THE question has to be faced: are the British public bothered about the neo-Marxist crackdown on dissenters?
Witness the near-empty Commons chamber during Andrew Bridgen’s brave speech when he led an adjournment debate about Covid vaccine harms.
Would MPs have so visibly refused to engage with his arguments if their mail had been full of concerns from voters about the growing evidence of vaccine harms and particularly the unnecessary risks to children caught up in the booster roll-out?
Witness also the behaviour of MPs who voted down an amendment to protect even silent prayer outside abortion clinics by 299 to 116.
Again, would they have done that if their mail had been full of voters’ concerns about Orwellian thoughtcrime jumping out of fiction into reality?
The woke police also seem to enjoy more public acquiescence than they deserve. When Roman Catholic pro-life campaigner Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was arrested for the first time in December for praying silently outside an abortion clinic in Birmingham (while it was closed) there seemed to be more of an outcry in the United States than in Britain.
It is not that the police are particularly popular with the public. It would seem that they are not held high in public esteem but where is the moral outrage that there should be against left-wing activists in police uniforms? If there were more public opposition, would they be getting away with enforcing their neo-Marxist nostrums?
Witness the lockdown regime. While Britain’s baby-boomer generation, particularly those who make up most of the Conservative Party’s membership, must take the largest share of the blame for failing to oppose the lockdown, it would seem that the health-and-safety dictatorship was generally acceptable to young adults. Where were the 1968-style student demonstrations against the tyranny?
It remains to be seen how much support from MP Ben Bradshaw’s Private Member’s Bill to force the Church of England to allow same-sex weddings, which passed its first reading without a vote last week, will get at its second reading in November. Though the Bill is likely to run out of parliamentary time, strong support from Bradshaw’s fellow Labour MPs and from a significant number of Conservatives (Tory Father of the House Peter Bottomley is one of its backers) could pave the way for a government-supported measure under a possible Labour-SNP coalition after the next General Election.
Parliament is increasingly coming to resemble the Petrograd Duma before Tsar Nicholas II prorogued it in the run-up to his abdication in March 1917, leading to the return that spring of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) from his cowardly hideaway in Switzerland, a rightly wanted man by the previous Russian authorities as a violent terrorist agitator.
Christians by God’s grace have the spiritual resources to cope with life as an oppressed minority. They have the Holy Spirit-inspired Holy Scriptures to nourish their souls and sustain their faith in the eternal God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christians who are attentive to their Bibles know not to put their faith in populism. They know from the New Testament Gospels that their Lord and Saviour was crucified with overwhelming popular support.
Samuel Crossman’s great 17th century hymn, My Song is Love Unknown, expresses this biblical truth brilliantly: ‘Sometimes they strew His way, and His sweet praises sing; resounding all the day Hosannas to their King: then “Crucify!” is all their breath, and for His death they thirst and cry.’
The anti-Christian elective dictatorship winning the culture war in Britain is the prevailing reality, and the majority of voters seem quite comfortable with it. The Conservatives are certainly not going to ride to the rescue. In fact, at High Noon for traditional British freedom under the rule of good Judeo-Christian (as opposed to bad Marxist) law, the Blairite Conservatives can be relied on to leave on the Noon Train.
The Book of Common Prayer Collect for today, the 5th Sunday of Lent, is surely urgent for the British Church and her ability to obey God and not man:
‘We beseech thee, Almighty God, mercifully to look upon thy people: that by thy great goodness they may be governed and preserved evermore, both in body and soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord.’
