The Left now wants the utter abolition of Britain as we know it.
Time and time again, this country’s most innocent pleasures are made grist for the modern grievance mill. I’ve had more than enough
Imagine the following fantastical idea. An inquiry is set up into the nature of something – anything – in modern Britain. It is staffed by the usual combination of quangocrats and wokeistas. Its job is to investigate whether everything is hunky-dory, or whether there could be some – any – evidence of past injustices.
The participants know that top marks and maximum media attention are always awarded to such committees if they manage to pin the label of “systemic racism” on the thing being investigated. What are the chances they come back and say, “Actually there’s nothing to see here. Everything looks fine”?
The answer is very near to zero, as we are now reminded on a weekly basis. Scouring our past and present and declaring it “institutionally racist” or somehow insufficiently inclusive has become the abiding bureaucratic game in modern Britain.
This week, it was the turn of cricket to be so described. A report by the “Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket” (ICEC) found that English cricket allegedly suffers from “widespread and deep-rooted” racism, sexism and elitism. Urgent reform is apparently badly needed. Goodness.
You can tell much about this preposterous inquiry from its name. “Equity” is, of course, not the same thing as “equality”. “Equity” means equality of outcome, and has nothing to do with either equality of opportunity or merit.
If true “equity” was ever arrived at in cricket, or any other sport, it would mean both sides always ending up with the same score, and nobody either winning or losing. It would mean people with no aptitude for the sport playing alongside those with the greatest aptitude. As for “elitism”, well – once again – elitism is a rather important thing in sports. Like elitism in academia, it ought in fact to be the aim. Not in keeping people out, but in only allowing in those most deserving of a place there.
But in some ways this is to duck the issue, which is this: I am afraid that like much of the rest of the public I can no longer bring myself to be bothered. Perhaps there is racism, sexism, class-ism, able-ism and even elitism in the world of cricket. Perhaps there isn’t. The ICEC report makes for very thin reading and thinner still evidence. But I am simply no longer bothered about such claims by bodies which seem guaranteed to have put the black cap of the hanging judge on their heads before hearing even the first piece of evidence or any case for the defence.
Like many others, I am simply fed up, bored and increasingly angry about everything in this nation – including its most innocent pleasures – being put through the modern grievance mill.
Of course, it isn’t at all remarkable that our country is filled with disgruntled malcontents and hand-wringing self-haters. What is remarkable to me is that institution after institution simply gives in to them. Where did all the adults go? Did they just leave the room and give it over to the people who know nothing yet forever instruct the rest of us to “educate” ourselves?
Look at an institution like the British Museum. The sole purpose of its director and trustees is to safeguard one of the great national collections of international treasures. It is not a museum of Britain. It is a museum of the world, that the world comes to see. But look at what the people in charge of it are obsessed by.
The former chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, is now chairman of the museum and has proved as much of a damp rag in that role as he was in government. He seems to have that perpetual Conservative-in-midlife-crisis desire to be loved by people who will never love him and whose opinion shouldn’t bother him anyway. In his new position, Osborne seems to be mulling the giving away of the museum’s treasures. All the talk is once again of returning the Elgin Marbles. Instead of making the argument for why this nation has these treasures and why we are best placed to preserve them, the discussion is led by people who behave as though the museum is holding on to a set of stolen goods, rather than a legitimately purchased collection.
The British Museum may not be the museum of Britain. But if such a place does exist then it is our great cathedrals and abbeys. Yet these places too have decided to turn on themselves. Just this past week we learned that St Paul’s Cathedral had used its promotional website to attack Winston Churchill and Lord Nelson. Among other things, it described Churchill – whose funeral, of course, took place in St Paul’s – of being an “unashamed imperialist” and a “white supremacist”.
Why would they do this? Because where our national religion once stood a new one now stands. As the Anglican church has become simply Extinction Rebellion at prayer so other religions have moved in to take its place. Chief among these is the religion of self-destruction: the religion of warring on our past, and especially taking out all of our great accomplishments and heroes.
The practitioners of this new religion tell us that in every aspect of our past and present, we should feel deep shame. Sometimes they even pretend to share in this shame themselves. But, of course, it is a fraud – as they are. These people are not filled with shame. They are filled with pride. Pride at standing over our past and pronouncing themselves better than it, wiser than it and – yes – braver than it. What would Churchill know of bravery compared to a social justice warrior in the church of the latter-day masochists?
Much of the modern Left and the weakling Right simply wants the deconstruction of everything in Britain as we know it. This is why they ignore the sins of other countries and cultures while inventing some of our own.
Well, I suggest that they have had their day. They have overinflated their currency enough. It is high time that they were told that the racket they have been indulging in is simply no longer welcome here.
Douglas Murray is author of ‘The War on the West’
