The Childlike lure of the Establishment

What is it about the Royal Family and the British Establishment that makes it so attractive to youngsters?

*squiggle - doodle - squiggle - doodle.* That was my introduction to the high-minded culture of the arts as it was many others I’m sure. A jolly, bearded behemoth of an artist grinning fulsomely which made far more of an impression than any “so called” “masterpiece” by any of the officially endorsed patron saints of the Left Wing art establishment such as the Chapman Brothers, Vivienne Westwood, Pablo Picasso or Giotto. Squiggle - doodle - squiggle - doodle. This is what made art accessible and fun: an outrageous, hairy cornflake of an almost-anglophone peintre armed with wit, repartee and a “wobble-board” - what child couldn’t be drawn to that? Not I - nor apparently - my 1980s contemporaries who knew where they were with Aussie banter, “cheeky” asides and his alter ego-cum-mascot the Rolfaroo holding court over proceedings. In later years I was glad to see the maestro emerging as a strong social conservative as per his country’s policy over “natives”, urging the indigenous Aboriginal inhabitants of Australia to “get up off your arse and clean up the streets,” before adding “why would you expect somebody to come in and clean up your garbage which you've dumped everywhere(?)". Splendid, culturally concise stuff to be sure. Is it any wonder these steadfast free market values led this greatest of all painters to be taken up as court artist/folk musician/jester to the House of Windsor and to be awarded the CBE and Order of Australia in the process? In this the most avant-garde of all antipodeans was mirroring the progress of musical impresario and philanthropist Jimmy Savile and the wit and raconteur Stuart Hall both of whom were doyens of the Royal Family and the conservative establishment during those halcyon years. In the process these titans of culture and conservatism gathered about them a great number of frantic fans - many of them youngsters, with unfortunate consequences as we have seen recently. In the fallout from the Operation Yewtree to my mind Britain needs to look at itself as a society and ask itself some difficult questions, the most difficult of course being - what is it about these men that make them so attractive to children? 

From the very beginning messieurs Savile, Harris and Hall were instrumental in bringing an exhilarating mix of high culture and bonhomie to all our childhoods. Savile in his work as chief gift giver as host of Jim’ll Fixit reminded us youngsters that it was and always would be who-you-know rather than what-you-know - truly the Tory way - and ended up blessed to spend eleven successive New Years Eves with The Lady at Chequers. Hall proved that a simple working man from “Oop" North could possess just as an adequate dexterity at language as his continental contemporaries Jean-Paul Sartre and Samuel Beckett, going on to accept an OBE and becoming the subject of a House of Commons motion congratulating him for his forty years service to the noble art of sports commentating. Now, we all know that children are subject to have their heads turned by excitement, by glamour and by the grace and favour of Margaret Thatcher and Her Madge herself. As has been revealed by some unsavoury (and unnecessary) high court trials a great many children may have been impressed by these bastions of the conservative establishment a little too much. These sorry affairs have opened up a great many questions regarding our children and their futures. Just what makes the Great British child so flighty, so prone to the bright lights of power and prestige and titillation? Are they easily led? Are they desirous? Insatiable? Perhaps deep down these brazen kiddlings are simply too easily led by all that glitz and glamour. 

In the wake of revelations regarding a number, or perhaps more. Perhaps dozens. Perhaps many dozens of children throwing themselves towards these bulwarks of the establishment one wonders about the quality of parenting in this nation of ours when we have in effect children who for several generations have clung so tightly to the trappings of power and the fame that it represents. Maybe we of Right minds and righter attitudes towards traditional family values should try and become less attractive - take a leaf out of Sir Leon Brittan’s book for goodness sake. There is a man who’s not been attractive to children for decades. Another suggestion is perhaps to adopt less groundbreaking and “trendy” musical tastes than the peerless innovator Savile who after all effectively invented “rave” music with the pioneering use of twin turntables. Want a non-child friendly soundtrack to your next dinner party or Conservative Association meeting? Look no further than the “hits” of Sir Cliff Richard! There’s no way any child AT ALL could be attracted to someone like him.

One thing I would like to make clear: no near-middle aged Tory should feel any sort of guilt when looking back at childhood infatuations with the likes of Hall, Savile and the Australian artiste himself. As Lord Tebbit has pointed out at the time in which they were in their pomp the priority in our national life was to defend the system. The establishment. This is what these men represented and why children found them so attractive and this is why we should regard these Grands Hommes of the arts as the cultural vanguard of the Right which crushed the Leftish Hampstead limp-wristedness of the continental, Labour supporting metropolitan elite. How sadly times have changed . . . as a latter-day wheezy-breathing Oscar Wilde languishes in Wandsworth Prison  let us remember the cultural contribution of those we have lost along the way, for as the groundbreaking Mancunian “emcee”  D.L.T said at the time of Sir Jimmy’s passing - “We are all going to be worse off without him around.”

