The beginnings of the Great Exhibition of 1851 begin with Prince Albert. After spending time as the President of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Commerce and Manufactures a few years prior, and having seen the success of the Exhibition of Products of French Industry, the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 was created. Spearheaded by Victorian England’s greatest industrial thinkers, including Henry Cole, Owen Jones, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, plans were immediately drawn up.
Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace was the chosen design for the structure. Measuring 1,851 feet with an interior height of 128 feet, the purpose of the structure was not only to be practical and cost effective, but a statement too. The Crystal Palace was representative of Victorian ingenuity and innovation, combining practicality with beauty. Without a need for interior lighting and being of a temporary nature, the structure was perhaps the greatest exhibit of all. Inside, exhibits included the Koh-I-Noor diamond, the Trophy Telescope, the first voting machine, and the prototype for the 1851 Colt Navy. Over the course of the next six months, over six million people would visit the exhibition, including the likes of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Queen Victoria on 33 occasions.
The Victorians were longtermists, and thus understood that influencing the long-term future was essential to maintaining a strong and capable society. Indeed, many civilisations of the past were longtermist, and they understood the importance of building not only for functionality but for its wider contribution to culture. The Great Exhibition was such an example, proving wildly popular not only for its technological vigour, but for its cultural significance. Considering the success of the Great Exhibition and the exhibitions that preceded and proceeded it, I care to ask why we haven’t hosted such an exhibition in recent history.
If a new Great Exhibition is to succeed, it really needs to capture the spirit of 1851. This cannot be used as a soulless quest for more tourism. It needs to be genuinely meaningful, productive, and awe-inspiring. Recent attempts to plan and host such an event, namely being the Festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, probably passed by without many of us knowing of its existence, let alone care. These events are terribly unproductive, and undoubtedly lead to a greater financial input than the value received. A genuine event of real value needs to break boundaries.
What would a modern-day exhibition look like? It should be noted that the structure used in 1851 was itself ‘modern’ and ‘different’ by 19th century standards. The point here is to create and innovate. To create something new, even if to be inspired by the past. Perhaps, this would serve an opportunity for architects to search for new architectural design, one to move us past the heavily criticised architecture of recent times. Whatever it is, it needs to be magnificent and grand. The Great Exhibition showed us that technological advancement does not have to be clouded in grey.
Moreover, the exhibits should be genuinely innovative and valuable. In 2013, Peter Theil famously said that “we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.” Technological innovation has been narrowing towards internet-based services, whether that be social media or management software, and has left us in a ‘great stagnation’. There is huge opportunity to innovate outside of this and break the frontiers of technology, particularly as the United Kingdom begins to pivot towards a tech-based economy. We can be the first to lead the revolutions in medicine, transport, manufacturing, and energy.
In 1850, Prince Albert said: “The exhibition of 1851 is to give us a true test and a living picture of the point of development at which the whole of mankind has arrived in this great task, and a new starting point from which all nations will be able to direct their further exertions.”
This speaks greatly of the attitude needed today, and hopefully the attitude a new Great Exhibition can birth. We need to once again strive to break the frontiers of industry and technology, and to understand its importance to long-term civilisational thinking. Only by innovating can the United Kingdom hope to regather its former power.
Ultimately, this is about developing and refining a culture, just as Prince Albert pursued his vision of Victorian industrialism. What is our vision? Who do we seek to be? Much has been said of the United Kingdom’s lack of identity and purpose, but the answers need to stretch further than basic policy reforms. Groundbreaking change is needed to sway the current direction of the country, to alter its path. Given it is planned correctly, a new Great Exhibition can do just that.
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Against Common Sense Conservativism
What a sad and wretched world we live in. The decline of Free Speech, British Values, and Common Sense has let the loony left and Radical Woke Nonsense destroy our Institutions.
Remix these words enough and you too can qualify to be a conservative commentator in the contemporary British political landscape. Looking across the commentariate of the right wing, you’d be forgiven for believing that these figures were grown in test tubes. One part ‘cultural Christian’ (with “mixed feelings” on gay marriage and abortion), another part straight-talker, with a dash of ‘political incorrectness’ (always tempered by a well-to-do attitude) and some kind of minority identity as a sting in the tail for the left, and you’ve got a Common Sense Conservative.
The Common Sense Conservative isn’t hard to find: they fill the ranks of GB News and do the talking for Talk Radio – what underlines the whole project is a constant bewilderment with the modern world, and an ability to formulate programmatic responses to the latest trends from the left wing. They are the zig to the liberal zag, but both invariably pull in one direction – towards more of the general decay they claim to lament.
