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New Statesman
6 days ago
- Politics
- New Statesman
Visions of an English civil war
Ulster Larne Demonstration at Drumbeg. Photo by Smith Archive/Alamy Last year, amid the riots that followed the Southport murders, the great sage Elon Musk prophesied that civil war in Britain was 'inevitable'. So far, he's been proved wrong, but then prophets can claim they're just not correct yet. A year on, such talk has surged. The Financial Times reported councils, MPs and charities comparing the mood in parts of Britain to a 'tinder box' and a 'powder keg'. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy warned that Labour's northern heartlands are so disaffected that they 'could go up in flames'. Journalists have been reporting members of the public talking about civil war; in May, Dominic Cummings told Sky News such conversations were no longer abnormal, and wrote about 'incoherent Whitehall terror of widespread white-English mobs turning political and attracting talented political entrepreneurs'. Matthew Goodwin has been demanding to know if Britain is 'about to blow'. Talk of a 'coming civil war' took off in February, when the podcaster Louise Perry recorded an interview with David Betz, a professor of war in the modern world, which duly went viral. Betz's thesis is that, driven by immigration and ethnic division, exacerbated by economic woes and reaction against elite overreach, 'civil conflict in the West' is 'practically inevitable' – and that Britain may well go first. He predicts that weak points in our energy infrastructure will come under attack; the cities will 'become ungovernable' and be seen by the indigenous rural population as 'lost to foreign occupation'. Tens of thousands may be killed each year, for years. The chances of this starting by 2029 he puts at around one in five. What is going on here? A clue lies, I think, in a striking assumption: that all this talk is unprecedented. When Perry asked why we think 'civil war won't happen here', Betz cited Brits' self-conception as 'rather peaceable, well governed, cool-headed folk'. Also taking this line, an article in UnHerd invoked the historian Robert Tombs' observation that the English harbour 'a complacent and often apathetic assumption bred by a fortunate history that nothing seriously bad can happen'. But over the last century, people in British politics have worried about civil war, repeatedly, in ways not unlike today. What did they fear, and why? And what might we learn from the fact that those fears disappeared? Even before the advent of full mass democracy, Britain was troubled by the prospect of a radical right revolt against a reckless left-liberal government. The outbreak of world war in 1914 tends to overshadow the extreme political tensions over Irish Home Rule that culminated that summer. In 1912, nearly a quarter of a million men had signed the 'Ulster Covenant', vowing to resist Home Rule by 'all means which may be found necessary'. But this happened on the 'mainland' too: in 1914, a 'British Covenant' also attracted hundreds of thousands of signatures. Its journal's motto was 'put your trust in God and keep your powder dry'. With armed volunteers openly drilling in Glasgow, Liverpool and London, and the army's willingness to enforce Home Rule in doubt, Britain was, according to the historian Dan Jackson 'arguably on the verge of civil war'. The outbreak of European conflict cut this off, but in 1916 Dublin witnessed violent rebellion against the London government. After the 1918 armistice, as full-scale war erupted in Ireland, waves of industrial strife crashed through a Britain full of angry young veterans. The government's response was sometimes startlingly militarised. In 1921, David Lloyd George solemnly announced to the Commons that he was setting up a civil defence force of volunteers to resist a joint strike by miners, railwaymen and transport workers, describing the situation as 'analogous to civil war', in the teeth of which his government were committing themselves to 'almost warlike' measures. 'For the first time in history,' he declared, according to the Times, a British government was 'confronted by an attempt to coerce the country by the destruction of its resources. The government proposed, therefore, to call for volunteers to save the mines. These men would need protection, and so a special appeal would be issued to citizens to enlist in an emergency defence force.' Union leaders lambasted the government for blithely taking on 'the grave responsibility of provoking bloodshed and civil war'. By the start of the following week, 70,000 men had joined the Defence Force. In the end, the rail and transport unions backed off, but the emerging struggle for power between the state and unionised labour continued to simmer. Days before the 1924 general election, the 'Zinoviev Letter' came to light, supposedly revealing a Soviet plot against Britain. The Daily Mail ran it on the front page, under the headline 'Civil War Plot by Socialists' Masters'. The letter was a forgery, but it hit home because in certain quarters, the scenario felt horribly real. With the Depression, and the fall of a Labour government in the face of financial crisis, this intensified. In 1933, the Labour MP Stafford Cripps delivered a lecture setting out how a newly elected socialist government would need to face down aggressive establishment resistance by suspending constitutional norms, even temporarily becoming a dictatorship. In Democracy in Crisis, Cripps' ideological ally Harold Laski suggested that in such a 'revolutionary situation… men would rapidly group themselves for civil war'. Right-wing writers like Hugh Sellon agreed: such a crisis would 'almost inevitably cause real civil war'. Reading reports from Vienna of the bloody crushing of a banned workers' militia by the right-wing authoritarian regime, some on the left found it all too easy to imagine the same thing happening here. