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of frontiers.
Nation
Revisited
# 67 May 2010.
Decision time
The general election is upon us and it’s time to decide
who to vote for. The television debates with the leaders of the main parties
showed that there is very little difference between them on the major issues.
They agree that we must reduce our staggering deficit but
differ on details and timing. The Tories and the Liberal Democrats would cut
spending immediately but the Labour Party would rely on higher taxes.
The Labour Party promises to reduce immigration but
refuse to set a limit. The Tories want to set a limit but will not say what it
is. And the Liberal Democrats want to reduce immigration but will not set a
limit and plan an amnesty for illegal immigrants.
They all want to keep our troops in Afghanistan and support
American foreign policy in the Middle East. But the Liberal Democrats have
broken ranks on defence by questioning the £100 billion replacement of Trident.
The main parties have hardly mentioned Europe but the
Tories might yet make an issue of it. The Euro-sceptics blame almost everything
on the European Union but if we quit the EU we would return to the dark days of
1973 when a ‘free and independent’ UK enjoyed mass immigration, high
unemployment, rampant inflation, a weak currency and a crippling budget
deficit.
We know that we cannot spend more than we earn yet we
support parties committed to doing so. We think that good intentions can
overcome mathematics and that rhetoric will banish reality. So we put our trust
in wishful thinking and vote for impossible policies from snake-oil salesmen
who radiate insincerity.
The polls are now predicting a hung parliament but that
does not mean that the lampposts of Westminster will groan under the weight of
the hundreds of cheats and liars that infest the Houses of Parliament. This may
sound harsh but many men have been hanged for lesser crimes than those
committed by our parliamentary representatives. And thousands of servicemen
have been sent to their deaths in pointless foreign wars.
The Labour and Tory parties have had an equal share of
power since the war. They have both helped to turn Britain into a near bankrupt
dumping ground for the world’s surplus population. Both parties pretend to be
patriots as they close down our industries and award contracts to our
competitors. And both of them are steeped in corruption and mendacity.
Elections are always held on a Thursday in the UK. This
is because people used to get paid on Friday, so they would probably be sober
on Thursday. But you would need to be drunk to vote for some of these
charlatans. Voting gives them a credibility that they do not deserve and
encourages them to greater crimes. Instead of taking part in a futile headcount
it would make more sense to stay at home on election night and watch The
Simpsons.
Ask the people
Political pressure groups claim that their policies are
the will of the people. This makes them democratic and therefore acceptable. We
have heard these arguments about capital punishment, nuclear disarmament,
Europe, immigration and many other issues. We are told that a referendum would
show peoples true feelings. But if the people are so against these issues why it
is not reflected in the polls? According to the UK Independence Party Forum they
only attract 4% of the popular vote.
It’s the same with immigration. The general perception is
that everybody is sick of it and would support a total ban on further
immigration. But when asked only 18% of people say that immigration is their
major concern. (The Times 08-04-10)
It may be that the pollsters are asking the wrong
questions. Or that people are so confused that they don’t know what they want.
The democratic process does not necessarily produce representative government
when the people vote for the best looking candidate.
It’s unfashionable to say that people need leadership and
guidance. But some of their decisions are hard to understand. In 1979 they
elected Margaret Thatcher by a landslide and in 1997 they returned Tony Blair
by another huge majority. Maggie started the collapse of our financial system
by demutualising the Building Societies and Tony Blair completed the process by
deregulating the banks. They were both lazier faire capitalists opposed to
state intervention and dedicated to free markets and open borders.
Today the British people are suffering from the same
amnesia that affected the Germans after the war. None of them would admit to
supporting Adolf Hitler but he won the 1933 general election by a country mile
and he was mobbed by adoring crowds wherever he went. Now it’s hard to find
anyone who voted for Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair but statistics show that
they did - on several occasions.
If we are to take democracy seriously we should use the
latest technology to find out what people want. We should list the top ten
electoral issues and use touch-screen computers to record people’s priorities.
The results would be instant and the government would find it hard to go
against them. It’s likely that most people would vote for lower taxation and
increased state spending. We might end up in an authoritarian republic with
capital punishment and strict censorship. Or we could be plunged into total
anarchy with the pubs open night and day and legalised drugs sold over the
counter. It would depend on what questions were asked and the mood of the
people.
Redundant politics
Political movements are described as left and right but
it’s not clear what these terms mean.
