The British Press’ Glowing Reviews of Second World War Pro-Nazi Book

Richard Griffiths, What Did You Do During the War? The Last Throes of the British pro-Nazi Right, 1940-45 (London: Routledge 2017).

I recently sent a review of the above book to the conspiracy/parapolitics website and magazine, Lobster. It’s been proofread and corrected, and hopefully will go up on the site before too long. The webmaster’s been very busy with work recently, hence the delay.

Richard Griffiths is an Emeritus Professor of King’s College London, and the author of several books on the British and European extreme Right. These include a biography of Marshal Petain (1970), the head of the collaborationist Vichy government during the Second World War, Fellow Travellers of the Right (1980), Patriotism Perverted (1998) and An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Fascism (2000).

The book is a study of how British Nazis and Nazi sympathisers reacted to the outbreak of the Second World War and internment. Some gave up their activities entirely, others carried on underground. A number also carried on as before. And some angrily denied that they had been Nazis, and blamed and attacked instead their former comrades. Another tactic was to infiltrate genuine, non-political pacifist groups, like the Peace Pledge Union, in order to influence British politics to avoid a war with Nazi Germany.

Oswald Mosley’s Lies about Not Collaborating

One chapter gives the British Fascist leader, Oswald Mosley, another well deserved kicking. Mosley claimed that when war was declared, he ordered his goose-stepping squadristi to cooperate with the authorities and obey their orders. This was in the text of a speech published in Action, the British Union of Fascists newsletter. In fact, Mosley advised only those members of squalid organisation, who were members of the armed forces, to obey orders and cooperate. In the original speech he made it clear that he expected the rest of the thugs to carry on their activities and pro-Nazi propaganda as normal. The speech was then carefully edited, published in Action to make it appear that Mosley had issued orders for comprehensive cooperation with the authorities. This was then taken up uncritically by his biographers.

This is another piece to add to the mountain of scholarship demolishing the sympathetic picture of Mosley created by Skidelsky’s biography in the 1970s. This was comprehensively refuted by Stephen Dorril in his biography of Mosley, Blackshirt, which came out a few years ago. Among other things, Dorril disproved Mosley’s claim that if the Nazis had invaded, he would never collaborate with them and serve in government ‘as another Quisling’, referring to the head of the puppet Norwegian government. In fact, he was quite prepared to do so.

Bryant’s Nazi Apologia, Unfinished Victory

But one of the most unsettling studies in the book is chapter 2, ‘The Reception of Bryant’s Unfinished Victory ‘, subtitled ‘The myth of public unanimity against Nazi Germany in early 1940’. Arthur Bryant was a writer of popular histories, such as English Saga (1940), The Years of Ednurance 1793-1802 (1942) and The Years of Victory 1802-1812 (1942). In the ’30s he had written academically respected biographies of Charles II and Samuel Pepys.

Bryant was a committed Conservative, and one of that party’s functionaries. In 1929 he became educational advisor to the Bonar Law Conservative College at Ashridge. His first book was The Spirit of Conservatism. Shortly after its publication he became editor of the college magazine, Asbbridge Journal. In 1937 he was made general editor of the National Book Association, the Tories’ answer to Gollancz’s Left Book Club. He was not only strongly in favour of appeasement, but also a supporter of Hitler and the Nazi regime. In 1934 he described Hitler as a mystic, who had enabled Germany ‘to find her soul’. From the late 30s he included in his columns in the Ashbridge Journal and The Illustrated News diatribes attacking what he saw as the libels and slanders put out by the ‘warmongers’ who were leading the country into conflict with the Nazis. In 1939 he was asked by Horace Wilson to write an article on the British point of view for the German press. This was never published, though it did form the basis for much of Unfinished Victory, and was approved by Chamberlain. In July 1939 he was unofficially authorised by Chamberlain to go to Germany to speak to a number of Nazi leaders, and Chamberlain later offered to pay his expenses from Secret Service funds.

The book’s introduction began by asserting that now we at war, Britain would fight with a unity of resolve and purpose. But it then qualified this with arguments for peace with the Nazi regime. And much of this was explicitly anti-Semitic, following Nazi propaganda. He described how Hitler’s seizure of power was greeted with joy by the German people as the new revolution.

He then went on to blame the Jews for the abortive Communist Revolution, claiming that it was led by the ‘Jew, Kurt Eisner’, and the Russian ambassador, the ‘Hebrew, Joffe’. Joffe had indeed been involved in promoting the Communist revolution, but Eisner was the leader of the workers’ soldiers and peasants’ council in Bavaria. I think he was a radical Socialist, rather than Communist, who believed that the Councils should form an addition to parliamentary government, not their replacement. It’s an attitude very different to Lenin’s idea of a bureaucratic state controlled by the Communist Party.

He then went on to accuse the Jews of exploiting the property market in the First World War, so that by 1939 after by five years of anti-Semitic legislation and persecution they still owned a third of real property in Germany. He stated that the Jews had exploited the 1929 Crash and the consequent inflation to make themselves increasingly dominant in politics, business and the learned professions. A quarter of the Social Democrat politicians in the Reichstag in 1924 were Jews, and they controlled the banks, the publishing industry, cinema and theatre, and a large part of the press ‘all the normal means in fact, by which public opinion in a civilised country was formed’.

He then claimed that there was a Jewish campaign to remove gentiles completely from politics and the privileged occupations. He wrote

Every year it became harder for a Gentile to gain or keep a foothold in any privileged occupation. At this time it was not the Aryans who exercised racial discrimination […]. By the third decade of the century it was the native Germans who were now confronted with a problem – that of rescuing their indigenous culture from an alien hand and restoring it to their own race.

Press Reaction Largely Positive

This is vile, murderous nonsense supporting a regime bent on persecuting the Jews to their deaths, even before the launch of Hitler’s infamous ‘Final Solution’. So how did the British press react to this nasty, mendacious piece of Nazi propaganda? In general, they loved it. The book received glowing praise from the Times Literary Supplement, the New English Weekly, the Fortnightly Review, the Church of England Newspaper, Peace Focus, and very many provincial newspapers, like the Sheffield Star, the Aberdeen Press and Journal, the East Anglian Daily Times, and the Cardiff newspaper, Western Mail.

There were critical reviews, however, in the Spectator, which was strongly anti-appeasement, the Jewish Chronical, the Manchester Guardian, New Statesman and other newspapers of that type. Two female critics of the Nazi regime submitted highly critical reviews in the journal Time and Tide. One of these was Emily Lorimer, the author of What Hitler Wants, who stated

“All the best and biggest Nazi lies are here, presented with a garnish of scholarship and erudition […] Please God, your clever book has come too late to take any readers in. “

Rebecca West writing in the same magazine declared that the book was
“a paean to Hitler so glowing, so infatuate, that it might be have been entitled ‘Kiss Me, Corporal’.”

The great historian, A.J.P. Taylor called the book and its author what they were in the Guardian in the very title of his review ‘A Nazi Apologist’ and made the point that much of the book was based on Hitler’s speeches. And Richard Crossman in the Staggers pointed to Bryant’s connection to the Conservatives and the appeasement camp.

Bryant himself started a series of correspondence defending himself with the Spectator and the Jewish Chronicle. His publishers at MacMillan, initially enthusiastic, became progressively cool towards it, trying to find reasons to refuse publication. Bryant was still promoting and defending his book as late as May 1940. What changed his attitude was the accession of Winston Churchill as PM, and the disappearance of pro-Nazi groups like Information and Policy. Later in the month Lovat Dickinson of MacMillan’s asked Hugh Trevor-Roper to inquire whether Bryant should be interned as a Fascist. Trevor-Roper advised against this on the grounds that views change with the times. And Bryant ended up writing pieces in the Ashridge Journal describing Hitler as ‘a terrible calamity’ and referring to the ‘terrible and evil things we are fighting’.

