Stop the Badger Cull

The scapegoat

by Scott Ullah

(European Socialist Action No 38   Jan/Feb 2012)

Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman wants badger culling trials to begin this year. She claims the evidence shows that the eradication of bovine TB depends on tackling the disease in badgers. “We can’t escape the fact that the evidence supports the case for the controlled reduction of the badger population in the areas affected by bovine TB”, she said.

Plans for a legal challenge have since been announced with the Mammal Society saying the government has based its culling on flawed science. Another animal welfare organisation, the Humane Society International UK, had its representative, Mark Jones, attacking the proposed culling trials by saying the scientific evidence demonstrates it will be ineffective and damaging to the local populations ... and cruel.

The Humane Society International UK also challenges the government proposals by claiming they breach an international convention on wildlife conservation.

So let us look at the scientific evidence.

The badgers are the victims in all this and not the cause of bovine TB spreading among the cattle population in Britain, scientists have confirmed.

After the savage losses of cattle to foot and mouth, farms were restocked with cattle with the old regulations relaxed; the cattle being moved around the country causing outbreaks of bovine TB where it previously did not exist.

Infection resulted from these movements and not from the badgers. It has been pointed out that cattle are free of the disease in Scotland with a healthy badger population thriving there, whereas on the Isle of Man bovine TB exists without a badger population.

In his book Badger Behaviour, Conservation and Rehabilitation: 70 Years of Getting to Know Badgers, George Pearce informs us that his family farm was bovine TB-free from 1950 to 2008 ... while enjoying the existence of badger setts on his land. He believes the current problem has more to do with cattle alone and nothing to do with the persecuted badgers.

This is what the experienced farmer, George Pearce, proposes:

Study the bloodlines of cattle and through blood tests test for susceptibility to bovine TB. The gene pool could be a contributory factor.

In the 1960s and 1970s, we were largely free of the disease but non-British breeds have been introduced that could be less resistant. Let the scientists get more involved and the politicians take a back seat.

Intensive breeding could be inducing stress, leading to increased stress-related susceptibility.

On one farm in Gloucestershire, hit by bovine TB, cattle were fed on maize, which lacks selenium, essential for maintaining a healthy immune system in cattle. Farmer, Dick Roper, then introduced selenium mineral licks for both cattle and badgers. The result? A complete cure. This successful treatment strongly suggests that outbreaks of bovine TB have a compromised immune system at the root of the problem.

There have been massive reductions in bovine TB cases in many parts of Wales due to cattle testing and movement controls without a single badger cull. But many rogue farmers are keeping infected cattle and sending healthy cattle to slaughter in their place.

David Williams of the Badger Trust says the guilty farmers are harbouring and spreading the disease, while the measures in place require effective movement control and accurate recordings. These measures have proved successful without killing a single badger.

The Independent Scientific Group monitored a pilot cull of badgers between 1997 and 2007. Inside the culling area bovine TB reduced only slightly while outside the area it increased dramatically. The conclusions of this trial were that culling can make “no meaningful contribution to the reduction of bovine TB”. The Independent Scientific Group has become involved once more in the latest government proposals. The members of the group have written a letter to The Times opposing them, including Lord Krebs, chairman of the House of Lords science and technology select committee, Professor John Bourne and Dr Chris Cheeseman, former chief scientist at DEFRA’s Gloucestershire study area. The Times letter stated there is “no empirical data  on the cost or effectiveness (or indeed humaneness or safety)  of controlling badgers by shooting, which has been illegal for decades”.

The government ignores scientific evidence. Why? Could it be they are after the farmers’ vote on this one, sacrificing our valuable wildlife in the process? If so, this is not only cruel but immoral and dishonest. To Caroline Spelman we can only echo the words of René Artois in BBC television’s ‘Allo ‘Allo! ... “You stupid woman!”                     copyright © Scott Ullah 2012

"Wild Man of The Left"

Labour Party days: Oswald Mosley with his first wife Cimmie

MOSLEY'S ORIGINS IN THE LABOUR PARTY

by Robert Edwards

Most readers of this paper will be familiar with Oswald Mosley’s now oft quoted response, from the late 1960s, to The Times newspaper, “I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the left and is now in the centre of politics” (Letter to The Times 26 April, 1968).

From the beginning, Oswald Mosley was never of ‘the Right’, that lazy political pigeon-holing practiced unscrupulously by both reactionaries and self-styled ‘progressives’. I have always understood ‘the Right’ to be that alignment of forces best characterised by a resistance to change, a preference for an old order of hierarchy and an undying fixation for discipline, punishment and the suppression of the ‘lower classes’. Racism and suchlike, however, are manifested throughout society and cut across political parties. When he first stood for Parliament in a Harrow constituency as a young army officer returned from the First World War, he coined the phrase ‘socialistic imperialism’ which must have confused some of his more strictly Tory electors. He stood as a Conservative Unionist and won the seat, of course, later opting for a position as an Independent Member of Parliament.

What did he mean when describing his election platform as ‘socialistic imperialism’? The British Empire was at its height of expansion, enjoying influence across several continents. Britain truly ruled the waves but the mass of people in Britain still lived in relative poverty. Worse still, many hundreds of thousands had been conscripted into a terrible war that lasted for four years, involving massive and unnecessary loss of life. Mosley was a cavalry officer (16th Lancers) who fought in both trench and in air. In those days, officers and men often shared the same conditions and the same fate. This bond of what he later called “the war generation” was at the core of his later political motivation and it began, then, on returning, only for him to discover that the same hard faced men, as he called them, were still in power and had no intention of giving the ex-soldiers a land fit for heroes to live in. Many of them had made big profits out of that war. Mosley’s ‘socialistic imperialism’ was his response to all that.

