Nation Revsited # 149 March 2019

Cameron's Chaos

Dave Cameron has gone off to write his memoirs, leaving our country in a state of chaos. He was one of the worst prime ministers in British history. He picked a fight with the EU to appease the right wing of the Tory Party, but he got nowhere with Brussels so he called a referendum. 'The People', led by the popular press and pissed-off by ten years of austerity, voted to leave the EU, but there was no plan for such a decision and after years of argument we are due to leave the EU on 31st March unless Brexit is delayed or abandoned.

Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg predict a Brexit boom but the Governor of the Bank of England is less optimistic, and to add to the confusion the our withdrawal is led by Theresa May who voted to remain in the EU.

Leaving the EU is a momentous decision but whatever happens, we will still have an unbalanced economy, a divided society, a housing crisis, a staggering national debt, cash-strapped armed forces, a National Health Service dependant on foreign labour, and an educational system that impoverishes students. None of these problems will be helped by Brexit, they all require the sort of political action that our politicians are incapable of delivering.

Impossible Dreams?

Fascism today is just a political insult but in 1922 it was a populist revolution that swept Benito Mussolini to power in Italy. At first, the regime was content to govern but by the time of the Italian Social Republic, it had developed a full range of progressive policies; a guaranteed minimum wage,, workers' partnership, free education, and social security from the cradle to the grave. These ideals were enshrined in the constitution of the RSI. Unfortunately, by then it was too late.

The post-war Labour government introduced the National Health Service but by the time of the Korean War, it dropped some services to save money. That's why opticians, chiropodists, and most dentists are outside of the system. The present Tory government loudly proclaims its support for the NHS but suspicions remain that they want to sell it off to the private health care providers and insurance companies. At present, the NHS is protected by legislation but the Tory desire for a trade deal with the United States could open the door to American competition. 

The Welfare State costs money that the Tories would rather spend on royal weddings, aircraft carriers and nuclear missiles. But the rise in homelessness and the use of food banks is a national disgrace. The main parties have acknowledged the problem but at the moment they are preoccupied with Brexit. Perhaps the splits now tearing the old parties apart are the start of a realignment of politics. We can only hope so because social justice is not an impossible dream. 

Donald Trump equates health care with Communism. He thinks that everybody should pay for their own doctors. But the sick and the unemployed can't afford expensive medical insurance. As fair-minded Europeans, we must reject Trump's selfishness and defend our NHS. 

Oil

It is fashionable to criticise the banks but the oil companies are just as bad. In his autobiography, 'Pantaraxia', Nubar Gulbenkian tells how his oil billionaire father took him to lunch in New York while he was on holiday. The first day they were treated royally, and as they left the restaurant Calouste told his son, "I've got a million dollars in that bank." The second day was just as good and as they left daddy told him that he had a million dollars in that bank. And so it went on with all the major American banks. On the last day, after a sumptuous lunch his father said nothing, so Nulbar asked him: "how much have you got in their bank daddy?", he replied: "not a cent, I owe them a million dollars."
  

Debtors without collateral are written off but those with assets are treated as valued customers. And its the same with countries. Venezuela is bankrupt and its people are starving but they are sitting on one of the world's biggest oilfields. It's only a matter of time before a consortium of banks and oil companies takes over the country. Venezuela tried to install a socialist system under Hugo Chavez but the experiment was ruined by the collapse of oil prices.

But Venezuela is not the first state to be taken over by the oil companies. Britain controlled Iran through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and when prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh (pictured) tried to nationalise it in 1953 he was ousted in a coup mounted by the CIA. The Shah was installed as a Western puppet but when he showed signs of independence in 1979, he was overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini who had been given refuge by France. Currently, Iran is being strangled by American sanctions. 

President Trump has reneged on his agreement to lift sanctions against Iran in return for them scrapping nuclear weapons. Iran is no threat to the US but her armed forces are engaged in Syria and Yemen.
 
Calouste Gulbenkian was known as Mr Ten Percent because creamed-off 10% of all the oil traded in the British Empire. Today, more countries are producing oil and Britain and America no longer dominate the market. Oil will run out one day but the producers are already investing in alternative energy. People all over the world think that their fates are decided by the illiterate crosses they put on ballot papers, but the important decisions are made in the boardrooms of the big oil corporations.

