Nation Revisited # 137, March 2018

Readers' Messages

I welcome comments from readers, even if they are critical. Joe Owens wrote to say that I am just preaching to the converted and regurgitating the same old stuff. He may well be right. Bernard Franklyn complained that the population has become apathetic, and he is undoubtedly right. Robert Lyons contacts me from the USA and John Beattie from Canada. I hear regularly from John Bean, Frank Walsh, and Eddy Morrison, and from my comrades at the Friends of Mosley. We all have our own opinions but we share an aversion to Zionism and Old Gang politicians.

Some messages are not so welcome. I am not Jewish but I have been mistaken for one. During the 1967 Arab-Israeli War I was buying a shirt in the OK Bazaar in Cape Town. The Jewish woman serving me was obviously upset and I asked her what the trouble was. She said that she had family in Israel, and then she said: "Anyway, what's a nice Jewish boy doing here when you should be fighting in Israel?

Some readers have concluded that I must be Jewish, or in the pay of the Jews, because I don't promote the Great Conspiracy Theory. Others have accused me of being a Freemason, or a homosexual because I don't attack them. This kind of thinking is dangerous nonsense. I know nothing about Freemasonry and what consenting adults get up to in private is their business. I do not attribute the sins of the world to any particular group but to greedy men and women of all persuasions.

Why do I bother? Well, it's ten years since the last financial meltdown and the experts are predicting another one. When major companies like Carillion go under we can expect trouble ahead. We could be in for another slump but our useless politicians are preoccupied with 'Brexit'. We live in interesting times and I shall continue to monitor the situation.

Those with good presentation skills can make videos or address meetings, but I shall continue to write my blog and enjoy receiving your messages. It may be a waste of time but you never know, I might influence someone out there, and if I do it will be worth it. 

What to do with the Banks

The financial crisis of 2008 showed how vulnerable the banks are. They don't make a profit by managing accounts, paying bills, and handling salaries and pensions. They make their money by investing in stocks and shares and by lending at interest. This is condemned as usury by critics of the banking system but a reasonable rate of interest on loans and deposits is necessary. Islamic banks don't apply interest rates but they use transaction fees to cover their costs. If the banks have enough money on deposit to cover loans they are successful but if they lend more than they can cover they are in trouble.

Before Margaret Thatcher deregulated the banks in 1986, credit was restricted and bank managers checked up on their customers, but that all changed when the banks were allowed to lend much more than they had on deposit. For about twenty years they got away with it until some financial genius in America decided to sell packages of sub-prime mortgages. This started a bubble all over the world as investors scrambled to get rich quick, and like all bubbles, it burst.

The resulting crash brought down Lehman Brothers in America and Northern Rock in the UK. Soon, the government had to bail out most of the banks. The alternative would have been to let them fail which would have cost people their homes, jobs and pensions. Disaster was avoided but many people thought that the government should nationalise the banks altogether.

The trouble is that governments would inevitably dip into bank deposits to finance important things such as; buying American missiles, giving foreign aid to ungrateful dictators, and building high-speed railways that cut the journey time from London to Glasgow by ten minutes.

They would rob the banks just as they robbed the National Insurance scheme. If all the money that had been paid in by the workers had been properly invested in a dedicated pension fund our pensioners would be comfortable instead of just about managing.

The only bank owned by the government is the Bank of England. It was established in 1694 to refit the Royal Navy and raised £1.2 million in twelve weeks by selling bonds. That was a lot of money in the seventeenth century. The BOE was nationalised in 1946 but many people think that it's still in private hands. Amongst the bank's assets are 310 tonnes of gold. This is well below our neighbours; Germany - 3,374, Italy - 2,451, France - 2,435.

The Thatcher experiment with deregulation resulted in the banks taking unnecessary risks but since the financial crisis of 2008 they have restricted credit and helped to strangle the economy.The problem is cultural as well as economic. In the old days, people were cautious and the banks avoided risk-taking. Banks, insurance companies, and pension funds need a gently expanding economy administered by honest men and women. The government should have a controlling share; say 51%. The banks employ 2.1 million people and contribute £35 billion a year to the exchequer. We need their skill and experience but they shouldn't be left to their own devices.