Then you would ask, but why stand as a Conservative Unionist if you want to espouse socialism? Why not simply join the Labour Party of Keir Hardie and the working man? The answer to these questions can best be explained in terms of Mosley’s social background (a sixth baronet, a baronetcy going back to the English Civil War on the side of the Royalists) and the class in which he moved. Standing as a Unionist (as opposed to a trade unionist) came with the title. His bonding with the men of the trenches, however, nurtured a quite different philosophy.

It seemed that Mosley was simply looking for an excuse to go over to the Labour Party at the earliest opportunity. After all, crossing the floor of the House of Commons is not a frequent occurrence and it involves a serious act of deep faith in political terms. He found it when he took up the cause of the Irish against the use of the Black and Tans in the early 1920s. Not for nothing did T.P. O’Connor, the Irish Nationalist MP, call Mosley “the greatest friend of Ireland”.

It was in the Labour Party of Ramsay MacDonald that his ‘socialistic imperialism’ found its true home or so he thought. Not everyone welcomed him there. Some thought him too ‘socialistic’ and they made that very clear to him. For a few, they resented his background and wealth and felt rather put in the shade by Mosley’s flamboyant personality. In his first fight for a Labour seat in Ladywood, Birmingham, he called for the nationalising of the mines, the railways ... and the banks. The Tory press gave him a rough time and he was narrowly defeated. On December 4th 1926, Mosley was again adopted, this time as the candidate for Smethwick and he won with a majority of 6,582 — his future in the Labour Party was secured despite the vicious press attacks. In the couple of years after his defeat at Ladywood, Mosley took time to formulate what became known as the Birmingham Proposals which were arguments against laissez-faire economics, in favour of planning. They were radical ideas for curing unemployment, a common theme throughout his political life. He had seen the slums and the poverty in a few major cities, including Liverpool, and commented, “The re-housing of the working class ought in itself to find work for the whole of the unemployed for the next ten years”. In my years in Union Movement I recall part of the policy as “treating housing as a national problem ... *the housing of the people should be taken seriously and treated like a problem of war”.

Today, we have the problem of so many empty properties (not slums) along with an army of the homeless. There was a previous government policy of mass clearance but they failed to replace them with the new, as promised. Mosley would have treated the problem differently, bringing down costs through methods of mass production.

Mosley’s greatest strength lay in his powerful grasp of economics and it is my contention that he should have stayed in the Labour Party despite internal opposition to his radical proposals. Even old adversaries like Manny Shinwell stated much later in 1968 that if he were more patient he would have won and made an enormous contribution to Labour politics and to the country. To a technocrat like Mosley, fascism had one main appeal and that was the freedom to act, to make things work, which it seemed was denied him by the old reactionaries within the Labour Party and who still clung to the laissez-faire economic theories of the previous century. The irony there was that Mosley confessed shortly after the Second World War that fascism “rode roughshod over civil liberties”, which seemed to cancel out the advantages of unbridled government action. In the late 1940s he had to all intent and purposes rejected fascism and called for European Socialism instead.

Fascism’s appeal to Mosley was as to a man concerned with the problems of unemployment and the serious faults within the economic system. It started as a vehicle for realising his goals, set originally while a member of a Labour government, given the responsibility for curing mass unemployment. He proposed very radical reforms on Keynesian lines, since adopted by subsequent governments, but were rejected then despite an appeal to Labour’s parliamentary party. He should have stayed put as most of his closest friends and supporters were then urging him to do.

This is what the left-wing historian A.J.P. Taylor meant when he wrote in English History, 1914-1945, “Mosley alone rose to the challenge ... his proposals offered a blueprint for most of the constructive advances in economic thinking to the present day ... an astonishing achievement, evidence of a superlative talent”.

Then, the Labour politician, Richard Crossman in 1961, “Capable of becoming either Conservative or Labour Prime Minister ... revealed as the outstanding politician of his generation ... Mosley was spurned by Whitehall, Fleet Street and every party leader at Westminster simply and solely because he was right” ... and so the accolades poured forth long after Mosley’s departure from the old party system.

The What If? books edited by Robert Cowley (published by Pan Books) offer some intriguing hypotheses in the form of essays written by eminent historians. There is one subject missing in this series of thought-provoking books and it is “If Oswald Mosley had stayed in the Labour government of Ramsay MacDonald and bided his time”.

I believe Britain would have been a better place if he had.

It is not Mosley the fascist leader that should be celebrated. No, not at all. It is Mosley the Labour Party socialist that more properly defines his true political home and the cradle of his ideas as political reformer and economist.

“Parliament invented me”, was a typical Mosleyism. He was the parliamentarian par excellence and his command of polemic was wasted on the visceral outpourings of fascism. He once said he was tired of men who think but preferred instead the company of men who feel; which is extraordinary coming from a man with such a brilliant mind. He was reaching out to the “war generation”, many of whom were then filling the ranks of his Blackshirt ‘legions’ within the BUF.

British fascism did not miss the potency of the emotional over the essentially intellectual. It made a virtue of it so much so, that it tended to supersede the latter.

Mosley’s speeches as a fascist leader, although permeated with some of the more romantic allusions, were fundamentally reasoned and filled with economic analysis reminiscent of his days in the House of Commons. The parliamentarian always emerged. The ‘fascist’ was simply an adopted mantel.

He later remarked when being interviewed by James Mossman on a BBC Panorama programme in 1968 that, “I exhausted every means in the Labour Party of getting my policies accepted before I left. First of all, the Parliamentary Party; secondly the Conference. And not until I was rejected and defeated in every attempt to get the Labour Party to accept it did I go over with precisely the same policy — and this is so curious — and start the fascist movement. Having been denounced as the wild man of the Left by Snowden and others, I was then supposed to become a right-wing reactionary. But my policy was precisely the same”.

