England in the Summer of 2025 & Visits to Preston Flea Pits that Still Influence my Life & Beliefs

England in the summer of 2025 is not a pleasant place. The sun might shine, but the atmosphere tells a different story, a story of hatred and lack of compassion, of intolerance fed by ignorance, of self-interest and large chunks of self-pity. In Epping and across the country “patriots” don flags of St George and Union flags and profess their love of “Engerland” fed by their own inadequacies, by social media, and by the gutter press. Tabloid newspapers and social media cheer on these patriots draped in their flags as they howl their mindless protests outside hotels housing refugees and asylum seekers. I wonder how many of these patriots who extol the virtues (as they see them) of St George who, legend has it, slew the dragon and displayed the “English values” they so highly and hypocritically prize, could recite the words to the school hymn that I sang throughout my own schooldays and my own teaching career? The words of the hymn “When a knight won his spurs” say nothing about waving flags, chanting hate filled messages or sending those in need away without succour. They do, however say much about the virtues associated with knighthood, about being gentle yet brave, of being Godly, of being joyful and not angry and greedy, and of being truthful – that last a commodity in short supply on the streets of “Engerland 2025” where falsehoods, misinformation and downright ignorance are preferred to honesty and truth by these marauding flag draped vigilantes:

When a knight won his spurs, in the stories of old,

He was gentle and brave, he was gallant and bold

With a shield on his arm and a lance in his hand,

For God and for valour he rode through the land.

No charger have I, and no sword by my side,

Yet still to adventure and battle I ride,

Though back into storyland giants have fled,

And the knights are no more and the dragons are dead.

Let faith be my shield and let joy be my steed

'Gainst the dragons of anger, the ogres of greed;

And let me set free with the sword of my youth,

From the castle of darkness, the power of the truth.

Last week the wife of a Tory party politician was released after a few months in jail for inciting hatred when she posted on social media that hotels housing migrants and asylum seekers should be burned down. The Daily Mail, other tabloids and much of social media treated her as a returning hero. Strangely, I don’t anywhere remember singing anything about burning or killing anyone (except dragons) in the hymn but I do remember a reference to a “castle of darkness”. The phrase “castle of darkness” didn’t have a lot of meaning to me as a ten year old when I sang it in school assemblies but it does now in 2025; it is surely what England in the summer of 2025 has become. Lord Northcliffe, owner of the Daily Mail, many years ago said that the success of his newspaper was because each day 'I give my readers a daily hate.'  Nothing has changed over the many years since he said that – either at the Daily Mail or on England’s streets; one of the “English values” so highly prized by the Mail, other

tabloids and the flag waving patriots on the streets is clearly hatred of our fellow men and women.

 

In talking of English values – if there is such a thing - they rant on about mosques and about Muslims and Hindus and other “unchristian” faiths threatening our way of life, they complain vehemently about “foreigners” taking our jobs. But when I visit my consultant in hospital it is likely that he will be from abroad. At my local GP practice out of the seven GPs listed five are of Indian extraction. Our health service and caring professions could not function without these people from “unchristian faiths”. And I often wonder why this should be so. Why do our medical schools each year pour out huge numbers – perhaps even a majority - of doctors/nurses etc from non-white English backgrounds. Why do the government have to seek doctors, nurses and other carers from countries far away to fill the gaps in our own provision? There will be many reasons, but one can safely assume that ultimately it boils down to the fact that we English, we born and bred patriots, don’t want to take on these caring responsibilities -  we only want exciting jobs or jobs that pay better or jobs that fit in with our preferred life style choices. Few, it seems, in 2025 white England, want to serve or care for others. Perhaps these patriots should consider this in their obsession with English values – that our values are such that we are unwilling to care for our own and must rely upon foreigners to do it for us; a sad and telling indictment of our national psyche and “values” indeed. But, to come back to the hymn, serving others was the whole essence of the knights of old; it was the essence of St George and his rescuing of the king’s daughter from the evil dragon, and it surely is a mainstay of not only the Christian faith but all other faiths. Sadly, I can only conclude that the parable about loving our neighbours in the New Testament, the tale of the Good Samaritan who protected, tended and cared for the injured man, a foreigner, on the roadside, would get short shrift from the raging, hate filled flag wavering “Christian Patriots” outside the hotels hosting refugees and asylum seekers of Epping and wider England in the summer of 2025.

 One might say that our present discontents are merely an aberration, a particular response to the very specific issues associated with the mass movement of people that we have experienced in recent years. There is clearly much in that view but history tells us that we English have a track record in hatred and “othering” people. In the 1930s Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts bullied and clashed with police on the streets of London and other cities. Mosley, an early version of our present day Nigel Farage and right wing agitator Tommy Robinson, had high society and royal connections and wielded huge influence over both the press and the mob preaching hate and division to huge gatherings, especially against Jewish people. And a generation later black and Asian immigrants arriving at our English ports answering the post war call from our government to come and work to help England, the mother country, get back on its feet after the war were met not with a warm welcome but with signs on doors saying “No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs”.