International finance is dominated by powerful families that swindle the nations of the world with impunity. They are what the Soviets used to call 'Rootless Cosmopolitans'. They are ruthless manipulators but your average high street banker is simply a service provider. Jesus whipped the money changers out of the temple but we must rely on regulation.

The Tory Legacy

Prejudice against foreigners is deeply ingrained in the Tory Party. Their arguments about sovereignty and free trade sound reasonable but they are really motivated by petty nationalism of the worst kind. The sort of jingoistic rubbish that one finds in the Daily Mail. Their hearts are hardened
and their minds are closed.

When Selwyn Lloyd was appointed Minister of State for Foreign Affairs in 1951 he protested to Winston Churchill: "But Sir, there must be some mistake. I do not speak any foreign language. Except in war. I have never visited a foreign country. I do not like foreigners. I have never spoken in a foreign-affairs debate in the House. I have never listened to one." Churchill growled back: "Young man, these all seem to be positive advantages."

Almost everyone in Europe was overjoyed when the Berlin Wall came down. Between 1961, when the wall went up, and 1989, when it came down, 239 people died trying to escape from East Berlin. The bankrupt DDR propped up its economy by selling political prisoners. They sold 33,700 people to the West and detained thousands more in their notorious prisons. The 'Stasi' policed the country by fear with a vast network of spies and informers.

But Margaret Thatcher was unmoved by the plight of our fellow Europeans. In December 1989 she told the assembled heads of Europe: "We beat the Germans twice, and now they're back." She was bitterly opposed to German reunification and couldn't understand why the French supported it. She never understood that the Common Market was about peace and security. She thought that it was a purely commercial venture. That's why she was happy to wear her famous jumper in 1975 bearing the flags of all nations.

President Donald Trump is of Scottish and German ancestry but he is unashamedly anti-German. He is the natural ally of Boris Johnson, the leader of the hard right extremists that have hijacked the Tory Party. If Theresa May falls they will take us out of Europe and negotiate a trade deal with America. They pretend to harbour no grudges against the Germans or the French, but it's not true. They say that they're against the EU and not against Europe, but they are lying. They are motivated by fear and hatred, like Margaret Thatcher, and by Atlanticism, like Winston Churchill.

Of course, they are perfectly entitled to their opinions but they shouldn't pretend to support British independence when they are ready to turn us into the 51st state of the Union. Conrad Black made a persuasive argument for Anglo-American Union when he owned the 'Daily Telegraph', but at least he was open about it.

Economic Nationalism

In answer to a reader's comment, the BNP website explains their economic policy.

"We call our idea economic nationalism Luke, read my post above which describes the basics of the banking system we propose. Taxes are high under the present system because government spending must come from either borrowing or taxation. If the government borrows via bond issuance the national debt increases and so does the interest on the debt leading to high taxes further down the line, so it's a no-win situation. A sovereign government can issue its own currency completely debt and interest-free if it so wishes and has the moral fibre to do so, but the big bankers would hate it and that is why it is not done." 

The article to which he refers calls for restrictions on imports and the encouragement of British manufacturing. Of course, such policies would be reciprocated by those nations that send us goods. If we stopped importing German cars the Germans would certainly stop importing British cars.

The article calls for the ending of foreign aid and our withdrawal from the Middle East. Those are achievable objectives but it should be remembered that foreign aid and military assistance are often linked to lucrative trade deals.

The BNP wants the British government to issue debt and interest-free money, but it has been doing so for years. Between 2009 and 2012 the Bank of England issued £375 billion in 'Quantitative Easing' and in August 2016 it authorised another £70 billion.

If QA works our economy will be saved but if it doesn't we will follow Zimbabwe into bankruptcy. At one point they had multi-billion Zimbabwe dollar bills in circulation until the currency was replaced by the US dollar.

