I have been struggling for a reasonable historical analogy to illustrate where the western democracies are going today. As we have clearly entered a new dark age I do not intend to hypothesise when exactly it happened, indeed the British Dark Age took several decades to manifest itself post Romano Britain. To save me wrestling with Goths, Visigoths, Huns, Franks & the whole potpourri of mainland Europe’s post Roman Empire tribulations I shall stick to British history so those with a traditional education can follow easily enough without brain strain.
Let us just look back on our history after Emperor Honorius informed Romano Brits they were on their own in 410 AD. Roman Empire colonies after some punishing thrashings were turned into quite civilised places. Who can forget the marvellous John Cleese sketch ‘What did the Romans ever do for us?’ When they left the Brits had to deal with Saxons, Danes & Vikings all intent on rape & pillage, to such an extent I am surprised given the penchant in modern society to bestow guilt on nations hundreds of years after perceived ancestral injustices we do not claim massive compensation from Scandinavian countries. They are politically woke enough to cough up.
But when the Romans left Britain, as when the British left Africa the civilising power abandoned lands to slip back into the mire of violence, corruption & poverty. In short a new dark age. Britain in the early middle ages was a sort of geo political curate’s egg. Good in parts. It is generally accepted after trials & tribulations England as we know it today was becoming recognisable. It didn’t last very long before the Normans turned up. As ever with a new regime murder & mayhem followed but Norman England prospered thanks to the Norman habit of settling & marrying into the local aristocracy.
The next & arguably first English civil war gave England a terrible decade as King Stephen squabbled with the rightful heir Mathilda. At no time since has England been laid waste to the extent it was then. The Wars of the Roses followed as every schoolboy of my generation learned ending in settlement with Henry Tudor marrying Elizabeth of York, uniting the two houses.
Fast forward then to the third English civil war which came in two parts. This is perhaps where some modern day social & political similarities become apparent. The tussle between a monarch committed to divine right clashed with a parliament desirous of a form of democracy. Interestingly the Commonwealth under Cromwell morphed into the sort of extraordinary puritan dictatorship we see manifesting itself today. The bible was the base for the tyranny of the Commonwealth or rather some citizens’ interpretation of it. The abolition of Christmas, banning of dancing & hymns, ducking stools, witch burning the whole nine yards. Sounding familiar? Based on the stupidity of zealots. Thirteen years on the people of England rebelled, the English are in the main a pleasure loving people who often end up with a puritan leadership when they take their eye off the ball. The Restoration brought back a love of life to England , never far from the surface in English life. Read Pepys, Evelyn, Swift, Dr. Johnson , you can feel the joie de vivre bursting out of the text.
Paraphrasing Pepys ‘Rose early, let the cat in, ate a leg of mutton, drank a pint of porter went to the Admiralty office until three of the clock, spent the early evening in an ale house, drank a pint of good brandy, got home swallowed a bucket of oysters, put the cat out, the wife not being at home put the maid to tup & went to bed’. Epic stuff.
Hundreds of years of political, economic & legal advancement based on Saxon Common Law, Magna Carta, the 1688/9 Bill of Rights & Toleration Act & the establishment of over four millennia of evolving governance under a constitutional parliamentary monarchy Britain has been illegally abandoned in just a few decades. A new regime is enforced by a politicised police force based on institutional bigotry, ignorance of the law & its original remit. Protection by the compliant press & public sector broadcasting has been abandoned. Even the new social media outlets have now been absorbed by the establishment. New thought crimes have been introduced completely contrary to the principle of English Law. The campaign for free speech is considered ‘fringe’. Where Speakers Corner was once world renowned as a beacon of free expression venerated by tourists, police now lurk with powers of arrest if you stray from the interpretation of the new bible, the bible of political correctness, ironically you are exempt if of a minority ethnic group or promote establishment political dogma.
The intimidation the public face now is not an insane interpretation of the bible, but the manic adoption of perverted science. Of which both Churchill & Eisenhower warned. The establishment is in the knowledge generations of their State education have left a nation where very few have any grasp of economics, science, mathematics or traditional national history.
The two prime gargantuan examples of this are climate change & Coronavirus. In days of yore the medieval king would take your gold or land for his personal benefit & enjoyed the power so to do. He was an honest thief. His modern equivalent takes your property by threat of force (tax) but with faux science pretends it is for your own good. We must save your life whether you want it saved or not. Some might feel locking you up is a rather extreme way of protecting your life. We are warned the planet will boil if you don’t do what you are told, by no lesser personage than the Prince of Wales, he hankers for the good old days of divine right one presumes. But there is no scientific debate, it is suppressed. At a private meeting nine years ago with his Royal Highness I & my colleagues were told we could not challenge him, I had to make do with laughing out loud when he gave the world six months to live. Dissent is verboten, as Dr. David Bellamy & Johnny Ball of the BBC found out when they challenged the increasingly ludicrous hypothesis that man made CO2 will kill the planet. They were replaced not by scientists but by eco activists. This nonsense is now twenty years old led by celebrities & royals desperate for a more meaningful role in their empty lives, sponsored by a few dodgy bankers on the make.
The constitutional & legal protection , the birthright of the free born Englishman has vaporised. The hard won role of a free press has all but disappeared. The law, once the shield of the citizen is now an iron bar with which to berate him. I would make Terrance Rattigan’s play The Winslow Boy compulsory viewing in every classroom for the benefit of staff & children alike, the example of what the law should be.
Let me just remind you in the last few months we have seen old people banned from seeing their loved ones, police assaulting peaceful protesters, ignoring violent ones, a nurse arrested for trying to take her ninety year mother home, police powers to detain citizens going about their lawful business, closure of pubs, restaurants & theatres plus too many other infringements on our liberties to record here. For a fake pandemic which has a 99%+ recovery rate in the healthy.
We are promised more of the same to save the planet from man made apocalyptic warming. Without any serious scientific evidence at all, a twenty year hypothesis still yet to be proven. Such restrictions as we now see are worse than the post civil war Commonwealth. World War II Britain was Libertarian by comparison.
But as in days of old, England will come out of the new dark age, as it has many times before, a new restoration will come when we relearn our history, moreover revere it as one of the most glorious of any nation. But above all we must understand we are already in a dark age, of our own making.
© Godfrey Bloom 2020 – http://godfreybloom.uk/blogs/
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file