Issue 88, February 2012

Nation Revisited

# 88, February 2012 

Michael Heseltine’s Prediction
 

Rob Poundall posting on the National Front website asks why Dave Cameron has the pro-European Michael Heseltine as a cabinet advisor. Speaking on the BBC1 Politics Show Michael Heseltine said: “I think that we will join the euro. I think the chances are that the euro will survive because the determination, particularly of the French and Germans, is to maintain the coherence that they have created in Europe. Now they have got a problem, let’s be frank about it, but my guess is that they will find a way through. I hope they will because the downside for the British economy of the euro going under is catastrophic. People have no idea of the scale of money British banks are owed by European banks. If the European banks start going it will be our banks on the line, our government on the line.”

When the New Statesman asked him about his stormy relationship with Margaret Thatcher he said: “Oh well, the council tax was the large domestic issue and Europe the international issue.” In fact, Margaret Thatcher’s government transferred more power to Brussels than any government before or since. She claimed that she was “not for turning” but her rhetoric seldom matched her performance.

The NF is right that Dave Cameron would not tolerate Michael Heseltine and Ken Clarke if he was as eurosceptic as he pretends to be. He has to placate the right wing of the Tory Party but he knows that we do most of our trade with the EU and that we are committed to the Anglo-French Defence Agreement of 2010. Dave Cameron may not be an intellectual but he is not as daft as he looks.

Michael Heseltine held senior posts under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, including Deputy Prime Minister and President of the Board of Trade. He is a self-made millionaire, a champion of European unity and a man of principle who resigned as Defence Secretary in 1986 over the Westland affair. Margaret Thatcher backed the takeover of our struggling helicopter manufacturer by Sikorsky of America. But Michael Heseltine favoured a European solution. Westland formed an alliance with Sikorsky but eventually merged with an Italian aerospace company to form Westland-Augusta in 2000. He remained a bitter enemy of Margaret Thatcher and helped to force her resignation in 1990.

The Thatcherites tried to sabotage the European aerospace industry but last year Airbus outsold Boeing two to one and employed 13,000 UK workers. British Aerospace makes 37.5% of the world-beating Eurofighter Typhoon. And Britain and France share military technology under the 2010 Defence Treaty.

The UK media are spreading alarm and despondency but the single market of half a billion people will survive as long as its leaders keep their nerve. It will continue to provide customers for our products and the close proximity of Russian oil and gas will guarantee our energy supplies for the future. And Michael Heseltine’s brave prediction will surely come to pass.

Fred Ponsford
 

The Pig and Truncheon, Whitehall. Specialists in marinated kippers and flambéed pork pies.  By Terry Savage, Nation # 8, July 1974.

Looking through a copy of the Hornsey Journal that had been left in the public bar my eye caught the following headline; “Blatant Insult to Immigrants Alleged.” I quickly read the piece to see what terrible crime had been committed against our coloured brothers!!! And lo and behold not only had the racialists of Haringey failed to elect a black Labour candidate in a safe Labour seat, but crime upon crime his fellow Labour Party members had not elected him as an Alderman. It appears that immigrant leaders in Haringey believe that at least one immigrant representative should be found a place on Haringey Council. I always thought that it was the electorate who decided these things, but then perhaps I am just old-fashioned. 

As I carried on clearing the lunchtime debris away I found on the floor a copy of the New York Times that must have been dropped by an American tourist. Right on the front page was an advert headed “Jews Don’t Mix-n-Match!” Part of the text was as follows: “We hate no one; we look down on no one. Our blood is no purer, our genes are not better, we consider ourselves superior to no one. We love Jews and Judaism and want to preserve it for generations to come.” Another part of the text ran: “There is no surer way to destroy the Jewish people than to marry out of the faith.” I wonder what political swear words would be used if anyone put an advertisement in the New York Times saying the same things about Anglo-Saxons.

On hearing on the ten pm news that Prince Charles had made his maiden speech in the House of Lords on the subject of sport and leisure, one of my customers, Fred the master of wit and repartee, leering through his one remaining eye (the other one being lost in the First World War, while trying to leave a Paris brothel without paying), was heard to comment, “that’s something he should bleeding well know about.”

