Calling Free Nations

Giuseppe Mazzini

Calling Free Nations

Stuart Millson deconstructs “Remainiac” rhetoric  

On 1stMay, the Daily Mail, the newspaper which the chattering classes love to hate, published some extraordinary despatches from the House of Lords debate on EU exit – their ‘lordships’ having inflicted the latest series of defeats on the Government’s Brexit legislation. Alongside messrs Mandelson, Heseltine and Kinnock, plus another noble peer whose only claim to fame is the manufacture and mass-sale of lager, the anti-Leave cause was spurred on by one, Lord Roberts of… Llandudno. A five-times-defeated LibDem parliamentary candidate, the noble Roberts (no relation, as far as we know, of the great Victorian/Edwardian General) compared the actions of the Prime Minister to those of Hitler. Quite apart from the fact that Mrs. May has demonstrated her liberal credentials on many occasions – her earnest belief in inclusion, in helping the “just managing” and the marginalised – the contention of Llandudno’s finest really cannot go unchallenged.

As can be seen from perusal of the pro-Remain press, or by listening to Radio 4’s Today programme or news “analysis”, the EU side – predominantly metropolitan – is fond of portraying the Brexit cause as populist, or worse – far-Right, even Fascistic. And yet the grand project to “unite” Europe, to bring every country and individual into a single state with its own anthem, flag and currency, harks back to the Berlin of 1942. In that year, leading economists and industrialists of the Reich met to discuss the formation of ‘Europäische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft’ – the European economic community. It is true that just before the fall of France in 1940, the French diplomat and League of Nations enthusiast Jean Monnet devised a plan for his country and the United Kingdom to merge into one new country, in order to face down the threat of German invasion and hegemony across the entire continent – a proposal rejected by the French Government.

In the post-war period, Monnet revived a new version of that plan, although adapted to the new reality of a France and Germany which had to be reconciled and stabilised, lest a European war ever break out again. However, Monnet’s plan of a Coal and Steel Community – although undoubtedly the first step toward a federation – never included a blueprint for what has come to pass in the early-21stcentury, a European Union consisting of former Warsaw Pact capitals – and a Union, at that, with its own (unelected) President.

If the architects of the embryonic European Community in 1942 could have foreseen the extent to which the modern EU has permeated most aspects of economic and political life, they would consider their work to have been well and truly achieved. That their system would also be the object of wholehearted veneration by the British Upper Chamber some 80 years later, might have led to the clinking of schnapps glasses long into the night.

But the 2016 Brexit vote has potentially changed Europe’s course: presaging the prospect of a new Europe of nations – of sovereign states and peoples; a Europe of a hundred flags; a continent in which the governments and parliaments – rather than a group of central controllers – conduct their home policies, customs and trade arrangements. So powerful a repudiation of the EU and its founding fathers and ideologies was the Brexit vote, that the powers-that-be in Brussels are now pouring every ounce of energy into defending the great structures of their system: the Single Market, the Customs Union, government from the European Commission, the firm and firmly-administered “unity” of the continental club. The prospect that a nation could lead a normal life again – governing itself through its own truly representative institutions – now reverberates throughout the weakening EU; with Hungary and Poland refusing the Brussels directive to accommodate large quotas of migrants; with Holland and Germany electing anti-EU members to their parliaments.

Brexit – although tangled and its details much disputed, and although our final withdrawal deal is far from clear – is a chance for us to establish a new chapter in the history books of Europe, whatever illusions our noble friend from Llandudno and his ill-informed associates cling on to.

Stuart Millson is QR’s Classical Music Editor

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18 Responses to Calling Free Nations

  1. David Ashton says:

    Let’s put the Rodney Atkinson’s Nazi-EU theory (which involved US Jewish financiers!) in the same barmy box as his brother’s Mr Bean.

    The EU – EEC – ECSE – was built on an anti-Nazi arrangement to prevent another conflict between France and Germany.

    Britain could have helped shape western Europe’s future by bringing in our then four Europe overseas Dominions in 1945-1950; a Europe of Nations. Now what is left of our country looks like swapping Bruxelles for Beijing, a Saxon-Norman heritage for an Afro-Asian future, and a replacement of the Protestant-Catholic religion by an Islamic-Marxist condominium.

  2. Stuart Millson says:

    Perhaps the EU idea goes even further back, to Napoleon’s continental system – the forerunner of the economic exclusion zone known now known as the Customs Union.

  3. David Ashton says:

    A good comparison, Stuart.

    But the peoples of Europe outside that French system were and are also Europeans.

    Part of this island was once inside the Roman Empire.

