Category Archives: Nationhood

Ashes news – “Australia’s experiment with their Asian immigrant population will be shelved.”

I sent this letter to the Daily Telegraph on 13 August:

Sir, 

 Scyld Berry’s piece on the fourth Test Ashes win  (Those scars will last until winter – 13th August) ) included this in my paper copy: 
“Usman Khawaja will be roasted for the limp defensive prod that he aimed at Swann when Australia were 147 for one. He could well be replaced in the Oval Test by Phil Hughes and Australia’s experiment with their Asian immigrant population will be shelved.”  
 
It has transmogrified into this on the Telegraph Website:
“Usman Khawaja will be roasted for the limp defensive prod that he aimed at Swann when Australia were 147 for one. He could well be replaced in the Oval Test by Phil Hughes. “
    
Why the change?
Yours sincerely,
Robert Henderson

Sorting out the mess after the Euro collapses

Robert Henderson

17 of the 28 EU states make up the Eurozone. If the Euro collapses 17 new national currencies will have to be established. A conversion rate for Euros to each re-established national currency will have to be agreed.   The weaker a country’s economy,  the less favourable the conversion rate.

That  will be painful for the weaker Eurozone economies, but it will be administratively relatively simple because the transaction can be made  bilateral,  just as the assimilation of the East German Ostmark into the Deutschmark was accomplished at the time of German re-unification, although this would be more complicated.

The bilateralism would  have to come through a system something like this:   the Euro coins and notes issued in each country’s name  and the Euro bank deposits of each country held at a certain date would be convertible only into the re-established national currency.  For example, this would mean that those holding Euros issued by France and Euros in French bank accounts  at a designated date,  would have their Euros converted to Francs at whatever the agreed rate was.

Unless such a system was adopted almost everyone holding  Euros would  demand that their Euros were converted to attractive currencies  such as a re-established Deutschmark rather than a new drachma or escudo, regardless of how attractive the conversion rates were for the weaker re-established Eurozone currencies.  This would happen because the weaker re-established currencies would be viewed by most as potentially worthless at worst and likely to devalue severely and quickly at best.  There would also be no guarantee that all the newly established currencies would be freely convertible.

The domestic administrative complications will be daunting enough,  but  they will be nothing compared to those that arise for  those holding the Euro as a reserve currency.  As the Euro is a supranational creation,  there can be no neat conversion of Euros held as a reserve currency to another currency as there was at German re-unification. Instead, each holder of Euros as a reserve currency would probably  have to receive a basket of currencies made up of all the 17 Eurozone’s new national currencies with the amounts  of each currency determined by some criterion such as the size of population of each Eurozone country. This would mean substantial losses for Euro reserve currency holders,  because most of the basket of 17 currencies they received to replace the Euros they held would be currencies which were weak and hence undesirable internationally.  Only the new Deutschmark would probably be considered genuine  reserve currency material.

In 2011  currencies held in reserve throughout the world amounted to about $10 trillion (http://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/13/reserve-currencies.asp). The Euro makes up just under a quarter of that, say $2.4 trillion.  The effect of a Euro collapse would be massive, not just on the EU or even the developed world generally,  but on the entire world because the developing countries hold around two-thirds of the $10 trillion, much of which will be Euros.

The potential damage the collapse of  the Euro would wreak may be the primary explanation for the ruthless treatment of Eurozone countries such as Greece, Spain and Portugal in the struggle to maintain the Euro, although the contemptible desire of the EU elites  to save face at any cost  is  doubtless also in play.

A subsidiary problem is how  non-reserve currency holders of Euros (individuals, business, other corporate bodies) outside the Eurozone would be treated. It would scarcely be a practical proposition to hand them a basket of currencies like the reserve currency holders because the vast majority would be holding only a small or relatively small number of Euros. For those holding just coins and notes there would not be a problem because those notes and coins would be identifiable as having been issued by a particular state and could be converted at the agreed Euro/re-established currency of the particular country rate just as the notes and coins held by those living in Eurozone countries could be converted. Ditto any Euros held in banks in Eurozone countries regardless of the nationality of the holder or their place of residence, the state in which bank account is held being the determining factor.

But a  severe problem would arise with those holding Euros in bank accounts outside of the Eurozone. How those Euros could be allocated to any Eurozone member by any rational or objectively fair scheme  I frankly cannot see. I suspect that they might have to settle for either  a basket of  Eurozone re-established national currencies as the holders would do (impractical for small amounts) or whatever (almost certainly decidedly penal) conversion rate each ex-Eurozone member might be willing to offer.  For example, France might offer a better rate than Germany. The foreign holders of Euros in bank accounts   could of course  simply be cut adrift and lose the entire value of their Euros.

Then there is the problem of what to do with contracts drawn up in Euros. What value would be put on the Euro cost of the contract?  I suppose it might be dealt with by using the conversion  rate  of the Euro to each Eurozone ex-member’s  re-established currency  with the place where the contract was to be carried out  determining to which newly  re–established currency  the contract would be converted. Or perhaps the contract could be converted to another currency such as the US dollar or pound sterling with payment either being made in that currency (which the contracting party doing the paying  would have to purchase using their own currency or any other foreign currency reserves) or in a newly re-established national currency at whatever  the exchange rate  between  that currency and  what might be termed the third party currency was at a moment in time. For example, suppose the third party currency was the US dollar and the ex-Eurozone state was France.  Francs would have to be given to the value  of whatever the exchange value of the Franc against the dollar was,  either at ts value at a given date or at an agreed conversion value.

The potential mess is colossal. What if a newly established currency is simply too weak to be able to either buy sufficient of a currency such as the US dollar or to make payment  in a new re-established national currency because the exchange rate was so penal it made the completing of the contract impossible?  What if  the contractor who  is  to be paid refused to complete the contract because they had no faith in  the newly re-established national currency? What if a newly  re-established currency was not strong enough to be fully convertible?   The outcome could be very severe because of the potential for a large shrinkage of economic activity across a  healthy slice of the world’s economy. What will happen generally if the Euro collapses?  The stark  truth is that no one knows because there is no historical example of a currency union on the scale or type of the Eurozone  failing .  The nearest example is the Latin Currency Union which lasted from 1865-1927, but that was small beer compared to the  Eurozone ,based on precious metals and not involving a reserve currency. Nor of course was international trade and finance developed to anything like the extent  it is today.

The architects of the Euro, whether intentionally or not, have behaved with a criminal recklessness in venturing where no one had gone before.

Bruges Group meeting 23rd April 2013 – Immigration: Can we control it?

Robert Henderson

Speakers: Sir Andrew Green (MigrationWatch UK)

Philip Hollobone (Tory MP for Kettering)

Gerard Batten (UKIP MEP for London)

This was a meeting truly remarkable the vehemence and explicit nature of the anti-immigrant feeling which was put forward not only by members of the audience during questions but by the speakers.  Some made s show of a few token gestures towards fitting their complaints within the pc envelope but most were explicit in their recognition that what matters is the qualitative societal change mass immigration brings.