Money doesn't have to be backed by gold or foreign currency reserves but it must have the confidence of those using it. The value of any currency is decided by international consensus. Any country that defaults on its debts is blacklisted, but a nation deeply in debt, like the United States, is trusted because of the underlying strength of its economy.

The BNP have come a long way since one of their members answered my question about their economic policy by saying: "we don't do that left-wing crap." Economics is the key to understanding politics. We have not been self-sufficient since the eighteenth century and we need to trade with our neighbours. We also need skilled workers from abroad. We can choose where we get them from but until we train our own people we will need them. These are facts that cannot be trumped by emotion.

The far-right's economic policies were copied by John Tyndall from Oswald Mosley's pre-war British Union. When the British Empire was destroyed by the Second World War, Mosley abandoned Imperial Preference and moved on to Europe. But Tyndall clung rigidly to policies that were no longer viable. Economic nationalism and compulsory repatriation are the twin fantasies of the far-right.

The Housing Crisis

The Chancellor's decision to cut stamp duty for first home buyers is welcome but saving £5,000 on a £500,000 home in London will not solve the housing crisis. And nor will making 'affordable' homes part of any new development. The thousands of flats being built along the Thames in London are selling for £1,000,000. They are mostly being bought by wealthy foreigners as an investment. An 'affordable' flat would cost 80% of the selling price - £800.000. That still puts them beyond the reach of most people.

There is no point in building houses in cheaper parts of the country. People want to live in London, Birmingham, and Manchester because that's where the work is. And they need to be a sensible distance from their place of work. Some people are wasting four hours a day commuting; time that they should be spending with their families.

We need social housing on a grand scale and a new Rent Act to protect private tenants. The government has promised to build a million houses in the next three years but we don't know how many of them will be for rent, or how many will be genuinely affordable. Margaret Thatcher's dream of a property-owning democracy has not been realised. Seventy-three years after World War Two we still have a housing shortage.

'Right to Buy' gave millions of people the chance to own their own homes but it depleted the available housing stock and almost killed social housing. We must get back to building safe family houses that people can afford. The tower block experiment ended in disaster. Old people and families with children cannot live in high rise blocks. We need houses with gardens and all the necessary services; sewers, roads, broadband, transport links etc. If the government carries out its promise to stop land banking and make more land available, it can be done.

Dogmatism

When Dr Beeching was asked to make the railways pay he started by listing loss-making lines for closure but he got carried away with enthusiasm and butchered the network. Years later, Margaret Thatcher did the same thing with coal mines. She could have shut down the most unprofitable pits but she closed down practically the entire industry. The government is now rebuilding the railways and we are importing coal that we could have produced ourselves. That's what happens when common sense is abandoned and dogma takes over.

Adolf Hitler should have sued for peace following the collapse of his invasion of the Soviet Union in 1943, but he fought on and wasted millions of lives, including his own. The top Nazi generals tried to reason with him but he was convinced of the superiority of the German armed forces, even when Field Marshal Paulus surrendered at Stalingrad and Field Marshal von Manstein was defeated at Kursk. Another example of dogma coming before reality.

If we leave the EU and import cheap food from outside Europe we will undercut our own agriculture. At present our farmers are protected by the Common Agricultural Policy but the Tories will let 'market forces' prevail. 

Politicians have good ideas from time to time but they sometimes go too far. They pretend to know what they are doing but their projects often end in failure. Margaret Thatcher went ahead with the Poll Tax despite being advised not to. She was right that everyone should pay for local services, but there is no point in a tax that people can't pay. Theresa May was also right that a lot of old people are comfortably off, but she was foolish to threaten to stop their Winter Fuel Payments just before an election. Both women put dogma before common sense.

We live in changing times. Artificial intelligence, medical science, and automation are changing the world. We must embrace new ideas, such as geopolitical union, social responsibility, and a universal wage, and not allow dogma to hold us back.

