Anonymous England Part Three

So much of our news and current affairs is overtly politically partisan, fictional, and fantastical – whilst the real country and people are right in front of your eyes yet anonymous, uncovered...

I selected the name Æthelstan partly to disguise who I was on social media but also because I deeply respect the actual historical figure. I was reintroduced to him when Michael Wood’s Aethelstan The First King of England was aired in 2013; it’s still well worth a watch (And ignore all of the nonsense in the Vikings TV series). Around this time, I was exploring the roots of the Orthodox Faith in England, having worked my way backwards in time through Christian history, looking for some form of continuity to the actual teachings of our Lord and his Apostles.

I had reviewed Christianity, in all its varied forms, during 2008-2011 and tried to work out where I stood. The protestant reformation, then the desolation of Roman Catholic England by Henry VIII. That period partly explains the skeletal-like ruins of Abbey’s, Monasteries and Churches that go un-mourned and un-consecrated across the country (see above).

Even before I recommitted to Christianity, I was repeatedly attracted to Eamon Duffy’s challenging, The Stripping of the Altars and his invocation of village life during a period of religious turmoil, The Voices of Morebath. Again, these events are nearly incomprehensible without a grasp of Christian history and theology. I originally learnt this whilst reading Antonia Frasers’ remarkable Cromwell, Our Chief of Men, back in 1987. Above all else, this book contributed to me eventually abandoning Marxist historical materialism. The English Civil War was incomprehensible without recognising how the people’s actual religious beliefs inspired them and how differences over how to approach the Christian God and worship him were driving factors in many societal changes, political conflicts, and governance.

We must hear the voices of the key players of the time, not impose the latest “ism” of historical revisionism upon them. I later bought Rosalind Miles’ The Women’s History of the World. I was wholly unconvinced by her theory of a matriarchal phase of world history followed by a decline into a patriarchal one. There would be no history without patriarchy, but that’s a separate issue.

Therefore, I am not a great fan of this modern Viking-philia. The Vikings and their offspring, the Normans, did, in fact, rape and pillage Anglo-Saxon Orthodox Christian England. William the Conqueror eventually enslaved much of the Anglo-Saxon people, crushing ruthlessly any resistance with foreign French-speaking co-rulers and troops and imposed priests with the support of Rome. The Doomsday Book is aptly titled.

The Norman Conquest was a crippling blow to Christianity in general. The failure to see this is part of our loss of national identity, particularly if you view history without referencing the Christian faiths and belief systems of the time. The dehumanising concept of grinding economic and class forces will not do.

The film Valhalla Rising might be a more faithful reflection of the clash of Scandinavian pagan culture and Christianity. And this is not to downplay the contribution of the Norse cultures, mythologies and history or to elevate the Anglo-Saxons and ignore the ancient British tribes they displaced.

The Eastern Orthodox Churches, by definition, see the Great Schism of 1054, when West and Eastern Christendom finally ruptured, as a critical stage in understanding Christian history in the West. This is particularly so for the British Isles, given the subsequent invasion of England in 1066 from Normandy.

I venerate St. Kenelm of Clent because of my Orthodox Christian faith, which requires we honour the memory of the pre-Schism British martyrs and saints. I tried to find out what I could of the age and these extraordinary figures.

When you visit old Norman castles or ancient churches, you are, in fact witnessing subjugation in hard stone. The Norman overlordship of the Anglo-Saxons created a caste system and ethnic structure that overlaid the previous divisions between Anglo-Saxons, the original Britons and Danes. We can still note the artefacts in the names of our towns, villages and cities.

It is suggested that the different ethnic groups lived in different settlements and only over decades, maybe a century or more, gradually intermingled. This admixture of epigenetic, cultural, and tribal components feeds through the ancestral and regional development of Britain and England but is under-acknowledged because it is little known or explored; or simply undervalued.

