Tomorrow We Live -British Union Policy 1938

 ( The auto conversion from PDF to text chopped parts of the text but in the main the concepts are plain enough for any man to understand. Mosley had ideas. He had vision. And frankly I cannot see why something like his British Union cannot be implemented in all the Anglo-sphere which are all variants of the UK's system at any rate. )


Tomorrow We Live -British Union Policy 1938


Tomorrow We Live -Foreword

The subject is too great to be confined in all detail within such limits of space. But the reader
who inquires further will discover in the publications of the British Union an amplitude of
detail on every subject of the day. Books and pamphlets by my colleagues, whose range of
abilities now cover every sphere of national life, will meet any inquiry, and further detail on
some topics can be found in my own books, "The Greater Britain" and "100 Questions
Answered."

In these pages the reader will discover, with the exception of the chapter on Foreign Affairs, a
policy suited to the character of this country and no other. British Union in whole character is a
British principle suited to Britain alone. It is true that our National Socialist and Fascist creed is
universal, in different form and method, to all great countries of the modern world. That was
true also in their own period of every great creed, political or religious, that our country has
ever known. The only difference in this respect between British Union and the old parties is
that our creed belongs to the twentieth century, and their creeds to the past that conceived them.
But a greater difference arises from the fact that National Socialism and Fascism is in essence a
national doctrine which finds in each great nation a character, policy, form and method suited
to each particular country. For this reason a far greater divergence will be found in the
expression and method of the modern Movement in different countries than prevailed in the
case of the international creeds of the past such as Liberalism and Socialism, or Conservatism,
which, under various names, can be found in every country in the world.

So the reader will find in these pages a policy born only of British inspiration, and a character
and method suited to Britain alone. He will be able to judge for himself our claim for British
Union that in constructive conception our policy already far transcends any previous emanation
of the modern Movement. We do not borrow ideas from foreign countries and we have no
"models" abroad for a plain and simple reason. We are proud enough of our own people to
believe that once Britain is awake our people will not follow, but will lead mankind. In this
deep faith we hold that no lesser destiny is worthy of the British people than that the whole
world shall find in Britain an example. The aim of British Union is no less than this.

Oswald Mosley -May 1938


Financial Democracy

THE will of the people shall prevail. The policy for which the people have voted shall be
carried out. This is the essence of good government in an enlightened age. This is the principle
which is denied by the system misnamed democracy, which in degeneration is more
appropriately called financial democracy. The reason is that government is paralysed by the
maintenance of a parliamentary system a century out of date. When the Government elected by
the people is incapable of rapid and effective action private and vested interests assume the real
power of Government, not by vote or permission of the people, but by power of money
dubiously acquired.

In recent years the trifling measures which have struggled through parliamentary obstruction
have been insignificant in their effect on the lives of the people by comparison with the
immense exercise of money power. Decisions and movements of international finance on Wall
Street, and its sub-branch in the City of London, may send prices soaring to create a
speculator's paradise at the expense of the real wages of the people, or may send prices
crashing to throw millions into unemployment as the aftermath of some gigantic gamble. In
terms of the things that really matter to the people, such as real wages, employment, the hours
of labour, food prices, and the simple ability to pay the rent, finance, under the present system,
can affect the lives of the mass of the people more closely and more terribly in the decision of
one afternoon than can Parliament, with puny labour and the mock heroics of sham battles, in
the course of a decade. For the instrument of the money power was designed to fit present
conditions and to exploit the decadence of an obsolete system. Parliament, on the other hand,
was created long before modern conditions existed to meet an altogether different set of facts.

New Conditions

Parliamentary Government, practically in modern form, was designed primarily to prevent the
abuse of elementary liberties in a relatively simple rural community with a primitive national
economy. The facts of that age have no relation to the periods of steam and power, which were
followed swiftly by vast accumulations of finance capital that possess the unlimited
international mobility of a world force. Is it really likely that the parliamentary instrument of a
century or more ago should be equally suitable to meet the facts of an age which science has
revolutionised? Yet on the assumption that the system of government alone required no change,
during the century of most startling change that mankind has known, rests the policy and the
philosophy of every one of the old parties of the State, Conservative, Liberal and Labour alike!

This patent fallacy which all the old parties teach the people admirably suits the financial
exploiter. A parliamentary system devised to check personal outrages by medieval courts or
nobles is represented still as the effective guardian of liberty in this age of international finance.
It would be as true to say that the bow and arrow with which primitive man defended his farm
from the marauding wolf is equally effective to defend him against the tanks of a modern
invading army. But the people are persuaded that the instruments by which they preserved
some semblance of liberty in the past are still effective to preserve their liberties in modern
conditions, in order that these liberties may be taken from them without their loss even being
realised.

Parliament and Liberty

It suits our financial masters well that all parties should combine to tell the people that
Parliament is the sole effective guardian of liberty, and, naturally, the national Press, which the
money power so largely controls, is in unison to echo the same refrain. It is also not surprising


That such power in Government does not exist today can scarcely be denied. It is admitted that
only two big Bills can be passed through Parliament in the course of a whole year, which
means that any effective programme submitted as a pledge of immediate action to the
electorate would take more than the lifetime of a generation to carry out.

Under such conditions every election programme becomes a fraudulent prospectus, which,
contrary to die experience of business life, carries the most fraudulent not to gaol, but to
Downing Street. Every main Bill has four stages of debate on the floor of the House of
Commons alone, and in two stages can be debated line by line by a committee of over six
hundred people. In such circumstances the ability of the Opposition to obstruct is unlimited,
and no measure can in effect reach the Statute Book in face of really determined opposition.
The result is that bargain, compromise, and delay completely stultify the programme for which
the majority of the people have voted. Yet this is the procedure which we are told "honest" men
are prepared to operate, within a system which renders impossible the execution of the
promises which they have given to the people, and by means of which they have secured office
and power.

The First Duty

On the contrary, we ask whether any honest man or Movement in politics would not make his
first proposal and his first duty to create an instrument of Government by which he could carry
out the promises he had made and the policy for which the people have voted. Yet all the old
parties combine to resist this principle of elementary honesty, and to denounce as the denial of
liberty any suggestion to give to the people the first principle of liberty in the actual execution
of the policy they desire. As a result the vote becomes ever more meaningless, and fewer
people take the trouble to exercise it as they learn by bitter experience that, no matter the party
for which they vote, they never by any chance secure the policy for which they have voted.
Farcical becomes the parliamentary scene as the people realise that in a dynamic age this
system can never deliver the goods, and like all systems in decline the parliamentary mind
seems anxious only to produce its own caricature.

In the Light of history it will ever be regarded as a curious and temporary aberration of the
human mind that great nations should elect a Government to do a job and should then elect an
Opposition to stop them doing it. Fortunately, even in the wildest excesses of this transient
mania, this delusion never spread to the business world, and no business man outside an
asylum has yet been observed to engage a staff of six to carry on the work of his firm, and then
to engage an additional staff of four to stop them doing their job. Curious to posterity will
appear the principle of creating at the same time a Government to do the nation's work and an
Opposition to frustrate it. But stranger still will seem the final reduction to absurdity of the
parliamentary system whereby a Prime Minister is paid £10,000 a year to do the nation's job,
and the Leader of the Opposition is paid, and accepts, £2,000 a year of the nation's money to
stop him doing it. Yet this extraordinary harlequinade, in which nothing serious, in terms of the


The instruments by which this great racket has been achieved are plain to see. The first is the
maintenance of an obsolete parliamentary system still invested from a past of difficult
conditions with the myth of liberty, by means of which Government is paralysed in order that
the real power of Government may be exercised elsewhere, not by the chosen of the people but
by the chosen of finance. The second instrument is the monopoly of propaganda by the money
power in the shape of a Press also invested with the myth of liberty from a past of different
conditions. The Free Press built by genuine journalists who were vendors of honest "news"
long ago gave place in most of the national Press to the financial combine which acquires
control of great blocks of newspaper shares. So the money power again in the name of a Free
Press can serve to the people not only the opinions but also the "news" which serves the
interests of the money power. Not only are our "free" British denied any meaning to the vote in
the shape of ever getting what they want, but they are also denied even the small privilege of
learning the truth. For power and propaganda alike are in the hands of a force whose interests
conflict with the interests of the people and is careful that they should not even learn the truth.
Thus the myth of freedom in Parliament and Press combine to promote the slavery of the
people.

Finance Power

Most of the Press is owned outright by the money power, or is controlled by the advertisements
which money power controls, and Parliament is paralysed by talk that power may reside
elsewhere. But the argument may be taken further, for the economic system which is
maintained by finance power for the benefit of its own interests, and to the detriment of every
interest of the people, also ensures that any Government may at any time be broken by the
money power. The international economic system is supported by every party of the State,
Conservative, Liberal and Labour alike. It will be shown in detail in chapter three of this book
that this system enables any Government to be broken at any time by the financial power, as
the weak Socialist Government was broken in Britain in 1931, and the weak Socialist
Government of Blum was broken in France in 1937.

It was not enough for finance to dope the system of Government with the talkative
parliamentary system of a century ago. Finance in the economic system also retains the power
at any time to knock a Government on the head. By way of further precaution the finance of
the money power controls the party machines, which in their turn control Parliament and
Government.

So this is finality in the land of "liberty and free speech": (1) Government is paralysed by the
system of talk that power may reside elsewhere; (2) Government can at any time be destroyed
by the power of money alone; (3) the Press which controls opinion is itself largely controlled
by the money power; (4) the party machines which control even the right of the individual to
make a speech to an appreciable audience in public are also controlled by the money power.

So what is left to you "free Britons" to voice your opinion and make your will effective? You
can go into a public-house and grumble in the assurance that no one will take the slightest
notice of what you say. But even then you must be sure to be out in the streets by closing time,
because the Old Woman of Westminster prefers, even in your private life, to treat you as a
child rather than as a man.


Is that really the Briton -tricked, fooled, hagridden, exploited, enslaved? Or does a generation
arise again, breaking from the hands of manhood resurgent the fetters of decadence and seeing
with the ardent eyes of an awakened giant the land that they shall make their own.


THE will of the people shall prevail. The policy for which the people have voted shall be
carried out. This is the essence of British Union Government. In the previous chapter the
present complete frustration of the people's will has been examined and the formidable
instruments of that frustration have been surveyed. In cold fact the money power commands
Government, Parliament, Party Machinery and Press. Not only does it possess the power to
render Government impotent and, if necessary, to break Government; money power also
possesses the means of preventing any new opinion or even any true news from reaching the
people at all. Faced with this formidable power and almost limitless corruption of a decadent
system, those who founded the British Union were moved by the deep belief that from the
people themselves alone could be created the instrument by which freedom could be won for
the people, and by which our country could be redeemed to greatness. Such an instrument
clearly, in its whole character and structure, must differ from the old parties of the State.

It would be idle with infinite labour to create a new movement to combat current corruption of
such a loose and flaccid character that, like the revolutionary movements of the immediate past,
it would fall an easy victim to the very corruption that it was designed to destroy. If this basic
principle is understood, much in the history and character of our Movement that has been
misunderstood will be easily comprehended. We had to create an "instrument of steel" because
we know from our experience of democracy that any character less hard and tested would
easily succumb to the system that it was designed to combat. Consequently our Movement has
rested from the outset upon the principles of struggle, sacrifice, and voluntary discipline. In the
fire of that struggle and by the force of the sacrifice for which I have never called in vain, the
"instrument of steel" has been forged that shall cut through corruption to a larger freedom than
this land has ever known.

It has been forged from the heart and soul of the people alone in the sacrifice of thousands of
unknown but utterly devoted men and women who have been ready to give all that Britain
might live. This Movement has been created by simple people in face of money power, party
power, and press power without any aid from the great names of the present system, and in
face of every weapon of boycott and misrepresentation that the money power could mobilise.
Thus ever have been born the great determinist forces of history in face of all material things
by the force of the spirit alone.

So has been accomplished the first stage in the mission of regeneration which is the creation
from the people themselves and from the people alone of a Movement capable of leading the
mass of the people to freedom. Those who sacrifice all for an undying cause are inevitably a
minority even in the movement they create. Soon thousands came and now come who are
gladly welcomed to give support or any kind of service, but many of whom for innumerable
reasons, domestic and business, are inhibited from the supreme sacrifice that builds this
Movement. Still later a whole nation will give support with enthusiasm to a cause that has been
built through the sacrifice by pioneers of most that makes life dear to men.

But they who lead the people to a higher civilisation are ever those who are capable of supreme
self dedication. The authority of leadership carries with it the responsibility of such a life. Thus
our new leaders of the people in every area of the land have been discovered, tried, and tested
in the actual ordeal of struggle. Their sacrifice during a struggle harder and fiercer in its whole
nature than any movement has known before in this country is the guarantee to the people that
they will not again be betrayed. Men and women do not sacrifice all in order to betray the thing
to which they have given their lives. A Fascist who, in power after such a struggle, betrayed his
cause, would betray his own life blood. Thus the struggle of a National Socialist Movement is
a necessary preliminary to the exercise of power, because the bitter character of that struggle


The Leadership Principle

The rebirth of a nation comes from the people in a clear and ordered sequence. The People,
their Movement, their Government, their Power. To create their Government and to overthrow
the Government of the money power which oppresses them the people have first to create their
Movement. This act enables them for the first time to give meaning to the vote by electing their
Government to power. The final stage is to arm this Government with power in their name to
act.

To represent this process as the constitution of a dictatorship against the will of the people is a
travesty of the facts as dishonest as it is childish. The only dictatorship that we propose for this
country is the dictatorship of the people themselves, which shall replace the present
dictatorship of the vested interests. Our Movement offers to the people not dictatorship but
leadership through an instrument by which their will can be carried out. British Union and
leadership seek not to be dictator to the people but servant of the people.

The only stipulation that we make is the simple condition that if the people want us to do the
job they shall give us the power to do it. Is that unreasonable? Is it not a waste of the people's
time and money to create a Government which has not the power to act? Is it not simple
dishonesty for any man or movement to accept office without the power to act and without the
ability to perform what he has undertaken to do?

Our principle is the leadership principle which has nothing whatever to do with dictatorship. It
is true that this principle is the opposite to the collective irresponsibility of the " democratic "
committee system but that does not make it dictatorship. British Union believes in the
following simple principles: (1) give a man a job to do; (2) give him the power to do it; (3)
hold him responsible for doing it; (4) sack him if he does not do it. Our principles, therefore,
are neither dictatorship nor the fugitive irresponsibility of a committee. We have seen the
committee system in action within financial democracy and have observed its consequence. If
several men are in name responsible no one is, in fact, responsible, and no one can be held to
account for failure.

Everyone shelters behind his colleagues and disclaims personal responsibility; all wanted to do
the right thing, but none could persuade their colleagues to do it. Not only does the committee
system of financial democracy dissipate action in endless talk; it breeds cowardice and evasion
in leadership in place of courage and responsibility. Therefore, in the building of our
Movement and in the building of a Government we believe in the leadership principle, which
means personal and individual responsibility.