There are plenty of so-called rightists who believe in socialism and
have no time for the monarchy. And there are leftists who share the
Euro-scepticism of Rupert Murdoch and the far right. The Labour party started
out as a working class movement but it is now to the right of the Tory Party.
But the Tory Party that always stood for the status quo is pledged to
redistribute wealth through taxation.
Political opinions go round in circles; if you keep going
right you end up on the left. Fascists and communists both believe in strong
central government, positive leadership and a planned economy. There wasn’t
much difference between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Once Stalin
annihilated the internationalists led by Leon Trotsky he ruled like a Tsar and
invoked Russian patriotism to resist the invaders. Both regimes relied on brute
strength and institutionalised nationalism.
The doomed Italian Social Republic was what fascism
should have been. As the Allies fought
their way up the Italian peninsular in 1943 Mussolini set up a new republic
based on industrial partnership. The RSI issued a decree to turn all companies
with a hundred employees or more into co-operatives. Il Duce said: “We do not
want state Socialism, the worst of the tyrannies which Capitalism can invent.
We want to continue the revolution, to reach out to the people with real facts
and not idle chat, for a higher social justice.”
Even his previous monarchist regime had done much for the
working class. In 1941 the exiled Italian communist leader Palmiro Togliatti
told the Comintern: “We must accept that the elements of strength in Fascism do
not lie only in violence and in the apparat. This dictatorship has done
something – not just by means of violence. It has done something even for the
workers and the young. We cannot deny that the introduction of social security
is a fact.” (Nicholas Farrell, Mussolini, 2003)
The designations left and right have been overtaken by changing
social and economic patterns. The old gang parties no longer represent the
class interests that they were designed for. They are now simply agents of big
business.
The most efficient countries enjoy a decent standard of
living and the least efficient struggle to survive. This depends on levels of
education, social mobility, industrial infrastructure, communications and the
availability of natural resources. It has nothing to do with the political
complexion of the government in power.
The United Kingdom led the developed nations in
abandoning manufacturing industry in favour of an economy based on financial
services and cheap imports. We rely on the rest of the world to make the things
that we need and to grow 40% of the food we eat. But now we are running out of
credit to buy imports and customers to provide services for.
At some point the present system will collapse under the
sheer weight of debt. Our political system is past its sell by date and we will
soon realise that our economic system is just as worn out. We must start
thinking about an entirely new system of representation and a self contained
economy that does not depend on deficit spending and cheap labour.
The
Problem of Power
The Labour government has enacted new laws to restrict
freedom of speech. They talk about open government but they have abused power
for their own ends and turned the police force into an instrument of state
oppression. It is interesting to read what Sir Oswald Mosley said on the
subject of power. He was interned in 1940, together with 1,600 others, for
daring to oppose the war. The state abused its power to silence its critics. It
locked up the Blackshirts without charge or trial and it still uses repression
and intimidation in defence of so-called democracy.
The following is taken from Mosley’s booklet Government of Tomorrow published in
1955. Available from European Action
- webmaster@europeanaction.com
The legitimate use of power
There is a fundamental distinction between the abuse of
power to infringe individual liberty and the use of power to implement the
people’s will; yet abuse and use are often confused. The old liberal clichés
concerning the corruption of power can be extended from a just indictment of
tyranny to a thesis so unreasonable that it causes the paralysis of the state;
all power, even for the most beneficial ends, can become suspect. Yet without
power the modern state cannot survive, and, a fortiori, any ordered movement to any higher form of existence
cannot occur.
It is too late to speculate on how agreeable the world
might be without power, things have gone too far. There was something to be
said for the philosophy of Ghandi, if you were prepared to live like Ghandi. A
world in which men were ready to live on a bowl of rice, or a few home-grown
vegetables, with a spinning wheel for home-made clothes, without heat, light or
communications more complex than the product of individual effort, could purchase
the freedom of anarchy at the expense of an extreme simplicity of life. But men
are not prepared so to live, and, in any case, there are now too m any of them
in the world to make the experiment practical. So power has to be entrusted to
some men, somewhere, on some conditions, or life comes to an end.
