Category Archives: liberal bigotry

After the EU referendum

The battle has been won but not the war

Robert Henderson

The Europhiles threw a great deal at the EU referendum campaign.  There was the shameless   use of government resources especially those of the Treasury to propagandise for the Remain side. The governor of the Bank of England  enthusiastically supported the remain side.  EU panjandrums directed  dire threats  of what the EU would do to  Britain. A gigantic cast of the “great and the good” from finance, trade, industry, the media and politics (drawn from both Britain and abroad ) were daily paraded in front of the public like ancient  oracles forecasting  unalloyed disaster if Britain voted to leave the EU.  Leading Tories in the Remain camp cast aspersions on the character of those supporting Leave –  David Cameron even claimed that voting leave was immoral. Accusations of racism  were routinely levelled  against any leave supporter with a public voice  who addressed  the subject of immigration and the leave voters were labelled as xenophobes, bigots and racists.   Most contemptibly when the Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered   Remain supporters, including  MPs, attempted by implication or direct accusation to link the killing with the Leave side’s position on immigration.  So desperate were  the government  and Remain politicians generally  to ensure a vote to remain  that when the government web site which allowed people to register for a vote crashed two hours before the deadline  for registering,  Parliament did not hesitate to extend the deadline the next day  (by 24 hours not two) in the belief that it would mean many more young voters (who generally favoured remaining in the EU) would vote.

It says much for the strength of character of  the British that they refused to be cowed by this onslaught of propaganda and threats.  The Remain camp started with Project Lie, moved to Project Fear and ended with Project Slander as their accusations of racism became ever more shrill as polling day approached.  None of it worked.  Their  prophecies of doom were so frequent and so overblown that their hysterical warnings  ended up looking like caricatures produced by the Leave  side .  The only thing which stopped the Leave campaign’s momentum was the death of Jo Cox which stopped campaigning for three days just as the polls were consistently  showing increasing support for Leave.  This break in momentum probably cost Leave several percentage points in the final poll as for a few days the polls swung back towards Remain.

There was also a strong tendency for the Remainers  to patronise the leavers by implying or saying directly that only a bigoted blockhead who did not know better could vote to leave.   Nowhere was this mentality  shown  more strongly than over the subject of immigration.  The Remainers’  favoured tactics were simply to ignore the issue or, if forced to address it, to chant the mantras such as  “Immigrants have brought so much to our country” or  “Immigrants do the jobs which Britons won’t do”  or “The shortage of housing, school places and GPs  etc  is not down to immigration but the failure of government to provide the money to build more houses, schools  and GPs etc”.  As immigration was the issue  which troubled voters most  and especially troubled the white working class,  this was madness on the part of the Remain campaign. Clearly nothing has been learnt by the politically correct from Gordon Brown’s abuse of a working class  English pensioner Gillian Duffy  during the 2010  General Election when she complained  about the effects of mass immigration and Brown  was caught describing her as a bigot.

But it was not only the Remainers who wanted to  ignore or explain away the problems mass immigration brings. Many on the Leave side were just as squeamish when it came to immigration.  If it had not been for Nigel Farage having the courage to keep banging the immigration drum in all probability the referendum would have been lost.  The question of regaining sovereignty was a very strong and positive message, but on its own it is doubtful if it would have gained sufficient traction to lead to a win. What made it really  potent was when it was allied to controlling our own borders and stemming immigration.   The least politically sophisticated person could readily understand the message.

The battle but not the war is won

Gratifying as the referendum result is,  it was only  the first battle in the war to recover Britain’s sovereignty.

As things stand we are still subject to EU law until either we leave without an  agreement with the EU or fight our way through the provisions of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, something which would almost certainly take two years from its activation and which could be extended indefinitely in principle with the agreement of the European Parliament.  It is even conceivable that new members could be enrolled before Britain’s departure who would then have a say in what the terms for Britain would be. That is just one of the drawbacks to using Article 50. There are others which mean that  Article 50 is a poisoned chalice and should be avoided.   Let me quote it in full as it is short:

  1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.
  2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.
  3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.
  4. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it.

A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

  1. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.

Before I get to the practical difficulties of using Article 50 let me stamp on an idea floating within the disgruntled Europhile camp  that Britain could remain in the EU if no agreement was reached on the terms of leaving. This is not so.  Paragraph 3 of the Article runs” The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.”  If there is no agreement and no extension of the negotiating time, Britain would simply leave and EU laws would cease to have effect.

The   drawbacks to using Article 50 are extensive.  To begin with it allows the EU to set the agenda and the pace of the negotiations. Until an agreement is reached or the leaving state simply leaves after two years of fruitless negotiation, Britain would  remain subject to   EU law. This  would mean, amongst other things, that Britain would have to continue to pay the £8  billion odd   to the EU that  they keep and the £6 bn odd  which the EU takes from us and then returns it to Britain with instructions  on how it is to be spent, Britain could not negotiate any treaties with countries outside of the EU and  British businesses would have to continue to implement EU imposed standards in areas such  as the  workplace  for example, the   hours worked. It would logically also mean that Britain was subject to any new EU laws passed during the negotiating period, for example, the EU might push through a transaction tax which would be utterly against Britain’s wishes.  Most importantly Britain would have to continue accept  migrants from the rest of the EU and probably other territories which  have free movement with the EU such as Norway or Switzerland .  Moreover,  the idea that Britain  would be leaving the EU  after two years  could provoke a massive upsurge in EU migration to these shores.

Europhile MPs

The other problem is the nature of Britain’s MPs. Most are Europhiles, as are a majority of the House of Lords. In principle the result of the referendum could be ignored – it is merely advisory not legally binding – by the Europhile majority in Parliament. That should  be politically impossible but there would be ample opportunity for the Europhiles to subvert the wishes of the British public more stealthily  by extending the length of time for  negotiation or by making agreements with the EU which would  stitch Britain back into the EU, for example, making immigration from the EU very easy.

If an agreement  which firmly attaches Britain to the EU once again is concluded one of two things could happen: either Parliament could accept in on a vote or a further referendum be held on the terms of the agreement with all the bullying associated with the EU when the public of a member makes the “wrong” choice the first time around.  The first would be overtly undemocratic and the second covertly undemocratic.

An alternative to an agreement between British politicians and EU politicians would be for  a major  party to campaign at a general election  for Britain to  withdraw from the leaving process and by doing so to remain in the EU. Whether  such a cancellation of Britain’s withdrawal would be legal is debatable, especially if Article 50 is activated because there is no procedure in the Article  for cancelling the article’s activation.  However, legal or not, the rest of the EU might be willing to accept the cancellation because this is really  about politics not law.

None of this is fanciful because there have already been suggestions from MPs, the most prominent being David Lammy of Labour , an ex-cabinet minister, has suggested that the Commons refuse to accept the result of the referendum   and Tim Farron, the leader of the LibDems has committed his party to standing on a platform to get Britain back into the EU.  There is also a petition on the government web site which is already in the millions demanding that the referendum result be deemed invalid (there is some doubt over the authenticity of large numbers of the signatures).

The next general election.

The question of when the next General Election is to be held looms over the post-referendum political world.    It could be soon, although because of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act two thirds of the House of Commons would have to pass a motion permitting an election less than five years after the last General Election. As this Tory government has a working  majority of only sixteen such a motion would need  to be supported by Labour. Whether that would suit Labour at present is extremely  dubious because the present chaos within the Party would almost certainly lose them many seats. But the other parties, including the Tories,  would probably  have many MPs against an early general election because there is a good chance that they could be punished by the voters either because they were for or against being  a member in the EU.  There are also many MPs with small majorities who would not welcome an election  because an MP with a small majority is always vulnerable to defeat. With nearly 4 years of this Parliament to run such MPs might well vote against an early election.  More generally, having run a general election campaign little more than a year ago parties may be short of money to run another.

If  there was sufficient support for an early election there would be  a halfway plausible  reason for having one. As  Cameron has resigned and a new Tory PM  is to be appointed by the Autumn,   a new election could represented as giving the new Tory regime electoral legitimacy.   But   it would be a rather weak argument because there is no  recent precedent for  governments calling a general election when prime ministers  are changed during the course of a Parliament. It did not happen when Gordon Brown took over from Blair, Major  succeeded  Thatcher  or when  Callaghan replaced Wilson. It would also be wholly exceptional for a general election to be called  so early in a Parliament (this one runs until 2020) for the purpose of validating a new PM.   Alternatively, a new General Election might be called because if defections, resignations or death   robbed the   Tory Party of a majority at some time in this Parliament..

But if an early election is not  called it is not inconceivable that the negotiation period could stretch deep into this Parliament or even past the 2020 date prescribed by the Fixed Term Parliaments  Act.  Implausible? Well, the first two years are almost certainly  accounted for if Article 50 is activated and it would not be that difficult to envisage Europhile British politicians colluding with EU politicians to string the matter out in the hope that time would change the political atmosphere in Britain sufficiently  to allow another referendum on whether Britain should leave the EU to be held and won by the Europhile side.

Other possibilities  would be  the election of a government comprised of one or more parties which  stood on a platform of  accepting  a  draft agreement  on offer from the EU  which would effectively  re-make Britain a member of the EU or of Britain withdrawing its application to leave  or  Britain re-applying to join the EU after leaving  it.

Because parties would have campaigned at an election for such policies any of these options could be implemented without a referendum.

What should happen?

