A little common sense goes a long way.
Margaret Thatcher would never have allowed the huge metal cage and gates that keep the people out of Downing Street. That says all you need to know about the pygmy prime ministers who followed her but were too small to tread in her footsteps.
On return from Vietnam in the autumn of 1971 the FCO put me in Western European Department working for my previous boss in Saigon, Kenneth James. With a very clever and warm hearted colleague, who put up with my cigars, we worked for Kelvin White, who was charged with relations with the Holy See, Switzerland and Ireland. By this time Kelvin was the most over-worked First Secretary in the office. My job was liaising with the MOD on Northern Ireland. Kenneth told me that across the road the FCO was known as the ‘enemy’ and the Irish prime minister as Union Jack. John Peck, our ambassador in Dublin, was called Green Mantle. There was indeed a problem. Within a month four of us became a brand new department led by the unflappable Kelvin. My job took me to Northern Ireland and the border. Fortunately I had friends in the Parachute Regiment serving in Northern Ireland who welcomed me whenever I went over there. We had very good cooperation with the Republic and the border at first was still largely open. The hardening came later and proved very unpopular.
Yet throughout the troubles we had very close relations with the government in Dublin and all the usual cooperation went on normally - the joint tax office to give but one example. If there was rivalry, it was friendly; for example, competition for inward investment was fierce.
Therefore I can understand Mr Varadkar's anxiety to stop the neighbours introducing more attractive conditions for investment, but either his confidence is misplaced or there is collusion by British officials. No sooner has he met with Mrs May than he's demanding that we stay in the Single Market. It's all a bit too obvious.
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During this time I became very friendly with Chris Mockler from the Conservative Research Department and his American wife, Lucy. I still followed the advice of my boss, the late Sir Kenneth James – Ken never voted which kept his advice to Ministers impartial. Chris and Lucy thought I should think about a career change.
The Conservative Party deputy-chairman, Sir Michael Fraser, invited me for a drink at the Carlton Club. He had turned down Burgess and Maclean for the Research Department as they were probably communist agents, long before they ran to Moscow.
We got on well and I was eventually sent for by the Selection Panel.
At this time Ted Heath was Prime Minister and insisted the country should join the Common Market. I wasn’t convinced and said as much to the half-dozen MPs on the panel. Despite my enthusiasm for the Commonwealth – I’d served in London, Lahore and Nicosia before Saigon – they decided that I would make a good candidate.
As I was leaving the room the senior man from Central Office slid alongside and hissed, ‘ Do understand that we in Central Office will never select you for any seat where you have the remotest chance of winning.’
Both main parties have been selecting candidates for the House of Commons this way ever since those far off days in the early nineteen seventies. Millions of us have long moved on.
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For the second time in less than two generations a Conservative Prime Minister has sacrificed tens of thousands of people who earn a living at sea by not supporting our fishermen and seamen. Their latest betrayer has over forty years of evidence, so knew exactly what she was doing. She has no children so is quite content for yours and mine to eat fish possibly contaminated with plastic from waters far from our own Exclusive Economic Zone under the UN Law of the Sea Convention.
As a boy I learned to sail with the fishermen of Burghead and later spent a summer on a trawler out of Grimsby. Cod, haddock and plaice straight out of the sea taste wonderful. For thirty years we lived in Sedlescombe, a Sussex village not far from Hastings. We always bought our fish from the beach. My wife used to treat the local children and the fishermen are wonderful at raising money for good causes. These people are the salt of the earth, not only the sea.
Few of the people we know in Sussex will vote Tory at the next General Election. Hastings looks back with nostalgia to Michael Foster ( Labour ) who was the best MP since Ken Warren ( Conservative.) What did we do to get Wardle, Barker and Rudd? Two of them Home Office, the government’s tip. That’s only two constituencies. Mrs May has beached our party. It’s making its last gasps before she and her cronies run for cover in the Lords.
The British establishment are as rotten as they were in May 1940.
Parliament is scared and trying every procedural trick to stop the people and overturn the 2016 referendum result. The Speaker is now dragging the Queen into his scheming with the Prime Minister. We need to modernise the way our country is governed. We should introduce much more direct democracy with the Swiss double yes - the number of votes cast and the individual results in voting areas/constituencies both count towards the final result. Furthermore, we the people should also have the Queen involved by her signing an order to make all referendum results law.
If you harbour ambitions for a political career, please read on…….
A MESSAGE FOR ALL YOUNG BREXITEERS
Pipers of the Khyber Rifles
Pakistan's Army proudly blends tradition from the British Raj with the clothes of the North West Frontier. We may find their generals' reluctance to sort out the Afghan Taliban a source of frustration - but there's a lot we can relearn from the Pakistan Army and the Frontier Corps.
A picture is worth a thousand words. The pipers mix tartan with traditional salwar kameez, long shirts and loose trousers and the famous sandals - you can walk all day over any country in chaplis, what's more a locally made pair lasts forever.
Anyone who has ever had the privilege of living among these men and their families knows that faith, courage, loyalty, pride with modesty, decency, kindness and warmth are qualities they enjoy in abundance. That's only the first lesson but it's the most important.
The second is don't believe anyone who tells you that the ordinary people in the lands that were once the British Empire think the same way as socialists in Britain. I was made welcome all over Pakistan and India simply because I was British and had served in the Army.
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Always think outside the box for the most effective strategic team. Modern conflicts are no place for hide bound conservatives.
2019?
STUMBLING TOWARDS A SECOND CIVIL WAR
WHAT WOULD MARGARET THATCHER MAKE OF THE BREXIT SHAMBLES?
TODAY
According to recent polls, one the Hansard Society's annual revue of our nation's attitudes, the electorate have never had such a low opinion of their politicians. They regard their MPs - who want their votes but not their views - as hostile to the voters and democracy. Most voters believe their MPs are more loyal to the EU than to their own country. Throughout all the debates and votes in Parliament only the voters rarely earn a mention. And on Monday 25 March the House of Commons proved that beyond doubt. They made a laughing stock of our country. This is a road to civil war and we’re already some way along it. Public moods change fast in this electronic age though not the way our Parliament thinks. Most of the electorate are very law abiding but when cheated over and over again by the same people, they reach boiling point and become willing to turn a blind eye towards politically provoked violence for what they see as perfectly reasonable grounds.
The logic is simple. On the 23 June 2016 a nationwide vote took place to decide whether the United Kingdom would stay in the European Union or leave the European Union. Our decision would be final and the government would carry out our decision. We voted to leave by a majority of 52-48%. That's a wider margin than the 2% margin of the 2017 general election after a considerably smaller turnout than for the referendum, several millions smaller. British voters are democrats. We accepted the 2017 general election result as we have all those before. Parliament has spent the last three years working to overthrow our 2016 vote which they didn't expect and don't like. Leaving the EU upsets all sorts of vested interests. Parliament has established a new rule in our un-written Constitution - if the electorate vote for something that Parliament doesn't like, they will ignore it or refuse to take any notice. That works both ways. We may all stay home if we don't think much of any of the candidates. Why bother to vote if there's nothing in it for us. We should ignore all decisions made by Parliament and encourage the people to run their own lives. The House of Commons is a dead duck, the Lords a Dodo.
