St Patrick's Saltire

In May 2011 the SNP won an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament, with 69 seats. This was a remarkable achievement, especially as the Additional Member system that is used for elections to the Scottish Parliament, was specially designed by the UK Labour government in 1999 to prevent any party gaining overall control of the parliament. Although the SNP have not expressed an urgency for a referendum on independence this issue has been at the heart of what the SNP is since its inception and so has a inevitability about it.
Meanwhile in Ireland the Queen’s visit was seen as a huge success. Old wounds were soothed by words of contrition for past mistakes. With the Irish growing increasingly weary of the EU shananigans, a dim cry seemed to go out that if only things had turned out differently.
Time then for a re-think of the whole United Kingdom project, to distill what is essential and disgard that that has become obsolete. The monarchy is the totem around which the whole concept gathers, so we need to return to the idea of three truly independent states, one kingdom. Organic states where power of wealth creation in the hands of the national syndicates receives its monetary form through the Monarch’s sponsorship.
A flag that has no connotations of English hegemony though no less respectful to the English is required, a flag that says the United Kingdom rather than Britain. What better than the under-used flag of St Patrick, it has similarities with the English flag and the Scottish saltire and certainly would pay respect to Ireland. Other European countries were they to choose to join the United Kingdom could fly it without feeling they had surrendered to Britain.
Perhaps this flag will fly over the seat of the palace of the King and that place will not be in London but in Dublin, a truly radical move that would invite in royalist Europe to a new regime.

Traditional Action suggests a new flag for the United Kingdom
- Article to follow.

Trouble in Lisbon.

Portugal 2010 budget deficit overshoots target

LISBON (Reuters) - Portugal's budget deficit surged past its 7.3 percent target last year, figures on Thursday showed, deepening the scale of its problems as it faces a daunting debt repayment schedule over the next three months.

The revision of the deficit to 8.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) piled more pressure on Lisbon to follow Ireland and Greece in seeking an international bailout, sending the country's bond yields to new euro lifetime highs.

The losses followed a visit by the EU's Eurostat statistics body and are caused by higher than expected losses for a nationalised bank and public transport companies.

But they add to the problems for the government that emerges from elections which are expected within months after a debt crisis which has forced eye-watering budget cutbacks, crippled growth and forced the current administration to resign.

Finance Minister Fernando Teixeira dos Santos said Lisbon would honour its debt payments even though it has no power to seek a bailout.

"The negative element is that we are appearing more like Greece than we would like, indicating that in the past there must have been some carelessness in the accounts," said Cristina Casalinho, chief economist at Banco BPI.

"It is a question of methodology. Eurostat has made the rules tougher."

POLITICAL LIMBO

Portugal's troubles were already mounting before last week's resignation by Prime Minister Jose Socrates after parliament rejected his minority Socialist government's latest austerity measures to help to cut the budget deficit.

That move prompted downgrades by credit rating agencies and warnings by economists that the country could be forced to quickly seek a bailout.

The president is expected to decide on Thursday to call a snap election for late May or early June.

But the political limbo left by the crisis ahead of the expected election made it impossible for the interim government to seek a bailout now, Teixeira dos Santos said.

"We have to face these difficulties and understand that the government doesn't have the conditions nor the powers to ask for any kind of external help," the minister told reporters.

Portugal has to redeem 4.2 billion euros of bonds in April and 4.9 billion euros (4.3 billion pounds) in June.

"The government is not irresponsible and will guarantee that there is the necessary financing for the country to honour commitments to creditors," he said.


Opinion.

The message and recommendation for Portugal is clear yet radical. Crises such as these will be followed by ever more crises. Within the EU, a club of bankers, Portugal will be for ever a vassal state. The solution is to leave the EU and join the revitalised Commonwealth we propose. Also reconnecting with Luso-tropical Africa in order that they too together come into the fold of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth given a real economic dimension, not for the furtherance of neo-con "free trade", but as a zone for a trans-continental managed trade and exchange, guided by an indicative economic plan formed by us all.

Camelots Du Roi

http://camelotsduroi.canalblog.com/archives/p1-1.html Archive of photos/stories/documents from the Camelots Du Roi - Action Francaise. French monarchist integralists.