Britain should not activate Article 50. Instead the  1972 Communities Act (the Act which gave legal force to  Britain’s membership of what became the EU)  should be repealed .  That would make the British Parliament sovereign again. Just to make sure there is no legal confusion  it would probably be advisable to enact a British sovereignty act to ensure that British judges cannot attempt to subvert Parliament’s intentions.  If  the Europhile majority in Commons refused to do this there would be a most serious constitutional crisis, the sort of crisis over which civil wars  are fought.  I doubt whether the Commons would risk that.  At  best such behaviour might well fracture parties and would sour the relationship between the electors and politicians for a long time.

The House of Lords is more problematical. They could  delay any legislation for around two years before the Parliament Act could  be used to force the legislation through. That would be a very dangerous path to go down for the Lords because it would probably result in their abolition. However, many peers might consider that a price worth paying and quite a few  both inside and outside of the Lords might see it as a solution to the anomaly of an unelected chamber  within the British political system.

Having repealed the 1972 Act and put any other necessary legislation  on the Statute Book, Britain would then be in the position of any other country outside the EU. They would negotiate with the EU on an equal basis without the EU controlling the agenda.  If the EU refuses to play ball Britain should simply trade under the WTO rules and conclude trade treaties as and when they are available and  advantageous to Britain.   Would the EU be obstructive?  I doubt it because  (1)  they have a massive trade surplus with the  Britain, (2) Britain is a partner in many  a pan-Europe enterprise ( for example, Airbus,  the European Space Agency) ,  (3) Britain is a very useful partner to have on the world stage because of her senior position in many international  bodies  (permanent member of the security council,  important member of the IMF, World Bank, Nato, G7, G20), (4) there are many  more  people from the other EU states in Britain  than there are Britons in the other EU countries and (5) the Republic of Ireland would be ruined if any serious protectionist measures aimed at Britain were enacted by the EU.  Most WTO tariffs  are low but where they are more substantial such as those attached to cars (around 10%) the odds are that the EU would rapidly make adjustments to those WTO tariffs  because they export so many cars to the UK.  The idea that nothing can be done quickly in terms of deciding the level of tariffs or their absence is obvious nonsense if  both sides want an agreement.

Britain’s negotiators, whether politicians or public servants, must be willing to play hardball. What is all too often not mentioned when tariffs being imposed by the EU  are discussed is that  Britain can impose reciprocal tariffs which would (1) bring in substantial amounts of tax and (2)  result in more British production going to the domestic British market.  The argument that Britain’s export  trade to the EU represent s  a much larger part of the British GDP than the other  EU states’ exports to the UK and consequently the EU would  not be damaged as much as the UK through a tariff war  does not hold water . This is because British exports to the EU are not spread uniformly throughout  the EU or  throughout individual members states’ economies.  Hence, the impact of  putting up barriers  to British exports would be very damaging to particular industries and areas  of EU member states. Think of the blow it would send to the German motor industry.

The repealing of the 1972 Act and what flows from it would have the great advantage of simplicity and above all speed.  Delay is the enemy of   those who want the wishes of the British people as expressed in the referendum to be honoured and the servant of those who wish to prevent Britain truly leaving the EU.  The longer the delay the more opportunity for fudge  and manipulation  by those with power.   Do not be misled by  politicians like Boris Johnson who led the Leave campaign and who will almost certainly  be at or near  the head of the government . Their embracing of the  Leave campaign  does not mean they will deal honestly with the British who voted to leave because they thought  that Britain would become truly sovereign again and above all be able  to control immigration.

Already there have been  British politicians who supported leaving the EU  who are saying that immigration will not be massively changed. For example,  Daniel Hannon a Conservative MEP and prominent Leave campaigner   told presenter Evan Davis on the BBC’s Newsnight programme: “Frankly, if people watching think that they have voted and there is now going to be zero immigration from the EU, they are going to be disappointed.” and admitted that  the price for remaining in a common market with the EU would be free movement of labour.  Boris Johnson himself has written a piece in the Telegraph saying that access to the single market would be available to the  UK after Brexit. That implies he would accept free movement of Labour for it is doubtful that EU would grant free access without mobility of Labour.

It is also noteworthy that the  line on immigration most pushed by Leave campaigners during the referendum campaign was not that immigration would be reduced dramatically  per se, but that an Australian-style points system would be introduced. If such a system was used  without a cap on numbers coming each year,   immigration could soar. Imagine that 100,000 foreign  nurses  a year meet the criteria for nurses in the UK  and want to come to Britain,  a points-system without restrictions on numbers would potentially allow all  100,000 to come in.

One thing is certain amongst the current political upheaval in Britain, the Europhiles (who can come in Eurosceptic clothing)  will not lie down and accept the verdict of the referendum.  Those who want Britain to be an a sovereign state again must be ever vigilant as to what is being done by politicians both  here in Britain and abroad. There is a real danger of the Leave victory being stolen from us.

 

Book review – Displacement

The story of  a man resigned to being a victim because he does not realise he is a victim

Author Derek Turner

Obtainable from  Amazon

Review by Robert Henderson

In his last work Sea Changes Derek Turner offered a large canvas on which he painted both the predicament of the illegal  immigrant and a Britain afflicted with a paralysing political correctness with which traps both the British elite and the ignored and secretly despised  working-class into an ideological web far removed from reality.    With  Displacement, a novella rather than a novel,  we have a more intimate work which illustrates through Martin Hacket  a dismal deracinated England which has left the English with no sense of  national feeling or any sense of having a land they could call their own. It has even robbed them of any sense that their predicament is in some way wrong or even just plain odd .

Displacement is set in South London. Martin is young , blond and  a member of  the white working class, an endangered species in his London.  Like the rest of his class Martin has been robbed not only of his sense of historical and territorial  place  but  materially deprived. He  has a job as  courier on a bike and, because he knows no better,  he thinks himself lucky to have the menial job  because  such jobs normally go to graduates.

The world Martin inhabits is unreservedly  tawdry. Everything  that once gave the white working class a sense of belonging, worth and respect has been removed by the massive  postwar immigration. A  surreptitious colonisation of Britain has occurred. His family is one of the few white English faces left in the road in which he lives.  Their  few white English neighbours  are not of his class, merely  the advance guard of a possible gentrification.   Martin wishfully thinks of a life in the suburbs.  He used to dream of somehow finding the money to move there when he  had a girlfriend Kate,   but  allowed that dream to die after they broke up because he  knows  he could never  afford any sort of  property.

Martin  lives with his father and elder brother Mike.  His father is a vessel  adrift from its anchor. He worked on ships as a deckhand until the company  which employed him  went belly up. Since then he has been unemployed.  But it is not just his work which has gone. A natural Labour voter he no longer has a meaningful Labour Party to vote for or a union to which he can belong .   Mike is a drug addict and minor criminal.

Martin’s  release from the  dreariness of  a  London in which  the native English have been reduced to just one ethnic group is twofold. The first means of escape is  free running.  This frees him from the clutching mediocrity of his social and physical world, giving him not just a physical release but a sense that he is above the fray the society in which he  lives.  His second release is through  poetry which he both reads and writes.   Martin  is not academically inclined and never got much out of school, but he has  a desire to express himself  and free verse  can be like free running,  something which is not constricting,  something he can bend to his will rather than being bent by circumstances.

Against all the odds Martin becomes a sort of celebrity, or  at least he has his fifteen minutes of fame.  Whilst free running  Martin is seen by  people in the buildings he scales.  This causes alarm amongst some, because he  runs in a  white hoody which with his blondness  gives  him a ghost-like appearance.  Martin  is also seen on a building housing a senior politician, something  which attracts the notice of the police who fear he is a security risk. The media takes up the story without knowing who  is  the   person  responsible.  Martin’s ex-girlfriend  guesses that he is responsible .  She is excited by Martin’s sudden if so far anonymous celebrity, reconnects with him and  arranges for a public school educated journalist by the name of Seb to interview Martin about his free running.

Seb visits Martin and his family  in the spirit of  an anthropologist visiting  a tribe of hunter gatherers.   Except for Kate , whom he tries unsuccessfully to seduce , Seb  does not have any real interest in Martin and his family and friends; they are  merely props for an article which will validate his ideas about the white working-class, an out of date , redundant species, Morlocks robbed of their purpose,  with  Martin cast as the ugly duckling who is changed into a swan by his free running exploits, something celebrated in prose of excruciating pretension  such as ’From  his concrete eyrie he can discern the essential unity of humanity’.

The article is deeply offensive but  Seb diffuses the anger  of Martin and his friends and family  by introducing Martin to a publisher of poetry .  What Martin does not appreciate is that this is an act of heavy patronage, a re-enactment of that extended to working-class authors in the quarter century after the Second World War, which is a continuation of the offensive patronising  tone of Seb’s newspaper article.

The real  tragedy is not the mean circumstances in which Martin  finds himself, but the fact that he accepts his lot without questioning : he does not ask  why he  cannot set up home in decent circumstances because housing is beyond expensive; why he cannot get the sort of job his father’s generation could get,  manual most probably but paying well enough for a man to raise a family; why his father has been reduced to idleness through no fault of his own. Most   importantly he does not question how it is that where he lives is almost entirely  dominated by people who are not like him when only  a few decades before the place he lived in had been solidly white working class.