Likewise the House of Lords ought to be putting the brakes on the House of Commons instead of rushing to overturn our 2016 vote. If the Lords fail to meet the reason for their existence and thus their duty, why waste money on a further twelve hundred people who think our votes don't count? It saddens me to write these words. I have always been a great fan of the House of Lords. Such is the corruptive influence of the EU that I would no longer fight for the Lords' life, indeed, perhaps it should be dismantled in its present form. The Lords is full of hundreds of Liberals urged on by aged diplomats who have never run a business let alone created and sold a new idea.
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Britain’s blinkered establishment crawls before another German Chancellor and her official fixers and thereby helps grease the wheels of the EU Commission. All remind of the 1930s. Large numbers of educated Britons, brainwashed at university, believe that Germany is invincible and that our islands must kow tow before Europe’s dangerously out of control so called super state. These are the political great-grand children of those who clamoured for appeasement in the 1930s.
Not all Germans are fans of Mutti. Alice Weidel ( link may not work inside EU internet censorship zone ) gave a straight talking speech in the German Parliament the other day - and she didn't need seven hours, she took just seven minutes to say why the EU's tactics were both stupid and self-harming. My only suggestion is that the next time you make those arguments, Alice, why not add Mrs May and London to Berlin and Paris, Muttie and Barnier. We need people like you in our Parliament, Alice; if you ever get bored, cross the Kanal. Actually, back in summer 2016 my plea to friends in your embassy here in Switzerland was for heaven's sake don't let the French negotiate with us on your behalf. If you're German and in business, ask Frau Merkel how she's going to compensate you for lost exports to the United Kingdom when there's a boycott of German products or even a breakdown of civil order. Herding your rivals into a sackgasse might work for the Stasi in eastern Germany, but doesn't in the British Isles. The people are furious, they want revenge; they will teach the politicians a lesson, one they won't forget for a very long time.
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Look further back, though, and you will find events with actors astonishingly similar to these shifty creatures in the present day Parliament. They are a species that the British people have suffered over the last forty years but most definitely will not for another forty. As the Chancellor and Business Secretary proved beyond question by conference calling three-hundred thirty businesses and promising to cancel Brexit, our democracy no longer works. Our political crisis has been under way since Mrs May was crowned leader of the largely remain Parliamentary Conservative Party. Chosen for her devotion to the EU and big money, her lack of intellectual curiosity, her utter contempt for ordinary voters, she met all expectations – so long as you are an EU big wig, the chairman of a big company, or a rich donor to the Conservative Party, Jack's all right.
Though it’s not all roses. She’s made numerous blunders. She’s now been caught plotting with the Speaker and Conservative rebels in Parliament to undermine her own government. For thirty months the remain Conservative Party MPs have colluded with Mrs May to cheat the voters and in the last two months saved her skin thrice. She is presently cheating the voters by plotting to stay in a customs union with the EU.
Something has to change and fast.
The simple and least damaging way is for the electorate to request the Queen to remove all important decisions from Parliament and adopt the Swiss double yes form of direct democracy. Alternatively we can hold a general election but only after sufficient time for local party committees to select new candidates. Nobody is going to vote for about 80% of the present Parliament. Can this be done peacefully? Or will it take violence once again for the people to get what they voted for?
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Adrian Hill draws from experience of seismic events on three continents. He served in the Royal Engineers as a Paratrooper and officer before joining HM Diplomatic Service in 1963. He served in London and then Lahore during the 1965 War between Pakistan and India where he witnessed the biggest tank battle since World War Two; Nicosia during the Cyprus emergency from 1966 to 1969 including the Six Day War; Saigon during the Vietnam War from 1969 to 1971 where he spent much time with US and South Vietnamese elite troops; London and Northern Ireland from 1971 to 1974 - where he concentrated on the border, stopping supplies of arms and bomb materials; Switzerland for some peace and calm from 1974 to 1978; Ottawa for the entirely peaceful though hard fought Canadian Constitution debate throughout 1982 – where he was Director of the British Information Services from 1978 to 1982; London for the Channel Tunnel project and the COBRA Committee on counter-terrorism; South Korea during 1986 to 1989 for our export drive, the Olympic Games and Royal Visits and the struggle for democracy in a country living with an armed truce. He retired from Jamaica to become an author ( The Tiger Pit set in South Korea, Spies & Lovers set in Britain, Switzerland and Germany, another novel set the Vietnam War almost finished and Escape with Honor) and the only British diplomat who has written a book ( with Ambassador Francis Terry McNamara ) that the US Department of State regards as part of the official history of its role during the Vietnam War. Later he was Chief Executive of an industry association, member of the CBI Council and the industry’s European Council, thus familiar with the EU and Germany in particular. After which he ran his own private tour business.
Adrian discusses the potential risks and what he fears might happen if the present fools’ Parliament recklessly tries to overturn the 2016 vote. He is not optimistic. Unless the people are provided with a way to reject colonisation by Merkel’s EU their only remaining option will be violence – and don’t think the people won’t take it.
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These days, Parliament cheats the voters by habit, revealing its elected members and appointed lords as the real enemies of the people. Look at the voting in both Houses. What comes across is total contempt for what we think and actually vote for ourselves. Few of them want to hear our opinions, all of them want our votes to keep their jobs. Few of them respect our votes, so why should we respect the results of their elections. Let’s ignore their elections, refuse to accept the results, refuse to take any notice of Parliament. Let’s ask the Queen to take over with the Privy Council while we devise a better way of governing our country.
Should we mourn the last squawk of so-called representative democracy? Frankly, no - some form of evolution is long overdue. Let's face it, we're about eight-hundred years behind the Swiss.
The vast majority of British members of Parliament appear to believe they’re living in the seventeenth century when almost half the electorate could neither read nor write. The Speaker is typical and the Prime Minister, her self-described deputy, the Chancellor and other ministers with about two-hundred MPs represent the very worst of the rump of Ted Heath’s party. They rarely say it to our faces but once their guard slips – usually when tired and emotional – the truth dares come out. They despise most voters as their intellectual inferiors, convinced that we’re thick, racists whatever our colour, stupid regardless of our education or achievements. Over the last three decades my wife and I had these opinions inflicted on us at regular intervals by various MPs from all the main parties. This odious lexicon lives on regardless during an age, when, through the miracles of quantum physics, even young children are bombarded all day long with news and information from all over the planet. All of which reveals an appalling level of ignorance about the world they live in and the people they’re supposed to serve – and I don’t mean their chums in big business where many hope to land jobs. Next general election, before you vote, take a moment to remind yourselves that most of the candidates on offer from their party’s inner clique don’t give a damn what you think about anything.
After three-hundred years Parliament as my generation knew it when we were young – has ended. I blame Tony Blair for the rise of the professional politician and the corruption of representative democracy. The Rotten Parliament is the last that will not have to ask the people’s permission before taking all important decisions. One could see it coming. Perhaps the first bonus of Brexit is that voters at long last are interested in politics again and therefore more critical of their representatives - and the civil service. Ordinary people know that something far more important than small percentage changes to GDP is at stake. Our country and respect for democracy are about to vanish forever. We voted to leave the EU because we recognised this threat to the very existence of our country. Over the last months it has become abundantly clear to the voters that the two largest parties that fought the last General Election did so by telling bare faced lies. If you run a multi-national business, countries whose people vote for different parties are a confounded nuisance. They stop you moving your production to wherever the costs are lowest. They stop you bribing politicians to smooth your path. Horror of horrors, these people believe in competition rather than cartels.
