by Martin Webster
A couple of months ago a friend with whom I had been in contact intermittently since the 1960s sent me an e-mail asking me to support the campaign for a second Referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union (EU). He is a retired music teacher and cathedral organist. I was surprised to get his appeal since we had never before engaged in any kind of political discussion. Our shared interest was organ music and English cathedral choral music, particularly of the Elizabethan era. In the light of the terms of his appeal, and at the risk of damaging our friendship, I decided, to ‘let him have it with both barrels’. The following was devised not just to enlighten him but in the hope that it will serve as a quarry of information and arguments for Brexit supporters to deploy when confronted by Remainers.
The referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union was authorised by an Act of Parliament. That Act granted to the British people the sovereign power to determine whether or not they wished their nation to continue to be a member of the EU. The text on the ballot paper in the Referendum read:
There were no conditions, qualifications, sub-clauses, reservations, small print or other confusions to the stark ‘Remain’ or ‘Leave’ choice voters were given.
There was no statement on the ballot paper, or some ‘understanding’ explicit or implicit in the Act that if the electorate or the government or Parliament or business leaders don’t like the terms of Britain’s withdrawal in any negotiation with the EU and/or don’t like the possible economic impact of withdrawal with or without a treaty of withdrawal, then the matter be put back to the electorate in another referendum — or, indeed, further referendums as each sequence of negotiations is concluded and put to the electorate.
No such qualifications appeared on the ballot paper because, as the saying has it: “That way lies madnessâ€.
‘Project Fear’ warned
us before we voted
It cannot be said that the British people were not warned that there would be some extent of economic turmoil in the event of a Leave vote and the implementation of that decision. Those dire and excessive warnings were issued to the British people on a continuous basis by ‘Project Fear’ for weeks prior to the Referendum.
Many of the predictions of ‘Project Fear’ have been shown to be propaganda hogwash. There was no collapse of the Pound Sterling, no huge increase in unemployment and no need for “an emergency Budget within days in the event of a Leave voteâ€, as the then Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne assured us.
Since the Referendum the British economy has done rather well and unemployment has gone down.
I recollect a BBC ‘Breakfast’ TV interview with Lord Digby Jones, a former head of the Confederation of British Industry, on the morning that the Referendum result was made known. (See: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHpOgaE4R-I>). Just see the first five minutes of the interview.
He made it clear that the British electors had heard loud and clear all that the ‘Project Fear’ propagandists had been saying prior to the vote, but had gone into the polling booths saying to themselves:
“I rather like the idea of electing the people who rule over me, unlike the set-up in the EU Commission. I put freedom first, and if it costs me a few shillings in the first instance, then so be it.â€
So there is no legal, political or moral basis for a second referendum — on the contrary, there is a substantial legal, political and moral basis for insisting that the verdict of the British people, by a clear majority, be carried out.
The Leave majority would have been huge if only indigenous Britons had voted
Note that if only native Britons — people born of indigenous British stock — had voted in the referendum, then the Leave majority would have been huge.
As it was, a sustained attempt was made by the Remain camp to mobilise foreigners to frustrate the will of the indigenous British people on a crucial issue which affected the destiny of their homeland.
I regard that Remainer ‘mobilise the foreigners’ campaign to be not merely misguided, but an act of treason…. but, at base, that is what “the European Project†is all about: Treason, that is, suborning your country to the will of another country or supra-national authority. There is no other word for it.
Whatever became of the oath which Parliamentarians and other public servants have to swear:
“I promise to bear true allegiance to the sovereignty of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, her heirs and successors, according to law�
Can Remainer MPs, Peers, senior civil servants, members of the Armed Services and the Police swear that oath in good conscience, or do they cross their fingers behind their backs and wink at each other when they do so?
But the Remainer reaction to the Leave vote appears to be — at first glance — less sophisticated than treason: a sulky child’s refusal to accept the outcome of a democratic vote. “We don’t like the result and so we’re going to kick up, complain, drag our feet, have hysterics until the Leave people back down and we get our way!â€
Imagine if any losing party in a general election were to campaign against the result on that basis! Such a party would be dismissed by the electorate as a serious contender for power for many elections hence. Foreigners would be forgiven for thinking that Britain had evolved into a Third World ‘banana republic’ kind of a country.
The Remainer campaign provides
a justification for terrorism
The Remain ‘Second Referendum’ campaign is the astonishingly un-British and undemocratic reaction of that portion of the population which considers itself to be “Elite†and finds itself contradicted by those it regards as intellectual and social inferiors.
The Remainer campaign of subversion has been reinforced by the European Union’s negotiators, by Britain’s treasonous Civil Service and, not least, by ‘our’ Prime Minister Theresa May.
Their joint strategy from the outset was to delay-delay-delay, to get the Leave decision trapped and buried in a bog of complexity of their making in the hope that the Leave majority would throw up their hands in despair and give up.
In the past, we have often been assured by those in authority:
“There is no good reason for anybody in the UK to resort to terrorism because everybody has the vote, anybody can set up a political party, there is freedom of speech, the right of assembly, etc., etc.â€
But that argument is a two-sided coin. The other side is:
If the results of votes and other attributes of democracy are denied to us, then there is every justification for a resort to terrorism. The restoration of democracy, by whatever means are available under a tyranny, becomes a patriotic civic duty.