Martin is a man resigned to being a victim because he does not realise he is a victim. He  sees the mediocrity of the world he lives in but accepts it as just how things are. He does not even have what Winston Smith in 1984 had,  vague  memories  of what  was before the  dismal world  in which he lived.  Winston however ineptly had an urge to challenge the status quo; Martin has  no urge to change things  only to find a way to escape the grind of his daily existence with poetry and free running, which both gives him a focus on something  untainted by the rest of his life and literally lifts him above it.  Yet even that consolations will be fleeting enough because free running is for the  young.  It will not be too many years before Martin is too old to find his freedom there.

Molesting justice

Robert Henderson

The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Alison Saunders  is to issue new  guidance to  police forces and prosecutors on the treatment of allegations of rape, viz:

Mrs Saunders said: “For too long society has blamed rape victims for confusing the issue of consent – by drinking or dressing provocatively for example – but it is not they who are confused, it is society itself and we must challenge that.

“Consent to sexual activity is not a grey area – in law it is clearly defined and must be given fully and freely.

“It is not a crime to drink, but it is a crime for a rapist to target someone who is no longer capable of consenting to sex though drink.

“These tools take us well beyond the old saying ‘no means no’ – it is now well established that many rape victims freeze rather than fight as a protective and coping mechanism.

“We want police and prosecutors to make sure they ask in every case where consent is the issue – how did the suspect know the complainant was saying yes and doing so freely and knowingly?”

This puts  men in a tremendously vulnerable position,   because rape cases  commonly do not rest on whether intercourse has taken place or not  but whether it was consensual. Consequently,  prosecutions are inevitably tricky, frequently coming down to  one person’s word against another with little if any supporting evidence as to who is telling the truth. To muddy the evidential waters further  the vast majority of rape allegations are made against men who are known to the accuser with a significant  proportion involving someone with whom they have had a sexual relationship before the rape.

What does meaningful consent mean?  

The new guidance means that a man will take his life in his hands if he has intercourse with any woman who has taken because she had taken drink because how on Earth is he to prove the woman was compos mentis when they had sex? . To  legally  give  her consent would a woman have to be stone cold sober, with drink in her  but talking fluently, slurred in her speech but aware of where she was and what she was saying,  inebriated but able to walk unaided  or so drunk that she needed to be helped to walk?   Or would she have to be unconscious?  Then there is the question of change of mood.  A person who has drunk alcohol  may be perfectly coherent but much less inhibited and do things they would not do when sober.  Could anyone who has taken drink be considered fully competent to make the decision to have sex?

The same would apply to drugs. It would all very subjective. There would be no objective point short of someone being unconscious  where it would be possible to  categorically say consent was not meaningfully given. Consequently, any claim short on proven insensibility should not meet the criminal evidential standard of beyond a reasonable doubt.

Apart from the subjectivity attached to the  woman’s condition there is also the question of who would provide evidence that a woman was unable to give meaningful consent.   Often the only witnesses   likely to have seen the woman shortly before she left a bar or a pub with a man are people were less than sober themselves. Take a common example,  a group of men and women go on a pub crawl and  at closing time a couple pair off.  Next day the woman makes a claim of rape and cites the other people on the pub crawl as witness to her drunken state before leaving the pub. The other people may say they thought she was too drunk, pretty drunk or drunk but not staggering drunk. The problem is that those witnesses themselves were most probably drunk  and in no state to rationally  judge another person’s drunkenness or appear as credible witnesses. .

Particularly pernicious is the recent introduction into English courts  of the practice of allowing women alleging rape to simply say  they were too drunk to remember  what happened with this being  taken as evidence of an inability to give consent . It emasculates the defence of any defendant claiming that consent occurred because, intended or not, it is a  most efficient way of avoiding meaningful cross-examination by the defence. What could defence counsel  ask the alleged victim  if she says she has no recollection  of what happened  and sticks to the story?  If the alleged victim  has a past history of sleeping around  defence counsel  might make something of that (although judges have been primed to treat such questioning with hostility),  but they  would not be able to attack the question of whether she had given consent if consent is not dependent on what the alleged victim says but her  physical  state at the time of the alleged rape.

It is also very important to understand that having no recollection of what happened after drink has been taken does not mean that the woman was not capable of saying yes.   It is quite possible for a woman to have given consent  having taken a good deal of drink and yet be unable to remember what  happened  the next day either at all or with any accuracy.   This is common knowledge. Most British adults at some time will have gone out for a heavy drinking session  and woken up the next day unable to remember  what happened the night before. Nonetheless,  when meeting up with the people they were with during the drinking bout they  discover that they were fully  conscious and physically capable during the time spent drinking. They may also have been sober enough to do something complicated such as having  made a  journey home which required them  to catch the correct bus  or  train, get off at the right station and  find their way home , yet have no recollection of doing so.

What goes for alcohol applies to drugs, both in terms of the incapacitating effects and changes in psychological state. However, with drugs the varieties of mood and consciousness alteration is much more varied.

But the dangers for  men go way beyond drink  and drugs. The guidance will also cover  circumstances where “a suspect held a position of power over the potential victim – as a teacher, an employer, a doctor or a fellow gang member” , the woman had mental problems or learning difficulties or the rapist was a husband or partner on whom the woman was financially dependent.  In  all these situations the judgement would, like the question of whether someone is sufficiently incapacitated by drink or drugs , be very subjective.

Why is only the man to be held responsible?

The onus to be responsible  is all on the man.  What about the woman’s responsibility to  take account of the  man’s  intoxication?  If a woman can be deemed to be morally incapable  through drink or drugs of being responsible enough to give consent why should not a  man in the same situation be given the same licence? For example, suppose a woman goes back to a man’s home after an evening’s drinking, could it not reasonably be argued  that the woman was behaving irresponsibly because (1) she must have known that the mere fact that she has gone back to the man’s home signals to the man that sex is on the cards and (2) the woman is going to the man’s home knowing that the man is drunk enough  to have the normal moral brakes off?  Why should the woman effectively be  treated as having no moral dimension in such circumstances?

The coaching of witnesses

Not content with grossly changing the evidential burden for rape,  the DPP has also in practice  relaxed the rules on coaching prosecution witnesses , something which will have a particular value for the prosecution in rape cases because so much rests on the performance of accuser and accused when giving evidence.  The DPP announced the change in this fashion:

‘ Miss Saunders said: “This aims to give prosecutors the confidence to engage with victims and witnesses without fear of any allegations of ‘coaching’ or going too far.

“It’s about telling them what the defence case is likely to be in general terms. But it is not about telling them what their evidence should be.”

Miss Saunders said the guidance was likely to play an important role in rape and other sex cases but also in assault or harassment prosecutions.’

Even giving such general information would amount to the  coaching of witnesses  because they would not come fresh to the witness box, and  human nature being what it is the odds are that if you give people half an inch they will take a mile or at least substantially more than an inch.  Even as things were before this  change  you can bet illicit coaching goes on, especially on the part of defendants and defence witnesses..

Why does this matter?  The coaching of witnesses  in England is considered to be  forbidden, although the legal  position is not entirely clear.  Nonetheless, it is generally accepted that coaching should be avoided. There is an excellent reason for this: the evidence a witness gives is meant to be their honest recollection based on what they experienced.  That can be simply their unaided memory or what they have written down in for example a diary or statement.   If they are rehearsed, as they can be in other jurisdictions such as the USA,  the evidence they give will inevitably be different from what they would give if un-coached. For example, knowing that sexual history of an alleged victim will be  part of the defence will most probably set the  alleged victim thinking of how she can deal with questions about  any embarrassing or compromising behaviour  in her past in a way she  probably would not do if left unaware of what  the defence against her accusations was to be. Coaching  also robs counsel of the element of surprise when cross-examining, a major  weapon in their armoury.

The anonymity of alleged rape victims

All of this new distortion of the English judicial system comes  on top  of the  hobbling of it by granting  the alleged victims of sexual offences  anonymity for life whether or not a conviction is obtained.  This amounts to secret justice which is wrong in principle  because how can the public judged that justice is being done. In the case of rape allegations this secrecy could also severely disadvantage a defendant.

The argument is routinely made by the politically correct  that publicising the name of the accused names in rape cases   is useful  because it may persuade other women to come forward to say that an accused has also sexually molested them .  But the same argument applies to making the names of alleged victims of rape public,  because a woman may have a record of making such allegations and publicising her name and that fact she is making an allegation of rape could  persuade  people who  were the subject of false allegations of rape or who simply know someone who has made such claims before to come forward to cast doubt on the veracity of  an accuser.

Why is this happening?

It is because the rate of successful prosecutions is low compared with the number of claims of rape made to the police –  approximately 1,000 successful prosecutions  in the year to June 2014 . Almost inevitably in these politically correct times there is pressure from those with power wealth and influence to treat the low  rate of conviction not as a natural consequence of  the difficult nature of the evidence  –  the man’s word against the woman’s – in most cases,   but as a flaw in the way the police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) handles rape allegations. The fact that we have a woman DPP probably acts as a catalyst for such changes.

Nor is this likely to be the end of alterations to rape allegations. Saunders appeared on the  BBC Radio 4 programme Unreliable Evidence on 27 January 2015. The programme was devoted to the changes to the way rape allegations are treated. The question of false rape allegations came up and there was  a serious discussion amongst the contributors to the programme about changing the charge for such crimes  from perverting the course of justice (a heavyweight law carrying a maximum of life imprisonment) to the much less serious charge of wasting police time. If such a change did take place it would be wholly wrong because a false accusation of rape can blight a man’s life. If anything the sentences such women get are far too lenient because they are so much less than the average rapist gets. There is a good case for saying women convicted for making false accusation should receive the same  sentence the person they have falsely accused would have got if they had been wrongly convicted of rape based on the false evidence.

