(Do you sometimes get the impression that the English garden was designed, like a stage set, to host a performance of summer for a few days in July? No, these June days have been truly beautiful. Hundreds of kids have been swimming, barbecuing and sunning themselves in the park nearby.)

In a garden we can hope to escape government's no-longer-secret surveillance of our lives.

But can we?

Knowledge is power. How much power do we want government and thousands of people in the pay of political parties to have over us?

He has just warned that malign forces are 'trying to take control' of the internet.

'Unwarranted government surveillance is an intrusion on basic human rights that threatens the very foundations of a democratic society,' Sir Tim said. 'I call on all web users to demand better legal protection and due process safeguards for the privacy of their online communications, including their right to be informed when someone requests or stores their data.'

]]> http://www.britsattheirbest.com/archives/004805.php http://www.britsattheirbest.com/archives/004805.php Sat, 08 Jun 2013 19:52:54 -0500 The Allied invasion that defeated evil..

Image: The Churchill Society

For years Winston Churchill had warned Britain of the Nazi German menace, and had been ignored:

If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

In 1940 Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France. A dark tyranny spread across Europe.

Dunkirk

British and French armies retreated to Dunkirk in May, 1940. At first there appeared to be no way to bring 220,000 Tommies and their French comrades to safety. In his history of World War II Churchill writes -

. . . By intense effort Fighter Command maintained successive patrols over the scene, and fought the enemy at long odds. Hour after hour they bit into the German fighter and bomber squadrons, taking a heavy toll, scattering them and driving them away. . .Unhappily, the troops on the beaches saw very little of this epic confrontation in the air, often miles away or above the clouds. . .

Meanwhile,

The French in Lille fought on. . .These Frenchmen, under the gallant leadership of General Molinié, for four critical days contained no less than seven German divisions which otherwise could have joined in the assaults on the Dunkirk perimeter. This was a splendid contribution to the escape of their more fortunate comrades and of the British Expeditionary Force. . .

The 'miracle' of Dunkirk was made possible because an unsung hero and his men and women worked night and day in Dover Castle to organize the rescue and because the British people raced out in their boats to rescue their boys.

"From the streams and estuaries of Kent and Dover, a strange fleet appeared: trawlers and tugs, scows and fishing sloops, lifeboats and pleasure craft, smacks and coasters; the island ferry Gracie Fields; Tom Sopwith's America Cup challenger Endeavour; even the London fire brigade's fire-float Massey Shaw - all of them manned by civilian volunteers. . .

"They sailed across the Channel to Dunkirk and under the deadly fire of the German Air Force rescued their exhausted, bleeding sons" (William Manchester, Churchill biography).

Battle of Britain

In the summer of 1940, the Battle of Britain raged over the south of England and the Channel. Outnumbered Royal Air Force pilots outflew and outfought the German Luftwaffe to prevent the invasion of Britain. Supported by maintenance crews and newly invented radar, they were "the Few".

'Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few', said Churchill.

Below them in the English Channel, the destroyers and battleships of the Royal Navy formed another line of defence.

On the ground, 1 Canadian Corps and the Home Guard ( Dad’s Army), which was armed with pikes and pitchforks, old shotguns and carving knives, stood between the Nazi German Army and London.

The German Luftwaffe bombed London. London firemen worked tirelessly to control the inferno. Photo Credit: U.S. National Archives, 306-NT-901-19

Leading Britain, Churchill spoke for all when he defiantly said -

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

The German Luftwaffe bombed Manchester, Liverpool, Belfast, Coventry and Glasgow. St. Paul's, London, symbol of British spirit, survived. Photo Credit: U.S. National Archives, 306-NT-3173V

World conflagration

The people of the Dominions came to the help of their brothers and sisters in Britain, and were followed by Americans. Side by side, men and women from Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa and America fought the Axis Powers of Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan around the globe.

They fought in the jungles of the Far East, the icy waters of the Arctic and North Atlantic, the deserts of Africa and the waters and islands of the Pacific. As the war went global, the Allies will include Russians, Free French, Poles, Yugoslavs, Greeks, Chinese, and the Nepalese Gurkhas.