One Common Sense Conservative is very quick to point out that identity politics allegedly places an expectation on what he, a non-white man should believe. This, in his view, is a form of racism, which ipso facto debunks identity politics. What goes undiscussed, is that the dispute between the Common Sense Conservative and the “Woke Left” (who are really just more internally consistent leftists) is simply the narcissism of small differences. The leftist project of the modern world is one of liberation, where liberation is defined as the absence of restraint. Identity politics comes to be viewed by the Common Sense Conservative as one such restraint, and must therefore be rejected. The fundamental metaphysic is the same: atomised selves, who cannot be infringed upon by collective projects. The modern left recognises that for the self to be liberated, they have to be embedded within a social context in which their self-expression is affirmed. To this end, collective action is necessary, and proven to work in the success of the Civil Rights movement. Ironically enough, the Common Sense Conservative often appeals to the MLK Jr. attitude of the ‘content of character’ to resist identity politics. The disagreement between these two forces is not a philosophical one, but a pragmatic one – do we undergo collective action to liberate the self, or do we rely on an atomised individualistic approach which denies group differences?
These inherent parallels make nice-sounding hollow appeals to buzzwords necessary. To actually explicate a coherent philosophy would be to fundamentally challenge not just the desirability of things like free speech, but the real possibility of such a thing to begin with. No-one believes free speech means you can broadcast the position of all nuclear submarines, and this belief has to be justified somehow. Put simply, you’re not allowed to do this because it threatens the political order atop of which your right to free speech rests. The principle is simple then: you cannot extend your principles to those who would threaten their existence. Yet, when Novara Media, an outlet which calls consistently for deplatforming is itself deplatformed – the sycophants from GB News and UnHerd flock to fill the void, with Tom Harwood claiming they have a right to be heard.
What this underscores is a hesitance to actually give limits on rights and so-called freedoms, preferring instead to defer to whatever seems reasonable in the given circumstance. Consequently, the Common Sense Conservative often finds himself shaped by the social context he inhabits; these environments quickly become targets for Gramscian takeover and ensure that what qualifies for Common Sense tomorrow will be assuredly more left wing than Common Sense today.
An example of this emerges in the way we discuss positive discrimination, quotas, or diversity. Quite recently, Andrew Bridgen MP posted a photograph of him and his supporters at the 41 Club in Castle Donington. In response, he suffered anti-white racist abuse due to the fact his supporters were White. Among these responses, someone mentioned the only diversity in the room was the waiting staff – and it was this response one Common Sense Conservative took to highlight the ‘bigotry’ of the progressive opposition. For this individual, it was not at all noteworthy that a gathering of white people was apparently subject for abuse, but instead a passing comment about non-whites was the indicator of racism. Again, we see that the framing of the discussion is always limited by social context. It goes with the general flow of society to defend even the most minor form of prejudice towards non-whites, before defending overt prejudice towards whites – and so the latest iteration of Common Sense dictates that this must be where the opposition is mounted.
The argument that affirmative action, quotas, and diversity are actually bad for those they claim to help is 50 years old now. Thomas Sowell made it in its honest and earnest form in the 1970s, and since then conservatives have used it to defeat the left – on their own terms. What continues to go unaddressed is that the primary victims of affirmative action are not ethnic minorities, who lose their ability to provide for themselves by being given grants or get placed in educational facilities that have workloads they are mismatched for. The primary victim is the majority population which loses money to pay for these grants but do not benefit from them, and lose places they otherwise would have achieved in educational facilities.
Ultimately, these unexamined priors which are justified under the edifices of ‘Common Sense’ reveal an intellectual vacuum in the modern right. The only attempt to form an alliance between intellectualism and conservatism in recent memory was the Conservative Philosophy Group in 1974, restarted with the help of Sir Roger Scruton in 2013. One exchange highlights the differences between the traditional form of conservatism with its modern vacuous counterpart:
Edward Norman (then Dean of Peterhouse) had attempted to mount a Christian argument for nuclear weapons. The discussion moved on to “Western values”. Mrs Thatcher said (in effect) that Norman had shown that the Bomb was necessary for the defence of our values. Powell: “No, we do not fight for values. I would fight for this country even if it had a communist government.” Thatcher (it was just before the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands): “Nonsense, Enoch. If I send British troops abroad, it will be to defend our values.” “No, Prime Minister, values exist in a transcendental realm, beyond space and time. They can neither be fought for, nor destroyed.” Mrs Thatcher looked utterly baffled. She had just been presented with the difference between Toryism and American Republicanism.
In Thatcher, we see appeals to values with no underpinning of where they emerge from and their justification, and in Powell we see a world-view which justifies itself from the ground up. It’s no wonder that today we see Thatcher emblazoned all across conference, to the extent that one Common Sense Conservative even has a cut-out of her in her room. Thatcher represents the true beginning of the vacuous conservativism that reduces Political problems to technical ones, and exists to retroactively justify the decisions of the mercantile class. To this end, it is incapable of creating anything new, and so invokes its own previous iterations with new coats of paint to provide a veneer of consistency over an economic order which fundamentally requires constant flux.