British Future report says 25% of British adults want all immigrants repatriated 

Robert Henderson

The think-tank British Future has recently published  the report How to talk about immigration based on research conducted by ICM, Ipsos MORI and YouGov. The report purports  to provide a blueprint for both the pros and antis in the immigration debate  to manage the subject  most effectively in public discussion.  This is not something which they achieve because they have bought into the internationalist agenda, viz: “Some three or four generations on from Windrush, it is now a settled and irreversible fact that we are a multi-ethnic society. Managing immigration effectively and fairly in the public interest  should and does matter to Britons from different ethnic backgrounds. We should be suspicious of approaches that sharply polarise British citizens along racial lines, in whatever direction”.

Nonetheless the research  does have much of interest.  One finding  is truly startling. Faced with the question  “The government should insist that all immigrants should return to the countries they came from, whether they’re here legally or illegally”  the result was Agree 25%, disagree 52% and neither 23%. (P17 of the report).  In addition, many of those who said no to forced repatriation were also firm supporters of strong border controls and restrictive  immigration policies.

The fact that 25% of the population have overcome their fear of  falling foul of the pc police and say that they do not merely want immigration stopped but sent into reverse is  stunning. Moreover, because political correctness has taken such an intimidating place in British society it is reasonable to assume that a substantial number of those who said they disagreed did so simply out of fear of being accused of racism.

The obverse of the immigration coin was shown by the question “In an increasingly borderless world, we should welcome anyone who wants to come to Britain and not deter them with border controls” (P16 of the report).  The results were 14% agree, 67% disagree and 19% don’t know.

That only 14% support such a policy compared to the 25% who  wished for forced repatriation is striking in itself, but  it is even better for the  opponents of immigration than it looks for two reasons. First, the 14%  of those who agreed with the question will be the honest figure because to say that you want open borders carries with it no penalties from the pc police  and will gain the person brownie points amongst the politically correct elite and their axillaries. Second,  as already mentioned, the 25% of those wanting forced repatriation of all immigrants will understate the true position because a significant proportion of those questioned with be lying out of fear.

The report also shows that older voters are more likely to be those who are most strongly opposed to immigration (P11 of the report).  That is important because older voters are the most likely to vote.

Taking all that into account  it is reasonable to assume that a referendum with the question “Do you wish to end mass immigration?”  would result in a solid probably overwhelming YES vote.

These facts  should persuade politicians that they would risk nothing if they move much further to restrict  immigration than they have already done and in so doing would  gain  considerable  extra electoral support.

This may well happen. Public rhetoric  about immigration is rapidly hardening There will come a tipping point where  the rhetoric  has departed so far from the politically correct position that serious  action to restrict immigration will occur because the stretch between rhetoric and action will  become too great to sustain in a society where governments are elected.

A party political  bidding process on the  subject of immigration is already taking place  and there will come a point where serious action has to follow  or there will be a very real chance that either one or more of the mainstream parties will become irrelevant and be superseded, or members of the mainstream parties will wrest control of these parties from their pc indoctrinated leadership  and adopt a policy on immigration  closer to what the public wants.

The other important effect of greater political honesty in political utterances about immigration is that it makes  it much easier for people generally to speak openly about their feelings on the subject and to lobby for radical action.   In  turn this will feed the desire of politicians to gain electoral credibility by being  ever former in their immigration policies.  Indeed, the only reason that the present immigration has been allowed to develop is because the subject has been effectively wiped off the public debate agenda since the1970s.

The Archers: an everyday story of simple culling  the Archers from the programme folk

Robert Henderson

The  Archers is currently the subject of various story-lines  which bid fair to leave the programme a largely Archer-free zone.

The pivotal Archer  family – David and  Ruth Archer – are in the process of selling Brookfield with the intent of buying a farm hundreds of miles away in the North East of England because planning permission has been given to build a road on Brookfield land.

Jill Archer is planning to move north with David and Ruth.

Pip Archer has been away from the programme for a suspiciously long time  working for other farmers or finishing her  agricultural studies.

Tony Archer lies critical injured in hospital after  being tossed and gored by his prize bull and even if he survives is likely to be paraplegic.

Tom Archer did  a runner on his wedding  day and is now in Canada and seemingly out of contact with his family.

Helen Archer is living with Rob Titchener, a very obvious psychopath,  and is  ripe for being slaughtered in a psychotic rage, by either Titchener or his unbalanced  estranged wife Jess.

Elizabeth  Pargetter,  is in the messy aftermath of an affair with Neil Carter , who will almost certainly sue her for wrongful dismissal after she sacked him as her manager  of her events company when the affair went wrong.  This will in all probability result in massive damages for Carter which will undermine the viability  of the country estate (Lower Loxley) on which the events business depends.

Debbie Aldridge has been a long-time exile in Eastern Europe.

Kate Madikane   lives in South Africa with her black husband.

Peggy Woolley  has just turned ninety and is obviously ripe for shuffling off this mortal coil.

This looks suspiciously  like a systematic culling   of  the Archer family to allow the programme to be moulded to a shape more agreeable to the crazed politically correct minds of those who control the show. They doubtless think it is, as they would put it, “ a scandal in this day and age”  to only have a minority  of black, Asian and gay characters in the cast  and desperately want to bring in far more,  but find it very difficult to do so when there are so many white heterosexual characters  in the soap opera.

Once the Archers have been reduced to no more than a token presence, what will the programme be like? Imagine Brookfield sold to Mr Singh and the village shop run by Mrs Patel  to join the Hindu wife of the  vicar  who is also the local solicitor and   Amy  the “dual heritage” daughter of  the vicar by his deceased  Jamaican first wife,  with Amy’s Jamaican grandmother taking the place in the storyline of Jill Archer.  The ultimate dream of the programme controllers will probably  be to see Ambridge with a minority of white characters to, as they would put it, “ make Ambridge look like modern England” .

The gay quotient will also be inflated. Already there is Charlie Thomas hovering over Adam Macey with the threat of a bust up with Macey’s  “husband”, the chef at Grey Gables with the hilarious Ian Paisley voice.  The programme makers  will surely  correct  one of their glaring pc omissions to date and  introduce a lesbian relationship, although they have been strangely coy to date about girl-on-girl action.

The cull of established characters  may well go beyond the Archer family because the older characters generally are not to the taste of the politically correct. Apart from being all too white and heterosexual, they have be allowed to express, within limits, non-pc views with the intention that such views can be portrayed as anachronistic and soon to die out . Useful as that was at one time, the politically correct mind now sees no need for such “black hat” characters because it sees the process of reforming British attitudes as having moved to a point where no one can safely express non-pc views and they feel that characters doing so at best will seem at odds with the reality of England today.

What  listeners can be certain of is that the Ambridge of the future will be very difficult to recognise as the classic English farming village it was intended to be.

 

The BBC and “coloured  players“

Robert Henderson

Twice in the past few days  two  interviewees from the football world  on Radio 5 have used the word coloured in connection with  black players  when discussing the possible introduction of the Rooney Rule into English football. The so-called rule comes from America and  in the English context makes  compulsory the interviewing of at least one black candidate where a managerial  or head coach position in a professional football  team is to be filled.

The first occasion was by the Wigan FC owner Dave Wheelan  (3 Oct),  who repeatedly referred to “coloured players” .  Nothing was said during the interview, but immediately it was over the presenter  in best politically correct fashion said in the peculiarly noxious tones of a white liberal affecting outrage that they were apologising for language in the interview “which listeners may have found offensive”.  Interestingly, the BBC  written item which referred to Whelan’s appearance discussing the Rooney Rule subject did not mention that he had used the phrase “black footballers”.

On the Stephen Nolan programme (4 Oct) the very experienced English football manager Dave Bassett  and the black basketball player  John Amaechi   engaged in an extended row over the same phrase  coloured footballers,  plus variations on it (go into to the recording at 35 minutes) .  Amaechi  jumped in after the first two uses  of “coloured players” with ”This is 2014 and I’m listening to someone talk about  using coloured players. For the love of God are  you kidding me?”.

Judged by his  frequent  British media appearances Amaechi  is a naturally petulant and childishly abusive personality. He  proceeded to try  to patronise Bassett, a working-class man without much education, by referring to his (Amaechi’s)  academic qualification in psychology and saying  with heavy sarcasm that he might just have the edge over Bassett when it came to judging human behaviour. This merely made Amaechi look like an unpleasant boor at best and a deeply insecure man at worst.  Amaechi added to this bad impression by constantly insulting Bassett by objecting to any attempt by Bassett to get a word in edgeways by shrieking something along the lines of don’t interrupt me, it’s rude.

The presenter Nolan made precious little attempt to restrain Amaechi’s rudeness or give Bassett a fair chance to speak. In addition, he backed up  up Amaechi by several times saying to Bassett that the word coloured in this  context was “inappropriate” . So much for BBC staff not expressing opinions.

Greatly to his credit Bassett stuck to his guns and refused to apologise , during his time on air or, according to Nolan, afterwards – Nolan said that Bassett had stood by his use of the phrase after he left the airwaves.  Whilst on air he made the very good point that managers and coaches in English professional football frequently did not represent the percentage of the players involved from various groups such as the Northern Irish or Welsh. He also opposed the introduction of the Rooney Rule.

