Forward The Extremists by A.K Chesterton
EVERY winter I am ordered
abroad by my doctor and
as I have many friends in South Africa it is there that I
spend my time until
returning to England in the Spring. Invariably I meet
Britons who reside at the
Cape and who, harbouring delightful visions of the land of
their birth, save up
money to go back on holiday, which they do with a sense of
great expectation.
During recent years those I have met on their return, almost
without exception,
have spoken of their experiences with a look of sadness,
mixed with
consternation, on their faces.
"Things are very
different now," they say. "It
might almost be a foreign country. We shall never be tempted
to go there again.
We had thought of sending our boys to school in England—in
fact that had been
our idea from the time of their birth—but after our recent
visit nothing would
induce us to do so."
Seizing on the word
'foreign', I make some remark
about coloured immigrants. Those visitors who travelled
about the country or
sauntered around inner London in the evening or saw the
schools disgorging their
pupils at the end of the day became well aware of the
problem —they could
scarcely have failed to do so.
But, they told me, it was
not that problem which
caused them the greatest concern. What then, I asked, so
gravely troubled them?
"It's the English
themselves," came the reply. (I
do not think the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish were
intended to be excluded
from the indictment.) "Whatever can have happened to
them? They were once a
wonderful people. Now they give every appearance of being a
defeated people, a
shambling people, a people without the guts to resist being
pushed around from
morning to night."
HIPPIES TOLERATED
I make some reference to
the hippies and am told :
"No, it's not the hippies we are talking about, but
the people who tolerate the
hippies and all the other abortions who throng the streets.
The people,
moreover, who allow the most preposterous things to be seen
and said on
television. Such things would be impossible if the British
people retained their
pride in themselves and their nation."
It will be correctly
surmised that I have here
summarised in my own words the gist of many conversations,
but I do not think
any will be found to challenge the overall accuracy of what
has been written.
That such impressions should be formed makes the heart
heavy.
The abiding impression, let
there be no doubt of
it, is of deep-rooted national decadence and nothing one can
say in any way
mitigates it.
One such visitor, recently
returned, expressed
himself vehemently about the rabble which endeavoured to
wreck the Springbok
Rugby tour. I agreed, but pointed out that the spectators in
the stand gave the
Boks an uproarious and most sporting welcome.
"Yes," he said. "That is the hell
of it. If the people on the inside were the same as the
morons yelling on the
outside, there would be no Rugby matches and the whole
country could be written
off as a sink of degeneracy. But the fact that you have a
large number of
big-hearted sportsmen who would be a credit to any nation,
and perhaps the best
police force in the world, makes one fume that they should
apparently be
impotent to prevent the image of Great Britain being
projected to the world as
that of the hippie mob, and not as that of the decent
elements—elements who
should be able to dominate the national scene. Why don't
they?"
That is a question I shall
endeavour to answer.
SEEN FROM AFAR
First, however, let me say that the vision of Britain
brought back by
disillusioned visitors is one that tends to be uppermost in
my own mind as I
picture the country from a distance of six thousand miles.
When working at home
I find myself tackling one absurdity or one act of treachery
as it arises and
sometimes losing sight of the wood for the trees. In other
words, I become
immersed in the daily round and habituated to the sort of
problem each day is
likely to bring. Out here, however, I begin to see the
picture in its totality
and to my sense of humiliation and anger is added a feeling
of something very
much akin to incredulity.
Can it be true—or simply a horrible nightmare—that
the posturing dwarfs
elected by a brain-washed public have encouraged the entry
into our small
islands of people of totally disparate racial stock, and
then enacted
legislation designed to make criminals of those Britons who,
having a preference
for sharing their homeland with men and women of their own
British breed, resist
all ideas of racial integration?
Is it possible that those who recoil in horror and disgust
from the
thought of such integration see no relation between the
creatures who try to
enforce the race-mixing and their own election of them to
Parliament.
On a more personal level, is it possible that a
creature like the Bishop of
Stepney (Trevor Huddleston, you may remember) really said
that he welcomed with
all his heart the entry of large numbers of Blacks whose
virility would
reanimate our effete British blood and give it fresh vigour?
To the European,
conscious of his racial identity, and to the African,
conscious of his such
teaching was poisonous and foul, and Huddleston, who must
have some knowledge of
the pitiable world of the half-caste, sinned against both
God and man in
propagating so vile a doctrine. Who was the irreverent clown
trying to please?
