The Britain we all knew is fast disappearing

Age-old social and cultural norms are being upended at breakneck speed - leaving many bewildered and disorientated

Every now and then a story pops up in the media which reminds us that our nation is being altered in very fundamental ways, and that age-old social and cultural norms are being upended at breakneck speed. I have no doubt that these radical shifts leave a large chunk of the populace feeling a sense of disorientation and bewilderment, not from some kind of misplaced nostalgia – the abandonment of some customs and traditions has undoubtedly been to the good – but simply from a perception that our country is being fast wrenched from its ancient moorings and in a way that makes it increasingly unrecognisable to many.

This week, we got two such stories for the price of one. First, we learned that, in Uxbridge, west London, a group of Christian street preachers had been surrounded by police officers and threatened with arrest for telling passers-by that, even if they were drunks, liars, prostitutes or homosexuals, God would grant them everlasting life if they believed in Him.

According to the officers, the preachers had potentially committed all manner of sins: public order offences, hate crimes, homophobia, causing alarm or distress in a public space, and whatever else.

Footage of the incident showed one officer insisting of a preacher, ‘Provide me your name now, or you will be arrested. You can spend the night in a cell and we can do it that way.’

In the end, the preachers relented, packed up their gear, and left the scene.

I’m not necessarily attacking the officers here. In fact, given the extensive (and sinister) reach of modern law on all these issues, as well as the increasing willingness of police bosses to apply it in as liberal a manner as possible, it is arguable that they had little option but to confront the preachers in the way they did.

Time was when society, and the police, would see street preachers, including those proselytising the more uncompromising versions of their faith, as mostly harmless, with passers-by either ignoring them completely or regarding them as the eccentrics they often were. Nowadays, any Christian preacher brave enough to recite the spicier passages from the good book is practically inviting a response from the local constabulary – usually, as in the aforementioned Uxbridge case, as a result of someone in earshot having taken offence and called 999.

I do wish we could be more grown up about these things. Whether we like it or not, some people, including many who are not evangelical Christian street preachers, consider homosexual acts to be wrong. Such individuals will often hold no antipathy towards homosexuals personally; they just don’t approve of what they do.

We don’t have to agree with such people, of course; but as long as they are not directly inciting violence or law-breaking when doing so, I think they have every right to express their view. I also think that others have every right to argue with them.

Yet increasingly we are seeing the law stamping on people’s freedom to even debate these matters, let alone preach about them.

It is also noticeable that the heavy-handedness sometimes directed towards Christians is not replicated when it comes to other faiths. Witness, for instance, the incident last year in Wakefield, west Yorkshire, which saw angry protests by Muslims after a schoolboy was alleged to have scuffed a copy of the Koran. The schoolboy and his family were forced into hiding. Eventually, the boy’s mother appeared, looking anxious and fearful, alongside a senior police officer at a tense meeting in a mosque (the audience was apparently made up exclusively of men). Instead of telling the fundamentalists where to get off, the officer – a chief inspector, no less – appeared to do everything he could to indulge them. It seemed a straightforward example of authority kow-towing to strident voices not because those voices were right but because they were threatening. Perhaps, in the end, Christians are just a bit too meek.

Which brings me to the second story that caught my eye this week. The Daily Telegraph reported that the Army had told soldiers to avoid incorporating ‘Christian elements’ into Acts of Remembrance on Armistice Day. Guidance issued by Army chiefs states, ‘Acts of Remembrance, on Armistice Day and others, should be inclusive and seek to avoid being conducted as a wholly religious event.’ It goes on, ‘Acts of Remembrance should be agnostic of religious elements and separated from Remembrance Services. This may be achieved by holding a religious service after the Act of Remembrance.’

What is there to say about this except that it is another depressing example of how the elites across our public and corporate institutions have become so obsessed with promoting ‘inclusivity’ at every turn that they have, in many cases, utterly lost sight of how fringe and exclusionary their ideas and decisions are seen by others?

One doesn’t have to be a practicing Christian (I’m not) to recognise that Christianity is so deeply ingrained in our history and culture – influencing not just our moral code, but our landscape, architecture, music, laws, and so on – that it is a core part of what we are as a nation. 

It also happens to be deeply intertwined with the history and culture of the Army itself, from its place within Acts of Remembrance (well, until now, at least) to the crosses that appear on the headstones marking the Commonwealth war graves of fallen soldiers, to the provision of chaplains, and the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior and its explicitly Christian inscriptions in Westminster Abbey. Interestingly, data published by the Ministry of Defence in 2018 showed that the percentage of Christians in the Army was notably higher (at 69%) than it was for the general population (51%).

Now, some people may hate all this and want to change it. And, between them, they may possess a number of different motivations for wishing to do so (they may be committed atheists or secularists, for example). But it strikes me that the least meritorious of those reasons is the desire to avoid causing ‘offence’ to people who belong to other faiths or have no faith.

After all, where does that approach end? Does the desire to make everyone feel ‘included’ mean that a nation should suppress any expression or display of its own dominant culture and identity while showing itself ever willing to promote those of others? That certainly seems to be the mindset adopted by the British elites. I am reminded of George Orwell’s observation that ‘England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality.’ That seems even more true today than it was then.  

I cannot help but feel that, under the stewardship of these elites, the well-meaning objective of eradicating prejudice against minority groups has transmuted into an all-consuming monster that won’t be satisfied until every aspect of British history and culture is, if not erased, then at least demoted to such a degree that these things are afforded no greater place in our national life than any other history or culture.

This, I’m sorry to say, is where these people seem to be leading us to. And they call us the culture warriors.

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If you happen to be in the Norwich area on Sunday, do feel free to come along to a talk I am giving to the New Culture Forum on the themes in my 2020 book, Despised: why the modern Left loathes the working class. Details available by emailing: Locals@NewCultureForum.org.uk

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I appeared in my regular slot as a panellist on GB News’s Dewbs & Co last Friday. The programme can be watched again here.

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A reminder that you can follow me on X/Twitter: @PaulEmbery