The attempt to stop the use of coloured is a prime example of how racial, ethnic and other minorities such as gays try to exert power generally over society .  This is both sinister  – control of language is the tool of dictators – and  unreasonable, because while  a group may call themselves whatever they choose , they  have no moral right to impose their chosen  term  upon those outside of the group. The moral abuse caused by imposition  becomes  especially  sharp where there is a different word used by the population in which they live which is not abusive.  That is the case with coloured.  The term was for more than a century  the polite term for blacks.   The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People was founded in 1909 in the USA and continues with the title today.   There is little serious complaint about the use of coloured in the title of that  organisation, while the  mixed race (white/black mixture)  population of South Africa is still called coloured.  Ironically, the term black  occupied the same position as coloured does now fifty years ago.

On the Rooney Rule question, it would be just another granting of privilege to a racial minority. Nor is  it clear who would count as black in these circumstances. How black would you have to be? One half black, quarter black , one eighth black?  What of someone with one parent who has black ancestry who looks white? (genetics can produce some unexpected results). Would every racial and ethnic minority be  allowed  climb on the bandwagon?

On a purely practical level where would  the large number of black and Asian qualified managers and senior coaches required to meet the  interviewee quota come from? Would it be a very small group who went from interview to interview?  After all, if there are only two black managers in the top 92 English league clubs , who exactly could be meaningfully called for interview? By definition  these would all be inexperienced  so how on earth could many if any be considered for clubs in the  tope toe English divisions, the Premier  League and the Championship?   Even at the level of formal coaching qualifications there would be a problem because few black  or Asian footballers  are taking their advanced coaching badges.

The group which is scandalously under represented in football both as players and managers is of course the English, who have been relentlessly squeezed out since the formation of the Premier League in 1992 and foreign owners, managers and players flooded in as English League  football became ever more lucrative and prestigious.  The result is that the English have become second-class citizens in their own professional football. That is the  inequality which needs addressing.

NB If you want to catch the Nolan programme recording , do so quickly because it will only be available on IPlayer at  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04jj29l   fro another 4 days.

The persecution of Emma West continues

Robert Henderson

Emma West  was arrested in November 2011 after she protested about immigration whilst travelling on a bus. Her protest was captured on video and uploaded to YouTube as well as being copied by many national media outlets. The video was  viewed millions of times.

Following the upload of the video Emma was arrested, held in the UK’s highest security prison for women , released and then subjected to a year and a half’s intimidation by the state as the powers-that-be desperately tried to get her to plead guilty to charges relating to racially motivated serious crimes (racially aggravated intentional harassment and racially aggravated assault)  which would have almost certainly sent her to prison. Eventually, worn down by the stress she pleaded guilty to the  lesser charge of racially aggravated harassment, alarm or distress.

I say Emma’s outburst was a protest against immigration because that is precisely what it is. Here are some of her comments:

She says: “What’s this country coming too?

“A load of black people and and load of f***ing Polish.”

One commuter challenges West, who rounds on him telling him: “You aren’t English”, to which he replies “No, I’m not”

She then scans the tram, pointing out people one-by-one, saying: “You ain’t English, you ain’t English, None of you are f***ing English.

“Get back to your own f***ing countries.”

“Britain is nothing now, Britain is f***k all.

“My Britain is f**k all now.”

You can argue that is foulmouthed,  but you cannot argue it is anything but a protest against immigration. In fact, it is the most grass-root form of political protest there is, namely, directly engaging with the effects of policy.

Emma lives in a country which has been made unrecognisable by the permitting of mass immigration for over sixty years. Neither Emma nor any other native English man or woman (or Briton come to that) has had any say in this invasion of the country. This most fundamental act of treason has been committed by generations of British politicians who to date have got away with their crime. But to continue to get away with the crime the guilty men and women need to suppress public protest against what they have done.  That is why the authorities were so desperate to get to plead guilty. She was a refusnik and they could not let that pass.  That she resorted to foul language in her frustration is entirely understandable.

But those with power were not satisfied simply with her criminal conviction. Emma has now had her livelihood as a dental nurse taken away by the General Medical Council with this preternaturally smug judgement:

A [Dental Council] spokeswoman said: “Her conduct was truly appalling.

“It clearly has the capacity to bring the profession into disrepute and to undermine public confidence in its standards.

“Furthermore, her violent and abusive conduct would demonstrate a real risk to the safety of patients.

“In relation to her racially aggravated offence, this was committed in a public setting and received further public exposure, as a person had uploaded the video clip to the internet which has been viewed extensively.”

So there you have it, political correctness can not only send you into the clutches of the law but take your means of living away.

For the full story of Emma West’ persecution see

The oppression of Emma West : the politically correct end game plays out

Posted on July 2, 2013by

Robert Henderson In November 2011 Emma West was arrested  and subsequently charged for a racially aggravated public order offence (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/emma-west-immigration-and-the-liberal-totalitarian-state/). The charges concerned her  public denunciation of the effects of mass immigration whilst on a tram in Croydon,  a suburb … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Immigration, Nationhood, Politics | Tagged , , , , | 61 Comments | Edit

Emma West and the State – The State has its way (sort of)

Posted on June 5, 2013by

Robert Henderson Emma West has finally been worn down. Eighteen months after she was charged with racially aggravated intentional harassment and racially aggravated assault , she has agreed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of racially aggravated harassment, alarm … Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , | 21 Comments | Edit

Emma West’s trial scheduled for the sixth time

Posted on April 10, 2013by

Robert Henderson Emma West was due to stand trial at Croydon Crown Court for  two racially aggravated public order offences  arising from her complaint about  mass immigration and its effects made on a Croydon tram  in November 2011 . The … Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Nationhood, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , ,, | 36 Comments | Edit

Emma West trial scheduled for the fifth time

Posted on March 13, 2013by

Robert Henderson A fifth, yes that’s fifth,  date for the start of Emma West’s trial on criminal charges arising from her complaint about  mass immigration and its effects made on a Croydon tram  in November 2011 has been set  for  … Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Nationhood | Tagged , , , , , , ,, | 28 Comments | Edit

What has happened to Emma West?

Posted on January 8, 2013by

Robert Henderson It is now 14 months since Emma West was charged with racially aggravated public order offences after she got into an argument on a tram which led her to make loud complaint about the effects of mass immigration. … Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | 31 Comments | Edit

Emma West trial delayed for the third time

Posted on September 8, 2012by

Robert Henderson The trial of Emma West on racially aggravated public order offences has been delayed for the third time ( http://www.thisiscroydontoday.co.uk/Emma-West-trial-adjourned-time/story-16820636-detail/story.html ).  No further date has been set.   The trial was originally scheduled for June, then July and finally September … Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Nationhood, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | 13 Comments | Edit

Emma West has her trial delayed yet again

Posted on July 27, 2012by

The trial of Emma West on two racially aggravated public order offences has been put back to 5 September to allow further medical reports (http://www.thisiscroydontoday.co.uk/Trial-alleged-YouTube-tram-racist-Emma-West-moved/story-16543355-detail/story.html).  Her trial was meant to take place on 17th July but a request for … Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Nationhood, Politics | Tagged , , , , ,, , | 12 Comments | Edit

Courage is the best defence against charges of racism

Posted on June 12, 2012by

Robert Henderson The trial of Emma West on two racially aggravated public order charges which was scheduled for 11 June has been postponed until 16 July to enable further psychiatric reports to be prepared. (http://www.thisiscroydontoday.co.uk/Emma-West-race-rant-trial-moved-July/story-16346869-detail/story.html). As Miss West was charged … Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Nationhood, Politics | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments | Edit

Emma West, immigration and the Liberal totalitarian state part 3

Posted on January 4, 2012by

Robert Henderson Emma West appeared at Croydon magistrates court on 3rd January.  She  will stand trial  on  two racially aggravated public order offences, one with intent to cause fear. She will next appear in court  – Croydon Crown Court –  … Continue reading →

Posted in Anglophobia, Immigration, Nationhood, Politics | Tagged , , , , ,, , , | 12 Comments | Edit

Emma West, immigration and the Liberal totalitarian state part 2

Posted on December 7, 2011by

Robert Henderson Emma West has been remanded in custody until 3rd of January when she will appear at Croydon Crown Court (http://uk.news.yahoo.com/tram-race-rant-woman-court-052333359.html).  By 3rd January she will in, effect , have served a custodial sentence of 37 days,  [RH She was … Continue reading →

Posted in Anglophobia, Culture, Immigration, Nationhood, Politics | Tagged , , , ,, , , | 23 Comments | Edit

Emma West, immigration and the Liberal totalitarian state

Posted on December 1, 2011by

Emma West of New Addington, London has been arrested and placed in “protective custody” following the publication on YouTube of  a two minute 25 second  recording labelled by the YouTube poster as “Racist British Woman on the Tram goes CRAZY …Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Nationhood | Tagged , , , , , , ,, | 39 Comments | Edit

What is treason today?

A vital part of the liberal internationalist plot to destroy Britain as an independent nation is the destruction of the concept of treason. They do this the attempt through a tidal wave of propaganda about the joys of diversity, the incessant reciting of mantras such as that “we live in a globalised world” , the signing of treaties which embroil Britain in supra-national authority and the repeal of laws relating to treason. (see http://www.hmg.gov.uk/epetition-responses/petition-view.aspx?epref=TreasonAmend as an example of the present government’s mentality).

