JOHN MARQUIS, who was The Tribune’s Managing Editor for ten years, believes his homeland - Great Britain - is facing a cultural and economic abyss, and that a miracle is needed to save it from disaster.

WHENEVER the subjects of democracy and free speech have come up for discussion during my eighty-one years of life, I’ve always felt safe in citing Britain - “the mother country” - as the gold standard for civilised living.

Its great traditions, its unparalleled achievements, its glorious art and literature, its free press, its legal system, its governmental prowess have always been firm evidence of its pre-eminence in the field of human endeavour.

The rainy little island nation on the fringes of north-west Europe struck out to create the greatest empire ever known. It spread the greatest language around the world, it created some of the greatest books, much of its greatest art and music, and pioneered and invented some of the greatest scientific achievements of modern times.

It was never perfect. It was always tainted - and to some extent, still is - by a vile class system which has systematically kept down working-class talent, and promoted the interests of an “upper class” - big laugh - that is staggeringly unaccomplished.

But something is happening now that actually threatens to undermine, and ultimately destroy, the land of Shakespeare as we know it.

Since the turn of the century - a mere 25 years - Britain has been polluted, and I use the word advisedly, by alien cultures that threaten everything it stands for. Millions of immigrants, many of them with far from good intentions, have ghettoised our towns and cities, terrorised old-established communities, and sought to subjugate the country’s customs and unique way of life.

There are now EIGHTY-FIVE sharia courts operating in Britain. There is a Muslim Council, a muslim political organisation, and muslim politicians who wish to introduce archaic blasphemy laws to curb free expression in a largely secular society that ditched religious conflict and bigotry decades ago.

We were treated, very recently, to the indignity of a British mother begging for compassion from a conclave of mullahs because her small son had accidentally scuffed a copy of the Koran. We have a British teacher who has been in hiding for four years - under threat by islamic extremists - because he dared to show a picture of the Prophet to his pupils.

We have had militant islamists crying out for jihad on the streets of London. Jewish families - many descended from victims of the holocaust - are now afraid to go out in public because of the threat of pro-Gaza activists’ reprisals.

Worse still, the so-called “ordinary” working people of Britain are under threat of imprisonment if they express dismay online about the detrimental effect of the liberal lobby’s disastrous experiment in multi-culturalism and diversity.

Can you imagine a woman being intimidated by police for offering silent prayers outside an abortion clinic? Well, it happened in Britain, when the officers demanded to know what she was thinking. Believe it or not, the article you are reading now would probably not pass muster with Britain’s Thought Police because it might be deemed to contain “hate” material.

A prominent British journalist was bullied by police a few months ago because she “tweeted” something online that hinted at “islamophobia”, which is one of the new buzzwords of the Left.

Migrants from the Middle East are not the only problem as Britain undergoes a damaging transformation. Older people, in particular, believe the nation they knew in their youth is vanishing from under their feet.

Knife and machete crime has rocketed in London and other inner city areas. Rambo and zombie knives are the weapons of choice for lawless drug gangs fighting turf wars in the back alleys of urban Britain. Drive-by shootings are now a feature of the British criminal landscape. Negative aspects of African and Caribbean life have been imported en masse.

One in 12 London dwellers are illegal migrants. My dear late brother Reg described his home town, Leicester, as “an Asian city”. The great northern conurbations have undergone massive demographic transformations, so that little of traditional English life remains there.

The distinctive working class culture of London’s East End has now all but disappeared. The famous pie-and-mash shops are vanishing fast. Meanwhile, the East London mosque in Whitechapel still retains separate doors for males and females, an anachronism wholly at odds with the country’s so-called “progressive” ideals, which include gender equality.

Indigenous Brits are bottom of the country’s crime table. The descent into routine criminality is due almost entirely to alien invaders.

Even a left-wing lawyer confessed to me that eighty per cent of London’s violent crime is now carried out by migrant villains. Grooming gangs, many of Pakistani stock, are raping and effectively enslaving white working class girls, most of them vulnerable because of poor home backgrounds.