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe With the advent of the post-war settlement after 1945, such fears faded, for a time. When Churchill's Conservatives attempted to use them against Labour in the 1945 election, they embarrassed themselves. But the arrival of Commonwealth citizens from the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent began to provoke another nightmare scenario. Today, Betz's analysis refers to theoretical warnings that 'one of the most powerful causes of civil war' arises when a dominant group perceives it is facing 'status reversal'. This recalls the fear Enoch Powell stoked in April 1968 in his 'rivers of blood' speech. Powell uncritically quoted a middle-aged worker saying 'in 15 or 20 years' time, the black man will have the whip hand over the white man'; this imaginary threat was the reason why Powell thought it appropriate to conjure visions of racial civil war. This didn't happen, but the fear that it might rippled through the Labour cabinet. Barbara Castle thought Powell had 'helped to make a race war… inevitable'. James Callaghan worried that Powell would trigger racial tension akin to the religious strife of the 17th century – when England really had descended into civil war. In 1972, something like Powell's vision was sketched out by the young liberal novelist Christopher Priest. Some of the scenes in Fugue for a Darkening Island prefigure Betz's vision of a near-future civil war today: of people fleeing 'feral' cities, and the establishment of 'secure zones'. The novel imagines a near-future Britain in which a nationalist politician preaching 'racial purity' takes power, as boats full of African refugees arrive in the Thames. The country splits into a pro-government, pro-deportation majority, and part-white, part-refugee resistance. As society disintegrates and people make knives out of bathroom mirrors, some flee the cities with their barricaded enclaves, only to find rural roads too dangerous to travel after dark, and that farms and villages that have become stockades. And while fear of racially inflected civil strife bubbled away through the 1970s, the stand-off between state, capital and labour returned. Around the time of Powell's speech, another apocalyptically minded public figure, Daily Mirror boss Cecil King, was also panicking about social collapse – because of imminent financial crisis. Nursing visions from his Irish adolescence, King took to asking 'If civil war could break out in Dublin in 1916, why couldn't it flare up in… London in… 1968.' By the early 1970s, as strikes spread and inflation pushed towards 20 per cent, even more measured establishment figures found it difficult to see a way through that did not involve the use of force to overcome the massed ranks of the pickets. Retired military commanders like Lt-Col Sir David Stirling, founder of the SAS, planned to helicopter a private army over picket lines to seize back worker-occupied factories. The Conservatives began developing their own – more cautious, but still incendiary – plans to defeat strikes. When these were leaked to the Economist in 1978, it ran them under a headline invoking the American Confederate surrender in 1865: 'Appomattox or civil war?' All this culminated in the miners' strike of 1984-85, during which leaders like Dennis Skinner warned that the army might be deployed against the strikers. That didn't happen, but nonetheless, the strike is remembered by many as a kind of civil war. Nothing so intense has happened since, but the idea still haunts our politics, as the background to last year's riots and the belated announcement of an inquiry into the Battle of Orgreave attest. Writers have continued to detect the phenomenon even in less violent events. In September 2004, a few protesters against the Blair government's ban on fox hunting invaded the Commons chamber, triggering the startling Daily Mail front page headline: 'CIVIL WAR' – an echo, doubtless unintended, of their Zinoviev Letter splash 80 years earlier. Brexit – which Betz sees, not unreasonably, as the trigger for today's divisions – was cast in TV drama as the 'uncivil war'. At least one leading Leaver saw Brussels as a latter-day Charles I. So contemporaneous fears of civil war sit in a long tradition – in which, so far, the most consistent thread is that they have not come true. Visions of unrest in the 1920s drove draconian new laws, but also moves to find compromise. Cripps' talk of suspending the constitution was driven by the urgency of dealing with mass unemployment; once the Second World War made this a more consensual goal, those scenarios became a relic. Powell's nightmare of racial civil war was chased away by the quiet efforts of working-class Brits of all races to make multicultural life work. And those 