Spalding anti-immigration protest: April 2013

Spalding has a problem with immigration, as does Boston. However, the greatest problem faced by the residents of these two towns is not so much the immigrants themselves, as the political system and legislation that has enabled and encouraged the latter to settle there. One cannot blame the immigrants for wishing to seek a better life given that EU regulations have legally entitled them to come and work in the UK. Our dissatisfaction should not be directed at these people, but at the EU, our Government, our mainstream political parties and those employers who seek to use immigrant labour to their narrow self-advantage and to the detriment of the wider society.

Although it would be churlish to state that every aspect of EU membership has been negative, on balance, both in practical terms and in matters of democratic principle, membership has neither been welcomed by nor beneficial to a large segment of our population. The free movement of labour between member states has been one of the most visible and most negative aspects of membership. From the perspective of certain vested interests – notably unscrupulous employers keen to drive down wages irrespective of the impact upon living conditions – the importation of cheap and often highly qualified and motivated labour from the EU accession countries of the former Soviet bloc has been welcome, but from the viewpoint of ordinary people here at home struggling to find work that will pay a living wage and enable them to live what would hitherto been seen as a ‘normal life’, it most certainly has not.

The people of Spalding are tired of having their concerns relating to unprecedented levels of immigration ignored or branded as ‘racist’, and inspired by recent anti-immigration demonstrations that took place in nearby Boston in November and earlier this week, they have decided to take to the streets at a date yet to be fixed this coming April. Its organiser, Dean Everitt, told the Spalding Guardian that this march would be followed up by marches in Boston, Wisbech and Lincoln, culminating in a march on Westminster. Details of the protests are to be posted on the Spalding Immigration Issues Facebook page.

Mr Everitt stated:

Europeans cannot come here and think they can act in the same way as they do abroad. People don’t want drinking and urinating in the streets, overcrowding in properties and lack of jobs.

Residents are becoming afraid to go out, especially at night. We’ve had six murders in three years – and that’s just Boston and Spalding.

In addition to the problems listed by Mr Everitt, there will of course be associated issues generated by a large influx of non-English speaking children into local schools and pressure placed upon health and social services. Whereas our large urban centres have been subject to such pressures for decades, these problems are new for small towns such as Boston and Spalding which have seen recent immigration create a staggering growth in population. By 2008, some estimates placed Boston’s immigrant population as high as one quarter of the total, and the 2011 census indicated that the population of the borough as a whole had increased from 55,800 in 2001 to 64,600.

This specific problem recently received an airing on the BBC’s Question Time in which the BBC’s favoured Professor of Classics Mary Beard dutifully sang from the globalist open borders hymn sheet, extolling the many ‘virtues’ of Boston’s immigrant influx, blithely brushing aside the concerns of locals. However, as can be seen from the second of the clips below, Beard’s sunny evaluation of the situation was soon washed away by a contribution from a local woman of half-Polish descent who highlighted the general nature of the problem whilst providing some specific examples.

Such is the discontent generated by the immigrant influx, that even Boston Labour Councillor Paul Kenny has been compelled to grant some form of recognition to public concerns. Thus, this week he attended a House of Commons conference entitled ‘Immigration to the regions: how do we ensure that no-one is left behind?’ with a view to raising questions about ‘street drinking, employment and issues surrounding Houses of Multiple Occupation (HMOs)’. However, the only genuine solution to the specific problems experienced in Boston and Spalding, as well as to the wider negative impacts of mass immigration across the country as a whole, is to take a genuinely robust approach to immigration which involves a de facto closing of the borders, with allowance being made for only a very small number of immigrants to enter the country under genuinely exceptional circumstances. As for those who are allowed in, citizenship and its attendant rights should be granted only after an extended period of residence providing that the individuals concerned have fully integrated and proven themselves to be of good character.