Sir Andrew Green

Green performed as he usually does, sticking in the main to statistics. Nonetheless he was more forthright than he used to be in his language and statistics alone can be very telling.  These quotes will give a flavour of his talk:

“I would suggest to you that the present scale of immigration represents the greatest threat to our social cohesion we have ever faced and I would further suggest that the failure of the political class to address this issue has undermined confidence in our entire political system. “

“ The public are not in the least convinced   by nonsense they are told about this being a country of immigration.  We are not and never have been.  The number of net migrants in 2010 exceeded the number between 1066 and 1950. “

(Green’s  assertion that more immigrants arrived in the UK  in  2010 than came between 1066 and 1950 is very plausible,  even if  the  figures have to be guesstimates because of the  lack of adequate  records before the 19th century. We can be pretty sure that there was little immigration because populations in Europe were very small by modern standards at the beginning of the period and were reduced dramatically by  the Black Death in the 14th Century which is generally reckoned by historians of the period to have  carried off a third to half of Europe’s inhabitants.  Tellingly, there was a lack of serious riots in England  against foreigners simply because they were  foreigners or against what would now be called ethnic minorities between the expulsion of the Jews in 1290 by Edward I and the arrival of  Protestant Huguenots,  who  arrived  from Catholic France after the revocation of the Edict of Nante in 1684 removed the limited toleration they had been given by the French monarchy.  Their  numbers were not great because they cannot have been great because the population of France was still overwhelmingly Catholic and was probably only 15-20 million during the period in question.  They were followed by an influx of  Jews in the 18th century and bursts of Jewish immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as they fled first the pogroms of eastern Europe and then Hitler.  The numbers involved were very small compared with the vast numbers who have arrived since 1945 and particularly in the period since 1997 (tens of  thousands compared with millions in the modern period).

Green made these statistical points:

–          Most of the immigration to the UK comes from outside the EU. Therefore, the UK should be concentrating on reducing that while we remain within the EU.

–          If net immigration  continued to run  at 200,000 pa, the figure which it has averaged for the past ten years, the UK population  would reach 70 million by 2027.

–          The Coalition has managed to make significant progress towards  their target of reducing net immigration to tens of thousands by 2015. However, the right to free movement granted to Romania and Bulgaria from 1 January 2014 could easily undermine these efforts.

–          The Coalition may fudge things by not including the 2014 Bulgarian/ Romanian figures in the immigration statistics before the next general election.

–          Very large numbers of Bulgarians are already in Spain and Italy and may well move northwards to escape the difficult  economic circumstances in those countries.  Green also mentioned that there are 1.5m Roma in these countries.

–          The official immigration figures massively understate the true level of  EU immigration, perhaps by 2-3 times.

Green raised the question of leaving the EU but did not explore it, although he stated .  He suggested instead that when the proposed renegotiation with the EU  took place,   access to benefits by EU migrants should be one of the prime subjects for Britain to put on the agenda.

Although Green did not wholeheartedly go for the policies which would allow Britain to  really control her borders such as leaving the EU and repudiating any other treaty which restricts Britain’s ability to control her borders,  both he and MigrationWatch have  come a long way in the past ten years. There was a time when Green would have disregarded the EU dimension and spoken only about restricting immigration from outside the EU. Nor would you have heard him using such blunt language and sentiments as those contained in the two passages I have quoted above.  The movement of Green and MigrationWatch (most of it in the past five years) is emblematic of a general movement in the rhetoric if not the action of the mainstream British Parties and the British elite in general in recent years.

Philip Hollobone

For a Tory MP, indeed for any MP,  Holbone was startlingly frank.  He is a member of the “Better off Out” group  and maintains  that the demands of EU membership is “not a price the British people wish to pay”. This allowed him to embrace the idea that the UK could only regain control of its borders by leaving the EU.

While the UK remained within the  EU he advocated that the Government should (1) challenge the EU by refusing  to accept the lifting of the transitional rules  for Bulgarians and Romanians and (2) do what other countries in the EU such as Spain and officially register foreign workers and keep tabs on them.

Hollobone also railed against the pressure immigrants  brought on  infrastructure and  the crime they committed,  declared that the NHS was “ the National Health Service not the World Health Service” and stated  that UK  citizenship was granted far too  easily and should require 15 or 20 years  of well behaved residence in the country before someone was considered for citizenship.

All well and good, but sadly and pathetically Hollobone tried to excuse himself and other politicians from not speaking out until recently because it was only the advent of white immigration from the EU which had “given permission”  to the British to complain about immigration.  He needed to be “given permission” before speaking  out? That is the problem with mainstream British politicians in a nutshell: they have not got an ounce of courage.  When it comes to emotive and serious subjects, what counts is speaking when it is dangerous not when it is safe.

 Gerard Batten   

Batten was even franker than Hollobone. As a UKIP member, he is of course in favour of leaving the UK, (which he stressed was the only way to regain control over the UK’s borders), but he also favours withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights, repealing the Human Rights Act, making over-staying a visa a criminal offence and only allowing visitors into Britain if they either have health insurance or the UK has reciprocal medical arrangements with the visitor’s country.  Batten also suggested that immigrants  whose status could be illegal should be forced to  register with the government  if they wanted their cases  investigated.  Failure to register should, he said,  result in expulsion from the UK  without any chance of appeal.

Batten  slated the great increase in immigration from the Blair government onwards , an increase which he attributed to a deliberate Labour policy designed to change the ethnic make-up of the UK.  (The grounds for  this belief is the Evening Standard article by Andrew Neather in 2009 in which he claimed that “mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural”  (http://www.standard.co.uk/news/dont-listen-to-the-whingers–london-needs-immigrants-6786170.html).

Batten derided the British MEPs other than those from  UKIP who had recently voted  in the EU Parliament for the adoption of a report advocating the entry into the EU of Turkey, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo, countries with a combined population of 80 million.

The importance of breaking the liberal censorship

The vehemence of many of the audience was considerable. Not only were  very strong opinions against the politically correct  status quo expressed, the tones of voice and the  body language were both extremely animated.

Although there was no effing and blinding or crude racist language,  the ideas being put forward by both the speakers and the audience  were far more inflammatory in their implications  than many of those  who have been charged in recent times with  being “racist” because of what they have said or written in public.   Take  Green’s “the greatest threat to our social cohesion we have ever faced” or Batten’s belief that Blair had used immigration as an instrument of policy to fracture the ethnic solidarity of the UK.   Is that really different in sentiment from the white working class Englishwoman Emma West who is charged with a racially aggravated  public order offence for saying in a public place things like  “‘You ain’t English. No, you ain’t English either. You ain’t English. None of you’s ****ing English. Get back to your own ****ing… do you know what sort out your own countries, don’t come and do mine.”?  (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/emma-west-immigration-and-the-liberal-totalitarian-state/).

The audience questions were heartening because they  were based mainly on the social rather than the economic impact of immigration.  The competition for jobs, housing, medical treatment, education and welfare is of course important,  but the primary objection to mass immigration is the general change it brings to society. Mass immigration which results in numbers of particular nationalities, races and ethnicities arriving which are sufficient to permit the development of settlements with separate ways of living  from the host population is a covert form of conquest.  Mass immigration of the unassimilatable is an act of the most profound treason by those with political power who permit it, and, in the case of the Labour governments of  Blair and Brown, made doubly so by those who positively encourage it as a matter of policy.  It is treason  because the effect of such immigration is to effectively allow the unassimilatable to colonise territory by settlement.

