History Debunked Questions Johnson’s Britishness

Oh ho! This is very amusing. The Tory party has always positioned itself, at least since the 19th century, as the party of Britishness. If you listen to its supporters and propaganda, it’s the party of the British constitution and the union, protecting our ancient liberties and defending our great nation from plots and attacks by evil foreigners. Historically this largely meant the French, but today means the EU and Scots Nationalists. Under Maggie Thatcher this nationalism became particularly shrill. The 1987 Tory election broadcast showed Spitfires zooming about the sky while an excited voice told us that ‘We were born free. It’s our fundamental right’ and ended with ‘It’s great, to be great again!’ Political theorists who’ve read, or at least heard of Rousseau could correct the first statement. At the beginning of his book, The Social Contract, which became one of the founding texts of the French Revolution, Rousseau said: ‘Man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains.’ Which is probably not something Thatcher wanted said about her government. As for being ‘great again’, this was the period when Thatcher was selling our state industries off to foreign investors, destroying trade unions, cutting unemployment and other welfare benefits and trying to find ways to get people to take out private medical insurance instead of relying on the NHS. She would have liked to have privatised that, but was prevented by a massive cabinet rebellion. At the same time she was using her ‘strong state’ against striking miners and anyone else she thought was an evil Commie subversive while at the same time propping up truly evil Fascist dictators abroad. Like the brute General Pinochet, responsible for the murder and torture of 30,000 people in his native Chile. The country’s present grinding poverty and crumbling infrastructure are all a result of her policies. The identification of the Conservative party with Britishness was so loud and crass that, reviewing the election broadcast on Radio 4’s The News Quiz, the late, much-missed humourist Alan Coren referred to the planes as ‘the Royal Conservative Airforce’. I also remember one of the Observer’s columnists referring to the Tories as ‘the patriotic party’.

But now aspersions have been cast on the Britishness of the Tories’ leader and current head of the country, Boris Johnson. Simon Webb of the History Debunked YouTube channel put up a piece yesterday asking ‘How British Is Boris Johnson?’ This speculated that Johnson carries on the way does because, quite simply, he isn’t really British. He was born in New York, and is of mixed Turkish and American ancestry. He is also part Jewish, which is one reason why I’m not going to put the video up here. One of the elements of the genuine anti-Semitic conspiracies is the allegation that Jews aren’t really patriotic citizens because of their international connections and foreign ancestry and relatives. They have frequently been accused of being ‘rootless cosmopolitans’ with no real connection or loyalty to the gentile peoples among which they settle. It’s a poisonous allegation that has resulted in the murder of countless innocents and encouraged the formation and growth of Fascist organisations and parties like the Nazis. The vast majority of British Jews are as British as everyone else. And before the Second World War, the vast majority of Jews wished to remain in the countries of their birth, to be accepted as patriotic fellow citizens by their gentile countrymen. It’s why the leaders of the British Jewish community during the First World War actually opposed the Balfour Declaration. They did not want the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine nor anywhere else, as it could lead to the accusation that their loyalties were divided. And they weren’t. They were, and wanted to be seen as, patriotic Brits.

But there is a kind of irony in Boris Johnson, a pukka old Etonian, and true-blue Tory being accused of not being British enough.

And I think Webb has a point, though not in the sense he means. At the heart of the right-wing ranting and suspicion about the ‘globalists’, supposedly plotting to create an evil, Satanic one-world Communist state, there’s an element of truth. Regardless of their nationality or ancestry, it appears to me that the global superrich really are forming a separate international class whose loyalty is primarily to themselves and not to the people below them, even if these people are of the same nationality. You can see that in the way the Tory grandees and those like them move their capital around the world, investing in countries on the other side of the world while making pay and conditions worse over here and cutting benefits. As far as I know, Jacob Rees-Mogg is thoroughly British in his ancestry. He also projects a caricatured, right-wing image of Britishness very much like his nickname of ‘Lord Snooty’. He also backed Brexit, which was supposed to be another patriotic gesture in which Britain took back her sovereignty.

In fact Brexit has wreaked massive harm to our economy, disastrously cutting British firms off from continental markets and suppliers. The deals we’ve made, or are trying to make, with the Americans, Australians and New Zealanders are to our disadvantage, whatever the Tory mouthpieces say to the contrary. And the response of Rees-Mogg and the superrich like him amply demonstrate where their loyalties lie. Even before Brexit, Mogg had invested in companies in the far east. And when he was urging everyone to vote to leave the EU, he was moving his own financial interests to Eire. This was to pick up on all the EU business he would otherwise have lost if they’d remained centred in Britain. Which is, to me, another example of Tory hypocrisy.