 In writing the above paragraph I could not help my mind wandering back to my own childhood. I lived throughout those years in a small working class street in Preston Lancashire. My father was a quiet, unassuming, kind, gentle and humble man but someone with whom I did not develop a close relationship with until later in life.  He was, however, and I even more so now believe it today, someone to look up to. I once read that it is the destiny or maybe the responsibility of every son to exceed the dreams that his father had for him. I don't know if that is true but I do know that if I can be thought of as the sort of man my dad was then I will be more than satisfied. My mother, sadly, was a different “cup of tea”. When I was very small she stayed at home, a housewife, but once I went to school she returned to her job as a weaver – and it has always been a great sadness to me that although I knew that she loved me dearly she was also a woman not to cross or challenge in any way. In modern day terms she could have a row with herself if she was alone on a desert island and anyone who did not fit in with her view or beliefs about the world was the subject of her ire and venom. As a child I often cried myself to sleep having heard her screaming at my dad – my sobs partly fear and worry for myself but also sadness for my dad who bore the brunt of her rage which could flare at any moment. It was a regular occurrence in our house for my mother to vent her spleen on those she hated or despised – the blacks and Asians (of whom there were none in our area), the Irish (of whom there may have been some) and the Catholics (of whom there were several) -  this latter section of the local community were given special treatment by my mother because at the end of our street was a large Catholic Church, St Joseph’s, a place, which if you believed my mother was not far removed from Satan’s kingdom! Looking back from today, I can imagine my mother cheering on the flag waving patriots with their hateful chants outside asylum seeker hotels and applauding the bile of the Daily Mail and social media; today’s crowds would, I know, speak for her. Where I looked up to my dad, I feared my mother. I knew I was loved and never mistreated, indeed the opposite – but her angry outbursts and harsh view of people and the world worried and frightened me; it was a source of constant anxiety that lasts to this day. As I grew into my teenage years I promised myself that I would never, ever, lose my temper or rage at others. I knew the effect it had on me and how it might effect others. Now, at eighty, I take a small pleasure in knowing that I have largely kept my promise even though sometimes I know I have been thought naïve, a soft touch, or spineless or worse.

My dad died about 20 years ago, my mother having died three years earlier. I have always regretted that I did not have the close father/son relationship with him that some enjoy. He was a long distance lorry driver often away for much of the week and on top of that when he was at home there were frequent, and for me very painful, rows usually about money. We were not a well-off family; each week my dad worked long hours, gave my mother his unopened pay packet, rarely drank or had any obvious luxuries (apart from his weekly packet of fags), did most of the cleaning of the house at weekends and cooked Mum’s breakfast and then Sunday dinner as she rested in bed till noon reading the News of the World or doing her crossword much loved cryptic crosswords at which she was an expert – a skill that I have inherited.  I can never once, throughout my childhood and teenage years, remember mum saying “thanks” or giving any word of praise to my dad, nor were there any signs of affection. My mother didn’t do hugs to him, to me – or to anyone else, a thing that still today, is something I feel very anxious about. In our contemporary world where hugs of greeting or farewell amongst family and friends are accepted and normal I feel uncomfortable, highly embarrassed even, when in a situation where this is expected. The regular rows and my mother’s vitriol coloured my childhood and still haunt me even now a lifetime later and it made relationships difficult within the wider family, not just within our own little family unit. My mother had a fractured relationship with her sisters and brothers which meant that with one exception – my much loved auntie Edna, “Nenny” I called her till the day she died - I grew up knowing that I had a wider family but only rarely, and in some cases never, being part of it.

 As a result, although opportunities for dad and me to do things together were limited, when they did occur, they were, and still are today, precious to me. I loved my mother and feared her in equal measure, but as a young child, I was aware that she was a not an easy woman to please and that dad couldn't win - whatever he did. He was always to blame – for our lack of money, for anything that went wrong in the house, for not being there two or three nights a week when he was on the road; in my mother’s eyes all the ills that beset our little family where down to dad.  One of the few precious moments that I enjoyed with my dad, was, however, when we occasionally went to the cinema together – just him and me. I would have liked my mother to have come as well – I longed for a sense of us being a “happy family” - but that just wasn’t us; she wasn't one for the cinema, so it was usually just us two, dad and me. And as the years have passed those cinema trips have become more important to me. Now, if one of the old films we saw together is repeated on TV I'm a sucker for it.  It takes me back to the darkened cinema, to the heavily made-up usherette with her torch guiding us to our seats and at the interval standing with her tray of ice creams – what a treat that was! Then, on the way home, we often enjoyed fish and chips eaten from the newspaper making that shared couple of hours with my dad – without my mother’s hovering presence – a time when I didn’t have to worry myself that a sudden row would break out as so often it did when my mother felt aggrieved about something. As we walked the dark Preston streets on our way home, eating our fish and chips, I knew that mum would almost certainly be in bed when we got home so the chances of another row were lower. I would not, I knew as I ate my chips, be sitting on the top step of the stairs weeping and terrified, my mother screaming in the kitchen at my dad and beating him with her fists as he stood, silent, allowing her to do it. Those trips to the cinema were far more than just a nice evening out – they were, for me, a relief from the brooding, intensity of life with my mother, a thing that coloured my life and relationships with both her and my dad until the very day that she died – and still do today.

