I lived in South Yorkshire when the Rotherham scandal went mainstream. It wasn’t ‘breaking news’ to many of us living there. I became involved in helping a female pupil at the school at which I was a parent-governor. She was 12 years’ old and was being groomed by a Pakistani rape gang. I was also, I suppose, a member of the middle-class then, by virtue of my profession (academic). Naively I expected my feminist female colleagues to have some empathy for the poor girls of Rotherham - they’d all undergone the ‘patriarchy is evil’ standard programming. What could be more patriarchal than a rape gang? It was gutting to see how little they cared. They just didn’t see them. As you say, the white working-class just have no place in their hierarchy of oppression. My same ex-colleagues will cry for the women of Iran or Afghanistan or, right now, Gaza but they couldn’t give tuppence for the poor girls down the road. Everyone elsewhere matters more. Another commenter has mentioned the decline of Christianity as a factor in the loss of basic humanity and that consensus of caring. Alexander Solzhenitsyn repeatedly warned that ‘Men have forgotten God’ in his writings; we see yet more evidence of that by the day.
I mentioned the grooming gangs to a pro-EU scientist I met, years ago, he just laughed & said, smiling, "yeah but when you look at these girls, the kind of girls they are, their background, why should we care?" I was so staggered I didn't even want to strike him, I just sat there thinking Holy shit. He assumed, I guess, that as an educated chap I would agree, however my mother is from Rotherham, working class, and in any case, what a bastard.
Exactly ‘why should we care?’ That’s their attitude. They saw the girls as sub-human. They’ll cry for a woman getting harassed by the morality police in Kabul. but ignore (even despise) a child of their own ethnicity being gang raped in Rotherham. I used to work with these people and I grew to despise them.
Hi. I loved your comment. A while back I wrote an essay on the grooming gangs. I did a few basic Maths calculations to argue that for those urban working class communities which happened to be situated near to particular types of Muslim communities, the average person of working class origin would know about 5 girls who had been victims of grooming gangs. This was based on an estimate from a victims organisation which estimated the total number of victims at somewhere between 75,000 and 380,000.
It was only a back of the envelope calculation, but didn't factor in girls who wouldn't come forward into the equation. It was based upon the observation in psychology that the average person has roughly 150 acquaintances with whom they are friendly and know a basic life story- a favourite hairdresser would be a prime example. I was heavily critical of our institutions and government in the essay- if they had acted sooner the problem would have been far, far smaller. We don't have many genuine conservatives left in positions of power- if we did, they would have told the liberal Tories and Leftists that people respond well to deterrence, especially when it's accompanied with a real sense of shame and social ostracism. The police and criminal justice system could have cut the problem by a factor of five, making the problem only two or three times (per population) as common as white (and more covert) paedophile gangs.
Second question- was the problem mainly centred around a mosque or mosques which were Wahhabi/Salafi?
Anyway, the numbers question relates to my theory that the rage seen in the UK riots was mainly due to direct experience- what the Left likes to call 'lived experience'- not, as they like to claim the product of the far right. Apparently a fourteen year old girl went missing and was subsequently found dead. This was back in 2003. Her name was Charlene Downes.
And it's not a lack of compassion by the way, although I'm sure there was plenty of subconscious 'victim-blaming' going on- and the most awful type of bigoted class prejudice. It's just that most people are such cowards- they keep their heads down like timid little rabbits. For what, exactly? It's more important to be able to look oneself in the mirror. There is nothing new about it either. Back in the thirties, Parliament was convinced that at the first sign of German bombers, the working classes would riot, as would the Jews in Whitechapel and on the Old Kent Road. In real life, they showed redoubtable spirits- it was the upper and upper middle classes who fled for the country and the safety of 'funk holes'- just like the pandemic, really!
Anyway. you mentioned Christianity. If you're interested, I would heartily recommend the Chosen series- a five season epic about the life of Jesus and his followers. It's fantastic and free (supported by voluntary donations). They've made four seasons so far. It's available through the Chosen app, a standalone app which is distinct from the other app. It should be available through most Smart TV's, Nvidia Shield or Amazon Firestick. The historical research is meticulous. Worldwide, many Jewish people have been watching it because they've learned things about their culture and/or religion that they didn't know before.
Thanks so much for your comment. Yes, the numbers of children raped and trafficked was enormous. It did feel like literally everyone knew someone who someone who knew someone that was directly or indirectly affected by this heinous crime. Morgoth made a video a couple of years’ ago about the industrial scale sex enslavement of white children in the north of England and he refers to ‘football stadiums full’, which is about right.
When the Rotherham scandal broke in 2013, it wasn’t news to many of us living in the area. I had seen the cars picking up girls from the children’s homes and gangs of girls around the taxi cab offices at night, when I was coming home from work. I did several ‘concerned’ complaint to the council only to be shut down, that was in 2009. I’d already written to many local MP’s - one being David Blunkett a senior minister in Tony Blair’s government. To no avail. A Labour MO, Ann Cryer, had been trying to draw attention to the grooming issue for years but she was told to shut up.
You mentioned the issue of Muslim ethnicity. From my experience it didn’t matter which type of Muslim the perpetrator was. Rather the key issues were -
Where did their family originate from in Pakistan? I got to read a number of the perpetrators’ statements. A huge majority of them came from one particular part of Pakistan and many from one specific village. They were often related to one another - as you know, this scum interbreed and do cousin marriage, so the perpetrators were often related to one another too. It was a family business for them. Remember many of them were making money from pimping out the children and selling them to brothels.
