In the months since the historic Brexit vote on June 23rd 2016 there have been a surprisingly high number of establishment figures that have come out as being in favour of our withdrawal from the so-called "European Union". People such as Lord Lawson, Andrew Neill, Michael Caine and John Cleese, as well as many Tory and Labour MPs. In this thought-provoking post, Will Wright discusses whether this is a trend that is likely to grow as the British public gradually wakes up to the nightmare they are being sleep-walked into and start to do something about it.
Do we have friends in high places?
Does British nationalism have any friends in our county’s establishment? This might seem a strange question to ask. Some nationalists might have taken it for granted that everyone in the establishment and the political class is beyond redemption. Does it matter?
When a country has a revolution, or a fundamental change of government, many people recognise that one ruling group of people has been replaced by another. But, that’s not the full story. The country itself is still much the same. The civil service, the police and the military are mostly the same people as before.
Some senior people in those institutions find it fairly easy to go from supporting the old regime to supporting the new one. Some journalists, unless they are very ideologically committed, might carry on much as before. Revolutionary regimes tend to purge those they regard as ideological enemies, just as the previous order would purge those it considered dangerous revolutionaries – but most of the people in the country are the same people in the same roles.
Governments change when a new party wins an election, or in some countries, when there is a violent revolution. But something happens before that point. Something that is subtler. Some people who are very much part of the establishment, politicians, judges, senior civil servants and policemen and military leaders, gradually change their allegiances from the old order to the new.
It is this change before a revolution happens that enables it to happen. All new regimes had supporters in the old order. This seems to have been true of the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution and the Nazi takeover in Germany.
There might be some in the British establishment who have always been patriotic and broadly in agreement with us. Such people might have been browbeaten into silence, at the moment, waiting for a patriotic mass movement to emerge. After all, shouldn’t we expect the military to be nationalistic? Shouldn’t we expect judges and policemen to believe in law and order? Shouldn’t we expect some common ground with journalists and politicians ‘on the right’?
When a movement is very certain about what it wants to achieve and very active and determined about achieving it, then something magical happens. The movement becomes very charismatic. The magnetic pull of the movement becomes ever greater and more and more people are attracted. Of course, people in establishment circles are not immune from this. Some of them prepare to make peace with a new regime and get ready to serve it.
So, does British racial nationalism have any supporters in the establishment? At the moment this is not at all clear. The conditions are not right to bring about open support – there is no charismatic mass movement. Anyone who declared any kind of support for nationalism would be purged.
During the nineteen-seventies, the National Front was numerically small compared to the established parties and those of the far-left. But, through a spirit of activism, lead by National Activities Organiser, Martin Webster, it was becoming charismatic. Some members of established parties defected to the NF. Many policemen, especially London policemen, supported the NF. So, too did prison warders and many London postal workers.
John Tyndall boasted, in Spearhead magazine, that the establishment would be frightened if it knew of the strength of support among those groups. Tyndall was probably too quick to mention this. The establishment did notice – and took steps to reverse the trend. The military, the police and the prison service all now ban nationalists from joining. In all the big public service trade unions, the far-left are in charge. They join the management in driving out nationalists.
All big public organisations have ‘Equality and Diversity’ courses for their employees. The unions state, “no platform for fascists and racistsâ€.
So, is all lost? No.
Nationalists need to have a very clear vision of the future that we are going to achieve – long-term and well as short-term. There seems to be something mystical about thinking very long-term. Once a body of people has a vision they must be very active in pursuit of that goal. Then the charisma and magnetic pull takes over. People are attracted to conviction politicians – they can tell when someone is authentic. Once a mass movement is born, then the conditions are in place for friends in high places to declare themselves.
Most people pay lip-service to ‘Equality and Diversity’ but privately regard it as a form of brainwashing. The unions are in terminal decline. Not many people join or support them anymore. The old political parties have become alienated from voters – and alienated from their own rank-and-file members.
Banning nationalists from certain professions will be counterproductive in the long run. This practice might even be challenged in the courts if someone declared themselves to be a nationalist and then was refused a job. The establishment’s equality and diversity legislation can be used against it.
We need someone with vision to build the mass movement.