Sunday, 6 February 2011

Booker - by Richard... Sunday, February 06, 2011

Fifty years on The Sunday Telegraph, marking the anniversary of its launch. Was it that long ago?

Despite a self-indulgent leader, however - "a passion for quality, truth and freedom" - the management continues to allow the comment on Booker's column to be sabotaged. This is being done with the active assistance of the moderators. They are deleting comments in "real time", while giving a troll a free pass to put up "spam" posts and to saturate the board, in defiance of the rules - ignoring the many "reports" against it.

The newspaper has become a parody of itself.

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Rot at the Beeb - by Richard...


You might have noticed that I sort of took a day off from the blog yesterday, engrossed in writing the book. The two last posts were directly related, and are a fascinating corner of our history that is little explored.

One recalls of that period that the BBC regarded itself as its "finest hour", the period when broadcasting came of age. But I also found a minute from Winston Churchill from 1941, stating that editorial control was vested completely in the Ministry of Information. Effectively, the BBC then was an arm of the state, the official state broadcaster.

Now, it is the arm of the "liberal" establishment – in theory. But this piece in the Mail on Sundaymakes you wonder whether it is even that, or whether now it is totally out of control. The time has come for all good people to stop paying the BBC tax. The only license here is the BBC's – a license to steal.

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Europe: voices from the grave - by Richard... Saturday, February 05, 2011


What is quite remarkable about the "Europe" debate is how long it has been going, the extract below from a paper submitted to the War Cabinet on 12 November 1942 by Leo Amery, then India Secretary. Even at this time of the war - and in fact from a much earlier date - there had been a wide-ranging debate within the War Cabinet about the shape of post-war Europe, and Britain's role in it. And, nearly 70 years ago, how familiar these arguments are:

"An actual federal scheme for Europe as a whole, involving a surrender of sovereignty to a central Government, is hardly conceivable. But a looser union, more akin to our British Commonwealth, is at any rate within the bounds of possibility. It might be based on such things as a common declaration of civic and cultural rights for all the inhabitants of Europe, a common standing European Conference, mutual economic arrangements as regards currency, tariffs, railway and air communications, and, possibly, a common Air Force to keep the European peace and a definite undertaking by the member States to send military contingents to help enforce it.

What elements would such a European polity comprise? Obviously, if it is to be a voluntary association, it may not include the whole of the Continent. Spain and Portugal might possibly prefer to stay outside and foster their relations with South America, now only a few hours distant. Norway, and possibly indeed the whole of Scandinavia, might prefer to work more closely with the Anglo-Saxon Powers, to whose political outlook and social conditions they are so closely akin.

On the other hand, if the basis of the future European structure is to be not only material interest, but a common European patriotism, a sense of Europe as something characteristic and worthwhile for its own sake, it must clearly not include elements of an entirely different cultural character, with dominating interests outside Europe, or inspired by a patriotism that is not centred in Europe. From that point of view neither Russia nor this country can become actual members of a European polity without destroying its whole effectiveness.

Russia is essentially an Asiatic Power whose centre is steadily shifting eastwards, and its whole tradition is essentially different from that of Central and Western Europe. We belong to a world-wide Commonwealth which, after our own island, has the first and instinctive call on our patriotism. We can play an indispensable part in getting the New Europe started. When it is started we can play a no less important part, as the link between it and America, perhaps also as a mediator between it and Russia.

But we cannot be an actual effective member so long as our main interests, our primary obligations and our instinctive loyalties are concerned with our partners in the British Commonwealth. Still less would Canada or Australia wish to become a part of Europe. We, the British Commonwealth, can no more be an actual part of a United Europe than we can be a part of the United States or of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. We have a greater future before us than any of these other groups and a greater contribution to make to the peace of the world."

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Who wrote this, and when? - by Richard...

The morale of the people of Great Britain at the present time is excellent. Their mood is one of expectancy and confidence. They are awaiting an invasion and have no doubts as to their ability to repel it. But no moods endure indefinitely, and from the point of view of propaganda it is important that we should prepare for what is to come.

Either the invasion will take place and be defeated or else it will be indefinitely postponed. In either case there will be a reaction of opinion and people will begin to ask themselves the question "What next?" It seems highly probable that this phase will be accompanied by peace offers from Germany, of which faint indications have already been apparent. The German case would be that they had accomplished their purpose; that they wished to introduce a new order into the continent of Europe; that they had never desired a war with Great Britain, but that Great Britain and France had declared war on them while they were engaged in rectifying the situation of Poland.

Now that they had overcome all their enemies on the continent why should the useless struggle continue? Great Britain could not win the war except by starving the continent of Europe, which would be a crime against humanity. Britain, possessing in her colonies and dominions the largest Empire in the world, should be content to leave Europe alone.

Important waterways, the Straits of Gibraltar and the Suez Canal should be internationalised; the colonial situation in North Africa should be readjusted; Italy should be assured of her rights in the Mediterranean, but otherwise no claims would be made against Great Britain in spite of all the damage she had done to Germany. She would be left in possession of her vast empire, her prosperous commerce and her command of the sea. Such a peace offensive would be more dangerous than any invasion. The object of it would be to give Germany time to consolidate her gains, to replenish her resources, to strengthen her fleet, with a view to a far more formidable invasion of Great Britain in the future, launched probably without warning in time of peace. The danger of such a peace offensive would lie in the fact that it would make a very wide appeal. To those suffering from war-weariness and lack of vision it would seem eminently fair and reasonable.