Whether a man occupies a position of minor responsibility or a position of the gravest
responsibility in the State that task is his responsibility and that of no other, and for the
execution of that task he shall be held responsible to the people. Authority can never be divided
because divided authority means divided responsibility, and that leads to the futility and
cowardice of the committee system. Failure to comprehend this principle is failure alike to
understand the principles of National Socialism or the essence of any creed of dynamic action
and achievement since the world began. But to represent as dictatorship authority freely
conferred by the people in return for the manly acceptance of personal responsibility is a
misunderstanding, or rather misrepresentation, equally gross.

The Structure of Government

British Union seeks power by the vote of the people alone at a general election. But we tell the
people quite frankly in advance that we will not accept responsibility without power, because
we believe it to be dishonest to take office without the ability to carry out the policy for which
the people have voted. The first measure of British Union Government will, therefore, be a
General Powers Bill conferring on Government the means to act by order, subject to the right
of Parliament elected by the vote of the people at any time to dismiss the Government by vote
of censure if it abuses power. Subject to this right of dismissal by Parliament the Government
will be free to act without delay or obstruction from the interminable rigmarole of present
parliamentary procedure. Parliament will be called together at regular intervals to review the
work of the Government and to criticise and suggest. M.P's will be armed with facts for
criticism and suggestion which they do not at present possess, because they will not spend
most of their time in the corrupting atmosphere of Westminster but in the stimulating
atmosphere of their own constituencies among the people whom they represent. In particular
British Union will give most of the M.P.s an executive task in place of a purely talkative role in
a complete reform of the local authority system. Local authority areas will be enlarged and all
purely local matters will be delegated to their jurisdiction. Again, the leadership principle will
be employed and the executive leader of the local authority will be an M.P. of the majority
party in Parliament elected from the area over whose local authority he presides. He will be
advised and assisted by a local Council elected on the principle of occupational franchise, the
method of which both local and national will be described later in this chapter. Each member
of the Council will be an executive officer in charge of a Local Government department and
responsible to the local leader, who will be responsible to the Government of the nation. Thus
committee irresponsibility in local, as in national affairs, will yield place to the leadership
principle of personal responsibility and effective action.

Local leaders both in the first Parliament of British Union and in the permanent system will be
selected from the Movement for which the majority of the people have voted. To many this
may seem a revolutionary principle but, in fact, is it not plain common sense? Local leaders
will be selected as ministers are today from the party for which the majority of the country
have voted and will be given power to act. Can Government ever be effective or action ever be
taken if differing policies are pursued by National Government and local authority ? What
would happen to a business whose head office pursued one policy and whose branch offices
pursued another? Can any real democrat object to the principle that the programme for which
the majority of the people have voted shall be carried out both nationally and locally? We hear
so much these days of the rights of the minority that many are inclined to forget the rights of
the majority. Is it democracy or any form of free government for the majority of the people to


Many a good revolutionary has arrived at Westminster roaring like a lion, only a few months
later to be cooing as the tame dove of his opponents. The bar, the smoking room, the lobby, the
dinner tables of his constituents' enemies, and the "atmosphere of the best club in the country,"
very quickly rob a people's champion of his vitality and fighting power. Revolutionary
movements lose their revolutionary ardour as a result long before they ever reach power, and
the warrior of the platform becomes the lapdog of the lobbies. In the light of this experience
British Union M.P.s from the outset will go to Westminster under solemn pledge not to mix
socially, or even to speak, to their opponents. They will go to Parliament to fight for the people
who sent them there, and not to fraternise with men who have betrayed the people.

Thus only with sustained fighting spirit and revolutionary ardour can the nation's cause be
served. In Westminster, as out' side, British Union must be the " instrument of steel" in the
service of the people. Until we win power we shall fight every inch of the way, and directly
upon the winning of power we shall establish an instrument of Government capable of
executing the people's will. This instrument, nationally and locally, will be created by the vote
of the majority of the people and this instrument, nationally and locally, will execute their will.
Power conferred by the people in their name will be exercised, and that power shall be
removed by the vote of the people alone, to whom alone, under the Crown, we will account
and be responsible.

Occupational Franchise

We have observed that in the first Parliament of British Union complete power of action by
Government is combined with the right of Parliament elected by the people to dismiss the
Government if it abuses power. Government's power of action nationally and locally is
complete, but so also the control of the people over Government is complete.

We come now to the consideration of the permanent system which is created with the second
Parliament of British Union. The first Parliament, by necessity, is elected on the existing
franchise which is geographical. That franchise is a relic of the past, in which the interests of
men and women were more centred in their locality of residence than in their occupation
within the national economy. Such conditions have long passed away as the main categories of
occupation assumed a national in place of a purely local character. Today the fact that a man is
an engineer or doctor, a farmer or cotton operative, is a greater factor in his existence than the
particular locality in which he happens to reside. In modern and scientific organisation
occupation definitely supersedes in importance the chance of residence. In geographical
constituencies thousands of diverse human beings and interests are fortuitously brought
together by the franchise without much knowledge of each other and with few interests in
common. Again this system of voting in its obsolescence produces the abuses of decay.


It is, therefore, necessary to restore not only reality but understanding to the vote. The idea that
all men on all subjects are equally competent to give a verdict becomes, in modern conditions,
an ever more manifest absurdity. Therefore, we propose an occupational franchise that men
and women may vote on problems they well understand for personnel with whom they have a
long familiarity.

Men and women will vote not as residents in a particular locality but as persons engaged in a
particular occupation. Doctors will vote as doctors, engineers as engineers, miners as miners,
farmers as farmers, farm workers as farm workers, married women as housewives and mothers
with a franchise of their own.

Women's Part

It is noteworthy today that the mothers of the nation possess few representatives in Parliament
with any special competence to represent them.

Women's questions are usually handled by ageing spinsters, for the simple reason that most
women with any practical experience of maternity find the conflict between home and public
life so intolerable that they retire again to a sphere where their true interests lie. The problem
can only be resolved by occupational franchise, which gives them special representation in a
Parliament that will not remove them altogether from the interests they represent.

The care of the mother and the child is one of the main neglects of the present system and will
be among the main concerns of British Union. It is only right, therefore, that this great interest
should secure proper representation with the other great interests of the nation. This does not
mean that we seek to relegate women purely to the home, which is a charge denied in practice
by the act that we present today a larger proportion of women candidates to the electorate than
any other party. In our permanent system women in industry or the professions will have their
vote and their representatives within their occupation.

An economic system which provides work for all has no need to drive women from industry.
But a political system which guards the health and strength of the race will certainly prevent
the grave scandal of women being driven from the home against their will because the
miserable wages of the men cannot keep the home together. Women, whether in home or
industry, will hold a high and honoured place in accord with British tradition and will receive
full measure of representation and weight in the counsels of the State.

Occupational franchise, therefore, will secure a technical Parliament suited to the problems of a
technical age. A vote given with full information and, consequently, with a sense of
responsibility will secure a serious and dignified assembly. Such a Parliament will consider
national questions freely on their merits and not beneath the lash of the party whip in the
ignoble scramble for place which has become the hall mark of present politics. It is clear that
such a system brings to an end the party game and apart from other advantages it is deliberately
designed to that end. British Union means to bring to an end the party game. There is no time
in the modern world, with menacing problems of a dynamic age for mere opposition for the
sake of opposing, in the hope of getting the other man's job by the simple process of blacking
his face by any means, fair or foul.

Under our system a man or woman will be elected because he, or she, is a good engineer or a
good doctor, not a party doctor or party engineer. The M.P. will emerge to prominence and
office not by dexterity in mere debate, or by bibulous capacity to sit up all night to obstruct the
business of the nation, but by serious criticism and constructive suggestion which will make
real contribution to the deliberations of the nation. In a new age the party type will pass,
together with the corruption of the party machine.

People's Control Over Government

Few will deny that the constructive seriousness of such a Parliament will be an improvement
on the frivolity and chicanery of an obsolete system. But the question is often raised how, in
the absence of organised opposition, the people can change the Government if they wish. The
answer is that in the permanent system of British Union the life of the Government will depend
on the direct vote of the people, held at regular and frequent intervals. If the people wish to
change the Government the simple remedy is to vote against it. In the event of an adverse vote
the Crown, to which British Union is entirely loyal, will intervene, and H.M. the King, in the
restoration of his full historic prerogative, will send for new ministers Who in his opinion have
a good chance of receiving the support of the country at a fresh vote. Thus in the permanent
system of British Union nothing intervenes between Government and people. No log rolling in
Parliament or intrigue in the lobby can shake the power of Government. The will of the people
and that alone can make and break the Government.

Opposition Parties

But the "democrat" at this point usually expostulates that the people cannot decide to vote
against a Government if no opposition parties exist organised for party warfare. Surely of all
the insults which financial democracy offers to the intelligence of die electorate this is the
gravest. Are we really to believe that a great people cannot make up their mind that they do not
like a Government, and give a vote to that effect, without a lot of little politicians bawling in
their ears that they do not like it, and asking them to vote for a dozen confused and
contradictory policies. The suggestion that a great nation cannot live without professional
politicians is an insult alike to their intelligence and their temper. Yet the "democratic
politicians" who pretend that the people are capable, without such advice, of giving a decision
on the broad issue of whether they want a Government or not, are at pains to defend the present
system, which rests on the grotesque assumption that every elector understands every national
question ranging from currency reform and naval strategy to the price of beer.

The facts are surely at complete variance with the pretensions of financial democracy. The
people are perfectly competent to give a verdict on the general conduct of Government without
any assistance from a bawling match of politicians. The elector also is perfectly competent to


We are faced with the necessity of combining the right of the people to control and dismiss
Government with serious discussion of highly complicated and diverse problems. The solution
of British Union is to give the people direct control over Government by direct vote of the
whole nation at regular intervals, when they will give their verdict on the general issue whether
Government is good or bad, and, at the same time, to give them a separate occupational
franchise for the election of a serious and modern Parliament on which Government will rely
for the detailed consideration of modern problems.

With this solution we challenge the present system of financial democracy which in theory
rests on the absurd assumption that everyone understands everything. In practice it results in
such complete confusion that the great interests can govern under cover of the all-pervading
smoke screen, and the great rogues of finance can get away with their booty, while the antics of
the little kept politicians distract the attention of the people from reality.

A Government resting on the direct vote of the people and a Parliament elected by the
informed vote of the people reconciles freedom with action and lays the foundation of the
modern State.

The House of Lords

The present House of Lords can find no place in a modern system and will be abolished by
British Union. It will be replaced by a new Second Chamber which reconciles British tradition
with modern Government. That Chamber will represent the proved ability and experience of
the nation. It will comprise industrial representatives from the National 'Council of
Corporations, representatives of all the main religious denominations, representatives of
education, representatives of the Services and men and women automatically appointed by
their long occupation of positions of conspicuous service to the State. From such an assembly
of personal experience and ability Government can draw great reserves of capacity for advice
and constructive suggestion in all the multifarious variety of modern problems. This
conception also carries out in modern form the original aim of the British Constitution. The
House of Lords was constructed to represent the industrial, cultural, and spiritual aspects of the
national life. In those days agriculture was the only industry and the peers owned most of the
land. today agriculture is not the only industry and most peers have little to do with the land,
while even the most ardent defender of the House of Lords will not claim that the peers are
today the sole repositories of national culture.

The present House of Lords, therefore, no longer executes the original idea of the Constitution
and is an anachronism. British Union will implement that original British tradition by giving to
the Second Chamber a character really representative of the industrial, cultural and spiritual
life of the nation. In the latter sphere it is only right that in an enlightened age the religious
beliefs of all the main sections of our fellow citizens should be represented. In practice as well
as in theory British Union believes in religious toleration, and that belief will be implemented
by the representation of all denominations.


The Press

It remains to consider the effect on the individual of this structure of Government in terms of
human freedom and the full individual life. If we accept the premise that economic freedom is
the only true basis of individual freedom in modern conditions it must be agreed that effective
power of action in Government is the prerequisite of individual freedom. For such power of
action is necessary to bring to an end the economic chaos which today robs the individual of
economic liberty in an age from which science can win this boon for all. But some still shrink
from the only means of securing the larger economic liberty for the people through fear that the
process will deprive them of a " political liberty " which in fact does not today exist. This type
can find no answer in practical detail to the simple query, when have they ever got anything for
which they have voted? They are baffled completely by the further question, what is the use of
a "political liberty" which has never yet brought them any practical result? So they usually fall
back on vague generalities concerning the inestimable boons of freedom of speech and
freedom of the Press.

It is, therefore, necessary to examine in a little detail in what freedom of Press and speech
today consists, and what would be the position of these "principles" under British Union
Government. It may at once be stated categorically, to the surprise of many, that the freedom of
the individual in these respects will be far greater than it is today. What freedom of the Press
does the individual possess today? He certainly does not possess the freedom to secure the
printing in the Press of either news or views which do not suit the interests of the Press. In the
national Press, at any rate, he may not even humbly creep into back page correspondence
columns if his opinions be regarded as in any way dangerous.

What prospect has the individual of founding a national newspaper of his own in conditions
where monopoly has reached the point that no newcomer can hope to make good unless he can
command millions of capital? A man of relatively moderate capital resources may possibly
acquire control of a local paper of purely local influence or even, by a lifetime of hard work,
may build such a modest influence in the State by genuine journalism without much capital
resources. But no other save the great finance powers can now arrive in the national Press in
modern monopoly conditions. So, in fact, when our opponents speak of the freedom of the
Press they mean the power of the great financiers to purvey their opinions and their news to the
people, with scant reference to the merits of the journalism, but with much reference to the
weight of money power, which enables them to purchase circulations by canvass and free gifts,
for which the advertisements of the great interests alone can recompense them.

The national Press, in fact, long since has become a matter not of journalism but of finance. In
such circumstances what transparent mockery it is to tell the individual that he possesses
freedom of opinion and of Press, for he, too, can start a newspaper. It is equivalent to the
alleged statement of the classic Tory that Britain was a free country because rich or poor alike
were free to sleep on the Embankment.

Free Speech

As for freedom of speech, in what today does it consist? It is true that anyone can carry a soap
box to a street corner and from that eminence may make any moderate noise that he sees fit to
emit, unless the whim of the local police chief transports him on charge of obstruction before a
bench of magistrates selected for other political qualifications than street corner oratory. But
may we not assume as the premise of the argument that none but a purely "' mental" type
desires to talk under these conditions purely for the sake of talking without any effective action


Freedom of speech for the individual is confined to the "mental" type who enjoys indefinitely a
fruitless exercise of his lungs at a street corner without the slightest prospect of his words ever
being translated into action. In fact, "freedom of speech " under financial democracy is merely
another solemn make believe which obscures the reality of tyranny. No individual has any
hope of producing any practical effect by words unless he serves one of the great party
machines and, as we shall observe in the next chapter, the party machines in their turn serve the
great interests and by the very nature of the system which they support are inevitably the
servants of finance. So in actual practice under this system freedom of speech is the freedom to
be the servant of the financier.

