August, 1938. As Europe tensed for another cataclysmic war, Ulster poet Louis MacNeice wrote about life on the edge of the abyss. Autumn Journal begins in napping Hampshire, as summer ends, \u201cEbbing away down ramps of shaven lawn where close-clipped yew \/ Insulates the lives of retired generals and admirals \/ And the spyglasses hung in the hall and the prayer-books ready in the pew\u2026\u201d MacNeice opened his great poem of foreboding with scenes of narcotic normality.<\/p>\n
\u201cNormalcy bias is very powerful,\u201d says David Betz. \u201cIt keeps people in their homes when they\u2019re warned Category 5 hurricanes are coming at them.\u201d Betz is Professor of War in the Modern World at King\u2019s College London. He\u2019s pretty sure that civil war is coming. Not a civil war that we have been trained to recognise. There will be no ordered forces of uniformed troops, no Edgehill or Gettysburg. He foresees something messier, perhaps even more painful, like an abscessed tooth fragmenting in the mouth.<\/p>\n
Betz speaks in calm, measured tones. There is very little umming or ahhhing. He quietly explains why what counts as normal in many Western countries today \u2014 the UK, the US, France, to name a few \u2014 has created ideal conditions for mass violence, dissolving government authority, and even social collapse. The factors at play are varied. The alarming thing is that they are all present at the same time. \u201cTo use the clich\u00e9,\u201d Betz says, \u201cit\u2019s kind of a perfect storm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anyone with eyes, no matter their political sympathies, knows that something is badly askew. Perhaps this is why Betz\u2019s recent podcast<\/a> appearance \u2014 186,000 views, and climbing \u2014 received so much attention. So often, it is the little things. Visiting London last December, I noticed that the platform waiting room at Acton Town tube station had been locked. A sign on the door read: \u201cTHIS IS NOT A TOILET\u201d. I passed that way again this week, to discover the door still locked and the sign still in place. The sign is wrong, of course. If a waiting room is consistently used as a toilet, then it\u2019s no longer a waiting room. It is a toilet.<\/p>\n Everyone has their own examples of this granular decay. Think of the rats, so plump off Birmingham rubbish they\u2019re now the size of cats<\/a>; or the metal security tags protecting \u00a34 fish fillets; or the depthless cringe of police officers who dress up<\/a> as Batman and Robin to catch con artists within spitting distance of Parliament.<\/p>\n Betz works with larger themes. Falling living standards and a dearth of well-paid jobs create an \u201cexpectation gap\u201d, seeding resentment and apathy through whole generations. The creeping normalisation of identitarian<\/a> factionalism<\/a> across<\/a> British<\/a> life<\/a>, both daily and political, weakens our ability to function as a coherent nation. Unprecedented levels of immigration<\/a> produce growing anxiety in the majority population, an anxiety that may metastasise into something darker. Finally, and perhaps most damningly, Betz brings up a rising crisis of government legitimacy: \u201cThe primary thing to be tested is legitimacy. If you have legitimacy, you have no insurgent problem. If you don\u2019t, you are very likely to have an insurgent problem. It\u2019s as simple as that.\u201d<\/p>\n In his academic work<\/a>, Betz has described legitimacy as a kind of magic spell. If polls<\/a> are anything to go by, it\u2019s a spell that has now been well and truly broken: a record 45% of Brits \u201calmost never\u201d trust the government to put the nation first. As the academic says: \u201cThere has been a collapse in trust over the course of a generation.\u201d The once awesome magus has been revealed as a syphilitic old soak, his robes stained sacking, his staff a rolled newspaper. Public trust in politicians, then, is at an all-time low (\u201cJournalists aren\u2019t much more trusted,\u201d he adds in a wry aside), but Betz is deeply worried that faith in all kinds of institutions is diminishing rapidly.<\/p>\n There are often very good reasons for this trust deficit, especially in areas like crime and punishment. Take the recent furore over sentencing. \u201cIt\u2019s ridiculous to deny that we have a two-tier justice system,\u201d Betz says. \u201cJust last week, the Justice Secretary said the sentencing guidelines<\/a> are two-tier. Which begs the question of what a Justice Secretary is for\u2026 It\u2019s outrageous.\u201d Things are no better at the other end of the justice system. \u201cOur police establishment is not neutral. It\u2019s heavily politically biased,\u201d he says, even as the Met fails<\/a> to solve any neighbourhood crime across swathes of the capital.<\/p>\n No trust means no legitimacy. And that\u2019s when everything begins to unravel. Central government loses its gravitational pull on the populace, which proceeds to drift off into its constituent parts. If the state ceases to offer stability and justice, then people will do as the Romano-Britons did, and look to their own defence. There have been clues as to what this might mean in the coming years.