"We Need Roots!"

Take the time to watch and listen to the new video link at the side of this blog.

The song, Roots, is a great lament for the loss of what the English once possessed.

It was G.K. Chesterton who derided the ruling elite (with their "bright dead alien eyes" - or as the great Welsh nationalist Saunders Lewis would have it, their "Hebrew snouts" stuck in ledgers) because they "knew no songs."

Now we have bred a generation of Englishmen who "know no songs" -- unless one counts the mass produced Cola-anthems.

I think I've said before, somewhere or other, that I have enjoyed the proverbial pub "lock ins" and late night singalongs in Welsh, Scottish and Irish pubs, where the ale and whisky has flowed. In one Scottish pub someone grabbed a squeezebox and we all sang Scots songs with a few Irish ones thrown in. I think there was even a Welsh one sung too. That was a night I'll never forget because there was a real sense of camaraderie there, we were all just friends, neighbours etc. and afterwards we all walked through the fields and roads to a friends house where we carried on till the break of dawn (it's rude to put the lid back on a whisky bottle!)

You had the feeling that this was a ritual long practiced, and the farmers, fishermen and handymen there could probably look back several generations and know that they did much the same.

Walking past an Australian themed pub near Tottenham Court Road (central London) I saw a sign outside asking for information about a vicious assault on a customer there.

At 3am walking through the West End of London you get the stench of fast food, the "boom boom" of coloureds cruising around in their little box cars with the bass turned right up, and the fear of someone from the duskier end of town approaching you "for a light."

Compare that to tottering through a field by moonlight en route from a lock-in to an impromptu (albeit discrete and cosy) house party...

I think that's what too many of us have lost. No drunken fighting and sprawling, no silly night club clothes (men or women!), no sparring up for a fight with strangers or screaming abuse at the police, no cheap salmonella fast food and vomit "pizzas" littering the streets: just a sense of shared culture, shared history, shared songs and a good time had by all.

Maybe it's not too late, but I still think the English need to grasp their history, their culture etc. and reclaim it from both the "inclusive" multi-cult "new labour" crud that's offered today (with "Swing Low" pumped out on speakers sung by UB40) as well as Tory-style pining for a lost Empire and a Union that is fast crumbling.

Reclaim England for the English. Return to your roots. Reclaim the pre-Mass Immigration indigenous communities. Reclaim the pre-Industrial revolution landscape. Reclaim the towering cathedrals with the tombs of warriors and saints. Reclaim the Saxon villages and farmsteads.

The Welsh, Scots and Irish know their roots. They know their history, their struggles, their cultures, their identities because they have been forged in struggles to regain/reclaim their nationhood.

Now it's time for the English to do likewise, and that is no bad thing!

So start today, and have a listen to the song "Roots" -- it has a valid message.