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There was another time when leaders took bribes – which come in many forms – and went behind the backs of their own ministers, made claims in Parliament that were obviously untrue and repeatedly threatened the people with absurd calamities while making secret pacts with foreign monarchs. This era crossed my mind frequently during the opening weeks of this year. It’s also the last time foreign powers tried intervening to this extent in British domestic politics. As our MPs want to live in the seventeenth century for the rewards of high office, perhaps they should also face that era’s punishments for failure and treason. Mrs May, as a woman, probably would have been allowed the rope rather than a worse fate. She is too low down the social ladder for the axe. Oliver Cromwell, a Tudor squire at heart, would have hung, drawn and quartered all her accomplices for treachery and incompetence to boot. Corbin and John McDonnell admire the early twentieth century villains. Both would have been stood against a wall and machine-gunned by their heroes Lenin and Stalin.
All of which leads to another question. Are this Rotten Parliament and establishment, numbering a few thousand political pygmies at most, clever to assume that they can force sixty-six million people back into Merkel’s EU empire - without any form of violent backlash? And if they do provoke a violent backlash, what form would it take and who would win? Clean Brexiteers or the Merkel's ruled EU Empire? The latter is thick skinned enough to stretch political interference until she suddenly provokes some form of violent intervention by the people. How long would her British fellow-travellers last?
Frau Merkel says that she’s not up to date with our seventeenth century Parliamentary procedure. My dear lady, how could you be? As a small child you were removed from the debris after the Third Reich to the last bastion of the master race cult. You only joined the democratic movement once it was obvious the Soviet Union was never going to recover. You may be surprised to learn that our first parliaments were founded by Angles and Saxons from Germany and long before 1604.
Some suspect that Spain will ask Brussels and Berlin for help over Catalonia. Five words of warning – the Kondor Legion and Guernica. Let’s add a sixth – Picasso whose powerful picture ensures that the world remembers. Angela Merkel is conducting hostile diplomacy against us with nearly all Europe as her claque. As Alice Weibel proves, not all Germans think it's the appropriate behaviour towards a friend in good times and bad. The people of Pas de Calais agree with her, not Macron. On the Continent only the Swiss vigorously resist the relentless management takeover of the European Union by Merkel’s new imperial coalition. Already she controls the EU Commission and Europe’s Parliament while Germany dominates Europe’s economy and controls its money. The French and Italians have been shoved aside and the smaller countries are simply markets for German goods. Next on her list is the replacement of NATO by a Napoleonic alliance – commanded by Germans and controlled by Germany. But to find answers closer to home we must look at the last time civil war swept across our peaceful country - when the political scheming and treachery mirrored the present day.
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James the First of England and Sixth of Scotland
Would you buy a horse from him?
James - the First of England and Sixth of Scotland – came to the throne in March 1603 on the death of the childless Elizabeth the First. He had a closed mind and weakness for lecturing but he left us the wonderful 1606 Bible. During the first year of his reign he held a religious conference at Hampton Court. The Church of England was a compromise by Elizabeth the First that was protestant with Catholic style services in English. Go to a Catholic church if you're C of E and apart from a bit of bell ringing and incense I challenge you to tell me what's different. Scotland's church, however, drew its inspiration from Calvin's strict regime in Geneva.
Neither Puritans nor Catholics came away satisfied. Such was the disappointment of the Catholics that came November 1605 a few of them tried to blow up Parliament with James under its roof.
A FEW MONTHS TIME?
Could it happen again? Could Parliament’s arrogance and lies drive modern voters to similar lengths. The answer has to be yes - Parliament is an obvious target anyway in this age of instant global news, but their patronising contempt for us, the voters, leaves them devoid of sympathy.
As long as the Queen is near by Parliament is safe, even Frau Merkel's mole May.
Led by the Speaker and his fellow remain supporters from all parties, Parliament is engaged in a war against the people. Greatly respected judges, experts on Constitutional Law, conclude that the Prime Minister and the Speaker are claiming that breaches of Constitutional are new precedents. Only the government should propose motions that involve spending our taxes. Thus public support is the foundation stone of any counter movement against Parliament and the London establishment. Nothing must harm or inconvenience ordinary people throughout the British Isles. This rules out IRA style attacks - not for the IRA and Islamic gangs – but for all popular rebels; instead they will strike politicians and civil servants around Westminster or targets such as the EU Representative’s office and residence and some of his staff. There are anyway, very effective and much smarter ways of closing down Parliament starting with the obvious measures that would make the buildings unfit for human occupancy!
These are potentially very popular moves given that British voters already object to repairing the building that provides a roof in London for those hostile to us.
But exactly who are the plotters?
Strictly speaking, today’s counter-reformation forces are the Merkel ruled EU. They won’t want to blow up Parliament. It’s eating out of their hands. Some may even be in the EU’s pocket. They wouldn’t be the only ones among the establishment to have taken money from the new Merkel EU empire.
The people will be championed by modern Robin Hoods with bands of Merry Men. Few in number but armed with the latest technology, thus able to have an impact out of all proportion to their numbers.
Leaks in the Sunday papers about the government’s emergency planning leave an impression that the Cabinet Office is staffed by schoolchildren. Frankly, the Prime Minister, her Cabinet and its Secretariat are the ones who need protecting. They’d do better to leave London, even better flee to Berlin where they’d be more at home. I’m sure Her Majesty, who is more popular than ever and needs no protecting, would be kind enough to send them a postcard from London or anywhere else in the British Isles when she has a spare moment from browsing through The Racing Post.
For the reasons already suggested any civil war is likely to involve a tiny number of people. This is going to be a test bed for modern surgical warfare. Who would fight for Parliament and the Establishment? I’m dubious whether the Armed Forces and Police would wish to inflict violence on their fellow citizens simply to serve a foreign power that wants to make Britain its colony. As we’ve seen recently, given a terrorist attack, they courageously carry out their duty and protect the public including Parliament. Our political class and the Establishment do not understand how ordinary police officers have no difficulty standing up for the highest moral ideals, just as do the Armed Forces. We all swear allegiance to the Queen, her lawful heirs and successors. Unlike some MPs, we take our oaths seriously - we mean it. You don’t need a university degree to spot the difference between right and wrong, nor to pick the side that in the long run is going to win.
Should the enraged electorate gather in their millions to surround Parliament I’m by no means certain what the police would do – other than try to keep the situation good humoured and cope with the vast numbers blocking Westminster and central London. Who can forget the sight of a loose line of policemen slowly leading a million people along the Mall for the Queen's diamond jubilee.
What if the enraged people took a more subtle approach? After the votes during March 2019 the people know without doubt that Parliament is their sworn enemy. And in a civil war you eliminate enemies as quickly as possible.
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Modern ‘gunpowder plotters’ have many options. They could simply lock the members out of Parliament or indeed, lock them within the Palace of Westminster so they can do no more harm outside. Alternative venues would also become obvious targets for closure but there remains a simplicity in locking up Parliament and letting it potter along ignored and thus no longer interfering with the rest of the country. ( See Rule Eight of Diplomacy for Dummies on www.theredcell.co.uk ) This would give all the local associations time to select replacement candidates and elect them locally. Once an alternative Parliament is elected its first task would be to petition the Queen. They could respectfully ask Her Majesty if she would be kind enough to dissolve and dismiss the Remain Rump or Rotten Parliament and invite one of their number to form a government. The dismissed members would be released, providing they went quietly and made no fuss. If they refused, the rebels could just turn off the lights, heat and water – with the MPs inside.