  4. Stuart Millson says:

    David – I strongly believe in a new (or old!) Europe of Nations, with Britain as a member or participant. We must resist, though, the EU – which aims to replace the true nations of our continent with social engineering, bureaucracy and an ersatz superstate.

    My hope for Brexit is that our example will inspire other electorates; that we will leave the EU in a secure, step-by-step, pragmatic yet purposeful way – and that other free nations will join us.

    It is a pity that the ‘Lords’ (most of whom are just political appointees, not ancestral members of the peerage) approached the debate on Brexit legislation, not in a spirit of making sensible adjustments to the Bill, but in a vengeful, destructive, selfish manner. The British people will not forget their wilful behaviour.

  5. David Ashton says:

    We agree enough. My fear is that we’ll get the worst of all worlds in the “tradition” of British politicians and their stooges for exactly a century past.

    The EEA looks a potentially reasonable proposition, but even that will probably be bungled if they try it.

    Meanwhile, the peoples of Shakespeare, Wagner, LeBon, Dante and Aristotle watch their heritage crumble. I am not among those pleased, for example, to learn that today’s Luftwaffe has only 4 combat ready fighter jets, because my uncle was bombed out and my cousin was shot down in an unnecessary war, or that Europe (excluding Turkey) has 50 million Muslims, and many more to come.

  6. Stuart Millson says:

    Apparently, according to our desperate Remainiac media, “a million students” – a million, no less! – are calling for a second EU referendum.

    Would that be the same “million” students who couldn’t be bothered to vote in the last one, or in the General Election before that?

    And I was amused to read that one of the leaders of the Remoonies in the House of Commons, Dominic Grieve, has called for Boris Johnson to resign – as Mr. Johnson is apparently guilty in the eyes of St. Dominic for contravening “Cabinet collective responsibility”. Let’s hope Mr. Grieve doesn’t vote against his own party and Government again in the Commons: collective responsibility is so important…

  7. David Ashton says:

    We are heading for a dog’s dinner, whatever way we look at it and whenever it is served.

    “The decline and fall of England,which will rejoice her enemies, will not be England’s decline and fall only, but for all which she stood, and not till then shall we know the extent of our miseries.” – W. Macneile Dixon, “The Human Situation” (1937) p.110.

  8. Stuart Millson says:

    We owe a huge debt of gratitude to This England magazine – a publication that was in the anti-EU battle from the very beginning.

    When the Danes struck the first blow against the EU in 1992 (the electorate of that country rejected the Maastricht Treaty), a great celebration – with Danish pastries – took place in TE’s editorial office! It is, therefore, very sad to see that the Editor’s letter has not appeared in the latest This England – and I hear from friends who are Facebookers that the Editor has (apparently – according to announcements) “retired” or that the magazine has been reorganised, or some such thing.

    Having written for This England for 30 years, I happen to know the former Editor, Stephen Garnett, very well – and he is a very fine chap, and tells me that it’s news to him that he’s retired! Instead, This England has been transferred from Regency Cheltenham to corporate Dundee (minus its existing staff) – Dundee being the HQ of the new owners. It seems unlikely that This England will ever speak out again on the European question, given that a new staff now runs the publication. (Certainly, the campaigning section of the magazine – ‘Nelson’s Column’ – has been dismasted.) It is disappointing that Stephen, as Editor, did not have the chance to say goodbye to the readers, or that an explanation of the new “arrangements” was not included in the summer edition.

    But what I can say is how proud I am that the “old firm” stood firm for so long, and in its own quiet, persuasive way – aided by a refreshing pot of tea, and the production of thousands of anti-EU stickers and many anti-EU articles – succeeded in helping to turn the tide; so that in the June of 2016, our country voted to regain its former sovereign independence.

    Long live the old This England.

  9. David Ashton, Stale, Pale & 100% Male says:

    No Drill Music reviews & no picturesque mosques with their Ottoman conquest symbol in the Olde “That” England. I remember when its Editor once dared to complain about “hordes of immigrants”, today a crime. The only thing I disliked was Colin Carr’s drawings in which even the children looked like old people, and his inevitable cat. The essays by one S. Millson or his nom-de-plume were always a treat.

    As for the actual Nelson’s Column, a xenophobic monument to a slavery-supporter, that will have to have Mandela on top instead of Horatio, or be demolished, when the Replacement is completed.

  10. Stuart Millson says:

    Thank you, David!

