A Special Relationship

Unlike in the 1966 music video above reflecting a revolutionary United States, today the US and UK are in something known as ‘the special relationship’, which has been in effect since about 1900. Before that, in the 1880’s and 1890’s there was a strong push by elites of both the US and UK to form an outright political union between the United States and the British Empire, as signified by such articles as the one below written by James Bryce of the UK and published in the Atlantic Monthly. While it was probably seen as a bit dubious in the UK, in the US many sharp questions were raised, amongst them…‘What had the Revolution been fought for?’

Indeed!

They seemed to back off at first, but as elites are wont to do they did it any way, more or less, with the special relationship between the US and UK, a relationship that is only just short of an outright political union.

“Religion, language, interest, affections, may, and I hope will yet, prove a bond of permanent union between the two countries…”
King George III in speech before British Parliament - December 5, 1782

Roosevelt and Churchill - 1943

The Essential Unity of Britain and America

“War between two nations is a deplorable event, whatever the causes and the circumstances. But as evil sometimes comes out of good, so events which in themselves are unfortunate may become the parents of good. Thus the outbreak of hostilities between the United States and Spain gave occasion for the display of a feeling in England, not against Spain, but of interest in the United States, which was not only general, but conspicuously spontaneous. It was the sudden and indisputable evidence of a sentiment we believed to exist, but which had never before been made so manifest. It was promptly and heartily reciprocated in the United States. And now many voices have been asking what durable expression can be given to this feeling shared by the two peoples, and to what account, permanently helpful to both, it can be turned. As Mr. Olney has pointed out, in the thoughtful and weighty article which he contributed to the May number of The Atlantic Monthly (an article whose friendly tone has been cordially appreciated in England), there are some obvious difficulties in the way of a fomal alliance.

Those difficulties are not insurmountable, and if such an alliance were ultimately to be formed, instead of threatening other states it would be a guarantee of peace to the world; for each nation would feel itself bound to justify its policy to the public opinion of the other. Meantime, there are things which may be done at once to cement and perpetuate the good relations which happily prevail. One is the conclusion of a general arbitration treaty, providing for the amicable settlement of all differences which may hereafter arise between the nations. Another is the agreement to render services to each other: such, for instance as giving to a citizen of either nation a right to invoke the good offices of the diplomatic or consular representatives of the other in a place where his own government has no representative; or such as the recognition of a common citizenship, securing to the citizens of each in the country of the other, certain rights not enjoyed by other foreigners. But the greatest thing of all is that the two peoples should realize, as we may hope they are now coming to do, that whether or no they have a formal alliance, they may have a league of the heart; that the sympathy of each is a tower of strength to the other; that the best and surest foundation of the future policy of each is to be found in relations of frank and cordial friendship with the other.”

Bush and Blair

“Now, although there are five great world powers, there are only four great world races; for one of the races has embodied itself in two powers, and has built up the North American republic and the oceanic empire of Britain. There has indeed been a large infusion of other elements into the population of the United States, but those elements are mostly drawn from the same sources, Teutonic and Celtic, whcih form the population of the British Isles, and all have been, or are being, moulded into the same normal American type. That type differs less from the normal British type than the Englishman of Hampshire differs from the Scotchman of Fife or the Irishman of Galway; and the differences which separate the average Englishman and the average American are as nothing in the comparison with those which separate either of them from members of any of the other great races. The influences of climate and institutions which tend to differentiate them are less potent than the influences of literature and thought which tend to assimilation. Here in England, at any rate, we never think of natives of the United States as different from ourselves, and when we speak of “foreigners” we do not include Americans. Accordingly, whenever we think of what is called - the term may not be a correct one - but it is the best we have - the Anglo-Saxon race, to which we belong, we think of it as a whole, though it dwells on opposite sides of the Atlantic. We think of it as one race, one in character, in temper, in habits, in beliefs, in ideals. That intensified race consciousness which the rivalry of the other great races has produced, that feeling of pride in the occupation and development of the earth’s surface which has grown with the keener competition of recent years, have deepened the sense of solidarity in the scattered members of the race and drawn Englishmen nearer and nearer to the great branch in the United States, now larger than their own as well as the smaller branches in Canada and Australia. Thus it is not with jealousy, but with admiration and sympathy, that the extraordinary progress of the United States in wealth, power, and population has been regarded by the great mass of our people. They have thought of the two countries as partners and fellow workers in securing the ascendency of the language, the free institutions, the ideas, which they themselves cherish, and with whose progress they believe the future welfare of humanity to be involved.”