Perhaps to make a point they all should be deported to British Antarctica. Mrs May and her Ministers, numerous shadow ministers and opposition MPs should suffer harsher punishment for their sins are those of commission. All set out deliberately to defy the people and steal their democratic votes.
There are obvious ways of carrying out these tasks and by using methods that bend rather than break the law. A prime aim of any physical action would be to keep the sympathy of the general public by making the victims look silly, thus also amuse the police and Armed Forces so they remain reluctant to intervene, effectively neutral. I would not have thought that is too difficult at present. The police have had their patience sorely tried. Indeed, General Mike Jackson’s way of dealing with the Russian grab of Pristina Airport control tower in Kosovo set the benchmark. On a hot Balkan summer day he didn’t go to war, he asked the sappers to turn off the control tower’s water supply. The hot and thirsty Russians abandoned their armoured personnel carriers and gave in very quickly.
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I won’t bore you with a detailed assessment of the remainers’ military prowess. Suffice it to say that I’m curious to see whether the MPs and Lords can recruit a new model army army from some of those respectable Liberals in Notting Hill and Richmond upon Thames. One warning – it is the Liberal/New Labour/pc lexicon that has threatened criminal charges for soldiers who served in Northern Ireland. Tony Blair offered only the IRA and UVF immunity from prosecution. He didn’t care about the men and women who served their country in Northern Ireland anymore than he cared about those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. An event such as charging soldiers fifty years after the event could trigger widespread violence – and today’s soldiers might not support a hostile act against their old comrades. Keep in mind that the political class and establishment with their similar educations and social backgrounds have no idea what makes the rest of us tick.
At the moment Scottish Nationalists try interfering bloodlessly though rather clumsily, their efforts provoke the same kind of resentment that their forefathers stirred up in seventeenth century England. Cromwell destroyed the Scots Army at Dunbar in 1650 killing three-thousand and taking nine-thousand prisoners. Some ten thousand Scots fled the field, leaving Cromwell’s eleven-thousand Ironsides victorious having lost twenty killed and fifty-eight wounded. The message across the centuries is clear – the side with modern professionals and the most daring is going to win any new civil war, but their methods may not be conventional.
Charles the First
On the Continent the counter-reformation had failed to stamp out the Protestant cause and eventually in 1648 a peace deal at Osnabruck ended the war. Four years earlier in England peace was fragile. James’s heir, Charles the First, sympathetic to the beliefs of his French Catholic wife, had strong views on the rights of kings which soon brought him into conflict with Parliament. He wanted to end his having to ask Parliament for money. Foreign adventures needed money. Parliament pushed for these in the Protestant cause, then made political demands before voting enough money. There were disagreements over religion and the powers of Parliament. Eventually, to stop a critical vote the King prorogued Parliament and then dismissed it for a decade. This May sound familiar? He only recalled Parliament because he needed money. There took place one of the great political battles of our history. The King tried to impose taxes though abolish rights that had existed long before Magna Carta and also end habeas corpus. Parliament resisted, demanded and won the head of his closest minister. Both sides withdrew though only to arm for a Civil War that ultimately lasted forty-four years – indeed a hundred-and-five years if one counts Bonnie Prince Charlie’s defeat on Culloden Moor.
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Nearly two-hundred years had passed since the bloodiest battle fought on English soil at Towton in March 1461. The outnumbered Yorkists had opened fire at long range with a thick blizzard carrying their arrows among the packed Lancastrian ranks. Between fifty-five thousand and sixty-five thousand men fought that day. Nearly half died. The grandsons of the long bowmen who, heavily outnumbered, advanced and slaughtered the flower of France at Agincourt, forty-six years later at Towton slaughtered each other. Twenty-four years after Towton the last battle fought on English soil – up until then – took place Bosworth when the king, Richard the Third, was put to the sword and his crown found in a thorn bush. In 1641 very few living could remember the Spanish Armada in 1588 and the distant thunder of cannon during the running battle up the Channel.
The King’s supporters sold their silver to buy arms. Parliament raised money from London and the Eastern counties. Only the land owning aristocrats, gentry and the new mercantile wealthy paid taxes. Charles is often portrayed as a tyrant, but this was a land without a standing army and had been since Henry the Seventh, having killed Richard, banned livery and maintenance over one hundred and fifty years earlier. Henry also ruled that only the king could keep gunpowder, overnight making every castle obsolete. In 1641 the King and Parliament saw the war as a conflict with each other. Both assumed the people would do as they were told by their betters. Yet the common people held views on the struggle which eventually would decide the outcome, moreover an outcome that could have been reached without war. Sounds familiar?
When the King and Parliament clashed at Edgehill in 1642 although indecisive, the battle left a thousand dead and three-thousand wounded, shared evenly by both sides. No-one alive had seen such horror in England’s peaceful countryside. One can imagine the national shock wave. The following year, despite failure of his plan to advance on London from Oxford and the west, the campaign ended as the most successful for Charles throughout the war.
A contemporary map of Royalist and Parliamentary England bears a remarkable likeness to a map of the June 2016 referendum results, save that while the King did not hold a strip of land from Chester to the Channel, Leavers in 2016 captured almost the whole of England. Only London, forty times larger than in 1643, with the M 40 and M 11 corridors voted to become colonies of the Merkel ruled EU.
Oliver Cromwell
During winter two developments reversed the King’s reasonably stable situation: the MP for Cambridge, Colonel Cromwell, took charge of the whole Parliamentary Army and over the following months trained a modern force of twenty-two thousand men which became known as the New Model Army. Parliament once again paid the experienced Scots to invade England. A third development is far more significant for our debate. All over the country ‘clubmen’ appeared, groups of local land owners and farm workers, together guarding their districts from the marauding troops of both sides. For already the mass of England’s five million inhabitants sensed the warring sides had little interest in the people’s daily bread. They were fighting over who ruled on Earth, whose version of the Christian faith everyone else would be made to observe, arguing that only their own sect knew the true path to salvation. And the mass of the people realised something else that was rather important – the Law was much older than Kings or Parliaments. The Common Law went back to the days before England, to the Saxon kingdoms, and it wasn’t written down. Magna Carta was simply a reminder of these laws. Did the people really want any king or Parliament able to change these ancient fundamental rights of the common man without any means to stop such tyranny? Their country was up for grabs. Survival instincts went into overdrive. The same wedding of the soul with the abstract that makes us create and adore music also drives our strong urge for freedom.
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THIS SUMMER?
These challenges sound more than familiar today.
In those times, people who were frustrated and dismayed by Church, King and Parliament had an escape route – the new world. During the Stuart troubles some seventy-thousand people left the British Isles forever to settle in New England. Cromwell himself admitted that, had the vote on Habeas Corpus and other rights gone the other way, he would have left for New England himself.
Would the clubmen stand their ground today? My hunch is yes, indeed the Queen’s recent advice to her Norfolk branch of the Women’s Institute was not just aimed at fellow Women's Institute members! The truckers threatening to block the Channel ports are descendents in spirit of the clubmen. They’ll find they’re far from alone.
