Europe a Nation

The Greater Europe ... or Little England

2011-12-26T01:40:00.000-08:00

byRobert Edwards

European Socialist Action No 37

Oswald Mosley speaks in Shoreditch, East London, 1960s

EuropeanAction stands for the completeintegration of Europe as an economic and political unitary power.This is clearly a continuation of the policy of Oswald Mosley’sUnion Movement, two of which former members are writing in thiscurrent issue of EA’s EuropeanSocialist Action. Yet another formermember is further mentioned in a report detailing recent interviewswith an American university’s history department. There is no othergroup, with or without a regular publication, that can claim to standfirm and square for this policy and we therefore claim to be uniqueand original in that regard.

Notfor us the compromise or flirtation with right wing nationalism, thatreactionary throw-back to the days of Empire, that refuses toacknowledge 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 andconfusion of garbled talk of ‘confederations’ and loose alliancesthat mean, in reality, no unity at all.

Rightwing nationalists, which includes all Eurosceptics and enemies ofEuropean unity (‘nationalism’ being an essentially generic term)presuppose we each possess, as separate countries, something calledsovereignty andthat the waving of a flag and the face of a monarch or a president ona bank note mean, through such symbolism alone, these things become areality. Wishful thinking or deluded dreaming? A bit of both, Isuspect.

Rightwing fringe parties hold onto their only version of an economic ideawhich is expressed through that tired and worn-out demand, “We wantto go it alone and choose who we trade with in the world and not betold by Europe”.

Allvery good if you have the vast resources of something the size of theBritish Empire at its height ... but all rather pathetic when you areleft high and dry as a set of weather-beaten little isles in theNorth Sea with nearly all your major industry gone in the click ofMargaret Thatcher’s finger and thumb. What on earth are these sillylittle ‘patriots’ going on about? Trade with whom we choose? Howis little Albion going to compete successfully on world marketsagainst the likes of China or India ... or do they have “a cunningplan”, as the unfortunate Baldrick would occasionally inform hismaster in the Blackadder TVseries?

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

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

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

Withour history of Britain in the last few hundred years it wasinevitable that myths and legends would be created on the strengthsof the many achievements of exceptional individuals. We were the‘work shop of the world’ during that period called the IndustrialRevolution when British capitalism could exploit the vast resourcesof overseas empire ... but the social cost was enormous when theordinary people were often treated worse than animals down mines, infactories and up chimneys. The ‘subjects’ in our overseasterritories were regarded as less than human. All of this, in orderthat Britain could be ‘great’. The few became exceedingly wealthyand the many were to become the downtrodden industrial working class.

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

Inthe 20th Century, we had two catastrophic world wars with Europeanbrother against European brother or, if you like, the workersfighting other workers. After the First World War there was anattempt to right the wrongs that had led to the massive slaughter inplaces like Flanders with both communism and fascism offering answersto the crises of capitalism in the 1930s. Indeed, the ideas ofnational self-sufficiency, tied to vast imperial resources, asproposed by ‘the Modern Movement’ in various countries, was thenearest to a real threat to an international system of finance thatmanipulated the money supply within international competition. With atoss of the coin, fascism lost and had to go ... with another war in1939.

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

Interms of economic practice, fascism became totally redundant with theloss of Empire, as a direct consequence of the Second World War.Without the vast resources of an overseas empire, self-sufficiencywas impossible and we were back to competing against other countries,keeping wages down in order to keep costs down. Mosley wanted toorganise the economy in a way that an insulated economy could createa home market for all that it produced but this could only beachieved on a large scale. Small, isolated countries could neverachieve this.

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

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

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

Europea Nation would mean the elimination of racial and national hatreds,the product of many centuries of competitive warfare and religiousstrife. No single nation-state would ever again attempt hegemony overthe rest ... Europeans must beequal.

Wemust have an ever-expanding European economy creating a demand forskilled and trained people such as scientists, technicians,engineers, teachers, physicians, architects and so on. Science shallserve the workers’ state.

Therewill be the abolition of unemployment with the right of everyEuropean to work, leisure and education.

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

Wecall this European Socialism where strong, democratic governmentleads the economy, intervening where it matters but giving power andresponsibility to the workers in their places of work. Who do we meanby ‘workers’? It must be those who toil by both hand and withbrain, the operative or worker working alongside elected managers andsupervisors. 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.

Howdo we arrive at this when we have to contend with the greatestpolitical obstacle to Europe a Nation – nationalisticthinking. 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, inparticular. Again, these people are the great exponents of freetrade, the doctrine on which international competition is based. Itis a free for all whereby those who keep costs down by keeping wageslow have a fighting chance of winning. Those who want to give workersa 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 theclaptrap of jingoistic nationalism, “we’re all in it together”and “do it for Britain” ... when, in fact, they are doing itpurely for themselves while loafing about in their gentlemen’sclubs.

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

Thenyou have the worst of all, this conspiracy by private banking tocreate a national debt in each country, building a monopoly on thecontrol of money so that governments are helpless in the grip ofusury.

Whenall of government policy is reduced to a single objective ... not theimprovement and betterment of the lives of ordinary people, thepeople who elected the government, but this over-riding push toreduce a phantom borrowing deficit, then something is gravely wrongin the world.

Askyour ordinary man or woman in the street to whom do we owe thisincredibly vast amount of money and they can not tell you. Eventhough they do not know, they go along with it. Never question it.

Atthe core of it is private banking or, more precisely, the systemof private banking which aim is tocontrol the world’s money supply. Sometimes called the Rothschildmodel of banking, it seeks to take away from governments the meansfor creating and distributing money. It is created through borrowingfrom private banks and must be paid back at interest.

Assuch, all central banks must surrender their national purpose to aninternational purpose, hence the wars with Iraq, Afghanistan, Libyaand a few more lined up. Why? ... because all these countrieshad central banks completely independent of the Rothschild usurymodel. This is developed further in the article on the back page froman American writer.

Thisis perhaps one of the strongest arguments for a fully united Europewith its own government and its own banking system whereby theEuropean people’s government controls the money supplythrough a European credit bank not based on usury but on a regulatedneed to maintain that balance between production and consumption.Private banking would end and so would the external National Debt.

Youneed the strength and power of a super state like Europe a Nation,big enough to defend itself from the New World Order’s dirtytricks, which acts as the military wing of the World Bank and theInternational Monetary Fund, pushing countries into debt slavery andthen dictating how those countries regulate fiscal policy withthreats if they default. Meanwhile, public services are sacrificedfirst as an ‘austerity measure’ while those that are responsiblefor economic crises, the private banks, accept public bail outs andthen continue to award themselves massive bonuses. If you have twoluxury yachts why do you need a third? Why all this greed?

Whydo we allow ourselves to be treated this way and why is it allowed togo on? The answer, my friends, is that all governments in the Westare in thrall to these financial institutions and are there to servethem and not us.

Europearise and break the chains that bind us!

Reflections on the Somme

2011-11-08T08:14:00.001-08:00

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.

ESA No 37 November/December 2011

The Signal For Things to Come

2011-11-01T00:21:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-06T22:53:00.000-07:00

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’.

Nation Revisited

2011-03-18T02:45:00.000-07:00

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?

Roulette Capitalism is the Problem

2011-03-18T02:23:00.000-07:00

Editorial, European Socialist Action No 32

The international bankers have a history of taking irrational risks out of which they make huge profits for themselves. When reality eventually hits them, however, they make us taxpayers pay for their losses. The bankers keep the profits but expect us to pay for their mistakes, which we do without question.

In all this, governments must always prop up the banking system because, as they view it, there is no system but global capitalism. They will always do the bidding of international banking over which they have little or no control.

This Coalition government is nothing but a joke ... a government that can not be taken seriously in anything it does. We are told the Coalition is tackling our public borrowing deficit by the only way they know how ... austerity cuts, which mean reducing our deficit by hitting the poor and disadvantaged in society. The public sector is to be ravaged with all hopes placed on a revived private sector. Hundreds of thousands of jobs must go in the public sector to miraculously emerge in a revived private sector.

It is all based on a false optimism with a banking system still reluctant to lend to business through a lack of confidence in debt repayment.

The fact is, capitalism is in crisis with no easy way out ... if any at all. The world remains teetering on the brink of economic disaster and the prognostication still remains gloomy.

But borrowing in the UK continues with increased spending on health and defence. Indeed, it is an increase on twelve months ago ... which seems to throw doubt on the government’s ability to reduce the public deficit.

Both the CBI and the British Chambers of Commerce have now lowered their forecasts for economic growth believing higher inflation will impede economic recovery. A VAT increase to 20 per cent from 17.5 per cent on January 4 will not help, either.

Forecasts and calculations hold for one day and can be torn up the next. The problem concerns more than the cyclic ups and downs of a free market system over which government has no real control. Anything can happen now.

We have always said it is the system itself which is the problem and needs to be replaced. Patching it up here and there will never offer a long term solution. At each crisis we lurch further and further towards complete and irretrievable breakdown.

Banking relies on confidence in order to function but irresponsible banking with its ‘get rich quick’ gambling binges and the ensuing disasters have finally revealed a racket operating in what is nothing more than a giant global casino. How can anyone have confidence in such a state of affairs?

The result can only be an increasing loss of faith in the markets as the gambling continues and more banks suffer meltdowns and collapse with companies facing liquidity and investors losing their savings.

On Wall Street and in the City of London, they will continue to take big risks because they know governments will bale them out when things go belly up. It is said they will play until they crash because it is at the heart of the very nature of banking.

This is the one central issue upon which any solution to our national problems must be addressed. It is this issue and nothing else.

Not one single party, whether mainstream or of the fringe, has addressed this great problem upon which the future livelihoods of millions of people must eventually rest.

UKIP blames the European Union, the British National Party blames the Muslims, the Tories and Liberal Democrats blame previous Labour governments, the Scottish Nationalists blame England, Sinn Fein blames the Ulster Unionists, the DUP blames the Pope, the Green Party blames global warming ... and so on — but not one of them can see what is, in fact, the elephant in the sitting room, the real glaringly obvious menace to the future of our country and to the rest of Europe, the banking racket as practiced within global capitalism.

We need to get out of this system of dominance by financial forces that makes a mockery of government and democracy ... and the only way out is that proposed by Sir Oswald Mosley and Union Movement — the concept of Europe a Nation.

It is the creation of large-scale economic units big enough to be self-sufficient and independent which will then be free of the vagaries of international competition and the financial institutions that make profits out of supplying the finances for this competitive trading where one country gains a temporary advantage at the expense of another. No one wins but Finance.

Within Europe a Nation, banking will serve the people and only the people. Banking would function only within the area of Europe and it would be under the direction and leadership of an elected European government.

Banking should then become responsible and answerable to the European people. No more roulette capitalism.

Once you have achieved this, you can then organise the economy on the lines of an upward progression because keeping wages down in order to compete would no longer apply. We all know that success in international competition is based on keeping wages down in order to keep costs down in order to undercut your competition. We will no longer engage in this.

Mosley proposed that heads of European governments should unite and agree on a strategy to free us from the International Monetary Fund and our national debts to a conglomeration of what are private banks controlling our money supplies.

They should agree to do this together at an agreed hour and there would be nothing the international bankers could do about it. As separate, isolated countries there is nothing we can do ... but a united Europe would be a force with which to be reckoned.

We are European Action - For Europe a Nation

2011-03-05T00:57:00.000-08:00

The Letters Page,
European Socialist Action No 33

Robert, I presume you are aware of the German website Europäische Aktion. Is that why you have changed to European Socialist Action?

At least it will keep the Tories away.

Best wishes,

Bill Baillie, Kennington

South London

[The Editor replies: That is very astute of you, Bill, and worthy of a full explanation in response.

It is desirable that we incorporate the term ‘Socialist’ into our title for a very clear reason and that is to emphasise the core political philosophy that was the post-war movement ‘beyond fascism’ and, indeed, beyond the morass of nationalisms perceived as being the defence of immutable, separately constituted entities.

We do not adopt ‘Socialism’ for expediency nor for any opportunistic purposes but, rather, to re-state our position based on long-standing conviction and resolve. European Socialism was the post-war creed, superseding the pre-war creed of Fascism. As such, those who foolishly attempt to revive any form of Fascism are our enemies because they ignore the greatest contribution to the post-war thinking on international affairs ... the idea of the union of peoples transcending the old nation-states for the purposes of creating true economic independence from global capitalism.

Our new title is being endorsed already which reveals a healthy sense of reality among our supporters. Our European Socialism stands opposed to capitalist exploitation with our first regard for the working man and woman, the essential backbone of a productive economy. The wealth of a nation is in the products of labour and nothing else.

Our European Socialism stands full square against the international trading system and the exploitation within low wage economies used to undercut other nations, thereby attacking the living conditions of all workers throughout the world.

Our European Socialism promotes the idea of Workers’ Control or Syndicalism as industrial policy. Equal partnership in industry and commerce within the framework of full democratic practices. None shall prosper while others go without. When we say “we are all in it together” we mean it. It follows that the people should own the means of production, distribution and exchange.

Our European Socialism rejects all ‘right-wing’ notions based on racial and religious intolerance dressed as ‘patriotism’. We know that the ‘patriotism’ of these right-wing reactionaries actually prevents many from seeing the bigger picture of international exploitation and oppression, that all the oppressed peoples throughout the world share one important thing in common ... a basic humanitarian regard for others. In that sense, we extend our true patriotism in the spirit of mutual assistance and not in the spirit of nationalistic antagonism.

Returning to your point regarding the ‘German website’, their adoption of the phrase European Action (Europäische Aktion) is not something complementary as first perceived. When you further study the platform of this group, based in Switzerland, you find something completely at odds with everything we stand for.

First of all it is focused entirely on the German-speaking countries of central Europe with echoes of a Grossdeutschland (a Greater Germany) promoting an out-dated revanchism, the policy of seeking to recover lost territories. This can only antagonise European neighbours and is entirely against the spirit of our European position on these matters.

A Europe based on German hegemony is a discredited thing of the past which led to a world war and the deaths of millions. As such, Europäische Aktion is nothing more than a form of German neo-Nazism, attempting to reawaken ghosts from Germany’s not so distant past ... which we further reject without question.

Another aspect to this group is its rampant position promoting Holocaust denial. It is our position that the ‘debate’ concerning whether or not gas chambers existed at Auschwitz is entirely sterile and can only serve one purpose: the supply of the oxygen of publicity to Zionist propaganda which has always sought to use the issue as ‘evidence’ of a universal anti-Semitism and, thus, a permanent threat to the existence of Israel and of the Jewish people. It also provides an alibi for the monstrous and criminal treatment of the Palestinian people who had nothing to do with the events in central Europe during the Second World War.

We would further insist that the Holocaust has nothing to do with the British people and therefore we should neither question it nor commemorate it as a special day. The only people to whom it has any relevance, apart from the Jewish people, are those Germans who took part in those ‘special operations’ and they grow fewer by the day. The rest of the world is ‘not guilty’.

Our policy on the issue is therefore simple: ignore it. It is not an issue for Europeans today nor should it ever be.

There is also the issue of Muslims in Europe. Again, we differ from this German-speaking group in that we reject the disreputable idea there is a ‘clash of civilisations’ and that Muslims are here to slit our throats while we sleep soundly at night or that Christianity is itself threatened by a Muslim presence. ‘Islamisation’, they call it.

The values of Islam are identical to those of Christianity. That is the first consideration. The second is that there is a Qur’anic injunction for Muslims to respect the laws of a host country. All the rest is ill-informed hysteria and barely veiled racism.

This German-speaking group talks of a ‘confederation’ of European states. Not unity, mind you, but what is in reality a loose agreement or alliances in a vague common interest. Perhaps we should move away from the phrase ‘Europe a Nation’ and state quite categorically that we mean nothing less than the United States of Europe as a single power and entity in the world. We do not mean the sum total of little nationalisms, which is a ‘confederation’, but the end of nationalism and the beginning of a true European awareness, calling ourselves Europeans and thinking as Europeans and not as separate nationalisms barely tolerating each other because we continue to harbour and nurse old territorial jealousies and prejudices. The revanchist obsessions of these German-speaking ‘confederalists’ being a prime example.

Europe will not be made by latching onto the past and remembering old wars and old battles that have for so long divided us and on more than one occasion almost brought about Europe’s destruction. I am not talking about the Muslim conquest of Spain which was highly beneficial to all of Europe in the long run nor the repelling of a Muslim army by Charles Martel. No, I am talking about the worst threat of all ... the internecine rivalries down the ages between Europeans themselves. You could say Europeans have been their own worst enemies.

The threat of an external enemy is an old trick that imperialists and nationalists have employed for their own ends many times in the past. The American imperialists used the alleged military threat from the Soviet Union in the Cold War as an alibi to invade small countries, ostensibly to ‘defeat communism’, but whatever political system these people chose should have been their own business. You now have it today in the form of the ‘war against terrorism’, the external threat being something called Al-Qa'eda, with many people now realising this is a CIA-invented ‘Islamist’ bogeyman, the bogus image of which is further promoted by a manipulated Western media. Iraq and Afghanistan have since fallen victim to this fake scenario engineered and operated by American-led Western imperialism.

Our real enemy is within. It is ourselves as separate and divided parts of Europe, huddled together in our separate enclaves we call ‘our country’, afraid to stand up to the predatory financial forces that determine whether a country goes up or goes down on the economic scale. Whether it prospers temporarily or whether it is torn apart by imposed ‘austerity measures’.

Our enemy is nationalism, the misbegotten belief that we can defend something called ‘sovereignty’ because they actually believe small, dependent countries can run their own affairs and we only need place the word ‘Great’ before Britain in order that we become important again.

Look how we cling to our past ... the corrupt honours list with all the allusions to the British Empire. Perhaps someone should just show enough moral courage and stand up and shout, “There is no British Empire!” and end all this archaic nonsense. Get into the 21st Century.]

Where are the Great Personalities in Politics?

2011-02-10T00:23:00.000-08:00

by Robert Edwards

Published in European Socialist Action No 31 November/December 2010


Ed Milliband addresses Labour Friends of Palestine

An electorate gets the politicians it deserves or, at least, those on offer to them. What is it about our party political system that favours the bland, the uninspiring and, let us be honest, the downright mediocre? Bear in mind the process whereby these lack-lustre career politicians are chosen for office, which is of the ‘democratic’ way, and thus we are led to the conclusion that it must be a question of a far wider responsibility. Do the British people as a whole nurture this preference for the ‘more safe’ politician, meaning the politician who will not frighten away any straggling voters by rocking the boat and who will always tread very carefully along the opportunist’s road to power, obeying the party whips in the hope of attaining office? Is it a reflection of the nation as a whole in which politics is less of a passion and more of a clever career move? Whatever happened to moral conviction politics of a more visceral nature?

What was it about the Miliband brothers that got us all excited in September? Or not, as the case may be. Sibling rivalry rather took over serious politics for a while and we were treated to something more reminiscent of the Mike and Bernie Winters Show (under forties should ask someone much older).

Has the Labour Party ended up with ‘Bernie and Schnorbitz’, following Ed’s snatching away his brother David’s dream of high office, to further top his previously nationalising David’s train set? Like Mike and Bernie, Ed and David could no longer work together ... and, like Mike and Bernie, only one of them will now fulfil his ambition.

But enough of show business. Real politics concerns leadership and something called charisma, which seems to be seriously of the discount these days. I suspect the Labour Party now thinks it picked the wrong brother after the unions had come to Ed’s rescue, in the way that the Prussian Marshal Blücher came charging out of a forest at the eleventh hour when everything seemed to be to Napoleon Bonaparte’s advantage at Waterloo. David Miliband was to meet his Waterloo with much the same element of surprise.

Although Ed Miliband is not an impressive leader at the moment, he will survive because there is no one with whom he can be compared in terms of the old charismatic oomph. It just does not exist anywhere in British politics today except, perhaps, and now only on the fringe, with George Galloway, that rare political animal, a man of passionate principle with the gift of spell-binding oratory.

Ed Miliband was compared to Ian Duncan Smith as a party leader for the obvious reasons ... totally unremarkable and relatively unknown, with the implication that he will not be around to even contest the next General Election. A stop gap choice, some might think ... or hope, as they may well do.

The new leader of the Labour Party is described as a geek. They say he looks like a geek and he talks like a geek. But hang on, Blairites, geeks can sometimes be unpredictable and, on closer inspection, Ed Miliband is not all that he appears to be on the surface.

The incurable anti-Semite will be anticipating a reference from me to his Jewish background but even that is not so straightforward. Forget Jewish plots for one moment, Ed is not for sucking up to Israel.

In the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, Anschel Pfeffer wrote, “It’s difficult to find any kind of comment about Israel in the past statements of the British Labour Party’s new leader, Ed Miliband. If it’s up to him, he’d prefer to keep it that way ... a new Labour leader who aspires to return to power will not waste his time on foreign policy”. Former Foreign Secretary and Zionist, Brother David, please take careful note.

Pfeffer concludes, “Ed Miliband was elected with the help of the unions, most of whose members support a boycott of Israel ... all in all, the Blair-Brown era is definitely over”.

He is an atheist, a non-practicing Jew with a Gentile partner and a mother, Marion Kozak, who is a member of a pro-Palestinian organisation, Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JJP). He also opposed the invasion of Iraq. So he is no neo-con Zionist and he is certainly not one of those Labour Friends of Israel apologists. The highly principled Gerald Kaufman also being note-worthy in this respect. To paraphrase, you don’t have to be Gentile.

Immediately after winning the Labour Party leadership contest, Ed Miliband attended the annual reception of the Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East group (LFPME) which was sponsored by the Friends of Al-Aqsa at the Labour Party’s annual conference in Manchester. This was, perhaps, one of the first occasions during which he has elucidated on any foreign policy ideas, after making references to the Middle East in his maiden speech. As the new leader, you could say it was incumbent upon him to do so.

To a sizeable audience of Labour MPs, MEPs and councillors, he expressed his wish to visit Palestine, which struck a chord with Haneen Zoubi, an Israeli Knesset member and Palestinian Arab, who attended the LFPME reception. She was onboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in May of this year.

In the run-up to the Labour Party leadership contest, Ed Miliband had this to say to the Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East, published on their website, “The Palestinian people have the right to a state with internationally recognised borders. They have a right to a functioning economy. They have the right to be free and to pursue a better life for themselves and for their children.

The sad truth is that today, with the blockade still in place on Gaza and in the aftermath of the appalling events on board the SS Mavi Marmara, we are a long way from securing that outcome. There should be an international investigation into what happened aboard that ship, but that alone will not undo the damage – to Israel’s reputation and the peace process – done by those tragic events.

The lack of a credible peace process is helping no-one. It sets back the date at which a viable state of Palestine comes into existence, it leaves Israel with few friends in the region and it poses an ongoing risk of instability for the international community. It is vital that we find ways to breathe new life into that process.

I believe that Israel must make an important step by lifting the blockade of Gaza as soon as possible. Israel has security concerns, but the blockade is the wrong way to address them. Instead, we need to find a way to lift the blockade that respects legitimate security needs, guarantees humanitarian access to help Gazans who are suffering from the blockade, and helps deliver justice for Palestinians.

The EU can play an important role here by providing a naval monitoring capability to ensure that arms are not being smuggled into the area by sea, and it can use its relationship with Egypt to help ensure the smuggling tunnels are shut down. If elected leader of the Labour Party I would visit Israel and the Palestinian Authority and take a first-hand look at what is happening on the ground in Gaza”.

Given that his predecessor, Gordon Brown, surrounded himself with Zionists, it is tempting to view Ed Miliband in terms of a complete break from the past in relation to the Blair and Brown years but we do not know, as yet, what kind of people he will choose as his foreign policy advisers. This is crucial.

Most of all, does Ed Miliband possess the necessary leadership qualities to carry the bulk of the parliamentary and constituency Labour Party along with him? Those sections that previously favoured his brother, for example.

Foreign policy will again be on the agenda, there is no escaping it in a ‘globalised’ world, while the Coalition Government busies itself with its swingeing austerity cuts at home. David Cameron has already proven himself to be totally inadequate and inept at putting his government’s position across to ‘Johnnie foreigner’, due mainly to that old Etonian manner that displays disdain towards all others without exception. Could you imagine Cameron with a deputy Prime Minister who was not an ex-public schoolboy? Someone not acquainted with fagging? It just would not work.

Labour may have its first Jewish party leader but it may also have its first true friend of the Muslim world if Ed Miliband can inspire others to follow his path towards achieving justice for the Palestinian people.

Mediocrity, as I said, has plagued British political life for too long and is the most single element, apart from personal corruption, that has prevented anything being done in the country since the war, to paraphrase a political figure from another era.

What they are now suggesting is a leftward lurch in British politics is, in fact, a great sea-change in terms of moral and practical issues. Left or right have nothing to do with it. As Dermont Clark pointed out in the last issue, it has more to do with right or wrong.

The Labour Friends of Palestine was set up in 2008 as a counter to the Labour Friends of Israel. We all know how corrupting the latter lobby has been and how the Palestinian cause was so tragically neglected. Years gone by, we had only Christopher Mayhew and his friend Michael Adams founding the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU) and the Labour Middle East Council in 1962 to oppose the power of the Zionist lobby in the face of the absence of an Arab one.

Ismail Patel, the chairman of the Friends of Al-Aqsa, said, “It was refreshing to have a leader of a political party appreciate the fact that the general public hold a lot of sympathy for the Palestinian people and that Britain should be pursuing a fair and just policy in the region”.

He went on, “It is interesting that there is no similar group [Friends of Palestine] within the Conservative Party where the Conservative Friends of Israel are well documented as wielding a great deal of power. A ‘Conservative Friends of Palestine’ group is well overdue”.

Don’t hold your breath on that one, Mr Patel.

After Nick Clegg’s cold-shouldering of the Friends of Palestine at the Liberal Democratic Conference, while he attended the Friends of Israel event, it would be safe to conclude that the Deputy Prime Minister is now well and truly in the pockets of the ever so Israeli-friendly Conservative Party and is following the Zionist (party) line to the letter. Cameron’s fag must not be permitted to step out of line. That is what coalitions are for, after all.