His policy was indeed the same which would more or less confirm that he had not changed his views but simply the modus operandi for putting them across. Dressed in his black shirt, he remained a socialist through it all, speaking for Britain and the British working man. It also explains the fact that British fascism under Mosley’s leadership was not a right-wing movement ... even though it did attract some right-wing people.

All through the years of the British Union of Fascists and then the considerably longer years of Union Movement, Mosley the socialist from the old Labour Party shone through like a golden thread of honourable consistency, never losing sight of that noble purpose coming back from the trenches with the ‘war generation’. The sacrifice has yet to be atoned.

From the beginning, it has been the purpose of this publication to put the record straight in face of the many misrepresentations. If you want to obsess with the fascist phase of Mosley’s career then do so ... but with one stipulation of understanding. It is that British fascism was no more than a temporary vehicle for a set of ideas that have their roots in the Labour Party. Those ideas were to transcend issues of political party and organisation. Developed in the Labour Party, they are essentially socialist in nature. That they were rejected is less an indictment of the Labour Party itself but more a comment on the short-sighted stupidity of those leading it at the time.

It seems perfectly reasonable to describe the post-war platform as European Socialist, given the loss of Empire as an economic dimension. Not ‘socialistic imperialism’ in the old sense but a revised European creed with Europe as the new ‘empire’.

You can not understand Mosley without looking at his parliamentary career and his struggle within the MacDonald government around the time of 1930.  Although he always put Britain first, he was never a nationalist in the narrow sense, as with the far-right fringe. He further coined the phrase “to do great things in a great way” ... an echo of his proposals as a member of the Labour Party. Nationalism, by its narrow thinking, can only do things in a small way. Today, they have to blame the Muslims through complete lack of constructive policy.

Unlike “the Right”, supporters of European Action possess a deeply held collective social conscience. It is a moral regard for others, a desire to solve the great social problems of this age through changing the system that is largely responsible for most of our ills.

Unlike “the Right”, we have an extensive policy that would lead to an end to social exploitation and the dominance of international finance (globalism) in the affairs of nations. We subscribe to the political and economic ideas of Oswald Mosley ... which is why we are European Socialists.

RHE © 2012
European Socialist Action No 38

The Greater Europe ... or Little England

by Robert Edwards

European Socialist Action No 37

Oswald Mosley speaks in Shoreditch, East London, 1960s

European Action stands for the complete integration of Europe as an economic and political unitary power. This is clearly a continuation of the policy of Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement, two of which former members are writing in this current issue of EA’s European Socialist Action. Yet another former member is further mentioned in a report detailing recent interviews with an American university’s history department. There is no other group, with or without a regular publication, that can claim to stand firm and square for this policy and we therefore claim to be unique and original in that regard.

Not for us the compromise or flirtation with right wing nationalism, that reactionary throw-back to the days of Empire, that refuses to acknowledge the world has changed since the sun set on it long ago. Not for us the semantic juggling with terms that pretend to be ‘European’ but are, in fact, a cop-out through the fogginess and confusion of garbled talk of ‘confederations’ and loose alliances that mean, in reality, no unity at all.

Right wing nationalists, which includes all Eurosceptics and enemies of European unity (‘nationalism’ being an essentially generic term) presuppose we each possess, as separate countries, something called sovereignty and that the waving of a flag and the face of a monarch or a president on a bank note mean, through such symbolism alone, these things become a reality. Wishful thinking or deluded dreaming? A bit of both, I suspect.

Right wing fringe parties hold onto their only version of an economic idea which is expressed through that tired and worn-out demand, “We want to go it alone and choose who we trade with in the world and not be told by Europe”.

All very good if you have the vast resources of something the size of the British Empire at its height ... but all rather pathetic when you are left high and dry as a set of weather-beaten little isles in the North Sea with nearly all your major industry gone in the click of Margaret Thatcher’s finger and thumb. What on earth are these silly little ‘patriots’ going on about? Trade with whom we choose? How is little Albion going to compete successfully on world markets against the likes of China or India ... or do they have “a cunning plan”, as the unfortunate Baldrick would occasionally inform his master in the Blackadder TV series?

The British far right does not like economics ... or, as one of them informed me some time ago, “Economics is Marxist – commie rubbish”. Anything is “rubbish” if you do not understand it. This is probably the reason why parties like the BNP have no economic policy to speak of, apart from a childish fantasy called ‘national autarky’, getting everyone to dig for victory ... as they are so fond of wartime metaphor. The idea of the allotment gets a revival in the BNP’s book of economic self-sufficiency ... grow your own!

You have to ask yourselves, why do they persist with this “rule Britannia” nationalism in the face of all the evidence that ‘little Britain’ would never work as a so-called sovereign power? First of all, no sovereignty in the big, bad wide world and, second, no power with your industry spent and the East taking over your former glory in industrial terms.

Why do they hate Europe so much? Let us have a look.

With our history of Britain in the last few hundred years it was inevitable that myths and legends would be created on the strengths of the many achievements of exceptional individuals. We were the ‘work shop of the world’ during that period called the Industrial Revolution when British capitalism could exploit the vast resources of overseas empire ... but the social cost was enormous when the ordinary people were often treated worse than animals down mines, in factories and up chimneys. The ‘subjects’ in our overseas territories were regarded as less than human. All of this, in order that Britain could be ‘great’. The few became exceedingly wealthy and the many were to become the downtrodden industrial working class.

The ordinary British people who nearly broke their backs under horrendous conditions were kept in such dire poverty that none had the purchasing power to consume all that they produced here in Britain. Instead, overseas markets were created which created conflict with other European powers equally keen on exploiting the foreigner. Competition on such a scale ultimately led to war because, let us face it, all wars are economic (that dirty Marxist word).

