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 # 119 September 2016

In Praise of Britain’s Imperial Mission – Robert Dewar

(This article originally appeared in Identity the magazine of the British National Party in January 2008. It paints a rosy picture of Empire that few colonial subjects would recognise. But it cannot be denied that the British Empire was a force for human progress that changed the world).

Until the early 1980s Britain was a country of net emigration. Between 5,000 – 7,000 people a year from the 16th to the end of the 18th centuries, or about a quarter of the natural increase, left the country for destinations abroad. Direct data becomes available from the 19th century onwards, and we know that 90,000 people a year were leaving Britain. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and even South Africa, owe their early demographic growth to British immigrants. Emigration from the British Isles peaked in the last years of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. North America gained more than 100 million British and 7 million Irish emigrants between 1815 to 1930.

After the Second World War, various kinds of government and Commonwealth schemes saw huge numbers of Britons emigrating for Australia, Canada and New Zealand, with as many as 104,000 people leaving for these ex-colonies as late as 1974. A much lower but still relatively high number of British emigrants settled in South Africa.

Following the two world wars, soldier-settler schemes encouraged several thousand British ex-servicemen to settle in Kenya and then Rhodesia. Scattered across the rest of the Empire were large numbers of semi-permanent traders, engineers, agricultural experts and administrators, as well as large numbers of missionaries.

Had the territories that were one day to become the Dominions not been open to colonisation by Britain’s rapidly growing population, it is highly likely that the pressure of population would have brought about the same sort of violent revolutions in Britain which scarred Europe in the 1830s and 1840s. Had the Empire not existed, it is extremely unlikely that a great number of present day states would now exist, with India a collection of more than 400 independent principalities of varying size and power before the British gained control of the sub-continent – being the foremost example. Great swathes of Africa owe the fact of sovereign so-called “nations” to British imperial administrative measures, unifying disparate and often warring tribes under the Pax Britannica into colonies which later became independent states. That most of these states are in various degrees failed is due not to the fact of past British imperial rule, but to its contemporary absence.

Let it be stated quite clearly at this point: not a single ex-colony gained independence as a result of so-called freedom fighters. In all cases, Britain sought to construct viable nations with political systems based pn the Westminster parliamentary model; Britain, unlike Portugal and Spain, did not buckle to de facto terrorist movements in Africa, any more than she was defeated by the Communist terrorist movement in the Malay States, or by the criminal Mau Mau in Kenya (which saw only a few dozen European deaths but about 20,000 black on black murders). In the present day, kleptocratic and often tyrannical regimes across Africa seek to perpetuate for their own reasons the myth of having wrested freedom from the colonial power at the end of a gun. In many such states (with Zimbabwe being the prime example), Britain is still vilified for mythological colonial crimes, and held to be responsible for the ills inflicted in fact by their own vicious rulers.

Nor were Britain’s imperial subjects systematically oppressed. The British Empire was, by any objective measure, perhaps the most benign in history, motivated by the most noble sentiments and ideals. Fortunate were members of the Empire to be ruled by Britain and not by Germany or Japan before the First World War, or by Spain or Portugal, whose ramshackle imperial remnants were notorious (in the case of their African colonies until well into the mid-seventies) for chaotic administration and systematised cruelties. Britain’s colonial subjects gained immeasurably by British rule, not only materially, but with reference to the grafting of systems of law and government motivated by the highest ideals, whose echoes are still heard dimly today.

The British in India and Africa put down witchcraft and slavery; they sank wells and set in hand programmes of advanced irrigation, reducing the incidence of famine; they improved methods of agriculture and provided basic health care and education to the peasantry. Britain supressed the endemic inter-tribal warfare which was Africa's curse, and which supplied most of the prisoners for the slave trade. The Royal Navy patrolled Africa's western and eastern shores, almost entirely suppressed the trade in black African slaves. British colonial rule saw an end to tyranny across Africa, an end to arbitary injustice and cruelties; across the Empire all men were equal before the law. Britain created nations where there had been none; India and Pakistan were brought into being sixty years ago to express the will of the peoples of the sub-continent; a scattering of island nations arose in the Caribbean, and in Africa colonies whose borders reflected largely colonial administrative imperatives were constituted as sovereign states, all with governments which were designed to mirror Britain's own parliamentary system with its inbuilt checks and balances. 

