Merrie England-2,000 by Colin Jordan. Printed & published by Gothic Ripples, Thorgarth, Greenhow Hill, Harrogate Yorkshire England. 1 pound sterling per copy from us (ten shillings to Friends of the Scorpion) plus 1 pound 10/ (50"p") for postage and packing. Those interested in negotiating bulk purchase rates should write to the author.

WHERE ARGUMENT FAILS, satire often succeeds, catching its subject off guard, confronting the reason not directly, which may mean in a defensive or apologetic manner, but by eliciting the emotional and humorous response first, before reason brings in its ponderous arguments. Reason, after all, is not, and never has been, the neutral element that it is so often thought to be by those oh-so-reasonable- persons who preach it.

We laugh at the satire, or shudder at its grotesqueness. That emotive reaction of ours reveals a truth which our reason may have otherwise succeeded in hiding from us, protesting, "no, no that isn't right"; or, "that's a terrible exaggeration". Deft use of satire is the outstanding quality of George Orwell's 1984, a satire written on more levels than most readers have appreciated, when at the time it was written the belief that the British would ever accept the political tailoring of their language or the enforcement of metrication seemed very fanciful, not to be taken too seriously. There are echoes of 1984 in Jordan's Merrie England-2,000. It is written in the same line of political satire, extrapolating certain tendencies in society and imagining that we have not long to go now before we have arrived at a point where the tendencies have become have omnipresent facts of life:

"...the mythomania of the "Holocaust" pervaded the whole of life. Newspapers carried on their front pages daily an inset demanding "Don't forget the Holocaust!" Supermarket shopping bags and all other articles from cars to carpets were emblazoned with such words as "Remember Auschwitz!" "Holocaust" shrines appeared at roadsides the length and breadth of the land where travellers could rest and recite poems of remembrance inscribed on the walls. At 11 o'clock every morning sirens and bells called a halt to life throughout England for two minutes, not on account of some long forgotten armistice in some war of 1914-18, but because of the extermination of the Jews in the World War for Democracy of 1939- 45."

The Ministry of Harmony is responsible for the administration of a wonder drug called Harmonine. "This wonderful product caused excruciating pain whenever the brain registered the slightest disharmonious thought, thus administering a commendable punishment in the course of inducing better habits of thinking for the future." School starts in the morning with the ritual of the "Circle of Sameness",

"The children linked hands, then chanted the 20-verse Song of Sameness which had all to do with breaking down barriers, pushing out prejudices, filling up with love and care for every form of life generously classified as "human"."

Whites go on processions in the manner of the flagellanti of the Middle Ages, beating themselves for the sinfulness of being white. Incorrigible racialists are labotomised. Books disappear from libraries. History is re-written so that Robin Hood is Indian, Lord Nelson a half-caste. A gormless enslaved mass is kept happy with the modern version of bread and circuses: drugs, discos, sex and t.v.

Fanciful? Impossible? Exaggerated? This satire was written before the release of Schindler's List in a fanfare of publicity, with free showings for the impressionable young and compulsory viewing in many schools, disrespectful Black school-children in one case reported in the U.S. being made to see the film twice, the second time without laughing. In 1995 the Western media spent more time in remembrance of the dead in German concentration camps, especially Jewish dead, (and it is illegal in many countries to even so much as publically debate the number of these dead or the nature of their death) than their own fallen in the last war. And Robin Hood? I wonder if Colin Jordan had seen Kevin Costner in the role when he wrote this, or was that another coincidence? Dancing in rings of harmony in schools wouldn't surprise me at all. Books disappearing from libraries? Whatever happened to Camp of the Saints? This book will not disappear from libraries as it will not be allowed to appear in one in the first place. As for labotomy, be suspicious of little men in white coats calling at your door. Joke: it couldn't happen here could it? That's as absurd as Orwell's thinking in 1948 that metrication...

Easy to read, this book deserves wide circulation. It will not receive it. On the contrary, no mainline publication will dare review it, even criticially, a state of affairs which itself tends to confirm the justness of much of the writer's satire. Unfortunately the book is accompanied by illustrations which are likely to make the censors' job easier without adding to the impact of the written satire. A lack of subtlety has been the besetting curse of those who since the war have tried to ensure that the White homelands remain White and the illustrations here are a throwback to the Alf Garnett school of racialism, something which, by itself, the intellectual Bolshevik can easily cope with. Mr. Jordan himself is sometimes not a subtle writer. He is an admirer of Adolph Hitler and that puts him beyond the pale for many who would do well to listen to what he has to say here regardless of what they think of the late German chancellor.

The response from the guardians of decency has not been slow in coming. Mr. Janner of the British Board of Deputies wants the book banned, which makes him sound as though he is volunteering for the leading role as "nasty Uncle Shylock" in a dramatisation of the work. Fanciful? Exaggeration? I should like to think so. The tightening noose of "anti-hate" legislation, which is legislation to protect firstly Jews and secondly Blacks and other non-Whites from criticism, the ritualistic denunciations of Hitler et al seem to me to be pointing the other way. But obviously I haven't been taking enough Harmonine.

Dominic Campbell

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