Trees without Roots

By Andrew Brons. “Policies are not free-standing ideas without roots. They are based on spoken or unspoken beliefs and assumptions.”

Andrew Brons has outlined what he considers to be the beliefs and values at the heart of British Nationalism. The Party might decide to pronounce on this question officially. However, at the time of publication, he is writing only on his own behalf and not on behalf of the Party.

Policies are not free-standing ideas without roots. They are based on spoken or unspoken beliefs and assumptions. Some of these beliefs and assumptions are descriptive and predictive; they say what persons and peoples are and will be.  Others are prescriptive; they say what objectives ought to be pursued.

Some political activists understand the beliefs on which their policies are based. Some  simply assume those beliefs. However, there are others who are too unprincipled (to use their word ‘pragmatic’), lazy or stupid to consider the assumptions on which their policies rest.

If a person does not know, understand or care about the principles upon which his policy is based, the likelihood is that is not his policy but one imposed on him by the leadership of his party  or by those who lead the whole political class by the nose.

Policies cannot exist without the beliefs and principles on which they are based any more than trees can exist without roots. To conceive of policies without underlying beliefs and principles is to conceive of trees without roots.

One of the most important divisions — perhaps the most important division — in political thought is between the belief that differences between persons and peoples are primarily attributable to differences in their heredity (their ‘nature’) and the belief that they are attributable to differences in their environment, their upbringing, their culture (their ‘nurture’).

We believe that observed differences have been the product of nature rather than nurture. However, the narrower the range of differences in one will increase the relative significance of the other. The observed differences between identical twins will inevitably be the product of nurture.

It should suffice to say that modern academic, political and journalistic opinion has exaggerated the role of nurture and diminished the role of nature. This has been the result of the insistence that Sociology should become the compulsory ingredient in almost any area of study.

Sociology is a subject that has been skewed, quite deliberately, to ignore the influence of heredity and to concentrate only on (alleged) cultural or environmental influences.

A belief in the importance of nature rather than nurture as an explanation of observed differences, leads almost inevitably to a belief that human beings are unequal in ability and disposition.

This is quite different from a belief that people ought to be unequal or that they ought to be treated differently and unfairly.

Another major difference in political thought is between those who have an optimistic view of human nature and those who have a pessimistic view of human nature.

Optimists are said to believe that individuals are (or have a capacity for being) selfless, altruistic and co-operative. Pessimists are said to believe that individuals are selfish, greedy and even aggressive. Where do we lie on the continuum?

There is, no doubt, a wide variation between the selflessness of Mother Theresa on the one hand and the greed of Bernard Madoff and the violence of  Harold Shipman on the other.

However, most individuals are more selfless and less selfish towards those with whom they identify, than to those from whom they feel remote and unconnected. This is our description of how people do think; it is not a prescription of how they ought to think and behave.

Whilst a degree of relative altruism would be irresistible, gratuitous aggression can never be justified. The common humanity of all peoples cannot be forgotten. The deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, in the war against that country, were dismissed as a statistic, by the warmonger politicians.

What are the implications for our position on the optimism-pessimism continuum?

There are implications for defence policy and our law and order policy.

We see other countries as potential threats — if their national interests should contradict ours but not as inevitable threats.

This means that must maintain deterrents and have the capacity for retaliation but we have no need to pursue aggressive policies towards possible threats.

Furthermore, we reject the suggestion that Britain should assume the role of world police officer or to tie its foreign policy to the agenda of other countries. We are not pacifists but neither are we warmongers.

We have a right to call upon our armed services to risk their lives for their country but not to do so, in order to pursue policies that have no connection with the interests of our Nation.

We are sure that the world would be a safer place with a government of British Nationalists. Furthermore, we are confident that a British Nationalist Government would be uniquely able to discuss differences with Nationalists from other countries. It is an oft-repeated fallacy that Nationalism leads to war.

It is our contention that it is Imperialism that leads to war. That Imperialism might be Nationalist Imperialism, Socialist/Communist Imperialism or modern Liberal Imperialism.

Nationalists, who have no imperialist ambitions, can talk constructively with other genuine Nationalists.

Our understanding that some members of society will always be aggressive and selfish means that deterrent and protective sentences must be available to the courts.

