Saturday 25 August 2012

Issue 27, March 2007


Nation Revisited

An occasional email to friends, March 2007. # 27

The National Interest

The Tories have saved Tony Blair from certain defeat by backing his Trident replacement policy. Once again Dave Cameron has cited “The National Interest” for his support of the Labour regime. The Tories backed the wars on Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq and the erosion of civil liberties all in the name of “The National Interest.”

The Opposition has given up opposing to become Tony Blair’s backing group. So long as Blair wraps his aggression in the Union Jack and waffles on about the sheer professionalism of our troops the Tories will cheer his every move and burst into Land of Hope and Glory with simple-minded enthusiasm.

Instead of taking the opportunity to bring down the government they have aided and abetted the waging of aggressive war and the deception of parliament. When the born again warmonger Tony Blair stands accused in the dock of The International Court of Justice Dave Cameron should be at his side.

Dave Cameron likes to present himself as a modern and compassionate guy who rides a bike to save the environment and plants trees wearing his recycled trainers. He’s just your average old Etonian who loves hoodies and embraces youth culture. But behind the benign image is a cold-blooded accomplice to mass murder.

Cameron is a Zionist apologist who condemns Iran for trying to defend herself but keeps silent about Israel’s weapons of mass destruction. He cares about the environment so much that he wants to tax airfares but he makes no comment when the Israelis bomb Lebanese oil depots and use depleted uranium shells.

He feels sorry for the disadvantaged in the UK but manages to ignore the Palestinians and the Iraqis who are being systematically brutalized and dispossessed. He shows selective sympathy for politically correct causes and competes with Tony Blair with his sickening insincerity.

But the leaders of the two main parties are totally immersed in the blood of the innocent and no amount of spin or polish can hide their guilt, or save them from damnation. Tony Blair will leave a legacy of pathological mendacity and Dave Cameron is all set to inherit it.

What’s the Point?

Minority parties like to imagine that they will one day come to power. They talk about forming a government and implementing policies as though there’s a real chance of it happening. That’s probably why they attach such importance to points of policy and spend so much time writing detailed manifestos and expelling each other.

The so-called far right has inherited the vacant spot left by fascism. Under an alphabet of initials they have been trying to take over the country since Miss Rotha Lintorn-Orman founded the British Fascisti in 1923.

Mosley’s British Union of Fascists was severely damaged by the Public Order Act of 1936 and shut down by Regulation 18B in 1940. It was a mass movement with a charismatic leader but a world war specifically against Fascism proved to be a severe handicap.

After the war the survivors of internment joined with returned servicemen to found Union Movement and fight for Europe a Nation. But those who could not accept the reality of national bankruptcy clung to the fast disappearing empire and founded the National Front.

By the mid Seventies the NF had grown into a nationwide movement that could put thousands of people on the streets and dominate the headlines. They looked set to change the face of British politics. But in 1979 Margaret Thatcher virtually destroyed them as a political force by saying that she understood people’s fears of being swamped by immigration.

The punters believed that the Tories would do something about immigration; they did – they opened the floodgates even wider and showed their total contempt for public opinion. The Tories wanted immigrants as cheap labour and the Labour Party wanted their votes.

Almost thirty years later the British National Party is the latest champion of the far right. They have got more than fifty local councilors and usually get 5-10% in parliamentary elections. Not enough to get elected but enough to annoy the establishment and show the people that someone is fighting for them.

This level of success has frightened the Labour Party into bringing in tougher immigration controls. It’s not so easy to shut down a properly constituted movement in peacetime so the government has attacked on two fronts.
On the one hand they are appeasing public opinion and on the other they are prosecuting members and supporters of the far right with repressive legislation.

The BNP have managed to push the government some way towards immigration control. In that respect they have been successful. But they still dream of coming to power and consider their manifesto to be cast in stone; even though their supporters are voting against immigration and do not study their policies.

The electoral performance of the anti-immigration parties has hardly changed in fifty years and doesn’t seem to have anything to do with party labels. They are putting up more candidates but the percentages achieved are much the same: 
  • Oswald Mosley got 8% in Kensington North in 1959 for Union Movement.
  • John Bean got 9% in Southall in 1964 for the original British National Party.
  • Colin Jordan got 2.5% in Birmingham Aston in 1970 for British Movement.
  • John Tyndall got 7% in Hackney South in 1979 for the National Front.

Political realities are changing fast. The big parties are not nearly as big as they used to be. The Tories can no longer count on the middle class vote or on the financial support of big business. The Labour Party has managed to change sides and now supports unbridled capitalism. This has won them the support of big business but they have lost members from the working class and are losing the immigrant vote to parties like Respect.

The Liberal Democrats have made a comeback and the Greens and UKIP are threatening to make a parliamentary breakthrough. Loyalties are changing. The white working class is disaffected and most of them have lost the habit of voting; after all, it involves leaving the television or the pub to go to the polling station. Unfortunately it is the white working class that they need to attract.