In the 20th Century, we had two catastrophic world wars with European brother against European brother or, if you like, the workers fighting other workers. After the First World War there was an attempt to right the wrongs that had led to the massive slaughter in places like Flanders with both communism and fascism offering answers to the crises of capitalism in the 1930s. Indeed, the ideas of national self-sufficiency, tied to vast imperial resources, as proposed by ‘the Modern Movement’ in various countries, was the nearest to a real threat to an international system of finance that manipulated the money supply within international competition. With a toss of the coin, fascism lost and had to go ... with another war in 1939.

The problem of fascism in the 1930s was that it was ultra-nationalistic, which was another factor that could lead to war. Oswald Mosley came to that conclusion shortly after the Second World War. An alternative had to be found.

In terms of economic practice, fascism became totally redundant with the loss of Empire, as a direct consequence of the Second World War. Without the vast resources of an overseas empire, self-sufficiency was impossible and we were back to competing against other countries, keeping wages down in order to keep costs down. Mosley wanted to organise the economy in a way that an insulated economy could create a home market for all that it produced but this could only be achieved on a large scale. Small, isolated countries could never achieve this.

The alternative was Europe, along with areas of the world known then as the ‘white dominions’ ... Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. They were to be brought into Mosley’s idea of Europe a Nation on the basis of European kinship alone. That kinship, as it was, no longer exists as each ‘dominion’ gene-pool became infused with extra-European peoples and they traded with areas nearer to them. Australia with the Pacific Rim, for example.

The principal aim of Europe a Nation is the elimination of crises and depressions by striking a balance between production and consumption, putting the money into the pockets of the workers to buy back the goods they make as fast as science can increase the means to produce. Mosley called it the wage/price mechanism. This could only operate within a large insulated economy free of the vagaries of international competition ... which would mean an end to ‘free trade’ that has so long ruined this country of ours.

Then, industry should be under workers’ ownership with all having a stake and a share in the running of each industry. This would correct the previous injustices of capitalist exploitation. No more workers versus the bosses.

Europe a Nation would mean the elimination of racial and national hatreds, the product of many centuries of competitive warfare and religious strife. No single nation-state would ever again attempt hegemony over the rest ...  Europeans must be equal.

We must have an ever-expanding European economy creating a demand for skilled and trained people such as scientists, technicians, engineers, teachers, physicians, architects and so on. Science shall serve the workers’ state.

There will be the abolition of unemployment with the right of every European to work, leisure and education.

For all this, we will need a system of planning, the main purpose of which will be the ordered development of Europe’s resources, ensuring no waste.

We call this European Socialism where strong, democratic government leads the economy, intervening where it matters but giving power and responsibility to the workers in their places of work. Who do we mean by ‘workers’? It must be those who toil by both hand and with brain, the operative or worker working alongside elected managers and supervisors. It also includes people like buyers and statisticians. In other words, the entire team in a going concern, working together. It can not be otherwise.

How do we arrive at this when we have to contend with the greatest political obstacle to Europe a Nation – nationalistic thinking. Right wing nationalist thinking being its worst expression. This does not belong exclusively to the fringes of British politics. Oh, no. It exists within the Establishment and in the Tory Party, in particular. Again, these people are the great exponents of free trade, the doctrine on which international competition is based. It is a free for all whereby those who keep costs down by keeping wages low have a fighting chance of winning. Those who want to give workers a fair deal do not stand a chance. Well, that is the Tories for you ... minimum wage, a horror of horrors to them. They will use all the claptrap of jingoistic nationalism, “we’re all in it together” and “do it for Britain” ... when, in fact, they are doing it purely for themselves while loafing about in their gentlemen’s clubs.

As I said, those who want to give the workers a fair deal do not stand a chance ... under this system. It will always be like this so long as we are part of the international free for all now known as globalism. They call it the “world economy”, rather blowing the gaff on the idea that each country’s economy is its own. It also makes a mockery of the policy these nationalistic people peddle concerning “trading with whom we choose”, as if it is all a nice, friendly game with fair rules. It is not. Co-operation not competition.

Then you have the worst of all, this conspiracy by private banking to create a national debt in each country, building a monopoly on the control of money so that governments are helpless in the grip of usury.

When all of government policy is reduced to a single objective ... not the improvement and betterment of the lives of ordinary people, the people who elected the government, but this over-riding push to reduce a phantom borrowing deficit, then something is gravely wrong in the world.

Ask your ordinary man or woman in the street to whom do we owe this incredibly vast amount of money and they can not tell you. Even though they do not know, they go along with it. Never question it.

At the core of it is private banking or, more precisely, the system of private banking which aim is to control the world’s money supply. Sometimes called the Rothschild model of banking, it seeks to take away from governments the means for creating and distributing money. It is created through borrowing from private banks and must be paid back at interest.

As such, all central banks must surrender their national purpose to an international purpose, hence the wars with Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and a few more lined up. Why? ...  because all these countries had central banks completely independent of the Rothschild usury model. This is developed further in the article on the back page from an American writer.

This is perhaps one of the strongest arguments for a fully united Europe with its own government and its own banking system whereby the European people’s government  controls the money supply through a European credit bank not based on usury but on a regulated need to maintain that balance between production and consumption. Private banking would end and so would the external National Debt.

You need the strength and power of a super state like Europe a Nation, big enough to defend itself from the New World Order’s dirty tricks, which acts as the military wing of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, pushing countries into debt slavery and then dictating how those countries regulate fiscal policy with threats if they default. Meanwhile, public services are sacrificed first as an ‘austerity measure’ while those that are responsible for economic crises, the private banks, accept public bail outs and then continue to award themselves massive bonuses. If you have two luxury yachts why do you need a third? Why all this greed?

Why do we allow ourselves to be treated this way and why is it allowed to go on? The answer, my friends, is that all governments in the West are in thrall to these financial institutions and are there to serve them and not us.

Europe arise and break the chains that bind us!

