The Authortarian State
John Tyndall speaking for the National Labour Party in the late fifties. Note the cross and star symbol still used by Nation Revisited and European Outlook. The cross stands for our nation and the star stands for our people. It was designed and bequeathed to me by John Bean.
John Tyndall published 'The Authoritarian State' in 1962 when he was 28 years old. We all say unwise things when we are young. Liz Truss made a speech to the Liberal-Democrat conference when she was 19 calling for the abolition of the monarchy. She was forgiven for her youthful indiscretion but John Tyndall was not. He died in 2005 just two days before his trial on a charge of inciting racial hatred. If he had stood trial, and if 'The Authoritarian State' had been used in evidence, he would probably have been convicted. UK prisons hold many people found guilty of offences under the Race Relations Act and the Anti-Terrorism Act whose rhetoric is restrained compared to the frank language of the past.
It's perhaps rather late to review a pamphlet that was published 61 years ago, but better late than never.
I am indebted to the archivist Stephen Swinfen for providing me with a PDF of JT's first literary effort. I have been looking for it for years without success, but by the wonder of the Internet my search has been rewarded.
'The Authoritarian State' is closely modelled on Oswald Mosley's pre-war policy statement 'The Greater Britain'. It calls for strong government, leadership, financial reform, protectionism, and so on. JT even borrowed some of Mosley's favorite phrases such as; "the old gang", "old women", and "the coming crisis."
The Talking Pictures TV channel shows old movies often carrying the warning that they contain "prevailing attitudes and language of the time that viewers may find offensive". A similar warning should be attached to 'The Authoritarian State' which sensitive souls may find alarming:
"While the authoritarian creed respects the idea of personal freedom. It insists upon the establishment of clearly defined limits to which such freedoms can go. Aside from the aforementioned examples, one could go on indefinitely giving instances of how, under the old Democracy, the concept of "freedom" has been turned to the worst possible abuse - because such practical limits have failed to be enforced. Our simple test of individual activity is: Does it or does it not harm the moral or material well-being of the nation. If the answer is no, then by all means let it continue. If, on the other hand, a man's conduct of his personal life is of a nature certain to lessen his usefulness to the community he serves, and hence harm that community as a whole, then he is abusing his right to freedom, and as such must warrant the intervention of state guidance until he has mended his ways.
Freedom for those that work, for those who create, for those who conscientiously remember their duties of citizenship; such freedoms we would never wish to destroy. What we would not tolerate in the state of tomorrow is the loafer, the spiv, or the degenerate. In short, what we intend to build is a national community in which that natural Nordic birth right of freedom is not something to be taken for granted by the dregs of society, but something earned by labour, loyalty, and service."
JT's worldview was based on the conspiracy theory outlined in 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' that was distributed by the Okhrana, the Imperial Russian Secret Police, in 1903. He quotes from this dubious source:
" Political freedom is an idea but not a fact This idea one must know how to apply whenever it appears necessary to use it as a bait to attract the masses of people to one's party for the purpose of crushing another who is in authority. This task is rendered easier if the opponent has himself been infected with the idea of "freedom", so-called Liberalism, and, for the sake of an idea, is willing to yield some of his power."
JT believed that the Jews are behind a plot to flood Britain and Europe with non-Europeans. He saw immigration not as an economic problem but as a conspiracy to destroy European civilization. In later life he toned down his antisemitism but it's hard to believe that he had a genuine change of heart.
The following passage is from his obituary on the BNP website of 19 July 2005:
"Tyndall's courage was legendary and his stamina undoubted. He was a fine writer with a tremendous grasp of written English, and an outstanding platform speaker. Nevertheless, John Tyndall's Nazi associations in his early life dogged him throughout his political career. In addition, the same 1930's mindset left the British National Party under his leadership with an outdated strategy which alienated public support."
'The Authoritarian State' is essential reading for anyone trying to understand John Tyndall, just as 'Mein Kampf' is essential for the study of Adolf Hitler. Both works chart the development of their authors. We all modify our views over the years. The young are expected to be radicals and the old are expected to be conservatives, but few people change their core beliefs.
Most of John Tyndall's supporters were worried about coloured immigration, but he barely mentions it in this pamphlet which concentrates on the failure of democracy, the need for leadership, and the alleged Jewish conspiracy. Oswald Mosley never mentioned coloured immigration in 'The Greater Britain' because it was not an issue in 1932, but it was twenty years later.
John Tyndall was a brave and decent man who was stuck in the past. He believed in reviving the British Empire, deporting the millions of non-Europeans in the UK back to their countries of origin, and 'Economic Nationalism' which took no account of changes in world trade. He advocated these policies from 'The Authoritarian State' in 1962 to the 'Eleventh Hour' in 1998. Like the Bourbons he learned nothing and forgot nothing.
Example of the Aztecs - Andrew Fountaine
From 'The Meaning of an Enemy', available from Amazon.
In nations and civilizations as in armies it is the leadership corps which counts and whose importance is paramount. Of a number of great civilizations which have come and gone before our time few were causatively destroyed by enemy conquest or military miscalculations. The majority died by their own hand of auto-intoxication and internal disintegration, and in every case it was among the culture bearing stratum that the rigidity, petrification and suicidal tendencies had first appeared. For the evils of parasitism, class wars, social anarchy and revolution are not the causes of decline of civilizations but the symptoms of the disease itself which is the decline of authority.
There is no more instructive example in the history of this phenomena than the story of the conquest of Mexico.