The other morning whilst having a quick half and a look through the licensed victuallers trade paper just before opening time, I noticed that with the news that the Methodists had voted to abolish the Church’s policy of total abstinence, Allied monopolies shares had soared. In a statement the Rev Lennin-Foskett, chairman of the Church’s finance and investment committee says, “The fine new beers brewed by Allied Monopolies have enabled the Church to revise policies and appear far more modern, progressive and democratic without deviating from our deeply held beliefs.”

Whilst consuming a breakfast of succulent marinated kippers, the tender flesh of which oozed with a mouth-watering mixture of wine, oil and garlic, washed down with a pint of Guinness, I noticed a small paragraph tucked away in an inside page of the Telegraph. It seems United Nations officials in Geneva have ordered copies of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book, Gulag Archipelago, to be removed from bookstands in the Palais des Nations, the UN headquarters in Europe.

One can only wonder at the mentality of people who advocate world government as a panacea for world peace, when that panacea is prepared to publish hate propaganda and lies about Britain, South Africa, Greece etc, but suppress the truth about Russia and the Soviet system. It’s enough to put one off one’s breakfast, even marinated kippers; 1984 here we come.

Lies and Misinformation
 

Joseph Goebbels the Third Reich’s Minister of Enlightenment and Propaganda is credited with the invention of the Big Lie. The idea that a fantastic story is easier to believe than one that is simply exaggerated. That may be true but lots of little lies can be just as effective.

Every year without fail the press runs the story that one or other of the eurozone countries is secretly printing their old banknotes and getting ready to ditch the euro. This fabrication has been spread for the past decade but there has been no sign of a single new drachma, let alone a franc, lira or mark.

The latest fantasy is that the British government is standing by to repatriate a million Brits from Spain and Portugal when the euro crashes. If the euro crashed it would be throughout the world and one of the first casualties would be the UK. We do half our trade with the eurozone and our banks hold billions of euros. In the event of such a catastrophe the British government would not be able to help itself let alone a million refugees. This story is nonsense from beginning to end but it’s being reported.

           The press praises George Osborne for his handling of the UK economy. The pound lost 30% of its value in the past three years but instead of blaming him for the resultant rise in gas and oil prices they congratulate him for making our exports cheaper. Unfortunately we import more than we export so devaluation does us no favours. Once again they are twisting the facts.

The UK political consensus is led by the Times and the BBC. Its guiding principles are that American hegemony is sacrosanct, Europe is a potential enemy that’s about to collapse, and immigration is generally a good thing; except maybe for Poles and Muslims. These articles of faith are epitomised by Nigel Farage of UKIP who is almost a permanent fixture on Question Time.

British newspapers reported the Jameson Raid in 1895 although they knew that it was a subterfuge to provoke a war in South Africa. Leander Starr Jameson led a column of 600 soldiers of fortune in a botched invasion of Johannesburg. But the raid failed to trigger an uprising against the Transvaal Republic by mostly British “uitlanders” and he was forced to surrender to Commander Piet Cronje. At his London trial in 1896 he was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment but released early on health grounds. Throughout his trial he was lionised by the press and Rudyard Kipling was inspired to write his poem “If.” The press played a major part in starting the Anglo-South African War; a blatant act of aggressive imperialism driven by lust for gold and diamonds.

Modern communications have brought down oppressive regimes and newspaper circulation is falling throughout the world as people seek more reliable sources of information. When Marshal Giovanni Messe C in C Tunisia surrendered to General Bernard Montgomery in May 1943, the Axis newspapers made no mention of his capture together with General von Armin and 275,000 German and Italian soldiers. If it happened today the TV cameras of the world would be watching. And the locals would be tweeting, e-mailing and texting the news from their smart phones. Wars are now fought on camera and the days of the lies and censorship are over.

John Bean
 

In NR 87 Bill Baillie skates on thin ice when he presents evidence to suggest that the European Commission is completely democratically elected, yet later he says “self-appointed and self-perpetuating authority has served us well over the centuries.” The later comment suggests that he is not really sure of the former. As a committed European I have always looked for change via political activism and taking into account what the insular British will accept (hence my support for a European Confederation as opposed to a single federal state). Bill, less of an optimist than I, does not.

