A cafe in north London has come under fascist attack. Named ‘Blighty’, the cafe celebrates traditional notions of British identity. First the words ‘scum’ and ‘imperialist’ were scrawled across its mural of Winston Churchill, and the cafe felt compelled to remove the image of fascism’s great opponent. Now, a mob have invaded the cafe chanting ‘Churchill is a racist!’
Reports do not suggest they were wearing swastikas or fasces but their intimidating behaviour is a giveaway. A mobile phone video of the attack makes the threat to liberty abundantly clear. Reading from a script one of the group, a woman, declared to startled customers: ‘We cannot accept the unashamed colonial and gentrifying presence of this cafe.’ The fascists then chanted: ‘You will never make colonialism palatable.’
A Ms Hussein was next to denounce the cafe’s proprietor: ‘To the owner of the cafe, apologise to the local community for their poorly thought and insensitive branding and promptly change it, from the menu to the aesthetics and decor of the cafe.’
According to media reports, Ms Hussein is a politics student at the School of Oriental and African Studies University of London and co-president of a group called Equality and Liberation. She has published a photograph online of herself with Russell Brand, and Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow whom she jokes is her ‘best friend now’.
What a triumph all of this represents for the educational establishment, the Blob. After thirty years of dumbed-down GCSE history we have a younger generation saturated in ignorance and prejudice about the nation’s saviour in 1940. As recently as 2002, in a BBC poll, the public voted Churchill the greatest Briton of all time. Sadly, our wartime leader, along with World War II itself, has only non-statutory status in the history national curriculum.
Aided and abetted by successive governments, the Blob’s hostility towards Churchill has won the day. So, too, has its antipathy towards Britain and its empire. The rot really set in back in 1995 with a 40-minute government video pack to commemorate the 50th anniversary of V E Day which was sent to every school in the country. It allocated only a few seconds to Churchill’s role in the war and then only to the effect that he lost the 1945 election. Children were informed, however, that the war was ‘sexist’. Extraordinarily, in the House of Commons the Tory government of the day defended the video pack after its inanity was exposed by the popular press.
Since then, what Michael Gove called the ‘trashing of our past’ has continued unabated in schools. Both the Cenotaph in Whitehall and the statue of Churchill in Parliament Square have been desecrated and recently a campaign to replace the red poppy with a white version has entered schools. Meanwhile, Blackadder has been placed on the A-Level English syllabus alongside the likes of Russell Brand and Dizzee Rascal.
The attack on the Blighty cafe is symptomatic of a war over British identity that is being lost. Cultural fascism built on blind ignorance is the order of the day. For thirty years or more, rather than opening minds, schools have been closing them. Young people have been robbed of knowledge. What a triumph all this represents for our ‘educators’!
