Social Nationalism VS National Socialism:
(By Dr. Adel Bshara)
At the core of National Socialism was the Nationalism advocated by the historian Heinrich von Treitschke. A basic theme was Social Darwinism: individuals and nations are both subject to a continuous struggle for life. In this struggle, race is the center of life and all other elements are rated with reference to it. National Socialism claimed that keeping the blood and the race pure is a nation's noblest task. It proclaimed the Germanic race as the new ‘icorpus mysticum’ on which the salvation of the Aryan race and consequently that of the world depended. Accordingly, Nazist policies "figured solely as an expedient intended to improve the Germanic race genetically and to protect it against racial interbreeding which according to the National Socialists, always entails the doctrine of the higher race."
By contrast, Saadeh excluded the notion of race as a criteria of nationality. In one of his most vigorous statements against the national socialist conception of the N.S.D.A.P, he declared: "The alleged purity of the race or the blood of any nation is a groundless myth. It is found only in savage groups, and even there it is rare." For the same reason, Saadeh reproached both Count Gobineau and Chamberlain, the forefathers of National Socialism, and Pascal Mancini who unconsciously lapsed into the use of the catchword race in defining the concept of the nation.
In National Socialism, the national idea lost any pretense of scientific objectivity. This is because there is no correlation between race and national frontiers. More importantly, when seen from a purely social perspective, the nation is not a single race in the scientific sense, but a multiracial society fused together in multitudes. This fusion is a process by which two or more races combine to produce a new whole which is significantly different from each of its parent races, but includes elements from all of them, produced through the stimulation of contact and subsequent internal development.
Another significant difference between National Socialism and Social Nationalism relates to the concept of national history. In National Socialism purity of blood speaks louder than reason, and race is the center of all human history. Ernest Kriek, a National Socialist philosopher at Heidelberg, asserted the contrast as follows: "There has arisen ... blood against formal reason; race against purposeful rationality; honour against profit; unity against individualistic disintegration; martial virtue against bourgeois security; the folk against the individual and the mass."
In Mein Kampf Hitler stated the basic postulates of the race theory as follows: First, a struggle for the survival of the fittest sets the pace for social progress. This struggle occurs within the race, thus giving rise to a natural elite; it also occurs between races and the cultures that express the inherent natures of different races. Second, hybridization by the intermixture of two races results in the degeneration of the higher race. Third, that all high civilizations or important cultures are the creation of one race, or at most of a few. One particular race singled out is the 'culture-creating Aryan' which, according to Hitler, achieved its superior moral qualities through dutifulness and idealism (honour) rather than intelligence. In this organic conception of life, all history "must be rewritten and reinterpreted in terms of the struggle between the races and their characteristic ideas, or more specifically, as a struggle between the Aryan or culture-creating race and all the lower breeds of mankind."
On the contrary, Saadeh regarded racial fusion as one of the driving forces of human history. Although he distinguished between higher and lower civilizations he never lost sight of the common sense approach to the question of race relations. This distinction itself was maintained on the ground of racial hybridization. Higher civilization was thus seen as the product not of racial purity, as the national socialists would have us believe, but of the group's on-going inter-racial mixture, and vice versa in relation to lower civilizations. Moreover, whereas in national socialism the nation, in both its existence and history, is seen in a purely racial sense, in social nationalism, it is based on human as well as geographical factors. "There can be no people," wrote Saadeh, "where there is no land, no society where there is no physical environment, and no history where there is no society."
In short, National Socialism and Social Nationalism operate on two separate intellectual planes: the former connects between race and nation and the later discounts any such connection. While they may be similar in certain limited ways, it must be recognized that, from both a theoretical and practical perspective, a certain correlation exists between all ideologies no matter how far apart they may be. More obvious, at any rate, is the difference between the intrinsic elements of an idea and its extrinsic parts which can become the great enemy of the intrinsic. It is within this context that comparative analysis should take place, not only between National Socialism and Social Nationalism but also between any two ideas.
Saturday 5 September 2009
Friday 15 May 2009
The Enemy within the Empire
The Enemy Within the Empire (an excerpt)
A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND
By ERIC D. BUTLER.
Most orthodox history that is crammed into the heads of our children is one long list of contradictions. There is no real background to our social development because the main underlying factors have been completely ignored.
The part played by the money system in the growth of society has been tremendous;
yet how many of our historians mention it?
We teach our children about the development of the British Commonwealth of Nations, although the real basis of this growth has been either neglected of distorted, while the development of that powerful, private and anti-social institution, the Bank of England, is very rarely mentioned.
If we are really desirous of preserving and developing British culture, it is essential that we attempt to gain at. least an elementary knowledge of the attack which was launched against the British people at the time of Cromwell.
It is significant that the introduction of what has been termed a "spurious Whig culture," marked the origin of the present banking racket in Britain. This cultural and financial attack has been going ever since, although there is sound reason to believe that the enemy is at last being turned on both flanks However, as yet, there is no sign of a rout in the enemy's ranks. Even the London "Times," one of the chief mouthpieces of the financial oligarchy, offered the following criticism of "Whigism" in its issue of August 4, 1840:
"There is certainly in 'Whigism' an inherent propensity to tyranny; and of all the methods which tyranny ever invented for sucking out the essential vitality of free institutions, without appearing materially to touch their forms, this centralising system is the most plausible and the most pernicious. . . If it shall be fully carried out, British liberty ... will rest no longer on the possession of constitutional power by the people, but upon the sufferance of a majority of those who, for the time being, may call themselves the people's representatives."
The man who wrote the above lines, 100 years ago, had a deep insight into the principles of social organisation. Those who seek to re-write history find it a very formidable undertaking, because it has become a "vested interest" with the official historians. Any historian who refused to portray Cromwell as a saviour of the British people, pointed out that his real name was Williams, and that he belonged to a small group of men who had been enriching themselves at the expense of the Monarchy...
Our "Whig" historians tell us about the tyrannies of Charles I. and Charles II, and how they reigned without Parliament. The impression is given that Parliament in those days was similar to what we have to-day. Nothing is further from the truth. It was comprised of. a group of wealthy men who were not very responsible to the British people.
The real fight was between the Money Power and Monarchy, with the victory of the Money Power in 1688 when James II was driven off the throne by his son-in-law, William III., who was brought to Britain at the behest of the financial interests. The Bank of England was formed six years later - 1694 - and with it began the National Debt.
A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND
By ERIC D. BUTLER.
Most orthodox history that is crammed into the heads of our children is one long list of contradictions. There is no real background to our social development because the main underlying factors have been completely ignored.
The part played by the money system in the growth of society has been tremendous;
yet how many of our historians mention it?
We teach our children about the development of the British Commonwealth of Nations, although the real basis of this growth has been either neglected of distorted, while the development of that powerful, private and anti-social institution, the Bank of England, is very rarely mentioned.
If we are really desirous of preserving and developing British culture, it is essential that we attempt to gain at. least an elementary knowledge of the attack which was launched against the British people at the time of Cromwell.
It is significant that the introduction of what has been termed a "spurious Whig culture," marked the origin of the present banking racket in Britain. This cultural and financial attack has been going ever since, although there is sound reason to believe that the enemy is at last being turned on both flanks However, as yet, there is no sign of a rout in the enemy's ranks. Even the London "Times," one of the chief mouthpieces of the financial oligarchy, offered the following criticism of "Whigism" in its issue of August 4, 1840:
"There is certainly in 'Whigism' an inherent propensity to tyranny; and of all the methods which tyranny ever invented for sucking out the essential vitality of free institutions, without appearing materially to touch their forms, this centralising system is the most plausible and the most pernicious. . . If it shall be fully carried out, British liberty ... will rest no longer on the possession of constitutional power by the people, but upon the sufferance of a majority of those who, for the time being, may call themselves the people's representatives."
The man who wrote the above lines, 100 years ago, had a deep insight into the principles of social organisation. Those who seek to re-write history find it a very formidable undertaking, because it has become a "vested interest" with the official historians. Any historian who refused to portray Cromwell as a saviour of the British people, pointed out that his real name was Williams, and that he belonged to a small group of men who had been enriching themselves at the expense of the Monarchy...
Our "Whig" historians tell us about the tyrannies of Charles I. and Charles II, and how they reigned without Parliament. The impression is given that Parliament in those days was similar to what we have to-day. Nothing is further from the truth. It was comprised of. a group of wealthy men who were not very responsible to the British people.
The real fight was between the Money Power and Monarchy, with the victory of the Money Power in 1688 when James II was driven off the throne by his son-in-law, William III., who was brought to Britain at the behest of the financial interests. The Bank of England was formed six years later - 1694 - and with it began the National Debt.
Sunday 10 May 2009
Greenshirts for Social Credit
In 1935, the poet born in America, Ezra Pound, dedicated one of his booklets on the monetary reform: Social Credit: year Impact, “with the Green Shirts of England”. Pound combined poetry with the defense of the Social Credit and Fascism. They saw them both as opposite with the international system of financial interest which he regarded as having a harmful impact on civilization.
In Canto XLV (With wear), Pound made a particularly lucid talk of the destroying nature of the financial interest on the social and cultural welfare:
“With wear… no table is made to last, nor to live/but to be sold, to be sold with haste/with wear, sin against-nature/your bread is always a stale hunk/your bread is as dry as paper… /and no man can find a place to live/the stone mason remains without stone/Tisserand remains without wire/with wear… against-nature…”
In other words, wear is a parasitic company which prevents the creativity.