Albanians, Rumanians and other Eastern European groups are at the centre of a growing gang culture in East Anglia. A rash of phone-snatching, shoplifting, muggings and casual violence and robbery is making life a misery in many small and mid-sized towns across the land.

If you think all this is terrible, it gets worse when you consider that it’s all happening against an Orwellian backdrop in which the police - instead of investigating true crime like burglary and shoplifting - are tracking social media abuse, seeking to curb perceived “islamophobia” or “non-crime hate incidents”, especially those which offend the woke orthodoxy.

George Orwell would have seen modern Britain as an absolute vindication of his theories in his seminal novel, Nineteen Eighty Four. There is now a Big Brother feel about a society once famous for free speech, widespread tolerance, its Speakers’ Corner, its mother of parliaments, its absolute commitment to political and religious freedom and its salty non-woke sense of humour.

Now there is genuine fear of official action if “unacceptable” things are said in public or online. Traditional English “mickey-taking” comedy is now virtually outlawed. Great comics of the 1960s and 70s like Frankie Howard and Les Dawson would be persona non grata now. A cloak of po-faced piety has stifled levity across the land.

There is a two-tier policing system that jails people for an indiscreet remark on Twitter but allows free rein to the mobs that gather in London every weekend to spout anti-semitic bile.

In fact, only two days ago it was suggested that even use of the phrase “two-tier policing” could be in breach of new socialist diktats. And any reference to “grooming gangs” or “islamic extremists” could be seen as unlawful.

What’s more, the government is proposing to outlaw “hurty words” in pubs, traditionally hotbeds of spirited debate of all kinds. Thus, an ancient institution in which robust conversation was always part of its appeal, now faces twin attacks on its very existence, with massive taxes on drinks, and a sneaks’ charter in the public bar, where drinkers will never feel safe from ill-intentioned eavesdroppers and snoopers.

The recently elected Labour government, led by the reviled lawyer Keir Starmer, has compounded the problem by wilfully ignoring, or seeking to discredit, the genuine fears of everyday Brits.

He routinely refers to anti-immigration protesters as “far right thugs” and dithers on curbing immigration.

He is so mendacious and incompetent that he makes the late Bahamian prime minister Lynden Pindling look like Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, all wrapped up in one.

In fact, The Tribune’s resounding defeat of Pindling’s anti-press legislation in 1969 left The Bahamas with an enviable legacy, an environment in which free speech is established as a right and a necessity. I regret to say that the same cannot be said for modern Britain, where the Magna Carta established our rights in 1215 and laid the foundations for free societies everywhere.

Today, Britain struggles under a socialist government that hasn’t done a thing right since it was elected in July, 2024. It is crippled by misguided ideology and inbuilt ineptitude. “Mere Keir”, as I call him, is as useless as a chocolate fireguard and much more dangerous.

With billionaires and entrepreneurs taking flight, Britain’s economy is flatlining and stagnating at an alarming rate. Morale in the business community is at an all-time low. None of the institutions work properly, the National Health Service is collapsing, law enforcement is immobilised by woke absurdity, and taxpayers face unprecedented raids on their money, whether it be savings, pensions or current income.

Farmers, who provide much of our food, are under the cosh from a robotic chancellor who is imposing crippling inheritance tax on their land. Several have already committed suicide because they foresaw their estates being taken apart by a pitiless party with no respect or regard for Britain’s uniquely beautiful rural areas.

The left-leaning civil service assumes power over our lives and promotes, under-handedly, policies we never voted for. We are living, whether we like it or not, under a system riven with left-wing dogma and woke objectives. And the elitists in Labour’s hierarchy display, every day, the kind of arrogance and high-handedness that, despite their proclamations of equality, echo Orwell’s cynical observation that, in the left-wing mindset “some are more equal than others”.

The best of Britain’s brains are seeking a way out. Young people see few signs of hope. And, to put the cap on it, five million more immigrants are expected to pour ashore by 2032, taking the country’s population to a staggering, and unsustainable, 72,000,000. At the present rate, more than twenty per cent of the electorate will be muslim by 2050.