We remain in a period of exceptional economic crisis, and whereas mass immigration does not lie at the root of this crisis, it has certainly made it harder to cope with; further immigration will do nothing other than exacerbate our many problems in the areas of employment, housing, health, education and social services. Leaving the EU will only be part of the solution, for the abandonment of the false belief in the morality of globalism will be a necessary precondition for regaining control of our borders, as this is what allows our borders to be so porous. Will the protesters from Spalding and Boston recognise this truth and draw the necessary political conclusions, or will they be bought off with some sop from Westminster?

  

Party Progress: Part One

Introduction

It seems that the internet is abuzz with news and rumours pertaining to new political parties these days, although quite how new their content may be, is another matter altogether. Some of them are focused on single issues, whereas others see themselves as successors to a small ethnonationalist party in terminal decline. Not unnaturally, some readers of this blog may have concluded, given the statement made here earlier this year, that one or two of these rumoured new parties may in some way be linked with this announcement, or backed by this blog; they are not. Why this should be the case will become clear in the paragraphs below. However, before outlining precisely what it is that we propose, and characterising in broad ideological terms what we are and the values that we stand for in the next article, it will first be necessary to provide a digressive introduction, for it is an unfortunate fact that from the outset it is likely that we will be attacked and deliberately misrepresented by our political foes. It is in recognition of this coming campaign of disinformation that this outline is given, so that unprejudiced readers may adjudge for themselves what we truly are and wish to achieve, rather than running the risk of having them misled by the defamatory lies and distortions of those who oppose the emergence of a genuine non-globalist political alternative in our country today.

Earlier this year, I wrote a series of articles that outlined the need for the creation of a moderate political party that placed the national interest first; that had amongst its primary goals the advancement of the material well-being of the people of this country and the recognition that sovereignty inheres within the people and flows from them, not from any supranational agency or body. Part of the recent crisis of confidence in democracy has arisen from a lack of accountability and responsiveness on the part of political elites and, although it has not been articulated quite so frequently, of a nascent transnational economic stratum to which they are linked, and with which they overlap in terms both of outlook and membership. The intent of what was written therefore was to turn attention to this democratic deficit, and to propose a remedy in the form of the creation of a credible and moderate political party, which unlike the Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat or Green parties would not advance the principle of globalism, but that of popular national participatory democracy. Whereas our current party political system militates against choice and in favour of technocratic managerial authoritarianism of one flavour or another, our proposed party advocates a thoroughgoing democratisation.

Marx and Hayek: In Globalism we trust 

For those on the Far Left, the principle of national sovereignty is anathema upon doctrinaire grounds, for it is believed to hamper the coming of the desired-for socialist millennium, whereas for the capitalist advocates of globalism, national sovereignty is seen as an unwelcome hindrance to the transnational movement of capital, goods and labour. The two therefore, have become vigorous advocates of an interrelated set of ideologies: transnationalism; globalism; cosmopolitanism and ‘diversity’. The disciples of Marx and Hayek have paradoxically united in their opposition to such inconveniences as national self-determination and democracy, with both promoting a politico-economic fatalism that portrays globalisation as an unstoppable, inevitable and desirable process. There is no conspiracy as such at play here, but rather the complex interaction of different material interests and ideologies embodied within and articulated by a plethora of non-state, sub-state and transnational actors, whether they be commercial, political or cultural. The revolutionary Marxist Left has since its inception sought not to ameliorate what it terms ‘the contradictions of capitalism’, but to exacerbate them, so as to try and bring about an intensification of human suffering, and thereby precipitate a revolutionary situation through mass radicalisation. It is their hope that the current global financial crisis can be exploited in their favour; globalisation, they believe, is their friend.

Elements of the Far Left have thus welcomed the coming of globalisation and the promotion of its attendant ideology of globalism, and a number of ‘radical’ theories and stances developed by the New Left and US Civil Rights Movement since the 1960s, have been eagerly appropriated by transnational corporations (TNCs) and agencies (TNAs), to lend a veneer of ‘progressivism’ and ‘morality’ to their narrow self-interested operations. Thus it is that the discourse of ‘diversity’ and ‘anti-racism’, largely developed within the context of the politics of the United States, a racially cleft society of immigrants, has been taken up by TNCs and TNAs and employed as a means of challenging the legitimacy of nation-states, promoting the dismantling of border controls to facilitate mass immigration which drives down labour costs, assists in the stripping away of European workers’ rights, and thereby enables an assault to be made upon European welfare states that they portray as being ‘too costly’. The latter is untrue, but TNCs possess sufficient financial clout to be able to promote this message through a compliant mass media that they effectively own. Our party opposes this attack upon the material conditions of working people in the UK, whilst at the same time not placing blame upon the immigrants who have come here genuinely to work, for they have merely taken advantage of a near de facto open borders policy.