Association of British Muslims

Brief History of the ABM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Daoud Rosser-Owen In 1889, the Shaykhu-l Islam of the British Isles, HE Shaykh Abdullah Quilliam Bey (born William Henry Quilliam in 1857 of Manx parents), a Liverpool solicitor (who famously, as borough solicitor for Bradford, inaugurated the new Town Hall at its Grand Opening with a recitation of the first surah of the Quran "Al Fatihah"), founded the English Islamic Association. He published a newspaper and a magazine, and wrote a number of illuminating articles and pamphlets on Islam - attracting some opprobrium from Stanley Lane Poole in the Letters column of The Times. He also translated some parts of the Quran into Manx Gaelic (Gaelg). After Quilliam and his community were forced to migrate to the Ottoman Empire in 1908, the Association fell into abeyance. Just before the outbreak of World War I, Quilliam (disguised as "Professor Henri Marcel Leon", sometimes "Haroun Mustapha Leon" under which name he is buried at Brookwood Cemetery, near Woking) returned to England. He revived his organisation on 20 December 1914 as the British Muslim Society, basing it at the Shah Jehan Mosque in Woking, with Lord Headley as President and Khalid Sheldrake as Secretary. The organisation was revived again in 1924 as the Western Islamic Association. By 1927, it was located in London's Notting Hill and the Amir was HE Khalid Sheldrake (né Bertram William Sheldrake, known as "the Pickle King"). In 1930 he had established a branch of it in South Shields. He was for a while in 1934 the Emir of Islamistan (Kashghar in East Turkestan) on the invitation of the Emirs of Khotan. It was located at 111 Campden Hill Road where there was a library, lectures were held, and the Friday Prayers led by Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, the famous polymathic translator of the Quran. It absorbed the activities of the Muslim Literary Society (founded 1916 and headed by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, himself a famous translator of the Quran, classical scholar, and sometime Collector in the ICS) that had become effectively defunct after 1917. Since its gradual decline and virtual demise in the late 1940s with the death of Abdullah Yusuf Ali, there have been several attempts to revive it. In 1969, Daoud Rosser-Owen, Abdur Rashid Craig, Abdul Rashid Ansari, Dr Ya'qub Zaki, and Kamaruddin Peckham held meetings but received extreme opposition from nationality organised immigrant Muslim organisations that were accusing them of racialism. In 1975, no longer willing to accept further marginalisation of the converts, Rashid Craig, Daud Relf, Daoud Rosser-Owen and others went ahead and re-established it as the Association of British Muslims, with Shaykh Daoud Rosser-Owen as Amir, and the endorsement and authority of Shaykh Nazim al-Haqqani. In 1978, on advice from Kamaruddin Peckham, Yusuf Islam and others, it was renamed the Association For British Muslims with Hajji Abdur Rasjid Skinner as Amir and Abdullah Ibrahim, rahmatu-Llahi 'alayh, as Secretary although it has continued all along using both names. This was the most recent revival of Quilliam's organisation. It has struggled to survive, and still functions with Shaykh Daoud as caretaker Amir. Conscious of the earlier accusations, but aware that activity by functional groupings was most effective and conscious of the Shari"i requirement for Muslims to engage with communities through their own people, the ABM affiliated to the "Union of Muslim Organisations in the UK and the Republic of Ireland" as an appropriate umbrella body soon after that organisation was founded.

With usura - Ezra Pound

France nearly in Commonwealth, 1950's

When Britain and France nearly married
By Mike Thomson
Presenter, Document


From BBC News,2007

The major event of the year was the Suez episode
Formerly secret documents unearthed from the National Archives have shown Britain and France considered a "union" in the 1950s.

On 10 September 1956 French Prime Minister Guy Mollet arrived in London for talks with his British counterpart, Anthony Eden.

These were troubled times for Mollet's France. Egypt's President Gamel Abdel Nasser had nationalised the Suez Canal and, as if that was not enough, he was also busy funding separatists in French Algeria, fuelling a bloody mutiny that was costing the country's colonial masters dear.

Monsieur Mollet was ready to fight back and he was determined to get Britain's help to do it.

Formerly secret documents held in Britain's National Archives in London, which have lain virtually unnoticed since being released two decades ago, reveal the extraordinary proposal Mollet was about to make.


The following is an extract from a British government cabinet paper of the day. It reads:

"When the French Prime Minister, Monsieur Mollet was recently in London he raised with the prime minister the possibility of a union between the United Kingdom and France."

Mollet was desperate to hit back at Nasser. He was also an Anglophile who admired Britain both for its help in two world wars and its blossoming welfare state.

There was another reason, too, that the French prime minister proposed this radical plan.

Tension was growing at this time along the border between Israel and Jordan. France was an ally of Israel and Britain of Jordan. If events got out of control there, French and British soldiers could soon be fighting each other.

With the Suez issue on the boil Mollet could not let such a disaster happen.

Secret document

So, when Eden turned down his request for a union between France and Britain the French prime minister came up with another proposal.
This time, while Eden was on a visit to Paris, he requested that France be allowed to join the British Commonwealth.
A secret document from 28 September 1956 records the surprisingly enthusiastic way the British premier responded to the proposal when he discussed it with his Cabinet Secretary, Sir Norman Brook.

It says: "Sir Norman Brook asked to see me this morning and told me he had come up from the country consequent on a telephone conversation from the prime minister who is in Wiltshire.

"The PM told him on the telephone that he thought in the light of his talks with the French:


•"That we should give immediate consideration to France joining the Commonwealth

•"That Monsieur Mollet had not thought there need be difficulty over France accepting the headship of her Majesty

•"That the French would welcome a common citizenship arrangement on the Irish basis"
Seeing these words for the first time, Henri Soutou, professor of contemporary history at Paris's Sorbonne University almost fell off his chair.

Stammering repeatedly he said: "Really I am stuttering because this idea is so preposterous. The idea of joining the Commonwealth and accepting the headship of Her Majesty would not have gone down well. If this had been suggested more recently Mollet might have found himself in court."


Nationalist MP Jacques Myard was similarly stunned on being shown the papers, saying: "I tell you the truth, when I read that I am quite astonished. I had a good opinion of Mr Mollet before. I think I am going to revise that opinion.


"I am just amazed at reading this because since the days I was learning history as a student I have never heard of this. It is not in the textbooks."

It seems that the French prime minister decided to quietly forget about his strange proposals.

No record of them seems to exist in the French archives and it is clear that he told few other ministers of the day about them.

This might well be because after Britain decided to pull out of Suez, the battle against President Nasser was lost and all talk of union died too.

Instead, when the EEC was born the following year, France teamed up with Germany while Britain watched on. The rest, it seems, is history.