The flux of modernity is only truly possible because of the aforementioned metaphysic that we are atomised selves, who contract or compete to create the social, Political, and economic orders in which we live. We can therefore not be infringed upon as individuals, but are reconfigurable units in these wider orders, and by virtue of our individual nature – have no right to dictate what these wider orders are, as this would be an infringement upon the individual.
Appeals to ‘common values’ will never work as long as this individualistic ontology is accepted; it offers no justification as to why these common values cannot be departed from at will. For this reason, it is necessary to invoke ‘Common Sense’ as the reason to remain within the common set of values. But of course, by the time you must invoke common sense, it’s hardly common any more. I’m yet to have an argument over the common sense notion that one ought to look both ways before crossing the road, but I’ve had plenty of arguments about the fact that men aren’t women. Truthfully, these beliefs need justification beyond appeals to common sense. The categories of men and women need to be defined not just in a taken-for-granted social manner, but in a metaphysical, biological, and philosophical manner. Only when these beliefs are deeply rooted and interconnected with not just the fabric of oneself, but of the fabric of reality itself, can people be driven to the depths of passion necessary to rebuff the challenges of the modern world. To that end, a right-wing intellectual vanguard is necessary to any movement which seeks to overturn the new orthodoxies of modernity.
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Why Can’t We Be Friends?
It’s hardly a novel take at this point to notice that something is fundamentally “off”, to put it lightly, with the way politics and society are currently operating. The events of the last year and a half have demonstrated a distinct lack of consistency in terms of virtually everything. Groups of rioters tearing down and/or vandalising historical monuments have operated virtually unimpeded, whilst a peaceful vigil for a woman murdered by a police officer was met with unwarranted violence, and the once obscene conspiracy theory that COVID originated from a Chinese lab has now been deemed not only acceptable, but plausible by the political elite. Perhaps the worst part is, no matter how uneasy this situation makes us, there is nothing “off” or abnormal about it; it is simply politics operating exactly how it should, whether we like it or not.
In Concept of the Political, German jurist and philosopher Carl Schmitt attempted to precisely define the term “political”; indeed, the more one thinks about it, the harder this task appears. If you asked twenty random people off the street what “politics” actually means, I’d bet a modest pittance you’d get around twenty different answers. From experience, it would range from “the practice of governing/making laws”, to “ruling over people”, to “compromising to reach a universally acceptable outcome.” Schmitt would have fundamentally disagreed with all of these propositions, more-so the last assertion for the crime of being egregiously wishy-washy.
Instead, politics, like all spheres of human activity, is defined by a dichotomic distinction. In the sphere of morality there is “good” and “evil”, in aesthetics “beauty” and “ugliness”, and in economics “profitable” and “unprofitable.” For politics, “the specific [distinction] to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.” The “enemy” in the political sense is not a business competitor, or the villain of a petty private rivalry, but a public enemy, or “hostis.” As Schmitt explains,
“An enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to a whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such a relationship.”
Politics then, is driven by group-based loyalties; ideology, nationality, ethnicity, etc., any means of finding commonality amongst otherwise isolated individuals. Of course, this reductively alludes to the sentiment of “strength in numbers”, but it also appeals to the human disposition towards a common purpose greater than themselves, fostering a sense of camaraderie between those who share in it. These are the friends, and those who do not share the values and goals of the group, or hold loyalties elsewhere, are enemies. For the safety and security of the friend group and its institutions, enemies must be defined, outed, and crushed.
Historians and theorists continue to debate whether Schmitt’s “concept [or definition] of the political” drew from his tendency towards authoritarianism and later National Socialism. Despite this, one cannot ignore that Schmitt’s definition is universally observable both in the past and present. Having formed the Second Triumvirate, Mark Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus instigated brutal proscriptions to ensure their most high-profile enemies were disposed of. In the words of Ronald Syme, “the Triumvirs were pitiless, logical, and concordant. On the list of the prescriptions all said they set one hundred and thirty senators and a great number of Roman knights.” They were not motivated by personal disdain or savage revenge, rather “their victory was the victory of a party”; the supremacy of the Caesarean cause against its threats.[5] Lenin too was political in this sense, evident, among other places, in State and Revolution:
“the ‘special repressive force’ of the bourgeoisie for the suppression of the proletariat, of the millions of workers by a handful of the rich, must be replaced by a “special repressive force” of the proletariat for the suppression of the bourgeoisie.”[6]
This is essentially a high-brow version of “it’s okay when we do it”; the destruction of the bourgeoisie (the enemy group) through violent means is perfectly acceptable, nay necessary, but violence used by the bourgeoisie against the proletariat (the friend group) is unjust. Even Joe Biden began his presidency in this manner, declaring those who stormed the Capitol Building on January 6th (something which both the elite and faux leftist rebels are still seething over) to be “extremists dedicated to lawlessness” who “do not represent a true America.”[7] Whether it be the most brutal dictatorship or the smiliest liberal democracy, every successful regime refuses to suffer the presence of those who wish to undermine it. Regardless of what we think of Schmitt’s motivations and endeavours, or indeed the notion of group/identity-based politics in itself, the friend-enemy distinction rings true to those in power.
