MYTHS

Another myth that has been advanced during the credit crunch, is that the 1930s slump was exacerbated by, if not a caused by, protectionism - something which we are now told we must avoid at all costs.

It might be true to not regard protectionism as a solution to the present economic crisis, but it was not a causal factor of the 1930s slump. In reality, trade between different countries from different social, economic and political systems has always tended to be regulated to some extent and this has involved tariffs.

What did happen in the 1930s, is that Britain was forced, due to a variety of factors [the exit from the Gold Standard, the collapse in industry and the attendant unemployment, the devaluation of the currency and competitive devaluations], to abandon its simplistic theoretical laissez-faire free trade policy, and introduce tariffs to protect its industry from unfair competition [the damage done to British industry by returning to the Gold Standard was substantial - see the English Rights Campaign item dated the 18 December 2008].

This abandonment was long overdue and the reluctance to respond to the gravity of the threat posed to our industries by foreign protectionist measures was a major factor in the decline of British power. For example, in 1904 the average tariffs on industrial goods imported from Britain were: 25% in Germany, 34% in France, 73% in the USA and 131% in Russia. The British tariff on manufactured imports was zero.

It was impossible for British industry to compete successfully on such a basis and it is little wonder that our rivals and competitors not only caught up with us, but overtook us economically and then militarily.

The introduction of a more protectionist stance by Britain in the 1930s led to a fivefold increase in the output of machine tools, and a boom in chemicals, steel, aerospace and many other industries. Without this re-industrialization, Britain would have fared even worse against the Nazis in the Second World War than we did. Fighting wars is dependent on industrial production - not City speculation.

Today, those industries which are facing competition from the Far East, where they are free to exploit Western technology without any accompanying Western labour costs and other regulations, should be able to expect a more supportive government and would be more successful if they did not face unfair competition. On leaving the EU, our fishing industry would boom as we retook control of our own territorial waters.

A more pragmatic approach is needed and should be welcomed.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Despite some determined campaigning, English nationalism has failed to make a significant breakthrough this last year, although the third place position [only 44 votes behind of the Greens who were second] in the Haltemprice and Howden Westminster by-election does demonstrate the potential.

Meanwhile, Labour’s various anti-English policies continue apace. We are witnessing the attempted destruction of a nation.

Sometime in the next 18 months, Labour will have to face the electorate in a general election. For certain, Labour will face the electorate in the EU elections in June, with a proportional representation counting system.

It is crucial that English nationalism does achieve electoral success, not only in the June elections, but also the general election, whenever it comes.

For those who have supported this blog and its campaign, and to English nationalists everywhere, the English Rights Campaign would wish a very Happy Christmas and a successful New Year.

IMMIGRATION

The extent of the judiciary’s determination to promote mass immigration, including illegal immigration, knows no bounds. The latest example being the marriage by proxy of a Polish immigrant to a Brazilian at a ceremony where neither attended. The 15 minute ceremony took place in Brazil, with friends and a lawyer in attendance.

Although marriage by proxy is illegal in Britain, it is legal in Brazil. Therefore Judge David Allen pronounced that the marriage was therefore valid under English law and that because the Brazilian is married to a Pole, then under EU law he is entitled to British residency.

The potential for abuse and exploitation by organized crime rackets does not take much imagination. Sir Andrew Green of MigrationWatch said:

‘This is a ludicrous outcome. It drives a coach and horses through the government’s efforts to prevent sham marriages. Those who succeed by this bizarre route can obtain a meal ticket for life at the British taxpayer’s expense.’

THE WAR ON TERROR

Cambridgeshire County Council has used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act [RIPA], one piece of Labour’s anti-terrorist legislation, to spy on 5 paperboys suspected of not having the correct paperwork. The council has a by-law requiring paperboys to have work permits.

Council officials spied on the paperboys and produced surveillance evidence to secure a conviction.

Local councils have become quite adept at exploiting anti-terror legislation to harass ordinary people. Poole Council used RIPA to investigate parents suspected of not abiding by school catchment area rules. Other councils have used covert techniques to investigate dog fouling and litter louts.