The Myth of British anti-Nazism and Concern for the Jews

One of the great myths about the Second World War was that it was fought to defend the Jews. In fact, as the Tory journalist and polemicist, Peter Hitchens points out, Britain entered the war to honour the defence treaties we had made with France and Poland. And the historian Martin Pugh has also said that Churchill’s reasons for promoting war with Germany were hardly altruistic. They were entirely geopolitical. Churchill was afraid that German domination of the North Sea and Baltic would threaten British naval supremacy. And although in private he described Mussolini as ‘a perfect swine’, he had made trips to Fascist Italy and was an admirer of General Franco. And a friend of mine pointed out that in none of Churchill’s speeches does he ever condemn Fascism. He attacks Nazism and the Axis, but says nothing about the wider political ideology to which they belonged.

Griffiths points out that the book’s enthusiastic reception by the majority of the British press shows that large numbers of the British population were indifferent to the sufferings of the Jews. He argues that the idea that the war was fought to destroy a brutal regime was a later war aim. Most Brits at the time believed that Nazi aggression had to be countered, but there was more interest in understanding Nazi Germany than condemning the internal structure of Hitler’s vile dictatorship.

He also argues that while there was little of the visceral anti-Jewish Hatred in Britain like that, which had propelled the Nazis to power, there was considerable ‘social anti-Semitism’ in popular culture. Jews were excluded from certain social groups, jokes based on anti-Semitic caricatures, such as their supposed greed for money, ignorance of British social conventions, as well as the suspicion in popular literature that they were the leaders of subversive groups, and were cowards and profiteers in war. Griffiths writes

Though, in contrast to rabid anti-Semitism social anti-Semitism may have appeared comparatively innocuous,, its depiction of the Jew as ‘other’ could lead to apathy and lack of concern when faced with examples of racial intolerance and persecution. On the one hand, as Dan Stone has pointed out, the British public could manifest a ‘casual anti-Semitism’ which fell into the trap of accepting the ‘reasons’ for the German dislike of the Jews. […] on the other hand, while Nazi measures could shock people of all views, may people found it possible to ignore the problem altogether, while speaking only of the matters, in relation to Germany, that they believed to be ‘important’.

The Importance of Maintaining Auschwitz and Educating People about the Holocaust

This attitude clearly changed after the War when the Allies investigated and condemned its monstrous crimes against humanity, prosecuting and hanging the Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials. And an important part of this change was the revelations about the Holocaust. Which is why Holocaust Memorial Day, the preservation of Auschwitz as a museum and memorial to the innocents butchered there and the various Holocaust memorials and museum across the world are important. Its why the real Nazis, unlike Mike, are keen to minimise the Holocaust and deny it ever occurred.

Hypocrisy of British and Libels against Mike and the Left

But this also shows up the hypocrisy of the various papers, which last week published the gross libel against Mike, accusing him of being a Holocaust denier when he is certainly no such thing. Much has been published on the Net and elsewhere about the Daily Mail’s murky, pro-Nazi past, including how the father of editor Paul Dacre was a fanboy of Adolf. And the scum are still doing it. Mike has put up an article this morning about a vile piece in the Torygraph repeating the anti-Semitic tropes of the American Right about the Jewish financier and multi-millionaire, George Soros, accusing him of covertly funding anti-Brexit groups. This part of the American Right’s suspicion that Soros is responsible for all manner of anti-democratic, subversive political groups. It’s part of the anti-Semitic trope of the Jew as leader and instigator of subversion. Perhaps they’d like to go a bit further and claim that he’s also trying to enslave the White race and bring about its destruction through race mixing?

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/02/10/anti-semitic-jewish-conspiracy-story-about-soros-confirms-the-businessmans-own-fears/

Soros against Zionists Because of Collaboration with Nazis in the Murder of Hungarian Jews

Of course, this is just more politically motivated smears. The Israel lobby also hates Soros, because, as Mike points out, he is bitterly critical of Israel’s persecution and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Soros himself is of Hungarian descent, and he despises Zionism because of the way they sold out Hungarian Jews to the Nazis. Kasztner, the leader of the Zionists in Hungary, tried to make an agreement with the Nazi authorities to allow several thousand Jews to be deported to their deaths, so long as the Nazis spared some by sending them to Israel. it’s another example of the way Zionists would collaborate with real Nazis and murderous anti-Semites to promote their own cause, even if it meant the mass murder of Jewish men, women and children.

The Hypocrisy, Smears and Anti-Semitic Tropes of the Israel Lobby, the Blairites and the Lamestream Press

This shows just how selective and hypocritical the British press’ attitude to anti-Semitism is, as well as that of the groups promoting the smears – the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, the Jewish Labour Movement, the Tories and the Blairites in Labour. These smears are used exclusively to isolate and marginalise the Left as a political threat to the cosy neoliberal politics and support for the racist, persecutory regime in Israel. But when it serves their purpose, they will use the same anti-Semitic tropes against those Jews, who also threaten them.

The Bad Man Blog: Q & A with Comics Legend Pat Mills

Borag Thungg again, Earthlets! Pat Mills, one of the Britain’s leading comics creators, and the script robot behind the Nemesis the Warlock, ABC Warriors, DeFoe, and Slaine strips in 2000 AD, and the classic Charley’s War in Battle, as well as Marshal Law, is featured in The Bad Man Blog in an entry for the 5th April this year, in which he answers 10 questions. The Bad Man introduces him with the words

If you want to know where the edge in modern comic books comes from, whether that be the inception of DC’s 80’s Vertigo line, the Image creator evolution of the 90’s, right on up to the Indie Artist ripe market-place, vying for a spot amongst the giants in modernity, then perhaps turn your head back to the late 70’s and the birth of 2000AD.

2000 AD Creator Pat Mills wanted to write working class comic books that shook the establishment and reached out to an angry youth with a subversive message that spoke to them through sci-fantasy. He succeeded with a revolution in British comic book storytelling that’s been oft imitated but never replicated.

Mills talks about the difficulty of writing for a disenfranchised generation, both then and now, without sounding too preachy or ‘David Icke’, and his regret that he couldn’t hit the establishment harder. He talks about how his opposition to the establishment was a product of his upbringing, and particularly his experience with the Roman Catholic Church and the Masons. He gives advice to budding comic creators, and lists the writers, who have been the biggest influence on his writing. Among literary giants like Wilkie Collins, Graham Greene, Dennis Wheatley and Rider Haggard, and modern crusading journalists and polemicists like John Pilger, he also includes Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle for the Molesworth Books, and for Searle’s St. Trinian’s cartoons. In answer to the question of what motivates him to write, he states that it’s a kind of catharsis and a way through strips like Slaine to explore his own psychology. And he also states that its a way of paying tribute to his heroes, like the Levellers. He continues

Defoe is a Leveller – they were great men who schools deliberately do not teach kids about because they stood for freedom. If the Levellers had won it wouldn’t be Charles 1 alone on the scaffold. They’d have got rid of all privilege. And there’d be no Charles 111. How our country allows an idiot with a disturbing, troubled and suspicious private life to take the throne of Britain is beyond me.

He also urges aspiring comics artists and writers to take up social activism and issues in their work, saying

Challenge society, change society, widen perspectives outside the mental straitjacket the media would put us in. E.G. By acknowledging Britain was probably one of the most evil Empires the world has ever known (and it’s still pretty dirty when you look at Iraq and Syria,) it sets us free. It’s not self-flagellation, it’s actually taking pride in the true Britain of characters like Defoe and the Levellers, soldiers like Charley in Charley’s War, wild Celts like Slaine and so on.