A link to the full article containing the excerpt of King George III’s speech as appeared on pg 834 of the May 1883 edition of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine

A link to the full article in the July 1898 edition of The Atlantic Monthly pg 22-28

A link to a similar article entitled “The United States and the Anglo-Saxon Future” which appeared in a July 1896 edition of The Atlantic Monthly pg 35-44

Posted by Alex on Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 06:57 PM in
Comments (32) | Tell a friend

Comments:

Posted by Alex on February 11, 2010, 07:03 PM | #

More on this very important subject in time…

Posted by sirrealpolitik on February 11, 2010, 07:35 PM | #

For more on these late nineteenth-century “Anglo-Saxon unification” sentiments:

The Idea of Greater Britain.
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8530.html

Posted by Grimoire on February 12, 2010, 04:33 AM | #

Similar to the Cecil Rhodes/ Lord Milner Roundtable / ‘Society of the Elect’. A concept of mercantilism- exploitation -mass consumption of the earths’ easily accessed wealth, limited to the mercantile class alone, but then tied to a false concept of race and nationalist triumphalism for the encouragement of the proletariat, without a blush at the deep hypocrisy of the conceit. At it’s core hollow and dishonest, this grafting of Judaic/Old Testament malfeasance and imperialism to European technology. No coincidence this is all co-incident with British/Israelism. Original to the moment of the beginning of the downfall for Britain and Europe.
England sounds the trumpet with fanfares and throws the corsage for the English respect for free association and institutions and sensible adaptations etc, turning a blind eye to it’s centuries old genocidal exploitation of the white man in Ireland. Even here on ‘Majority Rights’ I have come across three times at least, the perplexing question of whether the Irishman is even ‘white’. An idea so despicable yet so common among so called Anglo-Saxons white men.
England - ‘This Enchanted Isl.’ - was highly respected in this world once for it’s Aristocracy. Despite all the flatulent hand waving about the Magna Carta and the rights of the common drover - the working people of Britain where always the worst fed, housed and exploited in all of Europe since time immemorial. And you would have to invent a situation, or reach back into antiquity, where one European people enslaved and despoiled another, with zero respect for the rights of man and zero tolerance for free association, for the length of time England sucked like a vampire on the neck of Ireland.
Only Soviet Russia for a short time could match England’s work / poor houses, it’s land enclosures, it’s impressment gangs, it’s exile system and bond slavery of it’s own peoples. America’s first slave plantations where in fact manned by British slaves.
All this tripe about free association and free men and sensible adaptation bears no scrutiny whatsoever. Similar the ‘Anglo Saxon’ as an imminent race, or even as a race…. - fortunate yes, but all races have their day. Do they remain true, in their day of fortune? Or does fortune turn them despicable and dishonest to their core? How do they bear misfortune? - so far I, many, have the right to wonder if the ‘Anglo Saxon’ is not after all devolved into the spiritual pygmy of the Europeans.
Despite, at one time, the Aristocracy and the intellectual/clergy class kept alive or bore the idea of Britain and England that predated the conquests, that reached into the mists of time, coeval with Europe itself.
‘This Enchanted and Sceptered Isl.’....and it is a enchantment, the hairs on the neck of any man who has the soul of Europe in him will rise up with a thrill of a diaphanous stirring that is innate. It stirs when you read Shakespeare, Marlowe, Blake - the energumens of this sculpted language, it stirs when you converse or trade words with any true Briton. It exists in the people, what is left of them, for if any European, embody the Northern European concept of Gemutlich, it is the British. It exists in the Ghosts of the great Universities and Academies. It exists most of all, eternally in the land and the coasts of Britain….the old towns, the farmland and estates, will it still exist when it it inhabited by Pakistani’s and Levites?....more so or less as when it is inhabited by Americans and Negroes?
I read the other day, a 19-century diary of a parishioner of the borough of Worcester, on the casting of several sizes of bells, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, it existed here - Britain, this beautiful land, this beautiful people…..

