The Decline of British Witchcraft?

“Look, I’ve been living in this town for nearly six months now – and I still haven’t been invited to join a witches coven,” complains company director and putative Reform UK parliamentary candidate for Crapchester, Harold Dullass. “Not only that, but I haven’t been invited to any nocturnal Satanic rites in the local park. I mean, according to horror movies these sorts of thing lurk in every provincial town – apparently there are human sacrifices taking place and evil spells being cast left, right and centre in suburbia, but I’ve never seen any sign of it here in Crapchester!” A disappointed Dullass admits that one of the main motivating factors in his move to the town was his belief that it was likely to be a hotbed of paganism, black magic and bizarre ancient rituals. “That’s what you expect from these places outside of London – good old arcane local traditions,” he told the local newspaper, The Crapchester Chronicle. “As you know, we in Reform UK very much believe in the preservation of British traditions and what could be more traditionally British than witchcraft and black magic? They’ve been practiced here for millennia, even surviving  an attempt at their repression by Cromwell and his Puritans – the Wokerati of their day!” Dullass has ventured that modern Crapchester isn’t an environment to foster such ancient beliefs. “I was expecting thatched cottages and quaint workers’ hovels,” he explains. “But the whole bloody place is made out of concrete – hardly conducive to the practice of the black arts!”

Dullass claims that his search for covens and cults in Crapchester has been exhaustive. “In those films, every seemingly respectable citizen turns out to be a raving satanist or bonkers cult member, dancing naked around blazing pyres on the local green every full moon,” he says. “So I surreptitiously approached local shop keepers. Bank manager, butchers, greengrocers and publicans, to try and make contact through the use of secret signs that would be known only to an occultist.” His approaches were, in general, met with hostility. “When I went into my local pub, acting on my suspicion that the landlord – known locally as ‘that fat bastard’ – was secretly the High Priest of a local satanist group and thrust a decapitated chicken at him, he just punched me in the face and threw me out,” he explains. “Turns out he really is just a ‘fat bastard’ rather than someone who dons stags antlers and rogers naked women on an altar erected in his barrel store every full moon.” Dullass also found himself rebuffed by other local businessmen. “The local greengrocer is just a greengrocer and doesn’t have an idol of some heathen god in his backroom and doesn’t use his fruits and vegetables in strange naked rituals in the park,” he laments. !As I found out when he kicked me out of his shop and chased me down the street, hurling cucumbers, melons and cantaloupes at me – you’d be surprised how painful fruit and veg an be when it is being thrown at you by a maniac!”

Having established that the Crapchester Bowls Club didn’t engage in wild naked orgies on their green under each full moon – they just played bowls every Thursday and Saturday – Dullass was forced to face the fact that either the town was entirely free of the sort of localised evil he was seeking, or that it was conducted secretly, by invitation only.  “Which begs the question, why haven’t I ever been invited to join any of these things?” he asks. “After all, I flaunt all political conventions by being a member of Reform UK.  I’m frequently in conflict with the establishment, and have little regard for those established woke religions.  You’d think that there would be a whole queue of covens, Satanists and the like knocking on my door and extending invitations.  But apparently not.”  Dullass has been forced to speculate as to just why he hasn’t been recruited by some local cult since arriving in Crapchester. “Maybe I’m just too boring to be considered for membership – I dress conservatively and always remove my hat before punching a woman,” he muses. “Then again, perhaps my disregard for religion is a stumbling block – maybe you have to demonstrate some sort of spirituality and belief in true evil to be considered for membership.  Then again, it could be that those bloody films have all lied to me and provincial England isn’t rife with occult practices.”

Dullass has, however, another theory to explain the lack of witch or satanic activity in Crapchester. “Before I came down here, I was living in London and I can tell you, there was plenty of black magic going on there – but it was all bloody foreign!” he declares. “It was all that filthy Voodoo stuff involving child sacrifices and the like – not like good old decent British occultism, which is just a bit of harmless fun and nudity. And maybe sex, if you get lucky.” Mass non-white immigration is at fault for the decline of traditional black magic in the UK, Dullass argues. “It’s all these buggers coming in from Bongo-Bongo land on those boats,” he says. “Bringing their disgusting false religions with them – all those rapes of white women by these bastards are really part of their evil sexual rites designed to summon up their black devils!” He believes that, having overrun London with their magic, driving out indigenous witchcraft, these immigrant sorcerers are now moving into the provinces to do the same thing. “One of the first things I noticed here in Crapchester was the presence of a Mosque,” he points out. “I can guarantee that the buggers are conjuring up their bloody D’Jinn to wreak havoc around the town – no wonder it all looks so run down and depressing.”

Local Crapchester historian Bill Crackers has weighed in on the debate, contending that the town has never had any history of witchcraft or black magic. “Historically, we’ve had sheep-shaggers and cholera outbreaks from people shitting in their own water supplies, but never anything in the way of occultism,” he opines. “Mind you, there was a time when I suspected that old biddy who used to live down the road from me of running a coven under the guise of the local ‘Spanish Circle’, but nothing was ever proven.” Crackers does concede that the old biddy in question did die a sad and bizarre death. “She had a fall while working on her allotment, couldn’t get up and froze to death overnight,” he recalls.  “Very sad, but I couldn’t help but suspect at the time that the victims of her coven might have been buried on that ‘allotment’ and she fell prey to their vengeful spirits.  Possibly raised by a rival coven.  Or maybe even the local Satanists.  That said, I’ve seen nothing of either.  No desecrated churches, no naked loonies dancing around the bandstand in the park on full moons.  To be honest, though, I’m quite glad that I haven’t witnessed any of those naked rites by either witches or Satanists.  The idea of that old biddy and her cronies prancing around in the buff chills my blood.” Indeed, according to the historian, the closest thing to an evil cult in Crapchester is the local branch of Reform UK.