Even if the partisans of the Social Credit found apparently Fascism very unpleasant, the fact remains that Italy and Germany reorganized their financial system by restoring in the State the prerogative to emit credit. In New Zealand, the eminent monetary reformer Henry Kelliher, member of the direction of the Bank of New Zealand, and director of the Breweries of the Dominion, published a newspaper, “The Mirror”, which recommended a monetary reform, and included an examination of the economic reforms of Germany. Kelliher was thanked publicly by Labour the Prime Minister Joseph Savage for his countryside which made it possible the first worker government to apply a financial policy of social credit (although they were only half-measures).
New Zealand had also its own Green Chemises recommending the Social Credit, the Legion of Zealand News, under the direction of the famous surgeon Campbell Begg, who recommended also a semi-corporative State which would join together all the factions of classes and economic in an Economic council to advise the government (the New Zealand party of the Social Credit also continued in the Fifties to recommend something of similar).
WHITE FOX
However, the Green Shirts of Great Britain had their origins in a movement of discovered forests, coming from the scouts of Baden Powell; at the time of the Great Crisis in Great Britain, these Green Shirts undertook a campaign as militant and as daring as that of the Communists and Black Shirts of Mosley.
The Green Shirts owed their existence with the charismatic personality of John Hargrave, a veteran of the 26 years old war. Whereas he was still Commissaire for the Forest and the Camp-site in the movement scout of Baden-Powell, in 1920 “White Fox” (the pen name of Hargrave in the newspapers scouts) and other scouts chiefs created the Tribe of Kibbo Kift (KK), according to the old dialect of Kent, “proof of great force”.
The movement was to return to the medievism and the Saxon heritage. Debates and of Althings [general meetings] popular were organized. The instruction included the knowledge of the forest, the creation of guilds of the trades, cultural development, and the use of ritual. The movement was clearly of a nature very “völkisch”. The ceremonies had a strong taste of sagas Scandinavian and habits saxonnes.
The members of the movement were organized as Clans and Tribes. The uniform of the KK was made with the hand by each member or a “rooftree” (family group), and consisted of a Saxon unit, with cap, waistcoat, shorts and long coat. The chiefs wore embroidered silk dresses for the ceremonies.
Whereas it was scout, Hargrave had promoted the solitary concept of scout, somebody being held on his own feet. Its experiments in the world of the war as a sergeant in first line with the stretcher-bearers (it was at the time pacifist coming from a family of Quakers) had led it to the conviction that civilization had failed, and that only a small number of people would be able to take up the challenge to be rebuilt while being withdrawn from a corrupted company.
This reconnection with the countryside was high on a spiritual level like that of Wandervögel, the groups of youth nationalist hikers who explored nature in the hills and the forests, seen like the paramount gasoline of Germany. Like Kibbo Kift, Wandervögel were to give a major contribution to the later political movements. The books of Hargrave on the forest were translated into German and accomodated very well in this country. Members of the KK took part in camps of youth of Wandervögel where they were well accomodated.
Up to that point Hargrave had scorned the policy, in spite of its horror of the contemporary company. Nevertheless, its movement had received the support of some eminent members of socialist Fabian Society, including H.G. Wells. A certain number of young idealistic Socialists were attracted by the KK. Hargrave was confronted with the prospect for an incursion of socialism into the movement. It was determined to be opposed to it.
At the time of Althing of 1924, the socialist faction led by Leslie Paul disputed the direction of Hargrave. He answered by giving ten minutes to his detractors to make their bag and to leave the camp a small number was carried out and created Woodcraft Folk [People of the Forest] which continues to exist like socialist youth movement.
SOCIAL CREDIT
Hargrave now had success as an artist and a short story writer, and obtained an use of draughtsman in an advertising agency. The director of the agency put it in contact in 1923 with major C.H. Douglas, father of the Social Credit. Douglas had written in a series of articles in the magazine “New Age” that the phenomenon of “poverty in the middle of abundance” was caused by a lack of purchasing power due to the creation of the credit like private product.
If the élitiste ethics of the KK made it possible its devoted members to obtain a purified individual life of the corruption of modern industrial civilization, the Social Credit could be the means by which the company as a whole could be released from corruption. Hargrave declared: “The half of our problem is psychological and the other half is economic. The psychological complex of industrial humanity can be removed only by solving the economic dead end”.
In 1927, Hargrave had converted the majority of the leaders of Kibbo Kift and then added the topic of the Social Credit to its principles.
In 1930, a Legion of the Unemployed was created in Coventry. In 1931, the Legion adopted a paramilitary style with green shirt and green beret Bientôt the Legion was called openly the Green Shirts of Kibbo Kift. The following year, the KK itself adopted the uniform with the green shirt, and in 1932 Hargrave changed the name of the KK in favour of that of Movement of the Green Shirts for the Social Credit.
At the time of the annual festival held in January 1931, Hargrave declared that the duty of the KK was to break the capacity of the “money merchants”. That could not be done at the Parliament, but by a movement which would show the people that it was based on “this devotion absolute, religious, military, towards the duty, without which no great cause led forever to a victorious exit”.
Hargrave recommended a new orientation for the Social Credit, which until this time had been limited to groups of study and a discrete approach. A militant campaign could break the silence of the media, while carrying the message directly with the people by steps, gatherings of streets, streamers and drums, easy ways advertising and a tabloïd. Major Douglas gave his approval to the movement.
GREEN SHIRTS MOVING
Vis-a-vis the opposition of the media and Communists, and even of the clashes with the Black Shirts of Mosley, the Green Shirts pointed out themselves by their discipline and their order vis-a-vis the provocations. They gave also a direct support to people economically dispossessed and impoverished, uniting or leading steps of the hunger and manifestations of the movement of the workers to unemployment. Unfortunately, but without surprise, such a radicalism raised the opposition of certain partisans of the Social Credit, who thought that such a militancy was not in agreement with their ideals.
On June 9, 1932, the first meeting in the open air was held in Lewisham High Street. Until October 1934,3.426 meetings in the open air and 32 demonstrations were held, 56.000 sold newspapers, and 223.000 distributed leaflets.
From 1933 to 1937, the newspaper of the movement, “Attack”, was published.
Part of the nature of the enthusiastic radicalism of the movement, if different from the Social Credit that we had the practice to see, can be deduced from the course of the year 1934:
- May 16: delegations at the Bank of England and the 10, Downing Street.
- June 27: a brick painted in green is thrown by the window of the 11, Downing Street (the bricks and the arrows painted in green were to become the mark of the actions of the movement).
- July 4: Lord Straboli receives a delegation of the Green Shirts, and raises the question of the National Dividend to the House of Lords (the question is also mentioned with the House of Commons).
Other major features of the countryside of the movement during the years of pre-war period included what follows:
- November 14, 1935: general elections. W. Towsend obtains 11,01% of the votes with South Leeds.
- November 13, 1936: Hargrave goes on a journey in Alberta, and is named economic council of the new government of the Social Credit, where it develops the “Hargrave Plan”. Unfortunately, major Douglas writes some comments scornful on the technical aptitudes of Hargrave, which causes a rupture between the two men.
- January 1, 1937: the Act of the Law and order prohibited the political uniforms, a measurement directed as much against the Green Shirts as against the Black Shirts.
- October 11, 1937: “Remove your legs of Alberta! ” painted in green on the Bank of England.
- February 20, 1938: a brick painted in green thrown in a window of the Bank of Montreal, Threadneedle Street (the government of Social Credit of Alberta was unable to apply most of its policy because of the regulations of the central government, although it preserved the government during many years).
- March 24, 1938: first cry of “Social Credit, the only remedy! ” in the public gallery of the House of Commons.
- May 1, 1938: demonstration with green shirts hung on posts, a protest symbolic system against the prohibition of the uniforms. New green bricks thrown to the 10, Downing Street.
- July 20, 1938: open rupture with major Douglas at the time of the meeting of Short Chiltern.
- October 28, 1938: petition with the King with Coventry, asking an investigation in the monetary system.
- November 5, 1938: the effigy of Montagu Norman, governor of the Bank of England, is burned in front of the Bank.
- January 10, 1939: a sheaf of corn is burned beside a meeting of the Commission of Corn: “They burn the corn which we want to eat! ”, an allusion to the phenomenon of “poverty in the middle of abundance” during the Crisis, when the farmers were paid to destroy their harvests and their cattle while people were famished because it misses purchasing power.
- April 25, 1939: “Recruit the bankers in first! ”, demonstration against the war with Throgmorton Street in London.
In spite of the difficulties caused by the war, of many militants having been called for the service, the movement manages to continue its countryside:
- February 29, 1940: from the “Robins of wood” wearing the illegal green shirt draw a green arrow on the 10, Downing Street.
- March 6, 1940: an effigy of Montagu Norman is thrown at the entry of the Bank of England (the person in charge is condemned to three months of forced labors).
- April 23, 1940: women out of green dresses with crinoline (“obsolete, as the financial system”) protest in front of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
- January 2, 1941: “Release Great Britain of the Interest! ” is painted on the Bank of England.
- May 22, 1942: launching of the countryside “Great Britain can nourish itself”.
As for Hargrave, in 1935 it published its news Summer Times Ends [the summer finishes], on the apathy of ordinary people, with a judgment of the social system and economic and of its politicians and bankers. In 1937 he invented an automatic navigator for the planes. In 1939, it published a news based on the governor of the Bank of England. The Bank counteracted by buying all the specimens of the book to prevent its distribution. From March 1938, it launched its semi-monthly “Message of Hargrave” which lasted until 1951. In 1944 it began another part of its life as an healer paranormal, obviously with a great success.