There is much to be said for never leaving the ground in
an aeroplane and at a height of ten thousand feet, deciding to strap up the
pilot and leave the aeroplane to fly and land itself. It is unwise to do it
even if you think the pilot is being too authoritative, even if you have clear
reason to believe he is not very competent, even if you can cite numerous cases
of pilots crashing aeroplanes and killing the occupants: when all this is said
and proved, you will still have a better chance to land safely if the pilot’s
hands are free than if he is tied up. Once you are down again you can change
him, if you wish (and you would be well advised, after some bad experience, to
see that pilots in future are properly trained for their work), but, when all
is said and done, the fact remains that a machine so modern and so complex as
an aeroplane cannot be flown without a pilot.
You have to recognise that fact or spend the rest of your life on the
ground.
The lesson in terms of modern society is that we cannot
get rid of power: the most we can hope is to make men fit for power, a problem
with which Plato was so gravely, and still helpfully, exercised, so long ago.
It should be possible for the world of the future to ensure that men are
properly trained for power: to define with more precision the terms within
which power may be employed, and to devise more effective machinery both for
its exercise and its check. This essay is a preliminary attempt, in a new age
of new facts, to provide a basis for the discussion of such a system.
NF Policy
The National Front is calling for a homeland for the
seven million whites spread throughout black Africa (NF News 27-02-10). They want
to incorporate the new state into a resurrected Commonwealth with Australia,
New Zealand, Canada, the Falklands, Gibraltar and the UK. They will also
consider joining the European Free Trade Association as an alternative to the European
Union. This is blue sky thinking on a grand scale but the following points
should be considered.
Apart from the Afrikaners the whites in Africa owe allegiance
to their European homelands; even the Portuguese who have been there for 500
years. It would take a leap of faith for them to unite as one nation. It’s ironic
that the NF are prepared to embrace French, Belgian, Portuguese, German and
Dutch people in Africa when they refuse
to unite with them in Europe.
EFTA is not an alternative to the EU but a group of
affiliated states that belong to the Schengen Agreement and conform to EU laws
and specifications. The only difference is that the EFTA states have no say in
the way that Europe is run.
Since 1994 Canada has been tied to the United States and
Mexico by the North American Free Trade Agreement. New Zealand is about to join
Australia in a Pacific federation that will depend on Asian trade. South Africa
is unlikely to give the Zulu homeland KwaZulu-Natal to the whites; and even if
they did the Afrikaners would never accept membership of a resurrected British
Commonwealth. Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands are military dependencies with
tiny populations. The Falklands have just over 3,000 people, mostly of British
descent, and Gibraltar has a population of 29,000, mostly of Spanish, Italian
and Maltese ancestry.
The creation of a white state in Africa would be a major
project requiring international agreement and funding. It would probably be
easier to swap Africa’s whites for our blacks. An equitable humanitarian solution
spaced over a generation and justified by the slogan “Africa for the Africans
and Europe for the Europeans.”
It would stop the slaughter of whites in South Africa,
The Afrikaner resistance leader Eugene Terre Blanche was one of 3,100 farmers
murdered since the start of black rule. South Africa is going the same way as
Zimbabwe as falling living standards provoke more racial violence.
The return of black migrants to Africa and white settlers
to Europe would ultimately benefit both continents. Africa would regain its
skilled workers and we would welcome home seven million hard working
ex-colonials. In an age of mass migration air travel makes it possible for
millions of people to move around the world. A selective population exchange
between Europe and Africa would not only be possible but economically
beneficial. It would be an admission of defeat for the multiracial dreamers but
a triumph of commonsense for the rest of us.
The National Front policy is a wish list inspired by
patriotism but noble sentiments will not save us. As the world’s population grows to nine
billions we will run out of food, water and raw materials. We will face
demographic and economic problems that cannot be solved by imperial
arrangements from the last century. A resurrected Commonwealth is not going to
happen. Our only hope is to forge the nations of Europe into a self sufficient
fortress that can defend its borders against the teeming masses of the Third World.
It’s time for those who value our culture and traditions
to grasp reality. After nearly forty years in Europe we are still British, the
French are still French and the Germans are still German. Nobody has lost their
nationality because of the European Union. The EU is still a squabbling
collection of nation states but it can be reformed and big business can be
restrained. These problems can be overcome but the enduring threats to our
survival are unlimited Third World immigration and our slavish adherence to
American foreign policy.
The failed revolutionary
This will be the first election for many years in which
Margaret Thatcher has not played a prominent part. She was not a traditional
Tory but a revolutionary who believed passionately in private enterprise. She
saw Britain’s role as a close ally of the United States helping to enforce the
free market economy on a grateful world.
