moral high ground, I segue into my next point
about our attitudes to the sexual attraction, and sexuality of, our youth. Here
are two stories: before the Criminal Law Amendment 1885, the age of consent was
12. However, a newspaper published stories, largely fabricated to sell
newspapers, about the pimping of teenage girls, and thus, there was a campaign,
backed by special-interest groups, to change the age of consent to 16 and
mobilised a new newspaper-reading class to back them in their crusade for
innocence. The law was passed. Compare
to today: ‘paedophiles’ are named and shamed, where fabricated stories are
published and broadcast, and where Twitter-users, also relatively new, happily
retweet slanderous garbage, all without second thought or rationality, all in the
name of retaining innocence.
And what is more, we affect the lives of thousands of
people, be it sexually active adolescents who were placed in this grey area of
the law, or the innocent men wrongly accused of being sexually predators by the
press in the name and shame incidents. We also force this issue into this hushed-up
topic, and any sensible debate is muddied by those who confuse paedophilia or
pederasty, that is the sexual attraction towards children or adolescents, with
child sex abuse i.e. sex abuse inflicted upon someone under the age of consent,
and all reason and judgement, which may provide a key into deeply
understanding, is abandoned. Indeed, that law of 1885 also criminalised any
sexual acts between two men, and in the 1950s especially, the nation was swept
into equally stupid moral panic after the War, as people in high positions were
outed by the press, and columns were written about such ‘debased’ and ‘unnatural’
things. Indeed, I would place a wager and say that if you were to take an
article from a 1950s newspaper condemning homosexuality, take every reference
to homosexuality, and replace with an equal reference to one related to
paedophilia, you would have something comparable to what is published today.
And the issue and uproar of paedophilia is not alone – a
more hostile attitude to Europe, our (former) rivals and enemies, is taking
inspiration from one-hundred years ago. This compulsion of waging war against
Europe, and our fear of Europe, may well be comparable to the heyday of Empire,
when we feared of losing our edge and competition to our European counterparts
in terms of colonies, wealth, and thus, power. Today, the European Union has
taken over in the role of ‘Greatest Threat’ from France, Germany, and the USSR,
as people simply see ‘Europe’ as a threat to the United Kingdom, rather than,
in any way, a great beneficiary in helping to improve people’s lives in
preserving civil liberties, and allowing the British to live and work on the
Continent however long and in any legal way they please. The newspapers pressed
for war on the military fields, and now they press for war at the European
Council through defiance and hindrance. And, like those who wore workmen’s caps
and bowler hats, these people who today wear Marks and Spencer suits and own
Ford Focuses follow the stupid rhetoric of wanting immediate and bold action, at the expense of proper decision-making.
The adulation of the armed forces, the mob justice on
morale, and the ridiculous perceptions on Europe are all part of this enduring
regression that is spreading across all classes and cultures, into what
resembles a cultural fascism which leaves no room for questions or reasoned
debate. It is, bit by bit, destroying the country from the inside, and
systematically lays waste to any claim that this country is one that is
pragmatic in its policy, and we are becoming the sheep being led to watch, and participate in, the slaughter of reason. If
we are making the counterculture of the 1960s look like a counterculture,
rather than mainstream culture, something has gone deeply wrong, and as a
result, something needs to change this so that this does not become a zeitgeist, comparable to that of Victorian prudishness or 1950s conformity.
Indeed, I have come to a conclusion: we need at least two of
these things: the Western forces in Afghanistan to be held in a stalemate, leading to quick withdrawal, another economic depression caused partly by isolation from Europe -
Or, what I will explain next time, we need another
Roy Jenkins.