This ‘Anglo-Saxon’ unification - this mercantile crusade - this is the destruction of Britain, and Europe. There is and never was a ‘Greater Britain’, that is the name reserved for the Global slave plantation. An ephemeral and unsustainable exploitation of the native man. Similar to Ireland. Similar to how you ‘Anglo-Saxons’ broke your back destroying Europe. The fruits of which you experience now.

There is only Britain. And there is only one Britain, and one British people who are irreplacable. And when they are gone. There will no longer be a Britain or an England, except as a quaint hyphenated place name on a map.

I laugh bitterly, sorrowfully at the conceit of this article. The ‘Anglo-Saxon Unification’. For the Americans are no longer predominantly Wasp’s…and even among the minority of Wasp’s almost none of them have any deep respect or care for you. Futhermore you lost everything you owned in your last great ‘Anglo-Saxon’ future unification project… the great project to destroy European civilization as a competitor and make the world safe for merchant armies, bankers, and jews.
This conceit toadying to the US and Israel in Iraq and the Middle East is a sign of the Great Anglo-Saxon reunion. This has even less reality than a previous article about King Arthur and Merlin waving canvas rags around a campfire….and that article’s only virtue was (hopefully) it knew it was dealing myth.

There is only Britain now. Much of her is in the past, Before your Anglo-Saxon global project of Disraeli and Rhodes. The unification thing was the greatest disaster the European race had ever experienced, and we may not survive long past its failure.
Perhaps it is time to give up your conceits and false hopes and look to Britain, perhaps to the Europe of which you have eternally been a part. Anglo-Saxon suprematism is a sick and psychotic joke. British extinction is the issue…. mere survival, not suprematism.
Are there no honest men left among you? Is there any among you who is truly British - truthful, sound, upright and fearless of truth? Or is all that is left to save Britain the pygmy golem of the Anglo-Saxon supremacist? Him who is neither Anglo-Saxon nor supreme at anything but self deception?
Diogenes today, would throw his dead chicken on the floor of Westminster and claim,
‘ Look! I have found the Anglo-Saxon’.

Posted by Lurker on February 12, 2010, 05:50 AM | #

Great post. Is that Wintermute?

Posted by sirrealpolitik on February 12, 2010, 01:44 PM | #

give up your conceits

just to clarify: i never said i endorsed the idea. just pointing out that a book had been written on it.

ezra pound in the 30s, in his italian radio addresses, also encouraged brotherly sentiments among anglo-saxons in the us and the uk, thinking it might confound the schemes of the international zionists.

obviously his encouragements fell on deaf ears. and he got shoved in a dog kennel.

Posted by Dan Dare on February 12, 2010, 02:15 PM | #

Grimoire is getting so carried away with his spittle-flecked Anglophobia that he is prepared to throw the historical record out of the window.

the working people of Britain where always the worst fed, housed and exploited in all of Europe since time immemorial.

Has he, one wonders, ever read Germinal, Emile Zola’s account of working-class life in the northern French coalfield? Or Gerhard Hauptmann’s Die Weber, which deals with the weaver’s revolt in Silesia in 1844, a working-class insurrection mercilessly crushed by military force?

If he had, he would have an understanding that life for the working-class was pretty dire throughout industrial Europe.

Posted by Euro on February 12, 2010, 03:57 PM | #

Sirreal,

As late as the ‘50s-‘60s James Burnham, son of an English immigrant, proposed extending U.S. citizenship to the U.K., even pushing the scheme of formal political union between the two nations.

Great post, Alex. Looking forward to the sequel.

Posted by Grimoire on February 13, 2010, 02:48 AM | #

@Dan Dare

I consider myself an anglophile, of a real Britain. A Britain that would be destroyed by this foolishness as much or more than any other part of Europe.

As a former military officer , I drink cheaply, ‘sur la maison’ at any military club in the world I should happen to be. I’ve spoken with many veterans of the Great Wars…and the thing I’ve hear everywhere - in a nutcap. “we sent our boys over twice, hundreds of thousands of boys died, not for freedom or any of that, that was lies and propaganda…, but to protect British commercial interests…and for all that, they treated us like cannon fodder. Three or four Canadians or Australians took a bullet for every Brit.” I have never met a Canadian, British or American military man who expressed any admiration for the British establishment or any Anglo unification idea. Many have said, although I’m sure in jest, they’d rather fight for Hitler, they wished they had. All the same, none of them are anglophobes, as I am not…, just realists.

