A Dirge for Britain
Once upon a time, Britain was great.
I. British Greatness
Britain was the origin of the notion of civil rights in the modern world. The birthplace of the Mother of Parliaments. The first nation to even theoretically acknowledge the virtues of free trade. One of the first to abolish slavery.
Britain was mighty. British ships patrolled the high seas, quelling piracy and checking Continental tyrants, stopping slavers. The Royal Navy participated in the final defeat of the Barbary Pirates, and British forces smashed one after another of the gimcrack city-states of the Arab slavers, all along the African coasts. Britain was the superpower, long before anyone invented the term.
Britain was wealthy. Even before the Industrial Revolution, the British ate better than the people of Continental kingdoms such as France. The Industrial Revolution started in Britain, and Britain became one of the first countries in the world where ordinary people could afford changes of clothing, table utensils, and furniture. Something we take for granted today, but something that was utopian fiction until the ironmasters and the factory-owners made it real.
Britain was the mother of nations. America, the dominant Power of the modern world, started as British. So did the rest of the countries of the "Anglosphere" -- Australia, Canada, and New Zealand -- countries notable for their own wealth and freedom. A century ago, all the Anglosphere looked to Britain for leadership.
Britain was proud. The British people were patriotic, yet ultimately tolerant of dissent -- they knew they were loyal, and that practically everyone else was too, so they didn't need to oppress those who believed differently. They were not warlike, but they were willing to fight when called upon, and British sailors and soldiers were victorious on a thousand battlefields, all over the world.
Then, something went wrong.
II. British Disaster
The British made three crucial mistakes during the first half of the 20th century which destroyed their dominance. These were their prosecution of World War One, their failure to prevent World War Two, and their embrace of socialism.
A. The First World War
It was not the British entry into World War One which was foolish. Britain was, after all, bound by treaty to defend Belgium; violating a public treaty of such magnitude would diminish Britain's ability to deter any treaty violations in the future. And German expansionism needed to be checked: the British had learned in many wars the danger of letting a tyrant dominate the whole Continent.
What was foolish was the arrogant over-confidence with which Britain entered the war. They acted on the assumption that British arms would be automatically victorious at no great cost, for no better reason than that Britain had been victorious before. Their military leaders were devoutly anti-intellectual -- before the war, it had been considered a strike against an aspiring officer for him to pay too much attention to the theory of tactics or the implications of technological advances on the battlefield. Their naval leadership was better, but there was even there a fatal complacency born of Trafalgar and a century of naval dominance. Their quality control on vital equipment such as armor-piercing shells was poor, leading directly to the failure to win a decisive victory at Jutland.
What was worse was the way in which the Army leadership handled the troops entrusted to their command. The very first major British offensives, in 1915, should have taught them that there was something wrong with existing doctrine, and should have made them shy of futher large-scale attacks until the doctrine was improved. Instead, given the gift of a big and patriotic volunteer army with an incredibly-professional cadre to train it up, they treated this gift like a wastrel coming into his inheritance. They burned up a whole generation of young manhood, dealing demographic damage to their own society of a sort which the Kaiser's limited strategic air and sea forces could have only dreamt of inflicting.
In doing so, they discredited the whole idea of patriotism in Britain. Nothing destroys a meme better than the extermination of most of those bearing it in their minds, the more so because humans are sapient and can choose to reject it. Cultures are Lamarckian, rather than purely Darwinian, and the Donkeys were effectively telling the British people: "Patriotism and courage are for suckers: believe them and you die."
B. The Second World War
The second mistake, therefore, followed directly from the first one. The British, having been badly bled in the First World War, did not want to fight a Second one. Because they were now gun-shy, they assumed that the best way of avoiding a fight was to be pacifist; to refuse to become involved in a future land war in Europe.
Consequently, when Germany challenged the Versailles Treaty, and Italy and Japan the whole world order embodied in the Covenant of the League of Nations, the British did nothing. This was an egregious failing, for the British were the only Power in a position to do anything effective across the whole sphere thus described.
The British excuse for doing nothing was, in every case, a lack of allies willing to support British actions. In particular, they blamed France for refusing to act. (Of course, the French were making the exact same excuse regarding their own inaction -- they could not act unless Britain was willing to intervene).