Oil dominates the economies of the Western nations and influences their foreign policies. Russia is accused of being too authoritarian and aggressive but her real crime is to be a major oil producer.  

Jimmy Miller

I first met my friend Jimmy Miller in 1983 when I moved back to South London. He was living in a council flat awarded to him by Lambeth Council. But a highly organised gang of middle-class squatters was occupying all the vacant flats in the area and forcing out the working-class tenants. They only wanted their own kind to be housed. Jimmy was having none of that and he defended himself vigorously, only to be arrested and evicted for his bravery.

Jimmy was born in Liverpool in the Thirties. I don't know exactly how old he was but he was older than me. He served in the Royal Corps of Signals and he took part in the defence of Kuwait in 1961. General Qasim of Iraq massed his forces on the Kuwaiti border ready to invade The British rushed 7,000 troops to Kuwait and broadcast bogus messages indicating a massive military build-up. Qasim fell for the deception and promptly withdrew his forces.

After the army Jimmy worked as a painter at the giant Cammell Laird shipyard. There he was elected as a shop steward representing the painters. Most of the union officials were communists who put up posters of Marx and Lenin on their office walls. Not to be outdone Jimmy put up a poster of Adolf Hitler and defied anyone to touch it.

After leaving Liverpool, he worked all over the country renovating Woolworth's stores and eventually got a job as a maintenance man at Bon Marche in Brixton. For all his National Socialist convictions Jimmy got on well with the West Indian community. He always used to say that its the politicians who are to blame not the immigrants.

He moved back to Liverpool when he retired but he always sent me a Christmas card and a calendar. He was suffering from Parkinson's and his handwriting grew more erratic each year, but this year his package did not arrive at all and I guess that he has passed away.

Jimmy Miller was a brave, intelligent, and generous man. He was raised as a Catholic but in later life, he was attracted to the Salvation Army. And that's how I picture him, to the words of the anthem, "Onward Christian Soldiers marching on to war."

Assassination 

Government agents and terrorists regularly kill each other. Recent murders by the Russians and the Saudis have been roundly condemned by the West but we have a long and distinguished history of political assassination. Britain's most famous hit happened on 4th June 1942 when two Special Operations Executive officers, Josef Cabcik and Jan Kubis, shot dead Richard Heydrich the Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. Nazi reprisals were expected but the British government did not know that the town of Lidice would be destroyed together with thousands of civilians. 

The Nazi reaction was as cruel as the British treatment of dissidents in India. In April 1919, following days of rioting in which four Europeans were killed, Brig Gen Dyer (pictured) ordered his men to open fire on an unarmed crowd of protesters, 379 were killed and 1,200 wounded. The Amritsar atrocity was more mass murder than assassination but it showed the world who was in charge of India; at least, for the next thirty years.

Throughout the Northern Ireland Troubles, IRA terrorists were shot by Protestant paramilitaries on information supplied by MI5. Sometimes the government acted in the other direction. Lenny Murphy, the Protestant terrorists known as the Shankhill Butcher, was killed because he had become an embarrassment.  

Our fictitious national hero, James Bond has a licence to kill. Commander Bond 007 was an invention but his creator, Ian Fleming, was a British agent who understood how these things are done.

Our American allies shot dead Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011. American Special Forces killed him and dumped his body in the sea. His death was announced by President Obama who welcomed the death of the leader of Al-Qaeda.

It seems that bumping off political opponents is not necessarily a crime. When we kill our enemies we are fulfilling the will of the people, but when authoritarian foreign governments kill their opponents they are acting like savages.The truth is that all governments conduct under-cover operations and no individual government has the right to give lectures on good behaviour.

Mosley on Race, from "Union" May 1948

When Oswald Mosley wrote this article in 1948 it would have been possible to send back recently-arrived West Indian workers. Today things are different. We can enforce our rules of entry and deport foreign criminals but a mass round up of immigrants is out of the question. 

Race is the first reality of European Unity. This unique stock of men in Europe has, in fact, produced the culture, the values and the achievements of the West. This race, in their family of Europe, has produced most things that matter on this globe. This achievement has been the result of their character, which in turn was the result of their race.