The concept of popular sovereignty, of political authority being anchored in and flowing from the people – from the nation – has been subjected to an ongoing and sustained ideological and material assault, undermining the very basis, and hollowing out the substance of democracy itself. Part of this attack upon national self-determination in the UK has consisted of the relatively recently propagated myth that ‘we are a nation of immigrants’, whereas prior to the post-war waves of mass immigration which this narrative has been devised to accommodate and legitimise, the situation was rather different. The Far Left scorns popular national democracy as ‘bourgeois democracy’, whereas the TNCs and TNAs do not find it conducive to their smooth operation, so these various actors have found it convenient to recast defenders of popular democracy as ‘xenophobes’, ‘bigots’ and ‘racists’, fabricating a discourse about their constituting a new ‘Far Right threat’, lumping them in with the small number of people who genuinely merit such appellations.

This seeming digression has been provided for one straightforward yet highly salient reason: the proponents of globalism are willing to do whatever they deem necessary to discredit and destroy any opposition to their globalist objectives, and in order to do this, they employ the most potent weapons available in the political arsenal: accusing their opponents of being ‘Far Right’, ‘racist’, ‘fascist’ or ‘Nazi’. In doing so, they not only manage to target those who do deserve such labels – a vanishingly small number of people in any country including our own – but those of us who do not. These smear tactics are calculated and deliberate, and once thrown, the mud tends to stick no matter how undeserving the target. How then should we popular democrats rebut such allegations? It is in fact, quite straightforward.

The first thing to consider when rebutting the above accusations is that those who employ these smears fail to define their terms. So, we must define them, and once they are defined, it is but a straightforward matter to prove that their allegations are baseless. Let us start by turning to the term ‘fascism’.

What is Fascism?

Fascism is an anti-democratic authoritarian movement that takes many forms, but at its core lie the following features: a cult of anti-rational violence, militarism, authoritarianism and national or racial supremacism, often combined with territorial expansionism. The role of law is disregarded, being replaced by the arbitrary exercise of power undertaken by the governing party and its authoritarian leadership. Moreover, many definitions refer to a fusion of corporate and state interests, with private interest being portrayed as embodying the public good. A single ideology is promulgated and enforced, with dissident views being suppressed, and those who articulate them persecuted.

It is traditionally characterised as being of the ‘Right’, but combines features from various elements of the political spectrum (‘Left’ and ‘Right’, particularly in practical terms, are now largely antiquated labels and should to all intents and purposes be discarded, although they still possess a certain emotive appeal for those who believe that they belong to one or the other).

What we are not:

Fascists

We are not fascists, for we believe in intellectual pluralism, freedom of speech and expression and the principle of holding politicians to account; we favour thoroughgoing democratisation, not authoritarianism.

We are resolutely opposed to political violence and to the ready recourse to military adventurism in foreign affairs. Militarily, we stand for a policy of neutrality and non-interventionism overseas, holding to the principle that our armed forces should act in a purely defensive capacity.

We are not xenophobes or supremacists, and recognise and appreciate the genuine expression of human cultural, ethnic and linguistic diversity around the globe, as well as the right to assert our cultural primacy in our own country through ensuring that all official communication is in our native languages, that there is one common law for all, and that children are taught our history and traditions in our schools. All peoples should be accorded the inalienable right of cultural self-determination in their own home territories. We respect and value cultural pluralism, but we reject state-imposed ‘multiculturalism’, which is a different affair altogether.

