DESPISED – WHY THE MODERN LEFT LOATHES THE WORKING CLASS BY PAUL EMBERY

 

DESPISED – WHY THE MODERN LEFT LOATHES THE WORKING CLASS BY PAUL EMBERY

 

I have recently been reading the very interesting book ‘Despised’ by a Labour Party member in which he tries to explain why Labour has come adrift from its working class roots.  The book is well written and a good read. 

 

The following extract particularly caught my attention and I think will be of interest to any English nationalist:-

 

“The sense of national dispossession that has taken root over years in … in England beyond the cities shows no sign of dissipating.  A feeling of disenfranchisement began to take hold around the turn of the Century, with the advent of devolution in Scotland and Wales solidified into a more general resentment at being “forgotten” and then the emergence of a new sense of Englishness, with large numbers of people beginning to identify as English rather than British.  There was a clear mood developing among the English: We are sick and tired of being ignored. 

 

In the EU referendum, this mood manifested itself in the clear rejection of the status quo, with over 70% of those who identified most strongly as English voting Leave. (A similar percentage of those who identified the least strong voted Remain).  The writer and campaigner Anthony Barnett, has illustrated how much of the Leave vote was driven by distinct sense of grievance among the English.  Comparing the towns of Wigan in North of England and Paisley in Scotland, it explained how they were similar in the sense that both were “once thriving centres of imperial industry… now grappling with impoverishment” and “social and economic equivalents”.  Yet in the referendum, Wigan voted 64% for Leave and Paisley, on an identical turnout, the same percentage for Remain.  Barnett concluded that it was the national factor at work. 

 

In 2018, a poll for the Centre of Towns Think Tank showed that the towns in which people identified most strongly as English – often places which had undergone fundamental social and economic change – were most inclined to feel that Westminster did not reflect the concerns of their part of the country. 

 

As this sense of English discontent grows, it does so outside of normal political structures and institutions – principally because it has no other choice.  Neither the Conservative nor Labour Parties, for example, maintain a specifically English section; and there is no major party, assembly or parliament representing solely England.  English voters also see the obvious democratic imbalance of having MPs representing constituencies other nations of the UK vote on laws affecting England while, thanks to the devolution, their counterparts representing English constituencies have no corresponding right.

 

A YouGov survey for the BBC in 2018 highlighted the extent to which English identity had become a feature of peoples’ lives, with 80% of respondents saying they identified strongly as English.  This feeling had taken hold particularly in coastal and former industrial towns, with two thirds of respondents in those places saying they felt a sense of English pride.  By contrast, less than half of respondents in the major cities felt the same thing. 

 

Labour has a particular problem with England, not having beaten the Conservatives in the share of popular vote there since 2001.  It is widely accepted that worries among English voters that undue SNP influence over a future Labour government played a crucial role in helping the Tories achieve a majority in the 2015 General Election.  Out of the 60 seats lost by the Labour Party at the 2019 General Election, 48 were in England.  This was, in large part, the vote that the Party had always taken for granted, with many of the losses occurring in traditional working class heartlands – the so-called “Red Wall” and non-metropolitan seats – where the sense of patriotism and “being English” was heightened.

 

A post-election report by the English Labour Network showed that more voters in England were likely to identify as “more English than British” than the other way round, and that this group was instrumental in delivering victory for the Conservative Party.  Among these voters, Labour won just 10 votes for every 27 won by the Conservatives.

 

The authors, who included former Cabinet Member, John Denham, concluded that Labour’s failure to promote itself as a patriotic party or even to mention England in any of its political messaging, as well as its lack of any plan to devolve power within England, had alienated voters who emphasised their English identity.  And on the contentious issue of immigration – unquestionably a significant factor on the doorstep – they wrote, perceptively; “These voters have been disconcerted by mass immigration.  Their strong sense of identity and community has been disrupted by changes they were not expecting.  While some of this reaction is based on racism and for the most it is more (a) sense of uncertainty and loss of a stable community.  At least some Labour figures and activists have stereotyped anyone who is not actually in favour of large scale migration as bigoted.”

 

In its disregard for the growing sense of English dispossession, Labour has repeated a catastrophic mistake it made in Scotland – a failure which led to its virtual wipe-out there – of not paying due attention to the politics of national identity.”

 

Paul Embury then goes onto talk about the idea that Labour could become patriotic.  He is of course writing from the perspective of a member of the Labour Party and formerly a senior trade union official in the Fire Brigade Union (from which he was unfairly dismissed by its Europhile leadership for his support of Brexit). 

 

Then in his chapter setting out “What is to be done?”  In which he sets out what Labour should do to recapture the English vote, he suggests:-

 

“In particular, the sense of national dispossession of disenfranchisement felt by the English must be addressed. One way of doing this would be to grant them direct political representation through the creation of a parliament for England to take its place inside a Federal United Kingdom”. 