I attempted without success to be called to put a question. Had I been called my question would have been “Before there can be proper public debate about immigration and its consequences the restrictions on free expression which result in people being charged with criminal offences, losing their jobs or being the subject of a media hate campaign when they speak honestly on the subject must be removed. What will the speakers be doing to remove those restrictions?” Unfortunately no one else asked the question so it went by default.

There is undoubtedly a changed and  changing public rhetoric on race and immigration, but it is still being controlled by those with power and influence. To get the change on immigration policy which is required – an end to mass immigration and the policy of multiculturalism – the general public must be able to express their views as they choose without fear of prosecution or other penalties such as the loss of employment.

This question also has serious implications for those who wish to leave the EU. Immigration is the prime driver of anti-EU sentiment in the UK. If the present straitjacket of fear  about expressing non-pc views on immigration remains,  the politically correct can stifle and manipulate debate on not only immigration  but also EU membership by  representing those who wish to leave the EU as xenophobes at best and racists at worst.

The Archers: an everyday story of simple feminists saying “Men!” folk

Robert Henderson

The white male characters in the Archers are invariably  either louts or cringing wimps who are treated as children by the female characters.  (Ethnic minority male characters are of course exempted from this rule, being invariably middleclass and if not always models of moral decorum never pathetic).

In recent weeks the dissatisfaction   with men of the crazed feminists who control the programme has reached new levels of intensity and scope.  Everywhere in the fictional village female characters are treating their menfolk with a disdain and lack of consideration unusual by the very high standards of contempt and condescension they normally display towards them. This feminine misbehaviour is of course not misbehaviour at all in feminist eyes but female “empowerment”.

Brenda Tucker has given her long-time live in boyfriend Tom Archer the old heave-ho for  the high-octane feminist reasons that (1) she wants to follow her own career and (2) is determined not to have children.   The announcement of this opened the way for the script writers to have Tom trying to blub his way to getting her back and sundry female characters saying how understandable it was that Brenda had decided to put her own feelings and career first.

Chris Carter, who was recently in intensive care after having an accident  after  being distracted at his work by his wife  Alice being selected  for a job in Canada and expecting  him to drop his own business as a farrier to join him there on spec.  Nothing daunted in the feminist selfishness stakes,  Alice  spent weeks during his recovery still thinking about going to Canada before eventually deciding against emigrating  – for the moment.

Lillian Bellamy’s excruciating geriatric affair with the overtly ineffably wet Paul has hit a rocky patch with Paul revealing more and more of his distinctly sinister side with  possessiveness  and pettishness alternating, while Lillian continues to show no remorse about betraying her live-in partner Matt Crawford.

Darrell Makepeace and his Albanian wife are at odds over Darrell’s inability to get regular work and is even more concerned over what he is doing to bring in the money he does bring in. Darrell being white, English and working-class  is fair game for misbehaviour to be allotted to him. He arrived in the series with a prison sentence behind him and has now been plonked into a storyline which has him caught up in a dog-fighting ring which is where he is getting his money from.

Pip Archer, arguably the most irritating female character ever to hit the airwaves, is permanently in a rage with her father David for daring to expect her to help about the family farm whilst she is living there rent and board free during her time at university.

But it has not quite been all feminist abuse of men. Helen Archer,  well into her thirties and replete with child obtained through artificial insemination from an unknown donor, is dating again in the manner of a 15 year-old. Nothing disastrous has happened yet but this being Helen it will. And needless to say, she and  the other main female characters will be saying “Men!”

On the everyday story of disabled folk front, the Downs child Bethany born to Mike and Vicky Tucker when Mike is in his sixties and she in her forties, is now greeted with cries of joy by every Archers’ character. This week the “normalisation of disability” in Ambridge took another step forward with the local WI putting on a talk given by a mother and her adult age Downs son. The event  was of course  greeted with universal praise.

Finally, the introduction of the Muslim character Iftikar Khan into the Archers core family  has been at least temporarily delayed. An attempted kiss and embrace between the chatelaine of lower Loxley Elizabeth  Pargetter and Khan resulted in a rebuff, gentle of course, from Elizabeth,  on the grounds that  she was “Not quite ready for a relationship”. But diversity lovers should not fear. It is only a matter of time before they are an item.  Indeed, the white, English  characters  are already preparing the ground . When gossip about a romance was developing between Khan and Elizabeth, a number of them talked about it without batting an eyelid at the prospect of a Muslim ending up as the squire of an English country estate with doubtless the patter of tiny feet of  a Mohammed or Fatima or both echoing in the ancient Lower Loxley halls.  Will Elizabeth have to convert to Islam is the big question.

Truly amazing what the BBC thinks goes on in an English farming village.

Emma West’s trial scheduled for the sixth time

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 trial has been delayed yet again and she will now (allegedly) stand trial on 10 May.[1]

The authorities are extracting the bodily fluids if they expect the general public to believe there is a legitimate reason for the delay.  The 10 May will be the sixth (yes, that is the sixth) trial date Ms West has been given since she was arrested .  By 10 May she will have been waiting to be tried for just short of eighteen months. The delay  is patently unreasonable.

The latest  excuse  given for the inordinate delay are “legal reasons”.   The only likely reasons are political ones, namely, her trial will challenge to politically correct status quo. This is because unlike virtually everyone else who has been charged with these type of offences she has made it clear she will be pleading NOT GUILTY.   The authorities simply  do not know what to do with her.

There is an added complication. When the previous re-scheduling happened the charges of assault against two police offices during the investigation of her case were also delayed  -they were originally due to be held on 3 March and were re-scheduled for 15 April.[2]

It will be interesting to see if these cases (to be heard in a magistrates’ court) go ahead on the 15 April or are put back yet again.   The authorities may have decided they want these cases to be heard before the racially aggravated public order offences. That could be to her disadvantage not just because it would taint her with  a criminal conviction before her Crown Court trial, but even more  dangerously because a criminal conviction for violence could provide the local social services with grounds for removing or threatening to remove her young son.  That might well be used as a lever to persuade her to plead guilty.  It is all too easy to imagine the cant the social services could come out with: “If you show remorse, Emma,  it may be possible to let you keep your child because it shows willingness to change. But if you stubbornly stick to your  not guilty plea we may have to take your son away from you because you are an unfit mother.”

The other possibility is that if the assault charges  are heard on  15 April and she is found guilty, she might be sent to prison. This would be very unusual for common assault cases, but the fact that the alleged victims are police officers might give the magistrates grounds for doing so. If that happened her son would probably be taken into care.  Whether she would ever get him back is a moot point. This scenario could of course also be used to frighten her in pleading guilty.