We oppose the fusion of corporate and state power, and seek instead to ensure that our citizens are protected both from unwarranted state intrusion into their domestic lives, and corporate attempts to drive down wages and depress the general standard of living.

Conspiracy Theorists

We do not believe that there is any cohesive global elite or one in the making that possesses any ‘plan’ bent upon global domination. Instead, we recognise that international relations are governed by a complex interplay of competing and overlapping material and ideological interests embodied within states, transnational corporations, supranational institutions, NGOs, social movements and the media, that at times converge to produce statements and policies deemed to be mutually beneficial and expedient by a number of these actors, whilst at others generating conflict between them. The idea of there being a single aspirant hegemonic force at play in global politics is utterly misguided and unfounded. We therefore do not subscribe to any conspiracy theories centred upon the following: Bilderbergers; UN New World Order; the Illuminati; Jews; interdimensional lizards or any other fantastical force capable of being dreamt up within the mind of a conspiracy theorist. 

Racists

We are not racists, for we believe that individuals each possess their own merits and aptitudes irrespective of their racial background. To treat someone in a negative manner because they happen to be of a different race is simply wrong. The selection of candidates in the workplace should be based upon merit alone: the right candidate for the job in question. No favouritism should be displayed in the form of ethnic and racial quotas, or associated ancillary measures promoting the creation of ethnic and racial pressure groups, as is the case today.  

Concluding Remarks

It should now be clear from what has been written that we are not proposing some thuggish, authoritarian, anti-rational politics and system of governance as elements of the Far Left will doubtless claim, but something altogether different: a broadening and deepening of democratic practice intended to promote the well-being of the nation.

Having spelt out what our party is not, the next instalment will outline our broad policy platform and objectives. If after reading this you should find it to your liking, we invite you to become involved in making this party a success. We need a fresh, viable political alternative to the globalist options currently set before us, and the time for the launch of a party embodying such principles is ripe. We cannot bring this about alone, and need to draw in dedicated people with a diverse range of talents. It is up to you.

Peter Sutherland: a real-life Vogon?

Ah, those Bilderbergers! Nothing to fear from their behind-the-scenes secret discussions and decisions, eh? Before commencing with a rather more considered response to Peter Sutherland's genocidal recommendation that 'The EU should "do its best to undermine" the "homogeneity" of its member states,' has anyone else noted the startling resemblance between the UN's Special Representative for Migration and Goldman Sachs International Non-Executive Chairman and the Vogons? Maybe David Icke's nutty lizard conspiracy theory is wide of the mark, but perhaps he should switch to considering a Vogon conspiracy instead? The pictures and attitudes speak for themselves.

Advocate of anti-European Genocide - Peter Sutherland

Vogon

Jimmy Carr: Laughing all the Way to the Bank?

Some people, apparently, find Jimmy Carr a very funny man. Others, it seems, have always found him to be rather smug and oleaginous. Following today’s revelations about his Jersey-based tax scam, in which he has been found to have squirreled away a fortune of £3.3 million on the island using the K2 Scheme to pay only 1% tax on his earnings, some might say that he is a smug, oleaginous hypocrite. Surely not? After all, look at what he says in the video below. A hypocrite? Would 8 out of ten fat cats come to such a conclusion? For the mechanics of the scam, refer either to this article in The Daily Telegraph, or this one in The Daily Mail. We await his redemption and resurrection in The Guardian at some point.

Hénin-Beaumont: Le Pen versus Melanchon

Today the first round of the French elections to the 577-member National Assembly will take place, with the second round being held in a week’s time. Given the economic and political turmoil besetting the Eurozone, this election will have particular significance for the future tenor of policy within its constituent states and for the EU more widely.

Hitherto, the Front National has not won a seat in the National Assembly under the current first-past-the post system (under proportional representation it managed to take 35 seats in 1986), but it is estimated that the party could possibly, rather than probably, take up to 8 seats on this occasion. It is in the town of Hénin-Beaumont that the most interesting constituency contest looks set to take place, with Marine Le Pen standing against Left Front leader Jean-Luc Melenchon. Across France the Front National has been scoring between 12 and 18% in opinion polls over the past month, with those from the past week suggesting a level of support between 14 and 15%. However, in Hénin-Beaumont the popularity of the Front National is considerably higher, which coupled with Marine Le Pen’s profile, could result in a win for the party.

