European Outlook # 39 March 2017

The Housing Crisis

                                  Harold Macmillan

There was a time when it was possible to buy a house. Wages were in line with inflation, mortgages were reasonable and available, and house prices were relatively stable. None of those conditions apply today. The average house in London costs more than ten times the average annual salary. Mortgages are strictly rationed by banks that were hit by the last crash, and building is restrained by planning permission and a skilled labour shortage.

Social housing provided by housing associations and local authorities is in very short supply. The Tories started selling council houses under Margaret Thatcher in the hope of turning Britain into a property-owning democracy. This diminished the housing stock and the population boom has taken care of the remainder.

It’s still possible to buy or rent a house, or even to get a council house, if you are prepared to live in an area of high unemployment. But if you want to live in London, Manchester or any area where work is available you will be extremely fortunate to find a house.

Theresa May's government has issued a White Paper on housing  but the right wing hijackers of the Tory Party are ideologically opposed to state housing. They believe that the homeless deserve their fate, and they regard social housing as a form of Communism. 

Various schemes have been tried including fixed-interest mortgages, part ownership, and rent controls but the real answer to the problem is simply to build a lot more houses. Of course, this would drive down house prices which might not suit those house owners who like to boast about how much their property is worth.

We need to change the culture of ever increasing property values that has taken root.  Our children and grandchildren deserve roofs over their heads. They are not socially inadequate because they haven’t got half a million pounds to spend. And they would not be a burden on the state if they were paying affordable rents to registered landlords.

Immigration has certainly aggravated the situation but we must deal with the problem as it is instead of being negative about it. The people living in this country need to be housed. Some future government might do something about immigration but that doesn't help us now.

Harold Macmillan was a 'One Nation' Tory who was housing minister in Winston Churchill's post-war government. He built 240,000 houses in 1951-52, 301,000 houses in 1952-53, and 318,000 houses in 1953-54. In those grim days we were desperately short of money, men and materials but he still succeeded. It can be done and it must be done.

Voters' Intentions

The June 2016 referendum in the UK was supposed to be about our membership of the European Union but people voted for all sorts of reasons. One man said that he was sick of being dictated to by London - not Brussels but London. Many people voted to get rid of foreigners, and  a Yorkshireman said that he voted Leave to get the coal mines reopened.

American voters who elected Donald Trump were just as confused by a billionaire property developer who presents himself as a man of the people.

An angry man said that he was voting for the National Front. When he was told that there are no candidates in a referendum he said: "Then I will vote Labour."

One man told me before the referendum that he was voting Leave to get rid of the euro. I told him that we didn't use the euro but I don't think that he believed me.

Nearly everyone that I spoke to voted Leave to stop immigration but hardly any of them knew that half of our immigrants come from the Commonwealth. A West Indian woman told me that she had every right to be here because she was a subject of Queen Elizabeth and had worked in the National Health Service for twenty years. She was voting Leave because "The country is full up."

Literacy tests for voters were introduced in the Southern United States in the 1890s and abolished by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. They were considered to be unfair to the blacks but many poor whites were also disenfranchised.

White-ruled Rhodesia had voting rights based on property ownership that were designed to exclude Africans but they too discriminated against poor whites.

In Britain, where almost everybody can vote, UK Political Info gives the state of the parties is as follows:
Conservatives 42%
Labour 27%
Lib Dem 10%
Ukip 12%
Other 10%
Parliamentary democracy has been replaced by an elected Tory dictatorship.


Trooping the Colour - GL Nicol
Reprinted from The European, May 1958

We sailed on New Year's Day from Southampton. An elderly major-general in a British warm waved from the quayside. The band on deck played a patriotic medley. We were sailing, one entire battalion, to Port Sudan. With us were a few Sandhurst RASC officers, newly-commissioned and rather far down the pass-out list. Our battalion had come from Germany and we were very conscious of our 'scheme' fitness. Hell, Nigel the bar closes at eleven. It did. We could only stand with empty glasses and watch a girl  in a sailor's cap dance the old year out.

Khartoum. Anyway no more 'schemes.' You are going out there to show the flag, we have been told. Guard-mounting, cricket and garden parties. Nicely proconsular and plenty of girls. The CO realised that it would be 'cushy,' so we trained for any and every eventuality. Rifle exercises, unarmed combat, IA's on the Bren and concealment films. In the Bay of Biscay we saw strangely lyrical War Office films shot on Salisbury Plain. Kill or be killed. Tense faces and the traffic moving along a main road to London. By Gibraltar desert warfare seemed as far away. I saw a book, Imperial Policing, on the adjutant's deck-chair.