Horses go further and faster than donkeys because they are horses and not donkeys. We cannot avoid the basic facts of nature, even if we would. Nor can we drown them beneath a verbiage of words. If we are to build then surely we must build on real foundations, and I know that we do.

Therefore, I affirm the fact that the first reality and rock foundation of European Union is Race! Who are our nearest kindred? The answer is the German people. The British and the Germans are the most closely related of all European peoples. The Northern French also belong to this close circle of Race or Family and were united with the Germans under Charlemagne.

Near in blood to us, and the Germans, are the whole Northern block of Sweden, Norway and Denmark. A related stock is also the great family of the Latin nations, whose culture has adorned the illuminated pages of European history. 

You cannot deny nature; you cannot create in defiance of reality.

An Alternative View - Bernard Franklyn

Since the early 1950s, every aspect of our once great country has been destroyed. Only old age pensioners in their seventies, like myself, are aware of the changes that have been made. When we are gone there will be no one left to explain what we have lost to the younger generation. I feel that we need to urge OAP's to become vocal, but that is hard work. Still, I am going to urge more of my generation to explain the situation to their children and grandchildren. My daughter and her husband both work but are unable to keep up with the bills. In the 1950s wives didn't work, the families were able to survive and pay all the bills on the husband's wage. In the 1950s and '60s, virtually everyone could afford a mortgage so long as you were a regular saver. In 1958 a terraced house in the suburbs of London would have sold for £10,000; today it would be £500,000. The house would not be worth any more, that is how our fraudulent governments have reduced the value of money by just creating it out of thin air. Parliament is run by our enemies and has been throughout my life. The time is long overdue to find our own BRITISH candidates who have the knowledge and skills to run the country. You need no qualifications to or knowledge a prime or cabinet minister. You only have to be subservient to political Mafia that really rules our country, nay the world.

The people of Europe have no control over the EU. It is an ever growing nightmare with even more power over its people than the Soviet Union had. If the public had elected the National Front in the 1960s we wouldn't have joined the EEC which became the EU, we could have saved what was left of our manufacturing industry, we wouldn't have allowed the standard of education to be lowered through the introduction of the comprehensive system, there would have been no mass immigration programme, anti-British Jews wouldn't have been appointed to the senior positions of the judiciary, proper sentencing of murderers and criminals would have continued, the drug problem would not have escalated like it has, there would be no national debt as we would have created interest free banking which the EU would never allow.

Britain was extremely successful at managing its own affairs long before the EU was thought of. We will manage again, so long as we have a government that doesn't want to keep us tied to the United States, Israel and the EU. If you are not sure, watch RT news on channel 234 and see how often these three work in instantaneous harmony whenever they want to do something diabolical. 

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Nation Revisited

All articles are 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.

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Nation Revisited # 148 February 2019

Red Lines

The ongoing Brexit fiasco owes much to the government's 'Red Lines', these are a series of defensive positions that must never be abandoned. Hitler had the same idea at Stalingrad.

It would have been easier to stay in the single market and the customs union, that way there would be no problem with the Irish border, but that, we are told, would have stopped us from signing lucrative trade deals with up to forty countries. We are not allowed to know which countries are waiting to trade with us. We produce high-tech cars and machine tools for the leading industrial nations but I suppose it's possible that some impoverished African dictatorship is desperate to buy our aerospace equipment and sell us their mangos. Nobody really believes in this propaganda. We already trade with the world through the EU.

Another reason is that membership of the customs union would put us under the jurisdiction of the European Court. The problem seems to be that the ECJ is staffed by foreigners, but an inspection of our own noble judges would reveal almost as many foreign-looking faces. We have no trouble submitting to the WTO, despite the fact, that its judges found against us in the Great Cod War with Iceland. We may end up as partners of Iceland in the European Free Trade Area. This is part of the European project reserved for those nations that recently gained independence, Norway from Sweden in 1905, and Iceland from Denmark in 1944.

But whatever happens, the peoples of Europe will ultimately be united in a federal union. Those who share the blood and culture of Europe will not be divided by petty nationalism. 

Hugh Tudor

Throughout history, good men have been given bad orders by politicians. One such man was Henry Tudor, a brave and loyal soldier who led the infamous Black and Tans during the Irish War of Independence. The following letter from PJ Lewis appeared in the Daily Mail in September 2015).