 This was in the mid-fifties and in those long gone days Preston, like other towns seemed full of cinemas; in the town centre there was the Ritz, the Palladium, the ABC, the Empire, the Gaumont and more. To occasionally go into town to visit one of these gilded palaces was a real treat – I can remember feeling almost like a movie star as we paid for our ticket and then made our way to our seats in the highly decorated venues. Going to the town centre cinemas, however, was rare we usually stayed closer to home. Like other towns, there were local cinemas in abundance only a few hundred yards from our Caroline Street doorstep. But in all honesty the term these places a ‘cinema’ is probably a bit over the top. They were what were called 'flea pits', small picture houses where a cheap night’s entertainment could be had before the age of mass television. I can still remember, and smell them today: 'The Guild', 'The Queens’, 'The Plaza', 'The Carlton' – all within a short walking distance of our little terraced house. Every Saturday afternoon I would call for my school pal Billy Masheter who lived on Outram Street and we would go to the Guild and watch black and white films of Hopalong Cassidy, Tom Mix or Roy Rogers fight the gun slinging cattle rustlers and the red Indian hordes or we would be amazed by the science fiction future of the heroic Flash Gordon doing battle against the evil Ming the Merciless. But that was all kid’s stuff to fill our Saturdays. My dad and I on our occasional nights out saw sterner stuff; films like 'Paleface', 'Genevieve', 'Robin Hood', 'Davy Crockett', 'The Robe', 'The Ten Commandments', '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea', 'Son of Paleface' , 'A Kid for  Two Farthings', 'The Cockleshell Heroes', 'King of the Khyber Rifles', 'The Dam Busters', 'Shane', 'High Noon', .......the list goes on.

 Today, all these years later, I'm still a sucker for these, what I call real films, not the violent rubbish that fills our screens today. Films with real heroes, likeable people, where the 'good guys' are good and the 'bad guys' get their due punishment! Many would say they are 'naff', twee, old fashioned. Well, that may well be the case – they certainly don’t contain the violence or seamy side of life so often portrayed in modern films.  They speak of a gentler life and honourable action – something to aspire to and make you feel good. For a youngster they were portraying worthwhile values – albeit a bit twee. I would argue this is much more savoury than the values so often portrayed to the young in modern films – violence, excess, foul language or soft porn. Who cannot empathise with the ultimate hero, Shane? - a man who portrays all that is best in human nature. A man of few words: quiet, unassuming, dignified. No violent foul mouthed Clint Eastwood figure this. I defy anyone not to empathise with the feelings of Shane as he stoically and unflinchingly takes the abuse from the Ryker gang and doesn't rise to their bait. And no-one could fail to breath a sigh of relief as he faces down the psychopathic gunslinger Jack Wilson – good triumphing over evil and doing it with calm dignity. Or, who cannot feel anxious and want to help Gary Cooper as Marshal Will Kane in "High Noon" as, on his wedding day, he desperately tries to enlist the help of the town folk to face the dreaded Miller gang? Nor can I believe that any normal person cannot be moved by the story of young Joe as he looks after the sickly little goat he has bought at the market believing that it is a unicorn in 'A Kid for Two Farthings'. As I write this I can still feel the anger and anxiety as I watched Sam, the honest, hard working young man, wrestle with the dreaded and evil Python Macklin (played by the huge wrestler Primo Carnera) in “A Kid for Two Farthings” whilst the crowd bay and Sam’s girlfriend Sonia (played by Diana Dors) averts her eyes from the punishment that Sam is receiving! I can still hear my dad that evening leaning over in the darkened Queen’s cinema in Tunbridge Street and whisper 'That's Primo Carnera, Tony - he's a nasty, big headed, 'bu**er'! 

