"...tolerance and decency are deeply rooted in England", said George Orwell

"tolerance and decency are deeply rooted in England".'...the intellectual liberty which without a doubt has been one of the distinguishing marks of western civilisation" and states that "tolerance and decency are deeply rooted in England". 


So, would this be the "intellectual liberty" afforded — not so long before Orwell's time — to the Tolpuddle Martyrs and other ordinary workers, imprisoned, banished or simply murdered by the British state for daring to organise trade unions, or the "tolerance and decency" that callously sent millions of young people to the slaughterhouse of World War I — not to mention the horrors of imperial rule within the British Isles and overseas.