POST-WAR PERIOD CAMPAIGN
With the end of the war, the Party of the Social Credit was reactivated, its first meeting since 1939 was held in May 1945, and a Gospel of the National Social Credit was launched to break the blackout of the media by a return to the spectacular methods.
- December 12, 1945: demonstration “Britannia” against the agreement of Bretton Woods which creates the World Bank and the IMF, the world control mechanism of international finance in the post-war period.
- January 1, 1946: publication of the book “the clearly explained Social Credit”.
- July 1, 1946: demonstration with Whitehall: “Atomic energy - Life or Dead”.
- July 20, 1946: demonstration “has the rationing of the bread low! ”.
- June 7, 1947: manifestation of the streamers to the Derby of Epsom.
- August 16, 1947: manifestation of the streamers at the time of the Oval (test match).
- November 28, 1947: Hargrave declares its intention to be submitted to the Parliament.
- May 15, 1948: first National Assembly of post-war period of the Party of the Social Credit. The group of the Party, “Agriculture and breeding” is formed in face, with the slogan “Great Britain can nourish itself! ”.
- November 4, 1949: Hargrave speaks with 5.000 elderly with Central Hall, Westminster.
- February 23, 1950: general elections: Hargrave obtains 551 votes with Stoke Newington and Hackney.
- November 16, 1950: first of a series of eight cries in one month: “Social Credit, the only remedy! ” in the public gallery of the Parliament.
In spite of this activism, the apathy of mass reigned in Great Britain of post-war period, and after the poor result of Hargrave in the elections of 1951, it was solved to dissolve the party.
Hargrave was a considerable success as a writer in his later life, and was greeted by the public when it assisted in 1976 with representations of a musical comedy on the Green Shirts. In 1977 the Foundation of Kibbo Kift was created with Hargrave as president, “with an aim of providing an authority and a permanent property of the files and badges” of the movement. Most of the energy of Hargrave in the post-war period was occupied showing that he had been the inventor of the process of automatic navigation, largely used on the planes including on the Harmony. Finally it was to receive a recognition of bad grace but one refused a compensation for technicality to him. Hargrave died on November 21, 1982.
If the Social Credit had known the zeal of crusade and the radical engagement of the past, including in New Zealand, the history could have been very different.
In Canto XLV (With wear), Pound made a particularly lucid talk of the destroying nature of the financial interest on the social and cultural welfare:
“With wear… no table is made to last, nor to live/but to be sold, to be sold with haste/with wear, sin against-nature/your bread is always a stale hunk/your bread is as dry as paper… /and no man can find a place to live/the stone mason remains without stone/Tisserand remains without wire/with wear… against-nature…”
In other words, wear is a parasitic company which prevents the creativity.
Even if the partisans of the Social Credit found apparently Fascism very unpleasant, the fact remains that Italy and Germany reorganized their financial system by restoring in the State the prerogative to emit credit. In New Zealand, the eminent monetary reformer Henry Kelliher, member of the direction of the Bank of New Zealand, and director of the Breweries of the Dominion, published a newspaper, “The Mirror”, which recommended a monetary reform, and included an examination of the economic reforms of Germany. Kelliher was thanked publicly by Labour the Prime Minister Joseph Savage for his countryside which made it possible the first worker government to apply a financial policy of social credit (although they were only half-measures).
New Zealand had also its own Green Chemises recommending the Social Credit, the Legion of Zealand News, under the direction of the famous surgeon Campbell Begg, who recommended also a semi-corporative State which would join together all the factions of classes and economic in an Economic council to advise the government (the New Zealand party of the Social Credit also continued in the Fifties to recommend something of similar).
WHITE FOX
However, the Green Shirts of Great Britain had their origins in a movement of discovered forests, coming from the scouts of Baden Powell; at the time of the Great Crisis in Great Britain, these Green Shirts undertook a campaign as militant and as daring as that of the Communists and Black Shirts of Mosley.
The Green Shirts owed their existence with the charismatic personality of John Hargrave, a veteran of the 26 years old war. Whereas he was still Commissaire for the Forest and the Camp-site in the movement scout of Baden-Powell, in 1920 “White Fox” (the pen name of Hargrave in the newspapers scouts) and other scouts chiefs created the Tribe of Kibbo Kift (KK), according to the old dialect of Kent, “proof of great force”.
The movement was to return to the medievism and the Saxon heritage. Debates and of Althings [general meetings] popular were organized. The instruction included the knowledge of the forest, the creation of guilds of the trades, cultural development, and the use of ritual. The movement was clearly of a nature very “völkisch”. The ceremonies had a strong taste of sagas Scandinavian and habits saxonnes.
The members of the movement were organized as Clans and Tribes. The uniform of the KK was made with the hand by each member or a “rooftree” (family group), and consisted of a Saxon unit, with cap, waistcoat, shorts and long coat. The chiefs wore embroidered silk dresses for the ceremonies.
Whereas it was scout, Hargrave had promoted the solitary concept of scout, somebody being held on his own feet. Its experiments in the world of the war as a sergeant in first line with the stretcher-bearers (it was at the time pacifist coming from a family of Quakers) had led it to the conviction that civilization had failed, and that only a small number of people would be able to take up the challenge to be rebuilt while being withdrawn from a corrupted company.
This reconnection with the countryside was high on a spiritual level like that of Wandervögel, the groups of youth nationalist hikers who explored nature in the hills and the forests, seen like the paramount gasoline of Germany. Like Kibbo Kift, Wandervögel were to give a major contribution to the later political movements. The books of Hargrave on the forest were translated into German and accomodated very well in this country. Members of the KK took part in camps of youth of Wandervögel where they were well accomodated.
Up to that point Hargrave had scorned the policy, in spite of its horror of the contemporary company. Nevertheless, its movement had received the support of some eminent members of socialist Fabian Society, including H.G. Wells. A certain number of young idealistic Socialists were attracted by the KK. Hargrave was confronted with the prospect for an incursion of socialism into the movement. It was determined to be opposed to it.
At the time of Althing of 1924, the socialist faction led by Leslie Paul disputed the direction of Hargrave. He answered by giving ten minutes to his detractors to make their bag and to leave the camp a small number was carried out and created Woodcraft Folk [People of the Forest] which continues to exist like socialist youth movement.
SOCIAL CREDIT
Hargrave now had success as an artist and a short story writer, and obtained an use of draughtsman in an advertising agency. The director of the agency put it in contact in 1923 with major C.H. Douglas, father of the Social Credit. Douglas had written in a series of articles in the magazine “New Age” that the phenomenon of “poverty in the middle of abundance” was caused by a lack of purchasing power due to the creation of the credit like private product.
If the élitiste ethics of the KK made it possible its devoted members to obtain a purified individual life of the corruption of modern industrial civilization, the Social Credit could be the means by which the company as a whole could be released from corruption. Hargrave declared: “The half of our problem is psychological and the other half is economic. The psychological complex of industrial humanity can be removed only by solving the economic dead end”.
In 1927, Hargrave had converted the majority of the leaders of Kibbo Kift and then added the topic of the Social Credit to its principles.
In 1930, a Legion of the Unemployed was created in Coventry. In 1931, the Legion adopted a paramilitary style with green shirt and green beret Bientôt the Legion was called openly the Green Shirts of Kibbo Kift. The following year, the KK itself adopted the uniform with the green shirt, and in 1932 Hargrave changed the name of the KK in favour of that of Movement of the Green Shirts for the Social Credit.
At the time of the annual festival held in January 1931, Hargrave declared that the duty of the KK was to break the capacity of the “money merchants”. That could not be done at the Parliament, but by a movement which would show the people that it was based on “this devotion absolute, religious, military, towards the duty, without which no great cause led forever to a victorious exit”.
Hargrave recommended a new orientation for the Social Credit, which until this time had been limited to groups of study and a discrete approach. A militant campaign could break the silence of the media, while carrying the message directly with the people by steps, gatherings of streets, streamers and drums, easy ways advertising and a tabloïd. Major Douglas gave his approval to the movement.
GREEN SHIRTS MOVING
Vis-a-vis the opposition of the media and Communists, and even of the clashes with the Black Shirts of Mosley, the Green Shirts pointed out themselves by their discipline and their order vis-a-vis the provocations. They gave also a direct support to people economically dispossessed and impoverished, uniting or leading steps of the hunger and manifestations of the movement of the workers to unemployment. Unfortunately, but without surprise, such a radicalism raised the opposition of certain partisans of the Social Credit, who thought that such a militancy was not in agreement with their ideals.
On June 9, 1932, the first meeting in the open air was held in Lewisham High Street. Until October 1934,3.426 meetings in the open air and 32 demonstrations were held, 56.000 sold newspapers, and 223.000 distributed leaflets.
From 1933 to 1937, the newspaper of the movement, “Attack”, was published.
Part of the nature of the enthusiastic radicalism of the movement, if different from the Social Credit that we had the practice to see, can be deduced from the course of the year 1934:
- May 16: delegations at the Bank of England and the 10, Downing Street.
- June 27: a brick painted in green is thrown by the window of the 11, Downing Street (the bricks and the arrows painted in green were to become the mark of the actions of the movement).
- July 4: Lord Straboli receives a delegation of the Green Shirts, and raises the question of the National Dividend to the House of Lords (the question is also mentioned with the House of Commons).
Other major features of the countryside of the movement during the years of pre-war period included what follows:
- November 14, 1935: general elections. W. Towsend obtains 11,01% of the votes with South Leeds.
