OF CABBAGES AND KINGS | Will ‘Wokery’ Now Displace All Rivals To Christianity in Britain Of Today? | Farrukh Dhondy

“The winds blow over the emperor’s tomb

He now lies safe in eternity’s womb

Eternity denies us all rebirth

To lie there hearing all echoes of doom

But why, Bachchoo, these morose thoughts today?

I’ve just been reading a history essay

Proving we never learn from human past --

Guns and bombs constantly have their way...?”

From The Rubaiyat of Aesop Goal

In the last week three million people tuned in to a speech by the British MP, Danny Kruger. He had, some days earlier, delivered it to a virtually empty House of Commons as his parliamentary colleagues, not having any political differences to settle or demonstrate their partialities, had quit the green benches, had a good lunch and presumably retired to their constituencies.

Nevertheless, dedicated Christian Kruger, addressed the green cushions and the handful of nodding-off colleagues because he had, he thought, something urgent to say about the state of the country, its heart, its soul, its present as he saw it and its future as this present threatened.

His speech began on a note of despair. The churches were emptying. He hadn’t checked the latest statistics which proudly announce that the reverse trend seems to be spreading through the country -- abandonment is slowly but surely being abandoned.

Nevertheless, Danny carried on. His contention was/is that Christianity is in the very fabric of this country and its values. He used the metaphor of it “being the substance of its bones!”. He could have appealed to a younger constituency by saying it was in its DNA, but perhaps that would be wrong as the pagan, tribal, Druidic past of this country only changed when St Augustine brought the word of Jesus to the green and pleasant land.

Danny was of course conscious that though there weren’t any ears of peers listening in the House, his speech would reach a gracious, numerous following of Christians through the advertised social media transmission.

There were two forces, he said, which were displacing Christianity: Islam and Wokery. “Fact?” as the Orange blob would ask (sorry, he uses the word to give questionable veracity to a lie. So “!!!!”, and not “?”) I am afraid not. I beg to differ on both counts.

There is absolutely no evidence that masses of Christians are converting to Islam. But perhaps that’s not what Danny means. He wants to imply that Muslims have invaded the country in hordes and mosques and Islamic centres are cropping up in most cities and in communities where Muslim immigrants have settled. Aha! -- the dog-whistle against immigration and the supposed alien invasion?

If at all conversions are taking place, they are not to Islam but to the cults of Hinduism. The Hare Krishna crowd in their lungis and shaved heads chant in some city squares. Others have taken to following Hindu godmen in search of spirituality. Yoga, despite its roots and origin in Hindu theology, is incarnate in Britain as an absolutely secular way of staying nimble.

So, what then of Danny’s contention that the second religion displacing Christianity in contemporary Britain is “Wokery”? His speech took for granted that his listeners would have, through common perception, a uniform definition of what the word means.

As Humpty Dumpty said to Alice, the word means what he intends it to mean.

To my mind, gentle reader, it seems to mean very many different things. To the right-wing commentators in anti-Left vituperative publications such as Britain’s weekly Spectator, it means anything that the entire spectrum of what it characterises as “The Left” believes.

For some commentators -- again writers for Britain’s dailies The Telegraph, The Mail and The Express -- support for the people of Gaza, for a state of Palestine or any stand against the genocide by the Benjamin Netanyahu government qualifies as “wokery”. Some of these commentators -- and I can name them, but their identities would mean little to most of this column’s audience -- would characterise the counter-demonstrators who oppose the mobs who gather to attack the hostels and living spaces that the government has allocated to migrants awaiting their appeals for residence to be processed, as “woke”.

I have always understood the word to have originated as American slang for having woken up from the trance of social injustice. That is legitimate linguistic invention for an advance in states of thought or awareness.

I’m not unaware that the word has been widely applied to some foibles of university students who attempt to ban certain, even innocuous, words or expressions on the grounds that they make others feel insecure. Very many of these bans or curtailments are legitimately “woke” in so far as they prevent insults on the rounds of race, religion, appearance etc.

Then there is the trend, attributed to “wokery”, of not using gender-specific pronouns and calling everyone “they”. Some anti-woke-wallas, again in the publications mentioned above, have moaned that this is a symptom of the end of civilisation. It isn’t -- the Orange booby is still President, right-wing parties are on the rise in very many nations, the Royal Shakespeare Company has full houses for every show -- though I am sure one day some director, seized by gender-and-race-neutral considerations, will cast a white woman as Othello.

Yes, well -- but even that’s not the end of civilisation.

When asked to specify what pronoun I prefer for myself, I say I favour “it” -- always objective!