Introduction When writing, it frequently happens that the author’s intent changes as a piece evolves, and whereas
Beyond the Fringe was originally intended to consist of two parts, it has in fact become three. Thus, in this second instalment, the author provides a sketch of the main policy focus that a new party should adopt, without intending to in any way provide a full manifesto. What follows is still very much a work in progress, and the lack of elaboration relating to some key points that will only be alluded to is not meant to signify their lack of importance, for they are key to any nationalist party’s programme, but to indicate that the general public will know them to be a given, so it will not be necessary to belabour them.
Much of what follows will be in tune with the thinking of most nationalists, although some of the general approach to macroeconomic policy may polarise sentiment to a certain extent. The peripheral and damaging concerns held by a minority of nationalists will not be addressed here, not because the author thinks it expedient not to mention them, but because such policies and attitudes are held to be ill founded and not conducive to the public good.
Policies in and of themselves are all very well, but they will be worthless if nobody gets to hear of them. In the third and final instalment of this series therefore, attention will be turned to the potential baseline of support for a nationalist party; strategy; tactics and communicating a consistent message employing language of an appropriate tone and focus.
Policy In
Part I it was noted that UKIP, the English Democrats, the BFP and the National Front had each come to be associated in the public mind with one particular policy concern which limits their prospects for electoral success, but the focus proposed for a new party here will, if it does lead to it being identified with any one policy, serve only to assist it, for it should focus upon economic nationalism. If it is to hold genuine mass appeal, it must offer a credible prospect of prosperity, as well as personal liberty and security. The cracks in the globalist economic system are becoming ever more apparent, so much so, that even some mainstream politicians are now playing with the rhetoric of national interest and “rebalancing the economy”, with a greater focus upon domestic manufacturing. However, their policies and proposals continue to entrench and accelerate globalisation, whereas the task of a new party should be to reverse this process.
Focusing on the economy Dogmatic hostility to state intervention in economics is as myopic as dogmatic hostility to all forms of private enterprise. A new party should not pursue an economic policy based upon Thatcherite ideology, but upon pragmatism, learning from the successes of the East Asian developmental state, as well as seeking to draw upon approaches offered by distributism.
Whereas the interests of the nation have been subordinated to the state, those of the state must in future be subordinated to the nation. Likewise, a new nationalist party should set out to reorder the economic foundations of the nation, making economic policy subordinate not to the imperatives of transnational financial institutions and corporations, but to the needs of the nation. As such, a National Investment Bank (NIB) should be established that focuses upon raising funds for investment in the following undergirding key aspects of infrastructure: energy, new technologies and transport. To raise capital, encourage savings and ensure that the public has a stake in this undertaking, future tax-exempt investments in the form of stocks and shares ISAs should be restricted to the financing of national projects funded by the NIB.
A credible nationalist party therefore will focus upon economics: the need for energy security; opposition to offshoring; the promotion of domestic manufacturing; legal obligations to privilege nationals in the sphere of employment; crackdowns on corporate tax evasion; the revitalisation of our countryside through the promotion of rural employment in agriculture, conservation and afforestation; the promotion of social enterprises and mutuals with a focus upon increasing the well-being of local communities and the nation as a whole. Given the anti-globalisation sentiment of many members of the younger generation, nationalists should aim to tap into this and show them that nationalism, rather than other ideologies, offers the positive solutions to the economic problems that we face.
One criticism of the BNP’s last General Election Manifesto that any new party needs to take seriously relates to budgetary costings, which its detractors correctly noted did not add up. Any party that hopes to win the trust of voters must not make budgetary commitments based upon spurious assumptions about the amount of money that can be saved through decommitting from foreign aid and leaving the EU. Budgetary proposals must be robust and able to withstand the scrutiny of critics. If they are not, any party forwarding them does not deserve the trust of the public.
Securing national energy supplies This is vital both in ensuring national prosperity and security, and so can legitimately be considered to be an integral part of both economic and defence policy.
North Sea oil and gas production are in long-term decline, and as a consequence, we are importing a growing percentage of our energy requirements from abroad, not only worsening our balance of payments deficit, but also making ourselves more vulnerable to fluctuations in international prices as well as to potential disruptions in supply. Clearly, new domestic energy resources need to be developed, and existing renewable technologies are not fit to meet the demands placed upon them. Moreover, carbon taxes and the renewable levy on domestic energy users are inflating our national costs of production, thereby undermining our international competitiveness and placing a strain on domestic budgets. Thankfully, real alternative energy sources exist, and others should become available in the coming decades.
