Fascism 100 Years On
Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy in 1922 when he led thousands of black shirted ex-servicemen from WW1 in the March on Rome. He was appointed by King Victor Emmanuel 111 who feared a communist revolution.
Mussolini, Il Duce as he was known, was adored by most Italians, even when he ordered the invasion of Ethiopia in 1937, and Albania in 1939, but his close ties to Adolf Hitler cost him his dictatorship.
Italian Fascism was not racist until Hitler persuaded Mussolini to introduce discriminatory legislation in 1938. This was aimed at the Jews. There were hardly any Blacks in the country but Italian soldiers were forbidden to have sex with local women when they invaded Ethiopia.
The Italian colonisation of Ethiopia seems outrageous today, but at the time Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal, and Spain all had colonial empires in Africa, and Italy already possessed Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia.
Benito Mussolini is remembered for making the trains run on time, but he did so much more; he drained the Pontine Marshes to reclaim the land and wipe out water-born diseases, he started the Autostrada motorway network, he modernised industry and agriculture, and he instilled in the Italian people a sense of pride and unity.
He was murdered by Communist Partisans in 1945 together with his girlfriend Claretta Petacci, but his movement re-emerged after the Second World War and went through various incarnations until his spiritual heiress Georgia Meloni (pictured) came to power as the leader of Fratelli D'Italia in 2022; one hundred years after the birth of Fascism.
The Future of the Internet
Colin Todd, far right (where else?) with fellow nationalists at the Cenotaph.
I asked Colin Todd, the editor of 'Candour' why he persisted with a hard-copy publication when it would be so much easier to go online, like 'The Independent' newspaper.
Patriotic magazines face the double jeopardy of rising postal and print charges, and a total lack of advertising. The existing magazines advertise each other on a reciprocal basis but there is no paid advertising.
His reply surprised me. He said that our increasingly authoritarian government could shut us out of the Internet at any time. They have already started to interfere by making the service providers attach warning notices to our blogs. The next step could be a total ban.
It would be easier for the government to control the Internet than bringing prosecutions against individual publications, none of which actually promotes violence or racial hatred.
In order to educate the masses we must maintain our hard-copy magazines by taking out subscriptions and making donations. We cannot hope to compete with the mass media, but we can influence our readers.
In the old days we used to sell our papers on street corners. In 1962 I was arrested in Croydon town centre for selling 'Candour' whilst wearing a Union Jack armband. An eager young copper marched me to the police station to be charged, presumably under the Public Order Act, but a wise old station sergeant ordered him to let me go.
In those days 'Candour' was a highly intellectual journal that was difficult to sell without being obstructed by the police. Today's version is easier to read but no less forthright.
Street vending can be difficult and sometimes dangerous. Political meetings are a much better venue. When the London Forum held meetings there were always stalls selling books and publications.
Candour - www.candour.org.uk
League Sentinel - www.leaguestgeorge.org
Broadsword - www.britishmovementnorthern.org
Heritage and Destiny - www.heritageanddestiny.com
Britain, My Nation - 10 Washpool, Swindon SN5 3PN
Alan Whereat
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I don't have pictures of Alan Whereat or Keith Goodall but here is a picture of Roy Robinson the deputy leader of the National Union of Fascists.
In a past issue I misnamed Alan Whereat as Denis Whereat, for which I apologise. I am indebted to the Vote UK Forum for the following information.
He was first mentioned in the Portsmouth Evening News in 1939 when he was bound over for twelve months for using obscene language when asked to move on by a policeman. He had been collecting signatures for a petition demanding better old age pensions. He was then 21 years-old.
During the Second World War local elections were suspended and candidates for office were chosen by the existing council. In 1944 he put his name forward for the vacant post of Alderman in Portsmouth but he was an unsuccessful. He was described as an Air Ministry storeman.
In 1951 he had a letter published in the Bucks Herald claiming that the Labour Party were making false claims about unemployment.
In 1962 he was charged under the Public Order Act with wearing a black shirt, outside Brixton Town Hall. He was distributing election leaflets for Keith Goodall's National Union of Fascists, a short-lived breakaway from Oswald Mosley's Union Movement. He was described as a Lift Operator. When the case was dismissed for lack of evidence he gave a fascist salute to the judge..
In 1978 he stood as an independent candidate in the Lambeth Central by election under the incongruous slogan: "Homes, Employment, Anti-Racial Discrimination." He received 55 votes. He was then 60 years-old.
I remember Alan Whereat from the sixties when he used to parade around Brixton Market in his black shirt to the amusement of the stallholders. But he was more than a figure of fun, he was a social reformer who wasn't afraid to speak his mind, a brave man of humble means who loved his country. If more of us followed his example we would have a truly representative government instead of the liars and cheats that currently rule over us.
Inflation: The threat to the pound in your pocket
(With inflation above the Bank of England's target this article from my duplicated newsletter 'Nation' # 8, July 1974 deserves a reprint).