Our 'Black' Ancestry - John Bean

Without exception, the UK daily press and all main TV channels have welcomed research at the Natural History Museum which, they said, shows our ancient ancestry was black. It is the media's interpretation of a facial reconstruction on the skull of Britain's oldest skeleton, the 10,000-year-old Cheddar Gorge Man.

A typical press report on the findings began: "The earliest Britons were black-skinned with dark curly hair and possible blue eyes." This came from a Henry Bodkin of the Daily Telegraph, a so-called serious Tory paper. The photo produced everywhere shows that the face was a dark bronze and the hair was straight down to mouth level and then became wavy. Perhaps our Mr Bodkin wanted it to appear more African with complete curly hair. As for the definitely blue eyes, well you can't have that with an ancient African, hence it was "possible" blue eyes.

I make no criticism of the pioneering work of the archaeologists who found scraps of DNA in the ear of the Mesolithic 'Cheddar Man'. They then cross-referenced the genomes of modern inhabitance with known origins of living near the area of the Gorge. Their DNA now comprises roughly 10 percent of the genetic makeup of most white people living in the UK. But the maximum figure of 10 percent is not good enough for the heading to Mr Bodkin's report. This says "The first Britons were Black - and their DNA lives on in most of us."

That was also the view of a dusky lady on the BBC, who went even further by suggesting that the overwhelming majority of Brits throughout the UK were black in origin. Ignore the fact that 90 percent of our ancestors were Celts, Saxons, or Vikings (the Normans were cross-breeds of French and Viking). Furthermore, Archeologists in mainland Europe have recorded ample evidence in DNA testing that their 'whiteness' goes back at least ten millennia.

NR Comment

Piltdown Man was discovered by Charles Dawson in 1912 and only refuted in 1953. For 41 years the world's leading scientists accepted the hoax as the 'missing link' between man and ape. Sometimes politically motivated scientists find what they are looking for. 

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All articles in Nation Revisited are written by Bill Baillie unless otherwise stated. The opinions of guest writers are entirely their own. This blog is 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."


  

Nation Revisited # 102, April 2013

e-mail:    nationrevisited@gmail.com

website: http://nationrevisited.blogspot.co.uk

 Unexpected Help

We have lost our national triple ‘A’ credit rating and the economy is static but the forces of destiny may provide some unexpected help.

The corrosive influence of the Frankfurt School has run its course. Most of the left wing academics of the swinging sixties are dead and gone. Multiculturalism is still part of the national curriculum but the long-haired revolutionaries of days gone by have been replaced by tame little conservatives who are only interested in getting a job. One of the unintended consequences of austerity has been the restoration of middle class values. Today’s docile teachers and students even read the Daily Mail.

Half a century of campaigning against immigration has failed to stop it but market forces might do the trick. Plantation slavery was initiated by economic conditions and it was ended by them. European refugees flooding into America during the early 19^th century were cheaper to employ than black slaves who needed to be fed and housed. In the same way Third World workers in Europe and North America will be replaced by automation. Immigration is not a monstrous conspiracy by the “liberal elite” but an old-fashioned preference for cheap labour. Supply and demand will govern employment and population policies. The more technological that our society becomes the less we will need unskilled labour.

Flag-waving jingoism will not feed our booming population or pay our bills. The UK cannot stay apart from the world’s largest trading bloc; an economic union of half a billion souls stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals. If we ever get Dave Cameron’s long promised referendum we might quit the EU and join EFTA with Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. But that would only be a temporary measure; eventually we will become Europeans. Ukip is capturing protest votes from the established parties but they can’t turn back the tide of history with policies that are nothing but nostalgic nonsense.

This newsletter is unashamedly nostalgic but we are not a political party. Only the middle aged can remember Enoch Powell or the Soviet Union. We should forget about “the good old days” when people enjoyed decent incomes and conditions. We must appeal to the youngsters who are trying to pay mortgages and fuel bills on frozen salaries. They are no different to the generation that fought the Battle of Britain and stormed the beaches of Normandy; all they need is leadership.   