Gary Barlow: Songsmith of the Right

What better tunesmith to write a brand new version of the national anthem and to bring Britain truly up to date

Gaz Man! How well I remember how he arrived during the twilight of the Major years . . . how Bowie-esque he lit up a grey decaying nation in a ray of extraterrestrial mystique and free market vigour . . . 

“Space Man

I always wanted you to gooooo!!!

Into space man

Intergalactic chrissttt!”

With a poetical assault on the senses of youth Gaz Man made selling sexy again in a way not seen since Duran Duran pulled up on the shores of Thatcherite Britain showing us that what really mattered in life was not something to say, intelligence, wit or style. No. It is showing the world that you have lots of women and other things of monetary value - THAT is what make’s people jealous! That is what “pop” music is truly about! And it is this spirit of pop which surrounds us in 2014, bought and sold and wholly prepackaged by the erstwhile Simon Cowell and the Gazster himself. Ever since the “kidz” (a young Thorncroft very much included) took to wearing Levis on the back of Gary Barlow’s shape-shifting space changeling hit I have myself followed the fortunes of Mr Barlow’s side-project, the “boy” band Take That with rapt attention in the years since. There was something wholly distracting and even slightly confusing about Gaz’s bandmates. Whether it was Mark’s boyish smile . . . Jason’s sinewy body . . . or even Howard’s hair; my teenage years were spent in an avalanche of admiration and wanderlust for the musical journey that Gary and the lads were taking us on. Imagine my delight when years down the line my own hopes were confirmed by dear old Gaz grinning next to Her Majesty whilst receiving his honours and contributing healthily to The Conservative Party’s esteemed coffers. As a young - albeit not as young as I once was - Conservative, and a pop fan who still wakes up each morning to the dulcet tones of Spaceman I have been outraged by the sanctimonious attitude taken towards this national hero on his healthy line towards sensible tax efficiency. Luckily I have a project that I can propose which will once again lift Mr Barlow back up into the pantheon of British musical geniuses alongside Handel, Cliff Richard, Bucks Fizz and Yehudi Menuhin. 

The most durable British patriot must admit that the National Anthem as it is is a bit of a dirge. Even after a crate of Stella I

can’t countenance the idea of watching Roy and the lads latest heroic failure in South America this summer played out to a cacophony of that plodding same-key beat before each shafting at the hands of our crafty continental opponents. I don’t think there’s any shame in saying that our anthem could do with a healthy lick of paint so that Britain itself can be pulled kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century. I mean it’s not as if I don’t want to save Her Majesty - far from it. I like  her. In the same way that one likes an aging uncle who arrives for Christmas dinner each year only to tell the same joke as he always does and then fuck off in his shoddy Fiat Punto. No, Her Madge is sacrosanct as far as Britishness is concerned. But aren’t there other areas of public life that are far more worthy of our defence, even our veneration? Money for instance. Or a cup of tea first thing. Or a healthy dislike of the E.U and/or foreigners in general. As far as I’m concerned there is only one candidate who can bring a healthy, British Right-Minded approach to rewriting our national anthem given his sterling record supporting the establishment against the forces of long haired-ness and guitars - and that man is Mr Gary Barlow O.B.E. 

Think of Gaz’s greatest hits. There are too many to chose from aren’t there? From the saucy, eroticised verses of the classic dancefloor filler “Relight My Fire” to the plaintive tones of the utterly poignant “A Million Love Songs” the man simply has it all. God willing following Mr Cameron’s election victory we on the Right need to follow our successes vis-a-vis the EU referendum and the march of Mr Gove’s Free School project with some zeitgeist defining innovations that will truly put the Great back into Team GB - the first of which I propose is the Gazster writing ten alternative versions of the new national anthem and putting up the entires to public vote on what remains of the BBC. Or Sky. Think of the possibilities of Barlow belting out each and every free market inspired ditty alongside a bevy of Conservative supporting backing singers such as Cilla, Frank Bruno and Pudsey Bear! We could even put up the winning entry into European competition during that years Eurovision Song Contest - that’ll put the bearded Austrian lady in her place I can tell you! By penning a rallying cry to the Right in the form of national song celebrating low tax thresholds for those most able, and the right of an Englishman to hog the barbecue during a sunny garden get-together of a May Bank Holiday can we really get to rally the silent majority of Great Britishers of whom Gaz is truly their poet laureate. What d’ya say Gaz? C’mon! Let’s boogie!      