To this the retort may be made that any individual is free to win the support of his fellow
countrymen, and in so doing from their enthusiasm to create his own machine in face of the
money power. To that argument in turn we make the proud reply that this phenomenon has
been achieved but once in post war Britain in the creation of British Union. And, the writer
may add a note from that unique experience at the end of some years of such a struggle; if
anyone believes that it is an easy and everyday task to create a new Movement from nothing by
the force of the spirit alone in face of Money Power, Press power and Party power, he is
welcome to the unparalleled exertion of that experience, but he will win success only at the
cost of something in his own life and being that is not an everyday occasion.

Real Freedom of Press and Speech

In face of the present negation of freedom in the realm of Press and speech, British Union
approaches a constructive solution in the determination to win real freedom of Press and
speech for the people. That freedom will rest on two main principles: (l) that freedom of Press
means the freedom of the people to read the truth in the national Press and not the freedom of
finance power to tell lies to the people in support of vested interests; (2) that freedom of speech
for the individual means an effective method of translating his opinion into action if by words
he can persuade sufficient of his fellows to agree with him. In the sphere of the Press, therefore,
we lay down the truly revolutionary principle that the Press shall tell the truth. To this end the
proprietors of great newspapers will be liable to prosecution if it can be proved w Court that
they have published news which is not true, and the penalty will be particularly severe if it can
be shown that such Publication was deliberately and maliciously conceived in support of a
private interest to the detriment of the national interest. It is a curious anomaly of present
confusion that an individual who is libelled can obtain redress from the law but the nation
when libelled can obtain no redress. Therefore, it will be open to a Government, elected by the
people, on behalf of the nation to sue a newspaper proprietor if his paper publishes facts which
are false to the detriment of the nation's interest, particularly if the object is to promote a
private interest at the nation's expense. This will curtail the freedom of the Press to publish
news which is untrue, but it will confer upon the people the freedom to read news which is true.
British Union takes the simple view that the freedom of the people to learn the truth should
supersede the freedom of the vested interest to deceive the people. For this reason our new "
freedom of the Press" rests on the simple but revolutionary principle that die Press shall tell the
truth. Consequently neither national nor local paper which tells the truth will in any way be
affected, and no proprietor can have any complaint unless he makes the unexpected admission
that he is in the habit of not telling the truth in his papers at present.


If the whole national Press was conducted in the same method and in the same spirit as the
majority of the local Press they would have nothing to fear from British Union Government.

Free Speech and Corporate Life

The machinery for putting into practice the principle ot freedom of speech is equally definite.
We start from the premise that if freedom of speech is to be a reality the individual must
possess effective means of translating words into actions. To this end any individual with
industry, interest, or profession, will be invited to enter into the appropriate Corporation, the
detailed structure of which is suggested in Mr. Raven Thomson's able book on this subject and
will not here be repeated beyond a survey of economic function in Chapter 4. Within the
Corporation every one is not only permitted but by every means encouraged to express
opinions both constructive and critical, and is provided with a means of making opinion
effective. For if the individual can move the relevant Corporation by argument that
Corporation's opinion, representing a very substantial factor in the State, is transmitted to
Government, and for Government to ignore Corporate opinion would be to court dismissal at
the next vote on universal franchise by the sum of individual voters who comprise the
Corporations.

The mechanism of the Corporation, ready to the hand of the individual, is a more powerful
instrument for the expression of free speech in effective terms of reality than the lonely and
meaningless pedestal of the street corner orator. Through Corporate life the individual wins
meaning and reality for freedom of speech. Such real and effective freedom of speech is a basic
necessity for British Union Government which in the achievement of a revolution in national
life must ever carry the people with it, and maintain a far closer contact with the people's
opinion than Government possesses today. It is good enough for the Governments of financial
democracy to consult the people in a mock election once in five years in the hope that they will
go to sleep in the interval so that Government can go to sleep as well. That is a procedure
possible for Governments which in reality only exist to preserve the existing system and to
guard its vested interests. But such a conception is not good enough for a revolutionary
Movement determined to wrest from chaos a nobler civilisation. For such an achievement it is
not enough to obtain the tacit consent of the people, it is necessary to carry the people with us
all the way and all the time on the march to higher things. That is why we must know all the
time what they are feeling and thinking and have precise means to that end. That is why we
must devise machinery not only to give the people freedom of speech but to make that freedom
effective. Contact between Government and people must ever be so close that the flame of our
own revolutionary passion may pass continually from the souls of pioneers to fire and maintain
the spirit of the people at a white heat of ardour unknown to the doped and tepid supporters of
financial democracy.

For this shall be a great comradeship between the people and the Government they have
elected to lead them. They must ever know what we are doing and we must ever know what
they are thinking. That is why we believe in the people's real freedom of speech and will win it
for them. Thus only can be secured that close and sacred union between the people and their
Government by which alone a great nation shall march again to greatness.


Economics of Poverty or Plenty

THE economic system is breaking down for reasons that are plain to see. But these reasons are
never seriously discussed in Press or Parliament because the decadence of an economic System
suits well the money power which controls Press and Parliament. Realisation by the people of
the reasons for economic breakdown means the end of finance power. Therefore, every reason
other than the plain and true reason must be provided, and every difficulty must be represented
as temporary and transient rather than fundamental and inherent to a system in decline.

Every boom of the present system grows shorter and lesser; every depression grows deeper and
longer. The crazy machine of the present economy rocks ever more violently toward a final
disaster. The plain and simple reason is that the economic system is a century out of date. That
system is the international system of trade and that system is responsible both for the evils and
for the danger of the present time. In the sphere of economics, even more than in the sphere of
Government, it should be clear that the method which grew from the facts of a century ago is
not designed to meet the facts of today. The economic system was born of the age of poverty
economics; we live in the age of plenty economics.

The facts are precisely the opposite to a century ago; yet the system in all fundamentals is
precisely the same and the attitude of the parties is the same. To the international parties
everything that has happened in the interval might never have occurred. The arrival of the
technician, the introduction of the age of steam and later the age of power has altered for ever
the economic environment of mankind. Yet all parties, including the Labour Party, support the
international system of trade which preceded this vast revolution in fact and circumstance.

At the beginning of the international system the world was faced with the problem of poverty.
Mankind could with difficulty produce enough to live. So it was argued with force by the
economists of the period that each nation should produce what it was best fitted by nature to
produce, judged by die sole criterion of cheapness, and should exchange such products with
corresponding products from other nations. It was further argued that any barrier cutting across
the thin trickle of international trade would universally diminish the standard of life, and in
ensuing chaos might even result in the return of man to a primitive agricultural existence from
which he had so recently struggled. It is unnecessary to discuss the merits of the arguments for
or against that theory, though in retrospect we may condemn strongly the sacrifice of British
agriculture to the extremes of that conception, It is redundant to discuss in modern times that
theory because the whole premise on which it rested has been destroyed. It was born of the age
of poverty, in which the question of the hour was how to produce enough to live.

This is the age of plenty, in which the question of the hour is how to sell what we can produce.
The facts and the problem are exactly the opposite but die system and the parties remain the
same. From all parties, platforms and Press we hear, in varying language and degree, insistence
upon the maintenance and restoration of international trade and the free exchange of goods
between nations. The main object of their denunciation is "economic nationalism," by which
they mean any suggestion for nations themselves to produce as large a quantity as possible of
the goods that they consume. Yet none can deny that every great nation today, with the aid of
modern science, is itself capable of producing in almost unlimited quantity practically every
commodity it requires, provided it has access to raw materials.

In face of all fact the politicians maintain a system that rests on the assumption that mankind
can only with difficulty produce enough to live, and that goods must, therefore, be produced
only by nations particularly suited to produce them and freely exchanged between nations. On


In fact, the old parties all support a system resting on an assumption of facts which the
thousands of technicians over whom they rule well know to be nonsense. Facts may change in
gigantic revolutions of science but the politician changes never. This is not because he is so
stupid as he appears but because, for a reason we shall study later, a system of decadence suits
his masters better than a system which functions for the welfare of the people.

Export Trade

So our unfortunate industry is compelled to serve the international system and at all costs to
national economy to fight for the export trade on which that system rests. In the battle for
exports modem science and modern condition has again confronted our trade with an entirely
new set of facts which have built such insuperable obstacles that the fight for exports ever
since the war has been a steadily losing battle. The spread of modern science and technique has
enabled our former customers to industrialise themselves. These new foreign industries are
protected not by the obsolete weapon of tariffs but by barriers of complete exclusion which
have not yet been lowered in response to the pious requests of British statesmanship, at
innumerable international conferences, that these foreign nations should ruin their own
industries in order to provide us with the markets that we lack. In remaining markets still open
to us we are faced with a competition, unprecedented and irresistible, which has been created
by the vile exploitation of modern science by finance power in the industrialisation of the
Orient.

Western finance has provided the loans which have equipped the East with equal machinery to
the West, and has hired the Western technician to teach the Oriental to perform the simplified
tasks of mass production with modern mechanical technique at a third of the wages and for
longer hours of monotonous toil that white labour can endure. The result has been a stream of
sweated goods undercutting British products or the markets of the world. Their deadly effect
can be observed in the cold statistics that show the decline of Lancashire and Yorkshire exports
under the attack of rising Japanese exports and the vast increase in Indian sweated products.

Internationalism and the Standard of Life

Not only are we subject to the undercutting of sweated products in the markets of the world. In
addition the blessings of the international system permit, despite all pretence at protection,
great and increasing quantities of these goods even to invade our home market. British industry
is not only being driven by new enemies and new weapons from our world position, but is
being counter-attacked as well on the home and still more on the Empire market.

In such circumstances we ask the old parties a simple question that has never yet been
answered. How can any international system, whether capitalist or Socialist, advance or even
maintain the standard of life of our people? The international system of trade admittedly means
the more or less free exchange of goods between nations. How can we raise or even maintain
British wages in the face of competition from sweated labour supplied with the same
machinery but paid a third of the wages and working for far longer hours? Whether industry be
capitalist and owned by the unrestricted individual, or Socialist and owned by the State, how
can it function in modern conditions if the system be international? This question is the epitaph
of international Socialism, for it drives every thinking Socialist, together with men of all


Purchasing Power

The construction of that system belongs to the next chapter, for the analysis of breakdown must
be pursued further to a conclusion. We indict the international system as the root of present
evils in the economic sphere. In view of the facts above recited the effect of the international
system is plain to observe on the main problem of our day, which is the problem of
"purchasing power." Few will deny that the industrial question today is how to sell what we
produce. None can deny the truism that to sell one must find customers and, as foreign markets
progressively close in the light of export figures over any substantial period, the home
customer becomes ever more the outlet of industry. But the home customer is simply the
British people, on whose purchasing power our industry is ever more dependent.

For the most part the purchasing power of the British people depends on the wages and salaries
that they are paid. Here the effect of the international system on the central problem of
purchasing power becomes obvious. The wages and salaries of the British people are held
down far below the level which modern science and tike potential of production could justify
because their labour is subject to the undercutting competition of sweated labour on both
foreign and home markets. Again we ask, how can British purchasing power be increased or
even maintained in face of such competition? Yet internationalism condemns us to such
competition and as a result, while foreign markets close, the purchasing power of the British
people remains far inadequate to provide a home market capable of absorbing anything
approaching the full production of British industry. The result is the tragic paradox of poverty
and unemployment amid potential plenty.

Thousands even in the boom periods of this system, let alone the depressions, walk the streets
in unemployment, and machines are idle which are capable of producing the goods that
millions require but lack the power to buy. Internationalism, in fact, robs the British people of
the power to buy the goods that the British people produce. In final frenzy of this system, with
accompanying mumbo jumbo from the witch doctors of its economics, the people are even
taught to believe that some mystic virtue resides in goods exported for foreign consumption,
but that no good can come of the production of goods by Britons for the benefit of Britons.

Rationalisation

In economic result every blessing with which science now endows mankind becomes in
practice a curse. The rationalisation of industry with higher wealth potential should be the
greatest benefit of the period. In fact, it is dreaded by the people because it brings ever
increasing unemployment with every increase in the power to produce. The reason again is
plain to see because each increase in the power to produce goods is not accompanied by a
corresponding increase in the power to consume goods. On the contrary, because
internationalism restricts purchasing power rationalisation results in a lesser rather than a
greater power to consume the wealth that it produces. Rationalisation enables industry either to
produce more goods with the same amount of labour, or to produce the same amount of goods
with less labour. Because the purchasing power of the people is held down by the unfair
competition of the international system purchasing power cannot increase at the same time that
rationalisation increases the power to produce. As a result only the same amount of goods as
before can be produced after rationalisation, and they are produced with less labour. More are
thrown, with loss of wages, on to the scrap heap of unemployment, and purchasing power is

Labour and Inflation

With the millstone of internationalism round their necks the old parties are incapable of dealing
with the central problem of purchasing power. They are inhibited from the only solution of
building up British wages to provide, by higher purchasing power, a greater market for British
products, because higher wages are immediately undercut by cheap foreign competition and
the industrialist who gives higher wages is put out of business. So Conservatism contents itself
with a quiet drift to disaster in the hope that endless repetition of the lie prosperity may by
medieval incantation invoke prosperity. Labour, on the other hand, turns to remedies which
make confusion worse confounded on the lines pursued by Mr. Leon Blum, the Jewish
Socialist Prime Minister of France, who was hailed by Mr. Attlee as a model for the Labour
Party just before he fell from power, leaving French economics in chaos. Because it is
impossible for Labour genuinely to increase purchasing power in face of the sweated
competition of the international system, which they support, they turn to the false creation of
illusory purchasing power by the disastrous measure of inflation.

This process was well described in the City columns of Labour's organ, the "Daily Herald," in
an eulogy of their other foreign hero, Mr. Roosevelt. "In modem conditions a reforming
Government must maintain a constant stimulus of Government spending ... we have learnt, not
that a reforming Government cannot make a system of partly private enterprise work, but that
it cannot make it work today without a constantly inflationary pressure . . . The mere pressure
of unemployment and of falling Federal revenues will force a big budget deficit on the
President."

So the once Socialist Party places its only hope in reformist doctrines which rest on the simple
disaster of unbalanced budgets and inflation. This is the Nemesis of making great promises
within the limits of a system that cannot deliver the goods. This is the fatality of supporting
international Socialism in an age when only National Socialism can work. To inflate means to
increase the supply of money without any corresponding increase in the supply of goods, and
the result is on historic record in all countries that have tried it. Prices rising far more rapidly
than wages diminish the real wages of the workers and create a speculators' paradise, with vast
profits for the Stock Exchanges and rising cost of food and living to the people. Inflation and
the opposite policy of deflation, which was pursued by the previous Labour Government, alike
serve none but the financier who lives by flux and chaos. Inflation with a continually rising
price level diminishes real wages and makes speculators' profits. Deflation by continually
depressing the price level throws thousands into unemployment and increases the burden of all
dead weight debt by making the fixed interest of the bond holder more valuable than it was
before.