He discusses more history you don’t and won’t read about in answer to the Bad Man’s question of what he would do if he could go back in time. Mills’ answer is straightforward: Shoot Lord Milner. He explains that Milner was part of a conspiracy that started the First World War. He states that Belgium was in a secret alliance with Britain and France at the time, and it’s only in Britain that we’ve been taught otherwise. Mills goes on to explain that E. Morel, who exposed the Congo atrocities, also revealed Milner’s role in igniting the War, but his work is simply dismissed as ‘wrong’ by historians today. He recommends that for further information people should read McGregor’s Hidden History, which is available online, Milner’s Second War, and E. Morel’s pamphlets. He explains

If Milner had been assassinated, in 1912, it could have just stopped Armageddon and opportunist characters like Churchill and Lloyd George might never have come to power with the terrible consequences for the people of 1914 – 1918 and beyond. With some areas of history, I’m still a student, but I’ve been studying WW1 since I was a kid and there is no doubt Britain was responsible.

Not something you’re likely to read about in school books or the mainstream media where Max Hastings and Paxman reign supreme, alas. As you can see, I feel strongly about this because we owe it to our ancestors that the truth gets out there. Not the ‘noble sacrifice’ bullshit of Cameron and co. The WW1 generation of young soldiers were murdered by the British establishment in conjunction with other forces, notably the bankers and merchants of death.

He ends the session by talking about the strips he’s working on at the moment.

See: https://therealbadman.wordpress.com/tag/nemesis-the-warlock/

Mills clearly has some very controversial opinions, especially about the Roman Catholic church, and that Britain is occupying Northern Ireland. That clearly isn’t the way the Loyalist community see it. Nevertheless, regardless of his views on the legitimacy of British rule in Northern Ireland, he is absolutely right about there having been a ‘dirty war’ there. Lobster has published a series of articles discussing the collaboration of the British state with loyalist paramilitaries in containing the IRA, and how secret SAS units were embedded in regular army units to assassinate leading Nationalists.

As for the Roman Catholic church, unfortunately he is right in that there is a problem with corruption in Vatican and the Church hierarchy, and this has left many Roman Catholics feeling betrayed. The many scandals around the world about child abuse by priests and clergy has led to many believers leaving the Church, particularly in Ireland and in Germany. Many German Roman Catholics left because of the last pope’s perceived reluctance or inability to tackle the issue and make proper reparations.

Mills also makes a very good statement about the misuse of power in local communities, when he says that in the small town where he grew up, everyone in power knew everyone else, and used their power in very negative ways. Dad and others had the same experience of the power of the local business community in Taunton, and the same abuse of social and economic position and authority still continues in Britain today.

It would be very interesting indeed to read and hear more about Britain’s responsibility for causing the First World War. This is not a view I’ve ever heard before. Quite the opposite. Just about all the historians I’ve ever read have blamed the Germans and Austrians. German historians argue in contrast that the War broke out almost as an inevitable accident, brought about through the web of alliances and the extremely volatile nature of the Balkans. Together, these caused the nations of Europe to ‘drift to war’. The German view, from what I’ve read, is not only rejected by British historians, but seen as something peculiar to Germany. It seems to me that it’s implied in British historians’ criticism of the German view of the origins of the War that the Germans are somehow trying to exculpate themselves from their responsibility for starting it. After reading Mills’ brief statements about the issue, the conventional historical view of German culpability no longer seems at all certain.

His is an extreme view, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. And he’s right about contemporary historiography of the war, at least at the popular level, being dominated by establishment figures like Max Hastings, the former editor of the Telegraph, and Jeremy Paxman. I like Paxo, and think he did a good job when he was on Newsnight, at least of irritating the Tories. But that doesn’t mean he’s telling the truth as an historian. Indeed, Private Eye a few weeks ago pointed out the many mistakes he was making in his latest excursion into literary history. He was trying to argue that a number of literary genres were in fact the creation of British writers in the 19th century. One of these was detective fiction. In fact, the first detective novel is usually considered to be Edgar Allan Poe’s The Mysteries of the Rue Morgue. Mind you, as with so many things, it can also be argued that the Chinese got there first. The Chinese also independently developed the novel, including tales of detection featuring Judge Dee. A number of these were translated by Van Lustgarten, who also wrote a story of his own using the character. So perhaps Paxo probably isn’t the most reliable guide either to literary history, or that of the Great War.

And as extreme as his view is, I don’t think it should be immediately dismissed because of the care Mills took in researching his stories. Charley’s War is a classic because it movingly portrays the reality of the War for the ordinary Tommy, and I’ve no doubt Mills did considerable research when writing the strip and subsequently after. He has said in another interview, a few years ago, how he broke with the traditional, very low view of comic writing when he started on 2000 AD. It was an SF comic, so he bought four books on science to research the subject, and invoiced IPC for expenses. Which left them shocked with the idea that anyone should do something as basic as that. Clearly, 2000 AD and its characters are Science Fiction and Fantasy, not fact, and in many cases very obviously are far from conventional scientific or historical fact. But the fact that Mills is prepared to research carefully the background of the strips he writes does make me wonder whether he’s right about this issue as well. But go and read what he says for yourselves, and make your own minds up.

Splundig Vur Thrigg!, as Old Green Bonce would say.

George Galloway and Peter Hitchens on Blair and the Iraq War

This is another very interesting piece from YouTube, again featuring George Galloway. It’s not really a video, as it’s just recorded dialogue, presumably from his radio show. In it, he talks to the right-wing columnist and broadcast, Peter Hitchens. The two are from completely the opposite ends of the political spectrum, but on the matter of the Chilcot Inquiry and the Iraq War they are largely in agreement. Galloway acknowledges that he has profound disagreements with Hitchens, but also some overlap. Most of the talking in conversation is done by Hitchens, who makes some very interesting points.

Hitchens points out that, although the Chilcot Inquiry made Blair the sole culprit responsible for the Iraq War, there were many others involved, who have been exonerated, such as Alistair Campbell. Hitchens is not greatly impressed with Blair’s intellectual abilities. He states several times that he was only a figurehead, and the real leadership of New Labour was elsewhere. Blair, he contends, didn’t really understand what was going on around him. At one point Hitchens states that Blair didn’t really want to be a politician. He wanted to be Mick Jagger. He probably had the intellectual ability to be Jagger, but certainly lacked the necessary brainpower to be prime minister. He also argues that Blair was really only a figurehead for New Labour. He was found and groomed by the real leaders of the faction, who wanted someone who would be ‘the anti-Michael Foot’. They settled on Blair, and prepared him for the role without him really understanding what was going on.

Hitchens and Galloway also discuss the allegation that everyone was in favour of the War, and it was only the Left that was against it. Hitchens states that he was initially in favour of the War, but if he had the sense to turn against it in 2003, it shows that you didn’t have to have any great prophetic ability to be against it. Hitchens states that he feels that people were led to support the War, because of the myth of the ‘Good War’. This is based on the belief that the Second World War was a straightforward, uncomplicated struggle against evil. Ever since the War, our leaders have been fancying themselves as Churchill or Roosevelt, and casting every opponent as Hitler. They did it with the Iraq War, and they’re doing it now with the Russians and Vladimir Putin. They’re presenting Russia as an expansion power, and preparing for another war with Russia by sending troops to Estonia and Poland, when the reality is that Russia is not an expansionist threat and has actually ceded hundreds of miles of territory. Hitchens also informs Galloway and his listeners that Britain has actually sent troops into the Ukraine.

