Life on Airstrip One

Democracy and civil liberty are constructs built on one essential foundation – a society that is culturally homogenous. That is to say, there has to be a set of core civic values, things that we can share in our individuality, things that define who we are as a people and as a nation. A respect for the rights and privacy of the citizen come high here.

Alas, such respect is being challenged by the very people we elect to uphold it, demonstrated by the recent proposal to monitor the emails and phone calls of all private citizens, something I touched on in Big Brother might just watch you. We have a government of appeasers, an attitude of mind born of fear - the fear of the minority; fear of what they might think; fear of what they might do. We have a government that would make criminals of us all rather than name the criminals.

The sad truth is our social fabric has all but been destroyed by the lie of multiculturalism, a lie sold by successive administrations. Multiculturalism, of course, is the corollary of mass immigration. The Tiber may not have foamed – yet – with much blood, but Enoch Powell was right when he said that we must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to have permitted an influx of migrants on an unprecedented scale, a movement of peoples not seen since the last days of the Roman Empire.

My thoughts here have been spurred by a recent article in the Telegraph by Ed West (The case for liberalism in one country). In this he makes reference to John Stuart Mill’s Representative Government, a classic of nineteenth century liberalism. I read this some years ago, though I have forgotten most of its content. But there is one key passage that is now fixed forever in my mind;

Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling…each fears more injury to itself from other nationalities, than from the common arbiter, the State. Their mutual antipathies are generally much stronger than their jealousy of government.

Just imagine the likes of Nick Clegg or any of the sad ghosts of contemporary liberalism saying that! It’s something Powell might have made use of, though, alongside Virgil.

Diversity has become the shibboleth that has united the whole political class ever since the time Powell was sacked from the Tory shadow cabinet for showing more honesty than is wise in politics. Thereafter a numbing silence settled on the whole question of mass immigration, a consensus that was no consensus.

I wrote above that we have a government of appeasers, fearful of the minority. People were rightly shocked by the recent mass surveillance proposals but, as West emphasises, what was absent from the debate was the extent to which the snooper state is the direct consequence of mass immigration. The sad truth is that, with the rise of Islamic radicalism, the snooping is never going to go away.

Although the political class in general is responsible for the damage done to this country, the government of Tony Blair carries a particularly heavy burden of blame. I think it will take decades to assess the true legacy of the whole cancerous New Labour project, more treasonable than is possible to conceive, short of a Quisling occupation.

Unrestricted immigration went hand in hand with the war on terror and the appeasement of religious minorities. Il-conceived wars abroad, supposedly designed to fight terror, brought terror to our doorstep. We are far more at risk now from jihadists in London then we ever were in Kabul or Baghdad. The anti-terror legislation introduced by the last government did more damage to our national freedoms than the Taliban or al-Qaeda ever could. All this and the Racial and Religious Hatred Act, a direct challenge to freedom of speech, legislation that has seen people prosecuted for expressing a point of view.

West makes one core observation;

The British end of the war on terror, and the appalling loss of British lives in Afghanistan, is a product of mass immigration, but such is the way that the sacred cow of diversity must be protected that people would rather accept any course than one that confronted this fact.

When wealthy, globe-trotting liberals espouse the cause of universalism they often describe it in terms of air travel and airports, a world of vibrant, diverse, cross-cultural pollination. Which is great, for the few wealthy enough to use business class. For the rest of us society has become exactly like an airport – endless security checks, CCTV, government snooping, armed police and all-powerful officials who will arrest you for an inappropriate remark. For our own safety, of course.

Yes, life in an airport, that just about sums up the truth of modern England. Perhaps that ancient name should go. Orwell was right; this really is Airstrip One.