Britain is a strange place filled with strange but often lovely people. Its history and its geography have created its people, just as the history and geography of France or Germany or Poland has created the people of those nations.
In some ways we Britons are similar to other nations but also dissimilar. Like many other nations Britain, or at least one of the component parts of it, England, had a revolution although ours was back in the 17th century, which is much earlier than many other European nations. Back then we had a civil war and threw nigh on 600 years of monarchy into the dustbin and became a republic.
However, unlike other European nations, England brought back its monarchy, in part because Republican Government had brought instability and political division. The Republican Government of Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector had been a miserable experience for many English people since the country was run as a de facto Calvinist theocracy with little in the way of tolerance for Roman Catholics or even Anglicans. People wanted to have back a monarchy that they associated with stability and unity with a governmental structure that was familiar to them. People also wanted to do the things that made them happy but which had been forbidden by Cromwell’s government, such as celebrating Christmas.
The only other revolution that Britain has had is the Glorious Revolution of 1688 but that was not as radical a revolution as one that sets about deposing and then executing a Monarch, this was much more gentle in comparison. Parliament and the broader state effectively replaced the sitting Monarch by inviting William of Orange to become joint monarch of Britain with his wife Mary. The Monarchy was then chained by the 1689 Bill of Rights which limited the Monarch’s political power, which defined the succession and codified that the Monarch must be an Anglican Protestant, which gave Parliamentarians in both Houses almost limitless freedom of speech and which basically created our modern political set up. Those who say that Britain does not have any form of written constitution should look to the 1689 Bill of Rights in order to see the closest thing that Britain has to a Constitution.
Between then and now there have been wars and rumours of wars along with extended periods of peace, economic and imperial triumph and decline, innovation and sclerotic sloth, peace and disorder, tolerance and intolerance along with periods of laudable politicians and periods where our politicians have been less than laudable.
Britain’s history as a nation is long, England was first under one Monarch as a unified nation in the 9th century. Even the political structure that is Great Britain is old when compared to say, Germany with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland being formally and legally created in 1801 although to a large extent unification was de facto.
Such a long history with bits of greatness and not so great bits in it have created the British people in all their uniqueness. Every war, every new industry and the social change that comes with it, every political upheaval, every massacre by the State and every family history has created the British people.
What that history created was a people whose patriotism was not forced or compelled as it is in some countries, but just was what it was, which was a sense of place, of belonging and of a shared culture, history and family ties, this was what we were waving flags for. Maybe a long history of not being invaded and of being a set of islands has enhanced that sort of patriotism, a soil but not always blood, type of patriotism?
But what happens when the sort of patriotism that I remember from my childhood, with companies and other organisations unashamedly using British and home nation symbols, becomes anathema to those in authority? What happens when the symbols of nationhood are treated like cursed talismans by the political, administrative and media classes? What happens when the display of British and especially English national symbols is frowned upon by the Establishment, whilst the flags of other nations and ideological flags are promoted?
The answer is that such national self-hatred from the Establishment has created a very British form of protest which is the flying of the flags of the Union and of the component nations of the Union just about everywhere. This protest has spread to areas that I would not have expected and is also much more widespread than many might have expected. I’ve lost count of the places which I’ve seen on social media where British and Home Nations flags have been raised as part of this protest, including places that I’ve driven through recently in the West Midlands. The flags are everywhere and every one of them in my view represents a pissed off Briton. These Britons are pissed off about the way the country is being run, pissed off with what is coming to be called ‘the lanyard class’, pissed off with Britain’s almost completely open borders and pissed off that their safety and security and that of their families is being allegedly compromised by migrants.
As a mass the British people are remarkably slow to anger. They tolerate state systems and mechanisms that have in some cases have been utterly dysfunctional, such as the policing, justice and healthcare services for example. I cannot imagine for example that a post Cold War Pole would tolerate Polish health services that paid out more money in compensation for botched births than on newborn care or justice systems that gaol wrongthinkers whilst giving community sentences for child sex offenders. I certainly cannot imagine today’s Poles tolerating the Islamic-majority rape gangs, allegedly colluded with by offices from various police forces, that have scarred so many of Britain’s towns and cities.
But the British people, in all of the components of the nation are starting to get angry and they are expressing that anger by the flying of those national symbols that are hated by the modern day Establishment. In so many places are the fruits of what is called ‘Operation Raise The Colours’ being seen.
I’m mightily pleased to see that symbols of the nation are being raised, the flags of the Union and of the component nations should not be things of shame. Like all nations, Britain has done both bad and good, has both built and destroyed, but it is our home. Even though I have the right to go elsewhere, this is my land, even though not all of my family are allegedly of ‘oak tree’ ancestry, I know that being British, and aligned with its culture and with its people (all of its people both those of blood and those of fealty and contribution ) should not be something to be ashamed of. There is nothing inherently wrong about being proud of the people of your nation or your nation’s achievements. The flag of the nation does not automatically lead to a reanimation of Nazism, no matter what the middle class Left say.