So what are we to make of Ed Miliband, the choice of the unions and, without doubt, a man of considerably unorthodox political views for a British Member of Parliament, almost singing from the same hymn sheet as Gorgeous George? It is true he kept his head down for a long time in regard to his views on foreign affairs but then his brother was Foreign Secretary for a while and so he chose, correctly, not to step on his brother’s toes while getting on with his own job at the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

He has chosen Yvette Cooper as Shadow Foreign Secretary, wife of Ed Balls. Although she has spent a few years in Cabinet, she has absolutely no experience of foreign affairs and so will need to learn some new skills from scratch. For this, she will need to take her cue from her new party leader. She may, at first, appear out of her depth but she will learn fast.

Foreign affairs, they say, is not Ed Miliband’s top priority, as with the Coalition, but it is one of those areas that all must eventually enter simply because the world today is so interconnected both politically and economically. The ‘geek’, Ed Miliband, could turn out to be the catalyst that is so needed ... despite the current mediocrities pervading British politics.

Book Review by Robert Edwards

2011-02-02T23:56:00.001-08:00

OSWALD MOSLEY

AND THE NEW PARTY

Matthew Worley

Palgrave Macmillan 234 pages

Published in ESA No 31 - November/December 2010

Long in coming, a book on Oswald Mosley’s earlier political career is a refreshing change from the interminable rehashing of his fascist Blackshirt phase, from 1932 to 1940. A mere eight years but, nonetheless, the most turbulent and controversial and, therefore, the more sensational for the sensationalising ‘anti-fascist’ writer with a penchant for conspiracy theories and an urge to character assassination. How many more do we have to suffer?

This book places Mosley’s underlying core political ideas into their proper perspective, going back to his true political roots which were in the Labour Party, the New Party being created within it. Fascism came later.

In his introduction, Worley asks the question, “How was it that a man purportedly of the left, a former Labour government minister recognised by some as a future premier, could so seamlessly become a would-be Führer cast on the margins of what is usually perceived as the far right?”

This more or less sets the tone for the rest of the book. However, on BBC’s Panorama programme in 1968, Mosley was to explain, “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”. There is your answer, Mr Worley.
The author takes us on a journey from the time Mosley was first elected a Unionist MP for Harrow in 1918, later joining Labour in 1924, and then onto the ‘proto-fascist’ New Party in 1931 after his failure to convince the Labour leadership of the need to do something about increasing unemployment during a time of economic recession. It was as a firebrand socialist, with his collaborator at the time, John Strachey, that Mosley discovered Keynesian monetary theories and the necessity for government intervention and planning. This was not to the taste of Labour’s old guard in office, still stuck on the laissez faire economics of the previous century and doing absolutely nothing about the plight of the unemployed.
When he left the government, Mosley had support from across the party divide and the names tumble off the pages, reading like a roll call of the most prominent and promising politicians of the day, mainly well-to-do with a smattering of a few with working class backgrounds. The New Party’s inaugural meeting at the Memorial Hall in Farringdon, London, was on March 5, 1931, with Mosley laid low with pneumonia and pleurisy, unable to attend. In April of that year, Allen Young, a former Independent Labour Party member from Glasgow, stood as a New Party candidate for the Ashton-under-Lyne by-election in what was a working class Labour stronghold, at that time suffering under the economic recession. He finished third, helping to defeat Labour in the process. On polling night, with a Tory victory, Labour supporters turned on the New Party members at Ashton Town Hall, throwing class war abuse at them.
Mosley has since been attributed with the now oft quoted response to them with, “That is the crowd that has prevented anyone doing anything in England since the war”, which was also the signal for Strachey to denounce that point in Mosley’s political course as “the moment when fascism was born in England”.
Strachey and Young were to resign in July. C.E.M. Joad soon after. In the General Election of that year, all 24 New Party candidates performed disastrously. Worley points out, “Only Sellick Davies (who ran in a straight fight with the ILP in Merthyr) and Mosley polled anything resembling a respectable total; only James Stuart Barr finished higher then bottom of the poll, and that because the National Labour candidate’s withdrawal from the contest came too late for his name to be removed from the ballot paper”.
Surprisingly, we learn that Mosley had been offered prospective parliamentary seats from both Labour and Tory parties after the New Party’s electoral collapse but in January 1932, he visited Mussolini in Rome with Harold Nicolson and Christopher Hobhouse. This occasion convinced him that fascism offered the only alternative to communism and was needed in Britain to prevent economic collapse. So began the transformation of the New Party into a fascist movement. He had burned his bridges for all time.
Worley offers the premise that the New Party’s transformation into a fascist organisation was inevitable even without the fateful visit to Rome in 1932 because it already possessed the trappings of fascism with the formation of a youth movement and an emphasis on drilling and physical fitness. Mosley was already talking in terms of the corporate state.
Other aspects of the New Party are covered in this riveting book which tend to confirm the ‘proto-fascist’ accusation levelled at it. Chapter 8, with the title ‘Leaders of Men: Masculinity and the Promise of a New Life’, argues the New Party more or less anticipated the later fascist dynamics.
What is so fascinating about Worley’s book is his painstaking research into all those who were initially attracted to Mosley’s radical ideas for economic revival even though most were to eventually fall away as he leaned further and further towards fascism. They did not all join him in the New Party but some were very much sympathetic towards his proposals to cure unemployment with an economic plan when he was in the Labour Party.
Besides John Strachey, during the time of his resignation from the government, there were Nye Bevan from Labour and Robert Boothby from the Conservatives. Boothby advised Mosley not to resign from the Labour Party but to no avail. Even Ian Mikardo joined the New Party after disillusionment with the MacDonald government. He left after the lurch towards fascism, becoming a Labour MP in 1945.
Perhaps the most colourful character to join Mosley in the New Party was Peter Cheyney “the maverick journalist, actor and ultra-nationalist who helped to develop the Nupa prototype” and who believed the New Party was unlikely to achieve power through parliamentary means. Nupa was the party’s youth movement with Cheyney becoming increasingly influential in turning it into a ’shock movement’, as he perceived it should become.
According to Worley, Cheyney, who Harold Nicolson thought was “a most voluble, violent and unpleasant type”, left in February 1932 after playing a role in developing Nupa into the ‘nucleus of Britain’s storm troops’. He had, in fact, helped pave the way for fascism in Britain to take root in October of that year when Mosley unveiled a new ceremonial banner emblazoned with the fasces.

Quintessentially English

2011-01-09T02:59:00.000-08:00

Scott Ulla

Countryside Affairs

by Scott Ullah

Published in European Socialist Action No 31

I am currently enjoying my well earned day off and have just got back from a lovely walk at the local wildlife sanctuary. I didn’t spot anything unusual apart from two ripe Porcini mushrooms that I will cook with some garlic and cream and have it on toast for my lunch. We are all guilty, from time to time, of taking nature reserves and wildlife sanctuaries for granted and readily assume they are there for our enjoyment as of a public right. I often visit them for that essential connection with nature and, inwardly, I am better for it. The mushrooms were delicious, by the way. Better than the supermarket’s.

However, I am disturbed to learn that this Coalition government will include natural conservation areas in its austerity measures. Disturbed, because some of the most beautiful areas could be sold off like everything else the Tories and their willing accomplices, the Liberal Democrats, deem ripe for privatisation and, therefore, exploitation for private profit. It is all in the interests of reducing our national deficit, they tell us.

Spending cuts are most likely to hit ‘Green England’ soon with proposals including selling off our beloved nature reserves and privatising the Forestry Commission. Over 2,000 miles of our canals and waterways will have all their grants removed, the consequences of which can only be detrimental to our environment and our enjoyment of it. The Environment Agency is going to be forced to reduce spending on such things as pollution and waste controls, spelling disaster for the biology of our waterways.

We are bound by very strict environmental measures from the European Union, measures that are still in force and will cost us further in terms of fines and other penalties. For example, there are strict EU Commission conservation regulations regarding wild birds and habitats. New marine nature reserves will suffer as well. The British government has legal obligations under European Union directives but it seems William Hague’s threat that the Coalition will not play ball with Europe over certain areas of our national life is to be casually realised ... but definitely NOT in the interests of our treasured environment, its wildlife and the preservation of everything else that makes England’s natural areas so wonderful.

What is the sense in depriving the natural environment of preservation and protection for the purpose of cutting our deficit when, on the other hand, such actions will only bring about enormous financial penalties?

The Coalition Environment Secretary is Caroline Spelman. She has already decided on the abolition of thirty environmental advisory groups which includes the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. The damage predicted will set back environmental progress by at least forty years. Spelman backs the growing of genetically modified crops (Frankenstein foods) and backs the culling of badgers in England even though they are protected in law.

When you really think about it, the threat to our environment and, thus, the well-being of all the people in these isles does not come principally from ‘climate change’ but from an irresponsible government whose sole agenda is to attack the weakest and most vulnerable elements in our land. Unnerved that the public sector is not going to stand for any attacks upon its people, this government turns its sights on an important element that has no trade union power to defend it against cuts. That is the craven cowardly purpose behind hacking away at the resources of our natural reservations and the environment in general. It can not answer back!

The consequences will be disastrous. 25 conservation groups addressed the government with a statement saying, these measures “could have profound and perhaps irreversible consequences for wildlife, landscapes and people .... a false economy — short-term savings would translate into huge long-term costs for our economy and our well-being”.

Those who signed the statement included The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Campaign to Protect Rural England and several others.

It said, “Reed beds are dry and clogged with brambles; heath lands have vanished as scrubs begin to take over. Wetlands have dwindled and rivers and canals have become clogged by invasive plants which threaten native species. The loss of money for wildlife-friendly farming has seen farmland birds resume their slide into extinction.

Bat populations are clinging on to survival in isolated pockets, facing starvation due to the dwindling insect populations, while the country’s flower meadows have all but vanished. England’s uplands have become degraded; their wildlife is in decline and their ability to lock away carbon and provide clean drinking water for millions sadly reduced.

There are fewer people, too. Without cash to keep paths and bridleways open, huge swathes of the English countryside and coast are effectively closed to millions”.

Ahmed Djoghlaf, Secretary General of October’s United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, summed up the threat with, “It would be very short-sighted to cut biodiversity spending. You may well save a few pounds now but you will lose billions later. Biodiversity is your natural asset. The more you lose it, the more you lose your cultural assets, too”.

To think that such near-criminal destruction is carried out in the interests of delivering sacrificial offerings into the gaping hole of the god of international banking, in order to appease it, is unspeakably obscene. This government, a coalition of Tory millionaires and well-healed Lib Dems, is prepared to destroy our natural heritage, a heritage that belongs to the people but soon to become another statistic in the bankers’ racket of debt-creation on a massive scale.

This Coalition government is not a product of the people’s will. It has no mandate nor any moral justification for destroying our natural conservation areas. It is the product of an illegitimate arrangement between two minority parties hungry for power. Well, they are not in power for any altruistic reasons, are they? They are not there for the purpose of improving our lives. More like improving their lives, that is for sure.

The next time I pick some Porcini mushrooms I must wonder how much longer I can do this.

Quintessentially English

2010-11-17T00:54:00.000-08:00

Celebrating English Rural Culture

by Scott Ullah

Published in European Socialist Action No 30, September/October 2010

(above right, Penshurst Place)

To find a village in the South East of England that epitomises the perfect example of English social life, in terms of rank and quality, was always going to be a time consuming challenge for me so it was an idea that I immediately put to bed. I decided to focus on searching for the best preserved country pubs.

Picture this, a cosy and inviting pub with its dark wooden-beamed interior, open fireplace and friendly staff who only serve well kept, local real ale. This was an image that was conjured up in my mind when I first decided to search for the ‘holy grail’ of the English village pub, the unmistakable centre of traditional village social life.

Over the next few issues I would like to share with you some of my best and worst experiences in pursuit of that mission, of finding the most quintessentially English hostelry and maybe reveal to you some of the many hidden gems that I have found along the way.

I decided to start my search by visiting a village nestled in the ‘weald’* of the Kent countryside, not far from Royal Tunbridge Wells. Penshurst is a village rich with history. Previously occupied by the Saxons until the Norman invasion of 1066, Penshurst stands beside the vast and well kept grounds of Penshurst Place manor.

The manor, which is home to one of the finest examples of Fourteenth Century domestic architecture, is well worth a visit if you have the time, before tasting the liquid delights that the local pubs have to offer. After leaving the long and repetitive road of the A21, I was left to navigate my car through the narrow, winding, secluded roads of The Weald. It’s funny but this kind of road always reminds me of those typical American horror movies where the guy breaks down in the middle of ‘Deliverance’ country, only to be hunted down by a pack of inbred, deformed scavengers.

This, of course, did not happen to me and the only sign of human life that passed by me was an old man sitting on a fence staring at a flock of sheep that were grazing lazily in a field. Much more civilised! But all is not well despite the idyllic stillness.

The English countryside is under threat from development with Government proposals to meet fresh housing targets initiated under a Labour government. The new Coalition government intends to relax planning rules further. All these beautiful villages I love so much, where the weary traveller will find hospitality and refreshment, are to be engulfed by vast new housing developments, changing forever the landscape and the character of historic areas like the Weald.

One of my favourite causes is the Weald of Kent Protection Society whose fiftieth anniversary falls this year. Its events calendar reads like a rustic community’s traditional fare from a Wealden Ploughman's Lunch, an annual Summer Party, to volunteers for making log piles in Cole Wood (a 12 acre semi-ancient wood dominated by sycamore with ash, oak and beech supporting a mixed vegetative community left to the Society). Inviolable and so precious.

The Weald of Kent Protection Society exists for one of the noblest causes you will find in this England of ours — to resist the urbanisation of the Weald and to preserve the green belt for posterity. In their own words: “The society’s aim is now, and always has been, to protect and enhance the rural character of our Wealden villages and countryside”.

As I sat out the back of The Spotted Dog in Penshurst sipping their finest ale, I viewed the Weald as far as the eye could see. It is wondrous as you feel its ancient presence, a legacy handed down for all to enjoy and, most of all, to respect.

I am a great believer in rural communities maintaining a certain continuity, forever close to the land from generation to generation. They are the custodians of the land in the same way as the old established peasant families were on the continent of Europe before the Second World War, now sadly replaced by an industrialisation of agriculture. It began elsewhere with Stalinist brutality and the elimination of the Kulaks in Russia.

I fear the encroachment of urban sprawl, the lifting of planning regulation, opening up to the very great dangers of the spoiling of traditional English beauty and it will be devastating.

Even for the outsider, the ‘townie’, our rural areas are a source of escape from the greyness of our concrete towns, from the modernism of new office blocks and the asphalt of roads and supermarket car parks. Go into the countryside, as I do, for the very clear purpose of enjoying it for what it is and what it should always be — a contrast to our urban life and not an extension of it.

Ah, yes. I come back to my traditional village pub as a centre of local life. In early evening there is a buzz as it fills with the residents of the area, all of them knowing each other, greeting and smiling to those so familiar to them. These pubs have not been ‘themed’.

I am an outsider, a visitor, and I must extend the same friendly gestures because it is the most natural thing to do. This familiarity is a characteristic of rural life that is very noticeably disappearing in our towns and cities where community has been so eroded over the years. It is called society and being social, sadly gone completely in some places.

The Weald of Kent Preservation Society is exactly that in spirit and in practice. Preservation societies are motivated by the best reasons whatever their interests. We must consider everything that is beneficial to the well-being of the nation and look after it as a shepherd minds his flock. Such a rural metaphor is more than appropriate — it should be an everlasting symbol of what is undoubtedly a great responsibility. Scott Ullah

Traitors Were Never Patriots

2010-08-27T00:24:00.000-07:00

Alfred Vivian Minchin in German uniform

by Robert Edwards

Published in European Socialist Action No 29, July/August 2010

With war inevitable on September 1, 1939, Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of British Union, issued this statement to all members of his organisation: “To our members my message is plain and clear. Our country is involved in war. Therefore I ask you to do nothing to injure our country OR TO HELP ANY OTHER POWER. Our members should do what the law requires of them and, if they are members of any forces or services of the Crown, they should obey their orders and, in particular, obey the rules of their service ... We have said a hundred times that if the life of Britain were threatened we would fight again ...”. In May 1940, he wrote, “... Stories concerning the invasion of Britain are being circulated ... in such an event every member of British Union would be at the disposal of the nation. Every one of us would resist the foreign invader with all that is in us...”.

John Amery was never a member of British Union or any similar organisation although, along with William Joyce, he came to personify that type of misguided idealist, adopting the ideological ethos of another country. In that sense, they had something in common with the Burgesses and Macleans of the post-war world.
All the countries occupied by the Germans in the Second World War were, de facto, under German martial law, defeated and without their former heads of government. For them, hostilities had ceased and life seemed to continue more or less as in peace-time. Without directions from their former heads of government, the inhabitants of the occupied territories had several choices ...collaboration, neutrality or resistance. With the absence of a state of war, collaboration seemed the most realistic course for many. Others volunteered for the Waffen SS divisions in defence of the New Order.
Britain, however, remained at war throughout the duration and for its citizens the moral question was far simpler. The duty of a patriot was to fight in the defence of Britain, whether the war was right or wrong. This was the position of Oswald Mosley and British Union, even though many were interned without charge or trial under Defence Regulation 18b. Many other Mosley men, however, made the supreme sacrifice in all the branches of the armed forces. In this respect, Mosley’s Blackshirts were patriotic to a man, while a handful of traitors had left the movement long before hostilities commenced. William Joyce being one and a notable exception as far as British fascism was concerned.
John Amery was a strange case, indeed. From a wealthy family, his father was Leo Amery ... a member of Churchill’s Cabinet and a drafter of the Balfour Declaration, then becoming the Secretary of State for India and Burma. His younger brother, Julian, became a not inconspicuous Tory MP after the war and paid dearly for his sibling’s ultimate fate on the gallows. He loved his brother and wished eternally that things had been different.
Leo sent his eldest son to public school where he excelled himself with his first act of notoriety by running off to France with his father’s wallet and a revolver. Thereafter, the father arranged private tuition and John discovered the deceptive sexual delights of prostitutes ... the more the merrier!
As a consequence of this particular peccadillo, his first wife, Una Wing, was an ex-prostitute with several convictions for plying her trade in the West End of the capital. When funds were really short, John was not averse to turning to being a rent boy himself on several occasions.
After bankruptcy, John Amery was sent to France with a small allowance and from there he dabbled in the far-right movements prevalent at the time.
The Vichy government, anxious then to please both the French people and the Germans, prevented him from leaving France. At the same time, Vichy disapproved of Amery’s adopted style of French radical fascist views. He was an embarrassment to them.
With little else to do, John Amery approached the German Armistice Commission in Grenoble with an offer it seemed it could not refuse. Amery, always one to grasp an opportunity when it came along, was soon to end up in wartime Berlin, speaking eloquently into the propaganda microphones of the Reichsrundfunk, the first foolish move he had made in a long time. On November 19, 1942, John Amery spoke through the Germans’ English language service with material supplied by Dr Fritz Hesse of the England Committee and Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Foreign Minister and former Ambassador to Britain. His broadcast was an immediate flop and he failed to impress anyone, including his listening father who was mortified. His broadcasts continued for several months but he never quite achieved the notoriety of William Joyce.
Even so, he was given the five-star treatment in a luxury hotel with a generous expense account while the Joyces made do with their small apartment and a basic salary.
Amery’s next mission was to tour the internment camps to give tedious homilies on how sensible it would be to change sides and wear the uniform of the enemy. Thus was born the idea of The Legion of St George, later to be known as the British Free Corps, under the control of the SS. It was formed in the last year of the war and numbered no more than thirty misfits out of hundreds of thousands of British prisoners of war. To the annoyance of Joyce, a few had been recruited from his broadcasting assistants.
The types who joined included the son of a Lithuanian Jewish merchant settled in England, a chemist who had been a member of British Union from 1934 to 1938, the son of a German immigrant who had found himself caught up in the Channel Islands working for the Todt organisation and another, a seventeen year old captured from a torpedoed ship and recruited by Amery, who the lad thought was Britain’s Foreign Minister. Another seventeen year old captured in the Italian campaign thought the British Free Corps was composed of several divisions. As pointed out before, those few who had connections with British Union had lapsed from membership years before the outbreak of hostilities.
This motley crew spent most of their days in indolent debauchery until, after the bombing of Dresden in February 1945, they were ordered to the Russian Front. For all the high-faluting propaganda of fighting Bolshevism, the very purpose of the BFC’s existence, they refused to budge with the Germans placing some blame on them for the bombing of Dresden and then throwing them into prison ... or punishment camp. Two months later, after much pleading, they were released conditionally but always in a state of near rebellion. The rest of the BFC disintegrated in panic at the news of the punishment camps where, it was rumoured, starving prisoners fell on the cadavers of others, pulling out their livers and kidneys for sustenance. One of them, the BFC’s British-born, half-German commandant, Thomas Haller Cooper, walked away to be captured by the British ... later reprieved after being given the death sentence.
Cooper was an exception among his BFC ‘comrades’ because, having a German mother, he had joined the Leibstandarte Division of the Waffen SS soon after the outbreak of war, serving in Poland and Russia, where he was wounded. Parentage sometimes lands the thinking man on difficult shores.
The myth that the British Free Corps represented all the best and noble in the struggle against communism and that they even fell fighting in the ruins of Berlin is the stuff of pulp fiction of the It Happened Here genre. It was never like that. If they had behaved with the gallantry of the various Waffen SS divisions from the occupied territories then there may have been some cause for redemption. Their legal status was one of traitors while their country was at war and no lies or myths can change that fact.
John Amery did not don the field-grey uniform with the British Free Corps cuff band and the Union flag sleeve motif, even though the Legion of St George (later the BFC) was his brainchild. He did more than these (literally) turncoats by touring the camps and inciting British POWs to commit treason. Many former Blackshirts within the ranks of those prisoners must have seethed with contempt for this spoiled, upper-class opportunist who continued his playboy lifestyle when German civilians picked through the rubble of their cities.
He was awarded a gallantry medal after a Berlin air raid but the circumstances remain unknown.
He travelled the length and breadth of occupied Europe, convinced he was a major celebrity, giving speeches to all who would listen ... rather like the present-day lecture circuits. As the war began to draw to a close, he ended up working for Mussolini in Northern Italy.
As befitting his celebrity status, on capture he was escorted into custody by an Intelligence Corps captain by the name of Alan Whicker, not knowing that his captor would, in the years following Amery’s execution, enjoy a rather more successful career in broadcasting than Amery’s ever was.
While Joyce’s council argued the business over a British passport in order to avoid a meeting with the hangman, Amery pleaded guilty on all counts knowing full well that he would receive the death penalty. The Germans, in defeat, passed over all the information they had on him.
The legacy of all this is that a new Europe can only be built on the firm rock of patriotism, each man loyal to his locality, while serving the greater union. The legend printed inside every Union Movement membership card read; BRITAIN FIRST IN EUROPE A NATION. It is the principle to which we subscribe up to this day.
John Amery was a traitor as much as a German who assisted the Allies, for whatever high moral reason at the time. One is bound by an oath of loyalty to one’s country ... always! Otherwise ‘patriotism’ is an empty word.