In 1943 the Germans destroyed the Warsaw Ghetto as part of their Final Solution to kill every Jewish man, woman, and child. They murdered Christians, ethnic groups, disabled people and gays. Before they were stopped, the Axis Powers killed more than 50 million civilians. Photo credit: Photo Credit: U.S. National Archives, 238-NT-282

World War II was fought with the help of British women who pitched in at farms and factories, and served in the fire brigades, the WACs (Women's Army Corps), WAAFs (Women's Auxiliary Air Force), ATA (Air Transport Auxiliary), ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service - Princess Elizabeth served in the ATS), and the WRENs (Women's Royal Naval Service). No job was too dirty, difficult or dangerous. Photo Credit: National Maritime Museum

The Allies launched D-Day to liberate Europe and end the war. They battled to restore freedom, and to end the murderous horrors of the fascist regimes.

580,406 United Kingdom and Commonwealth forces and 67,073 British civilians died during World War II. Three hundred thousand were wounded. More than 400,000 Americans died in action. There were 40,500 Australians who died in battle along with 45,300 Canadians, 11,900 Kiwis, and 87,000 Indians (Wiki). Many who were not killed or wounded gave five years of their lives to defeating Fascism.

On May 7th 1945 the Germans surrendered. On May 8th, the world celebrated. The war in the Pacific continued.

Canadians. Photo Credit: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

The war in the Pacific ended on August 14th.

Constitutional governments were established in Germany, Japan and Italy. The Allies provided food and supplies to the starving German, Japanese and Italian people and to the millions of refugees their warmongering had created. They helped them to rebuild. The Allies did not take for themselves even a foot of ground, except in those cemeteries where their soldiers lie buried.

A veteran pays tribute to his Captain, who died during the Normandy Invasion.
Photo: J. Plank

The whole story is too great to be told here.

We salute the gallantry and courage of those who brought us decades of peace and freedom. (Hint, it was not the European Union.)

]]> http://www.britsattheirbest.com/archives/004804.php http://www.britsattheirbest.com/archives/004804.php Thu, 06 Jun 2013 11:16:44 -0500 British schools are helping to boost Islamism with politically correct lessons that tell black pupils that slavery was entirely the fault of English and Americans, and omit the long and vicious history of Arab slave trading, according to an influential Church of England bishop, Nazir Ali.

The men of African descent who murdered soldier Lee Rigby in London may have been fed this travesty of history, but they could have picked it up online. Presumably they never heard of Doctor David Livingstone, one of many Christians who battled to end the slave trade and slavery in Africa.

Born two hundred years ago, in Scotland, David Livingstone began work in a textile mill at the age of ten. Somehow he educated himself, paid his own way through school to become a doctor, and simultaneously became an ordained minister. His faith led him to become a missionary in Africa, but his work was unsuccessful. After seven years, he had come no closer to ending 'the open sore of the world', African slavery. He decided to embark on a new strategy, though it was likely it would kill him.

Livingstone set himself

on a collision course with a sophisticated economic system organised from the East African coast by Arab and Portuguese slave traders. Yet in his usual undaunted way, he had soon worked out a scheme that would not only open up Africa to God and civilisation, but also dispose of slavery into the bargain. Like so many Victorians, he took it for granted that a free market would be more efficient than an unfree one In his view, the witchery of the slave trade had distracted attention from every other source of wealth in Africa: Coffee, cotton sugar oil iron and even gold were abandoned for the delusive gains of a trade which rarely enriches. If an easier route could be found by which honest merchants could travel to the interior and establish legitimate trade in these other commodities--buying the products of free African labour rather than taking that labour by force and exporting it--then the slave traders would be put out of business. Free labour would drive out unfree. All Livingstone had to do was to find this route.

In his search for the artery of civilisation, Livingstone was indefatigable. Indeed, compared with those who struggled to keep pace with him, he seemed indestructible. Already the first man to cross the Kalahari desert, the first white man to see Lake Ngami and the first white man to traverse the continent, in November 1855 he became the first to see what is perhaps the greatest of all the natural wonders in the world. . .the Zambezi. . .and Victoria Falls. Livingstone believed that the Zambezi could become Africa's great highway. -Niall Ferguson writing in Empire.