With very few exceptions, I’ve always rated politicians third-rate and lower, essentially self-serving mediocrities with no talent, no principles and no conscience to speak of. But I’ve never encountered anyone quite so lamentably awful as the execrable Starmer and the coven of airheads who make up his calamitous cabinet.

After just six months in power, they have left Britain deeply dispirited, despondent and close to despair. Most of those who voted Labour to power now say they would never do so again.

A country that won two world wars last century, and established a reputation for indomitable spirit and relentless grit, is now powerless in the face of a daily invasion by undocumented aliens whose interests are placed above those of the British people.

Every day, I am forced to reflect that we, the British, are at the mercy of a dogma-driven administration whose incompetence is matched only by its obstinacy, wrong-headedness and misguided conceit.

Re-reading this, I acknowledge that uninformed outsiders might consider it exaggerated and overblown. I only wish that were so, but it’s not. It represents the insane truth about a nation once noted for its steadfastness, security, stability and restraint.

I was born as the all-clear sirens were sounding over my Leicestershire home in wartime 1943. It was a time when fortunes were turning against the appalling Adolf Hitler and in favour of the Allies. As a result, I have aways seen myself as one of life’s fortunate people, living in a civilised society protected and preserved from tyranny by the truly great generation that preceded mine. Since then I’ve lived a truly blessed life, and experienced one of the greatest periods of peace in British history.

But now a shroud of despondency has settled over my green and pleasant land, and I genuinely fear for its future. Whatever happens next, I believe the true essence of Britain has been wrung out of it by politicians who either don’t know, or care, about the extent of the damage they are doing.

When Lynden Pindling tried, in 1969, to introduce anti-press laws to curb criticism of his corrupt regime, and proposed star chamber treatment for errant journalists in the House of Assembly, Sir Etienne Dupuch and his word warriors, including me, mounted a stern campaign against him.

By enlisting the help of the international press, and defying the tinpot tyrant at every turn, we forced a humiliating climbdown.

Hence, the acceptance of a free press, and the underscoring of free expression, became embedded in a society that continues to enjoy those rights today.

Bill Cole of The Nassau Guardian and I were interviewed by American TV stations, and I gave a speech to East Nassau Rotary Club in which I described the Bahamas as a “frightened society” that was in danger of falling victim to a totalitarian regime. I never thought I would ever see the day when Britain became a “frightened society” run by a tinpot, two-bit tyrant. But it is edging closer every day towards an Orwellian dystopia.

After Pindling’s humiliation, it wasn’t long before a cabal of PLP parliamentarians, led by Cecil Wallace-Whitfield, broke clear of Pindling’s grip and later formed what became the Free National Movement. Thus, the most intelligent segment of the PLP became the official opposition.

Cole and I were able to take so strong a stance against Pindling’s evil proposals because we felt emboldened by Britain’s moral certitude when it came to free speech. Unfortunately, we would not be able to feel that way today.

In 1940, Britain repelled a planned invasion by the most grotesque dictator in a thousand years. Today an invasion just as threatening in different ways is taking place daily, with young men from savage societies coming ashore in rubber boats as alleged asylum seekers. They drop their mobile phones and passports into the sea before stepping ashore, and percolate into a society already over-stretched to the limit.

Trapped in the web of wokery, hamstrung by a socialist government, and no longer sure of its cultural identity, Britain faces an uncertain future.

Multiculturalism and diversity, the twin shibboleths of the Left, have failed in Britain.

Alien cultures are undermining everyday life, indigenous Brits no longer feel safe in their homes, and the spirit of Churchill has died on the vine. All the old certainties have gone. Common decency is fading fast. Uncontainable lawlessness is placing everyone in peril.

For the first time in 81 years, I fear that Britain is being invaded by forces that will destroy its culture and change - for the worse - everything it has ever stood for.

JOHN MARQUIS was a journalist for 50 years. He was an award-winning investigative reporter, a Fleet Street sports editor, an international boxing writer, and editor of a West Country newspaper group before becoming The Tribune’s Managing Editor for the last decade of his career, 1999-2009.