Why Europe Should Unite as a Super Power

Beyond the old ideas of nation-states within our fractured and divided Europe ... towards a new political and economic system for our Europe united and free

by Robert Edwards 

(ESA No 42 September/October 2012)

The  first thing we need to do, in relation to Europe, is clearly define our position regarding European identity. Why do we claim to be European above all other considerations and why do we feel justified in proclaiming complete European integration to be the only constructive way forward?

We begin from the premise that Europeans have so much in common in terms of cultural, artistic and scientific achievement, that we must come together in order to preserve our unique civilisation. We are also very similar in ethnic terms but we also rejoice in the great diversity of types that complement each other. From the Nordic to the Mediterranean, we share the same history of achievement and, on those broadest of terms, we find the basis for fraternal solidarity. We call it European brotherhood.

This European identity is further enforced and affirmed by the great tragedy of war and internecine conflict. What greater motive for coming together in common purpose than to push aside national differences that had, too often, led to massive slaughter on battle fields, most often in the pursuit of economic advantage. By coming together as Europeans we end, for all time, the possibilities of future wars between Europeans.

When the greatest European in modern history was released from detention during the last months of the Second World War, this was his first observation. He said the worst were ever united but the best were ever divided. The worst, of course, being the jackals of war that profited from the second European conflict in the Twentieth Century. They destroyed both Germany and the British Empire. Europe was carved up between East and West while America and Russia occupied our continent throughout the Cold War. The best were then more divided than they ever were.

There should be a lesson to be learned from that but still we have separate states with separate national agendas, each of them vying for an advantage over their neighbours. The phrase ‘European Union’ remains a misnomer rather than the reality it should be. Why do we have this situation? I am going to point the finger of accusation firmly in the direction of the United States, currently attempting to expand its imperialist agenda as the world’s only military super power (global cop?) joined at the hip to Israel, also armed to the teeth, mainly by the American taxpayer. The United States hates the idea of Europe as one, with its own government and its own foreign policy. Furthermore, it clings to that Cold War set-up, NATO, in order to lead Europeans by the nose in its illegal military incursions. They fear Europe having its own defence system independent of the United States. This would, of course, leave the United States considerably weakened with the potential of becoming isolated. Can you imagine a Hilary Clinton without an obedient William Hague, that droning, servile, monotone mouthpiece for Washington and Tel Aviv? David Cameron and Nick Clegg went off on holiday to Spain and left him in charge. It is who pulls Hague’s strings that should worry us most.

Hague’s recent attacks upon the European Union and Britain’s relation to it leave us in no doubt that he is firmly in the pay of Europe’s enemies.

It was under George W. Bush that the doctrine of ‘Old Europe and New Europe’ was first created. Rather than allow Europe to integrate as one, the Americans sought to undermine this by reaching out to the newly-emerged former communist states, bribing and placing pressure on them for the purpose of buying permanent bases in Russia’s backyard. They dubbed these economically weaker states ‘New Europe’, thus implying ‘Old Europe’ (Western Europe) could be treated differently and separately. How’s that for dirty tricks? Divide and rule by Pax Americana.

European Action says, there should be no American military presence anywhere in Europe and, this presence should, henceforth, be regarded as a subversion of European territory and, thus, an illegal act of invasion. We thought the Cold War had ended but the American imperialists are still here with new ‘Checkpoint Charleys’, all ready for a new Cold War with ‘enemies’ of their own making. The CIA mindset infects all discussion on who or what is a threat to “the American way of life” and “if you are not with us then you must be against us”. We do not buy this oversimplified blackmail. Let me make it even more simple: we oppose you. ... period.

Our European identity shall be defined by our opposition to American imperialism in all its forms. Above all, we should never permit the Americans to play their games within Europe, buying off corrupt leaders with large financial hand-outs and dividing us still further. European politics is a matter for Europeans only. Or so it should be.

Our European identity is also determined by the necessity to build a new economic order independent of the present global structures. By this, we mean an end to the system of international finance controlled and manipulated by cartels of private bankers. This was discussed in the previous issue of European Socialist Action (No 41), the publication of European Action, in the front page article, WE MUST END THIS BANKERS’ RACKET.