However, we recognise that not all offenders are incorrigible and for these there is a role for rehabilitation as well as punishment.

We understand that societies that are relatively homogenous and homogeneous are more likely to be conducive to altruistic rather than just selfish actions.

It is in atomised societies, without natural links of kinship, that individuals are pre-disposed to act selfishly and even ruthlessly.

We are British Nationalists, which means that the British Nation is the centre of our attention. We reject the baseless but repeated assertion that the British Nation is a heterogeneous collection of disparate peoples.

The study by Stephen Oppenheimer found that between two-thirds and three-quarters of the ancestors of the indigenous population were the Paeleolithic people who settled in Britain following the retreat of the last Ice Age.

All subsequent immigration of closely related Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Norsemen and of Normans and French contributed less than a third of the ancestry of indigenous Britons.

We believe that cultures are the product of distinctive peoples and not that peoples are the product of the cultures to which they are exposed. Our culture might be a sign of our distinctiveness but it is not an ultimate cause.

We recognise that a change in the population of a country will inevitably change its culture: its values, its beliefs and its behaviour.

British culture is not an overcoat that can be donned at the port of entry. It is not even an imprint applied by birth and upbringing in Britain.

Even third generation immigrants from Africa and Asia remain at heart Africans and Asians. Some ‘liberal’ members of the indigenous population see this proposition as highly insulting and try to counter it by listing the qualities and virtues of particular members of ethnic minority populations.

However, to suggest that persons with virtue and estimable qualities must, therefore, be British, is about as dangerous an idea to a liberal that can possibly be imagined!

Central and Eastern Europeans recognise the difference between nationality and citizenship.

Whilst citizenship can be acquired by legal process, nationality is conferred by descent.

Some of the British in India during the Raj were born and lived there for three generations or more but they did not, thereby, become Indians. The British people have been confused by legislators who have studiously confused the two concepts.

Only British Nationalists understand the difference between those who are only civically British (i.e. have British citizenship) and those who are also ethnically British (are descended from the indigenous population).

We do not see nations, races or population groups as being discrete, homogeneous wholes. Still less do we see divisions of humanity as uniformly superior or inferior to each other.

However, there are inherited differences between individuals and divisions of humanity would be highly unlikely to have identical average abilities.

We are happy to leave measurements of such differences to experts in the relevant field. We believe that academic questions should be left to academics without political interference.

However, it would be incontrovertible to say that the British and closely related people have been prominent in the list of those peoples who have made disproportionate and significant scientific, technological and cultural advances for mankind.

We define ourselves as Ethno-Nationalists as distinct from Civic Nationalists.

We recognise the difference between those who form the indigenous population and those who do not. Furthermore, we believe that the interests of the indigenous population must be given priority in our country.

Our approach to the indigenous population is a family approach. We recognise the Nation as a family of families. It has been estimated that the British are on average thirtieth cousins to apparently unrelated fellow nationals.

This means that we owe that population a duty that is not simply a legal duty; it is a duty of kinship. Furthermore, we expect a similar commitment from that population to the nation state, which is their instrument.

This approach will have implications for our policy towards the poor, the unemployed and the sick, that should differ from that of mainstream ‘right-wing’ parties.

We do not see our fellow nationals as expendable factors of production that can be dispensed with by the state and employers. We see the economy as an instrument to serve our people and not an institution that the Nation should serve.

We recognise our civic responsibility towards citizens who are not indigenous. Those who have immigrated were told by successive governments that they were welcome.

Those who were born here had no choice but to be here. They are entitled to state services that they have earned.

Those wishing to return to their countries of origin, are entitled to financial and other help from the state. We believe that individuals and organisations that have encouraged immigration have a moral obligation to contribute to this cost.

We believe that immigration should occur only as an exception, apart from those of British descent who wish to return to the land of their ancestors. However, even these must be limited, when employment and resources are in short supply.

We are opposed, in particular, to economic migration, which is a form of human trafficking, where the trafficker is not an identifiable individual but is represented by blind economic forces that have been freed from proper regulation. Economies should serve humanity and not be its master.

Economic migration is disruptive of the countries that receive the immigrants but it is also disruptive of the countries that provide the immigrants. It robs them of  a younger generation of  dynamic people who have been educated and trained at the expense of their home countries.

