Below a speech I gave to the Traditional Britain Group on May 18 following their Annual General Meeting. Video to follow. See also my Ecclesiastical and Political Call to Arms of 2010.
Ladies and gentlemen, comrades in the struggle for the liberty and
prosperity of our dearest of all nations. I have sojourned on the
continent for the last ten years, in that very heart of darkness,
which goes by the name of Brussels, where daily they scheme for the
destruction of our liberties and business. Chief conspirators among
them are the French, who live with perpetual anger in their breast
against all things Anglo-Saxon, not least our economics thereby
blinding themselves to their own spiritual and economic decay. To
which I can only echo the words of the Duke of Wellington,
We
always have been, we are, and I hope that we always shall be detested
in France.
They
pride themselves on civilisation but it is but now so much chaff
blowing in the wind of globalisation.
France,
the eldest daughter of the Church, whose finest flower, St Joan of
Arc, was herself a great enemy of the English, is now the most
decadent of all the devastated vineyards of the modern European
church.
More
immediately their economy and that of Italy is about to bring down
the European roof crashing down on us all. We do not have until
2017 to get sufficient distance from this impending disaster not to
suffer our own grave economic and social consequences. (But more of
Cameron Conservativism later)
The
French Revolution was and remains the source of many contemporary
evils with its corrupt and corrupting principals of “liberty,
equality and fraternity”. I was once accused of rejecting the
principals of the French revolution- and I surprised my accuser by
confessing immediately that I did, with my whole heart and soul.
Politically incorrect maybe. Unapologetic always.
In
a previous speech to this most esteemed of all political groups, I
said the Revolution supplies to us but the liberty of dogs, the
equality of sheep and the fraternity of wolves. The dogs of
liberty attempt to herd the sheep but the wolves of the revolution
consume them. The Revolution in the name of a perverted humanism,
even committed that most odious sin of regicide- for he that will
kill the Monarch would think nothing of joining in the mob screaming
for the death of the King of Kings on Good Friday.
I
suggested that these so-called principals, better to say perversions
of the human spirit. should be replaced by human liberty, in the
profound and Christian sense of the word found first in St Augustine,
together with identity and dignity.
Identity
so that not just we as individuals but also nations rediscover who
they are- lest we be assimilated into a European melting pot.
Death is to be preferred to assimilation, for assimilation is a
living death of the human spirit.
Dignity,
of the use of reason and an eternal destiny that distinguishes us
from the animals, and which should be protected from the very moment
of conception to the very end of life when God calls us to our
reward, a time not of our choosing but His. The right to life and
the right to property, both held in contempt by the blood soaked,
greedy Revolution are interchangeable.
Sadly,
an Englishman, William Wordsworth paid homage in 1798 to the French
Revolution
Bliss
was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very
heaven!--Oh! Times, In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways Of
custom, law, and statute, took at once The attraction of a country in
romance!
When
Reason seemed the most to assert her rights, When most intent on
making of herself A prime Enchantress--to assist the work, Which
then was going forward in her name!
It
is not just irrational love of the allegedly reasonable that is
enchanting, but the very modern itself, seductress par excellence,
all other loves and fidelities forgotten in the very moment of
rapture, shock and perversion.
I
make no apologies for first speaking about the modern in religion
before I move onto the modern in politics. As the Duke of Wellington
said,
Educate
people without religion and you make them but clever devils.
The
Catholic Church has suffered under the heavy burden of the modern for
the last fifty years. I for one am not celebrating the 50th
Anniversary of the Second Vatican Council rather the much more
important 1700th anniversary of the victory of Constantine at the
Milvian Bridge with the important consequence of the acceptance of
the Christian religion in Rome and in the Empire. We shall not
conquer by being open to the world and its ways, but in close array
around the sign of the Cross. Salve Crux, Spes Unica. In Hoc
Signo Vinces. Holy Cross Our Only Hope- in this sign we will
conquer.
One
of the signs of the acceptance of Christianity was the outlawing of
homosexual unions.
At
the Second Vatican Council, there was a great movement back to the
Fathers, to allegedly rediscover the pristine freshness in faith of
the Early Church. The modern world is pushing us even further back
into the past into a new paganism. As I said in a letter to The Times
when Rowan Williams became an Archdruid, I quote, “When Pope St
Gregory the Great, Apostle of the English, told St Augustine of
Canterbury to transform rather than destroy pagan altars, he could
not have expected Augustine's successor to reverse the process. What
Williams did for religion, Cameron now does for morals with his
proposals for gay marriage.
The
re-moralisation of our society needs leadership rather than the
followership of all trends practiced by Dave Cameron, not least over
gay marriage. Cameron saying that he will fight secularism is like
a European politician saying that he will fight corruption or Silvio
Berlosconi saying that he has gone off women.