1970s calls to use force against strikers were made redundant by another shift in the bounds of the politically possible. By the early 1980s, inflation had trumped unemployment as Britain's overriding political fear; as the jobless total was allowed to rise, it undermined the unions' power years before the miners' began their last, doomed battle. So it may be that the return of talk of civil war is less a glimpse of our near future, more a signal that something has become intolerable. Clearly this is partly about immigration, but look beyond the fevered talk on YouTube, X and GB News, and something else comes into view. When Sky's Liz Bates challenged Dominic Cummings to explain what he meant by 'civil war', he didn't talk about ethnic strife, bar a passing reference to 'no-go areas'. He cited widespread anger at the decay of public services from closing police stations to inaccessible GPs, 15 years of flatlining pay, and repeated broken promises of change. This chimes with a public mood that More In Common and other pollsters have been reporting for months. Likewise, Betz mentions the pressures caused by financialisation reaching 'the end of the line'. The Starmer government knows it needs to act on illegal immigration, but if – if – it can deliver the economic change it promised, then it may be that the issue will become less intensely symbolic of wider long-term government failure. The real threat that talk of civil war expresses is that the public is so sick of being let down that trust in mainstream democratic politics may die. As in the past, such fears may help impel a government to break economic taboos and make people's lives better. There are plenty of worse scenarios, but if they can manage it, the talk of civil war will fade. And in 30 years' time, perhaps a new generation will find themselves expressing similar fears – and will complain that the British are always too complacent, and never think it can happen here. [See also: One year on, tensions still circle Britain's asylum-seeker hotels] Related
Gulf Insider
05-07-2025
- Politics
- Gulf Insider
Professor Warns UK Govt Is Preparing For Civil War, Using Russian Invasion Threat As Cover
A prominent academic in London has warned that the UK government is actively preparing for the break out of a civil war, but is using the 'logically absurd' cover of a Russian invasion to put contingencies in place. Pointing to remarks made in the 2025 National Security Strategy paper last month, Professor David Betz of King's College London has suggested that the British government is using the phantom threat of a foreign attack in order to harden critical national infrastructure against sabotage. 'For the first time in many years, we have to actively prepare for the possibility of the UK homeland coming under direct threat,' the Whitehall paper noted, adding that 'critical national infrastructure – including undersea cables, energy pipelines, transportation and logistics hubs' are a major target. During a discussion with Professor Lewis Halsey, Professor Betz, a modern war expert recently stated 'there is growing apprehension about the security of Britain, the security of its infrastructure specifically, and about the potential for active conflict at home in a very direct manner, effecting people in a very direct manner.' 'But that's not external in origin, that's internal, and that has to do with the way our society is now configured, it is highly fractured,' Betz continued, adding 'Low trust, highly fractured, and highly politically factionalised which is leading us increasingly inevitably into civil conflict.' Betz further outlined how the Russian threat is being amplified as a cover story. 'The fact of the matter is there is a great distance between us and Russia… we are not militarily threatened in a direct way on the ground by any obvious external enemy, even Russia,' Betz outlined. 'Which isn't to say there aren't things which Russia could do to attack the UK should they wish to, but one of those is not occupying the village green with Russian soldiers, that simply, frankly, is a rather bizarre assertion,' he contended. 'What they're concerned about is domestic conflict, and they perfectly understand this, but that's completely politically toxic for them to say so publicly, hence the convenience of saying 'we need to develop… a citizen's militia for the protection of critical infrastructure',' Betz further noted. 'To say that we're doing this against the potential of Russian attack, which is frankly a logically absurd proposition, but it is convenient as a pretext,' he emphasised. Betz also recently posited that many European countries are on the verge of civil war and may already be past the point of no return. He says his research shows there is a statistically significant chance of a civil war breaking out within five years in a major European country, with a distinct possibility that the conflict could spill over to neighbouring Nations. Professor Of War Warns Many European Countries Are In A 'Pre CIVIL WAR' State Speaking to documentarian Andrew Gold, Betz further noted that it is likely too late to prevent things getting 'very much worse' in Europe, and that governments may only be able to better prepare for the inevitable. 'I would probably avoid big cities. I would suggest you reduce your exposure to big cities if you are able,' Betz chillingly urged.