- November 13, 1936: Hargrave goes on a journey in Alberta, and is named economic council of the new government of the Social Credit, where it develops the “Hargrave Plan”. Unfortunately, major Douglas writes some comments scornful on the technical aptitudes of Hargrave, which causes a rupture between the two men.
- January 1, 1937: the Act of the Law and order prohibited the political uniforms, a measurement directed as much against the Green Shirts as against the Black Shirts.
- October 11, 1937: “Remove your legs of Alberta! ” painted in green on the Bank of England.
- February 20, 1938: a brick painted in green thrown in a window of the Bank of Montreal, Threadneedle Street (the government of Social Credit of Alberta was unable to apply most of its policy because of the regulations of the central government, although it preserved the government during many years).
- March 24, 1938: first cry of “Social Credit, the only remedy! ” in the public gallery of the House of Commons.
- May 1, 1938: demonstration with green shirts hung on posts, a protest symbolic system against the prohibition of the uniforms. New green bricks thrown to the 10, Downing Street.
- July 20, 1938: open rupture with major Douglas at the time of the meeting of Short Chiltern.
- October 28, 1938: petition with the King with Coventry, asking an investigation in the monetary system.
- November 5, 1938: the effigy of Montagu Norman, governor of the Bank of England, is burned in front of the Bank.
- January 10, 1939: a sheaf of corn is burned beside a meeting of the Commission of Corn: “They burn the corn which we want to eat! ”, an allusion to the phenomenon of “poverty in the middle of abundance” during the Crisis, when the farmers were paid to destroy their harvests and their cattle while people were famished because it misses purchasing power.
- April 25, 1939: “Recruit the bankers in first! ”, demonstration against the war with Throgmorton Street in London.
In spite of the difficulties caused by the war, of many militants having been called for the service, the movement manages to continue its countryside:
- February 29, 1940: from the “Robins of wood” wearing the illegal green shirt draw a green arrow on the 10, Downing Street.
- March 6, 1940: an effigy of Montagu Norman is thrown at the entry of the Bank of England (the person in charge is condemned to three months of forced labors).
- April 23, 1940: women out of green dresses with crinoline (“obsolete, as the financial system”) protest in front of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
- January 2, 1941: “Release Great Britain of the Interest! ” is painted on the Bank of England.
- May 22, 1942: launching of the countryside “Great Britain can nourish itself”.
As for Hargrave, in 1935 it published its news Summer Times Ends [the summer finishes], on the apathy of ordinary people, with a judgment of the social system and economic and of its politicians and bankers. In 1937 he invented an automatic navigator for the planes. In 1939, it published a news based on the governor of the Bank of England. The Bank counteracted by buying all the specimens of the book to prevent its distribution. From March 1938, it launched its semi-monthly “Message of Hargrave” which lasted until 1951. In 1944 it began another part of its life as an healer paranormal, obviously with a great success.
POST-WAR PERIOD CAMPAIGN
With the end of the war, the Party of the Social Credit was reactivated, its first meeting since 1939 was held in May 1945, and a Gospel of the National Social Credit was launched to break the blackout of the media by a return to the spectacular methods.
- December 12, 1945: demonstration “Britannia” against the agreement of Bretton Woods which creates the World Bank and the IMF, the world control mechanism of international finance in the post-war period.
- January 1, 1946: publication of the book “the clearly explained Social Credit”.
- July 1, 1946: demonstration with Whitehall: “Atomic energy - Life or Dead”.
- July 20, 1946: demonstration “has the rationing of the bread low! ”.
- June 7, 1947: manifestation of the streamers to the Derby of Epsom.
- August 16, 1947: manifestation of the streamers at the time of the Oval (test match).
- November 28, 1947: Hargrave declares its intention to be submitted to the Parliament.
- May 15, 1948: first National Assembly of post-war period of the Party of the Social Credit. The group of the Party, “Agriculture and breeding” is formed in face, with the slogan “Great Britain can nourish itself! ”.
- November 4, 1949: Hargrave speaks with 5.000 elderly with Central Hall, Westminster.
- February 23, 1950: general elections: Hargrave obtains 551 votes with Stoke Newington and Hackney.
- November 16, 1950: first of a series of eight cries in one month: “Social Credit, the only remedy! ” in the public gallery of the Parliament.
In spite of this activism, the apathy of mass reigned in Great Britain of post-war period, and after the poor result of Hargrave in the elections of 1951, it was solved to dissolve the party.
Hargrave was a considerable success as a writer in his later life, and was greeted by the public when it assisted in 1976 with representations of a musical comedy on the Green Shirts. In 1977 the Foundation of Kibbo Kift was created with Hargrave as president, “with an aim of providing an authority and a permanent property of the files and badges” of the movement. Most of the energy of Hargrave in the post-war period was occupied showing that he had been the inventor of the process of automatic navigation, largely used on the planes including on the Harmony. Finally it was to receive a recognition of bad grace but one refused a compensation for technicality to him. Hargrave died on November 21, 1982.
If the Social Credit had known the zeal of crusade and the radical engagement of the past, including in New Zealand, the history could have been very different.
Friday 8 May 2009
The Ghurkas
Gurkhas are fighting for Justice. They want the same terms and conditions as their UK and Commonwealth counterparts. Britain has had no greater friends than the Gurkhas. They have served all across the world in the defence of our Country for nearly 200 years. Over 45,000 died in the two World Wars as part of the British Army. They are still fighting in the British Army today.
The Government decision of 25th April 2009 on Gurkha settlement rights is yet another huge betrayal of the Gurkhas who have served our country.
Only a tiny fraction of the Gurkhas who retired before 1997 will win settlement rights under the new policy. A Gurkha will have to have served 20 years or more or won one of a handful of medals: the big majority of Gurkhas served for 15 years under standard army policy.
The issue goes to the very heart of the identity of Britain, this oh so liberal government in some respects, gay members of the government itself indeed, seeks to deny the rights of residence to those that have served King and country loyally, playing in the murky waters of crypto-racism, yet residence extended to some who would do the country down. Hard to understand surely.
The British Government needs to know they will have a huge campaign against them by those committed to righting this wrong.
The Government decision of 25th April 2009 on Gurkha settlement rights is yet another huge betrayal of the Gurkhas who have served our country.
Only a tiny fraction of the Gurkhas who retired before 1997 will win settlement rights under the new policy. A Gurkha will have to have served 20 years or more or won one of a handful of medals: the big majority of Gurkhas served for 15 years under standard army policy.
The issue goes to the very heart of the identity of Britain, this oh so liberal government in some respects, gay members of the government itself indeed, seeks to deny the rights of residence to those that have served King and country loyally, playing in the murky waters of crypto-racism, yet residence extended to some who would do the country down. Hard to understand surely.
The British Government needs to know they will have a huge campaign against them by those committed to righting this wrong.
Monday 30 March 2009
British Geo-Politicism
British patriots must reject Racism and embrace Geo-Politics.
Geopolitics attempts to explain why some countries have power and other countries do not. The connection between spatial qualities of countries and international relations has been observed since the Greeks (Spencer 42). However, the formal links between geography and political science began about 100 years ago.
In 1890 Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote The Influence of Sea Power upon Hisory, Sea power was necessary to facilitate trade and peaceful commerce, therefore Mahan believed that the country that possessed power would be one that could control the seas. Thus, the development of a strong navy was an essential ingredient to a powerful state as was the country's location. He believed that the country with the most power would be one whose relative location was accessible and connected with a long coastline and good harbours. Mahan saw power as belonging north of the Suez and Panama Canals.
Sir Halford Mackinder proposed what would become the most widely discussed concept of geopolitical studies. Mackinder was interested in political motion and he observed that the spatial distribution of strategic opportunities in the world was unequal. Mackinder's thesis, developed in his 1904 book Democratic ideals and Reality, disregarded Mahan's theory. Advances in technology were forcing a reevaluation of spatial concepts and military strategies. With the advent of railroads, countries no longer depended on the navy to move large armies. Thus, Mackinder believed that the focus of warfare would be shifted from the sea to the hinterland (interiors). Mackinder developed a "pivot area" which was the northern and interior parts of the Eurasian continent where the rivers flow to the Arctic or to salt seas and lakes. He believed that with the advent of railroads, this area would be pivotal as it would be easy to defend and hard to conquer. Later, he called the pivot area the "Heartland" and devised his famous Heartland Theory: "He who controls the Heartland controls the World Island (Eurasia and Africa); He who controls the World Island, controls the world." Mackinder anticipated that Germany would be a threat to controlling the resources of Eastern Europe and the Heartland.
General Karl Hauschofer was a leading proponent of Mackinder's Heartland Theory and he developed a theory of pan regions. Hauschofer divided the world into three pan regions which were blocs of power based on complementarily between the North and South. The Northern core region was connected to a Southern periphery. The three pan regions were Anglo America and its periphery, Latin America; Europe (controlled by Germany) and its periphery, Africa and India; and Japan and its periphery, Southeast Asia. Hauschofer began teaching in Munich during World War I and it was here that Rudolf Hess heard Hauschofer's lectures and later introduced him to Adolph Hitler Hitler, ignoring the subtleties of Hauschofer's teaching, used these theories to advance the Nazi cause of world domination. The Nazi's,used quasi-scientific justification based on the works of Hauschofer and Ratzel as justification for territorial expansion.
The idea of pan-regions appears a superior development on Mackinder’s Heartland idea, but Haushoffer’s theory had two great flaws. The first was to classify Britain and America as one and the same, the second was naming Africa as the periphery of Europe (Germany) rather than that of Britain. As the interface between European civilisation and the maritime world, Britain uniquely has had the mission of creating a trans-continental maritime order. America could never hope to truly assume this position, a colony that cut itself off from the motherland, for all its resources never able to achieve the depth of greatness that can only be borne of a high culture. And so it has swung between isolationism and continental adventurism ( against Thayer’s advice), driven by the money power that has dominated America in the absence of monarchy.