The Ongoing Debate

I am grateful for the gift of copies of the League Review and the National Review dating back to the seventies. Their pages record the death struggle of Rhodesia and the relentless Third World invasion but the dominant theme is Europe. The current version of this magazine is the League Sentinel: http://www.leaguestgeorge.com

Following their short-lived collaboration in the National Socialist Movement John Tyndall pursued his leadership ambitions in the National Front and Colin Jordan devoted himself to writing and publishing.

Despite the failure of the Ottawa Conference of 1932 to unite Britain with the White Dominions through “Imperial Preference” John Tyndall believed in a resurrected Commonwealth and rejected union with Europe. Commenting on the editorial in issue 36 of the League Review in December 1981 he wrote:

“Those who would prefer us to have a close European tie rather than a White Commonwealth tie will claim that the dominions are no longer bound by automatic loyalty to Britain and will simply trade where their own interests dictate. To this I would answer – Yes! And those interests dictate that if Britain is willing to but their surpluses in return for their buying its surpluses, they should take up the offer.

Of the three options mentioned by you, therefore, a trading bloc of Britain and the White Commonwealth is the only one that corresponds to economic reality. This does not mean, however, that there would not be many areas of common interest between such a bloc and Western Europe in which the two could work together.”

John Tyndall’s insular policies still influence the nationalist parties today. Colin Jordan never supported the EU but he rejected narrow nationalism and stood for white solidarity; in a letter to the League Review in February 1983 he wrote:

“If we are to learn from the past, and to prevent any possibility of a repetition of such catastrophic folly (World War 2) in the future, we have to expand our vision beyond an insular nationalism. Feeling for soil, love of country in all the fullness of its meaning, a sense of the community of the folk, all of which is cherished and cited by the nationalists, and so rightly so, is not, as is their great mistake, to be exclusively equated with and restricted to the contemporary nation states. These states, Britain included, came about through the migrations and divisions of the white peoples, a family of related races, and now, if those white peoples are to have a future, we must embrace without delay a unity beyond and greater than those segmentary states in separation. This is not for one moment to deny or to neglect the most obvious fact that in Britain our most immediate and particular attachment is to our own island, and to the task of securing its salvation; but this not only does not conflict with a positive and practical recognition of an overall allegiance to the white cause world-wide, but absolutely requires it from the start. Britain cannot go it alone and win by herself in the world of today. Her only true hope lies in the triumph of a National Socialist world struggle of the white man.”

The divide between narrow nationalism and European solidarity is as wide as ever. Most members of the so-called far-right parties are deeply anti-EU but there are a few realists who keep quiet for fear of being shouted down by the hard-liners. They are primarily concerned with stopping Third World immigration and put up with the petty nationalist rhetoric for the sake of unity. In the next two years leading up to a possible referendum we will hear all the arguments for and against Europe; but the real decision is not about politics or economics, it’s a matter of faith.

Some of the League of St George magazines are nearly forty years old but their pages brought back many names that I remember, or have come to know; Ron Hargrave, Bill Whitbread, Oliver Gilbert, Bob Molesworth, Robert Stanton, Robert Edwards, Keith Thompson, Jerry Sibley and many others.

Then, as now, the UK economy was in chaos and our future in Europe was threatened. The Soviet Union has ceased to exist but apart from that nothing much has changed. We are still being overrun by Third World immigrants; misgoverned by corrupt politicians in the pockets of big business, and misinformed by the mass media. The crisis of capitalism long predicted by Oswald Mosley has come to pass. The Tories think that they can escape from reality by pulling up the drawbridge; but the inexorable rules of supply and demand dictate that a nation that owes more than £1 trillion and imports half of its food and oil cannot go it alone.

Economic Nationalism

North Korea now has atomic weapons and the means to deliver them. The “Juche” (self-sufficiency) regime has sacrificed the living standards of the people to develop its own nuclear and space programmes. Kim Jong-un took over the impoverished Asian nation of 23 million people on the death of his father Kim Jong-il - the Dear Leader, who followed his father Kim il-Sung - the Great Leader. He leads a bizarre hereditary dictatorship obsessed with flag-waving and crippled with paranoia. He is far from being a heroic figure with his bouffant hairstyle and stacked heels but there is a real danger that he might get carried away with his own belligerent propaganda.