Back in the 19th century Disraeli declared in his books Coningsby and Sybil that Britain was divided into two nations, the rich and poor, who had no knowledge or connection with each other, and demanded that this should be remedied. They’ve been talking about ‘One Nation’ Toryism every since. This is done by leaders like John Major, Michael Howard, David Cameron and so on, and is supposed to show that they are from that branch of the party that still has some paternalistic regard for those below them. The same people talk, or used to talk, about ‘caring Conservativism’. This is all the while doing what Tories always do – cut benefits, wages, and employment conditions and make it easier to sack people. All while manipulating the stats to persuade people that this is actually working and that they’re somehow better off.

Tony Benn in one of his books said something about the British ruling class regarding the lower orders as indeed like a foreign nation. Thinking about the Britannia Unchained mob, he had a point. This was the book written by a group of Tory MPs, including the smirking insult to decency, Priti Patel, that said that for Britain to compete in the global market, British workers must endure the same terrible conditions and wages as those elsewhere in the world, like India. A similar view was put forward by a former Lib Dem MP for Taunton Deane in Somerset. I’ve forgotten who he was, but I do remember his appearance on the local news. Introducing him, the interviewer stated that he came from a family of colonial administrators and governors. This strongly suggests to me that, deep down, he regarded British people of all colours in the same way his family had regarded the Africans and other indigenous peoples they governed.

And going back back to the 1920s, George Bernard Shaw attacked the Tory claim that they and the rich represented Britain and her interests in his book The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism by pointing out that the rich spent much of their time and money abroad, and preferred to invest in firms in the colonies using cheap indigenous labour. And this still remains absolutely true. One of the problems with Britain’s banking system is that its investment banks are geared to putting money into commonwealth rather than domestic industries.

At a fundamental level, Boris Johnson and the rest of the Tory elite really don’t have any connection to the Brits below them. It’s not because of their ancestry. In my view, they’re the same whether they’re completely British by descent. It’s because they are part, and see themselves as part of an international industrial and political class, who move their businesses and investments from one country to another without concern for how this affects their fellow countrymen. All the while trying to deceive the rest of us by yelling about their Britishness and British values.

Johnson and the Tories aren’t British patriots, except at the crude level of repeating nationalist slogan and anti-immigrant attitudes. Ordinary Brits are foreigners to them, like the low-waged workers in other countries they also seek to exploit.

Vox Political: Priti Patel Confirms ‘Leave’ Campaign Wants to Take Away Workers’ Rights

Mike on Saturday also posted up another piece commenting on the anti-working class policies of the ‘Brexit’ crowd. Priti Patel, one of its leaders, and the author of the notorious Britannia Unchained, gave a speech to the Institute of Directors claiming that leaving the EU would give Britain an opportunity to abandon its legal obligations to protect workers under current EU legislation. She claimed this would produce another 60,000 jobs.

Frances O’Grady, the head of the TUC, has denounced this attack on workers’ rights by the ‘Leave’ campaign. The TUC has also commissioned a report into which rights would be vulnerable to repeal from Michael Ford, QC. Some of these are listed in this piece reblogged by Mike.

See: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/05/21/priti-patel-admits-leave-campaign-agenda-to-reduce-workers-rights-tuc/

This latest sputtering from the Brexit crowd doesn’t surprise me in the least. I’ve said all along that what really annoys the Tories about the EU is the Social Charter, as was shown back in the 1990s when Terry Wogan had on his show a Tory politico, who fully endorsed the Common Market but hated the protection it gave European workers. Patel and the other authors of Britannia Unchained argued in that vile little screed that British workers should accept poor conditions and work harder, so that the country can compete with the sweatshops of the Developing World. The same views were articulated here in the West Country by an ‘Orange’ Book Lib Dem from Taunton Dean. Of course, neither Patel nor the rest of that crew believe in cutting managers’ salaries and shareholder dividends in order to make the companies more competitive by allowing them to free more capital to invest in new machinery and research and development.

As for those 60,000 or so jobs, they wouldn’t appear either if Britain left the EU. The money saved from the EU contributions would be frittered away giving yet more massive tax cuts to the rich. Or else it would be eaten up in the extra expenses that would be incurred by Britain going it alone outside Europe, and having to hammer out trade agreements with each individual EU nation, as Mike has repeatedly pointed out.