The
task is made easier for the new pagans not just by the simple
trahison des clercs, betrayal by the clergy, but by the abandonment
of the theology of St Thomas Aquinas by the modern Church. Indeed in
the encyclical Aeterni Patris, which established Thomism as the
philosophy of choice for Catholics, Pope Leo XIII presciently stated
that even critics of the Church, “ openly declare that, if the
teaching of Thomas Aquinas were only taken away, they could easily
battle with all Catholic teachers.”
I
am obliged to quote at length the encyclical Studiorum Ducem of Pope
Pius XI.
Again,
if we are to avoid the errors which are the source and fountain-head
of all the miseries of our time, the teaching of Aquinas must be
adhered to more religiously than ever. For Thomas refutes the
theories propounded by Modernists in every sphere, in philosophy, by
protecting, as We have reminded you, the force and power of the human
mind and by demonstrating the existence of God by the most cogent
arguments; in dogmatic theology, by distinguishing the supernatural
from the natural order and explaining the reasons for belief and the
dogmas themselves;
in
theology, by showing that the articles of faith are not based upon
mere opinion but upon truth and therefore cannot possibly change; in
exegesis, by transmitting the true conception of divine inspiration;
in the science of morals, in sociology and law, by laying down sound
principles of legal and social, commutative and distributive, justice
and explaining the relations between justice and charity; in the
theory of asceticism, by his precepts concerning the perfection of
the Christian life and his confutation of the enemies of the
religious orders in his own day. Lastly, against the much vaunted
liberty of the human reason and its independence in regard to God he
asserts the rights of primary Truth and the authority over us of the
Supreme Master. It is therefore clear why Modernists are so amply
justified in fearing no Doctor of the Church so much as Thomas
Aquinas.
End
quote and it is also so very clear why I like St Thomas so very much.
Go to Thomas, go to Divus Thomas, Divine Thomas.
There
was a great sign of hope that the long post-conciliar devastation of
God's vineyards was coming to an end with the elevation of Pope
Benedict XVI to the Papal throne.
He
understood the nature of the office more than any other modern, that
while the bishops participate in the teaching office, the Papacy
cannot be rented out to them in the name of collegiality.
Cardinal Ottaviani, predecessor of Cardinal Ratzinger, as head of the
Holy Office pointed out at the Council the
Bible only records one example of the apostles acting collegially -
at the Garden of Gethsemane when "They all fled."
My
one criticism of Benedict is that he laid aside the time-honoured
title of the Patriarch of the West, for which he even received the
much more important criticism from the Moscow Patriarchate, to whom
infallibility, not jurisdiction in the West is the real problem.
It
is of vital significance as the only ecumenism today of real interest
is between traditionally minded groups, Orthodox, Anglicans and
Catholic, since most Anglicans and also many, many Protestants are
suffocating their faith in a women-ordaining progressivism, a
desperate search for love celebrated in dogma free-zones, whose only
object is to please crowds, but whose churches are emptier day by
day. The Anglicans talk many pretty words about ecumenism but their
ordination of women shows they are not serious about ecumenism.
Pope
Benedict talked in a 2005 speech to the Curia about the hermeneutic
of continuity, saying that there was no real change at the Council.
This was the leitmotif of his Papacy.
If
this was the case, what on earth was the purpose of the Council?
Councils are normally called as a result of grave crises in the life
of Church, but in 1960, Mass attendance was in growing strongly and
more Catholics than ever understood the meaning and practice of their
faith. The freefall set in after the Council- now there really is
a crisis but God forbid that Pope Francis calls a Third Vatican
Council to finish the unfinished work of the modernists at the
Second.
Bliss
was it that dawn to be alive at the Church's very own French
revolution. Ratzinger, a progressive of the highest order at the
Council, in many ways became the ecclesiastical Napoleon.; Napoleon
who attempted to reconcile conservatives with the principals of the
Revolution, symbolised by Napoleon's imperial Coronation on this day
in 1804. Oh, that the Pope would be again crowned and not
inaugerated as all have been since Paul VI. Reading the augers is
nothing if not pagan. Indeed Catholicism prospered in France, when
there was no other monarch to turn to after 1870.
But
it was the radical revolutionary Ratzinger who broke the power of
Curia at the Council in a speech he drafted, as a theological
advisor, for the near blind Cardinal Frings. There would, for
instance, have not been a declaration on religious liberty, but one
on religious tolerance and Western society would have been on much
firmer grounds, confident in its own identity. Dialogue would not
have become another word for surrender. The Council talks loud
about human conscience, for did not Cardinal Newman say?