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The last time civil war blemished the British Isles was not so long ago, the Irish Troubles, and my fear is an intelligent version of that conflict. The IRA mainland campaign was vicious and pointless. If any other country had done the same we would have bombed the sources of violence – as we do in Syria and Iraq today. We would have taken out the leadership, the political fellow travellers, the thugs with long range missiles from drones cruising over the Atlantic Ocean. Instead huge amounts of damage were done and the taxpayers loyally footed the repair bills - our politicians could sleep soundly having declined to stamp out the threat in its lairs. The bad legacy from Northern Ireland was that the Army and Police were too good at keeping violence below a certain level. The politicians were not under enough pressure to sort out the mess. We’ve since suffered several attempts to attack our civilian population in the same way from Islamic terrorists. Again, we have the same idleness. The Cabinet Secretary thinks bringing back Direct Rule is the answer; obviously he doesn't know much about Northern Ireland where politics is like a mobile hanging from the ceiling. Leave it alone and all stays calm, touch it even gently and it'll fly all over the place. Not my words but those of Richard Lawson when commanding general.
Islamic terrorist attacks have occurred over many years. The intelligence effort required to keep this threat below a certain level is both extensive and costly. For threats by Moslems some twenty-thousand files are live and four-thousand suspects are monitored. The latter task needs a pool of highly trained, skilled intelligence and police officers. Violent incidents occur when the suspects change tactics or are placed on a lower level watch due to a shortage of this skilled manpower. Other crime also rises – look at the knife crime among teenage gangs in London and the Mayor’s obvious inability to do anything.
The Irish and Islamic threats combined with an Army half the size compared with thirty years ago mean that our security forces protecting the public no longer enjoy built-in redundancy. Northern Ireland drew heavily on the British Army of the Rhine – which was as large as the whole Army today. A division came from Germany just for Operation Motorman in July 1972 which removed the ‘ no-go’ areas of Belfast and Londonderry. Today the security services – reporting to central government – lack the capacity to intervene in widespread civil violence and looting as we saw in London in 2011 after the shooting of Mark Duggan. Some parts of London have given up on the Mayor and employ private security firms.
My own forecast is that many more voluntary forms of neighbourhood watch though with teeth will step into this gap in law and order - if you like, modern club men. Some kind of unrest along those 2011 lines is a strong possibility simply as an instant and rather obvious way for people to express their loathing of the establishment generally. There’s already a truckers’ protest movement. This could spread to rail and air travel. If you own a luxury store, make sure your insurance covers riots and vandalism. If you’re a prominent leave campaigner, urge people to stay patient and keep the police and Armed Forces on side. Let the political campaigners and media get rid of Mrs May, Mrs Balls and fellow travellers.
Because the fundamental reason why people feel an urge to riot is anger - at betrayal combined with repugnance for the arrogance and dishonesty of the political class and I include Westminster’s wider court – the BBC, institutes funded by the EU such as the CBI, RUSI, big businesses and many others. Potential masterminds behind real political violence know all this and in considerable detail. Again, my hunch is that at first there will be a race to organise the best shadow political party. Momentum has already half done this, and they nearly own the Labour Party. The only reason they don’t own it fully is because the big unions quite rightly block their path. Nigel Farage with his new Brexit Party targets former UKIP and Tory voters. Already he claims that 40% of his supporters are former Tory voters. Brexit has swept aside traditional party politics. We could see the splitting and collapse of both Labour and Tory Parties.
Public anger will be rising at exactly the same time as the Tory and Labour pro-Europe rumps wane towards extinction. Farage and UKIP never managed to become a parliamentary party in the same way that the Front National and Swiss People’s Party have in Paris and Bern. Someone could gain a foothold in the UK and almost certainly won't be a hard right or hard left movement. Voters want a Brexit Party. The best solution, in my humble opinion, is for the ERG and the Brexit network to offer themselves as the real Tory Party – New Tories, Brexit Conservatives, whatever name you fancy – but obviously for Brexit, which places you as the only party in Parliament that respects peoples’ votes. Not only that but you’ll be the most disciplined party.
Some months ago I drew up a plan for how key people in the Brexit movement could get cracking on the same task within the Tory Party. This plan should be read alongside this assessment. I strongly urge reading my plan – you are welcome to cherry pick(!) - and also starting now. The party that fights for Brexit, that respects how we all vote, has twenty million potential members, possibly more. Tory donors are telling Mrs May that they won’t give a penny while she remains leader. Local associations should tell Mrs May that they also will not lift a finger if she calls an election. They should select their own candidates. Hers will have to deliver leaflets themselves. Labour local associations should do the same in constituencies that voted leave. My plan is designed to avoid violence altogether. In the seventeenth century the only plan on both sides was to win a civil war.
Cromwell at Marston Moor
BEFORE PART THREE
On the Continent eventually in 1648 a peace deal at Osnabruck ended the war. The following autumn the King lost a crucial battle at Marston Moor in Yorkshire and the next summer suffered a final disaster at Naseby in Leicestershire. Cromwell’s army had fought with a professionalism not seen since the long bowmen of old. These defeats cost Charles the war, his freedom and his life. The King almost reached a deal with the Parliamentary leaders. However, the Army were not happy; its devout soldiers full of the Old Testament regarded their leaders as supping with the devil. Charles plotted to divide his captors while seeking help from France, where the queen had taken refuge. The second plan was treason and to make the point and take their vengeance in 1649 Parliament had him beheaded in his own palace yard.
Parliament had created the most dangerous threat to its existence – the New Model Army – who refused to disband until everyone had been paid. There was a mutiny in 1649 which Cromwell personally ended. The Army found themselves fighting everyone else in a second civil war. Half the Navy mutinied, changed sides and sailed to Holland and asked the Prince of Wales to become their admiral. To release some of this anger Cromwell allowed a constitutional debate at St Mary the Virgin church on the southern end of Putney Bridge. They sought no more rights than the Swiss had enjoyed for over four hundred years already but for England their proposals were three centuries ahead of time and more akin to Jimmy Maxton than John Milton. Cromwell owned land and property. Ownership relied on respect for the hereditary principal. At heart an Elizabethan, Cromwell was not about to introduce revolutionary chaos.
Some of their ideas eventually crossed the Atlantic and became the constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Cromwell made himself Lord Protector
Aware of the people’s growing disillusion with the victors of the Civil War, the Prince of Wales launched a rebellion, though lost a battle at Worcester in 1651 – to this day known as the loyal city – and the future Charles II hid in an oak tree and then, dressed as a woman eluded the Parliamentary Army’s patrols and escaped to France.
The elected Parliament, known as the Rump, sank further into the kind of arrogant waffle and bigotry that we see in Parliament today. Eventually, the leader of their army, Cromwell, took his seat, listened for a while, and when his speech provoked anger, ordered them into the street with those famous words, ‘ Come, come. I’ll put an end to your prating. You are no Parliament. ’ Then his musketeers cleared the House and locked the doors.
Cromwell became dictator. As the Lord Protector he was a combination of unofficial king and Prime Minister. England was divided into military districts and ruled by eleven major-generals. Cromwell and his Generals set themselves tasks, one was fining royalists, another the elimination of vice. Soldiers even seized roasting meat joints from the homes of London at Christmas. Maypoles were hewn down, adultery punishable by death save that fortunately juries always failed to reach a conclusion. England became a land of Puritan prying and spying. Nine years later the people had enough. They were sick of bigots, army rule, papists, cheats, traitors, nosey parkers and just wanted their lives and country back. After secret negotiations with the Parliamentary general and admiral, George Monk, in 1660 Charles II was welcomed home.
