"IN ENGLAND'S GREEN & PLEASANT LAND"

Have just returned from a family visit to London. It was at the tail end of a two month heat wave and drought, and didn’t look like the England I had known. I couldn’t help thinking of the most popular song, or hymn, written by William Blake in 1804, that I still remembered from my school days.  To quote the final verse in this epic poem -  which is considered by many to be the English unofficial national anthem:

“I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England’s green & pleasant Land.”

The phrase "green and pleasant land" has become a common term for an identifiably English landscape and society. The landscape I knew and loved was damp and green. The one which greeted me on arrival was dry and brownish.  

As far as “society” is concerned, England is certainly a far cry from what it was in Blake’s day.

I thought the newspapers would be a refreshing change from the news we get in Israel, with just trivia about the doings of the Royal family, or whatever. However, I became disillusioned very quickly after a few days of collecting the English newspapers.

The first one had headlines which took up the whole front page. “Boris to face Tory probe in Burka storm”. Apparently, the former foreign secretary Boris Johnson had written a newspaper column, not in favour of banning the burka outright, but suggesting that appropriate restrictions would be in order. This caused a considerable volume of complaints from the public.  A formal decision to refer him to an investigatory panel headed by a lawyer was the result.

The second also took up the whole front page, including a picture of the incident: “Corbyn’s wreath at graves of Munich terrorists”. Corbyn, head of the British Labour Party no less, is clearly pictured holding a wreath during a service to honour Palestinian “martyrs” who who took part in the brutal massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the  1972 Olympics. In the same newspaper was an article about the scourge of litter blighting the English countryside.

The following day’s news proclaimed: “Convert’s plot to kill 100 on Oxford St.” It stated that a Muslim convert pleaded guilty the previous day to plotting an Islamic State-inspired attack on Oxford street in which he hoped to kill 100 people. Ludlow, a Royal Mail worker, had posted a video on YouTube in which he talked of being a neo-Nazi before converting to Islam at the age of 16. He also used Facebook to raise funds for Isis. On the same day another two Muslims, from north and east London, also faced three charges of collecting information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing terrorism.

Two days later, the front page headline “TERROR AT WESTMINSTER” hit me in the eye. A car intentionally ploughed through 10 to 15 cyclists and crashed into security barriers outside the Houses of Parliament.  Police threw a “terror cordon” around Westminster, closing the Underground station and roads around Parliament Square. The suspected perpetrator is Salih Khater, a British national who moved to the UK from Sudan.

The incident came 17 months after fanatic Khalid Masood, mowed down pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, before stabling a policeman to death at the gates of Parliament. The debate as to whether traffic should be banned outside Parliament has been re-opened.

The newspaper I opened the day before I left contained an article by a well-known columnist Matthew d”Ancona titled: “Islamist terrorism is not some medieval cult, it is a hyper-modern threat.” The director–general of M15 claimed that there has been a “dramatic upshift” in Islamist activity. The fact that counter-terrorism officers have foiled 13 Islamist plots in the past 18 months is chilling. D’Ancona coins the phrase “routinised horror” which can lead one to the slogan “keep calm and carry on” (or typical British stoicism) morphing into amnesia.

He adds: “If those who represent us in the Palace of Westminster still need reminding of the dangers that we face daily, they need only to heed the deadly screech of tyres and look out of the window.”