A school in Rugby has offered an instructive lesson in what some of Britain’s most misguided morons think of our country.
Courtney Wright, 12, was reprimanded for this dress (Image: SWNS)
There’s an ugly impulse that persists in Britain which has reached a cartoonish nadir as a schoolgirl was placed in isolation for doing absolutely nothing wrong. It’s the same impulse that middle-class do-gooders who think themselves oh-so virtuous feel when they see a St George’s cross flying from an English pub, a feeling that retreats into non-existence when they see the Palestinian flag flown in East London.
Courtney Wright, 12, was placed in isolation for wearing a Spice Girls-style Union Jack dress and matching hat to Bilton School in Rugby which invited its youngsters to celebrate heritage at its culture day last week. Courtney being a child untainted by the cynical racism of various fifth columnists who live in the UK took this invitation at face-value, dressed accordingly and gave a speech on British culture.
She obviously didn’t get the memo, which wasn’t written down and the existence of which would probably be denied. But that memo translates to: “Do not celebrate anything British ’cause racism.”
It doesn’t matter that Britain was the first power to remove itself from the slave trade. Just like it doesn’t matter that after we abolished that vile trade we patrolled the seas to slap other nations about for still trafficking in humans.
It doesn’t matter how many polls show the United Kingdom to be one of the most pluralistic, tolerant societies on the planet and far less racist than its European neighbours who somehow still summon the balls to sneer at Britons as bigoted retrogrades to be crushed under their metropolitan heels.
What matters is that since George Orwell’s day, and probably before, sections of the population have sought comfort in anti-British sentiment.
They grimace at our flag, national anthem, anything at all that celebrates Britain, and especially England, while thinking this makes them morally superior.
It’s why Orwell wrote in 1941: “It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during God save the King than of stealing from a poor box.”
Despite the great man’s warning, this behaviour persists and is now fuelled by a very American take on racial politics, which is mapped onto a British society fundamentally altered by mass migration and an approach to that migration called multiculturalism.
Unlike pluralism, which promotes peaceful existence among those from different places, multiculturalism has a very different point of view.
It takes the view that no cultures are superior, despite its adherents overwhelmingly living in the West. Following this logic, its proponents insist that anybody who comes here should be encouraged to cling to and promote their own culture rather than join in with ours, resulting in some living in siloed communities (why wouldn’t you, if given the option?).
This relegates British culture as simply one of many equal ways of life. The problem with that is that this IS Britain. It is not Pakistan, India or Albania. To pretend that Britain should treat cultures other than its own as being of equal importance on its own soil is a paradox that the UK has never squared.
That’s partly because the working class standard-bearers of British culture, which includes migrants and those with migrant backgrounds – they come here for a reason, after all – are shut out of these debates, ignored or vilified when they try to contribute.
Many will have got the message that it’s pointless even trying to contribute, such is the reaction and vitriol of Guardian-reading prigs when they witness the supposed horror of our national culture being celebrated.
These “lefties” (they’re not, they’re metropolitan liberals with few, if any, principals of note) are the same slobbering sycophants who swoon at every modern orthordoxy masquering as revolution when spoken from a plumb-mouthed bore at a drab dinner party.
They’re the same losers who only partake in national pride during the World Cup, largely because an overrated author in the nineties made liking football acceptable again for the middle classes (cheers for that, Nick Hornby, we can probably draw a straight line between today’s over-policing of every utterance in a Premier League ground and your pallid prose).
Enough with what these people and their petty enforcers think. If they sneer at you, look down on them as the ungrateful miscreants and divisive dullards they clearly are for reaping the benefits of the country that invented Parliamentary democracy while pretending that displaying its flag is a step towards the fascism this great nation sacrificed its Empire to help defeat.
And when you’ve finished doing that, ask them in which country they’d rather live than this. As they splutter and claim “that’s not the point”, run home, grab your flag and return to wave it proudly at that whimpering weakling.