Were they involved in the night-time economy? By that I mean, did they work in or around the fast food outlets and taxi offices. These places allowed them to access vulnerable children who often hung around such places. The night economy meant they were out and about at night. Taxis were key in the trafficking of children. The 12 year girl I supported had been trafficked across the north of England in that way.
This crime dates back to the 80’s but the first recorded cases were in 1997. It is still happening.
I post about it regularly on Twitter and plan to write a Substack about my experiences in the near future. It’s not a time I was able to talk about much for ages….My dealings with the apparatus of state changed me forever. I saw them all for what they are.
Thanks so much for the recommendation too. Very best wishes.
This type of crime requires witnesses as well as victims, to make it personal and real for people. The fact that you are middle class will help open up the ongoing scandal to a wider audience. Good luck with the Substack! On the subject of incest I was chatting with someone in comments on Helen Dale's Substack a few weeks back. He was a genetic scientist. He had planned to research data which showed that father-daughter incest was 6,000 times more common for one specific ethnicity in the UK, but was told by the powers that be that to do so would be highly discriminatory. I wonder which specific ethnicity had drawn his attention?
There are heroes in this story. Andrew Norfolk is one of them. He has continuously been called racist and far right scum by many journalists on the Left, ever since he first reported the story in The Times back in 2011. In reality, he's actually a moderate Lefty, and was very conflicted when he first considered whether to report the story when he first become aware of it. Ultimately, conscience and his journalistic sense of duty won out- both rate commodities these days, the latter especially.
Over the past 15 to 20 years many have shifted from epistemic rationality to instrumental rationality. Sure, there was always bias, but these days there isn't even a pretence of impartiality.
That’s funny! I read your bio when I subscribed. I love Pre-Raphaelite art! A company called John Williams Waterhouse Gifts sells Pre-Raphaelite T-shirts on Amazon. I like them because they fit well, don’t stretch out of shape with multiple wears, and come in multiple colours. I’m not that fond of the usual boring mix of black, white, grey and an occasional navy blue.
My favourite T-shirt has to be my Make 1984 Fiction Again T-shirt though- in the current paradigm, it’s sadly apropos. Gallows humour…
Yes I love Pre-Raphaelite art and Romantic poetry - Lord Alfred Tennyson, as you’ll know, wrote a long poem about the poor Lady of Shalott. I’m massively into Arthurian legend too. I made a video about the revival of interest in King Arthur in the 19th century, for my dear friend Nathan C J Hood’s ‘Arthur Day’ earlier this year https://youtu.be/fe2WDh7GnMU?si=-tQ8jgGGGD8QxKaG.
There was also a massive revival in Pre-Raphaelite art in the 70s/80s when wealthy people like the composer Andrew Lloyd-Webber began collecting pieces again - I wish I had his art collection!
Did you know they’ve actually placed the likely historical figure of Arthur? He was a fifth century figure called Riothamus, which is actually a Latinized version of a British term meaning "High King" or "supreme ruler." His campaigns on the continent, particularly in Gaul, mirror those of the legendary Arthur described in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae. The betrayal of Riothamus came from Roman officials, but it’s easy to understand the appeal of the Mordred myth- it allowed Christian writers to lay the foundation of a morality play, blending elements of Greek Tragedy with the Christian ethos, and which would eventually reach its zenith with the Elizabethan worldview of hierarchy, and order versus nature.
Wow- your video was great! Good narration and production. I see you’re an Excalibur fan- me too! I think you should bring your historical knowledge to bear in your writing on Substack. The link between old and new, current affairs and the Middle Ages, would ironically be Isaiah Berlin. Some have described him as a ‘liberal nationalist.’ He was emphatic on culture. He believed it was a river, which could twist and flow, ever changing, but not be interrupted, deprived of its source in the past. This is a key challenge to the cultural Leftists- imagining the future, ‘unburdened by the past’ (yes, the Kamala Harris word salad isn’t simple vacuity- it’s more a mask for her true intentions).
They want to use multiculturalism as a battering ram to create an entirely new culture. Berlin believed that any culture which didn’t view culture as a river and a continuation of the past into the future, was doomed to the worst kind of superficial cultural bankruptcy. He didn’t make any claims as to superiority though- I imagine in many ways he subscribed to Herder’s (of whom he was a proponent theory that cultures which simply different, and each would find it’s own ‘centre of gravity.’
Sorry to see you had a past illness referred to in the comments. Have you heard of Librarian of Celaeno? He’s an American Substack writer who is extremely well-read and knowledgeable about classical and medieval history. He’s built up a pretty good subscription base- better than my own. It might be worthwhile getting in touch to compare notes and for advice.
I cannot understate the importance of this next piece of advice. You need to start your Substack writing journey by linking your best YouTube videos into Substack threads (not posts).
Give a brief introduction of yourself, your background and your interests. I would title you first Substack Thread ‘A Journey through Arthurian Legend with Pre-Raphaelite Art.’ I would be a little informal, introduce yourself, and interject a little humour. I’ve just seen the top line of your YouTube channel. (I really should follow my own advice on this one, but, for some reason, fall into the trap of more conventional writing).