We Are European Socialists

2010-05-05T23:37:00.000-07:00

by Robert Edwards (European Socialist Action No 27)

Since the internationalist Labour Party ditched socialism in the form of Clause Four of its constitution (the people should own the means of production, distribution and exchange) for another internationalism, that of global capitalism, then the need today for a revived form of true socialism has never been so evident. It is the only antidote to the creeping encroachment of world capitalism and the possession of the world’s resources into ever increasingly fewer hands.
Socialism has taken many forms over the last hundred years or so, a subject that does not require much elaboration here. We need only think of Hitler and Stalin, to name just two. Used for good or bad, its appeal has always been one for social justice and support for the oppressed. Comparisons with the teachings of Christ have sometimes been applied to it.
Socialism as a generic term, however, has led to its use and abuse to such an extent that definitions seem boundless, sometimes depending on the intensity of class hatred, and ultimately leading to distortions of various kinds. The far-Left has always been a caricature of that disturbing phenomenon.
Oswald Mosley first adopted the phrase European Socialism in a speech to Union Movement on May Day in 1950, two years after the founding of the Movement. It is not so surprising given his earlier career within the Labour Party of Ramsay MacDonald when he sought to apply ‘socialistic ideas’ to curing the great problem of mass unemployment in Britain. He took those ideas with him into the New Party and then into the British Union of Fascists. 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”.
To Mosley, true socialism meant doing something for the people but especially for the good, honest working man. At the core is the idea of syndicalism as the alternative to the bureaucratic nationalisation of the old Labour Party, which, in reality, was simply the transfer of control from private hands into the hands of state bosses ... the workers having no direct say in the running of their industries, whatsoever. Syndicalism means workers’ ownership, a completely different type of ‘socialism’ in its unique form of industrial democracy, whereby the workers control their own means of production. Is not owning the means of production one part of the classical definition of socialism? Do we not represent that principle in its purest form, more so than the international socialists who had so long subscribed to ideas of bureaucratic state control?
Mosley proposed a synthesis of syndicalism and private enterprise which meant reconciling apparent opposites for very practical purposes. The creative individual is encouraged to contribute and to be rewarded for his endeavours. When a man or woman first creates a company or industry, it is left unhindered and encouraged to grow. However, when it reaches a certain size it is regarded as ready for syndicalisation. The original creator of the enterprise is rewarded generously for his past efforts. The spirit of service to the nation is paramount for this to work effectively.
European Socialism is very different to the old International Socialism in that ours has a solid and richer foundation on which to build. The expression National European alludes to the dimension while European Socialism is the creed. They are essentially two aspects of a single idea.
We reject, completely, the idea of an international proletariat, which is the basis of several strands of far-Left thinking ... principally that of Trotskyism. Rather, we understand the importance of kinship and culture within the European family of peoples and on that we can build our own form of socialism far removed from far-Left internationalism and notions of ‘the brotherhood of man’, which would reduce us to the level of economic units without soul.
We recognise cultural differences between peoples which should be respected with all the means for encouraging their development, preserving their roots and celebrating their existence. We have a European culture for which only complete unity can guarantee its survival in the globalist morass that currently surrounds us.
Class war divides a people and can only lead to social fragmentation, harmful to any nation. That is why we reject all theories of Marxian ‘historical class struggle’ and their deterministic ‘inevitability’. Mosley was a pragmatist and not a dogmatist. That is why he insisted on European Socialism being flexible enough to meet all circumstances for purely practical purposes. He was a technocrat who wanted to make things work.
By the 1960s, Mosley stopped to reflect on the term ‘European Socialism’ in his book, Mosley - Right or Wrong (Lion Books 1961). In answer to the question, what is ‘European Socialism’, he replied, “Any man has a right to call himself a socialist if he works for motives of public service rather than for private gain. That is why we used this phrase. Because our people have certainly proved that they work selflessly for the public good and it is this spirit which is needed for the building of a new European system. But I am not going to use it in future because it has led to misunderstanding. British people in general think that socialism means the nationalisation or bureaucratic control of industry, that it means the Labour Party policy which was a concept of the last century [nineteenth century]. But Union Movement has never stood for anything of this kind”.
Many of my comrades in European Action want to re-adopt the phrase European Socialism and for them they have always been European Socialists in the way Mosley first intended it to be used. What we need to do is continue where others left off, defining and redefining this great idea while maintaining core principles, that is to say, truly socialist principles.
Our use of the term is even more relevant today because what were once mainstream socialist parties of the Left, throughout the world, have since abandoned any pretence at being ‘for the workers’ but have all sold out to global capitalism. New Labour is the best example of this in Britain. Every one of them has adopted the principles of what is now talked of as the ‘global economy’ — international capitalism and predatory Finance, ruining the lives of millions within a system wide open to exploitation and unfair competition.
These parties have abandoned the people and now serve a global banking system, causing enormous pain and suffering everywhere you look.
Here is a new opportunity to explain our position very clearly in direct contrast to the sham that is the party political system of the old order of things.
The only other groups that continue to use the socialist label are of the far-Left ... groups that pursue causes such as anti-fascism. In fact, they now call themselves ‘anti-fascist’ before even considering raising the standard of socialism. Mainly Trotskyist (the Stalinist communists are miniscule and factionalist and no longer relevant without the Soviet Union), they are a mirror-image of global capitalism in that they do not recognise frontiers, cultures, races and religions but want a ‘rational’ world economy with all men as mere economic units. This is why many of the neo-cons in the United States, pursuing a policy of global imperialism on behalf of the World Bank, were once Trotskyites in their student days. The goal is the same — the domination of the globe, meaning the complete subservience of all mankind. That is not a conspiracy theory but a conspiracy fact!
We, however, offer the only viable alternative to rule by Money and the perpetuation of an international exploitative way of conducting the affairs of the world. We want the people to be free to run their own lives within their own economic area. But more than that, we want the people to have their own identity as European workers, producing for themselves within a self-contained area large enough to be self-sufficient.
This is the only way you can realise that concept of the people owning the means of production, distribution and exchange, the only way you can have socialism in the way Mosley first understood that term all those years ago.
After the Conference of Venice in 1962, Union Movement adopted the slogan, ‘We Are National Europeans’, emblazoned on the propaganda boards at meetings in Trafalgar Square. In fact, we are both National Europeans and European Socialists — not only interchangeable terms but each to be used according to the context in which they are used.
We should also consider the advantages of any misunderstandings caused by the use of the term European Socialist. If this causes confusion for some then we have the golden opportunity for explaining ... over and over again, if necessary. This is an essential part of the propaganda war and we should hammer it home with all the faith and confidence we possess. It would also serve to draw attention to ourselves, which we desire.
The first point to be made is that we are neither left nor right. European Socialism transcends the old dichotomy of an out-dated parliamentary system based on the seating arrangements of the elected assembly convened after the French Revolution. We want a new democracy without an out-dated party political system that is now exposed so clearly today as a ‘gentlemen’s club’ full of hot air and bad wind, regulating themselves privileges in the form of exorbitant expenses claims, with several Members now being pursued under the Theft Act. Why not nick the rest of these scoundrels and throw them out? Did someone say we need another Cromwell?
It all goes to show that our wonderfully democratic politicians are only out for themselves, each riding on the back of a political party little different to the party next to them. That is why we oppose this party political system and not because we want to do away with them in order to set up a dictatorship. No, we want to return democratic values and principles to the people in order that the people rule and not the political parties, which only follow their own agenda. The alternative to this pseudo-democratic plutocracy is a system of representation known as Occupational Franchise. This is very easy to understand with the briefest of explanations.
In place of the old political parties, we would have an elected House comprised entirely of Members representing trades, professions, women (for example) and various social and economic groupings. You elect a candidate that will represent your occupation. He represents you as an essential part of society and not a party machine. No political party, of left or right, can do this because the party has its own priorities which consist entirely of securing its survival in an infantile game of point scoring — if one jumps up to say the earth is round then his opposite number must jump up and pronounce it flat. This silliness goes on and on with every issue and point of policy. Farmyard impressions abound. The purpose of the ‘opposition’ is to con the people and give the impression that something important is going on when, in fact, it is played out according to an old boy’s tradition going back to the days when only the upper crust could sit. Then, it was truly a privileged club when the rules were created by its Members with complete impunity. It seems the old days are returning and never was a change to the system more needed with leadership restored because we have no true leadership, only mediocrity and politicians that speak like bank managers and with as much passion and conviction as the contents of a bucket of plankton.
Oswald Mosley and others led the way with a great alternative:
For example, point six of the European Declaration agreed at Venice in1962, stated, “That industries already nationalised will be better conducted by workers’ ownership or syndicalism than by state bureaucracy, but the system of the wage-price mechanism will, in full development, make irrelevant the question of the ownership of industry by reason of the decisive leadership of elected government, and will bring such prosperity that workers will have no interest in controversies which belong to the Nineteenth Century”.
This was to be part of a future system agreed on by brother Europeans, part of a new Europe that will one day sweep away all the decay and corruption.

Religions Can Live Together

2010-03-31T09:33:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-03-06T14:49:00.000-08:00

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.

Money Does Not Grow On Trees

2010-02-12T00:18:00.000-08:00

From the Editorial, EA No 26 (January/February 2010)

Britain lurches deeper into recession with no way out in the foreseeable future. Instead, our governing politicians prefer to feed us overseas diversions in the form of the continued involvement in Afghanistan with the increasingly bogus claim that there is a serious internal terrorist threat to bomb Britain to smithereens, masterminded by an elusive Al Qa’eda.
Apart from that, the masses are given TV soaps along with the likes of Strictly Come Dancing and The X-Factor to take their minds away from the real dangers of economic collapse.
What all politicians from all parties will not face up to is that our real problems are the direct consequence of Government helplessness before the international banking system, a system that is answerable to no one. It is a scandal of international proportions so that we now see they can not even enforce regulations regarding the recent bonus scandals. The Government is paralysed as bankers put up two fingers to them.
Not one of our politicians is honest enough or courageous enough to expose this banking scam and to explain how it really works. In fact, it functions by lending money, which has been created out of absolutely nothing, to governments that have to pay it back with interest. That repayment money must also be borrowed from bankers who further create it out of thin air ... and so the screw is tightened at every turn. Debt ultimately enslaves nations.
Most people do not understand what money is or how it is created and used. If they did then politicians could no longer pull the wool over the eyes of the public but would need to confront the con-men of the banking system in direct response to the anger of the people that elected them. Public ignorance is the elected politicians’ only hope against the potential for mass revolt by the people.
The present system is designed to fail. Why? So that when countries are in the economic doldrums the bankers can exploit the situation to their advantage. We have all recently witnessed this and it is no accident out of control.
Money exists in two forms. One is in the form of very tangible banknotes and coins. This is but a small part, 3 per cent, in fact. The larger element, which is an intangible record of credit/debt, makes up the other 97 per cent. It is out of lending and borrowing that most money is created and supplied. The banks create money through loans and it is then simply set against these debts by entries into a computer. Once the debt is paid back the money disappears from the economy. In fact, it never existed in any tangible form because money is debt. A David Nixon or Paul Daniels could never match that sleight of hand.
Large private international companies play around with the money supply of national economies in a way that suggests total manipulation. They can increase or shrink the money supply ... less money means businesses going bust, unemployment on the rise and a downward spiral into recession. Before that, things went well as the money supply was increased through massive borrowing ... but people borrowed beyond their means so that eventually they could borrow no more. The banks reduced lending as a consequence, which further reduced the money supply within the economy. Recurring recessions are inbuilt as a result.
This is what happened recently with massive defaults on payment of debt with the defaults reducing the money supply further. Firms then go bust with yet more people on the dole ... but the bankers continue to gorge themselves while awarding each other massive bonuses for doing practically little. The moral point is completely missed which indicates something very rotten in the state of Britain.
A debt-based money supply in the control of private international companies is the root cause of all our ills and needs to be changed. The words of Meyer Amschel Rothschild, “Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws” were uttered centuries ago and should alert anyone who believes in liberty.
The alternative is to hand the creation of the money supply over to governmental regulation and to make it accountable only to the people. It was Mosley’s view that banking should become the servant of the people and not to be their master.

We Need European Reconciliation Day

2010-01-13T13:56:00.000-08:00

German and British soldiers in France

by Robert Edwards

European Action No 25 , November/December 2009

As editor of European Action, I have an obligation to respond to supporters on important European issues. Tony Rawlings asked me to include something on what he described as ‘the need for a European remembrance’, an extension of our own national rite. I gave this some thought and came up with the necessity for something that would unite Europeans through a process of healing ... because, for too long, so much had divided us as Europeans. The word ‘reconciliation’ seemed more appropriate, rather than simple remembrance. Reconciliation demands an active participation whereas to remember is always a passive activity. Action must always follow clear thought, as Oswald Mosley would often tell us.
Since a lad, I have always wondered why the remembrance of war in the conflicts of the Twentieth Century seemed to be the sole prerogative of one side. The inference is obvious ... that the ‘other side’ is collectively guilty and therefore evil and should play no part in our own collective grief. Such an attitude is, of course, nonsensical because collective guilt will unfairly condemn the innocent, those who stood by helplessly ... or the many who were basically decent and honourable on all sides in wartime .
Let us get down to the issue without beating about the bush. Germany has for too long borne the brunt of the most hate-fuelled media campaign, the main perpetrator of which has been the lie industry known as Hollywood. The subject of this hate, thus the victim, has always been the German soldier ... der Landser, the equivalent of the British Tommy. Nowhere is he publicly honoured and nowhere is his sacrifice recognised in a sympathetic way. The German soldier has to bear all the inglorious baggage and the entire guilt, taken off the shoulders of Allied soldiers, to become the sole carrier as iconic war criminal. He is also identified as being essentially the ‘evil Nazi’ in Hollywood image-making.
In both wartime and peacetime, this demonisation of der Landser has had repercussions throughout the European continent. The ‘anti-Bolshevik’ struggle in wartime developed into a pan-European fighting force during the Second World War. Just about every country had large sections of its manhood enrolled as ‘foreign volunteers’ in the struggle against Bolshevik Russia ... and later these men were to be condemned for fighting on the losing side. Their undoubted heroism, alongside their German brothers, was to be misrepresented as a crime by the tribunals and the revenge courts. The division of Europe was thus worsened by the ‘collaborationist’ legend which to this day has left its deep scars, particularly in France.

FASCISM AND EUROPE

This is not simply a question of ideology. In March 1945, Benito Mussolini gave an interview to Magdalena Mollier. He said,
“This morning in my room a little swallow got trapped. It flew about, it flew desperately, until it fell exhausted on my bed; a little trembling creature. I caressed it and gradually, it calmed down; and in the end it dared to look at me. I went to the window, I opened my hand. It was still stunned, did not understand immediately … then it opened its wings and, with a cry of joy, it flew to liberty. I will never forget that cry of joy. The only doors that will open for me are those of death. And it is also just. I have erred and I shall pay. I have never made a mistake following my instinct, but always when I obeyed reason. I do not blame anyone, I do not reproach anyone apart from myself. I am responsible, just as much for the things that I did well, that the world can never deny me, as for my weaknesses and my decline. My star has set. I work and make an effort, even though knowing that everything is a farce. My star has set, but I did not have the strength or the courage to retire in time. Have you ever seen a prudent, calculating dictator? They all become mad, they lose their equilibrium in the clouds, in quivering ambitions and obsessions. And it is actually that mad passion which brought them to where they are. A brave Borghese would never discomfort himself so much. There is no doubt that we are heading towards, in short, a Socialist époque. I see the salvation of Europe only in a socialist union of European states. A formidable block that will defend our civilisation and existence against the Red materialism of the Bolsheviks and for us more or less damaging experiments of the American type. Soon the German, French, Spanish, Italian etc. question will be of no interest; only Europe will be of interest. Everyone will realise it. If in time or not, who knows?”
The selfless Mussolini knew what was coming, both to himself and to the Europe he loved. Like that other great ex-socialist, Oswald Mosley, he could see beyond his own fascism and the errors of that creed ... far too nationalistic. Europe needed more than the sum of separate insular attitudes.
Emerging from prison without charge or trial, imprisoned purely for campaigning for a negotiated peace in 1940, Mosley declared that there were some whose hands were not stained with blood from the Brothers’ War and that it is these people, those who joined to form the new Union Movement, who could unite Europe so that Europeans would never fight each other again in unnecessary war.

ATROCITY PROPAGANDA

There has always been one major stumbling block on the way to the creation of that all-embracing European brotherhood and it is the anti-German legacy of the black propaganda of the Second World War. Indeed, we could go back to the First World War with the absurd canard of the hated ‘Hun’ eating roasted Belgian babies on the end of a bayonet. Millions of Englishmen were led to believe this atrocity propaganda and it resonated into the coming major conflict. Anti-German sentiment covers the greater part of the Twentieth Century. As National Europeans we must reject it completely as poisonous nonsense because its sole intention is to perpetuate division and animosity among Europeans.
It is for this reason we object to the hijacking, on the part of the British National Party, of the symbolism from one side in the Brothers’ War — the Spitfire, Churchill, Vera Lynn and so on. The narrow and insular nationalistic message is obvious and this expropriation being completely unprincipled. It is no wonder its leader is shunned by most of the far-Right in the European Parliament.
War atrocities were nothing new in the last century. They go back thousands of years and they are committed by all sides to some degree or another. Why nations go to war is always a contentious issue but largely the reasons are economic. All the other high-flown talk of freedom and democracy is but a fanciful screen to hide the more prosaic criminal intent. The true perpetrators, if they triumph, will gain the means of publicity and hang the defeated in an orgy of moral indignation in order that the entire world remains enslaved to international finance capitalism.
In 1945, the entire German nation faced the ignominy of being defeated in both body and soul. The German soldier became the devil incarnate, fit for purpose as everyone’s hate figure. The revenge courts legitimised this.
The true story of the fate of these soldiers in defeat has recently emerged, revealing a murderous plan that the Allies attempted to conceal from the world. The American General Eisenhower ordered the death by starvation of over a million German prisoners of war, left out in the open without sanitation, food or water. The blame for these ‘lost’ soldiers was first placed on Russia whose German POWs were packed off to Siberia as slave labour but many did eventually return from Soviet captivity. Not so those in American captivity. Summary executions of German prisoners by American GIs was also commonplace. American criminality was endemic as it is now.

A NEW CZECH CRISIS?

The point I am making here is that in war we ordinary folk are always the victims and losers and that the only true victors are those who re-write history for themselves and for their own personal gain. In all cases, it is the same kind of people who also make the biggest profits out of the misery in the world and continue to do so to this day.
The legacy of the events leading up to the Second World War have been focused on recent wrangling over the Lisbon Treaty ... most noticeably by the Czech President, Vaclav Klaus. The issue here is the Sudetenland and the fears that Germans may wish to claim their former homes. Indeed, there are many other parts of Central Europe that are traditionally and historically German and this problem could divide Europe unless resolved for all time. President Klaus seems only to enflame the issue, awakening memories of Chamberlain and Hitler meeting in an attempt to resolve another past crisis.
As time passes we find that old scores are never permanently settled because Germany, as with the conditions of the Versailles Treaty in 1919, suffered territorial losses with the added condition of becoming a divided nation.
President Klaus has been given an opt-out as a sweetener to putting his signature to the Lisbon Treaty, a step towards a kind of European unity. He says he will not raise any more conditions but this condition on its own will sour relations between member states for a long time to come.
The opt-out denies the rights of ethnic Germans to reclaim their property in the former Sudetenland. In other words, Klaus wants to legitimise the ‘ethnic-cleansing’ of Sudeten Germans, decreed by Czechoslovak President Eduard Benes after the Second World War. This was a terrible time for German civilians, as with many other nationalities, as Germany now comes to terms with the suffering of its own people. Czech Social Democrat, Jan Hamacek, claims the opt-out is ‘superfluous’ and therefore may not be legitimate ... which leaves the issue more like an open festering wound rather than a genuine healing. Europe will not realise genuine union of its peoples when a lack of historical sensitivity is used in political horse trading. Reconciliation requires facing the past honestly and only then comes justice.

John Watler

2009-12-28T06:17:00.000-08:00

In memoriam

John Bertram Watler was a member of Mosley’s Union Movement in the 1970s. He joined the Movement after Robert Edwards set up the Thanet group in Ramsgate during a stay in his home town in 1969. As group leader, Edwards invited Jeffrey Hamm and others to Thanet in order to launch the group officially, which included several new members from nearby Deal. John, with his wife Margaret, were to host the gathering in their Ramsgate home, with spectacular views over Pegwell Bay serving to add to the pleasure of the occasion. John and Margaret were always warm and generous hosts.
When Edwards returned to London, becoming West London Area Organiser in 1970, John took over the Thanet group, later contributing articles to UM’s paper ACTION, writing under his own name.
He was a prolific writer throughout the early 1970s, when UM was briefly re-named Action Party. He was reported in ACTION No 169 (March, 1974) as “getting ‘Action’ into his local library at Ramsgate”. Thereon, he continued to organise members’ and contacts’ meetings.
John Watler died suddenly on November 18th, 2009, aged 82 years.
A ‘Celebration of his Life’ took place at Thanet Crematorium on Monday, December 7th, 2009.
He leaves a wife, son John and grandson Jonathan.

2009-11-03T07:07:00.000-08:00

TELEVISION:
THEN AND NOW
From Editorial, issue No 25, November/December 2009

(photo) OM being interviewed at 302 Vauxhall Bridge Road in 1962

Readers of European Action who listened to our CD of Oswald Mosley on the David Frost Show will be aware of OM’s masterly performance before a live audience on British television and how he handled hostility from the audience with his usual aplomb.
Throughout the show, Mosley had to contend with shouting from a section of the audience, mainly Jewish communist militants, whose life-long purpose seemed to consist entirely of attempts to silence Mosley wherever he stood up to speak.
Solly Kaye was the most vociferous on this occasion but the only point to be made from this Jewish thug’s behaviour was how Mosley was perfectly justified in forming his supporters into a uniformed defence force. It was the only way to overcome organised communist violence in those days.
As a television performance it stands out as a good lesson in political triumph in the face of adversity.
Coming to the present day, I wonder how people would compare Nick Griffin’s descent into the lion’s den that is BBC’s Question Time to Oswald Mosley’s noisy reception on the David Frost Show on November 16, 1967.
Here we have two examples of method and technique ... how to do it and how not to do it. But are there any lessons to be learned for the present day that would assist anyone who wants to succeed in politics?
Mosley always gained control of a situation, often turning what was potentially a disastrous situation to his advantage. He did it through sheer force of personality. It was his powerful personality that held sway in the face of communist intimidation on the David Frost Show. He had the situation under permanent control as a result.
According to Paul Callan of the Daily Express on October 24 (whose grandparents were Jewish immigrants fleeing Russia, by the way), Mosley “was undoubtedly a charismatic speaker”. Callan’s article was entitled, Fascists Always Fail in Britain, and was largely aimed at Nick Griffin and the far-Right fringe.
This Daily Express columnist begins, “The bigoted babblings of the porcine-featured British National Party leader, Nick Griffin, on Thursday’s Question Time would have inflicted a feeling of nausea on decent people”. It goes on in similar vein with Griffin as “gorge-raising fascist” and so on ... but never is Griffin referred to as possessing charisma.
I find it significant that Callan, who also interviewed Mosley in the late 1960s, should attribute charismatic qualities to Mosley and remain very much the anti-fascist. John Freeman, the broadcaster who interviewed Mosley for BBC’s Panorama programme around the same time, described Mosley as the most intelligent British politician he had ever met.
No one is going to say any of those things about Nick Griffin no matter how many BNP local councillors are elected. His performance on Question Time will go down in broadcasting history as probably one of the worst by any aspiring politician.
What we saw was a man bereft of any personality, moral courage or honesty. He writhed and squirmed, ducked and dived throughout the questions ... and, unlike Mosley, he had no real violently noisy opposition. Just an audience that laughed at his ineptitude. I had a little chuckle, myself.

2009-09-03T08:17:00.000-07:00

MOSLEY WARNED OF WORLD CRISIS
by Peter Kendall

(published in European Action No 23)