It’s pleasing to see the flags flying high and they make a welcome change from the flags of quasi or pretend nations inhabited by those who want my family and I dead. However I need to address where I believe that this protest has come from.
I believe the protest has come, at least in part, from the realisation by those in places previously little touched by the problems associated with migration and top down multiculturalism, that the problems that they may have heard vague rumours about, such as the behaviour of migrants both legal and illegal in Britain’s major towns and cities, had come to their areas. Strange foreign looking men leering at or intimidating women and children was once for many Britons something confined to ‘other places’ that they could get away with not visiting or dealing with in any way shape or form. But now due to the decision by this Government and previous governments to house migrants of questionable quality in hotels and other accommodation across the nation, a lot of people have suddenly become aware that problems that they might have reasonably been able to avoid, or not think about or explain away, have turned up on their doorsteps. A problem only really becomes more real and tangible when it drops into a person or a community’s lap and now the hotels and the homes in multiple occupation where the illegal migrants have been housed, and the alleged crime that the migrants have brought, have fired people into action.
The flag protest has been stunningly successful so far and although there has been pushback from the police, the Left and our more volatile Islamic brethren, this campaign seems to have legs, lots of them. This is a grass roots up movement not a top down one and you can see that quite clearly from the geographical spread of the signs of the protest, the very public flags and the clear evidence of word of mouth publicity for this phenomenon.
The Left, especially the middle class left, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the trade unions that are no longer representative of the views and wishes of workers, the public sector ‘lanyard class’ and the ‘media-ocracy’, whining bitches that they are, are condemning this protest. They are condemning it because it runs against the Establishment’s narratives such as multiculturalism works, there is no border crisis, Islam is a religion of peace (not withstanding all those terrorist attacks, too many in Britain, of course) and that women can possess a penis of their very own. The Opposition, in which I include the aforementioned middle class left etc., along with the enraged Islamic contingent etc. are treating these incidents of flag erection as if they were landing craft led by Meth-head Adolf and his troops powering up the Solent. However they are nothing of the sort.
They are the signs that there’s now a critical mass of people who are pissed off. This has now gone beyond the ability of SWP front groups such as Stand Up To Racism, to counter-protest everything although they are having a bloody good go, as are the more volatile Muslims who are said to be strutting their aggressive stuff on the streets on the Isle of Dogs.
If nothing else the ‘Raise The Colours’ campaign has certainly brought out the character of the Opposition, if you’ve seen what I’ve seen on social media (and if you are interested in Britain’s ‘Interesting Times’ then you probably are aware of such content). We can see what the Opposition is and it’s really not at all pretty. It’s featherbedded public servants, some of whom are the teachers that we are forced to entrust our children to, it’s those who earn their living from the current unsatisfactory situation that Britons find ourselves in, it’s lefty students, Boomer liberals and our more hate filled Islamic guests, This Opposition also contains some rather nasty political extremist and Islamist elements and there have been several reports out there, which I cannot at this point verify, of flag raisers being attacked by those they believe are Leftists or Muslims. Local authorities are also taking down British flags but leaving ‘Palestinian’ and other foreign flags up because they fear for the safety of council staff if these flags were removed. Because of these reports about two tier council and police flag enforcement and the stories about Muslims and leftists attacking British flag raisers, it’s quite possible that what is currently a Cold War over flags could in some places grow much hotter.
The flag raising protests are in my view expressions of frustration about how Britons are governed, and at how unresponsive British governments are to the will of the people. Successive governments have certainly been unresponsive when it comes to the issue of migration. At many of the elections from the 70’s onwards, Britons voted for a lowering of immigration and Margaret Thatcher did, if I recall correctly, gain some votes from those who were disturbed by immigration levels even back then. The problem is although lower migration has been promised since 1979 by all the Westminster Parties, lower migration has not been delivered. The people have asked for lower migration and have been let down on every occasion. Even those who have given the appearance of being on the side of Britons on this matter, I’m looking at YOU Boris Johnson, have let the British people down on the issue of migration. The ignoring of the people’s wishes with regards to migration was bad enough in the 80’s and 90’s but the Establishment-created massive migration waves of the 21st century have been even worse. Whilst the just prior to and post 1997 migration waves were high, many of those who came here were readily or reasonably readily assimilable. The Bosnians who came here, especially those who I met, seemed to be grateful for survival and many of them have assimilated into British society. But other groups have not and have been both a net burden and a source of societal disquiet. A Bosniak name might raise curiosity from a Briton but it might not elicit hatred or disgust. Same with the Poles and many other people from former Iron Curtain countries, yeah they’ve had their wrong’uns, every group has had their wrong’uns who hasn’t, but they mostly worked hard, they integrated as much as they could and they contributed to our society. A reasonable person should not have any problem with that scenario or those decent people but it’s easy to understand why British people are pissed off with migrants and those migrant heritage types who see Britain and Britons as prey rather than fellow citizens of a cohesive nation.