Africa is Britain’s periphery, but the relationship does not have to be exploitative. Mutual advantage is possible and the sea is the key to this advantage. Mackinder was wrong to classify Africa as part of the World Island, sub-Saharan Africa is as surely dis-joined from this geo-political concept as is Britain. Yet both regions, Britain and Africa, are linked by the dynamic of this maritime civilisation putting to sea and and dominating the Atlantic seaways.
Geopolitics attempts to explain why some countries have power and other countries do not. The connection between spatial qualities of countries and international relations has been observed since the Greeks (Spencer 42). However, the formal links between geography and political science began about 100 years ago.
In 1890 Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote The Influence of Sea Power upon Hisory, Sea power was necessary to facilitate trade and peaceful commerce, therefore Mahan believed that the country that possessed power would be one that could control the seas. Thus, the development of a strong navy was an essential ingredient to a powerful state as was the country's location. He believed that the country with the most power would be one whose relative location was accessible and connected with a long coastline and good harbours. Mahan saw power as belonging north of the Suez and Panama Canals.
Sir Halford Mackinder proposed what would become the most widely discussed concept of geopolitical studies. Mackinder was interested in political motion and he observed that the spatial distribution of strategic opportunities in the world was unequal. Mackinder's thesis, developed in his 1904 book Democratic ideals and Reality, disregarded Mahan's theory. Advances in technology were forcing a reevaluation of spatial concepts and military strategies. With the advent of railroads, countries no longer depended on the navy to move large armies. Thus, Mackinder believed that the focus of warfare would be shifted from the sea to the hinterland (interiors). Mackinder developed a "pivot area" which was the northern and interior parts of the Eurasian continent where the rivers flow to the Arctic or to salt seas and lakes. He believed that with the advent of railroads, this area would be pivotal as it would be easy to defend and hard to conquer. Later, he called the pivot area the "Heartland" and devised his famous Heartland Theory: "He who controls the Heartland controls the World Island (Eurasia and Africa); He who controls the World Island, controls the world." Mackinder anticipated that Germany would be a threat to controlling the resources of Eastern Europe and the Heartland.
General Karl Hauschofer was a leading proponent of Mackinder's Heartland Theory and he developed a theory of pan regions. Hauschofer divided the world into three pan regions which were blocs of power based on complementarily between the North and South. The Northern core region was connected to a Southern periphery. The three pan regions were Anglo America and its periphery, Latin America; Europe (controlled by Germany) and its periphery, Africa and India; and Japan and its periphery, Southeast Asia. Hauschofer began teaching in Munich during World War I and it was here that Rudolf Hess heard Hauschofer's lectures and later introduced him to Adolph Hitler Hitler, ignoring the subtleties of Hauschofer's teaching, used these theories to advance the Nazi cause of world domination. The Nazi's,used quasi-scientific justification based on the works of Hauschofer and Ratzel as justification for territorial expansion.
The idea of pan-regions appears a superior development on Mackinder’s Heartland idea, but Haushoffer’s theory had two great flaws. The first was to classify Britain and America as one and the same, the second was naming Africa as the periphery of Europe (Germany) rather than that of Britain. As the interface between European civilisation and the maritime world, Britain uniquely has had the mission of creating a trans-continental maritime order. America could never hope to truly assume this position, a colony that cut itself off from the motherland, for all its resources never able to achieve the depth of greatness that can only be borne of a high culture. And so it has swung between isolationism and continental adventurism ( against Thayer’s advice), driven by the money power that has dominated America in the absence of monarchy.
Africa is Britain’s periphery, but the relationship does not have to be exploitative. Mutual advantage is possible and the sea is the key to this advantage. Mackinder was wrong to classify Africa as part of the World Island, sub-Saharan Africa is as surely dis-joined from this geo-political concept as is Britain. Yet both regions, Britain and Africa, are linked by the dynamic of this maritime civilisation putting to sea and and dominating the Atlantic seaways.
Saturday 28 March 2009
Ulster Says No- Abdassamad Clarke
“Usury I put down, as the great pivot of all their (the Irish people’s) disasters - the main and primary spring that sets on motion the whole machinery of Ireland’s calamities.” (Jeremiah O’Callaghan 1780 -1861)
Seeing Ulster hit the headlines again, one is revolted that the only thing offered its Catholics and Protestants is the severely over-rated virtue of ‘tolerance’ for each other. How about some facts that would make sense of their history, our history? For the truth is that Ulster straddles the fault-line whose recent shifts caused such tectonic shudders around the world: the great banking collapses of 2008 whose end we have by no means seen yet.
For the Northern Irish Protestant the date 1690 has an almost mythical status. At the Battle of the Boyne the Protestant King – William of Orange to history, King Billy to us – defeated the Catholic King James II, from which event stem many but not all of that province’s subsequent divisions. Never mind that the Vatican was lit in celebration of Billy’s victory and other inconvenient facts.
However, this date is certainly one of the most grave moments for all the world, even for people who have never heard of it. For prior to it the British throne and its people had been shaken by the Tudors’ (and all Europe’s) to-and-fro between Protestantism and Catholicism one of the main consequences of which was legislation governing interest rates, not only whether they went up or down but whether interest was charged at all, and the events of 1690 set the issue in stone. A major undercurrent of the Reformation had been the legalisation, in a Christian sense, of what had been the mortal sin of usury, a sin whose perpetrator would be refused the last rites and a Christian burial unless he repented and paid back all his ill-gotten gains. In essence Calvin legalised that sin in a modest sort of fashion, i.e. 4%, and subsequent controversy largely amounted to exactly what was the legal level of usury – sorry, I mean interest – to be?
Now we would have to be utterly naïve to interpret that event as Protestant usury fighting valiant and stalwart usury-free Catholicism, for under the Popes usury was illegal but widespread, and the interest-rate could be between 200% and 300%. The Medicis were bankers to the pope up to the point when they supplied the incumbent themselves. Well did Strathearn subtitle his magisterial history of the Medicis, “The Godfathers of the Renaissance,” for a very congenial bunch of thugs they were, but that seemed to be what the age required and supplied, and it was their uneasy consciences which led to their philanthropy which gave us the Renaissance and its dubious benefits.
Nevertheless, the transition from a basically underworld criminal usury to a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-the-mouth Christian banking system was a staggering one, whose price we are still paying, and 1690 and the Battle of the Boyne were right there at the fulcrum of this event.
The extraordinary thing is that if you find an average history of William of Orange, it will not contain any of the following information:
1. He licensed the foundation of the Bank of England in 1694, which has had an incredible impact on the world’s history, and which was the first ‘national’ bank in history, even though a private bank for most of its life.
2. He secured the first ‘national debt’ in history, i.e. rather than securing a loan for himself and undertaking to pay it off, the loan contract recognised that it might never be repaid, and that only the interest had to be serviced.
3. During his reign the first really significant paper money of modern history was issued by the Bank. I qualify it in that way, because a Swedish king temporarily issued paper money to fund a war, but withdrew it as soon as the war was over, and of course the Chinese had experimented with it at some point. The British experiment in paper money has never been withdrawn and indeed has gone on to spread paper all over the world.
What were the forces at work in this event? William was invited in by the British mercantile class who were appalled at the idea of any revocation of their recent privileges among which were the right to lend money at interest.
Perhaps the case has not been made fully for regarding this as a matter of some significance. So let us take a modest interest rate of say 6% and consider the circumstance of a single 1p invested at the birth of the Christian era, 2000 years ago, invested at compound interest. After two years it has become 1.12p. After 20 years 3.27p. After 200 years £1,151.26. After 2000 years it is :
£4,090,068,009,880,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
This is what mathematicians call an exponential curve, i.e. one that shoots off the top edge of the paper very rapidly, and that is precisely where we are in history at the present. (Do not imagine that because compound interest is so dramatic we are endorsing interest per se. Interest is usury.)
So you can see that this process has the potential for making some people incalculably wealthy just as conversely it has the potential for impoverishing people, nations and the planet in ways previously never thought possible, since negative numbers, i.e. debts, grow at precisely the same exponential rate.
This is the issue that was fought over for so many centuries in Europe’s past. Not just the issue of Catholic and Protestant, but very fundamental matters of life beyond dogma and doctrine but which, nevertheless, grew out of that dogma and its becoming corrupted or ignored. Protestant banking grew directly out of Catholic banking, but whereas Cosimo de Medici had the good grace to have a guilty conscience the modern banker has no conscience whatsoever and doesn’t even know that he ought to have one or that he ever had one.
That battle of the Boyne was won by Billy, the bankers’ cipher. The Bank of England was established with a loan to the nation, not the King, of £1,200,000 at 6% interest. That was lent in REAL money, i.e. gold. But that loan to the nation was regarded as an asset, and thus the Bank was allowed to lend precisely the same sum to the nation again, i.e. to individuals, at the same rate of interest, but this time as the new paper money.
But why did Billy agree to this deal? He was over a barrel. The British are islanders with a longstanding antipathy to people on the ‘continent’. The British have never been ‘Europeans’ in any acceptable sense of the term, or at least have never included themselves among them. The traditional dislike for a usurper of the throne fighting the rightful monarch was thus made all the stronger by the fact that he was extremely foreign. The merchants tried to get around this by making his wife, James’s daughter Mary, co-monarch: William and Mary.