    I was most amused by the Remainiacs’ desperate rally for the EU, held on Saturday – a function addressed by… Anna Soubry, Gina Miller and the Baldrick actor, who also presents Time Team. (Archaeologists of the future may one day dig up some Euro coins – prompting a discussion on the strange Euro-cult that existed centuries ago.) During Saturday’s proceedings, one pro-Brexit Tory MP tried to speak reasonably to some of the Euro-cult followers, only to be subjected to abuse and swearing. Welcome to their ideal European society. This is the sort of threatening atmosphere the Remainiacs are trying to create.

    Needless to say, the ridiculously-biased, gushing BBC made much of the rally – ignoring a large pro-Brexit demonstration being held just around the corner at Millbank. The Remainiacs – brandishing their Euro-flags (the totalitarian symbol which aims to replace real European nations) may have put quite a few angry, London-based zealots on the streets, but the event attracted just a tiny, tiny fraction of the number who, in the referendum of 2016, decisively rejected the collectivist, politically-correct EU and all that this rotten organisation stands for.

    Brexit seems to have inspired other freedom-loving European peoples to break with Brussels: in Italy, the new government is tearing up the liberal rule-book; in Sweden, the parties of the democratic Right are – if elected – promising a referendum on EU membership; and the former Eastern bloc countries have boycotted a European meeting on immigration (i.e. rejecting Merkel’s open-door policy for the whole of Europe).

    Now that the EU Withdrawal Act has successfully passed through the United Kingdom Parliament, we can take some heart that our membership of this bureaucrats’ hall of mirrors and system of control is nearing its end.

  11. David Ashton says:

    Soft Brexit: Foreign EU control of our domestic affairs & immigration from EU, plus reduced access to the adjacent large regional market & supplies.

    Hard Brexit: Foreign control of our domestic infrastructure & immigration from outside EU, plus minimal access to the adjacent large regional market & supplies.

    M’aidez!

    Passo in avanti, Sig Salvini!

  12. Stuart Millson says:

    After having told us continually that Parliament needs to be the final arbiter in the EU exit process, the Remainiacs – now led by insignificant ex-minister Justine Greening – are now demanding a second referendum!

    Despite the somewhat watered-down nature of some aspects of Brexit (and the fact that we have compromised too much with Barnier and Brussels), I feel that we need to stick with Theresa May. Better a gradual Brexit with her, than continued EU control and occupation under Corbyn and his European Union quislings.

  13. David Ashton says:

    A gradual Brexit or a gradual Remain? Or the worst of both worlds? Stick to Nurse (& her “equality, diversity & more immigration”) for fear of something worse (Corbyn’s “more immigration, equality & diversity”).

    See e.g. James Forsyth in the current “Spectator”.

    Anyway the “English” are now allowed to wave their old flag now that England is now “a melting pot of [other] races and religions”. Oh, thank you, thank you! We doff our caps and tug our forelocks to our new unhappy lords and masters, “but still it is not we”.

  14. Stuart Millson says:

    The British Government (after the EU’s Salzburg jolly) needs to ask the question: who is this so-called ‘President’ Donald Tusk? Who is this man? No European citizen has ever elected him, and yet he poses as the leader of a superpower – telling an elected British Prime Minister what is or not acceptable to him and his precious little bureaucracy. Our country has given every possible compromise in these tedious EU exit “negotiations” – and offered the wretched cabal in Brussels £39 million – which should be spent on British hospitals and infrastructure – and defence. I believe that it is time now to dig in, and leave without paying a single penny. Perhaps this stance might bring the closed-minded EU to its senses.

    As to the continuing nonsense about the Irish border – are we seriously being told that an official with a clipboard or scanner, checking a lorry as it goes from Eire to Ulster, constitutes a “hard border” or threatens the peace process? Britain must stand up to the endless spinning of fantasies and threats by ‘President’ Donald Tusk.

  15. David Ashton says:

    M’aidez!

    Un diner de chien sans aucun doute.

    Les pions du jeu de dames.

    Ou es-tu, Monsieur Bojo! Tu ne vas pas jouer avec les grenouilles? Trop occupe avec less filles en Angleterre perfide, tres certainement.

  16. David Ashton says:

    les filles, bien sur

  17. Stuart Millson says:

    On this Armistice commemorative weekend, President Macron of the EU satellite state, France, has called for a joint European army to protect the continent against China, Russia “and even America”. The President seems to forget that it was a sovereign Britain, together with the Americans and Canadians, who began the liberation of his country and its neighbours in 1944. With a heavy loss of life.

  18. David Ashton says:

    We certainly need to defend the entire region and shared civilization of Europe from Chinese imperialism, Islamic fundamentalism and African migration.

    But how trivial such considerations seem compared to the Great Public Decision just ahead: Brexit has become a Bore, so let’s just leave it all to that nice Mrs May and her Backstop whatever that means.

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