When, in 1945, Britain, bloody but unbowed, emerged victorious from the greatest war in history, who then would have believed that we would be where we now are. This country, whose resolution enabled the nations of Europe to escape the evil Nazi regime, now kneels before those same nations, begging to be allowed to control at least a little of its own affairs, while pygmy bureaucrats order us around, and our gutless political class shames us by yielding to their every demand. Our democracy, which so many died defending, has been undermined by the political class, who have placed their own selfish interests above those of the people, and handed executive power to unelected apparatchiks in a foreign capital. They falsely claim that this is to our financial advantage, but in any case when did money become the most important priority for any proud nation. If all we cared about was economics we would not have gone to war in 1914, but instead have sheltered behind the Grand Fleet and the Empire, saving our vast accumulated wealth, and allowing Germany free rein in continental Europe. We did not because we valued freedom more.
It is true that, when I was born, in the period just after the Second Word War, we were on our knees economically, rationing was still in place, and indeed got worse before it got better, energy supplies were constantly under threat, and the nation was deep in debt to the USA. Nevertheless people shared a common purpose in life, felt a deep and abiding loyalty to, and pride in, not just the country, but in each other. Most were generous in spirit, and regarded their fellow citizens as comrades, not competitors, had little need to covert luxuries, but rather were happy with modest possessions, furnishing their homes with utility furniture, some of which we had in our home for many years, and accepting that the common interest was paramount, whether it be in food rationing, or in supporting the NHS. They knew that they had been through a time of great trial, which had ended in triumph, and that this country had made a massive contribution to the defeat of a truly terrible foe, and that the free world owed us a debt which was not monetary, but is almost beyond payment. To listen to the comments coming out of European capitals today concerning our desire to leave the EU it is clear that that debt is no longer remembered by the ungrateful inhabitants. We are supposed to regard them as friends and partners, when those whom we fought alongside, such as the USA, Russia and the Commonwealth, are to be treated as of less importance.
Our heroes were great men like Churchill, Montgomery, Douglas Bader and Guy Gibson, in contrast to the vacuous celebrities and ignorant, so called, media personalities, who pass for role models in the twenty first century. The luvvies and football pundits, earning obscene salaries, lecture us on why we should stay in the EU, but clearly have no conception of its nature, or intent.
No doubt I will be accused of being far too nostalgic about the past, and I know that not everything in the garden was rosy, and that many people did not share the same experience, but, perhaps even more than 1940, it was our finest hour, and there was one overwhelming reality which subsequent generations have put in mortal peril, the fact that we lived in a free country, with a democracy we had evolved over centuries, and which made those who ruled subject to the will of the people. We had exceptional men at the top in politics, with Clement Attlee as Prime Minister, and that greatest of Britons, Churchill, as the leader of the opposition. How insignificant today's supposed leaders look in comparison. The benches of the House of Commons were filled with a vast majority of those who, whatever their philosophical differences, would never have contemplated passing the power to run Britain to some supranational state, run by the equivalent of civil servants. I know from my over forty years of working in Westminster, and dealing with other civil servants at union conferences etc., that there was a time when a request for information from a sitting MP would be treated with the utmost seriousness and regarded as a matter for urgent action. However, after decades of this country sinking into the morass of the EU, civil servants recognised that true power had passed to Brussels apparatchiks, and that the occupants of the parliamentary benches were no longer to be treated as important.
Thanks to the black market we had the spivs, but they were more of a necessary evil, and their spiritual descendants now sit in offices in the City of London, making vast fortunes merely by pushing other people's money around. The Labour government had implemented the 1944 Education Act, giving a chance to working class children such as myself, whose father was a postman, and mother a housewife, to obtain a grammar school education, which opened the door to a good career. My wife, as the daughter of a steelworker was able to go from her grammar school to Manchester University, in the days when universities were really temples of knowledge, not the dumbed down institutions they are today. The so called egalitarians destroyed that system with their bog standard comprehensives, and the ludicrous belief that one could send fifty per cent of youngsters to universities without undermining the latter.
There was still a common-sense approach to crime, which recognised that deterrents actually work, and that justice demands that punishments fit the crime. It was said that criminal gangs searched each other before setting out, to ensure that nobody had a gun, as they could all pay the ultimate penalty if murder was committed. Nowadays law abiding people are at the mercy of those who have a fit of the vapours at the thought that someone who has spent months tormenting and then killing a child might be subject to execution. Perhaps the relatives of the ninety or so people stabbed to death in London this year have a different view. Opinion polls have always shown a majority in favour of the death penalty but the arrogant liberals, who think they know best, have prevailed. It is worth noting that outside the EU we could apply the ultimate sanction when deserved.
From where we were how did we get here? Step by step the establishment and the political class have betrayed us, and the 2016 EU referendum was the time when the people finally stood up and said enough is enough. However the kind of gullible idiots who believe what they read in rags such as 'The New European' now seek to reverse that decision by stealth. The Conservative party is doing what it always does, putting party before country, and giving whoever is their leader unreasoning support, however much he or she is betraying their supposed principles, while the Labour Party is now dominated by the Marxist left, who hate Jews, the USA, Israel and every value for which this country once stood. The Greens and Liberal Democrats are so naive as to laughable, as they clearly have no understanding of human nature, and no common-sense whatsoever.
It is not impossible that all this could be reversed, if only the electorate voted for those with a patriotic belief in their country, and a love of democracy and freedom. The absolute sine qua non is that we escape from the dead hand of Brussels, and the only way the so called progressives and liberal idiots will be defeated is if the voters turn on the appeasers in the old parties, and vote for UKIP, the only party prepared to stand up for Britain.