Hitchens goes on to state that much of the West’s destabilisation and attempts to destroy opposing regimes is done covertly, through the funding of opposition movements, the manipulation of aid, and – here Galloway supplies the words – ‘moderates’. This happened in Syria, where considerable damage was done before we started bombing them. But people don’t realise it, as this will never show up in a newsreel. As for how warmongers like Blair can be stopped, it can only come from parliament. Hitchens remarks approvingly on the way parliament stopped Cameron when he wanted to bomb Syria. Unfortunately, Hitchens concludes that turning Blair into an object of ridicule is the only justice we can expect. He is pessimistic about there being any tribunal that can bring war criminals like Blair and Bush before it, and so here there’s a difference between those, who have and those who don’t hold a religious belief. For religious believers, you hope that there will be an ultimate judgement coming. Galloway concludes by saying that he believes that there is such a punishment coming to Blair.

It’s an interesting dialogue, as the two clearly have pretty much the same perspective on the Gulf War. They’re both religious believers, as they themselves make clear. Hitchens converted from Marxism and atheism to Christianity, while I think Galloway has said that he’s converted to Islam. As believers in two of the Abrahamic religions, they share the faith that God does judge the guilty in the hereafter. Galloway is very supportive of Hitchens in this video as well. Hitchens states at one point that he’s going to publish a book on the myth of the ‘Good War’. Galloway asks him when it’s going to come out. Hitchens then replies that he hasn’t written it yet, to which Galloway then tells him to come on, as he wants to read it.

Hitchens is right about the manipulation of protest movements, humanitarian aid and opposition groups by the West to destabilise their opponents around the world. This is what happened in Chile and Iran with the overthrow of Salvador Allende and Mossadeq respectively. It happened in the Ukraine during the Orange Revolution, and I’ve no doubt Hitchens is exactly right about it occurring in Syria. The parapolitical magazine, Lobster, has been saying this more or lest since it was founded in the 1980s. It laments that very few, in any, academic scholars are willing to accept the fact that so much diplomacy and politics is done through covert groups.

I think Hitchens is also correct about Britain and the West always casting themselves as the heroic ‘good guys’ in their wars, though I strongly disagree with Hitchens’ reasoning behind it. Hitchens has made clear in his books, column and website that he believes Britain should have stayed away from the Second World War. He correctly points out that it was not about saving the Jews from the Holocaust, but honouring our treaty with the French to defend Poland. he also thinks that if Britain had not declared War, we would still have the Empire.

I’ve blogged before that I believe this to be profoundly wrong. We did the right thing in opposing Hitler, regardless of the motives of the time. The Poles, and the other nations threatened by Nazi Germany needed and deserved protection. Churchill’s motives for urging Britain into the War was that Nazi Germany would be a threat to British naval power in the North Sea, if they were allowed to conquer Europe. This is a correct evaluation. A Europe under Nazi domination would see Britain pushed very much to the periphery. The Nazis believed that it was control of the Eurasian landmass which would determine future economic and political power and influence. If Britain was deprived of this, she would eventually stagnate and decline as an international power.

Nor do I believe we would have kept the Empire. The first stirrings of African nationalism had emerged before the Second World War. Ghana had taken a momentous first step in being the first African colony to have indigenous members of its governing council. The Indian independence movement had been growing since the 19th century, and was gathering increasing support and power under the leadership of Gandhi. Orwell, remarking on a parade of Black troopers in French Morocco in the 1930s, stated that in the mind of every White man present was the thought ‘How long can we keep fooling these people?’ The War accelerated the process of independence, as, along with the First World War, it taught the indigenous peoples of the Empire that the British alongside whom they fought were not gods, but flesh and blood, like them, who suffered sickness and injury. The War also forced the pace of independence, as Britain was left bankrupt and exhausted by the War. As part of their reward for aiding us, the Americans – and also the Russians – demanded that we open up the Empire to outside commerce and start to give our subject people’s their independence. This was particularly welcome to the leaders of the Jamaican independence movement. This had also started in the 1930s, if not before. It was partly based on the dissatisfaction of the Jamaican middle class at having their economy managed for British interests, rather than their own. They hoped that independence from Britain would allow them to develop their economy through closer links with the US.

I also think that the belief of most British people in the rightness of the Wars we fought also comes from British imperial history. Part of the Victorian’s legacy was the Empire and the belief that this was essentially a benign institution, which gave the less developed peoples of the world the benefits of modern British rule, medicine, technology and so on, while downplaying the atrocities and aggression we also visited on them. It’s a rosy view of the Empire, which is by no means accepted by everyone. Nevertheless, it’s the view that the Tories would like to instil into our schoolchildren. This was shown a few years ago by their ludicrous attack on Blackadder and demands for a more positive teaching of British history. Unlike the Germans, who were defeated and called to account for the horrors of the Nazis and Second World War, Britain has never suffered a similar defeat, and so hasn’t experienced the shock of having to re-evaluate its history and legacy to that level. And because Hussein was a brutal dictator, Blair was indeed able to pose as Churchill, as Thatcher did before him, and start another War.

The Young Turks Celebrate the Defeat of Ted Cruz

Mike over at Vox Political has posted this piece about Trump’s victory over Ted Cruz in the Republican primaries: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/05/04/trump-now-certain-to-get-republican-presidential-nomination-as-ted-cruz-quits/

He rightly notes that this makes it almost certain that Trump will get the Republican nomination. And so he says, ‘Be afraid. Be very afraid.’

On the other hand, The Young Turks’ anchor, Cenk Uygur, is ecstatic about Cruz’s defeat, as showing in the video below.

This isn’t because The Turks are an ultra-Right news organisation, like Fox. Rather the opposite. But they took the line that as bad as Trump was – and he is abysmal – Cruz was slightly worse. Trump talked about banning Muslims from America. Ted Cruz was actually trying to put this policy into practice. He was part of a team in Congress that was trying to pass a bill limiting Muslim immigration to the US. So depending on your view of Ted Cruz – Uygur actually describes him as ‘Lucifer’, Cruz’s defeat isn’t all bad.

Unfortunately, it means that Americans when they go to the polls may well be faced with a choice between Trump – a raving White supremacist and misogynist creep – and Hillary Clinton, a corporate shill for American imperialism. Neither will do much for the ordinary blue-collar and middle class people of America. As for foreign policy, Trump has said various contradictory statements, but several of them have been about how he’ll ramp up the war on terror and increase the use of torture ‘even if it doesn’t work’. As for Shrillary, she’s been a party to the overthrow of a democratically elected Leftist government in Honduras, all for American corporate profit. And the Rightist government that followed have carried out intimidation, purges and assassinations of Left-wing and indigenous rights activists.

Twenty years or so ago, Radio 4 did a series on the negotiations at Yalta between Stalin, Churchill, and president Truman on how the world was to be divided up after the Second World War. It was called The Eagle and the Small Birds, after a comment from Churchill:

‘The eagle should let the small birds sing, and care not wherefore they sang.’

That was a metaphor for the smaller, less powerful nations, that Churchill rightly feared were threatened by the new global dominance of the Soviet Union.

But Churchill’s words are also all-too descriptive of the smaller, weaker nations that have been dominated and brutalised by American and western power over the same period, a process that has not stopped after the Fall of Communism. Bernie Sanders in one of his speeches recognised this evil, and said that if he was president, there’d be no more invasions. I hope he wins the Democratic nomination against Shrillary. The last thing this planet needs is more war, and more bloody coups.

Tories Waffle to Prevent Bill against Privatisation of the NHS in Parliament

Mike over at Vox Political has put up another important piece reporting a filibuster in parliament to ‘talk out’ a bill by the former leader of the Green party, Caroline Lucas. The four Tories, who waffled and blustered in order to prevent the bill being discussed or passed, were David Nuttall, Phillip Davies, Phillip Hollobone, and Sir Edward Leigh.

Mike writes:

It’s hard to think of Philip Davies without imagining that the people of Shipley were so disillusioned with Parliament that they sent a motion of the bowels to Westminster as a sign of their low esteem.