Reflections on the Somme

Henry Williamson

by John Roberts

It is heartening and encouraging to see the English writer Henry Williamson’s name crop up and it was good to see reader Michael Woodbridge mention him in a letter a few years ago.

I, too, am a member of  The Henry Williamson Society and for the benefit of readers of European Socialist Action the following is an article, albeit slightly revised, which I submitted to the society’s newsletter some time ago. It was written after a fascinating journey to The Somme and places associated with Henry, organised by the society.

Mr Woodbridge’s comment in his letter is, I feel, worthy of repeat here. “..... (The Henry Williamson Society) ..... although it purports to be non-political nevertheless can not deny that Williamson represented the spirit of England which Mosley sought to champion”.

Battlefield Tour

“The English Channel is free of U-Boats and the Kaiser’s navy is sunk. The coast is clear”. Thus to paraphrase our intrepid astonishingly well-informed guide Paul Reed (you may well have seen him of late on various television programmes on the Great War – including Michael Palin’s documentary on the last hours of the war, shown in November 2008), setting the scene on a bright day in Dover for a riveting and extraordinary moving tour of The Somme battlefields in Northern France.

Memories of this tour are already indelibly inscribed in the mind. Placing a wreath on a lonely, windswept cemetery in the middle of a field. “May he rest in ancient sunlight” (an allusion to HW’s Chronicles of Ancient Sunlight series of books); the rusty remains of a shell unearthed by farmers after 90 years. There was a palpable sense of occasion here.

Other abiding memories are the soft Spring showers, wind driven, gently spattering the Portland stone. “A New Zealand soldier of the Great War”. Sgt J. Montgomery, Royal Irish Rifles. 1st July 1916, age 24”. The oak leaf crest of the Cheshire Regiment. Atop the hill beyond Serre Road Number 2 Cemetery, a steely threatening grey sky; in the foreground, bright Spring sunshine illuminating the Portland stone and daffodils. A poem is read by Gilbert Waterhouse; it alludes to nightingales in one verse. As we listen, we can hear skylarks.

Afterwards, we gaze at the lone cross in the corner of a field; an officer, Valentine Braithwaite: Somerset Light Infantry. “A corner of a foreign field that is forever England”. Those well-worn words sprung into the mind unbidden and acquire a stark relief this Spring afternoon.

For me, what makes Henry Williamson’s work so fascinating is how we can be drawn into a visionary, almost mystical sense of the English countryside, yet there is a keenness, an edge given by Henry’s experiences of the Great War. War and nature in close proximity; the blasted trees, the skylarks above the guns. At Lochnager crater (‘Le Grande Mine’ on the road signs with the poppy symbol by a row of typically French trees) we observe the poppies cast down into the crater’s base; a hare makes a brief appearance. In nearby fields where the Tynesiders moved forward, we can see the yellowhammers and skylarks.

We view ‘The Golden Virgin’ of Albert town across the fields, whilst Richard (Henry’s eldest son) reads in the midday breeze. The Angelus bell has just rung from a nearby church. In the distance, those so typical copses of trees.

A poignant address at the Arras memorial; the tragic circumstances of Private Frith’s death were recorded by HW along with his trusty mule. This I found an extraordinarily moving passage. The combination of man and beast. Those dignified, graceful and innocent creatures who obediently assist, even in the horrific midst of war. How often we are inclined to let their contribution slip from our memory. The Dickin Medal, initiated by the PDSA founder, Maria Dickin, has rightly been awarded to horses, dogs, cats, even pigeons.

I rediscovered Henry Williamson only a few years ago. My wife, Geraldine, was having treatment for cancer (happily she is now in remission) and I came across an article on HW whilst attending the infirmary in Leeds where she was receiving chemotherapy.

In the booklet given out to accompany the tour, Richard Williamson wrote an introduction and one of the things he wrote made a marked impression.

To quote: “A soldier sees things that others never see”.

This line ignited my imagination. Perhaps a soldier, in having to face certain truths about himself and the world around him, is in a similar condition to that of the artist. Maybe not the same immediate danger but there are connections in terms of discipline. Henry Williamson was, of course, an artist and a soldier.

To the artist or writer, a constant, acute and tireless observation of his or her surroundings is in their very nature. The activities of a soldier and artist also involve that acute presence of mind.

These musings brought to mind the poet Henry Reed who wrote Naming of Parts. On one level this is a description, with a sardonic edge, of a soldier’s training routine; in this case, rifle training. Yet Reed displays an awareness of his surroundings: it is obviously Spring. “The Japonica glistens like coral in the neighbouring garden”.

There are fascinating metaphors and juxtapositions made between the rifle instructions, so mechanical and matter of fact and equally precise observations of the beauty and fragility of nature. “Almond blossoms silent in the garden”.

When he refers to “Easing the Spring” on a rifle, there is a marvellous interplay of the meaning. The early bees “are assaulting and fumbling the flowers”. “Easing the Spring” is transfigured from a technical instruction to an acute observation on the emergence of the season of Spring.

There is also the further idea that everything has a name, whether it be the breech of a rifle or a genus of blossom tree, though their ‘natures’ and purposes are entirely different.

A soldier will also see things in the sight of a rifle. Perhaps an animal, the shadow of foliage on the bark of a tree in bright sunshine; the particular hue of brickwork on a barn or wall; a cobweb on a windowpane; the murmur of breeze; a bird darting across the vision.

Henry had the same acuteness of vision. To me, this ‘colliding of worlds’ is what makes Henry Williamson’s so compelling. He saw how war affects the natural world and how the natural world subsists even during war. How animals and insects react to man’s destructive potency.

I am sure that Henry’s acute, almost mystical awareness of the natural world, yet also his experience of the waste and barbarity (and dignity and heroism it can reveal) are what gives his work such energy, vitality and potency.

