Nation Revisited
#
77, March 2011
Setting
an example
We never know the influence that we have on others. Every
human contact makes an impression without us necessarily knowing anything about
it. The way that we talk and conduct ourselves is therefore important because
people are impressed by good behaviour and disgusted by loutishness.
We should set an example by not behaving in a crass or
thoughtless way. Most people are embarrassed by racial or religious confrontations.
Calling immigrants offensive names often damages the abuser more than the
abused.
Immigration is about race and culture but it’s also about
politics and economics. Britain is an average sized European country with 62
million people and rising unemployment. We need to reduce immigration but the
Maastricht Treaty of 1992 guarantees access to EU citizens. Therefore we can
only control non-European immigration. There is nothing racist or illegal about
that. We cannot be prosecuted by the state for discussing economics.
Zionism is not so easy. The most restrained criticism of
Israel is shouted down as ‘anti-Semitism’. Even Jewish campaigners for justice
in Palestine are accused of it. Israel
is the only state in the world founded on racism and sustained by American
foreign aid. Israel will fall as soon as the USA cuts off funding. That day
will surely come, but meanwhile we must support UN Resolution 242 and refuse to
be bullied by the Zionists. The old order is collapsing in the Middle East and
the compliance of the Arab states is no longer guaranteed.
The poor general election results of the far-right show
that they will never come to power in Britain. We are stuck with the old gang
parties that are owned by big business and committed to free trade and open
borders. But they depend on the votes of the people and can be influenced by pressure
groups. Ben Page of Ipsos MORI said: “For the first time we are now seeing a
rise in people saying immigration is not just a problem nationally, but
specifically in their own local areas.”
Immigration was used by the Labour government to change
the racial makeup of Britain. 80% of the 5.5 million immigrants that flooded in
under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were from the Third World (Daily Telegraph
22-02-11). In 2009 Andrew Neather a
former adviser to Tony Blair admitted that their policy was to: “rub the
Right’s nose in diversity.” The present
government has appointed Damian Green to control immigration but we must keep
up the pressure. Three out of every four Britons are worried about immigration but
only 5 – 10% of them are prepared to vote against it; a figure that has been
consistent over the past fifty years despite the rise and fall of far-right parties.
We need to explain the reasons for immigration and the
benefits of stopping and reversing it. The majority of British people are
opposed to immigration but they do not show it at the ballot box. We have tried
the direct approach with limited success. Nowadays we have to moderate our
approach to stay within the law, but there’s nothing to stop us campaigning
against non-EU immigration, especially at a time or rising unemployment.
Governments all over Europe have already started to listen to public opinion.
Skidelski
on Mosley
Political correctness can only thrive if those who
influence public opinion go along with it. Most writers and opinion makers are
frightened to make a stand against the pernicious culture of self-censorship
but a few brave men and women have refused to be intimidated. Thirty years ago
the historian Robert Skidelski defended his biography of Oswald Mosley and
rejected claims by Vernon Bogdanor that he had been too sympathetic.
...I
would still defend this biographical bias as a contribution to historical
truth. The trouble is that most previous writing about Mosley, especially the
fascist Mosley, had been from the prosecution point of view. This led to some
very biased history. For example, even a historian so much on his guard against
fashionable orthodoxies as AJP Taylor could write that in the 1930s the BUF
‘relied on marches and violence, not on speeches.’ This is simply not true. I
calculated that in the first four years of fascism – before his outlets began
to dry up – Mosley made over a hundred speeches a year. Yet from some accounts
one would gather that he made token appearances on the platform merely to give
his stewards an excuse for beating up opponents.
Bogdanor
is shocked that I wrote of blackshirts that they ‘acquitted themselves with
aplomb in many difficult situations, and often with conspicuous courage.’ He
does not quote the context of the remark: ‘Nor is it fair to brand the
blackshirts indiscriminately as thugs, sadists and bullies.’ What I was
objecting to was the unthinking label ‘Mosley’s thugs’ – a phrase which
reappeared in some of the very reviews which accused me of bias. There were
thugs and bullies; but an even handed approach would also recognise that
violence sometimes occurred under conditions of great stress.
Bias
may thus have its uses as a corrective. History is usually written against a
background of previous argument. A revisionist view is bound to contain
counter-argument. Those who demand, as Bogdanor does, a ‘rounded view’ of
reality within the confines of a single book ignore the previous background and
the fact that it is through the process of argument between different
historians that contentious issues get clarified. Even if I plead too much on
Mosley’s behalf in the 1930s, I would still defend the method as a contribution
to the truth, against the background of what had previously been written.