Sir Oswald Mosley is almost invariably described as ‘Britain’s war-time fascist leader’ but how could he have possibly led the British Union of Fascists in wartime when he was in prison and unable to communicate with the world outside? How could there have been a mainstream fascist movement when the majority of Blackshirts had enlisted to fight for their country in 1939? Mosley certainly did oppose another European war but left his followers in no doubt: once the die had been cast it was everyone’s duty to fight for king and country as he had in the 1914-1918 conflict.
He had no illusions. When the politicians and international bankers wanted war they usually got their way – and it was then the common man who had to fight and perish as death and misery piled up across Europe. Bravery, chivalry and self-sacrifice were not restricted to one side and there were finally no genuine military victories – only financial gain and initiation of dark influences seeking to destroy European culture and traditions, replacing the great European composers with punk rock and stealing great European advances in aerospace and a hundred other technical advances that Mosley said might provide prosperity to the European peoples.
The Bell X15 supersonic aircraft was not designed in America – it was designed in a small aerospace firm on the outskirts of Reading, Berkshire (Miles Aircraft). The supersonic flight research exchange was one-way. The British gave over their research but the Americans then refused to honour their side of the agreement in the interests of their ‘national security’. That is how incompetent Mosley’s ‘tired old men’ were – they simply gave away Britain’s lead in aerospace technology, totally mismanaging the exchange so that Britain was cheated.
Much the same could be said about German missile technology taken forcibly from Europe after the 1939-45 conflict. Try as they might, the dark forces cannot prevent the words of historians and politicians of the 1930s, still proving Mosley right - they have managed to ban free speech but not books, at least not yet. Any thinking person can reasonably judge that the misery and social injustice of the 1930s pre-war depression could have been avoided by implementing Mosley’s economic plans. Hitler and Mussolini did provide their peoples with a solution to mass unemployment – but the London Stock Exchange resisted Government initiatives to recruit labour battalions because it would have been against the interests of the big company shareholders to enable the masses to earn money.
The British Union of Fascists is still heavily criticized for its associations with Hitler, Mussolini and Franco but pre-war European fascists had one common political aim: to improve living standards of the masses, expel the exploiters and halt the creeping disease of communism in Europe. European counter-communist political movements were essential in defeating the common enemy in the 1930s and to bring back prosperity and full employment. The last nine years in British politics have shown us how the Reds work: atheism, perversion, 1984-style control of the individual and major financial mismanagement. Consider the hunger marches, unemployment and social hardships of Britain in the 1930s and ask the question, “What possible reason could there ever have been to commit this generation to an all-out war because of Poland?”
Who had been so recklessly insane to conclude a treaty of guarantee to Poland – and what common interests did the British Empire have with Eastern Europe? The freedom of the Polish people had nothing to do with the September 1939 declaration of war against Germany. The Polish people were sold down the river in the Potsdam conferences and their nation subjugated by the Reds. Freedom proved to be an exotic dream for the half century following the war under the Soviet jackboot. In this context, there had been nothing to fight for – Britain was mortally wounded for no good reason. In one sense, we lost the war.
The war-time leaders knew that the game would be up if the British public knew of the Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland and of the crimes the NKVD had perpetrated against humanity – Polish warriors died at Arnhem, at Monte Casino and a thousand other battlefields in British uniforms while Allied leaders agreed to Poland being swallowed up after the conflict. At the same time, these same leaders concealed discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest and mass murders of the Kulak classes. Delivery of Poland to the USSR after the conflict had already been planned well before the war ended when Polish soldiers spilled their blood fighting for the Britain they trusted. Was it really the will of the British people to enter into war in the first place? Would they have agreed to a betrayal of Poland, the forced return of Cossacks and Yugoslavs to the Soviets? Or did international forces decide for us as they did in the case of Iraq?
In fact, Mosley’s immortal words continue to ring with absolute truth. Governance of Britain, he maintained, was nothing to do with the British government – it was governance by the international bankers headed by the Wall Street financial thugs and the legions of the world's banks and the faceless figures who run them. The power of unlimited money determined that Britain should go to war against the very European population with whom they had so much in common. Clearly, an Anglo-German alliance would have had a moderating influence after the 1918 European disaster – but it would have failed to make vast fortunes for the international arms manufacturers – it was nothing to do with Poland but rather engineered for profit and for a major power shift towards America and its small ally in the Middle East.
Big money continues to fuel the third world sweat shop industries, engineered to turn out disposable goods for the opulent nations of the world, while depressing traditional domestic skills and wage levels in Europe. Big money also continues to use the European peoples in their reckless gambles such as buying up debt. As my fellow European Action contributor Dermont Clark so eloquently wrote in the March/April edition, “Banking should serve the people”. In fact, Mr Clark’s opinion is proved absolutely right by recent history. A large section of British banking did serve the British people – the traditional mutually-owned building societies imposed sensible lending limits, thus ensuring that greed would not end in families being thrown onto the streets. But the sharks moved in, sensing blood in the water in the form of unprincipled profit margins. They were determined to end the Mutual organisations that operated exclusively for the benefit of their investors and mortgaged customers.
Building societies did not need shareholders and did not participate in wild gambling. In all probability, mutual societies were consequently considered blasphemous by the big corporations who moved in to devour most of the decency and prudence of the long-established societies. At the same time, the politicians moved in to end tax relief on both mortgages and on marital status. The ordinary citizen should not be helped to put a roof over his family’s heads or to afford a decent standard of living for his children. If he dared dream of buying a home, then he would have to sweat blood in paying taxes for it.
Bear in mind governments give nothing in offering tax relief – they merely fail to take money away from its rightful owner. The resulting financial institutions threw caution to the wind in the hopes of enormous gains. They put away the conservative methods of mortgage provision and introduced the free for all attitudes of the nineties, buying up questionable international debt and offering self-certificated mortgage applications or 150 per cent loans when easy money was limitless. They all went along with the greed: local authorities, the government and the banks. Flog everything –the utility companies, our traditional productive industries, coal and steel. Blue the North Sea fuel wealth in the interests of quick money and voter popularity. No longer was borrowing linked to incomes – if people borrowed too much, why worry? Their properties could easily be re-possessed and the breathtaking appreciation in property values used to recover any losses: credit card companies adopted the same blackmail techniques: you can have as much credit as you want - provided you put your home on the line.
The international bankers had some smart moves tucked up their sleeves selling packaged debt. What an absolute contrast Mosley’s plans offered the people: the generation of European industries backed by the purchasing power of the Europeans. He was horrified at Third World sweat shops that treated indigenous populations as animals, beasts of burden, while spreading the curse of unemployment throughout our European nation. He was so right in suggesting that the West Indian plantations should be properly financed – given prosperity, the inhabitants would never have wanted to live in these cold, sad islands and immigration might not have ever reached crisis proportions. Even now, the government pours billions into failed banks and arranges so-called ‘shotgun marriages’ to save the institutions that have choked on their own greed and particularly if they are in Scotland. The British government never even thought of bringing back the old mutual institutions to ensure that families would not lose their homes.
British politicians do not fight for the British people – they serve the international bankers and if these mysterious dark powers had wanted Britain to adopt the Euro – we would have been in the Euro-zone before you could say ‘Gordon Brown’. Within the context of the 1920s and 1930s, Mosley was right to ally himself with Hitler and Mussolini. Before total all-out war was engineered, both leaders brought full employment to their peoples. Both opposed the advance of Soviet communism, a fight that the post-war Western nations had to continue from 1945 until 1989. Those who rejected Mosley’s conviction that Westminster was run by the ‘tired old men’ of British politics, might do well to consider the present circumstances. Recently, a Downing Street website was deliberately designed to ‘smear’ opposition political figures. The perpetrators had the nerve to name their website after the Red Flag. Is this really where the so-called Mother of all Parliaments has ended up? Do the long-suffering, tolerant British people really deserve this financial and moral decline in politics?
How could Mosley possibly be judged as an extremist when he put his finger on the very organisms that have now developed into a full-blown fatal disease? Suddenly last year, Mosley was again proved right as the international bankers pressed their luck too far and began to go to the wall. But the radical reforms he proposed were again swept under the carpet. Do not worry if the banks and Westminster had been reckless, there was always the taxpayer to fall back on and there was still plenty of capital to fund gigantic pension pots and bonuses for poor performance. Those who had lost pensions and the widows surviving on meagre pensions could whistle for any rise in basic living standards. All the Flash Harry characters in the City and in Westminster have to take precedence – that is why British state pensions are the lowest in the developed world, why the British government has ruined the pensions industry by over taxation and lack of regulation, why Britain imposes the highest tax burden on the lower earnings sector and why our local taxes have more than doubled under Labour: the heaviest local tax in the whole of the European community.
Europe a Nation? Good God, no! We could never afford tax harmonisation and the British people have already found out far too much about European living standards – who knows, they might even demand the same standards for themselves! British taxpayers – what perfect investors! They never choose which investments to make or dictate any policy. It is an absolute nonsense to cite local or national elections as instruments of democratic change or policy determination. British elections are mad illogical games played by all-colluding professional politicians and simply do not express the wishes of the British people.
If the banks or the current administration go into the red, billions will be immediately supplied by the taxpayer provided the country has not been bankrupted in the meantime: there will be no annual general meetings or referenda to gauge opinion or to vote politicians off the board. The former postman, cruise ship steward and parson’s son can decide the vital national issues, doubtless assisted by the rag-bag of feminists and other extremists and perverts that Blair used to hoodwink the electorate. After all, the clown in charge has banished the boom and bust cycle and has subsequently saved the world, what more do we want? – how modest Baron Brown von Munchausen now appears to be!
The present administration is in power by virtue of a 35 per cent majority, made legitimate through the ‘first past the post’ electoral system that divides the nation into non-proportional geographic segments. Political movements are also restricted. Only two almost bankrupt organisations are allowed with a third force kept in line by the banning of proportional representation. Democracy yes, new leftist parties yes, but never anything right of centre. The British people will be told who will govern and there will never be an issue decided by the whole population.
Decentralisation and devolution are nonsense terms used by the very politicians that keep Britain a divided nation. Mosley was so right in advocating the end of Westminster because the bodies that he proposed for the new administration would truly serve the people. His vision of an NHS governed by a panel of physicians and nursing professionals still makes good sense – the leading medical experts would never have allowed the dried human blood on walls and floors or minimised expenditure on hygiene. There would be no stench of stale urine or used syringes left on bedside cabinets. Qualified British nurses and doctors would have led the field – not incompetent so-called managers and a rag-tag host from overseas, often with bogus qualifications. His proposed system would have made the majority of present hospital infections virtually impossible. The Panel would have known how to keep wards clean and how best to provide patient care – hospitals would have been built here most needed and not as political sweeteners. Instead of recruiting questionable medical staff from the Third World, Britain would have continued to send well-trained the doctors and nurses so badly needed abroad. The Labour government has been exposed. It is now clear that Britain is ruled by a gang of vicious, sleazy opportunists who have no respect for either decency, freedom, prosperity or democracy. The opposition parties offer nothing better, particularly as discussing vital issues have been banned. Mosley's views have been vindicated and proved right. Who knows if Gordon Brown’s desperation to cling on to power will allow him to concede a General Election next year (President Mugabe shows the way forward for despot). Blair and Brown have allowed Westminster to descend into the politics of the gutter with Downing Street now rightly described as a cesspit. The British people would benefit by reading Mosley’s aims and to dismiss the continual vilification. They will never be called upon to fight for Poland but they might have to fight for a return to decent governance and restoration of the right to their own nation. Britain has always favoured reform and debate but now we edge towards the abyss where a 1939 fighting spirit will be needed – this time in exclusive defence of the British. Let us be prepared to face the challenge and to make the sacrifice.

The Myth of Islamisation

2009-08-21T22:40:00.000-07:00

by Robert Edwards

(Published in European Action No 23)

Any attack upon another’s religion is a violation of a human right. A man’s religion is his free choice of worship and should be inviolable. Let us make it clear that the politicisation of religion is the real cause of so much human strife and suffering and not the religion in itself. Religion is often attacked by atheists and other secularists as being responsible for the slaughter of millions over the centuries ... and it is the cynical political manipulation of religion for secular ends that concerns us here.
Here in Britain (and elsewhere in Europe) we have this ugly phenomenon of some fringe parties adopting a violent type of religious intolerance as a nationalistic platform. Its exclusive target is Islam and what is perceived to be ‘the threat of Islamification’, supposedly challenging Britain’s identity as a Christian nation. Are we really justified in claiming to be a Christian nation?
Where did all this begin? What are its origins? Attacking anyone for his religion was unheard of in the days of Mosley’s Union Movement. Mosley always said, “We do not attack people on account of what they were born [what they are] but solely on what they do”. This is a perfectly sane and rational point of view and can not be challenged on any moral grounds. At that time, Mosley was referring to what was described as ‘the quarrel with the Jews’. He would say the same regarding Muslims, always consistent, and he abhorred any ill-treatment of the under-dog. In Mosley’s case, there was never a quarrel with Muslims. Quite the opposite. He regarded the Arab world as Europe’s natural ally.
I believe this bogus ‘crusade’ against Islam erupted at the time of the end of the Cold War, when international communism dealt its own death blow. The Age of Ideology came to an end leaving an enormous vacuum waiting to be filled by a much-needed external threat in the form of another global bogeyman. That is when the idea of a ‘war against terrorism’ was first hatched with the Middle East in mind and the new neo-con global agenda linked to Israel and a New World Order. The rest is history, as they say.
Far-right opportunists latched onto this conspiracy theory, opposing Islam worldwide, as an ideal substitute for a previous ‘external threat’ now re-invented as the Muslim ‘enemy within’ ... the militant Muslim with his eye on world domination. Ring a bell?
A new vocabulary was needed in order to articulate this myth. We had ‘jihadists’ and then ‘islamofascists’. ‘Jihadist’ is a clear corruption of a noble and pious obligation for the religious. It has no political equivalent. Jihad means the daily struggle to improve oneself as a religious person, having a subjective dimension as well as an obligation to the greater well-being of the community. It does not mean holy war, which is a cynical invention of the self-styled, latter-day ‘crusaders’ stirring up religious hatred. This is but one example of how Islam is being distorted and how it is being misrepresented by the far-right groups, without which they are completely moribund in terms of ideas.
All of this has been cobbled together to create a grotesque caricature divorced from reality ... reality being one of three Abrahamic faiths experiencing a revival that was once the Christian experience, uplifting and dynamic. This is ‘Islamification’ to the conspiracy theorists ... meaning Islam gaining in size and strength but it is only in terms of the religious without a political base. This is where the conspiracy theory falls flat on its face.
Although Muslims recognise the Ummah as the world community of Islam, it has no political organisation as such and is simply the recognition of a universal brotherhood of the religious. Universality is a characteristic of all the major religions and Islam is no exception.
This brings us to another weakness in the claims of the anti-Islamic far-right. There is a mad idea that only ‘British’ religions have a place in these isles, corralling their ‘British gods’ within a sanitised cordon off North West Europe. Universality is too much like the nightmare of world government which, as all good Empire Loyalists know, is a Jewish communist conspiracy in the pay of New York bankers. How Muslims fit into that equation is something that only the complete paranoiac can incorporate into his tangled web of a mind.
We find them defending the Christian values of Britain against the ‘alien’ faith, the interloper and destroyer of the true faith. Christianity has its roots in the Middle East, the Holy Land, as does Islam. If Islam is deemed alien then so is Christianity and, of course, the predecessor of both, Judaism. That any religion should have a national identity is absurd in the extreme ... equally as much as the idea of a Christ renewing his British passport with the Home Office.
Christian values are not British values. They are universal values ... meaning they are for all mankind. Islamic values are so similar that the same universality applies. How these giant faiths co-exist is a mark of our nation’s tradition of tolerance and the magnanimous nature of its people. Whether church, mosque or synagogue — they are all centres of religiosity and the human feeling that there is something greater than all of us. This is higher than any politics.
Then there is the scaremongering concerning Sharia Law. This is regarded by the anti-Islamic ‘crusader’ as barbaric, involving torture and mutilation unto which no Christian should succumb. For the benefit of the ignorant, Sharia Law is for Muslims only, being based on the Holy Qur’an ... perceived to be the word of God. The reasoning being that God is higher than man, so it follows that God’s law is higher than man-made law.
The Jews in Britain have their Beth Din, Jewish ecclesiastical courts for the religious. This is perfectly reasonable and acceptable. Surely it follows that different faiths must have different needs. What a dull, grey world it would be if everything in our society were to be standardised and subject to a one-size-fits-all rule on matters of law and regulation. Yes, we have diversity and there should never be coercion to conform to a single standard way of living. I say that Muslims are entitled to another tier of law if their faith demands it. There will always be our tier of secular law ... but there is nothing wrong with choice. According to Islamic injunction, a Muslim is obliged to honour and respect the laws of a host country and to do otherwise is deemed un-Islamic, of course.
We have large Muslim communities settled in Britain that have become part of a permanent demographic change. Second, third and fourth generations have adopted much of our culture, as one would expect, but most retain the faith of their fathers and those before them. Islam is now firmly rooted here and it deserves to be respected and understood ... not attacked as a conspiracy.
Have I changed my mind on the immigration issue since the days of the 1960s when our slogan was ‘Stop Immigration — Send Them Back to Good Jobs and Conditions’? It was always a humane policy and one that became part of a wider economic solution for Britain and Europe. At that time, reversing non-white immigration was a very reasonable and practical proposition. Fifty years later, it is a different world that has left many far behind but one that demands a rethink if we are to preserve our European culture in peace and in prosperity.
All things are in a state of becoming. It is a law of the Universe. Race and culture are no exception in the great movements and upheavals that occur from time to time. Races have always migrated and moved around the world.
However, ‘Islamification’ is nothing more than a cheap scare tactic. This must be understood first. Islam saved Europe before when the Arab Empire civilised Andalucía for hundreds of years while Europe lived in the Dark Ages. Islam can again have a benevolent influence upon our lives in terms of morality, human character and a code for families and communities. After all, it is a complete way of life for the believer in a way that the Christian churches never quite managed to pull off for their flocks.
In these times of economic stress and uncertainty many of us are struggling and finding it all very difficult. The solution is not to turn on a perfectly innocent, hard-working community because it appears different in custom and worship.
I am often urged to seek out what unites us rather than to knock the far-right for its short-comings. I would apply that same principle to all other groups and communities living alongside us during these difficult times.
What should unite us all is a common interest in survival as people first.

My Father, the Loyal Blackshirt

2009-06-26T12:11:00.000-07:00

by David Whelan

(Published in European Action No 22)

Whenever the name of Mosley is mentioned in print it is usually to vilify or in some way ridicule his memory. Occasionally, a brave journalist will praise him but when this is done the very same writer cannot help adding some comment about ‘Blackshirt bully boys’. There seems to exist a complete misunderstanding of what motivated the men and women who joined Mosley’s ranks.
I have some personal knowledge of this because my own father, James Whelan, was a member of both the BUF and Union Movement. He was also detained under the Emergency Powers Act, Defence Regulation 18B. One major influence on people turning to radical ideas was the tragedy of the First World War. My own father lost his father fighting on the Western Front (Pte John Joseph Whelan, 1st Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers, killed September 1918 ). Many who joined had either served on the Western Front or, like my own father, had lost someone close to them. The prospect of another war which would destroy, yet again, a generation of Europe’s youth appalled them. In addition, the effects of the economic collapse of the late 1920s and the mass unemployment of the 1930s caused young men and women of my father’s generation to look for more radical solutions.
Some turned to communism, others to fascism. The people who were at the core membership of the BUF and Union Movement were never, even from the earliest times, narrow nationalists. My father always detested the ‘little Englanders’. He understood, like all those who served the Movement, the real meaning of patriotism. Another part of his motivation in joining the BUF was Mosley’s attack on the Black and Tan atrocities in Ireland. My father always supported the idea of a united Ireland. He was also an admirer of T.E. Lawrence and the Arab world in general.
In fact, Eastern societies always fascinated him, especially Japan, and he read many books about Eastern religions. I read recently of the BUF policy on animal rights. I am not sure how aware my father was of this when he joined but it is something for which he would have had strong support. I believe that my father was typical of the serious-minded people who joined and stayed in the Movement, even when their freedom was taken away.
So why the term ‘Blackshirt bully boys’? Well, there was certainly plenty of violence involved whenever the BUF or Union Movement held meetings. Over the period he was involved, my father was punched, kicked, beaten with clubs, shot at and attacked with a machete (by Spanish communists at Hull docks, I believe).
The following is an excerpt from Jeffrey Hamm’s book Action Replay and recalls an incident where my father was involved.
“In September 1949, a particularly successful meeting in Bradford provoked the Yorkshire communists to lay on a warm reception committee for me when I returned a fortnight later. They brought in heavy reinforcements from Leeds and at one stage they backed a heavy lorry into our platform, which was gallantly defended by two old friends, Jimmy Whelan from Manchester and Norman Heys, a native of Accrington but then living in Brighouse. (I have lost touch with Jimmy, and I was sad to hear of Norman's death in September 1980). Jimmy had recently had his teeth out and was wearing a set of dentures; as the situation grew more menacing I saw him take them out and carefully deposit them in a tin which he slipped into his pocket, ready for action. Norman grew increasingly impatient at the antics of the mob and was muttering to me, out of the corner of his mouth: "I'll shift this lot in a minute". He could have done so, single-handed, because he was a great bull of a man who knew no fear but I restrained him as I did not want the meeting to break up in disorder. When we eventually closed it, we found that we were in a cul-de-sac and that the only way out was through the mob in front of us. "What do we do now?", my friends inquired of me. There was only one answer: we go through them. We walked up to them and I politely asked them to excuse us. This so astonished them that they obligingly parted and made way for us. We walked through them and were away before it occurred to any of them to attack us. The golden rule on such occasions is to follow the advice which Corporal Jones used to tender to Captain Mainwaring, and "don't panic". To run away would not only be cowardly but suicidal; a steady walk is the correct procedure. Self-confidence is a valuable asset which has extracted many of us from difficult and dangerous situations”.
The calmness and bravery displayed here is typical of the many tales my dad told me. Also the humour, in the face of what must have been a frightening situation. He was, until the end of his days, a fierce enemy of communism and staunch supporter of Mosley and his ideals. For many years I had assumed the ideals my father had fought for had been forgotten. In the 1970s and 1980s, I observed the emergence of organisations like the National Front and later the British National Party. I have to say, I was not in the least bit impressed by these people. They seemed to represent the very narrow-minded nationalists my father had always ridiculed, the BNP being the foremost present-day culprits. They do not have the answers to the problems which face us. In fact, they do not even have the questions. The NF just appear to want to rid the world of all minorities who do not fit their bizarre definition of what it means to be British.

I am involved in a music project called The Pride of Wolves. In certain aspects of our music we like to express our feelings about the present political situation. In some of our songs I have included quotes from The Alternative and from The European, Mosley's essays on Europe.
The music scene in which we are involved, the Neo-Folk, martial scene, can be quite political. One band of particular interest is German band Von Thronstahl, fronted by Josef Maria Klumb. The concept of Europe a Nation features prominently in his work as does the history and ideas of fascism. As a result of this, attempts have been made to place his music on ‘the index’, the list of forbidden publications and works in Germany. These attempts have failed and Von Thronstahl continue to produce very interesting and varied music.
In 1979, Jean Jacques Burnel of The Stranglers (my all-time favourite band) did a solo LP called Euroman Cometh, which deals with the ideas of Europe as a nation. The Pride of Wolves next CD will be called Imperium Europa and is partly about the historical concept of Europe a Nation.
We hope to release this later in the year.
© David Whelan 2009

Robert Edwards Interview

2009-04-05T01:49:00.000-07:00

Interview with Blood and Honour magazine (published in B&H issue no 41)

B&H Question: Mr Edwards, what is European Action and what exactly motivates you?

Answer: European Action is the title of both our bi-monthly newspaper and an informal association of those who remain loyal to the ideas and policies of Sir Oswald Mosley. By his policies, I mean his post-war thinking on European unity which he proclaimed as 'Europe a Nation' way back in 1948. European Action has several supporters who were members of Mosley's Union Movement, including myself. It was the inspiring leadership of Mosley that motivates us today, along with our belief that he was right on so many issues. We also believe his ideas were well before their time, particularly the economic arguments in relation to the international banking system. Mosley predicted the problems we are faced with today. That is why we carry on the struggle that began in our youth. It is far from over.

B&H Question: You were once jailed for drawing the cartoon strips for a comic called The Stormer. Can you explain the circumstances that brought this about?

Answer: It was way back in 1981 when I drafted the cartoons. In retrospect, it was more of an experiment in bad taste than anything else. I suppose I would now be considered the Russell Brand of the cartooning pen. I was given a twelve months prison sentence at Snaresbrook Crown Court in East London and I served just over nine months. I remember the wording of the original summons - “material likely to incite racial hatred ...”. There was never any evidence that these comics actually incited anyone to harm or injure others but I do admit the cartoons were a bit over the top. I tend to avoid depicting Jews or black people in caricature. The risks are too great and sitting in a prison cell is a complete waste of time. Martyrdom is often short-lived in the memory of others, besides.
As a cartoonist, I do find myself severely restricted. There have been many more examples of cartoons causing serious controversy since then. I am sure they will not be the last.

B&H Question: When did you first get involved in politics?

Answer: My father was a Welsh miner and a communist, so I was brought up in a highly charged political household. My father admired the Soviet Union and especially so since he served in the Royal Navy on the Arctic Convoys to Russia. As a lad I began to form an admiration for Hitler's Germany and this tended to cause a rift between us which went on for years. At the best of times it was a controlled rivalry. I learned very quickly that communists do not engage in debate nor tolerate anything that challenges their political mission. But my regard for Hitler's Germany evolved into something more British after reading The Fascists in Britain by Colin Cross. I was still a schoolboy.
After leaving school, I joined the Army at 17 and, on my way home on leave, I stopped in Victoria, London, and found myself at 302 Vauxhall Bridge Road ... the European Bookshop and the offices of Mosley's Union Movement. It was a fateful event that changed the course of my life. My political apprenticeship was to begin from that point in my life.

B&H Question: What aspect of Mosley's ideas inspired you most? Was it anything like the pre-war British Union of Fascists, for example?

Answer: After reading The Fascists in Britain, it was understandably easy to associate Mosley with the fascism of the 1930s and to assume that he remain an unreconstructed Blackshirt. After reading Union Movement literature in the comfort of a barrack room I found a wealth of advanced thinking that transcended the fascism of the Thirties. To me, Mosley was a forward-looking genius with answers to everything. I was given a paperback book called Mosley-Right or Wrong? containing over 300 questions and answers on a plethora of subjects. I had never read anything so brilliant. It was a blueprint for the reconstruction of Britain and Europe spelled out in the most easily read style. I still have that first copy after all these years ... kept together with tape and a strong elastic band. Europe, Faith and Plan was another great Mosley book and I quickly became a National European believing strongly in the necessity of complete European unification with common government and an economy that would be self-sufficient. Mosley explained that he had gone beyond both fascism and the old-style democracy to a new synthesis which he described as 'European Socialism'.

B&H Question: Why exactly did Mosley go beyond the fascism of the British Union of Fascists? Can you explain how fascism had become out-dated and unnecessary after all the struggle and sacrifices that he and many thousands of his pre-war supporters had endured, including being imprisoned without charge or trial under Defence Regulation 18B?

Answer: There were two main reasons. Firstly, there was the fact that Britain had lost its Empire as a consequence of the Second World War. The British Empire had been the means whereby the BUF's Empire Insulation Policy could create the mechanism for insulating the British worker from under-cutting by unfair international trading that used overseas cheap labour from countries outside the Empire. We had all the overseas resources and access to important minerals, for example. The British Empire could easily have been self-sufficient and our workers protected.
Britain, alone and without Empire, could not possibly compete against cheap sweated labour from the East, as it can not do so today. We have lost our major means of manufacturing production. That makes us vulnerable and dependent on others. And so Mosley revised his thinking.
The second reason was the resolve that Europeans should never fight each other again and European unification would be the means of preventing further wars. Mosley always claimed that he had no blood on his hands from the 'Brothers' War', as he termed it, being interned in 1940 for his campaign for a negotiated peace. He had fought in the First World War in trench and in the air and had seen the senseless slaughter of much of his generation. He was resolved that this should not occur again. Certain interests were intent on war with Germany and so the inevitable happened with appalling consequences for all of Europe which was then carved up between the Americans and the Russians. What lessons do we learn from this? As Mosley said, “The worst were ever united and the best were ever divided”. He called for an extension of patriotism ... to regard Europe a Nation as our country and to fight for its liberation

B&H Question: What is the position of European Action on the subject of race? Are you, for example, white supremacists? I ask this because many still regard Mosley as a racist.

Answer: That is a complete distortion of the facts and possibly something that holds us back in the public eye. Mosley rejected the idea that some races were above other races and that they should be there to be exploited. We had all been victims of international finance, as we remain so today. Races are neither superior nor inferior to each other ... they are different. That was his fundamental position on the subject. He was the first to openly campaign against coloured mass immigration in the early 1950s because he could see it for what it really was. A British government had reneged on a deal with the West Indies, preferring to trade with Batista's Cuba, with the result that its sugar industry collapsed at home. A further consequence was mass unemployment there. A British Nationality Act then opened the flood-gates to what became a large pool of cheap coloured labour with many West Indians willing to do menial jobs for low wages. It was always dictated by 'the markets' and the interests of international finance. The result is a bogus 'multiculturalism', as if it were something desired and perfectly natural. We had all been the victims of powerful forces motivated solely by profit. We should always look at the larger picture that way and not be so quick to attack non-white people simply for being pawns in the same game.

B&H Question: You say that you support the idea of a National Party of Europe. What is the origin of this idea and how do you propose to bring it about? For example, there is a European National Front and there have been attempts to form nationalist blocs in the European Parliament. How are you so different?

Answer: We are different on important fundamental points. In 1962, Mosley attended the Conference of Venice set up to bring together leaders of political parties that would agree on common action by pooling their resources into a single political party for ALL Europeans. Included were the British, German, Italian and Belgian delegates. They all agreed to use the title NATIONAL PARTY OF EUROPE and to eventually drop their separate national titles. It was not just a confederation of European patriots but much more. It was a recognition that Europe should be one with a single, unitary party to campaign to this end.
News of this reverberated throughout the Continent and one of Mosley's National Party of Europe meetings was savagely attacked in Trafalgar Square in 1962 by a coalition of communist and Jewish organisations. These attacks continued in other towns and cities of Britain with the collusion of Government, the police often failing to keep order.
The result was disastrous for Mosley's movement as the conspiracy of the Establishment press along with Mosley's enemies turned it against Mosley, claiming that his presence alone incited this violence. He called off his campaign.
Only Mosley and the Belgian, Jean Thiriart, remained true to the European idea while the Germans and Italians reverted to their separate nationalistic positions in their separate enclaves. Yes, it failed but the real achievement had been that these separate parties had come together in the first place in order to sign an agreement that, to my mind, still stands today as a manifesto for a revival in the future.
With all respects to these gentlemen but the European National Front is an umbrella grouping in intent. It is not a single unitary force but, rather, a collection of separate nationalistic parties that find a common thread in parts of their ideology. They can still go their separate ways if they consider their own national interests above European solidarity. This has occurred when blocs are formed in the European Parliament and then they fall apart because one group does not like another group. They are trying to resuscitate this today but many of the same groups are involved and nationalist rivalry will always rear its head. As Mosley said, “Twenty pygmies can not make a giant”. And, of course, marriages of convenience rarely hold together for long.
We are different because we transcend the old nation-states and do not cling so much to the past. We are for one Europe, for one people and one system for the benefit of all.
How do we achieve this? It is hard work but we need to educate and inspire with a revolutionary idea. That is where our paper, European Action, comes into the equation. It is the flagship of the idea, carrying it out to those who are open-minded enough to grasp the significance of the Mosley message.
But mark my words before anyone should think we want to submerge us all into a common, grey morass. We want to preserve the great diversity of the European people, their culture and traditions, and not imitate America with its 'melting pot', leading to a coffee-coloured nation. Our call for unification has a major purpose and that is to find strength in union, pooling our sovereignties in order to create a single, powerful sovereignty that can stand alone without fear of anything. Within this, we can organise and give all Europeans what they want, which is the freedom to conduct their own affairs free of the vagaries of international trade and the exploitative nature of international finance.
It is a message worthy of the best revolutionaries. We began long ago and so we continue today, drawing in new blood and fresh minds that can grasp the importance of Mosley's message.
We say, “Britain first in Europe a nation” ... the idea that we do not lose sight of the land from whence we came, as we go forward together into that great extension of patriotism – Europe, the coming new force in the world.