Empire’s highest ideal of all, the urge to bring about self realisation and freedom for peoples previously denied freedom by despotic rulers, meant that the finest global geopolitical creation in history carried within it the seeds of its own demise. Britain’s empire was not lost; it was (certainly, long before the time was yet ripe), freely given away. 

Curiously – except for perhaps ten years at the turn of the century – Britain’s empire was never wholly popular back home except in the middle and upper classes. The imperial mission rarely captured the imagination of the working class, and when it did this was due to military triumph. Imperial expansion was generally the work of a social and intellectual elite.

But in 1898, Lord Curzon could claim with some justification that imperial expansion “is becoming every day less and less the creed of a party and more the faith of a nation.” However, except for a few years from the mid 1890s, kit is debatable whether imperial pride truly dominated the thinking of more than a minority  of Britons outside of the middle and upper middle classes (though within these classes the imperial mission was firmly established),  except viscerally, as an embodiment of Britain’s leadership in the world. The fact of empire was popularly held to be the logical outcome of the inherent superiority of the British people over any other peoples, anywhere.In certain circles it has long been held that the growth of empire was a response to economic factors. J.A.Hobson, whose publication, Imperialism (1902) was very influential in this regard, argued that by the latter part of the nineteenth century a disproportionate share of the national wealth had piled up in the hands of relatively few people, with an extreme inequality in its distribution: the relative poverty of the greater part of the working class population meant that they were unable to consume enough of the industrial output to make its continued expansion profitable. The argument went that huge amounts of surplus capital sought profitable outlets which could not be found at home, so its owners tended to invest in facilities in Africa and Asia, and then call on the government to protect these investments by conquering and administrating the territories concerned. However, no European government of the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, not even that of the Nation of Shopkeepers, was so entirely the tool of a class of financiers and merchants. When compelled to chose, the British government of the time invariably expressed the dominance of political and diplomatic necessities over more economic factors.

What is more, the greater part of Britain’s huge investments abroad during the latter part of the nineteenth century went not to the newly acquired African colonies, or to India, or even to her spheres of influence in east Asia, but to the temperate regions of the world, to the United States, to South America, and to what would become the Dominions. Some of Britain’s colonial acquisitions were economically quite worthless (such as British New Guinea), though sometimes strategically valuable. Of all Britain’s African possessions, only the Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, with their gold fields, could compete with the United States or with the old settled colonies as either sources of food and raw materials, or as markets for capital or manufactured goods. Yes, there was a slowing of British economic growth relative to the United States and Germany in the latter part of the nineteenth century, which certainly did something to stimulate a search for new economic opportunities overseas, but this phenomenon and the imperial urge were not cause and effect. If it is still believed that empire was the answer to surplus capital and manufactured products seeking a home abroad, then how can the growth of the Italian and Russian empires of the period be explained? No, there must have been some other factors behind the imperial dynamic, for neither Russia or Italy was highly industrialised, and both countries were importers of capital, yet both these countries were driven by expansion abroad.

The simplistic political explanation for the sudden growth of empire in the late 19th century is that territories overseas were seized to keep them out of the hands of rival powers. That this state of affairs came about was due to the rise of nationalism in Germany, France and Italy: - despite their sometimes bitter rivalry, the balance of power within Europe’s borders by the 1870s was static, so national pride saw expression at the highest levels with the acquisition of territories outside Europe, of colonial possessions in Africa and Asia: - Britain, more secure within her national psyche than the other great European powers, nonetheless could not sit back and see the world carved up between them, especially as Britain had already by far the greatest investments in Africa and Asia, investments and strategic routes which might be threatened unless she too were to seize and conquer territories.

Amongst those visionaries of empire who sometimes single handed gathered lands and peoples into the empire, there was generally another higher current of feeling. This was the deeply held belief that the advance of British rule meant material progress, self realisation and in the long term, the possibilities of freedom, for the peoples brought under British rule. This belief in the white man’s duty to civilise the world for the good of its peoples was a progressive force and one with noble qualities.

I have already mentioned some of the very real advantages accruing to conquered peoples under British rule, the most important of which was the imposition and maintenance of the Pax Britannica, beneath which all other virtues could flourish. To the exponents of empire, Britain, indubitably the finest of all the European nations, had a moral duty to bring disorderly, stagnant and brutal societies under her benign rule. Many of the greatest empire builders were also active in reform and improvement at home. Lord Milner, for example (alongside Cecil Rhodes the driving force behind the Anglo-Boer War, and the creator of the Union of South Africa), when a young man had helped to found Toynbee Hall, the Oxford University settlement in London’s deprived East End.

