“The old world will burn in the fires of industry. The forests will fall. A new order will rise. We will drive the machine of war with sword and the spear and the iron fist of the orc.” Saruman, The Two Towers.

The underlying political themes of The Lord of the Rings novels, are complex and diverse, warranting me to write an entire book on the subject at some point in the future.

Using the very limited time I currently have available to me, the themes can in my view be best summarised as the battle against industrialisation and globalisation, as portrayed in the character of Sauron and the bumbling proletariat masses of the orcs, and also the struggle of a pure-spirited people whose time on the Earth draws to a close, portrayed in the novels by the well-spoken, fair skinned, fair haired and blue eyed elves of the West.

It can be no coincidence that the nature of the relationship between the God-made races of Middle Earth, namely elves, dwarves and men and with the decrepit and crude orcs, created by Lord Melkor and also Sauron, bears similarities with the looming imposition of third world immigrants and their relation with the indigenous population of our West.

Make of this what you will, for I am merely making an objective statement, the orcs were clearly written with the image of third world races in mind. The orcs are depicted as possessing crude technologies, ineloquent speech and arising from the South and from the East, imported into the West of Middle Earth to reap chaos by the Eye in the Tower, which I can only assume represents any conglomeration of supernational organisations, most likely at the time LOTR was written it was intended to represent the UN, or even something more obscure that I dare not mention.

Hobbit culture is quintessentially British; simple folk who enjoy good food, country walks, a pint at the pub, fireworks and keeping to themselves. They are completely unaware of the threat Sauron poses to their existence, nor are they aware of the orcs expansion into the West of Middle Earth, representing No-Go Zones, and they also believe Sauron, the bumbling proletariat masses, to have been destroyed.

This is just a taste of the many themes that can be found in LOTR that I haven’t time to discuss, but this video rather well summarises some others.

And also a video of John Rhys Davies, the actor who played the role if Gimli, discussing the replacement of indigenous Europeans.