Such excuses are, of course, only excuses. British might was great, and greatly respected, in the Interwar Era. Germany was incredibly weak until the late 1930's, and could have been forced to submit to even a small BEF. Italy was utterly vulnerable to the Royal Navy; in particular she could not have carried out any campaign in Ethiopia into the teeth of a British blockade. As for the Japanese, they respected courage and strength, and as Britain yielded on one issue after another, they lost their respect for the British.
Thus, British pacifism made the war inevitable. Chamberlain threw away the last chance to deter Germany without a major war at Munich in 1938, proving to Hitler's satisfaction that he could get away with anything he wanted to try. And British pacifism made the war more costly. The British Governments of the 1930's repeatedly refused to fund air and armor purchases. Had the British been stronger with armor and in the air in 1939-40, Germany might not have been able to commit enough forces east to quickly conquer Poland, and the BEF might have been able to meaningfully counterattack and prevent the rapid fall of France in 1940.
In consequence of British stinginess, Poland fell in 1939 and France in 1940, with the result that by late 1940 Britain was facing a foe whose bombers based from Northern France and whose submarines based on the French Atlantic Coast, and vast quantities of men and materiel were destroyed by these raiders. Never before had so much been lost to the unwillingness to spend so little. Had it not been for Churchill, and the early British development of radar-based coordinated air defense and sonar-based anti-submarine warfare, Britain might have been forced to surrender by early 1941.
Britain was to pay for the rest of the war for her unpreparedness in 1939. Britain was forced to fight the Axis alone from fall 1940 to summer 1941, at ruinous financial expense. France was only regained in 1944 after an incredibly expensive invasion and land campaign, and Poland remained lost to the West until 1989. What is more, the price of victory was the passage of world leadership of the West from Britain to America, because the British were simply too drained after six years of war -- half of it on the weaker side -- to deter any other Powers, or even to hold on to the Empire.
World War One was probably unavoidable. The mistakes that led to World War Two were best understood as overreactions to the horrors of World War One.
But the third great mistake -- the one that prevented Britain from recovering -- was purely self-inflicted.
C. Socialism
Originally, socialism was supposed to replace capitalism after the revolution of the proleteriat. This was safely improbable in all but the most unstable countries.
But the British invented "Fabian" Socialism, and hence brought on themselves their doom.
Fabian Socialism abandoned the notion of a revolution of the proletariat (in part because, in Britain, there was almost no genuinely "propertyless" class), in favor of the idea of socialism by slow legislative enactment. Industry would still be nationalized and the exchange-economy abandoned, but step by step rather than in a single bloody revolution.
Now, during World War Two, some degree of socialist control was unavoidable. War industries, even if privately owned, had to be managed with an eye toward providing the fighting forces with the supplies they needed. Because of the U-Boat blockade, food and other materiels had to be rationed (or, at least, rationing seemed the least painful way of dealing with the inevitable shortages).
Normally, these war measures would have been phased-out at the end of the war. Not immediately, of course, because cutting them all immediately would have caused destructive economic dislocation. But over the period of a few years, as had been done before.
However, the war measures seemed ideal from the viewpoint of the Fabian Socialists who dominated the Labour Party -- the party that came to power following the dissolution of the War Government in 1945. Industries that had been controlled could be easily nationalized. Rationing could be continued, and eventually accepted as the norm.
So this was done.
It should be a shame to Britain -- should be, but it is not taught to British students in this fashion -- that the country which began the Scientific-Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions suffered under rationing for years after the end of the war. In fact, rationing became stricter following the end of hostilities. Rationing was not ended for sweets and for sugar until 1953 -- eight years after the guns fell silent!
The excuse was the need to feed the starving population of the Continent. But, absent U-Boats actually sinking freighters, rationing was unnecessary. The British could have allowed their people to purchase whatever food they could afford, and either dealt with the starving Continentals by means of foreign aid or -- if they couldn't have afforded this -- let said Continentals take care of their own problems.
(the Continentals weren't actually starving after 1947 or so anyway).
Postwar rationing had its desired political effect. The British people, who had been proud and free, were conditioned to accept extreme restrictions on their personal liberties in peacetime. If one accepts that it is illegal to buy food in excess of a government-mandated limit, without the lash of wartime necessity, then one will accept any limit on one's freedom. Afterward, British Governments could enact any restrictions they wished on the ancient "liberties of Englishmen."