Therefore, when the elite tells us that tearing down statues is correcting history, or that taking the knee before a sporting event is a heroic stand against injustice, but protesting against lockdowns or waving the flag of your own country is a threat to “our way of life”, they are simply doing what all political entities must do: defining what behaviours and values are and are not acceptable, preserving the sanctity of the friend group against its enemies. Indeed, this sentiment echoes through Samuel Francis’s concept of “anarcho-tyranny”; describing the situation when an authoritarian state, despite its extensive power, is unable to enforce basic law and order, leading it to overregulate the lives of law-abiding citizens instead, rather than attempt to deal with genuine crime. An example of this would be clamping down hard on people travelling too far for a run at the peak of lockdown, but refusing to take any meaningful action on systematic trafficking through grooming gangs.
In the context of the friend-enemy distinction, anarcho-tyranny appears as a political choice rather than risible incompetence; to introduce another of Schmitt’s famous definitions: “sovereign is he who decides on the exception”, holding the power to transcend the restraints of the law such that they may protect the friend group in a state of emergency.[9] “Anarchy” reserved for friends, permitted by the sovereign (ruling elite in this case, rather than single individual) to do as they please because they either pose no real threat to the system and its goals, or are a useful pawn against its enemies. “Tyranny” is imposed upon enemies, whose every move must be monitored to ensure they are not in a position to challenge the system, and swiftly dealt with if they are. However, the problem with liberal democracies is that they are operated by the soft-handed administrators of the managerial elite, who are hesitant to use brute force against their enemies, even at a time of emergency. Make no mistake, the tyranny is still there, it simply takes a subtler form, often involving long-term manipulative tactics rather than outright arresting or executing dissidents, as one would typically expect from an oppressive state.
One of the most powerful of these tactics is “framing.” In this context, framing can be best described using the old adage “you’re either with us, or against us”, a sentiment expressed in one way or another by political icons from Cicero to Lenin and Benito Mussolini to George Bush. As soon as there is the possibility of a middle-ground, or a compromise with the enemy, subversion is all-but certain. Consequently, the slightest disagreement with the status quo can effectively be painted as a potentially system-level threat. Even the mildest of lockdown sceptics, concerned about the effects of shutting the country down on small business, human interaction, or children’s development, can be framed as a threat to public health by placing them, in the mainstream consciousness, as one step away from national enemies such as Piers Corbyn, David Icke, and other such “deranged anti-vaxxers.” When put so reductively it sounds like a laughable exaggeration, yet it works. Understandably, the average person holds no desire to be framed in such a way, given the potential ramifications it could have on their life, leading them too comfortably justify averting the risk and pushing any niggling worries they may have had to the back of their head, slotting comfortably back into “trusting the experts.”
This process also notably applied to UKIP at its peak (perhaps even the entire “populist uprising” more broadly), a party of free-market libertarians who flirted with drug legalisation, yet successfully framed in the media as fellow travellers of the openly fascist and white nationalist BNP; simply because they both claimed to oppose “the establishment” and mass immigration, and didn’t apologise for the Empire every ten minutes. Neither of these examples have been presented to lament their underdog status against a system that hates them, but simply to illustrate that once the powers-that-be determine a group or an idea unacceptable, usually because it threatens their narrative, social pressure will be enough for the average person to cave in and accept the status out of fear of being associated with extremists, and subsequently marginalised. One silver-lining to this practice is that it informs us which opinions truly are dangerous. If you can say something without fear of being called an extremist, chances are it’s neither threatening to the system nor particularly edgy; how many people have lost their jobs or livelihoods for being a Marxist in recent years? If anything, it’ll get you a pretty cosy gig at SAGE.
Returning to Schmitt’s definition of sovereignty, our aforementioned extremists or “threats to the system”, are regularly exaggerated to justify a faux state of emergency or “exception.” The most hardcore COVID deniers and anti-vaxxers, should they by some miracle gain political power, would do some damage to the system, so too would the BNP if it ever got anywhere. Realistically, the chances of either of these happening is so miniscule it seems the media time afforded to them feels somewhat unjustified. What were the odds of the BNP winning an election, even at their peak? Essentially nil. How many people are total COVID deniers who think vaccines are the mark of the beast? An insignificant amount. Yet, we’re constantly bombarded with sensationalist fear porn to make it seem like the enemies are just one step away from ruining everyone’s day. By lauding them as existential threats to normality, and making them seem more powerful and influential than they are, it leads people straight back into the arms of the system, such that it may protect them from these awful people and their dangerous ideas. In fact, there is an argument to be made that suppression of extremists is counter-intuitive, as their existence (especially when, as it is in reality, negligible) works to support the system rather than weaken it, providing a visible manifestation of the enemy; a deterrent to discourage normal people (who are raised from birth with the idea that the establishment is the friend) from straying too far outside the Overton window. Framing then, acts as both a means of undermining the enemy, as well as consolidating the power of the friend group without needing to bash down doors and shoot dissidents in the street; far more civilised if you ask me.