I shared a cabin with four others. It was very small and stuffy. My bunk was under the port-hole and the climb-up was particularly difficult in a heavy sea. Bill, Pat, Nigel; all good second-lieutenant names. Almost straight from school, we were very conscious of officer status, with monogrammed coat-hangers and snap-shots of 'nice' girls in our wallets. Our batmen would come in about six o'clock in the evening and polish brasses and boots, squatting on the floor. Sometimes we played cards with them, cigarettes dangling from the corners of our mouths, like professional gamblers. You rock ape, one of them always said, if I missed a trick.

The senior officers had wives and children, as well as luggage. For them it was very much a matter of servants, verandahs with sun-blinds and dinner parties. A country for them was measured entirely, by the condition of its service accommodation. Off duty we were on Christian name terms with some of the senior officers. Thirsty, Pat? What you having? In the bar most of the conversation was about Germany, or someone putting up a black, or a woman, or that hell of a good party when old Henry... Perhaps a major after his fifth whisky would talk about Sicily. Christ... Bloody good show... shit flying everywhere... sergeant what's his name of the MMGs, he'll remember. They had, and it made us respect them, been at the sharp end of things.

Off Malta we had a ship's dance. As far as women were concerned, we were fairly well placed. There was a party of school-teachers going out to Suez. They had north-country accents and wore nylon stockings with thick dark seams. They had been invited by the adjutant, but some preferred the sergeant's 'do.' It was rather heavy Palm Court, the atmosphere. The regimental band played selections from 'Oklahoma' and 'Bless the Bride.' Some of us danced, but most just drank and talked to the CO and his wife. One of the Sandhurst RASC sat playing sedate cards the whole evening with a pimply girl, her mother and two journalists. Later, according to hallowed tradition, the colonel called on the subalterns to perform. Like a group photograph we lined up in front of the scarred piano. We sang a number from an American musical with a loud chorus about 'dames.' One or two were missing on deck . Pat swore he was locked in a bathroom with an Irish girl who had brought her riding habit in her luggage. By about one most people were drunk. The senior officers drifted off to their nuptial bunks. I expect we played rugger among the broken glasses and paper.

Disgorged from the canal, we stopped training. The Red Sea was too hot for anything. The soldiers lay about on their decks in PT shorts. We gave short talks on the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium and the Gezira cotton scheme. Sketch in the background, just a few facts, we were told. In the evening we played deck tennis or quoits on the sun deck. The CO, adjutant and second in command in short white shorts sat sipping lime juice. The stared across the still sea at the jagged backbone of Arabia though tired eyes. It could have been India, again but no, Khartoum was to be a short posting. Those evenings had an almost tireless quality of English middle-class life. Scarcely a breeze; and their wives laid back in deck chairs, their arms limp and eyes closed.

My tour of duty as an orderly officer took me to the hold. Here most of the men slept in hammocks. The sergeant accompanying me wore a red sash and was confidently pleasant. There was a foul smell of stale sweat and heavy cacophonous breathing. The hold itself was almost dark. Suddenly a man swayed towards us. His hair was close cropped, like worn down bristles and his face was thin and tired. I stepped aside to let him pass. Two months later I was to see the same man in a guardroom cell. He was standing by his bed rigidly to attention in denim trousers and a red vest. In the camp bed all his kit was neatly arranged. He had gone absent for a day and was found in a native brothel, hiding in the cupboard. I was glad of the clean night air.

The night before docking at Port Sudan we entertained the ship's officers at a cocktail party. All the conversations were about Khartoum. Speculation nibbled among the cheese biscuits and olives. The soldiers, I suppose, were drinking warm NAAFI beer in their canteen. One or two belching quietly to themselves, and lonely. The five of us were invited by some junior engineer officers to their cabin. It was even smaller than our own, with sickly green walls and a huge revolving fan. Three bottles of whisky and a mountain of cigarette packets on a small table. We drank and sang. One of the engineers got very drunk. He stood up, a whisky in his hand and started on 'Scots wha hae.' He fell across the table scattering cigarettes. His face was pale green. Jolly good chaps, we said, pushing each other hard against the corridor walls.

