Asserting Litle England

Rightwing rag The Telegraph has a call to arms for Little Englanders and small-minded bigots everywhere today.

In a leader that sets out their 10 step plan to make the UK safer, the very first step is:

1. Confidently assert British values

We must recognise that a root cause of home-grown terrorism is the pollution of British values by Britain herself. Our own culture has actively, if unconsciously, helped to foster a contempt for our country among our own young people.

The result is not merely a loss of Britain's collective memory and communal understanding - it is a class of alienated young men of foreign extraction who regard our civilisation as weak, decadent and despicable.

We must prove them wrong. The Government, schools, the BBC and other cultural outlets should launch a campaign to celebrate the virtues and values of Britishness, and to inculcate these values in the children who grow up, and the migrants who settle, in our country.

But what are these qualities of "Britishness"? The Telegraph doesn't specify.

Might they mean the disparate and complex inter-relation of Scots, Welsh, Irish and English as well as all the welcome immigrants who add their own richness to British culture? Might they mean the fierce Britishness of unemployed ex-miners, or of Scots who loathe the way their public figures are British in success and Scottish in defeat? Might they mean the Britishness that calls for society to make welfare provision for it's weak and underprivileged or the Britishness of the poll tax protesters who spoke out against the Telegraph's beloved Maggie?

Well no.

The Telegraph, though careful not to say it, speaks of the Britishness of a thin slice of middle-class little England. Of tea and scones, cricket where the players are as white as their clothes and a regret that the Empire ever gave freedom to the "fuzzy-wuzzies". They speak of the Britishness of the BNP, who are
circulating a leaflet which shows the blast-damaged number 30 bus, in which 30 people died in Tavistock Square on July 7. It tells potential members: "Don't get mad - get even".

Headlined "Islamic terror, Labour failure", it blames Muslim extremists for the atrocities and all three of the major parties, as well as the BBC, for their presence in the country. The BNP claims to have distributed half a million copies around the country, with every branch receiving 5,000 copies.

It tells members to embark on a recruitment drive, claiming that their "once all-white country" has been turned into an "overcrowded multi-cultural slum".

The leaflet's distribution comes as it emerges that the number of faith-hate crimes have risen fivefold in the fortnight since the London bombings. The Metropolitan police has recorded 800 race- and faith-hate crimes since the July 7 attacks.

As a Scotsman, the Telegraph's subtext offends me. It always has. The bigots of little England are the primary reason so many Scots wish independence from the UK - for too long their "establishment" has meant a class system that ensures they and they alone reach positions of power over the rest of us. Remove them, and the UK would be better for it.

Unfortunately, they still have a lot of power. Fortunately, only the bigots of faded Empire and ignorant American bigots like Marc at USS: Neverdock still think that little England is all there is to the United Kingdom and it's people. Their time is fading like their wistfully wished-for Empire.

(Marc would like Scots to be happy to sing a national anthem that has lines that thank God for the ability to hammer the Scots. I assume he never actually goes outdoors to ask a real Scots person for their opinion.)