Framing also has an added bonus effect: it forces enemies to talk in the same language as friends, functionally turning them into a friend, but still kept at an arm’s length. Moderates of either side don’t want to be associated with extremists either, it’s bad PR, and will almost always side against them if it means they won’t be classified as an enemy. They possess a constant need for approval from the establishment; understandable at the surface level, as such approval allows them to participate in the mainstream dialogue, albeit at the cost of excessively watering-down their positions to the point where they offer little but an edgy (at best) spin on the narrative of the ruling elite. Hence why the moderate right-wing is so painfully milquetoast, they would rather cosy up to the progressive managerial elite than support people on their own side. Paul Gottfried refers to these people as “Conservative Inc.”, the Turning Points and “liberal Tories” of the world, establishment right-wingers who peddle toned-down, politically safe opinions, easily consumable by the average “sceptic”, whilst attacking those who offer a genuinely conservative alternative, often accusing them of being rabid reactionaries. Unfortunately, if you want a seat at the table of power, you need to be a friend, and that means you must play by the rules of the game and participate in the punishment of the enemies just the same.
Despite all of this, liberal democracy tries to disguise the friend-enemy distinction. According to Schmitt, as an ideology emergent from the economic sphere, liberalism is inclined towards compromise, as it is unprofitable to hold contemptuous relationships with a potential business partner or customer. As we have established, this does not mean that liberal democracies do not enforce the friend-enemy distinction, in fact, considering the effectiveness of framing they’re rather good at it, but they do attempt to smokescreen the natural dichotomy of politics.
One of the methods this is achieved is through what Curtis Yarvin calls the “two-story myth.” Under authoritarian regimes, a “national myth” is forced upon the population, constituting a narrative of history containing elements justifying the existence and power of the ruling elite. The problem with this, according to Yarvin, is that people fundamentally hate being told what to think, particularly as national myths are never completely truthful. You can see this in the limp efforts by the Conservative Party to promote “British values”, the substance of which are another issue entirely, and are almost always widely repudiated, whether it be through cynical edginess or a realisation that these things cannot be artificially created. Therefore, it is arguably more effective to create a “two-story myth”, whereby the national myth is split into two narratives.
“When people hear one story, they tend to ask: is this true? When they hear two stories, they tend to ask: which one of these is true?”
What is being questioned is not whether the ruling elite is justified in its position or not, simply the path taken for it to get there. The Tories (when not infested with Blairism) tell us that the British state promoted individualism, freedom of speech, and entrepreneurship, good old classical liberal values which built us into the country we are today. Labour on the other hand insist that our country was built into what it is now through co-operative values such as trade unionism, the NHS, and the welfare state. Despite both of these being mostly falsehoods, there are nuggets of truth present in them which provide just enough for there to be an “uncontroversial, bipartisan consensus”, meaning that when the system is threatened, the loyal peons of each path can be relied on to defend it.
As politics is innately dichotomous and confrontational, the two-story myth provides a faux-friend-enemy distinction to act as a “safety valve” stopping people turning to narratives that won’t arrive in the same place as the approved ones. Whilst people are busy fighting over whether the Tories or Labour should be in power, it keeps them from realising that they are friends, and that by supporting either they are supporting the maintenance of the status quo, regardless of which one is in office. Even people acutely aware of their similarities, quite a substantial number these days, still fall into the trap of engaging with such theatrics. This does not mean that there is no disagreement at all between friends, there are tussles over particular policies, permitted insofar as the fundamentals of the system are not challenged, and as long as the illusion of disagreement (at least superficially) maintains the deception. Different MPs of different parties had all sorts of opinions on Brexit, but beyond lip service, none of them ever questioned whether globalism or free-trade are inherent goods in themselves. Equally, Boris Johnson, Joe Biden, and Justin Trudeau certainly all have their own views on a variety of matters, and may not even like each other on a personal level, but when the time comes, they chant in unison their desire to “build back better.”
There is no friend-enemy distinction between Labour and the Conservatives, or any party in parliament; if any of them were deemed to be enemies of the system they would not be allowed anywhere near power. Back to the BNP example, whatever one thinks of them, they did not share the values of the ruling elite, nor did they buy into the national myth via either one of the two stories. Consequently, after gaining 2 MEPs in the 2009 European Parliament election, they were actively denied access to information afforded to every other party, and it was made clear that their involvement in anything meaningful would be kept to an absolute minimum. This is not an endorsement of the BNP or its failed plight against mainstream politics; honestly speaking, it makes perfect sense, bringing us full circle back to the central question raised by the friend-enemy distinction: would you let a rogue element, which actively despises you and everything you stand for, operate on the same playing field as you? If the answer is yes, then you must be some kind of masochist.