However, in order to fight a costly war against James and his powerful French backers, William would ordinarily have had to have raised a usurious loan (that was a given at most epochs in history), fought his war and repaid the loan from the spoils of war and the taxes extorted from the conquered and, if necessary, from his subjects. But this war was not going to have much in the way of spoils, and there was nothing more to extort from the Irish, and his subjects were not going to look more kindly on a foreigner who took them off to war to fight the rightful king, if he subsequently taxed them heavily. The deal with the bank was very simple: don’t bother to repay the loan. Simply service the interest on it. For ever. Therefore, rather than the repayment with interest ordinarily demanded, there was the much more reasonable 6% service charge. No one really liked it, but it was bearable.
It would grow from that £1,200,000 to somewhere between £697.5 billion at the end of 2008 or £4 trillion (according to John Redwood1) or an in-between figure of an “unprecedented £2.2 trillion – just under 150% of gross domestic product”2. What is staggering is not the size of the debt but that we consider such matters normal. It is said that Japan’s situation is much worse, which ought, in their thinking, to make ours bearable.
And the interest: “The cost of paying interest on the government’s debt is very high. In 2008 debt interest payments will be £31 billion a year (est. 2.5% of GDP). In 2009, they will be £35 billion (similar to defence budget).”3
But there is a real danger in all of this that we consider the scale of the matter the issue, the very size of the national debt the matter to hand, rather than the fact of the national debt. The truth is that we are in the situation we are because we have accepted the fact of the national debt,4 and thus we are facing a national debt of the size we are, because, as we have indicated with our compound interest example, that is the nature of the usurious loan. It has nowhere to go but up. It is impossible for it not to increase. And history has borne this out in every age and in every country on the planet. This trend has never been reversed except for short periods of time after which it has resumed its inevitable upwards climb. This is the nature of the beast we have unleashed.
The beast cannot be tamed, and like any vicious mad dog, it must be put down, for this current crisis is not just one in a cycle, so that we can compare it to the 30’s and finally admit that it is as bad as or possibly even worse than the 30’s. It is nothing to do with mismanagement and corruption and bonuses, for that would imply that there is such a thing as well managed banking and honest banking, something which all of the establishment commentators are desperately trying to establish. The fact is that as peoples we have been taken for a ride by what is little more than a mafia, something that is actually much more sinister and ruthless than the mafia, and we refuse to see it, because they have grown so effective at imitating elderly bishops or fuddy-duddy members of the aristocracy, because they can buy anything and anybody since we are so simple minded that we will accept a bit of paper with numbers and lots of zeros on it and because they own the ‘printing presses‘ (of course money is now largely digital).
Now, in all the quite substantial critique that exists in literature and around the Internet of this matter, the dominant response is that we should ourselves – or the state as our surrogate – take this dreadful power of interest-yielding and interest-demanding credit from the bankers. But a tremendously sharp blade is going to kill someone no matter in whose hand it lies, and we have seen that this mechanism is inexorable. We have no choice but to put an end to it. For that to happen, we must see that it is much deeper than a simple economic matter.
The great poet Ezra Pound who fought over the matter of usury all his life, memorably said at the end of his life, “re USURY: I was out of focus, taking a symptom for a cause. The cause is AVARICE.”5 This is far from being an acceptance of interest-banking, but rather Pound’s profound perception of the deep deep roots of this matter: the sickness of avarice or greed, a two dimensional condition the least of which is the desire for stuff, and the more serious and intractable aspect of which is the need for rank, social standing and all the paraphernalia of status. To that we would add another motor sickness: anxiety over provision. These twin psychological illnesses are the motors that drive this insane economic system which, in Cobbett’s memorable words, “…has produced what the world never saw before; starvation in the midst of abundance,”6 and we are blind to see it because we are driven by the same sicknesses as the bankers. That is the root cause of the entire affair, because a clique of psychotic bankers have no power to do anything whatsoever without our complicity. We are the criminals and we are the usurers who are destroying the planet.
-Abdassamad Clarke
Seeing Ulster hit the headlines again, one is revolted that the only thing offered its Catholics and Protestants is the severely over-rated virtue of ‘tolerance’ for each other. How about some facts that would make sense of their history, our history? For the truth is that Ulster straddles the fault-line whose recent shifts caused such tectonic shudders around the world: the great banking collapses of 2008 whose end we have by no means seen yet.
For the Northern Irish Protestant the date 1690 has an almost mythical status. At the Battle of the Boyne the Protestant King – William of Orange to history, King Billy to us – defeated the Catholic King James II, from which event stem many but not all of that province’s subsequent divisions. Never mind that the Vatican was lit in celebration of Billy’s victory and other inconvenient facts.
However, this date is certainly one of the most grave moments for all the world, even for people who have never heard of it. For prior to it the British throne and its people had been shaken by the Tudors’ (and all Europe’s) to-and-fro between Protestantism and Catholicism one of the main consequences of which was legislation governing interest rates, not only whether they went up or down but whether interest was charged at all, and the events of 1690 set the issue in stone. A major undercurrent of the Reformation had been the legalisation, in a Christian sense, of what had been the mortal sin of usury, a sin whose perpetrator would be refused the last rites and a Christian burial unless he repented and paid back all his ill-gotten gains. In essence Calvin legalised that sin in a modest sort of fashion, i.e. 4%, and subsequent controversy largely amounted to exactly what was the legal level of usury – sorry, I mean interest – to be?
Now we would have to be utterly naïve to interpret that event as Protestant usury fighting valiant and stalwart usury-free Catholicism, for under the Popes usury was illegal but widespread, and the interest-rate could be between 200% and 300%. The Medicis were bankers to the pope up to the point when they supplied the incumbent themselves. Well did Strathearn subtitle his magisterial history of the Medicis, “The Godfathers of the Renaissance,” for a very congenial bunch of thugs they were, but that seemed to be what the age required and supplied, and it was their uneasy consciences which led to their philanthropy which gave us the Renaissance and its dubious benefits.
Nevertheless, the transition from a basically underworld criminal usury to a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-the-mouth Christian banking system was a staggering one, whose price we are still paying, and 1690 and the Battle of the Boyne were right there at the fulcrum of this event.
The extraordinary thing is that if you find an average history of William of Orange, it will not contain any of the following information:
1. He licensed the foundation of the Bank of England in 1694, which has had an incredible impact on the world’s history, and which was the first ‘national’ bank in history, even though a private bank for most of its life.
2. He secured the first ‘national debt’ in history, i.e. rather than securing a loan for himself and undertaking to pay it off, the loan contract recognised that it might never be repaid, and that only the interest had to be serviced.
3. During his reign the first really significant paper money of modern history was issued by the Bank. I qualify it in that way, because a Swedish king temporarily issued paper money to fund a war, but withdrew it as soon as the war was over, and of course the Chinese had experimented with it at some point. The British experiment in paper money has never been withdrawn and indeed has gone on to spread paper all over the world.
What were the forces at work in this event? William was invited in by the British mercantile class who were appalled at the idea of any revocation of their recent privileges among which were the right to lend money at interest.
Perhaps the case has not been made fully for regarding this as a matter of some significance. So let us take a modest interest rate of say 6% and consider the circumstance of a single 1p invested at the birth of the Christian era, 2000 years ago, invested at compound interest. After two years it has become 1.12p. After 20 years 3.27p. After 200 years £1,151.26. After 2000 years it is :
£4,090,068,009,880,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
This is what mathematicians call an exponential curve, i.e. one that shoots off the top edge of the paper very rapidly, and that is precisely where we are in history at the present. (Do not imagine that because compound interest is so dramatic we are endorsing interest per se. Interest is usury.)
So you can see that this process has the potential for making some people incalculably wealthy just as conversely it has the potential for impoverishing people, nations and the planet in ways previously never thought possible, since negative numbers, i.e. debts, grow at precisely the same exponential rate.
This is the issue that was fought over for so many centuries in Europe’s past. Not just the issue of Catholic and Protestant, but very fundamental matters of life beyond dogma and doctrine but which, nevertheless, grew out of that dogma and its becoming corrupted or ignored. Protestant banking grew directly out of Catholic banking, but whereas Cosimo de Medici had the good grace to have a guilty conscience the modern banker has no conscience whatsoever and doesn’t even know that he ought to have one or that he ever had one.
That battle of the Boyne was won by Billy, the bankers’ cipher. The Bank of England was established with a loan to the nation, not the King, of £1,200,000 at 6% interest. That was lent in REAL money, i.e. gold. But that loan to the nation was regarded as an asset, and thus the Bank was allowed to lend precisely the same sum to the nation again, i.e. to individuals, at the same rate of interest, but this time as the new paper money.
But why did Billy agree to this deal? He was over a barrel. The British are islanders with a longstanding antipathy to people on the ‘continent’. The British have never been ‘Europeans’ in any acceptable sense of the term, or at least have never included themselves among them. The traditional dislike for a usurper of the throne fighting the rightful monarch was thus made all the stronger by the fact that he was extremely foreign. The merchants tried to get around this by making his wife, James’s daughter Mary, co-monarch: William and Mary.
However, in order to fight a costly war against James and his powerful French backers, William would ordinarily have had to have raised a usurious loan (that was a given at most epochs in history), fought his war and repaid the loan from the spoils of war and the taxes extorted from the conquered and, if necessary, from his subjects. But this war was not going to have much in the way of spoils, and there was nothing more to extort from the Irish, and his subjects were not going to look more kindly on a foreigner who took them off to war to fight the rightful king, if he subsequently taxed them heavily. The deal with the bank was very simple: don’t bother to repay the loan. Simply service the interest on it. For ever. Therefore, rather than the repayment with interest ordinarily demanded, there was the much more reasonable 6% service charge. No one really liked it, but it was bearable.