And they did.
III. British Decline and Demoralization
The period after World War II saw a slow but steady British decline, and (what is worse) a shift in British attitudes to regard that decline as inevitable, necessary, even admirable -- and anyone who attempted to reverse this decline as foolish and despicable. Was the economy less free? Why, that was "social democracy." Did the Empire fall away? That was the British "recognizing the rights" of the formerly colonial peoples. Had the Navy been reduced to little more than a coastal defense force? That was a British acknowledgement of the "futility of military means in the atomic age." And so on.
And anyone who said otherwise was a greedy imperialist fascist, that's what he was!
The reason for this shift in attitudes is easy to understand. The British had, in fact, failed spectacularly in the first half of the 20th century. They were still suffering the effects of that failure. But to regard it as "failure" was unpleasant. Far better to treat it as a new kind of success.
The flaw, of course, in this argument was that the British were denying reality. If one knows that one has failed, one can evaluate one's actions and learn from one's mistakes, resolving to do better next time. But, if one attempts to recast failure as success, one feels better but learns nothing. Indeed, one learns "anti-lessons" -- one learns how to produce more failure.
The proof of this is the extraordinary unpopularity, in Britain, of the one major political leaders who tried the hardest to reverse -- and did succeed in slowing -- the British decline. I speak, of course, of Lady Margaret Thatcher.
As Prime Minister, Thatcher succeeded in de-nationalizing several major industries and abolishing many archaic work rules, restoring a degree of British productivity and competitiveness. She modernized the military, effectively supported Reagan in the winning of the Cold War, handily defeated Argentina in the Falklands War, and helped ensure that George H. W. Bush would stand up to Saddam Hussein over Kuwait. If she were an American President, she would have gone down as "great" for these accomplishments.
But in Britain, especially among the chattering classes, she is hated for this. Hated, because by her success she highlighted the extent to which previous British leaders had failed. And, after she left office, even her own party promptly distanced itself from her policies.
IV. The Current Situation and the Future
Things are bad in Britain today. Under threat from a large and actively hostile Muslim minority, the British are unable to mount any kind of coherent resistance to them. They are refusing to take meaningful steps to either assimilate or deport the Muslims; in fact, all they seem to be able to do is persecute anyone who "offends" the Muslims in any way. While churches are vandalized and non-Muslims attacked by the Muslims, the police warn people against "being crusaders" if they lodge complaints against the perpetrators, and the Archbishop of Canterbury betrays his own religion to advocate the institution of shari'a. Far from attempting even a modest restoration of British national power, the current debate is over the possible secession of Scotland and even Wales.
In part this is because of the social effects of a half-century of making excuses for failure, and the resultant demoralization. A large portion of the population is on the dole: among this British underclass, promiscuity and unwed pregnancy are rampant to a degree dwarfing that of even the American underclass. Patriotism is now deemed reactionary and even "racist" (the St. Andrews Cross cases) and service personnel are advised not to wear their uniforms in public for fear of attack. A society this sick is vulnerable to any call for order -- even the dark and sinister "order" of Islam.
The future is uncertain.
What I hope to see is the rise of another Churchill or Thatcher, to rally the people and restore pride in their country. Such a leader could restore order on liberal terms, forcing the radical Muslims to obey the laws of the land, and thus in time assimilating rather than deporting or exterminating them. He could cut taxes and social programs, restore British prosperity, and use this restored prosperity to begin rebuilding British might.
What I fear to see is the rise of a British Mussolini, rallying the people against the Muslims on what amounts to Fascist principles. Such a leader would render assimilation difficult, and might deport or even exterminate the Muslim immigrants. To appeal to the people he would decry "economic exploiters," while cynically taking bribes from specific ones to spare their enterprises. He would seek out foreign wars to unite the people behind him, and he might well fail at everything save expelling the Muslims.
What I most fear to see is the victory of the Muslims, and the annihilation of culture. This I would deem worse than the Britain-goes-Fascist scenario, because a Fascist Britain would remain recognizably British (and eventually become democratic again someday) while a Muslim Britain would soon be Just Another 'Stan).
Which of these scenarioes will come to pass, I do not know.
