The Secret People

This is a classic poem by G. K. Chesterton describing how the English people have, over the centuries, succumbed to various forms of alien rule. Some of it makes rather uneasy reading nowadays, particularly the reference to “a cringing Jew”, but it still contains a profound truth about our country.

The penultimate stanza is especially relevant today:

They have given us into the hands of the new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger and honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evenings; and they know no songs.

“They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies” very precisely spears the attitude of the Cameron/Clegg/Miliband ruling class.

Over the years, I’ve heard various comments along the lines of “people will only take this for so long”. But, so far, they always have. The only glimmer of anything changing was during the 2000 fuel protest, which for a moment had Bliar really shitting himself. That was a short-lived genuine upsurge of popular feeling.

But more and more people are becoming alienated, whether by the foxhunting ban, the smoking ban, the punitive fuel duties, the constant war against the car, the alcohol duty escalator, gay marriage, metrication, open-door immigration or whatever. They may not form any particularly coherent feelings, but they will reach the conclusion that no politicians are to be trusted or will ever deliver what ordinary people want.

It will come, one day, but the timing and the reason will be unpredictable and probably, of themselves, irrational. But it will come. It will come. And our wrath will be the worst, because it has been pent up so long.

We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest
God's scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.