As for Patel herself, I have nothing but contempt for her. She first appeared in the 1990s, and was hailed and applauded by the Daily Mail, who produced her as a sign that the Tories were embracing ethnic minorities. She was featured in an article headlined, ‘As Priti as a Picture’. The article naturally claimed that Tory ethnic minorities were better than the Blacks or Asians in Labour, who were, of course, all riddled with post-colonial racial resentment against the Whites.

It struck me the other day that the arguments the Tories and big business use to justify unpaid internships would be wonderful for the apologists for slavery if somehow that vile trade had not been made illegal by Wilberforce, Olaudah Equiano, John Wedderburn and the rest of the Abolitionists. When Wilberforce and the others were launching their campaign to send the trade and free its victims, the West Indian planters and slavers complained that it was a ‘visonary’ and ‘philanthropic’ attack on private enterprise and private property, and as a result the economy would suffer. You can imagine the same slavers telling the slaves in Africa, and the indentured Indian labourers, who were exploited in the infamous ‘Coolie’ Trade, that they were going to enjoy a wonderful employment opportunity abroad. No, the planters couldn’t afford to pay them, but this would be good experience. Actually, the latter was the argument during the period of unpaid apprenticeship. After slavery itself was formally ended, the slaves were supposed to work unpaid for their masters in order to learn how to be upright, independent, self-reliant citizens. I’ve posted articles before comparing it to workfare.

And just as there was a slave trade from Africa across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and the New World, so there was also a slave trade across the Indian Ocean, from Africa, to Arabia, India and Asia. Indeed, the British authorities in the Bengal presidency banned slavery there as early as the 1820s, and in the 1870s the Raj stepped into ban the African slave trade carried out by British Indians, and confiscated their slaves. It struck me that the Indian slave trade was probably carried out by someone very like Priti Patel, just as someone like Gove and Johnson were probably out defending the slave trade in the Atlantic. I am certainly not accusing any of the above of personally supporting the slave trade, or having any connection to it. Just that they’ve got the same nasty exploitative attitudes of those who did.

Vox Political: Cameron Sneers at Corbyn and Migrants on Holocaust Memorial Day

Mike has posted this story on Vox Political about Cameron’s disgraceful lies about Jeremy Corbyn’s visit to the Calais migrants’ camp: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/01/27/liar-camerons-bunch-of-migrants-comment-attacked-by-labour/ Cameron stated that Corbyn had met with ‘a bunch of migrants’ and told them that they could all come to England.

The first thing to note about this is that, like just about everything Cameron and the Tory front bench ever utter, it’s a lie. Corbyn did indeed meet some of the migrants, but he did not say they could all come to England. He stated that those with a family connection should. This is clearly different from allowing all of them in, as Cameron well knows.

What is most shocking isn’t that Cameron lied once again, and certainly not that he has lied about migration, an issue which the Tories themselves have been shown repeatedly that they are unable to tackle, despite the boasts, promises and often aggressive rhetoric demonising asylum seekers. What is shocking and really offensive is Cameron’s sneering and offhand attitude to the migrants themselves. They’re ‘a bunch’. Like bananas. A mixed assortment, in other words. And he said this on Holocaust Memorial Day.

This is the day when Europe remembers not only the Nazi extermination of the Jews, but, by wider extension, all victims of racism and genocide. The blurb for it in the Radio Times actually says that. And many Jewish organisations make an explicit connection between commemorating and protesting against their own history of persecution, and contemporary genocides and crimes against humanity. Bernie Farber, the head of one of the major Canadian Jewish organisations, drew the ire of the Canadian right-wing Tories a few years ago during the Darfur crisis. Why? He organised an official ‘Shabbat for Darfur’, a ‘Sabbath’ of fasting and prayer against the genocide against its people then being carried out by the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed militias. It annoyed the particularist right, who felt that Farber should just be concerned to commemorate the sufferings of the Jewish people, without worrying about others. And unfortunately, there are others over here who share the same opinion. Like Richard Desmond, who wrote a moving description of his own visit to Auschwitz, before going on to join UKIP, despite the fact that many of the migrants UKIP vilify and denounce are similarly fleeing from the organised extermination of their peoples in their homelands. It seems from this that Cameron has the same view.

