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St George's Day

To be born English is to have won first prize in the lottery of life.

To be English is to be part of the world's richest culture. From this sceptred isle sprang talents as diverse as Orwell and Chaplin, Kipling and Shakespeare, Nelson and Joe Strummer.

In every field, in every era, the evidence of English greatness is there for all to see, from the enduring genius of Elgar to the magic of Michael Owen's goal against the Argies. As Ian Dury once sang: "There are jewels in the crown of England's glory, too numerous to mention, but a few."

OK, not many of us know more than the first two lines of There'll Always Be An England, but we do know that our country gave the world football, cricket, rugby, tennis, the Beatles and Dickens.

As a people we are not given to chest beating. Reserve and restraint are as much English qualities as inventiveness and enterprise. But we do resent the way Englishness is sneered at by the chattering classes. For them, the cross of St George is tainted by memories of empire (even though the Royal Navy smashed the slave trade). It has been like this for decades. More than 50 years ago, George Orwell wrote that "England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their nationality."

These sniggering fools don't even know the roots of their own radicalism. For every Francis Drake in English history there was a Wat Tyler. For every Wellington there was a Captain Swing. Military achievement understandably shaped our self image. The stout Yeomen of England have been beating off invaders for centuries.
We saw off Bonaparte and smashed the Spanish Armada. But England gave the world parliamentary democracy and the trade unions too.

We are strong-willed people, rightly proud of our traditions of free speech and tolerance. Our defining national characteristic is "constructive bloodymindedness" according to Keith Waterhouse, one of the greatest living Englishmen. Illustrated by the phrase "thus far and no further", it is why most of us refuse to take Europe seriously. European? Never. I was born English and I will die English, (unless South London achieves independence).

A soggy croissant will never replace egg, bacon and buttered toast. Whether your England is summed up by a bowler hat or a pit helmet, punk rock or Morris dancers, there are few national tapestries as rich as our beloved Albion's.

My England is bubble and squeak and foaming pints of Boddingtons. It is Les Dawson and Barbara Windsor, Max Miller and Page Three. My England is pie and mash and Aston Martins, Derby day and Arfur Daley, Mods and Suedeheads, Lennie McLean and Carry On films. My England stretches from Dennis Skinner to Roger Scruton, from Peggy Mount to Beki Bondage from Constable to the Bryant & May matchgirls' strike. It's Blackpool beach, Charlie Drake, Charlton Athletic FC, roast beef, imperial measurements and vindaloo. It's defiance. Whether it be King Alfred standing up to the Vikings, Colonel H at Goose Green, or the Metric Martyrs giving the finger to Brussels. No-one likes us! We don't care!

And of course it is a national disgrace that TV gives St George a blank.

But what do they know? How often do they get anything right?

If you are English turn off the TV on April 23rd and get down the pub, preferrably in a fine Longshanks shirt. As Chesterton wrote: "St George he was for England and before he slew the dragon, he drank a pint of English ale out of an English flagon."

Enjoy yourself this St. George's Day. And remember, there will always be an England.

April 23rd 2006 saw the first Festival of England. The St George's Day gig will be a rock 'n variety night at the Circus Tavern in Purfleet, Essex. The event featured headliner Brian Conley, impressionist Mike Osman, the Cockney Rejects, comic Mickey Pugh, Neville Staples & his band, Right Said Fred, Secret Affair, Max Splodge, Rick Wakeman, the OddBalls, Dexter Hilary O'Neil and Mark Perry. Music from DJ Pasha and the Artful Dodger The night was supported by Barbara Windsor, and attended by John Bardon and Sue Upton, one of Benny's best known Hill's Angels. All proceeds to the Benny Hill Statue Fund.