ABSURD ALTERNATIVE
Now to try to answer the question as to why the decent
elements in Britain
do not drive the unwashed rabble from the British scene. The
answer is that they
are as brain-washed as those whom they should oust from
public view. They are
convinced that Wilson as Prime Minister is a cheap joke and
that the Labour
Government is thoroughly anti-British, with neither of which
propositions will I
quarrel, but the poor saps believe that all will be made
well by putting Edward
Heath and a Conservative Government in their place, which is
an absurdity.
Well over sixty years ago Hilaire Belloc and my cousin,
Cecil Chesterton,
exposed the Party game as a sham-fight, and this it has
remained—with both sides
subservient to the Lords of Finance. If the Labour Party has
anything to commend
it, it is the fact that it does not pretend to be patriotic,
whereas
Conservatives, singing Land of Hope and Glory, have sold
British interests down
pretty well every river in the world.
That part of the Conservative Party which arouses the
most scorn in me is
the part which claims to be the Right Wing. Most of it
belongs to the Monday
Club, which sometimes ventures, ever so mildly and with all
the tact in the
world, to differ from the official leadership on such
questions as Rhodesia. The
chief concern of its members is that their lily-white
fingers should never be
spotted by any taint of extremism, which to them is the
ultimate disaster, just
as respectability is the sine qua non of their political
being. That is why I
despise them.
There is, however, another movement which has taken
over the fight—a
movement of dedicated extremists. They alone inspire hope.
Extremism does not mean violence, which is the
political weapon of the ape.
What it does mean is the giving of the whole of oneself and
all the time and
treasure one can afford, and more than one can afford, to
the cause—for us the
greatest of earthly causes, which is to rescue the once
great British nation
from the muddy Stygian depths in which she flounders.
Whoever thinks that this
task can be undertaken without extreme activity, with-out
getting mud
bespattered on hands and cuffs and without being called many
nasty names, is a
weakling, a political flaneur whose only service is to keep
a hundred miles away
from the battlefield. Forward the Extremists !
Let those who really mean business get down to the job
in hand and never
mind the smears. The personal reward is nil. The national
award will be superb.
abroad by my doctor and
as I have many friends in South Africa it is there that I
spend my time until
returning to England in the Spring. Invariably I meet
Britons who reside at the
Cape and who, harbouring delightful visions of the land of
their birth, save up
money to go back on holiday, which they do with a sense of
great expectation.
During recent years those I have met on their return, almost
without exception,
have spoken of their experiences with a look of sadness,
mixed with
consternation, on their faces.
"Things are very
different now," they say. "It
might almost be a foreign country. We shall never be tempted
to go there again.
We had thought of sending our boys to school in England—in
fact that had been
our idea from the time of their birth—but after our recent
visit nothing would
induce us to do so."
Seizing on the word
'foreign', I make some remark
about coloured immigrants. Those visitors who travelled
about the country or
sauntered around inner London in the evening or saw the
schools disgorging their
pupils at the end of the day became well aware of the
problem —they could
scarcely have failed to do so.
But, they told me, it was
not that problem which
caused them the greatest concern. What then, I asked, so
gravely troubled them?
"It's the English
themselves," came the reply. (I
do not think the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish were
intended to be excluded
from the indictment.) "Whatever can have happened to
them? They were once a
wonderful people. Now they give every appearance of being a
defeated people, a
shambling people, a people without the guts to resist being
pushed around from
morning to night."
HIPPIES TOLERATED
I make some reference to
the hippies and am told :
"No, it's not the hippies we are talking about, but
the people who tolerate the
hippies and all the other abortions who throng the streets.
The people,
moreover, who allow the most preposterous things to be seen
and said on
television. Such things would be impossible if the British
people retained their
pride in themselves and their nation."
It will be correctly
surmised that I have here
summarised in my own words the gist of many conversations,
but I do not think
any will be found to challenge the overall accuracy of what
has been written.
That such impressions should be formed makes the heart
heavy.
The abiding impression, let
there be no doubt of
it, is of deep-rooted national decadence and nothing one can
say in any way
mitigates it.
One such visitor, recently
returned, expressed
himself vehemently about the rabble which endeavoured to
wreck the Springbok
Rugby tour. I agreed, but pointed out that the spectators in
the stand gave the
Boks an uproarious and most sporting welcome.