As the existing mainstream parties are dragging their heels with respect to energy policy, this offers a contemporary forward-thinking nationalist party the opportunity to champion a genuine alternative course, thereby capturing the public’s imagination and exerting mass appeal. The party should pledge to research the non-fossil fuel energy resources of the future such as nuclear fusion, thorium reactors and hydrogen, whilst in the immediate future examine the feasibility of both fracking for natural gas and the relative merits of revitalising our national coal industry utilising either carbon capture and storage in power generation, or coal gasification. In the 1980s it was estimated that we possessed circa 300 years worth of coal reserves beneath our feet; moreover, diesel can be synthetically produced from coal if need be, thereby providing an alternative to oil imports. The aim of energy policy should be to provide for maximum self-sufficiency, and to utilise available reserves of coal, gas and oil for national use rather than sale on the international market which would lead to their rapid depletion.
Revitalising our domestic energy sector would generate tens of thousands of new jobs bringing wealth back to areas of our country that have been blighted since the pit closures, creating spin-off employment in the heavy-machinery supply chain and in other businesses required to support the sector. Prosperity could thereby be restored to areas of long-term unemployment and deprivation, creating a virtuous circle of development. It would also help us to choke off the flow of capital to Middle Eastern states such as Saudi Arabia that
use their money to spread Salafist Islam in our country and others. Without oil, these theocratic rentier states would count for next to nothing politically, and their malign global influence would collapse into insignificance.
In the interim, one of the factors feeding through into inflation and increasing general costs for business and consumers is the high price of petrol and diesel, the bulk of which is accounted for by tax. Planned increases in duty should be scrapped and the existing level reconsidered. High fuel prices have a particularly negative impact upon the lives of low-paid rural workers, who have no option but to drive owing to the absence of public transport.
Embracing cutting edge technologies A key element of economic policy should be the creation of conditions in which new technologies and industries can establish themselves and thrive. The potential of biotech needs to be harnessed to improve health, develop new fuels, deal with pollution and increase productivity. Stem cell therapies hold massive promise. The development and application of new advanced materials, such as graphene, must help drive a new industrial revolution. Science and technology must be at the core of policy thinking. If they are not, then other nations such as China will take the lead.
Some take a mistrustful view of science, arising from the particularistic interests of lobbies, whether they are corporations, governments or transnational political actors. However, whilst there can be no doubt that certain corporations have sought to dangerously abuse GM technologies by attempting to patent seeds and livestock, this is a separate issue entirely from the science itself. It should be illegal for companies to take out such patents, but research into the prospective benefits of aspects of GM should be encouraged, whilst ensuring that strict safeguards are drawn up in relation to any subsequent introduction of resultant products into the food chain.
Environmental Policy There is a genuine environmental crisis and a new party should highlight this. It however, is not climate change, for if anthropogenic climate change is indeed a reality, it is simply a by-product of global overpopulation. This must be constantly reiterated along with the corresponding fact that the UK has no further carrying capacity. Thus to take further immigrants is both irresponsible and, in the long term, dangerous.
Although a new party should certainly highlight where the climate change issue is being abused by political parties and the Government to further objectives which are against our national interest, it should not therefore draw the erroneous conclusion that the science is basically bogus. After all, why should the ‘sceptics’ be adjudged to be any less partisan or more objective than those who possess a mainstream position, given that the former are often funded by powerful oil companies that have a vested interest in opposing the current orthodoxy? Simply because climate change is being used by our mainstream parties to justify ramping up foreign aid, domestic deindustrialisation and introducing ‘green’ taxes does not imply that the science is necessarily being invented to justify policy. All it means is that our government, as well as the governments of many other countries, sees this as a useful pretext for implementing other agendas that they already possess, such as creating transnational institutions of political and economic governance. The party should therefore not adopt a strong position either way on the scientific basis of climate change, but should constantly and unfailingly highlight the political abuse of the climate change rationale for implementing undesirable policies that work directly against the national interest.
As our domestic oil reserves are declining and international supplies are growing less secure and more expensive, developing new technologies not dependent upon oil are good in and of themselves, for they reduce national vulnerability to external geopolitical factors and will be cleaner. If other countries are convinced of the necessity of introducing such technologies, why should we not profit from this by selling new technological expertise and products? Furthermore, moving away from an oil dependent economy will help to undermine the source of vast wealth underpinning Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia which ultimately funds global jihad and Islamic proselytisation, including in the UK.