People would ask themselves for what it was that they were fighting. They surely could not be expected to continue a world war for the sake of Poland. Still less could they be asked to sacrifice themselves for the small neutral countries which had refused to collaborate with us until they were attacked, which had appealed for our help when it was too late, and which had collapsed ingloriously. As for France, after the treachery of the Petain Government very few English People would be found willing to make sacrifices on her behalf. The cry would be that we should wash our hands of Europe and concentrate upon the development of our overseas possessions, which has always been the policy of the Isolationists.

In order to be prepared for this perilous situation the Government should now formulate in their own minds, with a view to conveying it to the people, a clear and definite picture of the cause that is at stake. Hated as Nazism and Fascism appear to us we must recognise that to millions of young people in Europe they constitute a faith and an inspiration, rendered today still more imposing by the wreaths of victory with which they are adorned. They have also the glamour of revolution, of a new order, of a better world.

So long as we are fighting for our own island we need have no fear but that our cause will stir the emotions of our people just as deeply as this new philosophy stirs the minds of our enemies. But when the island ceases to be the issue, when the menace to it has been, withdrawn, something else must be put in its place to stimulate the temper of the nation. If it then be thought that we are fighting merely to restore the Europe of Versailles and the England of the last two decades, the hearts of the people may begin to fail them because their heads will not convince them of the justice of their cause.

It is perfectly true that Hitler is both introducing a new order and uniting Europe. He is fashioning the whole continent on the totalitarian pattern, he is moulding it into one entity under Germany's heel. He claims that he is thus preventing the possibility of future European war. So long as his successful tyranny endures, his claim holds good, but the answer to this should plainly be that Great Britain is also anxious to see a united Europe, but Europe united by goodwill and in friendship, not by force and in terrors, a Europe based upon some federal system, details of which, will be worked out after the war with the glad co-operation of all the nations, a Europe in which armaments will be pooled and trade barriers will be broken down, and in which each nation will be allowed to conduct its own affairs in its own way with the same kind of freedom as each state in the American Union possesses. It is not necessary here to elaborate the scheme, but it would be the duty of those engaged on propaganda to elaborate it.

Not only would such a scheme give to the people in this country a cause to fight for, but it would also encourage the resistance and revive hopes of all the people of the vassal nations who would again have something definite to which they could look forward. No country possesses such good credentials as Great Britain for putting forward such a scheme, since we alone can point to a previous and successful experiment on similar lines. We can show how our own free Commonwealth of democratic nations has been created, how well it has stood the test of two terrible wars. We can also point to the facts that we have introduced self-government in India; we have abolished the protectorate in Egypt, preferring to base our relations with that country on a treaty concluded with a freely elected Government; and we alone among the nations have, in Iraq, converted a mandated territory into an independent kingdom. The other side of propaganda on these lines should concern itself with the future at home. Here again there should be a policy and a programme.

All evidence goes to show that the greater part of Hitler's success in winning over the minds of moderate, middle-aged Germans was due to the manner in which he solved the problem of unemployment. He has proved that the problem is not insoluble, and there is nothing that a Dictator can do which cannot be better accomplished by a Democracy. Here again it is not proposed to go into detail. We should proclaim that we do intend to make a better world at home in which the abuses of the past shall not be allowed to reappear. Unemployment, education, housing and the abolition of privilege should form the main plank of such a platform.

We must be careful not to slip into the error of appearing to be bribing men to fight by the promise of short hours and high wages when it is all over. We must not promise wealth and ease because that is a promise we could not fulfil. But we can promise in return for labour and sacrifice a greater equality of opportunity and a more even distribution of wealth. Here again, although no doubt many chances have been missed, our credentials are better than those of any other nation, for nowhere else has there been during the last 50 years so much social reform and so much progress.

If the views which I have somewhat vaguely adumbrated above meet with the general approval of the War Cabinet, the Ministry of Information would be provided with the guidance that is needed with regard to the principles upon which they should plan propaganda for the future.

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Baiting the warmists - by Richard...


With that headline, Fox News knows exactly what it is doing – and the shrieks of "it's weather, not climate" can be heard clear across the Atlantic. The storm is not quite as bad as this one (photo below), but it's getting pretty close – and that was in November 1940 at the start of the little cooling.




And the warmists can peddle their damage limitation, with their increasingly absurd claims that the cold and the snow and the ice and the blizzards and the storms and the frostbite are all a natural part of global warming. But their protestations are drowned in sniggers and howls of mirth. And that's one of the reasons why the warmists just hate Fox News.

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Open Fred - by Richard... Friday, February 04, 2011

I was looking for suitable pic to go with the "open thread" (pronounced "fred" in the part of the world where I was born and bred, where they still speak proppa). And google images came up with this. There is a story here, but I'm not actually sure I want to know it.

Anyhow, it seemed a nice colourful attention grabber to go with a post which is there for you to put anything you wish on the comments, without let or hindrance, subject to divine retribution if you break any of the rules, most of which we haven't even made up yet. The last open thread, I thought, went quite well, but – as they do – it gets stale, so here we go.

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Forum - by Richard...

It is open again, for a brief period, for anyone who missed out last time, and wants to register ... subject, as always, to the usual caveats.

My team of gifted helpers are as we speak thinking about ways to improve the presentation of the forum, but unless you think differently, it seems to me that it is an effective way of opening up the "conversation", and ate least we have a corner of the internet which is troll-free.

I have again to express my thanks for the high quality of the comment, and the continued support. For other bloggers, I have to say that I have no objection to you posting your own links on the forum ... and I'll try to make more "open threads" available for that and general purposes.

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Finger on the pulse - by Richard...

Mary Ellen Synon has her finger on the pulse. More to the point, she is fingering Charlie Boy as a rabid Europhile. There was a belief once that he was one of us ... believe no more. He is one of them ... the tumbrels await.

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Posted by Britannia Radio at 20:11