What do you think?
|
|||||
|
We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people. Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house] Authors
Arts, Tech & CultureCivil LibertiesCommentary
Economics |
Is Britain heading into an era of open strife?August 15th, 2025 |
 28 comments to Is Britain heading into an era of open strife?Leave a Reply |
Who Are We?The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling. We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
|||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
See David Betz recent round of the Podcasts
Disappointing the interview pretty much ends after the prediction of civil war. I’d like to know what he means more by civil war. Outright warfare between two or more organised and armed armies? Who will be the ‘sides’? Where will the weaponry come from?
I think an increase in civil unrest is extremely likely in UK. There are things the government doing everyday that seem to be goading increased civil unrest. However, in the near future, unless the state disintegrates or there is a coup d’etat, I’m much more sceptical of the civil war narrative.
Indeed. Much worse times are coming but it is by no means clear what shape that will take.
Is it overly cynical of me to think that they included the civil war line so they had a clickbait title?
Prof David Betz of King’s College, London, was mentioned at about 11:00 in the video.
This video from Andrew Gold is a deeper analysis of his (Betz’s) unsettling concerns:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf0VKszbn7Q
A shorter version, also with Andrew Gold:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3fI_OrAnoE
Betz is careful to point out that it is difficult to say what shape the conflict will take, but is clear that conflict there will be.
I could be wrong but I just don’t think the British people have it in them to engage in something as brutal as a civil war (especially since they gave up all weapons in a hope of peace). I think there are factions within Britain that are more than willing to engage in violence to achieve their political ends, but they are not the factions that you or I would want to have power.
You gave up your guns without a complaint, you gave up your freedom of speech with barely a sigh of sadness. You genuflected to the crazy left in your schools and institutions — to the point that it was ok to cut off the genitals of little boys and the breasts of little girls: and barely a peep of resistance. I have long contended that Britain’s goose is cooked.
Maybe you have a distant hope with the rise of Reform, and perhaps your left will disintegrate under its own internal conflicts. But four years is a long time, one cannot imagine how much damage will be done during this administration.
And as I have said before, civil wars rarely make things better. French revolutions are much more common than American ones. And even the English civil war resulted in the installation of a brutal tyrant, the only salvation being that his son was too much of a dick — literally — to take over.
There is a scene in “The Crown” where Mountbatten is discussing with a group of uppity ups the overthrow of the Wilson government. Although, as far as I understand, the scene is totally untrue, his analysis is still good. The institutions of Britain make revolution a practical impossibility.
I’ll predict open sniping between groups within 6 months – once the weapons shipments start to arrive and be sold throughout the society.
Not civil war so much as sporadic armed hostilities. Criminals will begin to die more often. Marches and demos will become dangerous.
Your government will attempt to tighten its control to stop this. It will make things worse.
Fraser:
No-one in Britain who owned guns gave them up willingly. They simply had to obey the full force of the law.
Post-1783, are there any major examples of successful armed uprisings against the US government? The Confederacy had a good run but went down in a blaze of glory. The Whiskey rebellion, John Brown, the NYC draft riots, Timothy McVeigh, all got pretty easily suppressed.
@JohnK
No-one in Britain who owned guns gave them up willingly. They simply had to obey the full force of the law.
You might be right, but I assure you that were such a law passed here (assuming that it could get past the 2nd amendment) some people would give up their guns, but a LOT of people would not. There would be a lot of “oh that gun? I lost it/it was stolen”. A lot of guns buried in old barns. A lot of sheriffs refusing to enforce the law. A lot of “from my cold dead hands.” And, I suspect, a lot of ATF agents and gun owners killed in shoot outs. So probably quite a few “cold dead hands”.
You have to remember that there are probably more small arms in private hands in Texas than there are in the whole British military and police force put together.
It wasn’t that long ago that the Irish were trying to drive out the English.
Fraser:
The constitutional right to keep and bear arms makes the American situation entirely different. Owning guns is common in the USA, not in the UK, where only about 1% at most own guns. In the USA I believe it is in the order of 20 to 30%. Numbers matter. Politicians realise that they do not get votes from citizens whose property they have just confiscated. Even the worst Democrat gun banners have to pretend they just want “common sense” gun controls.