‘Liberalism is moral syphilis. And I’m stepping over it.’ - Jonathan Bowden.
That’s brilliant! Make sure it’s the first line of your thread. It should draw a good deal of attention for sheer provocativeness. Also, make a YouTube video telling your subscribers on YouTube that you’ve got a Substack. Substack is a lot better than YouTube for forging very cursory relationships with readers. The only maintenance on your part will be hitting like, and occasionally responding to good or highly salient comments.
I wish I had a YouTube channel when I started out on Substack. Remember, part of the appeal of Substack is getting to know the author at an informal online level. It’s about finding people who share similar values and interests.
Yes I was sickened to see the return of Jacqui Smith, she of the porn-watching husband who had the cheek to charge his disgusting videos (of yet more exploited, vulnerable women) to get expenses…I honestly can’t think of a time when things have been worse in the UK. Perhaps this is accelerationism, and it’s better that things get worse faster in order for it all to collapse? All I know, is that it’s bloody awful.
Yes. I was told, in a meeting with South Yorkshire Police and social services, that the child I was acting as ‘appropriate adult’ for had made a ‘lifestyle choice’ - she was being raped and trafficked. Like 12 year old children make decisions like that….I still remember that meeting. I think it was the beginning of the end of my old life.
Jacqui Smith - the Home Secretary under Gordon Brown - sent out a memo to Police forces saying that victims of grooming gangs had "made an informed choice" and it's "not for police to get involved in". Keir Starmer has recently given her a place in the House of Lords and a position in his government - that of Minister of Skills.
My mother was the caretaker at the local secondary I attended. There was a smarmy cunt of a French teacher, Mr Ollie, who was classic middle class as described in this excellent article by virtue of the fact he was intelligent and enlightened enough to learn, speak and teach another language (despite the fact a million people on the other side of the channel attain this level of English as a 2nd language every single year).
Anyway, many years later I upset my mother when I pointed out what a lowlife degenerate Ollie was because we all know he fucked (i.e. groomed and raped) a 16 year old girl in my year called Tracy Smith. It was no surprise to me that, again as per the observations in this article, my middle class wannabe mother said "she asked for it, she was a slut". I know she didn't believe that but it was more important to her to preserve her vision of middle class than to admit the truth.
If nothing else, it put to bed for me the nature vs nurture bullshit.
The whole woke movement is simply class-signaling by other means.
They throw soup/march slowly/whatever 'not' to persuade you to agree with them, but in order to identify themselves to each other. They wave their luxury beliefs like flags to signal to other affluent people that they're on the same side.
Whenever I talk to the woke, I always address them as "you people" because it offends them. I suppose I had better start referring to "non-you people" now.
I think it will go back to basics. A new upper class will form from the best, brightest and bravest of England's young men in the coming years.
They will marry the bravest and brightest of the women.
Their strength will provide security to the less capable and enable enforcement of order in the lands they are rewarded and the hierarchy will be as it should be.
It wouldn't matter if you could get rid of the class system. You could bring the whole next generation up on another planet, brainwashing them to believe they had always been freewheeley and equal and open-minded and part of the same class, and then watch the exact same behaviors blossom up from nothing. The urge to be snobbily better-than -- *especially* in illegitimate ways -- is in their basic personality, instincts and DNA. (Sorry, but it is!)
If you want something that might work in the (relatively) short term, then claim the moral high ground and claim it hard. After all, it really does belong to you, and they respond to moral labels if not moral content.
Sadly we really are naked apes and subject to the same social dominance hierarchy as the rest of the animal kingdom - Jordan Peterson with his lobsters is absolutely correct - snobbery is innate and unavoidable - behind all the virtue signalling lies a brutal class sensitivity.
Kind of but not exactly. People respond to status very differently, after all. They're different in what they even think it's about, not to mention their priorities. It's not right to conflate all status or hierarchy with the abusive posers who make up certain "moral" social circles.
I immediately thought of poor Leonard Bast and the Schlegel sisters' enormous bookcase falling on him and killing him in Howard's End.
E M Forster - the author - being gay - felt like an outsider in Edwardian Britain and so was naturally on the side of the Schlegel girls who represented what today would be the Woke Left upper middle class.
Independently wealthy - nobody in the family has a job - and they have servants - the source of their wealth is never disclosed but it allows them the luxury of being kind to the working classes.
It costs them nothing to invite the impoverished bank clerk Leonard Bast in for tea when Helen Schlegel accidentally takes his umbrella after a concert.
Leonard is a tragic figure - the sensitive, artistic, working class man trapped in a soul destroying clerical position which he hates but keeps him from starvation.
His awkwardness around their very Woke tea table is painful in the extreme.
They try to include him in their social circle but it is clear he will never belong and is being massively patronised to give them the pleasure of feeling virtuous.
Leonard is a genuine sensitive - walking for miles outside London one full moon night just to escape the squalor and enjoy the beauty of nature - surreptitiously reading poetry at his work desk - attending classical music concerts with his battered old umbrella - desperately trying to look respectable.
Painfully aware of his inferior position.
E M Forster slyly suggests that it is Leonard's aspiration to be cultured that ends up killing him - his association with the Schlegel sisters proving lethal - thereby revealing Forster's innate snobbery.
