Sheep No More - "A labour of love "
Worry not as to the whereabouts of your purse or wallet, I have nothing to sell you at present other than an idea .
Lets you and I be brutally honest with ourselves for a moment and ask a searching and perhaps painful question… Has our generation honoured the efforts and sacrifices made by our forebears protecting the stable way of life they built and bequeathed us, and following naturally on from the first part of the question… have we performed our parental duty to our children and future generations, preserving and building further upon their birthright?
Forgive if you will, a lack of diplomatic nicety whilst answering the question from my own perspective… I suggest that we have spectacularly failed on both counts. The condition into which Britain has decayed is an absolute disgrace and every single adult within this country should be ashamed of both it and the part each of us has played, even if the majority of us are only guilty of remaining silent when we should have spoken out.
That for decades this nation has been blighted by an abysmal standard of leadership is a fact that few will deny. Blair is just the latest in a long line of inadequate self-serving and self-deluding politicians to have been left to their own devices shredding piece by piece the fabric of our society and ultimately costing our nation it’s stability and way of life. If you have read a daily paper or endured a news bulletin today then you will have had rammed down your throat the state of decay into which our land has sunk and so I will save the effort and column inches of laying on with a trowel just what Blair’s legacy to the British people will truly be when a genuine account of his time at the helm sees the light of day. Unlike those who govern, the likes of you and I aren’t lucky enough to be able to insulate ourselves from the world of their creation because the symptoms of social decay make up the circumstances of our daily lives. This unhappy state of affairs begs a pair of matched questions… Why are we putting up with it? And what are we going to do about it?
The answer to the first one is I believe surprisingly straight forward. We are putting up with a non-stop diet of crap because the heart and soul of this nation has been torn out and it’s backbone dissolved. It may have become entirely subconscious but we know deep inside that our way of life has been under relentless attack from every imaginable angle and we don’t actually expect any longer that those in power will lift a finger in defence of the British people’s interests. Decades of accumulative decline without respite have imposed upon us a defeatist mindset and this has perpetuated and accelerated the one way journey we have become bound into inevitably ending up where we are today.
Some might say that at face value Britain is doing OK so where’s the problem? Low interest rates, the biggest names in commerce raking in staggering levels of profit, house values soaring increasing folks perception of their own material wealth etc. This is undoubtedly how some amongst us measure success but in reality these features amount to a glossy topcoat as presented to the world. What lies beneath as the foundation of that topcoat is what interests me and is what this project seeks to expose. Is the British way of life as we perceive it today built upon solid foundations or is our nation rotten to the core? What are the factors that truly measure the state of health underlying the British way of life?
Are we able to sleep safely in our beds at night in the warm and reassuring knowledge that the law of the land will spring into action on the behalf of the decent hard working and law abiding citizen should that citizen find him or herself victimised? Can we be certain that our nation’s defences are rock solid and keeping out the heroin and cocaine that might otherwise find its way into the veins of our children? Can we pack our children of to school at the age of 5 in the knowledge that for a minimum of eleven years they will receive a high quality education within a disciplined working atmosphere? Do the powers that be understand the importance of stable communities in which children can grow physically, mentally and morally strong and the generations are bonded naturally together allowing experience and knowledge to transverse the ages along with mutual support that benefits all, from the newborn to those at the far end of life? Those four questions I picked at random from a potential pot of literally thousands all of which would be highly relevant to determining Britain’s true state of wellbeing. The answers to all four don’t even warrant debate as they are so patently obvious! Only the most insulated and self deluded amongst us will deny that the answers can only be NO, NO, NO and NO.
Just what the hell do we think we’re doing? What sort of a mess is our generation set to leave behind for its children? When the baton passed to us from the previous generation we inherited a stable nation saved from enslavement by them at enormous cost to their own generation and yet just a few decades on how much more dramatically could things have changed? Our own generation is set to go down in history as the one that sat idly by feeling sorry for itself whilst our children’s birthright has dissolved before our very eyes!!! Are you happy with that? You cannot be and neither am I so it’s about time we shook off the defeatism that has served us so badly and began instead taking our parental responsibilities seriously, wouldn’t you agree?
Those in power would have us believe that all’s fine and dandy. High powered individuals and institutions make the case daily that Britain is in fine fettle. The Bank of England and the CBI to name just two powerful institutions bang home the message with six inch nails that the economy is in safe hands and one government minister after another along with senior civil servants reassure us that the fabric of society is being maintained. All those making the assertion that everything’s fine and there’s nothing to worry about are of course wedded to the establishment in one form or another themselves and have the strongest of motives for not wanting to rock the boat. I suggest that what’s needed is an assessment of Britain’s state of health not from the perspective of those bent on maintaining their own positions at the top of the hierarchy, but from the ordinary citizen’s point of view living within the Britain of their creation. In other words not from the perspective of an unrepresentative minority enjoying life inside ivory towers of its own making, but from the likes of you and I forced to endure life in the real world.