Monetary inflation has been with us for so long that most of us take it for granted. Prices rise and wages increase, which means that prices must go up to meet the higher wage bill, resulting in new wage demands to keep pace with prices, and so on and on.
What, one might ask, is wrong with that? If wages are constantly adjusted to keep abreast of prices stability must be maintained. The fact is that 'stability' is a myth. Inflation is a wildcat, not a controllable creature at all, but a menace that will destroy the economy and sink us into real poverty.
In Italy the fields are full of crops, the vines are heavy with grapes, and their industrial order books are healthy. Italian unit production costs are low and their exports are high. Machine tools, cars, trucks, aircraft, and domestic appliances pour out of Italian factories to feed the markets of the world; but despite all this productivity the Italian people face disaster as their economy begins to implode with hyperinflation.
What is hyperinflation? We quote from an article by Leith McGrindle in the Sunday Telegraph of June 9th 1974.
"There is no clear definition of what a hyperinflation is. There was a time when prices in the West during the 1950s were rising at a steady and not terribly damaging 2% or so a year - when a hyperinflation would have been considered a rising cost of living in excess of 10%. Anything in double figures.
Now that hyperinflation is with us in Britain at over 15% and in double figures in most industrialised and developed countries, we have tended to raise this limit to 20% or over.
In fact, however, a real hyperinflation is when inflation breeds faster and faster on itself. Prices multiply many, many times over a short number of years. The end, when it comes, produces the multi-million note (like the Mark in 1922-23 during the Weimar hyperinflation) and then a complete changing of the currency . The creation of a new Mark etc.
An inflation rate of 15% a year means that prices double in five years and would multiply by nearly 18,000 times over the three score years and ten of a child born today. A house built this year and sold for £15,000 would sell for over £250 million after 70 years.
Property has traditionally been a superb inflation hedge. Because people know this house prices tend to rise more sharply than anything else when an inflation gets going. Witness the last few years.
Moreover, when the hyperinflation finally goes 'pop' the house is still there but notes under the bed or in the wheelbarrow are worthless.
All this is providing that in the course of ending the hyperinflation our house isn't razed go the ground by insurrectionists or confiscated by a revolutionary government."
This kind of language is something new from a democratic newspaper. We were warned by Douglas, Mosley, and Chesterton years ago that our economy is unscientific and bound to end in slump. Now 'respectable' economists are singing the same song.
Britain and the rest of Europe urgently needs strong government with the power to act. Our present system of party mismanagement cannot and will not act to stop inflation. As soon as one party gets its programme going it gets thrown out by a discontented electorate, only to be replaced by another party with another theory that's also at the mercy of the mob.
Sooner or later Britain will be governed by a strong regime. It's the task and responsibility of all of us who know the truth to see to it that the ascendants are patriots and not thinly disguised alien imperialists.
Protectionism
A Mosley's Union Movement flyer from the 1950s protesting against cheap Japanese imports.
When the economy slows down people start calling for protection against foreign imports. The USA is imposing protectionist tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and China and threatening the EU and the UK. But those nations effected are bound to retaliate with tariffs of their own.
The USA thrived under a protectionist policy in the 19th and early 20th century, but the pattern of world trade has completely changed since then. The Asian nations have developed beyond expectations and shipping has been revolutionised by the invention of the sea container.
President Donald Trump may find that it's not so easy to disrupt world trade. The immediate effect of his populist nationalist policy will be to increase the cost of living for American consumers. That will not be so popular.
If the USA imposes tariffs on British goods it would damage our our exports of cars and Scotch Whisky. And if we retaliate it will increase the price of Levi jeans, Coca Cola, and Harley Davidson motorcycles. It would be in nobody's interest.
The World Trade Organisation was set up in 1995 to avoid tariff wars. It has 166 member states. The Doha Round of 2001 is currently in force, but President Trump doesn't believe in international treaties and prefers to go it alone. He thinks that foreign countries are taking advantage of the USA. Time will tell if his paranoid policies are successful.
The Western World is going through a phase of nationalism similar to the 1930s. That ended in the Second World War but modern economies are so interwoven that it would be almost impossible to unravel them. The war between Russia and Ukraine is not confined to Eastern Europe, it has repercussions effecting many countries. Egypt used to rely on imported Ukrainian wheat, Germany is crippled by lack of Russian Gas, and India has become a major exporter of gas and oil from Russia.
But nothing lasts forever. Donald Trump is on his second term as President and his successor is unlikely to be so rigidly protectionist. The USA may be the world's major economy but China is catching up fast and the EU is a formidable trading bloc that cannot be bullied. Eventually the WTO will be consulted and we can wear our Levi jeans, drink Coca Cola and ride our Harley Davidson motorcycles, and the Americans can drive Land Rovers and enjoy their Scotch Whisky.
European Outlook - https://europeanoutlook.blogspot.com
Nation Revisited