Charles the Second
Bloodless Revolution is the best alternative to another civil war.
The new King was desperately short of money. He had spent part of his exile in the Spanish ruled Low Countries – in return for cash he made a treaty with Spain. The price for the money was almost at once war with the Dutch. No sooner had peace settled than the Great Plague struck and the following year came the Great Fire of London. Hardly was the country over these disasters than began the second Dutch War. At least we won New Amsterdam – today New York – before De Ruyter sailed up the Medway and burnt our fleet at anchor. By 1670 the need for money persuaded Charles to betray his country for the equivalent of multi-millions today through the Secret Treaty of Dover with Louis Quatorze of France. This treaty included a clause where Charles would declare himself a Catholic and return his kingdom to Rome. Historians doubt that he was sincere. The Stuarts had easy consciences. To preserve the restoration Charles signed death warrants for innocent men. He knew his brother would prove a disaster as king but believed in the hereditary line.
James the Second
The Restoration of the Monarchy soured when Charles’ brother James, an in your face Catholic, tried to hoodwink the people just as ninety per cent of Parliament attempt today. James made his own secret deal with Louis Quatorze. No sooner sealed, James appointed more and more Catholics, defying the law, until the birth of an heir sounded alarm bells all over the country. The leading politicians secretly approached William of Orange, a protestant prince who had married a daughter of Charles II. William sailed and landed an army at Lyme Bay in 1688.
William and Mary, Mary
Thanks to the British commanding general, John Churchill, he and large numbers of his officers rode over to William’s camp the night before a battle was inevitable. There was no bloodshed. James fled London. The political settlement is known as the Glorious Revolution and set the structure of our democratic monarchy to this day. Both William and Mary signed the state papers. Americans have William and Mary College to remind them of the only joint monarchy we ever had.
PAST, PRESENT AND WISER FUTURE
After thirty-three months of secret negotiations behind the backs of the whole country, including her Cabinet, culminating in her government breaking the Law of the land, a visitor from Mars would conclude Mrs May wants to return us to the seventeenth century though with Merkel's EU as Louis Quatorze and with much greater powers over our country. James was allowed to flee for his life, it was simpler, and perhaps that’s what should be done with Mrs May and her Remain entourage of Tories, Labour and Civil Servants. She should take the hint and run far from Maidenhead. John Churchill sends an important message across the centuries – the party donors, local association chairman and volunteers are like Churchill’s fellow officers, they can collapse a government by withdrawing their support long before an election campaign, leaving no troops to deliver leaflets and knock on doors.
Civil war is not the same as civil disorder. This government has broken the law, deliberately and often, ignoring Parliament and the majority of her Cabinet, staying in the EU after Brexit Day and threatening the people. The government scorns the people’s votes as of no consequence. The government is outside democracy. Effectively the government and most of Parliament have declared war on the people.
There will be at least three sides with their own Parliaments fighting this war. London and Edinburgh will carry on as Puppet Remain Parliaments taking orders from Merkel and the EU. The dangerous one won’t be governing or taxing in the conventional sense, because the Leave Parliament won’t need much money, nor an address although it will govern throughout the land by popular consent.
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Modern conflicts are fought with surgical warfare. The only weapon the Vietnamese communists possessed against the CIA’s Phoenix Programme - busy destroying their communist infra-structure - was the American anti-war movement. The communists had no effective defence in Vietnam. As all those years ago, the targets were politicians and the leadership, plus the command infra-structure at all levels. And that’s what Phoenix systematically wiped out. Today there are a host of tools that did not exist in the 1960s and early 1970s. Small smart weapons with long range, some highly lethal yet near impossible to trace like toy drones, driverless cars and trucks, cyber warfare in the widest sense, extremely long range rifles and laser weapons with smart optics to name a handful. I live in a country where ten year old boys ( some much older ) train their toy drones to follow and film them while skiing off piste as form of avalanche safety measure. Others could teach drones to poison or brain people. This may give rise to a new word in the language - droned? I see no Continental equivalent of the American anti-war movement ready to defend British remainer MPs and their supporters.
One suspects that collateral damage would be avoided at all costs. No blowing up ministers in cars – why should police officers and chauffeurs lose their lives just for doing their duty? They probably don’t even like some of their passengers. In any case, all the MPs devoted to remain as captives of the Merkel ruled EU are known, so are a significant number of people in Momentum and other political groups. These targets are known and easy to isolate from the background tapestry of innocent bystanders. The same goes for business fat cats. ( who may have to forego their big cars and jets for a while to survive a second civil war. ) The Chancellor’s conference call has given the names of three-hundred-and-thirty people who are opposed to the people’s vote for their own personal gain. An odd lost chairman will have no impact on a multi-national but will shake up his fellow board members no end. Votes in Parliament provide hundreds of names. I’ve nothing personal against these people although I despise their utter dishonesty and cowardice as politicians but do urge for their own safety they need to stop treating the general public as though we don’t exist.
This conflict almost certainly won’t resemble mindless knife attacks by Muslim fanatics other than as cover for eliminating a high value target. After wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria there is fairly large pool of extremely intelligent, street wise, rational people with significant practical experience of this type of high technology kit in dangerous combat zones while avoiding collateral casualties. ISIS thugs were blown to pieces on the streets of Syria without harming a hair of anyone in the near by shops and coffee houses. There is a mistaken belief that all who support Brexit are poorly educated simpletons and racists. Speaking for myself I am a big fan of the Commonwealth and believe that as a country we have wasted forty-five years and four-hundred billion pounds on white Europeans who actually don't like us, supporting their racist club. EU tariffs hit developing countries hardest. What if we had spent that money on clean water supplies throughout Africa and Asia?
Ireland has been used for centuries by foreign powers wanting to harm England. Cromwell crushed the Irish with shocking massacres at Drogheda and Wexford. German strategy for a century has been to use Ireland as a base against England. The Kaiser supplied the guns for the 1916 Easter Rising. Hitler used Ireland as safe house for espionage against Britain, not very successfully I might add. Today we have Angela Merkel’s mythical back stop with a little help from Mrs May. The smart Leavers’ general will go and see the former Provos and Officials who live along the border and make clear that there’s no quarrel with the Irish people and the last thing Brit' leavers want is a hard border. Sort it out in a local pub, nobody sensible wants violence. A few months ago a reporter from the Irish Independent interviewed former IRA men living beside the border. A surprising number wanted to quit the EU and go back to the punt as part of the Sterling area. The new IRA may find they’re a minority - if they want to blow up anyone’s hard border, Mr V in Dublin is the one putting up fences. There isn’t going to be much Irish neutrality trapped inside a Merkel ruled EU with its own military wing.
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All my experience of trying to stop this kind of violence in the Near East, Europe and the Far East warns me that any modern civil war in the UK will not be fought by violent mobs but by the complete opposite. Small cells of brainy though faceless people enjoying highly sophisticated and widespread intelligence support from a population that not only loathes its politicians but has the means to communicate instantly with each other and mass audiences. People will talk without anyone asking them. It was the population of places in Syria who used their mobile phones to tip off Allied forces about the whereabouts of ISIS personnel. If you like, one can say it’s Chairman Mao brought up to date through electronics – the people are the river and we are the fish.