I have often reflected that it is by such quietly whispered words or casual conversations over the tea table that children learn right and wrong, or learn of the things that their parents and adults in general believe, aspire to and expect. It is through such interaction that we learn what it is to be grown up. My dad's whispered words that night (and other nights) in those dark cinemas have remained with me and I can still hear him today seventy years later. I didn't think of it in these terms then, but looking back they spoke to me of things that I should value and that my dad believed in - fairness, honesty, thought for the underdog, of not being a bully and of not being big headed…... And, his words did it in a far more effective way than a lecture from my mother or telling off from her would ever have done. 

Maybe I'm reminiscing through rose coloured glasses but I can still remember the quiet kindly wisdom and wonderful voice of David Kossoff playing Mr Kandinsky, the Jewish tailor, as he talked to little Joe about life and death when Joe’s 'unicorn' finally died - as we all knew it would. I knew that Mr Kandinsky was everything that one should be, and it was so because the film told me and more importantly my dad did, too, by the way he reacted to the story. I might be naive, and I’m certainly a sucker for the old films but I often reflect that our world has become so rich in genius but so poor in wisdom and simple understanding of the important aspects of the human condition.

There seem so many things that perhaps we have lost – and many of these are the stuff of Mr Kandinsky, Shane or Marshal Kane and the films of that bygone age. In the final minutes of the film 'Shane' Joey, the young boy in the story, pleads with Shane to stay and look after him and his family. But Shane points out that he, Joey, can be a hero: “Look out for your Ma and Pa and you’ll be a hero.......Anyone”, says Shane, “can learn to shoot a gun, ride a horse and enjoy an exciting life but that doesn't make him a hero”.  Yes, yes, yes..... I know – it’s naff, Hollywood drivel, soft soap, cheesy - not what we say and do in our clever and fast moving 21st century world where we blast the bad guys with our X-Box and watch techno-digitally enhanced cyber adventures that provide no moral context or worthy aspiration and omit very core aspects of humanity: empathy, compassion, understanding or nuance.  Somehow a scowling Clint Eastwood uttering those immortal words “Make my day Punk” before gunning his enemy down don’t have the same humanity, compassion or moral coherence as the heroes of yesteryear.  But as I get older I know that Shane’s comments were just the sort of thing my dad understood. And, my worry is that if our modern world does not portray these basic “wisdoms” and human values through the media, if our 'heroes' – sports stars, celebrities, politicians.........and most of all parents -  do not reflect such values  and offer a way of life to give young people something worthwhile to believe and aspire to, then where else will tomorrow’s adults get them?

Now, as an eighty year old I can see the wisdom of 18^th century philosopher and politician Edmund Burke when he said "Manners are of more importance than laws. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarise or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe”. And the thoughts of moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre are in my view certainly true: "Virtues are dispositions not only to act in particular ways, but also to feel in particular ways. To act virtuously is to act from inclination formed by the cultivation of the virtues….”. Like the old fashioned films words like “manners” and “virtue” are now, in our brash modern world, a bit twee, old fashioned, but they are implicitly and explicitly the human characteristics  that was the theme running through these old films and the character of their heroes – Shane, Mr Kandinsky, Marshal Kane, Roy Rogers, Tom Mix, and the rest. When they are not present then we are, as Burke suggests, debased and barbarised; empathy and kindness, goodness and honest action are sidelined. One need only look at today’s divided world: Gaza, the vilifying of  certain groups, the savage comments on social media, an American President who is an anti-hero in terms of being a role model, violent demonstrations by flag waving hate filled “patriots” intent upon making our government act in a hostile way towards refugees, films and TV filled with expletives, coarse dialogue, and gratuitously violent and explicit storylines…….all of these are what we now subliminally soak up from the media and in doing so we are on danger of accepting barbarism, debasement, coarseness and violence as the new normal, immune to kindness, honesty, decency and doing the right thing.  As I look back and think of my dad I know that although he never read philosophy and would have never claimed to be learned he had great wisdom. He might have said “I’m only a lorry driver” but the reality was that he knew about decency and honest honourable action; he knew about the sort of virtues envisaged in the hymn I mentioned. He understood all this completely and unlike the flag waving “patriots” on “Engerland’s” streets in the summer of 2025 he would know just why these virtues and old-fashioned heroes were important to life and to his son growing up.

Nowadays I'm just a grumpy old man, a sad old git, but my trips to the cinema – or, in our case, the back street “flea pit” - were for me more than nice nights out, cowboys and Indians, ice creams and fish and chips.  They were, at one level, one of those growing up things – a few longed for hours with my dad, a bit of what we might call today “male bonding”. But their long-term effect has been that they are still today very much part of my life’s compass, fundamental to who I am and what I believe in and to my very being! They are, at the root, the reason why I know with absolute certainty that those draped in their St George’s flags, screaming abuse and hate at "others ", less fortunate than them in “Engerland’s” summer of 2025 are so very dreadfully and terribly wrong.