"This island, windswept, rain-soaked, battered and brilliant built the modern world. From the battlefield to the bookshelf, from medicine to music, our legacy is thunderous. And if you're not proud of that? You're either uneducated, ungrateful, or unworthy of the blood and brilliance that made you.
We gave the world Newton’s laws and Darwin’s theory. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin on British soil and we saved millions of lives before half the world knew what antibiotics were. We split the atom, built the jet engine, cracked the DNA code and mapped the stars with Hawking’s mind. The Industrial Revolution? Ours. Without Britain, there’s no electricity grid, no trains, no factories, no global economy.
From Shakespeare’s pen to The Beatles’ guitars, we didn’t just entertain the world we changed it. The Kinks, Bowie, Queen, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, our soundtracks shook the planet. Meanwhile, Orwell, Dickens, Austen and Tolkien defined entire genres. 1984, Oliver Twist, Pride and Prejudice, The Lord of the Rings still required reading everywhere civilised thought exists.
We stood alone in 1940 when the rest of Europe buckled. Churchill’s roar held the line. The RAF held the skies. And ordinary Brits held their nerve in the Blitz while fire rained from above. We faced down fascism with tea, steel and sheer bloody-minded defiance. And we didn’t just fight for ourselves we fought for freedom. Globally.
Yes, mistakes were made during empire. But we also built railways, schools, hospitals, legal systems and entire infrastructures in places left in chaos by tribalism and colonial conquest from others far crueller. We brought medicine, education and governance to lands where disease, illiteracy and slavery were endemic long before the Union Jack arrived. The British Empire wasn’t perfect. But it wasn’t evil. And it sure as hell isn’t something to apologise for every five minutes.
Rule of law. Habeas corpus. Free speech. Trial by jury. Parliamentary democracy. Those are British inventions. They're now the foundation of liberty around the world and they started right here. On this island. From Magna Carta to the mother of all parliaments.
We didn’t just influence the world.
We civilised it. Inspired it. Led it.
And we can do it again if we remember who we are.
So next time someone sneers at Britain?
Remind them we invented the weekend, football, the internet, steam power, radar, punk rock, double deckers and gin and tonic.
Our past isn’t shameful. It’s sacred.
It’s not baggage. It’s a banner.
So raise it. Own it. Defend it.
Because our future depends on remembering our glory
and living up to it.
THEIR LEGACY IS OUR DUTY
Most of us had a grandfather who fought in the mud of Passchendaele or the skies over Britain. A great uncle who never came back from Normandy. A nan who worked night shifts in a munitions factory with blisters on her hands and pride in her heart.
They didn’t bleed and break so their great grandchildren could grow up ashamed of Britain.
They didn’t face down Hitler so we could surrender to Brussels.
They didn’t survive the Blitz so we could hand our cities to people who hate us.
They believed in something. In this country. In who we are. In God, family, flag.
Now it’s our watch.
We are the link between the lions of the past and the unborn future of this nation. And I swear to you we must not drop the torch. We can not let this island fall to cowardice, to woke weakness, to foreign contempt.
It is time to rebuild this land. For our children. And for theirs.
This isn’t nostalgia.
It’s duty."
This opinion column is written by Jeff Wilton-Love, one of our new vice presidents and a former county councillor.