ETHNIC CLEANSING

Labour has announced that they intend to change the law in order to encourage anti-English discrimination. In future companies will be allowed to discriminate in favour of black and women candidates and against Englishmen.

Harriet Harman has said that ‘positive action’ is necessary to ensure that the workforce proportionally represents the population as a whole.

The proposals are supported by the TUC, the so-called Equalities and Human Rights Commission, and the CBI. That the establishment toadies at the CBI support such pernicious measures should come as no surprise. It is an organization which is usually in support of misguided government policies - such as the ERM, the single currency and the EU - but this time they have excelled themselves by being a party to the promotion of race zealotry.

Labour also said that they intend that more government contracts would be awarded to firms with a politically correct record on equality. Public organizations will be required not to discriminate on grounds of ‘sexual orientation, gender reassignment, age and religion or belief’. They will be required to report on pay inequalities and the Equality and Human Rights Commission will be carrying out a series of enquiries into pay.

This anti-English discrimination, in England, needs to be put into context. It was reported by the Office for National Statistics in the summer that the scale of immigration is such that in 2005 only 64% of babies born in England and Wales were recorded as being ‘White British’. Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of MigrationWatch, said:

‘This is a measure of the extent to which uncontrolled immigration is changing the nature of our society against the wishes of a very large majority. Immigration is now expected to account for 70% of our population increase in the next 25 years. This means we will have to build a city the size of Birmingham every three or four years to sustain the newcomers.’

If mass immigration continues, as the greater proportion of non-English children mature and enter the jobs market, then the anti-English discrimination will force out increasing numbers of Englishmen in pursuit of racial engineering. Labour is not only prepared to allow the continuance of mass immigration irrespective of the harm done to the fabric of our society, but are also prepared to displace the indigenous English population to that end.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH [bonus]

‘In Britain the interests of industry and the interests of finance have never been as closely intertwined as they are in France, Germany, were in the United States. As the decline of British manufacturing became evident, the competitive strength of foreign industry weakened somewhat the enthusiasm for free trade previously displayed by British manufacturers, but British financiers were still doing well out of financing the trade of the world. When, at the turn of the century, Joseph Chamberlain tried to rally the manufacturing interest in the Conservative Party behind the cause of protection for domestic industry, in the hope of launching a manufacturing revival, he was bitterly opposed by the financial interests. He and the manufacturers were decisively defeated.

The full extent of the victory for finance was to be demonstrated much later, in 1925, after the First World War had finally destroyed the edifice of British economic superiority. During the war normal free financial relations had been suspended, which had been the basis of the international monetary system guided from London. At the end of the war the City, in the interests of sound finance and the restoration of its position as an international centre, pressed the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill, to return to the gold standard, even though this would mean raising the value of the pound against the dollar and damaging the competitiveness of the export industries. Again the victory was won by finance, in the person of Montague Norman, Governor of the Bank of England; and the gold standard was restored.

In a bitter polemical pamphlet entitled The Economic Consequences of Mr Winston Churchill, Keynes argued that this decision would lead to disaster. He was right. The export industries - coal, shipbuilding, textiles - virtually collapsed. In 1926 there was a General Strike. Britain’s slump was well under way five years before the depression was to engulf the rest of the world.’

Lord Eatwell, writing in 1982.

The failure of Joseph Chamberlain’s campaign was referred to in the English Rights Campaign item, dated the 12 March 2005.

THE WAR ON TERROR

Below is an item from yesterday's The Times. It seems that Scotland Yard, in its eagerness to be politically correct, is now employing and funding terrorists:


December 16, 2008

Sack Mohamed Ali Harrath, Scotland Yard urged
Richard Kerbaj and Dominic Kennedy

Scotland Yard has been urged by the former intelligence chief Baroness Neville-Jones to sack one of its anti-terrorism advisers after The Times discovered that he is wanted by Interpol and authorities in his native Tunisia because of his links to an alleged terror organisation.

