Who are we British? Part 1 of 3

Who are we British? Part 1 of 3

WHO ARE WE BRITISH, WHAT FORCE FASHIONED SUCH A SPECIAL AND CHOSEN PEOPLE

:Part 1: Jim Dowson B.Th, Belfast 24/3/2012

Recently I read an article attacking Britain First in general and me in particular. I am sure you can imagine that I am no stranger to criticism, most of which is baseless or from the minds of the seriously disturbed.

However, this latest criticism was different: it was genuine in intent and from someone who was seriously concerned about my personal viewpoints and the “damage” my mindset may do to “his” vision of “nationalism”.

This got me thinking about the whole nationalist “genre”, its monumental failure over the years to engage with the British public in any real or meaningful way and its failure to attract anything more than a miniscule membership base.

We should remember that several ‘pro-life’ groups in this country have paid up memberships of over 40,000, while the BNP at their height never managed to attract more than 14,000 members.

I quote these figures to emphasize the reality that eludes so many nationalists that we are a fringe of a fringe of a rump on the edges of the margins of political or cultural life in this country. Yet many still talk as if nationalism is on the brink of a major breakthrough if only we could rid ourselves of Nick Griffin and a few other cranks. This sentiment is madness.

There are individual church congregations with larger memberships than the BNP. One single church in London has over 20,000 members, with several thousand in attendance every Sunday.

In Belfast, Paul Golding and I attended a church which every week has around 3,000 ‘bums on seats’. Again, I quote these figures to give some perspective to the nationalist dilemma and to introduce some realism to the delusional position of so many good patriots and nationalist stalwarts.

Now I want to return to the criticisms of myself. The basis of my critics prose was the simple proposition that I was clinically insane, mad and un-hinged (a position many would concur with). What was the basis of the diagnosis? My religion and faith. Yes, the critic was convinced of my mental instability because I, like another five million Britons, still attend church once a week (although only 900,000 attend the C of E), pray and read the Bible.

My critic was further appalled by my total and unshakable opposition to slaughtering our next British generation in the womb - yes I am implacably anti-abortion. He was also repelled by my opposition to ‘gay marriage’, homosexual adoption and a few other issues that a generation ago would have been opposed by almost all of our people.

I wonder if my critical friend knows that even if you add together the combined attendance at every football ground in the four divisions in England and those in Scotland, Ulster and Wales, football fans on a Saturday are still outnumbered 5 to 1 by Christians attending church the following day.

In this country, especially in nationalist circles many have the perception that football is so huge that it may provide a great recruiting platform for nationalist groups and that is why the NF, BNP and EDL put so much time into leafleting and selling papers outside football stadiums.

However, the false perception that football is the largest social event where OUR people gather and that the Christian church is tiny, irrelevant and almost defunct has steered the entire movement down a blind alley and resulted in the self imposed ghettoizing of Our Cause and has robbed us of several generations of decent, law abiding, clean living, capable people who would have been very useful to the furthermost of our agenda.

How many times have nationalists targeted Christians as we target football fans? I hear the reader ask, “If the Christians are so numerous and patriotic, where are they then?” A good question and one I can answer from my own personal experience.

When I was 16 I was deeply involved in the loyalist struggle in Ulster. I also flirted with the NF, even spending time at the HQ in Pawsons Rd, after being ejected from college for putting up anti-IRA NF stickers all over the campus (it was a fair cop). However, even as an ‘ultra-patriot’, I found my experience in London with the NF deeply unpleasant and alien to me.

Back then I was an infrequent church goer and had very little active faith if any, but I found that within nationalism then, as now, there was a virulent anti-Christian undertone and many ‘patriots’ were obsessed by a foreign notion of nationalism, i.e. one derived from Europe and Germany in particular (these “British” patriots conveniently ignore the famous saying “National Socialism is not for export.”)
This I found repellant and more than a bit bizarre as even as a youth I fully understood the true notion of ‘Britishness’, the pomp and circumstance, the feeling that we British were a special people and our intrinsic national link especially since the reformation, of nationhood, self-reliance and our Christian heritage.

One just has to observe the opening of Parliament or the opening of a rural council meeting to see that Christian ceremony dominates the proceedings as it does our legal system and just about every institution we claim as ‘quintessentially’ British.
Yet, nationalists are blind, ambivalent or hateful towards these old landmarks that are so deeply entrenched in the British people’s narrative, thus rendering themselves and the nationalist movement a rather exotic, or, at best, a foreign body that is most unappealing to most British people, even at a superficial level.