Under the Lisbon Treaty the European Council “shall provide the Union with the necessary impetus for its development.” This means it defines the EU’s policy agenda and is the motor for European integration. Its members are not voted for in any direct manner but comprise the heads of the nation states who are members of the EU. Prior to the Lisbon Treaty in 2009 national heads of government would take it in turns of six months to be the President of the European Council. Since then the Council elected the former Prime Minister of Belgium, Herman Van Rompuy as its PERMANENT President. This was followed by the appointment of the red Lady Catherine Ashton (who was never voted to hold any UK political position) as the PERMANENT High Representative for Foreign Affairs.

Since the Lisbon Treaty, the executive power of the EU has been transferred from the European Council to the European Commission, of which the one time Maoist Barroso has been President since 2004. The role of the European Council is now more of an ideas forum which the Commission fits with teeth to become effective. Bill Baillie feels that as the EU member states each appoint ‘appoint’ one delegate to the Commission (27 delegates is the maximum, so new member states will have to ‘share’) this is supposed to represent the will of the people. This might be so if a choice for each country’s delegate appeared on the voting form to appoint our MEPs, i.e. the talking-shop farce in Brussels and Strasbourg for windbags of all political persuasions who have virtually no influence on EU decisions.

Mosley and ‘Europe a Nation’
 

Nation Revisited has always made it clear that it supports unquestionably Sir Oswald Mosley’s considerable intellect that brought forward his post-war commitment to ‘Europe a Nation.’ My first wall painting – whose artistic value was hardly Banksian – in South London gave support to this campaign. However, in view of the rise to dominance since 1946 of internationalism through the twin power of finance capitalism and Marxism, would Mosley modify his concept of Europe a Nation if he was alive today? I suspect that he could have been aware of this eventuality when he wrote on page 433 of his autobiography, “My Life”:-

“The new patriotism will extend to embrace all of like kind, but will not destroy the value of its kind by seeking the unnatural mingling of the old internationalism.”

Many Shades of Black by John Bean is available from Ostara Publications at £12.95 www.ostarapublications.com

Idealists and Criminals
 

One of the disadvantages of parliamentary democracy is that a good man is often replaced by a bad one. Cyril Osbourne was the Tory MP for Louth who was one of the first British politicians to call for an end to Commonwealth immigration. He defied his party and the liberal atmosphere of post-war Britain to warn of the dangers of uncontrolled immigration. But when he died in 1969 he was replaced by Jeffrey Archer who went to prison for perverting the course of justice. In a letter to European Action in 2007 Colin Jordan wrote:

 “In the early 1950s with the onset of mass coloured immigration, Cyril Osborne (MP for Louth), the Union Movement and my group the White Defence League, were the only elements foreseeing its calamitous portent and denouncing it.”

Enoch Powell made his infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech in 1968. As Minister for Health from 1960 to 1963 he pioneered the importation of West Indians to work in the National Health Service. When he realized his mistake he started campaigning against immigration and helped the Tories to win the 1970 general election. But he cost them the 1974 general election after advising the electorate to vote Labour in opposition to the Common Market. He resigned from the Tory Party and decamped to Northern Ireland but that was effectively the end of his political career.

One of the few MPs to consistently defy the Tory Central Office on immigration was Harold Soref, who, despite his Jewish origins, had been a standard bearer at Oswald Mosley’s great BUF rally at Olympia in 1934. He was a fearless opponent of communism and a defender of the Whiteman in Africa. He was elected Conservative MP for Ormskirk in 1970 but lost his seat in the general election of 1974. He was beaten by Robert Kilroy-Silk who left the Labour Party in 2004 to become a UKIP MEP. When UKIP rejected Kilroy-Silk’s bid for the leadership he founded his own party called “Veritas” which collapsed within the year.

Another Tory MP who campaigned against immigration was Ronald Bell MP for Beaconsfield from 1974 until his death in 1982. He was replaced by Tim Smith who was found guilty with Neil Hamilton of taking “cash for questions” from Mohammed al-Fayed the former owner of Harrods.

The constituents of Louth, Ormskirk and Beaconsfield had the good fortune to be represented by decent and honourable men but they must have been bitterly disappointed by their successors. Robert Kilroy Silk never did anything illegal but he was sacked by the BBC for making racist remarks about Arabs. Jeffrey Archer and Tim Smith deservedly went to prison.