That is up to the British.
END
I. British Greatness
Britain was the origin of the notion of civil rights in the modern world. The birthplace of the Mother of Parliaments. The first nation to even theoretically acknowledge the virtues of free trade. One of the first to abolish slavery.
Britain was mighty. British ships patrolled the high seas, quelling piracy and checking Continental tyrants, stopping slavers. The Royal Navy participated in the final defeat of the Barbary Pirates, and British forces smashed one after another of the gimcrack city-states of the Arab slavers, all along the African coasts. Britain was the superpower, long before anyone invented the term.
Britain was wealthy. Even before the Industrial Revolution, the British ate better than the people of Continental kingdoms such as France. The Industrial Revolution started in Britain, and Britain became one of the first countries in the world where ordinary people could afford changes of clothing, table utensils, and furniture. Something we take for granted today, but something that was utopian fiction until the ironmasters and the factory-owners made it real.
Britain was the mother of nations. America, the dominant Power of the modern world, started as British. So did the rest of the countries of the "Anglosphere" -- Australia, Canada, and New Zealand -- countries notable for their own wealth and freedom. A century ago, all the Anglosphere looked to Britain for leadership.
Britain was proud. The British people were patriotic, yet ultimately tolerant of dissent -- they knew they were loyal, and that practically everyone else was too, so they didn't need to oppress those who believed differently. They were not warlike, but they were willing to fight when called upon, and British sailors and soldiers were victorious on a thousand battlefields, all over the world.
Then, something went wrong.
II. British Disaster
The British made three crucial mistakes during the first half of the 20th century which destroyed their dominance. These were their prosecution of World War One, their failure to prevent World War Two, and their embrace of socialism.
A. The First World War
It was not the British entry into World War One which was foolish. Britain was, after all, bound by treaty to defend Belgium; violating a public treaty of such magnitude would diminish Britain's ability to deter any treaty violations in the future. And German expansionism needed to be checked: the British had learned in many wars the danger of letting a tyrant dominate the whole Continent.
What was foolish was the arrogant over-confidence with which Britain entered the war. They acted on the assumption that British arms would be automatically victorious at no great cost, for no better reason than that Britain had been victorious before. Their military leaders were devoutly anti-intellectual -- before the war, it had been considered a strike against an aspiring officer for him to pay too much attention to the theory of tactics or the implications of technological advances on the battlefield. Their naval leadership was better, but there was even there a fatal complacency born of Trafalgar and a century of naval dominance. Their quality control on vital equipment such as armor-piercing shells was poor, leading directly to the failure to win a decisive victory at Jutland.
What was worse was the way in which the Army leadership handled the troops entrusted to their command. The very first major British offensives, in 1915, should have taught them that there was something wrong with existing doctrine, and should have made them shy of futher large-scale attacks until the doctrine was improved. Instead, given the gift of a big and patriotic volunteer army with an incredibly-professional cadre to train it up, they treated this gift like a wastrel coming into his inheritance. They burned up a whole generation of young manhood, dealing demographic damage to their own society of a sort which the Kaiser's limited strategic air and sea forces could have only dreamt of inflicting.
In doing so, they discredited the whole idea of patriotism in Britain. Nothing destroys a meme better than the extermination of most of those bearing it in their minds, the more so because humans are sapient and can choose to reject it. Cultures are Lamarckian, rather than purely Darwinian, and the Donkeys were effectively telling the British people: "Patriotism and courage are for suckers: believe them and you die."
B. The Second World War
The second mistake, therefore, followed directly from the first one. The British, having been badly bled in the First World War, did not want to fight a Second one. Because they were now gun-shy, they assumed that the best way of avoiding a fight was to be pacifist; to refuse to become involved in a future land war in Europe.
Consequently, when Germany challenged the Versailles Treaty, and Italy and Japan the whole world order embodied in the Covenant of the League of Nations, the British did nothing. This was an egregious failing, for the British were the only Power in a position to do anything effective across the whole sphere thus described.
The British excuse for doing nothing was, in every case, a lack of allies willing to support British actions. In particular, they blamed France for refusing to act. (Of course, the French were making the exact same excuse regarding their own inaction -- they could not act unless Britain was willing to intervene).