People might refuse to hand in guns, but that’s rather hard if they have been registered, and to be honest there is not much point owning a gun hidden somewhere that you cannot use.
Modern politics being what they are in this world, as opposed to 1776 here or 1642 there; I rather expect more of the terrorist model; with terrorist atrocities being committed by the government with the full force of the State. by whatever coalition of insurgents arises, and by your Muslim invaders/rulers. It is not going to be pleasant for a few generations in britain or in Western Europe. It is time to get yourselves, your loved ones, and your assets to somewhere you see as safe(r). Speaking personally, I wish to emphasize that warning to those of Jewish ancestry [practicing or not].
@JohnK I take your points, but I was thinking about our discussion when I listened to this press conference where the Sheriff of Santa Rosa County in Florida talked about an incident where some multiple repeat felon broke into some homes, and one of the home owners shot at him. The Sheriff says they aren’t sure who fired the shots, but they should come forward: they aren’t in any trouble, but he did want to let them know that every other Saturday they have a gun training course so that next time they might shoot a bit more accurately and save the taxpayers a lot of money.
So, yeah, you are right, Americans do indeed have a very different attitude toward guns.
“People might refuse to hand in guns, but that’s rather hard if they have been registered . . . “
Just as an FYI, the Firearms Owners Protection Act (USA federal law) makes it illegal for the national government or any state in the country to keep any database or registry that ties firearms directly to their owner.
We don’t have gun registration. (The states of New York and California are currently maintaining a pre-existing database of registrations – this is being fought in court.)
There is something going on in Britain, something that I’ve not seen in the thirty-plus years I’ve lived here. Yes, we had the National Front, then the English Defense League. In the 1990s we had the football hooligans. But these were skinheads, thugs, and bovver boys in their Doc Martins and waving their St. George flags.
This is something different. Look at pictures of the protesters; there are wives and mothers there. Look at how many are wearing the Union Jack as a cape.
There’s also a change in language. “Patriot” and “patriotism” used to be mostly an American thing. The British didn’t go in for that sort of thing. In fact, the words were frowned own. But they’re appearing more frequently in Britain.
Something is changing. I don’t know what it is or where it’ll lead, but it’s interesting to watch.
In the USA I believe it is in the order of 20 to 30%
That’s a conservative estimate. The true percentage is probably a good deal higher.
I live in an open carry state. Which means you can wear a firearm openly on your hip and you don’t need any permission from the powers-that-be. No registration, no carry permit, no firearms ordinance ID (“FOID”) required. No certification for completing a firearms safety course. No notifying any law enforcement agencies.
And bobby b is correct: there is no firearms registration, no firearms ownership databases. None. Nada. Zilch.
I’m just speculating, but I would say that the vast majority of households in my state have at least one firearm on the premises, probably more.
Recall Yamamoto’s observation, made to Japan’s military leaders before the Pearl Harbor attack, that they should put aside any thought of invading America because they would encounter “a gun behind every blade grass.”
That’s truer now, far more, than it was in 1941.
When the “Civil War” (however you define that) kicks off your uniform will be your skin colour and to a lesser extent your politics and behaviour (Refugees Welcome Here banner holders, as an example).
As for the percentage of people holding Firearms and Shotgun Certificates, the English Home Office does not make available the numbers but for Scotland, which has a population of 5,479,700, there are 25,223 Firearm Certificate holders (therefore 0.46% of the population) and 43,790 Shotgun Certificate holders (0.799% of the population). It is not stated how many firearm certificate holders also hold shotgun certificates so there are likely to be less than the 0.799%.
https://www.scotland.police.uk/about-us/what-we-do/firearms-and-explosives-licensing/
https://totalpopulation.co.uk/country/scotland
I think that those percentages will hold for the rest of the UK, England in particular.
The Police know exactly who possesses firearms of any description and at the slightest hint of civil disturbance, will confiscate them, very likely without compensation.
Only the criminals (both in uniform and freelance) will possess firearms and both categories are extremely happy with the situation.
Anyone that is serious about starting something, or responding if someone else does so, is going to see to it they have weapons. So far, the police do not seem to be having much success preventing criminals getting their hands on them; I recall a report to the effect that a European manufacturer of blank firing replica pistols was producing a model for the British market adapted to accept a silencer – because a lot were being modified to fire live ammo, and British murderers like silencers.