A concept of treason is fundamental to every society because it sets the bounds of loyalty. Allow that there is no difference between a native of a state and a foreigner, as the liberal internationalist does in practice, and the coherence of a society is destroyed which puts its very existence under threat.

This is particularly pertinent now because of the emergence of large numbers of British born Muslims showing unambiguously their rejection of British society through violence and threatened violence.

The article below examines what constitutes treason today.  It was published in Right Now! magazine in 2001.
What is treason today?

Robert Henderson

Treason is a famously slippery word, not least for the reason enshrined in the oft-quoted but, because it contains a savage truth, eternally potent rhyme:
Treason never prospers,
What’s the reason?
For if it does
None dare call it treason.

Yet elusive as it is, treason clearly has an objective reality, a reality, moreover, whose essence is changeless. That quality is betrayal which goes beyond the personal. If a friend betrays you to another friend that is not treason. If a fellow countryman betrays you to an occupying power that is treason.

As a legal concept, treason has been redrawn during the past millennium. In a dynastic context, where the king is king in executive fact as well as name, treason is the betrayal of the sovereign by a person who owes him allegiance. That betrayal may be through disloyalty or an attempt to harm the person of the monarch (and generally his family). By extension, the same applies to those to whom the monarch’s executive power is delegated. Kill the King’s man and you attack the King.

But treason in dynastic circumstances was not a straightforward matter of simply plotting against the king or attempting harm to the king’s person or doing the same to his representatives. A great noble or courtier close to the king might well lose his head through being deemed to have given “evil counsel” to the monarch, even though that counsel had been accepted and acted upon by the king. The “evil counsellor” would be blamed (and probably executed) to ensure that the monarch was not held to account.
The idea of “evil counsel” had an important effect in English constitutional development and a consequent broadening of the idea of treason. Evil counsellors were generally identified not by the king but by others, most notably Parliament. Thus the practical application of the idea of the evil counsellor both reinforced the idea that the monarch was not a completely independent agent and created the idea that any man involved in politics owed not merely his formal loyalty to the king (and later the people), but also should take care to act and speak in a way which would not be to the disadvantage of the king and his subjects.

The notion of treason evolved in Europe because monarchs have rarely if ever been able to act indiscriminately in their own interests. Indeed, European monarchs have been remarkably unsuccessful in creating efficient and lasting despotisms. Because of that, their subjects never truly succumbed to politically debilitating ideas such as the divine right of kings. Rather they expected of a king duty as well self-promotion and satisfaction. The concept of the unjust prince was well developed by 1100 and culminated in the doctrine of tyranicide developed by John of Salisbury in the 12th Century. Here is Manegold of Lautenbach writing in the 11th Century:

No man can make himself emperor or king; a people sets a man over it to the end that he may rule justly, giving to every man his own, aiding good men and coercing bad, in short, that he may give justice to all men. If then he violates the agreement according to which he was chosen, disturbing and confounding the very things which be was meant to put in order, reason dictates that he absolves the people from their obedience, especially when he has himself first broken the faith which bound him and the people together.*

* Quoted by A.J. and R.W. Carlyle in A history of Medieval Political Theory in the West , Vol. III, p. 164, n. 1.

For Manegold a people’s allegiance to its ruler is a promise support him in his lawful undertakings and is consequently void in the case of a tyrant. In a sense, a tyrant committed treason by dishonouring the office of monarch and its implied and inherent obligations.

Restraints on the monarch were given formal status by their coronation oaths. In England, Magna Carta (1215) moved matters on to another stage where a monarch was forced to agree to direct constraints on his power. The example of Magna Carta in turn led to the development of the English Parliament, which moved from a petitioning and tax granting body in the 14th century to the point where it practically, if not in theory, usurped the power of the king.

As the power of monarchs waned, the emphasis of who was betrayed gradually moved to the idea that the entire population of a country was an entity in itself and betrayal of that entity amounted to treason. The shift from monarch to people was completed with the advent of the formally democratic state, where, in theory at least, the general population became the sovereign.

Of what does treason consist in the formally democratic nation state? Generally it must be the conscious decision to act in a way which will weaken the integrity of the nation state. Betrayal in the old manner of spying or acting for an enemy in war is still part of that. But the primary treason in the modern formally democratic state is more insidious. It is the abrogation of the sovereignty of the nation state by immersement in larger political entities and through the signing of treaties which restrict the opportunity for national self-determination.

This raises an interesting question, namely can an elected politician commit treason if the treasonable activity is part of an election manifesto or it is put to a referendum? The textbook answer would be that ultimate sovereignty in a formal democracy lies practically and morally, if not always legally, with the electorate. An electorate which elects a party or individual on a manifesto or votes yes in a referendum is considered to be tacitly granting the policy legitimacy. However, there are strong objections to this interpretation.

The first is that the treasonable activity may be misrepresented by the party or politician. A classic example of this is Britain’s entry into what is now the European Union (EU). The British electorate were undeniably deliberately misled by the 1970 Tory manifesto into believing that they were merely joining a free trade area.

They were deliberately misled again during the 1975 referendum on Britain’s continued membership. They have been deliberately misled consistently in the 35 years since the referendum, being told by every government that British sovereignty is not being lost, when massive amounts have been ceded. That is treason by any meaningful definition that has ever been used in the past.

But what if all the sovereignty which had been ceded to the EU had been done after it was presently honestly to the electorate? Suppose every change had been the subject of a referendum. Suppose those referendums had been conducted with absolutely fairness.What then? Here the old idea of “evil counsellors” has utility. In the modern formal democracy, politicians play the role of counsellors. Where their counsel is bad and the results of it disadvantages the people to which they owe their good sense and loyalty, then that might be said to be treasonable. Our representatives owe us their best judgement and courage. If they act in a way which is compromised by considerations other than their honest judgement and that action has results which are treasonable, they are guilty of treason. Not only that, but the representative must be honest about the foreseeable consequences of what they propose. In the representative’s special position, treason may be committed though acts of omission as well as commission, through not pointing out consequences.

What are the great particular treasons of our time? They can be defined in terms of what causes damage to the viability of the nation state. In the case of Britain, the most dramatic formal act of damaging the nation state has been our membership of the EU. But that is only one of a number of serious attacks on the British state and people. The permitting of mass immigration is a profound form of treason, for mass immigration is a form of conquest. North America is now dominated by the white man because of a slow accretion of settlement not through sudden and violent conquest. To that treason is linked its sister act, the attempted cultural cleansing of the native population of Britain in general and the English in particular, through the wilful denigration of the native population of this country, the deliberate denial to them of their history in our schools and the suppression of dissent through the power of the state, willingly assisted by the mass media.

To those may be added these others which are patently against our interests. Entering into treaties which remove freedom of action from the country, for example those governing membership of the World Trade Organisation. The failure to maintain the country’s military capacity and the use of what military we have in foreign adventures in which Britain has no natural interest. The deliberate refusal to ensure that the country’s economic capacity can supply all essential items in time of emergency, in particular the securing of the food supplies. The spending of taxpayers’ money on foreign peoples. All these treasons, and those of the preceding paragraphs, apply to a lesser or greater degree throughout the First World.

Our own time has brought a new problem of definition to treason. The elite ideology of the moment is Liberal Internationalism. This might seem to be a direct challenge to the very idea of treason, for where neither the primacy of the nation nor the authority of a sovereign is recognised, against whom is treason committed? The answer is that for the Liberal Internationalist, treason is any dissent from his ideology. Treason has put on totalitarian clothes.

Unfortunately, the Liberal Internationalist propaganda has been so successful that treason has an old fashioned ring to the modern Briton. It is mocked along with the very idea of patriotism. So long have the British been at peace, so safe does everyday life seem, so ruthlessly have the liberal elite and their educational and media nomenclatura promoted the idea that the time of the nation state is passed, that even naturally patriotic Britons find the idea of treason an uncomfortable one.

That is a mortally dangerous because a belief that treason may be committed is vitally important if we wish to maintain our independence. It is so because the nation state requires a concept of treason as a foundation of its integrity. We desperately need to understand the nature of treason and act upon it for our own protection.

How the BBC fixes phone-ins – The Radio 5  Breakfast Programme phone-in on 6 May 2014

Robert Henderson

The think tank Policy Exchange  has published a report  on racial  and ethnic minorities entitled A portrait of modern Britain.  The headline grabbing statistic in the report is the claim that” the five largest distinct Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities could potentially double from 8 million people or 14% of the population [now] to between 20-30% by the middle of the century. Over the past decade, the UK’s White population has remained roughly the same while the minority population has almost doubled. Black Africans and Bangladeshis are the fastest growing minority communities with ethnic minorities representing 25% of people aged under the age of five.”

On 6 May BBC R5 decided to devote their morning Breakfast Programme  phone-in  hosted by Nick Campbell to the report.  Did the programme  address  the question of what the native British population thought of such a  radical change in the demographic composition of their country? Don’t be silly this is the BBC.  Instead the programme was devoted to asking  how welcoming Britain is to immigrants.  Campbell set the tone by  asking questions such as “Do you think this is one of the most welcoming countries across the world for immigrants” and making comments such as “The vast majority of people who come here, I’m sure, respect what are the cultural aspects of this country”. He also activated the pc  device of making discussion about immigration permissible by claiming that ethnic minorities and immigrants generally were often worried by ongoing  immigration.