The Metropolitan Police admitted last night that it had pumped money – estimated to be tens of thousands of pounds – into an annual interfaith forum hosted by the adviser, Mohamed Ali Harrath, for the past four years.

Lady Neville-Jones, who chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee and is a former governor of the BBC, demanded answers yesterday from Scotland Yard, the Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, about the extraordinary state of affairs surrounding Mr Harrath, who advises the Met’s Muslim Contact Unit on how to combat extremism. He also runs a Muslim television channel.

“Unless and until the Interpol red notice is removed it seems quite wrong that Mohamed Ali Harrath should be employed as an adviser,” Lady Neville-Jones, the Shadow Security Minister, said. “The Government must answer some very serious questions about its border control and vet-ting systems. Both the Home Office and Metropolitan Police have access to Interpol’s information. Did the Home Office access this information before allowing Mohamed Ali Harrath to enter, and did the Metropolitan Police check it before allowing him to work for them? If not, why not?

“If they did access Interpol’s data, how could the Home Office let in and the Met employ an individual with a red notice for alleged links to a suspected terrorist organisation? The FCO must be aware that the Tunisian Government, an ally in the fight against terrorism, has asked for the extradition of this man.”

Mr Harrath has admitted setting up the Tunisian Islamic Front (FIT) which, according to the Tunisian Government, advocated the establishment of “an Islamic state by means of armed revolutionary violence”.

In evidence before Britain’s Special Immigration Appeals Commission in 2003, an MI5 witness accused the FIT of terrorism activities in France.

Mr Harrath denies this, saying that his movement was wrongly blamed by the French courts. He described the FIT as a “nonviolent political party founded in 1986”, and said he has been persecuted and tortured by the Tunisian authorities because of his opposition to what he and other critics deride as a “one-party state”.

Scotland Yard refused to be drawn on The Times’s revelations about Mr Harrath. It emerged, however, that the Met has been providing funding for an annual Muslim gathering, Global Peace and Unity, hosted by Mr Harrath’s Islam Channel.

The event was addressed this year by leading politicians, including Sha-hid Malik, the Justice Minister, Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, and Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Home Secretary. Scotland Yard was unable to provide exact details about the funds, beyond saying that it had been £10,000 on one occasion.

The Islam Channel was rebuked by Ofcom, the media regulator, for showing a biased film about Jerusalem that gave only the Muslim viewpoint. Ofcom found last year that the channel had broken its broadcasting code by twice showing the documentary Jerusalem: A Promise of Heaven, which argued that Muslims had been deprived of ownership of the holy city.

The documentary earned some notoriety after being discovered in a suitcase found in the home of Saajid Badat, a Muslim, of Gloucester, who pleaded guilty in 2005 to plotting to destroy an aircraft with a shoe bomb. At the time police said that he had agreed to blow up a passenger aircraft from Europe to the US and was prepared to kill himself and hundreds of innocent people. When the channel was summoned before Ofcom, it argued that a complaint about the documentary was itself “partial” as it came from a “Jewish organisation”.

Ofcom stated: “The Islam Channel failed to ensure that this major matter of political controversy was treated with due impartiality.” It decided it was not a sufficiently serious breach to warrant a statutory sanction. However, at the same time , Ofcom did fine the channel £30,000 over a separate complaint of breaking election impartiality rules by letting candidates for the Respect party present programmes.

It gave the channel a broadcasting licence after deciding that Mr Harrath was a fit and proper person.

MYTHS

The credit crunch and the reaction to it has given rise to two myths. The first one relates to the issue of Keynesianism.

Keynes wrote his book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, in response to the unemployment in the 1930s. He was not interested in all forms of unemployment, but was primarily concerned with understanding as to why the unemployment of the 1930s was persistent when classical economists believed that the market would self-correct and so re-employ the unemployed.

Keynes took particular issue with Says Law, which held that supply would never exceed demand. Keynes regarded Says Law as wrong as unemployment was an excess of supply [of labour] over demand [the number of jobs available].