Even when clever marketing or terrorist events drive large numbers of decent people into our ranks they quickly exit when confronted with the strange fruit of national-socialist hang-ups, cerebral ethno-politics and rabid anti Christian ideology that, unfortunately, one could sell by the pound at most NF, BNP, EDL meetings despite the widespread use of Holy symbols and phrases.

Lately, it looks as if this was changing with the EDL getting more outwardly ‘Christian’ - even Griffin started wearing a cross and demanding crosses on all BNP propaganda.

Sadly, Griffin was only pretending and the EDL/British Freedom types seem more interested in defending Israel than Britain, or running around our town centres boozed up, jumping around like immature oiks chanting football slogans at an increasingly un-phased Muslim population who could, if they wished, wipe the floor with them if it so pleased their Imams.

You see the inescapable truth is simple, Britain, our mindset, our collective memory, our institutions, community customs and our nation’s entire narrative is not just completely intertwined with Christianity but rather we and our ‘Britishness’ are a product of the Christian Faith.

From the opening of a small council meeting to the state opening of Parliament to the naming of a ship, our Christian heritage cocoons the entire proceedings.

Think of when we welcome a child into the family or when we bury our loved ones, our Christian heritage sets the tone for the social interaction and rites of passage. Indeed this heritage is so completely interwoven as to become ‘unnoticed’ by its normality for most people, but none the less, any outside observer sees this thread of Christianity in our national make up as a strong and almost unique feature of ‘The British’.

Remember, we think of our American cousins as a nation deeply influenced by faith, however, the Europeans view us Brits in a similar light yet we fail to see the woods for the trees.

For anyone who is skeptical about how attractive our Christian heritage is to our people, even on a sub-conscious level just look to the largest ‘patriot’ group around at present. The EDL! They absolutely smother their literature in extreme Christian symbolism and icons. From crusader crosses, to knights templar motto’s, all of which permeates this groups web-site, blogs, facebook pages, merchandise and literature.
Unfortunately, I fear these people are insincere in their use (or are being deceived) and have shamefully woven Zionism and multi-culturalism into OUR iconology and ancient identity, this, just like European Nationalism is foreign to us British and will ultimately be their downfall.

Nationalism has never made any significant breakthrough in this country, ever. The NF at its peak could turn out maybe 4,000 on the streets and the BNP mustered half a million votes and 14,000 members, but these are unbelievably low figures considering huge swathes of our country now resemble Bangladesh.

For many years I have been amazed by the delusions of grandeur most nationalists suffer from, an almost manic sense of self importance pervades the entire movement and a fair amount of individuals therein.

Consider these figures against nationalism: the women’s institute has 210,000 paid up members, the Labour Party in 1997 had 405,000 members, the Tories peaked under Thatcher at 3,000,000 and the twitchers charity the RSPB boasts over 1,000,000 paid members including 195,000 youth members.

Many other social groups like the Masons have over 600,000 members in England alone and most depressing of all is the ‘Caravan Club of Britain’ who enjoy a membership of 375,000 households producing an annual turnover in excess of £100 million and employing 800 staff. To be frank, many golf clubs have achieved far larger memberships than any ‘nationalist’ group, until now.

These figures should put a sense of reality to our movement - we are so small it beggars belief, but why? After all we have been pushing our message for decades yet we are smaller than some vintage car clubs.

Well, I know exactly why and I shall say so - someone has to. We are small because our product is an unattractive foreign import, even in what most nationalists would regard as ‘moderate’ manifestations.

Successive nationalist leaders in this country have presented to the great British public an ideology fleshed out in the European theatre which contains ingredients alien to OUR culture and historical collective memory and social experience.

20th century British nationalism has also carried a virulent strain of anti-Christian malevolence. We see this clearly in the nationalist propensity to ridicule the faith of our fathers these 1,500 years in favour of various manifestations and interpretations of Germanic gods, or the pagan beliefs of our people thousands of years previous. Mention Odin, Thor or the Green man at most nationalist meetings and one will quickly be engaged in a friendly conversation. However, spout out the name of Jesus Christ and cries of “Jewish import, foreign, middle eastern rubbish” will soon fill your ears.

I know that devout, church attending Christians are not in the numbers they once enjoyed but most British people are so deeply entwined with cultural Christianity they don’t even know it by large. On the other hand there are still 5 million regular church goers in this country and the cultural Christians number in the tens of millions.