Each process serves the financiers alone; the first process was the policy of the last Labour
Government and the second process would be the policy of the next. For Labour is prevented
by an obsolete international creed from pursuing the only solution of building high British
wages within a British economic system to enable the British people to consume what the
British people produce. Any fool can inflate and appropriately enough this is the only remedy
now left to the Labour Party.

They talk of "public works" and certainly public works of a useful and remunerative character
should be undertaken by any vigorous Government to bridge the gulf between the breakdown
of the present economic system and the creation of a new. The writer, when a Minister in the


The Obsolescence of International Socialism

That Labour now has no serious intention of even attempting the building of a new system is
all too clear. They are paralysed into ineffective and ever disastrous reformist doctrines by new
and modern facts which their original theorists could not foresee, and the present leaders of
Labour are incapable of fresh original Bought.

The new facts which have destroyed the theory of international Socialism and in practice
reduced it to an ineffective and disastrous reformism are plain to see. The first fact is the
sweating of Eastern labour by Western finance to undercut the standards of the West. This
event has already been examined and alone renders impossible international Socialism. The
second fact is that international Socialism has always rested on the theory summarised in the
slogan "workers of the world unite," and that after 80 years of this appeal the workers of the
world are further than ever from unity. On the contrary, in the interval capitalism has got on
with the task of introducing new and sweated workers who are incapable even of reading a
Socialist manifesto. Therefore, all hope of freeing themselves from the consequences of
internationalism by effective international action has completely faded. The third fact is that
the evolutionary method of the Labour Party has become entirely unsuited to an age of
revolutionary fact. In practice revolution by the method of evolution has proved a contradiction
in terms. Facts move too fast for the Labour Party and the process of nationalising one or two
industries and awaiting results before taking "the next step" becomes a farcical delusion in a
period during which the whole economic system threatens to collapse about our ears.

While an economic system crashes the only contribution of Labour's evolutionary method is to
nationalise one or two of the most obsolete industries, of course, with full compensation, as
they always emphasise, to the dispossessed capitalist. So Labour is left holding the baby of
decaying industry while the rogues of capitalism make merry with the proceeds of
"compensation" in the decadence of a dying system, and the arms of Government are cluttered
with their discarded and exhausted offspring. The "inevitability of gradualness" and
nationalisation step by step with the hope of arriving at the Socialist State in the course of
several generations have become doctrines too absurd to be tenable in the face of the modern
electorate. So, at a loss for any effective plans of universal action which can only rest on the
principle of power in Government, that in principle Labour denies, they tamely accept their
Trade Union Leaders complete negation of Socialism which was summarised by Mr. Bevin's
remarkable statement: "We must consider carefully the question how far the State should be
permitted to interfere in the regulation of wages and conditions.

Our Movement is a voluntary one, and the claim for State regulation must not be carried too far.
It might easily lead us on to the slippery slope of the totalitarian state" (Trade Union Congress,
reported in "Manchester Guardian," 7/9/37). Their original theory thus entirely abandoned,
Labour falls back in practice on the "reformist" doctrines of inflation after the model of Blum
and Roosevelt. In so doing Labour performs its classic role and fulfils its historic destiny. For


In every sphere of national and world policy we find today international Socialism and
international finance marching hand in hand. International Socialism creates, by weakness in
Government and muddled folly in method, the flux and the chaos on which battens and thrives
the financial parasite of the world.

Finance and Flux

By flux lives the financier and by flux dies the producer. The financier in the inner ring buys at
the bottom and sells out at the top. To him, therefore, it is essential that a bottom and top
should exist, or in other words that flux should exist. The producer, however, before all else
requires stability. To him the greatest disaster is that the price level should be lower when he
sells his goods than when he produces his goods. Yet this occurs in every depression of the
system of flux by which the financier lives. The up and down of the economic system, in what
are called booms and depressions, are poison to industry but the life blood of finance. Such
fluctuation provides the normal business of finance, but in recent years greater and richer
harvests have come its way in the sudden crash of currencies and economic systems. Before
the pound was devalued in 1931 and the franc in 1937 it was a happy coincidence for the
financiers that the respective Socialist Prime Ministers in Britain and France (old "model"
MacDonald and new "model" Blum) should assure their nations that never, in any
circumstances, would pound or franc be devalued. The interval during which the currencies
were sustained by public belief in these statements enabled the financiers to get their money
out of the country at a high rate of exchange, and later after devaluation to make enormous
profits by bringing it back at a low rate of exchange.

Further fortune fell to the financiers towards the close of 1937, when the prosperity boosting of
Conservative ministers gave such confidence to small investors that stock markets for the time
held up fairly well, no doubt with the result that big financiers were able to unload on the
public in a good market with a view later to buying back when prices touched bottom. But
these are rare and refreshing prizes of finance apart from the normal business of profiting by
the flux of the system.

Gambling in Commodities

To understand the present fate of the producer it is necessary to study how the flux of the
international system is created. The flux of the system arises from the unlimited mobility of
inter optional finance and the unlimited power to gamble in the primary commodities which
supply the productive industries of the world. It is notable that each post war depression has
been preceded by a large rise in the price of primary commodities, followed by a collapse in
price. This is due for the most part to gambling by financiers in the raw materials that supply
the industries of the world. The immense power of modern production responds immediately to
boom demand by an increase in production which exceeds even boom demand. Glut is the
result because even a boom of the present system is inadequate to absorb production by reason
of the fact that the ultimate market of the people's purchasing power is insufficient. Therefore,
glut arises in relation to effective demand and price collapse ensues, with all the familiar
phenomena of depression. Finance greatly accentuates the chronic tendency to overproduction,
born of under-consumption, by speculation, particularly in primary products, directly a boom
increase in demand sets in motion a tendency to increasing price.

Wall Street Dictatorship

The same power of almost unlimited mobility of finance in practice subordinates completely
the economy of Britain to the economy, or rather chaos, of a foreign country. Finance in the
City of London is so interlocked with finance in Wall Street, New York, that in practice the
City of London has become a sub-branch of Wall Street. Let anyone who doubts this study the
immediate reaction on the London Stock Exchange of any movement on Wall Street. For
London follows Wall Street entirely irrespective of British conditions. In recent years adverse
movements on the London Stock Exchange have followed adverse movements on Wall Street
even in face of good British trade reports. On the other hand, upward movements on the
London Stock Exchange have followed an upswing on Wall Street, even in face of a disastrous
British unemployment return the previous day. What matters to finance in the City of London
is not what is happening in British industry, but what is happening in Wall Street, New York.

Therefore, as under the present system the City of London controls British industry, the life of
this nation in the final analysis is controlled by a sub-branch of Wall Street finance. A British
farmer may be deprived of his livelihood because a gamble in the Chicago Wheat Pit has
produced a collapse in price. A prosperous British industry may suddenly be reduced to a
stand' still because Wall Street speculation in primary commodities has brought a subsequent
fall on the Wall Street Stock Exchange with consequent fall in the City of London, and a
downward swing of all prices into depression. Thousands of Britons may walk the streets in
unemployment because some big rogue of finance on the other side of the world has gambled
in the raw materials of industry.

In fact, the British craftsman will make less money by studying and perfecting his craft than by
studying the symptoms of Wall Street. Ironic indeed is the tragedy of this dependence for a
people which possesses within our own great heritage of Empire the means to produce every
raw material and every commodity we require, not only in abundance but in complete
independence of world supply or world speculation.

Finance Power Over Government

This same power of almost unlimited mobility which the international system confers upon
finance affords it also almost unlimited power over Governments which support the
international system. It is inherent in the system that capital and credit shall nave power of
movement from one country to another. The power of the financier as an individual to shift his
fortune in and out of the country is entirely unrestricted. If these great mobile forces °t finance

In simple fact the power of international finance is absolute over all the old parties, because the
operation of the system which they support gives finance at any time the power to break them.

Foreign Lending -the Object and the Disaster of the System

When we analyse the power of finance over the old parties it is not difficult to see why a
system is maintained which serves the financier alone, although it is destructive in modern
conditions of every producer's interest, and is disastrous not only to the economy but to the
integrity of the nation. Finance is the master of the parties, and finance forbids the building of a
national system to meet modern facts and maintains an international system whose
obsolescence provides the parasite of decadence with profit. Not only is that profit provided by
speculation in the fever of the system which has already been examined. The traditional
business of finance under the present system depends on the maintenance of internationalism
and is admittedly brought to an end by the creation of an Empire system. That traditional
business is foreign lending which we have earlier observed has equipped against us our foreign
competitors all over the world, and in recent years has exploited the East to the threatened ruin
of the West.

The only motive of foreign lending is to derive a higher rate of interest from the equipment of
our competitors than from the equipment of British industry. That interest can only be drawn
annually from foreign nations in the shape of gold, services, or goods. As few of them have
either gold or services to offer the annual interest on foreign loans is derived almost entirely
from the import of foreign goods. Consequently the business of finance depends on foreign
imports, because without such imports it cannot draw usury from abroad. Therefore, the
interest of finance conflicts directly with the interest of the producer, because imports from
abroad are a necessity to finance but a disaster to the producer For it should further be noted
that the entry of foreign goods representing interest on foreign loans is not balanced by any
corresponding exports of British goods. They are tribute from one country to another in respect
of a past transaction without any countervailing payment. In fact their economic effect is
precisely the same as the payment of German reparations after the war, which represented
tribute from one country to another, in respect of the past transaction of the war, without any
balancing export. The effect on the economy of the recipient was then clearly observed and


Thus the part of international lending in our national economy is clear. It is firstly to supply
backward nations with the means to undercut us in the markets of the world, and secondly to
draw a high rate of usury from the transaction in the shape of cheap sweated goods, which
enter the British market to the complete displacement of British labour because they are
balanced by no form of export. Yet the extension of foreign lending has been laid before the
country as the highest ambition of British industry in almost all Mr. Neville Chamberlain's
annual orations to the Bankers' Dinner as Chancellor of the Exchequer, while the theory of
foreign lending and the rights of foreign investors are eagerly championed by the Labour Party.

Behind this theory every influence of the Press and old world economists is also arrayed.
British Union challenges, root and branch, the whole conception of foreign lending. We have
already observed that the result is interest payment in the shape of foreign goods, which
displaces British labour by sweated labour as surely as if thousands of Japanese were imported
to Lancashire and Yorkshire to take British jobs. We will now examine the original effect of a
foreign loan which means the permanent divorce of British wealth from British consumers for
the benefit, or rather for the exploitation, of foreign countries. That wealth, as a capital sum,
can never return to this country, for the repayment of the capital of all foreign loans in the
shape of foreign goods would not merely disrupt industry like the payment of interest, but
would completely shatter the British economic system. Foreign loans mean in practice the
permanent consumption of British produced wealth by foreigners, and the permanent loss of
that wealth to the Britons who produced it.

Yet the whole conspiracy of politicians, Press and economists teaches the British people to
believe that to send steel to a remote country to build a bridge over a far away river, and to
send bicycles for savages to ride over the bridge, without any hope of repayment of this
exported wealth, is a transaction of sound economy and finance. While to keep that steel at
home to build British dwellings, and the bicycles at home for Britons to ride along well made
roads, is a principle of wild cat finance.

The greatest of all bluffs put over the British people is the loan-export bluff, for it has induced
them to alienate from themselves for ever an enormous proportion of the wealth they have
produced by the genius of their technicians and the sweat of their workers. Late in the day they
begin to see that the export of machines which they created, and taught the world to use, is
today resulting in the equipment of sweated labour to undercut them on every market in the
world. Finance, secure in the equipment of the East by the effort of the West, cynically deserts
the origin of its strength and wealth for fresh Oriental pastures, where the yield of usury from
the sweated is greater than the return of interest from the civilised. So in the final frenzy of the
system finance drives the West to produce the means of its own destruction, and, not content
even with this classic business of the money power, our financial masters now make the
primary commodities and raw materials which serve our, stricken industries the subject of
world gambles whose fluctuations create a chaos in which industry is prostrated. But
internationalism and the parasite which drives it to destruction have gone too far; and today
greed and fully bring their Nemesis in the threatened destruction of the body on which they
prey. That body is the industry and life of Western Man.


BRITISH Union recognises the disintegration of the system and will not attempt to reform the
system. The machine in modern conditions has broken and a new machine is required to meet
modern fact. By this we do not mean that we shall ever destroy for the sake of destroying or
uproot existing institutions merely because they now exist. That was the fallacy of international
Socialism, which began with the theory of changing everything and ended with the practice of
changing nothing. On the contrary, whatever is good we shall preserve and adapt to a new
synthesis and harmony of the nation, while ruthlessly cutting away the dead wood of
obsolescence and decadence. The essence of our economic creed is the realist facing of facts
and the adoption, even more in practice than in theory, of the quickest means of securing the
essentials of national reconstruction. To that end we seek to reconcile every motive of
individual exertion with the welfare of the nation as a whole.

The interest of the nation transcends the interest of every faction, but, in recognising the overriding
interest of the community, the individual as a member of the nation secures his own
ultimate advantage. Every great institution of our national and traditional life which is
workable and can be adapted to new ends will be preserved and woven into a new national
pattern and purpose.

Empire System

Above all, we are determined not wantonly to discard but to turn to high advantage the heritage
won for our generation by the heroism and sacrifice of those who have gone before. The
conjunction of the vast resources of our Empire with the genius of modern science can solve
the problem of our age. We are no weak nation stripped of overseas possessions and denied
access to raw materials, for our past has bequeathed as opportunity to the present one quarter of
the surface of the globe. Therefore, in pride of our past and in confidence of our present
abilities we turn to the Empire as the basis of our economic system. In so doing we ask what
other alternative is open to our generation? what other means have we either of finding an
outlet for our production in face of closing world markets, or of winning freedom from finance
tyranny which rules through the obsolescence and decadence of the international system?

If we believe from the evidence of our eyes and of every present experience that
internationalism is outworn and in continuance threatens the very life of our industrial system
and national integrity, what alternative to that system can we discover except an Empire
alternative? If the analysis of the last chapter be accepted, or even in part accepted we are
driven to our own Empire as the only alternative to chaos and exploitation.

The only relevant question to the modern mind is whether or not the Empire can supply the
modern alternative to the breakdown of the obsolete international system. Can an Empire
system afford to our people not merely as good a material life as they possess today, but a
higher standard of civilisation than the world has yet seen? To that question we return an
unhesitating "yes," and prelude a detailed description of the system with the statement of
certain facts which none has yet been found to deny.

(1) Within these islands and the Empire are workers whose skill is second to none in the world.
(2) Within these islands and the Empire we possess technicians and can produce machinery
second to none in the world.
(3) Within the Empire alone we possess practically every resource of raw material which
industry can possibly require.
27
Within the Empire alone and with our own resources of men, machines, and raw materials,
we can immensely increase our present wealth production, provided we have a market for
which to produce.
These facts have not yet been challenged and, unless they can be disproved, it is possible to
build in our Empire alone, without the need of any assistance from the outside world of chaos,
a far higher standard of life than we possess today or than mankind has yet witnessed. But all
depends on the condition of the last proposition stated above. Empire industry must have a
market for which to produce and that is nothing else but the power of our people to consume.
We have studied in the last chapter the factors which deprive the British people of the ability to
consume the goods which they produce. Deliberately we build an Empire system that rests on
the simple principle that the British people shall consume what the British people produce.