A couple or three years ago I found myself so sick to the back teeth of being forced against my will to witness the trashing of the British way of life that I just had to do something about it. Your parents and mine did not go through hell in the names of democracy and freedom in order to create the Britain of today… spineless, subservient, crime ridden, divided and fearful now did they? The fact is the vast majority of the British people are even today and despite the conditions under which we are made to live overwhelmingly decent. Newspaper letters pages, radio phone-in programmes and literally millions of anger and fear fuelled conversations on the Clapham Common omnibus of legend and down at the local testify to the fact that this country is being run into the ground entirely against the wishes and interests of the vast majority of its people. All those letters and conversations prove two things of great relevance. The first is that the majority of our fellow countrymen have high moral standards and no difficulty telling right from wrong. The second is that even when the people are to all intents and purpose singing from the same song-sheet on an issue of vital national importance such as for instance asylum abuse, we are as a matter of routine ignored. Done with writing futile letters to newspaper editors I instead set myself a task that soon turned into a true labour of love! Despite the fact that never before had I written anything longer than a letter, I set about creating a book that even before a single word of text had been typed had its title. The British people in my opinion are routinely treated as though we are sheep to be corralled and ignored and so the title of “Sheep No More” was from day one the obvious and only choice.
By nature I’m somewhat analytical, it drives some folks mad! When a problem arises I want to know why it happened and what can be done about it. For as long as I can remember I have been aware of the decay at work within the British way of life and the way in which it has been allowed to spread from one issue to another. I have also been painfully aware of the fact that whilst the decay has eaten away at the fabric of our society not a finger has been lifted by any person at any point in order to get a grip on the situation! Our country has managed in the space of just a few decades to exchange the status of being the worlds most stable, creative and peaceful nation for that of unstable, subservient and fearful. It didn’t happen overnight, a process has been involved that started with the end of empire and has never stopped gathering pace since.
I set to work identifying the most destructive forces and the way in which they have interacted eventually bringing about the Britain of 2005. I must resist the temptation to start reeling of examples at this stage because this document might begin to seem like the beginnings of a book itself and I want to bring this introduction to a close as it’s already too long! Instead I would like to invite you to peruse one short and one medium length essay also included on this website. The first is entitled “Fact or Fantasy?” Within it I seek to highlight the level of self delusion Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are willing to indulge in whilst seeking to disguise the truth of the nation and economy they preside over. The second is entitled “The Handicapped Nation” This article seeks to highlight the general quality of leadership to which Britain is subjected. Not just political but also commercial and judicial. These are not extracts from my book but independent essays that should demonstrate the strands of logic employed and give a flavour of what readers will be able to expect once the book itself is ready for publication.
At the time of writing this item (September 2005) my book is in the final phase of its creation. It started out several years ago as a collection of ideas and concepts that explain to me how our country has ended up in its current almighty mess but that would require an awful lot of work in order that many diverse features might be formulated into a good read for others. Years of fermentation and mulling over later, the material is as complete as it ever will be and just needs a final writing up. The reason it has taken so long to get to this stage is that from the outset finding time to write has been my biggest single obstacle. I’m self employed and find with every year that passes making time for myself and my labour of love more difficult not less. (Something’s amiss, isn’t it supposed to get easier as we get older?)If I were able to dedicate the time then three months of concentrated effort would see the manuscript complete but as I have failed so far to find a way off the hamster wheel it will be done when its done, I can say no more.
This project has been for me the most constructive and satisfying period of my life. Learning how to apply logic and commonsense toward seeking solutions to pressing problems has created along the way a bonus that I hadn’t expected when it started. In the case of Britain’s current predicament, making the effort to understand what the negative forces are and the way in which they have interacted in bringing about the present totally unacceptable situation, the way of unpicking those same strands of decay begins to immerge out of exactly the same resources of commonsense and logic.. I am certain that not only is it possible to persuade others how the present came into being, but what straightforward concepts are needed to begin the process of sorting this country out and getting it back onto its feet.
Sheep No More will not start and finish life as just a book. The book will form a hub around which a diverse project will be built. The details I’ll keep to myself for now as you’ll appreciate there’s a way to go before the project will be able to exploit its own ideas. One detail I must make public from the start though, is that the SNM logo has been registered as a trademark and is protected under copyright law.
Other than the chancellor’s wedge of tax, every penny SNM the book generates in profit, no matter how big or small will be ploughed into the project itself in order that it may grow. This is for me the most important investment I could possibly make towards the future. A fund of cash built up with my name upon it might buy the means of insulating my own family from the worst elements of social decay, but an investment of effort in taking on with a view to digging out and destroying the root causes of the nation’s malaise represents immeasurably more. The best way of insuring the future for my own children in to build for them a safe environment in which they can thrive but for that to become a reality the investment must be made in the names of all the nation’s children.
All that remains to be done for the time being is to identify myself and sign off until work on the book is completed. My name is Pete Harris, I’m a family man in my late forties, I live on the Isle of Wight and work as a self employed engraver. I thank you for taking the time and trouble to read this far and hope that to some extent I might have fired up your own determination to stop accepting a non-stop diet of shit and start fighting back! Please do read the two essays and don’t be offended by my blunt style. I refuse to pussyfoot with polite language whilst the quality of life for Britain’s long abused citizens is being relentlessly and systematically trashed.
When the book is published please buy a copy. You will be making an investment not in mere paper and print but in a project that has the backbone and balls to fight for what’s right and reclaim all of our children’s birthright. Yours, mine and the people down the road with whom we shall almost certainly never meet. They are our countrymen and if the quality of their lives is poor then that fact must rub off on us all.
This old country is not finished yet!
Copyright of Pete Harris. First published September 2005
A Labour of Love |