(British Fascism, K Lunn and R Thurlow 1980)
Robert Skidelski is one of the few historians to have
avoided ‘fashionable orthodoxies.’ The BUF has been demonised by generations of
politically correct pseudo-historians who have rewritten history to suit their
prejudices. The ridiculous idea that Mosley held vast public meetings in order
to beat up his audience is generally accepted. And the mythical Battle of Cable
Street is commemorated by the local council. In fact, the only battle was
between a screaming Red mob and the police. Mosley obeyed police instructions
and diverted the march away from Cable Street in order to avoid violence. But
the left wing version of events is taught in schools, just as the myth of
German responsibility for the Katyn Forest Massacre was taught in the Soviet
Union.
Now that Mosley’s predictions about the failure of global
capitalism have come to pass it’s time to re-examine his policies. He advocated
a self-contained British Empire before the war and a self-contained European
Union after the war. He also predicted the rise of Asia and the destruction of
British industry. Robert Skidelski’s other great biography was of John Maynard
Keynes, the advocate of state intervention. He has been out of favour since
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher adopted the gospel of free trade. We were
told that the market would sort itself out if only we let it. But deregulation
resulted in the current economic crisis. Keynes has now been vindicated; Mosley
will surely follow.
Imperium
Europa
Congratulations to Norman Lowell on the seventh
anniversary of the Maltese pan-European movement Imperium Europa. Videos of
speeches commemorating the occasion can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVbdu0Bky78
In her opening speech Etoile Noir reminds the
audience that they cannot “go to sleep” just because the influx of African
illegal immigrants to Malta has stopped. They still have thousands of
unemployed Africans who need to be repatriated. She goes on to call for
European solidarity and denounces tribal attitudes that seek to divide us. She
reminds us that we are all Europeans who share the same civilisation and face
the same problems.
Norman Lowell starts his speech in English by
welcoming visitors from the UK and giving an update on his latest appeal
against a two year prison sentence for contravening Malta’s race laws. His
final appeal will be heard on the 28th February. He then switches to
the Maltese language.
The African invasion of Europe from Libya was
stopped by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. In return for Italian ‘reparations’ of $5
billion he agreed to intercept sub-Saharan refugees before they reached the
Mediterranean. Gaddafi was welcomed back to the fold by Tony Blair’s infamous
“deal in the desert” of 2004. But the old revolutionary is now fighting a civil
war and refugees are fleeing to Malta and Lampedusa. Italian foreign minister
Franco Frattini has warned of a new influx of 300,000 refugees and called for a
united European response.
Now that Spain is controlling immigration from
Morocco and Greece is building a wall to stop Asians - mostly Bangladeshis - from
crossing the Turkish border, Heathrow Airport is the main entry point for Third
World immigrants to Europe.
Rising food prices are contributing to unrest
throughout the Third World. As food gets dearer economic refugees will be even
more desperate to get into Europe. A prosperous Europe would be able to donate
surpluses to those in need but a bankrupt and overrun Europe would be in no
position to help. It’s in everybody’s interest to stop the influx and help
those living in appalling conditions to go home. Recent speeches by Angela
Merkel, Dave Cameron and Nicolas Sarkosy suggest that they have started to take
immigration seriously.
Manipulating
the market
We often hear that banks create money out of nothing with
the click of a mouse. But if it was really that easy we wouldn’t have a
financial crisis. We could simply issue more money by clicking a few more
times. The Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve have only resorted to ‘quantitative
easing’ as an emergency measure. It’s like having an advance on your salary,
but if they did it as a matter of course the pound and the dollar would quickly
depreciate and oblige them to issue more money to pay for imports. This is what
destroyed the Zimbabwe dollar.
Devaluation makes our exports more competitive but it
raises the cost of imports. UK inflation has risen as a direct result of the
pound falling 20% against the dollar. The old trick of using interest rates to
influence exchange rates no longer works because the pound is not nearly as
important as the dollar or the euro. The US dollar accounts for 60% of the
world’s currency reserves; the euro is at 30%, and Britain, Japan, Canada and
Switzerland share the remaining 10%.
Britain and America have little control over currency
fluctuations but China can call the tune because her economy is growing by 10%
per annum and she has foreign currency reserves of $2.85 trillion – mostly in
US Treasury Bonds. The yuan was un-pegged from the dollar in 2005 but the
People’s Bank of China is manipulating the market. President Barack Obama has
protested to President Hu Jintao but it’s difficult to threaten a country
that’s lending you the money to stay afloat.
There has been speculation about a return to the Gold
Standard. Britain left it in 1944 when the Bretton Woods Agreement pegged the
pound to the dollar. That lasted until 1971 when the US abandoned the Gold
Standard in the wake of Vietnam. There might have been enough gold in the world
to back currencies in the early 20th century but there certainly isn’t today.
The idea is a non starter.
Western countries with high living standards, social
security systems and health and safety regulations cannot compete with the
regimented labour of China. However much we automate and rationalise we will
never match their low production costs. Modern methods and machinery mean that
there is no difference in quality between Europe and Asia but there’s a huge
difference in wages.