Margaret Thatcher: the most useful of idiots is dead

Note: Undoubtedly a gigantic political personality, but that is disastrous if the politics and understanding of what she was doing are missing. One of her favourite claims was that she had been “badly advised”.  Just what you don’t want as PM.  What is needed is someone who understands the consequences of what they are doing. RH 

Margaret Thatcher: the most useful of idiots

Robert Henderson
With his mixture of vaulting intellectual ambition and howling mediocrity of mind, Lenin is the MaGonagal of philosophers. (Connoisseurs of intellectual incompetence and pretension should browse through Lenin’s ‘Materialism and Empririo-Criticism’ for an especial treat). Nonetheless, like Hitler, the man possessed a certain low animal cunning and a complete absence of moral restraint, which qualities permitted him to make a few acute psychological and sociological observations. Amongst these is the concept of the useful idiot.
For Lenin this was the role to be played primarily by simpleminded bourgeois dupes who unwittingly aided the movement towards the proletarian revolution, a revolution utterly antipathetic to the ideals and aspiration of the simpleminded bourgeois dupes. But the concept is of general political utility. The useful idiot is any person who acts in a way which unwittingly promotes political interests which are opposed to his own political ideals.
The best of all useful idiots are those in positions of the greatest political advantage, both because they have power and their propensity to be deluded by their egos into believing that they are utterly beyond manipulation or mistaken in their policies. They also display a serious want of understanding of the probable consequences of their actions.
It was this combination of circumstances and mentality which made Margaret Thatcher so potent a useful idiot in the liberal internationalist cause. As I wrote that last sentence, I saw rising up before me the opposing hordes of her admirers and haters, singularly united in a ghastly embrace of disbelief. Was she not the Iron Lady, the Hammer of the Left, the destroyer of union power, the slayer of the socialist dragon? Did she not speak of turning back the tide of immigrants? Was she not the rock from which the European Leviathan rebounded? Did she not ensure that Britain was respected in the world as she had not been since Suez? Was she not a mover and shaker in the nationalist cause?
In her own rhetorical world Mrs T was all of these things, a veritable Gloriana who enchanted some and banally persuaded many more, but in practical achievement she was none of them. This discrepancy between fact and fancy made her an extraordinarily potent tool for the soldiers of the ascendant ideology of the post-war period, the sordid bigotry that is liberal internationalism.
The hard truth is that she allowed the primary British political corruptions of the post war period – immigration, multiculturalism, “progressive” education, the social work circus, internationalism, the attachment to Europe – to not merely continue but grow vastly in scope during her period in power.
A harsh judgement? Well, at the end of her premiership what did Britain have to show for her vaunted patriotism, her wish to maintain Britain’s independence, her desire to drive back the state, her promise to end mass immigration? Precious little is the answer.
Her enthusiastic promotion of the Single European Act, which she ruthlessly drove through Parliament, allowed the Eurofederalists to greatly advance their cause under the guise of acting to produce a single market; her “triumph” in reducing our subsidy to Europe left us paying several billion a year to our European competitors whilst France paid next to nothing; our fishermen were sold down the river; farmers placed in the absurd position of not being allowed to produce even enough milk for British requirements; actual (as opposed to official) immigration increased; that monument to liberal bigotry, the Race Relations Act was untouched, the educational vandals were not only allowed to sabotage every serious attempt to overturn the progressive disaster, but were granted a great triumph in the ending of ‘O’ levels, a liberal bigot success amplified by the contemptible bleating of successive education secretaries that “rising examination success means rising standards”; foreign aid continued to be paid as an unforced Dangeld extracted from an unwilling electorate; major and strategically important industries either ceased to be serious competitors or ended in foreign hands; the armed forces were cut suicidally; the cost of the Welfare State and local government rose massively whilst the service provided both declined and Ulster was sold down the river with the Anglo Irish Agreement. Most generally damaging, she promoted internationalism through her fanatic pursuit of free trade.
At all points Britain was weakened as a nation. Such were the fruits of more than a decade of Thatcherism. Even those things which are most emblematic of her – privatisation, the sale of council houses and the subjection of the unions – have had effects which are contrary to those intended. Privatisation merely accelerated the loss of control which free trade engendered. We may as customers celebrate the liberation of British Telecom and BA, but is it such a wonderful thing to have no major car producer or shipbuilder? The trouble with the privatisation of major industries, which may be greatly reduced, go out of business or be taken over by foreign buyers, is that it ignores strategic and social welfare questions. Ditto free trade generally. Both assume that the world, or at least the parts which contain our major trading partners , will remain peaceful, stable and well disposed towards Britain for ever, an absurd assumption.
Margaret Thatcher also engaged in behaviour which led to a corruption of public life which undermined and continues to undermine her intended ends. Politicians should always think of what precedent they are setting when they act for bad precedents will be invariably seized upon by later governments. She consistently failed to address this concern. Take her attitude to privatisation and the unions. In the former case she displayed a contempt for ownership: in the latter she engaged in authoritarian actions which were simply inappropriate to a democracy. Such legally and politically cavalier behaviour has undoubtedly influenced Blair and New Labour, vide the contempt with which parliament is now treated, constitutional change wrought and incessant restrictions on liberty enacted.
There is a profound ethical question connected to privatisation which was never properly answered by Tories: what right does the state have to dispose by sale of assets which are held in trust on behalf of the general public and whose existence has been in large part guaranteed by taxpayer’s money? This is a question which should be as readily asked by a conservative as by a socialist for it touches upon a central point of democratic political morality, the custodianship of public property. The same ends – the diminution of the state and the freeing of the public from seemingly perpetual losses – could have been achieved by an equitable distribution of shares free of charge to the general public. This would have had, from a Thatcherite standpoint, the additional benefit of greatly increasing share ownership. By selling that which the government did not meaningfully own, she engaged in behaviour which if it had been engaged in by any private individual or company would have been described as fraud or theft.
The breaking of union power was overdone. As someone who is old enough to remember the Wilson, Heath and Callaghan years, I have no illusion of exactly how awful the unions were when they had real power. But her means of breaking their abusive ways, particularly during the miners’ strike, were simply inappropriate in a supposed democracy. Passing laws restricting picketing and making unions liable for material losses suffered when they broke the rules were one thing: the using of the police in an unambiguously authoritarian manner in circumstances of dubious legality such as the blanket prevention of free movement of miners, quite another.
The Falklands War displays another side of her weakness in matching actions to rhetoric. Admirable as the military action was, the terrible truth is that the war need never have been fought if the government had taken their intelligence reports seriously and retained a naval presence in the area. The lesson went unlearnt, for within a few years of the recovery of the Falklands, her government massively reduced defence expenditure.
But what of her clients, the Liberal Ascendency? Would they not be dismayed by much of what she did? Well, by the time Margaret Thatcher came to power liberals had really lost whatever interest they had ever had in state ownership or the genuine improvement of the worker’s lot. What they really cared about was promoting their internationalist vision and doctrine of spurious natural rights. They had new clients; the vast numbers of coloured immigrants and their children, women, homosexuals, the disabled. In short, all those who were dysfunctional, or could be made to feel dysfunctional, in terms of British society. They had new areas of power and distinction, social work, education, the civil service ,the mass media to which they added, after securing the ideological high ground, the ancient delights of politics.
Although the liberal left distrusted and hated Margaret Thatcher (and did not understand at the time how effective her commitment to free trade was in promoting internationalism), they nonetheless had the belief throughout her time in office that Britain’s involvement in the EU and the Liberal Ascendency’s control of education, the media, the civil service and bodies such as the Commission for Racial Equality would thwart those of her plans which were most dangerous and obnoxious to the liberal.
Margaret Thatcher greatly added to this wall of opposition by her choice of ministers. Think of her major cabinet appointments. She ensured that the Foreign Office remained in the hands of men (Howe and Hurd) who were both ardent Europhiles and willing tools of the FO Quisling culture, the Chancellorship was entrusted to first Howe and then Lawson who was also firmly committed to Europe. The Home Office sat in the laps of the social liberals Whitelaw, Hurd and Baker, Education was given to Baker and Clarke. Those appointments alone ensured that little would be done to attack the things which liberals held sacred, for they were men who broadly shared the liberal values and who were opposed to Thatcherite policies other than those on the economy, which of course was the one Thatcherite policy guaranteed to assist liberal internationalism. By the end, she was so weak that she was unable to prevent the effective sacking of a favourite cabinet minister, Nicholas Ridley, by the German Chancellor.
The constant cry of Margaret Thatcher after she left office is that she did not understand the consequences of her acts. Of course she does not put it in that way, but that is what it amounts to. She blames Brussels and the Foreign Office for the unwelcome consequences of the Single European Act. She readily admits that this minister or that in her government proved unreliable or treacherous, but does not conclude that her judgement in choosing them was at fault. She blames the Foreign Office for the Falklands War. But nowhere does she acknowledge her fault.
In her heart of hearts, has the second longest serving and most ideological prime minister in modern British history ever comprehended, however imperfectly, that she was a prime mover in the Liberal Internationalist cause? I doubt it, because self deception is at the heart of what makes a useful idiot.