B&H Question: What is your position regarding the Holocaust of European Jewry and laws in some European countries that criminalise any criticism or revision of the accepted version of events? Do you believe that there was a German policy for exterminating European Jewry?

Answer: This comes under the category of war crimes and atrocities which still go on today. I would first argue that the Holocaust was not something unique in history and that there have been many holocausts throughout history equally worthy of our sympathy and attention. The Zionists push this too far with the result that this claim of 'uniqueness' only offends other peoples and racial groups that have also suffered horrific genocide. For example, the Palestinians have suffered terribly for more than half a century, being murdered by the Zionists on a daily basis. They pick on children, the frail and the weak. The Gaza Strip is virtually a concentration camp with the Zionist IDF behaving like sadistic camp guards. They torture and harass Palestinians on a level that is undoubtedly inhumane to the extreme.
And yet we are bombarded with Holocaust material on screen and on the airwaves. Yes, we know all about it, so why keep reminding us to the point that many are sick and tired of it all? The Zionists would like the entire world to feel guilt but the point is, we in Britain had nothing to do with it. It is a German issue which the German people should deal with and sort out. Their government makes the laws that incarcerate citizens for questioning the Holocaust. This is persecution for a thought crime which is something totally unacceptable in a free society. The answer would be to remove the politicians who make these laws and replace them with German patriots who care about their own people.
Which brings us to Holocaust Day. They should change the name to 'Day of All Holocausts in Human History'. That would receive my sympathy without hesitation. But I would rather focus on the terrible things happening today.
Mosley said, “Let all things be discussed and truth prevail”. That should be the criterion on which people approach the subject of the Holocaust. I am not an expert on the subject so I can not answer your last question. That is a matter for accredited historians with open minds, along with forensic scientists and other experts. They should be free to carry out investigations wherever they choose.
I would not use the subject as a political issue at all. I would simply object to laws in some countries that criminalise opinion simply because it does not conform. This is something they attributed to the Hitler era. What does that say about the Zionists and their acolytes?
I do not want to sound like an echo of Basil Fawlty with, “Don't mention the war”, but Europe still needs to heal the wounds of past conflicts. Reconciliation requires that we Europeans treat each other with equal respect and the memory of the Second World War should be balanced with a recognition of the decency and honour of the German soldier during that time. Having said that, I feel that any memory of the Holocaust belongs exclusively to the memorial at Yad Vashem in Israel where those who wish go for a visit can do so.

B&H Questions: What do you call yourselves in the context of your political struggle? How are you different to other patriotic groups?

Answer: We are National Europeans and our creed is European Socialism. Both terms were created by Oswald Mosley when leader of Union Movement. The term 'National European' came to the fore during the negotiations for establishing the National Party of Europe in the early 1960s. It should not be confused with 'European nationalists', which is sometimes used to describe the various petty nationalists within Europe.
The National European regards Europe as his nation just as a British person regards himself British, whether he be English, Scots or Welsh. He is no less an Englishman for that. National Europeans have long subscribed to the slogan, 'Britain First in Europe a Nation', which speaks for itself.
The days have long gone when patriotism meant sticking to the past and the status quo. It was long used as an alibi for sending the ordinary man to war and slaughter for a cause that was not his own. It is currently being used to send our soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan in a quarrel that has more to do with stealing the mineral resources of other people, namely oil. The Americans even instituted a Patriot Act, used to persecute their own people.
In my view, patriotism entails doing the best for your own people. 'Of one's fathers' is the meaning of the original Greek word (patrios) for patriotism and so one would say that it concerns the people as a family going back in time. It has nothing to do with oligarchies, aristocracies or the privileged few. It is the ordinary people as a family bound in common blood that is the basis of patriotic sentiment.
We also say this of Europe as a great family bound in blood ... the blood of the European peoples. It was too often spilled but now it will be preserved in a metaphorical sense, in kinship and in brotherhood. This is the meaning of the extension of patriotism in Mosley's concept of Europe a Nation.

Copyright© Robert Edwards 2009
For more details write to: European Action, PO Box 415, Ramsgate, Kent CT11 9WW www.europeanaction.com

2009-03-25T00:10:00.000-07:00

A WELSH ICON

JEFFREY HAMM - SECRETARY OF MOSLEY'S UNION MOVEMENT

www.welshicons.org.uk/html/jeffrey_hamm.php

Jeffrey Hamm is honoured here on this Welsh heritage site. He was intensely proud to be Welsh. His eloquence as a public speaker can be attributable to the Welsh love of prose.

False 'European' Flags

2009-03-10T02:26:00.000-07:00

by Robert Edwards

Published in European Action No 18, September/October 2008

A reader sends me a copy of part of a newsletter from the miniscule Dagenham-based neo-nazi group, the League of St George. This two men and a dog outfit are imposters, using the slogan ‘Europe a Nation’ in a complete distortion of Oswald Mosley’s grand vision.
Europe a Nation, as most readers of this paper know, means the complete integration of Europe as a single political and economic force. There is nothing equivocal about that. ... and definitely no compromise.
However, the League of St George Führer idol worshippers have latched onto news of a recent press conference in Vienna convened by an alliance of extreme nationalist parties including representatives from Austria’s Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, the Vlaams Belang from Belgium, Jean Marie Le Pen’s Front National and the obscure Ataka party from Bulgaria. All of them are Euro-sceptic to the core. Heinz-Christian Strache of the FPÖ declared, “We call on patriots of all European countries to unite behind our banner, only together can we solve our problems”. These problems, incidentally, concern Muslims and immigration but little else.
Groupings within the European Parliament regularly form themselves into working blocs with titles that imply solidarity but all these groups are nothing more than very loose confederations of separate parties. The recent call for ‘solidarity’ is nothing but a substitute for the failed ‘Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty’ group (ITS). It failed because it was extreme nationalist to a man (and woman) and therefore basically hostile to a truly united Europe. The constituent parties had few other things in common. A spat between Alessandra Mussolini MEP and the Romanian Partidul Romania More finished it off.
The parties involved in the latest call for solidarity on ‘certain issues’ come from the same stable and are as far away from Mosley’s idea of Europe a Nation as UKIP is from the present-day European Union.
Incidentally, the ‘Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty’ group set up a few years ago in order to qualify for a big EU cash handout was composed of ... wait for it ... Front National of France, the Flemish Vlaams Belang, Austrian Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, Alterniva Sociale and Movimento Sociale Flamma Tricolore — the same people, more or less. (See Letters Page of EA, No 10, May/June 2007). That group also included UKIP renegade, Ashley Mote MEP.
The League of St George has twisted it all to imply that a ‘patriotic European political party’ is about to be launched and compares it to the Conference of Venice in 1962 which launched the National Party of Europe. It is nothing of the sort. The LSG neo-nazis have never understood the true meaning of Europe a Nation and use it as an occasional slogan for the bringing together of far-right reactionary nationalist groups that have a long record of saying, “No to Europe”. Islamophobia is their only common thread, as with the League.
Europe a Nation will never be built by the far-right because Mosley’s concept transcended both left and right in today’s politics. Essentially, it means an extension of patriotism, beyond the old nation-states ... which these far-right groups are incapable of embracing.
The League of St George ‘Aryan supermen’ like to call themselves fascists which displays a complete ignorance of Mosley’s position after 1945. When he first declared ‘Europe a Nation’ in 1948 he made it clear that he had gone beyond both fascism and the old-style democracy to a new synthesis based on full European unity. For that reason, anyone who promotes ‘fascism’ is going against the post-war idea and the essence of it, Europe a Nation. We are post-fascist in every sense of the term.
Only European Action, with its promotion of the idea for a National Party of Europe, remains true to the cause for which many of us fought. We can do without these imposters who were never with us and these ten narrow nationalist groups within Europe because ten pygmies do not a giant make.

Say No To Obama

2009-03-01T03:30:00.000-08:00

by Robert Edwards

Published in European Action No 20

Late last year a British Government official said, “It will be very difficult to refuse any request from the United States with the new President in the person of Barack Obama”. There is a word that begins with N and ends with O. It is the easiest word in the English language and one that is strongly advised to any lady in distress, being pestered by, for example, a sex fiend. We should all have that choice under any other circumstances and that goes for British governments being pestered by American war mongers.
Barack Hussein Obama was hyped up by the Western media as a fresh change to the old order in Washington. His racial background suggested something revolutionary with all the media flash-backs to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and beyond. Millions of voters were conned that way because Obama is a complete fraud.
We could see this when he began to pick his team for the White House. It was said that Obama did not choose his aides but that his aides chose him. His chief of staff is Rahm Emanuel, an Israeli citizen, an ‘Israel First’ Zionist who served in the Israeli army. His father, Dr Benjamin Emanuel, is even more horrifying, having served in the Jewish terrorist group the Irgun during the 1931-1948 war against the Arabs and the British in Palestine. This is what Benjamin Emanuel had to say after his son was chosen:
In an interview with the Israeli paper, Ma'ariv, he was sure that his son's appointment would benefit Israel. “Obviously he will influence the President to be pro-Israel", he said. "Why wouldn't he be? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House”. This, from a man whose terrorist group bombed the King David Hotel and tortured and hanged British soldiers in the orange groves. The reference to Arabs is highly derogatory and reflects the Jewish supremacist view that Zionists have of, say, the Palestinians. Why should his son feel differently?
A fine beginning, you would say, but before Obama could enjoy a tour round the Oval Office as the guest of the then incumbent, Rahm Emanuel was forced to apologise on behalf of his arrogant father. Arab American organisations had raised holy hell, reminding him of their electoral support for Obama and the Muslim vote in general.
This is how the Arab/American and Muslim vote for Obama was thrown back in their faces. They must now regret having placed their trust in the man who promised big changes. It is nothing of the sort, of course. It is the same servile pro-Israel agenda as with the previous administrations, totally in thrall to the Jewish lobby in the United States and its immense financial clout.
Then there is the race issue. We have examples in Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice, both of them having enjoyed key positions and both putting the knife into the Arab world while doing somersaults for Israel. Why was it so difficult to imagine a person of negro ancestry in the office of President after those two?
A couple of white supremacists were caught in a bungled amateur conspiracy to assassinate Obama but the world continued on its axis as usual. There was no other fuss concerning negro origins. The misplaced euphoria was to die down as the facts emerged.
But that does not mean the blacks in America now rule that nation. Obama has sworn to back Israel up to the hilt and he surrounds himself with fervent pro-Israel advisers and administrators. The same power will hold sway in the White House.
As I write, the Israelis have begun their military offensive in Gaza killing hundreds of innocent Palestinians. Interestingly, the response from Obama has been strangely muted. I say ’strangely’ because he had much to say as the honoured guest at AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee) meetings, the main Jewish lobby organisation in the United States. Here, Presidents of the United States must come along to prostrate themselves before a power, both financial and political, that can elevate or seal the fate of the careers of those reaching for the top. Obama’s reported ambivalence was swept away when he declared that America would stand by Israel through thick and thin, that it was America’s obligation to support Israel no matter what ... and, most significantly, that it would seek to preserve Israel as a JEWISH STATE. Those were his words that earned him rapturous applause at this Jewish lobby gathering, the purpose of which was to endorse Obama as a true friend of Israel. Using the word ’Jewish’ in this context suggested he knew exactly the right buttons to push. His new advisers serve him well.
It is now recognised by most people that America is unable to place any kind of pressure on Israel, in order to prevent the excesses of this brutal state and, further, that the United Nations is as ineffectual as the old League of Nations, formed after the First World War. This, despite the countless resolutions passed by the UN in condemning this serial violator of human rights. Israel simply adopts its stony-faced attitude of “mind your own business - we are only protecting ourselves - don’t interrupt the massacre of these dangerous Arabs”.
The world’s reaction to the latest air strikes by American-built F16 bomber aircraft on civilian areas had been very encouraging and noticeably vocal around the world where Palestinian solidarity groups continue to flourish despite the Zionist propaganda machine in the Western media. Incidentally, the use by Israel of F-16 bombers and the Apache gun-ship helicopters against civilians was only made possible through American grant aids amounting to $3 billion of US taxpayers’ money given away annually. Only recently, a deal was struck with the Raytheon Corporation to supply Israel with thousands of bunker-busting missiles. All of this makes the United States directly complicit in Israel’s murderous activities.
Surely all this violates America’s own laws on arms sales legislation, specifically the Arms Export Control Act that specifically prohibits the export sale of arms for purposes other than use within a country’s borders for its own self-defence.
Nothing that has happened recently can possibly be described as meeting that criterion. Since when were targets such as TV broadcasting stations, universities, police stations and residential areas qualified to be areas for ‘self defence’ attack. They are not and never could be. This was a clear violation of US law and the United States knew this before it occurred.
The claim is that Hamas is completely responsible for rocket attacks into Israel from Gaza and so Hamas is allegedly targeted specifically, even though they are only ‘suspected’ of operating within densely populated civilian areas. That is the morally feeble alibi for mass murder on a wide military scale.
The complicity of the United States is total when you consider that they knew this military attack on Palestinian civilians was to take place before it occurred. This has been confirmed and the implications are unthinkable. How deep and how thorough is Jewish Zionist influence within the US Administration and what difference can Obama bring in his new exalted position as Commander in Chief? Israel’s crimes are the crimes of the United States ... and heavily in league within other areas such as non-compliance with signing up to international war crimes tribunals (the World Court) for the trying of war criminals from many recent conflicts around the world. Both Israel and the United States could fill countless defence stands at The Hague, cramming the place with the most monstrous specimens of sub-humanity but they avoid that possibility like the plague.
Then there is the use of the American veto used constantly in the Security Council of the United Nations whenever another country attempts to censure Israel. It is like a knee-jerk reaction that does not require any real consideration from them. It is automatic. If the veto threat does not work then there is raw, naked military aggression that has made the lives of innocent millions a complete misery (nay, a hell) — all because the United States will never allow Israel to be brought to account for the violations they are both a party to and for which they never offer any apology.
For all that, there is a solidarity movement around the world that does not forget the terrible plight of the Palestinians and especially those in the concentration camp that is Gaza. It is militant and it can bring thousands onto the streets to demonstrate before the eyes of the world. This positive response is especially so in the United States where its new President turns his head away for the benefit of his Zionist collaborators. How does an incoming President handle the Middle East with the Zionists in the White House pulling all his strings? He ignores it ... so far!
After all, he has inherited the worst recession since the Thirties and it is getting worse. Most of those caught out defrauding on a massive scale during this time are Jews. The American economy is in free-fall, collapsing before our very eyes with three out of five of its largest banks wiped out as a result of the world economic crisis. Millions have lost their savings, unemployment is set to rise even further and prices are rocketing. With Ford and General Motors on the brink of liquidation, many more will be thrown onto the human scrap-heap. America is ripe for civil war.
Obama could then say he has more pressing matters than the events in Gaza as the United States lurches like the Titanic after hitting an iceberg. Alas, the new President will not be able to deliver the changes he promised for, by Spring, the crisis will have worsened to the point that the Dollar will be replaced as the world regulatory currency. It has been predicted by political scientists that America will then disintegrate as a direct consequence.
Other countries, notably China and Russia along with Europe, will reform the world’s financial systems. China’s gold reserves amount to over $2 trillion, being the world’s largest creditor to the United States. America’s role as the only global superpower will come to an end as a result of this economic collapse with others only too ready to change the rules for a new power game to be played out on a more level playing field.
With the United States reduced to a fractured set of impoverished autonomous states, the position of Israel will become very precarious, to say the least. This will make it even more volatile and an increased danger to the region. Therefore, there must be a push for a political solution with the full weight of a united Arab world behind it ... the one-state solution being the only meaningful path to peace — meaning the dismantling of the JEWISH STATE, which has never meant anything other than Jewish supremacy in the region. Let us hope that it will be a secular Palestine returned to all who belong in it by history and by tradition, which means Palestinian!
President Obama’s final act will be the maintenance of the ‘special relationship’ with Britain, so long a collaborator in war crimes in both Iraq and Afghanistan. British governments have always felt an obligation to America when it comes to offering the helping hand. Sometimes this verges on the embarrassingly compliant in a sort of inferior servile way.
Recently, British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, could not bring himself to condemn Israel nor to admit that military retaliation was disproportionate. This is the man who once said that anyone who attacks ‘his people’ would have to answer to him. No, not the British people ... but the Jewish people, meaning Israel. How he would fit in so nicely in the Oval Office performing little tricks in the style of Tony Blair, rolling over to have his belly tickled in an ecstatic display of solidarity with his Zionist brethren.
America, having lost the war in Iraq, is pulling out to saturate Afghanistan with military personnel, its presence being to serve as guardians of the proposed pipelines from the Caspian Sea area. Never mind the rubbish about the ‘war on terror’. They want more British troops there, as well, and the onus is completely on our very own Gordon Brown who will no doubt oblige despite previous pledges to withdraw sometime this year.
Just for once, he should say NO and break for ever this subservience to American interests. He owes it to those British soldiers who have died in vain, died for the unscrupulous oil executives who plotted these wars from the very beginning. Again and again, we say our true interests and our loyalties

Israel is not Europe

2009-01-23T01:41:00.000-08:00

by Robert Edwards

Published in EA No 8, January/February 2006

In a previous issue of European Action, the front page heading for an article was “Turkey is not Europe”, the text of which attempted to define a European identity based on our history and culture. Turkey belongs to a region known as Central Asia. Geographically it is not Europe. That was a good starting point, the rest followed.
Israel, on the other hand, is a state founded on a complete rejection of Europe ... Zionism being a political ideology of the Nineteenth Century that rejected the assimilation of Jews within European society, some of whose disciples attacked all European Gentiles as being afflicted with a congenital disease known as “anti-Semitism”. Christian Europe was picked out especially for this vile canard. They claimed this condition is incurable with most Zionists still maintaining this view today. The theory is that anti-Semitism is endemic in Europeans and the only guarantee of Jewish survival is to create a state to which all the world’s Jews can go and seek protection.
For this reason, I would like to question a creeping trend that is attempting to incorporate Israel and Zionism into mainstream European social and political life. How does a Middle East state, out of all the other Middle East states, suddenly become a paid-up member of the European Club? In days of old they were usually black-balled.
The longest standing anomaly has been the Eurovision Song Contest with Israelis warbling alongside genuine Europeans singers. No one questions this absurdity because such a critical observation would instantly prove the “anti-Semitism” of the observer. So no one says a word in contradiction, except us.
There is a real danger that the very idea of being a European is being traded for a cosmopolitan internationalism. By that I mean people from outside our borders are treating us as a convenient market to plunder and attach themselves at their will. By so doing they are undermining our true sense of identity as well as our heritage.
Another case is the convicted fraudster, David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan chief and now labelling himself a “European American”. Duke served time in the United States for embezzling funds from his political supporters. He is also an addicted casino gambler. Duke is currently touring former Soviet bloc countries preaching to the locals at considerable expense. Who pays his expenses? His embezzled supporters, the CIA or the State Department?
It is the use of the term “European American” that presents the biggest problem. Before then, he was a white American and this was widely used by Americans of European descent. However, Duke’s new term for a white American implies that he has a God-given right to speak on behalf of all Europeans in another part of the world to his own. He does not ... and he should be shown the way back to the United States where he truly belongs. You are either American or you are a European because these are two different worlds with whole sets of different values; there can never be a hybridisation of the two. We are coming back to this trend towards a global mono-culture that is currently being pressed by the American financial imperialists and Duke is either knowingly or unwittingly fostering this with his “European American” campaign. It is undermining the future sovereignty of a Europe that seeks a position in the world in its own right ... without the assistance of Americans, I must stress.
The parallel with Israel is obvious. Both states were founded on a rejection of European influences and broke away as such. The Americans reverted to a form of materialistic barbarism while Israel established a racist state based on the idea that all non-Jews wanted to kill them all. Thus, anti-Semitism as “the European disease” became the alibi for some of the worst atrocities committed since the Second World War. It was the Palestinians who were to suffer.
The leader of the British National Party has taken up the cause of Israel after years of trying to expose the wicked Jewish influence in the British media and poking fun at the “Holohoax”, as he then dubbed it. The term “wicked” is now reserved for another religious group, like swapping the latest designer fashion for another. The intention is the same but without the dreaded “anti-Semitic” label.
The BNP’s line is that Israeli Jews are just like us Europeans and hate Arabs and other Muslims with the same intensity as the leaders of that party. Well, that is a bit of an over-simplification but nevertheless fair. It is this idea that Zionist Jews are Europeans like the rest of us that goes against the grain of all logical thinking unless, of course, an inevitable hidden agenda pushes this view in the interests of Israel alone. How convenient would it be to have the full economic and military backing of a rising united European power, as well as that of the United States, propped up by a powerful Jewish lobby. Then the Zionists could fulfil the prophesy of a Greater Israeli Empire “extending from the Nile to the Euphrates”. That is why the Israelis want to involve themselves in European events and not through any brotherly love for the “congenital anti-Semites” of old.
Another recent anomaly has been Israel’s participation in the European Cup football fixtures, playing against genuine European teams. What on earth does the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) think it is doing? Have they ever looked at a map of the world? You would think Tel Aviv was somewhere between Paris and Warsaw and not in what is historically Arabia.
The Israeli flag which features at these games is both a religious and racist symbol that could offend many people with sympathies for the plight of the Palestinians and, as such, should be banned at football matches. It is the symbol of the murderous oppression of innocent people in Gaza at this very moment in time.
Israel has the closest ties with the United States where the new leader of the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, has declared her unconditional support for the Jewish state. She stated recently, “America and Israel share an unbreakable bond: in peace and war; and in prosperity and in hardship”. That tells you everything about the differences between Democrats and Republicans. None whatsoever, as far as Israel is concerned.
So where does this latest Zionist affinity with Europe stand in relation to the bonding with Uncle Sam? Israel was once considered as the back door for the Americans into the Middle East after the British were forced to leave Palestine under pressure from President Truman. At the time, the Foreign Office correctly perceived the State of Israel to be the beginning of the end of British predominance in the Middle East.
It was not until the fiasco of Suez in 1956 that the total humiliation of the British in the Middle East was completed and the British Empire declared officially dead.
We also remember and commemorate in this year of 2007, the torture and murder of British servicemen by the terrorist Stern Gang sixty years ago. A justifiable protest at any football match between Israeli and authentic European teams would be to display large banners reminding television viewers of the terrorist connection and, principally, the Stern Gang. See how the “European connection” holds together then.
As I said, the leader of the British National Party thinks that Israeli Jews are just like us, meaning, of course, that we share so much in common. He is oblivious to the true nature of the Zionist mindset that regards all non-Jews as potential genocidal maniacs out to get them. In that sense, the Zionists are on another planet while we prefer this one.
The BNP’s National Press Officer, former Tory Dr Phil Edwards, responded to a colleague of mine, “As far as I’m concerned Jews are white people of European ancestry and have made a significant contribution to civilisation and Western progress. No doubt there are a few who have ambitions for power and wealth but to typecast them all this way is a mistake. Instead of this obsession with the ‘Jewish question’ we must be able to debate their agenda without being typecast as anti-Semites”. Former Vlaams Blok leader, Filip De Winter, was quoted as saying similar in a Sunday newspaper but his party was condemned and banned as ‘racist’ some time later. It re-emerged as Vlaams Belang.
Quite so, Dr Edwards but it is leading figures in your BNP labelling any critics of Israel as “hysterical anti-Semites” that are the real culprits and, no doubt, this article will be viewed as the product of such. But we are talking of Israel and Zionism ... and not Jews in general. Anti-Semitism was always understood to mean condemning Jews simply because they are Jews, which is an irrational and stupid thing to do. No, Dr Edwards, we judge people entirely on their actions and past record and, in this case, the state of Israel and the ideology that founded it.
It is for the simple reason that the early Zionists rejected Europe and assimilation that present-day Zionists could never be considered as loyal and true Europeans as we understand the phrase. The state of Israel is exclusive and racist in the sense that it is a Jewish state for the Jewish people, despite a token Arab representation. The Arabs are second-class citizens in Israel with no property rights. The Israelis are unique in several ways but principally they seem to be allowed to practice apartheid in the region with the West simply looking on.
For all these reasons, when I had explained how Turkey is not part of Europe, there is the issue of Turkey’s human rights record still being debated by European governments. The record of human rights violations in Israel and the Palestinian territories is probably worse than that of Turkey and if not, no less so.
For this reason, Israel is not fit to be part of a European Union if that is what some Israeli politicians are considering. Being geographically outside historical and cultural Europe is but one consideration.
So let us begin by throwing Israel out of the Eurovision Song Contest whose last winner was a weird transsexual. Let us bring European football back to an exclusively European involvement ... otherwise why call it the European Cup? At present it is actually the “Israeli/European” Cup.
Israelis must be excluded from top secret sessions of inter-governmental defence and foreign policy in Europe and they must certainly be excluded from any civil contracts involving security in London’s public places ... London Underground, for example.
Israel’s intelligence services must be banned from operations in all countries of Europe, especially in regard to Mossad’s openly declared policy of targeted assassinations anywhere in the world. This is intolerable and a threat to the lives of all our citizens.
The idea of dual nationality must be included in the debate. With Israel outside Europe, how can any Zionist living in a European country profess complete loyalty to his land of abode when, at the same time, the state of Israel must come uppermost in his mind? One’s loyalty is always compromised under such an arrangement and more so when you are also an Israeli citizen. After all, all that it requires is that you are a Jew anywhere in the world.
Our Europe a Nation must practice complete religious tolerance as declared in our points of policy. But Zionism is a secular political ideology trading on a religious myth ... the bogus Law of Return. It is this ideology that has wormed its way into the White House and Downing Street, through the mainstream political parties in Westminster in the form of the “Friends of Israel”, whereby to “get on” you need to be affiliated whatever the colour of your politics.
A unified European Defence Force must never be tainted by any association with the Israeli Defence Force, a criminal organisation that seems to have no control over its trigger-happy soldiers. Perhaps some admirers of Israel need to see filming of Israeli soldiers shooting Palestinian children in the head, whose only crime has been to exist and who are committing the appalling terrorist act of walking to school or playing in the street.
I would say to them, no, they are nothing like us Europeans. But to tell them that is like banging your head against a brick wall, as is the custom in another part of the world outside Europe.