Keynes believed that full employment was not necessarily a natural state of affairs and that it was the role of government to intervene in the economy to ensure a level of output consistent with full employment. Keynes believed that output was determined by effective demand, consisting of consumer demand and investment; and that the level of investment was more volatile than consumption and had a disproportionate effect on employment.

One of the problems identified by Keynes, was a situation in which interest rates would not fall sufficiently and that there could be a situation where people and institutions were hording cash [liquidity preference] - thereby reducing demand. Keynes believed that one of the reasons for the 1930s slump was that interest rates did not fall far enough and that liquidity preference was high.

Keynes believed that the government needed to intervene to force down interest rates and/or increase effective demand either by tax cuts, or by increasing government spending on capital projects.

Labour’s reaction to the credit crunch, in which the banks are keeping up interest rates and are openly hording cash, is to spend tens of £billions reflating the insolvent banks, and pumping hundreds of £billions into the banks via the Bank of England. Meanwhile the government has made a 2.5% cut in VAT and has postponed the building of two aircraft carriers.

If Labour thought that the banks would very nicely lend money again given all the money they have received, then they have been proved wrong. If Labour thought that people would be tempted into spending money they do not have by a piffling 2.5% cut in VAT, then they have been proved wrong. Quite what relevance encouraging consumers to buy DVD players or televisions and suchlike, built in China and the Far East, has to cutting unemployment in Britain is not explained. Although Gordon Brown seems to think that he can persuade foreign governments to increase their own government spending and thus, presumably create jobs for British exporters.

With respect, this is not Keynesianism and Keynes is most unlikely to have advocated such naïve nonsense. He was trying to understand and solve the continuing unemployment of the 1930s, whereas Labour’s current policies are simply increasing unemployment.

The numbers of people seeking work are dependent on a number of factors, not all of which are economic. The size of the workforce is influenced by the birth rate several decades earlier, itself determined by non-economic factors, and also by immigration. Labour’s immigration policy pointedly refused to take account of the impact on the economy and is determined by their determination to reduce the English into being a minority in England and by their desire to support the creation of an EU suprastate.

The size of the workforce is also determined by retirement and the ability to retire on a pension. Labour have destroyed the private pension system, which in turn reduces the amount saved and thus the level of investment.

Labour are now promising to reclassify many of those currently on incapacity benefit as being unemployed. This might save money and remove the hidden unemployment created in the 1980s and 90s - but it does not create jobs.

It should be remembered that Keynes was writing in the 1930s and that the world has changed. For example, Keynes believed that an increase in inflation would be a means of reducing wages as he thought that the unions would not realize that the money income was being eroded. In fact, the unions were more alert than he presumed.

Also, in the 1930s, Britain was a major industrial power and increases in demand would result in increases in demand for British goods within Britain. Today, Britain is de-industrializing, as a result of government policy, and the import penetration of the home market means that much of an increase in demand will benefit foreign producers and suck in more imports. Also, there was no mass immigration in the 1930s.

The Tories seem to think that the problem is that Labour have been insufficiently generous to the bankers and that more £billions should be given to them. Labour now seem to be taking a similar view. Quite why showering hundreds of £billions on the banks, who will promptly horde that money, is a solution to the credit crunch is unexplained. The banks should be by-passed and should have been left to stew in their own juice. In the age of the internet, it is not necessary to have a nationwide branch network in order to lend money to ordinary people.

It is Labour’s rejection of the nation state that is the reason for their failed economic policy. They refuse to promote the national economy and local industry. Labour prefers super casinos. Mr Brown prefers to grandstand as saving the world’s banking system, rather than concentrate on running the home economy. Labour are determined to promote mass immigration and increase the numbers of those seeking work, which can only force down wages and living standards, and increase unemployment. Their disdain for the defence of the realm, means that they are happy to stall the building of desperately needed aircraft carriers regardless of the impact on jobs.

Labour are the problem, not the solution.