Another poem which came to mind unbidden is “All day it has remained” by Alun Lewis. Damp training tents; the tedium of the day: the discomfort. Rain pours on mankind whether he is at peace or war. The skylarks still sing, despite the guns.

Readers might be interested to know, if you are ever in Yorkshire, about Sledmere House near Driffield (East Riding).

Sledmere, on the Yorkshire Wolds, is the home of the ‘Wagoners Special Reserve’; these were agricultural workers skilled in the working of horses and wagons: they were amongst the first to join the British Expeditionary Force in August-September 1914. There is a small museum which documents the unique contribution which these men made, some of whom had never left the village in which they were born, amongst the first to serve their country abroad. These men of the Yorkshire Molds, of which there were a fair few, are celebrated here through memorabilia and medals. There is also an excellent (and very reasonably priced) cafe serving teas and lunches.

There is an interesting pair of memorials in Sledmere village itself, one in particular displaying a bas-relief of the Wagoners’ experience of the Great War (although somewhat controversial due to its somewhat lurid and savage depiction of the German army).

Sledmere is something of a well-kept secret. With its Arboretum of ancient trees (the likes of which I have only seen at Mourne Park House, Kilkeel, County Down in Northern Ireland), I am sure it is a place Henry would have appreciated.

For further details of Sledmere House phone 01377 236637

The Battlefields tour organised by the Henry Williamson Society occurred at Eastertide 2006.

copyright © John Roberts 2011
 

ESA No 37  November/December 2011

The Signal For Things to Come

The Height of the August riots in London, 2011

by Robert Edwards - ESA No 36

No one was prepared for the riots over an August weekend that spread from city to city, burning and looting on a scale not seen for decades. Parliament was in recess and the police seemed paralysed, like rabbits in a car’s headlamps, as they came out onto the streets to act as mere observers, standing by as looters emptied shops in full view. In one area, looting went on for over an hour in full view of police in riot gear.

The great British public also sat and watched, albeit in the comfort of their own sitting rooms on plasma screens that actually belong to them.

We watch famine and drought in Africa and NATO bombings in Libya; we watch rioting on the streets of Syria and severe storms and tsunamis in America and around the Indian Ocean ... but events on the scale of the August riots are now regarded in much the same way. News as morbid entertainment, so long as it is not in my backyard.

How many still remained secure in their homes while feral youth went on the rampage over several nights, burning out ordinary people who were as innocent and blameless as they could be? We were left wondering if we had a police force fit for purpose and it was becoming increasingly clear that we do not. Let us face it, they were completely ineffectual on the streets, seemingly incapable of knowing what to do under the circumstances.

The shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham by armed police officers is said to have been the spark that ignited the social powder keg. The local police chief seemed to ignore the requests from a peaceful group of demonstrators who waited for hours for answers outside the police station that evening. It was a prime example of the complete detachment of the police from the local community and more or less confirmed the feeling that the police treat young blacks unfairly. The peaceful demonstrators were snubbed by the local police chief ... then, later,  all hell broke loose.

Serious crimes were committed on that first night, and subsequently, the more serious being arson. The rioting was ferocious and a powerful force seemed to dominate the events. For moments it seemed parts of cities were to be razed to the ground as the mob pushed on with its criminal purpose.

The Prime Minister eventually got round to returning from his holiday, along with the rest of the Commons windbags. There was then some semblance of governing, along with the usual homilies before media cameras.

Cameron donned the persona of a hard line right wing Tory, dispensing with his customary ‘ethical conservatism’. They would be hunted down and punished, he swore. CCTV footage did the rest and the round-ups began. 

Fast-track court hearings were put in place after the arrests, based on CCTV mug shots. Entire families were evicted from their social housing as an added punishment.

To reinforce his new hard man image, Cameron decided to call in the expertise of US ‘super cop’, Bill Bratton, who is to meet our Prime Minister sometime in September. What does this say for our own senior police officers, some of whom clashed with the politicians, rudely interrupted on their holidays? They were informed they had gone about it the wrong way and so the politicians stepped in and sorted it out for them.

Those who advised Cameron on this option of bringing in an American cop may yet discover they have placed the Prime Minister in a somewhat awkward political dilemma — since the introduction of his new ‘bang ‘em up and throw away the key’ doctrine, beloved of his old ‘hang ‘em and flog ‘em’ blue-rinsed brigade of old. Tories used to be hard on crime but not the causes of crime. They were not interested in what were deemed mere excuses. Social problems were of no concern to them other than to punish the poor for being poor. “It was their own fault” because they had not been thrifty and as hard working as their social superiors ... as most Tories saw it. Social deprivation was largely ignored and treated as an embarrassment.

Bill Bratton seems to look at these issues quite differently and, perhaps, with far more insight. Success claims by this tough American cop do not appear to be entirely truthful as this passage from an American report indicate:

“By now, almost everyone has seen one of the semi-amusing videos of black teen mobs rampaging through a store. Maybe we've even seen the non-amusing pictures of the victims, or heard their stories.

Most Americans have heard of recent violent ‘flash mobs’, which are the bands of black teens that attack mostly white victims and white businesses, as even the New York Times once noted. But the flash mobs, which are more accurately called ‘race riots’ or ‘racial mob violence’, are not the only interesting topic to cover in our national conversation about race.

There is also the ‘knock out game’, which is stunning in its brutal simplicity and stark racial significance. The knock out game involves ‘unprovoked attacks on innocent bystanders’, according to police who have had to deal with it. A retired officer explained, "Normally it was a group of black males, one of which would strike him as hard as he could in the face, attempting to knock him out with one punch", says retired Sergeant Don Pizzo.

The victims are typically not robbed, but simply punched with no provocation. Such attacks have been reported in Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, and New Jersey ... local media outlets have failed to report on the racial aspect of the attacks. At best, the media will allow the race of attackers to be revealed by mug shots or quotations from police or victims. This follows a conscious policy of self-censorship that has been openly admitted by major newspapers”.