The American Nations by Colin Woodard identifies a Norman Overlord theme in what he describes as the Tidewater system of governance, which he traces back to the Cavaliers (Royalists during the era of the English Civil War and Stuart Restoration) that settled the region of what we now call the United States. Such governance notions, he suggests, still impact Virginia, Maryland, southern Delaware, and north-eastern North Carolina states.

If so, what about the themes of our shires, great cities, and ports? Is the North-South divided about economics, or is it more ancestral and abiding than that? And here is a leap: Is the defenestration of English history that I am drawing attention to, in fact, a continuation of Norman Overlordship by other means?

So whilst there appear to be two separate processes - a failure to respect and induct the native generation into their national history, on the one hand, and mass inward net migration of others with their own histories and cultures, on the other - are they, in fact, the same process just assessed from different perspectives.

How long before the second generation of Romanian migrants are encouraged to view their setbacks and challenges as evidence of systematic ethno-racism? My dealings with the best educated and astute amongst many non-white ethnic minorities tell me they privately look at this process with bafflement. Their actual stories of arrival, discrimination, glass ceilings and hard-fought accomplishment, which I have tried to record elsewhere, are also being overwritten as we speak. Even the immigrant’s transmission of the record of their “lived experience” has been disrupted.

One of my tasks at church is to preserve the opportunity for the native English to encounter Orthodoxy. For some, it will be part of their Greek Cypriot, Romanian, Georgian, or even African heritage. But for the majority of the native population, it is actually the faith of the Anglo-Saxons. Though I can count on one hand the recent English converts like me, and indeed I am partly of immigrant stock myself.

The generation of Anglican converts to Eastern Orthodoxy, that left the former after the introduction of female priests and other reforms is dwindling. The older generation passes away. What will the future hold: will the tide come in or continue to recede?

But any debate about acceptable levels of immigration has been dispensed with by the ruling caste. They simply ignored the Brexit vote and opinion poll after opinion poll. And it is far worse under Conservative than Labour. Those on the Right who pointed to New Labour’s support for the European Union’s free movement of people no longer appear to get as animated by events since 2010.

There is a sense of drift and dissolution in England. The masses of mostly Romanian men coming to midnight mass know who they are and value their culture, and whilst their church attendance might be one feast day a year, and their knowledge of the Church Fathers or even the Liturgy minimal, they know they are intrinsically Christians. They will tell you how they learnt this despite decades of brutal Communist atheist rule. No doubt, the growing second generation may, like the well-integrated Cypriot community, develop a more spiritual hunger.

Will a new awakening form in the English people, and will we start to seek out authentic Christianity and history? Will LGBTQ+ Anglicanism be discredited as people search for real meaning? Our churches, nominally Christian or Orthodox, are partly filling up with European migrants from still-believing parts of the continent, and post-Brexit the visas have been shared farther afield. But our country no longer requires anything of the migrant. We do not expect any real loyalty, commitment, or citizenship of incomers or indeed ourselves. It’s as though, aside from our sporting national teams, we have lost our faith in England.

Recent ONS Figures should be startling:

• In the year ending June 2022, long-term immigration into the UK was estimated at around 1.1 million. This is an estimated increase of 435,000 compared with the YE June 2021 (628,000).

• This was primarily driven by the immigration of non-EU nationals, accounting for an estimated 66% of total immigration (704,000), an increase of 379,000 compared with the YE June 2021.

• The immigration of EU nationals remained broadly stable in the last year, accounting for 21% of total immigration (224,000).

• British nationals made up the remaining 13% of immigration (135,000), an increase from 69,000 in the YE June 2021. This will include both British nationals arriving from Hong Kong and some BN(O) status holders arriving from Hong Kong. It is too early to tell whether these patterns will continue.

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I remember reading a David Aaronovitch article after the Brexit vote, ridiculing those that had voted to leave the European Union for thinking there would be any halt to the incoming numbers. He claimed that every major city in the United Kingdom would soon be like London, with a majority of first, second and third generations of immigrant stock. It is rapidly looking as though he was right. Brexit was partly about restoring due process and balance to immigration. Last year a net 500,000 inward migration shows that the unelected and elected governing caste have no time for that.