This sense of imperial mission was a response to a feeling of national moral superiority, not far separate from the widely held belief in the truth of the Christian faith and in the falsity of all others. The best colonial administrators saw clearly that the position in Africa and most parts of Asia – then as now – was quite simple: the peoples of these areas desperately needed just and orderly rule, this could only be provided by Europeans, and it was their duty to provide it. This argument still holds good today: Britain’s ex-colonial possessions are almost all misgoverned, often torn apart by warfare, their economies a shambles, their people measurably and objectively far worse off under “freedom” than ever they were under British rule.

Today more than at any previous time, an African empire would pay for itself, for today we are fully cognisant of the vast underground riches the ramshackle black countries are sitting upon. Even at the height of empire, in 1898, it was extremely cheap to defend. At the time there were 99,000 regular soldiers stationed in Britain, 75,000 in India and 41,000 elsewhere in the Empire. The Navy required another 100,000 men, and the Indian native army was 148,000 strong. Dotted around the world were thirty-three small strategically located barracks and naval coaling stations. Yet the total defence budget for 1898 was just over £40 million, a mere 2.5% of net national product: - in relative terms this is not much higher than the burden of Britain’s defence budget today, with absolutely no moral returns whatsoever, and it is far less than was spent on the military during the lengthy cold war years. If ever Britain had a duty to take charge of the less fortunate peoples of Africa especially, and bring them to political stability, material advancement and moral improvement, then in principle, if perhaps not in practicality, this duty beckons still.

Britain’s imperial security rested upon her naval dominance. Yet even when Britain modernised her entire fleet following the launch of the revolutionary Dreadnaught battleship (between 1906 and 1913, Britain built 27 such battleships) this cost only £49 million, being less than the annual interest on the national debt. Furthermore, the burden of defending the Empire did not rise significantly at the height of the imperial period.

It is clear from letters, memoirs and recollections of the time that the possession of a well-run empire, motivated by the noblest principles and philosophies directed at the welfare of the peoples therein, brings huge fulfilment and the sense of immeasurable well-being to those who take up the duties of running such an empire. As British society reels under the cumulative assaults of more than 50 years of insane left wing liberal government, and the Union, together of our culture and traditions, become less and less certain of themselves, facing ever greater threat from trendy left-wing nation-haters on the one hand, and regional nationalists on the other, the sense of mission offered the British people if we were to re-engage with our imperial destiny, would enliven us once again, giving new energy and direction to a nation renaissance, and reunifying Englishmen, Scotsmen, Welshmen, and Northern Irishmen under Union as only a shared sense of national identity can bring.

The beginning of the loss of Britain’s belief in herself, and in the decay in her society and culture, coincided with the break-up of the Empire. Was it because the British race had become degenerate that the Empire trickled so speedily through our fingers, or is it that our present day social, cultural and political degeneracy stems from the loss of Empire?  I contend that a re-evaluation of Great Britain’s imperial history, in which we come to recognise the huge debt owed by dozens of states across the World, but especially on the Indian sub-continent and in Africa, would help to restore that lost sense of British national pride which is the true legacy of successive post-war governments in Britain.

The Housing Crisis

The average house price in the UK is £235,000; the average yearly salary is £33,000 and the average annual mortgage is £15,600. That means that most young couples cannot afford to but their own home. The alternative is to rent but the average rent for a two bedroom flat in central London is £44,000. Social housing provided by housing associations and local authorities is much cheaper but in short supply. People are being forced to move out of town but essential workers such as medical staff and police officers need to be in London.

The political parties have all promised to address the problem but apart from Harold Macmillan they have done next to nothing about it. In 1953 Harold Macmillan built 300,000 houses as Minister of Housing in Winston Churchill's post-war Government. An achievement that has never been equalled. This was despite a shortage of construction workers and materials.

Margaret Thatcher started selling council houses to their tenants because she believed that people should own their homes but those on low incomes also need a roof over their heads. Since her time few council houses have been built. Governments have tinkered with the problem but they have not treated housing as a priority. At present interest rates are at rock bottom and there is plenty of land available. There has never been a better time for a massive house building program - all that's lacking is the will to do it.