Home Market

The first act in the building of a new system is clearly to free the people of these islands from
the forces which deprive them of purchasing power and to build a home market which rests on
the high purchasing power of the people. High wages is a basic principle of our economic
system, because high wages alone can give the people the power to consume the goods which
they produce. The first factor which prevents high wages at present is the undercutting of
British labour, even on the home market, by cheap foreign products often far below in price
our present production costs

To this situation we apply the simple principle that nothing shall be imported into Britain
which can be produced within Great Britain. The implementing of this principle means the
exclusion from these islands of some £360 millions of manufactured and agricultural products
which are now imported annually To replace these by British products, on any current
computation of production and employment, will give employment to nearly a million and a
half of our people. In addition, British industry will be free on the home market from the cheap
foreign competition which today holds down wages and diminishes the extent and purchasing
power of the home market.

But British Union system for the home market does not end there for it would be idle to
prevent the undercutting of British labour by sweated goods from abroad if we still permitted
the undercutting of British labour by sweated goods produced at home. It is useless to protect
our standard of life from the foreign employer who pays low wages if we still expose it to the
attack of the British employer who pays low wages. To meet this situation British Union
constitutes the Corporate system, and the effect of that system in preventing sweated
production within Great Britain is plain and direct.
The first objective of the great industrial Corporations will be the elimination of sweated
competition from within, when the Government, by exclusion, has eliminated sweated
competition from without. They will lay down the minimum wage rate over the sphere of
industry which they cover and infringement of these wage rates will be a criminal offence. But
the function of the Corporations will be not merely static but dynamic. It will be their task
progressively to adjust consumption to production power, and thus to overcome for the benefit
of industry and people the problems created by rationalisation and our ever advancing
industrial and mechanical technique. In other words, it will be the duty of the Corporations to
raise wages and salaries over the whole sphere of industry as science and industrial technique
increase the power to produce. Consequent on the elimination of sweated competition, both
from without and from within, no limit will exist to the extent to which producing power can
thus be increased except the limit set by scientific and productive advance.


Position of Individual Firms -Tory Protection

We seek to build a home market in which the British can consume what the British produce by
the joint method of excluding sweated products from without and the prohibition of sweated
production from within. The relative position of individual firms will remain the same on the
new high wage basis as on the present low wage basis. If you compel A to raise wages but
permit his rival B to maintain low wages the only effect is to put A out of business by giving
an advantage to his rival B. But if you compel both A and B to raise wages their relative
competitive position remains the same. Under British Union system any individual is free to
put his rival out of business by greater efficiency than his rival, but he is not free to put his
rival out of business by paying lower wages. The essential difference between the economic
"insulation" of British Union policy and any protective proposals ever advanced by the
Conservative Party can thus easily be discerned. We will assume, for the sake of argument, that
the incredible happened and that the Conservative Party gave to industry the real protection
from foreign competition which they have always promised at elections, in glaring
contradiction of their practice when they recently possessed record majorities in Government
and yet permitted the annual import into these islands of £360 millions of foreign manufactures
and agricultural products. If the miracle occurred and Conservative pledges were actually
carried out this vital difference would exist between their policy even in this regard and that of
British Union. Behind their protective barrier no organisation would exist to prevent the
production of sweated goods and unfair undercutting by low wages of one British firm by
another.

Conservative rejection of the Corporate system deprives them of any means to this end.
Consequently, despite their protection, British wages would still be kept down by sweated
competition from within even if they had eliminated sweated competition from without. A
further evil undoubtedly would arise under this unregulated and anarchic system which
provides freedom only for the exploiter to exploit. Freed from all check and threat of foreign
competition under Conservative protection the present tendency towards trust, combine and
monopoly would greatly accelerate. Even more combines would come together to exploit the
protected market without any let or hindrance. The classic tendency of the monopoly would
quickly emerge in the increase of price to the consumer and the decrease of wage to the worker.
Consequently protection unaccompanied by organisation and power in Government is an
unmitigated evil. On the other hand, insulation from world chaos is the first and necessary
action in the building of an economic system which can only thrive and advance in the high
purchasing power of the mass of the people.


Thus British Union builds a home market capable of absorbing the maximum production of
British industry, subject only to the necessity of acquiring outside these islands what we cannot
here produce. At this point we turn to our own Empire overseas to secure the raw materials and
some foodstuffs which Great Britain cannot produce. We shall offer to our Dominions and
Colonies the direct bargain for which they have always asked. We will buy from them raw
materials and any foodstuffs which we cannot produce here on condition that they accept an
equivalent value of our manufactures in return. They are primarily producers of raw materials
and foodstuffs and we are now primarily producers of manufactures and exports such as coal.
A natural balance of Empire economy exists which policy in this country has done much to
destroy by preferring to buy essential raw materials and food from foreign countries. As a
result the Dominions have already been driven to the development of secondary manufacturing
industries. That process, if long continued, may develop in the Dominions an economic self-
sufficiency which may lead in time to their complete inability to accept our exports. Great
Britain will then be faced with the retribution of internationalism in dependence on foreign
supply, for which she can only pay by exporting goods to foreign markets that are rapidly
closing against her. In fact, continuance in the policy of preferring the foreign to the Empire
supply of raw materials and certain foodstuffs might finally spell the doom of these crowded
islands when, in the future, they seek outside supplies for which they cannot make payment
either in foreign or Empire markets.

On the other hand, an early development of Empire economic system can arrest the drift to this
catastrophe. The process of developing secondary industries in Dominions and Colonies has
not yet gone far enough to prevent a balanced Imperial economy. They offer to us still the
simple bargain of their raw materials to be balanced by their acceptance of our manufactured
exports in a £1 to £1 equivalent.

Why are the international parties, Conservative and Labour alike, so mad as to refuse? The
answer to this riddle may be found in the deliberate maintenance of the adverse balance of
payments under the existing foreign trade pacts, which should provide a conclusive argument
for the abrogation of these pacts in favour of a balanced Empire trade. Under almost every
foreign trade pact Britain imports more than she exports in return. The adverse balance of
goods received represents interest payments made on past loans without any balancing export
in return as described in the last chapter. So Great Britain refuses Empire trade and maintains
the adverse balance of trade pacts with foreign nations for the sole reason that the process is a
means of collecting the usury of the City of London.

An Empire system is sacrificed and we drift towards the disaster of dependence on an ultimate
world system, in which we can find no means of payment for necessary imports, solely because
the British Government and our economic system are debt collectors for the City of London.
Not only must British labour be displaced in the home market by the import of sweated goods
as interest payment, but we are forbidden to develop our heritage in an Empire economy
because the millstone of foreign lending is still around our necks. We have to choose between
an insulated Empire system, containing within its free boundaries the highest standard of
civilisation that the world has yet seen, and the maintenance of a world usury system which in
every sphere destroys the productive interest and oppresses the people. We have to choose
between Empire and Usury; British Union chooses Empire.

Empire Development

It is clear that our system depends on the intensive development of an Empire which is today
producing only a fraction of what it could produce. The question is sometimes asked whether


In the case of the Crown Colonies we affirm frankly that what has been won by the heroism of
the British people shall be used for the benefit of the British people. Instruments like the Congo
Basin Treaty, which are supported by the Conservative Party and make our African
possessions the dumping ground of the world, will be repudiated, and British possessions will
be preserved as a British market, with a result in itself, that current statistics prove, will go far
to restoring our export trade. The great British colonial tradition of good and fair treatment of
native populations will be preserved, but we shall challenge the illusion that backward and
illiterate populations are fit for self-government when obviously they are not. Nor do we admit
that the Western nations should be confronted with closed areas in the supposed interests of
native populations, which have done nothing to develop their own territory before the genius of
the Western mind and energy put them on the map of the world.

If "Left" theories in this sphere were logically applied America would be handed back to the
original Red Indian inhabitants, and the white man would be barred from the land which his
talent has created. In practice these high-sounding theories of native self-determination have
resulted in no higher reality than the ruthless sweating and exploitation of native populations
by Western finance capitalists for the undercutting of the Western standard of life. In practice
native "rights" have been the right to be exploited. Such exploitation of backward populations
will be absolutely forbidden in British Union Empire, and as a result the poison stream of
sweated goods will no longer enter the arteries from within the body of Empire. Good and fair
treatment of native populations is a British tradition, but to stultify the white man's genius in
order to preserve native "rights" to neglect fertile areas of the globe, or native "rights" to be
exploited by finance capitalists for the destruction of the West, is an historic absurdity and a
British tragedy. Therefore, consciously and determinedly we develop for the benefit of the
British people the territory which the energy of the British people has made their own.

Agriculture

In developing the territory of our Empire British Union policy by no means forgets the
development of our own native soil. The measures already described will not only save
agriculture, but are the only measures that can save British agriculture. For our policy meets
the two factors which today destroy agriculture and depopulate our countryside. They are (1)
the flood of foreign imports, (2) the low purchasing power of our British people which
deprives them of the ability to buy good British food.

By present conditions a conflict has been created between town and country in which the
countryside has always been worsted since the Conservative Party ceased to be the party of the

British Union overcomes the dilemma of the countryside : (1) By raising the purchasing power
of the mass of the people to the point that modern science permits by means already described;

(2) By prohibiting entirely the import into Britain of any foodstuffs that can be produced within
Great Britain. This policy preserves for British agriculture the home market and provides a
market capable of paying for British products. In practice no substantial increase of price to the
consumer need be anticipated, and in any event, the general increase in wages and conditions
under a modern system will be far greater than any increase in farming prices. The farmer can
increase production for an assured market without any very great increase of his present
overhead charges. Consequently an increase in production without a commensurate increase in
production costs will tend to prevent prices from rising. Yet greater production for an assured
market will afford the farmer profit instead of loss, and the labourer a living in place of a
starvation wage. In addition a Distributive Corporation will cut our redundant distribution costs
and bring farmer and consumer closer together in the absence of a host of unnecessary
middlemen who now take their toll of farmer and consumer alike. Measures to prevent
profiteering in food are overdue, and if necessary, will be severe. But the basic guarantee of
prosperity to British agriculture is the high purchasing power of the British people and that
great home market is the constant aim of British Union policy. A market that is capable of
paying for British food products can easily be preserved for British agriculture, because if the
townsmen can pay for British food they will always prefer it as they know it to be the best.
More British Food

So British Union policy deliberately excludes from these islands all foodstuffs that can be
produced within them. This will entail the production of another £200 million of British
foodstuffs each year to replace foreign imports that will be excluded. The writer, in addressing
hundreds of farmers' meetings throughout the land, has never yet found a farmer to deny that it
is possible, pro' vided they have an assured market for which to produce. Clearly it will take
some years to evoke the maximum of British production. In practical method Government will
meet the Farmers' Union, which will have an even greater status within the Corporate State,
and will inquire by how much British production can be increased in each succeeding year.
Government will then undertake to cut down foreign imports by a corresponding amount until,
at the end of a specified period, British production has entirely taken the place of the foreign
import. The end will then be secured of a market for the full production of British agriculture
which rests on the high purchasing power of the British people.

It is true that we cannot here produce all the diverse kinds of foodstuffs that we require. But
like our raw materials we can acquire all the outside foodstuffs we need from our own
Dominions and Colonies. In a choice between British and Dominion products the British must
always come first, but plenty of room will still exist on British markets for Dominion
foodstuffs. We now import annually £180 million worth of foodstuffs from the Dominions, and
it is possible to increase British production by £200 million a year at the expense of the
foreigner alone, without touching Dominion imports. Further, any cut in any particular branch
of Dominion imports which it is necessary to make in the interests of British farming will be


Foreign Food Prices

The absence of the foreign food product from the British market is a distressing thought to
those international parties, Conservative and Labour alike, who have taught the people that to
buy abroad is to buy cheap. But the people are no longer impressed, for they have found in fact
that to buy abroad is to buy dear. In all recent sudden rises in food prices the rise in price of the
foreign has greatly exceeded the rise in price of the British product. The reason is that the
combine and monopoly have invaded also the control of the people's food. Immediately a
tendency to price rise occurs the foreign monopolies rush up the price of food to the British
consumer. If the international parties were allowed to carry the financier's game much further,
and the British consumer by the ruin of British farming became completely at the mercy of
foreign supply, the British people would find that to buy abroad from the foreign food
combines was the dearest folly that they had ever committed.

The import of foreign foodstuffs is pursued as a sacred rite of the financial democratic system
because those imports more than any other pay the interest on foreign loans as previously
described. But as ever in decadence parasite grows on parasite, and today the policy of foreign
food combines is to undercut and put the British farmer out of business in order that they may
have the British consumer completely at their mercy. This crime has been permitted and
encouraged by Conservative Governments which have given to the British farmer the "Board"
and to the foreign combine the "Market."

Organisation for a market which does not exist is in any case without purpose. The old parties
have merely given to the farmer restriction when all he needed was opportunity. The British
farmer may be trusted to carry on his own business once he has a market for which to produce.
He must be freed from the foreign import which destroys him, and the redundant middleman
who exploits him, to serve a market which is capable of paying him a living. This Government
can do this for farming and more, for every method of modern science and organisation to help
the farmer in his task must be made available to British agriculture. British Union knows that
no people can live that is uprooted from the soil and that the universal urbanisation of a
population spells a doom inevitable and historic. British Union knows too that the men who
carried British genius and the glory of our name and our achievement to the far corners of the
earth, had roots deep in the soil of our native land. The little men and the little parties in the
service of an alien finance have tried to sever the roots of the oak. We who come from the soil
of Britain say that the oak shall stand.


For the development of agriculture and most of our staple industries a complete revolution in
our financial system is required. British credit that now equips our foreign competitors against
us is urgently needed here at home. To this end foreign lending and the export of British capital
and credit in all forms will be forbidden under heavy penalty. A Finance Corporation will be
constituted to control all organs of finance and credit on the basic principle that British credit
shall be used for British purposes. Prominent among such purposes will be the re-equipment of
British agriculture for greater production. Today the farmer can usually secure credit only on
collateral security and only in rare cases can he even secure it on his machinery and stock.
British finance devoted to British purposes will develop an agricultural banking system which,
with knowledge of the industry, will advance credit on farming record and ability. Similarly in
industry, a banking system designed primarily to serve industry will secure the inventor and the
new process from the neglect or exploitation which are the usual alternatives today. British
finance which has its eyes on home problems, and not on the chance of quick profit at the ends
of the earth, will be required to develop an industrial banking system which carries the
invention from the stage of proved experiment to the public market. Finance and the technique
of industry will be interwoven in an industrial banking system consciously designed to serve
and to promote British industry. The neglected technician who today so often has to sell his
talent abroad, while finance gambles abroad, will be the most cherished possession of our new
industrial and financial system.