The answer is to disengage from world trade as far as
possible. Britain is not self-sufficient because we import nearly half of our
food, gas and oil. But together with mainland Europe and Russia we could be.
The model for such a union is the United States of America with fifty self-governing
states under a federal government in Washington. The individual states have
their own parliaments and judiciaries but they are united by one currency, one
army and one president.
Our island nation is reluctant to accept a federal
solution but it’s the only way to preserve our European identity. We haven’t
grown enough food to feed ourselves since the 18th century. We could
probably grow more crops but we would still be short of gas and oil. We must
decide if we want to be equal partners in the European Union – the world’s
largest trading bloc - or survive as an American dependency or as subjects of
the Celestial Empire. Staying on our own is no longer an option.
The
lesson of history
The great Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana
said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The
various nationalist parties in the European Parliament should heed his words or
their attempts at unity will be undone by the very nationalism that they
expound.
The chance of pre-war European unity was wrecked by
nationalism. The Germans and Italians sponsored fascist movements throughout
Europe but in support of imperial ambitions National Socialist Germany invaded
her neighbours Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland and Fascist Italy invaded her
neighbours Albania and Greece. All of these states had likeminded
anti-communist governments; in fact Austria and Greece had proper fascist
regimes, but their shared ideology did not save them from invasion.
General Francisco Franco established Nationalist Spain
with Italian and German help, but when Hitler wanted to bomb British
installations in Gibraltar from Algeciras El Jefe refused. It was the same with
Marshall Carl Gustav Mannerheim of Finland. He was glad of German aid in the
war with the Soviet Union but refused to help Hitler attack Leningrad. And
while the soldiers of Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria fought for the Axis their
governments were preoccupied with territorial disputes.
The Waffen SS started out as an elite German formation
but by 1941 the Nazis were recruiting from all over Europe and beyond. By the
end of the war the Waffen SS was 60% non-German. And when the Red Army stormed
the Fuhrebunker the last troops standing were remnants of the French SS
Division Charlemagne led by Unterscharfuhrer (sergeant) Eugene Vaulot. Against
impossible odds they held out until 2nd May 1945 to prevent the
Soviets from taking the bunker on May Day.
But the Nazis learned their lesson too late and Europe
was humiliated and divided between America and Russia. A united Europe could
have banished plutocracy and communism 70 years ago. Instead we clung to the
illusion of national independence and suffered the bloodbath of World War II
followed by half a century of occupation.
But nothing lasts forever; communism has collapsed in Russia, capitalism
is in crisis in America, and Europe is moving towards unity. This time we must
ensure that petty nationalism is supplanted by the greater patriotism of
Europe.
It’s right and natural to take pride in one’s own country
and its achievements. We all shout for our own team but when healthy enthusiasm
turns to fanaticism it becomes self-destructive. Then the half-witted jingoism
of the popular press turns into the madness of xenophobia. We must learn from
the mistakes of the past. We are Europeans by blood, language and civilisation.
We have wasted centuries fighting amongst ourselves but it’s never too late to
embrace our common heritage.
The Third World population explosion leaves us no
alternative but political and economic union. We can only survive by standing
together. Europe allied with Russia would have the technology, the resources
and the manpower to be self-sufficient. All that we need is solidarity and
faith in the future.
The
end of politics
Parliamentary democracy evolved to represent the rigid
class system of the last century. But times have changed and the political
parties have been taken over by big business. The great international
corporations exert enormous influence over governments. They turn over more money
than many nation states and their bosses wield greater power than most prime
ministers or presidents. When Barack Obama threatened BP over the Gulf of
Mexico disaster all they did was to replace their top man in the USA and carry
on as normal. They paid for the clean-up but they are still operating in the
USA.
The top ten world corporations are; Shell (Netherlands),
Exxon (USA). Wal-Mart (USA), BP (UK), Chevron (USA), Total (France), Conoco
Phillips (USA), ING Group (Netherlands), Sinopec (China), Toyota (Japan). Data
from www.chacha.com
Governments depend on taxes from the giant corporations
to stay in power. Political and economic policies are implemented by elected
politicians but decided by boards of directors, often sitting thousands of
miles away. Whatever party comes to power it depends on big business.
Governments could assert their independence but none in modern times has dared
to. Britain’s last Labour government was put in power by Rupert Murdoch but
when it started to go off course under Gordon Brown it was dropped and Dave
Cameron was put in power.
All attempts to destroy capitalism have failed. The
French Revolution started by executing a king and ended by crowning an Emperor.