As for the historical record, forget Zola novels. Anthropologists have exhumed remains from every period from all Europe to determine diets and causes of death measured against historical records for mortality. With no inconsistent results over numerous sampling and trials taken over decades, the English common man was the second most anemic of all Europe. The first being the Irish.

If the cause of people like those who frequent Majority Rights and others of Europe is to be furthered - you will have to give up this ‘hurrah’ bullshit and come to grips with reality. Reality as hard and cold as Sheffield Steel and as black as the coal that forged it.

Posted by Dan Dare on February 13, 2010, 03:44 AM | #

As for the historical record, forget Zola novels.

Zola’s observations were real, only the characters were fictional. The same could be said for Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, set in the 1890s Chicago stockyard district. You’d probably wish us to forget that as well. Friedrich Engels’ depictions of the industrial slums in Manchester in the 1840s were very real and still shock us today, but then so would the contemporary depictions of worker’s living conditions in German Wohnkasernen from the 1860s onwards. The only difference being what happened in England then happened everywhere else twenty or thirty years later.

Anthropologists have exhumed remains from every period from all Europe to determine diets and causes of death measured against historical records for mortality. With no inconsistent results over numerous sampling and trials taken over decades, the English common man was the second most anemic of all Europe.

OK I’ll bite. Show us the data.

And btw, the ‘Special Relationship’ is no more. It’s passed on! It’s ceased to be. It’s expired and gone to meet its maker! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If it hadn’t been nailed to its perch it’d be pushing up the daisies! It’s metabolic processes are now ‘istory! It’s off the twig! It’s kicked the bucket, It’s shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibule!! THIS IS AN EX-RELATIONSHIP!!

No more poodling.

Get the picture?

Posted by Grimoire on February 13, 2010, 04:07 AM | #

What I am saying is this - the great unification is ONLY this, and must be; the Saxon, the Scot, the Welsh - the ‘British’ and the Irish - with the German, the French, the Russian, all of Europe. This is the Great Unification. Then we will take our place in this world. The people, like the languages and politics of Europe are different everywhere, but the values of Europe are the same throughout. Europe has always been essentially one Nation of Nations. We can unify our continent without extinguishing or homogenizing the people. Easily. It can be done.
One Europe, not the half American , half Soviet Europe we have now. But a Super Nation of Nations. Then we will not only survive and prosper, but we will be the masters of the world, once more.

This is the Great Unification. A true Future. Not the shabby counterfeit of the Anglo-Saxon unification. You British were never Anglo-Saxons, although you may have Anglo-Saxon , among other Northern blood. Your Aristocracy was connected to Anglo-Saxon bloodlines, so you took the moniker….but it was just a conceit for 99% of you. You need to become what you are - Britons , Europeans by blood. Maybe this will put you right with the future.

Posted by Grimoire on February 13, 2010, 04:23 AM | #

i saw it move…it shuffled slightly…

Posted by Captainchaos on February 13, 2010, 02:08 PM | #

Grimoire, that’s fuckin’ A right. Look at the letter that Greek dude wrote that Bill posted. Our people are fed up and as a result they are beginning to wake up. But it goes deeper than just an abiding dissatisfaction with the existing order, there is apprehension of an inertia of decay, and a corresponding implicit desire to turn that into an inertia of progress. We would be fools not to harness the innate Promethean idealism of our people, that is the stuff mass movements are made of. And why should we not harness it, just what is the downside? The only downside I can see is a better and brighter future for our people than is presently imaginable by most, which is no downside at all. The “palingenetic” bogeyman some like to hold over our heads is simply no longer applicable today. The age of intra-European wars has gasped its last. What we need is for the idea of global White revolution to go viral, it will be in the air, with a sense of inevitability. Then, once the initial dominoes begin to fall, so will all the rest.

Posted by Dan Dare on February 13, 2010, 02:56 PM | #

Where does the United States fit into your grand scheme then, Grimoire?

Posted by antiwm on February 13, 2010, 04:08 PM | #

Great post. Is that Wintermute?

Please. Wintermute wrote with great concision and a (to others!) beguiling solemnity. Grimoire’s a gabbler in comparison. I like what he has to say more than Wintermute, though. I wanted to clap the latter in a cell and kick him to death like his hero Boethius.