The EU IN/OUT referendum: strategy and tactics for those who want to leave the EU

Robert Henderson

The general strategy

A) How to leave

Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty states

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.

5. 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. (http://www.lisbon-treaty.org/wcm/the-lisbon-treaty/treaty-on-european-union-and-comments/title-6-final-provisions/137-article-50.html).

The OUT camp must make it clear that  it would be both damaging and unnecessary for the UK to abide by this Treaty requirement. It  would allow the EU to inflict considerable damage on the UK both during the period prior to formally  leaving and afterwards if  the price of leaving with the EU’s agreement was  for  UK to sign up to various obligations, for example, to continue paying a large annual sum to the EU for ten years . It would also give  the Europhile UK political elite  ample opportunity to keep the UK attached to the EU in the manner that Norway and Switzerland are attached. More of them later.

There is also the danger that the stay-in camp could use Article 50 to argue that whether the British people want to be in or out, the cost of leaving would be too heavy because of this treaty requirement.

The Gordian knot of Article 50 can be cut  simply by passing an Act of Parliament repealing all the treaties that refer to the EU from the Treaty of Rome onwards. No major UK party could  object to this because all three have, at one time or another,  declared that Parliament remains supreme and can repudiate anything the EU does if it so chooses.

If the stay-in camp argue that would be illegal because of the  treaty obligation, the OUT camp should simply emphasise  (1) that international law is no law because there is never any means of enforcing it within its jurisdiction is a state rejects it and (2) that treaties which do not allow for contracting parties to simply withdraw are profoundly undemocratic because they bind future governments.

The OUT camp should press the major political parties to commit themselves to ignoring Article 50. If a party refuses that can be used against them because it will make them look suspicious. Before the vote

B) The parties’ plans of action if there is a vote to leave

It is important that all the parties likely to have seats in the Commons after the next election are publicly and relentlessly pressed to give at least a broad outline of what action they would adopt in the event of a vote to leave.  Left with a free hand there is a serious danger that whatever British  government is  in charge after a vote to leave would attempt to bind the UK back into the EU by stealth by signing the UK up to agreements such as those the EU has with Norway and Switzerland which mean that they have to (1) pay a fee to the EU annually, (2) adopt the social legislation which comes from the EU and (3) most importantly agree to the four “freedoms” of the EU – the free movement of goods, services, capital and  labour throughout not merely the EU  but the wider European Economic Area (EEA).

It is probable that the Westminster parties will all resist this, but that would present them with two problems. First, a refusal to do so would make them seem untrustworthy; second, if one party laid out their position but the others did not, that would potentially give the party which did say what it would do a considerable advantage over the others which did not.  If no party puts its plans before the public before the referendum, there should be demands  from those who want the UK to leave the EU that  any new treaties with the EU must be put to a referendum and, if they are rejected, the UK will simply trade with the EU under the WTO rules.

C) Repudiate re-negotiation before the referendum

Supporting the negotiation of a new relationship between the UK and the EU before a referendum is mistaken because it would seem to many to be giving tacit approval for renegotiation and legitimise the possibility of the UK remaining within the EU.  It is also rash  because  the likelihood  of the EU giving nothing is probably very small.  Indeed, they might well  give something which is substantial,  because the UK leaving the EU would be a very great blow to the organisation. The UK is the country with the second largest population within the EU with , depending on how it is measured,  the second or third largest   economy  and the country which pays the second largest contribution to the EU budget.   For the EU to lose the UK would not only be a blow in itself, it would also create a very strong precedent for every other EU state, especially the largest ones.  If  the UK left and prospered the temptation would be for other EU states to leave.

But even if negotiation  produced  nothing of substance as Harold Wilson’s “renegotiation” did in 1975, it would be a mistake to imagine that it would not influence the referendum result. The electorate is divided between the resolute come outs, the resolute stay-ins and the wavering middle.  A claim by the stay-in campaigners that something had been conceded by the EU, however  insignificant,  would provide the waverers with an excuse to vote to stay in because they could convince themselves they were voting for change.

It would be also be a mistake to see the EU offering  nothing  at all as a gift for the OUT camp. This is  because the waverers might simply see that as evidence that the EU was too powerful to oppose and shift their votes to staying in.

Those who want the UK to leave should unambiguously put the case for no renegotiation.  Dismiss anything Cameron (or any other PM) brings back from the EU by way of altered terms as being irrelevant because the EU has a long record of  agreeing things with  the UK and then finding ways of sabotaging what was agreed. In addition, a future British government  may agree to alter any terms offered at the time of the referendum.  The classic example of this changing of agreed terms happening in the past is Tony Blair’s  giving up of a substantial amount of the Thatcher rebate in return for a promised reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), a promise which was never met.  That episode produced my all-time favourite amongst Blair’s penchant for lying. Two days before he went to the EU meeting at which he  gave away a  substantial part of the rebate he declared during Prime Minister’s Questions  that  the rebate  was “non-negotiable – period”

It is difficult to envisage any British prime minister not trying to  negotiate with the EU before a referendum, but it might just  happen if whoever is in power when the referendum is announced were to be told privately by the  major EU players that nothing will be given and the prime minister of the day concludes it would be best to pretend that a decision had been made not to negotiate rather than risk the humiliation of getting nothing, perhaps not even a pretence of negotiation before nothing is given.  Why would the EU do this? They might calculate that it would be a gamble worth taking to send a British PM away  with nothing  whilst hoping the referendum vote would be to stay in because then the power of the UK to resist further integration would be shot.

