Is Britain Racist?
Various self-appointed bodies have issued damning reports on racism in Britain. We are told that black and brown people are discriminated against and that urgent measures are required to redress the situation. The Black Lives Matter movement wants to scrap the police force because it's 'institutionally racist' and their self-hating white supporters are in full agreement. They accuse prime minister Boris Johnson of being racist. He wrote in The Daily Telegraph: "the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies." But the word 'piccaninnies' is not racist, it comes from the Portuguese for 'very small'. His multiracial Cabinet includes; Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel. Kwasi Kwarteng, Alok Sharma, Nadhim Zahawi, and Suella Braverman.
But some people are never satisfied. On a recent radio talk show a woman with a West Indian accent complained that Priti Patel doesn't represent her because she is "practically white." So much for Afro-Asian solidarity. The caller may have a point about Priti's complexion but she can't complain about Kwasi Kwarteng who is of West African stock. His rise to prominence might have something to do with the fact that he went to Eton, but his position in the Cabinet shows that Britain is not a racist country.
The far-left and the far-right are united by an obsession with race that is not shared by the general public. Black and brown people are well represented in sports and entertainment, and . most of our ethnic minority MPs were elected by white constituents.
Those Brits who dream about deporting all the post-war immigrants and their descendants have lost touch with reality. Our small peacetime army would not be able to round up 10% of the population. And even if we could we haven't got enough ships or planes to send them back, and there is no guarantee that their countries of origin would accept them. We should certainly have strict immigration controls and a generous voluntary repatriation scheme but there will be no mass deportation.
The Public Order Act 1936 - Vic Sarson
The Battle of Cable Street initiated the 1936 Public Order Act.
The pre-war clashes in East London were mainly between fascists and communists, but journalists, politicians and historians, of the Guardian-ista variety, seldom report this accurately, thus distorting history.
There was at the time, in my view, a need for some sort of Act to regulate public behaviour, where the right of free assembly was being exercised, to prevent violence but the POA of 1936 was to some extent a knee jerk reaction. Although that era predates my birth I have known a number of people who were alive at the time and of various shades of political opinion; many have said that before the forming of the fascist groups, of which Mosley was certainly the most prominent, the communists existed in huge numbers and ruled the streets. Remember that street meetings, out of date now, were the norm at the time. Other groups and parties needed their permission to hold even indoor meetings that involved accepting tight restrictions on what they could say and for how long their meetings could last. Protection money had to be paid over. Many that were not swayed by fascist arguments tended to take their side because of their fear of the communists that were associated with thuggery and violence for at least a decade before the emergence of British fascism.
The POA 1936 was driven by the far left of the Labour Party, such as Fenner Brockway, Manny Shinwell, Herbert Morrison (uncle of Peter Mandelson) and others, and was heavily biased. It addressed none of the issues such as the criminal behaviour of the communists, as described. Certainly, the fascist practice of marching provocatively in uniform and military-type formations needed to be addressed and curtailed, which this Act did perfectly well, but what of the extortion as practiced by the other side?
The trouble with badly framed legislation is that it continues to ill effect normal life for decades, even centuries thereafter and often to ill inform subsequent legislation.
Nation Revisited: Reports of extortion may be anecdotal but the political violence of the 1930s is well documented. William Joyce, for instance, was slashed with a razor while stewarding a meeting of the Conservative Party at Lambeth Baths in 1924, The Reds used violence to disrupt meetings and Labour-controlled councils withheld meeting halls. This situation has not improved. A few years ago Eddy Morrison applied to hold a meeting in Trafalgar Square. To his surprise permission was granted, but he would have to pay for the police and take out insurance to cover any damage or injury. The prohibitive cost of such arrangements ensures that Free Speech is still denied.
Chris Farman
The Coronavirus pandemic continues to strike down the good and the bad. One of its first victims in the UK was the anti-fascist agitator Chris Farman. The Oxford Mail reported his death on May 29th 2020, which was his 83rd birthday. He glorified the International Brigade which fought on the losing side in the Spanish Civil War. John Bean mentions him in his memoir 'Many Shades of Black':
A regular heckler was a local journalist called Christopher Farman. Writing in the Guardian in the mid-eighties he reminisced about the various political meetings held at Earls Court in the sixties, with Communists one night, Mosley's Union Movement another night. "But Wednesday nights," he wrote, "that was when you had to hold on to your balls! That was BNP night,"
I first encountered him at the historic demonstration in support of South Africa in London in 1961. I was with a small group of Empire Loyalists who were attacked by a gang of Red thugs led by Chris Farman. We fought back with some success, and at one point Farman was bounced off the windows of the Army and Navy store in Victoria Street. That evening we went to the Orange Tree pub in Richmond-Upon-Thames, and there, holding court with his cronies was the battered figure of Chris Farman. When he saw us he quickly departed. We had no idea that he drank in that particular pub but he probably thought that we had followed him there.