Posted by Captainchaos on February 13, 2010, 05:19 PM | #

Grimoire gets the ‘spirit of the race’ thing through literature written by the masters of our Occidental tradition. That there is such a thing, and not merely wheels of a Darwinian process grinding along, is I think highly questionable. But, for many of our people disposed towards the spiritual, I see little harm and potentially much help in them pursuing that resonance consistent with the ethnic genetic interests of our race. I too feel that yearning for those “broad, sunlit uplands” of our dreams, only as I go along the pang of desire dulls as my realization of the chimera sharpens.

Posted by Grimoire on February 14, 2010, 03:59 AM | #

@Dan Dare
I live in North America, but I am not American as this is only a temporary change of address. My thoughts on America therefore do not carry the weight of a native. I agree with those who wish to see America return to the values and intentions of the founders…amended only by lessons of history and the virtues of experience. This America in essence has something for us all. The American constitution was not a parochial effort of local agenda, but the highest distillation of the values of the entire Western Civilization. America should be an example of a world ordered by European values, transcending while nurturing them.
But not Europe. Europe is of itself. It cannot be replicated, nor replaced. Systems of Order are secondary.
Britain and America can be allied in interests or enterprise, but not by blood. America has transcended Britain in this. America would not join Britain, and a Britain that joins America, ceases to exist.
Britain, like the rest of Europe, is not so much a territory inhabited by an indigenous population as it is A LIVING THING IN ITSELF, of which the indigenous population is the blood, the essence of its life. Without which it dies. There is no Britain without true British, only a territory, a possession, nothing. An empiricist would be skeptical of these ideas. Perhaps then they will have less of a problem adjusting to a future as it is planned for us now. I am not a empiricist to the exclusion of all else, so I do not fully comprehend the mindset.

@antiwm
Truth, I gabble, especially after my tonic… I also become flecked with spittle. Thank you for comment.

@Captainchaos
That chimera has never formed in my mind, but the opposite, of which I’ve mentioned. It is foreign to me, I wonder what that is like…

Posted by Dan Dare on February 14, 2010, 02:58 PM | #

Grimoire - you are being too modest. Even though you are only a sojourner, being resident in the USA entitles you to an opinion on its likely future. Even if you weren’t, that’s no real imdepiment either. You’ll notice that the Cousins on this board are not backward in coming forward with prescriptive opinions about Europe, so there’s no need for you to be bashful.

So let’s have it. In your model of a future Greater Europe, what role do you see for the United States? Forget the waffle about the Founding Fathers and the City on the Hill; just assume instead that it continues along the present demographic and political trajectory. What then?

Posted by rocket on February 14, 2010, 09:24 PM | #

July 4 , 1776 . Independence day from the British . I still enjoy their novelists , but that is about it .

Posted by Captainchaos on February 14, 2010, 09:43 PM | #

I’m of partial British ancestry myself (English-Scottish, in addition to German-Dutch) and therefore do not hold animus against my own blood. But this aiding in the shaming of Germans - the beating heart of our race - this blanket of induced shaming unto death woven of the fabric of lies that covers us all must finally end. To continue in that vein serves not us but only our enemies. The militarization of German society so that the Bolshevik threat could be countered was of utter necessity.

Posted by Lurker on February 14, 2010, 10:07 PM | #

The replies are not the Wintermute style, I think. Anyhow:

Three or four Canadians or Australians took a bullet for every Brit

Some might say that or believe it but I dont think the records bear that out, large scale over two world wars.

Posted by Grimoire on February 16, 2010, 10:10 AM | #

@Dan Dare:
I have some inchoate impressions that are only suitable to present as science fiction. I do not ask anyone to take this seriously. But I do not think continental United States racial problems are easily solvable. The separate state within the US, or moral regeneration and a return to economic and social sanity, electoral success, is only a temporary stopgap. I sense there will be a social, political, economic and environmental collapse, and the impending battle over sovereignty and resources will last generations and outlast any racial cohesiveness.
Contradicting myself, this is why the separate state idea is a start towards the only answer… the exception to the a state within the continental United States is that any territory within the confines of the US is not defensible or large enough for a large population to consolidate and control the coming tribal war.This new nation will need space between it’s population and the frontier. I think European Americans need to relocate to the northern central and western states and occupy Canada. This will happen in it’s own fashion anyway…. Canada is sitting on real estate that will soon be among the most valuable in the world, and the elites are integrating the two countries for just this reason. The question is, when and how Americans will take it over for their own purposes. It may only be an economic takeover for the time being, which is a stopgap. Third world immigration is growing leaps and bounds in that country. It is a question of do they have the will? I think that they may, but the adversaries and challenges they face are formidable. Without desperate measures it’s hard to see how the Americans can escape slipping into the melting pot that has been subverted.