The need for a single European economy with a European government controlling our own money supply could not be more obvious and necessary. This means an exclusively European banking system in the service of Europeans. All banking should be nationalised for this purpose. This can only be achieved on a large scale within an area large enough to sustain such a policy ... and that area is Europe! As OM would say, “Little England could never work”.

Have you noticed how right wing nationalists in this country never discuss these issues? They want “out of Europe”. Are they going to hire some tug boats and pull us across the Atlantic towards what they deem to be their true allies fighting ‘the Muslim threat to the West’? They talk of ‘Western values’ as if we share so much with America. Right wing nationalists love America rather than Europe. They prefer to be the servile ‘partner’ to Uncle Sam and deceive themselves with nonsense about a special relationship. The Americanised patriot is alive and well in the BNP and the EDL.

Who was it who said, “We have nothing in common with America apart from a language ... but we have everything in common with Europeans apart from language”? The first part is only partially true as correct and proper English still remains our prerogative.

I picked up the phone recently to learn that someone wants to offer me a good deal with a privatised utility company. I suggested he should get a proper job producing wealth and that I am fine with my current provider. I was very polite. He tells me he served in Iraq and this is the only job he can get. We got a bit friendly and he opened up his heart on matters to do with the world situation. It was then that I was given a deep insight into how far our soldiers are brainwashed. He would not accept that Britain should not have coalesced in the illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, even with all the facts thrown at him. His most revealing statement, after asking why he was there, was, “We have to support our allies”. We did not do that in Vietnam so why should we be the all too-willing accomplices in the recent batch of war crimes? The Americans were never our allies ... it is America first and last with them. The naivety of some of our own people is astounding.

The Twentieth Century is the shameful century of slaughter on an unprecedented scale which nearly destroyed Europe on two occasions. The causes of the two major world wars are still being discussed by historians around the world and, as time marches on, we become less hidebound by the impact of the old war propaganda immediately post-1945. Having said that, it is perfectly reasonable to consider all the facts leading up to wars and not to simply accept the received standard version. Some people call it ‘historical revisionism’ but we shall use that old legal phrase, ‘taking into consideration all the facts’. That way we avoid association with those whose only interest is the rehabilitation of the Nazis. It seems clear that all sides in war commit atrocities, as they do so today.

We reject, totally, the right wing nationalist claim that their mythical ‘sovereignty’ is threatened by Europe and we equally reject notions of confederation, a half-way house and an obstacle to fully integrated unity. Smaller, separate nations have never had ‘sovereignty’ because they have always been dependent on more powerful external forces. The nationalists are like the blind leading the blind, oblivious to these facts, immersed in myths and legends of heroic deeds of yore but never aware of the realities of predatory international finance.

Most people were inspired by the daily events during the London Olympics. They were organised and arranged to invoke the maximum patriotic fervour, the crowds deafening in their deeply emotional response when a British participant won a medal. The Union flag became a fashion accessory, draped over the shoulders in a victory roll, for all to see. Government ministers were to claim these games would boost the economy and give ‘GB’ a good kick-start. We were given the feel-good factor as more and more people claimed they were so proud to be British as a result.

Well, the economy is still in a state of stagnation and the only change we have experienced is a number of Olympic participants from Third World countries not returning home but are actively seeking asylum. Surprise, surprise! Guess where they come from?

Bike sales will peak and then just as quickly decline to its pre-Olympics level. Patriotic fervour will simply peter out and flying the Union flag will again be regarded as ‘fascist’.

Patriotism is a sentiment used by both the best and the worst in equal measure but those who peddle this feeling for political aims or advantages have been seriously misleading people in Britain.

It is not ‘patriotic’ to claim Britain can go it alone and compete successfully on world markets. It is the most shameless nonsense . Equally, it is the most idiotic nonsense that an ‘independent’ Scotland would be so in the sense that the buffoon Alex Salmond would be the Prime Minister of a new state in complete control of its finances, including the money supply.

Nationalism is the tool of international finance. Why do I say this? Because international finance preys on the chaos of international trade between nations competing, each one attempting to sell more than it imports. A favourable balance of payments, in other words. Separate nations are in a life or death struggle in a situation whereby nations can not all succeed at the same time. Success under these conditions means others losing out. The winners are usually those countries that keep wages down in order to keep costs down. Those who try to do well by their workers do not stand a chance.