Port Sudan was very hot. Kites hovered above the quayside. It took us the morning and most of the afternoon to unload. We had changed into khaki drill and strolled among the sweating unloading party and fingered our revolver holsters. Soon the train for Khartoum would pull in, milk-white and glinting in the evening sun. Take your platoons, we were ordered. Over there with the platoon book under his arm stood your sergeant. Across to him you marched, brown boots surfed with white dust. A sharp salute, and a final inspection. Fasten this strap. Haircut in Khartoum. Look to your front, man,

I could smell the sea. Perhaps three days to Khartoum. Lead on corporal, I said.

Breaking Windows

Some people have obsessive views; often about race. Groups like Black Lives Matter see everything from a black point of view, and some whites are just as bad.

The following story illustrates obsession. A mental patient was being examined by a panel of psychiatrists. They asked him what he would do if he was discharged. He replied that he would get hold of a catapult and break all the windows. A year later he was asked the same question and he gave the same answer. But at the third time of asking he said: "I would get a job, get an apartment, and look for a girlfriend. Then I would take her home, get the elastic out of her knickers, make a catapult and break all the windows. Naturally, they discharged him.

Nationalists see everything from a narrow viewpoint. Nigel Farage said that traffic jams are due to immigration. He has since moderated his statements but one suspects that he still wants to break all the windows.

Convinced nationalists rely on anecdotal evidence, emotional outbursts, and table thumping. One of them told me that the government statistical agency is controlled by the Jews. He said it was a well-known fact. 


Parliamentary democracy functions reasonably well in peacetime so long as different opinions are allowed. But since the referendum the winning 52% have turned nasty and the 48% who voted to remain in Europe are accused of flouting "the will of the people," be they parliamentarians, high court judges, or senior diplomats.

Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu (photo Wikipedia)

At the moment Nigel Farage enjoys popular support but he should remember that another populist, Nicolae Ceausescu, used to address adoring crowds from his balcony until they shot him and his wife on Christmas morning 1989. He endeared himself to the Romanian mob by demanding independence from the Soviet bloc but when their economy collapsed they turned on him.

Searching for Lord Haw Haw – reviewed for Amazon

Colin Holmes has produced another biography of William Joyce, Searching for Lord Haw Haw. I have also read Rebecca Wests 1948 book The Meaning of Treason, Francis Selwyn's 1987 account Hitler's Englishman, and Mary Kenny's splendid 2003 biography Germany Calling. To my mind the Mary Kenny biography is easily the best.

Professor Colin Holmes has written a well-researched and lavishly referenced book but his dislike of William Joyce is obvious. It's easy to dismiss Joyce as a traitor. He was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death but did a British court in 1945 arrive at the right verdict? He certainly assisted the Nazis and shared their views on plutocracy but he never hurt a British person by broadcasting from Germany.

He was born in the United States to Irish parents and was a naturalized German citizen. But he had held a British passport and on the strength of that he was executed. A traitor is someone who hates his country but William Joyce loved Britain. In 1937 he wrote the following prophetic words in National Socialism Now:

"For all of us British people there is a land for which we have played our part, great or humble in the drama of life, a land where  we have had our happy days as well as the sad. We generally forget the spring mornings, with the splendid sun sparkling on the dew in the green fields, the white lanes with their smiling hedges in summer, the rich tint of the leaves in the declining autumn afternoon, the first nip of winter, the English Christmas with our nearest and dearest, the mists on the fens, the gigantic bustle of our great cities, the fire-breathing giants of the night in the Black Country or by South Shields, the long snaky monsters that bring happiness, sorrow, hope or anxiety into Euston or King's Cross , the ocean battering away at the rocks of Devon, the Cockney with his Shoreditch barrow, making fun of every moment in his struggling little life, the broad Mersey restively bringing the challenge of the sea into the heart of Liverpool, the godly majesty of the Highlands, the serene power of the mountains of North Wales, even the rain blending so strangely with the romance of our early days, when as children we played in it - all these things are most often out of our minds, but if it ever happens to us to see the chalk cliffs receding for the last time as the water widens between us and our homeland then the memories will come in a choking flood, and we shall know our land when it is too late.