At a Conference of Ministers in May 1920, the Secretary of State for War (Winston Churchill) undertook to submit to the Cabinet a scheme for raising a special emergency gendarmerie which would become a branch of the Royal Irish Constabulary.

The conference also concluded that a special officer with suitable qualifications and experience should be appointed to supervise the entire organisation of the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police. On Churchill's recommendation, Major General Henry Hugh Tudor (1871-1965) was appointed 'police adviser' to the Irish government.

Tudor was an artilleryman, a hardened veteran of the South African War and World War 1, having served on the Western Front from 1914 through to the Armistice. He was on good terms with Churchill, having first met him in Bangalore in 1895.

Tudor styled himself Chief of Police and militarised the police forces. Like Churchill, Tudor handed out police posts to military friends and colleagues - for example, Brigadier-General Ormond Winter, whom he knew from India, became Deputy Police Adviser and Head of Intelligence.

The beleaguered RIC was reinforced with British ex-soldiers and sailors, the notorious 'Black and Tans'. With hindsight, these men traumatised and desensitised by years in the trenches and embittered by returning to a jobless existence in Britain were unsuitable for hunting down the IRA.

The nickname Black and Tans arose from the colours of the improvised uniforms they initially wore - British Army khaki and rifleman's green with RIC uniform parts.

The Auxiliary Division was commanded by experienced colonial warriors Brigadiers General FF Crozier and EA Wood. Tudor helped rebuild the RIC's numbers and morale but failed to maintain discipline. When police and auxiliaries were killed in ambushes or attacks, their comrades often carried out reprisals on Irish communities.

His attitude was summed up in a 1920 memorandum in which he advised his men to maintain 'the highest discipline' while reassuring them they would have 'the fullest support in the most drastic action against that band of assassins, the so-called IRA'.

Tudor remained Chief Of Police until his forces had been demobilised and the RIC was disbanded. By May 1922, Churchill was Secretary of State for the Colonies and found him a new post in the troubled Palestine Mandate, where he became Director of Public Safety, with a temporary rank of Air Vice Marshal.

In 1924 he retired from his position as Palestine's Director of Public Safety and from the Army and emigrated to Newfoundland, where he lived until his death in 1965.

Another Fifty Years

Richard Edmond's (pictured) call for nationalist unity prompted me to visit the National Front website. I found myself in general agreement wiith most of their policies, but some of them need reviewing. Financial services must be regulated, but the Stock Exchange generates money for pension funds and, however much we hate the IRA, Northern Ireland must stay within the Good Friday Agreement. Europe, of course, remains the great stumbling block.

The NF was founded in 1967 as an amalgamation of John Bean's BNP and the Empire Loyalists. The BNP, favoured a Confederation of European States but the dominant Empire Loyalists were committed to a revived Commonwealth. They also threw out JB's progressive labour policies. The rest, as they say, is history.

Like all the political parties, the NF will have to update its post Brexit policies. If we really leave in March they will have to drop half of their manifesto and concentrate on immigration. But if we stay in the single market and the customs union they could waste another fifty years claiming that someone has stolen our Brexit.

This is because they are stuck in the past. The Dominions used to send us raw materials and we sent them cars and manufactured goods in return. But this system broke down in the Sixties when China and Japan placed massive orders with Canada and Australia for coal and iron ore. A revived Commonwealth is not going to happen. We will continue to trade with our neighbours and some sort of customs union is inevitable. We will probably join the European Free Trade Area with Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland. This could be the basis of a European Confederation as advocated by the AFD in Germany.

If and when we leave the EU, there is a danger that non-Europeans will flood in to replace the Poles and other European workers. In fact, this is already happening. Only two countries in the world have taken practical steps to boost their declining birth rates; South Korea and Norway pay generous family allowances and make housing available, but most states depend on immigration to ensure a supply of labour. We will need a well-organised political party to counter this short-sighted policy. 

But it's no good living in the past. There will not be a revived Commonwealth because a post-industrial Britain cannot buy Australian coal and iron ore. The world has moved on. We are a leading high-tech manufacturer and we are more than capable of defending ourselves but we are not a super-power, and we do ourselves no favours by pretending to be what we are not.