The parliamentary system attracts criminals as well as idealists and the House of Commons has seen its fair share of both. There are bound to be a few crooks amongst 650 men and women at Westminster but the recent expenses scandal has revealed the extent of parliamentary corruption and the willingness of some MPs to bend the rules. Despite enjoying subsidised housing, catering and secretarial services and getting three times the average wage some of them are still fiddling their expenses. It would be only fair if those that got caught were given three times the average sentence.

Do currencies matter?
 

The Romans found that they could cut 240 handy sized denari (pennies) from a rolled bar of silver weighing one libra (pound). This gave us the LSD system that survived in mainland Europe until Napoleon and in the UK until 1971. Banknotes were brought into general circulation during WW1 but they are fast becoming redundant in the Electronic Age. If a man goes on tour with his current account in credit he can use his debit card to pay hotel and restaurant bills, or draw money from ATMs in any country. The machine will issue the local currency and he doesn’t have to change notes at a bureau de change or worry about exchange rates. 

The International Monetary Fund records the wealth of nations in units of account called Special Drawing Rights. They adopted this system way back in 1969 to avoid the confusion of fluctuating exchange rates. SDRs are now being championed by China as an alternative to the dollar as a reserve currency.

We live in an increasingly cashless society where debit cards, prepaid cards and the “Oyster” cards used on the London Underground have transformed the way we do business. You can even use your mobile phone to pay bills. People have their salaries or pensions paid into the bank. They pay their mortgages and utility bills by direct debit and their shopping and restaurant bills by debit card. All that matters is that they have enough money in their current accounts to cover their outgoings.

When Harold Wilson devalued the pound in 1967 he said: “This won’t affect the pound in your pocket.” Although it was worth 14% less he was right because people went on earning and spending as usual. In 1971 we went decimal and the pound changed from being worth 240 pennies to being worth 100 new pence. At the same time America finally abandoned the Gold Standard and the pound was untied from the dollar. But despite having a fundamentally different currency we carried on as though nothing had happened.

Japan, the USA, Britain and most of the European states are technically bankrupt. They have not balanced their budgets for the last thirty years. They have simply carried on borrowing in the hope that their booming economies would enable them to keep up the payments. They funded social welfare and defence way beyond their tax yields and out of all proportion to the GDPs. If Lehman Brothers and Northern Rock had not collapsed under the weight of subprime mortgages governments would have carried on borrowing and spending. But since the banks ran out of money and increased their lending rates we have been forced to live within our means.

The 27 member states of the European Union are still clinging to the nationalism of the last century instead of embracing European unity. But the main objective of the EU has been achieved; the major states of Europe are interdependent and will never go to war against each other again. The senseless fratricide of the two world wars will not be repeated. It may take another decade to achieve a European government, an integrated economy and a common currency; but it will happen. America will be preoccupied by the rise of China and the development of the North American Free Trade Agreement; and Europe will emerge as a self-sufficient power in partnership with Russia. When Europe is united from Galway to Vladivostok it won’t matter what we call the tokens in our pocket.

Foreign Aid
 

At times of recession people question foreign aid, especially when we give money to countries like Brazil and India that are fast overtaking us. We should only help countries worse off than we are. But it would be inhuman to ignore the homeless and hungry when we waste money on sporting extravaganzas and pointless wars. 

Foreign aid often requires the recipients to buy our products or support us diplomatically. We should extend this “quid pro quo” to facilitate the repatriation of illegal immigrants, failed asylum seekers, dole scroungers, convicted criminals and volunteers. Immigrants that cannot or will not contribute to our economy should be sent home. When the MV Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury in 1948 with 490 West Indians onboard we had a manpower shortage but now we’ve got nearly 3 million unemployed. There are currently 370,000 immigrants on the dole; 258,000 from outside the EU. Our social security system cannot accommodate the entire world. It must be restricted to those who have contributed towards it.

Foreign aid is less than 1% of our budget so cutting it would do nothing to balance the books. In 2011 the UK raised £598 billion in taxation but spent £711 billion. We borrowed the outstanding £113 billion. The biggest expenditure by far is Social Protection at £200 billion, followed by Health at £126 billion. Education costs £89 billion and Defence is way down the list at £40 billion.