Europe should unite as a single political and economic unit, large enough and powerful enough to free itself from the international trading system. In other words, a self-sufficient European socialist state with its own government. Then, at last, the European people determine their own future.

We Must End This Bankers' Racket

Make the New Europe Now!

by Robert Edwards

ESA No 41

The Italian government hopes to raise 10 billion euros    (£8.1 billion; $12.6 billion) selling off state-owned companies in a bid to reduce its crippling debt mountain ... goes a recent press release. This is the consequence of being at the wrong end of a system we know to be nothing short of debt slavery.

All over Europe, we are witnessing rule by finance ... private banking dictating policies to government. The BBC is constantly pushing the idea that Greece exiting the euro would have terrible economic consequences throughout the rest of the world. So it is not an exclusive issue for the euro-zone. Our Chancellor, old pal of the Rothschilds, George Osborne, says Britain’s recovery difficulties are all down to turmoil within the euro-zone but the real problems are far wider and originated in the United States of America.

Let us make it clear: this financial crisis was caused by Wall Street’s mortgage-backed securities fraud, none of whose perpetrators have ever been brought to book and jailed.

$90 trillion in credit debt swaps were then sold by Wall Street against Europe’s debt which presents further problems if the cash  is not available to make good when they are due. The truth is, Wall Street does not have the cash.

If the anti-austerity Left had won in Greece, then a bill would be presented to Wall Street that, of course, it could not pay.

Iceland famously threw out their government and jailed their criminal bankers which means all debts created through fraud were written off and the country is slowly recovering. This, surely, is the way out but the news media and economic ‘experts’ are telling us all that austerity is the only way. It is not.

Completely against Greek electoral law, the BBC and US polls predicted a win for the pro-austerity party, even though such polls, within two weeks of election, are banned in Greece. The BBC serves as a major influence in deciding many countries’ election results, manipulating minds but, in Greece’s case, quite illegally. Interfering in the elections of other countries is nothing new. The rewards are more debt slavery and plunder.

It was the BBC that reported, on 9/11, the collapse of a World Trade Centre tower 26 minutes before it occurred. It gives you some indication of how cravenly immoral the Beeb actually is.

They want to keep Greece in the straitjacket of debt slavery because that would serve the interests of Wall Street. The Greek people would then be consigned to perpetual poverty to pay off debts, in reality, the results of fraud and criminal acts committed elsewhere.

Who are these financial gangsters that exert so much influence over governments and can decide which country is up and which country is down? What is this imposed system of debt slavery and why do we permit large-scale usury, a practice condemned and proscribed in two mainstream religions, Islam and Christianity?

The Rothschilds took over the Bank of England in 1815 and, ever since, continued to expand and encroach upon nations everywhere in the world where corrupt political leaders would accept the offer of massive loans at exorbitant interest rates ... loans which can never be paid. This is the secret of the Rothschilds’ ultimate control .... the iron grip of usury whereby the borrower is permanently in debt and must, in perpetuity, meet all the conditions of the money-lenders. Remember the story of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice who demanded his pound of flesh on the failure of debt repayment.

The central banks of various nations, involved in bail-outs with strings attached, are nearly all Rothschild-controlled private banks. A list of them would flow over the edge of this page. The list includes the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, Deutsche Bundesbank, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Central Bank of Russia, every central bank in Africa and in South America ... and much more. Include the IMF, the World Bank and the Bank of International Settlements and you get the full picture. They are all in debt to the Rothschild family. If anyone thinks that central banks are independent institutions serving their nations, do not be deceived. They are illegally created private banks owned solely by the Rothschilds, created over a period of more than 200 years.

If you want an explanation why we have had these successive wars over the last few decades then consider this: before the destruction of the World Trade Centre, there were seven central banks not under Rothschild control. These were Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Sudan, Cuba, Iran and North Korea. Now there are only three, including the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

While NATO was fuelling civil war in Libya, the Rothschilds had set up their own bank in Benghazi ready for a take-over. They wanted Gaddafi out because he promoted the idea of a pan-African monetary union with the Gold Dinar as the reserve currency, independent of the globalist usurers and, of course, against the controlling interests of the Rothschild model of international banking.

They had previously operated in similar fashion in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you want to know what these wars were all about then look no further than the words on this page.