Perspective

People arrive at their opinions for the strangest reasons. I know an old campaigner from the Sixties who sides with the Ukrainians against the Russians because "they fought for the Fuhrer." In fact, all factions of the Ukrainian bloodbath were guilty of war crimes. Apart from the armies of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, there were Red Partisans and Ukrainian separatists, all of which engaged in mass murder.  

Many of the great figures from the Sixties, who were reviled by the far-right, were only messengers. When Harold Macmillan said that the "wind of change is blowing through Africa" he was only telling the truth. The wind did blow and one by one the European colonies were abandoned. And it was the same with JF Kennedy. The Civil Rights Movement in the US was inevitable once slavery was abolished. It took another hundred years but it was bound to happen; JFK was only an observer.

By studying history and economics we know that tribes become nations and nations become mighty empires. We also know that the world is driven by technology and the best-educated nations enjoy the highest standards of living. Those who are ignorant of history rely on conspiracy theories to explain what makes the world go round. 

Gerard Batten, the leader of UKIP, wants Britain to quit the EU and join the World Trade Organisation. The UKIP manifesto states: "Britain's international standing will be enhanced by leaving the EU as it will be able to act independently, whilst retaining its membership of the UN Security Council, the World Trade Organisation, the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, and over 100 other international organisations of which we are a member." This is opposed to the views of AK Chesterton (pictured) who hated Bernard Baruch and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which was the forerunner of the WTO. He said of it: "The Money Power intends that no nation shall be sovereign, that it alone shall exercise sovereign power on earth. The distance it has already travelled towards the fulfilment of its aims is terrifying." (The New Unhappy Lords)

The European Union is a voluntary association of sovereign states bound together by treaty. But to the Brexiteers, it's an undemocratic superstate bent on the destruction of everything British. In a similar way, Gerard Batten sees the WTO as an honest broker, but AK Chesterton saw it as an agent of the Money Power, It's all a matter of perspective.

British Independence

Jaguar Land Rover are laying off thousands of British workers because the Chinese are buying fewer cars. So much for the 'independence' trumpeted by the Brexiteers. We are, and we will remain, part of the global capitalist system. We can't control the price of oil or rising property prices in China. That's why we sought the protection of the EU.

One of the major arguments of the Brexiteers was that the EU undermined our sovereignty, but they never turned their attention to our defence arrangements. Britain boasts an 'independent nuclear deterrent' in the form of atomic warheads mounted on Trident missiles carried by nuclear-powered submarines.

We don't own the missiles, they are 'made available' by the United States under the terms of the Bahama Treaty of Dec 1962, signed by American President JF Kennedy and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.

The situation is further complicated by our commitment to the Anglo-French Naval Agreement of 2010, signed by British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Under this agreement, we share nuclear technology with France and co-operate with them on defence and security.

The fact is that our nuclear weapons, and our entire defence forces, are under NATO Command. 

"In practice, the Trident missiles for both US and UK submarines are held and serviced at King's Bay Georgia; the UK does not own any particular missile. Thus, the British independent deterrent is arguably British and arguably independent. That it is neither British or independent is equally arguable." (Prof Norman Dombey, Financial Times, Oct 2011). 

President Trump once threatened to withdraw his support for NATO. It's impossible to say what he will do because he says one thing and does another. But whatever happens we will continue to be part of a European defence pact, and our foreign policy will be geared to America. Those who think we could take on China or Russia on our own are deluded.

The Falklands War was a one-off. It was a recognised British territory invaded by a foreign power. At that time, we had armed forces capable of rapid response, a healthy war chest, and a neutral American ally. We also had Margaret Thatcher, a prime minister who believed in what she was doing. Such a combination of events is not likely to happen again.

The Railways

Benito Mussolini is remembered as the man who made the trains run on time, but during the Second World War, his railways, together with those of France, and Germany were so badly damaged that they were forced to rebuild them. Our system was badly knocked about but we were able to keep it going. When our fellow Europeans were building modern electric railways we were still using steam, and when the last steam locomotive puffed its last we turned to diesel. As a result, we are still trying to electrify the Great Western Railway.

                          Photo credit Great Western

Our railways were built and run by private enterprise but none of the companies was profitable and the government was forced to take over in 1948. They rationalised the system under Dr Beeching in the Sixties, and Margaret Thatcher gave the entire network to her capitalist friends in 1994. It is now divided into separate franchises and massively subsidized by the taxpayer.