This is the land for which better than we have died. For it we are asked not to die but to live; it is ours, it belongs to us in every spiritual and sensuous way; it must be ours in every other way, completely and utterly ours, not for some but for all of us. Know this truth, feel it, live it, and the victory shall be ours.

Some there are who will call the sentiment cheap; but it has been again and again redeemed in the blood of heroes, whose spirit the cheap alone can never understand."

Ron Tear a Good and Loyal Patriot - John Bean

Ronald Tear RIP - 1 December 1929 - 4 February 2017

Ron and I were much the same age. He first committed himself to active support for the cause of Nationalism and patriotism in 1959. This was a year after my formation of the National Labour Party.

I was speaking at our open air meeting held every Sunday in Bethnal Green when Ron, who had been standing as a new spectator, offered to sell our paper Combat. A local NLP member  said 'He's over-keen. He might be a spy'. I just felt instinctively that Ron Tear was what he claimed to be and  signed him up as an NLP member. One reason why we had not seen him  before was that he only just left the British Army. This could have been why over the next 25 years he always followed my actions, without debate, in looking for the best methods for raising support for the Patriotic Right.

In 1960 the NLP amalgamated with Colin Jordan's White Defence League to form the British National Party. Ron Tear
supported this, as he did eighteen months later when a majority of members did not want to follow the British Nazi party objective that Jordan was now after.

Ron was one of the most active members of the BNP in the greater London area and again followed the decision in early 1967 to enter into the formation of the National Front - whose initial membership was predominantly BNP. He continued his high activity for another 15 years, which no doubt was a factor in the breakdown of his marriage. It was at the same time that I felt I needed a retirement from the political struggle, which was intended to be temporary.

IN 1999 I published my autobiography of my political life up to then, Many Shades of Black. There were some who thought that this meant I was about to re-enter the arena and challenge my old friend John Tyndall in running the BNP, which in effectiveness had taken over from the ever-splitting National Front. Ron Tear had acted on this rumour and came knocking on my door. 'John', he said, ' If you are aiming to take charge again then count me in.' I did not.

I hope I did not betray his loyalty and his mental and physical courage in achieving the small gains we did make in those years.

Nation Revisited

Our sister blog is posted on:

http://nationrevisited.blogspot.co.uk

 
 
 

European Outlook # 36 December 2016

The Far-Right

The parties of the far-right (alt-right) have been eclipsed by a newly radicalised Tory Party. Alexandre Dumas wrote the heroic story of D'Artagnan who led his Three Musketeers, Athos, Porthos and Aramis, against the 'evil' Cardinal Richelieu. In the modern version Theresa May leads her Three Brexiteers, Boris, Liam and David against the 'evil' Jean Claude Juncker. Her government now stands for quitting the EU, restricting immigration, deporting undesirables, and increasing defence spending. Only time will tell if she means what she says. 

The far-right are dedicated to leaving the EU and repatriating immigrants. Their first objective is possible because we never adopted the euro or signed up to the Schengen treaty. But
repatriation is another matter. Most of our immigrants are too well established to be sent packing. We can introduce stricter immigration controls but we will probably need some workers from abroad. It's up to us where we get them from.

Housing is one of the most desperate problems facing our country but few of the minor parties mention it. The British Democratic Party's policy is typical: "the present perceived need to build more and more houses on precious green field sites is fuelled by endless large scale immigration. If we can stop immigration and put the process into reverse, the housing crisis would disappear." In the words of the old song: "with a ladder and some glasses you could see the Hackney marshes 'if' it wasn't for the houses in between."

Outside of the EU we would still have a housing crisis, an underfunded National Health Service, an unbalanced economy and an unemployable underclass. We urgently need a patriotic party with practical and affordable policies, but the Batley and Spen by-election showed that the far-right are not serious contenders.

Labour Party - Tracy Brabin - 17,506 - 85.8%
English Democrats - Therese Hirst - 969 - 4.8%
British National Party - David Furness - 548 - 2.7%
Independent - Garry Kitchin - 517 - 2.5%
English Independence Party - Corbyn Anti - 241 - 1.2%
Liberty GB - Jack Buckby - 220 - 1.1%
Independent - Henry Mayhew - 153 - 0.8%
Independent (UKIP member) - Waqas Ali Khan - 118 - 0.6%
National Front - Richard Edmonds - 87 - 0.4%
One Love Party - Ankit Love - 34 - 0.2%

Majority 16,537 -  81.0%
Turnout 20,393 -  25.8%
Labour hold 

Now that the referendum campaign has made immigration control respectable we must turn our attention to the Third World invasion. The arguments used by the popular press against the East Europeans must also apply to the blacks and Asians.

