newsBritish people once ruled the world – God must make them mighty, or they’ll all forget
Events during the miners strike (1984-1985) in Britain under-scored the thin line between democracy and potential dictatorship
By Trevor Grundy
“God, who made thee mighty,
Make thee mightier yet.”
- Land of Hope and Glory, music by Edward Elgar, lyrics added in 1902 by A.C. Benson
Soon after independence in 1980, I asked the Zimbabwean historian Lawrence Vambe what he hoped for young people in years to come.
He said – “My deepest wish is that the young go into politics not to make money but to serve the people.”
And politicians – “My hope is they stay vigilant and avoid nepotism and tolerate those who oppose government policies. The right to voice your opinion out loud in public is the essence of democracy.”
Lawrence’s grasp of history was strong.
Lawrence Vambe speaking at the Britain-Zimbabwe Society in Harare in 1980 (Picture: Trevor Grundy)
“Think of the Suffragettes and their ten-year struggle to get the vote for women. The struggle for freedom in India lasted for over 30 years. The British were never over-friendly to those who opposed them but when Gandhi went to England working people greeted him. I have such respect for the British people who fought so long and so hard for their own freedom – and for our freedom. Otherwise, we would still be living under Ian Smith.”
I asked him if there were examples that he’d like to see Zimbabwe emulate?
‘Of course. I’ve just said it. The United Kingdom. Great Britain. I believe if we follow their example we will not go wrong. We have much to learn from the British. I am an Anglophile. Always have been. Always will be. Can you imagine the British banning street demonstrations?”
Lawrence Vambe died in 2019, soon after his 102nd birthday. I believe he left the British stage at the right time.
Many of the qualities most admired by this rare man are being quite quickly dismantled. The British Government is giving the police new powers to restrict ‘repeat protests’ with the possibility that some protests could be banned outright.
The move comes after two people were killed at a Manchester synagogue on October 2 following an attack by a Muslin man, who was brought up in the UK with parents from Syria.
Following the attack, pro-Palestine groups in Britain were asked to reconsider holding planned marches by people angry that over 67,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the Hamas attack on Israelis in October 2023.
The organisers said that cancelling a peaceful protest would be to let terrorism win.
The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood told the BBC: “This is not about a ban. It’s about restrictions and conditions.”
Say that again.
Defend Our Juries – the organisers of protests that went ahead after the Manchester attack – said it would undertake a ‘major escalation’ in response to Mahmood’s plans.
She had told the BBC that she is very worried about the state of community relations in Britain.
Most of the people arrested during the pro-Palestine demonstrations in London were held on suspicion of supporting the proscribed group, Palestine Action.
Supporters of Palestine Action were demanding international condemnation of Israel which has been largely responsible for the death of 67,000 (around 18,000 of them children) people in Gaza since October 2023.
A spokesman for Defend Our Juries said: “It beggars belief that the Government has responded to widespread condemnation in its unprecedented attack on the rights to protest, from the United Nations, Amnesty International, legal experts and even the former director of public prosecutions – by announcing a further crackdown on free speech and assembly in our country.”
What follows is written by the well-respected Zimbabwean commentator Andrew Field.
It is not an attempt to revive ancient ideas of social hierarchy or to erect obstacles to the spread of democracy.
On the contrary.
It is an article that raises important questions about why so many young Trump and Musk-influenced British politicians are asleep at the wheel as rocks grow closer and closer.
Britain in 2025: A population seduced by bread and circuses
By Andrew Field
There was a time when the British people would not have endured the slow erosion of their culture. A time when Christian values, secular law, and civic pride formed the backbone of national life. That time is vanishing. What remains is a population subdued by comfort, distracted by spectacle, and betrayed by institutions that once stood for transparency and courage.
Amazingly, this same community, being the majority in the United Kingdom, swung heavily towards indigenous majorities during the last years of colonialism when insurgencies and anti-apartheid campaigns were in vogue. Bad karma is upon Perfidious Albion. Yet in the face of threatened non-secular, de-facto racial minority rule today, they are passive, afraid that perhaps they may offend.
The threat is not military. It does not arrive with tanks or flags. It arrives with euphemisms; “diversity,” “cohesion,” “faith sensitivity.” The non-secular enclaves are well established. It wears the garb of tolerance but demands submission. It speaks of inclusion while dismantling the very principles that made Britain a free society.
Britons are not cowards, but glibly gullible. But they have been conditioned, if not indoctrinated; to believe that resistance is prejudice; that defending Christian culture is exclusionary; that secularism is outdated. They have been taught to apologise for their hue and heritage, to defer to imported perilous certainties, to accept the inversion of rights and responsibilities.
And so they retreat into their shells akin to the tortoise in difficulty.
Rich observers of mass poverty continue to tell the British people things will be alright
They watch as schools dilute their curricula to avoid offence. As public spaces are reshaped to accommodate religious demands. As speech is policed in a two-tiered form, not for incitement, but for discomfort. They scroll and sigh and whisper; but they do not act.
Social media has become the last refuge of dissent. A place where satire flickers, where truth is murmured, where outrage finds fleeting expression. But it is not enough. Tweets do not change laws. Memes do not defend liberties. Threads do not rebuild institutions.
If Britons do not stand up (if they do not reclaim their secular heritage, their Christian cultural foundations, their legal clarity) then they will be enveloped. Not by violence, but by acquiescence. Not by conquest, but by accommodation. And once that envelopment is complete, the only alternatives left will be tragic ones.
History does not offer gentle exits from civilisational surrender. When peaceful resistance fails, when institutions betray their mandate, when the public loses its voice, bloody violence becomes the language of the desperate. That is not a call to arms. It is a warning.
There is still time. But not much.
Resistance must begin with clarity. With the refusal to apologise for Christian culture. With the insistence that all citizens are equal under the law, regardless of faith. With the demand that public policy serve the public; not the loudest lobby, not the most fragile sentiment, not the imported orthodoxy.
It must be strategic. Not nostalgic. Not tribal. Not reactionary
It must be rooted in principle, not prejudice. In courage, not cruelty. In the belief that Britain is worth defending; not because it is perfect, but because it is free. They are the majority, and their cultural, nationalist stake is the prize of resistance.
The alternative is silence. And silence, in the face of creeping authoritarianism, is complicity.
Britain has faced worse. The British people have rebuilt from rubble, resisted tyranny, and reimagined their society more than once. But never before have they risked losing their soul without a shot fired.
If Britons do not rise—not in anger, but in conviction—then the future will not be British. It will be something else. Something imposed. Something unrecognisable.
And when that moment comes, the choice will no longer be between resistance and retreat. It will be between violence and vanishing. Britons will be cornered with their only salvation being the barrel of a gun. As the African liberations movements called its cadres, Britons will now become ‘sons of the soil’.
Let that not be Britain’s legacy.
Let the British people speak, write, organise, and defend. Let them remember who they are; not in opposition to others, but in fidelity to themselves. Break the two-tier tyranny of legal double standards, speech policing; resist the oppression. Because if they do not, they will lose everything. And history will not mourn them. It will simply move on.
Andrew Field (above) is a businessman and former security and market intelligence analyst who continues to research and maintain a private interest in Central and Southern African conflict, politics, economics and society. Previous articles by him appear on a blog called South of the African Equator and the link is – https://justandrewinzimbabwe.wordpress.com