Life is hard in North Korea but most citizens share their government’s antipathy to foreigners and are immensely proud of their 1.2 million strong armed forces and their modern weapons including the world’s largest submarine fleet. To encourage the workers factories belt out patriotic music on their public address systems and state television and radio extol the superiority of the Korean race.

American-led sanctions have rendered North Korea’s currency unconvertible and made international trade all but impossible. She is an example of what happens when a nation tries to go it alone against the world; a half starved bankrupt dictatorship kept in power by a massive army.

The last thing we need in the UK is a xenophobic regime like the Kim dynasty. We have an immigrant-swollen population of 63.2 million; we are running out of oil and we have not fed ourselves since the 18^th century. Our industrial output has started to recover but we need to increase our exports and we will not do that by erecting protectionist tariffs that are always reciprocated.  

If we took the lead in Europe, instead of trying to wreck it, we could revitalize our economy, deport criminals and illegal aliens and encourage the voluntary repatriation of non-European immigrants. With proper leadership the economic potential of half a billion Europeans would make anything possible.

But on our own we simply do not have the resources to fight colonial wars all over the world. We have wasted hundreds of lives in Afghanistan but the Taliban will probably march into Kabul as soon as NATO forces withdraw. William Hague’s interference in Libya unleashed a wave of terrorism in Africa and his current support for the rebels in Syria will have the same effect in the Middle East. The far-right wants to expand our armed forces but common sense demands that we restructure them for home defence and stop acting as the world’s policeman.

Dave Cameron is trying to outmaneuver Ukip but a Harris poll (Financial Times 18/02/13) puts the European issue in perspective. It showed a two thirds majority for quitting the EU but placed the issue at 14^th out of 15 priorities. The Tory Party is obsessed with Europe, gay marriage and House of Lords reform but most people are more concerned with health, education and the economy.

The last Labour government left us with a massive national debt that we are struggling to repay. The UK is in the same position as the EU, the USA and Japan. Our problems are the result of years of deficit spending and have nothing to do with Europe. We will eventually pay off our debts but we must stop pretending to be a world power and shut our doors to mass migration.

The Germans manage without a worldwide army, a fleet of aircraft carriers, and a £130 billion Trident missile system (The Guardian 18/09/09). They were wiped out twice in the 20^th century but they have rebuilt their country as the powerhouse of the EU. We are finally moving in the right direction by withdrawing the British Army of the Rhine. It was probably an accountant who realized that we had 20,000 troops stationed in Germany 68 years after the end of WW2 and 22 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Another Fake Quote

 

This one making the rounds of White nationalist, White Supremacist, etc. sites:
In 1922, the Bolshevik leader Selenkov stated in Moscow: "We must create a climate of anti-nationalism and anti-racialism amongst Whites. We must reduce patriotism and pride of race to meaningless abstractions and make racialism a dirty word." Not only that, but obviously Selenkov was Jewish. Or he was named Zelenkov. Or whatever. There never was any Bolshevik leader named Zelenkov/Selenkov, and for all I or others can tell, this is yet another fake quote. You can usually tell these fake quotes just be looking at them, because it seems like no sane prominent person would ever be caught dead saying something so outrageous. Also, fake quotes are usually manufactured by nationalists. They place the quotes in the mouths of politicians they don't like and make them say they are going to hatch some kind of conspiracy against the ethnic group or nation in question. (From Robert Lindsay in California who describes himself as a non-racist race realist and a leftist nationalist.)

I recently received an e-mail that was supposed to show a little boy in Iran having his arm run over by a car for stealing bread. An Internet search revealed it to be an Israeli fake that has been doing the rounds since 2005. The pictures are of a gypsy fairground show where a little boy’s arm is run over before he miraculously recovers and goes around with the hat to collect money from the audience. Similar shows are familiar throughout the Middle East.