Successive governments have failed to plan for the future. They opened the floodgates to immigration without making sure that we had enough houses, schools and hospital beds. The telecoms industry was successfully privatised but power generation and the railways were a disaster. They are now talking about trading with the world but first we need to revitalise industry. Let's start with the construction industry. 

European Outlook

Our sister blog is posted on: europeanoutlook.blogspot.co.uk  

Nation Revisited # 106

Nation Revisited # 106, August 2013

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

Defence

British armed forces are being restructured in line with the 2010 Defence Review but they will still be highly trained, well-equipped and funded by the fourth largest defence budget in the world. The army will consist of 82,000 regulars and 30,000 Territorial Army reservists. The Royal Navy will consist of 36,000 personnel, including 7,000 Royal Marines and 5,200 men and women of the Fleet Air Arm. The Royal Air Force will have 33,000 personnel.

Our Type 45 destroyers; Daring, Dauntless, Diamond, Dragon, Defender and Duncan are the world’s most advanced warships. They displace 8,000 tonnes and are equipped with the Sea Viper missile system and Sampson radar. After much speculation our 65,000 tonne aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales are due to enter service in 2017. Each ship can carry 36 Lightning Joint Strike Fighters, 4 helicopters and a crew of 1600. Two Astute class submarines, Astute and Ambush are in service and five more will follow. These 7,000 tonne nuclear-powered submarines are armed with Spearfish torpedoes and Tomahawk cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

The RAF’s main aircraft is the formidable Panavia Tornado fighter-bomber. This is being replaced with the even more advanced Eurofighter Typhoon – probably the world’s best multi-role aircraft. The Hercules fleet is being replaced by 22 Airbus A400 transporters.

Our nuclear deterrent depends on Trident missiles supplied by the US under the 1958 UK-US Mutual Defence Agreement. They are carried aboard four submarines; Vanguard, Victorious, Vigilant and Vengeance. Each vessel displaces 16,000 tonnes and carries 16 Trident ballistic missiles with multiple warheads. The future of Trident will be decided in 2016. The cost of upgrading the submarines, missiles and warheads is estimated at £20 bn by the government and £100 bn by Greenpeace. The true figure is somewhere in between.

We are more than capable of defending ourselves and in cooperation with our European partners we are developing affordable domestic materiel. Typhoon multi-role aircraft, Augusta Westland combat helicopters, Sea Viper and Storm Shadow missiles, Spearfish torpedoes, Sampson radar, and Airbus A400 transport planes put us in the forefront of military technology and provide valuable jobs for British workers.

The Housing Crisis

It cannot be right that the seventh richest country on earth has a desperate housing shortage. There are 4.5 million people in the UK waiting to be housed and 3,960 families living in emergency bed and breakfast accommodation (National Housing Federation). Between 1951 and 1954 Harold Macmillan the Minister for Housing in Winston Churchill’s government built 300,000 houses per year. But we only managed to build 7,090 houses in 2012 (National House Building Council). In 2007 Gordon Brown pledged to build one million affordable houses but at the present rate of progress this will only amount to 400,000, less than half, by 2020 (The Guardian).

The UK housing shortage has been made worst by immigration and the financial constraints on local authorities. But with interest rates at rock bottom now is the right time to be building; and it would be cheaper than keeping people in B&Bs. There is no reason why social housing should not be profitable. Houses built at volume and sold or rented at realistic prices should cover the cost of construction and maintenance.

When Margaret Thatcher started selling off council houses the Labour Party protested but it soon became obvious that Labour Councilors were at the front of the queue. The Labour Party is good at talking socialism but it took a true-blue aristocrat like Harold Macmillan to set the record for house building. He is hated by Labour for saying that we had “never had it so good”, and he is hated by the Tories for his “Winds of Change” speech. In fact, he had an understanding of geopolitics and a rapport with the people that is sadly lacking in Dave Cameron.

A national house building programme would get families out of inadequate and expensive accommodation, get unemployed construction workers off the dole and give the economy a boost. Defenders of the free market are against government intervention but the private sector has completely failed to provide affordable homes. Banks are restrained from granting mortgages by new rules governing lending and property developers are hampered by planning permission. 

Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement had an extensive range of policies including housing. These were set out in their many books and pamphlets and all of them were covered in Mosley: Right or Wrong - (available from www.amazon.com  at £9.00).