Demographic Policy and Immigration A popular nationalism will address and solve the problems of an overburdened transport infrastructure, a shortage of housing and pressure upon our countryside by implementing policies that will at first stabilise and then encourage a reduction in our population. This can be achieved through a combination of strict immigration controls and facilitating the departure of those who lack ethnic roots in the UK who actively identify against the native population. Additional resources should be devoted to combating illegal means of entry to the country such as sham marriages, organised people trafficking and general lone entry by foreign nationals. Punitive sanctions should be put in place for those who organise both sham marriages and people trafficking, with the costs incurred in the expatriation and resettlement of illegal immigrants being funded by the liquidation of the assets of those found guilty of these crimes. If the individuals involved in the organisation of such activity also happen to lack ancestral roots in the United Kingdom, they and their families should be expatriated to their ancestral familial homeland with no right of appeal.
These sanctions should serve as an exemplary deterrent to all who would consider engaging in crimes of this type, as well as provide a means of humanely resettling those individuals who have found themselves victims of the international sex trade. Other illegal immigrants who have often paid a great deal of money to traffickers frequently find themselves in a miserable position once in the UK, often living in squalid sheds erected in back gardens and leading a twilight existence because their papers have been purposefully destroyed. They should be humanely expatriated using funds acquired from the liquidation of the assets of their landlords or gangmasters. Their experience and the headlines generated by their removal would send the desired message to others considering the same route: you will be sent back, papers or no papers.
Criminals of foreign extraction should be routinely deported to their countries of origin, for their crimes are only compounded by the taxpayer having to fund their incarceration here.
Another undesirable and dubious phenomenon that is currently legal but underpins the growth of parallel societies separate to the host nation, is chain migration, whereby relatives of those who have acquired citizenship are then able to settle in the United Kingdom and in turn gain citizenship themselves. Often this is said to be in accordance with their "human right" to a family life. Any such right to "family reunion" should apply only in the ancestral ethnic homeland of the parties in question.
Deportation should be the fate of those individuals (together with their families) who advocate and agitate for the undermining of our freedoms and system of law, by either calling for the recognition and operation of parallel legal structures and exemptions, or for the imposition of their preferred legal system upon the host society. Clearly, the views of such people are at variance with the country in which they currently reside, and thus it would be preferable for all if they were to be returned to their ancestral familial homelands, where legal and social codes are in accordance with their cultural preference. Similarly, those few indigenous members of the population who have gone over to this way of thinking should also be encouraged to leave.
Legitimate new arrivals ought to contribute to society before being able to claim full citizenship rights, such as the vote or the right to state benefits (e.g. housing benefit, unemployment benefit and free medical care). A qualifying period could thus be introduced, say three years for someone from within the EU or from Australia, New Zealand and Canada, and five years for those from elsewhere. Whereas in an ideal world of infinite resources it would be good to provide such entitlement for all, in practical terms, particularly during our current era of economic contraction and mass indebtedness, native citizens themselves are not being provided with the services that they deserve. Given that the number of prospective immigrants is many times the size of the existing population of the United Kingdom, measures must be put in place to ensure that this human tide is turned.
Provision for the Elderly Many of our old people have been ill rewarded for their years of labour, and have nothing more than the state pension as a means of subsistence. Although additional benefits can be claimed, it is demeaning that their incomes should be topped up in this fashion. A new party should therefore pledge to increase the basic state pension to a level that renders claiming for top-up benefits obsolete, the precise figure to be ascertained following a review of overall budgetary expenditure and taxation.
In recent years, many people of working age and those yet to enter the workplace have been notified that they will have to work longer than the current generation before qualifying for a state pension owing to an increase in general longevity. However, at the same time that people are being compelled to work for longer, millions of young people lack employment. A situation is therefore being created in which millions wish to retire, but cannot, whilst millions who wish to work, cannot. An obvious solution would be to return the standard retirement age to a uniform 65, which would please both the old and the young, for although longevity has increased, the number of healthy years spent in retirement has remained roughly the same. People should therefore be given the opportunity to retire at 65, but their right to continue working, should they wish to do so, ought to be protected. The money saved on benefits currently paid to the young unemployed would pay for returning the pensionable age to 65.
