Religions Can Live Together

From editorial in issue No 27 by Robert Edwards

When religious affairs in Britain are used as a political football then surely some of us have regressed in terms of civilisation.
For centuries, Christians, Muslims and Jews lived peaceably together in parts of the world now troubled by the war plans of American neo-cons. The hawkish attitude of Israel, with its Zionist doctrine of Jewish supremacism, seems certain to exacerbate the difficulties, not only in the Middle and Far East but here in Europe, as well.
Nick Griffin continues to use his one and only political playing card, that of the perceived threat of Islamisation, yet another newly constructed buzz word in the ‘nationalist’ lexicon, although still not yet entered into the Oxford Concise Dictionary. Not only is it not a legitimate word but its continued use by a bunch of illegitimate thugs with little else on their election stall, calls for some serious comment from us.
Let us take a look at these Islamophobes, a term that accurately describes their mental condition ... fear of Islam. The difference? Islamophobes do exist whereas ‘Islamisation’ is a product of their imagination ... an imaginary nightmare world calculated to scare the delicate among us.
The BNP has been coerced, albeit by law, to adopt a multi-ethnic membership policy and one of its first ‘ethnics’ is an excommunicated Sikh by the name of Rajinder Singh (right). Although born a Sikh in the Punjab, he no longer sports the obligatory beard and his turban is brought out only for photo opportunity shoots. In short, he is a phoney.
The Sikh community has sent him to Coventry and created in him a minority of one. Griffin had placed all his chips on Rajinder Singh bringing all other Sikhs in Britain onto the side of the BNP in the mistaken belief that they all hate Muslims with the same rabid intensity as ‘good old Rajinder’ (Griffin’s hatred of Muslims is purely venal). As such, Rajinder becomes the BNP’s first ‘ethnic’, now in complete isolation and very lonely. He will end up as an albatross around their necks, the curse of the Muslim-hater rejected by his own community and now of no use at all to anyone else.
Can you see the patriotic lads from Dagenham or Burnley giving him three loud cheers as he froths at the mouth, telling them how he would like all Muslims snuffed out? Can you really see them embracing him as one of their own? No, they will revert to type and eventually kick him out. They treat Sikhs with as equal contempt as they do Muslims. To them, they are all ‘rag heads’.
Over in the land of the clogs and tulips we have an even more bizarre Islamophobe. The flamboyant, platinum blond Geert Wilders of the Dutch Freedom Party has come out with what he calls “a rational deterrent to radical Islamists bent on using weapons of mass destruction against America and the West”. He wants to drop a nuclear bomb on Mecca. I am not surprised to learn that the English Defence League endorses Wilders’ mad proposal as many on the English Defence League’s forum have echoed the same.
There used to be a regular feature in Private Eye magazine under the moniker of ‘A Taxi Driver Writes’ and it always ended with “hanging’s too good for them”. Essex Man behind a wheel.
Comments on the EDL forum (in response to Wilders’ proposal) include the Neanderthal-speak, “Nuke em all thats [sic] what I say” and “I say the only way we will find out what will happen is to give it a try”. So much for ‘only against Islamic extremism’.
A few details regarding Geert Wilders need airing here. He regularly visits Israel and considers it his ‘second home’. He also regularly visits the Israeli Embassy in the Netherlands. We can only conclude that, with such unsavoury connections, murdering millions of innocent civilians will come as second nature to him.
Without the poison from these Islamophobes, we could all live in the tolerant spirit of civil and religious liberty ... a very English tradition since 1689. This was the case in the old Yugoslavia until Serbian nationalism reared its ugly head and embarked on ‘ethnic cleansing’, for which one of its main protagonists is now on trial in The Hague.
People professing different faiths can live together in peace and harmony, so necessary for stability within a Europe a Nation of the future. A new Age of Tolerance would ensure that. In the meantime, we need to stand up to and expose the hate-mongers ... those dupes doing the dirty work of the Zionist neo-cons in what is largely an invented ‘war on terrorism’ serving the interests of the globalists based in Washington and Tel Aviv.

