Nation Revisited
An occasional email to friends, # 20, December 2006
The Cost of Trident
According to CND we could pay every nurse
in Britain an extra thousand a year for the next 26 years with the money we
plan to spend on an updated Trident system.
“The reality is that it will cost a lot
more to keep Trident in service than it cost to build it. The ongoing cost will
be over 1 billion pounds every year. The government plans to keep the
submarines in service for another 26 years, which would cost over 26 billion
pounds – a small sum to Mr Robertson. This is more than double the official
cost of building Trident – 12 billion pounds.”
It’s difficult to imagine a situation in
which Britain would use such a weapon. We would presumably use it as a defence,
but against whom? Russia is no longer a threat; in fact we now look to Russia
for oil and gas. We haven’t got a quarrel with China, India or Pakistan.
Hopefully we will be talking to each of them about taking back their nationals,
but nuclear weapons will hardly form part of the negotiations.
It is surely unthinkable that a liberal
democracy like Britain would ever confront the USA, France or Israel. Iran and
North Korea are thought to be developing nuclear weapons but despite Tony
Blair’s empty rhetoric we have no quarrel with either state. Terrorism remains a threat but we could not
annihilate Bradford or Southall in order to knock out small groups of plotters.
The justification for nuclear weapons was
to counter a perceived threat from a Soviet Union that no longer exists, but
the current threat to our survival is not from Russia but from imported cheap
labour and exported jobs. Nuclear missiles can’t be used against asylum
seekers, Indian textile factories or Chinese car plants.
In any case the Trident system is not an
independent British deterrent. It is designed and built in America and the
firing codes would only be released to Britain under NATO command. In other words
we could only use it with American permission.
Replacing our Vanguard class submarines and
commissioning a new fleet of aircraft carriers will cost billions more than the
official estimates. Trident will be another intolerable burden on the British
taxpayer. We do not have an empire to defend; these ships and missiles are part
of our commitment to NATO – an instrument of American foreign policy. The
Second World War has been over for more than 60 years and the cold war for
nearly 20 years. It’s time that we structured our forces for the defence of the
homeland and stopped helping America to conquer the world.
From “Action” August 1980
Since this article was first published
communism has collapsed in Russia and China. They no longer sponsor colonial
wars but America is waging war on Afghanistan and Iraq, threatening Iran and
Syria, supporting Israel against Lebanon and Palestine, and supporting rebel
armies in Central Africa. Refugees are pouring into Europe and North America,
where they undercut wages and strain social services. In response to this mass migration right-wing
parties are making advances all over Europe and the Americans are planning a
fence along the Mexican border. Recent non-white riots and demonstrations in
Paris, Birmingham and Los Angeles have tipped the balance in favour of
immigration control. The teeming millions of the Third World are still
desperate to get into the West and greedy employers are eager to accept them.
Cheap labour exploitation has taken over from communism as the destroyer of
nations.
Communism and Hunger March Together
The Soviet-directed war in East Africa has
produced a staggering human problem. Over half a million refugees have fled the
Red terror in Ethiopia to freedom and near-starvation in neighbouring Somalia,
where they subsist on handouts from the United Nations and European
governments.
A similar tragedy exists in Indochina where
the wretched Cambodians are plagued with two warring communist armies and
overwhelming famine.
In the Caribbean thousands are prepared to
risk crossing shark-infested waters on flimsy craft to escape from Fidel
Castro’s bankrupt Cuba. These Cuban boat-people have been pouring into the
United States together with Vietnamese and ethnic Chinese from Vietnam, who
have risked everything in quitting the Hanoi regime.
Adding to the sum of human misery are the
Soviet Jews who continue to face the relentless persecution of the KGB. To
appease “world opinion” the Soviet quota system lets out some to join relatives
in the free world, but most remain virtual captives in the USSR.
All over the world men, women and children
are voting with their feet against the twin evils of communism and poverty,
which despite the good intentions of Karl Marx always seem to go together.