“Housing must be treated as a national problem. To leave it in the hands of local authorities is another case of stage-coach politics. You do not fight wars by farming out the job to local authorities. Why will present government never take anything seriously except fighting a war? It is only then that we have a national effort. The housing of the people should be taken seriously, and treated like a problem of war. Many of the same slums disgrace us today (1961) as when I entered politics. We have got to clean up the British housing problem in double quick time.”

Ukip blames the housing crisis on our membership of the European Union. They claim that the housing shortage is caused by immigration and pledge to solve the problem by getting Britain out of Europe. But this is simply not true. Apart from Citizens of the Irish Republic who are covered by the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1923 the majority of immigrants come from South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. Quitting the EU would do nothing to control them.

The less respectable nationalist parties follow the same line. They are dedicated to the mantra that was carved in stone when the National Front was founded in 1967: “Stop immigration, start repatriation, and get Britain out of the Common Market.”

We have had a housing shortage since the Second World War but apart from Harold Macmillan’s commendable effort in the fifties not enough has been done about it.  People bought their own houses during the boom but now they can’t get mortgages and the present government is torn between its duty to provide housing and its commitment to reducing the budget deficit.

Immigration did not cause the housing problem but it has aggravated it and continues to do so. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown imported 2.5 million immigrants in pursuit of their dream of a multiracial Britain; and in the hope that they would vote Labour. They never considered the availability of houses, jobs, schools and hospitals. They should have been charged with criminal negligence instead of being rewarded with prime ministerial pensions. Some say they should have been charged with treason.

When we built 300,000 houses per year just after the war we were short of materials, money and manpower. With modern construction methods, and rock bottom interest rates, we could build enough affordable houses for all our people. It would take a great national effort and it would upset profiteering bankers, landlords and estate agents but it can, and must be done.

The Dismantling of a Democracy

(Reprinted from The Flame August 2011 – http://theflameuk.com

People are claiming today that Britain has become an obedient poodle at the beck and call of the United States. This is nothing new Winston Churchill put us in this position in the 1930s.

In 1948 the British government signed away more of our freedoms when it signed the United Nations Charter and bound us to its terms. Alger Hiss, an American convicted communist and Soviet agent, together with Andrei Gromyko, a senior Soviet official, saw to it that Britain became embroiled in this trickster’s charter. The UN Act binds Parliament to a body over which it has no control.

Politicians must be the world’s greatest illusionists; for while they tell the public they are doing something good, they are usually getting away with the reverse, and few spot how this is done. Since 1937 plotters have been at work methodically getting rid of all the public safeguards which were built into our constitution. For instance they have gradually reduced the ability of the Sovereign (Crown) to defend her subjects, while dismissing all free and independent critics from the House of Lords. This has for the first time given Parliament a free hand to do just as it wants.

A letter from the Home Secretary dated 31^st May 1988 appears in the Independent newspaper on Monday 17^th June 1988. This document made it clear that her Majesty the Queen is prepared to place at the disposal of Parliament of her remaining prerogatives, including the power to make war or peace. The letter was signed by Douglas Hurd, while serving in Margaret Thatcher’s government. This has left Parliament and their non-elected partners the ability to decide where and when they deploy our armed forces.

With neither the Queen, nor the House of Lords able to place restraints on the government – or to be precise, the cabinet and their advisers – we now have a virtual elected dictatorship. Which is why, Tony Blair felt free to drag Britain into an unjustified and illegal assault on the sovereign nation of Iraq. To make matters worse he involved us in another illegal attack, by allowing American warplanes carrying bombs for the devastation of the Lebanon, to pass through the UK.

As there is no effective opposition party in the House of Commons, it is now left to journalists and the public to try and keep Parliament in check by using whatever means remain. Families who had their sons illegally killed while serving in Iraq have called for a public enquiry into the justification for war. It is possible that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith may, one day have to give evidence under oath. The Iraq conflict was not only morally wrong, but the reasons given for the engagement were fabricated.

However, a more pertinent point not generally raised is that servicemen sign up to fight for the defence of our nation, not to be lent out as mercenaries and placed at the disposal of that private organization that calls itself “The New World Order”. In fact our armed forces were commandeered in 1939 by a world government group led by Winston Churchill, and as yet they haven’t been returned. This is why our army and air force are constantly being used in wars which have absolutely nothing to do with us, while our shores and airports are continually used as points of arrival for an illegal invasion.

Editor: The United Kingdom has been militarily dependent on the USA since 1917 and economically dependent on them since 1944. We need to seriously consider our links with America, Europe and the rest of the world.