One should not misinterpret this as a polemic against liberal hypocrisy; yes, they allow their friends to operate as they please whilst marginalising anyone they disagree with, but that is not hypocrisy, it is simply politics. They are the ones who hold the power, and no one can expect them to sit back and give free rein to potential subverters. It may not be particularly nice, but the sooner we come to terms with it the better, and once we stop trying to be the bigger person, better still. They want you to “debate” them because it is a distraction, no matter how easy it is to tear apart their ideas and arguments. If those with power decide that something will happen, it will determine whether its justifications are fallacious or if anyone agrees or disagrees with it.
The simple answer is to return the favour, if they don’t care what you think of them, then you shouldn’t care what they think of you. Stand tall for what you believe in, refuse to allow that which you hold dear to be critiqued or questioned by people who hold you in contempt, because as soon as those ideas become contestable, they lose their sacred status. Let them bombard you with petty insults, safe in the knowledge that they are, in the words of Roger Scruton “propaganda words”, abstract weasel words designed to attach enemy status to someone; recognising such is the first part of stepping over the quagmire of liberalism. One you discover your friends (not enemies who wear the skins of friends) discuss ideas among them by all means, learn from your enemies but do not engage with them, no matter how much they try to lure you in with the promise of “free and fair discussion”; a deception to hide their true intention: to confuse you, humiliate you, and obliterate you and your way of life.
Friend good, enemy bad; the motto of all successful political entities.
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The National Scandal That Never Was
In undoubtedly one of the most important and disturbing watches this year, the GB News documentary Grooming Gangs: Britain’s Shame is perhaps the best examination of this ongoing (and sadly ever-widening) scourge on Britain as a nation. The amount of detail and research Charlie Peters goes into is commendable, simultaneously making the matter horrifying and frustrating, given how little was done to tackle it up until the last decade.
It’s not simply the individual accounts of grooming victims that make it such an uncomfortable watch, nor the vast scale of the scandal that Peters exposes. Rather, it’s the clear institutional failings that occurred, as well as the Soviet-level attempted cover-up by the authorities, including intimidation campaigns against those trying to tell the truth.
It ends with an overall call to action for the government to take this matter more seriously and have more of those involved in the cover-up to be held to account.
Peters’ excellent work is one of several noticeable examples of mainstream culture attempting to shed some more light on the scandal, with others including the equally harrowing BAFTA-winning BBC drama Three Girls and an episode of the Denise Walsh true crime series Survivors where prominent victim Sammy Woodhouse gave an extensive interview on her own tragic story.
However, such contributions are noticeable in how few and far between they actually are. This, in turn, highlights a sinister truth about the scandal as a whole: despite how much of a major problem it was, and continues to be, it never quite gained the status of ‘national scandal’ it truly deserved.
The fact it hasn’t had such an impact is very troubling and should highlight how legitimately broken our current system is, politically and institutionally.
But before that, it’s worth examining a brief history of this scandal.
For several decades now, tens of thousands of young, mostly white girls, have been targeted in numerous towns and cities across the UK by gangs (generally of British Pakistani origin) for grooming, sex and rape.
Such girls would be coerced by various means – offers of drugs and alcohol, psychological manipulation, fake affection – by these gangs, and would later be abused.
Sometimes, those in positions of authority were also accused of engaging in such behaviour themselves, including Labour peer Lord Nazir Ahmed, who was (ironically enough) lauded for a speech condemning it.
To make matters much worse, such crimes were often ignored for decades by the authorities, from the local councils, to the police to the social services. It was later discovered that fears of being called ‘racist’ and ‘politically incorrect’ and ‘undermining community cohesion’ were given as justifications for to the ‘see no evil’ attitude of those in charge, because of the race dynamics of those involved (not least of which the victims themselves, often berated for being white by the preparators).
In a post-MacPherson Inquiry Britain (of which had questionably accused the Metropolitan Police of being ‘institutionally racist’ following their bungled investigation of Stephen Lawrence’s murder), fears around that sort of accusation lingered among many police forces – leading to the direct racist abuse of many white, Sikh and Hindu girls in the process.
Later on, Dan Hodges described those failed in Rotherham as those failed because of crying ‘racism’, as “[Rotherham Council] were standing back because the victims were white and the rapists were not.”
The scandal would remain an open secret for many years, whether it be the working-class mumbling in hushed tones about it or less-than-palatable political alternatives captalising on the problem to gain local support.
This would change in 2012 when Times journalist Andrew Norfolk blew the whistle, following extensive research and corroboration with the likes of Woodhouse. This, alongside further exposure in other areas of the country, brave individuals like Maggie Oliver openly highlighted the matter, further helping it into the mainstream.
