Reasons to be proud of being British

FOR obvious reasons there are a lot of (justified) doom-mongering articles in TCW, not least some of my own. So, for a change, I have listed some of the many things Britain and the British should be immensely proud of. Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Our beautiful countryside. Of the many examples, and all readers will have their own favourites, I single out Dartmoor, the last great wilderness in Britain. In many areas of Dartmoor you can stand and turn 360 degrees without seeing a single piece of evidence of anything man-made; not a pylon, a dwelling, a wall or fence. The Lake District, the Scottish Highlands, the Yorkshire Moors. (Sadly much of these views are being ruined by absurd and pointless wind and solar farms). But also much that has been created by mankind, meaning, of course, our farmers. Drive on the A303 from, say, Exeter to Basingstoke and you will pass glorious fields of crops, some splashed with the blood red of poppies, contentedly grazing cows, neatly trimmed hedgerows and a patchwork of fields, some big, some small, but none of the vast soulless prairies of the wheat belt of the US and elsewhere.
2. Stunning architecture, much of it hundreds of years old. Cathedrals in particular. Salisbury with the tallest spire in Britain, York Minster, Durham, St Paul’s. The Houses of Parliament, many other outstanding examples in London alone such as Tower Bridge; the Royal Crescent, Bath, the Forth Bridge, the Severn Bridge and more near you.
3. Pubs. Virtually unique to Britain and Ireland, which this now Australia-dweller misses. Complete with warm beer of many fantastic flavours. Places where mates lean on the bar and set the world to rights. Even in pub-scarce Australia, ‘It doesn’t pass the pub test’ is a phrase often used to criticise some awful proposal (always ignored by the politicians, of course).
4. Sport. Britain has given the world so many sports, which in many cases have become national obsessions. Cricket, football, rugby football, tennis, squash, hockey, badminton. The international influence of football and cricket in particular bridges national and racial boundaries.
5. The English language. Above all. It hardly needs saying being completely taken for granted in the modern world.
6. Colonialism. The modern obsession with expunging Britain’s colonial past is absurd and quite wrong. Undoubtedly there were examples of exploitation of people and resources, but you don’t go into an orchard and not pick the fruit. But the empire on which the sun never sets, to use Churchill’s memorable description, left a legacy of a functioning civil service, the rule of law, police forces properly structured and much infrastructure. This compares very favourably with the Belgian Congo and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) where the colonists did very little to pass on governance, even having Dutch people as postmen for example. Withdrawal became inevitable but not everything left behind continued to do as well as before. Zimbabwe, South Africa and Burma are just three examples, and some populations have expressed the wish for the return of British colonial rule. The British Empire morphed into the Commonwealth, a brilliant institution inspirationally led by the late queen and now King Charles. No other nation has an equivalent.
7. Inventions and discoveries. The list of these is almost endless. The steam engine, railways, penicillin, the Worldwide Web, electricity, the Dyson, the jet engine.
8. Our armed forces. Although now seriously underfunded, undermanned and desperately short of hardware thanks to successive governments (‘there are no votes in defence’), our soldiers, sailors and airmen and their officers and NCOs are undoubtedly the finest, best trained and most dedicated in the world.
9. Parliamentary democracy. We invented this method of governance and exported it to many parts of the world and, although its flame is now sputtering and dimming and has led to dangerous and irresponsible left-wing administrations in some nations, it has not been extinguished and, hopefully, will recover.
10. The law. Another great British invention and institution exported worldwide, that practised in Britain still being the fairest and best. Regrettably now being traduced by activist judges and opportunist lawyers.
11. British food. Gone are the days of my childhood of dinner being a roast with soggy cabbage and gravy that didn’t move on the plate (in Tony Hancock’s memorable phrase). There has been a revolution in British cooking over the last several decades. Many more celebrity chefs with status owing to their delicious dishes made possible by the wealth of fresh ingredients made available by air freight from around the world, coupled with meat from home grown, properly fed and cared-for animals.
12. No death penalty. We can all think of people, mostly politicians, that we would love to be put up against a wall and shot. But no government organisation or judicial ruling should be able to mandate the legal taking of a human life for whatever crime. This is playing God. One need only observe the wicked nations that routinely execute their citizens for crimes, often alleged or minor: Iran, China, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Russia. Far too many. The US’s capital punishment system in still too many states with its harrowing years on death row is awful.

So we Brits can be proud of many things we have achieved, developed and exported to other nations that have successfully adopted them, and readers can doubtless think of many more. Let’s stop deprecating Britain, teaching children and students to be ashamed of our past and even our present.

How can we regain our national pride? It’s got to be done by leadership, which means first and foremost by parliamentarians, followed by business leaders, celebrities and so-called influencers (ghastly term though it is).