Chris Farman and his fellow anti-fascists were spoilt for choice on that Sunday morning 28th February 1961. The Anti-Apartheid Movement were holding a meeting in Trafalgar Square and every variety of nationalist turned up in opposition. Oswald Mosley was there with a large contingent of Union Movement activists who marched from Trafalgar Square to UM's headquarters in Vauxhall Bridge Road. John Bean was there with his newly formed BNP, and there were patriots from Colin Jordan's National Socialist Movement, and from the League of Empire Loyalists. It was one of the few occasions when we all stood together against a common enemy..
Accepting History
Omar Khayyam wrote: "The moving finger writes and having writ moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a line of it." His words are true but some people try to make history fit their own agenda.
The British Empire was a commercial venture backed up by the Royal Navy that conquered a quarter the world. It was a force for progress that brought untold benefits to its subjects, but it plundered raw materials, disrespected native cultures and kept order at the point of a bayonet.
The British Empire could have been an Imperial Federation as envisaged by Joseph Chamberlain before the First World War. But British politicians treated colonials as cannon fodder; South Africans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders fought and died for the Motherland in the First World War but at the Ottawa Conference in 1932 British prime minister Stanley Baldwin insisted that the Dominions should supply the Motherland with agricultural produce and raw materials in return for manufactured goods. This outraged the leaders of the Dominions who wanted to develop their own industries. The Conference established 'Imperial Preference' in principle but the United States objected and the scheme never really got going.
Seven years later Britain was once again at war with Germany and a loyal Empire immediately responded. We ended the war bankrupt and unable to keep the Empire together. Today we still have links of language and culture with the old White Dominions but they have gone their separate ways; Canada is inextricably linked to the United States, Australia and New Zealand are economic dependencies of China and Japan, and South Africa and Rhodesia have been taken over by the Blacks and are fast reverting to barbarism.
None of this is of any interest to the Black Lives Matter hooligans who destroy statues and set fire to police vehicles. All they are interested in is Britain's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. But old Omar was right; "The moving finger writes and having writ moves on.." Our little islands on the edge of Europe produced the men and women who trudged through swamps and jungles, and fought the savage foe, to build the greatest empire the world has known. And none of their piety nor wit can do a damn thing about it.
Starting The Fire
The riots in London and Bristol are just the beginning. After more than a year of Coronavirus restrictions young people are ready to risk arrest to make their feelings known. The anarchist element that is always present at demonstrations is prepared to set fire to police vehicles and it's only a matter of time before someone is killed. The State will respond with more repressive legislation and it will win because it has the weapons, the organisation and the backing of the general public. But before the rioters are defeated they will seriously damage the Boris Johnson regime.
The so-called 'far right' have no chance of upsetting parliamentary democracy. They are far too polite and their instinct is to be obedient to the State, not to overthrow it. Our situation can't be compared to Italy in 1922 or Germany in 1933. We don't have millions of unemployed ex-servicemen at our disposal, and we don't have the backing of big businessmen frightened of a Red revolution. It's almost a hundred years since Miss Rotha Lintorn-Orman founded the British Fascists and in all that time we haven't had a single MP elected.
We don't have the money or the manpower to stage impressive demonstrations like the militant Left. So we should let them take on the police, face the courts, and pay the price in broken bones and harsh prison sentences promised by Home Secretary Priti Patel. She may be an attractive little woman but she is a self-confessed Zionist, an alleged bully, and a supporter of capital punishment. In Hindu mythology Priti is the Mother Earth goddess, usually depicted as a red cow bellowing thunder.
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The police are doing a grand job and should be supported, but they are defending a corrupt government that is turning the UK into a cheap labour sweatshop. When Boris Johnson and his gang of criminals are confronted by screaming mobs of 'ant-fascists' we will be waiting in the wings.
Let the left-wing rabble start the fire, They can't win because they have no base. The Reds were a threat in the days of Communist China and the Soviet Union but Russia has had a market economy for nearly forty years and China might call herself a Communist country but she is thoroughly capitalist. The coalition of chaos which includes Black Lives Matter can't win but they can create a situation in which a Government of National Unity will emerge.
The 2011 referendum on electoral reform was a condition of the coalition agreement between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats. This was an opportunity to get rid of the first-past-the-post system that results in huge majorities for the leading party. Unfortunately, the public obeyed the Daily Mail and rejected the proposal, but the Electoral Reform Society is now urging the Labour Party to support a new campaign for proportional representation. This would result in the creation of new political parties. There would be a Ukip-like far-right party, a reactionary Tory Party on the Boris Johnson model, a One Nation Tory Party similar to John Major's administration, a Liberal Democrat Party, a Green Party, a moderate Social Democratic Party on the lines of the present Labour Party, a Socialist Party intent on bringing back Clause Four, and parties representing minorities such as Muslims. From this spectrum a Government of National Unity could be formed. So keep calm and campaign for proportional representation.
European Outlook
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