The Greater Europe ... or Little England

by Robert Edwards

European Socialist Action No 37

Oswald Mosley speaks in Shoreditch, East London, 1960s

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Europe arise and break the chains that bind us!