Hénin-Beaumont is twinned, rather appropriately given its closed pits and post-industrial malaise, with Wakefield. Even the light industry that replaced mining, notes the BBC, is closing down and moving out, such as in the case of a Samsonite factory which shut five years ago, its jobs being outsourced to Eastern Europe with half of its workforce remaining unemployed today. The ‘enormous factory floor is now home to squatters.’ Clearly, this is not a town imbued with a sense of optimism, its economic plight serving as an indictment of globalist free-market policies. Le Pen’s approach therefore, ought to possess a strong appeal in the constituency.

Traditionally, Hénin-Beaumont has been a Socialist stronghold, but in 2009 the Front National secured first place in its mayoral election with 39% of the vote in the first round, but alas, it was defeated in the second ballot owing to all other candidates standing down and uniting around a left-wing independent Daniel Duquenne. If Le Pen does not take more than 50% of the vote today, it is therefore likely that opposing candidates will once again stand aside and recommend that their supporters unite against the Front National. However, this in itself should not be a cause of despair for Le Pen, for Duquenne’s victory in 2009 was secured by a very narrow margin: 52% to 48%. The most recent test of popularity for the FN in the constituency was the presidential election, and Le Pen came out on top with 35%. Will she therefore be able to break the mould of French politics and win a seat? Such a victory appears to be plausible.

Jean-Luc Melanchon is a visceral opponent of the FN, the Galliawatch blog noting his recent comment that "Our objective remains to defeat the FN, to eradicate it politically, we will do whatever is necessary until we have the last word." (from an interview published in Direct Matin June 5, 2012). His bad tempered totalitarian tenor is accompanied by a vigorous anti-French position as expressed in his recent statement that “There is no future for France without Arabs and Berbers from the Maghreb.” Quite the contrary Monsieur Melanchon, I think that you will find that France will possess no future other than as a mere geographical and historical expression if the demographic inroads made by these North African peoples continues.

Flyers displaying these two statements have been circulating in Hénin-Beaumont, but who has produced them is a matter of uncertainty. It has undoubtedly made the irascible Melanchon furious, but why, given that he has said these things and presumably believes what he has said, should he be angry? The flyers after all, are only informing voters of what Melanchon stands for. One of them, admittedly, is in poor and rather inappropriate taste, featuring a doctored image of Melanchon set against the backdrop of a concentration camp, presumably as a retort to the constant unjust accusations of ‘Nazism’ thrown at the FN (Madonna, the superannuated enfant terrible, apparently made a cheap and inaccurate 'political' point whilst performing in Tel Aviv last week, appearing onstage brandishing an AK47 with a projection of Marine Le Pen with a swastika on her forehead as a backdrop). The other however, is reproduced below and features his quote on Arabs, Berbers and his de facto support for the end of France. It is only fair that the voters know what this man believes, and as such, these flyers fulfil a useful function. 

What, if any role, will this negative publicity play in the campaign? Whatever happens, the contest in this French town in desperate need of economic regeneration is going to prove to be a very interesting one.

City Centre Protests hit Leeds

Leeds is but the latest city to witness protests spawned by the ongoing economic crisis. Today, tents could be seen in City Square, flanked by elegant bronze nymphs bearing torches and baring torsos, whilst the august figures of James Watt and Joseph Priestley stared on blindly. Below, a group of mainly young people had chosen to bring their own version of the ‘Occupy’ protests to Leeds. Whereas I understand the frustration that motivates the protestors, the protests themselves I find a little perplexing, given their unfocused nature and lack of clear objectives.

For some reason, instead of protesting against the ideology of globalism and its enabling institutions such as the EU, the protesters instead elect to direct their inchoate sense of rage towards bankers alone, as if they operated in an institutional, political and legal void. This of course is not the case, and only through a popular peaceful participatory nationalism will we be able to successfully change those institutional, political and legal arrangements that currently enable predatory global capitalism to strip entire peoples of their right to self-determination and to prosperity.