THE LOONY LEFT

It is not only the success of their football team, or their commitment to yachting for the unemployed [see the English Rights Campaign item dated the 2 December 2008] that has put Hull on the map. Not to be outdone by the Loony Left at the University of Manchester [see the English Rights Campaign item dated the 4 October 2008], the Kingswood College of Arts, despite the credit crunch and the fact that the building is due to be demolished in 4 years, has spent £100,000 to have classical music piped into the school lavatories [this is not a spoof].

The secondary school was ranked as ‘inadequate’ in a recent Ofsted report. Only 13% of the pupils gained five A* to C GCSE grades this summer. Hull’s educational standards have been either the worst or among the worst in the country for many years.

Tony Hammond, the school’s director of resources, said:

‘Four years in the life of a secondary school student is a long time and we feel strongly the students who are here now deserve the best facilities and one of those is the toilets.’

The money came from the council’s capital budget for school buildings. The Liberal Democrat leader of Hull City Council said:

‘I think many parents of children who go to this college will think spending that sort of money is a bit bonkers. And I must admit I have some sympathy with that view.’

If that is the council’s view, one wonders why the money was spent? The luxury loos also include the school’s logo built into the floor, touch sensor flushes and all-in-one hand wash-and-dry units. The school has claimed that the piped music is necessary to protect pupils’ privacy.

CRASS KEYNESIANISM

Below is a copy of an article from today's Guardian:

Brown's VAT cut just crass Keynesianism, say Germans
• Britain accused of 'tossing around' billions of pounds
• Criticism clouds summit on EU stimulus package
* Nicholas Watt, Ashley Seager, Larry Elliott
* The Guardian, Thursday December 11 2008

Germany tore into Gordon Brown's £12.5bn cut in VAT last night, describing the move as "crass Keynesianism" that would raise Britain's national debt to levels that would take a generation to pay off.

In a blow to the prime minister, on the eve of today's EU summit in Brussels where a Europe fiscal stimulus plan will be discussed, the German finance minister accused Britain of "tossing around billions" after years of lecturing the EU on the dangers of deficit spending.

Peer Steinbrück, the SPD finance minister, made clear Berlin's resistance to a fiscal stimulus when he mocked "our British friends" for cutting VAT.

He told Newsweek: "We have no idea how much of that stores will pass on to customers. Are you really going to buy a DVD player because it now costs £39.10 instead of £39.90? All this will do is raise Britain's debt to a level that will take a whole generation to work off." His comments came on the eve of a fresh meeting between the Treasury and Britain's high street banks in which Alistair Darling will urge lenders to pass on cuts in interest rates and increase credit flows.

David Cameron, who last night seized on the Steinbrück attack as vindication of the opposition's critique of the government's fiscal rescue package, yesterday tabled his own proposals for a draft parliamentary bill that would create a government guarantee for up to 10% of all business loans in Britain, worth £50bn.

Steinbrück, a key figure in Labour's German sister party, made clear that Berlin is still smarting from a decade of lectures by Brown as chancellor to fellow EU finance ministers.

He said: "The same people who would never touch deficit spending are now tossing around billions. The switch from decades of supply-side politics all the way to a crass Keynesianism is breathtaking. When I ask about the origins of the crisis, economists I respect tell me it is the credit-financed growth of recent years and decades. Isn't this the same mistake everyone is suddenly making again, under all the public pressure?"

Berlin's intervention shows it is still smarting after Brown invited Nicolas Sarkozy and José Manuel Barroso, the European commission's president, to London on Monday to discuss plans for an EU-wide €200bn fiscal stimulus plan.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor who is wary of costly fiscal stimulus plans, did not attend the London meeting.

The Tories' national loan guarantee scheme will add to pressure on the government to announce fresh measures to boost bank lending. Figures from the Bank of England yesterday showed that mortgage rates have come down by far less than official bank rate in the past two months and that unsecured loans and overdrafts are more expensive than they were before the start of the credit crunch 18 months ago.

In the Commons, Cameron told Brown: "This recapitalisation scheme is not working. It needs to change if the banks are to start lending again. The prime minister keeps saying that everyone in the world has copied it, but no one has copied the details. He is lending to the banks at 12% and expecting them to lend out at 6%."

