A MERRY CHRISTMAS
AND HAPPY NEW YEAR.
*
A CALL TO ARMS
At a time of great peril to our Freedom and our Way-of Life
The Song of the Earth of
England
by
Percy Bysshe Shelly
– Eng. poet (1702-1822)
*
“Men of England, heirs of Glory,
Heroes of the unwritten
story,
Nurslings of one mighty
Mother
Hopes of her, and one
other;
“Rise like Lions after
slumber
In unvanquished number,
Shake your chains to
earth like dew
Which in sleep had
fallen on you-
Ye are many - they are
few.
“What is freedom?-ye
can tell
That which slavery is ,
too well-
For its very name has
grown
To an echo of your own.
“What art thou, Freedom?
O! could slaves
Answer from their
living graves
This demand-tyrants
would flee
Like a dream’s dim
imagery:
“Thou art not, as
impostors say,
A shadow soon to pass
away,
A superstition, and a
name
Echoing from the cave
of Fame.
Let a great Assembly be
Of the fearless and the
free
On the spot of English
ground
Where the plains
stretch wide around.
“Ye who suffer woes
untold,
or to feel, or to
behold
Your lost country
bought and sold
With a price of blood
and gold-
“Let a vast assembly
be’
And with great
solemnity
Declare with measured
words that ye
Are, as God has made ye
free-
“Stand ye calm and
resolute,
Like a forest close and
mute,
With folded arms and
looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished
war.
“The old laws of
England-they
Whose reverend heads
with age are grey
Children of a wiser
day;
And whose solemn voice
must be
Thine own echo-Liberty!
“On those who first
should violate
Such sacred heralds in
their State
Rest the blood and that
must ensue…
And it will not rest on
you.
“And the bold, true
warriors
Who have hugged Danger
in wars
Will turn to those who
would be free
Ashamed of such base
company.
“Rise like Lions after
slumber
In unvanquished
number-
Shake your chains to
earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen
on you-
Ye are many-they are
few.”
*
* *
A Christmas Message - 2004
[Certain alterations have been made in
December-2009]
The past year
has witnessed the 60th Anniversary of the
Commemoration of the Normandy landings on June 6th
1944. attended by the reduced ranks of the survivors whose
brave actions brought Freedom and Hope to Europe.
Shortly after
this emotional and significant event in the annals of our
history our Prime Minister Tony Blair signed twenty-five
times the Treaty of the New European Constitution at Rome
against the wishes of millions of the subjects of the Queen
who do
not wish to become citizens of the EU which would take away
the very liberties for which were fought for those 60 years
ago.
We have yet to
see Tony Blair say sorry for lying to Parliament and the
People and for taking the Country to war in Iraq on a Lie.
We still await the resignations of the Prime Minister and
Geoffrey Hoon and John Scarlett of M16.
We also deplore
the action of the Prime Minister and Defence Secretary for
moving the Black Watch and supporting troops up to the
Baghdad area and the lose of life, also the injuries –some
very serious - which our brave soldiers have received in
their stoic performance of their duties. As their Commander
said his troops ‘ will attract insurgents like Bees to
Honey’.
Our thoughts
are also with the families of the six Redcaps who
have been told that ‘No one to Blame’ and therefore,
they are left with no alternative but to take the matter
further in order to obtain what appears the unobtainable
with the present government ‘JUSTICE’.
Our thoughts
are also with the family of the Trooper
who though
cleared by the Army on two occasions of the unlawful killing
of an Iraqi citizen has by the Attorney General Lord
Goldsmith been committed to the Old Bailey to stand trial.
This is the same Attorney General who claimed the war on
Iraq was unlawful.
With Christmas
only a month away our thoughts are with the families and
friends of those soldiers who gave their lives and those who
have been injured –some possibly disabled for life, in their
duty and service to their Country, and those who must remain
in Iraq until recalled.
Our wish this
Christmas is that our troops will be home with their
families no later than Easter next year –earlier if
possible.
Since last year
everything is not gloom
we have had the resounding ‘NO’ from the
Northumbrian’s to any suggestion of giving up their
local self –government to a EU Quango -which
would be answerable to the unaccountable despotic
bureaucrats in their squalid stable in Brussels.
The
‘Victory’
in the North East
must be put into perspective. It was a magnificent
achievement when one considers as stated elsewhere…“that
the ‘Yes’ Vote had years to prepare;
support of all sorts of state and
pseudo-state bodies; a budget dozens of times the ‘NO’
campaign; the Tories had no significant forces in the region
other than some grass- roots volunteers; the business
organisations assumed a ‘Yes’ vote; the BBC was manfully on
the ‘Yes’ side and repeatedly tried to throw the campaign
Prescott’s way; the two biggest regional papers were pro;
three
month’s
earlier headline polls suggested they [The ‘Yes’ vote] had
something like a thirty point lead…”
So do remember
the attitude of the BBC Northeast and that section of the
Press who would rather put the freedom of the Press and
Media in jeopardy for their own EU agenda.