Fog in Channel: Europe cut-off

That famous headline from The Times epitomises the nationalist mindset. When reporting air crashes our newspapers are only interested in British deaths. They only report on foreigners if they do something wrong. Nationality is important and national stereotypes are ingrained. We were brought up on images of cruel Germans, glum Russians, rugged Australians, inscrutable Chinese, and loud-mouthed Americans. Kind Germans, cheerful Russians, studious Australians, transparent Chinese, and quiet Americans, would not be taken seriously.

Even animals are given nationalities. We hear about Irish race horses, and we fought a war with Iceland over British Cod. If the Daily Mail had to report "the cat sat on the mat" it would appear as "Siamese cat sat on Persian carpet."

We also like to credit ourselves with unique virtues. We pride ourselves with being a nation of animal lovers but fox hunting and hare coursing are still practised.

We are convinced that British justice is the best in the world, but over a thousand men and women were detained during the war without charge or trial under Defence Regulation 18B. And during the 'troubles' in Northern Ireland juries were suspended and detention without trial was used extensively.

Our attitude to foreigners has always been appalling. When Winston Churchill appointed Selwyn Lloyd as Foreign Secretary in 1955 Lloyd protested: "But Sir, I have never been abroad except during wartime, I speak no foreign languages, I have never spoken on foreign affairs, and I don't like foreigners." Churchill replied: "young man, these all seem to me to be positive advantages."

One of my favourite lines is from Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, when the great detective Hercule Poirot is asked by an Englishman to give his word, "as a foreigner."

Most people manage to keep their nationalistic urges under control but some poor souls are afflicted with Ukip syndrome and spend their lives denouncing "unelected foreigners."

No More Rebels

The old political division are becoming increasingly meaningless. The Labour Party used to be the party of the working class. It was run by middle class schoolteachers and lawyers but supported by the trade unions. The Tory Party was unashamedly middle class. It was the party of shopkeepers and managers who upheld the monarchy and the Church of England. The Liberals were not so easy to label; they tended to represent isolated areas like the Shetland Islands. Mosley's Union Movement failed to win sufficient support in the fifties and sixties, and so did the National Front in the seventies, and the BNP in modern times. The winning party usually got 40% of the poll, the runners up got 30%, the Liberals got 20%, and the other 10% was shared out between the little parties of left and right. 

In those days the parties knew what they stood for. A lot of arguing went on at conference time but once they got back to Westminster they presented a united front. Enoch Powell was the first Tory in a generation to rock the boat with his opposition to mass migration and the Common Market. He was a classical scholar and a Tory free trader but he was supported by working men who were fed up with immigration. He probably would have got away with it if he had not called for the electorate to vote Labour. Prime Minister Ted Heath could not put up with open rebellion so he sacked him. Powell emerged as a Northern Ireland Unionist but he was never taken seriously again.

Tony Benn was a Labour rebel who championed every left-wing cause from gay rights to colonial freedom. He was a ban-the-bomber, an anti-Common Market campaigner, a boycotter of South Africa and a supporter of the black terrorist Robert Mugabe. He was a renegade who would now be thoroughly at home in the Tory Party.

John Beckett the Independent Labour MP for Peckham
outraged the House of Commons in 1930. With the words:
"Mr Speaker, these proceedings are a disgrace" he picked up the Speaker's mace and removed it from the chamber for the first time since Oliver Cromwell. He lost his seat in the general election of 1931 and joined fellow rebel Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in 1934. He was detained under Defence Regulation 18B during the war.

There are few rebels in Parliament today. All parties have gravitated to the centre and bad boys like Denis Skinner are regarded as ‘national treasures’. The order of the day is ‘consensus’. They all support non-European immigration, the Zionist regime in Israel, the campaign against Russia, and minority causes like gay rights and drug reform.

The rapid development of computers will soon deliver government by technology. Programs will be written to handle production and distribution and squabbling politicians will be retrained as rat catchers and traffic wardens.  
   