How extensive this was and how far back this goes will probably never be known. In terms of time alone, there is much circumstantial evidence. The Sunday Mirror found that the Telford abuse goes back as far as the late 1970s and early 1980s. A Rotherham Advertiser article documented such abuse as far back as 1975. A memoir titled Call The Midwife dates the scandal even further back to 1950s London. During a 2021 Parliamentary debate on grooming, Rotherham’s Labour MP Sarah Champion noted that she had met victims who were 70 years old.
To make matters even bleaker, it seems that there are further revelations still to unfold – as one of the lawyers who helped to prosecute the Telford gangs stated, such matters in the town were simply the ‘tip of the iceberg’ for what was to come.
So if all of this is true, then why is it a scandal that has (once again) gone under the radar, kept on the down-low and sidelined to ‘dissident right’ Telegram chats?
There are several reasons for this, and none of them are good, shockingly enough.
Firstly, the ‘racism’ and ‘far-right’ stings and smears that made many turn away initially are still prevalent when discussing this stuff. Norfolk himself was worried about investigating the story initially when first hearing of it, stating in 2015 that his ‘liberal angst’ about the issue being a ‘dream story for the far-right’ made him nervous about tackling it.
Although such worries were somewhat justified, his reporting was originally dismissed by Rotherham Council as lies of the ‘[Rupert] Murdoch press’. Needless to say, if such concerns could make the likes of Norfolk (a hero in this story by all counts) nervous to start with, then why would anyone else senior want that to be their hill that they died on?
In 2015, when Nigel Farage as UKIP leader travelled to Rotherham to speak on the issue, there was a significant protest – but it wasn’t the gangs they had in their crosshairs. Instead, much hatred was directed against Farage for in part spreading ‘racism’.
Champion herself when calling out these problems in her constituency area in a hard-hitting 2017 Sun article received similar attacks. Beyond the death threats and deselection attempts, she was also criticized for being racist by MP Naz Shah (infamous for retweeting a parody account stating that the grooming victims should ‘shut their mouths for the good of diversity’) and her local Labour Party.
Meanwhile, Peters’ doc itself was targeted on similar grounds with University College London professor Ella Cockbain sending a complaint to Ofcom on the matter, as it promoted ‘racist tropes’ about ‘Pakistani men’ (thankfully to widespread backlash online as a result).
In short, if far-left campaign groups, certain trade unions, much of the Labour Party and academics among many others with ‘privileged’ status are still willing to shut down this debate with racism smears, why would those with much to lose campaign against it?
This highlights the second major reason as to why this never became a national scandal: it didn’t serve the interests of the political establishment at large (not least of which those involved in the original cover up, alongside specific councillors who made horrid remarks on it).
Writer Derek Turner once described political correctness as a ‘clown with a knife’, highlighting its funny aspects of which conceal its sinister totalitarian aims. The grooming gang scandal, alongside the infrequent spats of Islamic terrorism, are the most obvious times of such an idea playing out in such a fashion.
When the political establishment has their eggs in the baskets of political correctness, multiculturalism and mass immigration – policies and ideas of which the proliferation of grooming gangs couldn’t have happened without – why would they seriously want to tackle such a subject matter head on and deal with it?
Instead, they focus on supposed scandals that confirm their prejudices. When the grooming gang scandal was taking off in the mid-2010s, a completely made-up non-scandal was entertaining the eyes and ears of Westminster – that of the VIP pedophile ring alleged by fantasist Carl Beech. Senior MPs gave it Parliamentary space, LBC host James O’Brien gave it copious amounts of attention and many at the Met Police felt that Beech (under his pseudonym ‘Nick’) was ‘credible’. It went as far as then-Prime Minister David Cameron getting involved, with Douglas Murray describing how it created a ‘witch-hunt’ atmosphere in Parliament. Beech was found out later to be a fraud – sadly not before some were made homeless because of his claims and others died before their vindication.
It is easy to see why much of the Westminster bubble was so eager to give it attention, but not the grooming gangs. The Beech affair targeted the old British establishment they despised for their part in a traditional Britain ‘out-of-sync’ with the secular one of the current year they love (and have benefited greatly from).
Persecuting World War 2 generals like Lord Bramall and former MI5 heads, alongside the Tory old guard of Edward Heath and Harvey Proctor was very easy under this mentality. When the crimes and suspects involved violate the principles of secular Britain that becomes much harder to do.
As such, it isn’t surprising that the grooming gang scandal isn’t much use for the establishment at large. This is something blatantly seen with the generally scant media coverage it receives in comparison to other tragedies.
In Manufacturing Consent, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky highlight the various ways in which the media manipulate events and frame stories in a way to set an agenda. This includes the notion of ‘Worthy and Unworthy Victims’, whereby the media will ‘portray people abused in enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal and greater severity by their own government… as unworthy.’
Such an idea can be recontextualised in regards to how the media at large covers certain bleak stories, whether in Britain or abroad. For instance, the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 was given much coverage in the half-decade since the disaster, and rightly so. One would hope this extended to the ramifications of such an event. It was, but not in the way one would think.