Gulf Insider
16-06-2025
- Politics
- Gulf Insider
War Expert Warns Europe Nearing Civil War
One of the globe's leading experts on war has warned that many European countries are on the verge of civil war and may already be past the point of no Betz, Professor of War in the Modern World at King's College London, says his research shows is a statistically significant chance of a civil war breaking out within five years in a major European country, with a distinct possibility that the conflict could spill over to neighbouring Nations. Speaking to documentarian Andrew Gold, Betz further noted that it is likely too late to prevent things getting 'very much worse' in Europe, and that governments may only be able to better prepare for the inevitable.'I would probably avoid big cities. I would suggest you reduce your exposure to big cities if you are able,' Betz chillingly urged. He added, 'there isn't anything they can do, it's baked in. We're already past the tipping point, is my estimation… we are past the point at which there is a political offramp. We are past the point at which normal politics is able to solve the problem.' Betz emphasised that 'almost every plausible way forward from here involves some kind of violence in my view.' 'Anything the government tries to do at this point… you can solve one kind of problem, but it will aggravate another kind of problem in doing so, and you get back to violence,' the professor continued. 'The question really is about mitigating the costs, to my mind, not about preventing the outcome, I'm sorry to say… I have not heard a credible political way forward and I don't see a single political figure who is credible in the role of national saviour, or even inclined to do so,' he added. 'The bottom line is I don't think there is now a political solution to this which takes the form of everything just working out OK after some period of difficulty,' Betz grimly concludes, noting 'Things are bad now, but they are going to get very much worse.' 'Hopefully after they will get better, but you will have to go through the period of very much worse before you get there,' he predicted. It's a downward spiral, essentially. 'I understand what I say is extremely unpleasant', Betz said, further remarking: 'I just want to say dear elites, the consequences of your actions have arrived.' Betz notes that the United Kingdom, France, and Sweden all already have 'dire social instability', 'economic decline', and 'elite pusillanimity', all historically precursors to conflict. The academic estimates that a civil war in the UK, which now has a population of 70 million, could mean tens of thousands of deaths. 'The most unstable are moderately homogenous societies', Betz has previously observed, noting that legacy majority groups feel their status being threatened or about to be completely replaced and they are more likely to fight to retain dominance. While research has indicated that the UK is on course to become a minority white country within decades, Betz predicts that it won't actually happen because enough native Britons may move to reverse the trend. 'You could make such an argument, but that's, I think, making a lot of assumptions about people's likely response to things. I don't think that society is so inert', Betz said, adding 'I just don't think the British people want to be displaced from their own country… I think people are going to reject that. And they are already, people are already perceiving an urgency to act to prevent the loss of something they feel very strongly about still.' 🔻 REPORT: White British people will decline from their current position as 73 per cent of the population to 57 per cent by 2050 before slipping into a minority by 2063Read the full story ⬇️ — The Telegraph (@Telegraph) June 4, 2025 Betz further asserted that 'the existence of this idea [of England]… is very seriously in peril… how [people] react against that is the question. There's a grave potential for them to react in ways that take us right off the scale. I hope that doesn't occur, but we are at a very perilous moment.' Also read: Europe's Populist Parties Keep Gaining Ground, But Cannot Get Into Power
Daily Mirror
03-06-2025
- Business
- Daily Mirror
Military expert gives chilling British 'civil war' warning over 'feral cities'
