Older, No Wiser

Britain’s Political ‘Establishment’

Hannes Wessels,                                  

It with some bemusement I read recently, in an article written by Professor Michael Evans who lectures at the Australian Defence College, of the panic that was setting in at the UK Foreign Office prior to Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Among the documents discovered was one paper stating: “We wish to avoid 200,000 Rhodesians with cardboard suitcases arriving at Heathrow.”

This is a startling reminder of how quickly the political sands can shift. This point was being made less than 20 years after the end of WWII where these same Rhodesians had fought so fiercely and selflessly to defend the very people who had decided to scorn them.

But not only that, the unwanted 200,000 had just hacked a country out of an African wilderness in one of the greatest feats of nation-building in modern history. Equally, a young Rhodesian was about to get the Sword of Honour at Sandhurst, and these same unwanted had competed the longest runway found worldwide at Salisbury Airport, and just built the dam wall at Kariba, to boast ownership of the largest man-made water reservoir in the world.

And with most of the ‘unwanted’ being of British ancestry, one would have thought they would have been welcomed, not only because they were under enormous political pressure, largely through no fault of their own, and hence deserving of some empathy, but because they would have brought a tremendous amount of human capital back to their distant if oft-forgotten motherland.

Instead, the same politicians and bureaucrats decided to roll out the red carpet and welcome all the people with whom they had the least in common.

Opening the age of virtue-signalling, in a mad rush to be politically correct, multi-cultural and ‘diversified’, the new criterion for admission seemed to switch from historical cultural concord to one inviting potential conflict though encouraging the entry of millions of people who had no understanding of British history, social mores, democratic pluralism, or its Judeo-Christian bedrock that underpinned the rules of governance and law.

Forty years later Elon Musk, who seems to get a lot right, has stated on ‘X’ that he believes, “Civil war in Britain is inevitable”. Many Britons would agree, notably when he goes on to say that it “already began several years ago … but only the other side was fighting.”

This trenchant opinion drew the attention of the snake-eyed Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, who threatened to arrest Musk for inciting violence. Musk seems to have become more of a problem for Rowley than the Pakistani ‘Grooming Gangs’ that have been terrorising young English girls for the last 20 years. Indeed, a recent report indicates over 9,000 cases of previously ignored rape and sexual abuse of minors now have to be reopened since Musk shone a spotlight on this problem.

Musk’s opinion is supported by Professor David Betz of Kings College, London, who has reached a distressing conclusion pondering the possibility of civil conflict: “There isn’t anything they can do, it’s baked in. We’re already past the tipping point, is my estimation. Opportunities for dealing with problems have been ducked for so long; there are no longer any good answers,” he said. “Anything the government tries to do at this point … will aggravate another kind of problem in doing so, and you get back to violence”.

In the face of informed opinion such as this, and of overwhelming evidence showing how problematic uncontrolled immigration has become for the UK, it is astonishing for someone like me who has been studying British political behaviour for almost 60 years to comprehend the current views of the ‘establishment’ political and media elite in that country.

Some are the same people who provided the political leadership and influence that wrecked my homeland and other former colonies, and they are alive, well and as destructive as ever in Britain today. It seems that through a confluence of arrogance, entitlement, and ignorance they have learned absolutely nothing from what has transpired in Africa and elsewhere, and so it is no wonder Britain is a nation in rapid decline.

Lord Michael Heseltine, Tory grandee and former minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government thus compared members of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party ‘… to the fascists in the 30’s’. He goes on to admonish his countrymen and women, stating that, ‘being anti-immigrant throughout history has always been the cheap option’. Going on, that the ‘idea that foreigners are out to get you and your jobs, they are criminals and rapists, is encouraging the worst kind of prejudice.’ All this duly issued from the manor house on his Northamptonshire estate.

Looking at what happened under the Conservative premierships of David Cameron, Teresa May and Boris Johnson, there can be little doubt they share broadly the same views as Heseltine. At a critical time when most Britons awakened to the consequences of open borders, they turned in large numbers to save them from electoral defeat. By contrast, what they got was the ‘Boris Wave’ and probably the biggest single influx of migrants in the history of the country.

Sir Max Hastings, celebrated historian, author and journalist, and a venerated member of the establishment media, regrettably fits the same mould. I have followed Sir Max since the 70’s when he reported on the Rhodesian war.

Deceptively charming, Sir Max inveigled himself into acceptance by the besieged white farming community by leading his kindly and generous hosts to believe he was a friend and an ally who shared their love of the outdoors, and empathised with their desperate search for a consequential journalist who would report the truth of what was happening in the country, rather than what an instinctively hostile world wanted to hear. They were wrong; he was inside their inner sanctum under cover, and he was working to destroy them rather than help them.

Later he would write as follows: “Like most of my colleagues I reported from Rhodesia in an almost permanent state of rage. We saw a smug, ruthless white minority, beer guts contained with difficulty inside blazers with RAF crests, proclaiming themselves the guardians of civilisation in the heart of Africa. They killed carelessly, tortured freely and exploited censorship to conceal their worst excesses. The city dwellers, patrons of Meikles Hotel bar, were the worst, because they were the most hypocritical. Fervent supporters of ‘good old Smithy’, many took care not to expose their necks, preferring to ‘kill Kruger with (their) mouths’, as Kipling put it 70 years earlier.” 

Hastings referred to the government of the day as ‘near-fascists’ and P.K. van der Byl (one time defence minister) as “appalling,” and a “grotesque parody of a Dornford Yates English gentleman.” He then went on to lie when he wrote that “this dreadful man occasionally amused himself by potting at blacks from his helicopter with a hunting rifle …”.

Recently Sir Max was in the news again following his announcement that he would be joining in to protest the arrival in the UK of President Donald Trump at the invitation of the King for his unprecedented second state visit.

Sir Max, like Lord Heseltine, is pro-immigration and abhors the American president whom he describes as, “arguably the most deplorable president in American history who has brought shame on the United States.” Then he goes on to insist that the man is “cruel” and “bereft of compassion.” He accuses him of leading America into a dark age of increasing authoritarianism following the US president’s decision to deploy National Guard troops to cities where violent crime has spiralled out of control, of attacks on the judiciary, the media and being amid a “love affair” with President Vladimir Putin that threatens European and UK security.

I remember Ian Smith telling me that in retrospect, when he looked back on his political interaction with the British, he remembers people like Harold Wilson and the Labourites with more respect than the Conservatives. The former, he said, made it quite clear they were opposed to his policies, the latter lied and led him to believe they empathised, then betrayed him.

It looks like they have now done the same to their own.