Five Questions Answered by Claire Khaw

We asked our readers the following five questions. Who are you? What do you believe in? If you could direct government policy what would you do? What are you proud of and what do you regret? How would you like to be remembered? Interested readers should e-mail their replies to: nationrevisited@gmail.com

So far we have had replies from John Bean of the British Democrats # 76, Robert Edwards of European Action # 77, Bill Baillie of Nation Revisited # 78, Michael Woodbrige of Western Springs # 96, Eddy Morrison of the NF 97, Robert Best of the League of St George # 98, Arlette Baldacchino of Viva Malta # 99, Alex Morana from North America # 100, Rufus of News from Atlantis # 101, Pete Williamson of The White Way Home # 103. Here is Claire Khaw of The Voice of Reason.

 http://thevoiceofreasonann.blogspot.co.uk/

Who are you?

 

We are defined by; (1) our sex, (2) our religion / political beliefs, (3) our class, (4) our race, (5) our nation. I am a non-white British middle class female social conservative.

What do you believe in?

I believe that; (1) representative democracy, (2) liberalism, (3) feminism, (4) the desecration of marriage, (5) atheism; will be the death of Western civilization.

 If you could direct government policy what would you do?

(1) Repeal the Equality Act 2010. (2) Repeal the European Communities Act 1972.

(3) Repeal the Murder (Abolition of the Death Penalty) Act 1965. (4) Repeal the Human Rights Act 1998. (5) Make it a requirement for couples to agree a marriage contract before they can marry.

What are you proud of and what do you regret?

I am proud of my understanding of the hearts and minds of the British people as well as my knowledge of their history, culture, religious differences and class system.

It is too early to say if I have any regrets. I will have a better picture of the regrettable things I have done in my life on my deathbed.

How would you like to be remembered?

I would like to be remembered for not being afraid to say what I believe to be the truth and for saying what I feel needs to be said, rather than what is merely socially acceptable to say. A mediocre politician is economical with the truth, while a great politician is generous with the truth and also praised for the telling of it. I hope I will at least be something in between.

Bill White: Enemy of the State

The former leader of the American National Socialist Workers’ Party is back in prison for giving an unauthorized radio interview to the American Free Press.  Bill White, a 36 year-old psychology graduate, has been in and out of federal prisons for the last five years although most of the original charges against him have been dropped. He is accused of provoking violence by addressing an audience that is “inherently violent”. His website used to get 150,000 hits before it was shut down under legislation intended to protect America against terrorism. His former lawyer dropped out when she was advised that representing him could be a federal offence. And a subsequent state-appointed lawyer failed to turn up. Nobody knows how long he will be detained, or even where.

The Washington Post was so determined to incriminate Bill White that they tried to blame his website for the Columbine High School massacre of 1999. When Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot dead twelve students they suggested: “some police hate crime experts say privately it is not inconceivable that the teen-age gunmen in this case visited the site.” In fact White had merely said that the state education system endangered the mental health of its students. Even the FBI admitted that there was no evidence against him.

The British government used Defence Regulation 18B in 1940 to detain opponents of Churchill’s war without charge or trial. This emergency legislation was introduced to fight the IRA but it was used against Oswald Mosley and his supporters. The present government is preparing new legislation in response to recent terrorist outrages but they already have plenty of repressive laws at their disposal. Colin Jordan and Nick Griffin were prosecuted under the Race Relations Act and Simon Sheppard and Luke O’Farrell were given punitive sentences after being refused political asylum in the US. The British and American governments fully co-operate in locking up “enemies of the state.” The Atlantic Alliance is stronger than ever.

Bill White’s opinions are forthright but harsh words do not actually kill people. President Obama, on the other hand, speaks softly but backs the rebels in Syria and orders the killing of thousands of people throughout the world with missiles, bombs, heavy artillery and gunfire. The dissident writer is held in prison while the Commander in Chief enjoys all the comforts of the White House. Democracy is supposed to guarantee freedom of speech but criticizing the Money Power is obviously a freedom too far. In defence of “freedom” plutocratic governments are using all the instruments of oppression at their disposal.

You can access Bill White’s former website www.overthrow.com by visiting Way Back Machine at http://archive.org/web/web.php

The Great Divide

Those of us who opposed communism, global capitalism and unrestricted immigration in the fifties and sixties gravitated towards parties holding those views. But a clear division soon emerged between Oswald Mosley’s vision of Europe a Nation and the limited horizons of the petty nationalists. I wrote in Nation in 1973: “We are divided on Europe but agreed on the need to stop immigration and control the Money Power. We stand on the threshold of success.” Apart from the Panglossian final sentence the statement is still true.