The Necessity of Power Over Finance

"What a transformation of the present system and what forces you are challenging" the old
world replies. "Yes," we retort, "we are challenging great forces and we are carrying through
nothing less than a revolution in the subordination of finance to industry." But the key to the
problem is power in Government and it is for no light or idle reason that we ask real power.
This struggle requires in Government a power so all pervading that the financier who resists it
and breaks the law may know with certainty that he will go for a good spell where the poor go
today when they break the law. Once confronted with overwhelming power in Government,
willingly conferred by the people, the resistance of finance to the new order will break, and the
financier will become the servant and no longer the master of the people. To play with the
problem of finance merely by nationalising a Bank of England which for all practical purposes
is nationalised already, is only worthy of the make believe of a Labour Party which has no
serious intention of putting any of its theories into practice, and resists in principle the power in
Government by which alone finance can be subordinated to the nation. We do not propose by
nationalising the banks to substitute tot financial ability a miscellaneous collection of civil
servants and party hacks to play with intricate problems of which they have little understanding.
We propose, by the exercise of ruthless power in Government, to make those who understand
finance do what the people want done, and to let them know in plain fact what will happen if
they do not do the job the nation commands. The financiers have long compelled the people to
work for them. We now propose that the people shall compel the financiers to work for them.
Further, that process will be greatly assisted by the preliminary deportation of alien financiers,
who have abused alike the hospitality of Britain and the credit power which the British have
created.

The remaining British financiers will be confronted with the alternative of playing the nation's
game, in place of the alien's game, or facing the nation's retribution. Their natural patriotism
thus stimulated will make them the servants of the nation within a Corporate system of finance
that subordinates and utilises every existing instrument and ability of the financial system to a
new national purpose. Thus British Union's attack on the citadel of finance will not be partial



Credit

Within such a system the supply of credit must be adequate to a system of greater production
and greater consumption. The credit system will rest on certain clear and basic principles: (1)
that British credit created by the British people shall be used for British purposes alone; (2) that
British credit shall be no monopoly in the hands of a few people, and often alien hands at that,
but shall be held in high trusteeship for the British people as a whole; (3) that British credit
shall be consciously used to promote within Britain the maximum production and consumption
by the British of British goods; (4) that the credit system shall maintain a stable price level
against which the purchasing power of the people is progressively raised in the development of
higher wages.

Tomes could be written on credit policy and have been written with infinite diversity in
particular if with broad agreement from modern minds in general. The writer in earlier years
has contributed to these divers studies of one of the most fascinating subjects that can engage
the modern mind. But experience brings some lessons, and one lesson is that the creative urge
of modern man to build a modern credit system that serves the people and not the financier
may well be lost in the desert sands of divers detail. The broad principles of action are agreed
by most thoughtful and modern minds. The full details must await the vast resources of a
Government armed with power and a full mobilisation of the finest intellects of our time to
evolve the final pattern. But the principles here stated shall stand and a new credit system shall
be opened by the key of revolutionary Government entrusted by the people with real power. To
play with credit problems in the absence of real power is merely to court the classic inflationist
disaster of an impotent reformism.

Taxation

The problem of taxation is lifted naturally by the general economic policy of British Union.
Taxation depends upon revenue and revenue in turn depends upon national wealth production.
A lesser burden of taxation can produce a larger revenue if based on a greater national
production of wealth. Therefore a system which is designed to evoke the maximum wealth
production of the nation automatically lifts the burden of taxation. We rely for greater wealth
production not only on the absorption into productive industry of those now unemployed or
working short time, and not only on the maximum production of all present machinery; the
elimination of redundant middlemen, and the great network of purely parasitic occupations
which have grown up of recent years in the decline of productive industry, will release great
new forces for wealth production, in addition to the labour of those unemployed or on short
time. Any analysis of the swing over from staple productive industry to distributive, and still
more redundant quasi-luxury occupation in service of the profiteering rich, will yield the most
startling figures. In a civilisation in which the rich profiteer can buy too much of the inessential
and the poor can buy too little of the essential a disequilibrium takes place in the national
economy and hundreds of thousands are drawn from productive to non-productive industry.
The elimination of overlapping and redundant distributive services, and the reabsorption of
such labour, together with labour employed in ultra-luxury trades, back into productive
industry, in response to the people's new demands for "real" goods, will increase the productive
power of the nation in almost incalculable degree. The proportion of the people actually
engaged in real productive processes is small to the point of being one of the outstanding
anomalies of the system.


The Passing of Capitalism -Industrial Freedom

Thus in the new economy a nation emerges organised in the divine parallel of the human body
as the Corporate name implies. Every organ plays a part in relation to the whole and in
harmony with the whole. The warfare of sections and interests gives place to a co-operative
synthesis. Within that system every great institution of national life that can be adapted to a
new and higher purpose will find not a lesser but a greater part. Trade unions and employers'
organisations will no longer be the opposing armies of class war. They will be the twin pillars
which support the structure of the economic corporations. These will be controlled by
representatives of the technical and managerial staff and of employers' and trade unions, plus
consumers' representatives appointed by Government to prevent exploitation of the community.
Trade Unions, so far from being suppressed, will find not only greater status but greater power
within the Corporate system. Free from the dog fight of a system in which, with the odds
against them, they are ever on the run, they will be able to negotiate for the workers binding
and fair agreements with the force of law. The guarantee of this ability is that in the event of
deadlock within the Corporations, between employers and trade unions, either Government or
consumers' representatives appointed by Government will intervene and secure a binding
settlement. As Government depends on the votes of the people as a whole, among whom the
workers are in a vast majority, the people by their vote can at any time dismiss from power a
Government that does not secure the workers a fair deal.

They may rely on the Government which they created and which they can destroy to secure
them justice. This is the "power action" of the working class with which British Union
challenges the "strike action" of class war. The advantage of "power action" to the wage
earners is plain both in comparison with the "strike action" offered by class war and the
"political action" offered by the Labour Party. Through the Corporations they secure by law a
fair share in the expanding proceeds of industry and if, in their view, the share be not fair they
have the right to vote against a Government whose ultimate authority in industrial disputes
does not secure justice. Without recourse to class war a proper and automatic balance is
maintained between wages, profits and savings by the constant operation of the Corporate
system. Not only is justice secured to the working class, but a planned equilibrium is
maintained between the production of "capital" and "consumption" goods, which overcomes
one of the grave defects of the present system.

Similarly "power action" presents an overwhelming advantage to the wage earner in
comparison with the " political action " offered by the Labour Party. For the "power action" of
the Corporate system gives the workers immediate and equal participation in control and profit
over the whole field of industry. On the other hand, the "political action" of the Labour Party
merely offers "step by step" nationalisation, beginning with the most obsolete industries, while
the worker remains at the mercy of a chaotic capitalism over the whole sphere of industry
which is left unaffected by these measures. Labour policy is partial and ineffective. British
Union policy is universal and effective. In that policy the trade unions play not a lesser but a
greater part than they do today.


British Union is determined that the small man shall not be crushed out, because his energy and
individuality is a factor of progress and stability within the State. We want to see as many
owner-occupier farmers, as many individual industrialists and as many small shopkeepers as
possible. We are not against capital thus widely diffused, but we are against great monopolies
of capital in the hands of gigantic combines. This is the system of capitalism by which capital
uses the people for its own purpose. British Union is the system by which the people use
capital for their own purpose. But to win this freedom from finance capitalism the people must
elect and arm their Government with power and support their individual position with the
power of Corporate organisation. Scattered and divided they are helpless but within the
Corporate life they are all powerful.

To secure that Corporate life the individual is called upon to make no further sacrifice than to
accept some public obligation in return for private freedom. That public obligation is in his
work and contact with his fellows to serve the nation as well as to serve himself. He is not free,
by anti-social practice, by the cornering of commodities the people require, by sweating of
labour, or by price cutting to make profit for himself at the expense of his fellow Britons. But
he is free by his exertions and enterprise to build up a business which enriches himself and the
nation in the production of wealth, and to transmit the result of his life's work to his children if
they also are later prepared to play their part in the national life. The individual, in fact, is free
to develop but not to exploit, and the latter limitation is the only public obligation that he is
called upon to accept in return for private freedom. That new freedom of the individual is the
ability to carry on his business without let, hindrance or sudden ruin from the operations of
trust, combine, or finance power. It is conferred by the protection of a Government and the
operation of a system which the sum of the nation's individuals has created.

In this new forward march of humanity we but extend the basic principle and obligation of all
civilisation. Any man can escape from obligation by cutting himself off from his fellows and
living in the wilds. He may thus conceive that he wins freedom, but in fact he deprives himself
of freedom, for he loses not only the protection but the services which civilisation alone can
afford him. By accepting the obligations of civilisation, and civilised conduct which contact
with his fellows involves, he receives in return the freedom of countless services and amenities
which he would not secure for himself as an isolated individual. So in the next great advance of
humanity into Corporate life the individual wins for himself a greater freedom than he has ever
known before, not merely by securing Corporate protection from the forces which today
destroy his individual life, but in winning from his fellows the Corporate service of a mutual
and higher civilisation as the reward of service and fellowship to his fellow men. In
recognising his duties at last he will secure his rights.

Heredity

THE system of British Union provides no place for the parasite. It has neither privilege nor
place for those who seek to live on the efforts of others without giving anything in return. But
the people's state has opportunity and place for all who serve the nation in an infinite variety of
capacity. So British Union system of heredity is accordingly designed on the one hand to
encourage to the utmost the initiative and enterprise of the individual not only in working for
himself but also in deep and human motive in working for his children. On the other hand, it is
devised to eliminate the parasite and to deprive of all hereditary advantage those who prove
unworthy of their forebears' exertions and unworthy of the new nation. Therefore, a man, or
woman, may by energy and enterprise not only enrich themselves but bequeath the result of
their efforts to their children. But the children, either in industrial service or in public service,
must render a service equivalent to the benefit they receive, or in default will lose their
hereditary advantage in whole or in part. Equity Tribunals of People's Justice will be
established to determine on commonsense lines such questions, which will be no more difficult
to settle than many questions of equity that come before the courts today. The system will be
woven quite naturally and easily into a general codification and simplification of the law of the
land, in language which anyone can understand without dependence on a lawyer's racket.

The Land

Opportunities for public service on a far greater scale than exists today will be provided by the
immense development in the social life of the new nation, which will call for leadership and
effort in many spheres now closed. For one example, a real local leadership will again be
required in a revitalised countryside. The original owners of the land in most cases gave such
leadership until death duties and the victory of urbanism broke the system. They will again
have such opportunity in British Union system, which seeks consciously the continuity of a
stock with roots in the soil, and will accordingly lift from the land death duties and other
burdens in return for real service to the land. But the landlord whose time, money, and energy
are not spent among his own people in local leadership but are divided between a London night
club and a continental resort will be ruthlessly dispossessed without any compensation. The
land thus acquired by the State will be used for the development of owner occupier farms, and
a mixed system of local leadership and owner occupier will result which will preserve the best
traditions of the land and afford the maximum stability.

To the urban landlord British Union applies the same principle as to any other monopolist. Any
attempt to exploit a shortage of any commodity by increasing the price to the people will be
rigorously suppressed. So all rents will be controlled by law while any shortage of housing
exists. As for the slum landlord he will simply be dispossessed without compensation and
prosecuted like any other purveyor of commodities which are a danger to health. The landlord
who without effort of his own seeks to take advantage of community effort by increasing the
price of land in the neighbourhood of an expanding town or industry will be confronted by a
simple dilemma. He will be taxed on his own valuation of the land, but the State will have
power to acquire it at that valuation. If he assesses the value at a high figure he will be taxed at
a high figure, and if he assesses it at a low figure he will be bought out at that figure with
increment to the nation.

Thus British Union will solve the ancient problem of "land values" by measures which place
the land in the same category as any other potential monopoly. In practice, however, most
ownership of urban land will pass to the State as that category of landlord is a great deal less
likely than the leader of the countryside to justify his hereditary wealth by public service. It is


Class

Liberal Socialism has ever striven to represent that only one form of hereditary wealth led to
vicious results, namely the land in which their leading figures happened to have no interest. In
fact, the worse vices of the hereditary system which British Union will sweep away arise from
the transmission of hereditary wealth by quickly rich financiers and speculators, whose
children have no sense whatever of hereditary responsibility in return for hereditary wealth. To
such as these the "trustee of the nation" principle of all wealth owners under British Union are
utterly lacking. From them, in particular, has come the disgusting spectacle of flaunting
extravagance and paraded riches in face of poverty, which evoked from British Union the
principle that "none shall stuff while others starve." Above all they have created the fatal
distinctions of social class which British Union is determined to remove for ever. Their class
values are based on money value and on nothing else. The accident of birth and the mere fact
of being their "father's son" is held by these miserable specimens of modern degeneracy to
elevate them without effort of their own above their fellow men. Not only are they given
opportunity by their forebears's exertion, but many of them neglect that opportunity for any
other end than the idle pursuit of pleasure, while they cumber the directorates of their
hereditary businesses which underpaid technicians conduct. Here we see the apotheosis of the
parasite deriving his snobbery from his father's efforts and marking the values of the snob by
the capacity to squander in face of the starving. The snob and the parasite shall go, and with
him shall go his values in the classless state which accords "opportunity to all but privilege to
none."

Function

Class based on social snobbery and the accident of inheritance shall go. But British Union will
not fall into the opposite stupidity of an unworkable equalitarianism which refuses to recognise
between man and man or woman and woman any difference of function. A man shall be valued
by what he is and not by what his father was. If he performs high service to the nation in the
exercise of exceptional capacity he shall have fitting reward and status. To work, not only for
money for self and children, but for position and honour among fellow men is no small and
unworthy motive of mankind, and is a deep mainspring of human conduct which it is folly to
ignore. The award of honour as the reward of money may go to great service and may be
transmitted to children, but like hereditary wealth will be liable to removal if the children are
unworthy.

To argue that all men are the same and that exceptional effort is worthy of no recognition is an
error that robs of motive power important human enterprises. It is true that the great lights of
humanity have illumined the path of mankind from no other motive than the inner light. But it
is folly to ignore the fact that the overwhelming majority who achieve anything are moved by
simple terms of honourable distinction and the winning of security for home and children. It is
still greater folly to presume that ail men are equally gifted in mind, muscle, or spirit; from that
fallacy arises the fatal tendency of the present phase to slow down the pace of the fastest to that
of the slowest. This grotesque assumption, if carried to its logical conclusion, would merely
deprive the nation of the full exertion of exceptional ability by which alone great affairs can be
conducted.

The true solution is to eliminate the parasite of heredity but to give the utmost opportunity to
talent wherever it can be found. Whether a man starts in castle or cottage he shall have equal
opportunity to rise to the top and to use his talent if he possesses the capacity. This principle
involves a complete revision of the present educational system, which largely confines
opportunity to the accident of wealth. In the reconstruction of national education it will be also
the deliberate aim of British Union finally to eliminate the last trace of class and snobbery.

