Progressive authoritarians have embarked on ideological blitzkrieg – and it is destroying our national fabric

A controversy engulfing a primary school in Hampshire tells us so much about our country

Norwood primary school (photo: Hassocks5489, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)

It is often said, usually by those rightly concerned at the extent to which radical progressivism has seeped into our public and corporate institutions, that the Britain in which many of us grew up is slowly disappearing.

I think that analysis is true except in one respect: the change is not slow but rapid.

Our institutions are being subjected to a sort of ideological blitzkrieg. This in turn has meant that much of our public discourse is dominated by the priorities of the elite class that runs those institutions – priorities which are often dramatically at odds with those of ordinary people. It’s as though the two groups inhabit entirely different worlds.

We are witnessing, as a consequence of this march through the institutions, age-old social and cultural norms being overturned at breakneck speed and viewpoints that were deemed entirely valid – mainstream even – five minutes ago suddenly rendered taboo.

Inevitably, a cultural chasm has emerged between the elite class and a significant chunk of the populace. It is one, I fear, that threatens to destroy the trust and social cohesion on which our society – indeed, all stable societies – are based. One expert and government advisor has even predicted that it will end in civil war.

One of the principal targets of the new elites is what remains of our hitherto shared and unifying majority culture. They despise it. They hate Britain’s history, traditions and customs. To them, all these things are rooted in imperialism, privilege and supremacy. They’d like to jettison it all and turn our nation into something resembling a cross between a charity and the Olympic village – a sort of benevolent global hub that absorbs and promotes all national identities and cultures on an equal basis. Only with the exception of its own.

With the radical progressive worldview comes the frequent regurgitation of trite mantras such as ‘Diversity is our strength’ (demonstrably false, but that doesn’t seem to bother them) and the adoption of hard multicultural policies and initiatives which serve to divide and fragment. And once the ideology has become embedded within the commanding heights of state and corporate institutions, it is, as the evidence shows, a certainty that it will eventually begin to percolate through vast areas of national life, so that, in the end, all sorts of establishments, entities and industries – everything from academia to sport, from media to education, from heritage to entertainment, and from advertising to business and commerce – will feel obliged to implement its precepts.

And, lo, we end with the spectacle – unimaginable just a few years ago – of a primary school in an attractive corner of a typical English county banning Easter because it wishes to avoid causing offence to those from other cultures and religions.

That’s what parents and guardians of children attending Norwood primary school in Eastleigh, Hampshire, were told in a letter from the head teacher last week. The letter has been circulated widely online. I confess that when I first read it, I thought it was a joke – one of those bogus communications that occasionally do the rounds, usually drafted by someone attempting, by use of obvious parody and exaggeration, to make a political point.

But I should have known better, for it turned out to be authentic. ‘We have decided not to hold the Easter bonnet parade or Easter service this year,’ wrote the head teacher. ‘This decision has been made in the spirit of inclusivity and respect for the diverse religious beliefs represented within our school community.’

There were a few more paragraphs, all liberally peppered with the usual modish buzzwords and waffle. The head teacher rounded off by revealing that the school would be celebrating Refugee Week in June. Presumably she also intends to cancel Christmas and replace it with an event celebrating some other fashionable cause.

Now, if this sort of thing were a one-off, we could easily dismiss it as an isolated act of stupidity. But the truth is that decisions like this are becoming more and more common. That is because they are the inevitable end point of hardcore progressive ideology. To the head teacher in question, banning Easter to avoid causing offence or making some students feel ‘excluded’ would have seemed entirely uncontroversial, just as similar actions are uncontentious to the cohort of people who have travelled through that pipeline from university – where radical progressivism reigns supreme – and then into the higher echelons of public life, where they often end up running things and among which the dogma of diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) has itself taken the form of a new religion. The whole thing becomes self-reinforcing, with these new authoritarians seeking any opportunity to flaunt their ‘enlightened’ credentials in front of their peers, the better to earn social kudos.

Moreover, it is all underpinned by the Equality Act, a part-good part-appalling piece of legislation which, among other things, places the established religion of the nation on the same legal footing as all others. On a purely logical level, I find that utterly bizarre.

In this broad context, it isn’t difficult to understand why the head teacher felt confident about taking the decision she did. She was, after all, reflecting the legal, political and institutional zeitgeist. We are now a very different country to the one we were just a short time ago – and to the one that many still imagine us to be. We are a country in which, for example, Ramadan lights are officially displayed in the heart of the capital city during the Easter festival, white Christians are explicitly discriminated against in official sentencing guidelines, soldiers are instructed to avoid ‘Christian elements’ in acts of remembrance, and a top Ministry of Defence analyst is forced out of his job for asserting the reality of biological sex.

These things were not aberrations, nor the inventions of outraged ‘right-wingers’. They all happened. And a little research would produce a thousand similar examples, all demonstrating the pace and extent to which the culture of these islands and its institutions is being transformed.

If you’re still inclined to doubt it, ask yourself this: when these sorts of stories emerge, how many politicians and public leaders are willing to even speak about them, let alone full-throatedly condemn the decisions that were taken? In my judgement, barely any. I think that tells its own story.

Those responsible for the profound cultural shift preach the gospel of ‘inclusion’ without apparently realising that their actions, conflicting as they do with the opinions and good sense of the mainstream majority, are deeply exclusionary. They also fail to recognise – or perhaps they do, and it is deliberate – that the type of multiculturalism they promote is asymmetrical, in that those belonging to the majority culture and identity are constantly chivvied to celebrate other cultures and identities while being expected to suppress or downplay their own. People aren’t stupid: they can see what’s going on, and they resent it.

I do wonder if there is another country on Earth whose history and traditions are so routinely trashed by its own elites? I cannot think of one. In 1941, George Orwell wrote, ‘England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality.’ Doubtless true then; probably more so now.

I cannot help but feel, too, that we are approaching a sort of crunch point. I don’t believe that the majority will continue for much longer to put up with having their identity and culture dismantled before their eyes. These people know that they are losing their place in society, and I suspect that many among them will eventually conclude that if they don’t stand up and fight back soon, the change will be irreversible.

The progressive authoritarians should be careful what they wish for.

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