Above all, the Robin Hoods' strategy will be to sever as many of Hydra’s heads as possible, and there’s no escaping that Parliament is the most troublesome one and its elimination a prime strategic task. Most ordinary remain voters long ago accepted the referendum result without rancour. Mrs May and eighty per cent of this Parliament have not. Indeed, Mrs May and a coterie of ministers and officials, keep trying to force Angela Merkel’s phoney withdrawal agreement down the throats of the British people. Mrs May consistently works against her own Cabinet and mostly behind their backs, lately with the help of the Speaker. To the people who voted for leave that’s no different from all of them being in the service of a hostile foreign power. Ordinary voters know the May/Merkel agreement would make us a German colony with no deal or open warfare as the only escape clauses. Already there is a backlash from some leave voters, yellow vested demonstrators around Parliament with a sprinkling of less polite activists. The reaction of devout remain MPs is to accuse the police of not protecting them enough from the consequences of their own dishonesty.
More security around Parliament simply moves the focus to MPs residences in London and elsewhere, local party offices all over the country. Rowdy though peaceful demonstrations only need so much provocation to become battles of self-defence. Civil disorder may prove a prime aim of ‘imported’ EU agents provocateurs and my hunch is that those master-minding the ‘remain strategy’ may want to trigger serious violence to frighten the electorate. I can foresee British fishermen hiring seaborne security to enforce our EEZ given that the Chancellor has deliberately withheld the money for fishery patrol vessels. Mrs May has learnt nothing from the sad murder of Jo’ Cox MP. As long as she keeps pushing the voters into cul de sac until they're trapped, sooner or later violence is inevitable. This kind of violence caused from outside the local community is more likely than violence from anyone wishing to leave the EU. The EU ‘ intelligence’ report predicting an unstable Britain for years is actually Selmayr wishful thinking. I’m afraid removing various EU diplomats from the UK is a job for the FCO and our hard pressed Police Forces. Nobody in May’s government will deport the envoys of their rulers. Many will find themselves included among Hydra's heads and leave of their own accord.
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For the last three years Soviet style disinformation has been used by the government against the people on an immense scale. This makes one suspect that someone with a KGB or Stasi background has been advising the Treasury and Cabinet Office or giving orders to the Prime Minister. I doubt this was legal under English Law and it must have cost scores of millions in civil servants’ time. Any propaganda counter attack by leave must use refined rather than May's and Hammond's crude techniques. The aim should be to persuade local associations to break their link to Conservative Central Office and set up a party in parallel. New Labour was a PR coup. It failed because it was just PR.
What else won’t work? A well-meaning Brexit supporting MP suggested that people protest by writing letters to their MPs. Eighty per cent of modern MPs are more loyal to the EU than our country. Save for election days they ignore our votes, our letters go straight in the bin. There is a horrendous price for this ignorance sprayed with arrogance and it won’t come in the post. Modern civil war resembles Al Capone’s Chicago with hit squads descending at any hour, day or night, ‘droning’ their political prey in the street or relaxing in their gardens, perhaps just throwing them off high buildings, then vanishing while the corpses are still warm. Remember the chaos at Gatwick and they still don't know who put thousands of passengers through days of misery. Is that really what the political class and establishment fat cats want as their fate? Is the EU worth it? And if it is, the rest of us should make sure we all get out!
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Personally I much prefer peaceful methods, such as those deployed against the generals in suits who governed South Korea until summer 1987. I will not set out the detail, why spoil the surprise for our Parliament and its establishment court. Suffice to say that it took less than six months to bring down the whole political house of cards in South Korea. I suspect one could do it even faster in Britain where at least twenty-million adults believe their country is governed by fools and liars.
The watershed in South Korea was when the National Police started to run out of teargas – they didn’t want any more supplied, they had quietly joined the students on the streets! ( See Diplomacy for Dummies, Rule Ten on The Red Cell ) This has to be followed by a complete modernisation of our democracy on the lines that Switzerland has evolved over the last eight hundred years. We keep the Monarch’s role as it is but remove many, many decisions from Parliament and give them to ourselves through direct democracy at both national and local levels.
According to the heralds of the remain counter reformation the new Merkel empire is invincible. Obviously they haven’t heard what happened to the last two! The Fourth will end in a worse state than the Third. Why am I so sure? Because the last German leader who was sophisticated enough to know his limits was Frederick the Great. After the unconditional surrender in 1945, Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer ( in those days a general ) was put in charge of the British Control Zone. One of his tasks was to find talented Germans less tainted with Nazi Party links to administer the zone. Eventually, having found a mayor for Cologne, Templer had to sack him for idleness and inefficiency – his name was Konrad Adenauer.
Parliament will leave one more poisonous legacy. They have established that votes do not have to be respected. They don't respect our votes so we need not respect theirs. Through the wonders of the Internet we can hold votes on all sorts of things without their involvement. We will enjoy more sensible solutions and our country better governed. In fact, when you come to think of it, we don't need Parliament at all.
We must have a way by which those who govern, who raise and spend our taxes, can be held responsible and thrown out. For three hundred or so years this worked because the results of votes were respected. No longer. So why should we send anyone to Parliament? We're simply making trouble for ourselves. The best way forward is to follow the Swiss double yes system of direct democracy which has worked for two-hundred years as an improvement on the previous six-hundred years of their democracy.
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Our Parliament’s main message is contempt for us all, whatever way we vote, broadcast loud and clear day after day. We have not suffered any form of English civil war on the mainland since the miners’ strike and we do not want to again. Unless they are stopped, flee or banished, Mrs May and her fellow travellers will plunge us into civil war. This time as last, the great mass of the people will not be on the side of Parliament.
Rest assured the modern clubmen will become your implacable enemy.
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The Iron Lady talking to schoolchildren at the St. James's Park end of Downing Street. Number Ten is out of the picture to the right. Under the tree are the railings where a gate leads to Horseguards Parade and the trees of St. James's Park. The stone building on the left is the FCO and the little door into Downing Street behind the boy scratching his ear.
In those days Prime Minister's questions were twice a week. On Tuesday afternoons I would leave the FCO via its small door into Downing Street often at the same time as Mrs Thatcher was leaving Number Ten for Parliament. We always exchanged a few friendly words. There were no gates, children and tourists would take their photos in front of Number Ten's black door. One afternoon three schoolgirls aged about twelve in maroon uniforms with smart straw hats waited shyly on the FCO side of the street to catch a glimpse of the Iron lady. Mrs Thatcher emerged from the black door and made straight for the three young girls, immediately asking where they were from and which school.
As I drew alongside I smiled and said, ' Good afternoon, Prime Minister. Getting a sense of proportion?'
She smiled back with purpose, ' No dear, keeping it.'
WHAT WOULD MARGARET THATCHER DO?
Let's state the obvious and get it over with. She would not have been in such a mess in the first place. I know many people who haven't a good word for her in communities where industry was devastated by her economic and other reforms but on the EC as it was then called, her record is rock solid. Have a look at:-
https://briefingsforbrexit.com/was-margaret-thatcher-right-after-all-dangers-of-a-resurgent-germany/
She fought Jacques Delors in those days the French version of Junker, month after month, stopping his attempts to create a European and anti-American super state. As she put it so aptly, ' We have not thrown off the shackles of the state only to have them reimposed at a supranational level.'
Her archives are looked after with Winston Churchill's by Churchill College at the University of Cambridge and include that famous blue handbag for extracting rebates of our money!