But even with those  brakes  on any honest discussion of mass immigration and its effects on Britain, the BBC were nervous. Some frightful  non-pc people might get on and horror of horrors say that mass immigration was not the best thing to happen to Britain since sliced bread. So to make sure that such a ghastly  thing would not happen,  the BBC  unashamedly packed the programme with those who were either immigrants themselves or  the descendants of immigrants.

The studio guests were Rishi Sunak (Head of the Black & Minority Ethnic Research Unit at Policy Exchange),  Don Flynn from the  Migrants Rights Network and Gurinder  Josan  of the Sikh Council of the UK.

There were ten  callers put on air. Of these eight  were black or Asian, viz:

Mal –An  Asian of sub-continental origin who was sent to Britain at a young age.

Carl – He described himself as an Australian of mixed heritage. He is probably Asian from certain hints he gave.

Alex – He described himself as black. His voice suggested that he was raised in Britain.

Anoop –  A Kenyan Asian immigrant.

Ken –  A  old white workingclass man  from Luton.

Ravi – A Sikh.

Abdul – He described himself as Glaswegian with Pakistani and Irish ancestry.

Sabeena – Asian immigrant long resident in Britain..

Liz – A white lower-middle class English woman.  Lived in Leicester for  forty years before moving to Devon.

Bernie – A black man born and raised in Britain.

The general thrust of the comments by everyone except for Ken and Liz was that we all lived in a wonderful multicultural world, although there was a bit of victimhood whining by Alex and Bernie brought in the subject of slavery.  Abdul complained about recent immigrants getting council houses.  It is probable that he was deliberately put in to validate Campbell’s claim that many immigrants were against further immigration.

Ken was the perfect pc selected spokesman for the non-pc side,  old, white working-class,  inarticulate and palpably hamstrung by fear of saying something which could get him labelled a racist.  He emphasised the mixed nature of Luton and claimed that,  in his own experience,    abuse of  blacks and Asians was unknown and said he could not understand why black and Asian complaints were forever being heard  in the mainstream media.  This could have caused Campbell a problem because his complaint was about the practice of victimhood amongst ethnic minorities.  Sadly, Ken  then inadvertently blotted his pc copybook by  suddenly and irrelevantly recounting how he had asked his neighbour whether they wanted to be called  coloured or black. This  produced a snort of derision from Alex to whom Campbell eagerly went back to ask what he thought of Ken’s ideas and the question of victimhood and the media’s promotion of it went undiscussed. .

The nearest anyone came to expressing  outright dissent from the politically correct rubric was Liz. Her general point was that integration was a “two way street” and she was dubious about whether it was a “two way street”  because  immigrants were not always making an  effort to abide by the British way of life.  She made dangerously non-pc statements such as mosques in Leicester being  unwanted by the white population when they were first built and that immigrants to this country “should respect our religion”, but her complaints was surrounded by mantras such as “diversity is good” to ward off the pc Inquisition.  Campbell of course jumped in to correct matters, for example, by saying “What do you mean by our religion?”  But Liz kept veering off dangerously off pc message  and her contribution ended with this exchange with Campbell:

Liz:…if we both respect each other. If I went to another country I would respect their beliefs and wishes  and I would….” Campbell interrupts.  

Campbell: ““And the vast majority of people who come here, I’m sure, respect what are the cultural aspects of this country”. 

Liz : “Well if they do there will be no problem at all. Why is there a problem?  Why is there a problem in all these different cities? “

Campbell: “Is there a problem? Well, we have had  person after person saying it’s all going terribly well.”

Liz: “Well, I’m sure it is…” At this point Campbell cut her off.

That short exchange encapsulates the problem so many white Britons have when speaking in public about immigration and its  consequences. Clearly Liz wanted to express her fears  about the effects of mass immigration,  but she was so handicapped by fear of being thought a racist that she was l willing to agree with Campbell’s assertion there is no problem at the end because of her fear of being dubbed a racist.

I rang the phone-in after it had been going for about twenty minutes. Eventually the  producer phoned  me  back and said he would put me on. I waited on the phone  for over twenty minutes but never got on. There was the strongest of reasons  for putting me on: the programme was utterly unbalanced there being  not a single person who argued the case against mass immigration.

Had I got on I would have made these points:

  1. That no society anywhere welcomes mass immigration because mass immigration is invasion of territory, a surreptitious form of conquest.

2. That the permitting of mass immigration is the most fundamental form of treason those with power can commit.

3. All elites understand that mass immigration is  never wanted by any population and this leads them to suppress dissent,  as happens in this country now with people such as Emma West being charged with criminal offences simply because she spoke against immigration in a public place.

4. That mass immigration has already created the basis for considerable racial strife, something which will increase as the minority populations grow.

5. That mass immigration has already  resulted in many disastrous effects on British society such as minority ghettoes, a catastrophic housing shortage and a low wage economy.

I had made it clear that these were the issues I wished to raise when I spoke to the producer.  I suspect that the final decision is about who goes on is made by the programme  presenter . If so, Campbell must have seen my position on the question and deliberately excluded me.

My complaint is not that I did not get on the programme. Rather it is that no one expressing my views or anything like them  did so.

Would a libertarian society deprive individuals of cultural roots and collective identity?

There are many rooms in the libertarian  ideological house.  That fact often derails rational discussion of libertarian issues, but it need not be a problem in this instance because the question being asked is most  efficiently  examined   by testing  it against  the flintiest wing of libertarian thought.   If  that pristine, uncompromising  form of libertarianism is incompatible with the maintenance of cultural roots and collective identity, then  all other shades of libertarianism will be incompatible to some degree. 

The pristine libertarian has no truck with  any form of government, believing that  personal relations  between individuals  will adequately order society no matter how large or complex the society,  and that such ordering will arise naturally if  only the artificially constraints on human behaviour such as governments and laws are removed.   Such a society  would supposedly  work along these lines.    If the society is threatened by an invader,  individuals will join together to defend it out of a sense of self-preservation.  To   those who cannot work for reasons of sickness, injury, age or innate infirmity,  compassion and a sense of duty will ensure that private charity is  extended  to relieve the need. If  public works such as roads and railways are required, self-interest and reason will drive individuals to join to together to build them.   Matters such as education may be safely  left to parents and such charitable provision as arises.   Above all the individual is king and personal choice is only circumscribed if a choice involves the imposition of one individual’s will on another.   You get the idea.  The consequence is a vision of a society not  a million miles away from  Rightist  forms of anarchism.

This concentration on the individual makes for a fissile society. If each person  is to follow his or her  own way  without any requirement to believe anything other than to respect the conditions necessary to realise libertarian ends , that in itself  would definitely weaken  collective identity and probably affect cultural unity.  Nonetheless in a truly homogeneous society, especially if it was small, the probability is that cultural weakening would not be great and the absence of a conscious collective identity would not present a difficulty provided the society was not subject to a serious threat from outside.

Serious problems  for the pristine libertarian  arise if the society is heterogeneous,  because  then there is a loss of collective unity. If the heterogeneity comes from class,  the cultural roots may  be largely untouched or at least develop in a way  which ensures that there is still much cultural  uniformity  and that uniformity is clearly an extension of  past cultural traits. It is also true that in a racially and ethnically homogeneous society, a sense of collective unity will be easily rekindled if the society comes under external threat.

The most difficult society for libertarians to deal with is one which is ethnically divided, especially if the ethnic divide includes racial difference. There a society becomes not so much a society but a series of competing racial and ethnic enclaves.   In such a situation,  it is inevitable that both  cultural unity and collective identity is undermined because there is no  shared general cultural experience and this plus racial difference makes a collective identity not merely impossible but absurd even in concept.

The brings us to the most obvious threat presented by pristine  libertarians to the maintenance of cultural roots and collective identity. That  is the idea that national boundaries  should be irrelevant with people travelling and settling wherever they choose.  This presumes human beings are essentially interchangeable and in this respect it echoes  multiculturalism.  The consequence of such a belief is to greatly increase the heterogeneity of a society through the mass immigration of those who are radically different from the native population.  We do not need to guess what the result of such immigration is because it  has happened throughout the western world in our own time. More specifically, it has happened in those  countries whose populations which are most naturally sympathetic  to libertarian ideas: those which may broadly be described as Anglo-Saxon; countries such as Britain, the USA and what used to be known as  the old white dominions.

The influx of millions of people who  see themselves as separate from the native populations of the countries to which they had migrated has resulted in the Anglo-Saxon states gradually destroying their tradition of freedom. Driven by a mixture of liberal internationalist ideology and fear, their  elites have severely restricted by laws and their control of the media  and public institutions  what may be said publicly about immigration and its consequences.  In Britain it is now possible to be brought to court simply for saying to someone from an ethnic minority “go home”, while any allegation of racist behaviour  – which may be no more than failing to invite someone from an ethnic minority  to an office party – against a public servant will result at best in a long inquiry and at worst with dismissal.  Nor, in practice, is application of the law or the  witch-hunts  directed equally against everyone for it is overwhelmingly native Britons who are targeted.

