Proof that Britain is a profoundly conservative nation
Do note that we do not mean that Britain is a Conservative nation, only a conservative one. And our proof comes from an unlikely source, George Monbiot:
Battered into passivity by the media’s misinformation machine, distracted by consumer culture and the celebrity circus, we live in a permanent fug of confusion about the sources of oppression, and of alienation from the means by which they might be addressed.It is tempting to assert that civic life in this country is dead – but it’s not true. Millions of people belong to NGOs, or volunteer for charities. Eerily, however, there seems to be no connection between this mass participation and political change.
That is, we let the politicians prance in their Westminster bubble and keep on keeping on ourselves. We can see that there are things that we can do, ourselves and without direction, to make our country, our nation, a better place.
So, we go do them. Without orders, without instruction, without central control or even an ideology to guide us upon our way. Those who train the guide dogs for the blind, raise money for the air ambulances, the hospices, those who rescue those in peril on the seas: volunteers all. Done not for the glory of anything, just for the humanity of having done it.
We could call this evidence of profound liberality, and in a sense it is. You want to pitch in to society then do so, you don't then don't. No one is forced to do anything but the system as a whole works well, better than many if not all others.
It is also profoundly conservative (again, not Conservative). This is Edmund Burke's little platoons of society just getting on with being society. We ourselves are generally radicals which is the complete antithesis of conservatism. And yet this is at least one aspect of the conservative society that is Britain, even modern day Britain, which we thoroughly approve of.
Civil society should carry on being just and only what it is, civil society, and don't let anyone tell us different.