The UK system is one of the best in the world but it's far too expensive. Fares have gone up again for the second year running. We have tried running the railways as a commercial operation and as a state enterprise. Either way they have to be subsidised - currently by £4 billion. But France has shown that money spent on the railways is never wasted. The French railway system has boosted their economy and helped to restore their neglected regions.

Capitalism cannot be applied to the railways. They are like the National Health Service, the Police Force, or the Fire Brigade, they are essential services. In a civilised country, people should not have to worry about the cost of health care and they should not have to worry about the price of a railway ticket. People must be able to travel, and government policies must be guided by social responsibility. 

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Nation Revisited

All articles are 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.

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Use the facility at the end of this blog to leave your comments and read what others have to say.

European Outlook

Our sister blog is posted on - https://europeanoutlook.blogspot.com 

Nation Revisited # 147 January 2019

Books and Authors.

Oswald Mosley's 1961 book 'Mosley: Right or Wrong' covered almost everything but he couldn't know that the Soviet Union would collapse, or that the Whites would desert Africa so quickly. 

All movements have their books. We had Mosley's many works, the National Front had John Tyndall's 'Six Principles of British Nationalism', and the National Socialist Movement had 'The Protocols of the Learned Elder of Zion', which first appeared in Russia in 1903. It's supposed to be the minutes of a meeting held by the Jews to plan their conquest of the world. Henry Ford was so impressed by it that he had thousands of copies distributed, but most historians dismiss it as a Tsarist forgery.

Many books and authors are misunderstood. Oswald Spengler's gloomy forecasts are based on culture. This put him at odds with the Nazis who were obsessed with 'racial purity'. In fact, he was in the same camp as Nietzsche, Evola, Mosley, Yockey and Dugin, who all rejected strictly biological racism.

Those who dream of a Golden Age with knights in shining armour defended fair damsels, often gravitate to Tolkien with his dwarves and Hobbits. Tolkien once subscribed to 'Candour' but that doesn't prove anything. His strange world of fantasy has got nothing to do with the economic forces driving the modern world. Those who are opposed to plutocracy cannot seek refuge in fantasy.

The 'Wizard of Oz' was a landmark film released in 1939, based on the book by Lyman Frank Baum published in 1900. It tells the story of Dorothy and her friends, the Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man. They follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City in search of the Wizard of Oz. On their way, they encounter the terrible Witch of the West. At first sight, this is just a children's story, but Dorothy and her friends were really pilgrims in search of the truth, the Yellow Brick Road was life itself, the Wizard represented Good and the wicked witch Evil. And in the end, they discovered that: "There's No Place Like Home".

The Bible can be used to endorse all sorts of things. The Afrikaners used to quote passages from the Bible in support of apartheid, and so did the Southern Baptists. I am not familiar with the holy books of other religions but I imagine that they are also open to interpretation. 

Apart from the Jews, who cling to the ridiculous idea that they are God's Chosen People, all religions preach equality. But that doesn't stop Christians from disrespecting blacks, and it doesn't stop Muslim Arabs from trading in black slaves, or Buddhist Myanmar soldiers from butchering Rohingya refugees.

Humanity is united by cruelty and hypocrisy. Britain lectures the world on human rights but we presided over the Irish Famine and the Bengal Famine. We used starvation as a weapon of war and we prosecuted the Germans at Nuremberg for doing the same. 

Books impart knowledge which motivates civilisation. We have the resources and technology to feed the world but we rely on political systems that belong to the past. Only by studying history and economics can we hope to achieve our potential,


The Parliamentary Oath

Newly elected members of the UK Parliament are required to take the Oath of Allegiance to the monarch. This is supposed to date back to Magna Carta when the Barons swore allegiance to King John. In fact, the Promissory Oath Act was passed in 1868.

God-fearing members promise: I (name of member) swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, and her heirs and successors, according to law. So help me God.

Non-believers say: I (name of member) do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors, according to law.

The oath can be said in Welsh, Cornish or Scottish Gaelic and it can be sworn on the Bible, the Koran, or the Torah. 