The Russian Revolution was hijacked by the middle classes and National
Socialism led to world war. The last attempt was Mao Zedong’s Cultural
Revolution of 1966 when his Red Guards tried to install communism in China. But
instead of building a socialist state they founded a formidable capitalist
superpower. We can’t destroy capitalism but we can control it. The great
international corporations do not seek confrontation with nation states; they
prefer to work with them. This cooperation can be the basis of a future system
of government that recognises the realities of world power. Labour and capital
need each other and both deserve representation. A government drawn from the
military, the universities, the trade unions and industry would make more sense
than one comprised of professional politicians with no work experience.
Politicians used to come from working backgrounds. They
were bankers, brokers, lawyers, industrialists and trade unionists; people that
understood commerce and industry. But now MPs come straight from university
with no experience of earning a living in the real world. They cannot
understand the problems of working people. It’s time to make a bonfire of party
politics and install a representative government. In the Internet Age we don’t
have to cram 650 unemployables into a Victorian building and then march them in
and out of lobbies to be counted. This antiquated system is no longer fit for
purpose and should be done away with as soon as possible. We deserve better
representation and an efficient system of government.
Gallows
Humour
William Joyce was born in New York to an Irish father and
an English mother in 1906. He grew up and was educated in Galway and only came
to England as a young man. He was a naturalised German citizen but nevertheless
he was charged with ‘high treason’ for broadcasting wartime propaganda from
Hamburg. He was hanged in January 1946.
The following extract is taken from Hitler’s Englishman
by Francis Selwyn, published in 1987 by Routledge & Kegan Paul.
When
Head, his solicitor, visited him in Brixton one day, Joyce was suddenly struck
by the thought that he might find himself tried before a predominately Jewish
jury. Head assured him that his counsel would have the right to challenge
jurors, if he thought they were Jewish. “How does one know them?” Joyce asked.
“Oh,” said Head. “When they take the oath they put on a hat, or put their hand
on their head.” A glint of amusement
appeared in the prisoners eyes. “Well,” he said, “if six of them do it,
wouldn’t it be a good idea if I took the oath the same way?”
Nation Revisited Interview
I asked people who support the concept of European unity
the following questions. Here is Robert Edwards, a former member of Sir Oswald
Mosley’s Union Movement.
Who
are you?
Robert Edwards. I am the co-ordinator of European Action
and the editor of its paper, European
Socialist Action.
What
do you believe in?
I believe in social justice and the liberation of all
peoples from the grip of international (globalist) finance. I believe in
cultural integrity and the right of people to preserve those cultures free from
interference from outside. I oppose all ideas based on racial supremacy. I also
oppose the persecution of peoples based on religion. All have a right to
worship anywhere and anyway they chose, whether in church, synagogue or mosque.
There is no such thing as a ‘British’ religion. Right-wing reactionaries who
exploit ‘Islamophobia’ do so because they are bereft of any constructive ideas.
Besides, it is largely dishonest because their true motive is essentially racial
but they are too gutless to admit this.
This liberation of all peoples, I believe, can only come
about through the entire world being organised along the lines of continental
systems, with their own governments and with their own self-sufficient and independent
economies, free from the current international trading system. Mosley’s concept
of Europe a Nation should be adopted as a blue-print and the model for other
areas of the world. Only systems large enough can be truly independent and
self-sufficient. Smaller nations, as currently constituted, will always remain
dependent on a larger power. Better to be part of a greater union in equal
partnership. Union is strength.
I believe in European Socialism, a system based on
syndicalism or workers’ ownership. I also believe the people should own the
means of production, distribution and exchange. I oppose free market economics
and the idea of international competition. The living standards of our own
people must always come first and that is why we should have our own European
trading area for a thriving home market. Bring an end to the import of cheap
goods from low-wage Eastern economies which undercuts the European worker and
keeps our wages low as a consequence. European manufacturing for European consumption
only. Organise and lead within our own area! It can be done. All that is needed
is the will.
I believe in the complete union of Europe as a single
system with its own government, its own military defence force and a single
currency and economy. The regions of Europe should retain regional customs and
local laws best suited to them. However, I reject this watered-down nonsense of
‘confederation’ which is not union at all but a set of loose alliances for the
purpose of limited co-operation. Some bourgeois petty nationalists are trying
to push this confederation idea while retaining their nationalistic narrow
world view, hanging on to out-dated illusionary ideas of sovereignty. Ten
pygmies do not make a giant and ten separate nation-states would always remain
essentially divided. Nationalism should be consigned to the dustbin of history
as an anachronism with nothing to offer the people. The age of the nation-state
is over ... now comes the age of great continental systems.
What
are you proud of and what do you regret?
I am proud of having been a member of Oswald Mosley’s
Union Movement and of being, at one time, UM’s West London Area Organiser. I
regret nothing. To regret is pointless. To learn from one’s mistakes is far
more important.
How
would you like to be remembered?
As a notorious cartoonist. What else?
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