The Alternative

In the seventies Union Movement and the National Front both opposed global capitalism and open door immigration. UM stood for 'Europe a Nation' but the NF wanted to unite with the White Dominions. After the 1975 referendum Union Movement changed into Action Society and concentrated on publishing. The NF grew into a nationwide movement that put up over 300 candidates in the 1979 general election but following disappointing results they collapsed and were replaced by the British National Party. Under Nick Griffin's leadership the BNP won scores of council seats, a seat on the London Assembly, and two seats on the European Parliament. But they did badly in the 2010 general election and split into several hostile factions; just like the NF before them.

A few years ago a more realistic attitude towards Europe began to emerge in the nationalist camp and attempts were made to form a bloc in the European Parliament. But the 2016 referendum campaign showed that they are still clinging to insularity.

Quitting the EU will make our country poorer and do nothing to stop Third World immigration. 'Free trade' always comes at a price. The Indians have demanded that we take in more of their citizens in return for a trade deal. The Aussies abandoned their White Australia policy in order to trade with the Asian market and they now have over a million non-Europeans, mainly from China, India and South East Asia.

The temporary benefits of devaluation will soon pass and we will face the grim reality of racial replacement and unbridled capitalism under an unopposed Tory government. Protectionism will not solve the problems of global capitalism but there is an alternative. The geo-political solutions pioneered by Oswald Mosley are still relevant. They are outlined on the Friends of Mosley website: www.oswaldmosley.com  

International Trade

Britain tried to institute imperial preference at the Ottowa conference in 1932 but American pressure on Canada put a stop to it. Faced with bankruptcy we signed the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944 which tied the pound to the dollar and put our armed forces under American command. In 1947 this agreement was formalized as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and in 1995 it became the World Trade Organization. Any nation engaged in international trade must conform to the rules of the WTO. If we quit the EU we will simply be exchanging one set of rules for another.  

But none of this has registered with the Leavers. Flushed with success in the referendum they are now campaigning to bring back “our ancient weights and measures." But even the reactionary Tories know that we cannot return to the old days. As a trading nation we have to conform to international standards and market our products in terms that the world can understand. It’s no good telling customers that a car will do fifty miles to the gallon when they have no idea what miles and gallons are. And it would be dangerous to sell medicines labelled in ounces to a world that uses grammes.

European Union specifications will still be internationally accepted if the UK leaves the single market. If we make goods for export denominated in imperial measurements or not conforming to EU standards they will be rejected. Customers need to know how things are produced, where the raw materials come from, how the workers are employed, and how much carbon is generated. It’s no good protesting that our products are British and therefore above suspicion. Regulations that the Leavers regard as red tape are there to protect workers and customers The days when we could send shiploads of goods anywhere in the world, accompanied by the Royal Navy, are long gone. 

Brexit supporters are very keen on trading with the Commonwealth but the old dominions have all converted to the metric system. If we want to trade with Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians we must do so in litres, kilos and kilometres. Even the United States is converting and their military and scientific community has already done so.

We have been using the metric system for so long that it would be virtually impossible to go back to avoirdupois. We have not used the old measurements in industry since 1971 when we changed from pounds, shillings and pence. We only kept pints and miles because of newspapers like The Daily Mail; a reactionary rag that is still giving out temperatures in Fahrenheit; which nobody under sixty understands.

The nostalgic nationalists will have to get used to reality. We may be an island but we are still part of Europe and the wider world. We cannot survive with rods, poles and perches, and dreams of Empire.

Searching for Lord Haw Haw by Colin Holmes reviewed for Amazon by Gordon Beckwell

How do you justify a SIXTH biography of arch-traitor William Joyce? Colin Holmes thinks he has the answer - attack all previous biographies as being too 'kind' to Joyce (because their authors fell under the influence of Joyce admirers) or claim they are full of errors. Apart from the fact that all the other biographies roundly condemn Joyce for his high treason and paranoid anti-Semitism just who were these Joyce admirers who allegedly seduced previous authors? Holmes only names one: the late John Warburton of the Friends of Oswald Mosley. But even Holmes admits that during interviews with Warburton, the former Blackshirt showed no admiration for Joyce at all. So we are left to wonder if such seductive admirers really exist.

On the question of factual errors Holmes is as guilty as any. One example must suffice: he claims Joyce's scarred face wasn't the result of an Jewish communist slashing him with a razor (as Joyce always claimed) but a revenge attack by the I.R.A. The trouble with this new 'scoop' is that a police officer present recognised the attacker as an East End Red. Also, if the I.R.A. really wanted belated revenge on Joyce would they really do it at a crowded public meeting where Joyce was accompanied by other stewards? The razor is the weapon of choice of London's East End, a quiet knee-capping was more the I.R.A. style.