At the same time as native Britons are being silenced and intimidated, an incessant tide of pro-immigrant and multiculturalist  propaganda is pumped out by government, the public organisations they control such as the civil service and state schools and the mass media , which is overwhelmingly signed up to the liberal internationalist way of thinking.  The teaching of history has been made a non-compulsory subject in British schools after the age of 14 and such history as  is taught  is next to worthless in promoting a sense of collective unity,  both because it fails to give any chronological context to what is put before the pupils  because it concentrates on “themes”  rather than periods and because the amount of British history that is contained within  the syllabus is tiny, often consisting of the Tudors and little else.  The consequence is that the young of the native British population are left with both a sense that their own culture is in some strange way to be valued less than that of the various immigrant groups and the lack of any knowledge about their country’s past.

The most  and sinister  consequence of  post-war immigration and the British elite’s response to it  is the development within Britain of  a substantial number of Muslims who not only do not have any sense of belonging to the broader society in which they live, but who are actively hostile to  Britain and its values.  But if this is the most dramatic example of the fracturing  of British society, it is merely symptomatic of the separatist attitude of  ethnic minorities in Britain generally, especially those from radically alien cultures allied to racial difference.

All of these developments are antithetical to pristine  libertarian ideals,  both because they  undermine  shared values and because they  result in actions to control friction between competing racial and ethnic groups which in themselves undermine the conditions in which libertarian ideals  flourish.  That libertarians so often subscribe to the ideal of open borders despite the overwhelming evidence of  its counter-productive effects for libertarian ends is indicative of the blinkered nature of much libertarian thinking.

The fundamental weakness of pristine  libertarianism is its complete  failure to take  account of  human psychology  and the way humans behave as groups.  This is unsurprising  because of the central position given to the individual.  But by doing this pristine  libertarians  ignore the central fact of being human: we are a social animal. Being  a social animal entails two defining behaviours: all social animals  produce hierarchies  and   all social animals place limits to the group.  Homo sapiens is no exception.

Because hierarchies in the human context arise not only from the personal efforts, qualities and talents of each individual, as is the case with animals,  but from the  position  each individual occupies through the accident of birth, this raises two difficulties for libertarians.  The first is there is not a level playing field and without that the pristine  libertarian ideal of society organising itself through freely  entered into relationships is severely distorted because it is clearly absurd to say that a man born poor is freely entering into a master-servant relationship with a man born rich when the poor man needs money simply to feed himself.  The second difficulty is that the very existence of an hierarchy,  whether or not it is based on merit, undermines the notion of free choice because once it is established different power relationships exist.

The question of hierarchy becomes more complex as the heterogeneity of a society grows whether that be ever deeper division into classes or increasing ethnic and racial diversity . All social animals have to have boundaries  to  know where the group begins and ends.  This is  because a social animal must operate  within a hierarchy and a hierarchy can only exist where  there are  boundaries.   No boundaries,  no hierarchy, because  no  individual could  ever  know what the dominance/submission situation  was  within their species or at least within those members of the species with whom they interact.

The need to define the group is particularly important for libertarians.    Above all libertarianism requires  trust. In the pristine libertarian society this means each individual believing that other people will keep their word and generally behave honestly. But as we all know only too well  people cannot  be trusted to observe societal norms and a society which is fractured by class, race or  ethnicity  is the least likely of all to have a shared sense of what is right.  Therefore,  libertarians need to recognise that however much they would like to believe that each human being is an individual who may go where he or she pleases and do what he or she pleases, the sociological reality precludes  this and that the only sane ideological course for a libertarian is to advocate closed borders and the preservation of the homogeneity of  those societies which are most favourable to libertarian ideals not because the society  consciously espouses them,  but because the  society has evolved in a way which includes libertarian traits.

There will be libertarians who find it immensely difficult going on impossible to accept that the individual must in some respects be subordinated to the group.  They will imagine, as liberal internationalists do, that human nature can be changed, although in the case of libertarians the change will come not from re-education but the creation of circumstances propitious for libertarian behaviour to emerge.  Let me explain why this is impossible because of the innate differences between  human beings and the effects of cultural imprinting.

Because Man is differentiated profoundly by culture, the widely accepted definition  of a species – a population of freely interbreeding organisms sharing a common gene pool –   is  unsatisfactory,  for  clearly Man is  more  than  a brute   animal  responding   to   simple  biological   triggers.  When   behavioural differences  are perceived as belonging to a particular group  by  that group  as differentiating  members of the group from other  men,    they perform the same role as  organic differences for  they divide Man  into cultural species.

An analogy with computers can be made. As hardware,  a particular model of  computer is  practically identical to every other computer which  is classified  as  the same model.  But the  software available to every computer of the same model is not identical.   They may run  different operating systems, either completely different or different versions of the same program. The software which runs under the operating system is different  with different versions of the same program being used.  The data which is input to the computer varies and this in turn affects the capabilities of the computer.

It  clearly makes no sense to say every computer of the same  model  is the same even if the computer is loaded with the same software.   But of  course  not  all  computers  are  of  the  same  model.  They  vary tremendously  in  their  power.  The same software  will  run  at  very different  rates  because of this.  Storage and memory size  also  vary tremendously. Some computers cannot run programmes because the programmes  are too large.   We  may call all computers computers ,  but that is to say little more  than that  all  animals are animals,  for  computers  range  from  the immensely  powerful super computers – the homo sapiens  of  the computer  world  as it were – to the amoeba of the  simple  chip  which controls  lights  being put on or off in a room  depending  on whether someone is in it.

Are the circumstances of computers  not akin to those of  Man?  Do  not the racially based  differences in IQ correspond to the differences  in power  of  older  and  newer computers?  Do not different  languages  represent different operating systems? For example, think how different must be the mentality of  a native Chinese speaker (using  a language which  is entirely  monosyllabic)  to that of a native English speaker  (using  a polysyllabic language) simply because of the profound difference in the structure  of the language. A language will not merely impose limits on what  may  be  expressed it will affect the  entire  mentality  of  the individual,  from aesthetic appreciation to  social expression. Is not the experiential input analogous to the holding of different data?

But the most potent of human behavioural triggers are racial differences,  for they exercise the strongest control over the group in a territory where different racial groups exist. Race trumps ethnicity where the ethnic clash is one of people of the same race but different ethnicities.  Place a significant population of a different race into a territory where ethnicity rather than race is the cause of unrest and the ethnic factions of the same race will tend to unite against those of a different race.

To argue that racial difference is  not important to the choice of a mate is as absurd as arguing  that the attractiveness of a person is irrelevant to the choice of a  mate.

In  Freakonomics  Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner  cite a study made of a  US dating site (the full story is on pp 80-84).  The site is one  of the  largest  in  the US and the data examined  covered  30,000  people equally  divided  between San Diego and Boston.   Most were  white  but there was a substantial minority of non-white subjects.

The  questionnaire the  would-be  daters had to  fill  in  included  a question  choice on race as “same as mine”  and “doesn’t matter”.   The study  compared  the responses  by white would-be  daters  (those  from non-white were not analysed) to these  questions with the race of  the emails  actually  sent soliciting a date.   The result  in  Levitt  and Dubner’s words was:

“Roughly  half of the white women on the site  and  80  percent  of  the white men declared that  race  didn’t  matter to them. But the response data tell a different story  The white men who said that race didn’t  matter sent  90  percent of  their e-mail  queries  to  white women. The  white women who said race  didn’t  matter sent about 97 percent of their e-mail queries to white men.

“Is  it  possible that race really didn’t  matter  for  these  white women and men and that they simply  never  happened  to browse a non-white date  that  interested them?”

Or,  more likely, did they say that race didn’t matter  because they wanted to come across  especially  to potential mates of their own race as open-minded?” In short, around 99% of all the women and 94%  of all men in the sample were  not  willing  to  seek a  date of a  different  race.   How  much stronger  will  be  the tendency to refuse to breed with a  mate  of  a different race?

If sexual desire will not commonly override the natural disinclination to remain racially separate nothing will.

Because the tendency to mate with those of a similar race is so strong  and universal,  both in place and time, it is reasonable to conclude  that the  behaviour  is innate and that cultures  necessarily include  the requirement for a member of the society to be of a certain racial type. The  consequence of this is that someone of a different racial type  is effectively precluded from full integration because one of the criteria for  belonging has not been met.  That is not to say,  of course,  that many  of the habits of mind of an alien culture may not be  adopted  by someone  of  a  different race.  What is withheld  is  the  instinctive acceptance  of the alien and his or her descendants  as members of  the society. Just as no human being can decide for themselves that they are a member of this or that group, no individual can decide that they belong to this or that nation because it is a two-way process: the other members of the group they wish to join have to accept them as a true member of the group. (Stephen Frears the English  film director once wryly remarked that he had known the actor Daniel Day-Lewis “before he was Irish”).

Where does this leave us? In its present form libertarianism is a most efficient  dissolver of cultural roots and collective identity. It is this because it ignores the realities of  Man’s social nature.  This results in the  creation of the very circumstances which are least conducive to the realisation of libertarian ends.  If libertarians are to realise those ends, they must recognise that the society  most favourable to their beliefs  is one which is homogeneous in which the shared values create the platform of trust which must underlie libertarian behaviour.   Of course, that does not guarantee a society favourable to libertarians because  the shared values may be antithetical to them, but it is a necessary if not sufficient condition for libertarian ideals to flourish. To that libertarians must add a recognition that there are profound differences between ethnic and racial groups and identify those societies which are most worth protecting because they have the largest element of libertarian traits within them.

Written for entry to  the 2010  Chris Tame prize