Livingstone's travels have entered the realm of myth. His belief that the two pioneers of civilisation are Christianity and commerce have been dismissed.

Many people love to travel, and there are many parts of the world we like to visit. We don't always want to live where we travel, don't you know.

Is it just an accident that most people would prefer to live in countries which have inherited the principles of freedom, honesty, and kindness espoused by Jesus and Livingstone?

They're 3 of the 27 gifts which inspired our book, Share the Inheritance (see sidebar).

Digby had a reputation of being "something of a dandy," Mr. Brown recounts, "and was always decked out in the very latest fashions." Yet at Christmas and Easter something odd happened. Digby would put on a shabby blue coat, leave his house and disappear into the city. Digby's uncle, a prominent figure in the Whig government, was worried about his nephew and arranged to have him followed. The uncle's agents trailed Digby to the section of London called Southwark, finally losing track of him near the notorious Marshalsea Prison for debtors.

When the agents asked a prison guard if he had seen the man in the blue coat, the guard replied: "Yes, masters . . . but he is not a man, he is an angel." In the warder's telling, Digby was an angel of mercy for many prisoners, whom he would set free by paying off their debts. When the agents finally caught up with Digby, he invited them to join him for dinner at the George Inn with the prisoners he had just freed, as he did every Christmas and Easter.

Digby's story is one of the vignettes recounted by Mr. Brown in what the subtitle of his book describes as a "barstool history of London as seen through the windows of its oldest pub—the George Inn." The inn is situated in Southwark, on the south side of the Thames, a few steps from where the old London Bridge stood from the early 13th century to the early 19th.

In the 21st century, the George Inn has become a tourist attraction. In Mr. Brown's words, it is the "last living survivor" of all of London's "great, galleried coaching inns." The current building was erected in 1677, but an inn has existed on the site since medieval times.

Cheers for our troops. We will not be moved.

Just a month ago, we discussed the English "Atlantis" over dinner in David and Judith Sear's home. Sear is one of the University of Southampton's marine explorers.

Now here comes Jeff, to remind us of the story.

David Sear is conducting valuable research into the ecosystems of local rivers, and may soon be transferring his skills to a huge eco-project on the Ganges.

The 70th anniversary. More here.

I don't know if the Dambusters would agree with the Julian Lindley-French's penultimate thought on their mission, but everyone was glad when the war was over.

Thanks to Instapundit for the link. Photo Credit: BBC

These pressures are a direct consequence of our membership of the European Union, which allows unlimited immigration and takes huge hunks of our cash. Remember that all three main parties support the EU.

We must withdraw from the European Union, and live again as a free nation, trading with the world, and able to take care of our own people.

Congratulations to everyone who sent a message to Westminster yesterday by supporting the UK Independence Party at the polls.

Charles Moore explains why UKIP won.

I love the part where they decline to put in air conditioning so you can smell the countryside. Only in Britain.

Thanks to Instapundit for the link.

The poet RS Thomas, born in Cardiff in 1913, poet of rural Wales, God, and love.

In Wales there are jewels
To gather, but with the eye
Only. A hill lights up
Suddenly: a field trembles
With colour and goes out
In its turn…

(from The Small Window)

We met
under a shower
of bird-notes.
Fifty years passed,
love’s moment
in a world in
servitude to time.
She was young;
I kissed with my eyes
closed and opened
them on her wrinkles.
‘Come,’ said death,
choosing her as his partner for
the last dance, and she,
who in life
had done everything
with a bird’s grace,
opened her bill now
for the shedding
of one sigh no heavier than a feather.

(From A Marriage, an epitaph to his wife)

To mark the centenary of the poet's birth, Tony Brown and Jason Walford Davies created a volume of his Uncollected Poems. Poems once lost, forgotten, unearthed like buried Celtic gold.

Jeff Taylor of Oklahoma sends us this fascinating link to a place and an ancient stone now lost. Can they be recovered?

Many thanks, Jeff.