If the EU offer nothing, the OUT camp should welcome the fact and stress to the public that if the referendum is to stay-in the EU could force any federalist measure through because not only would any British government be much weakened in its opposition to more federalism, the UK political class as a whole would more than willing to go along with it because of their ideological commitment to the EU.

D) After the vote

Ideally the government which deals with the EU after a vote to leave will have committed themselves to a plan of action before the referendum vote.  However, as described above,  it is quite possible that this will not happen because  the UK’s overwhelmingly Europhile political class will try to re-entangle the UK with the EU. To prevent them doing so there should be a concerted campaign after the vote to ensure that the  British public understands what is being done on their behalf with a demand for a further referendum to agree any  new treaty.

The terms of the debate

It is essential that the Europhiles are not allowed to make the debate revolve around economics.   If they do it will effectively stifle meaningful debate. As anyone who has ever tried to present economic ideas to an audience of the general public will know it is a soul-destroying experience.  Take the question of how much of UK trade is with the EU. The debate will begin with the stay-in camp saying something like 45% of UK trade is with the EU. Those wanting to leave the EU will respond by saying it is probably less than 40% because of the Rotterdam/Antwerp effect . They will then be forced to explain what the Rotterdam/Amsterdam, effect is. That is the point where the general public’s concentration is lost and the debate ends up proving nothing to most of the audience.

But  although nothing is proved to the general audience by detailed economic argument ,  the audience will remember  certain phrases which have considerable  traction.  In amongst the serious debating on the issue of trade there will be phrases such as three million jobs in Britain rely on the EU and dire threats about how the EU will simply not buy British goods and services any more.  This is nonsense but fear is not a rational thing and many of those who vote will enter the voting chamber with fear of losing their jobs  in their heads regardless of what the OUT camp says if the debate is predominantly about economics.  Shift the debate away from economics and the fear inducing phrases will be heard less often.  If the BIG LIE is not repeated often enough its potency fades.

National Sovereignty

How should those wanting to leave the EU shift the focus of debate? They should put the matter which is really at the core of the UK’s  relationship with the EU  – national sovereignty – at the front of the  OUT camp’s referendum campaign.   Campaign under a slogan such as Are we to be masters in our own house?

Making national sovereignty the primary campaigning issue has the great advantage of  it being something that anyone can understand because it is both a simple concept and speaks directly to the natural tribal instincts of  human beings.   Being a simple concept readily  and naturally understood,   it is a far more potent debating tool than arguments attempting to refute the economic  arguments  beloved of the stay-in camp.  The fact that the natural tribal instincts have been suppressed for so long in the UK will increase its potency because most people will feel a sense of release when it begins to be catered for in public debate.

The appeal to national sovereignty has a further advantage. Those who support the EU are unused to debating on that ground.  That is because uncritical support for the EU has long been the position of both the British mainstream political class as a class and of the mass media.  That has meant that the contrary voice – that which wishes Britain to be independent – has been largely unheard in public debate for thirty years or more. Where it has been heard the response of the pro-EU majority has not been rational argument but abuse ranging from patronising dismissal of a wish for sovereignty as an outmoded nationalism to accusations that national sovereignty amounts to xenophobia or even racism.   These tactics – of excluding those who want to leave the EU from public debate and abuse substituted for argument – will no longer be available to the  pro EU lobby.

Immigration

The most threatening and energising subject relating to the EU for the general public is immigration. The public are right to identify this as the most important aspect of our membership of the EU because immigration touches every important part of British life: jobs, housing, education, welfare, healthcare, transport, free expression  and crime besides radically changing the  nature of parts of  the UK which now have large populations of immigrants and their descendants.

The public rhetoric of mainstream politicians and the media is changing fast as they begin to realise both what an electoral liability a de facto open door immigration policy is  as the effects of mass immigration become ever more glaring.  The argument is shifting from the economic to the cultural.  For example, here is the Daily Telegraph in a leader of  25 March:

“The fact is that, for many in Britain (especially those outside the middle classes), it is not just a matter of jobs being taken or public services being stretched, but of changes in the very character of communities. Those changes may not necessarily be for the worse: as the Prime Minister says, Britain’s culture has long been enriched by the contributions of new arrivals. But as long as ministers treat immigration as a matter of profit and loss, rather than the cause of often wrenching social change, they will never be able fully to address the grievances it causes.” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/9952717/Immigration-and-the-limits-of-the-possible.html)

This new frankness in public debate means that the OUT camp can use the immigration argument freely provided they keep the language within the confines of formal politeness. The subject will naturally dovetail with the emphasis on national sovereignty because the most important aspect of sovereignty is the ability to control the borders of the territory of a state.  Judged by their increasing willingness to talk publicly about immigration, it is probable that the mainstream UK parties will be content to go along with  ever more frank discussion about  immigration.

The economic argument must be kept simple

It will not be possible to avoid  economic arguments entirely. The OUT camp should concentrate on repeating these two facts:

–          The disadvantageous balance of payments deficit the UK has with the EU

–          The amount the UK pays to the EU

Those are the most solid  economic figures relating to the EU.   There is some fuzziness around the edges of the balance of payments deficit because of the question of where all the imports end up (whether in the EU or outside the EU through re-exporting) ,  while the  amount the EU  receives  is solid but it has to be broken down into the money which returns to the UK and the amount retained by Brussels.  Nonetheless these are the most certain  figures and the least susceptible to obfuscation by the stay-in side.

The best way of presenting the money paid to the EU is simply to say that outside the EU we can decide  how all of it is spent in this country and to illustrate what the money saved by not paying it to the EU would pay for.

It will also be necessary to address the question of protectionist measures the EU might take against the UK if the  vote was to leave.  It is improbable that the EU would place heavy protectionist barriers on UK exports because:

1.   The massive balance of payment deficit between the UK and the rest of the EU which is massively in the EU’s favour.

2.  Although the rest of the EU dwarfs the UK economy, much UK trade with the EU is heavily concentrated in certain regions of the EU.  The effect of protectionist barriers would  bear very heavily on these places.

3. There are strategically and economically important joint projects of which the UK is a major part,  for example, Airbus, the Joint-Strike Fighter.

4. the Republic of Ireland would be a massive bargaining chip for  the UK to play.  If the UK left and the EU rump attempted to impose sanctions against Britain this would cripple the RoI because so much of their trade is with the UK  The EU would be forced to massively subsidise the RoI  if protectionist barriers against the UK were imposed.  The EU could not exempt the RoI from the sanctions because that  would leave the EU open to British exports being funnelled through the RoI.

5. The EU would be bound by the World Trade Organisation’s restrictions on protectionist measures.

The economic  issues which are not worth pursuing in detail because they are too diffuse  and uncertain , are those relating to how much the EU costs Britain in terms of  EU-inspired legislation. It may well be that these load billions a year of extra costs  onto the UK  but they are not certain  or easily evaluated costs, not least because we cannot in the nature of things know what burdens an independent UK would impose off its own bat.   Getting into detailed  discussions about such things will simply play into the hands of  the stay-in camp because it will eat up the time and space available to those promoting the OUT cause.