Conscience
is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ, a prophet in its informations, a
monarch in its peremptoriness, a priest in its blessings and
anathemas, and, even though the eternal priesthood throughout the
Church could cease to be, in it the sacerdotal principle would remain
and would have a sway.
And
further
Certainly,
if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts, I shall
drink—to the Pope, if you please,—still, to Conscience first, and
to the Pope afterwards.
But
the Conciliar conscience is conscience not divine but of readers of
the Tablet, unaligned and forgetful of its twin prudence. No wonder
the virtue of obedience was forgotten after the Council. Any act of
disobedience became a conscientious act, inspired by some alleged
“Spirit of Vatican II”.
And
in the bitterest of ironies, traditionalists had to become
disobedient to the modern church in order to preserve the Faith.
The Council can be seen on the surface as a continuity, not least
because the real breaks came before the Council, first philosophical
and then later theological.
The
first philosophical break came with the acceptance of Maurice
Blondel's fatal definition of truth with which anything becomes
possible. He wrote.
In
place of the abstract and chimerical definition of truth as the
adequation of intellect and reality, we must substitute methodical
research, and define truth as follows: the adequation of intellect
and life.
The
great Thomist, Father Garrigou-Lagrange wrote to Blondel warning him
of a protracted residence in purgatory if he did not retract.
The
second philosophical break was the attempt to reconcile personalist
and traditional philosophy as an alternative to natural law
philosophy. The modern Church had ended up teaching morals, as if a
breach will damage the person but this is in conscience rejected. A
personalist argument against homosexuality is not an argument at all.
Natural
law which Edmund Burke called
the
great primeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with
the higher natures, connecting the visible and the invisible world.
The
final philosophical break was the submission of Father Maréchal to
the Kantian critique of the possibility of metaphysics, which
uneccesarily emasculated much Thomistic theology in Cahier 5 of Le
point de départ de la métaphysique. The Church had surrendered
ground to the unemotional mathematical explanations of Hawking, and
the cold, unfeeling chemical processes of Dawkins, even before either
were born. And now Dawkins wants to complete the rout and prove the
triumph of science and the non-existence of God. I for one will
never bend the knee to nature without grace.
Theologically,
the break came later with the publication of the de Lubac's
Surnaturel in 1948 which postulated that grace and nature had become
compartmentalised in traditional teaching where they should be
joined. The end effect was to deny the sheer gratuitousness of
grace and to leave the way open for the father of all modern heretics
Karl Rahner, himself influenced by Marechal philosophically to posit
intrinsic grace in nature. When everything is full of grace,
anything can be accepted and we return to Blondel's definition of
truth.
There
was at least a chance under Pope Benedict that traditionalists could
be reconciled to the Church. Failure to achieve this is catastrophic
both for the Church and traditionalists.
A
fatal error was made making the texts of Vatican II a litmus test of
Orthodoxy, ignoring all other previous Councils. The real debate
should be about the breaks described above, not Vatican II itself.
Vatican II is only a symptom of taking false philosophical and
theological paths.
Pope
Benedict even claimed before his election that Gaudium et Spes, the
Conciliar text on the Church in the modern world is in parts Pelagian
in its acceptance of works without grace- the church becomes very
busy with secular schemes of social betterment but turned away from
God.
This
use of the Vatican II texts has been promoted by Archbishop Mueller,
the new head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, who
horrible to say, is a defender of liberation theology which did so
much damage to the South American church in the 1970s and whose
fellow travellers would have left us enslaved under the Communist
yoke. I am not too young to have been a Cold War warrior. Lech
Walesa's pleas would have fallen on deaf ears in the modern Vatican.
My
spirits were hardly raised by the election of the new Pope, whose
record of suppressing the Latin Mass in his Archdiocese is lamentable
and who has the excessively strange opinion that the Falkland Islands
are Argentinian. Too many British soldiers sacrificed their lives
in the defence of the sovereignty of the islands for this to be even
remotely true. Does he want to invite the Italian army to take Rome
again as they did in 1870 and make him a prisoner in the Vatican?
(The Pope had been dependent on the French garrison which withdrew-
never rely on the French to defend anything)
I
always thought that once we had a Pope that had not been at the
Council, some progress could be made in the restoration of tradition
to her proper place alongside Scripture and Magisterium in the
Church. But there is only one group of people who are keener on the
Council than the Council fathers, those who were at seminary in the
60s, before the great emptying of the seminaries, as was Jorge
Bergoglio.
Msgr
Ronnie Knox, convert from Anglicanism and sometime Catholic chaplain
at Oxford said,
He
who travels in the Barque of Peter had better not look too closely
into the engine room.