2009-01-22T23:52:00.000-08:00

SCRAP NATO - DEFEND EUROPE

Published in EA No 19, November/December 2008

by Robert Edwards

‘The West’ was the collective term for a part of the world that featured in the global ideological polarisation between capitalism and communism during the period 1945 up to 1990 — known as the Cold War.
It was ‘the West’ that claimed to be an entity representing freedom and democracy with the communism of ‘the East’ being its ever-present threat and competitor for world hegemony. This global polarisation had one big effect upon the nations of Europe — it divided us very neatly along very clear and sharp ideological lines. Perhaps too sharply defined.
From the very beginning, we had an American military presence on one half of European soil with the Soviet Union claiming the other half. From this, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was established standing firmly against the Warsaw Pact countries under the Russians. It has now been revealed that the Russian military threat to the western part of Europe was exaggerated, primarily, by the Americans simply because the Americans needed an alibi for their presence outside their own national boundaries. This, despite the big con of Lend-Lease when Churchill gave away permanent military bases in Britain in exchange for a load of rusty war vessels. The money we owed the Americans for that world war has only recently been paid back to them in full, so not so much about how grateful we should feel, please. It is always ‘business as usual’ for the Americans
Why do we still have NATO when the Warsaw Pact ‘threat’ no longer exists? The fact is, ‘the West’ is no longer, nor probably ever was, a truly collective partnership of like-minded freedom-loving nations on a mission from God. ‘The West’ is, in fact, the United States as a unilateral super power with its satellite states divided and conquered long ago. In short, it is a lie.
When the Americans pronounce on anything or threaten anyone, they insist they speak on behalf of the rest of us — ‘the West’. They insist we go along with everything they do because we are all ‘of the West’. I have a more honest approach to all of this. We are not of ‘the West’ but of Europe, a completely different land, culture and set of values to that materialistic, sabre-rattling, gung-ho land of the gun-owner and the vulgar hamburger-munching ‘red neck’ or Texan oil executive.
‘The West’ or the ’Occident’ exists only in contrast to Oriental civilisation. It is its only valid context. Europe and America have never been truly represented as a single entity — only in the imaginations of Washington war planners and their poodles and other lap dogs in Whitehall. We can now include the present incumbent of the Palais de l’Élysée and the offices of the Bundeskanzlerin in this shameless bunch of tail-wagging, well-trained dogs that yap to the American tune. The President of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, is a traitor to Europe for recently permitting American missiles on European soil.
For this we have NATO maintained as an American imperial military machine, having lost its original purpose after the collapse of the Soviet Union but now attempting to re-invent itself as an expanding mercenary force to further the ends of global capitalism. Its very existence is an obstacle to a truly independent European defence force and, as such, an obstacle to European unity.
America’s opposition to European unity with its own military defence force has been expressed many times. America hates Europe as a potential challenger to its status as a unilateral super power and it does all it can to keep alive the myth of ‘old’ and ‘new’ Europe. This polarising division was the invention of the meddling Donald Rumsfeld, the man responsible for exaggerating the ‘Red peril’ nature of the Soviet Union from the Ronald Reagan era onwards. Today, the ‘Evil Empire’ seems a more appropriate title for the United States as we observe how it encroaches just about everywhere in the world for its own ends, dragging ‘the West’ along with it..
The Republican hopeful for the White House, Senator John McCain, said way back in 2001 that plans for a European Defence Force were leading to “unneeded acrimony” within NATO. What did he mean? In his words, “The issues that confront us go to the very core of our existence as an alliance. Fundamental questions regarding the future of NATO stand before us. I am afraid that our geographical divide is increasingly a functional one. Our perspectives are diverging”.
He was referring to a rift between the United States and Europe over plans for a European Defence Force with the new Bush administration issuing dire warnings of NATO being weakened. From the American point of view, the interests of its global aspirations were above those of its ’allies’ in Europe. In other words, do not get ideas above your station but fall back in line.
This was at a time when the United States was pushing forward its plans for a National Missile Defence system, nicknamed ‘Son of Star Wars’. Russia, Germany and France all opposed it. It was Tony Blair’s government that pussy-footed and attempted a delicate diplomatic balancing act.
In 2001, Donald Rumsfeld spoke at a security conference in Munich and threatened, “Actions that could reduce NATO’s [America’s] effectiveness by confusing duplication or perturbing the transatlantic link would not be positive”. This was in response to proposals for a 60,000 strong European Rapid Reaction Force to be in operation by 2003.
Rumsfeld then went on to discuss how the United States wanted “to help European nations and other allies to deploy missile defences”. In other words, how the United States wanted to dominate other countries with American missile bases established on their soil. We are seeing this in Georgia and in some eastern European countries within the European Union.
At that same meeting in Munich, the Canadian Defence Minister, Art Eggleton, parroted the American position by claiming that there was a danger of NATO splitting if an independent European Defence Force went ahead.
The division of Europe can only be in the interests of those who wish to exploit Europe, pitting one nation-state against another, as the enemies of Europe have done for so long. It is clear that the United States uses this policy of divide and rule for its own purposes and that what is needed in Europe are strong governments that say in unison, “We will have a unity of purpose independent of the United States and that means a separate foreign policy ... and a European army for our own defence”.
The division of Germany after 1945 was the epitome of Europe’s tragedy. Our continent was exhausted after the internecine conflict that Oswald Mosley called “The Brothers’ War”. Britain was soon to lose its empire as a consequence and the Americans were set to step in. For this purpose, the North Atlantic Treaty was signed on April 4th, 1949, in order to establish NATO.
NATO’s first Secretary General, Lord Ismay, stated that the organisation's aim was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down". Keeping the Germans down meant keeping Europe down because Germany has long been at the centre of European history, in art, in music and in literature. The war was over but the German people were to pay a heavy price for it … more so than after the First World War. This, of course, was at a time when Europe was weakened and divided and soon to be carved up for the real victors, America and Stalin’s Russia. Germany became the symbol of European division until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Mosley always said that European union was impossible without German re-unification and he made many friends in that country as a result of his sympathy for their plight. Mosley had become a true European after that war and understood the genius of our great continent and all its people.
Europe a Nation, as Mosley’s great post-war idea, called for a Europe independent of both America and Russia … throughout the Cold War era. It is even more relevant now that the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But the United States clings to the North Atlantic Treaty for a very obvious reason. If the United States loses that special relationship with Britain or the rest of Europe in the form of NATO then its influence and clout around the world will be severely diminished to the point that it could no longer carry out its many incursions into the territory of others.
It will have lost both credibility and legitimacy.
I have no doubt that with the disbandment of NATO as an alliance the United States would be forced back to within it own borders where, no doubt, it would continue to meddle in Central America … which they have always regarded as their ‘own backyard’. No part of Europe would again be picked on for use as a missile base and the transatlantic connection will have been broken for good.
There must be another call for freedom and that freedom must be the liberation of Europe from American domination and interference. It must be Europe’s right to break away from what is essentially an undesirable arrangement that is detrimental to European unity.
Other parts of the world would welcome this and we see aspects of this backlash to American imperialism in new alliances. All that is needed is strong government with courageous leaders. As I write, A Russian naval task force from the Northern Fleet will go on a tour of duty in the Atlantic Ocean and participate in joint naval drills with the Venezuelan navy in November.
“In line with the 2008 training programme, and in order to expand military cooperation with foreign navies, Russia will send in November a naval task force from the Northern Fleet, comprising nuclear-powered missile cruiser Pyotr Velikiy and support ships, to the Atlantic Ocean”, Captain 1st Rank Igor Dygalo has said.
Consider this with the corresponding news that the government of Ecuador has given the United States notice of closure of its military base in that country. The Americans have agreed to leave next year. You see, it can be done.
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and President Rafael Correa of Ecuador agreed in July to jointly finance a $6 billion oil refinery to be constructed near the city of Manta in Ecuador. Hutchison Port Holdings, based in Hong Kong, will be constructing one of the largest deep-water ports on the west coast of South America, costing $523 million. The project will include piers, cranes, tuna-boat terminals, roads, and the capacity to handle 1.6 million shipping containers a year at South America’s closest point to the Far East.
“The United States stopped being the benchmark of what is good for Latin America”, said Gustavo Larrea, Ecuador's security minister. “Because Latin America did everything that the United States asked it to do and was not able to get out of poverty, the North American myth lost political weight”.
The same can be said of every country in which the United States has been intrusive and has interfered in their internal affairs ever since 1945. Not one of these countries has advanced in terms of the quality of life of its masses. Just look at Iraq and Afghanistan today with the wholesale destruction and slaughter on a level that defies understanding. The treatment of civilian populations by both the American and British military warrants charges of crimes against humanity. Let us not mince words. Let us have no more cant regarding “our lads doing a great job”. These pawns are doing nothing of the sort ... and they are certainly not ‘heroes’ in terms of what I was taught as a schoolboy. Our heroes did not terrorise women and children ... nor murder them.
NATO, as such, is fast becoming not only an anachronism but also an embarrassing liability with no relevance to the genuine defence needs of a Europe that is slowly discovering its identity as a separate force in the world.
The entire fault for this seemingly inextricable alliance with the United States rests with the electorates of the separate nation-states of Europe, voting for weak governments servile to the United States, foolishly believing that the United States is motivated by an altruism ... a caring regard for the entire world but most especially towards its allies in ‘the West’.
Globalism, the new international doctrine that hands all our destinies over to the world banking system, is but a platform upon which the American and his murderous military hardware can posture, bully and hector. But, as some countries have discovered, there is strength in union, and when nations come together in common interest they discover another powerful weapon and that is economic independence. Yes, independence from the United States and, eventually, independence from the international banking system that is currently dragging us all down into recession and further suffering. Both independence and strength comes from the union of similar countries.
Oswald Mosley directed us towards a vision of a Europe united in brotherhood for the purposes of building a new social and economic system. We can never achieve that when we are shackled to the North Atlantic alliance, with the United States always calling the shots. It would be better if every American serviceman and all their government agents were to leave our shores tomorrow, as the Ecuadoran government gave them notice to quit from their only base in that brave country. Now, these are my real heroes.
They are very unlikely to do so as long as we have the Gordon Browns, the Nicolas Sarkozys, the Angela Merkels and so on. They are globalists to a man and a woman. They can not see beyond the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, blinded by and drunk on a power that is limited in its scope insofar that it is incapable of rescuing the European peoples from the recurring crises that gnaw and eat away at the soul of Europe.
America, dear reader, is the real enemy of Europe. They have said so in their disapproval of the creation of a European Defence Force. When this was announced, America’s leaders made threats and gave warnings. Why? Because America wants to control Europe as a master with his servants.
Peace will only ever come to the world once the United States is denied its position of what it deems to be the role of ‘policeman of the world’, even though ‘Globocop’ is responsible for more crimes against humanity than anything since 1945. We should no longer be accomplices to them.

2009-01-22T11:20:00.001-08:00

WHY THEY ATTACKED MOSLEY'S MEETINGS

Published in EA No 17, September/October 2008

by Robert Edwards

BBC Radio 4 hosts the ‘Archive Hour’, a series of hour-long programmes that deal with issues of a politically contentious nature and, essentially, within living memory.
As part of the series, ‘A Rage In Dalston’ was broadcast on Saturday, April 19 at 8pm, which was an attempt at justifying one of the worst conspiracies to commit serious violence against a body of people simply and solely because they held different views. The 43 Group was formed in 1946 for one purpose and that was to attack supporters of Oswald Mosley and to ‘wipe them out’. It was thuggery pure and simple.
Andrew Roberts, an Establishment historian and author, wrote in the Daily Mail of April 15, “The 43 Group regularly broke the law in their struggle and their veterans are proud to have done so. Their philosophy was simple: attack all fascists. Armed with clubs, razors, bricks, knuckledusters, broken bottles, knives and everything except guns and bombs, the 43 Group tracked down fascist meetings to quash them”. But Roberts was not condemning this hate-fuelled campaign of extreme violence ... he was condoning it.
Towards the end of his Daily Mail article he wrote, “A Rage in Dalston is a fine tribute to the small but committed group of Britons who took direct - if undeniably illegal - action against the bacillus of anti-Semitism”.
The 43 Group was overwhelmingly Jewish in membership and used the Holocaust as an alibi in order to justify its violent activities, initially aimed at former Blackshirt Jeffrey Hamm’s British League of Ex-Servicemen and Women, then holding regular outdoor meetings in Ridley Road, Dalston. Along with the Mosley Book Clubs, the League took a distinctly pro-Mosley position in its campaign to assert itself as a legitimate and patriotic group of ex-servicemen emerging in the post-war era.
Before the programme was broadcast, the Daily Mail published this letter from Calvin G. Poole of Cumbria, in response to Roberts, on April 18, “As a historian, Andrew Roberts is a bit naïve in praising criminal attacks with ‘razors, bricks, knuckledusters, broken bottles and knives’ against supporters of Sir Oswald Mosley. Mosley and his followers were no more responsible for Nazi wartime concentration camps than their socialist opponents in Britain were for Stalinist death camps in Russia. His entirely legal post-war Union Movement advocated the unity of Europe against communism and it is ridiculous to accuse its speakers of hatred for verbally retaliating against organised gangs trying to slash their faces”.
The programme itself was sickening in its glorification of a blood lust on the part of a group of psychopaths who were, in point of fact, early Zionists rather than the ‘Britons’ of Andrew Roberts’ mythologising. The intensity of this terrorist activity was almost mirrored in the cold-blooded campaigns against the Palestinian people at that time, which to this day use the same moral blackmail of ‘anti-Semitism’ against those who dare criticise this kind of criminal behaviour.
All the ‘witnesses’ in this radio programme were Jewish thugs and it was emphasised in the course of the commentary that no one ‘from the other side’ (Friends of Oswald Mosley) would agree to take part. In hindsight this was perfectly reasonable given the bias of the entire broadcast. A leading member of the Friends of Oswald Mosley confided that there would never be any further co-operation with the BBC given its persistent record of defaming Oswald Mosley, including a mock trial of him in the pages of the BBC’s History magazine in which he was ‘voted’ the most evil Briton of the Twentieth Century by a man-hating feminist academic.
It would be a demonstration of the most blinded naivety to suppose that mainstream academia in this country and around the Western world would treat Mosley with anything other than complete demonisation. Such is the depth of prejudice whenever Mosley is discussed within the liberal/leftist political Establishment ... the most illiberal of such generic institutions.
Perhaps the most stomach-wrenching anecdote on the BBC Radio 4 programme came from a 43 Group thug who boasted how he spotted a middle-aged Raven Thomson on the platform of a moving bus in London. With Raven’s back turned to him the cowardly thug related how he gripped the safety bars of the bus and used both his feet to kick the former Blackshirt off the moving bus and then looked back to gloat over Raven rolling severely injured in the gutter with Raven’s daughter screaming over him soon after. That he could have killed Raven did not disturb this vile piece of near-humanity.
Undoubtedly for his celebrity value, Vidal Sassoon was roped in to give his glamorised account of his participation as a youthful 43 Group gangster. The aging crimper was as remorseless as the would-be murderer of Raven Thomson. In Sassoon’s own words, “It was a miracle that no one was killed”, which tells us a lot about the severity of the 43 Group attacks. Sassoon later fought in Israel’s ‘War of Independence’ when entire villages of innocent Palestinians were massacred without mercy.
Who can miss the irony of these sanctimonious ‘victims of anti-Semitism’ acting out the bully-boy tactics they so love to attribute to Mosley’s men, quite unjustifiably it must be said? Yet the totally illegal attacks upon individuals who supported Mosley have been raised up by the BBC as a morally superior crusade aimed at justifying mutilation and attempted murder simply because the perpetrators were Jewish and the victims being deemed ‘fascists’ or ‘anti-Semites’. There is an obviously twisted and bent logic or morality there.
The real reason that the British League of Ex-Servicemen and Women, then later from 1948, the embryonic Union Movement, were the victims of this violent conspiracy was not the claim by one 43 Group thug that fascists were on street corners shouting, “Not enough Jews were burned in Belsen” (highly improbable) but that they had a new message for post-war Britain.
Mosley had delivered a detailed outline of his post-war policies in his book, THE ALTERNATIVE, published in 1946. The Mosley Book Clubs were distributing the Mosley Newsletters (the young man in the foreground of the League meeting [pictured above] holds these up for sale) and old hands like Raven Thomson were publishing booklets on syndicalism and other serious issues under the Raven Publications imprint.
There was no anti-Semitism or other expressions of hatred in any of this literature because, as always, Mosley had a serious and constructive message for the British people and his followers and supporters rallied round him for those policies because they knew he was right. The quarrel with the Jews was a pre-war issue, Mosley had said, because some Jewish interests wanted war with Germany and British Union opposed war. This no longer applied after 1945.
The 43 Group, on the other hand, wanted to revive the old animosities and adopted the razor and the cosh as its main expressions of political argument. It had nothing constructive in terms of ideas beyond murder and grievous bodily harm.
Although over a thousand British Union members were rounded up in 1940 to be interned without charge or trial under Defence Regulation 18B, many others enlisted in the armed forces of the Crown at that time, with many dying for their country. Traitors like William Joyce had left the Mosley movement a few years before the outbreak of war and the number of those stupid enough to be duped by the POW camp lectures of John Amery, induced to join the tiny British Free Corps, was so miniscule as to make them more of a joke than a real threat to anyone except themselves.
All the evidence points to Mosley’s supporters being quintessentially British and patriotic and that the vital interests of Britain determined their position in favour of a negotiated peace in 1940. It also determined their willingness to go to war for their country after the failure of their peace campaign. The moral correctness of this can no longer be disputed. Yet the lies and the smears continue long after so many patriotic members of the Mosley movements have passed on, long after all the years of selfless struggle and sacrifice, simply because they loved their country and followed a vision of hope that only a man like Mosley could articulate and project. The mainstream media with the full weight of academia in Britain can never be relied on for the objective truth. That is why we should never collaborate with them. The BBC’s ‘A Rage in Dalston’ only served to reinforce and confirm that position.

EDITORIAL - EA number 16

2008-05-16T00:52:00.000-07:00

MONEYLENDERS IN CRISIS
Oswald Mosley said it years ago - the way out of crisis was to create an economic area large enough to be self-sufficient thereby insulating ourselves from international competition and the international banking system. Today, that policy is needed more than ever.
The global banking system has recently thrown governments into disarray simply because they do not understand anything beyond their free market fundamentalist ideology ... the misbegotten idea that markets will find their own bottom on their own. In this case, the housing markets in both the United States and Britain are further from a bottoming out than any of them think. The ‘credit crunch’ brought about by the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis in the United States is ongoing with the larger banks and financial institutions around the world reportedly losing US$240 billion as of April this year. That is, even with the dispersion of bad credit to third party investors.
The United States, along with Britain and other countries, face slipping into a recession which, according to Professor Nouriel Roubini of New York University, “... will have a systematic banking crisis like we have not had since the 1930s”.
The Wall Street Journal in September 2007 quoted Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, as saying the current turmoil in financial markets “is identical to the problems of 1987 and 1998”.
Citigroup economists recently stated that “the self-feeding downturn now in place shows signs of becoming deeply entrenched” - indicating the very certainty of massive long-term recession around the world.
An obsession with massive consumer spending is a fundamental cause of the crisis as the freely available loans from lending institutions extended to many who could not or would not repay them. The massive losses to these institutions prevented many from further lending. The result is a downward spiral and hyperinflation.
The world housing bubble could be seen by anyone with long term vision to be heading for disaster. The obsession with home-ownership became endemic globally. This fuelled house price increases along with massive consumer spending. The idea was to spend ourselves out of recession, hence the massive imports of cheap Chinese goods, but it was on such high risk credit that eventually it all became unsustainable.
The answer is the one Mosley gave all those years ago. Free yourselves from the international banking system by building Europe a Nation, a fortress Europe that can supply everything the Europeans need with a European banking system that serves the European people alone. Then, what goes on in America would have no effect upon us whatsoever.
In his page on the BNP’s website, John Bean had this to say on ‘The Global Slump the BNP Predicted’ of February 16, “Although we can not isolate ourselves completely from the erratic behaviour of the world’s money markets, the way of modifying its effects that we gave then has not changed”. In the same article he openly adopts Conservative Party economic policy, an obvious indication that the BNP does not have one of its own, apart from a rigid autarky for these isles.
Mr Bean seems to have learned nothing from his short stay in Mosley’s Union Movement. Substitute the word isolate for insulate and it is no longer a matter of ’can not’ but one of necessity. Modifications to a system that is out-dated and out of control will never work and Little Englander economics always meant being thrown to the wolves of high finance.
Housing in Britain needs to be geared towards more rented social housing in order to house the homeless and those on lower incomes. Instead, Gordon Brown robs the poor in order to give money to his banking chums. This from the party of Keir Hardie that once claimed to be for the workers. What a disgrace.
Mosley was always for the working man ever since his days in the Labour Party when he offered constructive proposals for curing mass unemployment. Ramsay MacDonald’s government rejected them for being ‘too socialistic’ while the old Labour relics stuck to their blind faith in free market capitalism.
Nothing has changed and nothing will change while you have this acceptance of a global dimension to economics and the way we all trade with each other.
We say no to a global economy because it makes a mockery of sovereignty and the people’s will. We want our own economy within Europe, of Europe and for the Europeans. That is our revolutionary purpose. RHE