Other Issues

Apart from the economic issues the stay-in camp will use these reasons for staying in:

–          That the EU  has prevented war in Western Europe since 1945.  This can be simply refuted by pointing out that the EU was not formed until  twelve years after WW2; that until 1973 the EU consisted of only six countries, three of them small,  and  of only nine countries until the 1980s. Consequently it would be reasonable to look for other reasons for  the lack of war. The two causes of   the peace in Western Europe have been the NATO alliance and the invention of nuclear weapons which make the price of war extraordinarily high.

–          That nation states such as the UK are too small to carry any real diplomatic weight in modern world.   That begs the question of whether it is an advantageous thing to carry such weight – it can get a country into disastrous foreign entanglements such as Iraq and Afghanistan – but even assuming it is advantageous , many much smaller countries than the UK survive very nicely, making their own bilateral agreements with other states large and small.   It is also worth remembering that the UK has such levers as a permanent seat on the UN Security  Council (which allows the UK to veto any proposed  move by the UN) and considerable influence in institutions such as the IMF and World Bank.

Robert Henderson

1 April 2013

Emma West trial scheduled for the fifth time

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  9th April (http://www.thisiscroydontoday.co.uk/New-date-trial-alleged-Croydon-tram-racist-Emma/story-18324751-detail/story.html#ixzz2NP2WTqtB). Assuming it actually takes place it will have taken over sixteen  months  since being charged with racially aggravated public order offences. (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/emma-west-immigration-and-the-liberal-totalitarian-state/).

Justice delayed is justice denied. The delay here is unconscionable because her comments on the tram were recorded by a fellow passenger and the only points at issue are (1) whether the recording has been doctored; (2) whether what was said or happened before the recording began have relevance to the context of the remarks, for example, was there any provocation offered to Miss West; (3) whether the remarks were racist or fair comment and (4) the condition of Miss West at the time.  None of this should take such an age to determine.

The  delay is plausibly not down to any practical or legal reason,  but the fact that Miss West has done something very unusual by maintaining a plea of Not Guilty throughout her ordeal, despite being imprisoned for two weeks in the nearest there is to a Category A prison in England for women HMP Bronzefield after being refused bail on the bogus grounds that it was “for her own safety” and having the threat of her child being taken away hanging over her.

The powers-that-be cannot be doing with  people designated as having committed politically correct crimes not coming quietly by pleading guilty and making a Maoist-style public confession of fault . That is especially the case where the accusation is one of racism.  Emma West represents real danger to the authorities because a not guilty plea raises the possibility of that being discussed  in public which the politically correct most dread: the policy of mass immigration of the UK, overtly and covertly practised by ever government since the war, and its effects.  The ridiculous delay has been in all probability simply a cynical ploy to wear Miss West down and get her to plead guilty.

During the time since the original charges, Miss West has been further charged with assaulting two police officers at her home. These charges were due to be heard in a magistrates court  on 3rd March but have been delayed until after her trial on the  racial harassment charges.  Presuming she did not attack them with a deadly weapon or seriously harm them – something suggested by the cases being dealt with in a magistrates court – is it really in the public interest to prosecute her considering the stress she has been placed under by the oppressive action of the state in charging her for what is an illegitimate crime in a free society, her imprisonment, the threat of taking her child away and great the delay?  If this alleged assault merely consisted of, say, Miss West pushing the officers, or resisting when she was  physically held by the officers, a prosecution would be wholly unreasonable in the circumstances.

The authorities may simply have decided they can no longer string things out and have to bring the case to trial or drop the charges.  However things could be rather more sinister.  The delaying of the assault charges could be used as a carrot to get her to plead guilty (you plead guilty and we will drop the charges) or,  if she is found not guilty of the racial harassment charges, a means of punishing her by convicting her of assault which could be a lever for the social services to take her son into care.

If the case is delayed again it will be impossible to offer any plausible  explanation but deliberate interference with justice by those with power and influence.

BBC Anglophobe anti-white propaganda: The liberty of Norton Folgate

Robert Henderson

The Saturday play on Radio 4 The liberty of Norton Folgate  (9 February)  was an unashamed piece of racism, the racism being directed at the native English. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qgr4f).

The play was set in the East End of London. Norton Folgate is a street connecting Bishopsgate with Shoreditch High Street.  The  playwright Mark Davies Markham hung the play on the skeleton of the British pop group Madness’  album of the same name.

Madness wrote their album after a building which the locals prized was in danger of being demolished.  This was eventually prevented after it was discovered that Norton Folgate was a liberty, an archaic free status which put it outside the jurisdiction of the local authority.   Hence the title The liberty of Norton Folgate.

The Madness album concentrated on the racial and ethnic diversity of the area both past and present. Davies Markham took this general theme and made it his with knobs on.  In the play the building threatened with demolition becomes the Union café, its proprietors Asian and the wicked developer who wants to demolish the building is (natch) white and English.  Davies Markham’s  intention are clear from a blog he wrote for the BBC:

“The Union café is threatened to be demolished. The livelihood of Bangladeshi owners, Gazi and Sitara, is under threat. They fear for the identity of the community. This family make a stand for preserving British culture. The right for all their customers to a full English breakfast.  “ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcmusic/posts/The-Liberty-of-Norton-Folgate-A-drama)

You get the idea: the Asians are the true Britons: the English are not.

The Asian characters are constantly promoted positively (with the subtext that they are the real British patriots now) while the white  English characters (interestingly there was no non-white character represented as English) with the exception of Jess,  the white daughter of Ralph Burke, the evil property developer and leader of the New England Party,  were caricatures of what the liberal left fondly but mistakenly imagine are the only English people who resist immigration and its effects, namely, Neo-Nazis.  Jess is in a relationship with an Asian (natch) and just to put a cherry on the cake of Asian good, English bad scenario,  the wife of Ralph ran away with an Asian.

This was a deliberate denigration of theEnglish. It  was also unabashed politically correct, pro-immigrant propaganda. How does  all this  fit with the BBC legal requirement to attempt balance and remain within the law of  incitement to racial hatred?  You tell me.

When shall we see  BBC productions which honestly address the plight of the native English population,   especially that of the working class, a plight which engineered by the white liberal elites through their encouragement  and permitting of mass immigration? How about a topical drama which takes as its subject the Muslim gangs roaming places such as the area in which Norton Folgate was set with the intent to intimidate and assault non-Muslims? Now that would be realistic.

How the English saw themselves at the height of Empire – Cecil Rhodes’ will

Today the English are frequently represented by the politically correct left liberals  as being a people without any sense of identity, indeed, not really a Nation  at all.  The politically correct are able to freely peddle this fantasy because at present they have a vice-like grip on power which allows them to pass laws which make it dangerous to express  ideas such as thegreat  historical achievement of the English as a people; English anger at the mass immigration into England  and, indeed, any expression of pride in being English. They also  use their control of the media to  censor such ideas and promote  multiculturalist pro-immigrant propaganda. This propaganda  has also been institutionalised in England’s schools and universities.

Things were very different in the past. At the height of British imperial power the English (and both the English themselves and foreigners spoke of England not Britain at that time) commonly believed that England was the most civilised country in the word with the most exceptional people, a people so blessed that it was for the good of the human race that they should administer much of the world.