British cities are at risk of becoming 'feral' and could even descend into civil war over the next few years, a military expert has warned A military expert has warned that British cities could fall into a state of 'civil war' within five years because a breakdown in law and order. David Betz, Professor of War in the Modern World in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, cautioned that the UK and France are among the nations likely to struggle to maintain peace in the years ahead due to a multitude of social and economic issues - creating the risk of so-called "feral cities". It follows the shocking riots that gripped Paris after PSG's victory in the Champions League at the weekend, which left two dead and hundreds injured. Distressing footage from the French capital showed frightened women cowering inside their cars as mobs of out-of-control football fans smashed windows and set fire to nearby vehicles. And in Britain, a report released last month cautioned that authorities must be much swifter in tackling misinformation on social media to avoid a repeat of last year's riots, which followed the murders of three young girls at a dance class in Southport. Writing in in the latest issue of Military Strategy Magazine, Professor Betz argued that governments across the Western world have been "losing the ability to peacefully manage multicultural societies", leaving them open to mass disorder and potential civil war". He added: "The initial result is an accelerating descent of multiple major cities into marginally 'feral' status". In another part of the essay, Professor Betz predicted that the "countries that are most likely to experience the outbreak of violent civil conflict are Britain and France" - but said that other parts of Europe and the United States could also be at risk "It must be assumed that if civil war breaks out in one place it is likely to spread elsewhere", he added. Hundreds arrested after deadly PSG riots Clashes between police and supporters on Saturday began long before PSG's thumping 5-0 victory over Inter Milan had even finished, with officers deploying a water cannon on the Champs-Elysees at half-time. Ugly scenes later in the night saw drivers attacked in their cars, vehicles torched and shops looted, with over 200 people injured and two killed in gatherings connected to the post-match celebrations. A 17-year-old boy was stabbed to death in the western city of Dax during a street party after the final, the national police service said, and in Paris, a man in his 20s was killed when his scooter was hit by a car during PSG celebrations. A police officer was also hit accidentally by fireworks at a PSG fan gathering in northwest France, and placed in an artificial coma because of severe eye injuries. More than 500 people were arrested by police in connection with the disorder. Reacting to the initial reports of rioting Saturday night, France's Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau labelled the rioters "barbarians" and not "true PSG fans", adding: "It is unbearable that it is not possible to party without fearing the savagery of a minority of thugs who respect nothing." Smaller clashes between gangs of youths and police continued in the centre of Paris on Sunday.
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Springfield man charged with felony child endangerment after motorcycle crash
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — A Springfield man has been charged with felonies after a motorcycle crash left a child with serious injuries last year. According to court dockets filed Thursday, May 29, Jonathan Betz, born 1993, is charged with first-degree child endangerment causing serious physical injury, driving while intoxicated causing serious physical injury, and driving while intoxicated causing physical injury. The probable cause statement says the incident occurred on Aug. 11, 2024, when Betz was driving a Yahama Virago motorcycle with a passenger victim who was 11 years old at the time of the incident. The crash occurred on W. Mt. Vernon St. when a woman backed her Ford Mustang out of a driveway and into the street's eastbound lanes. As the woman was stopped for a few seconds to change gears, she saw Betz approaching on his motorcycle, but was unable to shift gears and move out of the way in time because of how fast Betz' motorcycle was approaching. Subsequently, Betz struck the woman's Mustang in the driver's side area. Three witnesses told police they observed Betz speeding prior to the crash. Law enforcement obtained video surveillance that didn't show the crash, but captured video footage of the 11-year-old victim as she went airborne over the vehicle. Following the crash, the 11-year-old was transported to a hospital. Medical records indicate she suffered a femur fracture requiring surgery, along with lacerations and a closed head injury. The child required a wheelchair to get around for a time, and a month after the crash, she still required a walker to get around, according to the statement. Betz was interviewed by police on Aug. 23, 2024, and he told police that prior to the crash, he and the victim were returning home after picking up pizza, which the victim was holding during the wreck. Betz allegedly told police he had consumed a mixed alcoholic drink around one hour before the crash. Medical records for Betz showed he suffered head trauma, multiple fractures, lacerations, abrasions and acute alcoholic intoxication. Toxicology reports showed he had a blood alcohol content level of .187 after being brought into the hospital from the crash. A warrant has been issued for Betz' arrest. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
