Indian: Only the British can preserve Britain

In November 2006 an Indian reader of the Daily Telegraph posted a letter about a Leo McKinstry column, “In defence of the white working class.” A VFR reader sent it to me, noting that the letter writer “sees that unless great societies are maintained all societies lose.” Here is the letter, followed by a comment by me:

I studied in England many years ago.

I worked in some factories during my vacations, and found the British working men and women to be the salt of the earth, I remember some of them even today after 40 years. Wonderful people.

As an Indian Hindu, I have great affection for Britain, and great respect for most things British, I am convinced that Britain must support its own people , because they are the ones who can be relied on to stand up for their country, and preserve its wonderful traditions.

This does not imply any disrespect for all others.

Posted by Lalit Bagai on November 15, 2006 8:34 PM

Lalit Bagai’s comment perfectly complement what I said in my article about Leo McKinstry on February 15:

If whites want to be cease being victimized, they must throw aside the belief in a diverse Britain and re-assert the historical fact and ideal of a mono-cultural Britain with themselves as its dominant majority. If whites continue to adhere to anti-racism and non-discrimination as their ruling values, they will keep being dragged down into non-existence. There is no middle ground.

I would add that the underlying meaning of Lalit Bagai’s comment is a further variation on a theme developed here:

You shouldn’t count on other people to keep your culture for you.

- end of initial entry -

Gintas J. writes:

In Communist Eastern Europe the ideology had lost the hearts and minds of most people long before the system collapsed. I’d guess one of the main reasons was that it became clear to them that it was a system of lies. It really helped that there were entire nations subjugated to it—the Baltic states, Poland, etc.—and that they constantly chafed at being absorbed into the USSR / Warsaw Pact.

The questions facing the West is: 1) will the people figure out that liberalism as we know it is a system of lies? and 2) if they ever do, will it be in time to try to reverse the damage done? The traditional West is really behind the eight-ball here. Most people still believe in the system of lies. (Maybe I’m being fast and loose in calling it a system of lies. It is a fantasy world, but one in which the foundational moral rules are not the same as in the traditional West.)

However, the scary thing is that built-in resistance to total EU control is not there. All those countries joined willingly, they weren’t conquered by a Russian army. Can a resistance grow? Look at what has happened to the Irish, it’s sad. But we see bits and pieces here and there, there is hope. You can pave over a plot of ground, but the plants somehow make their way through.

Since most of the benefits of being in the EU are economic, maybe an economic disaster on a global scale will bring down the system of lies.

An Indian living in the West writes:

This is interesting. But Lalit Bagai is living in the past. I have an uncle who was at Cambridge in the 1950s and he has an image of England based on that. When I told him (after the first of my many recent visits) what London has become, he refused to believe it because it just sounded unreal and completely absurd. The fact, however, is that the white working class which Bagai talks about has been completely wrecked. There are many reasons for this, which I shall come to in a minute.

Paradoxically, it wasn’t the left but the Tories which accomplished the destruction of Britain’s working class. The future of the British working class was tied up with the Britain’s manufacturing industries. These were suffering in the 1960s but were still alive. But what completed the rout was Maggie Thatcher’s economic policies of the early 1980s. Now I don’t want to sound like a socialist and I am not, but the fact is that the white working class, which was the backbone of Britain and fought all its horrible wars and did all the dirty work for its iniquitous empire, was sacrificed by the middle class which couldn’t care less about the working class anyway (it still doesn’t—some things never change).

The same thing has also been happening in America where the rich are slowly but surely destroying America’s white working class, the blue collar people that the rich have always looked down upon. This has been done in two ways—one by the destruction of American industry through the pursuit of “free trade” (which is no more than a justification for the decadent to be allowed to import their gadgets at the cheapest rates—American national security and industry be damned) and free immigration. Free trade (especially from the ferociously competitive industries of East Asia) has slowly but surely destroyed American manufacturing. American manufacturing employed blue collar workers and provided them with a “living wage.” When you destroy that, the people displaced are left with scrounging for jobs in service industries which do not pay well. It is a telling fact that in the 1950s, the average American worker could support a family of four on his wage alone. This was the bedrock of the American family as it allowed women to tend to the caring of children (a far important role than female economic competition). Today, the average American worker sees declining living standards even though both husband and wife work (and work longer hours than the husband ever did even in the 1950s). Free immigration make things worse by pitting the displaced working class people in competition with cheap imported labour which they cannot compete with. It also drives up the cost of real estate, of health, education and schools—the rich don’t suffer from this mostly but the working class bears the full brunt of this. The American response to this is called “white flight.”

Britain has seen the same thing happen, except that in Britain, class differences were always much more acute. It is not a coincidence that Marx coined the phrase “class warfare” after living in Britain. The British middle class people that I interact with in my business dealings want cheap Eastern European nannies for their kids, cheap cleaners and security guards for their mansions. To them, the country means nothing—it is an economic arrangement, it is a “market.” Thatcher was part of the problem when she said that “there is no such thing as society.” Of course these things do not have economic causes alone. The coming of the pill and rampant sexual promiscuity (and its promotion by the media) also played a very big part in wrecking the working class. However, it is easier to wreck a people with these things when they have lost their economic foundations and have become economically dissolute.

The British middle class always viewed the working class as economically disposable and now it views them as culturally disposable—disposable at the altar of “diversity” which the middle class always assiduously avoids while dumping it on those below it. It is an old game, there is nothing new in it. What is new is that the battles are no longer economic, they have become “cultural.” The story is the same in America too.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 28, 2007 12:38 PM | Send