My guess would be that if and when it does kick off, there will turn out to be a lot of AKs around, very likely delivered by the same gangs that bring over illegal immigrants.
Then of course there is the DIY option as used by the Polish, Danish and other resistance groups in World War Two – who turned out to be able to make thousands of sub-machine guns under pretty repressive conditions.
@Barbarus
My guess would be that if and when it does kick off, there will turn out to be a lot of AKs around, very likely delivered by the same gangs that bring over illegal immigrants.
I think that is unlikely, nonetheless, insofar as it is true those guns would be in the hands or exactly the wrong types of people. Regular folks would be defenceless. Which is the point I made earlier. Britain does not have the stomach for a revolution, or at least the parts of Britain you’d like to see resurgent don’t. So, if there is such a civil war it will make things much, much worse, not better. And why would they? They are already getting all they want through the political process.
FWIW, in Britain there is, or at least was, a right to keep and bear arms in one of the core documents that form the British “constitution”, namely the 1688 Bill of Rights, arising out of the Glorious Revolution “Subjects which are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions, and as allowed by Law”. Sucks if you were a Catholic or course, but the second amendment didn’t help you much way back when in America either if you were of a swarthy complexion.
Of course since Britain doesn’t actually have a real constitution, this was wiped out post World War 2 by simple legislative action. And of course Dunblane totally finished off this, one of the traditional rights of an Englishman.
If it does kick off, I’m sure we can organize an unofficial Lend-Lease program once again.
@JohnK. I live in Canada and some of my firearms, and those of my sons,became illegal.
It was no problem for us as we had lost them all in a regrettable boating accident just prior to the ban.
How hard would it be to make a STEN? Getting ammunition would be the difficult part.
Look at this.They want the flag of St George, the flag of my country, England to represent hate. And yet, in Birmingham, the flag of “Palestine” is protected… In a city where they can’t even empty the bins… Forget about the flags – what really ought to be hanging from the lampposts is members of the council.
I had little time for him as Tory leader but IDS nails it…
bobby b. is correct that Federal and State governments in the US are enjoined by Federal law from operating comprehensive registries of firearms. However, such registries are often de-facto in place at the local level, and FFLs are required to keep records of all transactions, most of which are now digital, and more and more places are moving towards requiring all firearms transfers to be carried out via a record-keeping FFL. Add to that the great increase in various systems to register, not firearms themselves, but firearms owners ( FOID laws, CPLs (however easy to get)) and so forth, and we are moving steadily towards a comprehensive registry of ‘which doors to knock on when it comes time to confiscate firearms’. After all, when that time comes, the JBT’s won’t be arriving with a list of serial numbers and descriptions – it will be a matter of ‘we know you have firearms and we don’t care how many or what kind, because we’re taking them all’. The good intent of FOPA has thus been craftily subverted.
llater,
llamas
@Windypants – stop thinking along such formulaic lines. Sure, you could make a Sten – it’s mostly plumbing pipe and hardware-store bits. But, as you say, you’ll never find ammunition for it.
Instead, download US DoD manual TM 31-210, “Improvised Weapons and Munitions’, and open up a whole new world.
The US has a rich sub-culture of home-made firearms, known collectively as ‘garage guns’, from the lowly ‘zip gun’, to complex and accomplished automatic weapons. But the most fearsome I have seen lately is constructed from box-store components, all entirely legal and untraceable to buy and possess, semi-automatic, comparable to a 9mm, and costing in total about $50, including material for 50 rounds of operation. Resistance will never arise using Sten guns and other conventional means – it will depend on the unconventional.
llater,
llamas
“Is Britain heading into an era of open strife?”
No.
There’s clearly a subculture of people who *want* this to be true, to justify the bollocks they’ve been spouting since 2001, but no. We’re going to continue to bumble along with the occasional protest and/or full-on fight, in (practically) the same way as we always have. We’ve had plenty of riots, I can think of several off the top of my head including the Battle Of Cable Street, the Notting Hill Race Riots, the Southall Riots, even the Poll Tax Riots and if you wanna get into it, the Mods vs Rockers fights in Brighton (and they’ll be loads others that I can’t be bothered to list)
But no, we’re not about to enter a period of “open strife” lmao
I find that alarming as you are wrong about most things