Once again free speech is being restricted by anti-terrorist legislation. This happened in 1940 when Defence Regulation 18B was used to detain Oswald Mosley and a thousand of his followers. The Act had been introduced to control the IRA but it was used against peace campaigners. Dangerous extremists should be locked up but law-abiding groups should be free to express their opinions. Transgressors are liable to prosecution, so be careful what you write or say.
In 1965 Colin Jordan was sentenced to eighteen months in prison for publishing a leaflet entitled 'The Coloured Invasion'. He was the first to be prosecuted under the new Race Relations Act. At that time Special Branch were scrutinizing everything produced by the so called far-Right and several people were threatened with prosecution. Bill Whitbread of the Trade Union Anti-Immigration Movement (Tru Aim) got over the problem by publishing a leaflet made up entirely of press cuttings. He could not be prosecuted for reproducing reports from the national press.
In those days Special Branch officers took shorthand notes at street corner meetings. Every word from the platform was dutifully written down. I once brought a smile to the face of a Special Branch officer at a meeting in Bethnal Green by claiming that West Indians are pouring into the country and committing, "rape, arson and buggery." Today, that would probably get one arrested.
The powerful Zionist lobby links any criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. They are hounding Jeremy Corbyn and they had Jez Turner imprisoned for commemorating a Stern Gang atrocity. Their arrogance is intolerable but there's no point in provoking them. Far better to chose one's words carefully and remain at liberty.
The 'National Action' case is another matter. Since the murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox, threats must be taken seriously. The State was right to lock up Jack Renshaw for threatening to kill Labour MP Rosie Cooper. It's unlikely that he would have carried out his threat but his drunken boasting has earned him a life sentence.
Just as stupid was the photofit picture of Prince Harry posted by Michal Szewczuk, which got him four years in prison, and the threatening blog posted by Oskar Dunn-Kaczorowski, for which he was sentenced to eighteen months.
Words and actions have consequences. When somebody threw a milkshake at Nigel Farage, the 'entertainer' Jo Brand said that it should have been battery acid, She is a former psychiatric nurse, a medical professional who has promised, "to do no harm.".She is lucky that the police have decided not to prosecute. If she had been a member of National Action she would now be doing a life sentence.
European Army
The idea of a European Army is anathema to the Brexiteers but it makes sense. If the leading nations of Europe pooled their resources we could have an army of half a million men at no additional cost to any member state. NATO is a European army with the addition of Canada and the United States. By having common arms, ammunition and command structures, the nations of the alliance are able to fight together. All that would be necessary to create a European Army would be for the US and Canada to withdraw from NATO. This would not be a hostile departure, 75 years after World War Two, many Americans, including President Donald Trump, think it's time for Europe to defend herself.
A start has already been made with the Franco-German Brigade, known as Eurocorps, which is stationed at Strasbourg. This is the latest in a long list European Armies.
The Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 at the head of an army known as the Seventh Coalition. This was drawn from the whole of Europe with the exception of the Kingdom of Naples.
The Axis was an alliance of states with Nazi Germany. The Warsaw Pact was an alliance of Eastern European states with the Soviet Union. And NATO is an alliance of states with the United States.
At the Battle of Stalingrad (1942-43) the Red Army, comprised of Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs etc, destroyed the 6th German Army, two Romanian armies, one Croatian regiment, the Hungarian 2nd Army, and the Italian 8th Army. 800,000 Axis soldiers and over a million Red Army soldiers died in the snow.
A modern European defence force would not face such problems. In fact, there is no reason why Russia should be our enemy. With massive reserves of gas and oil Russia is the natural ally of industrial Europe.The great threat in the future will be waves of economic migrants from Africa and Asia. This is a common European problem requiring a united response.
The WTO and the IMF
The Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944 established the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC. It tied the major currencies of the world to the US dollar, which was based on gold. And it gave loans to the shattered nations, including the UK which received $4.4 billion. This system backed the economies of the West until 1972 when America ran out of money fighting the Vietnam War and coping with the Middle East oil crisis. Christine Lagarde (pictured) is the chairwoman of the IMF.
The World Trade Organisation was founded in 1947 as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. It has its own court, known as the Resolution Disputes Panel, based in Geneva.
Britain slowly recovered after the Second World War and enjoyed a modest boom in the 1960s, but by the 1970s we were plagued with rising unemployment, severe inflation, and industrial unrest. Hoping for stability, we joined the old Common Market under Ted Heath in 1973. In 1976 we were forced to devalue the pound and seek an emergency loan of $3.9 billion from the IMF. We crashed out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992, but our standard of living improved steadily until the global financial crisis of 2008. This crippled our banks and forced the government to introduce austerity measures that are still in force. At the same time, our old manufacturing industries declined and disgruntled workers turned against the government. The result was the referendum of 2016 when 52% of the people voted to leave the European Union, and 48% voted to remain.
The Bretton Woods Agreement is often seen as a conspiracy against the British Empire. We won the war but we ran out of money and credit. Our servicemen came home to a broken country. Our homes and railways had been bombed to destruction, our merchant fleet had been sunk and we were bankrupt after six years of war. We had no choice but to accept an American loan and tie the pound to the dollar until the Nixon Shock of 1972.