It would grow from that £1,200,000 to somewhere between £697.5 billion at the end of 2008 or £4 trillion (according to John Redwood1) or an in-between figure of an “unprecedented £2.2 trillion – just under 150% of gross domestic product”2. What is staggering is not the size of the debt but that we consider such matters normal. It is said that Japan’s situation is much worse, which ought, in their thinking, to make ours bearable.
And the interest: “The cost of paying interest on the government’s debt is very high. In 2008 debt interest payments will be £31 billion a year (est. 2.5% of GDP). In 2009, they will be £35 billion (similar to defence budget).”3
But there is a real danger in all of this that we consider the scale of the matter the issue, the very size of the national debt the matter to hand, rather than the fact of the national debt. The truth is that we are in the situation we are because we have accepted the fact of the national debt,4 and thus we are facing a national debt of the size we are, because, as we have indicated with our compound interest example, that is the nature of the usurious loan. It has nowhere to go but up. It is impossible for it not to increase. And history has borne this out in every age and in every country on the planet. This trend has never been reversed except for short periods of time after which it has resumed its inevitable upwards climb. This is the nature of the beast we have unleashed.
The beast cannot be tamed, and like any vicious mad dog, it must be put down, for this current crisis is not just one in a cycle, so that we can compare it to the 30’s and finally admit that it is as bad as or possibly even worse than the 30’s. It is nothing to do with mismanagement and corruption and bonuses, for that would imply that there is such a thing as well managed banking and honest banking, something which all of the establishment commentators are desperately trying to establish. The fact is that as peoples we have been taken for a ride by what is little more than a mafia, something that is actually much more sinister and ruthless than the mafia, and we refuse to see it, because they have grown so effective at imitating elderly bishops or fuddy-duddy members of the aristocracy, because they can buy anything and anybody since we are so simple minded that we will accept a bit of paper with numbers and lots of zeros on it and because they own the ‘printing presses‘ (of course money is now largely digital).
Now, in all the quite substantial critique that exists in literature and around the Internet of this matter, the dominant response is that we should ourselves – or the state as our surrogate – take this dreadful power of interest-yielding and interest-demanding credit from the bankers. But a tremendously sharp blade is going to kill someone no matter in whose hand it lies, and we have seen that this mechanism is inexorable. We have no choice but to put an end to it. For that to happen, we must see that it is much deeper than a simple economic matter.
The great poet Ezra Pound who fought over the matter of usury all his life, memorably said at the end of his life, “re USURY: I was out of focus, taking a symptom for a cause. The cause is AVARICE.”5 This is far from being an acceptance of interest-banking, but rather Pound’s profound perception of the deep deep roots of this matter: the sickness of avarice or greed, a two dimensional condition the least of which is the desire for stuff, and the more serious and intractable aspect of which is the need for rank, social standing and all the paraphernalia of status. To that we would add another motor sickness: anxiety over provision. These twin psychological illnesses are the motors that drive this insane economic system which, in Cobbett’s memorable words, “…has produced what the world never saw before; starvation in the midst of abundance,”6 and we are blind to see it because we are driven by the same sicknesses as the bankers. That is the root cause of the entire affair, because a clique of psychotic bankers have no power to do anything whatsoever without our complicity. We are the criminals and we are the usurers who are destroying the planet.
-Abdassamad Clarke
Friday 20 March 2009
Saturday 14 March 2009
The Maritime Spirit
Anyone wanting to understand the essence of Britain must understand the sea. It was because of this relationship with the sea that Britain organized the biggest maritime empire the world has ever seen. While accepting that mistakes were made, sometimes dreadful mistakes, the empire was also a force for development of many parts of the world. It was very much in the process of transition to a more equal and reciprocal relationship, the Commonwealth, when Britain found itself in the position after WWII whereby other world powers had the leverage to force an abandonment of the project. A process of lack of confidence and decline followed.
In 1950 we had a two power standard navy that was almost the size of the respective Russian and U.S. navy, through neglect and political indifference the navy was slowly reduced in size. As part of our foreign policy and future needs we need to expand the navy to two thirds of the size of the U.S. surface fleet which in practical terms will require the creation of seven air craft carriers and no less than fifty frigates and ancillary battle cruisers. This program alone would require full capacity utilisation of the Steel Corporation and offer full employment in the ship yards to one million persons throughout Great Britain. If we are to project a global presence, our navy should be at the forefront.
British industry will need access to these raw materials and a secure home market for manufactured goods. In return the long-abandoned countries of Commonwealth Africa will no longer be dependent on the vaguaries of international trade that has served them so poorly since independence. Accordingly, instead of involving ourselves in costly wars in the middle east we should only intervene in local wars where the interests of a corporate Commonwealth are relevant. The plan must be to transform the Commonwealth from an ad hoc social club into a force for international good, offering security through defence, trade and a true self sufficient and insulated market. Under this new view of Africa none shall starve and war and pestilence will be a thing of the past.
In 1950 we had a two power standard navy that was almost the size of the respective Russian and U.S. navy, through neglect and political indifference the navy was slowly reduced in size. As part of our foreign policy and future needs we need to expand the navy to two thirds of the size of the U.S. surface fleet which in practical terms will require the creation of seven air craft carriers and no less than fifty frigates and ancillary battle cruisers. This program alone would require full capacity utilisation of the Steel Corporation and offer full employment in the ship yards to one million persons throughout Great Britain. If we are to project a global presence, our navy should be at the forefront.
British industry will need access to these raw materials and a secure home market for manufactured goods. In return the long-abandoned countries of Commonwealth Africa will no longer be dependent on the vaguaries of international trade that has served them so poorly since independence. Accordingly, instead of involving ourselves in costly wars in the middle east we should only intervene in local wars where the interests of a corporate Commonwealth are relevant. The plan must be to transform the Commonwealth from an ad hoc social club into a force for international good, offering security through defence, trade and a true self sufficient and insulated market. Under this new view of Africa none shall starve and war and pestilence will be a thing of the past.
Wednesday 4 March 2009
Joseph Chamberlain
Joseph Chamberlain
Joseph Chamberlain (8 July, 1836 – 2 July, 1914) was an influential British businessman, politician, and statesman.In his early years Chamberlain was a campaigner for educational reform, and President of the Board of Trade. He later became a Liberal Unionist in alliance with the Conservative Party and was appointed Colonial Secretary. At the end of his career he led the tariff reform campaign. Despite never becoming Prime Minister, he is regarded as one of the most important British politicians of the late 19th century and early 20th century, as well as a colourful character and renowned orator.
Some quotes from Chamberlain might illustrate his devotion to the Empire, later to become the
Commonwealth, alongside social reform.
"You are suffering from the unrestricted imports of cheaper goods. You are suffering also from the unrestricted immigration of the people who make these goods...The evils of this immigration have increased during recent years. And behind those people who have already reached these shores, remember there are millions of the same kind who, under easily conceivable circumstances, might follow in their track, and might invade this country in a way and to an extent of which few people have at present any conception...But the party of free importers is against any reform. How could they be otherwise? They are perfectly consistent. If sweated goods are to be allowed in this country without restriction, why not the people who make them? Where is the difference? There is no difference either in the principle or in the results. It all comes to the same thing - less labour for the British working man."
Speech in Limehouse in the East End of London (December 1904.)
[Social legislation] raised the cost of production; and what can be more illogical than to raise the cost of production in the country and then to allow the products of other countries which are not surrounded by any similar legislation, which are free from any similar cost and expenditure—freely to enter our country in competition with our own goods...If these foreign goods come in cheaper, one of two things must follow...either you will take lower wages or you will lose your work.
Speech on Free Trade (6 October, 1903).
And yet a keen social reformer:
"The great problem of our civilization is still unsolved. We have to account for and grapple with the mass of misery and destitution in our midst, co-existent as it is with the evidence of abundant wealth and teeming prosperity. It is a problem which some men would put aside by reference to the eternal laws of supply and demand, to the necessity of freedom of contract, and to the sanctity of every private right of property...Our object is the elevation of the poor, of the masses of the people—a levelling up of them by which we shall do something to remove the excessive inequality in social life."
-1885
Imperial Preference
Chamberlain advocated Imperial Preference at the turn of the 20th century. During the 1920s, it became popular once more. Prime Minister Baldwin was a tepid supporter. His Colonial and Dominions Secretary, Amery, was one of its strongest supporters and in 1926 established the Empire Marketing Board to encourage Britons to 'buy empire'. But Churchill, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Baldwin government, and always a free trader, was an opponent.
In 1935, the Canadian P.M., R. B. Bennett, a Conservative who supported Imperial Preference, was replaced by a Liberal, W. L. M. King. King responded to pressure from U.S. Secretary of State, Hull and abandoned Imperial Preference. In true American fashion, the United States was determined to maintain its tariff protections and access to markets, but was vociferously opposed to any such preferences enjoyed by other countries. In the case of the Commonwealth, the US was hostile to it from its inceptions, notwithstanding the fact that in the cases of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, there was overwhelmingly preference for a system anchored by the United Kingdom rather than the US.
Friday 27 February 2009
Portuguese resent EU
By Dan Bilefsky - International Herald Tribune Abridged
Published: July 20, 2007
"LISBON: In this old and nostalgic capital, filled with grand monuments to the navigators who helped create Europe's first overseas empire in the 15th century, one begins to understand why the Portuguese have never completely learned to love the latter-day empire of sorts known as the European Union.