The poorer countries, from which many migrants come, cannot afford to lose these workers or to have paid, fruitlessly, for their education and training. This is particularly tragic in case of medical staff, who are lured from their home countries in the Third World to compensate for deficiencies in the health services of European countries.

The sick of the Third World are being left to suffer and to die, in order to save developed countries the cost of training their own health care staff.

We believe in the desirability of the existence of sovereign nation states — and in particular the existence of a sovereign British nation state.

It is the first responsibility of the nation state to care for the interests and continued existence of the nation on which it is based or ought to be based.

Ideally, the geographical and legal boundaries of the state and its citizenship should be based on the ancestral boundaries of the nation that it represents.

Only sovereign states can take complete responsibility for their actions to the electorate through the ballot box. States that ‘share’ their sovereignty with supranational organisations diminish their responsibility to their electorates.

Our membership of international organisation would be restricted to those that leave British sovereignty undiminished.

We reject the belief of laissez-faire theorists that economies are self-regulating systems that will always work for the good of all by a ‘hidden hand.’

We therefore reject their conclusion that the best thing that a government can do for the economy is to leave it alone.

Laissez-faire enthusiasts sometimes compare decisions to spend money with the use of votes in political elections: each item of expenditure or each investment being a vote in favour of the economic consequences of that expenditure.

It is difficult enough for voters to be able to predict the political consequences of voting in elections, especially when the recipients of their votes are the charlatans who have disgraced legislatures throughout most of the world.

However, taking small economic decisions is more comparable with participating in a Ouija board session: the move of the glass is the consequence only of the sum of the individual movements of the players but it would be impossible for any individual player to influence it deliberately.

An economy, as a whole might (or might not) be better off economically when left to its own decision-making processes. However, that does not mean that all individuals, groups or nations are better off.

Furthermore, economic prosperity is not the same as more general well-being. There are non-economic consequences of economic decisions- environmental, ethnic, legal and cultural – that might outweigh alleged economic advantages.

Intervention in the economy is necessary:

1. To ensure that those functions that are properly the preserve of the state are really controlled by the state e.g. the process of credit creation, which is really the creation of money.
2. To ensure that the Nation or particular sections of the Nation are not treated unfavourably, economically, by blind, uncontrolled economic forces.
3. To ensure that uncontrolled (or even controlled) economic forces do not undermine the existence of the Nation.
4. To ensure that economic forces do not lead to unfavourable social consequences: falling birth rates; disease; addictions; criminality; cultural deprivation or distortion.

We believe that private enterprise is a force for good. It provides incentives to work hard and to provide goods and services that are of a sufficiently high standard to encourage customers to return.

However, if it is a desirable, it must be desirable that it should not be restricted to the few.

Workers should be encouraged to become entrepreneurs, either on their own account — by establishing their own businesses — or by becoming part owners of the businesses for which they work by share ownership.

Where appropriate, full workers co-operatives should be encouraged. They must restrict their membership to workers of the highest calibre, who have the capacity, the discipline and the vision for self-management.

There will inevitably be many workers who do not have the capacity or desire to run their own enterprises. They must be protected by independent trade unions.

These unions must be independent of political parties and must refrain from involvement in politics.

We are committed to a democratic political system, although we recognise that democracy means government by the people and not just government by persons.

Ideally a democratic system should be operated by a cohesive people – a nation – and not an arbitrary collection of persons bound together only by the flimsy ties of citizenship.

Nevertheless, we recognise the right of all citizens to exercise equal democratic rights to decide about matters that affect the country as a whole.

A democracy cannot operate without the existence and enforceability of the political rights of: freedom of expression; freedom of association; and freedom of assembly.

These rights can be qualified only by the need to prevent people from inciting violence, from forming organisations to pursue violent campaigns and from carrying out acts of violence.

We are understandably concerned about the manner in which our rights have been curtailed. However, the test of a person or organisation’s democratic credentials is not whether or not they are prepared to stand up for their own rights but whether or not they are prepared to stand up for the rights of those with whom they disagree.

We are committed to the enjoyment of these freedoms for all citizens of all political persuasions.