Despite the attempts of well meaning upper class philanthropists no good can ultimately come from providing the workers with public libraries, museums, art galleries and concerts Forster implies revealing his own status anxiety.
This is not true but exposes the snobbery of the left wing Bloomsbury set which Forster was on the edges of. Virginia Woolf hated him but she was also brutal about the lower orders as was D H Lawrence - an enthusiastic eugenicist.
The modern day equivalent of the Schlegel/Bloomsbury set - left wing in their politics - right wing in their economics - supremely patronising - Titania McGrath would not be out of place in Forster's novel.
And they would all hate Tommy Robinson - intelligent, outspoken, working class and proud of it, deeply patriotic - I have a strong suspicion that the unashamedly materialistic right-wing villains of the novel - the wealthy but uncultured Wilcoxes (they don't read but love sport so must be the bad guys) would really get along with Tommy and rather admire him.
Even in our fake egalitarian times and fake meritocracy which has already hardened into an unofficial caste system, there is a division between the middle and working classes. The problem for white people is that the working classes are no longer white and indigenous but mostly non-white and foreign. If the British body politic could be equated to a physical body, it would be the body of someone suffering from tetra amelia ie a body without arms and legs. HMG has begun the process of replacing the limbs of the British body politic with foreign workers. Once this process starts, it will soon replace everything else as well - the equivalent of its internal organs as well as its belief system. It would appear that this process is now irreversible.
The belief system of Christo-Liberalism is what one would call a luxury belief system,for Fundamental British Values is the antithesis of patriarchy and social conservatism as well as being distinctly anti-natalist. This being so, not tackling this means that the demographics of Britain being an ageing and shrinking society will continue to worsen.
The problem is simple in a way: what official moral system do the British need?
It would have to be a pro-natalist one if they ever want to resist the irresistible demand of business organisations for foreign labour.
What would induce the British to have enough children, parent them as well as educate and train the properly?
Importing immigrant labour then becomes a behavioural addiction: once you have some immigrants, a few more won't hurt too much and a few more and yet a few more ...
The solution must be to give up the luxury belief of anti-natalism and casual sex once you have convinced people of the moral imperative of restoring the patriarchy with social conservatism, marriage and family values.
Great article. Class rarely gets discussed, even within circles where the differences between races are accepted . Bloodlines are important and even dogs from certain lines are recognised for having superior traits to others of the same breed.
Class is a mighty difficult topic. Marx wrote a lot about it but never defined his terms. HG Wells demonstrated that a man might play several different class roles, depending on his economic activity.
But one thing is relatively simple and quite obvious when talking about then and now: the disappearance of Christianity. Can people be a people without some shared immutable spiritual and moral authority?
It calls for just one thing in my view - not 'heirarchy' but strong social pressure to support meritocracy and (concomittantly) aversion to all forms of 'equity'. That is the only thing which has a hope of getting us out of the bind we are in - if people all 'agree' they will snitch on anyone not doing their job properly and will have zero tolerance for the uspurption of real jobs by diversity hires.
(The merit principle is the unassailable one and the strongest card to play as a consequnce)
>It was initially very binary - the peasants and the aristocrats
ffs Woes, two sentences in and you're already making questionable statements. There always were urban dwellers, merchants, craftsmen, yoemen, etc. If you apply today's understanding of class to the Middle Ages, those would have made a the middle class.
Read more, watch less 80s TV.
btw. It always seemed to me that Brits tend to be significantly less knowledgeable than people with an equivalent educational level from other nations. Don't want to dunk on Brits or anything, and I think we can all name at least one exception, I'm genuinely curios if others share my impression.
I generally enjoyed your essay and agree with most of the history. However, I reserve the right to disagree on the issue of the BNP. The BNP are racist cretins. Islamophobia is not racism, despite what the Labour party and our institutions may believe. If the Left genuinely believes that anti-Zionism isn't anti-Semitism, then they must hold themselves to the same standard on Islam, lest they commit the motherlode of all category errors.
Most of us like most Muslims, just not the ones who are committed to Islamism as opposed to Islam. Most Muslim countries have long since banned Islamism and think we are mad not to. It is committed Islamists who continue to commit Islamism inspired terror attacks and which routinely get mislabelled as having mental health problems. I heard one commentator claim that Sweden had reclassified certain types of religiously inspired rape as terrorism, but was unable to confirm the claim.
A similar thing, but more muted. The more pronounced class distinctions are, the more they seem to galvanise civilisation on the ascent but also, on the descent, set the middle against everyone else. So, in countries with less pronounced class distinctions, it will be easier for people to work together.
We Americans certainly have a class system that is as strict as anyone else’s, just different. Certainly, any American born can see it. The elites especially those who have degrees from the Ivies have become cultists, believing that they earned it all on merit alone with anyone who disagrees with whatever the approved moralizing bullpucky is being bigots, losers, and among Clinton’s Disposables.
Really, same party, same dances, just different tunes.
From what I've observed the Upper and Working classes in Britain are very similar in temperament and attitude. It's the Middle Class who are quite different from the others.