Instead of talk surrounding corporate negligence and the neo-feudal implications of the inherent setup, the discussions surrounding Grenfell consisted of how the government had failed the seemingly benevolent ideas of multiculturalism and diversity due to the building’s high-foreign born population, all the while blaming the Tories’ austerity supposedly causing the matter to occur (a blame shared by more than just one political party, it turned out).
In all, brave firemen were more likely to be criticised for the incident than those who built it in such poor conditions, despite endless complaints from the residents about it. Grenfell could therefore be cynically pushed in a way that celebrated diversity and mass immigration, making its victims worthy ones. The grooming gang scandal meanwhile does the complete opposite, hence its victims are unworthy, for the reasons explained earlier. Hence why there was a Question Time episode set in Kensington for the Grenfell anniversary, but none for the grooming gang hotspots.
One can only then, in response, protest. Why can’t we all share in these tragedies together? Why does politicking and ideology have any part of such quandaries? Can we not move beyond politics, sacred cows and petty point scoring to grieve, share anger and unite in such times of darkness? Unfortunately it seems that no, we cannot.
It is for that reason, alongside not being recognised as a national scandal, that in some areas, the problem has only worsened since its exposure a decade ago – not least of which is the fact that Rotherham is still a hotspot for this very crime.
The liberal-left establishment have at best sought to further minimize and downplay it, and at worst once again outright deny it’s a problem. In a particularly blunt instance of anarcho-tyranny in late 2022, one victim (Samantha Smith) was investigated by West Mercia Police for discussing her abuse on GB News.
This vapid ignorance was no better displayed than the reaction by polite society to the 2020 whitewashed Home Office report into the matter. The vested interests wanting the story to go away treated it like gospel, including one Guardian writer who exclaimed that it ‘dispel[ed] myth of ‘Asian grooming gangs’ popularised by far right’.
The fact that some of its contributors were displeased at the report and it left out several key witnesses (like initial whistleblower former Labour MP Ann Cryer and the Quilliam Foundation) didn’t matter. Meanwhile, the recent exposure of the fakery of Eleanor Williams was certainly given far more coverage than something like Telford.
Such attitudes permeate other high places as well from so-called ‘comedians’ who try to make disgusting light of it as well as former respected journalists playing ‘whataboutism’ when confronted with the issue. Other institutions, like the BBC will conduct hit pieces against you if you highlight the matter further.
However, despite all this, there is reason to be hopeful.
Although not treated with the severity it deserves, the matter is at least public knowledge now, and can be dealt with accordingly. The 2017 arrests in Newcastle that were pre-emptive against such gangs (alongside many others in recent years) shows that the police in some areas are getting mildly better at catching the perpetrators of these despicable acts.
Meanwhile, the fact that some high-profile Tories, such as Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman, have made political hay of it in recent campaign and conference speeches is a positive sign – at the very least, it shows how much of a concern it is to many of their voters and the British right in general, even if one may argue its all cynical electoral-politicking.
Similar political concern could be fully seen in the 2021 Parliamentary debate on the matter, where there was clear cross-party support and sympathy to the victims and their plight, indicating the determination of some of them to want to do something to stop this from occurring again. There is circumstantial good news also such as the Rochdale 3 being possibly deported.
Such steps may be in the right direction, but more needs to be done.
The government needs to apologise to all of the victims and whistleblowers it let down, akin to David Cameron’s apology for Bloody Sunday following the Saville Inquiry.
Then, some genuine action needs to take place from the ground up. As Peters’ noted during the documentary, the National Crime Agency needs to do a complete investigation into the matter, especially in highlighting particular areas uncovered as of yet. Genuine accountability against those involved is also required – the groomers themselves should be deported if foreign-born, and if the death penalty can be re-institutionalised, it should be used against those we can’t deport.
Those in local government that were complicit in the cover-up should be removed from their positions, either by the ballot box or other means for officials and some should be imprisoned for perverting the course of justice.
This could all be done. The only thing stopping it is the cowardly Westminster consensus who instead of challenging such problems head-on would prefer to avoid, as Dominic Cummings stated, “awkward dinner party chats in London.”
It cannot be stressed enough that only the victims of this evil could deal with something that slight. Instead, they have their lives turned upside down, and in some cases ruined.
Rudyard Kipling once wrote about the Boer War that, “We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.” The sooner we appreciate that sentiment with the grooming gang problem and tackle it in a serious way, the better we’ll be as a nation.
In the leadup to the GB News documentary, writer Ed West wrote that “There should be a national conversation about it in the way there was after the Lawrence inquiry.”
The time for that ‘conversation’ is now. While the suffering of the victims can not be reversed, we can at least stop such horrors from continuing, not only showing that Britain truly listened to those people, but that it will leave future generations better off as a result.