Note that there is no mention of the country or the constituents who voted for the new MP. He, or she, promises to be loyal to the monarch but they make no such promise to the mugs who elected them.

Many Members of Parliament have no intention of keeping their promise. Over the years we have had self-confessed republicans, enemy agents and saboteurs representing us, but this meaningless oath of loyalty to the monarch prevents elected members of Sinn Fein from taking their seats.

Traditionalists will cry "treason" because they are pathologically opposed to change, but it would make sense to scrap this medieval nonsense and replace it with a promise for MPs to serve their constituents. We may not agree with Sinn Fein but if they have been duly elected they deserve to take their place in Parliament.

My old friend Terry Savage wrote an article in the BNP magazine 'Identity' in 2006 about Charles Bradlaugh (1883-1891), the social reformer and founder of the National Secular Society who was elected to Parliament as the Liberal MP for Northampton in 1880. He was denied his seat because he refused to swear on the Bible. After being repeatedly thrown out, fined and arrested, he eventually made his affirmation and took his seat in 1886. There were 3,000 mourners at his funeral.

A republican atheist like Charles Bradlaugh (pictured) may seem an unlikely hero for a BNP man but Terry Savage believed in free speech.

The law was changed and it could be changed again. If a meteor struck Buckingham Palace at tea time it could wipe out most of the Royal Family and leave us with an 'heir and successor' that we have never heard of. We might end up with the Duke of Hackney on the throne. He might be a cross-dresser, a raving lunatic or a hopeless drug addict but our MPs would have to bow down to him. Let's make an effort to join the 21st century by scrapping the loyal oath.

Accepting Reality

The United States is a superpower with massive armed forces and enough nuclear missiles to destroy the planet. The US economy is based on defence spending and their foreign policy supports it. That is the reality.

The UK is America's loyal ally and we follow them blindly, but we simply can't afford it. We now have two aircraft carriers and a fleet of nuclear missile submarines. We would be better off with more frigates and destroyers to defend the homeland, but we maintain a high seas fleet to promote the fantasy that 'Britannia Rules the Waves'.

Given our government's addiction to fantasy it's not surprising that so many people believe in expanding our armed forces, deporting all the immigrants, bringing back national service, reintroducing the death penalty, and asserting our independence. Of course, none of these things will happen. We should settle for armed forces capable of defending the homeland, an immigration policy that favours skilled workers, an educational system that teaches respect, a criminal code that protects the public, and our status as a European power.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. There used to be a famous whitewashed slogan on the approach to Paddington Station which said: "Far away is near at hand in dreams of long ago." Peter Simple, in the Daily Telegraph, called its author 'The Master of Paddington." 

If people are seriously interested in politics they should stop dreaming of past glories and start campaigning for more houses, increased wages, improved working conditions, a better National Health Service, and a representative system of government. We are a modern European nation and a world leader in science and technology. We can do great things but we must know our limitations. Such is the acceptance of reality.

Pressure

In the days of steam engines, they used to fit valves that would open to reduce the pressure and save the boiler from exploding. Global capitalism has a similar device to reduce pressure, it's called a recession. Goods and services are sold and money is generated at such a rate that the economy becomes overheated. At that point recession kicks in and the system returns to normal.

During this cycle businesses go broke, nations are ruined, people commit suicide, and the price of bananas rises. Politicians and journalists, who do not know what they are talking about, assure us that all will be well, but they have no influence on a system that is self-propelled.

The Communists tried to avoid the inner conflict of capitalism by building a centrally planned economy. The Soviet Union was big enough and productive enough for it to work but the experiment was wrecked by foreign interference, corruption, inefficiency, and massive spending on armaments. It was not systemic failure that brought down Communism but the Arms Race.

In the West, we rely on 'market forces' to regulate the system. Every time that the working man starts to feel comfortable he is hit with a recession. The last one was triggered by the sub-prime mortgage racket. We don't know what will cause the next financial disaster but pundits from Gordon Brown to Mark Carney are predicting another one. IMF director Christine Lagarde has warned that we must 'fix the roof while the sun is shining", by cutting deficits, improving banking capital, and maximising exchange rate flexibility.

It's not beyond the wit of man to devise a fair economic system. Global capitalism started with the East India Company when slavery was widespread and poverty was the natural condition for most of humanity. Today, we can feed the world, but first, we must abandon protectionism, embrace the latest scientific methods, and regulate capitalism.