@Captain Chaos:
Individual Britons are not responsible for the subset of their economic elite. They have payed a price in blood, treasure and their children’s future, that in the end if things continue will be as destructive as that faced by anywhere. Parroting of nonsense and belief in moral superiority is a normal symptom of the technique of using the best instincts of a people against themselves. The normal German youth, is as brainwashed by American cultural marxism as a 1950’s Soviet young pioneer.
None the less cutting through to reality through insults, satire and criticism…is sometimes necessary as it cuts to the chase without a lot of wasted effort. This is something I have seen you do well. Your not impressed with pretension. And anyone who doesn’t like it can go to hell. I appreciate these values.

@Lurker
I am not Wintermute. As i gather he had a distinctive style I am complimented by any momentary confusion. Thank you.
I do not claim any knowledge of ratio of mortality, I only relate that I was told this in detail in conversations with commonwealth veterans. As a German drinking in a foreign Officers Club, and small town Legions,. wherever there are soldiers the hospitality and generosity are automatic, as well that some old gentleman or three will tell you about their war and everything else until closing.

Posted by Alex on February 17, 2010, 03:54 PM | #

It is of interest to note that at the time King George III spoke of the prospect of a future ‘bond of permanent union between the two countries…” (in his speech to the British Parliament officially acknowledging the separation of the United States from the British Empire) that British troops were still not only present in
New York City, but that they would not be evacuated from that city for almost a full year yet.

The idea of a potential reunifying was there from very early on apparently.

Posted by Al Ross on February 17, 2010, 10:18 PM | #

The ‘US as melting pot’ meme only held good as long as immigration was sourced from Europe. With the increasing Thirdworldisation of that country and the concomitant, Liberal - driven ‘success’ of identity politics the melting pot has been transformed into an unsightly mosaic and I wonder just how many White Americans (to employ a former tautology) wish the country to continue down its present baneful path.

Here is one interesting German view (leaning heavily on Prof Sombart) of Americanism.

http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/ds1.htm

Posted by Desmond Jones on February 18, 2010, 01:22 AM | #

The ‘US as melting pot’ meme only held good as long as immigration was sourced from Europe.

I’ll respectfully disagree with Mr. Ross.

R.B. Bennett
Leader of the Conservative Party 1927-38, Prime Minister of Canada 1930-1935
House of Commons Debates, June 7, 1928, pp. 3925-7.

Read the history of the United States, read what is written in every magazine in that country by thoughtful men, and you will find that the principle of the melting pot has failed; and they are quite apprehensive. Every thoughtful man in the United States, every keen observer, every man who travels, every author, everyone who shapes and moulds public opinion in the universities and in the great foundations-all these are bewailing the fact that uncontrolled immigration has been permitted into that country, to such an extent that there is now in the United States a polyglot population, without any distinctive civilization, and one about which many of them are in great despair . . . it is because we desire to profit by the very lessons we learned there that we are endeavouring to maintain our civilization at that high standard which has made the British civilization the test by which all other civilized nations in modern times are measured . . .

Of course the Canadian attempt was an abject failure because they too succumbed to the delights of mass Catholic and Jewish immigration.

Posted by Dan Dare on February 18, 2010, 01:35 AM | #

The ‘US as melting pot’ meme only held good as long as immigration was sourced from Europe.

Perhaps that should have read from ‘Northwestern Europe’. Or, at least, from those parts of Europe without the former Russian Empire.

Posted by Al Ross on February 18, 2010, 02:45 AM | #

Interesting point, DJ. What changed Canada so radically that a mere ten years after the conclusion of Bennett’s leadership of the Tories, the country elected a French - Canadian Prime Minister, Louis St Laurent?