The sh*t from Shipley was one of four Tory MPs who waffled their way through the time allotted for Caroline Lucas’s Bill to stop the creeping privatisation of the National Health Service.

By their actions it is therefore easy to conclude that Davies, Philip Hollobone, David Nuttall and Sir Edward Leigh want to take free healthcare away from their constituents as soon as possible.

That’s very bad news if you live in Kettering, Bury North, Gainsborough and the afore-mentioned Shipley.

For more information, go to:

When Tories talk about ‘our NHS’ it means they think they own it already

The title to Mike’s piece is ‘When Tories talk about ‘our NHS’ it means they think they own it already’. This is exactly right at a number of levels. As I have been blogging about recently, I had a commenter on my blog criticise me when I claimed that Nye Bevan was the architect of the NHS. He was. The commenter maintained that the NHS was a policy of the National government during the War, which produced the Beveridge Report upon which the NHS is based. Also true. He also pointed out that Churchill also backed the NHS. Again, true, but Churchill was also very cautious in his support, and only broadcast his backing for it after the Labour Party had demanded a parliamentary debate about its early implementation now in 1942. The Tories turned this down, leaving the report to spend two years in committee. At which point the government realised that the Tories had shot themselves in the foot, and given the next election to Labour.

Now the argument over the creation of the NHS is important. It’s true that the Beveridge Report united Labour, the Liberals and left-wing Tories in its support. However, the Tories need to lay claim to it in order to assure the population that they have their best interests at heart, and won’t do anything to deprive them of it. In the 1980s and 1990s Thatcher’s and Major’s government declared that they weren’t going to privatise the NHS, and that it was only the Tories that knew how to run it efficiently and effectively.

This has been shown to be bunkum. It was either Thatcher’s or Major’s government that picked a fight with the dentists, causing them to leave the NHS en masse. The result has been the decline in cheap dental treatment for the poor and unemployed, and the corresponding decline in the health of the nation’s teeth. Well, the Americans have always made jokes about how we’ve got bad teeth. It’s even in Orwell. Possibly one of the public school wags in the Tories thought it would be a jolly good jape to play up to the stereotype, at least with the peasants. Make them all look like gap-toothed yokels, what? Spiffing! She also introduced fees for eye tests, and as a result fewer people saw the optician. She and her ministers solved this problem by lying about it, and so told the press that since charges were introduced, more people were actually going to have their eyesight examined.

Right. Pull the other one.

As for the statement that only they could keep the NHS in budget, this is a massive, sick joke. The Tories introduction of the internal market in the NHS has created more bureaucracy, along with Peter Lilley’s introduction of the Private Finance Initiative. This is a ruse by which the millions contracted by the government in debt for certain projects are kept off the record books, even though it’s immensely more expensive than normal procedures of funding infrastructure development. In a way, it’s ironic that it was Lilley that dreamed the scam up. He’s been compared on various satirical shows with Nazi officers, and something similar to the PFI was used by the Italian dictator, Mussolini, to finance infrastructure spending in Fascist Italy. Or perhaps it isn’t a coincidence at all, considering how well parts of the Tories got on with Gianfranco Fini’s ‘post-Fascist’ Alleanza Nazionale. And the results of the Tories’ latest mismanagement of the NHS has been to push it even further into debt, no doubt in preparation for its eventual sale.

And the commenter, who turned up here to criticise me for crediting the creation of the NHS on Nye Bevan also let the cat out of the bag there. He claimed that an opinion poll showed most people weren’t concerned if healthcare was private, so long as it was free. Well, that contrasts with the 85% of people in other polls, who definitely don’t want the NHS to be privatised. Presumably the people, who aren’t concerned if it’s private are all friends of Sam Cam, like the businesspeople who supposedly came out in supported of Cameron’s policy. This was later revealed to be not a spontaneous display of support, but due to Sam Cam ringing round their friends.

Don’t be fooled. Since Thatcher, the government has wanted to privatise the NHS. They are laying claim to it in order to sell it off.

Vox Political on Salmond being Denied Official Help by British Diplomats in Iran

Mike over at Vox Political has this story from the Groaniad, http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/01/25/salmond-v-hammond-and-the-constitutional-crisis-caused-by-a-diplomatic-dinner/. When Alex Salmond of the SNP flew to Iran just before Christmas on an official visit as the SNP’s Foreign Affairs spokesman, he expected to have the facilities of the British embassy in Tehran made available to him. When he got there, he was told by the ambassador, Philip Hammond, that he was not entitled to them, and so ended up hosting the event himself back at his hotel, paying not just for his own delegation, but for the staff from the embassy and the Iranian guests, who attended.

Salmond makes the point that this politicisation of the Foreign Office is absolutely unacceptable. It is the British Foreign Office, not that of the Tory party.

It’s an attitude of which the Conservatives, their SPADs and Philip Hammond should be ashamed. Firstly, it’s a disgraceful way to treat fellow Brits, especially in front of foreign dignitaries like the Iranians. It truly shames Britain.

And it’s especially embarrassing because this was done in front of the Iranians. The Iranians are deeply suspicious of Britain. This stems partly from their experience of British colonialism during the late 19th and 20th centuries, when Britain tried to draw them unofficially into the sphere of the Empire. British financial control and constraints were put in place following a series of colossal, and unrepayable loans, made to the Qajar Shahs, who were finally over thrown by the father of the last shah in 1920. After oil was discovered in Iran, the oil industry was effectively controlled by BP, who were then Anglo-Persian Oil. We seized the oil fields again during the Second World War, to prevent them falling into the hands of the Germans. About this, Churchill said, ‘In tempus belli leges silent’ – ‘in times of war, laws are silent’. When Mossadeq nationalised the Iranian oil industry in the 1950s, the CIA and Britain organised a coup to oust him. This led eventually the establishment of complete autocratic rule by the Shah during the White Revolution. And that, in turn, was the cause of Islamic Revolution and the Shah’s overthrow in 1979. During Britain’s control of the Iranian oil industry, Iranians were paid much less, and worked in poorer conditions than the British workers.

As a result, there’s a level of deep distrust in Iran towards us. John Simpson in his book on Iran states that there’s an Iranian proverb that runs, ‘If you see a stone in your path, it was put their by an Englishman’. Many Iranians also blame us for the Ayatollah Khomeini. In the 1990s there was a rumour going round that Khomeini was the son of a British oil worker called Williams. It’s completely untrue, but widely believed. And the subject of a number of jokes.

It was quite an achievement in the 1990s when diplomatic contact between Britain and Iran was finally restored and relations ‘normalised’, especially after the Ayatollah placed the fatwa on the head of Salman Rushdie. This, incidentally, hasn’t been lifted. It is much to the credit of Obama that he has prevented the Iranians getting nukes, and enabled the sanctions to be lifted and trade with Iran to begin again.

Britain can benefit from this. I can remember back in the 1990s Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili and other Young British Artists flying to Iran when the regime put on an exhibition of some of their works. Quite how that happened, I honestly don’t know, as the strains of modern, Western-influenced art, was one of the cultural issues the Iran revolutionaries were particularly reacting against. What is shocking to us is probably just as shocking to them. If not more so. But there you are.

Hammond’s fit of pique in denying official services to Salmond therefore seems to me acute counterproductive. It appears to show the Iranians that British politics between Scotland and Westminster is acutely divided, and that the British delegation have a strain of petty spite. This is not an image to project to potential business partners or allies in the common fight against terrorism and genocide in the Middle East.

William Blum on Right-Wing Coups in Greece

This is another interesting piece from William Blum’s Anti-Empire Report. Blum is a long-time critic of American imperialism. I’ve already reblogged several of his pieces. In issue 137 of his Report, he comments on the election of the new Syriza government in Greece. A number of the commenters on Mike’s blog wondered how far Syriza would be allowed to go in defying the Troika and its economic diktats before they were overthrown by the Fascist right, all in the name of fiscal responsibility, properly paying off the debt, Greece honouring its international obligations, and so forth.