Instead of cutting foreign aid we should increase it as part of a dynamic programme of repatriation. It would be cheaper than doling out never ending benefits, and it would show the world that we mean business. Last year the UK population reached 62.3 million and is expected to reach 70 million by 2027. The government claims that the European Convention on Human Rights stops us from deporting illegal immigrants and bogus asylum seekers. Last year we only deported 4,200 but France got rid of 33,000 under exactly the same legal constraints.

But we should not forget our neighbours. Hungary desperately needs a loan to avoid financial collapse. The forint is an independent currency that is not tied to the euro. The Hungarians took the advice of the eurosceptics but it has not helped them. The last time they tried devaluation in 1946 their old currency the pengo collapsed and was replaced by the forint at the rate of 1 = 200 million. The ECB will probably come to their rescue but the future of Hungary and all the states of Europe will depend on solidarity and planning. The Hungarians are a brave nation that resisted the tanks of the Red Army in 1956. They deserve our support and by helping them we would help ourselves. All the nations of Europe benefit from financial stability and we are all diminished by poverty.

The United States gave over $12 billion to Britain and Western Europe after WW2 under the Marshall Plan. This was a lot of money when the basic weekly wage in the USA was only $20. The aid was given with generosity and it was gratefully received. Most of it was used to buy American products but it got us back on our feet until we were able to fend for ourselves. 

America gives $3 billion each to Israel and Egypt every year. Most of which is spent on American arms. They are pursuing their foreign policy and subsidising their arms industry at the same time. All the big powers use similar arrangements to achieve political and commercial objectives. We should not hesitate to use the same tactics to solve our problems.

 

Chose Your Flag
 

When most people hear the word “nationalist” they think of Alex Salmond and the SNP, or Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland. But the BNP and similar parties also call themselves nationalist. The ones with “England” in their titles want to break up the UK but they all want to quit the EU, stop immigration and enlarge the armed forces. The British People’s Party and British Movement are National Socialists; the rest are what Arnold Leese used to call “Tories with knobs on.”

Nigel Farage would object to be included in such company but UKIP hates the EU and wants to control immigration – just like the rest of them. The BPP and BM would be just as horrified to be compared to reactionaries like UKIP. They all reject government figures showing that three million British jobs depend on our membership of the EU. Instead they use figures conflated by Open Europe; a Brussels-based “think tank” that is often mistaken for an official EU agency. In fact it’s a pressure group led by Baron Leach of Fairford, a dedicated eurosceptic and a director of Rothschild Continuation AG.

The BNP manifesto says: “The BNP will end the annual multibillion cash hemorrhage Britain pays out for EU membership fees and regulatory costs. This money will be spent on building infrastructure in Britain and alleviating poverty and unemployment at home.” 

The National Front takes a similar line: “The National Front supports the right of self-determination for all European nations and demands that right for Britain. It seeks a Europe where each nation is friendly to all others but where no nation seeks to dominate or interfere in the affairs of another. Consequently the National Front would withdraw Britain from the European Union.”

Many people who believe in European unity support so-called far-right parties because they campaign against Third World immigration. But an isolated Britain would not have the financial resources or the political clout to organise a programme of resettlement. Such a mammoth undertaking would require international agreement and could only be achieved through European solidarity. 

The great divide runs right through the political spectrum. The Liberal Democrats are pro-European but the Labour Party is split on the issue and the Tories are mostly eurosceptic. We have not had a party standing for “Europe a Nation” since Sir Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement ceased operations following his death in 1980. But now several pro-European groups have begun to expand with a variety of websites and publications. Three complimentary nationalisms are currently available to Englishmen; those of England, Britain and Europe.

The proposed independence of Scotland makes it all the more important for Europe to be united. If the UK breaks up we will still be linked to Scotland by the EU. The old gang parties in Westminster completely failed to grasp the implications of devolution until it was too late. It goes without saying that Scottish independence will be an illusion. National independent is unobtainable in the modern world and the “sovereign debt” crisis proves that no nation can go-it-alone. But the Scots seem determined to wave their Saltire whatever the consequences. 

The break-up of the UK would be as regrettable as that of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. It seems that as Europe gets bigger her states get smaller.