* Selected English reading: The Lion & The Unicorn - George Orwell; The Last Days Of Britain - Lindsay Jenkins; The Complete Verse - Rudyard Kipling; The English - Christopher Hibbert; The Making Of The English Working Class - E.P. Thompson; Nelson - Christopher Hibbert; The Tolpuddle Martyrs - Joyce Marlow; The English: A Portrait of a People - Jeremy Paxman; Set In A Silver Sea - Arthur Bryant; The Complete Poetical Works - P. B. Shelley. Tyranny Of The Law - John McLean. Le Morte D'Arthur - Sir Thomas Malory. England Away - John King.

MERRY Christmas! Are we still allowed to say that? Christmas is on the hit-list for the hard-line thought police of political correctness. Hard-Left councilors in Stoke want to replace it with Winterfest. Fruitcakes in Birmingham, where Santa Claus has been evicted from the Bull-ring Shopping Centre this year, prefer the term Winterval. While Cornwall’s Eden Project have banned Christmas and are celebrating the ‘Time of Gifts’. Ho-ho-hopeless. Now there may well be a reasonable socialist case to be made against Santa: he exploits those elves and over-works his reindeers something shocking. But the real motives are less amusing and often disguised. The library at High Wycombe, Bucks, which last year banned posters for Yuletide celebrations on the grounds that it would be wrong to single out Christian festivals for special treatment, was found to have hosted a party to celebrate Eid just days before. (That’s a Muslim knees-up to mark the breaking of the fast of Ramadan.) The argument that Christmas offends other religions is spurious cobblers. I’ve yet to meet a Sikh, Jew, Hindu or liberal Muslim who objects to English people enjoying English customs in England.

The real battlefield is a political one. The middle-class Marxist Left objects to Christmas because it is a Christian tradition; and the one thing they detest more than Christianity is tradition itself. Both are incompatible with the new faith of multiculturalism. This well-meaning but wrong-headed creed is built on double think. Its supporters are intellectually schizophrenic; fervently opposed to Western values, but gung-ho in favour of minority faiths and loyalties. So: our religion bad, any recently imported religion good; our history bad, any other history good (except of course the USA’s). The same kind of logic explains why BBC TV idents include colourful dancing Asians, Africans and Latinos but not a single Pearly King or Yorkshire colliery band. Why my daughter, when she was three years old, came home from nursery school parroting Vietnamese phrases. And why the dedicated agitators of the Socialist Workers Party are happy to link arms with the extremely illiberal Muslim Association of Britain. (Incredibly some on the Left believe that al-Qaeda’s medieval ‘holy war against infidels’ is progressive because their enemy is Western civilization and the West is automatically the oppressor.)

This cultural self-loathing is growing like a cancerous tumor. It isn’t merely a case of liberal politeness gone potty or the guilt-driven need to “apologize” for the imagined sins of empire. We are facing a movement set on undermining everything English people hold dear. Marxists, having failed to win power by the ballot box, have been successfully subverting the institutions for decades. In schools and universities, English history is ignored or derided, while Western achievements are written off as the work of the dreaded ‘dead white males’ (many of them English). “Who controls the past controls the future,” wrote Orwell in 1984. “Who controls the present controls the past.” We could of course roll over and agree to see our traditions as reactionary and out-dated; turn our back on all Anglo-Saxon, Christian-based customs and hand over our redundant turkey-basters to the nearest lesbian artificial insemination collective. Or we can fight back at every level – cultural, political and ideological.

+ Celebrate Christmas, Easter, Bon Fire Night and the rest with renewed gusto.

+ Organise street parties and local events to mark the 200th anniversary of Nelson’s victory at the Battle of Trafalgar next October.

+ Campaign for St George’s Day to be officially recognised as an English Bank Holiday.

+ Read up on English history and encourage others to do the same – there is far more to be proud of than ashamed.

+ And fight for a new English parliament that genuinely reflects the wishes and rights of English voters.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn once observed: “To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots.” The only way to resist is to become a movement ourselves. (Printed in The English Voice, November 2004)

>> Read more on Campaign to Celebrate Our English Heritage on St. Georges Day