Alun David

The Steak Bake Battalions I have said it for years. The men who will save this country can be found every morning, from six until half past eight, at almost every Greggs in the land. They are there before the office lights come on. Before the besuited pen-pushers arrive for their lattes. Before the morning fills with pushchairs, school runs and meetings about meetings. They are already awake. Already moving. Already at work. You will know them. Men in high-vis and cargo shorts. In battered work trousers and steel toe-capped boots. Sometimes in hard hats. Paint-spattered. Plaster-caked. Oil beneath their fingernails. Bags beneath their eyes. They queue for coffee, bacon rolls and Steak Bakes. The banter is merciless. The humour is dark. The language is occasionally appalling. But the fellowship is real. They are the grafters. Tradesmen. Engineers. Drivers. Fitters. Welders. Bricklayers. Scaffolders. Electricians. Plumbers. Mechanics. Machine operators. Small businessmen. Employers and employees. Working-class men. Middle-class men. Englishmen, Scotsmen, Welshmen and Northern Irishmen. British men. While much of the country still sleeps, they are leaving their wives, their children and their warm homes. They climb into cold vans. They drive through darkness and rain. They go where the work is. They build Britain. They keep the lights on and the water flowing. They repair the roads. Raise the scaffolding. Lay the bricks. Weld the steel. Fix the boilers. Clear the drains. Restore the roofs. Mend what is broken. They rarely appear on television. Nobody invites them onto fashionable panels. Nobody asks what they think. Nobody in Whitehall seems particularly interested in whether they can afford another van, another apprentice or another year of taxes, regulations and rising costs. Yet without them, the country stops. Completely. These are the descendants of the men of Agincourt and Waterloo. Of the Somme and Dunkirk. Of D-Day, Korea, the Falklands, Iraq and Afghanistan. Not trained soldiers, most of them. But recognisably of the same temper. The same stubbornness. The same humour in adversity. The same refusal to make a song and dance of hardship. The same instinct to shoulder the load, finish the job and look after the man beside them. They carry an inheritance shaped across centuries. Celt and Pict. Roman and Saxon. Viking and Norman. Generations forged by cold seas, hard ground, long winters, dangerous work and war. Their forebears built ships, railways, bridges, factories and cities. They crossed oceans. They defeated Napoleon, Hitler and Galtieri. They created an empire of extraordinary reach and consequence, and then spent British blood and treasure destroying the slave trade across much of the world. They were not flawless men. No nation is flawless. But they were formidable. And these men are formidable still. They are not extremists. They are not fanatics. They do not spend their days raging online. Most ask for very little. A fair wage. A decent home. Safe streets. A future for their children. The freedom to speak plainly. And a country that remembers who built it. But beneath the dust, the laughter and the apparent indifference, something remains. A deep attachment to home. A quiet patriotism. A line that can be pushed only so far. When this country finally decides that mass immigration must end, that integration must mean something, that borders must be real and that Britain must remain recognisably British, it will not be delivered by consultants, commentators or career politicians. It will be delivered by the people who already carry Britain on their backs. They are out there every morning. Millions of them. Waiting patiently in the half-light. Vans lined along the kerb. Engines ticking. Reflective jackets catching the first grey light of dawn. Coffee in one hand. Steak Bake in the other. The backbone of Britain. The Steak Bake Battalions.