Freedom of Speech and Expression One of the most notable characteristics of life in the contemporary United Kingdom is the degree to which traditional freedoms relating to thought, speech and expression have been systematically eroded under successive governments irrespective of their party political complexion. Thus we have seen laws introduced against "hate crimes" defined in such a manner as to make them almost all-encompassing, particularly with the catch-all term of "racism", which has come to be defined as existing if the victim of a particular crime perceives the intent of the perpetrator as emanating from, or being intensified by, a "racist" motive. In practice, together with its twin nebulous concept of "institutional racism", allegations of "racism" can be deployed by non-indigenes to stigmatise and destroy the reputation of any indigenous citizen. Such laws need to be replaced with legislation that guarantees the physical security of the person, and penalises only concrete threats or the real intent to instigate violence against an individual or group.
The Human Rights Act should be repealed, owing to the widespread abuses that have taken place in its name. It should be replaced with legislation that contains adequate provision for guaranteeing the rights and physical safety of citizens.
Secularism All legislation relating to "religious hatred" and the promotion of "diversity" needs to be repealed. Individuals should be protected by the law, but religious systems of belief and other ideologies should be open to full public criticism and ridicule; it should not be a crime for someone to be offended. A new party should be secular, which is to say, committed to keeping religion and politics separate, but advocate the public celebration of our traditional national festivals that have deep roots in Christianity, paganism and the natural passage of the seasons. People of any religion and none can share in these; otherwise, people’s religious beliefs and affiliations, or lack of them, are a matter for personal conscience.
Employment Law Selection in the workplace should be based exclusively upon the relative merits of candidates providing that they are citizens of this country. Skin colour should not come into it, for after all, if someone capable of a non-indigenous background is singled out for preferential treatment does this not feel demeaning? Does not the existing legislation actually patronise such people, and create potential mistrust and ill feeling between them and indigenous colleagues where none need exist if it were not for such legislation? Would it not be better for all concerned if the nagging thought that
“they only got that job because of their ethnicity” were to be removed from the equation?
Constitutional Matters The United Kingdom in its current form may not exist by 2015, depending upon the outcome of any referendum on Scotland’s independence. However, irrespective of the result, the West Lothian Question does need to be addressed. At a minimum, Scottish, Welsh and Irish MPs should not be able to vote on matters at Westminster – such as education – that concern only England.
Of more pressing concern than the above however, is the UK’s membership of the European Union. In order to regain sovereignty and effective border controls, a departure from the EU is essential.
A formal written constitution would include recognition of the existence of the indigenous peoples of the United Kingdom and their concomitant rights to national self-determination and primacy within their own homelands.
Foreign Policy A non-interventionist neutral foreign policy should be advocated which would entail leaving NATO as it no longer meets our national security requirements. Positive and close relations should be maintained with European countries, as well as with our daughter societies – Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Defence Policy This should be determined strictly by the need to protect the homeland, overseas British territories and shipping. All armed forces should be withdrawn from Afghanistan, and a policy of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states should be adopted. Military interventionism as an instrument of foreign policy as employed under recent Labour and Conservative administrations should be abandoned. Islamism should be tackled by the intelligence services and the police. A review of defence requirements should lead to the creation of a military better adapted to the future direction of foreign and domestic policy outlined above.
Conclusion The suggested policy focus could be summed up in three words: prosperity, liberty and security. This should provide the basis for a popular and resonant nationalist programme that would allow a newly constituted party to exert considerable public appeal. No such programme could be implemented without the UK’s exit from the EU, although it would be crucial for a new party to reiterate that it is anti-EU but not anti-European, for the two are quite distinct.
The globalist parties – Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat (as well as the Greens) – have all advocated and promoted the hollowing out of our democracy and sovereignty by using the state to further the interests of transnational corporations and finance, none of which can be held to account by our people. It will be essential to introduce legislation that removes the possibility of foreign takeovers of viable businesses, and the large-scale foreign direct investment that does take place must be subject to in-depth scrutiny. Some, such as by Nissan and Honda, is productive for the country, unlike the recently announced Arab financing of housing and infrastructure in Liverpool, which is parasitic. The latter needs to be curtailed.
In sum, focusing upon a distinctive nationalist economic agenda would present a new party with the most effective means of making headway. Whilst still retaining policies committed to ending mass immigration and multiculturalism, solutions to our economic problems are key. Much has been left out of this policy discussion, including pivotal areas such as health, education and law and order, but these will be revisited at a later date. The primary intent of this piece has been to forward the case for focusing upon the economy as a viable strategy for gaining public support, rather than providing a fully-fledged overview of policy. It is now up to readers to consider the points raised here, and to decide whether these suggestions possess merit.
Hat Tip to Durotrigan -
http://durotrigan.blogspot.com/2012/03/beyond-fringe-building-credible.html