In the West we have the temporary problem
of over-production, butter mountains, wine lakes and the rest, but surely this
is better than living under a communist system which cannot guarantee adequate
food supplies?
Communists and their sympathizers can no
longer point the finger at “capitalism” as the prime cause of want. The Reds
have had over sixty years to construct their dream of a worker’s paradise.
Instead they have spread a path of hunger and despair round the world.
What the papers say
What the papers say
Here are three more websites of interest to
the open-minded.
Lee Barnes…Clown or Evil Influence? –
Julian Graeme - www.united-front.org.uk
Over the past few weeks, there appears to
have been more controversy over Lee Barnes than anyone else in the hierarchy of
the BNP for a long time.
Many long-serving BNP members are seriously
worried about his views and are questioning his right to air them on a public
platform. Little wonder then, that Barnes is being criticized from all
quarters. Did I say “all quarters?” Apparently not, as far as the leadership is
concerned, because he was sitting next to Nick Griffin on the speaker’s
platform at a recent RWB rally.
What then is it about Barnes that alienates
him from so many of his comrades? Let us have a closer look at what he said.
“The world may have forgotten March 19,
1988 when two British soldiers, corporals Derek Wood and David Howes were
dragged from their car by a republican mob, beaten and then taken to a remote
area near Belfast’s Miltown Cemetery and shot dead.”
Does Barnes remember the two British
sergeants who were foully murdered and mutilated by a Jewish terrorist gang and
hanged by piano-wire in an orange grove?
Ersatz Nationalism – www.thirdway.org
The claims of the Euro-sceptics to
represent resurgent patriotism do not stand up to even cursory analysis. The
politics of Bill Cash, Teresa Gorman, Norman Tebbit, or Alan Sked are founded
upon unregulated markets, free trade, uncontrolled “economic growth” (whatever
the human or ecological cost) unchecked exploitation of people and resources at
home and abroad, and the unchallenged dominance of American-inspired junk
culture.
Such ideas are diametrically opposed to
everything Third Way is trying to achieve, as well as profoundly destructive in
themselves.
Euro-sceptic “nationalism” is not
nationalism at all, but a form of false consciousness.
It bases its patriotic appeal not on the
protection of the environment and the countryside, or on the rights of the
British worker, but on the Westminster Parliament, the Pound and the supremacy
of the City - - whose institutions are far more alien and parasitic than even
the least representative bodies in Brussels.
Health Care / Social Care – New National
Party – www.nnp.org.uk
All Doctors and Nurses who receive their
training in Britain should remain in Britain for seven years after qualifying,
or they should pay for their education if choosing to work abroad once
qualified.
All Doctors and Nurses should receive a
wage in keeping with their vocation and dedication to the service of saving
life and they should work no more than forty hours per week. By providing a
decent wage and working conditions, we would be able to provide a more stable
working environment and staff retention will be easier.
Father Brocard Sewell
Michael Seymour Sewell was born on July 30th
1912 in Bangkok, where his father, a prominent Anglican, was a teacher at the
Royal Thai College. Following the death of his mother he was sent to live with
his maternal grandmother in Cornwall and was educated at Weymouth College. He
left school at sixteen to work for GK Chesterton on his distributist newspaper
“GK’s Weekly.” There he developed the skills that he later used as a
cartographer, editor, publisher, printer and writer. He converted to Roman
Catholicism in 1931 and briefly joined the Dominican Order, but he continued to
campaign against the excesses of both communism and capitalism.
Although he was a kind and gentle man he
volunteered for the Royal Air Force and served his country during the war as a
mapmaker. In 1952 he revived his interest in the monastic life and was ordained
as a Carmelite friar. He adopted the religious name “Brocard” after a 13th
Century saint and for the rest of life he lived and worked amongst the
Carmelite communities in Cheltenham, Faversham and North London.