Posted by Desmond Jones on February 18, 2010, 03:30 AM | #

Actually Laurier was the first FC PM, Al. And it was Laurier who opened the door to Catholic immigration. Criticism of this position is what motivated Bennett to speak out. However, like so many racial restrictionists, Bennett was an assimilationist. It was folly of course.

He continues:

We earnestly and sincerely believe that the civilization which we call the British civilization is the standard by which we must measure our own civilization; we desire to assimilate those whom we bring to this country to that Unemployed demonstration civilization, that standard of living, that regard for morality and law and the institutions of the country and to the ordered and regulated development of this country. That is what we desire, rather than by the introduction of vast and overwhelming numbers of people from other countries to assimilate the British immigrants and the few Canadians who are left to some other civilization…

As far as I can see it is the purpose of all governments to maintain that position; that is the intention of all governments, but we do say that there has been a singular lack of appreciation of that position during recent years by the present government. In various sections of western Canada they have planted colonies from far-off lands, who have settled upon the soil and maintained their own peculiar civilization rather than become assimilated to that British civilization which should prevail in this country, because there has not been a sufficient leavening of it to ensure that result. That is one of the complaints we make . . .

In answer to your question about St. Laurent, it was French Canadian EGI, fueled by conscription, the war and la survivance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Survivance

Posted by Desmond Jones on February 18, 2010, 03:37 AM | #

La Survivance neatly summarized:

Notre foi, notre langue, nos institutions [our faith, our language, our institutions]. These three elements constituted essentially the three pillars of survival of French Canadians. They defined the distinctiveness of Quebec in the North American context and served as rallying points for the community. As long as French Canadians would stay faithful to these three pillars, they would continue to exist as a separate entity, as a people.

Posted by Al Ross on February 18, 2010, 04:11 AM | #

Thank you, Desmond, for your illuminating answer to my question.

In my native heath, Irish (Catholic) immigration was a major factor in turning political Scotland from a default position of Conservatism to one of Labourism. It seems likely that if the SNP could persuade the (atavistically nationalist) Catholic, Irish - descended segment of the Scottish electorate to abandon Labour and vote their way, power would be a reality. A case, then, of Nationalism for me but not for thee.

Posted by Matra on February 18, 2010, 04:22 PM | #

Al Ross: The ‘US as melting pot’ meme only held good as long as immigration was sourced from Europe.

I’d slightly modify that statement to say the melting pot would’ve been fine as long as they were not only sourced from Europe but also as long as their numbers were restricted so that they would have no choice but to merge (submerge?) into the already established native born white American nation. Obviously being north European and Protestant would’ve facilitated this process but I don’t think it absolutely necessary.

Dan Dare: Perhaps that should have read from ‘Northwestern Europe’. Or, at least, from those parts of Europe without the former Russian Empire.

But the Germans who arrived in such large numbers from the 1840s onward also had a negative impact on the native American nation. These Germans were numerous enough to establish their own communities with their own churches, newspapers, etc. Many were also trouble-making political radicals with ideas that caused conflict with Americans and, importantly, many of these post-1840s Germans, unlike the colonial settlers from Germany, were Catholics. I suspect even the Ellis Island Protestant Scandinavians, whose descendants are the ultimate SWPLers, were also problematic.

The melting pot seemed to work, even with Catholics and non-British settlers such as Huguenots, until near the mid-19th century when the number of immigrants arriving increased rapidly. “Numbers are of the essence” as a wise man once said.

Posted by Desmond Jones on February 18, 2010, 05:43 PM | #

I’ll respectfully disagree with Matra. Henri Bourassa spoke of language and the survival of the French-Canadian in North America. However, he also noted that the (Gaelic) Irish, as a race, survived despite losing their language. Given that Quebecers are now losing their race (i.e are being race-replaced) despite keeping/bolstering the prominence of their language (Office québécois de la langue française) indicates that of the three pillars of racial survival, paramount was Catholicism.

Posted by Alex on February 25, 2010, 04:42 PM | #

All these ‘splits’ and then later ‘convergences’ in history, such as between Russia and China, the US and UK, Capitalists and Marxists (forming Multi-Culturalism, reflective in part perhaps of a ‘split’ and then later ‘convergence’ between Scottish Rite and Grand Orient Freemasonry?)...not to knock the sincerity of belief and fighting spirit and ability of any of those who might have fought over any of these historical splits, but one might begin to wonder just how real at least some of these splits may have been to begin with.

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