"Yes," he said. "That is the hell
of it. If the people on the inside were the same as the
morons yelling on the
outside, there would be no Rugby matches and the whole
country could be written
off as a sink of degeneracy. But the fact that you have a
large number of
big-hearted sportsmen who would be a credit to any nation,
and perhaps the best
police force in the world, makes one fume that they should
apparently be
impotent to prevent the image of Great Britain being
projected to the world as
that of the hippie mob, and not as that of the decent
elements—elements who
should be able to dominate the national scene. Why don't
they?"
That is a question I shall
endeavour to answer.
SEEN FROM AFAR
First, however, let me say that the vision of Britain
brought back by
disillusioned visitors is one that tends to be uppermost in
my own mind as I
picture the country from a distance of six thousand miles.
When working at home
I find myself tackling one absurdity or one act of treachery
as it arises and
sometimes losing sight of the wood for the trees. In other
words, I become
immersed in the daily round and habituated to the sort of
problem each day is
likely to bring. Out here, however, I begin to see the
picture in its totality
and to my sense of humiliation and anger is added a feeling
of something very
much akin to incredulity.
Can it be true—or simply a horrible nightmare—that
the posturing dwarfs
elected by a brain-washed public have encouraged the entry
into our small
islands of people of totally disparate racial stock, and
then enacted
legislation designed to make criminals of those Britons who,
having a preference
for sharing their homeland with men and women of their own
British breed, resist
all ideas of racial integration?
Is it possible that those who recoil in horror and disgust
from the
thought of such integration see no relation between the
creatures who try to
enforce the race-mixing and their own election of them to
Parliament.
On a more personal level, is it possible that a
creature like the Bishop of
Stepney (Trevor Huddleston, you may remember) really said
that he welcomed with
all his heart the entry of large numbers of Blacks whose
virility would
reanimate our effete British blood and give it fresh vigour?
To the European,
conscious of his racial identity, and to the African,
conscious of his such
teaching was poisonous and foul, and Huddleston, who must
have some knowledge of
the pitiable world of the half-caste, sinned against both
God and man in
propagating so vile a doctrine. Who was the irreverent clown
trying to please?
ABSURD ALTERNATIVE
Now to try to answer the question as to why the decent
elements in Britain
do not drive the unwashed rabble from the British scene. The
answer is that they
are as brain-washed as those whom they should oust from
public view. They are
convinced that Wilson as Prime Minister is a cheap joke and
that the Labour
Government is thoroughly anti-British, with neither of which
propositions will I
quarrel, but the poor saps believe that all will be made
well by putting Edward
Heath and a Conservative Government in their place, which is
an absurdity.
Well over sixty years ago Hilaire Belloc and my cousin,
Cecil Chesterton,
exposed the Party game as a sham-fight, and this it has
remained—with both sides
subservient to the Lords of Finance. If the Labour Party has
anything to commend
it, it is the fact that it does not pretend to be patriotic,
whereas
Conservatives, singing Land of Hope and Glory, have sold
British interests down
pretty well every river in the world.
That part of the Conservative Party which arouses the
most scorn in me is
the part which claims to be the Right Wing. Most of it
belongs to the Monday
Club, which sometimes ventures, ever so mildly and with all
the tact in the
world, to differ from the official leadership on such
questions as Rhodesia. The
chief concern of its members is that their lily-white
fingers should never be
spotted by any taint of extremism, which to them is the
ultimate disaster, just
as respectability is the sine qua non of their political
being. That is why I
despise them.
There is, however, another movement which has taken
over the fight—a
movement of dedicated extremists. They alone inspire hope.
Extremism does not mean violence, which is the
political weapon of the ape.
What it does mean is the giving of the whole of oneself and
all the time and
treasure one can afford, and more than one can afford, to
the cause—for us the
greatest of earthly causes, which is to rescue the once
great British nation
from the muddy Stygian depths in which she flounders.
Whoever thinks that this
task can be undertaken without extreme activity, with-out
getting mud
bespattered on hands and cuffs and without being called many
nasty names, is a
weakling, a political flaneur whose only service is to keep
a hundred miles away
from the battlefield. Forward the Extremists !
Let those who really mean business get down to the job
in hand and never
mind the smears. The personal reward is nil. The national
award will be superb.
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