In 1954 he founded the literary magazine
“The Aylesford Review” and became friends with many of the literary, artistic
and political prominenti of the day, including Henry Williamson, Diana and
Oswald Mosley and Jeffrey Hamm. He was a familiar figure at Union Movement
social gatherings for many years and gave the Henry Williamson Lecture to
Action Society in May 1981.
His friend Fiona MacCarthy, the biographer
and columnist, described him as:
“A small, owlish man in his brown habit,
with a quizzical but imperturbable expression, he was an unforgettable figure
on the fringes of English literary life – he had the strange mix of innocence
and sharp intelligence that seems to flourish more creatively in a religious
order than in the outside world.”
He was never afraid to speak his mind or
stand by his friends. These included the showgirl Christine Keeler who was at
the centre of the Profumo Affair of 1963 that brought down the Tory government
of Harold Macmillan. Father Brocard Sewell described her as: “a beautiful and
well-mannered young woman.”
In 1968 he upset the Vatican when he wrote
a letter to “The Times” calling for Pope Paul VI to resign because of his
ruling against contraception. He was suspended from preaching by the Church
from 1969 to 1972. He spent this time in Canada but came back a devout, if sometimes
disobedient catholic.
His numerous works include the biographies
of Eric Gill, GK and Cecil Chesterton and the BUF writer and naturalist Henry
Williamson. He wrote a history of the Distributist Movement and helped Jeffrey
Hamm with the production of his 1983 autobiography “Action Replay.” Father
Brocard Sewell died in London on April 2nd 2000 and is buried in the
cemetery of Aylesford Priory.
Major General JFC Fuller CB, CBE, DSO.
John Frederick Charles (Boney) Fuller was
born in Chichester in 1878. He was commissioned in the British Army in 1899 and
fought with distinction in the South African War.
As a Staff Officer he developed the idea of
“blitzkrieg” and launched the Cambrai offensive of 1917 – the first use of the
tank. He wrote the standard textbook on tank warfare that was studied by future
generals Heinz Guderian, Georgi Zhukov and Charles de Gaulle.
In 1934 he joined the British Union of
Fascists and was appointed to the Policy Directorate. He wrote for “Action” and
“The Fascist Quarterly,” as well as the mainstream press.
In 1939 he was invited to Hitler’s 50th birthday
parade in Berlin. As a modern mechanized army drove by Hitler said: “I hope
that you are pleased with your children?” Fuller replied: “Your Excellency,
they have grown up so quickly that I hardly recognized them.”
It is said that he was saved from internment
under 18B by the personal intervention of Winston Churchill. After the war he
continued to write and lecture on military and political matters in Britain and
The United States.
He died in 1966.
Preface to "Generalship: Its Diseases and
their Cures."
I the summer of 1921 I was lunching at the
Restaurant la Rue with the deputy chief of the French General Staff when he
told me the following story:
At the battle of Waterloo, Colonel Clement,
an infantry commander, fought with the most conspicuous bravery; but
unfortunately was shot through the head. Napoleon hearing of his gallantry and
misfortune, gave instructions for him to be carried into a farm where Larrey
the surgeon-general was operating.
One glance convinced Larrey that his case
was desperate, so taking up a saw he removed the top of his skull and placed
his brains on the table. Just as he had finished, in rushed an aide-de-camp
shouting – “is General Clement here?”
Clement hearing him sat up and exclaimed:
“No but Colonel Clement is.”
“Oh mon general” cried the aide-de-camp
embracing him, “the Emperor was overwhelmed when he heard of your gallantry,
and has promoted you on the field of battle to the rank of general.”
Clement rubbed his eyes, got off the table,
clapped the top of his skull on his head and was about to leave the farm, when
Larrey shouted after him: “Mon general – you brains!”
To which the gallant Frenchman, increasing
his speed, shouted back: “Now that I am a general I shall no longer require
them!”
In this modest study my object is to prove, that
though Clement was wrong about his brains, without his courage there can be no
true generalship.
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