Individuals and parties come and go but ideas are indestructible. We who believe in Europe are still divided from those chasing the fantasy of “national independence.” We know that the EU will not destroy the individual nations of Europe any more than the United Kingdom destroyed England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Nations are not destroyed by federation. France, Germany and Italy have been in the EU since it was founded by the Treaty of Rome in 1957, but they are still indisputably French, German and Italian.

This debate was revived by an article on Marine Le Pen by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard the dystopian business editor of the Daily Telegraph. He welcomed Marine Le Pen’s promise to destroy the euro by withdrawing France from the eurozone. Even its strongest critics acknowledge that the collapse of the euro would be catastrophic; not just for the eurozone but for the UK and the rest of Europe. But Ambrose Evans-Pritchard thinks it’s a good idea. No wonder the Daily Telegraph’s circulation has halved in the past decade. If the Barclay Brothers want their ailing newspaper to survive they should dump him and embrace reality.

The Front National did well in recent elections, but after 41 years of campaigning they only have 2 seats in the National Assembly and 3 in the European Parliament. They will probably do well in the coming European election; as will Ukip in the UK and the Freedom Party in the Netherlands. They will pick up protest votes but their only answer to the worldwide economic crisis is protectionism. This did not work in the 1930s and it will not work now. France will not prosper on her own and nor will Britain or the Netherlands; we are bound together by ties of blood, culture and historical inevitability. Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders and Nigel Farage may delay European unity but they will never stop it.

Markets always respond to changing circumstances. Rising wages and expectations in China and a reduction in spending power in Europe and North America will rebalance the economies of the world. The future is looking good for our expanding high-tech industries but an isolated Britain hiding behind protective tariffs and lacking dollars to buy gas and oil is not something to look forward to.

Views on the News

Veteran campaigner and Nation Revisited subscriber Roger Clare was briefly interviewed outside Charing Cross Station on Andrew Neil’s Daily Politics TV show on Thursday 27/06/13. Adam Fleming asked him what he thought about George Osborne’s spending review. Roger replied that the Chancellor should have looked at the foreign aid budget. He told me later that he is not completely opposed to foreign aid but doesn’t see why it should be ring-fenced.

Eric Pirie died in a Nottingham Hospital on 8^th July 2013. He was the younger brother of Denis Pirie. Both brothers were members of the original British National Party who followed Colin Jordan into the National Socialist Movement in 1962 and survived the riot that ended their inaugural rally in Trafalgar Square. RIP Eric.

Ted Davey died of cancer in a Bournemouth hospice on 8^th July 2013. He was an active member of Union Movement in the fifties, a supporter of the original BNP and later Colin Jordan in the sixties and a regular at Friends of Mosley socials in the eighties and nineties. He was an avid letter writer with many contacts at home and abroad. RIP Ted.

Ten years after the death of weapons inspector Dr David Kelly a group of doctors led by radiologist Stephen Frost are calling for an inquest. The Hutton Inquiry found that he had committed suicide but this has been widely disputed. Courts of Inquiry usually find in favour of governments. But in the age of the Internet and the Freedom of Information Act it’s getting harder to manipulate the truth. Recent inquiries have uncovered corruption in high places. The Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War is due to report next year but the government is still refusing to release official documents. Lord Hutton’s verdict may be right but only a proper inquest by a trained coroner will settle the matter.

Dave Cameron has announced a crackdown on child pornography and plans to force Internet providers to install filters to stop children from accessing porn sites. But filters can be switched off by computer savvy children; and perverts can send pictures by e-mail. This is yet another empty Tory gesture to go with charging foreigners to use the National Health Service and advising illegal immigrants to go home. We need vigilant border guards to stop illegal immigrants and we need courts ready and willing to convict criminals. We cannot turn Internet providers, social workers, doctors and nurses into policemen. This government is addicted to gestures. They have promised a referendum on Europe to appease Ukip but they have no intention of acting on it. They promised to combat terrorism but openly supported the rebels in Syria. And they talk about stopping immigration and then tell us that we need another 7 million immigrants. Almost everything this government does is a deception involving smoke and mirrors. It’s time we got rid of them.