This happy state of affairs was undermined by the social turmoil of the Edwardian era. Early in that monarch's reign a large violent strike paralyzed the Port of London and this began to focus the ruling classes fear of continental style class warfare coming to the UK. The constant and often violent strikes in the coal, cartage, and engineering sectors made rich Liberals and Conservatives alike fear the potential for armed mob action. This fear was aggravated by the so called Siege of Sidney Street where the Home Secretary Winston Churchill used regular army personnel for the first time in decades to confront a band of armed protocommunists who had killed police officers. Churchill was embarrassed by the blowback from Sidney Street introduced the first significant gun licensing and restrictive legislation.
After World War One with the specter of real armed revolt by communists haunting the UK and with armed riot and revolt the daily news from the continent and the terrifying example of the Russian Revolution and Civil War was fresh in everyone’s mind more gun control became the order of the day. After the General Strike of 1926 detailed registration laws were passed and ownership of hand guns tightly controlled.
In the 70’s and 80’s Tory and Labor were happy to strip gun owners of residual rights and after a mass shooting at a school in Scotland pistol ownership was forbidden and truly impossible restrictions on long gun ownership were put in place. Again this was a ruling lass issue. Lady Thatcher was no friend of gun rights and was always quite vocally contemptuous of the ‘American gun culture’. The same ruling lass types both Conservative and Labor have moved on from stripping the right of gun ownership to eliminating both the castle octanes and the right to pro active self defense.
The lesson for the US is that rights such to bear arms, castle doctrines and defense of person and property have to be written into law and constantly defended from erosion by governing elites for any purportedly
socially beneficial purpose.
The British seem thoroughly brain washed by a century of government action that self defense and owning and being comfortable with the willingness to use deadlyforce to defend home and person are impermissible doctrines. I will always remember the absolute contempt for ‘Americans and thier guns’ that one upper class older British woman spat out at me in a conversation. This woman was very much a Tory but could not grasp the need for any decent person to be able to really think of killing another ‘human being’ for any reason. That is what the police and those rough characters in the armed force's are for.
With the Muslims and the black underclass flexing their muscles these sniffy sanctimonious attitudes are going to collide with reality.
Great synopsis...thanks...I remember reading about the blowback on Churchill. It was a century of Postmodernism seeping into England from the Continent—that sewage from the Rhine. Chesterton or someone like him wrote about it....that the whole English philosophy of Newton/Bacon/Locke was being erased from the British mind.....with that nihilistic philosophy from the Frankfurt school that denied Natural Rights and private property and instituted the welfare dependent state.
Dalrymple writes about the devastating effect the policies and philosophy has had on the English. They sold their soul for “protection and safety net of state” and centralized control of government, and look at the pathetic mess that is going to get them.....death panels for most, when they are no longer “contributing” to the collective. Or worse when shariah comes if they do not bow to mecca. Disgusting. Throwing such a great culture into a sewage bin for third world hatred.
Self-hatred basically and the Churchillian ideals and character and honor and ideas of Duty are long gone. It is such a shame since they were the home of Wilberforce, Shakespeare, Milton and so many other men of genius. They threw out their brilliant ideology for that sick, degenerate ideology of Marx.
I saw a note in The Guardian Live Blog that a group of Turkish shop-keepers were out protecting their properties with clubs, and the Bobby's told them to leave or be arrested for 'public order offense' charges. Remember Tony Martin? He was a farmer that shot at some burglars climbing in his windows with his shotgun, after he'd been burgled ten or more times previously. He got more jail time than the cretins that robbed him, as they convicted him of murder for defending his home and killing one of the three robbers. Oh, and the reason they call his shotgun illegal is because it was a pump-action; only single shot or doubles are legal in Britain.