Friday 9 August 2013

The Traditional Britain Group

Today has seen several attacks on the Traditional Britain Group in the national press. These take the time-honoured approach of damning the TBG as of the "far right", making much of the well-known views of Gregory Lauder-Frost, one of its leading members, on immigration and voluntary repatriation, and of course featuring the obligatory denunciation by a public figure; in this case Jacob Rees-Mogg, MP, who spoke at a TBG dinner in May but has now - with the aid, it should be mentioned, of well-known Leftist publication Searchlight, not to mention his masters at Conservative Central Office - recanted his involvement. The TBG has published a response.
The TBG, at whose last conference our own Dr Gabb gave an excellent speech (Preview, is not a libertarian organization, for all that some of its members hold libertarian views. It is, nevertheless, a meeting-point for those who hold traditional views that were mainstream within the Conservative Party of the 1980s but have since been marginalized as that party has moved towards the "centre ground". Its website describes its aims in these words,
Since World War II, serious assaults on our culture, heritage, constitution and institutions have gathered apace, leaving many dismayed and eager for change. Political correctness and enforced multiculturalism have watered down our rich national character and have forced honest and intelligent people to hide their true feelings for fear of reprisals.
Today liberal-left ideas are all pervasive, whilst the Conservative Party has failed to defend or preserve anything conservative or traditional. The organic and intrinsic, social, spiritual, legal and economic institutions of the British have been undermined and destroyed in the name of vague promises of equality and prosperity, whilst a transnational ideological, managerial and corporate elite dominate Europe with little accountability. The vacuum that remains has been filled by little more than blind consumerism, broken communities and socio-economic, environmental, spiritual and moral decline.
These are lines which, I suspect, are likely to have many of our readers nodding in agreement. There are twenty-one standpoints on the same page which articulate Conservative principles that would have been utterly unexceptional until recently, and which have found particular expression over the years in such organizations as the Conservative Monday Club.
It is significant that two of the attacks that have appeared have been in the leading newspaper of the Quisling Right, The Daily Telegraph, and in The Times, which was once a conservative newspaper. Their timing, considerably after the event in question, give rise to the likelihood that there is a political motivation behind these stories. In both papers, Mr Lauder-Frost is asked about his views on voluntary repatriation of the ethnic minorities as posted on Facebook and robustly defends these comments. The TBG's Facebook page also reacted to the news that Doreen Lawrence is to be made a life peer with the following statement, likewise quoted,
"It is a monstrous disgrace that this Lawrence women (sic), who is no friend of Great Britain, and who is totally without merit, should be recognised like this or in any other way.
In fact she, along with millions of others, should be requested to return to their natural homelands."
It appears that this was picked up by Liberal Conspiracy, the organ of Sunny Hundal, and from there came to the panicked ears of Conservative party officials. Attentive readers will remember that Sunny is not unknown to us, receiving a "good kicking" (verbally) at the hands of Dr Gabb on Radio 5 a couple of years ago, when he was "reduced to feeble irrelevance". It may be that the wounds are still smarting.
Clearly for Jacob Rees-Mogg and others of his ilk, it is no longer acceptable to oppose either Doreen Lawrence or what she represents. Since her appointment to the Lords is one of the most nakedly political appointments of recent times, it also signifies that there is little prospect that the political class is likely to back away from its embrace of the multicultural ideology and all that goes with it. Its attitude towards tradition, including its own tradition, is that those such as Jacob Rees-Mogg are tolerated only so long as their embodiment of tradition is confined to style - appearance, manner and so on - but not to substance. This is hardly a great surprise to any observer of modern politics.
It seems to me that the TBG is more likely to gain members as a result of today's publicity than to lose them. I suspect, however, that any who resign may well be those members of the political class who stand to lose from official disapproval of their associations, and any who join may be the increasingly disaffected numbers in this country who despise the political class and everything it stands for.