This Tuesday, for two precious minutes, the country will be united. The memory of our war dead, and the sacrifices they made, will compel solemnity and silence. Then, this brief respite ended, the cacophony and conflict of Modern Britain will resume. On social media, on our streets, through radio phone-ins and twitter pile-ons, the contending tribes of our dis-united kingdom will drive division and escalate the hate.
Research published last week by The Policy Institute at King’s College London indicates that British society is becoming increasingly polarised and strained. Eighty-four per cent of Britons believe the country is divided – up from 74 per cent five years ago.
And a sense of what we have lost is growing in parallel, with 48 per cent of people saying they want the country ‘the way it used to be’, 50 per cent believing our culture is changing too fast, and nostalgia rising across every generation.
That sense of loss was captured poignantly on Friday breakfast television when 100-year-old veteran Alec Penstone was interviewed on Good Morning Britain and he questioned whether his own service had been worth it, given what the country he had fought for had become.
The patriotism, social solidarity, national pride and sense of collective self-sacrifice that marked Alec’s generation is still there among many. Not least in the servicemen and women of today’s Army, Navy and Air Force.
But Alec can be more than forgiven his nostalgia, even despair, given how poorly the example of his generation is upheld by our elites – those appointed to lead the nation for which he was prepared to lay down his life.
If a country is to cohere and survive, let alone prosper and flourish, those in charge of its institutions have to believe in the worth of their nation, the value of its traditions and the nobility of its endeavours. That was never under any doubt when this country was led by the generation of Pitt, Palmerston, Churchill or Thatcher.
But their spirit is fugitive and feeble among our elites. In the shabby, twilit days of Starmerism, faith in our country, and pride in our shared inheritance, is now the love that dare not speak its name.
Former Tory minister Michael Gove argues that British society is becoming increasingly polarised and strained, with a recent poll showing eighty-four per cent of Britons believe the country is divided
The Cenotaph at Whitehall during last year’s Remembrance Sunday service. Gove writes that November 11 unites the country in the memory of our war dead, and the sacrifices they made
The common feature of so many of the institutions that once commanded, and defended, national loyalty is an abdication of legitimate authority. Whether it is those charged with defending our shores, our faith or our culture, a sense of pride in our past is in abeyance, and it is the new, fashionable gods of diversity, equity and inclusion to whom sacrifices must be made.
Only last month, our veterans faced another erosion of the protection they deserve. New legislation from this Government means that those who served the Crown fighting terrorism in Northern Ireland now fear a knock on the door and a summons to court for prosecution. While former IRA commanders, who ordered the torture and slaughter of innocents, are feted and free from justice.
Those who should be standing by our soldiers are silent. Instead, the Deputy Chief of the General Staff made it his priority recently to issue an order to all soldiers not to enter any clubs that may still have policies that exclude women.
Our national Church has gone equally astray.
The pews where we give thanks for the sacrifice of the fallen are governed by an episcopal hierarchy that takes the weekly offerings of worshippers and dedicates them to a bill running into the millions for reparations for slavery. Even though it was this country that led the fight against this trade in human suffering.
And the BBC is also forfeiting its authority. Once the home of fearless and patriotic truth-tellers such as George Orwell, this week it stands accused of editing footage and twisting reporting.
And all in a way that demeans our allies and contributes to greater hostility to the idea of the West – for which the Grand Alliance fought in the 1940s.
And, like the Army and Church hierarchies, the BBC leadership prefers to indulge in divisive identity-politics and virtue-signalling rather than strengthen the historic ties that bind us. So newsreader Martine Croxall is disciplined for referring to pregnant ‘women’ rather than pregnant ‘people’ while advocates for a trans ideology, which denies basic biological truth, are appeased.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer at last year’s Remembrance Sunday service. Gove writes: ‘In the shabby, twilit days of Starmerism, faith in our country, and pride in our shared inheritance, is now the love that dare not speak its name’
A willingness to accept difference, to welcome pluralism, to exemplify the best of what we used to call liberalism has long been a British characteristic. But liberalism, as Kemi Badenoch has rightly said, has been hacked.
The politics of tribal identity is replacing the patriotism of common commitment, dividing us into camps competing to advertise our anger, helplessness and victimhood.
The hoisting of the Palestinian flag in our cities becomes a symbol of inner secession – people want to belong but their allegiance is now to an ideology of permanent rebellion, Islamism or anti-Semitic intolerance. The globalised intifada has come home to Tower Hamlets and Leicester.
The Raise The Colours counter-protest, with Union Jacks appearing on lamp-posts and motorway bridges, was a reaction from those who felt their British identity threatened.
The high levels of both legal and illegal immigration in recent years have contributed to their sense of cultural alienation. And they heard no affirmation of pride in our history and values from those in authority. Instead, they were dismissed as ‘chavs’ and ‘gammons’, ‘rubes’ and ‘rednecks’.
The truth, of course, is that it is the British working class, men like Alec Penstone, that has been the saviour of our country again and again. Those under fire in Trafalgar, who suppressed the Atlantic slave trade, who held the line on the Marne, who faced down fascism on Cable Street, who liberated Normandy, who countered communism in the trade union movement and ensured Parliament honoured the Brexit vote were our working class. Motivated by the love of country, not an auction of grievance.
And yet their reward has been the condescension of elites. Brexit voters derided as dupes. Love of country permitted for the 90 minutes of a football match but considered embarrassing anywhere but the terraces. Our universities competing with each other to ‘decolonise the curriculum’ and denigrate this country’s past.
I saw it myself as Education Secretary when any attempt to reflect on our history with pride was regarded as that greatest of sins – narrow nationalism.
The Union flag and English flag on lampposts in Ellesmere Port. Gove argues the Raise The Colours counter-protest, with Union Jacks appearing on lamp-posts and motorway bridges, was a reaction from those who felt their British identity threatened
But when you undermine patriotic feeling you do not find its ebbing leads to greater solidarity – instead there is a search for new more combative identities. The politics of Islamist extremism, trans fundamentalism or other tribal assertiveness takes its place.
And if you damn patriots as bigots then real bigots seek to own, and twist, the definition of patriotism. As we have seen with the ugly tendency of some on the Right to deny that politicians such as Shabana Mahmood or Rishi Sunak, who exemplify our national virtues, are ‘really’ British.
This Remembrance Day, as we recall all those, of every faith and ethnicity, who rallied to our flag and fought for its values, we should honour their example.
This is a great country because of them and those who came before them, and our history is
not a chronicle of shame but an example of what a free people bound by law and honouring tradition can achieve.
Michael Gove is editor of The Spectator