The final version of  the will of Cecil Rhodes which I reproduce below will seem extreme to modern eyes, especially to those conditioned by ceaseless pc  propaganda decrying both England’s past and the reality of the English as a people.  But Rhodes  did not seem extreme in his own time. There were of course English people then who opposed his imperial plans on moral grounds  but they were very much  in the minority.  Rhodes was within the mainstream of Victorian British imperial thinking, Most importantly,  Rhodes was accepted by the British political elite  as someone who should be listened to, not written off as a dangerous extremist.

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The final will of Cecil Rhodes

It often strikes a man to enquire what is the chief goal in life; to one the thought comes that it is a happy marriage, to another great wealth, and as each seizes on his idea, for that he more or less works for the rest of his existence. To myself thinking over the same question the wish came to render myself useful to my country. I then asked myself how could I and after reviewing the various methods I have felt that at the present day we are actually limiting our children and perhaps bringing into the world half the human beings we might owing to the lack of country for them to inhabit {a lebensraum argument} that if we had retained America there would at this moment be millions more of English living. I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race . Just fancy those parts that are at present inhabited by the most despicable specimens of human beings what an alteration there would be if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence, look again at the extra employment a new country added to our dominions gives. I contend that every acre added to our territory means in the future birth to some more of the English race who otherwise would not be brought into existence . Added to this the absorption of the greater portion of the world under our rule simply means the end of all wars, at this moment had we not lost America I believe we could have stopped the Russian-Turkish war by merely refusing money and supplies. Having these ideas what scheme could we think of to forward this object. I look into history and I read the story of the Jesuits I see what they were able to do in a bad cause and I might say under bad leaders.

In the present day I became a member of the Masonic order I see the wealth and power they possess the influence they hold and I think over their ceremonies and I wonder that a large body of men can devote themselves to what at times appear the most ridiculous and absurd rites without an object and without an end.

The idea gleaming and dancing before one’s eyes like a will-of-the wisp at last frames itself into a plan. Why should we not form a secret society with but one object the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole uncivilised world under British rule for the recovery of the United States for the making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire. What a dream, but yet it is probable, it is possible. I once heard it argued by a fellow in my own college, I am sorry to own it by an Englishman, that it was a good thing for us that we have lost the United States. There are some subjects on which there can be no arguments, and to an Englishman this is one of them, but even from an American’s point of view just picture what they have lost, look at their government, are not the frauds that yearly come before the public view a disgrace to any country and especially their’s which is the finest in the world. Would they have occurred had they remained under English rule great as they have become how infinitely greater they would have been with the softening and elevating influences of English rule, think of those countless 000′s of Englishmen that during the last 100 years would have crossed the Atlantic and settled and populated the United States. Would they have not made without any prejudice a finer country of it than the low class Irish and German emigrants? All this we have lost and that country loses owing to whom? Owing to two or three ignorant pig-headed statesmen of the last century, at their door lies the blame. Do you ever feel mad? do you ever feel murderous. I think I do with those men. I bring facts to prove my assertions. Does an English father when his sons wish to emigrate ever think of suggesting emigration under another flag, never – it would seem a disgrace to suggest such a thing I think that we all think that poverty is better under our own flag rather than wealth under a foreign one.

Put your mind into another train of thought. Fancy Australia discovered and colonised under the French flag, what would it mean merely several millions of English unborn that at present exist we learn from the past and to form our future. We learn through having lost to cling to wehat we possess. We know the size of the world we know the total extent. Africa is still lying ready for us it is our duty to take it. It is our duty to seize every oportunity of acquiring more territory and we should keep this one idea steadily before our eyes that more territory simply means more of the Anglo-Saxon race more of the best the most human, most honourable race the world possesses.

To forward such a scheme what a splendid help a secret society would be a society not openly acknowledged but who would work in secret for such an object.

I contend that there are at the present moment numbers of the ablest men in the world who would devote their whole lives to it. I often think what a loss to the English nation in some respects the abolition of the Rotten Borough System has been. What thought strikes a man entering the house of commons, the assembly that rules the whole world? I think it is the mediocrity of the men but what is the cause. It is simply – an assembly of wealth of men whose lives have been spent in the accumulation of money and whose time has been too much engaged to be able to spare any for the study of past history. And yet in the hands of such men rest our destinies. Do men like the great Pitt, and Bourke and Sheridan not now exist. I contend they do. There are men now living with I know no other term the  mega chschegis  of Aristotle but there are not ways for enabling them to serve their Country. They live and die unused unemployed. What has been the main cause of the success of the Romish Church? The fact that every enthusiast, call it if you like every madman finds employment in it. Let us form the same kind of society a Church for the extension of the British Empire. A society which should have its members in every part of the British Empire working with one object and one idea we should have its members placed at our universities and our schools and should watch the English youth passing through their hands just one perhaps in every thousand would have the mind and feelings for such an object, he should be tried in every way, he should be tested whether he is endurant, possessed of eloquence, disregardful of the petty details of life, and if found to be such, then elected and bound by oath to serve for the rest of his life in his Country. He should then be supported if without means by the Society and sent to that part of the Empire where it was felt he was needed.

Take another case, let us fancy a man who finds himself his own master with ample means on attaining his majority whether he puts the question directly to himself or not, still like the old story of virtue and vice in the Memorabilia a fight goes on in him as to what he should do. Take it he plunges into dissipation there is nothing too reckless he does not attempt but after a time his life pulls on him, he mentally says this is not good enough, he changes his life, he reforms, he travels, he thinks now I have found the chief good in life, the novelty wears off, and he tires, to change again, he goes into the far interior after the wild game he thinks at last I’ve found that in life of which I cannot tire, again he is disappointed. He returns he thinks is there nothing I can do in life? Here I am with means, with a good house, with everything that is to envied and yet I am not happy I am tired of life he possesses within him a portion of the  mega chschegis of Aristotle but he knows it not, to such a man the Society should go, should test, and should finally show him the greatness of the scheme and list him as a member.

Take one more case of the younger son with high thoughts, high aspirations, endowed by nature with all the faculties to make a great man, and with the sole wish in his life to serve his Country but he lacks two things the means and the opportunity, ever troubled by a sort of inward deity urging him on to high and noble deeds, he is compelled to pass his time in some occupation which furnishes him with mere existence, he lives unhappily and dies miserably. Such men as these the Society should search out and use for the furtherance of their object.

(In every Colonial legislature the Society should attempt to have its members prepared at all times to vote or speak and advocate the closer union of England and the colonies, to crush all disloyalty and every movement for the severance of our Empire. The Society should inspire and even own portions of the press for the press rules the mind of the people. The Society should always be searching for members who might by their position in the world by their energies or character forward the object but the ballot and test for admittance should be severe). Once make it common and it fails. Take a man of great wealth who is bereft of his children perhaps having his mind soured by some bitter disappointment who shuts himself up separate from his neighbours and makes up his mind to a miserable existence. To such men as these the society should go gradually disclose the greatness of their scheme and entreat him to throw in his life and property with them for this object. I think that there are thousands now existing who would eagerly grasp at the opportunity. Such are the heads of my scheme.

For fear that death might cut me off before the time for attempting its development I leave all my worldly goods in trust to S. G. Shippard and the Secretary for the Colonies at the time of my death to try to form such a Society with such an object.