Do we need these American imports and should we rely on advice from countries that have the highest crime rates in the world and the largest prison populations? Do we really need Dirty Harry?

“You can not arrest yourself out of the problem”, Bratton told ABC television, “Arrest is certainly appropriate for the most violent, the incorrigible, but so much of it can be addressed in other ways and it's not just a police issue, it is in fact a societal issue”.

He recommended, “... a co-ordination of very assertive tough police tactics but also a lot of community outreach, a lot of creative, innovative programmes such as a significant use of gang interventionists”. Sounds like typical American socio-babble but he does touch on a point that Cameron is currently ignoring ... the origins of violence in social deprivation. There are no excuses for crime but their are causes and reasons for it.

Before you all think I am turning into a bleeding heart liberal, as they were once called, we must consider solutions while not constantly ranting on about punishment. It is clear there is a massive problem regarding social cohesion and that problem is largely economic ... the haves and the have-nots ... the massive gulf between the rich and the poor.

While not dismissing the criminality of the rioters, there is evidently a strong case for recognising a process of alienation that has been going on for some decades now, effecting more than one generation. British society has been disintegrating ever since our industrial base was eroded and the working class betrayed and thrown onto the scrapheap of English social history. Once-valued manual skills became as redundant as the massed ranks of industrial workers. Youths today, both black and white, will never have known the old pride in labour and to have belonged to the brotherhood of the working class. My father, a miner for most of his life, was an example of that esprit de corps felt by all who toiled and laboured together. Youths today, and I am talking of the disenfranchised and alienated, often do not have that essential feeling of ‘belonging’ that even a proper family gives of right and so they become feral, that adjective now recurring whenever this section of youth is given media attention.

The sense of ‘belonging’ is as natural and essential as anything in the animal world. In the Qur’an it says, “Even the animals have their community”, which emphasises the universal occurrence of it, overriding all other instincts and needs. Governments do not do anything to remedy this situation because, first of all, Margaret Thatcher said there was no such thing as society, that we are all individuals urged on by selfish greed. Global capitalism is driven by it and the bankers positively worship greed as a god. Mammon rules Britain!

Four masked youths, all black, were interviewed after the riots by a Sky News reporter on the banks of the Thames near Greenwich. They were asked why they engaged in the riots and one said clearly, “We did it for the money because we haven’t got any”. One stole nappies and Johnson baby products for his tiny son. Standing there, he pointed over at the City with its tall office blocks and then to the nearby block of council flats. He clearly understood this world whereby the super-rich get hold of large amounts of money easily through speculation (gambling) while the occupants of those council flats sometimes had no idea where the next meal is coming from. This feral youth understands, alright. They understand that bigger criminals lurk across the Thames in Canary Wharf and further down the river in the House of Commons. They do not need lectures from hypocrites.

As Britain lurches from one economic crisis to the next, the Government tells us we must learn to do with less because a phantom debt needs to be paid to the faceless bankers who lend it out of nothing and than want it back at interest. It is amazing how many people are duped into believing all this is aboveboard and perfectly legitimate. We owe nothing because money is phantom currency which exists in the form of figures on a database only. It is nothing more than that. Then there is the bond market where debts are traded ... buy cheap and sell when they go up in value. Roulette capitalism at its worst and most unethical.

An economist once wrote: “Money is the NOTHING you get for SOMETHING before you can get ANYTHING. To acquire money, its legitimate owner must give up something in the here and now - property, personal services, etc - for the nothing of money. The money serves as a claim to an equivalent share of real wealth to be produced and consumed sometime in the future. It represents society’s debt for wealth surrendered for the inherently worthless forms of modern money, hence the nothing of money”.

What do we get out of this system? Only war and growing poverty with periodic bouts of speculation-induced prosperity followed by economic collapse, as Frederick Soddy, the Nobel Prize winner, put it. He believed the explanation was in the way society distributed wealth and not in its ability to produce it.

It is very clear that science and technology can provide all that we need in abundance. Oswald Mosley always said that. With government leading, we can raise our standard of living and purchasing power as science increases the means to produce.

But we are not in control and there is the rub. The crux of all our problems. It is the reason for poverty, for a lack of social cohesion, for social deprivation and for the fact that large swathes of alienated youth do not ‘belong’ ... other than to gangs and other peer groups. The connection has gone ... with society, the police and the politicians. It is time for anti-politics and anti-money. After all, the power that the high and mighty wield is all relative. They are powerful because we believe they are powerful. Money exists because we believe it exists. Our national debt exists because we believe it exists. Take that belief away and the whole show could collapse like a house of cards.

Ask yourselves why the police simply stood by and watched the looting and burning going on. The answer is, they did not believe they could do anything about it. It is all about confidence ... as the bankers often claim.

So let us all have confidence, my friends. Confidence in overthrowing this system and replacing it with something better so there will never be the need for burning and looting because there will be an abundance for all.

Quintessentially English

European Socialist Action No 33, March/April 2011

Scott Ullah

by Scott Ullah

LAND AND PEOPLE

It was my intention to write on the threat to our forests and woodlands but the people have triumphed on this one, I am overjoyed to learn. Land and people is a good phrase to apply here because the two should be indivisible. Long may they remain so.

What on earth made them think they could just sell it all off to the highest bidder? Can you imagine these sacred places, our very English soil and all the beautiful wildlife, in the possession of a Russian oligarch or an American oil executive, lost forever and resigned to being plundered, spoiled and defiled. You know what some of these ‘businessmen’ are like. They buy up our football clubs as yet another possession to add to their business portfolios without any thought or feeling for local passions built up over generations of supporters. Our forests and woodlands would have been treated in the same fashion.