Another bogus e-mail showed Muslims in America apparently celebrating the anniversary of 9/11. In fact they were innocently observing a Shia holiday that happened to fall on the same day.

 
And I have seen several copies of a letter that’s supposed to be from a doctor listing the ample benefits claimed by an unmarried mother. There are British and Australian versions of this forgery but the original was from America and the doctor in question was forced to admit that he had heard about it from a nurse and couldn’t personally verify it. In fact benefits are capped in most states and food stamps are usually issued instead of money.

The BNP used to quote from what it described as “the highly respected Epoch Times”. This is actually the newspaper of Falun Gong, a wacky Chinese religion that believes human beings can fly through brick walls.
 
There are more than enough genuine outrages in the world without resorting to fabrications that can easily be disproved. These bogus propaganda stunts rely on the naivety of recipients who pass them on. The golden rule must be not to pass on anything that’s suspect. Anybody writing articles for publication has a duty of care. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and we can all make mistakes but we must try to be as objective as possible. As the great Marcus Aurelius said: “If it’s not right don’t do it; and if it’s not true don’t say it.”

Retro Chic

Political designations are often inaccurate and confusing. The old East German communist dictatorship styled itself “The German Democratic Republic” but the regime was kept in power by the army and that was backed up by the Soviet Union. They called the DDR “democratic” to distinguish it from the National Socialist state that preceded it; and which it resembled in many ways. But the communists avoided the words “National Socialist” to describe the Third Reich. They preferred to call it a “fascist” regime to avoid any confusion with socialism.

The Fascists were an ex-serviceman’s movement that took over Italy in 1922 during the Great Depression following the First World War. They started off as monarchists but ended up as republicans. They were sprung from the same socialist roots as the communists but they became bitter enemies. The Italian movement was copied throughout Europe; in Germany it was infused with racism, in Spain and Portugal it was hijacked by Catholicism, in Romania and Hungary it was obsessed with territorial nationalism. And in Britain and Ireland it gravitated from right to left before being shut down by the Second World War.

The descendants of the pre-war movements have abandoned “fascism” because of its association with the horrors of the Second World War.  There was a very short-lived breakaway group from Mosley’s Union Movement in the early sixties when their South London branch under Keith Goodall styled themselves The National Union of Fascists and held meetings in Brixton Market. At the same time the Spearhead faction broke away from the original BNP under Colin Jordan to form the National Socialist Movement complete with Nazi flags and uniforms. Both attempts to resurrect fascism failed but Gary Raikes, the former leader of the Scottish BNP, is trying again with an Internet-based group called the New British Union.

Would-be respectable groups are distancing themselves from openly fascist movements but their electoral performances are not getting any better. Dave Jones got the average nationalist percentage in the Todmorden local election despite being photographed carrying a rifle with a swastika flag flying overhead. Most of the far-right groups are led by former make-belief Nazis. They may have put their well-polished jackboots in the back of the wardrobe but old photos of them posing for posterity are still circulating. We all do daft things when we are young but membership of the World Domination League doesn’t look good on your CV.

We live in exciting times where “retro” is the latest thing and outrage is its own reward: militant gays are calling themselves “queer” and black people are using the forbidden word “nigger.” Perhaps the beautiful Art Deco imagery of fascism and the heroic theatricality of the Nazis will soon dominate the busy stalls of Camden Market.

Internment without Trial

The right wing of the Tory Party wants the UK to quit the European Court of Human Rights. They object to “foreigners interfering with British justice” but the real reason is that the court is outside their control. Internment without trial is illegal under the terms of the European Convention – except in a state of war.  This get-out clause enabled the UK to round up suspected terrorists from 1956 to 1961 and again from 1971 to 1975. Opposition from the ECHR helped to end internment but there was no outcry in 1940 when Winston Churchill caged nearly two thousand British dissidents under Defence Regulation 18B. They were never charged with any crime and some of them were locked up until 1945. I will only write about those that I met in the original British National Party and later in Union Movement.

