The Revolution Will Be Televised

A serious and sensible country should build its institutions around its people.  It used to be that this was broadly the state of affairs in Britain.  We do not suggest that this country was ever perfect or that there was, at some misty point in the past, a rose-tinted golden era of peace, harmony and contentment.  We know this country’s history isn’t like quite that.  In some ways, the cleave arising from the Norman Conquest, between an Anglo-Norman elite and native Celtic-Anglo-Saxons, presaged tumultuous ethnic and class-based struggle in England that persists to this day and divides society.  On reflection, our elites seem ‘foreign’ to us – and if they are not that in fact, then certainly they act as if they are. 

We know that the white British working class were treated horribly during the Industrial Revolution, in a way that was akin to slavery.  We know that the land of the English feudal peasantry was stolen from them by legislative fiat to make way for industrialisation and urbanisation; thus, many of the well-heeled individuals who appear on your television talking about law and order are themselves the descendants of legalised thieves.  We know that working class men were used as cannon fodder in numerous wars.  We know that this country’s proud tradition of liberalism and freedom is marred by a conflicting tradition of repressive laws and the brutal suppression of dissent.  We know that today the political elite ignore us, sneer at us, and ridicule us when talking among themselves, and they continue to asset-strip this country (they call it ‘privatisation’), destroy indigenous communities and bring in cheap labour to compete with the white British (it’s called ‘multi-culturalism’ and ‘diversity’), disregard national sovereignty, and happily put this country under the governance of unaccountable international and supranational bodies.  Those who oppose them are variously demonised as racists and bigots, and other things.

Despite these problems, in broad terms we would argue that this country has a history to be proud of and traditions that should be valued - and restored, albeit in a way that looks to the future.  Our belief is that the traditions of this country were built around the needs and particular characteristics of an insular, free and rambunctious people.  We had common law, jury trials, considerable personal liberties, strong regional identities, a quiet unmartial sort of patriotism.  Later, as modernism and capitalism took hold, we developed proper money, disciplined schools, austere prisons, and so on - the country was not perfect, but its modest institutions worked.  Life could be harsh, the culture could be overly-conservative and stifling, and sometimes people were treated unfairly; but at the same time, the majority were more content, men had a clear role and outlets for their energies, women were at the centre of home life, large families were the norm; children were happy, smiling and healthy.  Nobody worried too much about ‘careers’.  Very few people were in serious debt or even contemplated taking on debt.   In most places, there was no ‘housing market’ – you bought a house to live in, or you rented from the council.  Everything made sense.    

We are not a bunch of fuddy-duddies: it is not our view that Britain should go back to the past.  Nor are we inflexible conservatives or rigid traditionalists: we value the past, but we don't want to live in it.  Yet we don't want to stay in the present, either.  We want to look to a future in which core values and common sense notions are re-evaluated and re-adopted to address the needs of the time with a mind on the long-term future.  This is what we regard as true radicalism: root and branch reform.

You return to the roots not because you want to be subversive, but because you recognise that things have over-developed and become too comfortable and perhaps evolved in an unwanted direction. The aim is to get back to the core values.  That means, and it requires, an end to Leftist institutions like the BBC that refuse to listen to or reflect the sensibilities of the British people and that rely on laziness and complacency and a dumbed-down culture to get away with it.  

We talk of revolution because that is what is necessary; but true revolution is a process of evolution: we know that we will have to fight these people every inch of the way, making sudden and large gains at times, but mostly advancing little-by-little.

But the revolution will happen.  And it will be televised.

The State, Statism and Leftism

Conservative- and patriotic-minded people often think that if only they can capture the state machinery, it can be made to work in the national interest.  This does not follow.  The state itself is Leftist by nature, and 'statism' (i.e. the habitual or dogmatic reliance on the state to solve problems) always leads to the imposition of Leftist agendas.  