A few streets away on Briggate, another group of young protesters with a rather clearer and more focused objective – to draw public attention to the scandal of the tens of thousands of avoidable deaths amongst our elderly each year from cold – unfurled a banner with the slogan ‘High fuel prices kill. Don’t take it lying down.’ Other than the two who clasped the poles of the banner, the protesters lay upon the street as if dead, dressed in winter clothes. A crowd gathered to look and take pictures as other well-heeled shoppers vanished into the neighbouring Harvey Nichols store, paying them but cursory attention. A handful of police stood by and watched, their van parked in the middle of the pedestrianised street.

It is indeed a scandal that several tens of thousands of our old people died during the last winter, solely because they could not afford to heat their homes. I would therefore like to congratulate this group of protesters for highlighting this issue, but would like to invite them, as well as those engaged in the Leeds ‘Occupy’ protest, to consider what lies at the root of this poverty: globalisation and the economic depression wrought by the deindustrialisation of our nation. The mirage of prosperity based upon a service economy should by now be clear for all to see.

How much would it have cost for our Government to have saved the lives of the estimated 25,000 people aged 65 and over who are estimated to have died during each of the past five winters because they could not afford to pay their fuel bills? Although the current administration has not been willing to tackle this issue, it freely volunteered to spend what could be up to £1.75 billion upon its intervention in Libya in the name of saving Libyan lives. Why could this money not instead have been spent upon saving British lives? If we divide this sum by the estimated 125,000 pensioners who have unnecessarily died because of fuel poverty over the past five years, we end up with a sum of £14,000 per head, or £2,800 per capita per year, which greatly exceeds any possible heating bill. Why has money instead been spent upon a conflict in which we had no interest, whilst our own vulnerable citizens have been left to die? 

Whilst the politicians of the globalist parties - Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat - may be happy to prioritise arrangements in such a way, this is something that the British Freedom Party would never allow to happen. Whatever the coming winter brings in terms of weather, we can unfortunately anticipate that many more of our elderly people will meet an early grave because of conscious political decisions based upon the ideology of globalism.   

Nymph in Leeds City Square

Behold the Hydra’s Head!

Behold the head of the hydra! Osama bin Laden is dead! Which heads will now sprout in its place? What will happen to his vast wealth, which has helped to fund al-Qaeda’s operations around the globe? Answers to these questions are unlikely to become known for quite some time, but whilst there is some cause today for celebration, we must remember that this is the death of only one man, albeit a symbolically very significant one. Al-Qaeda will not cease to operate and, more importantly, neither will the Islamisation of Western nations.

The greatest threat to the well being of our country emanates not from Islamist terrorists, for such people can be readily rooted out and eliminated should we choose to rid ourselves of them, but from the ideologies of globalism, cultural relativism, ethnic and racial ‘guilt’ and their attendant ideological policing mechanism of political correctness. These ideologies are of course propagated by the nascent transnational oligarchy to which our leading politicians and members of our media class belong. They formulate the attendant policies and messages which are then transmitted to the public through the legal and educational systems and the mainstream mass media organs of television, radio, the press and online rolling news. These policies and messages bludgeon our native populations, and seek to inculcate a sense of guilt and subservience in the face of the exotic ‘other’, none being more exotic and alien than the figure of the Muslim.

Without the cankered ideology of our ruling class - in effect a masochistic creed of anti-White race hate masquerading as ‘tolerance’ - our futures would not be in jeopardy, for the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and every other European nation (I exclude Albania and Thracian Turkey from my definition of European, for they are Muslim) would not therefore choose to allow mass immigration to take place. We would not be allowing the propagation of Islam within our borders, just as we would not be allowing the propagation of Muslims themselves through chain migration and the acceptance of aggressive colonists from Africa and the Middle East risibly posing as ‘refugees’.