They weren’t alone in fearing for Greece’s future as a democratic country in the face of pressure from the EU and the international financial and industrial nexus. Blum also wondered how long they would last, based on the historical precedents. After the War, Greece was forced into the Western, capitalist bloc following the agreement Churchill and the Americans had made with Stalin at Yalta. The result was a bloody civil war fought against the Communist partisans, who had done the most to stop the Italians and had fought hardest against the Germans. Then, in 1964, when the liberal Papandreou came to power and began to pursue an independent line, he was overthrown in a coup, backed again by the CIA and the Americans. Blum writes

American historian D.F. Fleming, writing of the post-World War II period in his eminent history of the Cold War, stated that “Greece was the first of the liberated states to be openly and forcibly compelled to accept the political system of the occupying Great Power. It was Churchill who acted first and Stalin who followed his example, in Bulgaria and then in Rumania, though with less bloodshed.”

The British intervened in Greece while World War II was still raging. His Majesty’s Army waged war against ELAS, the left-wing guerrillas who had played a major role in forcing the Nazi occupiers to flee. Shortly after the war ended, the United States joined the Brits in this great anti-communist crusade, intervening in what was now a civil war, taking the side of the neo-fascists against the Greek left. The neo-fascists won and instituted a highly brutal regime, for which the CIA created a suitably repressive internal security agency (KYP in Greek).

In 1964, the liberal George Papandreou came to power, but in April 1967 a military coup took place, just before elections which appeared certain to bring Papandreou back as prime minister. The coup had been a joint effort of the Royal Court, the Greek military, the KYP, the CIA, and the American military stationed in Greece, and was followed immediately by the traditional martial law, censorship, arrests, beatings, and killings, the victims totaling some 8,000 in the first month. This was accompanied by the equally traditional declaration that this was all being done to save the nation from a “communist takeover”. Torture, inflicted in the most gruesome of ways, often with equipment supplied by the United States, became routine.

George Papandreou was not any kind of radical. He was a liberal anti-communist type. But his son Andreas, the heir-apparent, while only a little to the left of his father, had not disguised his wish to take Greece out of the Cold War, and had questioned remaining in NATO, or at least as a satellite of the United States.

As far as I can tell, all of this is correct. Misha Glenny, talking about his book on the Balkans at the Cheltenham Literature Festival back in the ’90s, stated that the division between the ‘east’ and ‘west’ bloc countries was entirely artificial, and was made according to the interests of the great powers, not the people of those countries themselves. The Communists were far stronger in Greece than in Romania, for example, but geopolitical considerations decided that Greece ended up in the West, and Romania in the Communist bloc.

The full article can be read at: http://williamblum.org/aer/read/137. The article’s entitled, Some Things Not To Forget, Which the New Greek Leaders Have Not’.

Boris Gets His Own Glossy Fan Mag

More proof of Boris Johnson’s vaulting political ambitions, or at least, his galloping megalomania.

Looking through the Cheltenham branch of W.H. Smith a few weeks ago, I found on the magazine racks a glossy brochure devoted to Boris. Simply titled Boris Johnson, it was very much like the type of glossy specials brought out to celebrate a royal event, like the queen’s coronation, the jubilee, or a royal wedding. It also reminded me of some of the material that came out during Thatcher’s reign. Despite its highly offensive and distasteful subject matter to anyone on the Left, and to a few genuinely caring Tories, for that matter, there was a point to it. Most of these came out when Thatcher celebrated 13 years in power. She was at that point the longest serving British prime minister, and the first woman to hold the office. In those respects she deserved to be commemorated. Or at least, she had as much right to be as every other holder of the office.

Boris, on the other hand, is still some way away from that lofty post. He’s been editor of magazine, The Spectator, though so was the fictional Jim Hacker of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister fame. And part of what made Hacker funny was that essentially he was a nondescript, junior MP, who was given a political office – the Minister for Administrative Affairs – who imagined himself as something far greater and grander. Like Winston Churchill. His voice took on the Great Warleader’s inflections and tones when he started to imagine the glorious political future stretching ahead of him, and the country under his benign leadership.

Which makes you wonder somewhat about Boris. Does he also stand in his office, posing as Churchill, trying to capture the great man’s tones and mannerisms in his office while no-one’s looking, conjuring up before his inner eye a magnificent future in which Maximus and UNUM have saved the government millions by killing off all the disabled through starvation, and the poor and proles are properly confined to their own ghettos and know their place?

The first part of that grim scenario is unlikely. Johnson has gained much of his popularity through posing as a loveable, bumbling oaf. He makes mistakes, but he means well, and it’s all a good laugh, so why not vote for him? In actual fact, while I’ve no doubt some of his accident prone persona is genuine, it strikes me as exaggerated and played up to get public sympathy. And people who know Johnson say he is a steely political operator with a vicious temper, quite different from the amiable fool that appears on Have I Got News For You.

The second part of that scenario, on the other hand, is all too plausible. It seems very clear that Johnson covets the role of PM, and would like to unseat, or at least, succeed Cameron in that role. And like the rest of the Tories, he has an absolute contempt for the poor and working and lower middle classes. It’s indicative of the contempt he feels for the people of London that he decided he couldn’t afford to pay the firemen a proper wage, but could buy three water cannons.

Cheltenham is also on the edge of the Cotswolds, and the magazines looks like it was designed to appear to the Cotswold set of very wealthy that live outside the town, reading magazines like Cotswold Life. Cheltenham itself is rather different, and has a large underclass, very like other towns such as Bath, where the very rich and the poor live practically cheek by jowl.

It also reminds me of the jokes about Adolf Hitler in Red Dwarf, when a set of photographs mutate so they can use them as a time machine. One of the photos is of Hitler, who Kryten recognises as he was featured in one of Rimmer’s specialist magazines: Fascist Dictator Monthly. The Fuehrer was Mr October. It also reminds me of the fan magazine devoted to the evil Torquemada, the genocidally racist grandmaster of Termight – Earth, thousands of years in the future – in 2000 AD’s ‘Nemesis the Warlock’ strip. As Torquemada was the absolute, totalitarian ruler of this nightmarish future Earth, he also had his fan magazine, with the slogan ‘Let’s talk Torquey’, and fan conventions. The last seemed partly modelled on the comics convictions that have been going since at least the ’70s. Johnson is far too clever to give in to the urge to make racist rants like Torquemada. He merely fronts TV series on the splendours of ancient Rome and appears as a genial guest on popular satirical quizzes.

But this is evidence of his megalomania, his driving ambition and his need for popular acclaim, as well as the popular votes, nonetheless. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Nigel Farage Interviewed by Evan Davies on Thatcher, NHS and Gay Kissing

Yesterday I blogged on a piece by Jon Stone in the Independent reporting that Nigel Farage was in favour of introducing the American healthcare system, where it was funded by insurance into the NHS. It looks as though Stone partly based his piece on this interview Farage gave to the Beeb’s Evan Davies on Newsnight a few nights ago.

In summary, Farage talks about how he had been a follower of Mrs Thatcher in the 1980s, and agreed with her about rolling back the state and cutting down the power of the trade unions. He also states that he’s been a lot of other things besides, like a Churchillian. He states he stands for a small state, deregulation and removing taxes.