 

For my part I am happy to say that I think that it is highly unlikely that a Labour Party whose leadership would take the knee in support of the Marxist Black Lives Matter Group, would even for a moment contemplate adopting the camouflage of being a English nationalist party. 

 

In these circumstances I think Paul Embery is usefully identifying a gap in the political market for English nationalism.  It is our job within the English Democrats to organise ourselves so that we can place our party in that gap!

 

 

STANDING IN CHIPPING ONGAR, MARDEN ASH AND GREENSTED WARD OF EPPING FOREST DISTRICT COUNCIL’S ELECTIONS

 

STANDING IN CHIPPING ONGAR, MARDEN ASH AND GREENSTED WARD OF EPPING FOREST DISTRICT COUNCIL’S ELECTIONS

 

I would like to thank my supporters and also voters in this election. 

 

The Chipping Ongar, Marden Ash and Greensted Ward has c.3,400 registered voters, but the turnout was 28.38% (i.e. about 965 votes were cast).  Of that turnout more than half voted for the Conservative candidate, Basil Vaz, and similar proportions of the electorate continued to vote for many “Conservative” candidates across the District Council. 

 

The votes were:-

 

26 Reform Party

144 Liberal Democrats

72 English Democrats
150 Labour

562 Conservative (i.e. about 16.5% of the electorate)

 

Epping Forest District Council is demographically mostly quite prosperous and fairly middle class.  It includes most of Epping Forest itself and many of its residents were commuters, the majority of whom have enjoyed Lockdown and working from home and are now reluctant to return to their old work pattern. 

 

Chipping Ongar itself is an outlier of Epping Forest District Council.  It was a historic market town being the capital of the Ongar Hundred.  There is still striking remnants of a major motte and bailey Norman castle situated on the northern bank on what was a ford over the Cripsey Brook, which is a tributary of the Roding River.  To the north-east there was a further ford over the Roding itself, allowing Medieval travellers from London to make their way into the hinterland of East Anglia. 

 

Cromwell’s and his troopers would regularly have clattered through Ongar on their way from London to the capital of the Eastern Association in Cambridge. One of Cromwell’s relatives is memorialised and buried in Chipping Ongar’s St Martins Church.  The current Rector is a very nice person but she is an emblem of how the Church of England has cast aside traditional English Protestantism in favour of Progressivism.  So has that other local bastion of traditional English values, the Conservative Party.

 

Ongar’s two Conservative Councillors, Mr Basil Vaz and Mr Paul Keska are both very nice and personable people, but, of course, nobody would expect them to be standard bearers of traditional Englishness.  They can both see the unfairness of the way that England is being treated at the moment by the British State, but they support the direction of travel of the “Conservative” Party under Boris Johnson.  Boris is a Globalist, Liberal Multi-culturalist who has a policy of stealthily increasing mass immigration into England. 

 

The layout of Ongar’s historic settlement can still be seen, not only in the still pretty high street but also some of the surrounding big houses and cottages, many of which have however been turned into multiple occupancy and their gardens infilled with development.

 

Several bigger housing estates have been built over the years since the War, the first of which being originally a sizeable council housing estate was built in the 40’s and 50’s on the way to Greensted Hall and the historic Greensted Church, but other housing estates are mostly 70’s.  These are comfortable, but typical of 70’s middle class housing.

 

The result is that Ongar’s residents, whilst beginning to notice the increase of prices, brought on partly by Lockdown and partly by the Government’s position on the Ukraine conflict, have not yet begun to feel the real discomfort that is coming. 

 

This lack of awareness is partly created by the extent of collusiveness within the Mainstream Media.  For instance in the Daily Telegraph waited until the day after the elections to run headlines of:- “Bank warns of recession and highest inflation for 40 years”;  “Wall Street rocked by $1.3 trillion market rout - New York traders head for the exit following federal reserve’s biggest rate rise in 22 years”;  “Sterling plummets as Bailey warns of looming recession”; and on the issue of the way the British State dealt with the Coronavirus in England:- “Anti-Lockdown Sweden among the lowest pandemic deaths”. 

 

It will be interesting to see next year whether English voters will have realised the extent of damage done to their life’s prospects by the current British Political, Financial and Media Establishments.  If they have then the still comfortable “Conservative” Party can expect to face their fully aroused wrath!

 

 

Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s Chief of Staff, exposes Boris’ real policy of increasing mass immigration!

 

Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s Chief of Staff, exposes Boris’ real policy of increasing mass immigration!

 

In the article below in the Telegraph, which is explosive, Nick Timothy explains just what Boris and his Government have been up to in trying to dramatically increase the amount of immigration into the country.

 

It seems that without any democratic mandate to do so and without any publicity or any honesty, Boris and his circle have been working on trying to undermine the real Will of the People, of not only of England, but also of the United Kingdom, to restrict mass immigration. 