The war on Islam (erroneously termed the “war on terrorism”) is a proxy war declared by the Rothschilds upon the whole of Islam ... because Islam forbids usury, the system of charging interest on loans. Usury is also forbidden in the Holy Bible and was prohibited by the Christian churches until a few centuries ago, much to their eternal shame and disgrace.

The Rothschilds want to establish their own usury-based bank in Iran. The oil is secondary. With the enormous influence the super-wealthy Rothschilds exert over publishing and the media around the world, the power of press, television and so on, is brought to bear in order to tell us how evil and dangerous countries like Iran are, creating this false image as a prerequisite for future military conflict and take-over. They did it before and they’ll do it again.

This emphasis on Iran’s nuclear development and its alleged hostile intentions is also the relentless theme of Israel’s war-rattling propaganda. This, from a state that is armed to the teeth with over two hundred nuclear war heads, financed largely by the tax payers of the United States.

On the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, June 17, Peter Mandelson, close friend of Nat Rothschild, stated, “We are not masters of economic events in our own country”. The characteristic wry smile gave the game away. Mandelson was being uncommonly candid, a trait you do not often see in most of our politicians. Mandelson is fond of holidaying at Rothschild’s private Corfu resort and on his luxury yacht there, alongside our very own Chancellor, George Osborne, where deals were struck with Russian oligarchs and other shady activities. As an insider within the money power, Mandelson’s statement regarding us not being masters of our own economy can be taken as entirely authentic and factual.

This throws up the question of the validity of democracy and the entire party political system in thrall to the financial power of the Rothschilds. It throws up the question of the integrity of all governments who have misled the people into believing that government is the “master of economic events”, with each successive party in power serving the banking system above the interests of the broad masses of the people.

The way out is as we have always said. In order to break the chains of debt slavery and the system of global usury that keeps each nation bound to them, we must strive for the alternative that is Europe a Nation.

That alternative will be revolutionary in the truest sense. It will demand an entirely new way of thinking so that politics itself will be turned on its head. Not so much a method of government but an economic idea that liberates men and nations. Money must revert to its original purpose which is as a means of exchange, pure and simple, and not as a phantom currency created by private banks out of thin air through lending at exorbitant interest rates. The private banks thus controlling the money supply.

European Socialism can only come about through popular will when crisis becomes so deep and severe that the great masses of Europe see no other way out ... at critical mass! It could be done through the present governments of Europe if they had the will but the money power of the Rothschilds is so powerful and the first stirrings from one head of government would mean ordinary people suffering through IMF-directed austerity measures, more severe than the previous conditions.

As separate nations divided against each other, we are helpless and vulnerable. This is a concept completely lost on the reactionary right wing nationalists who oppose complete European unity. I have always said nationalism is the enemy of Europe.

End this rotten and corrupt international banking system by creating your own banking system within Europe, of Europe and for the European peoples alone. A European Central Bank, relieved of Rothschild control, would supply credit where it is really needed and the money supply would be firmly within the control of elected government.

Banking should serve the people and not the other way round.

We must also have a fiscal and monetary policy controlled by European government whereby the supply of money is such that it is neither too much nor too little for the development of an economy. Too much money in the system not matched by production would lead to inflation ... less money in the system would, of course, lead to deflation.

Today, bankers can move money in and out of countries, often having a detrimental effect upon those countries. It does this through operating within the international trading system, supplying the money for this competitive trade. They control us this way.

We say end this system of international trade whereby financiers supply money to it and can so easily withdraw it. The creation of a self-contained European economic system with political leadership would remove the power of international finance simply by our withdrawing from international trade and thus becoming insulated from world markets.

We could create our own banking system which would cease to be international finance. Creative finance would then serve the European people.

The Barbaric Americans

EDITORIAL - ESA No 39, March/April 2012

Our hearts went out to 65 year old Christopher Tappin after losing his two year battle against extradition to the United States for selling batteries to Iran.

Any trial there will prove unfair as Mr Tappin’s UK witnesses will not travel to the United States (due to the enormous travel and accommodation costs) and where video questioning is not permitted under US law. The prosecution counsel will have free reign with full government backing. This will be a political trial ... a political show trial, no less. As rigged as any Stalinist show trial of the 1930s Soviet Union.