A year or so ago Mike also put up another piece commenting on Ian Duncan Smith’s visit to Auschwitz and the hypocrisy involved there. The ‘Gentleman Ranker’ was trying to show he shared the world’s horror and outrage at the crime, while at the same time his policies, like the Nazis, attacked and degraded the sick, unemployed and disabled. In the case of denying them benefit, to the point of death. IDS seems to have regarded the trip as little more than a photo opportunity, a chance to show that he was a decent human being by going on a pilgrimage to a place of the most extreme horror. While all the time, his policies say otherwise. And Cameron, from his dismissive comments about the migrants at Calais, also apparently shares this blithe indifference, even hostility, to the victims of such holocausts today.

Labour’s Yvette Cooper protested against Cameron’s comments and his sneering lack of concern for those, who have lost everything. She is to be applauded for it. As for Cameron, he should feel ashamed, both about his lying, and the sneering racism underneath it. But I doubt that he will. Cameron is a toff, and as the American Socialist journalist Chris Hedges pointed out in a piece I reblogged last week, the upper classes are unpleasant psychopaths. They sneer at the lower classes and have the same contempt for the middle class. It is, however, disguised by clever PR work and various much-publicised philanthropy.

Cameron’s offhand remark about ‘a bunch of migrants’ also tells you everything you need to know about the Tory attitude to globalisation and the social disruption this causes. The elites love it, because it allows them to break the power of national governments to regulate the economy and protect the working and lower middle classes by exporting industry to other countries around the world, where labour is cheap and welfare provision minimal. And if the workers there prove a bit ‘bolshie’ and demand their rights, it can be moved to somewhere else. For the working peoples of the world, it’s been disastrous, as they’ve seen their working conditions deteriorate, wages stagnate and working hours increase. The process is documented in the book Falling Off the Edge, and Greg Palast’s Armed Madhouse. The result of this has been the massive disruption of many societies in the Developing World, culminating in terrorism by guerrillas and the state. The result of this has been the mass migration of millions of displaced people around the world, seeking safety or a better standard of living.

Like those in Calais.

And this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Way back c. ’95, the BBC’s long running science programme, Horizon, devoted an edition to ‘Icon Earth’. This was about the photograph of the full Earth taken from the Moon by the Apollo astronauts, and the way it had changed our perspectives. The programme made the point that there had been no photographs of the Earth as a whole before then. The result of this was that there was a change in consciousness, as the world’s populations became less concerned with their own, particular affairs on more aware of the importance of the planet and interrelatedness of the world’s peoples and their actions. It helped stimulate the nascent ecological movement, as part of this.

The programme covered the contemporary debate about globalisation, then being embraced by the Major and Bliar Conservative and Labour parties. One of the speakers on the programme was an Indian social activist, who opined that while politicians liked globalisation for the opportunities it gave for business, they did not like the mass migration it also engendered. Her words were accompanied by footage of migrants trying to get through various borders, fighting police and border guards as they did. I think she was particularly concerned at the way immigrants to the west from south Asian countries, like India, were being blocked as governments increasingly clamped down. But she also predicted that as time went on, we would also see pockets of the Third World appear in the West.

She’s right. Priti Patel and the other globalists behind the book, Britannia Unchained, wanted to see Brits similarly forced to work the long hours for few material rewards as their counterparts in the Developing World, in order to make Britain, or rather their bosses, more prosperous. And this attitude was echoed in Nick Clegg’s Lib Dems by the MP for Taunton Dean, who wrote his ‘magnificent octopus’ (apologies Baldrick) on the same subject. And the mass migration thrown up by globalisation has carried on. The victims of globalisation’s disruption of societies and economies across the globe, and Cameron and Bliar’s wars in the Middle East, are there in the Calais migrant camps. But they’re un-people, those outside the circle of bankers, industrialists and big businessmen, who are the only people who matter to Cameron. They’re of no interest to him except as a political embarrassment to Cameron, or, at best, just as an opportunity to score a point over a principled rival before his claque of right-wing morons. They are the flotsam and jetsam of the world, thrown up by globalisation.

Cameron’s attitude is disgusting, but entirely explicable in terms of his class and politics. He’s a liar, and the political and economic theories he embraces with such passion have caused misery on a global scale, but he has nothing but contempt for their victims, both within Britain and outside. The sooner he’s voted out, the better.

Jeremy Browne and the Neo-Liberal Lib Dems

Jeremy Browne: The ‘Orange Book’ Liberal who wishes to privatise the Health Service and give even more tax breaks to the rich.