If our peoples chose to ditch multiculturalism and its associated ethnic and racial self-loathing, then the question of the Islamisation of our nations would be decided in an instant, and this process thrown into firm and permanent reverse. Islamisation would be but a dark historical episode to be held up to future generations as an admonitory example of what can go wrong with a society when it chooses to allow barbarism an equal footing with civilisation, and to denigrate the latter as being in some sense culpable for the ills of mankind. This misplaced sense of collective guilt is but a hangover from the Christian past of the European peoples, and we would do well to expunge ourselves of this.

Yes, rejoice for Osama bin Laden is dead, but we must be unflinching in our efforts to ensure that doctrinaire Islam and its exponents are removed from all European nations and their daughter societies forever. We have yet to defeat the greatest twin threats to our national futures: globalism and the demographic jihad waged through the womb and by migration. On these two fronts, we currently have nothing to celebrate, for we are losing. It is up to us however, to ensure that a day of celebration on this score will occur, and that it will happen in our lifetimes. If it does not, there is little likelihood that it will happen at all.

Reflections on British Nationalism and the Foundation of the British Freedom Party: Part 1

Introduction
Following months of rancour within the BNP, a group of reformists has announced the creation of the British Freedom Party (BFP). Its founding has been precipitated by their failure to effectively challenge Nick Griffin’s hold on the leadership of the party and to introduce mechanisms for the democratic formulation of party policy and the appointment of key personnel. Furthermore, there were questions connected to a lack of transparency relating to party accounts and allegations of an absence of financial probity at the top of the party.

Thus, the imperative for the emergence of the new party was not ideological, but procedural. The BFP is therefore presumably what its founders would have liked the BNP to have become had the Nick Griffin/Jim Dowson clique either stepped down or been dislodged. That said, one of the leading voices amongst the BFP is Lee Barnes, the BNP’s former ‘legal eagle’, who fell out with Griffin then swiftly fell in with the reformist camp led by Eddy Butler who sought to challenge Griffin for the party leadership. Being a prolific blogger and commentator on nationalist forums, Barnes has to date been the main source of information about the BFP and its ideological stance. For Barnes, the BFP is not a party founded upon racial nationalism, ethno-nationalism or civic nationalism, but upon cultural nationalism. In effect, this is a beefed-up civic nationalism with a greater emphasis upon the cultural assimilation of the immigrant population.

The objectives of the BFP published on the Advanced Ape blog are certainly ones to which I subscribe:

The objects of the Party shall exist to defend and restore the freedoms, traditions, unity, identity, democracy and independence of the British people, to establish full sovereignty over all our national affairs by restoring the supremacy of the British Parliament, to withdraw from the European Union, to promote democratic British nationalist principles, to promote the social, economic, environmental and cultural interests of the British people and to preserve and promote the ancestral rights and liberties of the British people as enshrined in the British Constitution.

The BFP now enters a crowded field of parties touting for the nationalist vote, for besides the BNP there are also UKIP, the English Democrats, the National Front (NF) and the England First Party (EFP). There are probably other miniscule groupings that I have not mentioned, but if I’ve not heard of them, you can guarantee that they certainly will not make a breakthrough. Besides these, we have the anti-Islamisation street movement of the English Defence League (EDL). None, in my opinion, possess the right mix of policies, objectives and organisation to be able to make a mainstream breakthrough at the current time. All lack credibility. What is equally clear is that there has never been a greater need for a moderate nationalist party to break through into the mainstream. Before proceeding to outline why, it will first be necessary to clarify my terms.

Why Nationalism? What is Nationalism?
I recognise that my reasons for favouring nationalism will not be shared by many others who describe themselves as nationalists, and this of course grows out of the fact that what is meant by the term ‘nationalism’ is hotly disputed and possesses a wide variety of definitions. So, before venturing further I shall provide a definition of what I consider to be a ‘nation’ (as those of you familiar with theoretical writings on this subject will note, my position shares a great deal with that of A.D. Smith), but given the limited scope of this piece I shall at this stage neither go into great depth nor provide bibliographic citations in line with standard academic practice as used in the Harvard System.