<\/p>\n A recent video<\/a>, purportedly from New Eltham, shows a street lined with Union flags. This is a perfectly normal sight in East Belfast, but comes as a surprise in South London. Perhaps it shouldn\u2019t. The \u201cUlsterisation\u201d of Britain in a purely visual sense \u2014 flags, murals, a repertoire of annual events designed to affirm and renew control over territory \u2014 might be welcomed by some as a simple acknowledgement of lived reality in many parts of the country. But the term means much more than a few flags snapping in the breeze. MacNeice called Ulster \u201cthe limbo lands\u201d, a place unhappily webbed with competing claims and warring histories, never quite one thing and never quite the other. The danger is that this becomes Britain\u2019s future too, with all that fate implies.<\/p>\n Betz thinks that conflict, widespread and devastating enough to qualify as a form of civil war, is now close to inevitable. \u201cI don\u2019t see an off-ramp from this,\u201d he tells me. As MacNeice had it, \u201cThe bloody frontier converges on our beds \/ Like jungle beaters closing in on their destined \/ Trophy of pelts and heads.\u201d Betz favours the work of another Irish poet. He quotes<\/a>, as many<\/a> have before him, W.B. Yeats\u2019s \u201cThe Second Coming<\/a>\u201d. The sickening vertigo of the falcon \u201cturning and turning in the widening gyre\u201d, beyond reason or recall, is a seven-word summary of Betz\u2019s argument.<\/p>\n It is impossible to predict when this war will start, or what the inciting events might be. But Betz is pretty sure how it will be fought. Attacks on key infrastructure, most of it protected by no more than a locked door and a symbolic fence \u2014 gas compression stations, electricity substations, telecommunications cables, and the like \u2014 will be used to devastate cities and frustrate government attempts to restore order. Another Ulster parallel shows the effectiveness of these tactics. In March and April 1969, Loyalist paramilitaries bombed an electricity substation and a series of water installations, resulting in serious water shortages across Belfast. The Northern Irish prime minister of the time, Terence O\u2019Neill, resigned on 1 May. O\u2019Neill was beset by a great many problems, but he was in no doubt that those assaults on infrastructure dealt the final blow to his premiership. They were \u201cexplosions which quite literally blew me out of office\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAttacks on key infrastructure will be used to devastate cities\u201d<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t take<\/a> a William Gibson to imagine the effect a similar, more prolonged campaign would have on London or Liverpool. \u201cCities will be dark, cold, rioting and unpoliced,\u201d says Betz. The police barely managed to contain the 2011 London riots, a relatively small blister of disorder compared to the trouble he sees coming. \u201cOn any given night in 2011, there were maybe 200 really active rioters. Imagine that but 10 or 20 times worse, several thousand people rioting in a hardcore manner. And not just once, but every two weeks.\u201d Any attempt to impose martial law would fail, given the military\u2019s ever-shrinking<\/a> manpower: \u201cThere\u2019s no potential for the British army to respond to wide-scale civil disorder.\u201d<\/p>\n Life would be desperate in those cold and lightless cities, returning us to earlier epochs but without the knowledge and materials that made such eras bearable. I think about the time I lost my glasses, and had replacements delivered within the week. Or about a friend with diabetes, who monitors her condition using a smartphone app and has an insulin pen in her handbag. All that would go, along with the cucumbers and the buses, the postmen and the bars of soap. The preppers would be all right for a time, until cold and hungry people discovered what they had, and took it from them. Betz observes that it wouldn\u2019t be long before people start trying to heat their houses and flats with whatever they have to hand \u2014 and once that starts, buildings will go up in flames. \u201cImagine,\u201d he says, \u201chalf a dozen Grenfell Towers in a single winter.\u201d<\/p>\n If Betz is correct in his analysis, then why aren\u2019t preparations being made by the Government? The logical answer is that politicians lack both the ability and the desire to do their jobs. But there are some conscientious people in the British state. Betz has spoken to individuals within the security services who have reached similar conclusions to him, but \u201cthey\u2019re embedded within a system that makes it practically impossible to address it openly\u2026 They\u2019re very leery of thinking out loud, let alone planning for those contingencies, without a civil directive. It would take a very brave \u2014 morally brave \u2014 senior British police officer or military figure [to start planning], and it would probably be career-ending.\u201d<\/p>\n Naturally, many in power simply don\u2019t believe that prolonged mass violence is probable. The UK Government\u2019s resilience website lists<\/a> hazards ranging from severe weather to terrorism, but makes no mention of civil unrest, while Lib\u00e9ration reports<\/a> that a forthcoming French preparedness booklet will be primarily concerned with natural disasters. Perhaps politicians realise that any mention of civil war in an official publication would be a PR catastrophe. Or maybe they view Western citizens as simply too cosseted, too biddable. People raised amid relative plenty and security are simply not likely to erupt in significant numbers.<\/p>\n