We're British, not 'citizens of the world'

I have begun to feel as if I am surrounded by aliens in my own country. Their heads refuse to listen to reason. They display no pride in being British, and deplore our history and traditions. They are prepared, it seems, to go to the line for the sake of beliefs which have no place in the modern world.

No, I don't mean young British Muslims. I am talking about that confluence of white, middle-class professionals whom George Orwell, one of their heroes, called the liberal intelligentsia. Their views lead them to condemn the bombing of the Taliban in Afghanistan without proposing any rational alternative to prevent that country becoming a vast de facto terrorist training camp with Osama bin Laden at its head. They do not recognise that in the struggle against what could become nuclear terrorism on an international scale, a diplomatic draw is not an option.

In his celebrated essay called England, Your England, written in 1941, Orwell described their contributions to the war effort in terms which would be immediately recognisable today.

"The immediately striking thing is their generally negative, querulous attitude, their complete lack at all times of any constructive suggestion.

"There is little in them except the irresponsible carping of people who have never been and never expect to be in a position of power. Another characteristic is the emotional shallowness of people who live in a world of ideas and have little contact with physical reality ... England is perhaps the only country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality."

Tell me, what has changed? Here they are today, the same people, except that they speak with more authority - in the Labour Party (and of course the Lib Dems), on the BBC, in the Left-leaning broadsheets and at the kitchen suppers of metropolitan bien pensants. More to the point, they are still in the classrooms, teaching our children to feel guilt for being a citizen of Britain, and instead to see themselves as citizens of the world.

How many tens of thousands of children in Britain have been taught to disparage the heritage of their own country since the mid-1970s when this self-abasement set in? People now in their late forties grew up with constant reminders that Britain's Empire was one long rape of the Third World. The sight of a Muslim, Sikh or Jamaican child in their classes still spurs on many schoolteachers to deplore our colonial role and inculcate the impression that Britain's history consisted only of military aggression, piracy, slavery and the oppression of the labouring classes.

We can't blame them: it is probably what they were told themselves, in school and teachertraining. For many years, history taught in terms of the people and events that forged our national heritage has been scanted or dropped altogether, in favour of social studies and "world history", which emphasises that all religions and societies have an equal value to us.

It is a kind of self-abasement masquerading as impartiality which we see in local councillors who forbid the flying of the Union Jack because it is overtly nationalistic, and in vicars who refuse to allow Christmas cribs into their churches for fear of giving offence to other religions. The result is that generations of young people have been actively discouraged from recognising the specifically British values of tolerance and fairness which emerge from our patrimony and become the focus of our allegiance to Britain and our pride in being British.

That is why I feel some sympathy for the mostly young British Muslims who openly express their hostility towards Britain and by an overwhelming majority declare that they are Muslims first and Britons second. If so many in Britain appear to have no pride in our country, why should a second-generation British Muslim feel pride in being here? They have been born into a libertarian, multi-tolerant society in which there are no sexual taboos, and no rules of behaviour which cannot be broken with impunity - how should their parents keep them in line? They find their self-respect elsewhere, in the authority which underpins Islamic law, and they become willing acolytes of mullahs who preach jihad against a society which has broken its links with God. Hence the more than 10 per cent of British Muslims, according to one Sunday newspaper poll this week, who think Osama bin Laden was justified in launching terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center.

We cannot manage these young Muslims in our midst, let alone win a long-term war against Islamic terrorism, without belief in ourselves. I think it is fair to say that the great majority of non-Muslims in Britain who have given any thought to Islam regard it as a backward civilisation, whose insistence that God is supreme in all things meant that it turned its back on scientific progress, leaving millions of Muslims bitterly resentful when their elites later tried to modernise their societies along infidel western lines.

Yet for many of them (the men especially, of course) the wheel has turned full circle. Islam in its purer forms offers them authority, religious conviction, pride and manly fellowship - all those fiercely uncompromising attributes which once inspired the Christian West to proselytise with sword and gun.

What have we to set against this medieval rage? The BBC? The National Health Service? WB Yeats wrote of the rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem at a time when "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity". The worst have not yet done their worst, here in England. If and when they do, I pray that we can find that conviction in ourselves to defeat them.

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