She was a strong believer in Cabinet Government and lively debate. She would not have taken seven hours to reach a decision by recorded vote - much less - but she would have accepted the majority view, and even if reluctantly, would have done her utmost to carry out the decision.
In this case, almost certainly she would have voted with the majority for no deal with the EU and an exit on WTO terms, leaving us free to strike trade deals with non EU countries. There are a lot.
She was human. She made mistakes. Putting an accountant like John Nott in charge of the nation's safety was one of the worst. His slashing of the Royal Navy invited a war with Argentina. That self-knowledge was why she liked to argue and distrusted people who didn't or couldn't argue their point of view.
She would not have called for a referendum regarding it Parliament's job to take responsibility. However, once a vote had been counted, she regarded the result as sacrosanct.
She had great sympathy for all who bear the weight of high office and the pressures on them. She would regard the Prime Minister's actions over the last two years as taking sides with the EU at the risk of flouting the Law. She was insistent that it was the British taxpayers' money, not the EU Commission's. She would inform the EU in no uncertain terms that the British people do not consider themselves in any way under an obligation to abide by treaties that merely reflect treacherous liaisons with hostile foreign powers. At the first opportunity our Parliament and the people will repudiate them all.
She was most proud of all that as a young organic chemist she had been a member of the team that created soft frozen ice cream. She knew from experience when young that success needs thorough preparation. Look at her de-regulation of the City where the volume and value business took off so fast that it became known as the Big Bang. London resumed its role as the World's leading financial centre. Today that's what we have the chance of achieving for the whole economy. We're not aiming to become the biggest but we will become the best providing we escape Germany's grip on the economies of the European continent.
She would see at once that the EU has become so anti the Americans, British and Commonwealth - Anglo-Saxons to Continentals - that Merkel's Germans are trying replace NATO with themselves so they can cosy up to Russia and China. The logical destination along this road is that Britain would be a province of a German ruled super state that is hostile to the United States and our Commonwealth and other allies. A hostile super-state that threatened our former closest friends with our nuclear weapons and those of France and Russia. Our three countries would suffer any second strike by the United States, not Germany. Margaret Thatcher would fight against such a preposterous strategy by stripping out the dead wood that poisons the Tory Party - May, Hammond, Letwin and the whole remain claque are typical - and raise a new party with mass membership. She may have accepted donations from business and industry but with 1.2 million members in her Tory party she didn't need bribes from business fat cats. Unlike her pigmy successors.
And I think that as a great admirer of the Swiss, she would see the advantages of direct democracy and the Swiss double yes, in an age where electronic communication is instant and costs little to run. Her fight was for individual choice against bureaucracy and its costs, not against democracy.
We are fighting her complete opposites. Let's keep going and finish the job she started so well.
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HMS Queen Elizabeth and the USS George Bush
‘ I humbly confess I am neither a diplomatist nor a politician. I thank God I am neither. The former are senile, and the latter are liars.’
Admiral Sir Jackie Fisher in a letter to King Edward VII
Summer 1907
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‘ It is fashionable in English politics to discredit the opinion of people on the spot. They are supposed to be excited and prejudiced, to be unable to take the judicial and comprehensive views which can, it is believed, be adopted only in an atmosphere of ignorant indifference.’
Lieutenant Winston S Churchill 4th Hussars for The Daily Telegraph
Shumshuk 21 September 1897
All staff officers have four qualities – intelligence, stupidity, industriousness and laziness. If an officer is intelligent and industrious, he will do quite well. If an officer is intelligent and lazy, he will do the best. If an officer is stupid and lazy, he can do no harm; but if an officer is stupid and industrious, remove him immediately.
Clausewitz
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For a UK global diplomatic and export plan........an island lives and prospers on sea power.........just click the ships
With lower taxes on shipping the Merchant Navy grows - as owners recognise the increasing risks at sea and return to the red duster.
Photo Royal Navy
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A GREAT DAY FOR THE ROYAL NAVY
The Queen with the Duke of Edinburgh, Lord High Admiral, and Admiral Sir George Zambellas, admiring the Royal Navy's latest aircraft carrier - HMS Queen Elizabeth - up in Rosyth on the 4 July.
The previous Queen Elizabeth was also a trail blazer, built as a fast oil-fired battleship armed with eight fifteen inch guns, she set a new benchmark for big gun ships and was to serve in two world wars. During the first with the Grand Fleet as Admiral Beatty's flag ship and during the second in the Mediterranean and Far East.
The new HMS Queen Elizabeth weighs in at 72,100 short tons - 65,000 imperial tons - and will carry an air strike group with stealth fighters able to reach targets hundreds of miles away. Her sister ship, HMS Prince of Wales, will take her place in the huge assembly dock now the Queen Elizabeth has taken to the water for her sea trials.
' How big did you say? '
.
' The one bearing your name is the larger one, Maam.'
The Queen concentrates as the bottle of Islay single malt hits grey steel.
Alongside the new carrier is HMS Illustrious, last of the ' through deck cruisers ' known by the navy as ' see through carriers ' which kept alive carrier jet fighter operations with the Sea Harrier jump jets. Otherwise, John Nott's suicidal naval cuts would have reduced the Royal Navy to a third rate naval power. Harrier carriers made possible liberation of the Falkland Islands.
The jet fighter on the ski ramp of HMS Elizabeth is a mock up but gives a very clear idea of the size of the flight deck. The Royal Navy will fight to ensure that both new aircraft carriers join the fleet. I feel confident the RN and its many staunch fans will win that fight. Everyone who thinks we should have a much stronger navy needs to make their voice heard. This is a job for a single massive public voice. The coming political battle will involve public pressure to double the number of destroyers, frigates and submarines. Ideally the Royal Navy could find plenty of work for a third new carrier and a four-fold increase in surface ships and submarines but let's take things a step at a time. First the British public have to be educated that they live on an island that's becoming as over-crowded as Japan.
Then compare the size of their navy with ours.
All the same, truly, a great day for the Royal Navy ( not to mention Gordon Brown ) and all the ship yard workers, the thousands of skilled people who delivered her on time for the Queen.
COMMONWEALTH'S GRANDMAMA INVITES EUROPE'S MUTTI TO TEA
ALL THIS IS ABOUT FOUR YEARS OLD - SO IGNORE WHAT WE FORECAST AT YOUR PERIL
DAVE AND ANGE
Oh dear, Mutti has bitten another partner but this time the victim survived. Dave had an easy decision but he made heavy weather of it - as usual. There was a landslide election victory staring him in the face. The Tories and UKIP had 35% and 10-15% of the vote together. The only negotiation with the EC that made sense was British exit. That would given the ' conservative vote ' a boost up to 55% of the voters, possibly 60% with the prospect of freedom from the EC shackles around our commercial ankles.
Dave bungled his negotiations with Mutti, called a referendum so we could decide, then threatened us voters with project fear, roping in everyone from Tony Blair to the American President.
He lost and now Theresa May is trying to keep us in the EU by pretending she's making a mess of leaving.
Far from facing ruin, freed from Europe's sheet anchor, Britain's economy will grow much faster. We should become a another Japan anchored off the Continent.
The price is worth paying - much larger armed forces, particularly the Royal Navy, and restoration of the FCO to its former strength.
Forget our useless politicians.
Let's get started.
Start buying British.
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