We could have turned to the Commonwealth instead of joining the Common Market in 1973, but we tried that at the Ottowa Conference in 1932 when we proposed a system of Imperial Preference. It never really got going because the Dominions wanted to develop their own industries and their own markets. By 1972 the Canadian economy was linked to the United States and the Australians were striking massive trade deals with the Japanese. The Commonwealth solution was too late in 1932, too late in 1972, and definitely too late in 2019.
The pound is more than a national currency, it's also a symbol of British sovereignty. But the International Monetary Fund (IMF) doesn't deal in national currencies but in Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), a unit of account based on a basket of currencies. We may celebrate 'getting our country back' but the real decisions will be made in Washington DC and Geneva. By leaving the EU and joining the WTO we would simply exchange one bureaucracy for another.
The Party System
The UK used to be dominated by the two big parties, Labour and Conservative, with the Lib Dems coming third. Now all that has changed. The Scottish Nationalist Party controls Scotland, Northern Ireland is split between Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party - when the Northern Ireland Assembly is sitting. Plaid Cymru is making progress in Wales, and in England the Brexit Party, the Lib Dems and the Green Party are growing in popularity. The old class-based system has broken down.
Working Class people traditionally voted Labour, the Middle Class voted Tory, and the undecided voted for the Lib Dems, or one of the minor parties. But they didn't necessarily follow a logical pattern. A friend of mine canvassing for the Tories asked a man if he could depend on his vote. The man said that he would be voting for the National Front. My friend told him that the NF didn't have a candidate in the constituency. So the man said that in that case he would vote Labour.
Nigel Farage's Brexit Party attracts old-fashioned Tories and Labour Brexiteers in equal measure. This is the first time that an extreme right party has made headway since the National Front was sunk at the 1979 general election by Margaret Thatcher's brilliantly-timed statement that she understood peoples fears of being "swamped" by immigration.
The British National Party had two MEPs and scores of local councillors in their prime but they never got an MP elected. They were undermined by UKIP and finished off by Nick Griffin's unfortunate appearance on Question Time.
Brexit is not a party political matter. Both main parties are divided on the issue. At the same time the designations 'Left' and 'Right' have become meaningless. People are discontented and there's no way of predicting how they will vote - as shown by the Peterborough by-election.
In times of crisis, such as the Great Depression, or the Second World War, we appointed a Government of National Unity. The current crisis threatens to tear the country apart. It's time that the parties stopped arguing amongst themselves and co-operated with each other. We need a Government of National Unity with the power to get things done. It should be made up of selected Members of Parliament together with representatives from the trade unions, industry, the military, and all walks of life. The social structure of the country is changing and the political system must adapt.
Foreign Companies
The closures of the Honda plant in Swindon and the Ford plant in Bridgend are only to be expected when car sales are falling. The Japanese are shutting down their Swindon plant to keep their own people working at home, and the Americans are doing the same at Bridgend. And now Indian-owned Jaguar-Land Rover have announced that they are scaling down their UK operation.
It's good that foreign companies employ British workers and pay British taxes but we are vulnerable when it comes to closures. It's something worth considering when foreign companies bid for British firms. The Tory policy of letting the market sort itself out is callous and irresponsible. The State has a duty to intervene when jobs and pensions are involved.
The government can't save the motor factories but they can help to attract new industries. Stoke-on-Trent lost over 30,000 jobs with the closure of the coalmines, the steelworks, and the potteries, but new industries have taken their place. Many of the new jobs are not as well paid as the skilled jobs that have been lost but they are better than being unemployed. Fortunately, houses in Stoke are half the price of those in London so the redundant workers can pay their rents and mortgages.
Talk of nationalisation of the motor industry is unrealistic. The change from petrol and diesel to electric means that existing car plants will have to be refitted and their workers retrained. The giant multi-national car makers can afford to make the necessary investment but the British taxpayer cannot.
Anti-Semitism
The slaughter of the European Jews during WW2 was a crime against humanity that has been turned into a lucrative business. The Holocaust generates billions of dollars in donations, film rights, book rights, compensation claims, and 'reparations' from Germany. As long as the Jews keep it going they are assured of a good income.
The trouble is that it happened at least 75 years ago. We are all familiar with black and white footage of concentration camps, but current atrocities are screened live on our television screens. The Jews no longer have a monopoly on persecution.
They are fighting back with an unfounded campaign against the Labour Party. They have targeted the Labour Party and its leader Jeremy Corbyn because he has expressed sympathy for the Palestinians, They are trying to make any criticism of Israel an anti-Semitic offence..
This is an outrageous allegation; there are plenty of Jews, including Israelis, who condemn Zionism. It is not anti-Semitic to protest about Israeli soldiers shooting Palestinian children. The Zionists in the UK will not succeed in labelling Jeremy Corbyn as a Nazi. People may dislike him for all sorts of reasons but nobody seriously believes that he is anti-Semitic.
Nation Revisited
This blog seeks reform by legal means. All articles are by Bill Baillie unless otherwise stated. The opinions of guest writers are entirely their own. We are protected by the UN Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19: "We all have the right to make up our own minds, to think what we like, to say what we think, and to share ideas with other people."
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