The Aztec civilization was the last in line before our own. Of all past civilizations including classical Rome it bore the nearest analogy to our European Faustian ethos and though by some strange aberration of circumstances the wheel had not been discovered, their culture had reached a grandeur and stability matching anything in Europe and their calendar system and time reckoning by annual computation alone failed to match modern Greenwich calculations by a mere matter of minutes. This was a civilization that by the 16th century had substituted human sacrifice in the place of civil war and social crime and had introduced compulsory education, state welfare and a universal health system at least as efficient as the parody with which we are burdened today.
It was upon the shores of this state in March 1519 that Cortez landed with 553 soldiers (including 32 crossbowmen and 16 horses) and 14 cannon and set out in a little under two years to conquer an empire nearly twice as large as Spain and defended by an army of 200,000 well-armed and fanatical warriors who believed as devoutly in their war god Huitzilopochtle as Cortez did in Christ. But it was not Spanish guns and cavalry which conquered Mexico but the suicidal compulsion of the Aztec Emperor Montezuma himself who believed in a myth as fervently as Cortez believed in the Virgin Mother and therby suggested his own defeat and the collapse of the highly organized Empire.
The myth was that the tribal god of the Toltecs (a race the Aztecs had conquered some centuries earlier) by name Quetzalcoatl - of fair complexion, dark hair and flowing beard - had on the defeat of his tribe sailed away eastward over the Atlantic, promising at some future date to return and resume his rule. Thus when Cortez appeared Montezuma had accepted him as Quetzalcoatl!
Time and again when the Spanish were surrounded and facing annihilation the emperor called off his disciplined warriors and sent in emissaries with supplies and victuals begging the invaders to return whence they had come.
Eventually he allowed the Spaniards to enter Mexico and ultimately surrendering his person to Cortez, allowed his temples to be desecrated and was killed in a tumult. Thus by sheer auto-suggestion he collapsed into moral suicide. From thence the conquest of the leaderless and demoralized Aztecs took nine months of the bitterest fighting of all and added Spanish reinforcements. Yet despite the phenominal leadership of Cortez and the incredible courage of his men the Aztec civilization was destroyed by a ghost - the calumny of its leader.
It is relevent to observe here that the Spanish loot of Aztec gold and the contemporary plunder of the Inca treasure south of the isthmus found its way by devious dissipation into the coffers of the Indian potentates where it lay dormant for two centuries until in the year 1747. Clive at the decisive battle of Plassey laid open the treasures of Bengal.
Here the combined treasure of the old world and the new provided the sinews of Britain's Napoleonic campaign, fertilized the industrial revolution, and created the fulcram of amorality upon which the back of the English aristocracy was broken.
Five Questions Answered # 20 Dennis Whiting
Who are you?
I am Arthur Dennis Whiting (known as Dennis). Born 18/07/33; grew up mainly in the Maidstone area: attended Maidstone Grammar School; National Service in the Royal Artillery, 1952-54; read English literature at Keble College, Oxford 1954-57; became a librarian, firstly at Aberdeen University, 1959-63, then at the University of Kent, 1963-95. Married Sylvia Brewer in 1976, sadly no children. Been retired since 1995. As a teenager I became a fan of G.K. Chesterton, who inoculated me against conventional politics for the rest of my life. In the 1950s I became aware of A.K.Chesterton, cousin of G.K. I subscribed to Candour and joined the League of Empire Loyalists. I was never in touch with the postwar Mosley movement. I was active in the National Front from 1967-1980 and with the British National Party thereafter (until 2011).
What do you believe in?
I am a Christian believer (early influences, Chesterton, Belloc, Newman, C.S. Lewis). Although an Anglican until I was received into the Roman Catholic Church at age 50, I was never at heart a Protestant. My faith has become more important to me in recent years as it has become ever clearer that modernism, globalism, and the new world order are an all-out attack on Christendom. My Catholicism is by way of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the Society of ST. Pius X and Bishop Richard Williamson. I consider Pope Francis to be a very bad pope and a traitor to the institution which he is nominally the head.
If you could direct government policy, what would you do?
If I was in charge of government policy (what a dream) I would have to undo a great deal of the legislation of the past half century or more. I would be guided by the list of SINS CRYING TO HEAVAN FOR VENGEANCE found in my missal. They are; Wilful murder - The sin of Sodom - Oppression of the poor - Defrauding labourers of their wages.
This missal incidently is not some ancient historical document but was published and given its imprimatur in 1962 under the reign of John XX111, the first modernist pope. The two later sins one might have to deal with indirectly by a radical reform of our corrupt and usurious financial system. The two former encompass abortion and the LGBTxyz attempt to destroy the family. Abortion ought never to have been legalised. It might not be prudent to re-enact homosexual activity between consenting adult males as a criminal offence but most certainly organisations such as Stonewall need to be turfed off the moral high ground which they have fraudulently seized. Single mothers carrying unwanted children in the womb are themselves the victims of our current society and should be treated gently and compassionately. There are many childless couples anxious to adopt. No doubt there was undue harshness in the past but we should remember that the pro-abortion lobby has been in charge of the narrative for a long time and they do not give a fair picture of how things used to be.
What are you proud of and what do you regret?
There is not much in my life to be proud of but I do regret the way I allowed my family, friends and workmates to compartmenalise my political activities. Here - they seemed to say - is a decent enough chap: why he puts up as a parliamentary candidate for an extremist outfit like the NF we don't wish to know. For the sake of a quite life I went along with this when I should have defended my views in season and out.
How would you like to be remembered?
How would I like to be remembered? I have written a number of articles in my time which have mainly fallen on stony ground. It would be good if some of them could be collected to remember me after I am gone.
Viva Argentina
Congratulations to Argentina on winning the 2022 FIFA World Cup. The New York Times demanded to know why they had not fielded any black players. Probably because the black population of Argentina is less than one percent.
European Outlook
Our sister blog European Outlook is posted at: https://europeanoutlook.blogspot.com
Nation Revisited
