Labelling designed to bully into quiescence

Ironically, those who wish to save Britain and open up a splendid future for her must be prepared to reject many ideas popularly but quite falsely held to be 'British', even 'patriotic'.  We must not confuse those real national virtues that led to our mighty success and expansion as a race with the traits with which today our enemies flatter us - precisely because they are the traits that make us a 'soft touch'.  True patriotism, as I have hinted before, lies in the nurturing of all that is strong, healthy and vital in our nation, and the casting out of everything that weakens, however deeply instituted.

In every way possible we must draw from the best of our own national traditions the inspiration for the movement of British revival of which we are part.  Every great nation must stage its own awakening in its own way, with methods appropriate to its own particular national character and genius.  In an earlier chapter I related my brief involvement in, and later my decisive rejection of, politics resting on imported terminology, paraphernalia and symbolism, with its pantheon of heroes who, whatever their merits or demerits, have no part of our history.  Today, down to the minutest detail I strive to ensure that our movement draws its building materials from home sources, even to the point of a preference for melodies originating in the British Isles as the music for party songs.

Nevertheless, it is inevitable that parallels are going to be drawn between at least some of the policies we advocate for national reconstruction in Britain and policies carried out in similar fields by other nations at other times, with the lumping of all together under some blanket description, the most popular of which is 'fascism'.  Our opponents will see to it that this is done, whatever we may do or say to the contrary.

So what is 'fascism'?  It is a word of Italian origin used to describe the programme carried out in Italy by Mussolini between 1922 and 1943.  It is no part of our language and we do not need it.  Be that as it may though, 'fascism' has entered the dictionary as a term employed to cover almost every kind of patriotic and national doctrine of the 20th century, and in so doing has lost all its original precision.  Today it means just about anything that people want it to mean, according to their viewpoint.

There are two extremes of reaction to this state of affairs, and both are equally foolish.

One is to copy to the letter the name, programme, symbols and ritual used by some foreign movement of the past, be it that of Mussolini or Hitler, and attempt to resurrect it - right down to the last belt-buckle.

The other is to jump like a scalded cat and bolt in panic in the opposite direction, trying so hard to prove to the world that one is not a 'fascist' or a 'nazi' that one abandons one firm political conviction after another, to the point at which there is none left.

Nothing creates such a pathetic spectacle as those people who live in daily dread of being branded as 'fascists' or 'nazis', and are thus deterred from adopting any robust principles of politics at all.

We should reject both these foolish courses and be prepared to look at every political idea on its merits, regardless of the names people give to it and regardless of who may have adopted it, wholly or partially, in the past.

We must see today's professional 'anti-fascists' and 'anti-nazis' for what they are: people whose purpose is to impose a psychological terror which puts an end to all rational thought and discussion about anything - in a way similar to the 'anti-racism' of which I spoke in an earlier chapter.  We must not allow the process of public debate to be controlled according to these people's rules.

If I happen to believe that a particular policy is good and right for Britain in our time, I am not going to be frightened of advocating it by the fact that a similar policy may have been carried out by fascists or national socialists in another country at another time.

And if British people generally are going to take effective action to win back control of their country and rebuild its prosperity and strength, they must first decide to immunise themselves psychologically against the shock impact of the 'fascist' label.  There is absolutely no chance of doing anything meaningful to help the patriotic cause while escaping this label, and so everyone may as well learn to live with it and not worry about it.

We ourselves repudiate what most perceive to be the central feature of fascism: the intolerance of dissent and the forcible imposition on people of policies that run contrary to their will.  We stress again and again our belief in a free national debate on all the issues - with that freedom extended to our opponents no less than to ourselves.

Yet those opponents persist in the use of the 'fascist' smear against us, and some potential supporters still cower in fright in the face of that smear.  There must come a point at which these people have to ask themselves: do they want Britain to have a future or do they not?  And if the answer is affirmative they must somehow rid themselves of the terror of mere labels designed by the enemies of this country to neutralise them in the way of any effective resistance to the policies of national ruin.

Indeed, one of the barriers that has to be overcome is that of convincing people that there simply is no easy and comfortable way of winning this battle.  A great many people would like to see the victory of a patriotic movement in Britain but delude themselves that there is some route to this objective in which we can duck away from the orchestrated vituperation of the nation's destroyers.  No such route exists.

Tyndall, J  The Eleventh Hour, Third Edition, 1998, Welling: Albion Press, pp 520-3