But where Holmes really allows his personal hatreds to mar his judgement concerns Oswald Mosley. During the early months of WW2 Mosley made contact with other anti-war groups with a view to coordinating the policy of 'Peace with Honour, Empire Intact and British People Safe'. In Holmes' blinkered view this is seen as 'plotting' to share out the top jobs after a successful German invasion. Holmes doesn't understand that Mosley considered himself as far superior to Hitler in every way (even to the point of arrogance) or as the Blackshirt Leader put it he had "no desire to become the underling of some foreigner - even my worse enemies have never accused me of having small ambitions!

Holmes goes on to claim without evidence that Mosley was as much a traitor as Joyce as he was engaged in treasonable relations with the German Nazis. He cannot see that if this was true then the Government and MI5 who both hated Mosley would have jumped at the chance of trying Mosley as a traitor and hanging him too. They didn't because they couldn't - Mosley was not a traitor and no evidence existed to suggest otherwise.

Holmes' biography of Joyce has more than a hint of desperation about it: he makes spectacular claims without substantiation and allows his own prejudices to blinker him to the normal academic disciplines of modern political history of which ne was formerly a professor.

So we must assert that the Holmes biography is most certainly not the pre-eminent version on Joyce - that accolade falls to Mary Kenny's 'Germany Calling!' who does not find it necessary to rubbish other authors in her book.

Déjà Vu

The recent referendum campaign was strangely similar to the one in 1975. Back then the popular press was all for Europe, this time they changed sides but their obedient readers did as they were told. The Tory newspapers compared the EU to the USSR and accused Angela Merkel of being a communist because she grew up in East Germany. In the earlier campaign they stressed that the EEC was a bulwark against Communism and the lunatic left agreed with them. The following is from the Common Cause Report of May 1975.

The British Communist Party's view of the Common Market was summarised by Tony Chater in an article in the Morning Star (25 Jan 1975). In this he made the following statements:

"The entire structure of the Common Market is designed to facilitate the profit making activities of the big capitalist firms..."

"The Common Market is much more than a customs union. Behind the common protective wall of tariffs the aim is a major reorganisation of west European capitalism..."

"The EEC is therefore imperialist, anti-working class, and anti-Socialist. It is the economic counterpart in Europe of NATO, buttressing the Cold War divisions and hostility towards the Socialist world..."

"Parliament's power to decide economic and social policies would gradually cease to exist. They would be transferred to the Community's institutions where they would be shielded from popular pressure by the EEC's bureaucratic structure..."

Since then the CPGB have campaigned strongly in favour of a "no" vote in the referendum on June 5th and this line has the support of most Left-wing trade union leaders, who have brought strong pressure to bear on their district and branch staffs and offices to follow suit.

Their counterpart brothers in Europe however take a different view and while being perhaps critical of the EEC as at present constituted, they are nevertheless against their countries withdrawing from it.

In France the Communist Party is more hostile than it used to be towards the EEC, and accuses it of "betraying France's national interests for the sake of monopoly capitalism." French Communists, however, do not suggest a French withdrawal, and generally accept that the EEC is a political and economic reality to which they must adapt.

A Message from Bill White

Bill White is an American National Socialist who is serving a 25 year sentence for a variety of offences. Killers like David Copeland, Anders Breveik, Dylann Roof, and Thomas Mair deserved to be locked up but Bill White has never hurt anyone. 

From the Northwest Front - www.northwestfront.org

After Trump settles into office, and gets his cabinet in order, and, the rest, we may want to start lobbying him to pardon all White nationalist prisoners. I would not be partisan about this - I would, for instance, demand that wrongfully targeted folk like David Duke get pardoned along with folk like Matt Hale. And, we would probably want to throw in all of the alleged "right wing" prisoners of various sorts, militias, sovereigns, and the rest - they have plenty of people in prison - in order to make this as broad based as possible.

This seems to be a project for the near future that people should be thinking about. We should start thinking of how to interact with a government that may, for once, start listening to our concerns. Bill White

Nation Revisited

Our sister blog is posted on: http://nationrevisited.blogspot.co.uk

 

  

 

  

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