On the subject of the NHS, he denies that he’s in favour of its privatisation. In answer to careful questioning for Davies, he states that everyone in the 1990s, even Tony Blair, was in favour of finding private solutions to the problem of the NHS. These have not worked. The outsourcing only accounts for 6 per cent of NHS work, and the health service has been saddled with massive debt through the Private Finance Initiative. He wishes to abolish this. He then goes on to say that the state and private enterprise should be kept separate, as mixing them in the NHS has not worked. He does, however, also state that as the population grows to 80, 90, 100 million, we will have to find new ways of financing it, including looking at an insurance-funded system. ‘Nothing should be set in stone’, says the Fuhrer.

On the subject of gay men kissing, Farage himself denies that he personally has any problem with it. On the other hand, many people do have a problem with it, and they shouldn’t be treated with the harsh disapproval that some give them now.

Slippery Farage

This interview actually shows just how slippery and specious Farage is. Much of what he said in this interview makes him and his party look benign and reasonable. He is absolutely right about the Private Finance Initiative. It hasn’t worked. All it has done is make the shareholders of the private contractors extremely rich while saddling them with massive debt. Even George Osborne recognised this. And made exactly the same promise.

Which is why you can’t trust him on this point.

Before the 2010 election, Osborne stated very clearly that the Private Finance Initiative was a disaster and said he would get rid of it. He hasn’t, and it’s gone on regardless, as has the Tories’ privatisation of the NHS.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice … etc.

As for Margaret Thatcher, Farage has said repeatedly that his is a Thatcherite party. Of course, he doesn’t want to say this outright and unqualified on Newsnight, as it means that some of the Labour voters, who he hopes to win over, will immediately drop UKIP like a hot rock. So it’s heavily qualified with flannel about other people he respects, like Winston Churchill, whom he hopes have universal respect.

As for introducing an insurance based system into the NHS, he states that it’s partly done in France and the Netherlands to some extent. In fact, it’s the basis for the health care systems in much of Europe. A Swiss lady I know explained that in her country, medical care was funded partly by the state and partly through insurance contributions. Most people had a mixture of state/ private insurance. Only the very rich had completely private insurance, and only the poorest had completely state care. I think there was a similar system introduced in one of the American states on the East Coast, to the sneers and derision of much of the rest of America.

Now, if Farage wishes to introduce funding through insurance contributions, as in France and the Netherlands, then he still wants to privatise the NHS by opening it up to private health insurance companies.

Despite what Farage believes, or appears to believe, this will make treatment even more expensive. One fifth of Americans cannot afford their healthcare, because of the way insurance premiums have ballooned over the past decade. Farage clearly wants to introduce that into the UK.

And while he says he doesn’t want to privatise the NHS, he also made comments to the contrary. As has his deputy, Paul ‘Eddie Hitler’ Nuttall.

So I simply don’t believe him when he says he doesn’t want to privatise the NHS. It’s exactly what the Tories have said, even when they are doing their level best to sell it off.

As for gay men kissing, while he’s right that there are many people, who would feel uncomfortable about, Farage’s party goes far beyond simple disapproval. Much of the party is bitterly anti-gay, just as the party is also vehemently racist, despite what Farage claims. UKIP’s opponents have attacked the party because, despite it’s ostensibly softer, more reasonable approach, it threatens to legitimise bigotry and intolerance against ethnic minorities. And from this interview, it would also seem gays.

In short, don’t be taken in by the weasel words Farage has made in this interview. His is still a very intolerant party, and he still stands for the privatisation of the NHS, whatever he says.

Working Class Experience and the Tories’ Hatred of International Human Rights Legislation

William(?) Dent, ‘A Right Honble Democrat Dissected’, 1793. In Roy Porter, Bodies Politic: Death, Disease and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2001) 243. The caption for this reads: The various portions of his anatomy display every form of hypocrisy and immorality, personal and political.

The Tories Attack on Human Rights Legislation

Last week I reblogged Mike’s piece, ‘The Tory Euro Threat Exposed’, which demolished some of the claims the Tories were making about the EU, including their promise to hold a referendum on Europe. One of the criticisms Mike made was against the Tories’ plans to withdraw Britain from the European Court of Human Rights. Mike pointed out that the Court is actually nothing to do with the EU, and if Britain withdrew, it would mean the Tories could pass highly illiberal legislation ignoring and undermining the human rights of British citizens. He specifically mentioned workfare, the right to a fair trial and the current laws protecting the disabled as areas that would be under threat. It is not just European human rights legislation and international justice that the Tories are opposed to. They also plan to repeal Labour’s human rights legislation at home.

The Memoir of Robert Blincoe and 19th Century Working Class Political Oppression

Jess, one of the commenters on mine and Mike’s blog, suggested that the part of the problem was that most people now don’t recall a time when there was no absolutely no respect for human rights in Britain, and people were genuinely oppressed and jailed for their political beliefs. As a corrective, she posted a link to The Memoir of Robert Blincoe, a 19th century working-class activist, who was jailed for setting up a trade union. She wrote

Part of the ‘problem’ convincing people of the validity of human rights legislation is they have no concept, or memory, of what things were like before such things began to be regulated. Or the fight it took to force such legislation through Parliament.

This small book, ‘Memoir of Robert Blincoe’, now online, courtesy of Malcolm Powell’s Northern Grove Publishing Project

Click to access A%20MEMOIR%20OF%20ROBERT%20BLINCOE.pdf

“The Memoir….” was first published by Richard Carlile in his journal ‘The Lion’ in 1828. It was republished as a pamphlet the same year, and then re-serialised in ‘The Poor Man’s Advocate’ later the same year.

The pioneer Trades Unionist, John Doherty republished it in 1832, with the co-operation of Blincoe and additional text. Caliban reprinted Doherty’s text in 1977. For some reason it was not mentioned in Burnett, Mayall and Vincent (Eds) Bibliograpy (of) The Autobiography of The Working Class.

19th Century Oppression, thatcher’s Assault on the Unions, British Forced Labour Camps and the New Surveillance State

She has a point. For most people, this was so long ago that it’s no longer relevant – just another fact of history, along with the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Great Reform Act and the Workhouse. It’s an example how things were grim back in the 19th century, but it doesn’t really have any direct significance today. In fact, it’s extremely relevant as the Tories are doing their best to strangle the Trade Unions with legislation following their decimation with the Miners’ Strike under Thatcher. The Coalition has also passed legislation providing for the establishment of secret courts, and Britain is being transformed into a surveillance society through the massive tapping of phones and other electronic communication by GCHQ. And I reblogged a piece from one of the other bloggers – I think it was Unemployed in Tyne and Weare – about the existence of forced labour camps for the unemployed here in Britain during the recession of the 1920s. I doubt anyone outside a few small circles of labour historians have heard of that, particularly as the authorities destroyed much of the documentation. Nevertheless, it’s a sobering reminder that Britain is not unique, and that the methods associated with Nazism and Stalinism certainly existed over here.

Britain as Uniquely Democratic, Above Foreign Interference

Another part of the problem lies in British exceptionalism. There is the view that somehow Britain is uniquely democratic, with a mission to spread freedom and democracy throughout the world. This conception of one’s country and its history is strongest in America, and forms a very powerful element of the ideology of the Republican party and the Neo-Cons. America has repeatedly refused to allow international courts jurisdiction in America and condemned criticism of American society and institutions by the UN, on the grounds that these organisations and the countries they represent are much less democratic than the US. To allow them jurisdiction in America, or over Americans, is seen as an attack on the fundamental institutions of American freedom. Thus, while America has demanded that foreign heads of states responsible for atrocities, such as the Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, should be tried at the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, it has strenuously resisted calls for the prosecution of American commanders accused of similar crimes.