On the surface, it would seem natural that Portugal, a small country of 10.6 million people that shed an authoritarian regime, would have an instinctive affinity for the EU. The Union has been an anchor of democracy since the revolution that overthrew the dictatorship here in 1974. It has pumped nearly 50 billion euros into Portugal's economy since the country joined the EU in 1986 and helps it to have influence beyond its size on the world stage.
Yet Portugal has an ambivalent relationship with the bloc of 480 million people it will now lead as EU president for the next six months. It is sometimes said here that Europe was the last continent to be discovered by the Portuguese.
"We were the first European country to have an empire and the last one to give it up," said Jaime Nogueira Pinto, a biographer of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, the dictator who ruled Portugal for nearly 50 years. "So the Portuguese, more than most, are sensitive about losing our national identity."
Salazar's authoritarian regime was far more focused on Portugal's overseas provinces than on Europe, believing that little Portugal would be lost without its empire.
Since the transition to democracy, successive governments have harnessed the country's future to the EU. But its colonial past still exerts a strong hold on the national psyche and Lisbon still maintains close ties with Portugal's five former African colonies and Brazil. It is no coincidence that Portugal will use its EU presidency to hold the first EU-Africa summit in seven years, as well as a high-profile summit with Brazil.
However potent its imperial hangover, the greatest factor weighing on Portugal's mixed attitude toward the EU is its economy, which is severely underperforming other neighboring EU countries like Spain.
According to a recent Eurobarometer poll, support for the EU dropped to 49 percent last year compared with 58 percent the year before but edged up to 55 percent in the first quarter of this year. In 2006, half of the respondents believed the process of European integration undermined the country's economy and contributed to its 8 percent unemployment rate.
While the Spanish economy grew at about 3.9 percent last year, Portugal had the lowest economic growth in Western Europe, about 1.3 percent. Its budget deficit of 3.9 percent of gross domestic product also breaches EU rules requiring countries in the euro zone to maintain deficits under 3 percent."
Eliadite:- Here would be a perfect partner in the Commonwealth Bloc. Britain's oldest ally and a European country with so much in common in terms of being a former colonial power and historically with an outward-looking, maritime attitude. It would also provide an certain element of contigruity between the Commonwealth Bloc countires of north west Europe and the African ones. Obviously Portugal's membership would also raise the possibility of Angola joining and possibly even Brazil.
Published: July 20, 2007
"LISBON: In this old and nostalgic capital, filled with grand monuments to the navigators who helped create Europe's first overseas empire in the 15th century, one begins to understand why the Portuguese have never completely learned to love the latter-day empire of sorts known as the European Union.
On the surface, it would seem natural that Portugal, a small country of 10.6 million people that shed an authoritarian regime, would have an instinctive affinity for the EU. The Union has been an anchor of democracy since the revolution that overthrew the dictatorship here in 1974. It has pumped nearly 50 billion euros into Portugal's economy since the country joined the EU in 1986 and helps it to have influence beyond its size on the world stage.
Yet Portugal has an ambivalent relationship with the bloc of 480 million people it will now lead as EU president for the next six months. It is sometimes said here that Europe was the last continent to be discovered by the Portuguese.
"We were the first European country to have an empire and the last one to give it up," said Jaime Nogueira Pinto, a biographer of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, the dictator who ruled Portugal for nearly 50 years. "So the Portuguese, more than most, are sensitive about losing our national identity."
Salazar's authoritarian regime was far more focused on Portugal's overseas provinces than on Europe, believing that little Portugal would be lost without its empire.
Since the transition to democracy, successive governments have harnessed the country's future to the EU. But its colonial past still exerts a strong hold on the national psyche and Lisbon still maintains close ties with Portugal's five former African colonies and Brazil. It is no coincidence that Portugal will use its EU presidency to hold the first EU-Africa summit in seven years, as well as a high-profile summit with Brazil.
However potent its imperial hangover, the greatest factor weighing on Portugal's mixed attitude toward the EU is its economy, which is severely underperforming other neighboring EU countries like Spain.
According to a recent Eurobarometer poll, support for the EU dropped to 49 percent last year compared with 58 percent the year before but edged up to 55 percent in the first quarter of this year. In 2006, half of the respondents believed the process of European integration undermined the country's economy and contributed to its 8 percent unemployment rate.
While the Spanish economy grew at about 3.9 percent last year, Portugal had the lowest economic growth in Western Europe, about 1.3 percent. Its budget deficit of 3.9 percent of gross domestic product also breaches EU rules requiring countries in the euro zone to maintain deficits under 3 percent."
Eliadite:- Here would be a perfect partner in the Commonwealth Bloc. Britain's oldest ally and a European country with so much in common in terms of being a former colonial power and historically with an outward-looking, maritime attitude. It would also provide an certain element of contigruity between the Commonwealth Bloc countires of north west Europe and the African ones. Obviously Portugal's membership would also raise the possibility of Angola joining and possibly even Brazil.
Thursday 19 February 2009
The Social Commonwealth
Mosley transcended both free market economics and the Marxist alternative. He rejected both the belief of those who put their blind trust in international competition based on free trade and those who simply waited for capitalism to collapse through its “inherent contradictions”, as the Marxists viewed the recurring crises.
Before turning to fascism, Mosley had visited America where he witnessed a higher standard of living linked to a highly developed technology. The secret he found rested on the existence of a large home market protected from the competition of low-waged imports because America was large enough geographically to become self-sufficient in food production and raw materials. Restricted immigration also maintained a shortage of labour that gave the unions more clout to push wages up to a higher standard of living for the workers, thus giving them the purchasing power to buy the goods they produced. The elimination of the need to trade with the rest of the world by being self-sufficient solved most problems.
So why not do the same with the resources of the British Empire?
The main obstacle was the City of London. The main occupation of the City of London was foreign lending for the purpose of making profits for financiers. As the home market became depressed through low wages and unemployment, the City of London invested more and more in foreign countries. With the absence of gold and other services in these countries, the interest from loans was drawn back on foreign imports … knocking down the producers and consumers in Britain.
Mosley attacked this system for its predatory affects on the national economy claiming that the speculative nature of international finance led to instability and the destruction of British industry.
Finance was to become the handmaiden of the economy and not the master. All the resources of Empire would have been used for an Insulated Empire Policy protecting the nation from cheap foreign imports.
-Robert Edwards, Sir Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists
Comment from Drakeleigh:
The Empire has long ago evolved into the Commonwealth and Mosley's ideas moved in the direction of a united Europe, both as a consequence of the dramatic events of WWII. Yet as that terrible episode in world history recedes into more distant history, we can review where we are now and how else it might have been. Oswald Mosley lived until 1980, not long enough to see just what a miserable parody of the vision he had the European Union has become. Maybe now so much dust has settled, we can find solutions to the state Britain is in not just from Mosley's post-war writings, but also from his earlier views regarding Britain's role in the world. The European Union as it has developed is little more than a free trade club for bankers, with very little "organic" integrity. The Commonwealth, for all it's faults, is an organic entity, springing from that dynamic expression of European civilisation, British sea power. Here is a real starting point, not some artificial expenses paid bureacracy.
We should look again at Mosley's idea of Europe- Africa, but put it in the already existing construct of the Commonwealth. And open membership of the Commonwealth to other European countries, they too can be part of this project of which the British monarch is the head.
Before turning to fascism, Mosley had visited America where he witnessed a higher standard of living linked to a highly developed technology. The secret he found rested on the existence of a large home market protected from the competition of low-waged imports because America was large enough geographically to become self-sufficient in food production and raw materials. Restricted immigration also maintained a shortage of labour that gave the unions more clout to push wages up to a higher standard of living for the workers, thus giving them the purchasing power to buy the goods they produced. The elimination of the need to trade with the rest of the world by being self-sufficient solved most problems.
So why not do the same with the resources of the British Empire?
The main obstacle was the City of London. The main occupation of the City of London was foreign lending for the purpose of making profits for financiers. As the home market became depressed through low wages and unemployment, the City of London invested more and more in foreign countries. With the absence of gold and other services in these countries, the interest from loans was drawn back on foreign imports … knocking down the producers and consumers in Britain.
Mosley attacked this system for its predatory affects on the national economy claiming that the speculative nature of international finance led to instability and the destruction of British industry.
Finance was to become the handmaiden of the economy and not the master. All the resources of Empire would have been used for an Insulated Empire Policy protecting the nation from cheap foreign imports.
-Robert Edwards, Sir Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists
Comment from Drakeleigh:
The Empire has long ago evolved into the Commonwealth and Mosley's ideas moved in the direction of a united Europe, both as a consequence of the dramatic events of WWII. Yet as that terrible episode in world history recedes into more distant history, we can review where we are now and how else it might have been. Oswald Mosley lived until 1980, not long enough to see just what a miserable parody of the vision he had the European Union has become. Maybe now so much dust has settled, we can find solutions to the state Britain is in not just from Mosley's post-war writings, but also from his earlier views regarding Britain's role in the world. The European Union as it has developed is little more than a free trade club for bankers, with very little "organic" integrity. The Commonwealth, for all it's faults, is an organic entity, springing from that dynamic expression of European civilisation, British sea power. Here is a real starting point, not some artificial expenses paid bureacracy.
We should look again at Mosley's idea of Europe- Africa, but put it in the already existing construct of the Commonwealth. And open membership of the Commonwealth to other European countries, they too can be part of this project of which the British monarch is the head.
Wednesday 18 February 2009
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