European Outlook # 80 November 2022

Education 

When black boys were at the bottom of the educational league table some people were quick to point to genetic reasons. They said that black students were inherently less intelligent, but now that white boys occupy the bottom spot they are looking for other causes.

Having scrimped and saved and crossed oceans and continents to get here, many immigrants are ambitious. They know that education is the key to their children's future, and they give them every encouragement. This is not always the case with the white working class. To many of them time spent at school is the same as time spent in prison. They just do their time and get out as soon as possible.

It's not the fault of the teachers. They do their best with the children in their care, but they struggle to inspire pupils from disadvantaged backgounds.

This is a cultural problem linked to our ingrained class system. We need a social revolution to lift the working class out of economic and intellectual poverty. It can be done but it won't be done by a Tory government that's more interested in making money. They may talk about levelling up but they don't really mean it.

It's not a coincidence that most members of the Cabinet went to private schools, where classes are much smaller and highly qualified teachers have the time and the facilities to groom them for a place at university.

Those students who pass the university entrance exam face fees of £9,250 but foreign students pay £24,000. Last year (2021) there were 605,130 overseas students. This is a windfall for the universities but it means a shortage of places for British students. There is also the danger that foreign students will forget to go home when they graduate or drop out.

Our so-called 'public schools', which are in fact private schools, turn out Cabinet Ministers that are well-spoken, beautifully attired, and supremely confident. They rise to the top on a wave of inherited privilege, but gifted working class kids are stuck at the bottom. This is not just unfair, it's also a waste of talent in a country that desperately needs the right people.

The Immigration Swindle

During the Brexit debate we heard much about sovereignty and the alleged benefits of quitting the EU, but the main reason was immigration. Newsapers like 'The Daily Mail' convinced its readers that the EU was responsible for mass migration to the UK. We were told that only by leaving the EU could we 'regain control of our borders'. This was a lie; at the peak of the influx the Poles and other east Europeans represented only half of our total intake; the rest came from outside of Europe.  

EU citizens had a right of entry under Free Movement of Labour, but there was never any EU regulations covering non-Europeans. The British government could have shut the door to the Afro-Asians at any time, if it had wanted to, but the Tory press gave the impression that the EU was responsible.

Since we left the EU thousands of east Europeans have gone home but we are now attracting Afghans and Hong Kong Chinese, in addition to our regular influx of Indians, Pakistanis, Bengalis, Nigerians, Jamaicans etc.

Priti Patel (pictured) who was Home Secretary under Boris Johnson, came up with the ridiculous idea of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda, a former Belgian colony that's now a member of the Commonwealth. It's also an authoritarian African state with a history of genocide. This expensive deception was intended to bamboozle the British public into believing that she was doing something about immigration. As widely expected, the Rwanda plan was rejected by the European Court of Human Rights; a pan-European body established in 1959 at Strasbourg that's not part of the European Union. The EU supreme court is the European Court of Justice founded in 1952 and based in Luxembourg.

Every day more and more immigrants arrive in the UK by legal and illegal routes. We notice those crossing the English Channel in flimsy boats, but we tend to ignore those arriving by scheduled airlines. Just to confuse us, they are divided into 'tourists', 'refugees', 'asylum seekers', 'economic migrants', 'dependents', and 'students'. The east Europeans are so near to us geographically that they are practically commuters, but the non-Europeans come to stay.

The incomers did not cause our housing crisis, our shortage of NHS beds, our leaking water pipes, our shit-splattered beaches, or our energy crisis, but they certainly haven't made things better. They have to be housed, fed, medicated, and educated by a country with a £2.4 trillion National Debt, a shrinking economy, an incompetant government, and a declining birth rate.

The population replacement rate is 2.1 babies per couple but the current UK birth rate is only 1.6. At this rate we are bound to need immigrants to keep our economy going, but it's up to us where we get them from. We can choose our fellow Europeans who look like us and share our culture, or we can 'celebrate diversity' by importing even more black and brown people from what my old friend Jack Lelieve used to call: "Suez and points east." 

The Lost Leader

In the Comments section of European Outlook # 72, March 2022, Mark Taha posed the following question: "John Bean - the leader lost. If he'd stayed active would things have gone differently?"

I very much doubt it. The newly formed National Front was firmly in the grip of the Empire Loyalists faction. John Bean had moved on from old-fashioned imperialism and his 'Mosleyite' ideas about Workers' Partnership and European Solidarity were considered 'treasonable' by the old guard.

The return of JohnTyndall to the mainstream nationalist fold was another obstacle. Bean and Tyndall were old comrades but they found it difficult to work together. Bean was a pragmatist who criticised the Money Power, but Tyndall pursued the matter with all the fervour of a new convert:

"Candour brought me face to face for the first time with what is sometimes called the 'Conspiracy Theory', the idea that great events of recent history were not chance occurrences or indeed the products of the causes popularly attributed to them  but were, and are, the outcome of conspiratorial forces, directing world affairs in a manner entirely different to that explained to, and believed by, the masses." JT, 'The Eleventh Hour'.

