Saturday 11 October 2014

UKIP, Dad's Army and the Matter of Britain

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Jonathan Freedland has written a thought-provoking, if condescending, article in The Guardian, likening Nigel Farage, the leader of the British Eurosceptic party UKIP, to Captain Mainwaring in Dad's Army. I think Private Walker is more apposite but let that pass.  (If you don't know the programme it is pointless for me to explain but you might enjoy this.)

I prefer to point out that Captain Mainwaring, Pooterish, self-important, ridiculous, was a hero, whereas his much more agreeable adjunct, Sergeant Wilson, intelligent, suave, funny and upper middle-class, was weak. Mainwaring would have laid down his life for his country. Wilson would have been a defeatist, perhaps a quisling, had the Germans conquered Sussex, at least if not carefully watched by Mainwaring. 


Actually, the real myth bequeathed by the Second World War is that fascism is still a great danger or will be in Europe in the next twenty years. Evil morphs. The nearest thing to a fascist threat today and for the foreseeable future comes from Muslim extremists, not anti immigration parties.

Going to war with Germany with 1939 was in any case catastrophic for Britain, for the country we ostensibly went to war to save, Poland, for our ally France - and for the whole world. This truth is obscured by heroic myths.


In the Middle Ages the Matter of Britain meant the legends of King Arthur (while the Matter of France meant those recounting the imaginary deeds of Child Roland and Charlemagne). In our time the Matter of Britain is the myth of Britain standing alone in the Second World War. It's curious that when we British think about that war it is not war films or stories we think of nearly as much as a comedy programme broadcast over forty years ago about a group of part-time volunteers, in a genteel resort on the South Coast of England, preparing to meet German invaders. It's about a time when Britain was still a great power, still all white, still had class distinction. Instead of being about courage in battle, or the horrors of world war, or about our country's abrupt passage from global domination to a purely secondary role, it's a myth of cosiness, a national comfort blanket, a cuddle. 


As the man says,
The Americans had Private Ryan; we had Private Pike.
John Charmley, Professor of Modern History at the University of East Anglia, more than twenty years ago eloquently made the case for Britain not declaring war on Germany in 1939 and for making terms with Germany in 1940, as Lord Halifax and Rab Butler favoured. Over time, I have slowly come to find his ideas very persuasive. They are discussed here

How I wish I could discuss this with my father who was called up on September 1, 1939.

15 comments:

  1. These are the sort of stupid people - mainly men as the article points out - who think we won two world wars a world cup. Only one of those is right - and that was nearly 50 years ago now and won't be repeated.

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  2. People who vote UKIP are invariably stupid though. It's nothing to do with patriotism. It's just stupidity.

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  3. The sad truth is that had we had fewer Captain Mainwarings and more thoughtful, intelligent "quislings" Britain would have kicked Churchill out and accepted Hitler's repeated peace offers. Britain and Western Civilization would have been saved instead of being set on a path of spiritual, cultural (and finally) physicial-genetic meltdown. The existential threat to Britain and the West is not from "extremist" Muslims but from ordinary moderate Muslim and non-Muslim 3rd world immigrants of childbearing age who are demographically overwhelming the ageing British and Euro populations.

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    1. Oh really.. you sad fool. You buy into the lies of the left so easily, and you don't know diddly about history. I'm an American, on my dad's side, I have ancestors who came over on the Mayflower and survived, and others who arrived in 1632, I know the names of ancestors who fought in the war of independence. On my mother's, I have Abenaki ancestors, a people of the Algonquin nation, and I know more about WWII history than you, and apparently what's been happening since.. or perhaps you're in denial oh, and I have watched Dad's Army, it aired for years on PBS. It wasn't the patriotic British then or now who brought you open borders, and tossed the Magna Carta aside as an inconvenience.

      Do you think Hitler and his Nazis were 'misunderstood' or something? They were Marxists, and they represented another split among Marxists that had been occuring, in the USSR and in any area infested with them. Hitler was very cosy with the Islamists, as cozy as your Lab/LibDem/ToryInNameOnly con men Hitler rose to power on the shoulders of academics, students, actors, writers, unions, environmentalists, homosexuals. You need to face some home truths, the same types who championed appeasement of Hitler, are the same ideologically as those who wanted/want mass 3rd world immigration to dispossess the British. Tories in name only like Cameron, Boris Johnson, et al.. were educated/indoctrinated by Marxists in your universities. You owe your lives to the real men who Mainwaring might be a slightly mocking nod to... if you had more men like him now, the UK might be a safer place for you. BTW Churchill didn't support flinging your borders open wide, and I'd suggest you read his prescient writings on the subject of Muslims. Can the insults of Farage, I think he's a true British patriot

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  4. A message for the so-called 'main' political parties of all colours: if you wish for success remember London Is Another Country, so stop thinking about it. Concentrate on the great cities (especially Northern ones) and the provinces. Surely UKIP and the SNP have made that plain to you?

    Sebastian Hyatt

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  5. How did Clacton upset the clergy? Im not surprised though

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    1. I meant most Anglican clergy, at least according to Damian Thompson, regard UKIP as wicked.

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    2. http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/10/anglican-bishop-to-address-ukip-now-thats-courage-for-you/

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    3. Although some Anglican clergy living in France, have hoisted a UKIP flag. (The CofE clergy-in-exile there are so traditional that the French think they are Society of Pius X.

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  6. Jonathan Freedland for me is the most inane commentator in the English language. I didn’t know how big his reputation was until I Googled him the other day – who on earth listens to what he says?

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  7. A taxi driver told me: I thoroughly enjoyed that. I have very rarely felt like falling asleep at the wheel, having Freedland as a passenger was one occasion.

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  8. "The Americans had Private Ryan; we had Private Pike."

    So what. You had Tommy Atkins.

    Are modern Brits embarrassed by your earlier military and naval prowess? Or, your empire? I guess I've become too much of a fan of Kipling, Maturin/Aubrey and the common US and Brit heritage to waste any angst over the past.

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    1. O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' ``Tommy, go away'';
      But it's ``Thank you, Mister Atkins,'' when the band begins to play

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  9. I read your enthralling article. It contained some thought provoking observation about national myths and about how reasonable appeasement was. This is without trivialising the horrendous character of Nazism. The comments that followed were alarming with much racialist diatribe. George Callaghan

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