The New Pro-American Party

This article of mine appears (by request, I might add) on Harry's Place:

We promote friendship and co-operation with the American people on the basis of common interests such as family values, the protection of workers and consumers, strictly limited and strictly legal immigration, fair trade and fair tax, constitutional checks and balances, universal health care, national security, Social Security, energy independence, environmental responsibility, Second Amendment rights and responsibilities, Civil Rights, America as an English-speaking country, and foreign policy realism.

The British People’s Alliance is the restoration of the party that gave this country the universal and comprehensive Welfare State, and the strong statutory and other (including trade union) protection of workers, consumers, communities and the environment, the former paid for by progressive taxation, the whole underwritten by full employment, and all these good things delivered by the partnership between a strong Parliament and strong local government.

We believe in national self-government (the only basis for international co-operation, and including the United Kingdom as greater than the sum of its parts), local variation, historical consciousness, and family life (founded on the marital union of one man and one woman). In the whole Biblical and Classical patrimony of the West. In agriculture, manufacturing, and small business. In close-knit communities, law and order, and civil liberties.

In academic standards, and all forms of art. In mass political participation within a constitutional framework. In the absolute sanctity of each individual human life from the point of fertilisation to the point of natural death. And in the constitutional and other ties among the Realms and Territories having the British monarch as Head of State, the status of the English language and the rights of its speakers both throughout the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and the rights of British-descended communities throughout the world.

We are social democrats precisely to counteract all these good things’ corrosion to nought by the “free” market.

So the BPA is the pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war party of economically social democratic, morally and socially conservative British and Commonwealth patriots. We are the party that was otherwise destroyed by Communist and Trotskyist infiltration, eventually leading to the creation of New Labour by utterly unrepentant old Communists, Trotskyists and fellow-travellers. The party owing more to Methodism than to Marx, indeed owing nothing whatever to Marx. The party of Attlee, Bevin, Morrison, Bevan and Gaitskell.

Of the trade unionists and Labour activists who in the early twentieth century peremptorily dismissed an attempt to make the Labour Party anti-monarchist, and resisted schemes to abort, contracept and sterilise the working class out of existence.

Of the Attlee Government’s refusal to join the European Coal and Steel Community on the grounds that it was “the blueprint for a federal state”. Of Gaitskell’s rejection of European federalism as “the end of a thousand years of history” and liable to destroy the Commonwealth. Of the 66 Labour MPs who voted against Maastricht. And of the every single Labour MP who voted against the Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies every year between 1979 and 1997.

Of Bevan’s ridicule of the first parliamentary Welsh Day on the grounds that “Welsh coal is the same as English coal and Welsh sheep are the same as English sheep”. Of those Labour MPs who in the 1970s successfully opposed Scottish and Welsh devolution not least because of its ruinous effects on the North of England. And of those Labour activists in the Scottish Highlands, Islands and Borders, and in North, Mid and West Wales, who accurately predicted that their areas would be balefully neglected under devolution.

Of the Parliamentary Labour Party that voted against the partition of the United Kingdom. Of the Attlee Government’s first ever acceptance of the principle of consent with regard to the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. Of the Wilson Government’s deployment of British troops to protect Northern Ireland’s grateful Catholics precisely as British subjects. And of the Callaghan Government’s administration of Northern Ireland exactly as if it were any other part of the United Kingdom.

Of the Catholic and other Labour MPs who fought tooth and nail against abortion and easier divorce. Of the Methodist and other Labour MPs who fought tooth and nail against deregulated drinking and gambling. And of those who successfully organised against Thatcher’s and Major’s attempts to destroy the special character of Sunday and of Christmas Day.

Of Attlee’s successful dissuasion of Truman from dropping an atom bomb on Korea. Of Wilson’s refusal to send British forces to Vietnam, but use of military force to safeguard the right of the people of Anguilla to be British. And of Callaghan’s successful prevention of an Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands.

We helped to provide the backbone of the Police, the Armed Forces and the Prison Service in much better days for all of them, and to call millions onto the streets to celebrate such events as the Coronation in 1953 and the Silver Jubilee in 1977. And now, we are back.

Further information is available from info@britishpeoplesalliance.org.uk