I had hoped that, once the decades long fight to separate the UK from the EU had been won, politics would return to something like normal. Unfortunately I was wrong, for a threat to our freedom, which actually predates the nightmare of our involvement with Brussels, is very much with us, and is more powerful than ever.
When Orwell wrote 1984 his main target was of course Stalin, and the Communist system, but he named the totalitarian party which ruled Britain ‘IngSoc’, a contraction of English Socialism, as knew only too well the nature of the enemy within. Although from what he described as the 'lower upper middle class', and educated at Eton, Orwell was a supporter of democratic socialism, but recognized the fact that many of his fellow intellectuals, who declared their support for the Left, in fact supported what we today call the Liberal left, which had only contempt for democracy, and, although they would deny this, despised the ordinary Briton, particularly the working class, who refused to sign up to their ideas of a Marxist revolution. The Labour party as it existed under Attlee, and Gaitskill, never met with the approval of these activists, in large part because the latter, despite all their professed egalitarianism, were ridden with class snobbery, considering the workers as only fit to obey their self appointed leaders, in the same arrogant manner that the Soviet communists insisted that the party was the 'vanguard', who knew best.
One prime example of this view of the world were the married couple Sidney and Beatrice Webbe who were at the core of the Fabian Society. Despite their proclaimed belief in democratic socialism they became cheerleaders for the Communist regime in the USSR, ignoring the mounting evidence of atrocities being committed by Stalin, and remaining supporters of the Soviet Union until their deaths. Their books "Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation? (1935)" and "The Truth About Soviet Russia (1942)" gave a positive assessment of Stalin's regime. One Trotskyist historian later described the first of these books as ">pure Soviet propaganda at its most mendacious". The Fabian Society itself was named in honour of the Roman General Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus (nicknamed Cunctator, meaning the "Delayer") whose sought gradual victory against the superior Carthaginians army through persistence, harassment, and wearing the enemy down by attrition rather than pitched, climactic battles. The group's first pamphlet declared: "For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your waiting will be in vain, and fruitless". It was said that the original logo of the Fabian Society, a tortoise, represented the group's predilection for a slow, imperceptible transition to socialism, while its coat of arms, a ‘wolf in sheep's clothing’, represented its preferred methodology for achieving its goal. As Lenin said "You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw". Clearly that plan is still being followed by the intellectual, radical Left, and they now seem to have reached the stage of striking at our society.
Since those long gone post war days the Labour party has fallen victim to these disdainful so called thinkers, and they also dominate the other parties of the Left, such as the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, and completely control parts of the media, such as the BBC. The manner in which our universities have largely been taken over by hard left academics ensures that the only acceptable views are those which emulate Orwell's sheep in his other great masterpiece Animal Farm, chanting ‘Woke good, non woke bad’, so students who do not subscribe to this philosophy are marginalised, and treated as guilty of racism. Unfortunately our young people have been so brainwashed by the Marxists who have infiltrated our educational institutions, aided and abetted by those such as the disgrace which still calls itself the 'British' Broadcasting Corporation, that they accept these lies.
Increasingly we have seen the manner in which so many aspects of our lives have fallen under the sway of these pseudo fascists, who are like termites, gnawing away at the foundations of our society, occasionally needing to hold back when the reaction to their activities requires them to, but never retreating far, and always returning to their foul work when democratic vigilance slackens.
The areas where one can see their most malign influences are the politics of identity, particularly concerning sex, and race. The manner in which gender, and sexual orientation, have become battlegrounds is due to the desire of these same people to involve as many minorities as possible in a coalition which hates everything this country stands for, and seeks to subject the majority to their rule by corrupting our language, and by suppressing free speech. Their virtue signalling is sickening, as they are anything but virtuous. It is also deplorable the way in which vacuous celebrities seek to prove how wonderfully moral and virtuous they are by competing with each other to condemn people they don't know as racists, just because they dare to disagree with the propaganda put out by the hard left.
The response to the report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, is proof, if proof was needed, that those who have dominated debate on race in this country for many years are not driven by morality, as they pretend, but by a left wing ideology which hates our society. Although there are morons around who hate people merely because of the category into which they fall, the majority of Britons are mostly easy going, and consider fairness to be a virtue. If however perfectly innocent people find themselves constantly demonised on the basis of their being white they will react with anger. The result will not be better race relations, but a polarisation in society. Of course this is precisely what the Marxists want, as they continue to believe that causing social upheaval will give them the opportunity to gain power, before instituting their socialist nirvana. It seems to pass them by that this never works, and that all they end up with are regimes which crush them, but that's what you get when you insist on following the ideas of foolishly idealistic nineteenth century intellectuals, instead of genuinely seeking a better world.
The membership of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities is approximately ninety per cent non white, yet the political activists who have responded treat the report as if it were some sort of statement by the Ku Klux Klan. The Runnymede Trust, called it a "gross offence" to grieving families of ethnic minorities who have died of Covid, as if the virus has been somehow directed to infect the latter in preference to the white community, while Black Lives Matter, said that it was "perplexed" by the report's methodology, and "disappointed" by oversight of police racism. This latter organisation seems to have no concern for anti Semitism in its ranks, so obviously for them some people are more equal than others. The usual suspects, when interviewed by their fellow travellers in the BBC spoke as if the people who produced the report were merely government dupes, whose efforts could just be dismissed.
One important matter raised by this report is that it is not race, but, as always, class, which affects opportunity in our contemporary society, and that the true victims are the white working class, in particular the boys. Of course this idea does not fit with the world view of those who talk of white privilege, and who sit in their North London mansions, or university colleges, regarding the working class with contempt. When once the Labour party would have been up in arms about the manner in which these boys are neglected it now only concerns itself with sexual minorities, and non white racial groups. Even as I write this we learn of new guidance, drawn up by representatives from unions and charities, which advocates teaching toddlers under six years old about 'white privilege'. The bodies involved include the National Education Union, so organisations which were created to advance the interests of the working class now work to instil a sense of guilt in the children of the latter, so that they may use minorities to pursue their hard left agenda.
As a child of the working class I know that the claims of white privilege are arrant nonsense. My mother knew of someone living in her own street who died of malnutrition during the great depression of the 1930s, and my parents often struggled economically to bring up two boys, but they provided us with a loving home, without constantly claiming that they were being discriminated against. Most of my school friends, and those with whom I worked during my career, had similar backgrounds, and for the patronising, self hating liberals who dominate so much of public discourse today, to claim that we were were accorded benefits merely because of the colour of our skin shows that these people are just ignorant racist scum, although in their case they direct their hate at their own race. For myself I often get on better with those from ethnic minorities than I do with other whites. It is the person that matters, not their race.
The true enemies of our democratic society are not those minorities patronised by the intellectual left, but are to be found among the overwhelmingly white liberal elite, who hate their own country, despise its flag, and whose arrogance is only exceeded by their abhorrence for those they regard as an inferior class. They have the same mentality as the totalitarians of Orwell's Inner party, and must be beaten if our democratic society is to be saved. Otherwise we shall see book burning, Thought Police, the complete suppression of free speech, and the image of a boot stamping forever on a human face, becoming a reality.