 

Read the article.  Here is the link to the article >>> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/04/24/brexit-supposed-take-back-control-immigration-hasnt/

 

And here is the full text (as it is behind a paywall):-

 

Brexit was supposed to take back control of immigration. It hasn’t

Britain's new points-based system is designed to keep numbers high. When the public realise, there will be trouble

NICK TIMOTHY24 April 2022 • 9:30pm

From the application of human rights laws to the analysis of statistics, immigration can be a complex subject, and the public debate about it can be deeply dishonest. But most of us ought to be able to agree some common-sense principles.

From bringing skills and enterprise to adding to the cultural capital of the country, immigration can bring great benefits, but in large numbers can also bring great challenges – so the flows must be controlled. This control needs clear laws, strong enforcement and tough but intelligent border security. Decisions ought to be made not in the interests of foreign nationals, immigration lawyers or supranational organisations, but the British people. And the decision-makers themselves must be politicians, directly accountable to those who elect them.

There is of course huge scope for disagreement in the practical implementation of these principles. We can differ over the extent of the need for foreign workers, for example, when there is a dire lack of technical and vocational education and training for people already living here. We can argue about the desirability of allowing colleges and universities the right to sell long-term immigration, not just education, to hundreds of thousands of foreign students.

Regardless of such differences, it is difficult to deny that our immigration system is failing, despite Brexit and the end of free-movement rules.

We are yet to see meaningful post-Brexit immigration statistics. In 2020, thanks to the pandemic, net migration fell by 88 per cent to just 34,000. In 2019, net migration was 271,000 – high, but not unusual for the past couple of decades, when the number has been known to exceed 300,000. We can already see from the number of visas issued that immigration is about to soar again, probably to record highs.

Comparing 2021 to 2019, work visas (239,987) are up 25 per cent, family visas (280,776) are up 49 per cent, and student visas (432,279) are up 52 per cent. More than a quarter of foreign students are Chinese, but the number of Nigerian students is up 415 per cent, Pakistani up 256 per cent and Indian up 164 per cent.

This enormous increase in immigration is not happening by chance. Even as the Government ended European free-movement rules after Brexit – a decision driven, pollsters agree, by concerns about sovereignty, democratic control and immigration – Boris Johnson demanded a more liberal policy.

Work permits were unlimited, and the definition of “skilled work” was watered down. The shortage-occupation list was extended to allow the recruitment of foreign workers in yet more trades. Employers were no longer compelled to seek workers from the resident population before recruiting from overseas. A salary threshold, supposedly set to ensure only high-skilled immigration, was set at £25,600 and for some workers only £20,400. Foreign students – whatever their qualification – were given the right to stay and work in Britain at the end of their courses.

And a new framework was established. The points-based system, the Government likes to point out, is inspired by the Australian model, which focus groups tell them is widely believed to be tough. But while Australia is uncompromising on illegal immigration, its policy on legal migrants has been liberal for decades, with its per capita immigration higher even than ours. Just as Australia’s points-based system was created to increase immigration, so is the British one. Our numbers will keep going up.

A points-based system surrenders the very principle of control. When migrants want to come to Britain, if they have the requisite number of points they simply win the right to come. And the principle of control – the very promise of Brexit, remember – will be further eroded by trade deals the Prime Minister is negotiating. In India last week, Johnson signalled his agreement with further liberalisation for Indian workers and claimed, despite probable record immigration this year, “we’re short to the tune of hundreds of thousands [of workers] in our economy”.

This is not true. But then, of course, the debate about immigration has never been honest. Advocates of mass immigration pretend we have always been “a country of immigrants” and engage in countless forms of evasion and sophistry. Some say the numbers are irrelevant and all that matters is control. Others insist that the public simply want the system to work, even as they oppose every reform to make it work. Most common, however, is those who pay lip service to the notion of overall control, while opposing control in every visa route going. In practice, they claim that each application is of vital national interest.

It is easy to make it sound reassuring. Who could reasonably oppose skilled workers coming here to contribute? But under the points-based system, skilled workers are not only astrophysicists: they might also be bricklayers. Who could oppose the brightest and the best coming to use their talents here? But the majority of foreign students attend institutions outside the Russell Group of top universities. Three quarters of the increase in student visas from 2019 comes from applicants to lower quality universities. All have the right to work here afterwards, whatever their qualification and whatever their job.

Supporters of mass immigration might not care. Every day that these policies continue, they get what they want and conclude that they will win in the end. But nobody has ever made the argument for such rapid population change and won an election. And this includes the Prime Minister, who has no mandate for the policies he is pursuing. His manifesto promised “overall numbers will come down … we will ensure that the British people are always in control”.

The British people have good reasons for wishing to remain in control. They know, from bitter experience, the costs of mass immigration. They know the problems caused by rapid social change, stark cultural divides, pressure on infrastructure and public services, housing shortages and high rents, job displacement and the suppression of wages.

When they realise, having voted to take back control, that the PM has given it away, the Tories will find there will be hell to pay.