The government said the Conservatives would have to make £14bn of provisions against companies failing during the recession and said the measures announced in the pre-budget report were targeted, effective and costed.

Darling will next week announce changes to the terms of the credit guarantee scheme for banks in an attempt to ensure that the benefits of taxpayer support are passed on to lenders.

"I'm prepared to do more to free up lending," he told the Treasury select committee yesterday.

According to Bank of England data, the average interest rate on a standard variable rate mortgage stood at 6.39% in November, compared with a bank rate of 3%.

The spread of 3.39 percentage points was the widest since records began in 1995 because while bank rate came down by 1.5 points, the SVR mortgage fell by 0.52 points. New tracker rates came down in November after rising sharply in October. Over the two months combined, new tracker rates fell 0.28 percentage points - a small fraction of the two point drop in bank rate.

Michael Saunders, UK economist at Citi, said: "It is even worse for unsecured loans. Between July 2007 [just before the financial crisis erupted] and up to and including November 2008, the Bank of England cut rates by 2.75 percentage points.

"But over that period average interest rates for household overdrafts rose 3.11 percentage points, average credit card rates rose 0.83 points, the average interest rate of a £10,000 personal loan rose 1.84 percentage points and the average rate on a £5,000 personal loan rose 3.15 points. "All these unsecured personal interest rates are now the highest for several years.

RACE WAR POLITICS

Valleys Race Equality Council has issued a leaflet advising that the term ‘British’ is to be avoided. The leaflet’s advice has been accepted by the Caerphilly Council in South Wales.

The leaflet states that:

‘The idea of “British” implies a false sense of unity - many Scots, Welsh and Irish resist being called British and the land denoted by the term contains a wide variety of cultures, languages and religions.’

The leaflet continues to say that the term ‘half-caste’ implies that ‘a person is not whole and so should be avoided’. The term ‘negro’ is described as having ‘racist overtones and is linked with the slave trade’.

Less than 1% of Caerphilly’s 170,000 population are from an ethnic minority.

David Davies, the Tory MP for Monmouth, has condemned the leaflet as ‘political correctness gone mad’ and has further said:

‘Organizations like this are using public money to propagate their own narrow nationalistic ideas. Perhaps they should be replaced by a single body that promotes Britishness and encourages everyone in this country, whether black, Asian or white to unite and stand together under the British flag.’

The motive for the leaflet is not nationalism, but communism. As is plain from the leaflet’s contents, it is striving to achieve disunity and anti-Englishness.

There is nothing wrong in encouraging people to unite under the British flag, but many immigrants do not see themselves as British and what matters is that they are able to integrate into the host community. That is dependent upon the numbers of immigrants involved, which is far too high, and on the difference between the immigrants and the host community.

As a point of fact, the Scots, Welsh, Irish and English are British.

The quango should be closed and not replaced or repackaged. There are more deserving ways of spending taxpayers’ money and we certainly should not be wasting such monies on quangos like this in a deep recession.

VOTE RIGGING

A Populus opinion poll for the Times today highlights the danger posed to the Tories by their failure to tackle Labour's vote rigging activities.

Despite the economic downturn, Labour still has a lead on its handling of the economy, with 40% trusting Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling to fight the recession. This demonstrates the Tory weakness to offer a viable alternative to 12 years of Labour's spendthrift policies with English taxpayers' money.

More importantly, the poll shows that the Tories have an overall lead among voters with 39% support, compared with Labour on 35% and the Lib Dems on 17%. On these figures, then Labour could well win the next general election.

In a Boundary Commission report entitled Guide to the New Electoral Boundaries [see the English Rights Campaign item dated the 13 March 2006], the commission pointed out that:

'Even on the new boundaries if both of the main parties were on the same percentage of vote - for example 35% - then Labour would have 87 seats more than the Conservatives.'