Such excuses are, of course, only excuses. British might was great, and greatly respected, in the Interwar Era. Germany was incredibly weak until the late 1930's, and could have been forced to submit to even a small BEF. Italy was utterly vulnerable to the Royal Navy; in particular she could not have carried out any campaign in Ethiopia into the teeth of a British blockade. As for the Japanese, they respected courage and strength, and as Britain yielded on one issue after another, they lost their respect for the British.
Thus, British pacifism made the war inevitable. Chamberlain threw away the last chance to deter Germany without a major war at Munich in 1938, proving to Hitler's satisfaction that he could get away with anything he wanted to try. And British pacifism made the war more costly. The British Governments of the 1930's repeatedly refused to fund air and armor purchases. Had the British been stronger with armor and in the air in 1939-40, Germany might not have been able to commit enough forces east to quickly conquer Poland, and the BEF might have been able to meaningfully counterattack and prevent the rapid fall of France in 1940.
In consequence of British stinginess, Poland fell in 1939 and France in 1940, with the result that by late 1940 Britain was facing a foe whose bombers based from Northern France and whose submarines based on the French Atlantic Coast, and vast quantities of men and materiel were destroyed by these raiders. Never before had so much been lost to the unwillingness to spend so little. Had it not been for Churchill, and the early British development of radar-based coordinated air defense and sonar-based anti-submarine warfare, Britain might have been forced to surrender by early 1941.
Britain was to pay for the rest of the war for her unpreparedness in 1939. Britain was forced to fight the Axis alone from fall 1940 to summer 1941, at ruinous financial expense. France was only regained in 1944 after an incredibly expensive invasion and land campaign, and Poland remained lost to the West until 1989. What is more, the price of victory was the passage of world leadership of the West from Britain to America, because the British were simply too drained after six years of war -- half of it on the weaker side -- to deter any other Powers, or even to hold on to the Empire.
World War One was probably unavoidable. The mistakes that led to World War Two were best understood as overreactions to the horrors of World War One.
But the third great mistake -- the one that prevented Britain from recovering -- was purely self-inflicted.
C. Socialism
Originally, socialism was supposed to replace capitalism after the revolution of the proleteriat. This was safely improbable in all but the most unstable countries.
But the British invented "Fabian" Socialism, and hence brought on themselves their doom.
Fabian Socialism abandoned the notion of a revolution of the proletariat (in part because, in Britain, there was almost no genuinely "propertyless" class), in favor of the idea of socialism by slow legislative enactment. Industry would still be nationalized and the exchange-economy abandoned, but step by step rather than in a single bloody revolution.
Now, during World War Two, some degree of socialist control was unavoidable. War industries, even if privately owned, had to be managed with an eye toward providing the fighting forces with the supplies they needed. Because of the U-Boat blockade, food and other materiels had to be rationed (or, at least, rationing seemed the least painful way of dealing with the inevitable shortages).
Normally, these war measures would have been phased-out at the end of the war. Not immediately, of course, because cutting them all immediately would have caused destructive economic dislocation. But over the period of a few years, as had been done before.
However, the war measures seemed ideal from the viewpoint of the Fabian Socialists who dominated the Labour Party -- the party that came to power following the dissolution of the War Government in 1945. Industries that had been controlled could be easily nationalized. Rationing could be continued, and eventually accepted as the norm.
So this was done.
It should be a shame to Britain -- should be, but it is not taught to British students in this fashion -- that the country which began the Scientific-Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions suffered under rationing for years after the end of the war. In fact, rationing became stricter following the end of hostilities. Rationing was not ended for sweets and for sugar until 1953 -- eight years after the guns fell silent!
The excuse was the need to feed the starving population of the Continent. But, absent U-Boats actually sinking freighters, rationing was unnecessary. The British could have allowed their people to purchase whatever food they could afford, and either dealt with the starving Continentals by means of foreign aid or -- if they couldn't have afforded this -- let said Continentals take care of their own problems.
(the Continentals weren't actually starving after 1947 or so anyway).
Postwar rationing had its desired political effect. The British people, who had been proud and free, were conditioned to accept extreme restrictions on their personal liberties in peacetime. If one accepts that it is illegal to buy food in excess of a government-mandated limit, without the lash of wartime necessity, then one will accept any limit on one's freedom. Afterward, British Governments could enact any restrictions they wished on the ancient "liberties of Englishmen."
