Nation Revisited # 154 August 2019:

‘England, My Country’ was an independent A5 magazine edited by Robert Baggs in support of English Nationalism.

The four nations of the United Kingdom have been together for hundreds of years but they have never lost their national characteristics.

I was born in London in the last days of the British Empire. We were proud to be British but less sure of our Anglo-Saxon identity. We knew about Alfred the Great who fought the Danes and burned the cakes, and poor King Harold who perished at the Battle of Hastings. And we sang William Blake’s stirring anthem “Jerusalem the Golden.” But with the rise of Sinn Fein, the Scottish Nationalist Party, and Plaid Cymru, an English response was inevitable.

Preserving the ancient traditions of England is a worthy task but we must remember that the British Empire was a joint venture.

Vic Sarson posted the following piece to his mailing list.

I am no fan of Corbyn, I have been hostile to him for decades. I have also been hostile to political parties believing them to be a corrupting influence on the politics of the nation. I have also consistently argued that employment in the civil or other government service at any level should preclude membership of political parties or engagement in partisan political activity.

The current mischievous campaign to undermine Corbyn by rumour I think gives force to my arguments.

The overwhelming majority of people employed within the civil service are Labour Party members and many are political activists whether Blairites or Corbynites and often abuse their positions whenever possible.

Civil servants are releasing political propaganda to influence the accepted political processes to a political direction of their preference: in this case it is Blairites. It was Blair who corrupted the Civil Service..

International Finance

The great international banks came to grief in 2008 by trading in worthless mortgages but their national governments came to the rescue.They are now restrained from gambling but high street banking makes very little money compared with the casino side of the business. Last year, money on deposit returned half of one percent interest but the leading investment funds made 25%.

The banks are only part of a worldwide movement of money that includes insurance, reinsurance, fund management, and construction and property speculation. The United Kingdom is a top nation for inward investment. The figures are staggering. £351 bn from the US, £744 bn from Europe, £128 from Asia. These are not loans, they are investments in British companies.

But we are still living beyond our means..Last year we borrowed £48 bn and paid £42 bn in interest on existing loans.

We exported and imported goods and services worth imported goods worth £5610 Billion

Money is sent home by immigrants working in the UK and by Brits working abroad. Nobody know the real figures but the World Bank estimates that £8 billion is sent abroad, mainly to Pakistan and Somalia.

When Oswald Mosley attacked The Money Power he was aiming at the rootless cosmopolitans that dominated international finance in the Thirties. Today, the market is totally global and the big players are likely to be Chinese and Korean. Far removed from the cartoon images of rich Jewish bankers that appeared in the Nazi newspapers.

The only way to control globalism is to divide the world into manageable economic areas, such as North America, South America, China, the Russian Federation, and the European Union, Brexit is a temporary aberration that will soon be forgotten. The great realignment is well under way.
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Interesting Times

Attempts to label political parties according to the layout of the French Parliament are not very accurate. Those on the Left are supposed to be libertarians but all too often they are authoritarians. And those on the Right are meant to be royalists and supporters of the ancient regime, but there was nothing more revolutionary than a republican fascist. The manifesto of the Italian Social Republic (RSI) was entirely progressive but, unfortunately, it was too late

Political theories are ten a penny but running a modern economy takes skill and patience. It doesn’t matter if the government is Left, Right or Centre, It still has to collect enough money to pay for the services that we demand. We knew what to expect from the Old Gang, but we now have four parties competing for power; Labour; Tory; Lib-Dem, and the Brexit Party. Nobody knows what to expect.

The Labour Party is trying to be all things to all men. But there’s a limit to how many factions can be accommodated. They have always boasted of being a broad church but it would take a very broad church to incorporate its bitterly hostile factions.

The Tories have had their civil war and the hard Right has seized power. The One Nation Tories will be confined to the back benches fot daring to support the EU.

The Brexit Party is a one trick pony with massive support in the depressed areas. Nobody knows what they stand for but health and social security are not thought to be amongst their priorities.They probably stand for the usual reactionary causes; bring back hanging, bring back conscription, and lock up all “Nancy Boys.”

It’s almost impossible to predict the result of the coming general election. We can only hope that the public sees through Boris “Fuck Business"Johnson.

He is riding high at the moment but he should hope that history doesn’t repeat itself. His great grandfather was a prominent Turkish journalist and politician, Ali Kamal Bey, who was lynched by an angry mob in 1922.

Prosperity

My local supermarket is being redeveloped and just before it closed, some of the shelves were empty. A Russian man once told me that one of the worst things about the old Soviet Union was the sight of empty shelves at the supermarket. It was, he said, a sign of desperation.

We have come to expect prosperity, almost as a right. Food used to be seasonal but now everything is available throughout the year, and what used to be considered exotic is now common.

In the Old Days we would be greeted by a grocer, served by a shop assistant and handed over to a cashier. Nowadays, we have to help ourselves to the goods and even operate the check out. Times change but so long as the supermarket shelves are full most of us will be alright.

Of course, some poor souls can’t afford to go shopping. We spend millions of pounds on social security but some people slip through the net. It’s a disgrace for an advanced country like Britain to have food banks to help the poor. Some of them have contributed to their situation by spending their money on drink or drugs, but most of them are victims of an efficient but uncaring capitalist system.

The main reason for poverty is the high cost of rents and mortgages. The average rental value for new tenancies in London is £1,611 a month, but the average salary is only £2,964. If the Government ever sorts out the Brexit fiasco it should prioritize the elimination of poverty.

Nation Revisited

This blog seeks reform by legal means. All articles are by Bill Baillie unless otherwise stated. The opinions of guest writers are entirely their own. We are protected by the UN Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19: “We all have the right to make up our own minds, to think what we like, to say what we think, and to share ideas with other people.”

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Our flag was designed by John Bean in 1957 for his National Labour Party. It is used by Nation Revisited with his blessing.The cross represents our nation and the radiant star represents Socialism.