Preliminary education will afford to all the same sound basis of classless and national
education, subject to the right of all parents to secure for their children the religious
atmosphere they desire. But later education will differentiate widely, not on the principle of
wealth but purely on the principle of talent. At present the children of the rich are normally
educated at least until eighteen years of age, altogether irrespective of their capacity for
education. The children of the poor, on the other hand, are largely thrust into industry at the
age of fourteen, irrespective of talent for the higher education which is denied. It will be the
policy of British Union to continue the education of all by varying methods and degree until
eighteen years of age. In the present low standard of life to deprive parents of the small wages
of children who displace their elders from industry would be a hardship. In the higher standard
of life which science will produce within a modern system adults will earn enough to keep the
home together without dependence on the wage pittances of children.

Therefore British Union will render it possible to continue education for all until an age when
they can be regarded as truly adult and ready to enter industrial life. But from the age of fifteen
onwards education will be sharply and progressively differentiated between varying degrees of
talent.

All children of outstanding ability will have open to them by progressive selection a straight
road from cradle to university. The opportunity open to every child will be the same, and the
same path to higher education will be available to all talent. Those on the other hand who
cannot benefit beyond a certain point from the absorption of academic knowledge, as a
preliminary to the practical in life, will undergo different forms of education and training, and
at an earlier age will specialise for some definite avocation. Above all, every child, of whatever
talent or capacity, will receive a sound physical and nutritional basis for the struggle of life.
The care of the child is the special care of British Union, for British Union will be not only the
nation's trustee of today but also of tomorrow. That infinite morrow of British destiny depends
on building a nation with physique and morale adequate to the immense duty of British
leadership. In that high purpose we guard the child.

True Patriotism

The people's state of British Union thus secures the principle of opportunity for all but
privilege to none. Every Briton shall have equal opportunity in the land of his birth, and,
therefore, equal possession and love of that land. Thus shall be born the true patriotism which
is determination to build a land worthy of a patriot's love. This is something very different
from Conservatism's exploitation of that profound emotion to guard the vested interests which
possess Britain today. No wonder that so many of the dispossessed reply to the "Tory patriot"
that "it is your land, not our land, that you ask us to defend." Britain looks different to the
"father's son" arriving at a night club door in a Rolls Royce than to the man of possibly greater
capacity and, in the war at least, of greater service, who is shivering in the rain or fog of a
country that has used him and discarded him. In British Union our land will look the same to
all, for it will afford to all the same opportunity and so will belong to all.




THE Jewish question should receive proper space in relation to national affairs in any book
which deals with the modern problem. This question was no concern of our Movement at the
outset, but the Jews themselves very quickly made it a concern. We advanced for the
consideration of our countrymen the policy which appears in these pages, without raising any
racial question or troubling with any faction. Long before we raised the Jewish question in any
form, however, that question was forced on our attention.

The evidence for this statement can be ascertained by any one from police court records. For
the inquirer will learn that of those convicted for physical attacks on Blackshirts 50 per cent
were undeniably Jewish in the six months which preceded the introduction of this question by
the British Union in October, 1934. Our organisation had then been in existence two years and
we had observed that, in addition to an extraordinary proportion of Jews in the physical
assailants of our members (when out' numbered), the victimisation of our people by Jewish
employers and the pressure of Jewish interests on our supporters was a very distinctive feature
of our struggle. This occurrence forced the Jewish question on the attention of many who had
paid no more attention to Jews or their particular problem and character than to any other
section of the community.

The resultant study revealed a fact not difficult to ascertain, that a remarkable proportion of
Jews were engaged in practices which the system we proposed would bring to an end.
Throughout the ages Jews have taken a leading part in international usury and all forms of
finance and money lending, while smaller exemplars of the method have engaged in such
practices as price cutting, the sweating of labour, and other means of livelihood which any
ordered and regulated economy must bring to an end. So the reason was not far to seek why we
had incurred the bitter and especial enmity of Jewish interests.

Some say that it is a wicked animal that defends itself when attacked, but the response of the
Englishman to a blow in the face is traditional. That response was greeted immediately by all
the organs which Jewish interests control with a loud clamour of racial persecution. It is well,
therefore, to set down exactly what we propose on this question, and the reader may decide for
himself whether this policy is persecution or simple justice which is necessary to the integrity
of our own nation.

Rights of the State

We do not attack Jews on account of their religion, for our principle is complete religious
toleration, and we certainly do not wish to persecute them on account of their race, for we
dedicate ourselves to service of an Empire which contains many different races and any
suggestion of racial persecution would be detrimental to the Empire we serve. Our quarrel with
the Jewish interests is that they have constituted themselves a state within the nation, and have
set the interests of their co-racialists at home and abroad above the interest of the British State.

An outstanding example of this conduct is the persistent attempt of many Jewish interests to
provoke the world disaster of another war between Britain and Germany, not this time in any
British quarrel, but purely in a Jewish quarrel.
None can argue that it is a principle of racial or religious persecution for a State to lay down
the principle that its citizens must own first allegiance to the nation of which they are members
and not to any faction at home or abroad. That many Jews regard themselves first as members
of Jewry and secondly as British citizens is not only a matter of simple observation but of proof
from Jewish literature and statement. British Union, therefore, affirms the simple principle that
Jews who have placed the interests of Jewry before those of Britain must leave Great Britain.


We British have not been in the habit of persecuting foreigners and we shall not in British
Union develop that habit. On the contrary, we have a tradition of according good treatment to
foreigners who have particularly served this nation and any such Jews have certainly no reason
to anticipate any breach of this tradition. But all nations have a right to say that foreigners who
have abused their hospitality shall leave the country, and any State has a right to affirm that all
citizens shall own allegiance to the nation and not to any external power.

It remains to inquire whether in fact it is fair to regard the Jew as a foreigner. The simple
answer is that he comes from the Orient and physically, mentally and spiritually, is more alien
to us than any Western nation. If a community of several hundred thousand Frenchmen,
Germans, Italians or Russians were dumped in our midst they would create a grave national
problem. That problem would be particularly grave if they maintained themselves as a
community in our midst, owning spiritual allegiance to their original nation, and indulging in
methods and practices altogether alien to British character and temperament. Such an event
would create a problem so serious that a solution would have to be found. Yet the Jew is more
remote from British character than any German or Frenchman, for they are Westerners and the
Jews are Orientals.

The Final Solution

This problem has been raised with increasing pressure in most European countries in the
inevitable opportunity presented to Jewish method by the "decline of the West." It has become
a European question of first class magnitude in which Britain must offer leadership in accord
with British tradition. It is not in accord with British character to keep Jews here in order to
bully them -that we will never do. On the contrary, the statesmanship of the future must find a
solution of this question on the lines of the Jews again becoming an integral nation.

There are many waste places of the earth possessing great potential fertility, and the collective
wisdom of a new Europe should be capable of finding territory where the Jews may escape the
curse of no nationality and may again acquire the status and opportunity of nationhood. It is
true that Palestine is not available as a home for the Jewish race throughout the world, for the
simple reason that it is already the home of the Arabs. Whatever wrongs the Jews are alleged to
have suffered will not be righted by the crime of inflicting with violence far greater wrongs on
the Arab ally who trusted the word of Britain in war. The most that the Jews can reasonably
hope from Palestine is respect for their holy places and free access to visit them as the pilgrim
Arab has access to Mecca. Other territory must and can be found for the solution of the Jewish
problem of the world. Is it really persecution of the Jews to suggest that they should again
become a nation in suitable territory? If so, it is persecution which has been acclaimed by the
prophets and seers of Jewry as the final objective of their race for the last two thousand years.
Their leaders have always proclaimed the wish of Jewry to become again a nation. Why is it
persecution to say "very well, you shall become again a nation "? It is not persecution unless it
be true that every protestation of Jewry in this regard was hypocrisy throughout the ages, and
that their real desire was not to reunite their scattered race in national dignity but to become for
ever the parasite of humanity.


In summary of our policy on this question we affirm the right of every nation to deport any
foreigner who has abused its hospitality, and we hold the aim of finding, together with other
European nations, a final solution of this vexed question by the creation of a Jewish National
State, in full accord with the age-long prayers of the prophets and leaders of the Jewish race. Is
this persecution or is it justice?


The International of Finance and Socialism

BRITISH foreign policy should hold two objectives: (1) the maintenance of British interest; (2)
the maintenance of world peace. These two objectives do not conflict but coincide. British
Unions deep quarrel with the virtually unanimous policy of the old parties is that it has
sacrificed both the interests of Britain and of world peace to a political vendetta. Particularly
we denounce the pursuit of that feud to the risk of British lives and world catastrophe because
it is dictated by subservience to the vile international interests which command the old parties.

In this sphere international finance and international Socialism march openly hand in hand.
They are by nature complementary forces of disaster, for the policy of international Socialism
creates the flux and chaos by which finance lives and the producer perishes. Still more, in
foreign policy their community of aim and of method should be clear to all, together with the
reason of their unholy union. Certain countries have at once extirpated the control of
international finance and the hopes of international Socialism. No reason exists in British
interest to quarrel with these countries and every reason of world peace forbids the quarrel. Yet
the feud of international finance and its twin, international Socialism, thrusts the manhood of
Britain toward mortal quarrel with these nations.

Germany and Italy, despite a present poverty of natural resources have, at least, broken the
control of international finance, and Germany in particular has offended this world power by
summary dealing with the Jewish masters of usury. So every force of the money power
throughout the world has been mobilised to crush them, and that power does not stop short at
payment for its vendetta in British blood. Any study of the Press and propaganda organs
controlled by finance power can reach no other conclusion if we ask the simple question, what
single interest of Britain or of world peace is served by their clearly deliberate intention to
provoke war between Britain and the new countries?

The motive of international Socialists is equally clear in their new clamour for war at any price.
International Socialism has always taught the people that any form of national action in
independence of world conditions was futile, and that the success of Socialism in Britain
depended on the universal adoption of their doctrines throughout the world. Now great
countries arise which have uprooted in theory and practice the obsolete doctrines of
international Socialism, and consequently bar to the British Labour Party all hope of the
universal acceptance of their creed, on which they admit alone the success of their cause can
depend. So but one hope of the ultimate triumph of their party remains to the leaders of Labour,
and that is the overthrow of these new systems by the force of world war. Lightly the Labour
leaders appear to be prepared to purchase their political objective in British blood, and to
pursue their political vendetta at the price of every interest of Britain and of world peace.

The party which has been built on cant of pacifism today leads the clamour for war, and the
party which ever refused Britain arms to defend herself now supports rearmament, not for the
defence of Britain, but for the defence by war of international Socialism. Foremost in the van
of the new jingoes is the Socialist conscientious objector of 1914. So is presented an edifying
spectacle which naturally makes but scant appeal to the ex-serviceman of the last war. He
replies with British Union that we have fought Germany once in a British quarrel and we shall
not fight her again either in a Socialist or in a Jewish quarrel.

In result every high aspiration of the war generation has been frustrated and perverted. The
League of Nations, which was the repository of many fine ideals, like the Holy Alliance of the
previous century, has been perverted to perform exactly the opposite purpose to that which it
was intended to fulfill. The League was meant to overcome the division of Europe, and to
eliminate for ever the fatal system of the balance of power, which divided mankind into
opposing and contending camps of highly armed and hostile nations. It has been perverted to
be a new and more vicious instrument of that system by which Britain, France and Russia, in
the name of the League, can mobilise their remaining satellite powers in one balance of a scale,
whose other balance, by force of a common original adversity, now holds the armed power of
Germany, Italy and Japan.

Despite every aspiration of the war generation and every hope of stricken mankind we are back
where we began in a situation which for Britain is more dangerous than before. For the
departure by present Government, in their political vendetta, from the sober British policy of
pursuing the coincident objectives of peace and British interests has resulted in follies of which
British statesman ship has never previously been guilty. Never before in modern times have we
placed ourselves in a strategical position so vulnerable that any child could observe it and also
apprehend the consequence. We face Germany across the North Sea and Japan in the far seas
of our Eastern possessions, while in the Mediterranean route to our Oriental Empire we have
succeeded in antagonising at one end the new Spain, and at the other end the Arabs, with an
alienated Italy in the middle. With Germany and the Arabs we have quarreled for the sake of
the Jews, and with Italy and the new Spain for the sake of international Socialism in an alliance
with Russian Communism. Has British statesmanship ever before perpetrated folly on a scale
so gigantic, in denial so complete of British interest, security and peace?

Conservative Alliance with Communism

The virtual alliance of Conservative Government in Britain with Communist Government in
Russia is at the root of all evil in foreign policy. This curious communion of Conservatism and
Communism in the international sphere will not appear so strange to those familiar at home
with British Union struggle, who have witnessed again and again the deliberate use by
Conservatism of a Communism which, in myopic vision, they do not fear against the creed of
the twentieth century, which has excited both the panic and the fury of reaction. Constantly
Conservatism has condoned, excused, and even supported the crimes of Communism when the
target was fellow Britons who dared to raise against Conservative betrayal of the people the
standard of a new and true patriotism.

Abroad, as at home, Conservatism is willing to use even the vile and bloody instrument of
world Communism against the nations of European renaissance. That a virtual alliance exists
between the Government of Britain and that of Moscow, with the natural and warm approval of
the Socialist opposition, is not today denied. The Franco Soviet Pact has ever been approved by
the Conservative Government and the close association of French and British policy, together
with the close cooperation of British and Russian policy at Geneva and elsewhere, has almost
flaunted in the face of Europe the triple alliance of Britain, France and Russia, to which the
overwhelming majority of the British people are completely opposed.

Arms Race Origin

The full historic error of the Franco Soviet Pact can only be appreciated if the chronology of
these events is recalled. In November, 1933, the leader of Germany made an offer to Europe


That Britain should be fully armed in a troubled world, to defend herself from any possible
assault, has been a basic principle of British Union long before the National Government,
which had criminally neglected our defences, consented to tardy and inefficient rearmament.
Disarmament can only be won by world agreement which proportionately reduces the strength
of all great nations and leaves the relative strength the same and the immunity from attack the
greater. But armament by political parties which have grossly neglected the elementary duty of
Government to put Britain in a position of self-defence, as part of an arms race which their
blunders have precipitated is a very different matter. Arm we must if other nations are armed,
but every effort of statesmanship should seek an end to the menace of arms race, which can
only be achieved by world appeasement.

European Division and Eastern Anarchy

In the fatal sequence of events a divided Europe fell an easy and humiliated prey to Oriental
anarchy. Germany isolated and encircled, like others in similar predicament, sought support
where she could find it, and to the Berlin-Rome axis was added an understanding with Japan.
As a result, in face of a divided Europe, Japan was able to cut loose in the Orient, with Great
Britain an impotent and humiliated spectator.