And the lack lustre attitude of the defeatist Conservative
Party who must again be saying to itself –how can it happen
– that so many times we have been proved wrong -yet again
–when
will we learn? –When too late?
We hope the
bias of the BBC in the Northeast is the exception, otherwise
we may need International Observers from Ukraine and Iraq
and Sudan or wherever to oversee the general election and
referendum to ensure fair play and truth prevails in our
present supposed democracy.
The intention of the
Government to increase its hold on the population by taking
away our most sacred liberties and rights must be fought to
the last –until we are successful.
The justification for
their infringements is sketchy to say the least and cannot
be permitted to succeed.
What might help their
credibility would be if those Ministers responsible admitted
their fault and resigned. But this seems to be a lost cause
with the present Executive who intend whatever it takes to
hold on till the next election.
This may be the
last Christmas that we enjoy those freedoms which we hold so
dear unless we come to our senses and prevent the erosion of
our traditional ‘Rights and Liberties’ by supporting
the
UKIP
the only party which will protect our Constitution at the
forthcoming General Election in May 2005 and give a
resounding ‘No’ to the New European Constitution at
the Referendum which is anticipated to follow.
Lastly, the historian Sir John A.R. Marriott
outlined
our Individual responsibility in 1935 at a time of a number
of Dictatorships in Europe-Italy-Germany-Russia
(USSR)–Spain. In the closing words of his
publication ‘Dictatorship and Democracy’ which all
should read- the following words:
‘Thus the English
people have come to regard themselves, not merely as the
fortunate possessors of A RICH HERITAGE OF ORDER AND
FREEDOM,
also as the trustees of a property to be held
for the common benefit of mankind.
[Which
we all and mankind would lose if we do not leave the EU]
‘They
hold themselves to be charged with a unique
responsibility-to be stewards, in a special sense, of the
mystery of government. If stewards indeed we are,
it is required of them that they
are found to be faithful. The fruits of FREEDOM, hardly
won, may not, without grave and anxious deliberation,
be dissipated even to purchase
ORDER; nor may the blessings of ORDER be surrendered in vain
pursuit of the shadow of FREEDOM.
Sir John A.R.Marriott. (1935)
To those who
may be still be unconvinced we call on a Christian
liberal European thinker of the last century
Lord Acton
(1834-1902)
who sought to
further the aim for Peace and Freedom in a world of
True Federal Democracies loosely formed of Independent
Nation States and he further comments: -
‘Laws are part of a thing’s nature. Law
is National, growing on a particular soil, suited to a
particular character and wants. Legislation should grow in
harmony with the People-should be based on habits as
well as on precepts. It should be identified with the
National character and life. On this depends growth and
progress. The People cannot administer a law not their
own. This is the reverse of Self-Government, which proceeds
not from code but from custom, is learnt not from books but
from practice, is administered by the People
themselves.
However the code may
be, if it comes from
aliunde than from
National life and history, it destroys Self-Government…even
if its forms are liberal…it is for this reason that it has
never been possible to export more than phantoms of the
British Constitution.
Lord Acton
concluded his speech on Freedom
with the following words: -
‘I do not like to
conclude without inviting the attention to the impressive
fact that so much of the hard fighting, the thinking, the
enduring that has contributed to the deliverance of man from
the power of man, has been the work of our countrymen and
their
descendents in other
lands…
All these explanations lie
on the surface, and are visible as the protecting ocean; but
they can only be successive effects of a constant cause
which must lie in the same native qualities of perseverance,
moderation, individuality, and manly sense of duty, which
give to the English race its supremacy in the stern art of
labour, which as enabled it to thrive as no other can on
inhospitable shores, and which (although no other people has
less of the bloodthirsty craving for glory…) caused Napoleon
to exclaim, as he rode away from Waterloo, “It has always
been the same since Crecy.?
[Fonts altered-bolding used-comments in
brackets]
11/04
*
CHRISTMAS PAST
*
A Story of Courage
AT
CHRISTMAS THERE IS A BRIGHT STAR TO FOLLOW
*
A Story of Innocence
A DROPPED JESUS - FORGOTTEN
LINES -AND ACTORS IN TEARS....
*
A STORY OF SACRIFICE
WE REMEMBER THE YEAR 2006
*
A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE TO OUR
VIEWERS IN 2007
*
A Story of Faith
LET
the CHRISTMAS MESSAGE ring out WHILE you still CAN
By
Michael Nazir Ali
BISHOP
OF ROCHESTER
*
THE SPIRIT OF
FREEDOM
*
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