As has been remarked by others, including parliamentarians: “The Remain campaign to frustrate the referendum vote is playing with fire.â€
The Referendum was the biggest exercise in democracy Britain has ever seen. More than 17 million voters put their ‘X’ against the winning “Leave†option.
Subversion of democracy a feature of
the ‘European Project’ from the outset
The Brexit vote constitutes a kind of book-end to my political life. I began political activity in 1960/61 as a 17 year old in the Mill Hill (North London) branch of the Young Conservatives. I was already opposed to Britain joining what was then the European Economic Community (EEC).
I met another lad in the YCs who was also a member of the Anti-Common Market League. We asked for a debate on the issue. We were fed up with being asked to debate inane issues such as: “Are moving pavements a thing of the future and, if so, are they a good idea?â€
Our request was resisted by the constituency Agent, a paid servant of Conservative Central Office. Eventually the Agent conceded because a lot of YCs were keen on having a debate about something important. However, as recent school-leavers we were unprepared for the cynical tricks he was willing to deploy at the last hurdle to frustrate democracy.
Nobody could be found within the YC membership to oppose our motion: “Britain must not join the EECâ€. Ignorance of the topic and shyness is forgivable in teenagers.
The adult association was turned to, but nobody offered to speak against us. This is because they were either ignorant about the topic or cowards unwilling to engage in controversy of any kind — in most cases, probably both.
In the end, a Mr Rose from Golders Green, an adult from the adjoining Hendon & Finchley Constituency Association, had to be imported to advocate the pro-EEC case.
My friend (the Proposer) and I (his Seconder) relied on simple patriotism to advance our case: Our nation had never done well when entangled with Europe and had prospered when it secured its independence via a global mission. Did we fight two world wars in order to be ruled by foreigners?
Mr Rose’s case was mainly to do with avoiding further wars in Europe and talk of a huge home market. He was seconded by a YC who knew nothing of the issues and who said nothing beyond: “I Second Mr. Rose.â€
“It’s now time for the disco….â€
It was evident that my friend and I had captured the imagination of the audience and that Mr Rose had not impressed. It was going to be a landslide. Just as the vote was about to be taken, the constituency Agent, who had been eavesdropping, stepped into the room and announced:
“You’ve all had a debate — but we’re all Conservatives here. We’re not going to divide ourselves, so there will be no vote. It’s now time for the disco….â€
The Agent’s intervention prefigured and epitomises the pro-EEC/EU/Remainer attitude to being contradicted via the democratic process. It was that undemocratic fiasco which disillusioned me with ‘Establishment’ political parties and prompted my foray towards nationalist politics.
There is and never has been anything democratic about “the European Projectâ€. It does not have and never has had “the full-hearted consent of the British Parliament and peopleâ€, because the British people have always known that Edward’s Heath’s assurance: “Membership of the EEC does not involve Britain in any loss of essential national sovereignty†was a plain lie — which he later admitted (as being “necessaryâ€) — shortly before he died.
The British public were never consulted either in a general election or via a referendum before we were taken into the EEC by Edward Heath’s Conservative government.
In 1975 and 2016, government
thumbs were in the scales of
referendums on Europe Â
The 1975 referendum on Britain’s continued membership of the EEC was staged by Harold Wilson’s Labour government. It was fraudulently conducted in all sorts of ways.
The Remain and the Leave camps were both funded to issue to every household a booklet stating their case — but the government also issued its own “official†booklet, which was thoroughly Remain in content. The mass media was largely — and the BBC was wholly — pro-Remain.
In the case of the 2016 EU Referendum, the government also funded Leave and Remain booklets to be sent to every household, but spent an additional ï¿¡9 million issuing its own booklet which was thoroughly Remain in content.
This ‘thumb-in-the-scales’ exercise was contrary to the spirit — and some say also to the letter — of contemporary Electoral Law. Several senior executives of the Electoral Commission resigned their posts at the end of October (2018) after the High Court ruled in September that “the Commission had misinterpreted election lawâ€Â in the run-up to the Brexit vote. (See: https://www.dailymail.
The Commission had pursued every allegation of alleged financial impropriety against Leave campaign groups, but ignored all such allegations against Remain groups.
The mass media was largely Remain in its output. The BBC was compelled to give equal coverage to the Leave and Remain camps during the three-week campaign.
But in the two year period since then, when Brexit negotiations were in motion, the BBC has rallied unrelentingly behind the undemocratic Remain/EU Commission campaign for another Referendum on the grounds that the majority of voters who had voted Leave were “too stupid†to have been allowed to vote in the first one in 2016!
A logical contradiction? Superficially yes.
But what the Remainers hope is that in a second Referendum a sufficient number of “stupid†voters will either have died (yes, they have openly wished death on their opponents!) or will have become sufficiently cowed by the “Elite’s†propaganda onslaught against them that they will have changed their minds or — best of all — will refrain from voting.
This is the state of ‘democracy’ in Britain today.
I hope to see my country free before I die.