Most Britons may not articulate their ingrained national Christian identity in an outward fashion but we see their position being manifest in their almost unanimous decision to reject our nationalist message in its current and long standing format.
The DNA of English/British Christianity was, and still is, who we are. A man may leave the army after 20 years service and be far away from his discarded uniform but to any observer one can see by his mannerisms, behaviour and walk that ‘he might be out of the army, but the army as never been out of him’. And so it is with us and our Christian social and collective experience. We are what our history has made us and to jettison this will render us irrelevant - just ask the BNP or NF.

From Mosley to Tyndall, Webster to Griffin, all have tried to impose a north European national socialist atheist or (pagan) ideology on the British patriotic constituents within our population with very little success. Even today we British are far more insular, parochial and patriotic than any of our European neighbours yet they have built huge nationalist movements and we, sadly, have utterly failed.

The answer is not to continue on with the failed strategy of trying to import that which works in Europe, the answer lies within us, in our unique cultural and social interaction and collective historical experiences. Our task is to tap into the existing rich cultural DNA that permeates our lives and that includes celebrating/exploiting our Christian heritage and the social markers that regulate our society.

For those who think we have no such things, ponder these social regulators: Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Saints Days, Pancake Tuesday, All Souls (Halloween), baptisms, christenings, weddings, confirmations, funerals.

To those that doubt the efficacy and near total domination of Christianity on every facet of our society need only look to any state occasion, be it Parliament, the Lords, Royal Weddings/Funerals, Council meetings Military displays especially Remembrance Day and even many sporting events.

All are set within the rich and well practices ceremonies that involve us all in some kind of collective/tribal community action and contemplation.

I suppose what I am alluding to is this: whether you like it or not, most if not all of our private and collective benchmarks in our native life are marked and regulated by centuries old traditions of Christianity. It’s part of our British DNA. On the surface, our taste for religion may ebb and flow but I suggest that scratch a British patriot and his or her Christian identity (spiritual or cultural) will shine through with blinding radiance and be defended with jealous pride.

European patriots have always had to supplement their faith with a political way to manifest their national pride as their majority faith was subservient to a foreign power. However, since the reformation our British nation, patriotic identity and pride have been completely immersed in our peculiar and defiant faith.

Indeed that was what separated us from Europe these last 500 years and was the driving force behind the many conflicts we endured, (although please don’t think for one moment I am being sectarian, (Been there, its not a good place) I am merely trying to explain our peculiar national and historical experience.

Today we live in a new dispensation where particular brands of Christianity are far less important and those of the old European variety need not be kept at bay by ‘Puritan England’, but nonetheless we have been foolish in trying to over-write our own centuries old collective DNA with a European code. It has not, and could not ever have worked, not now, not ever, it’s just not who WE are.

Getting back to the original criticism of me: I stand fast on my sincere beliefs and my opposition of such social cancers as gay marriage, gay adoption and the butchering of the next generation of Brits by abortion. If that repels some nationalists or patriots I make absolutely no concession whatsoever and would challenge them in their claims to love this nation and our people.

I want to help our people survive and to build a better, cleaner, more just society and to that goal I am fully committed. Surviving the coming apocalyptic struggle as an atheistic, gay adopting, child murdering, degenerate nation would be the final insult to our ancestors and long gone heroes. It would be better for such a nation of people to have never existed at all. Even worse and far more unmanly and cowardly would be surviving as a nation of converts to Islam.

Make no mistake, there are many of the ruling elite and sadly many Racial nationalist's who would readily convert but for different reasons. One to retain wealth and influence, and the other for more nefarious reasons.

Several well respected nationalist's have said to me over the years,’ better a surviving white Muslim Britain than no Britain at all’. I utterly and completely reject this abomination and suggest this back up ‘survival strategy’ would weaken our resolve to the point of assured defeat.

I personally have no survival exit strategy and hold fast to the principle: better to fight to the last man, women and child (I say this with 4 bountiful grandchildren in mind) than give up one square inch of OUR country to the Islamic invaders.

Better we are remembered in history as the people who could not be tamed, intimidated or conquered than those who put up a bit of a fight then conformed in order to save our skins.

Because of its evil and suffocating nature and not because of our intolerance we can never compromise with Islam, nor can we ever come to a mutually respectful arrangement in the future, such a temporary solution would always spell the end for us.

This paper is the first of three that I have written in order to try and clarify our current situation. By understanding where we came from it may just be possible to map out the direction of where we should be going to ensure our future generations a secured future.

Who are we British? Part 2 of 3
Who are we British? Part 3 of 3