President Trump is ruling the world, but some of his tactics have already gone wrong. He has slapped a punitive tax on Russian aluminium which the American drinks industry depends on for its cans. World trade is complex and he will discover that protectionist policies are a dangerous short-term measure that can go horribly wrong.  

The Commonwealth Myth

The parties of the far-right all follow the economic policies outlined in John Tyndall's 1966 book "Six Principles of British Nationalism." They want to resurrect the Commonwealth and turn it into a free trade area under British control.

Ramsay MacDonald had the same idea in 1932 when he convened the Ottowa Conference. He wanted the Dominions to buy British manufactured goods and sell us their raw materials. Naturally, the Canadians and the Australians wanted to expand their own industries and they refused to agree to such a proposition. After the Second World War Britain was bankrupt and in no position to dictate trade terms. We carried on as best we could under the Bretton Woods Agreement until the Nixon Shock of 1972 unpegged the pound from the dollar and cut us adrift. Reluctantly, we joined the old Common Market which kept us in relative prosperity for the next forty years. Now we are about to go it alone but what used to be British colonies are now fully fledged nations in their own right, with their own markets and alliances.

There will be no Commonwealth revival. We can trade with whoever we like, subject to American approval, but we will not be buying Australia's vast output of coal and iron ore because we don't have the manufacturing industry to use it. And we can't compete with the United States as a market for Canadian produce.

Brexit is bound to be disruptive. We can survive with a reduced economy but the dream of independence will not be realised. John Tyndall's policy was unrealistic when he wrote it but half a century later it's totally impossible. If we leave the EU the pound will almost certainly go down against the dollar making imported goods dearer in our shops.

Throughout the Brexit fiasco, the government insisted that we must gain control of immigration. But most of our immigrants come from the Commonwealth. The latest immigration statistics for June 2018 show that net migrants from the EU numbered 74,000 but non-EU net migrants came to 248.000.

The people of the White dominions have fond feelings for the 'Motherland' but they will not risk their economies by joining a revived Commonwealth. Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, and South Africans will always be close to our hearts, as will Americans because we are sprung from the same stock. We must maintain the closest possible contact with them and defend those traditions that unite us, but the closeness of Europe, and our common history, will dictate our future.

Patriotism and Nationalism 

Many readers took exception to my article on Xenophobia. But my remarks were not aimed at sensible nationalists but at 'little Englanders'. You will remember that Nigel Farage was upset by hearing people on a train speaking a foreign language. Language and religion are of little importance. You can learn a different language and adopt a different religion, but you cannot change your heritage.

The campaign against the East Europeans, which formed an important part of the Brexit movement, was disgraceful. The Poles did not rape our young women on an industrial scale, they did not riot and burn down our town centres, and they did not expect to live on social security. The peoples of Europe are related and easily assimilated into our society. I don't retract a word of my article but I discriminate between genuine nationalists imbued with the culture of Europe and petty nationalists who can't tell a Nigerian from a Norwegian.

The British Isles were populated after the Ice Age by tribes from the European mainland who followed the reindeer across the land bridge. Subsequent invasions brought Celts, Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans. Before the 1948 Nationality Act and the subsequent mass migration from the Commonwealth, we were entirely a White country.

Ukip and the popular press were frightened to campaign against immigration for fear of prosecution under the Race Relations Act. So, they concentrated on the East Europeans and ignored the Afro-Asians. They deliberately obscured the fact that the Poles are our fellow Europeans. To deliberately stir up trouble between us was divisive and those responsible should be ashamed of themselves. Unfortunately, the political parties concerned with immigration did nothing to educate their members. Only Union Movement called for European solidarity. Mosley explained:

"To become a European you must extend your patriotism and also your understanding. Both are now necessary. It is a very natural process. Not long ago in terms of history, our ancestors were hating any man in the next village, even taking the opportunity any dark night to cut his throat. It is just a matter of growing up, a process which continues all the time in the advance of humanity."

Statement

This blog, and our sister blog 'European Outlook', have no connection with suspected terrorists who are currently being rounded up by the police. We advocate reform by lawful means and unreservedly condemn groups promoting hatred and violence. 

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All articles are 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.

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