Necessary Words

WITH this poetical work, Necessary Words , Tong joins a number of relatively unknown Nationalist poets like Dick Cardmore (possibly a pseudonym for Right Now’s Derek Turner). Michael Cope and Steven Taylor. All in all, these verses are a poeticisation of various articles in Voice of Freedom. For example, Necessary Words, the title refrain, deals with the unassailable nature of English identity. Whereas the next scald in, Feeding the Pigeons, laments the universalism of a charity which forgets everything happening here. Does it take reference from the fact that Mayor Ken Livingstone’s banned feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square but Hizb ut-Tahrir regularly meets there? Where In a Strange Land and My Home both analyse the disorientation and alienation of the English as their country becomes 14% non-White. Poems as diverse as The Arbiters, Observing the English, To a Hostel Warden and A Commonwealth Conference Photograph then make an appearance. All of them dissect media distortion and lies, moral laziness, hypocrisy and a sort of Middle English blindness. Mr. Tong’s essential point, in these stanzas, seems to be an attack on the milksop ethics of the philosopher, G.E. Moore, and the liberal platitudes they evince.

St. John and St. Anselm, Triolet for St. John’s and An Anglican Bishop emerge in the book’s middle section. They confer an obviously Christian and Anglican identity on the poet, but definitely of a militant and rather Evangelical hue. In these words our bard’s adopting a muscular Christian tone, redolent of Victorian and Imperial divines, yet alienated from documents like Faith in the City. Perhaps there’s more than a hint of Sir Henry Newbolt here…

Televised Protest, Other Eden, In Another’s Place and Stamp Issues are verses towards the book’s second half. They rehearse and extend already visited themes. These strophes choose to look at Japanese cultural imperialism, Anglo-Saxon aimlessness and the ‘Right to Shop’, together with the luxury of animal rights at a time when one’s society is in free fall. Four other staves – The Great Storm, Bosworth 1485, On the Statue of Oliver Cromwell at Westminster and Milton 1660 – adopt a new tone. These lyrics wax more historical, rooted, vanguardist and cross-referenced than before. While the mention of the Lord Protector and the Commonwealth’s Minister of Latin (i.e. foreign secretary) gives an English Protestant and heroic demeanour to Tong’s efforts. Alternatively,

Gulls and The Pond

embody a more pastoral and evergreen temperature – a rallying cry to the fact that our poet is an English version of R.S. Thomas’ aboriginal cymric. Figures on a Desolate Landscape and After the Explosion, however, seem more urgent and restless. Could our versifier be a New Apocalyptic without knowing it? Finally, we need to end this review by concentrating on two bardic offerings. They carry the titles of An English Prayer and I Let It Happen respectively. The first happens to be a ‘politically incorrect’ liturgy reminiscent of the Reverend Robert West’s delivery. The second reads like a moderate cri de coeur towards the author’s lack of nationalist action. I believe that Excalibur’s book arm sell Raymond Tong’s Words of Necessity for £7.00. Buy it: Excalibur, P.O. Box 116, Leeds LS27 9WW, England. www.bnp.org.uk/shopping/excalibur/index.php