I lived in South Yorkshire when the Rotherham scandal went mainstream. It wasn’t ‘breaking news’ to many of us living there. I became involved in helping a female pupil at the school at which I was a parent-governor. She was 12 years’ old and was being groomed by a Pakistani rape gang. I was also, I suppose, a member of the middle-class then, by virtue of my profession (academic). Naively I expected my feminist female colleagues to have some empathy for the poor girls of Rotherham - they’d all undergone the ‘patriarchy is evil’ standard programming. What could be more patriarchal than a rape gang? It was gutting to see how little they cared. They just didn’t see them. As you say, the white working-class just have no place in their hierarchy of oppression. My same ex-colleagues will cry for the women of Iran or Afghanistan or, right now, Gaza but they couldn’t give tuppence for the poor girls down the road. Everyone elsewhere matters more. Another commenter has mentioned the decline of Christianity as a factor in the loss of basic humanity and that consensus of caring. Alexander Solzhenitsyn repeatedly warned that ‘Men have forgotten God’ in his writings; we see yet more evidence of that by the day.
I mentioned the grooming gangs to a pro-EU scientist I met, years ago, he just laughed & said, smiling, "yeah but when you look at these girls, the kind of girls they are, their background, why should we care?" I was so staggered I didn't even want to strike him, I just sat there thinking Holy shit. He assumed, I guess, that as an educated chap I would agree, however my mother is from Rotherham, working class, and in any case, what a bastard.
Exactly ‘why should we care?’ That’s their attitude. They saw the girls as sub-human. They’ll cry for a woman getting harassed by the morality police in Kabul. but ignore (even despise) a child of their own ethnicity being gang raped in Rotherham. I used to work with these people and I grew to despise them.
Hi. I loved your comment. A while back I wrote an essay on the grooming gangs. I did a few basic Maths calculations to argue that for those urban working class communities which happened to be situated near to particular types of Muslim communities, the average person of working class origin would know about 5 girls who had been victims of grooming gangs. This was based on an estimate from a victims organisation which estimated the total number of victims at somewhere between 75,000 and 380,000.
It was only a back of the envelope calculation, but didn't factor in girls who wouldn't come forward into the equation. It was based upon the observation in psychology that the average person has roughly 150 acquaintances with whom they are friendly and know a basic life story- a favourite hairdresser would be a prime example. I was heavily critical of our institutions and government in the essay- if they had acted sooner the problem would have been far, far smaller. We don't have many genuine conservatives left in positions of power- if we did, they would have told the liberal Tories and Leftists that people respond well to deterrence, especially when it's accompanied with a real sense of shame and social ostracism. The police and criminal justice system could have cut the problem by a factor of five, making the problem only two or three times (per population) as common as white (and more covert) paedophile gangs.
Second question- was the problem mainly centred around a mosque or mosques which were Wahhabi/Salafi?
Anyway, the numbers question relates to my theory that the rage seen in the UK riots was mainly due to direct experience- what the Left likes to call 'lived experience'- not, as they like to claim the product of the far right. Apparently a fourteen year old girl went missing and was subsequently found dead. This was back in 2003. Her name was Charlene Downes.
And it's not a lack of compassion by the way, although I'm sure there was plenty of subconscious 'victim-blaming' going on- and the most awful type of bigoted class prejudice. It's just that most people are such cowards- they keep their heads down like timid little rabbits. For what, exactly? It's more important to be able to look oneself in the mirror. There is nothing new about it either. Back in the thirties, Parliament was convinced that at the first sign of German bombers, the working classes would riot, as would the Jews in Whitechapel and on the Old Kent Road. In real life, they showed redoubtable spirits- it was the upper and upper middle classes who fled for the country and the safety of 'funk holes'- just like the pandemic, really!
Anyway. you mentioned Christianity. If you're interested, I would heartily recommend the Chosen series- a five season epic about the life of Jesus and his followers. It's fantastic and free (supported by voluntary donations). They've made four seasons so far. It's available through the Chosen app, a standalone app which is distinct from the other app. It should be available through most Smart TV's, Nvidia Shield or Amazon Firestick. The historical research is meticulous. Worldwide, many Jewish people have been watching it because they've learned things about their culture and/or religion that they didn't know before.
Thanks so much for your comment. Yes, the numbers of children raped and trafficked was enormous. It did feel like literally everyone knew someone who someone who knew someone that was directly or indirectly affected by this heinous crime. Morgoth made a video a couple of years’ ago about the industrial scale sex enslavement of white children in the north of England and he refers to ‘football stadiums full’, which is about right.
When the Rotherham scandal broke in 2013, it wasn’t news to many of us living in the area. I had seen the cars picking up girls from the children’s homes and gangs of girls around the taxi cab offices at night, when I was coming home from work. I did several ‘concerned’ complaint to the council only to be shut down, that was in 2009. I’d already written to many local MP’s - one being David Blunkett a senior minister in Tony Blair’s government. To no avail. A Labour MO, Ann Cryer, had been trying to draw attention to the grooming issue for years but she was told to shut up.
You mentioned the issue of Muslim ethnicity. From my experience it didn’t matter which type of Muslim the perpetrator was. Rather the key issues were -
Where did their family originate from in Pakistan? I got to read a number of the perpetrators’ statements. A huge majority of them came from one particular part of Pakistan and many from one specific village. They were often related to one another - as you know, this scum interbreed and do cousin marriage, so the perpetrators were often related to one another too. It was a family business for them. Remember many of them were making money from pimping out the children and selling them to brothels.
Were they involved in the night-time economy? By that I mean, did they work in or around the fast food outlets and taxi offices. These places allowed them to access vulnerable children who often hung around such places. The night economy meant they were out and about at night. Taxis were key in the trafficking of children. The 12 year girl I supported had been trafficked across the north of England in that way.