Whilst some of the flag raisers are clearly at least partially motivated by a dislike of Islam, something that many may find somewhat understandable bearing in mind the disproportional amount of crime, terrorism and social disorder that Muslims appear to be involved in, the flag protests are not overtly racial in nature. As someone who once marched against the real far right in the form of the National Front back in the day, flag raising protests that have involved White, Black and Brown Britons are clearly not primarily driven by racial animus on the part of the flag raisers.
What is clear from this protest however, is that it is clearly class based. It is a protest primarily of Britain’s working classes against the middle and upper classes that have been behind many of the problems that Britons face today. After all it’s not the working classes of Britain that propped open the nation’s doors, or instituted justice and welfare systems that are increasingly being seen by indigenous Britons as two tier or who put virtue signalling and ‘international law’ over ‘refugees’ ahead of the safety, security and prosperity of Britons.
Many of the problems that we currently suffer from with regards to immigration and to other unrelated issues such as energy affordability were not caused by Britain’s working class people, they were caused or greatly exacerbated by Britain’s left/liberal middle and upper classes. It is those left/liberal Establishment classes who have pontificated about ‘refugees welcome’, how ‘diversity is a strength’ from posh, cohesive and safe areas whilst the ordinary working class Britons have to live with the dire consequences for the virtue signalling and bad ideas of these Establishment types. Those from the Establishment who are criticising the flag protests will never have to worry about their daughters being raped or exploited by rape gangs, as do parents in places like Rochdale, nor will they have to experience their long standing (and sometimes racially mixed) communities being utterly destroyed by migration, as has happened in many parts of East London. Ordinary working class Britons have paid the price and continue to pay the price of the luxury beliefs of Britain’s Establishment and of the middle and upper class liberal/left.
A nation can be genuinely enhanced and enriched by a proportionally small number of skilled or contributory migrants. I can easily point, for example, to migrant relatives of my wife who did stuff for the UK that quite rightly earned them honours, praise and gratitude from Britain and from Britons and many of us shop at a particular supermarket started by a man who started out their life in Britain with very little. The relatively small number of contributory and migrants loyal to Britain and who saw Britain as a place of intellectual, social, religious and economic freedom have been little in the way of a problem. The hordes of other migrants, many of who are never going to be net contributors, who occupy public housing that could have gone to Britons, who cost us our money and our security and who come from cultures that are radically different and indeed lesser in civilizational stature to our own, are however a big problem for many Britons. Such migrants are not bringing in new and positive ideas to Britain or hard work or new businesses, instead they are bringing rape, terrorism, crime and the intimidation of women and children. Nobody should be expected to put up with that without peaceable complaints.
Working class Britons have been stressed almost beyond endurance by the migration and ‘community cohesion’ policies of the Establishment and the middle class liberal/left. Their children have been the targets of violence and sexual exploitation by those whom our Establishment has imported and pandered to. Complaints about the behaviour of certain imported communities have fallen on deaf ears, when such complaints were brought to the attention of organisations such as the police and government, both local and national. Well founded complaints about the behaviour of alien communities have been ignored and the crimes of these alien communities covered up or even allegedly colluded with by police and local government and its agencies.
It’s a sign as to how morally corrupted our Establishment has become that flying the national flag or the flags of Britain’s component nations is seen by that Establishment as something contemptuous. It is in large part because the increasingly hated Establishment thinks this way that the flag raising protests have spread so rapidly and so geographically wide.
To conclude: As I said earlier in this piece Britain’s history, warts and all, its wars and national upheavals along with its geography has created the British people. Those people, many of whom had been shat on from a great height by Britain’s Establishment over the last three decades have now decided to speak up and they are doing so by way of the raising of national and Home Nations’ flags. It is as I said earlier a very British form of protest and one aimed at those who rule over us and who have made the lives of many Britons an absolute misery. The flags are being used as protest weapons because the votes of Britons have become essentially useless. No matter who we have voted for we’ve got similar high levels of migration and the import of people who really should not be in the UK because they are problematic. Where this protest will go or how it will end up or what will lead from it is too early to tell, but it’s clear that many Britons have had enough of being silent and are speaking up. At present we have a situation where we have people mostly from the working classes putting up UK flags and being bitched about by the middle class liberal/left. Attitudes are changing, the ‘refugees welcome’ mindset is being shown to be very much a minority pursuit and people are deciding that they’ve had enough of a society that works for ‘them’ as in the foreigner and the Establishment and not for ‘us’ as in the British people. I don’t see the flag raising protests as the be all and end all of protests by increasingly unhappy Britons but merely the first stage in such protests. What will be the next stage who knows? I hope and pray that the desperate change that Britain and Britons need will come about peacefully but from what I can see the Opposition may play its part in creating a decidedly non-peaceful outcome. Someone, I forget who, once said that ‘to those who are privileged being suddenly subjected to equality looks to them like oppression’. The Left, the Establishment ‘open borders’ fans, the ‘cocks in frocks’ promoters and those minority groups that have been pandered to by the State, see the reaction to their unwarranted privilege and are going to kick back. Whether these previously privileged groups hit back at the British patriots who are protesting with the national flags via the political system or via some other means only the future will give us the answer.