Britain Not Democratic for Most of its History

This sense of a unique, democratic destiny and a moral superiority to other nations also permeates the British Right. Daniel Hannan, the Conservative MEP for Dorset, who wishes to privatise the NHS, has written a book, on how the English-speaking peoples invented democracy. It’s a highly debatable view. Most historians, I suspect, take the view instead that it was the Americans and French, rather than exclusively the English-speaking peoples, who invented democracy. Britain invented representative, elected government, but until quite late in the 19th century the franchise was restricted to a narrow class of propertied men. Women in Britain finally got the right to vote in 1918, but didn’t actually get to vote until 1928. Part of the Fascist revolt in Britain in the 1930s was by Right-wing, die-hard Tories alarmed at all of the proles finally getting the vote, and the growing power of Socialism and the trade unions. Technically, Britain is still not a democracy. The architects of the British constitution in the 17th and 18th centuries viewed it as mixed constitution, containing monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, with each component and social class acting as a check on the others. The House of Commons was the democratic element. And the 17th and 18th century views of its democratic nature often seem at odds with the modern idea that everyone should have the inalienable right to vote. It seems to me that these centuries’ very restricted view of democracy ultimately derived from Aristotle. In his Politics, Aristotle considers a number of constitutions and forms of government and state, including democracy. His idea of democracy, however, is very definitely not ours. He considers it to be a state governed by leisured, landed gentlemen, who are supposed to remain aloof and separate from the lower orders – the artisans, labourers, tradesmen and merchants, who actually run the economy. In his ideal democracy, there were to be two different fora – one for the gentlemen of the political class, the other for the rude mechanicals and tradesmen of the hoi polloi.

How seriously the British ruling class took democracy and constitutional freedom can be seen in the very rapid way they removed and abolished most of it to stop the proles rising up during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Burke is hailed as the founder of modern Conservatism for his Reflections on the Revolution in France, in which he argued for cautious, gradual change firmly grounded and respecting national tradition, as opposed to the violence and bloodshed which occurred over the other side of the Channel, when the French tried rebuilding their nation from scratch. At the time, however, Burke was seen as half-mad and extremely eccentric for his views.

Imperial Government and Lack of Democracy in Colonies

The lack of democracy became acute in the case of the countries the British conquered as they established the British Empire. The peoples of Africa, the Middle East and Asia were largely governed indirectly through their indigenous authorities. However, ultimate authority lay with the British governors and the colonial administration. It was not until the 1920s, for example, that an indigenous chief was given a place on the colonial council in the Gold Coast, now Ghana. Some governors did actively try to involve the peoples, over whom they ruled, in the business of government, like Hennessy in Hong Kong. For the vast majority of colonial peoples, however, the reality was the absence of self-government and democracy.

British Imperial Aggression and Oppression of Subject Peoples

And for many of the peoples of the British Empire, imperial rule meant a long history of horrific oppression. The sugar plantations of the West Indies have been described as ‘concentration camps for Blacks’, which have left a continuing legacy of bitterness and resentment amongst some West Indians. The sense of moral outrage, as well as the horrific nature of imperial rule for Black West Indians and the indigenous Arawak and Carib peoples in books on West Indian history written by West Indians can come as a real shock to Brits, who have grown up with the Whig interpretation of history. Other chapters in British imperial history also come across as actually quite sordid, like the annexation of the Transvaal, despite the fact that the Afrikaaner voortrekkers who colonised it did so to get away from British rule. The Opium War is another notorious example, the colonisation of Australia was accompanied by the truly horrific genocide of the Aboriginal peoples, and the late 19th century ‘Scramble for Africa’, which saw much of the continent conquered by the French and British, was largely motivated by the desire to grab Africa and its resources before the Germans did.

Whig Interpretation of History: Britain Advancing Freedom against Foreign Tyranny

All this gives the lie to the Whig interpretation of history. This was the name the historian Butterfield gave to the reassuring, patriotic view of British history being one natural progression upwards to democracy and the Empire. There’s still an element of it around today. The view of the Empire as promoted by patriotic text books like Our Empire Story, was of Britain establishing freedom and justice against foreign tyrants and despots, civilising the backward nations of Africa and Asia. Similar views can be found in Niall Ferguson, who in his books states that Europe and America managed to overtake other global cultures because of their innately democratic character and respect for property. Ferguson presented this idea in a television series, which was critiqued by Private Eye’s ‘Square Eyes’.

Another, very strong element in this patriotic view of British history is the struggle Between Britain and foreign tyrants, starting with the French in the Hundred Years War, through the Spanish Armada, and then the Napoleonic War and Hitler, and finally as part of the Western free world standing against Communism. In fact, many of the regimes supported by Britain and the Americans weren’t very free at all. Salvador Allende of Chile, although a Marxist, was democratically elected. He was over thrown in the coup that elevated General Pinochet to power, sponsored by the CIA. Similar coups were launched against the democratic, non-Marxist Socialist regime of Benz in Guatemala. And it hasn’t stopped with the election of Barak Obama. Seumas Milne in one of his pieces for the Guardian, collected in The Revenge of History, reports a Right-wing coup against the democratically elected government in Honduras, again sponsored by America. at the same time Britain and America supported various Middle Eastern despots and tyrants, including the theocratic, absolute monarchies of the Gulf States, against Communism. If you are a member of these nations, in South and Central America and the Middle East, you could be forgiven for believing that the last thing the West stands for is democracy, or that it’s a hypocritical pose. Democracy and freedom is all right for Britain, America and their allies, but definitely not something to be given to the rest of the world. And certainly not if they don’t vote the way we want them.

Origin of Link between Britain and Democracy in Churchill’s Propaganda against Axis

In fact, it’s only been since the Second World War that the English-speaking world has attempted to make itself synonymous with ‘democracy’. While Britain previously considered itself to be a pillar of freedom, this was certainly not synonymous, and in some cases directly opposed to democracy. Some 18th and 19th century cartoons on the radical ferment about the time of the French Revolution and its supporters in Britain are explicitly anti-democratic. Martini Pugh in his book on British Fascism between the Wars notes that large sections of the colonial bureaucracy, including the India Office, were firmly against the introduction of democracy in England. According to an article on the origins of the English-Speaking Union in the Financial Times I read years ago, this situation only changed with the Second World War, when Churchill was faced with the problem of winning the propaganda battle against Nazi Germany. So he attempted win allies, and hearts and minds, by explicitly linking British culture to the idea of democracy. This may not have been a hugely radical step, as Hitler already equated Britain with democracy. Nevertheless, it completed the process by which the country’s view of its constitution, from being narrowly oligarchical, was transformed into a democracy, though one which retained the monarchy and the House of Lords.

House of Lords as Seat of British Prime Ministers, Not Commons

And it wasn’t that long ago that effective power lay with the upper house, rather than the Commons. During the 19th and early 20th centuries a succession of prime ministers were drawn from the House of Lords. It was only after Lloyd George’s constitutional reforms that the head of government came from the Lower House, rather than the chamber of the aristocracy.

Most of this is either unknown, or is just accepted by most people in Britain today. The British’ idea of themselves as uniquely democratic is largely accepted unquestioningly, to the point where just raising the issue of how recent and artificial it is, especially with regard to Britain’s colonies and the Empire’s subaltern peoples, is still extremely radical. And the Conservatives and their fellows on the Right, like UKIP, play on this assumption of democratic superiority. Europe, or anywhere else in the world, for that matter, isn’t as democratic us, and has absolutely no right telling us what to do.

Need to Challenge Image of Britain as Uniquely Democratic, to Stop Tories Undermining It

And so the British image of themselves as innately, quintessentially democratic and freedom-loving, is turned around by the Right to attack foreign human rights legislation, courts and institutions, that help to protect British freedoms at home. This needs to be tackled, and the anti-democratic nature of much of British history and political culture needs to be raised and properly appreciated in order to stop further erosion of our human rights as British citizens, by a thoroughly reactionary Conservative administration determined to throw us back to the aristocratic rule of the 19th century, when democracy was itself was highly suspect and even subversive because of its origins in the French Revolution.