This crime dates back to the 80’s but the first recorded cases were in 1997. It is still happening.
I post about it regularly on Twitter and plan to write a Substack about my experiences in the near future. It’s not a time I was able to talk about much for ages….My dealings with the apparatus of state changed me forever. I saw them all for what they are.
Thanks so much for the recommendation too. Very best wishes.
This type of crime requires witnesses as well as victims, to make it personal and real for people. The fact that you are middle class will help open up the ongoing scandal to a wider audience. Good luck with the Substack! On the subject of incest I was chatting with someone in comments on Helen Dale's Substack a few weeks back. He was a genetic scientist. He had planned to research data which showed that father-daughter incest was 6,000 times more common for one specific ethnicity in the UK, but was told by the powers that be that to do so would be highly discriminatory. I wonder which specific ethnicity had drawn his attention?
There are heroes in this story. Andrew Norfolk is one of them. He has continuously been called racist and far right scum by many journalists on the Left, ever since he first reported the story in The Times back in 2011. In reality, he's actually a moderate Lefty, and was very conflicted when he first considered whether to report the story when he first become aware of it. Ultimately, conscience and his journalistic sense of duty won out- both rate commodities these days, the latter especially.
Over the past 15 to 20 years many have shifted from epistemic rationality to instrumental rationality. Sure, there was always bias, but these days there isn't even a pretence of impartiality.
That’s funny! I read your bio when I subscribed. I love Pre-Raphaelite art! A company called John Williams Waterhouse Gifts sells Pre-Raphaelite T-shirts on Amazon. I like them because they fit well, don’t stretch out of shape with multiple wears, and come in multiple colours. I’m not that fond of the usual boring mix of black, white, grey and an occasional navy blue.
My favourite T-shirt has to be my Make 1984 Fiction Again T-shirt though- in the current paradigm, it’s sadly apropos. Gallows humour…
Yes I love Pre-Raphaelite art and Romantic poetry - Lord Alfred Tennyson, as you’ll know, wrote a long poem about the poor Lady of Shalott. I’m massively into Arthurian legend too. I made a video about the revival of interest in King Arthur in the 19th century, for my dear friend Nathan C J Hood’s ‘Arthur Day’ earlier this year https://youtu.be/fe2WDh7GnMU?si=-tQ8jgGGGD8QxKaG.
There was also a massive revival in Pre-Raphaelite art in the 70s/80s when wealthy people like the composer Andrew Lloyd-Webber began collecting pieces again - I wish I had his art collection!
Sorry about the wall of text. For some reason Substack is not allowing to properly space the comment.
Did you know they’ve actually placed the likely historical figure of Arthur? He was a fifth century figure called Riothamus, which is actually a Latinized version of a British term meaning "High King" or "supreme ruler." His campaigns on the continent, particularly in Gaul, mirror those of the legendary Arthur described in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae. The betrayal of Riothamus came from Roman officials, but it’s easy to understand the appeal of the Mordred myth- it allowed Christian writers to lay the foundation of a morality play, blending elements of Greek Tragedy with the Christian ethos, and which would eventually reach its zenith with the Elizabethan worldview of hierarchy, and order versus nature.
Wow- your video was great! Good narration and production. I see you’re an Excalibur fan- me too! I think you should bring your historical knowledge to bear in your writing on Substack. The link between old and new, current affairs and the Middle Ages, would ironically be Isaiah Berlin. Some have described him as a ‘liberal nationalist.’ He was emphatic on culture. He believed it was a river, which could twist and flow, ever changing, but not be interrupted, deprived of its source in the past. This is a key challenge to the cultural Leftists- imagining the future, ‘unburdened by the past’ (yes, the Kamala Harris word salad isn’t simple vacuity- it’s more a mask for her true intentions).
They want to use multiculturalism as a battering ram to create an entirely new culture. Berlin believed that any culture which didn’t view culture as a river and a continuation of the past into the future, was doomed to the worst kind of superficial cultural bankruptcy. He didn’t make any claims as to superiority though- I imagine in many ways he subscribed to Herder’s (of whom he was a proponent theory that cultures which simply different, and each would find it’s own ‘centre of gravity.’
Sorry to see you had a past illness referred to in the comments. Have you heard of Librarian of Celaeno? He’s an American Substack writer who is extremely well-read and knowledgeable about classical and medieval history. He’s built up a pretty good subscription base- better than my own. It might be worthwhile getting in touch to compare notes and for advice.
I cannot understate the importance of this next piece of advice. You need to start your Substack writing journey by linking your best YouTube videos into Substack threads (not posts).
Give a brief introduction of yourself, your background and your interests. I would title you first Substack Thread ‘A Journey through Arthurian Legend with Pre-Raphaelite Art.’ I would be a little informal, introduce yourself, and interject a little humour. I’ve just seen the top line of your YouTube channel. (I really should follow my own advice on this one, but, for some reason, fall into the trap of more conventional writing).
‘Liberalism is moral syphilis. And I’m stepping over it.’ - Jonathan Bowden.