This softly spoken gentle man has borne his predicament with dignity and charm. How will this Englishman cope in a land where good manners are unheard of and everything is determined by how many dollars you have in the bank?

Mr Tappin told the press, when leaving at Heathrow, that he felt David Cameron had let him down, which is a typical English understatement for downright betrayal, the betrayal of a mild-mannered businessman doing his job. This government betrayed us all by not keeping to a promise to review and amend the extradition arrangements with America. Mr Tappin was waiting for this patiently but nothing transpired.

The batteries were for missiles. If he had sold them to Israel, perhaps the most aggressive nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, all those respected members of the Conservative Friends of Israel would be nominating him for a position on the next Honours List. Our Foreign Secretary, William Hague, is a senior member of the Conservative Friends of Israel and it shows wherever he goes. He was there prompting and giving aid to the illegal opposition to Colonel Gaddafi and now he is clamouring for more support for the Israeli-backed opposition to President Assad of Syria. He is doing the bidding of Israel every minute of his waking life. It shows every time that flat monotone voice of his struggles to justify the position of the Foreign Office on its Middle East policy.

Now Christopher Tappin must be thrown to the wolves even though he has been caring for his wife who has Churg-Strauss Syndrome. This caring man is being torn away from a woman who is dependent on her husband. That alone should be grounds for preventing his extradition ... compassionate grounds that would otherwise enable an illegal immigrant to be granted full citizenship here with all the perks. The European Court of Human Rights would have had something to say about it all ... but this does not concern human rights at all. It concerns America’s interests and those interests alone.

A once great Britain has to bow down to the American barbarians and give up a human sacrifice on the bloody altar of America’s imperialistic war against the Muslim world. They want to show that they really do rule the world and will come down like a ton of bricks on any decent Englishman trying to earn a crust by selling a few batteries to America’s enemies.

We should end all extradition treaties with the United States followed by a disbanding of NATO. Certainly, we should cease to be part of any military coalition anywhere in the world. This country should concern itself with British and European laws, British and European economic interests and British and European global interests ... not doing the bidding of the world’s only super power in league with Israel which has nothing to do with Britain’s interests whatsoever.

You begin to wonder just how far Israel is involved in all the upheavals today, instigated by dark forces.

The United States is now saying they do not believe Iran is pursuing the development of nuclear weapons. George W. Bush tried to tell us Saddam Hussein (a former US ally) had weapons of mass destruction which turned out be entirely false. They want Israel to tone down all its clamouring for war against what were once upon a time, the Persians.

Religious Jews celebrate a festival called Purim every year which involves taking enormous pleasure from the historical massacre of a very large number of Persians ... men, women and children ... in the most appalling manner.

The Iranians are latter-day Persians and their Biblical foe. Bear that in mind when you try to fathom why the Israelis go on about bombing Iran.

Zionism is an essentially secular political creed but they are not above using religious myth in pursuit of Israeli expansionism. This is the hypocrisy of Zionism ... secularism  invoking the promises of a Jewish god. Yes, a god in which they do not believe. Only a certain kind of mindset can juggle with such contradictions.

Our position on Christopher Tappin is, therefore, quite clear. There should be no extradition treaties with the United States whereby our citizens, entitled to the protection of the British government, have their lives destroyed, along with those of their immediate families, in the pursuit of American foreign policy.

There are only British interests in this country. It is the business of British government to protect those interests and to protect all our citizens here in Britain.

To paraphrase the Book of Common Prayer, “the President of the United States hath no jurisdiction in this Realm”. In the original BCP, the reference is made to the Bishop of Rome (the Pope). It is still used in our English churches today.

That is what being British really means; protecting our civil liberties to the death. The barbaric ’Merkans have different ways which we do not like at all. Their prisons are some of the worst in the world where every kind of vice and corruption reigns. Christopher Tappin should never be in one. Instead, he deserves to be treated humanely and decently.

Stop the Badger Cull

The scapegoat

by Scott Ullah

(European Socialist Action No 38   Jan/Feb 2012)

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

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

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

So let us look at the scientific evidence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Wild Man of The Left"

Labour Party days: Oswald Mosley with his first wife Cimmie

MOSLEY'S ORIGINS IN THE LABOUR PARTY

by Robert Edwards

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RHE © 2012
European Socialist Action No 38