"Red Tory"? If You Like, But...

My friend Phillip Blond’s Red Tory project at Demos is launched today by David Cameron, Frank Field, Jon Cruddas et al. And good luck to him, because he is going to need it.

Call it what you will, but this country needs pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war movement of economically social democratic, morally and socially conservative British and Commonwealth patriots.

In the tradition 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.

In the tradition 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”, and of Gaitskell’s rejection of European federalism as “the end of a thousand years of history” and liable to destroy the Commonwealth.

In the tradition 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.

In the tradition 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.

In the tradition 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.

In the tradition of Attlee’s successful dissuasion of Truman from dropping an atom bomb on Korea, of Wilson’s refusal to send British forces to Vietnam, of Wilson’s 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.

And in the tradition that 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.

It must conserve or, where necessary, restore 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, family life (founded on the marital union of one man and one woman), and the whole Biblical and Classical patrimony of the West. Agriculture, manufacturing, and small business. Close-knit communities, law and order, civil liberties, academic standards, and all forms of art. Mass political participation within a constitutional framework, and respect for the absolute sanctity of each individual human life from the point of fertilisation to the point of natural death. 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.

It must counteract the corrosion to nought of everything set out above by the “free” market, both directly and because it drives its despairing victims by the million into the arms of Jacobinism, Marxism, anarchism and Fascism, all of which feed into neoconservatism.

It must defend and promote 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 thing delivered by the partnership between a strong Parliament and strong local government. That includes by giving a political voice to trade unions, co-operatives, credit unions, mutual guarantee societies, mutual building societies and similar bodies.

It must resist both the decadent social libertinism of the 1960s and the decadent economic libertinism of the 1980s. Both the European Union’s erosion of our self-government and culture, and that erosion by global capital and by American hegemony, And both the unrestricted movement of people and that of goods, services and capital.

It must uphold the concept of society on the grounds that if “there is no such thing as society”, then there can be no such thing as the society that is the family, or the society that is the nation, and to oppose the “free” market on the grounds that there cannot be a “free” market generally but not in alcohol, gambling, drugs, prostitution or pornography.

It must maintain and further liberty (the freedom to be virtuous, and to do anything not specifically proscribed), equality (the means to liberty, and never to be confused with mechanical uniformity) and fraternity (the means to equality) as inseparable from nationhood (a space in which to be unselfish), family (the nation in miniature, where unselfishness is first learnt) and property (each family’s safeguard both against over-mighty commercial interests and against an over-mighty State, therefore requiring to be as widely diffused as possible, and thus the guarantor of liberty as here defined).

It must protect the family, private property and the State on the basis of their common origin and their interdependence, such that the diminishment or withering away of any one or two of them can only be the diminishment and withering away of all three of them.

It must realise as the basis of the State and of all public policy the doctrinal and moral principles (including the cultural patrimony) of classical, historic, mainstream Christianity, including the duty of assistance and protection towards all those throughout the world who profess those principles, and including by giving a political voice to the churches and agencies that so profess.

It must expose, halt and reverse the erosion of our sovereignty, liberty, democracy and identity by a heavy reliance on imported goods, rather than on a domestic manufacturing base By a heavy dependence on imported food instead of the maintenance of a thriving agricultural sector, characteristically a bastion of strong family ties, and therefore also of strong community spirit. And by the ownership or control of much of our agriculture, industry and commerce by persons who are either not our citizens or not resident within our borders for tax purposes.

It must expose, halt and reverse the deliberate importation of a new working class whose members understand no English except commands, know nothing about workers’ rights in this country, can be deported if they step out of line, and (since they have no affinity with any particular part of this country) can be moved around at will. The enforced bilingualism or multilingualism that transfers economic, social, cultural and political power to a bilingual or multilingual elite, so that those who are or will be excluded are or will be the English-speaking working class, black and white. And the process whereby, far from our having grown richer since 1979, we have in fact grown vastly poorer in real terms.

It must resist hysteria over climate change, campaigning in favour of high-wage, high-skilled and high-status jobs for the working class, and campaigning against any attempt to use climate change as an excuse, either to retard or reverse economic development in the poorer parts of the world, or to restrict travel to the rich.

It must give a voice to working-class opinion in rural areas, and in London and the South East. To the agricultural and fisheries sectors, which are being driven out of existence by European federalism, globalisation and the “free” market. To the North of England, the Midlands, the West Country and East Anglia. To the Highlands, Islands and Borders of Scotland. To North, Mid and West Wales. And to Northern Ireland specifically as part of a political movement embracing the United Kingdom as a whole.

It must give a voice to those who wish this country’s dealings with the wider world to reflect white working-class and other family ties to the Commonwealth Realms of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere, and Afro-Caribbean and other family ties to the Commonwealth Realms in the West Indies and elsewhere To those who desire partnership with Russia, who reject out of hand both the Union of the Mediterranean and any treatment of Turkey as a Western country, who resist without compromise any Islamic secession from Christian countries, and who are concerned to protect the Christian communities in the Middle East. To the heirs of Sobieski and Solidarnosc.

To those who are equally unyielding, both in their determination to preserve the existing true, non-Eurofederalist unions of Latin and Teutonic peoples, and in their determination to preserve and develop those unions’ respective social democracies as expressions of Christian principles, including the safeguarding of that union, of that social democracy and of those principles by the Crown in one case, and in another case by another monarch of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. To those who are equally unyielding, both in their demand for freedom and democracy throughout Latin America, and in their insistence on the sovereignty of each Latin American state and on its duty to pursue social justice as a sovereign state. And to those who are equally unyielding, both in their demand for freedom and democracy throughout China, and in their insistence on the indivisibility of China, from Taiwan to Tibet.

To those who refuse to allow globalisation and its multiculturalism to relegate them to Untouchable or lower-caste status. To those who refuse to define their Jewishness in terms of uncritical support for the Likud State (with its Sharia courts for certain ethnic minorities), including those who reject as a blasphemous presumption the creation of a Jewish State by human initiative, prior to the divine initiative of the sending of the Messiah. To those who reject alliance with the brutally repressive Gulf monarchies. And to those who would encourage and celebrate the high culture and emerging democracy in Iran.

It must promote friendship and co-operation between the people of English, Scots, Welsh and Irish descent, and the people of West African slave descent, on the basis of their common heritage, including Christianity, the Crown, the Common Law tradition, the English language, and the two peoples’ very extensive blood ties.

It must 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 Obama Coalition of economically populist (i.e., economically patriotic), morally and socially conservative foreign policy realists.

It must stand in and with the Australian tradition of B A Santamria and his five primacies: the integrity of human life, support for the family unit, decentralism, patriotism (including economic patriotism), and Judeo-Christian values, in equal and vehement opposition both to Marxism and to capitalism.

It must stand in and with the French tradition of good conservative dirigisme in opposition to the capitalist corrosion of everything that conservatives exist in order to conserve. And, inseparably therefrom, of an independent foreign policy drawing on the glorious battles against all four of German occupation, Soviet infiltration, American domination, and the unbalancing of the nascent EU by British accession.

And it must cultivate Russia’s sense of herself as an integral part of the Biblical and Classical civilisation that is the West, and as that civilisation’s bridge both to the world as defined by Islam, and to the world of the Far East, while acting as the West’s gatekeeper against subjugation to Islam or to anything Far Eastern, sharing that historic role with all the Slavs.

You know what you have to do.