An ethnie is a group defined by a combination of common biological descent, common culture and common history. These are the preconditions upon which a collective ethnic sentiment is forged and rests; without these, there can be no distinct ‘we’. A nation is a politically mobilised ethnie that is either in possession of a state, is actively seeking statehood, or has lost statehood and is seeking its restoration. Mobilisation thus proceeds upon the basis of securing the interests (however they may be defined) of the nation as a whole. Nationalism therefore represents the purest form of democratic politics, for the nation and the demos and their interests are identified as one. Without seeking to further the interests of the nation, politicians of whatever stated hue are acting against the well-being of the demos, and are thus by definition anti-democrats. Politicians and journalists who act against the interests of the nation use pejorative terms such as ‘populism’ and ‘demagoguery’ to stigmatise the genuine articulation of the people’s interests and opinions by anti-oligarchic rivals.

Nationalism therefore, is nothing more than the political pursuit of the well-being of the members of a given nation. It is the purest expression of democratic principles and thus stands opposed to oligarchy and globalism. Thus, unlike what its leftist detractors claim, nationalism is not an ideology of ‘hate’; nationalism is not ‘xenophobic’; nationalism is not synonymous with imperialism (in fact, genuine nationalists deplore imperialism for they recognise the rights of other nations to self-determination and free political expression) and nationalism is not ‘racist’. Nationalism defines itself in a positive fashion by pursuing what is best for the people collectively, not through seeking conflict with other nations.

Nationalism seeks to liberate the potential of all members of the nation, not of any one class or special interest group. This is why those on the Left detest nationalism, for they are wedded to the belief that international class identities trump all others, and that nations should be ‘smashed’ to usher in their Socialist or Communist Millennium. Nationalism stands for pluralism and true diversity, whereas the visions of leftists and capitalist globalists seek a totalitarian uniformity.

I therefore define myself as a nationalist because I wish to see the best for the members my nation collectively; the nation provides the best context in which individuals can flourish and reach their full potential. I wish to see other peoples also concern themselves with building better lives and futures for their own nations. Nationalism represents the best path for the whole of humanity, and does not in and of itself lead to conflict.

Nationalism is not imperialism. Nationalism is not fascism. Nationalism is not Nazism. Nationalism does not entail ethnic cleansing. Nationalism is democracy in action. Nationalism promotes the conservation of resources and the environment. Nationalism is diversity.

Globalism generates hate. Globalism generates conflict. Globalism facilitates economic imperialism. Globalism is oligarchy in action. Globalism promotes the degradation of resources and the environment. Globalism is uniformity.

Which Nation is Mine?
For all of the above reasons I am a nationalist, but of what type? I am English. In those three words there is much significance, for although I also see myself as British, as European and more widely (moving into the realm of ideological belonging) a Westerner and a rationalist, the ‘English’ element denotes what I consider to be my nationality. Strangely though, although the English are arguably one of the oldest nations, they do not currently possess a statehood of their own, being instead cemented into the UK and the EU. Within the UK the Scots, the Welsh and the Unionist and Republican populations of Ulster all possess their own distinct forms of in-group ethnic sentiment as well as political expression in their own assemblies and, in the Scottish case, Parliament. The English on the other hand, have to make do with Westminster which of course represents the whole of the UK. In this respect therefore, the English can technically be said to lack a political existence as a nation.

Devolution has created a situation in which distinct political dynamics have been established in Scotland and to a lesser extent Wales (the situation in Ulster has always been different), which mean that they increasingly see themselves as separate from England. They also have their own ostensible nationalist parties in the form of the SNP and Plaid Cymru, which are in reality defined exclusively through opposition to England and the English because otherwise they embrace multiculturalism and do not therefore behave in the manner of true nationalist parties. The launch of a British rather than an English Freedom Party thus seems to me to be a tactical mistake. England has borne the brunt of mass immigration, multiculturalism and Islamisation, and it is in England that there exists the greatest pent up demand for a true national democratic party. An English Freedom Party could still be a unionist party, but, any continuation of the United Kingdom needs to be one that is ratified by its composite nations and, irrespective of its outcome, England needs a parliament of its own.