2008-04-12T04:01:00.000-07:00

NATIONAL EUROPEANS WERE NEVER FAR-RIGHT REACTIONARY NATIONALISTS

Published in European Action number 15

By ROBERT EDWARDS

We are often mistaken for ‘fellow-travellers’ of the narrow nationalistic far-right and lumped together with the entire reactionary groupings that call themselves ‘British patriots’. When I say this is mistaken, I mean it to be completely misguided and based on an ignorance of our unique ideological viewpoint.
We are NOT nationalists in the sense that we cling to an older form of territorial identity. We have gone beyond the old nation-states. That is the reality. Yet the ‘reactionary’ myth is perpetuated by both Left and Right. Permit me to explain by unravelling the twisted distortions that most ‘anti-fascists’ are so fond of using by way of explaining us away.
Parties like the British National Party trade on sentiments that belong to another age, a perceived Golden Age of imperial might and industrial strength. John Tyndall used to rant on about it in his perorations. It is unreconstructed ‘empire loyalism’, a loyalism to something that no longer exists. How absurd, you might think. The BNP’s political roots are from the immediate post-war League of Empire Loyalists (among other small groups) that clung to the idea of British dominion over a quarter of the globe. They wanted to restore that pre-eminence but were not quite sure how to go about it. All they had was nostalgia for the past and a few smoke bombs.
Another force in British politics had emerged with an idea that dealt with the problem of Britain’s changes of fortune, largely as a result of the Second World War. Sir Oswald Mosley alone had the vision and he made it the core thinking of his new Movement. It was at this point he broke from the past and offered solutions for present and future. The main point here is, he rejected the narrower nationalism of pre-war fascism while the reactionaries of today, in the form of the BNP, actually try to revive it. The BNP and its satellite factions adhere to policies that are essentially those of the pre-war British Union of Fascists with one important element missing ... the great resources of the British Empire that once inspired the BUF’s economic theory of an Empire Insulation Policy.
So you see, the BUF was not really nationalist - it was imperialist. The reason for this was simple. Mosley wanted to harness all the resources of Empire in order to create an insulated economy that could be planned and also be free of the international trading system that undermined the living standards of the British worker.
Ask the BNP what its economic policy is and they will tell you that they want to go it alone, to be independent and to choose with whom they wish to trade. Sounds like a noble cause and all that ... but it is totally impracticable for several reasons. As a small set of islands we need to import more food than we can produce and we could never compete successfully in a world where the cheapest goods are favoured over those created by higher wages. Look today at the flood of Chinese goods from low wage industries, favoured because it encourages consumer spending at home in order to avoid an economic recession. It is an impossible situation.
On the front page of the BNP’s Voice of Freedom was the daft idea that Britain could become self-sufficient in food if every family had an allotment. The frightening thing is that some of these people really believe this to be a genuine solution and that every citizen should spend part of his day admiring his marrow in the cause of British sovereignty. They are leading you up the garden path and it is not to their cabbage patch heaven.
We say very clearly, Britain can not go it alone. It is a pipe dream perpetuated by right-wing reactionaries who believe that a rigid nationalism based on autarky can put the ‘Great’ back into Britain. We say, create the new empire, the empire of Europe a Nation, that federation of European states that could be the strongest power in the world. We could pool all our resources and keep a healthy population on the land with no trouble at all.
The right-wing reactionaries react with horror and say, “No to Europe. We don’t want to be swallowed up by a super-state”.
Why not? They do not seem to mind being swallowed up by the international banking system and by all the other international institutions now going under the new catch-word of globalisation. That is the real enslavement ... not Europe. The right-wing reactionaries could never grasp the simple facts of economics never mind that the kinship they always went on about has a European dimension.
By rejecting Europe they embrace the very internationalism they once professed to oppose - because the only alternative to a National Europe is to suffer the vagaries of the international trading system with all its uncertainties and perils - yes, “going it alone”.
Take note of the term ’National Europe’ and not the ‘global Europe’ recently championed by Gordon Brown, the bankers’ Prime Minister.
The right-wing reactionaries also found a new object for their seething hatred in the form of a religion ... to replace a racism that was outlawed under threat of imprisonment. In place of constructive policies, we are presented with a ‘clash of civilisations’ in direct mimicry of Zionist supremacism and the war plans of American neo-cons. The ‘wicked Muslim’ came of age.
Funny how they did not mention this years ago before the collapse of what Ronald Reagan described as the ‘Evil Empire’. At the end of the Cold War a new external threat needed inventing and Islam fitted the bill, being antagonistic towards Israel over the Palestinian issue and seemingly making greater inroads at the expense of liberal, secular Christianity.
The real issue here is immigration and the identity not only of Britain but of the whole of Europe. It is not a new religious war and it should not be an opportunity for gaining cheap votes as Nick Griffin so cynically uses it. Islam may be alien to many of these right-wing reactionaries but so too is Christianity which many so secretly despise. Their championing of Christianity is wholly disingenuous, serving only to cover up their real agenda, which is to exploit racial resentment. For Muslim, read brown person. That is more like the truth, is it not? Tell the truth - you want to keep Britain white and not to keep it Christian. Enough of this deception.
The right-wing reactionaries now side with the Zionists, doing their bidding in order to curry favour. John Bean, editor of the BNP’s Identity magazine, is overbearingly superior when he rails against “obsessive old school anti-Semites who believe that my enemy’s enemy is my friend”. Many people might even stomach such cant and humbug if John Bean had not had close political allies such as Colin Jordan and John Tyndall, no strangers to the Jewish conspiracy theories of the 1950s and thereafter.
According to George Thayer in The British Political Fringe, Bean joined Mosley’s Union Movement in the 1950s and he “joined and quit all within two weeks, perhaps a record” (page 48). He was later expelled from the League of Empire Loyalists. Bean’s original British National Party, a merger of his National Labour Party with Jordan’s White Defence League, believed that all Jews should be shipped to Madagascar. According to Thayer, “The policies of this new party combined all the old ideas of Arnold Leese with those of Jordan and Bean”.
So please, Mr Bean, spare us the ‘elder statesman’ pontificating. We are all prisoners of our political past and you are no exception.
If the present-day British National Party could claim a direct political connection with that old BNP of yore by dint of Mr Bean’s position as editor of Identity, then it has a lot of anti-Semitic baggage to contend with. Try brushing that under the carpet.
The position of Union Movement, and now European Action, on the issue of race and culture does not follow the right-wing reactionary road. First of all, we never blamed the immigrants nor did we ever suggest they should be persecuted. We most certainly do not condone picking on them for their religious beliefs. According to Mosley, we have all been the victims of Government policies which are directly influenced by the need of international capitalism to acquire ever more sources of cheap labour. That is what makes profits and little else. Non-white immigrants were victims of this large-scale exploitation, at the expense of the indigenous people. Remember Enoch Powell (Mr Bean’s idol) who imported coloured nurses when serving as a Tory Health Minister in order to circumvent giving our own nurses a well deserved pay rise?
It is desirable to preserve cultural identities for all peoples and the racial component has an essential part to play. But it should never entail notions of superiority and inferiority ... what is called ‘supremacism’. We see this supremacism at play in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and it is not a pleasant experience.
Those right-wing reactionaries who entertain supremacist notions (you find them hissing and spitting on the Stormfront internet forum) are surely the worst type of racist ignoramus ... an embarrassment, even. No humanity, no humility and not a kind thought for anyone. One good thing the Race Relations Act did encourage, and I am not condoning locking people up for an opinion, is that those of us who can think were corralled into using gentler language in relation to other races. The lesson being - if you do not want to go to prison then curb your language and treat all people in a fair way. Consequently, the policies of successive governments are the only legitimate targets on the race issue. Quite right, too.
Do not confuse us with the Nordicists, the skull measurers, racial superiority theorists or those who dream of ethnic cleansing. They do not represent the purpose of our politics. Our purpose is to create a better world for all mankind without the necessity of bombing the hell out of people or walking all over their land.
That is why Mosley favoured the principle of federal union for all mankind, to organise yourselves so that you are truly self-sufficient and free of the international trading system that favours low-wage economies over those trying to raise the standard of life for their people. Only large areas can succeed, as such. In each federal union there must be common government because government must always lead the economy ... not the money markets or the ‘free market forces’ of international trade.
As distinct from the right-wing reactionaries, we propose a system of social justice based on the principles of European Socialism.
Mosley coined that phrase in the 1950s but it will serve us well into the 21st Century. It proposes that a partnership of workers’ ownership and free enterprise will be the foundation of all industrial relations in Europe a Nation. But more than this, it is a rejection of the old ways of ‘them and us’, bringing together the only vital elements - the workers and the pioneers of enterprise. All the rest were parasitic and exploitative. This then was the vision for a revolution ... not just a third force in the world but also a third system, as Mosley used to say.
So let us be very clear about this. We have nothing in common with the ‘British nationalists’ who say no to Europe, meaning both the present set-up of the European Union and the alternative National Europe we are proposing. British nationalism is out of date, out of step and out of tune. In other words, the right-wing reactionary nationalists have no future. That is why they are always squabbling.
The future belongs to those who can see through the misbegotten nostalgia for past glories that are locked into a mindset refusing to move on. Mosley’s ideas are the ideas of tomorrow which time is coming. They serve many purposes in that respect - the only way out of the stranglehold of the international financial system, the creation of a powerful state that need fear nothing and as a role model for the other great areas of the globe ... the Muslim world, Central Asia, the Far East and South America. All of them have the potential for federal union in common purpose and common leadership. Then you have an end to one great superpower pushing its weight around the world and, at last, the great cultures and races existing together, each with its own self-sufficient system because each is large enough to do so. We can enter a trade agreement any time with any other economic bloc for anything extra we need ... but not as hostile competitors as we have in the world today.

2008-03-07T00:25:00.000-08:00

THE CHAMPION OF RHODESIA - IAN SMITH

Published in European Action No 15, March/April 2008

BY PETER KENDALL

There were no accolades for Ian Smith the former Prime Minister of Rhodesia who died in 2007. There was no gathering of world leaders to bid farewell to this great statesman, or any attempt to praise his sincerity. Ian Smith was branded a ‘racist dictator’ and was then betrayed by dictators within the British Commonwealth of Nations – the institution that he had so admired and for whom he had fought as a Spitfire pilot during the Second World War.
His post-war fight for civilised democracy and European culture was opposed by Harold Wilson, a British PM suspected of links with the KGB, an organisation within the USSR whose Red doctrines dictated that African ‘colonialists’ had to be attacked on all fronts. South Africa and Rhodesia were seen as enemies by the USSR, mainly because most of the new gold flowing into Zurich was either from South Africa or from the USSR. The Kremlin fought only for the interests of the USSR and it is a sad delusion that it was concerned for the welfare of the indigenous African population. The truth is that gold was the only thing that counted.
The denigration of Ian Smith by the British press often exploited his cold-looking austere facial expression which in fact was due to horrendous injuries sustained during the war when his Spitfire crashed on takeoff. These injuries included loss of one eye, speech impediment and partial paralysis of the face. These dreadful war wounds were never mentioned in the press, nor was the fact that he had volunteered for the RAF aircrew service immediately war was declared, nor that he had continued combat flying after his appalling injuries. Of course, these truths, if commonly known, would have accorded Smith the respectability and admiration he so richly deserved, a possibility that Comrade Wilson and his Red chums would have abhorred. Also never mentioned was the fact that he was involved in a later air crash when his Spitfire was brought down by enemy fire in Italy, or that he joined the local partisans to continue the fight.
When Ian Smith entered politics at the end of the war, he set off on a journey that would take him to premiership and to ultimate betrayal by the Commonwealth that he had so deeply loved and admired. There can be no doubt that the communist sympathisers that ruled Britain in the 1960s deliberately stuck a knife into the backs of their Rhodesian kith and kin. Who knows, perhaps those who have the right to live in all countries also wanted Smith out – because of their extreme interest in gold. Once again, the tired old men in Westminster, many of whom had never even set foot in Africa, dictated to those who had devoted their lives to European civilisation and advancement of the African nations and all their peoples. It had been perfectly acceptable to send innumerable ‘black’ African troops to certain death during the war but an entirely different matter to rule them with justice, law and order. The British Government favoured ANC thugs: Smith was a gentleman. Faced with total intransigence from London, the Rhodesian government was forced to declare independence (as the American colonialists had been forced to centuries earlier). Instead of recognising this action as defence of European civilisation, justice and advancement, Wilson and his fellow-traveller cronies forced sanctions on Rhodesia without a care about the bankruptcies or other hardships they might cause. Henry Kissinger fully realised that the American demands he must deliver to the War Hero politician
were tantamount to placing a pistol into Smith’s hands and demanding that he commit suicide. Shame on Kissinger, because he comes from a country that also declared unilateral independence, having rebelled against and then left the British Empire because of English tax greed.
When Ian Smith was finally forced to step down, many intelligent, thinking people had already realised what was in store. Farmers would be brutally butchered, land and property owners disowned while the Rhodesian economy would be pushed into free fall. The inevitable shortages arose while the local populations rejoiced in not having to work for a boss anymore. But, the following year brought desperate food shortages combined with lack of the foreign currencies that production of natural resources and Rhodesian tobacco farmers had previously earned.
Brutal dictatorship was just around the corner: Ian Smith had presided over a country where law and order had ruled and where nobody was above the law, where everybody had sufficient to eat and where medical attention was available to all.
Now that the enemies of freedom have completed their goals people could be put to death by placing tyres filled with petrol around their necks and burning them to death, whole townships can be removed from the face of the earth if the inhabitants do not vote for the ignoramus who now heads the country. At the same time, inflation gallops away in unbelievable multiples and many once-healthy businesses fall into ruin. The children who could formerly expect at least a basic education must now count themselves lucky to be alive and not molested. Bravo, the British Government, for sending Rhodesia back to the dark ages.
There is nothing new about the phenomena: it is happening in Kenya today: a delicate blend of political corruption combined with death tolls from riots set the all too familiar scene. Uganda, freed from the European, rapidly fell into the dark ages with mass murder served up as entertainment for an insane leader, while the county’s agriculture and industry were ruined. Tribal hatreds will never go away.
When Ian Smith passed away, there were no grand obituaries or national grief. This old war hero must be forgotten, if only to cover up the disastrous mistakes of the tired old men who made the fatal decisions. There may be a grudging admission that perhaps he had been right about one or two things. But, nobody will ever admit that Rhodesia would now be a rich, stable and powerful Nation if Smith had not been removed.
The uninformed, perverted doctrines of the Whitehall moralists had to be preserved. The resulting mayhem will never be acknowledged. Never would they admit that Ian Smith maintained his Rhodesian farm without let or hindrance, because the locals had deep respect if not affection for him even after UDI. No, his farm was not attacked once, and yes, unbelievably, the locals loved and respected this great man who had ensured one of the highest living standards in Africa for the indigenous peoples. They had been, in Smiths words, the happiest black faces in Africa, until he was deposed!
Smith once remarked that if he and Mugabe walked into a township only he would emerge alive. Smith knew the African peoples. Conversely, the African peoples know the Mugabes of their world.

REVIEW OF 'THE EVIL GOOD MEN DO'

2008-02-28T02:25:00.000-08:00

Published in issue no 13 of European Action

Reviewed by Colin Wilson in the Hampstead and Highgate Express, January 20th 1989

(This was Jeffrey Hamm’s second book, following on from his autobiography, Action Replay. Hamm was a founding member of Mosley’s Union Movement and Oswald Mosley’s private secretary up until the Leader’s death in 1980. The Evil Good Men Do was published in 1988, nearly 20 years ago.)

In the late 1950s I was a famous Nazi - at least according to some of the leftists of that period, such as Kenneth Tynan, Bernard Levin and Philip Toynbee. What they meant was that I had spoken out in support of Sir Oswald Mosley, particularly his idea of a European Common Market. I could deny the ‘fascist’ allegation until I was black in the face; since they commanded more newspaper space than I did, a great many people believed them.
Now, eight years after Mosley’s death, it is becoming possible to discuss him without being accused of wanting to re-open Buchenwald. And anyone who is willing to take the trouble can find out that he was one of the most far-sighted politicians of the 20th century. As a simple and painless way of doing this, I can thoroughly recommend Jeffrey Hamm’s The Evil Good Men Do.
I am not too keen on the title; it sounds like one of those all-purpose soporifics from Shakespeare. In fact, a better title would have been Blunders. For that is precisely what it is about; the appalling blunders made by well-meaning politicians between the First World War and the present day - blunders in immigration policy, in housing, in education, the use of North Sea oil. And a dozen other delicate subjects including Northern Ireland. Hamm writes calmly, almost primly, yet a great deal of what he is saying is dynamite.
Hamm is a Welshman who, like many decent and intelligent people, joined Mosley’s Movement in the 1930s because he saw that Mosley provided a real alternative to the bumbling and incompetence of politicians such as Ramsay MacDonald and Neville Chamberlain - the incompetence that led us into the Second World War.
Although he was school-teaching in the Falklands in 1940, he was arrested and interned. On his release he joined the army and fought Hitler. But he is still understandably bitter about the stupidities that labelled him a kind of Nazi, and about the mud that continued to stick even after the war, when Mosley’s most important idea was a European Common Market. Hamm’s autobiography, Action Replay, was a sincere, intelligent and exciting book, and I recommend it to everyone who would like to hear the other side of the story.
Having said which, I have to admit that the second chapter of his new book will give most people apoplexy. It is entitled The Disastrous War and it argues that Britain made a tremendous mistake in going to war with Hitler. It asks the question: Did Hitler regard England as an enemy? - and answers No. Which is undoubtedly true. Hitler had an almost sentimental regard for the British.
It then goes on to point out that Hitler’s designs lay all to the East, in Russia and suggests that it would have been no bad thing if he had smashed Stalinism, and we had sat back and let him do it.
If you can accept this, then you will certainly read the rest of Hamm’s book with admiration. But even if you can’t, it should be no obstacle to admiring Hamm’s acute political intelligence as he retells the political history of our time and points out that British post-war governments have been just as incompetent as those of the ’30s.
You may well gasp with astonishment and outrage at a comment such as: “The war had inadvertently enabled Labour to achieve one of its pre-war objectives: the destruction of the British Empire”. But anyone who thinks this is rightist rhetoric should then read the next page in which Hamm totally justifies his opinion by quoting Attlee, Stafford Cripps and Hugh Gaitskell.
During the last 20 years of his life, Mosley knew he had lost the battle; that even if he grew wings and a halo, he would never succeed in persuading people that he was not a Nazi thug and that his political ideas were intelligent and reasonable.
As I read Hamm’s scathing and witty book, I was saddened by the thought that he is basically in the same position. Yet even if he can only reach a hundred readers who understand the importance of what he has to say, he will have justified the courageous optimism that made him write it.
Colin Wilson

THE EUROPEAN SOCIALISM OF OSWALD MOSLEY

2008-02-10T01:22:00.000-08:00

By Dermont Clark

Firstly, let me pay tribute to Sir Oswald Mosley who coined the phrase Europe a Nation, because nearly six decades after the formation of Union Movement back in 1948, and more than 26 years after his death in 1980, we who subscribe to or write articles for European Action are still inspired by his philosophy. Walter Lippman (the American journalist, author and Pulitzer Prize winning columnist) said, “The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on”.
Interesting too, that in reviewing the early successes of British Union, Mosley addressing his brother Blackshirts called on them to possess the character of the true revolutionary. They were fighting for nothing less than a revolution in the spirit of the British people and they needed to have within them the character and power to endure, to have loyalty, constancy, manhood and stability of nature.
A previous issue of this publication (number 8, March/April 2007) dealt in much detail with the Conference of Venice in 1962 and the acceptance by those who attended of the need for a National Party of Europe, and how some of the other European parties that had subscribed fully to proposals failed to act and ultimately reverted to their cozy nationalist agenda.
In fact, Mosley had gone further still and called upon members of Union Movement to be European Socialists (he had always denied being of the ‘right’ politically, stating that he was from the ‘left’). In essence then, we have been called revolutionaries and socialists but how does this tie in with our National Party of Europe and the demand to bring about Europe a Nation?
In May 1956, Mosley’s essay ‘European Socialism’ was printed in the German monthly Nation Europa. In that article, European Socialism was defined as “the development by a fully united Europe of all the resources in our continent for the benefit of all the peoples of Europe, with every energy and incentive that the active leadership of European government can give to private enterprise, workers’ ownership or any other method of progress which science and a dynamic system of government find most effective for the enrichment of all our people and the lifting of European civilization to ever higher forms of life”.
Note that both private enterprise and workers’ ownership (syndicalism) are equally acceptable under this plan, Indeed, Mosley’s concept was of private enterprise leading to syndicalism as a natural transition from one to the other. When a private business became too big for individual management or when private enterprise is exhausted, workers’ ownership would be introduced. Today we are used to the idea of a ‘management buy out’ but syndicalism goes much further, vesting the ownership of the business among ALL of the workers in the same way as the John Lewis and Waitrose stores are owned by a partnership of all the staff.
Mosley went on to say that “the state should define the broad boundaries within which industry might operate and should itself only intervene in the event of breakdown. The state should direct not by control but by leadership, not by bureaucracy but by the wage-price mechanism”. In other words, for example, the state says to producers, wholesalers and retailers of foodstuffs that you must only sell people food that is safe to eat and then let them get on with their task. You do not have to define the size and shape of a cucumber and then hire a team of bureaucrats to go around shops and supermarkets to ensure that the cucumbers are not too large or too small or have too big a bend.
On taxation, Mosley said, “The leadership of the state will be exercised by the planned and regulated raising of wages over the whole field of industry as science increases the power to produce”. He then went on to say that wages should reflect a reward for the skill, effort and responsibility taken by the employee.
Mosley saw his concept of European Socialism not as commandments set in stone but as a fluid, changing and developing plan that met the needs of the times. He said, “We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity because science has broken so many bonds and has so greatly enlarged the horizons of men. If men in an age of new facts are prepared to find new policies to meet them, they are natural companions, provided of course that we hold together that all-important spiritual kinship. We must think again, then act most strenuously, and on a greater scale than ever because we have greater possibilities, First comes the idea and the union of the spirit. All else follows!”.

THE MYTH OF NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY

2008-02-10T01:14:00.000-08:00

By Robert Edwards

"Anyone who knows how difficult it is to keep a secret among three men - particularly if they are married - knows how absurd is the idea of a worldwide secret conspiracy consciously controlling all mankind by its financial power; in real, clear analysis". Oswald Mosley

Conspiracy theories are sometimes the product of a far too vivid imagination. It has been said that the poet and the paranoiac find connection where the logical mind finds none. But when the truth is thrust under one’s nose, the palpable stench of duplicity and corruption turns theory into reality very quickly. This is the case with that shadowy cabal known as the Bilderberg Group. You can talk of UFOs or even fairies at the bottom of the garden in justifiably sceptical terms ... but, believe me, the Bilderberg Group is very real.The Bilderberg Group’s first meeting took place at the Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, Holland, at the end of May 1954. Meeting annually, the group consists of bankers, industrialists and politicians, mainly from Europe and America. Included are representatives of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund ... as well as military leaders. Their debates are held in secret and are not reported in the world’s press. According to Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands who attended that first meeting, “The hotel was ringed by security guards, so that not a single journalist got within a mile of the place. The participants were pledged not to repeat publicly what was said in the discussions”. This is in total variance to the nature of the recent gathering of the G8 leaders in Edinburgh, where even public protests were accepted as legitimate activity. And the deliberations of the G8 leaders were reported openly and freely on a daily basis.The Bilderberg Group, on the other hand, is a supra-national “government” manipulating the global economy and establishing monetary rates around the world. It even selects the political leaders who it deems fit to rule and targets those that it wishes to be removed. Again, Prince Bernhard clarified the modus operandi of the group with, “It is difficult to re-educate people who have been brought up on nationalism to the idea of relinquishing part of their sovereignty to a supra-national body”. So why the secrecy when G8 meetings are voluntarily placed under the public spotlight to the point that they become a mere diversion from the Bilderberg heavy mob?This year, in May, the Bilderbergers met behind the fortified and heavily protected walls of the Dorint Sofitel Seehotel Überfahrt in Rottach-Egern, Munich in Bavaria. These venues vary from year to year.There was a blanket ban on reporting the event. This was made easy to apply through the presence of many newspaper proprietors and their editors from around the world, Bilderbergers to a man. These are the men who decide what you read and what you do not read. From the list of participants we have the editor of Le Figaro, the publisher of the Austrian Der Standard, the boss of Axel Springer AG, the chairman of the Washington Post Company, the deputy editor of Die Zeit, Norman Pearlstine of Time Inc, the editor of Newsweek International, the United States editor of The Economist, the senior correspondent of the International Herald Tribune and Martin Wolf of the Financial Times. Previously, Bilderberg Group meetings have been graced by the presence of Gerald Levin of Time Warner Inc and Norman Spector of the Jerusalem PostThe May meeting in Rottach-Egern was too uncomfortably close to the G8 meeting in June but its significance is far greater than the G8 agenda of tackling poverty in Africa. It is greater insofar that matters to do with imposing a worldwide UN taxation on all people living on this planet were discussed once again. Five years ago, this controversial proposition was on the agenda then but was proven to present a problem when coming to universal acceptance. Nevertheless, here it is again, and if enacted would set a dangerous precedent because the United Nations is a non-government agency (NGA) and part of the new Global Ethic. For the first time it would circumvent national governments on imposing taxation and make a mockery of ideas concerning national sovereignty or independence, which hardly exist even without such an imposition.The world’s moneybags were there ... all the names that evoke all that is implied by the term “high finance”. Goldman Sachs International has a permanent seat at these gatherings, along with the vice-chairman of Rothschild Europe, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Global Investment Holdings, Henry Kissinger (the elder statesman of the Bilderbergers) chairman of Kissinger Associates Inc, the chairman of Nokia Corporation, David Rockefeller of JP Morgan International Council and Judith Rodin of the Rockefeller Foundation. From around the world we had the chairman of ThyssenKrupp AG, the president of Siemens AG, the governor of the European Central Bank ... and to top it all with the cherry on the icing, former president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, alongside the present incumbent, the former war-monger, Paul Wolfowitz. You could say the proverbial wolves got through the door as opposed to being kept away.A political group within the meeting is particularly influential, best described as the neo-conservatives who had been the driving force behind recent illegal wars. This sub-group includes, of course, the current president of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz. All the forces of globalism, the new economics of world domination, were out in force in Rottach-Egern for one purpose ... to decide on how the nations of the world will conform to a one-world culture based on guidelines dictated by Washington and Wall Street, New York. Any deviation from these edicts will not be tolerated and the necessary pressure applied, including the threat of war.Most of all, the very existence of this elitist club of very powerful men really does shatter the myth of national sovereignty that certain groups of narrow nationalists believe can exist if, for example, we simply withdraw from the European Union. UKIP and other Euro-sceptics fully embrace the concept of the global free market with scant idea of the predatory nature of those who manipulate the markets and can create pools of mass unemployment at the nod of a head. Their idea of sovereignty simply throws Britain to the wolves of what used to be referred to as international finance but has since evolved into a sinister form of American financial imperialism claiming the entire world as its personal fiefdom. Oswald Mosley warned of the predatory nature of world international competition throughout his political life. He said that countries needed to protect themselves by creating self-sufficient units otherwise unemployment was inevitable as financiers engaged one country against another, each attempting an advantage over the others. Those that did better than others in this system were the ones that kept wages down in order to compete successfully and make a profit. This global system could simply shift industries around the world to where the cheapest labour can be found. It recognises neither national frontiers nor any concept of sovereignty. The entire world belongs to money ... as in the song, “money makes the world go around”. Or should we say, money makes the world dance to its tune?The Bilderbergers represent all that is powerful and influential in the capitalist West, brought together on a regular basis in order to exercise their clout regardless of elected governments and regardless of Twentieth Century notions of national self-determination. Forget Brussels and those irritating bureaucrats who draw up rules on fishing quotas or the vital statistics of a banana. They can be sorted out through reform of the European Parliament. Look beyond all that and truly worry about the issues that affect the entire globe. There you will find the reality of world power, self-serving and without any restraints whatsoever. To those who think that the call for withdrawal from the European Union would preserve some ill-conceived sovereignty that Britain and other nations in the world feel is threatened solely by the EU ... then look at who manipulates the money markets, who lays down the conditions for borrowing from the World Bank and who meets annually to decide the future of the globe.

CORRUPTED BY PARTY POLITICS

2008-01-19T07:03:00.000-08:00

By Robert Edwards

(published in European Action number 11, July/August 2007)

In the previous issue of European Action, Bill Baillie asked what is the point of minority far-right parties entering the arena of both the local and national elections when the mainstream parties seem to have it all sown up in their favour and for themselves alone. The best they can do, he said, was to influence government policy now and then.
The results of the last local elections in May were devastating for the British National Party after putting up a record number of over 800 candidates. Most of them were paper candidates, of course, with at least one in the South East of a very dubious moral background.
The BNP, under Nick Griffin, has struggled for the past several years in order to re-invent itself, bending over backwards to follow similar groups on the continent that have adopted a stridently pro-Israel line. They think that being anti-Muslim and pro-Jewish will open the doors to mainstream politics, when recent election results have proven that this is not the case. Some people, you see, have long memories, especially Jewish people.