I am one of those who is keen on the word ‘socialist’ being added to this publication because we need to show that we believe the people of this country should always have a say in the affairs of our England. The best way to implement it properly would be to make sure the people actually own their own country. This includes what they call the utilities or what my old mum would call the essentials — gas, electricity and water. Why is there this urgency to make a profit out of anything and everything? It is pure greed.

Of course, globalism is the curse in all this and we need a government that can resist this plundering of all our resources and assets.

This is not America even though they try to Americanise us through the media. The idea of theme parks is purely American and like much from that hell of a place it is plastic and phoney. It was with this thought in mind that I dreaded this proposed sell-off, thinking the Government must have either gone mad or is quite without morals. It is most definitely the latter.

So why did they back down on this in the end?

My theory is, this Tory-led Coalition government has no idea how ordinary people think and feel, despite this patronising claptrap about ‘we are all in it together’. You see, multi-millionaires live in a different world and that is a fact from which you can not escape. It was only when the depth of feeling regarding our forests and woodlands included the great and the good in the protest that the cracks in the Coalition’s sell-off plans began to appear. They attracted over half a million signatories for this purpose which I am told is unprecedented in this day and age. They were up against more than the hoi polloi. Then and only then did Cameron state over the Despatch Box that he was not happy with it all and tried to win back all the brownie points he was losing on this one.

He knows now that he and his cronies are more unpopular than Ed Miliband’s Labour Party — and Ed Miliband has not really made his mark yet. Time will tell.

FREEDOM OF THE LAND

I believe in freedom. That freedom must entail public ownership of many aspects of our nation that would benefit us all in the common good. The countryside, for example, offers all of us so much joy and pleasure but it also entails responsibilities on the part of all of us. Awareness of certain rules of the countryside only comes with education and this should most definitely begin early on in the schools.  It is our heritage, after all.

I am told that a line in an old Mosley song went, “Sprung from that soil for whose dear sake they bled”. It carries a certain reverence which certainly inspires my deep respect. I immediately think of war memorials.

People died for the land, for their land. That is how they viewed it, even though the wealthy landowners really owned it lock, stock and barrel. Whether it was for King and Country or just to defend a little village, the ordinary people felt it was theirs because they were born there and that is why the English rose up recently and demanded their forests and woodlands must not be sold to some foreign mogul.

You could see that there is still that almost spiritual attachment to the soil and everything that springs from it. With that there is hope, which springs eternal.

The preservation of England’s green and pleasant land was worth dying for over the centuries and it is still worth the effort because without it we lose that sense of continuity of identity that some old-fashioned people call ‘patriotism’.

THE SPIRIT OF NATURE

I have walked through woodland on a quiet Sunday morning with that most uplifting of music called birdsong and the smell of fern and moss all around me. I know immediately that I am on hallowed ground so that I am not sure whether my presence there is a right or a privilege. I know one thing. We have a duty to protect it for the generations to come and, of course, for that other precious life that lives there, the wildlife. There is something essentially mystical about it all and it is there that you fully understand the phrase ‘Mother Nature’.   

© Scott Ullah 2011

Nation Revisited

Interview For Bill Baillie's Online Bulletin
To receive an issue online or subscribe: bill.baillie1@btinternet.com

Nation Revisited Interview

I asked people who support the concept of European unity the following questions. Here is Robert Edwards, a former member of Sir Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement.
 

Who are you?

Robert Edwards. I am the co-ordinator of European Action and the editor of its paper, European Socialist Action.

What do you believe in?

I believe in social justice and the liberation of all peoples from the grip of international (globalist) finance. I believe in cultural integrity and the right of people to preserve those cultures free from interference from outside. I oppose all ideas based on racial supremacy. I also oppose the persecution of peoples based on religion. All have a right to worship anywhere and anyway they chose, whether in church, synagogue or mosque. There is no such thing as a ‘British’ religion. Right-wing reactionaries who exploit ‘Islamophobia’ do so because they are bereft of any constructive ideas. Besides, it is largely dishonest because their true motive is essentially racial but they are too gutless to admit this.

This liberation of all peoples, I believe, can only come about through the entire world being organised along the lines of continental systems, with their own governments and with their own self-sufficient and independent economies, free from the current international trading system. Mosley’s concept of Europe a Nation should be adopted as a blue-print and the model for other areas of the world. Only systems large enough can be truly independent and self-sufficient. Smaller nations, as currently constituted, will always remain dependent on a larger power. Better to be part of a greater union in equal partnership. Union is strength.

I believe in European Socialism, a system based on syndicalism or workers’ ownership. I also believe the people should own the means of production, distribution and exchange. I oppose free market economics and the idea of international competition. The living standards of our own people must always come first and that is why we should have our own European trading area for a thriving home market. Bring an end to the import of cheap goods from low-wage Eastern economies which undercuts the European worker and keeps our wages low as a consequence. European manufacturing for European consumption only. Organise and lead within our own area! It can be done. All that is needed is the will.

I believe in the complete union of Europe as a single system with its own government, its own military defence force and a single currency and economy. The regions of Europe should retain regional customs and local laws best suited to them. However, I reject this watered-down nonsense of ‘confederation’ which is not union at all but a set of loose alliances for the purpose of limited co-operation. Some bourgeois petty nationalists are trying to push this confederation idea while retaining their nationalistic narrow world view, hanging on to out-dated illusionary ideas of sovereignty. Ten pygmies do not make a giant and ten separate nation-states would always remain essentially divided. Nationalism should be consigned to the dustbin of history as an anachronism with nothing to offer the people. The age of the nation-state is over ... now comes the age of great continental systems.

What are you proud of and what do you regret?

I am proud of having been a member of Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement and of being, at one time, UM’s West London Area Organiser. I regret nothing. To regret is pointless. To learn from one’s mistakes is far more important.

How would you like to be remembered?

As a notorious cartoonist. What else?