Albion– a manifesto and a rallying cry to the Children of Albion
‘Albion- awake, awake, awake…
Then was a time of love,
and now the time returns again…’
Albion is the alternative Britain; it is the ideal Britain, the Britain that we would wish to create. It is an ancient land- its name is an echo of antique authors but the place itself still alive. Albion is the abiding presence of the past in the present. Albion is a landscape and a dreamscape. It is an aspiration and an allegory.
Albion is mythical, magical, possibly better and more beautiful than our current Britain. It is potentially less polluted, less prejudiced and more perfect. It is separate but proximate, distinct but not distant. Albion is the power and potential of the other Britain- that which is yet to be.
Albion is an ancient land- but it is a new land. It is not freighted with the history of England, Scotland, Wales or Cornwall. It is a nation to create afresh; it is a story to be told anew. Albion is free of hierarchy, of enmity, of inequity; it is free of injustice, oppression and untruths. Albion is outside; it is a rejection of Britain- it is opposed. It is underground; it is above labels and beyond limits. Albion is a re-imagining; it is a re-visioning.
Albion is a single island, undivided; it is a single people, not artificially separated, and we are Children of Albion. The Children of Albion make life, they do not take it; they make art, not deals; they are concerned with beauty and not with business, with unity and not with division. We all share the island of Albion therefore it must all be shared. Every child of Albion has a life to live, from the richest to the poorest, and they have a right to determine and decide.
Are you one of the Children of Albion? Now is surely the time for the children to speak again. As I have written in another post, they found a voice briefly in 1960s. Fifty years on from the summer of love and the summer of discontent, we need to rediscover both the love and the radicalism of those years in order to confront the ills of our modern world.
The time has come. From the Vale of Avalon to the hills of Dulwich; from the druid stones of Stenness to Dover’s rocky shore; from the mansions of Mayfair and the palaces of Buckingham Gate to the tower blocks of the Tyne and Tees, the time has come. It is the time for Albion to awake; it is time for the children of Albion to arise.
“England! awake! awake! awake!
Jerusalem thy Sister calls!
Why wilt thou sleep the sleep of death,
And close her from thy ancient walls?
Thy hills & valleys felt her feet,
Gently upon their bosoms move:
Thy gates beheld sweet Zion’s ways:
Then was a time of love.
And now the time returns again:
Our souls exult, & London’s towers
Receive the lamb of God to dwell
In England’s green & pleasant bowers.
William Blake, ‘Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion’ [1804]
For fuller details of my fiction and nonfiction writings on British folklore, see my website.
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