European Socialism, Syndicalism ...
“Viva España!”

by Jeffrey Wallder

Published in European Socialist Action No 26

General Franco certainly saved Spain from the Reds and fifty years of Stalinist oppression. But as Mosley said in private before the war, “Franco wasn’t a real fascist”. A nationalist yes but a socialist never. Once he was in power the big landowners continued to own the land and the industrialists continued to own the factories. The stock exchanges of Spain remained open and life was hard and hungry until the post-war tourist boom brought some relief.
Spain’s real Man of Destiny was Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder and leader of the Falange. This charismatic aristocrat pledged himself to the service of the working people and put forward a blueprint for the complete reorganisation of economic life based on a Spanish version of syndicalism. This involved the re-distribution of power and profit directly among those employed in each factory, farm and retail enterprise.
The cause of worker ownership, against communism, against capitalism, was almost brought to an end in 1936 by the murder by Reds of Jose Antonio in the Spanish Civil War. Franco then assumed the mantle of Caudillo or Leader of the Falange, and began to purge it of the syndicalist element beginning with Jose Antonio’s deputy. Although the Spanish economy was reorganised after the Civil War to give a semblance of syndical structure, power remained firmly in the same old hands.
However, among the blue-shirted rank and file members of the Falange Espanola y de Nacional Sindicalista there was a faction that remembered the original syndical ideals of Jose Antonio and knew that they and their fathers had fought for a better Spain than this.

Mondragon establishes Worker Ownership
in post-War Spain

During the late 1940s and 1950s, Oswald Mosley and Raven Thomson developed a policy of ‘European Socialism’ which applied syndicalist principles to the post-war world. Although Mosley and Raven visited Spain several times during this period, there is no evidence to suggest that they were in contact with the founding members of the Mondragon Corporation which began establishing worker-owned businesses in Spain at about the same time. But the thinking behind the two groups is remarkably similar.
In 1956, five graduates from the Basque region set up Spain’s first syndicalist enterprise making oil-fired heaters and cookers. From its earliest days, Mondragon has been run by a Congress voted to power directly by the workforce. This body then elects an executive council charged with the day-to-day management of the Corporation.
Each Mondragon business also has a Work Place Council that elects a president to work alongside a company manager. Both president and directors are elected on a ‘One Worker, One Vote’ principle.
If the business prospers, the workers benefit directly - but if there is no profit they receive no dividend, only their basic wage. In the event of a company experiencing financial difficulties, Mondragon’s policy is to introduce temporary pay-cuts rather than redundancies.
However, in the first fifty years of its existence only one company, a fishing co-operative, has failed. This is out of 150 businesses engaged in everything from manufacturing machine tools and electronics to refrigerators and retailing. The latter includes Eroski Supermarkets: the largest Spanish-owned retail food chain.
Mondragon is recognised as being one of the greatest commercial success stories of post-war Spain. Today it has almost 100,000 worker-owners and is the seventh largest business corporation in the country with sales of 16-billion Euros.

All other ‘isms’ are obsolete

In the space of just twenty years, first communism and then global capitalism have both passed their use-by dates. As systems they are irretrievably damaged, totally discredited and increasingly seen as having no relevance to the modern world. Inevitably, more attention is being given to the third system of syndicalism on which the European Socialism of Oswald Mosley and Raven Thomson is based.
A major breakthrough is the recent news that North America’s largest industrial union with 1.2-million members, the United Steelworker’s Union (USU), has agreed a framework of collaboration with Mondragon to establish syndical start-ups in Canada and the United States.
The USU President explained: ”We see Mondragon’s co-operative model with ‘One Worker, One Vote’ ownership as a means to re-empower workers and make business accountable to Main Street not Wall Street … too often we have seen Wall Street ‘hollow out’ companies by draining their cash and assets, shedding jobs and shutting plants. We need a new business model that invests in workers and communities!”.
This new syndical initiative has been overwhelmingly endorsed by Union members with one observer describing it as “a new social invention that makes capitalism, communism, state socialism and all the squabbling between these ‘isms’ as crude, obsolete and irrelevant”.
Most readers of European Action will wish the Mondragon-USU collaboration well but many will be surprised that this first co-operative venture should be with a non-European organisation. Surely within the homeland of our own continent there are many working groups with the vision and ambition to make the Mondragon factor work successfully for them.
It is up to those of us who understand what Mosley meant by European Socialism to promote its virtues. Whether by word of mouth, correspondence with local news media or any other means at our disposal, it is the task of all to bring to the attention of the people a system that advances enterprise, initiative and incentive throughout the workforce - and rewards it free from the rapacious demands of state owners or absentee shareholders.