This is an appalling and completely unacceptable state of affairs.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

‘Such a separation within the upper levels of British capitalism helps explain the aloofness of the twentieth-century City from the needs of British industry. This aloofness can be traced back to the eighteen-seventies, when so much of the social pattern of modern Britain was being fixed. The year 1878, which saw the failure of the City of Glasgow Bank, was, W.P. Kennedy has argued, a watershed for British banking’s relation to industry: “A point had been reached where the entire system had either to be reorganized to withstand the greater risks of steadily enlarging industrial requirements or the system had to withdraw from long term industrial involvement. The system withdrew. After 1878, no longer would banks become willingly involved in the long term financing of industry”. The capital markets became “deeply biased away from favouring most home industrial projects”. Consequently, the development of industry was handicapped and a vicious circle of declining relative profitability was created that continued through the twentieth century. Insufficient long-term investment hobbled productivity growth, which in turn made such investment ever less attractive, and so on in a downward spiral. Particularly hurt were the new electrical equipment and automobile industries, two of the industries of the “second industrial revolution”.

Why did British bankers take that turn away from industry? Domestic industry may already have become less profitable than other opportunities afforded by a rapidly developing world economy. Yet there seems more to it than this. That financial watershed paralleled the wider cultural watershed: As Kennedy observed about capital markets, “Institutions successfully created in Britain to ensure the stability necessary to early industrialization were distinctly less appropriate for the problems of sustaining subsequent development”. The stability had been achieved; now what was becoming necessary was a radical overhaul of institutions (and values) to actively foster continued development. Instead, stability remained the overriding end; confronted with the choice between safety and maximum growth, the financial system (like the social system as a whole) opted for safety. This pullback from industrial involvement was made more likely by the social separation that already existed between the worlds of finance and industry, and the contemporaneous entrenchment of anti-industrial sentiments in the financial and professional classes.’

And:

‘British businessmen in the twentieth century came to accept a dual orientation - what one business school professor called “the British mission - to combine business with humanity”. As Sir George Schuster, a director of the Westminster Bank and of several other firms, hopefully asked in 1947, “Can we, the nation of shop-keepers and money-makers, show the world how to put money-making in its right subsidiary place in the scale of values, without ceasing to perform well all the varied - and vital - functions which underlie the process of money-making?”

These aspirations of gentility imparted a particular tone to business behaviour in Britain. But its consequences were not the same throughout the business world; finance was not hampered as industry was. The milieu of finance, as we have seen, was not all that different from the traditional world of the aristocracy. It was already wealthy and socially established in the mid-nineteenth century, when the cultural counterrevolution was gaining momentum. It was “clean” - well removed from the actual processes of production. It involved the extraction of wealth by associating with people of one’s own class in fashionable surroundings, not by dealing with things and with the working and lower-middle classes, in perhaps grimy and ugly and certainly unfashionable locations. The life of finance was readily reconcilable with the gentry ideal, could recruit the best talent, and could call forth its energies without apologetics or the deliberation of a collective inferiority complex. There was no haemorrhage of ability out of finance: Families like the Barings, or the Barclays, the Smiths, and the Rothschilds remained active over generations, becoming indistinguishable from the old aristocracy. The inhibitions on economic enterprise that this ideal still enforced even on those in the City - resulting in the high value placed on amateurism, for instance - were counterbalanced by the great political power they wielded. Through its integration into the elite, the City could call upon government much more effectively than could industry to favour and support its interests. Further, the City did not depend upon the prosperity of the domestic economy. It was increasingly bound up more with foreign economies than with its own, and could flourish with them while British industry languished. The City, in short, offered a way (more difficult in industry) to be a gentleman and still get rich. Given all these advantages, it is not surprising that finance prospered while industry struggled.’

Martin J Wiener [writer and historian]

HOOD ROBIN

It was announced last week that Labour are to nationalise the Royal Bank of Scotland, taking a 58% shareholding. This is following the failure of RBS to raise £15billion by selling new shares, which the government will now buy itself.

In addition, the government is buying £5billion of preference shares, bringing the total cost to £20billion. This is the same amount as Labour’s giveaway package announced recently for the whole country.