Margaret Thatcher came to understand this quite late in her career, and on becoming leader of the Conservative Party, set about trying to ‘roll back the state’.  The organised opposition to ‘Thatcherism’ came from the Labour Party, trade unions, the BBC,  local government, civil servants, academia, large companies, charities, and similar, not to mention opposition from 'wet' Tories within the Conservative Party itself.  Those forces remain in place today, and if anything, have been greatly strengthened.  They are the Left.  They are the people who rely for payment of their wages on enforced deductions from your wages: i.e. taxes.  They all work for the state or other public bodies, or in the case of charities and the corporate business sector, for organisations subsidised by the taxpayer.  Their opposition to Thatcher was virulent, bitter and at times violent, on a scale perhaps never before seen against a government of modern times.  The reason for this was not really because of Thatcher's policies as such.  In fact, virtually all post-War governments, both Labour and Conservative, had implemented similar policies (albeit not to such an ambitious or sweeping extent); rather, it was because Thatcher explicitly proposed to attack, undermine, and where possible, systematically dismantle, the very basis of the Left's power in Britain.

Thatcher's friends and allies were, variously, the entrepreneurial lower middle-class, most of the provincial Tory Party, much of the ordinary working class - especially in the south of England - and socially-conservative and patriotic elements within the Labour Party, who realised the Left was descending into lunacy.  Thus, the battle lines back then were quite similar to those that exist today over Brexit.  Thatcher failed in her objectives and, if anything, the reach of the state expanded under her governments.  One problem with Margaret Thatcher was that she had been formed politically under the post-War social-democratic consensus.  Her melodramatic Damascene conversion to Austrian economics and Gladstonian liberalism was her scientific intellect attempting to find a sufficiently-powerful antidote to her essentially leftist leanings, but she could not entirely shake-off those formative influences and was not sufficiently ruthless in dealing with the Left.  Nevertheless, 'Thatcherism' is a term coined in a British context for a style of government that goes against social-democratic policies in that it minimises state intervention; supports a concomitant contraction of the state; encourages economic liberalism, government spending cuts, tax cuts, deregulation, privatisation and flexible labour markets; and that pursues a patriotic stance at home and abroad.

We are not Thatcherites - in fact, we are not even supporters of the Conservative Party - and we have different motivations to Thatcher for attacking the Left, but we agree with her method.  In order to defeat the Left, we must dismantle the state – we think the BBC is a good starting point.  It is the centre of the Left’s power in this country.

Ours is not an argument against the state per se.  That is an entirely other subject and a different debate.  For us, the point is that the state, if it exists, must be minimal, and must - so far as is possible – work broadly in the interests of the indigenous population.  We believe the two things go together: a larger state bureaucracy means more Leftism, a lesser need for self-reliance among the population, a large number of intrusive and inefficient state-run or state-subsidised services that are available not just to the indigenous British but to all-comers; whereas, a smaller state bureaucracy, means less Leftism, a greater need for self-reliance among the population, but more focused and efficient essential services directed to the needs of the indigenous British people and no other.  We want the latter, not the former.  For that to happen in Britain, we must have a Ground Zero Revolution in which the state bureaucracy, and other similar bureaus such as those in local government and large companies, are dismantled under process of law.  This is true radicalism: a return to the roots of good governance founded in communities, families and individuals, instead of reliance on large impersonal entities that are funded at the point of a gun.  This blog focuses on the BBC, but from time-to-time we may touch on the other lines of attack and how radical reform can be achieved.

To be clear, it is not that we are uncaring right-wing free marketeers who want to remove social safety nets.  Quite the opposite: we want to see a system built around the needs and interests of the British people.  We think that requires a restoration of tradition, family, community, autonomy and responsibility, in which a minimal state agrees to provide safety nets on the understanding that people learn to stand on their own two feet and take responsibility for themselves, their families and their local communities.

What could replace the BBC?  We want to see public broadcasting replaced with plurality.  There is choice already, but not enough.  Most broadcasting is bland and conformist, and we think the existence of the BBC has something to do with this.  The private sector will fill the void to a large extent, but local communities and conscientious individuals could organise their own broadcasting stations, covering issues that matter to them instead of having concerns and issues imposed on them.  With digital technology, this is now possible.  The BBC itself cannot contribute to a pluralistic and democratic media environment.  It was founded as a paternalistic broadcaster, at arm’s length from the state, intended to inform, entertain and educate – and this was perfectly admirable and laudable for its time - but as society changed, the BBC lost its way and has gradually become a maternalistic general purpose busy-body agency of the state, smothering and stifling everybody, and telling everybody what is good for them.