Our institutions, public services, schools and, of course, the National Health Service are overwhelmed, as is our housing stock. I can remember in the early 2000s having a conversation with a friend and Labour Party Council leader in an East Midlands city, who at the time was closing two comprehensive schools due to falling numbers of children and birth rates. The then-Muslim population was the only one exceeding its replication rate. No doubt those schools were either reopened or the remaining ones extended.

The immigration increases are clearly planned as the Government is addicted to immigrants, for both cheap labour and skilled, to grow the economy by numbers, not efficiency or invention, and to paper over the cracks of our failing education system, university credentialism and staff our underperforming Health Service more cheaply.

Once immigration becomes the answer, sections of the native population that have failed in our education system will become surplus to requirements. Politics in the eighties, nineties and noughties was dominated by the poor quality of our schools and academia and the plight of small and medium-sized businesses with the quality of new recruits. The issue has gone off the agenda since the Coalition government and the Gove reforms, along with so many formerly bread-and-butter issues.

The demographic incoming waves are so intrinsic to our Universities’ financial model that any Cabinet or Prime Minister will not expend their political capital on addressing this. They argue in favour of wonders of mass economic immigration or merely pretend they are against it. The healthy men coming to the country by boat from Albania and elsewhere are at record numbers. But they are also misdirection from the huge increase in those coming here legally.

Before Brexit, I thought there was a “national debate” on immigration and that some of our mistakes could be halted or even reversed. The Conservatives won elections in 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019, promising to stem the tide of immigration and have, in fact, presided over a dramatic escalation. There has never been a majority in favour of any of this, but from the mid-eighties, there has been very little in the form of a reactionary opposition.

The new Race Grifters and Refugees Welcome brigade are the new, often government-funded extremists and claim the UK is a racist this or that, I see no real evidence of a major problem. Neither do the BLM and others of their ilk have much support in formerly immigrant communities (whether this will stay the case remains to be seen).

These activists are their own social class, a product of the importation of American College activism into key British universities. But the general deculturation, the striping of the native people, of their own historical birthright, faith and values - that were just recognisable in my youth but have been dying off since the second world war generation passed away - has also impacted the Caribbean-originated communities.

Now so much of news, current affairs, and popular culture is overtly politically partisan, fictional, and fantastical – whilst the real country and people are right in front of our eyes, they are anonymous, uncovered, and involuntarily opaque. We see them at the Queen’s funeral, but normal service is restored shortly thereafter.

We do not have the excuse of Muslim or communist rule. To complain about extremists in the Muslim community misses the point completely. Our relations with the local Muslims that dominate the Ward where our church is based are exemplary. No one complains about the disruption of mid-night paschal mass though they would have a real right to do so. The Muslim children attend their after-school Koran classes but also are sent to our church as part of their school’s religious education to learn about Christianity.

Contrast this with my experience of looking for a junior school for my daughter. The ideal school was just outside our catchment area, and getting our daughter in would have been a real challenge. We met with the Headteacher, who was excellent, and the school had an Outstanding Ofsted rating. But I was struck by one of the classroom teachers when they reassured me that the Christian ethos of the school was “not something to worry about”. We were eventually offered a place at a nominally catholic school.

But it is the country itself and those that should manage the transmission of culture and values from one generation of English to the next who are simply completely opposed to the project. Our intelligentsia, academia and establishment used to prefer second homes in Provence; now they virtue signal by denouncing themselves, pleading for Polar Bears, or promoting ever more inward migration, knowing full well they will be dumped in predominately working-class urban and rural areas. Any protests are denounced as Far-right. Will we wake up as this drift towards an economic, public health and financial disaster plays out? Or will even this be used to dragoon another cultureless generation into compliance? I suppose we must watch this space.

Christ Is Risen.