That’s brilliant! Make sure it’s the first line of your thread. It should draw a good deal of attention for sheer provocativeness. Also, make a YouTube video telling your subscribers on YouTube that you’ve got a Substack. Substack is a lot better than YouTube for forging very cursory relationships with readers. The only maintenance on your part will be hitting like, and occasionally responding to good or highly salient comments.
I wish I had a YouTube channel when I started out on Substack. Remember, part of the appeal of Substack is getting to know the author at an informal online level. It’s about finding people who share similar values and interests.
Yes I was sickened to see the return of Jacqui Smith, she of the porn-watching husband who had the cheek to charge his disgusting videos (of yet more exploited, vulnerable women) to get expenses…I honestly can’t think of a time when things have been worse in the UK. Perhaps this is accelerationism, and it’s better that things get worse faster in order for it all to collapse? All I know, is that it’s bloody awful.
One police officer said the victims 'should all have been drowned at birth'.
Yes. I was told, in a meeting with South Yorkshire Police and social services, that the child I was acting as ‘appropriate adult’ for had made a ‘lifestyle choice’ - she was being raped and trafficked. Like 12 year old children make decisions like that….I still remember that meeting. I think it was the beginning of the end of my old life.
Jacqui Smith - the Home Secretary under Gordon Brown - sent out a memo to Police forces saying that victims of grooming gangs had "made an informed choice" and it's "not for police to get involved in". Keir Starmer has recently given her a place in the House of Lords and a position in his government - that of Minister of Skills.
God almighty...
My mother was the caretaker at the local secondary I attended. There was a smarmy cunt of a French teacher, Mr Ollie, who was classic middle class as described in this excellent article by virtue of the fact he was intelligent and enlightened enough to learn, speak and teach another language (despite the fact a million people on the other side of the channel attain this level of English as a 2nd language every single year).
Anyway, many years later I upset my mother when I pointed out what a lowlife degenerate Ollie was because we all know he fucked (i.e. groomed and raped) a 16 year old girl in my year called Tracy Smith. It was no surprise to me that, again as per the observations in this article, my middle class wannabe mother said "she asked for it, she was a slut". I know she didn't believe that but it was more important to her to preserve her vision of middle class than to admit the truth.
If nothing else, it put to bed for me the nature vs nurture bullshit.
The whole woke movement is simply class-signaling by other means.
They throw soup/march slowly/whatever 'not' to persuade you to agree with them, but in order to identify themselves to each other. They wave their luxury beliefs like flags to signal to other affluent people that they're on the same side.
It's U and Non-U, dressed as a rainbow.
Whenever I talk to the woke, I always address them as "you people" because it offends them. I suppose I had better start referring to "non-you people" now.
I think I will too.
I think it will go back to basics. A new upper class will form from the best, brightest and bravest of England's young men in the coming years.
They will marry the bravest and brightest of the women.
Their strength will provide security to the less capable and enable enforcement of order in the lands they are rewarded and the hierarchy will be as it should be.
I certainly hope so.
It wouldn't matter if you could get rid of the class system. You could bring the whole next generation up on another planet, brainwashing them to believe they had always been freewheeley and equal and open-minded and part of the same class, and then watch the exact same behaviors blossom up from nothing. The urge to be snobbily better-than -- *especially* in illegitimate ways -- is in their basic personality, instincts and DNA. (Sorry, but it is!)
If you want something that might work in the (relatively) short term, then claim the moral high ground and claim it hard. After all, it really does belong to you, and they respond to moral labels if not moral content.
Sadly we really are naked apes and subject to the same social dominance hierarchy as the rest of the animal kingdom - Jordan Peterson with his lobsters is absolutely correct - snobbery is innate and unavoidable - behind all the virtue signalling lies a brutal class sensitivity.
Kind of but not exactly. People respond to status very differently, after all. They're different in what they even think it's about, not to mention their priorities. It's not right to conflate all status or hierarchy with the abusive posers who make up certain "moral" social circles.
Another excellent thought provoking essay.
I immediately thought of poor Leonard Bast and the Schlegel sisters' enormous bookcase falling on him and killing him in Howard's End.
E M Forster - the author - being gay - felt like an outsider in Edwardian Britain and so was naturally on the side of the Schlegel girls who represented what today would be the Woke Left upper middle class.
Independently wealthy - nobody in the family has a job - and they have servants - the source of their wealth is never disclosed but it allows them the luxury of being kind to the working classes.
It costs them nothing to invite the impoverished bank clerk Leonard Bast in for tea when Helen Schlegel accidentally takes his umbrella after a concert.
Leonard is a tragic figure - the sensitive, artistic, working class man trapped in a soul destroying clerical position which he hates but keeps him from starvation.
His awkwardness around their very Woke tea table is painful in the extreme.
They try to include him in their social circle but it is clear he will never belong and is being massively patronised to give them the pleasure of feeling virtuous.
Leonard is a genuine sensitive - walking for miles outside London one full moon night just to escape the squalor and enjoy the beauty of nature - surreptitiously reading poetry at his work desk - attending classical music concerts with his battered old umbrella - desperately trying to look respectable.
Painfully aware of his inferior position.
E M Forster slyly suggests that it is Leonard's aspiration to be cultured that ends up killing him - his association with the Schlegel sisters proving lethal - thereby revealing Forster's innate snobbery.
Despite the attempts of well meaning upper class philanthropists no good can ultimately come from providing the workers with public libraries, museums, art galleries and concerts Forster implies revealing his own status anxiety.