She was a patriot who liked to be photographed with her
troops surrounded by flags and bunting. But her vision of Britain was a dated
middle class image of a lost empire. She was right to respond to the Argentine
invasion of British territory but she led the Falklands campaign with callous
enthusiasm and rejoiced at the deaths of her enemies.
She believed that everybody should own property and did
not believe in social housing. So she put the nation at the mercy of the banks
and let the economy sort itself out. According to her guru Milton Friedman non
intervention was the way to run a modern economy. But the result was widespread
bankruptcy.
She used industrial unrest to smash the trade unions and
close down subsidised industries. Only the balance sheet mattered. Unprofitable
pits were closed down regardless of the social consequences. But she thrived on
popularity and couldn’t understand it when the people turned against her.
She supported the Common Market because she thought that
it was simply a customs union. When she discovered that it was designed to
bring about European federation she tried to wreck the whole project.
To Maggie everything was black or white; Russia was bad
and America was good, trade unions were bad and bosses were good, the state was
bad and big business was good. A mantra of half understood economic slogans
repeated to absurdity. By the time she was sacked by her own party the aspiring
working class who had deserted the Labour Party to support her were unemployed
and their semi-detached houses were repossessed.
People fondly remember the Falklands victory but they
have forgotten the Miner’s Strike when squads of paramilitary police battered
working men who were only trying to defend their jobs. And they have forgotten
about the ill-conceived poll tax and the obnoxious ‘loads of money” culture
that elevated street corner hustlers to high office. Tories unimpressed by Dave
Cameron are now wishing that Margaret Thatcher would come back to save us.
Sadly she is now afflicted with dementia and cannot
comment on current affairs. But she would probably defend the bankers who lost
our pension funds and sold us worthless sub-prime mortgages packaged as investments.
She started the free-for-all that almost destroyed the banking industry in the
naive belief that private capital always knows best. But thirty years later even
President Obama is enforcing stricter regulations. Her epitaph should read:
“Here lies a failed revolutionary.”
Hannan’s history lesson
Daniel
Hannan writing in The Daily Telegraph
(10-09-09) reminded us that European Union was first proposed by fascist and
national socialist politicians. World War Two delayed the project but progress
towards political and economic union started as soon as the guns fell silent.
Hitler
said in Nuremberg in 1937: “We are most interested in United Europe as a
coordinated family of nations, instead of any state as such.”
In 1942
Berlin hosted a big conference with the theme “Europaishe Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft”
or “European Economic Union.” The conclusion of the conference was: “A single
European market with the Reichmark as the reference currency.”
“Technology
of transport and telecommunications reduce distances among people (countries)
and that will inevitably bring European integration, great German Reich will
reorganize Europe, bring down borders which still separate European people and enable
them to live together with ease; in 50 years people will stop thinking about
nations” said Goebbels in 1940.”
Alberto
de Stefani (Mussolini’s finance minister 1922-25) said in 1941: “Nations cannot
be a good base for making of the new order, because of their variety and
traditional differences, and European Union would not be subject to the
oscillations of internal politics which characterize the liberal regimes.”
Hannan
attacks the EU because Oswald Mosley supported it. He also supported health
care, social housing, education, full employment and equal opportunities but
Hannan wasn’t objecting to those things – at least not in this article. He was
upset because pro-Europeans constantly point out that some of his allies have
less than spotless democratic credentials. He was attempting to show that
pro-Europeans have just as many fascists as his own side.
Daniel
Hannan MEP is a Peruvian born Briton of Irish ancestry who believes in
‘national independence.’ In October 2004 he wrote in The Spectator: “For 70 years the Althing (Icelandic Parliament) has
been dominated by the splendidly named Independence Party, which has pursued
the kind of Thatcherite agenda that is off limits to EU members. Icelanders
have no more desire to submit to international than to national regulations.
That attitude has made them the happiest, freest and wealthiest people on
earth. Long may they remain so.”
Since he
wrote that glowing tribute almost everything has gone wrong with Iceland. The Krona
has lost two thirds of its value, the ‘wealthiest people on earth’ have gone
back to fishing and their volcanoes have started to blow. They have long been
in EFTA but they have now applied to join the EU. The Icelandic economic
collapse was caused by creative accounting and blind optimism. Greece has now
gone the same way for the same reasons. Both nations crashed because they were
small states living beyond their means. The USA and the UK are also living on
credit but they are major economies that are thought to be too big to fail.
Let’s hope that the investors are right.
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