Free the United Kingdom’s Interests and Traditions

FUKIT

A Manifesto for a Better Britain

1) Britain should be run for the British. We want the Queen, the mother of all Parliaments, the crack of wood against steadfast leather, Ladies Day at Ascot, Crufts, nonsensical sobbing, dry rot, zesty complaints and general disappointment in those who spoil it for the rest of us.

2) Britain should not be run BY the British. There are many ample attributes of our island race but organisation is clearly not one of them. A single look at the delays on the TFL website says its own story. Instead we should ask a team of highly trained Swedish Civil Servants to augument a practical takeover of all facilities in this country. Only when we are run by foreigners will we know just how disgusting foreigners truly are. 

3) The British reserve the right to stick our tongues out at any persons speaking a foreign language. We reserve the right to stick our tongues out. And to run away.

4) We should respect the thoughts and practices of those who are out of the norm. The British are a respecting and a respectful people after all. All those persons of a Muslim and/or homosexual bent should be sent to Butlins for a long weekend to show just how we do things around here.

5) The Danish. I’ve got nothing much to add here.

6) The Conservative Party are the natural party of government. However in this time of terror, recession and the short sharp shock of Theresa May a man (or his wife) should be allowed to post UKIP supportive posts on the Telegraph website during the midweek malaise.

7) There should be no Australians unless entirely necessary.

8) Every Britishperson (man woman and child) should be visibly intoxicated in public on at least two occasions during the working week.

9) Be kind to northerners.

10) Let us all entreat to bring back the larder - it was always the most thoroughly British room in the house.

11) Going abroad is fine. What is not fine however is a lack of Gordon’s Gin.

12) Every British man (or otherwise) should be sodding well left alone for a few hours of a Sunday. 

Our Gloriously Dead

Why 2014 marks a happy centenary

These are images that are etched across our national consciousness: the oft-bespoke analogy of “Lions led by Donkeys” as wave after wave of young working class men in sepia black-and-white go “over the top” amidst the wail of cello-song. Miles upon miles of military cemeteries in Northern France and Belgium are testament to this scar upon history. The cliché that we will no doubt be told ad nauseum this year is that those million or so who gave their lives in Flanders and the Somme were the best of the best. Like the Battle of Britain lot of the early 1940s these people (most of whom were only in their teens or twenties at the time) made the ultimate sacrifice to keep Britain and Britain and to defeat the enslaving clutches of European-based international socialism. 2014 will be chocka full of anniversary events dedicated to perpetuating the memory of this most glorious of generations. Whilst we will no doubt stand in salute collectively at the metaphorical Menim Gate many of us historians of the amateurish hue will count the what ifs. What if Britain hadn’t gone to war over that “little scrap of paper” vis-a-vis Belgium? What if the strenuous terms of the Treaty of Versailles hadn’t led to the bloodletting of an aggrieved Austrian colonel twenty-five years later? Thank God that we all can celebrate that it didn’t. For not only has the British nation earned a new mythology thanks to the conflicts of the twentieth century but the deaths of those involved meant that decades of progressive/socialist governments have been averted.

The large body of those who endorsed the socialist tyranny of Mr Attlee in 1945 were of working class stock who’d participated first hand in the two world wars. The contribution of these men apparently gave them grand ideas far above their station as to the running of the country post the Nazi capitulation and hence forth history records the sad litany of leftish failure in the years following the defeat of Hitler. Just think what might have happened if the Germans had won the first bout of their efforts towards world domination - had we been defeated in 1918 might Britain have retained a downsized empire whilst keeping the underclass in their place to boot? Would Churchill, Lloyd George and others have embraced universal suffrage had the krauts not surrendered their only natural interest for empire building and lebensraum? We will never know. What we do know however is that this most “unselfish” of generations emerged from the slaughter of Passchendaele and of the heroics of D Day, the dam busters and all the rest voting for socialist surrender to the eastern bloc and spurning the generous offerings of British industrialists and imperialists who offered them a better sight of the future in a world where one could work for a living and expect just rewards in doing so; where one could aspire to be the best one could be without pandering to the labour movement’s “Gestapo” tactics as predicted so wisely by Mr Churchill. Thank the lord then that post-1979 British politics has been thusly realigned to the advantage of the wealth creators to the general horror of the trade unionists and other such traitors to British interest. That the dying wishes of two generations of British working class heroes who gave their utmost for King and Country have been systematically reversed over the previous three decades is to our credit as a nation and a people who believe wholeheartedly in free commerce and are sceptical as per class consciousness and human solidarity. So this year let us come together not only to celebrate these greatest of all Britons but more importantly to breathe a sigh of relief that oh so many of them came to a premature end.