If John Bean had not left the NF of his own accord he would probably have been frozen out by the growing Tyndall faction. Remember that he didn't join Nick Griffin's BNP until JT had been ousted.

I think that he made the right decision. After nearly twenty years devoted to fringe politics he had little to show for it. He therefore spent the next twenty years building up a business, paying off a mortgage, and looking after his family. He knew from his experience with the old BNP that small parties are easily damaged by adverse publicity. Unfortunately, John Tyndall attracted negative press coverage. He was handicapped by newspaper pictures of him dressed in his Stormtrooper-style Spearhead uniform; not to mention his unrelenting anti-Semitism. Enoch Powell said that all political careers end in failure: how right he was.

Consequences

Our economic crisis is the consequence of the government spending more money than it collected. Bailing out the banks in 2008 cost £137 billion, the Covid pandemic cost £400 billion, and we are about to spend an estimated £150 billion on the energy crisis.

In fairness the government had little choice. We couldnt let our major banks go the same way as Lehman Brothers. And if we had ignored the plight of companies during the Covid lockdown there would have been widespread unemployment.

Now we are facing an energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, or rather Russia's reaction to the sanctions we have imposed on them. Despite our National Debt of 2.4 trillion, the government is once again borrowing to subsidise the crippling cost of gas and electricity.

We can't do anything about the mistakes of the past, but we should face reality and make peace with Russia. The Ukraine war was provoked by the eastward expansion of NATO and it's being prolonged by arms shipments from the West. If we stopped helping the Zelensky regime and abandoned the economic war against Russia we could strike a deal on gas and oil.

The argument that we have a moral duty to defend Ukraine is bogus. Volodymyr Zelensky is not the champion of democracy he is made out to be. He has banned opposition parties and locked up political opponents on a grand scale. He is owned body and soul by the CIA and he is being used by the USA to wage a proxy war on Russia. There is no reason why the UK should be involved in this fratricidal conflict.

In addition to minding our own business, we should nationalize the utilities; gas, electricity, oil, water, and railways. They should be run as public services and any profits should be ploughed back into those industries instead of being given to shareholders and overpaid bosses. When Margaret Thatcher started "selling off the family silver," to quote Harold Macmillan, she told us that competition would bring down prices and benifit everybody. What nonsense that turned out to be.

There is no competition when utility companies are cartels with fixed prices and guaranteed profits. If you live in the south of England you can't buy your water from a Northern Irish, Welsh or Scottish supplier. You can choose between the big six energy suppliers but they all charge the same rates. And if you are travelling by rail you have to use a company that runs trains to your destination. 

We are entering a global recession with no plan for the future. The laissez faire policy of the Tories has left us bereft of ideas. Things could get so bad that civil unrest results. The energy crisis will devastate industry. Individuals can take shorter showers and turn their thermostats down, but industry can't. Car factories, potteries, and steel plants need affordable and uninterrupted power. It's estimated that seven out of ten pubs will close down this winter. We could see unemployment on an grand scale, and there might come a time when the government can no longer sell investment bonds to investors. Then we would have to turn to the IMF, as we did in 1976.

The great economist John Maynard Keynes (pictured) recommended increasing the money supply at times of crisis, but he qualified his advice by insisting on higher productivity. Instead, we have increased the money supply without increasing productivity. Is this the crisis of capitalism long predicted by Karl Marx, Oswald Mosley and many others? 

From The Archives  Action No 219, June 1976   

The death of Queen Elizabeth and the accession of King Charles have revived interest in the Commonwealth. The population figures I quoted in 'Action' are out of date, the UK now has 68 million people and the USA has 332 million. India has an extreme Hindu nationalist government that still occupies Kashmir. And Rhodesia and South Africa have fallen to black rule. Otherwise I stand by my article from 46 years ago. The multiracial Commonwealth still defies commonsense. We have ties of blood with Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but we have little in common with African and Asian states that use the UK as a dumping ground for their surplus population.

Heather Landolo RIP

Heather Landolo the eldest daughter of William Joyce has died aged 93. She was born July 30 1928 and died July 8 2022. She campaigned to have her father's body removed from the grounds of Wandsworth Prison and reburied in Galway. This was achieved in 1976. She also campaigned against capital punishment and for better understanding between Jews and Gentiles. May she rest in peace.

Who is This ?

Can anyone identify the man in this photo from https;//blograrebooks.com  He is speaking for the National Labour Party circa 1957-1960. Note the cross and star symbol that was designed by John Bean and bequeathed to us, The cross stands for the nation and the star stands for the people.

Nation Revisited

Our sister blog is posted at: https://nationrevisited.blogspot.com

European Outlook

All articles are by Bill Baillie unless otherwise stated. The opinions of guest writers are entirely their own. We seek reform by legal means according to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19:

"We all have the right to make up our own minds, to think what we like, to say what we think, and to share our ideas with other people."