The leaders and writers of the far right will not be manning the barricades in the near future. They will not be marching on the capital like Benito Mussolini at the head of his Blackshirts; they are not supported by millions of unemployed ex-servicemen like Adolf Hitler; and they cannot call on the army like Francisco Franco. Their only hope is the ballot box that is already rigged in favour of the powers that be.

So what’s the point? The point is that they can change things and have already started to do so. They should stop fantasizing about coming to power and continue to concentrate on building a viable political movement that can influence events. They are unlikely to form a government but they can influence public opinion and government policy.

There’s nothing wrong with standing for parliament. It is good training for the troops, it gets publicity and it attracts donations. And if your candidate can divert enough votes to unseat an old gang MP so much the better. But it’s a foolish flight of fancy to think that Nick Griffin will ever come to power.

The Father of Europe

Robert Schuman was born a German citizen in Luxembourg in 1886 of French and German ancestry. His native tongue was Luxembourgish and all his life he spoke French with a German accent. He studied law in Berlin and Strasbourg and served on the Metz City Council. He was judged to be medically unfit for service in the Imperial German Army during the First World War.

When the French Army retook Alsace-Lorraine he became a French citizen. He was elected as a French Christian Democrat MP for Thionville in 1919 and served that constituency almost continuously until 1958.

He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1940 for protesting against the German occupation of France but escaped from the custody of Gauleiter Joseph Buerckel in 1942 to rejoin the French Resistance. Buerckel later committed suicide.

Despite the bitterness between France and Germany during the war years he never stopped campaigning for European unity. He reasoned that no nation can make war without coal and steel, and that its common ownership would be a guarantee of peace.

He was Minister of Finance and Prime Minister of France in 1947-48 and later became Foreign Minister. On May 9th 1950 – Europe day – he founded with Jean Monnet the European coal and Steel community, the forerunner of the European Union.

He was awarded the “Karlspreis” by the German city of Aachen in 1958. This prize is awarded in commemoration of Charlemagne the Emperor of both France and Germany; it is awarded for services to European unity. The European Parliament acclaimed him as The Father of Europe.

Robert Schuman was a deeply religious man who never married but devoted his life to the cause of European Union and to the study of the works of Pope Pius XII and St Thomas Aquinus.

 In 2004 the Vatican took the first steps towards making him a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. He was a Knight of the Order of Pope Pius IX. He died in 1960 and in buried in Strasbourg.
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European Action a newspaper in support of a National party for Europe.
Edited by Robert Edwards. PO Box 415, Ramsgate CT11 9WW, United Kingdom
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Views on The News

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who has survived six years of detention and interrogation by the US military has confessed to almost everything. In a statement obviously crafted to discredit his captors he has claimed responsibility for most of the terrorist activity over the past decade. Despite the clear absurdity of his statement it is being hailed as a great success by the Bush-Cheney regime.
The neo-cons apparently do not realize that the whole world is laughing at them.
After holding hundreds of captives, mostly sold to them by the Northern Alliance, the CIA can only claim 14 proven al-Qaeda terrorists.

John Kufuor the President of Ghana on a state visit to London was greeted by police chief Sir Ian Blair who resisted the temptation to say: “You’re nicked sunshine.” Later he laid a wreath on the grave of the Unknown Soldier, who, since he was unknown might have been a Ghanaian. According to our press Ghana was the first African-ruled country; this is apart from the Egyptians, the Ethiopians, the Ashanti, the Zulus and all the other Africans who managed their own affairs for thousands of years. The Queen spoke about the warm relations between our two peoples. This is a constant topic of conversation in every pub:
“Those Ghanaians are lovely people, I was only saying the other day…”

The conviction for perjury of Lewis Scooter Libby senior aide to the US Vice President Dick Cheney, and the continuing investigation of Tony Blair and Lord Levy in the cash for honours scandal, reminds me of General Abdel Karim Kaseem who overthrew the detested Iraqi monarchy in 1958. Kaseem ordered that those Hashemites who confessed to corruption were to be shot and that those who didn’t confess were to be shot for lying. The good general was killed in the Baathist Revolution of 1963.

Ken Clarke has described Dave Cameron’s decision for the Tories to quit the European People’s Party to form an alliance with the Czech Euro-sceptics as “head-banging.” Ken has long been a National European, when he was chairman of the Cambridge University Students Association he invited Union Movement leader Sir Oswald Mosley to speak at the University twice in two months. This caused a row with fellow Conservative student Michael Howard who accused his chairman of anti-Semitism.

The Metropolitan Police have paid out six million pounds in compensation claims. About half of this was for accidents involving police cars and the rest was for people injured in police stations. It seems that a disproportionate number of people have fallen down police station steps. Easy access to lawyers specializing in claims has made it possible for the public to seek redress. The police should be more careful with the taxpayers and their money.

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