A united Europe and a rational policy would at any time have averted the disaster by firm
intimation to Japan that north of the Yangtze river, but no further, she was at liberty to do what
Britain did in India, and in bringing order where anarchy and bloodshed ruled to find an outlet
for her population and access to raw materials. Similarly the dignity and strength of a united
Europe could have secured the relatively bloodless suppression of slave trading barbarity in
Abyssinia and legitimate expansion for Italy, in full accord with the civilising mission which
Britain herself undertook throughout the world. But Europe was divided, and from this division
of the mind and spirit a sequence of catastrophe has arisen. Japan, forbidden to expand in
Northern China, exploded throughout the Far East, and Italy, forbidden to expand where her
legitimate interests were affected in the prevention of slave raiding from adjoining territory,
exploded throughout the Near East. The simple lesson of history, and particularly of British
history, is that great nations expand or explode. By denying expansion when no British
interests were affected we have provoked explosion, and by encouraging to resistance primitive
populations whom we had neither the will nor the means to defend, we sacrificed their blood
and our own prestige.

We ask what British interest was served by long encouraging resistance to Japan in Northern
China, except deference to our Governments Soviet ally, who required that territory as a
breeding ground for Oriental Communism, and could exact support in the East against Japan in
return for support in the West against Germany. Again we ask what British interest was served
by partial and ineffective intervention in the Abyssinian dispute in deference to the clamour of


British Union Principles

So with the lesson in mind of past blunders, which we have consistently opposed, British
Union policy in the foreign sphere rests on two principles: (1) to interfere in no quarrels which
are not our concern. Britons shall fight for Britain only, and never again shall conscript armies
leave these shores in foreign quarrel. Britain we will always defend from any attack, and we
will provide the means for that defence, but never again shall British blood be spilt in an alien
quarrel; (2) we will give leadership and make contribution to secure the material and spiritual
union of Europe, on which alone world peace and British interest in world peace can rest. If,
despite that leadership and contribution, the world in madness destroys itself by war we will
"Mind Britain's Business" and thereby save our people from that catastrophe.

The New Germany

In that determination it is natural immediately to seek a solution of present difficulties with
Germany and the establishment of friendship. That such a solution can be found is plain to
anyone who has studied the facts of the new Europe and, therefore, under stands the profound
difference between the old and the new Germany. The Germany of the Kaiser rested on a
system of export capitalism conducted by Judaic finance which challenged us on the markets
of the world, and emphasised that challenge with naval rivalry that threatened our Empire. In
historic survey the internal forces of that Germany, operating within the international system to
which Britain was wedded, made a clash inevitable.

It is, therefore, important to realise that in 15 years of Hitler's struggle a new German
psychology was created which rests on a conception exactly the opposite to that of the Kaiser.
The new German does not desire a world wide Empire, for he believes that racial deterioration
will result from such racial intercourse, and that the new German has another mission in the
world than to elevate savages. These are reasons strange for the Englishman to understand,
because he knows that the foremost achievements of his race have been evoked in the vast
work of Empire building which, in the particular case of his Imperial genius, has led to no such
deleterious results. But these facts are important in that they denote no longer a divergence but
a community of objective. Britain requires in peace to develop her own Empire, and Germany
desires in peace to incorporate within the Reich the Germans of Europe.

The desires of these two powers, therefore, for the first time become not antithetical but
complementary. For a strong British Empire throughout the world can be regarded by the new
German as a world bulwark against Oriental Communism, and a strong Germany in Europe
can be regarded by the new Briton as a European bulwark against the same disruption that
invades from the East the life of Western man. From new conceptions in Germany and in
Britain can arise a new communion of interest to support the communion that should exist in a
common blood.

France and European Solidarity

To this idea the writer, as a friend of the French people, is convinced that France can be
attached once she, too, has won freedom from the vendettas of politicians and can be induced
to realise that the legitimate expansion of Germany, in directions the opposite to any threat to
French interest, is a strength to Europe, and, therefore, a strength to France in securing


Let us put ourselves for a moment in the German position and console ourselves and the
French with the reflection that German affairs are no longer conducted by fools but by a man
of singular intelligence. By recognition of the fact that the new German interests lie in the East
rather than in the West of Europe, British Union does not mean that we seek joint action with
Germany in the waging of war against Russia, although we shall forthwith break the present
alliance with Russia. On the contrary, we seek peace with all countries, including Russia, and
would only join with other powers in action against her if she menaced Great Britain and thus
evoked our resolute principle of self-defence. But even the folly of Russian Communism will
not challenge the might of an united Europe which, if need arose, would deal with her as easily
as with a colonial expedition.

We seek not by war, but by the solidarity of the European spirit and plain commonsense, to
secure that legitimate expansion of great nations which can avert the disaster of another and
greater explosion. That solution will be found without bloodshed for the good and simple
reason that none can resist a combination of the great powers of Europe. Britain, Germany,
France and Italy have in this matter a basic community of interest which the victory of the
modern movement in Britain can weld into an irrefragable instrument of action in the
achievement of peace.

In foreign affairs, as in national life, the leadership principle prevails in reality, and Europe is
lost without the united and effective leadership of the Great Powers. Too long we have suffered
from the post war delusion that a tiny State, possessing a few thousands of backward
population, was not only in theory but in practice the equal of a great nation with millions of
advanced peoples to support material power and moral position.

Colonial Question

The great powers must unite and lead to peace, and this final blessing can only come from the
victory of British Union in the land that is today the key to world peace. But, in giving leader
ship, Britain must also make contribution, and long before the colonial question was raised in
acute and controversial form British Union declared willingness to hand back to Germany the
mandated territories, on simple and clear conditions that they should not be used as naval or air
bases against Britain, and that Britain might preserve such facilities as were necessary to her
naval and air communications. Such a concession would present no difficulty to a Germany
which has already accepted a 35 per cent ratio of our naval strength, and therefore made the
maintenance of her potential colonial communications dependent on friendship with Britain.
We will not surrender one inch of British territory to any power, but these colonies held in
mandate from the League of Nations are not British in law, and in practice we are inhibited
from their development for British purposes, with the result that territory, which in restoration
would be an outlet and opportunity for Germany, is today a burden and expense to us. Yet the
Conservatives, who have betrayed British Empire by throwing open British African
possessions as the dumping ground of the world, are ready to jeopardise world peace in
clinging to territory we do not require, while neglecting the territory which belongs to us at the
expense of infinite sacrifice and heroism of virile generations of the British. So in passing it

Economic Peace

It is clear that the peace of the new world can only rest on material justice and to deny it is to
court war. The access of Germany to raw materials and opportunity for outlet and expansion
will solve the last material problem of the great powers, for the other dispossessed nations,
such as Italy and Japan, have already found a solution by force that the financial democratic
world with characteristic folly refused to reason.

Thus in the solution of the German problem it becomes possible for each great nation to build
that comparatively self contained civilisation which is the surest guarantee of peace. To those
who deny this elementary statement of fact we pose the simple question, what are modern wars
about? The answer is clearly that modern wars are economic in the struggle for raw materials
and for markets. Consequently if each great nation has access to raw materials, and opportunity
to build a market in the purchasing power of their own people, the only effective cause of war
in the world is eliminated. The urge to war will go with the suppression of the international
struggle for raw materials and markets, and the financial parasite that inflames the fever. Then
if the world goes to war the world will indeed be mad, because no reason can exist for war, and
Britain with justice will have no part in that madness.

The New Europe

But in truth no such fear need exist, for the reason of the present malady of Europe is not so
difficult to diagnose. It is a malady and division of the spirit, which transcends all material
differences. Material justice must be done and the new world must be built on the sound reality
of a fair economic basis. But deeper than every division of material things is the division of the
spirit in the modern Europe. The old world and the new world are divided and they cannot
mingle. Either the new world and the old world will collide in disaster or the new world will
emerge as the final system of the modern age. Therefore on the fate of Britain depends the fate
of mankind.

British Union advances with British policy, method and character suited to this nation and to
no other. But we can understand those who in other countries have brought the new world to
triumph by policy, method and character suited to their nations as no "democrat" ever can.
Because, despite every divergence of policy and difference of national character, we have the
same origin in the straggle of our betrayed generation of the war to redeem great nations from
corruption, and in common with these others we have passed through the same ordeals and
faced the same enemies. This origin of a common experience and determination that great
peoples shall not perish from the earth gives us an understanding one of another and a
sympathy in the mutual struggle with the dark enemy of mankind that the old world can neither
comprehend nor disrupt.

We are British and before all else in our national creed we place Britain and our love of
country, but because we love our land we can understand and work with those who love their
land. Thus shall be born not only the material union but the spiritual union of the new world.


SO British Union emerges from the welter of parties and the chaos of the system. To meet an
emergency no less menacing than 1914 because it is not so sudden or so universally apparent,
British Union summons our people to no less an effort in no less a spirit. Gone in the demand
of that hour was the clamour of faction and the strife of section that a great nation might unite
to win salvation. A brotherhood of the British was born that in the strength of union was
invincible and irresistible.

Today the nation faces a foe more dangerous because he dwells within, and a situation no less
grave because to all it is not yet visible. We have been divided and we have been conquered
because by division of the British alone we can be conquered. Class against class, faction
against faction, party against party, interest against interest, man against man, and brother
against brother has been the tactic of the warfare by which the British in the modern age for the
first time in their history have been subdued. We have been defeated, too, at a moment in our
history when the world was at our feet, because the heritage won for us by the heroism of our
fathers affords to the genius of modern science, and the new and unprecedented triumph of the
human mind, an opportunity of material achievement leading, through the gift of economic
freedom, to a higher spiritual civilisation than mankind in the long story of the human race has
yet witnessed. But for the moment the British are defeated and acquiescence in defeat means
the end. On the one hand, continued lethargy can lead only to unlimited chaos, ending in
ultimate destruction, and, on the other, new effort can open before us a vista of unparalleled
and unlimited opportunity.

Humanity can never stand still, and at this moment more than any other in our history the
alternatives before a great nation are heroism or oblivion. Can we recapture the union of 1914
and that rapturous dedication of the individual to a cause that transcends self and faction, or are
we doomed to go down with the Empires of history in the chaos of usury and sectional greed?
That is the question of the hour for which every factor and symptom of the current situation
presses decision. Is it now possible by a supreme effort of the British spirit and the human will
to arrest what in the light of all past history would appear to be the course of destiny itself?
For we have reached the period, by every indication available to the intellect, at which each
civilisation and Empire of the past has begun to traverse that downward path to the dust and
ashes from which their glory never returned. Every fatal symptom of the past is present in the
modern situation, from the uprooting of the people's contact with the soil to the development of
usury and the rule of money power, accompanied by social decadence and vice that flaunts in
the face or civilisation the doctrine of defeat and decline.

Above the European scene towers in menace Spengler's colossal contribution to modern
thought which taught our new generation that a limit is set to the course of civilisations and
Empires, and that the course that once is run is for ever closed. Every indication of decadence
and decline which he observed as a precursor of the downfall of a civilisation is apparent in the
modern scene, and from all history he deduced the sombre conclusion that the effort of
"Faustian" man to renew his youth and to recapture the dawn of a civilisation must ever fail.
History is on the side of the great philosopher and every sign of the period with fatal recurrence
supports his view. His massive pessimism, supported by impressive armoury of fact, rises in
challenge and in menace to our generation and our age. We take up that challenge with the
radiant optimism born of man's achievements in the new realm of science that the philosopher
understood less well than history, and born, above all, of our undying belief in the invincible
spirit of that final product of the ages -the modem man.


It is in immense answer to all past history of human fate that British Union emerges within
British Empire and the modern creed in diverse form emerges in all great nations with the
decisive challenge of the renaissance of the Western man. Underlying every difference in
policy, method, form and character in different nations, the rise of the National Socialist and
Fascist doctrine throughout Europe represents in historic determinism the supreme effort of
modern man to challenge and overcome the human destiny which in every previous civilisation
has ordained irretrievable downfall.

The doctrines of modem disintegration are classic in form and pervade the political parties,
which fade from a flaccid and universal "Liberalism" into the sheer disruption and corruption
of Socialism serving usury. The doctrinaires of the immediate past come to the aid of political
defeatism with the negation of manhood and selfwill and the scientific formulation of surrender
as a faith.

In the sphere of economics Marx portrays humanity as the helpless victim of material
circumstance, and in the sphere of psychology Freud assists the doctrine of human defeatism
with the teaching that selfwill and selfhelp are no longer of any avail, and that man is equally
the helpless toy of childish and even pre-natal influence. Marx's "materialist conception of
history" tells us that man has ever been moved by no higher instinct than the urge of his
stomach, and Freud supports this teaching of man's spiritual futility with the lesson that man
can never escape from the squalid misadventures of childhood.

By a fatal conjunction the materialist doctrines of these two Jews have dominated the modern
"intellectual" world to the rout and destruction of every value of the spirit. This predestination
of materialism has proved in practice even more destructive of the human will and spirit than
the old and discredited "predestination of the soul." It has paralysed the intellectual world into
the acceptance of surrender to circumstance as an article of faith. To these destructive doctrines
of material defeatism our renaissant creed returns a determined answer.

To Marx we say it is true that if we observe the motive of a donkey in jumping a ditch we may
discern a desire to consume a particularly luxuriant thistle that grows on the other side. On the
other hand, if we observe a man jumping a ditch we may legitimately conclude that he
possesses a different and possibly a higher motive.

To Freud we reply that if indeed man has no determination of his own will beyond the idle
chances of childhood then every escape from heredity and environment, not only of genius, but
of every determined spirit in history, is but a figment of historic imagination.

In answer to the fatalistic defeatism of the "intellectual" world our creed summons not only the
whole of history as a witness to the power and motive force of the human spirit, but every
evidence and tendency of recent science. Today the whole front of materialism is on the retreat
and the scene of modern thought is dominated by the triumph of the spirit. In rout are the little


So man emerges for the final struggle of the ages the supreme and conscious master of his fate
to surmount the destiny that has reduced former civilisations to oblivion even from the annals
of time. He advances to the final ordeal armed with weapons of the modern .mind that were
lacking to the hand of any previous generation in the crisis of a civilisation.

The wonders of our new science afford him not only the means with which to conquer material
environment in the ability to wrest wealth in abundance from nature, but, in the final unfolding
of the scientific revelation, probably also the means of controlling even the physical rhythm of
a civilisation. Man for the first time in human history carries to the crisis of his fate weapons
with which he may conquer even destiny. But one compelling necessity remains that he shall
win within himself the will to struggle and to conquer. Our creed and our Movement instill in
man the heroic attitude to life because he needs heroism.

Our new Britons require the virility of the Elizabethan combined with the intellect and method
of the modern technician. The age demands the radiance of the dawn to infuse the wonder of
maturity. We need heroism not just for war, which is a mere stupidity, but heroism to sustain
us through man's sublime attempt to wrestle with nature and to strive with destiny. To this high
purpose we summon from the void of present circumstance the vast spirit of man's heroism.
For this shall be the epic generation whose struggle and whose sacrifice shall decide whether
man again shall know the dust or whether man at last shall grasp the stars.

We know the answer for we have felt this thing within us. In divine purpose the spirit of man
rises above and beyond the welter of chaos and materialism to the conquest of a civilisation
that shall be the sum and the glory of the travail of the ages. In that high fate tomorrow we live.


Tomorrow We Live - British Union Policy 1938