This is not true but exposes the snobbery of the left wing Bloomsbury set which Forster was on the edges of. Virginia Woolf hated him but she was also brutal about the lower orders as was D H Lawrence - an enthusiastic eugenicist.
The modern day equivalent of the Schlegel/Bloomsbury set - left wing in their politics - right wing in their economics - supremely patronising - Titania McGrath would not be out of place in Forster's novel.
And they would all hate Tommy Robinson - intelligent, outspoken, working class and proud of it, deeply patriotic - I have a strong suspicion that the unashamedly materialistic right-wing villains of the novel - the wealthy but uncultured Wilcoxes (they don't read but love sport so must be the bad guys) would really get along with Tommy and rather admire him.
It's about 40 years since I last read Howard's End, but your dissection of it as proto-woke is very very incisive. Have an upvote with my compliments.
"a deeply moral group of people, but that their current morality is completely perverse", the moral imperative of antiwhitism.
These young women who are so proud of their PhDs are in for a rude awakening.
Even in our fake egalitarian times and fake meritocracy which has already hardened into an unofficial caste system, there is a division between the middle and working classes. The problem for white people is that the working classes are no longer white and indigenous but mostly non-white and foreign. If the British body politic could be equated to a physical body, it would be the body of someone suffering from tetra amelia ie a body without arms and legs. HMG has begun the process of replacing the limbs of the British body politic with foreign workers. Once this process starts, it will soon replace everything else as well - the equivalent of its internal organs as well as its belief system. It would appear that this process is now irreversible.
The belief system of Christo-Liberalism is what one would call a luxury belief system,for Fundamental British Values is the antithesis of patriarchy and social conservatism as well as being distinctly anti-natalist. This being so, not tackling this means that the demographics of Britain being an ageing and shrinking society will continue to worsen.
The problem is simple in a way: what official moral system do the British need?
It would have to be a pro-natalist one if they ever want to resist the irresistible demand of business organisations for foreign labour.
What would induce the British to have enough children, parent them as well as educate and train the properly?
Importing immigrant labour then becomes a behavioural addiction: once you have some immigrants, a few more won't hurt too much and a few more and yet a few more ...
The solution must be to give up the luxury belief of anti-natalism and casual sex once you have convinced people of the moral imperative of restoring the patriarchy with social conservatism, marriage and family values.
The patient is sick, but will he take the cure?
Great article. Class rarely gets discussed, even within circles where the differences between races are accepted . Bloodlines are important and even dogs from certain lines are recognised for having superior traits to others of the same breed.
Class is a mighty difficult topic. Marx wrote a lot about it but never defined his terms. HG Wells demonstrated that a man might play several different class roles, depending on his economic activity.
But one thing is relatively simple and quite obvious when talking about then and now: the disappearance of Christianity. Can people be a people without some shared immutable spiritual and moral authority?
It calls for just one thing in my view - not 'heirarchy' but strong social pressure to support meritocracy and (concomittantly) aversion to all forms of 'equity'. That is the only thing which has a hope of getting us out of the bind we are in - if people all 'agree' they will snitch on anyone not doing their job properly and will have zero tolerance for the uspurption of real jobs by diversity hires.
(The merit principle is the unassailable one and the strongest card to play as a consequnce)
>It was initially very binary - the peasants and the aristocrats
ffs Woes, two sentences in and you're already making questionable statements. There always were urban dwellers, merchants, craftsmen, yoemen, etc. If you apply today's understanding of class to the Middle Ages, those would have made a the middle class.
Read more, watch less 80s TV.
btw. It always seemed to me that Brits tend to be significantly less knowledgeable than people with an equivalent educational level from other nations. Don't want to dunk on Brits or anything, and I think we can all name at least one exception, I'm genuinely curios if others share my impression.
I generally enjoyed your essay and agree with most of the history. However, I reserve the right to disagree on the issue of the BNP. The BNP are racist cretins. Islamophobia is not racism, despite what the Labour party and our institutions may believe. If the Left genuinely believes that anti-Zionism isn't anti-Semitism, then they must hold themselves to the same standard on Islam, lest they commit the motherlode of all category errors.
Most of us like most Muslims, just not the ones who are committed to Islamism as opposed to Islam. Most Muslim countries have long since banned Islamism and think we are mad not to. It is committed Islamists who continue to commit Islamism inspired terror attacks and which routinely get mislabelled as having mental health problems. I heard one commentator claim that Sweden had reclassified certain types of religiously inspired rape as terrorism, but was unable to confirm the claim.
Too bad jews were the class who ruled it or it might have had a future
Very insightful, well thought out and well written. Thanks
A similar thing, but more muted. The more pronounced class distinctions are, the more they seem to galvanise civilisation on the ascent but also, on the descent, set the middle against everyone else. So, in countries with less pronounced class distinctions, it will be easier for people to work together.
We Americans certainly have a class system that is as strict as anyone else’s, just different. Certainly, any American born can see it. The elites especially those who have degrees from the Ivies have become cultists, believing that they earned it all on merit alone with anyone who disagrees with whatever the approved moralizing bullpucky is being bigots, losers, and among Clinton’s Disposables.
Really, same party, same dances, just different tunes.
From what I've observed the Upper and Working classes in Britain are very similar in temperament and attitude. It's the Middle Class who are quite different from the others.