We must restore pluralist democracy and end woke tyranny

If one were to look for an event whose characteristics are the extreme antithesis of everything promoted by the BBC, it would surely be the Last Night of the Proms. Joyful and fun, this affectionate if partly irreverent celebration of heritage and national identity is everything that the average “woke” broadcaster believes should be banned under escalating hate laws. Riotously rehearsed in the Victorian ambience of the Royal Albert Hall, it resembles a Victorian Christmas party in summer.

The one discordant note, incongruous to the point of absurdity, is that this carnival of confident self-parody is broadcast under the aegis of the BBC. As the Corporation pompously stated this week, “decisions about the Proms are made by the BBC”, and its decision is that Last Night favourites “Rule Britannia” and “Land of Hope and Glory” this year will only be performed orchestrally, without singing. The alleged pretext is Covid-19 precautions.

It is true that the coronavirus is likely to be spread by mass singing in an indoor confined space. Superficially, therefore, the BBC might be thought to be acting responsibly. However, that is not what this restriction is about. The BBC detests these patriotic songs and is using the pandemic as an excuse to suppress the lyrics. A BBC source reportedly told the Sunday Times: “Dalia (Stasevska, the Finnish guest conductor) is a big supporter of Black Lives Matter and thinks a ceremony without an audience is the perfect moment to bring change.”

Friends of Stasevska told The Daily Telegraph that it was not her decision. They blamed figures in the BBC. 

In other words, ideology not epidemiology is the real motivation. The obvious intention is that, having suppressed the lyrics for one year, the practice of orchestral-only performances would continue in future years, despite implausible assurances to the contrary as the BBC faced a growing backlash. The unreal feature of this controversy is that, in any case, there will not be a live audience present to do the singing. Nor could the limited number of socially distanced singers in the hall do the occasion justice.

In these circumstances, the BBC might have got away with this ploy, if it had not already betrayed its unease with such expressions of patriotism and if it did not leak like a sieve, enabling a national newspaper to expose its true agenda. The obvious solution, if health concerns are the issue, would be for the orchestra to play the customary songs, so that the tradition continues to be honoured this year, and then, since it is a television event, cut to footage of lively audience participation at past Last Nights. If the BBC does not do that, it will confirm its political motivation.

This is about much more than a row over some patriotic songs. Britain is at a crossroads: its future as a pluralist democracy is at risk, not from some bogeyman “fascist” (i.e. anyone disagreeing with the woke agenda) movement, but from the culmination of half a century of cultural Marxism’s long march through the institutions. All Britain’s most iconic institutions have been infiltrated: the BBC, the universities, the RSPCA, the National Trust – almost daily now, some fresh evidence of a leftist takeover of influential agencies confronts us.

Just as the universities are the seed-bed, the BBC is the super spreader. Decades of increasingly brainwashed graduates attaining positions of influence not only in the Corporation but in the civil service, the quangos and once respected voluntary organisations have produced a situation in which the electorate – voting for Brexit and awarding a large majority to a Conservative government – does not significantly affect the tenor of public life.

The National Trust is another recent example of this transformation. In 2017, the Trust instructed its volunteers at Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk to wear “gay pride” badges and only relented when faced with a backlash, including a membership boycott. It is now proposing to downgrade its “outdated mansion experience” and put thousands of artworks into storage, in order to focus on its outdoor assets. The absurdity is that, while members of the public may welcome instruction on the many features of a great house, they hardly need the assistance of the National Trust to go for a walk.

It is a bit late for the National Trust to retreat from the promotion of stately homes, since it has acquired more than 500 historic houses and gardens, besides 960 square miles of land and 780 miles of coastline. It is scandalous that a single organisation should have been permitted to gobble up so much of our nation’s heritage. Notoriously, the Trust did very nicely out of the Attlee government’s punitive death duties which drove many families to donate their homes to the taxman and ultimately to the National Trust.

Another famous organisation, the RSPCA, has become extravagantly politicised, spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on mostly futile prosecutions of fox hunts while some of its local shelters are starved of cash; it also campaigned against badger culling until required by the Charity Commission not to “name and shame” farmers engaged in culls or to encourage a boycott of milk in cull areas.

The whole institutional landscape of Britain has been darkened by woke activism. The centuries-old principle of equality under the law has been breached by the introduction of “protected characteristics” – last enjoyed by pre-Magna Carta Norman barons – and disproportionate penalties for “aggravated” offences. “Hate” laws are expressions of ideological preferences and should have no place on the statute book of a pluralist democracy. In Scotland, always the canary in the coal-mine for leftist extremism, a hate law is being legislatively processed that is so extravagantly totalitarian as to excite the envy of President Xi.

Our pluralist democracy should have been sturdy enough to hold the ring in the so-called culture wars; instead, it has been badly eroded. In the debates relating to issues such as homosexuality, pluralism should have protected the free speech of all concerned, equally allowing an open platform to those in favour of changes such as same-sex marriage and those opposed. Instead, Christians who could hardly be expected to abandon two millennia of their Church’s teaching were demonised and sometimes prosecuted. Pluralism is fast becoming a memory in institutionally woke Britain.

What is to be done? If pluralist democracy is to be saved and reinstated, a measured, radical programme of reform must be urged on the government. Firstly, all hate laws should be repealed: there is ample provision in previously existing statute law for protection of everyone from physical threats. If wet Conservative MPs resist this restoration of pluralism, as some did over Brexit, they will probably have to contend with their electors or perhaps yet another party formed by Nigel Farage.

The BBC is not susceptible to reform; it must be abolished in stages. The first step is the ending of the licence fee forthwith, without waiting for its next charter renewal. Thereafter it should be broken up and sold off. 

The National Trust, now proposing to squirrel away artworks in cellars, should be compelled to disgorge its excessive acquisitions and return many country houses to private ownership, safeguarded by strict planning restrictions and a requirement to open to the public on a certain number of days per year. Houses should not be museums, but lived in by families. The National Trust’s vast appanage of stately homes is a melancholy testimony to the anti-heritage instincts of past Labour and wet Tory governments.

The RSPCA should lose its right to prosecute, as has been demanded by the police and the judiciary, a right it has flagrantly abused. The BBC’s similar right was subject to a consultation that closed on 1 April and is being considered by the government. There is little to consider. The network of quangos, supposedly committed to a bonfire years ago, is another support system for liberal bluestocking Oxbridge baronesses, politicians, retired civil servants and other standard-bearers of the woke left; they require a mass cull.

In a pluralist system, no single view can be “politically correct”. The public will and the means to reverse the abolition of our pluralist democracy exist; what is missing is the political will. As with Brexit, it will fall to the electorate to insist upon the reassertion of its rights and freedoms.