Tony Gittens was a leading member of the Imperial Fascist League. He was detained under 18B in 1940. He effectively ran the post-war National Workers Movement from 1948 to 1950. He took over Gothic Ripples when Arnold Leese died in 1956. And he kept the Britons Publishing Co going until his own death in 1973. According to Richard Thurlow’s 1987 book Fascism in Britain, he was AK Chesterton’s intelligence agent in the early days of the National Front.

Phil Ridout led the ‘tough squad’ that defended IFL meetings in the East End. He was credited with popularizing the fascist greeting “PJ” – short for “Perish Judah.” In 1937 he was fined for using insulting language at an IFL meeting by referring to the League of Nations as “the League of Nathans.” Oliver Gilbert who was the first BUF member to be detained described him as the IFL’s best speaker. He was interned in 1940. In 1951 he founded the British Empire Party and in the general election of that year Trevor Davies their candidate for Ogmore, South Wales, won 1,643 votes, 3.4%. In the sixties Phil worked for an aircraft company with fellow 18B detainee Ron Hargrave and the much younger Terry Savage. He was a popular speaker for the original BNP. I remember him as a kindly pensioner, John Bean describes him as “a pleasant old boy,” and Robert Lyons from the USA remembers him as “an English gentleman.”

Ronald Creasy (1909-2004) was a Suffolk farmer and landowner who was invited to join a police squad during the 1926 General Strike. But he sided with the strikers and refused to act as a strike-breaker. He joined the BUF in 1938 and was elected to Eye Borough Council. He was detained in 1940. After the war he became an enthusiastic Mosley supporter and often spoke at UM dinners.

Robert Wilkinson was another victim of 18B. I had the pleasure of hearing him speak at a Friends of Mosley gathering a few years ago. He was in his nineties but he made an impassioned speech comparing the situation today to the 1930s. He said that the capitalist racket was just the same and that the solution was just the same.

Jeffrey Hamm was arrested in the Falkland Islands and imprisoned in the rusting hulk of a ship before being taken to a prisoner-of-war camp in South Africa. He was instrumental in founding UM in 1948 and kept the movement going following Oswald Mosley’s retirement in 1973.

Robert Row, who went on to be editor of Union and Action was also interned in 1940. He wrote: “There was no charge or trial, banana republic justice replaced these, trial by jury was scrapped. So was Habeas Corpus; so much for the honour of British politicians.”

Just fewer than 2,000 anti-war campaigners were detained under Defence Regulation 18B of which 1,054 were BUF members including Oswald Mosley and Diana Mitford. (Figures are taken from In the Highest Degree Odious by AWB Simpson and the Friends of Mosley)

 Elected Councillors - by “Union” 

The British Union led by Oswald Mosley had 40,000 members and was the biggest patriotic movement in British political history. In fact Mosley’s pre-war and post-war movements both had elected representatives.

Captain Bentinck-Budd elected to Worthing Council in 1934 as a BUF councillor.
Commander Charles Hudson elected to Bognor Regis Council in the 1930s as a BUF councillor.
Sydney Crossland elected as a BUF councillor in Sussex in the 1930s.
Ronald Creasy elected to Eye Borough Council Suffolk as a BUF councillor in 1938.
FB Price-Heywood elected to Grasmere Council Cumbria in 1953 for Union Movement.
Robert Saunders of Union Movement elected to Dorset County Council post-war.
Harold Soref a member of British Union elected as Conservative MP for Ormskirk in 1970.
Major Jocelyn Lucas a BUF member in 1935 elected as Conservative MP for Portsmouth South in 1939.

The National Front had an elected councillor in Northern Ireland and 2 Conservative councillors joined the NF in the 1970s in Wandsworth. Recently they briefly had a parish councillor and a local councillor who joined from the BNP. The National Party elected 2 councillors in Blackburn, Lancashire in 1976 and recently the England First Party elected 2 councillors also in Lancashire.

 Granted the BNP had more councillors and 2 MEPs, but how successful would a Mosley-inspired party be if were still active today?