How interesting
A significant trend in the public mood in Britain has been increased support for the Armed Forces. It began with two news stories, one positive, one negative. The positive was that a story started to spread around the UK, that a small town called Wooton Bassett had got into a touching habit. Wooton Bassett is just down the road from RAF Lyneham, where the bodies of British soldiers fallen abroad - earlier in Iraq, now in Afghanistan - are taken on their way to being buried with military honours. The coffin cars would always drive through Wooton Bassett's main road, with the coffin draped in the Union Jack visible through the glass. And soon it happened that every time a military coffin drove by, the whole town would apparently stop and turn out on the main street to salute it. After a while, images of this spontaneous ceremony started becoming familiar across the country.
The negative piece of news came from Luton, an industrial town north of London. There a march of a local army unit was almost disrupted, and certainly fouled, by hate-ridden demonstrations from local Muslims - these being second- or third-generation British cticizens who shouted insults at the soldiers in the local dialect. The widespread anger and revulsion at these images - much though media and police tried to sanitize them - led directly to the foundation of the English Defence League, the dangerous volunteer group I mentioned in my last post. But they also led to a conscious decision on the part of millions of Britons to show their support for the forces in a more tangible way. Units returning from Afghanistan used to just drop in, get changed and go home. Now they are given parades through the high streets of main cities - Croydon and Liverpool, for instance - and applauded as they go. There is a strong feeling that the lads deserve our support, and I gather that it has made a difference to them. Incidentally, army recruitment is markedly up.
Now, what I think is that someone somewhere must have regarded these developments with dismay. It asserts everything about Britain that the PC leadership does not approve of. I may be edging towards paranoia, but does it sound accidental to you, that soon after the great marching ceremony of Remembrance Sunday - whose emphasis, this year, was more on recent war veterans - a clutch of human rights lawyers have presented no less than thirty charges of atrocities and war crimes against individual members of the British Army in Iraq, dating to years ago? And does it seem coincidental that the BBC have placed this as their lead news item of the day? The British political class is utterly discredited; most of the organs of the State get little respect from the public - courts, police, councils, etc.; even the beloved NHS is losing popularity these days. Only the Army, and among the Army the soldiers who do the actual fighting, are rising in the public's eye. Time to cut them down to size, wouldn't you say?
The negative piece of news came from Luton, an industrial town north of London. There a march of a local army unit was almost disrupted, and certainly fouled, by hate-ridden demonstrations from local Muslims - these being second- or third-generation British cticizens who shouted insults at the soldiers in the local dialect. The widespread anger and revulsion at these images - much though media and police tried to sanitize them - led directly to the foundation of the English Defence League, the dangerous volunteer group I mentioned in my last post. But they also led to a conscious decision on the part of millions of Britons to show their support for the forces in a more tangible way. Units returning from Afghanistan used to just drop in, get changed and go home. Now they are given parades through the high streets of main cities - Croydon and Liverpool, for instance - and applauded as they go. There is a strong feeling that the lads deserve our support, and I gather that it has made a difference to them. Incidentally, army recruitment is markedly up.
Now, what I think is that someone somewhere must have regarded these developments with dismay. It asserts everything about Britain that the PC leadership does not approve of. I may be edging towards paranoia, but does it sound accidental to you, that soon after the great marching ceremony of Remembrance Sunday - whose emphasis, this year, was more on recent war veterans - a clutch of human rights lawyers have presented no less than thirty charges of atrocities and war crimes against individual members of the British Army in Iraq, dating to years ago? And does it seem coincidental that the BBC have placed this as their lead news item of the day? The British political class is utterly discredited; most of the organs of the State get little respect from the public - courts, police, councils, etc.; even the beloved NHS is losing popularity these days. Only the Army, and among the Army the soldiers who do the actual fighting, are rising in the public's eye. Time to cut them down to size, wouldn't you say?