QUENTIN LETTS: Why does the Left celebrate every woke cause but seem reluctant to mark the 1,100th anniversary of the coronation that forged England?

Did you enjoy Back Care Awareness week? Were you all limbered up for World Menopause Day on October 18?Early next month we have International Day of Persons With Disabilities. In a similar vein, at 11am last Sunday, when one might have expected them to be marking Remembrance Sunday, the Scottish government took to social media to publicise Bandi Chhor Divas, a Sikh celebration.British institutions and their commissars love to mark multicultural and progressive shindigs, from Pride Month to Women’s History Month, World Breastfeeding Week to Colour Blind Awareness Day, Inter Faith Week to Intersex Awareness Day. Other cultures are paraded and minority grievances are tooted from the rooftops.There is International Pronouns Day, International Lesbian Day, South Asian Heritage Month, and a day in May when our diplomats and other public servants pause in their noble endeavours to remember the death of George Floyd, a black man killed by white police in Minneapolis six years ago.No specific date in the calendar, however, can be found to mark a coming event of profoundly greater significance: the 1,100th anniversary of the foundation of England under its first true king, Aethelstan.Although yesterday a culture minister vaguely agreed to cast an eye over the matter, officialdom has been disgracefully cool to the idea. Is it just too, well, English for them? Is the 1,100th anniversary of England's foundation under its first true king, Aethelstan (his portrait pictured) simply just too English for the Left? asks Quentin LettsAt mention of Aethelstan you might say: ‘Aethelwho?’ Which rather proves the necessity for a commemoration. If we continue to be so unaware of the clement statesman who founded our own country back in the pre-Norman mists, what hope have we for the future?It was on July 12 in 927 AD, at Eamont Bridge in modern Cumbria, that Aethelstan was hailed as England’s monarch. Having been crowned King of the southern regions of Wessex and Mercia two years earlier, he had driven the Danes out of eastern England and was the undisputed power in the south of Britain. Scottish kings from Alba and Strathclyde travelled to Cumbria to acknowledge Aethelstan’s rule over the now neighbouring territory of the Angles and Saxons.Brooding Welshmen also recognised Aethelstan as legitimate monarch of the lands east of the Marches.This was England’s foundational moment – the birth of our nation. Yet it goes ignored by today’s political class. What other country would behave in such a way?Aethelstan (b.893) reigned from 925 to 939. He was the son of Alfred the Great’s son Edward and he seems, from what little historical evidence we have, to have been an enlightened, decisive Christian soul. A good Aegg, if you like. Alfred has long had a positive press. He defended Wessex against the Great Heathen Army of the Vikings, established the first English navy and made reforms to justice and education.Alfred’s daughter Aethelflaed continued that work, driving the Danes out of Mercia. Among other heroics she poured boiling beer on the invaders when retaking the old Roman garrison of Chester. Aethelflaed was every bit as much an English battleaxe as Queen Boudicca of the Iceni.Aethelstan inherited his aunt’s martial vigour and his grandfather’s wisdom. As he pushed northwards he made shrewd diplomatic alliances and embraced a doctrine of national unity, forging a single entity out of Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and East Anglia. He posed for portraits not in the war-leader’s traditional helmet but in a crown, projecting a more peaceful demeanour.He understood that a centralised government could impose laws that would bring justice and liberty to the populus. His legal code imposed laws against theft, murder, treachery, Sunday trading and mistreatment of slaves.Aethelstan was good to monks and it was during his reign that the Church became seen as a partner of civic government. The idea of common law took hold, establishing notions of legal precedent to temper kingly tyranny.Citizens could start to anticipate certain rights as opposed to being constantly in terror of foreign invaders and the bigshot in the local castle. Without Aethelstan it is debatable whether or not we would have had Magna Carta some three centuries later.All of which, surely, is an inheritance that we, today, should defend jealously, proclaiming Aethelstan’s virtue with pride.This would be particularly useful at a time when there is so much national self-loathing evident in our intellectual class.Attempts to establish some sort of national celebration of ‘England’s 1,100th Birthday’ have hit maddening bureaucratic indifference. Historians and opposition politicians have tried. But the powers-that-be gave every indication – until a Conservative parliamentary question yesterday caught culture ministers on the hop – that they wanted Aethelstan to stay under his stone. Aethelstan was good to monks and it was during his reign that the Church became seen as a partner of civic government and the idea of common law took hold, writes Quentin Letts Saxon king Aethelstan's 15h-century memorial tomb at Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire One person trying to whip up interest in him is Kemi Badenoch’s deputy, Alex Burghart MP, who is a scholar of Anglo-Saxon history.For months he, along with TV historians Tom Holland and Michael Wood, has been speaking up for the 1,100th anniversary in 2027. Mr Burghart admits they have made little headway. Why? He concludes, sadly: ‘Supporting English culture and history is seen as inherently racist. As a result, there is a great danger this anniversary will go almost entirely unmarked.’He would love to see the BBC or other broadcasters commission radio and TV programmes about Aethelstan. In a properly enlightened realm, the Education Department would send every school an information pack about the foundation of England in 927. Dream on. The current Education Secretary, low-wattage Lucy Powell, probably thinks Aethelstan is a dormitory town in Surrey.How about an issue of Aethelstan stamps by Royal Mail? Recent commemorative stamps have celebrated moths, waterfalls and the pop group Duran Duran. Is the moment England became a political entity not a smidgen more important than SimonLe Bon? Our culture’s gatekeepers have been remarkably slow to agree.‘At very least there should be a plaque to Aethelstan at Westminster Abbey, even though it was built after his death,’ says Alex Burghart. ‘The abbey is where we celebrate our great people. Aethelstan was a unifying figure.‘He was a good warrior who was pious and fair-minded and brought together the diverse people of the North and South and the Danelaw [eastern England, where Viking customs remained], forging them into one.’ Thanks to him, indeed, English law soon developed into an enriching, civilising force. Aethelstan respected the law. He had care for the destitute. He scrapped the death penalty for children. And he never married.Should the Left not be rushing to celebrate such an admirable confirmed bachelor? Alas, officialdom in Labour Britain seems to have wanted little to do with him. It heard ‘England’ and seemed to recoil, perhaps at associations with far-Right aggression.Sir Ed Davey, Lib Dem leader, has taken an interest because Aethelstan was first crowned in his Kingston upon Thames constituency in 925, two years before he became the first King of England in 927. The Reform MP Andrew Rosindell has joined a suggestion by Sir Ed that there be a bank holiday on July 12, 2027, to mark England’s foundation. This met with a dusty response from Whitehall.Bayeux Tapestry-loving bien pensants are happy to celebrate the Norman invasion of 1066 – an act of murderous colonialism – but will not give the time of day to the great English king who drove an earlier invader from our shores and made possible the legal system which has been the basis of so much Western freedom.England! What a country. What a civilisation. What a stellar example she has been to the world. Until yesterday, the clowns in charge were more interested in menopauses and intersexuality, whatever that might be, than hailing the dynamic, decent Aethelstan who made it all possible.