Britain is sliding inexorably into Fascism. Of this there can be no doubt. The 'land of my father's', seems today like a foreign country to me . The once friendly 'Bobby on the beat' is no more to be seen. In his place are legions of surveillance cameras, many fitted with loudspeakers to terrorize and shame pedestrians and shoppers publicly into abject conformity.
Around the 'Mother Of Parliaments', an area of one square kilometre has been declared a 'no protest zone'. This would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. Is this really the country of Byron, Shakespeare, Bronte and Charles Dickens ?
I was a teenager in South Wales back in the seventies, , when 'Coal was King' and Steel it's consort. All our men folk were either Miners or Steelworkers. The family unit was very tight, and communities helped each in good times and bad. The only `surveillance` was Sgt. Evans, our local Cop. Thirty eight years on, I still remember him, as being somehow always there, and usually friendly and helpful, yet with an air of authority and decency sadly lacking in today's Officers.
That country is gone 'with the wind' one might say. In it's place is a far more ominous, impersonal 'State' where the 'regime' has become all powerful and intrusive. I was a Police Officer for fifteen years. I carried no Gun, no Taser, no Pepper Spray and wore no Body Armour. My only protection was a short piece of wood, and my wits.
Britain's Police 'Service' has become a politicized paramilitary arm of of the state. They can 'gun down' innocent people (as in John Menezes), shoot them eight times in the head at point blank range and go unpunished. Unmanned `Drones` fly over the London skies with intrusive camera equipment and microwave weapons on board. Peaceful protesters are battered with `nightsticks`, and then arrested for their trouble. The ancient right of trial by jury is under constant attack, egged on by the `Code Napoleonists` in Brussels..
For most of my career , I watched successive governments do nothing as crime and disorder escalated out of control. Paedophiles, were allowed (perhaps encouraged) to prowl our land with apparent impunity and State sponsored anonymity. Traffic chaos, road rage, the break down of the family, `feral` children, football hooliganism. All out of control. Why did government stand idly by and pay only lip service to 'law and order'.
The Masonic Motto is , "Out of Chaos comes order". In other words, create the problem incite the reaction, then offer your solution. One of Blair's solutions was the `Civil Contingencies Act of 2004. This is in spirit a direct descendent of the Nazi Enabling Act of 1936, and a first cousin to the 'US Patriot Act'. In effect, it gives 'the government' the power to declare a 'state of emergency' and impose Martial Law. Of course, the Al Qaeda bogeyman has played it's part further justifying this 'necessary restriction of liberties'. It was only the first of other tyrannical statutes to be introduced subsequently in order 'To protect the people'. Surveillance Cameras, Drones in the sky, Bio ID Cards, 'Tooled Up' Police on the Streets, no protest zones, free speech zones, intrusive and invasive Council Tax Inspectors. It is hard to fathom how this could have happened to that country I loved so much in only half a lifetime. It was Huey long who said, "When Fascism comes to America, it will come in the name of Anti Fascism". Well Fascism came to Britain in 1997 in the guise of a liberal left wing government, led by a 'liberal' 'child of the sixties' Mr 'Phoney' Blair.
My late father fought with Montgomery during WWII. He was a damaged man when he came home, and never realised his own potential. That can be said of a generation of British men who went to war to 'fight for freedom'. What a betrayal of millions of lives.
I moved to live in Denmark in 1996, one year prior to the New Labour 'coup d'etat' but in truth, in my heart, I never left Britain, it left me and all my generation. Blair's 'Cool Britania' was and is something very different. A nation of TV addicts, sports crazy's and hedonists, mixed into a cocktail with multiculturalism, anti social behaviour and ruthlessness.
This essay could be entitled 'Problem Reaction Solution versus The Hidden Threat'. Here in Denmark, things are done differently. It is my thesis that the Utopian Danish Social State is actually something other from that which on face value at least, it appears to be. Denmark is not about Welfare, nor has it ever been. Welfare was the 'Carrot' and now 'the Stick' is being used to beat the Danish people down economically, having installed over five decades, deep within their national character, a complete dependency on the State apparatus.
The nearest example to this is Huxley's nightmare novel, 'Brave New World'. Denmark' apparent prosperity, comprehensive social welfare, and corporate efficiency, are I would suggest products not of enlightenment, but of a profound insecurity and uniformity in the Danish character. The political system here, has not only successfully undermined the role of the Danish Parliament and substituted a vast bureaucracy that has contrived a firm pact between labour and the establishment, it has also presided over a process by which the Dane has become the obedient and malleable item in a 'town planners' or sociologist's dream.
A friend, the Danish Political Commentator Kjeld Heising (www.heising.dk) wrote recently on the Danish condition,
"Danes live within narrow margins. Inside these margins, we can live normally, as part of the labour force, as consumers and as members of a 'thought community'. Outside of this is a steep slope to poverty, social isolation and deroute. The slope is vertical, there are no 'in betweens'. Constants heaps of legislation ensure that no Dane understands his conditions and therefore no Dane can operate in them. Consequently, the middle class Dane lives under a constant threat of bills, fines, penalties, duties, charges, fees, loss of income and esteem. These 'narrow margins' ensure that even minor sanctions can tip the scales. That's why he can be controlled with a smile, a raised finger and a subtle reminder of small sanctions. A 'Silent Threat'."
For the moment, there seems no reason for the more obvious, draconnian and overt measures here in Denmark that we see being put in place across the North Sea. The 'Silent threat' is enough for the present. The incessant economic turning of the screw is doing its job well enough for now. But, I just wonder how many turns are left before Danes wake up and 'smell the coffee' or should I say 'Kaffe'.
PS. The book 'The New Totalitarians' by Roland Huntford written in the 1970's was an ominously correct analysis of the Swedish Social Model. Denmark, Sweden, potato, potaato. It's well worth a read.
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