And they did.
III. British Decline and Demoralization
The period after World War II saw a slow but steady British decline, and (what is worse) a shift in British attitudes to regard that decline as inevitable, necessary, even admirable -- and anyone who attempted to reverse this decline as foolish and despicable. Was the economy less free? Why, that was "social democracy." Did the Empire fall away? That was the British "recognizing the rights" of the formerly colonial peoples. Had the Navy been reduced to little more than a coastal defense force? That was a British acknowledgement of the "futility of military means in the atomic age." And so on.
And anyone who said otherwise was a greedy imperialist fascist, that's what he was!
The reason for this shift in attitudes is easy to understand. The British had, in fact, failed spectacularly in the first half of the 20th century. They were still suffering the effects of that failure. But to regard it as "failure" was unpleasant. Far better to treat it as a new kind of success.
The flaw, of course, in this argument was that the British were denying reality. If one knows that one has failed, one can evaluate one's actions and learn from one's mistakes, resolving to do better next time. But, if one attempts to recast failure as success, one feels better but learns nothing. Indeed, one learns "anti-lessons" -- one learns how to produce more failure.
The proof of this is the extraordinary unpopularity, in Britain, of the one major political leaders who tried the hardest to reverse -- and did succeed in slowing -- the British decline. I speak, of course, of Lady Margaret Thatcher.
As Prime Minister, Thatcher succeeded in de-nationalizing several major industries and abolishing many archaic work rules, restoring a degree of British productivity and competitiveness. She modernized the military, effectively supported Reagan in the winning of the Cold War, handily defeated Argentina in the Falklands War, and helped ensure that George H. W. Bush would stand up to Saddam Hussein over Kuwait. If she were an American President, she would have gone down as "great" for these accomplishments.
But in Britain, especially among the chattering classes, she is hated for this. Hated, because by her success she highlighted the extent to which previous British leaders had failed. And, after she left office, even her own party promptly distanced itself from her policies.
IV. The Current Situation and the Future
Things are bad in Britain today. Under threat from a large and actively hostile Muslim minority, the British are unable to mount any kind of coherent resistance to them. They are refusing to take meaningful steps to either assimilate or deport the Muslims; in fact, all they seem to be able to do is persecute anyone who "offends" the Muslims in any way. While churches are vandalized and non-Muslims attacked by the Muslims, the police warn people against "being crusaders" if they lodge complaints against the perpetrators, and the Archbishop of Canterbury betrays his own religion to advocate the institution of shari'a. Far from attempting even a modest restoration of British national power, the current debate is over the possible secession of Scotland and even Wales.
In part this is because of the social effects of a half-century of making excuses for failure, and the resultant demoralization. A large portion of the population is on the dole: among this British underclass, promiscuity and unwed pregnancy are rampant to a degree dwarfing that of even the American underclass. Patriotism is now deemed reactionary and even "racist" (the St. Andrews Cross cases) and service personnel are advised not to wear their uniforms in public for fear of attack. A society this sick is vulnerable to any call for order -- even the dark and sinister "order" of Islam.
The future is uncertain.
What I hope to see is the rise of another Churchill or Thatcher, to rally the people and restore pride in their country. Such a leader could restore order on liberal terms, forcing the radical Muslims to obey the laws of the land, and thus in time assimilating rather than deporting or exterminating them. He could cut taxes and social programs, restore British prosperity, and use this restored prosperity to begin rebuilding British might.
What I fear to see is the rise of a British Mussolini, rallying the people against the Muslims on what amounts to Fascist principles. Such a leader would render assimilation difficult, and might deport or even exterminate the Muslim immigrants. To appeal to the people he would decry "economic exploiters," while cynically taking bribes from specific ones to spare their enterprises. He would seek out foreign wars to unite the people behind him, and he might well fail at everything save expelling the Muslims.
What I most fear to see is the victory of the Muslims, and the annihilation of culture. This I would deem worse than the Britain-goes-Fascist scenario, because a Fascist Britain would remain recognizably British (and eventually become democratic again someday) while a Muslim Britain would soon be Just Another 'Stan).
Which of these scenarioes will come to pass, I do not know.
That is up to the British.
END