Labour is showering huge sums on the banks in the hope that they might extend credit to the wider economy, which they are not prepared to do. The Labour policy is a very costly failure.

Labour - Putting Bankers First

English Democrats - Putting England First

THE NHS

At a time of the rationing of drugs in the NHS and when many are losing their jobs as a result of the credit crunch, Hull’s primary care trust, NHS Hull, has decided to launch a new scheme to provide training for young unemployed people.

Not minded to take any notice of the local plebs, who have been quite vocal in their disapproval, in a unanimous vote of the 12 board members, NHS Hull has decided to spend no less that £500,000 on buying a yacht to send 150 young people yachting each year for the next 3 years. This will involve a 14 week course, 2 weeks of which will be at sea.

One Hull, a local quango, is helping to fund the scheme out of the Government’s Working Neighbourhood Fund with a donation totalling a further £1.3million. The scheme is to be run by a new not-for-profit charitable trust.

Hull City Council leader, Carl Minns, who is also chairman of One Hull, had previously admitted that:

‘From what I have seen of the business case, I think it’s got a lot of holes in it. To give one example, the exit strategy goes from something being funded with a lot of public sector money to one with a new organisation having to generate almost £500,000 straight away.’

Mr Minns had also previously stated that he thought there were better ways of providing ‘quality apprenticeships’ and that it was ‘not for him’ to comment on NHS Hull’s decision to buy the yacht.

Initially, NHS Hull was expected to spend £400,000 on the 72ft yacht, but it was then decided that another £100,000 was needed to bring it up to spec. NHS Hull chief executive, Chris Long, said:

‘If you are buying an ocean-going yacht you are not necessarily buying an ocean-going yacht which is equipped for training.’

IMMIGRATION

Below is a copy of an article from today's Daily Express, in which Sir Gulam Noon once again [see the English Rights Campaign entry dated the 6 September 2005] shows a more common sense attitude to immigration than most politicians - including the Tories:

SIR GULAM: WE NEED A 10-YEAR BAN ON MIGRANTS

Monday December 1,2008
By Alison Little, Deputy Political Editor

BRITAIN should shut its borders to all immigrants for up to 10 years to prevent racial unrest, a top Indian-born businessmen said yesterday.

High-profile Labour donor Sir Gulam Noon, known as the “curry king” because of his multi-million-pound ready meals empire, said a ban was needed to stop racist groups exploiting tensions.

“I strongly feel that whoever are the immigrants here, we’d better give them jobs and give them dignity to live here before we import some more,” Sir Gulam told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show.

“I do not want a situation whereby a party like the BNP says, ‘Listen, all your jobs are being taken away by immigrants’. We have to be extremely careful.

“Some sort of a ban should be there,” said Sir Gulam, who last week survived the terrorist attack on the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai by barricading himself into his suite.

Sir Gulam, 72, who came to the UK in 1966 with just £50 in his pocket, is understood to have said: “We should wait for five or 10 years, until all the newcomers have been properly integrated and assimilated into the country.

“Until then we should just shut the door. We can only accommodate so many. There is always a danger that for the sake of political correctness, or a party’s political advantage, we find ourselves filling up the country with too many immigrants who will disturb the balance and upset the people – particularly the young people – of the host community.”

He also warned: “You can’t just put hundreds of thousands of people on this small island. There is a limit.”

He believes that immigrants must learn English and schoolgirls should not wear veils. The moderate Muslim also called on Britain to be tougher on extremists, saying it was a “soft target because we are mollycoddling these people”, who then saw it as a sign of weakness. His message to extremists was: “If you don’t like this country, get out.”

A Home Office spokesman said in response to Sir Gulam’s comments: “People understand that migration can bring benefits but they also rightly demand that we have robust systems in place to control those coming here.

“Our new points-based immigration system is about getting only the right people and no more.

“It is a powerful set of controls, which allows us to raise and lower the bar depending on the needs of the labour market and the country as a whole. We will use those levers.”