Jeremy Browne, the Lib Dem MP for the Somerset constituency of Taunton Dean, was interviewed briefly by David Garmston on the local news programme, Points West. Browne was in the papers earlier this week because of the policies he outlined in his book Race Plan: An Authentic Liberal Plan to Get Britain Fit for the Global Race. Amongst the policies he advocates are cutting the top rate of tax from 45 per cent down to 40 per cent, privatising the Health Service and replacing it with private medical insurance, and the introduction of education vouchers. Browne stated that these policies were necessary in order to make Britain competitive with the new emerging economies in the Developing World, countries which were pushing Britain further down the hierarchy of rich nations. Garmston asked him about what this would do for the working class, as there was nothing in the book for them. Not so, declared Browne – they would have greater opportunities. Garmston observed that this broke with the Lib Dems. They were a centre-left party, but these policies were well to the right of the Tory party. No, answered Browne, they were real, liberal policies.

Effect of Education Vouchers in Chile

This last statement shows the true origin of Browne’s view: Neoliberalism. Von Hayek and Mises, its founders, claimed that it represents genuine, 19th century liberalism against the progressive liberalism of the 20th century. Milton Friedman, the economic guru of Monetarism, also recommended education vouchers. Guy Debord’s Cat has posted on the way this system has wrecked Chile’s education system. See The Chilean Equality Protests at http://buddyhell.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/the-chilean-equality-protests/. And this is only one of the spectacular failure of Neoliberal economics.

Neoliberalism Producing Global Poverty

As for the effects of global competition, Greg Palast in Armed Madhouse shows how increasing hours and poor pay amongst Western workers has had the effect of driving up working hours and lowering pay in the rest of the world, as the other countries also struggle to compete. The workers in these nations don’t win, as conditions become ever more harsh and poverty, even for those in work, increases. The only people to gain from this are the international, wealthy elite.

Browne’s Privileged Background, like Tory and Tory Democrat Cabinet

This is on a par with Browne’s own background. According to Wikipedia, Browne was a son of the diplomat Sir Nicholas Browne, and grew up in a variety of different countries, including Iran, Belgium and Zimbabwe. It also states that he was educated at Bedales, one of the most expensive public schools in the UK with fees of £10,300 per term. He studied politics at Nottingham University. He also worked for the financial consultancy Drew Rogerson, and the PR firms Edelman and Reputationinc. This is pretty much the background of David Cameron and the Tory and Tory Democrat cabinet – extremely rich middle class with careers in banking and the financial sector, and PR. He thus shares the same views regarding destroying state intervention and the welfare state. Just to show how extremely Right-wing he is, he was in the Telegraph yesterday declaring that there was no point to his party, as there was too much conservatism in it supporting the state and the status quo. The book sounds extremely similar to Britannia Unchained, written by a trio of Tory MPs, who declared that British workers must work harder for less in order for Britain to compete globally.

Break with Tradition of Liberal Founders Welfare State

A hundred years ago the Liberals laid the foundations of the modern welfare state with sickness and unemployment insurance based very much on Bismarck’s reforms in Germany. In 1909 Lloyd George gave a speech at Limehouse appealing to the working class and violently denouncing the aristocracy, corrupt landlords and financial magnates. This was all too much for Winston Churchill, who declared it was ‘Socialism by the backdoor’ and stormed off to join the Tories. Now it seems the Orange Book Liberals, one of whom is Browne, have also rejected Lloyd George’s legacy and gone off to join the Neoliberal extreme Right. When asked by Garmston whether he had an eye on the Lib Dem leadership, Browne denied it, saying that the Lib Dems already had a leader. Considering his latest attack on the Lib Dem party, this denial rings very hollow.

Support for Privatisation and Destruction Welfare State in Lib Dems

Unfortunately, it’s not just Browne, who hold these views. Anne Soper, a Social Democrat MP back in the 1980s declared her support for education vouchers. In the 1987 election Davids Steel and Owen declared that it didn’t matter if the Health Service was privatised, so long as it remained free. Well, Browne wants to privatise it, and certainly doesn’t want it to be free. And all in the name of choice, which was used by Thatcher to justify her disastrous campaign of privatisation and the destruction of the welfare state. The entry for Browne in Wikipedia states that he is a member of the Orange Book section of the Lib Dems. This is the section that fully endorses and supports Neoliberalism and the campaigns of privatisation and cuts to welfare services.

Browne is thus a personal demonstration that if you are working or lower middle class, there is absolutely no point in voting Lib Dem. And especially not in Taunton Deane.