"The popularism [sic] in British nationalist circles means the idea that if we change our image the Jews will not say bad things about us … The BNP should not try and appeal to middle-class notions of respectability, which take issue with the fact that a minority of nationalists wear large boots and short haircuts, or that the BNP activities often 'provoke violence'. It is more important to control the streets of a city than its council chamber". Nick Griffin, The Cook Report, 1997

Quite often, this transformation took the form of attacking nationalistic critics of Israel by labelling them anti-Semites with the implication that they are largely influenced by the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. The BNP’s leader, Nick Griffin, was the author of a booklet entitled ‘The Mindbenders’, an exposé of alleged disproportionate Jewish influence in the British media. This was published within recent memory with the BNP now attempting to erase aspects of its history by saying Griffin had nothing to do with it.
Unfortunately for him, we have the following quote in stark contradiction to the latest ‘in denial’ struggle of conscience. In issue number 3, on page 11, of The Patriot 1999, he declares, "I have been busy writing The Mindbenders". Indelible, unambiguous and unequivocal!
What makes people like Griffin believe that political somersaults and twisted contortions will benefit them in the long run when inconsistency and downright opportunism does not go unnoticed and will surely follow them for the rest of their lives?
John Tyndall could never shake off his penchant for Nazi uniforms in the early 1960s, paraded for the whole world on the front page of the Daily Mirror. It was a propaganda gift to his enemies on the extreme-left and to his own internal rivals. They used it against him time and again.
After years of servility to JT, Griffin decided to challenge him on the issue of modernising the party and ridding it of the old guard anti-Semites, even though he was one himself, referring to the ‘Holohoax’ in his Rune magazine. Tyndall was given the ‘let’s get rid of the Nazis’ treatment that became more acrimonious as time went by. Griffin, as we all know, won the contest.
The Griffin gang also discovered a substitute for the old anti-Semitism in the form of a wildly exaggerated anti-Islamism, with the foul-mouthed Lee Barnes appointing himself the BNP’s Witch-Finder General. On April 9, 2006, Barnes informed me, “Islam is a direct threat to our safety. Jewish power is a mere political threat. When faced with two tigers trying to destroy you but you have only one bullet in your rifle what do you do?”
The cynical opportunism is plain to see but the logic is flawed. Having shot one tiger, what do you do about the other? Go on your knees and beg?
Just before last May’s elections, it was not surprising that Jewish leaders were to warn British Jews to unite against the BNP. One Jewish website declared, “The Board of Deputies of British Jews is calling on all communities to unite in making sure voters across the country reject the far right British National Party in May's local elections”.
It appeared that all the crawling and toadying to Jewish feelings and aspirations had been for nothing.

“The Messianic nature of Judaism has always been an important factor, at least subconsciously, in the hugely disproportionate role of racial Jews in both Communism and Capitalism”. Nick Griffin, Spearhead, February 1996

European Action has no problem in confronting the crimes of Israel and giving its support to the persecuted Palestinian people. We know that we are condemning people for what they do and not for what they were born. Anti-Semitism is attacking Jews merely because they are born Jews. Messrs Griffin, Barnes and Bean have still not quite grasped that simple definition of a term they are now so fond of throwing at any critic of Israel or even their own BNP policy on the subject.
The octogenarian editor of the BNP’s Identity magazine has a past history of far-right fringe activity, rubbing shoulders with anti-Semites throughout all that time in the 1950s and early 1960s. He was five minutes in Mosley’s Union Movement but then preferred those groups more interested in the ‘international Jewish conspiracy’ rather than serious solutions to Britain’s problems. Now he emerges as an ‘elder statesman’ of the BNP after disappearing completely from political life, after the founding of the National Front in 1967. Up on his pedestal he now dismisses the ’Judeo-obsessives’, as if he were as pure as the driven snow and never said “boo!” to a rabbi.
The attempt at appeasing Jewry has failed. It was never going to work because it was only ever viewed as a tactical ploy by anyone who could see through it. But why is supporting Israel and Jewry so important to a politician who wants to get on? What is the significance of leaked stories such as an alleged midnight call from the Jewish journalist Barbara Amiel, wife of Conrad Black, to Nick Griffin along the lines of, "Isn't it about time that we started to work together for mutual defence against the Muslim threat?". The authenticity of the exchange is highly questionable but the ‘leak’ was not condemned by Griffin because the purpose of relating such an unlikely tale was to send out a message to Jewry at large, preying on fears of Islam. It was Barnes’ dilemma of two tigers and only one bullet.
It is not wrong to condemn Israel for what is done to the Palestinians and it is not wrong to point out that some sections of Jewry put the interests of Israel above those of the countries of which they are citizens.
I recall an article in an old issue of Action of the early 1960s pointing out that there is something just as equally unacceptable as attributing all the world’s ills to a malevolent ‘international Jewish conspiracy’ ... and that is the idea that organised Jewry is blameless, always morally correct and, thus, should be completely immune from criticism. In other words, we should avoid all mention of them for fear of offending. Both views are, of course, irrational and morally unacceptable

IMMIGRATION - BIGOTRY OR REASON

2008-01-15T05:32:00.000-08:00

by Dermont Clark

(Published in European Action number 5, July/August 2006)

[Dermont Clark is a former Union Movement organiser and speaker from Cambridgeshire. In the early 1970s he was a main speaker at “Action Party” conferences until it reverted to “Union Movement” after a couple of years. He later played a role in the Action Society. He is now an enthusiastic supporter of European Action, the successor to the movement’s Action]

The policy of Union Movement, the post Second World War political party of Oswald Mosley, put the emphasis on humane repatriation of immigrants. This was perfectly possible in the 1950s and the 1960s because by 1958 the Indian population had only reached 125,000 and by the late 50s the total number of blacks in Great Britain was 192,000 (or less than 0.5 per cent of the population).However, as we entered the 1980s the demographic changes were being set permanently, and here and now in the 21st Century we must accept that any idea of coerced repatriation is neither possible nor morally defensible. Our immigrant population has established itself, for the most part regards itself as truly British and plays an important part in just about every part of our national life.Just for a moment consider the policy of some “patriotic” British political parties who would repatriate the entire non-European immigrant population over a ten or fifteen year term. The question is, how? If 25,000 sat down in the middle of London the state does not have the manpower to move them, nor the facilities to house them.Are we to return to the occasional stupid and shameful excesses of the British Raj in India when troops were summoned to move protesters and ended up firing with both small arms and artillery on the hapless natives, killing hundreds of mainly old men, women and children?Or do we wish the rest of the world to judge us from the comfort of their living rooms as they see on their TV screens Balkan type ethnic cleansing and huge camps full of huddled masses awaiting deportation back to countries that they no longer know as “home”? This would be racism and bigotry of the worst kind.In his book, “My Life”, Sir Oswald Mosley says, “I have always stood against the exploitation of the old colonialism, the placing of one people on top of another on grounds of alleged superiority or inferiority, which is the only rational definition of racialism and which I reject”.The Editor and contributors to European Action consider Oswald Mosley to have been a politician and philosopher of great vision and often decades ahead of his contemporaries in his planning for and aspirations of Europe a Nation, but we also feel the need to interpret his ideas in the contemporary context, bearing in mind that many things change over the years.Let us try now and relate to the present day, and the difficulties that we face in regard to the many issues surrounding immigration. The Government of the day has a moral obligation to protect and secure the borders of the United Kingdom and a National Party of Europe has the same obligation over its boundaries.The people have a right to expect their Government to protect them also from people in their midst who would break the laws of the land and/or wish to do them harm, and also the right to expect equal treatment. The Government should wisely and carefully use the revenues that it raises to manage their Public Services.It is now common knowledge that “New Labour” and the Home Office have lost total control of our borders. They have no idea how many people who shouldn’t be in the UK are living here (their estimate is some 400,000 but it could be more) and, as highlighted in a recent TV documentary, because of pressure from Number 10, the immigration officials are being forced to ignore the deportation of dangerous foreign criminals in order to meet targets.So called “political correctness” means that unfair discrimination is being used to advantage some people over others based on their ethnicity. This is morally wrong and completely stupid. The idea that an applicant’s ability to do a job is of less importance than his or her racial background, etc. is bound to deliver lower rather than higher standards. In the same way, because of poorly drafted laws, many of which have been pushed through to meet this Government’s deadlines of a new scheme or incentive every month or so, there has sprung up a whole legal “industry” to try and manipulate the system to the advantage of immigrants and asylum seekers who are not truly entitled to be in this country, all of which is funded through Legal Aid.What then are the solutions (solutions that are required not just by white voters but right across the racial mix of our voting public)?Firstly, procedures must immediately be put in place and given substantial backing to detain in custody and to return to their country of origin all immigrant criminals who have abused the hospitality of our country, and anyone who has been found guilty of any crime that potentially carries a prison sentence should be deported.Given that the cost of keeping a convict in prison is more expensive than putting them up in a four star hotel, it would seem sensible that these criminals serve their time back in their true homeland, rather than in the UK. This would also free up spaces in our increasingly over-full prisons. This is most easily achieved by subsidising the cost of the imprisonment in their country of origin.Virtually every other democracy in the world has a limit to the number of immigrants that it will accept in any given year, often broken down into specific numbers from individual countries. Indeed, one of the reasons for West Indian migration to the UK was the 1952 McCarren-Walter Act that changed the rules originally permitting some 65,000 British Commonwealth citizens to come to America each year, to restrict the number of Caribbeans to only 800.In addition, many countries will give preference within their quota to specified trades and professions (say, builders and doctors) and, in addition, will often apply other requirements such as the need to pass medical examinations, often a requirement (especially for older applicants) to post surety against the cost to the state of any medical treatment and an exclusion from any Social Security benefits for, say, the first three years.All of that seems perfectly sensible and reasonable. I can understand that families living in the UK want to bring over their elderly parents and their siblings. As long as they fall within the allotted quotas and do not cost the taxpayer any money, I have no objections. If we wanted to go to the United States or Australia, the same conditions would apply irrespective of race or colour.Asylum seekers are a particularly difficult area because, while one does not want to return the genuine applicant to a country where they are likely to be abused or tortured, the system is very muddled and unclear.This encourages “shyster” lawyers to challenge decisions to repatriate their clients and to “play the system” by telling those claiming the right to settle here to falsely claim they are from such and such a country “because under Human Rights legislation they can’t send you back”. The enormous cost of all this comes out of the Legal Aid budget funded by you and me, the taxpayers.This needs a root and branch overhaul, with clear and definitive rules, which should include the needs for claimants to prove their identity and country of origin with, if necessary, citizens of certain countries being excluded from entry into the UK. This would make the administration of requests for asylum simpler and more straightforward and eliminate much of the huge cost of court action and counter-action.Finally, what should happen to the half million or so immigrants in this country illegally? Mass deportation seems impractical at best, and as many of these people have settled into our society and contribute to our economy others have suggested an amnesty. I reject the concept of amnesty because these people are here illegally, but as they are located I do believe that the Immigration Service should take into consideration how they have conducted themselves and their circumstances.The first option would be some form of license to stay and work in the UK without granting any rights of citizenship (similar to how Germany after the Second World War recruited necessary immigrant labour from Turkey). After a suitable period of time, and dependent on how they conducted themselves in our society, full citizenship could follow while, of course, all the “bad apples” would immediately be sent packing.Rather than playing the “race card” or, on the other hand, surrendering our control of our borders and sovereignty to the masses who would descend on our land if given half a chance, I believe that a serious and practical solution based on fairness and justice in the best interests of all our citizens irrespective of their race, colour or creed is both a necessity and a duty that a government of which a National Party of Europe was a member would not hesitate to implement.

A SCHOOLBOY WITH MOSLEY

2008-01-04T20:50:00.000-08:00

By Gordon Beckwell
Friends of Oswald Mosley

(Published in the January/February 2008 issue of European Action No 14)

Everybody remembers the first time they heard Oswald Mosley speak. Mine was at precisely 3 o’clock on the afternoon of Sunday, May 14, 1961 in Trafalgar Square. It was a glorious Bank Holiday weekend. Some people say of their first occasion that they “came to jeer but stayed to cheer”. Not me. I knew exactly what I was going to hear and I was not disappointed. A few years previously, aged 15, I had come across a book, ‘Mosley - The Facts’, in the old Chelsea Public Library in Manresa Road. That red-jacketed book began a journey for me that continues half a century later and will not end until the day I hear the chiming of the hour.
In it, Mosley set out his ideas for nothing less than the transformation of Great Britain. His policy of ‘Britain First in Europe a Nation’ would make us strong enough to stop Soviet Russia taking over the rest of Europe without us becoming the servile underling of America. Economic life would flourish within its self-contained frontier, our great industries protected from the destructive effect of cheap labour competition from Asia and Africa.
In time, Europe would become the richest, most powerful and beneficent civilisation the world had ever seen.
A Mosley government would also stop mass immigration once and for all. Even then it was threatening the cultural identity of all the great races of the world; leading to the rootless ‘international airport departure lounge’ society we have today. Large parts of the South London I knew had already become Caribbean or Asiatic townships. I wanted to live in a British city.
The book also described Mosley’s version of an economy based on syndicalist principles. Instead of company profits going into state coffers or the pockets of capitalists, they should be distributed among the working people who produced them. It promised to be the biggest redistribution of wealth in the history of the world.
That first time, as I stood in the Square with the warm sun on my back and some school mates by my side, there was a feeling of anticipation and excitement. And a hint of danger. The crowd stretched back from the base of the Column to the pavement opposite the National Portrait Gallery. On the plinth, beneath Nelson’s distant gaze, stood a man I later knew to be Jeffrey Hamm giving the warm-up speech.
Before long I could hear the sound of drums coming from Whitehall as the Union Movement marchers approached. Then I noticed a number of young men in white shirts and black ties, the unofficial uniform of the Movement, slowly infiltrate the crowd ready to be on hand in the event of trouble. One of them I recognised as Mosley’s red-haired son Max.
Jeffrey Hamm reached the peroration of his speech with perfect timing: “And now I give you a man whose name is on the lips of all Britain, nay, of all Europe – Oswald Mosley”. On to the plinth jumped a grey-haired man in a grey double-breasted suit. He flashed a smile as he quickly appraised his audience and began to speak. His strong, resonant voice filled the Square: I had never heard oratory like this before.
Mosley spoke for over an hour without notes, without hesitation and without interruption. He had a marvellous joined-up way of speaking and a powerful grasp of words. Here was a master in the use of alliteration, intonation and emphasis to make a point and lead to emotive plateaux in the speech that brought thunderous applause. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up more than once.
I have absolutely no recollection of what Mosley said in that speech though no doubt it followed the lines of the book. What I do remember is the feeling. I was no longer a spotty-faced teenager from Chelsea. I was a member of the greatest race the world had ever known and we were going to make history and achieve wonderful things that would be honoured for generations to come. Hey, what’s wrong with that?
By the end of the speech nobody was moving in the Square. Even the day-trippers were rooted to the spot by the man in the double-breasted suit. As the cheering subsided, Mosley descended into the Square surrounded and protected by his followers. As he walked through the throng, a forest of arms rose in the full salute, mine among them. Quickly it was all over, Mosley entered a grey Riley saloon car and was driven swiftly away.
Ten weeks later I remember hurrying back by train from Spain to attend the next Mosley rally in Trafalgar Square held on Sunday, July 30. And I was there again on Sunday, October 8, when the Leader’s new book ‘Mosley – Right or Wrong?’ was launched [see page 4, bottom left - Ed]. You could not help noticing that each time the Square was packed even denser than before. Anyone who had come to feed the pigeons those Sundays was out of luck.

Union Movement’s Finest Hour
But the greatest rally of them all was still to come. On Sunday, May 13, 1962 it felt like half of London was in the Square and along its side streets. Few looked like casual passers by to me. People were getting really worried about immigration and nobody else was willing to make a stand. The Cold War was getting dangerous but few felt that the unilateral disarmament of CND was the answer. The housing problem was still acute. Mosley had common sense answers for all these problems and the common thread was that Europe should unite and unite now. At this time, National Headquarters in Victoria was receiving over a thousand enquiries a week, new branches were springing up and membership was growing.
After another tremendous speech, a column began to form for the march back to NHQ. I fell in with my school chums. Now I know that we used to march three abreast, rather than the usual military four, a little trick to stretch the length of the column. But I could tell something amazing was happening, so many people joined the march that day that when the front was entering Parliament Square the rear had only just left Trafalgar Square. At one point Mosley looked back and commented to the London Area Organiser, Fred Bailey, who was marching by his side, “Quite like old times, Fred”. You just knew that we were on a roll.
As I marched along Whitehall, some scruffy Reds on the pavement spat at us. But it was the proudest moment of my life. On passing through Parliament Square, bells sounded. The East Londoner in front of me shouted, “See, even Big Ben’s chiming for us!”. Everybody laughed.
Then it was up Victoria Street to Union Movement’s NHQ where we were due to disperse. Vauxhall Bridge Road was solid with people right up to Victoria Station, all traffic had long since given up hope of getting through. I stood not four yards away from Mosley. He turned from side to side and repeated, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” Cold words as you read them on the page but the way he said them produced the sensation that a piece of melting ice was running down my spine. I thought, a few more marches like this and the whole of Britain would sit up and take notice.
But other eyes were watching and alarm bells began to ring. An unholy trinity of Establishment, communist and Jewish interests arose and began to act. Reds and the street terrorists of the 62 Group attacked our meetings en masse. The Tory Government banned us from Trafalgar Square and local Labour councils denied us the use their public halls. Mosley and Union Movement fought on but the forces of reaction ranged against us were overwhelming.
Was it all worth it? Of course it was! It sent a message to future generations. Not only about Mosley’s ideas that in modern guise could still bring peace, prosperity and order to human affairs. But the knowledge that if men and women of strong resolve stand bravely, and can endure, then nothing that corrupt enemies can throw at them can ever break them. As the continuing existence of initiatives like ‘European Action’ proves.

OUR HERITAGE IS UNDER THREAT FROM AMERICA

2007-12-08T09:59:00.001-08:00

(published in the November/December 2007 issue of European Action)

by Robert Edwards

So why does the rest of the world hate America, apart for the many wars it has initiated since 1945? The answer, I believe, is much deeper and concerns a threat to the cultural lives of every nation on this planet ... but particularly to we Europeans. The following article calls for a resistance to all things American as the only way forward in the pursuit of the preservation of our own national values. ‘Britishness’ is a concept valued by all real patriots and must not be sacrificed on the altar of the new globalist mono-culture now being promoted by American capitalist imperialism ... the PAX AMERICANA!
The ‘father of British cultural nationalism’ was undoubtedly Sir Michael Balcon. He was thus described recently on BBC TV in a celebration of British film comedy. Who was he, you may ask. "Here during a quarter of a century many films were made projecting Britain and the British character", read a plaque erected by Balcon at Ealing Studios when it was sold in 1955 and continued as MGM British. He began as a regional distributor in 1919 before founding Gainsborough Pictures in 1924. After twelve years, he became a director and production chief at the studios in Ealing between 1937 and 1959. That should explain why he is regarded as a key figure in the history of the British film industry, celebrating all of our wonderful British cultural life.
His achievements have to be evaluated in the face of the massive output from Hollywood with all its Dollar power and the mighty movie moguls. He went there early in his career, had a big row with Louis B. Mayer, and returned to his native Britain (he was born in Birmingham) for which many should thank him intensely.
Some of our American readers will understand that my defence of British cultural values will inevitably entail a critique of the influence of American cinema and television on the British media to the point of mass saturation. It is at the expense of our own home-grown talent as well as being a destructive intrusion. But more, much more than this, is the dumbing down, an obsession with gratuitous violence, corruption of the English language replete with the obligatory profanities (principally, incest with your mother) that now deface and defile our television screens.
This obsession with the gun is also something alien to Britain and chiefly associated with the Westerns we watched as children. In this country we regarded these ‘gunslingers’ as fictional characters, too larger-than-life and from a land of which we knew little. Chicago gangsters usually got their comeuppance after behaving badly. They also had ‘attitude’ when armed with a ‘Tommy’ gun.
Ealing Studios, on the other hand, gave gentle insights into a different breed of people, often luckless but triumphing in the end through pure goodness. There were few guns involved, as well. When PC George Dixon (played by Jack Warner) was shot dead in the film, ‘The Blue Lamp’ (1949), it was unprecedented in terms of British cinema. In that era, when you shot dead a copper in real life you hanged for it, regarded by many as ‘the good old days’.
In the world of contemporary music, young British singers must affect an American accent with a drawl as they wail and scream out songs in apparent agony. It is a style that belongs to the United States, like so much other rubbish that is imported. The English accent seems to be a definite disadvantage if you want to get on with the likes of Simon Cowell, for example. Rap singing is not indigenous to the British cultural scene and unashamedly imitates the Americans ... black Americans, to be specific. White youths, called ‘wiggers’, adopt the black ghetto speak of American cities in a rejection of traditional white English values.
The white working class in Britain has been under attack for many decades now and the weapon used is American cultural dumbing down. You see it with the wearing of track suits, trainers and baseball caps ... probably the most ugly of sartorial expression. ‘Hoodies’, of course, complete the ensemble. You see the white boy imitating the American negro again, including the drugs culture and now the hand gun.
As a European, I can speak only for my British homeland first, but the problem should concern all Europeans as the so-called ‘global village’ sucks our entire ancient continent into its sphere of cultural influence. Starbucks here and Starbucks there ... the American multi-national desecrates the soil of our European heartland. The very presence of one of these coffee house rip-offs is a statement of cultural invasion and they should be driven back with the fury that sent the Turk packing at the gates of Vienna those centuries ago.
The destruction of the British character and the destruction of a way of life is intentional and by design because globalist free market exploitation requires populations of producers and consumers to be without national frontiers or any form of unique, separate identity. It is a requirement of some of the most evil forces on our planet, a requirement that believes we are nothing more than economic units in the grand designs of the big money-bags that manipulate governments. Nothing less.
The Americanisation of Britain and the rest of Europe is but one way of standardising the planet in order that the character of each is extinguished ... thus facilitating the free movement of labour wherever ‘free market’ monopoly capitalism requires it. This is on the basis of the old formula that cheap labour means fatter profits.
That is the economic argument. There is another, more invidious, dimension to this act of cultural vandalism and it is based on the misbegotten idea that the American way of life is such a wonderful and beneficial gift to the rest of the world that it must be imposed everywhere and anywhere. This, of course, entails the erosion of indigenous cultures in order that American values predominate.
I have to first confess that my own country practiced something very similar during that period of history when the British Empire held sway over much of the globe. As with the new American Empire today, our British Empire was motivated solely by material gain and greed at the expense of other countries ... gold and diamonds in Africa, along with the dope trade in China, for example. It was all thoroughly despicable. Our army was used in order to quell any opposition to the plunder and exploitation that lasted for more than a couple of centuries.
During that time we practiced the worst kind of self-righteous humbug with the belief that Britain was then giving ‘the natives’ the benefits of English civilisation, without which they would descend into savagery.
The point that was missed is that English civilisation evolved in England and was quintessentially for and of the English. It is best suited to a people of essentially Anglo-Saxon/Celtic stock who know and recognise each other for that.
That was the big mistake of all empire builders who deceive themselves and others that what they are doing is for the good of others, whether they like it or not ... a kind of brutal paternalism.
If we British had not sent our heroes out on storm-tossed seas those centuries ago and laid claim to others’ territory for commercial exploitation, I am sure the rest of the world would have survived without us and evolved and prospered according to their own innate abilities and values. Of course, they would. It is the utmost arrogance to think otherwise.
So it is with America today, hooked on cheap petrol with the arrogant belief that it has the right to take what it wants from anywhere in the world because it is bestowing ‘freedom and democracy’ in exchange. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Now we are the victims of another’s imperialism and our way of life is as much under threat as that of the subjects of Britain’s imperial past. The lesson to learn is that there can not be universal standards for all the peoples on this planet and that the most precious right is that freedom to develop according to the traditions and customs of each community without outside interference. This must be so for Britain and for the rest of Europe today.
A European identity, with Britain in a leading role, could only be expressed in terms of a resistance to the present-day rampaging American imperialism in all its forms. The external threat has always been the main impetus for a struggle of liberation.
Let us return to our Britishness, those qualities that made us distinguishable from the rest of the world but especially from America. We are essentially of the European world in terms of history with its centuries of creative genius and we should always consider that fact first, before going on about a ’special relationship’ across the Atlantic. The rest of Europe has always regarded us with suspicion as a consequence ... and not truly committed to the European ideal.
It is said that we have nothing in common with America except a language and that we have everything in common with other Europeans except a language. We should never allow a difference of language to get in the way of a good friendship. On the other hand, speaking roughly the same language has, in the case of the United States, proven to be misguided and illusionary. The ‘Atlantic Alliance’ has never been a partnership of equals, but, rather, one of master and poodle … of Bush and Blair, for example. That is why successive British governments have been reluctant to embrace Europe completely, looking over their shoulders to see if Washington approves. What kind of independence and ‘sovereignty’ is that?
The more we are Americanised, the less British we become. Other European nations have never been a threat in that sense, maintaining their national characteristics chiefly through language, languages distinctly different to that of the ’Anglo-Saxon world’, although English incorporates elements of many Continental tongues.
I would contend, therefore, that speaking a common language has been to our disadvantage where America is concerned. For a start, it is not exactly the same, is it? There is a difference in the general tone and inflection, along with a penchant for the crass and the vulgar. Such ‘kinship’ is illusionary and should be rejected.
I go back to the great achievements of the Ealing film studios and that wonderful tradition of British humour and British character. It is a rich heritage that is still appreciated by many in our country and reminds us that our best qualities as a people are not so far behind us as we resist constant attempts at sucking us into the global mono-culture with American materialism as its crass role model.
Americans, as a wit once noted, went from barbarism to decadence without an intervening period of culture. That is what makes it so impossible to appreciate why so many of our fellow Europeans, given our great cultural heritage, could ever sink so low as to embrace superficial American ‘cool’. They should know better.

A personal introduction

2007-12-08T09:02:00.000-08:00

Starting this blog was an idea that came to me after reading a few blogs from others. No names but they all seemed to follow a certain pattern. The people I am writing about never seem to say anything important or interesting even though they claim to be involved in politics. One of them goes on about driving up and down motorways stopping to take digital photos of wild birds and animals. He takes every opportunity to remind readers that he is a naturist. Another lives on a pig farm in North Wales and drones on about ancient monuments and what his family had for dinner. Their utter banality makes reading their blogs heavy going, ever in anticipation of coming across something witty or clever. Only to be disappointed.
To me, a blog should serve a purpose in direct accordance to the main interest of the group of people in which the blogger involves himself on a regular basis. In my case it is the political ideas of Sir Oswald Mosley and his vision for Europe. This, to me, is of greater interest than all the incidental comings and going of the day.
I am not going to follow the trend of the self-obsessed who tell us at what time they got up in the morning, how many times they broke wind in the process or how the dog reacted when he shouted, "Walkies!"
Why do these people think we want to know these details? It suggests an egotism out of direct proportion to their importance as human beings.
I shall not be informing you of the details of my personal life, my ablutions or what I had for lunch, because it is none of your bee's wax. Besides, you will find something more interesting on these pages which you will rarely find elsewhere ... political ideas that offer serious solutions to our country's problems.