Pope
Benedict was all too well aquainted with the engine roome- Pope
Francis by contrast sees no problem with the post-Conciliar times and
indeed calls the Second Vatican Council a beautiful work of the Holy
Spirit- it is as much ruled by the Holy Spirit as the Falklands is
ruled from Buones Aires. One can only fear what could happen now
given the Pope's support of the charismatic movement. The Holy
Spirit or even the Spirit of Vatican II can be used to justify
precisely anything.
But
bliss it was that dawn to be alive. I just hope we do not see a
repeat of Pope John XXIII. Neo-conservatives at the time said don't
you worry THAT could never happen. But THAT happened over and over
again.
Finally,
we must await the next generation for a Pope who sees the Council for
the disaster it was- resulting in empty echoing churches, often
bulldozed away and a Faith not passed onto children. In Vienna, they
even have a ghastly cube, called the Vatican II Memorial Church- if
you seek its monument look around- unfaithful clerics and empty
churches- and the faith not taught. Its pseudo-spirit even pervaded
the Anglican church whose radicals were freed for even greater
radicalism, when the Roman anchor gave way.
No
progress can be made without an acceptance of a problem. Running
around pretending not to be ill will eventually lead to total
collapse.
There
is a Viennese saying- there are three great mysteries of the Church-
1st:
How many womens' orders actually exist.
2nd:
Where the wealth of the Franciscans comes from.
3rd:
What a Jesuit really believes.
And
reading Pope Francis, His Life in his own words, one is tempted at
least to agree with the last. We have waited centuries for a Jesuit
Pope and he disguises himself as a Franciscan. I have five Jesuits
in the family but would never dream of supporting the modern Jesuits.
My relatives would turn in their grave to see what became of the
greatest order, besotted with liberation theology.
The
revival of traditional ceremonial begun under Pope Benedict is at an
end in the name of Franciscan simplicity. Not least under threat
is the Latin Mass from which all other liturgy is a mere abstraction
There
is an enormous danger that this becomes not a love of the poor but an
ostentatious display of poverty. Dominicans are also a mendicant
order, but simply do not make the same song and dance about it as the
Franciscans.
Love
of poverty becomes a pauperism to please the modern world, not least
as it stands as a concession to the worldly who attack the Church for
her wealth. Ironic, by the way, that the poorest church I ever
did see in Austria stands surrounded by millionaires villas, many of
whom go out of their way to loudly criticise the church for her
wealth- the Conscience of the Rich, as C P Snow entitled one of his
novels.
I
am all in favour of restoring the Church, as St Francis was told to
do by God at San
Damiano and whose example Pope Francis hopes to imitate. However,
this will not be achieved by the Pope if instead of promoting
religion, he imposes poverty on us all. He should resolve the
crisis in his own church before making pronouncements as he did today
about the economic crisis, which is making a good job of imposing
universal poverty all of its own.
Pope
Francis seized the highest office with a short but evocative speech
at the pre-Conclave meetings. He complained about theological
narcissism- but after the Council the Church was never more
self-referential. What can be more self-referential than the modern
Mass where the priest faces the people and the faithful are no longer
the Body of Christ, but the pilgrim people of God, wandering across
the face of the earth. He wants the Church to go out to the world
to evangelize but ironically all over Europe there are mission
crosses set up in churches, to which the date of each local mission
is added- normally these happened every ten years- but they stop in
the 1950s. What went wrong?
Evangelisation
is not a virtue in itself- the modern church, Anglican and Catholic
must know what she stands for. The Orthodox always know.
Before
anything, she must turn towards the East in prayer- priest and
people- open to the divine.
But
I now turn from Rome to England.
May
God deliver us from the complacent Romanticism of Alfred Lord
Tennyson in Morte D'Arthur
The
old order changeth yielding place to new
And
God fulfills himself in many ways Lest one good custom should corrupt
the world
Arthur,
the second finest name that a Britain can possess after George, St
George being our principal patron with St Alban in heaven. David is
good for a Welshman, and David Lloyd George seems to have prospered
for a while under his patronage, as well as having a fair amount of
the natural genius of the Welsh.
But
now I come to the Scottish Dave, Dave Cameron.
Like
the Pope who made a dramatic intervention in the pre-Conclave
meetings, he won election with a sharp and confident speech- Old
Etonians are not known for their lack of confidence.
But
the battles for this country will not be won in the playing fields of
Eton or indeed by a cosy clique of Old Etonians. If, God forbid, I
was Prime Minister, I could certainly find enough talent among alumni
of Manchester Grammar School to run the country after a manner, but
an Old Mancunians club would be a disaster for the country as it
would entirely be lacking in balance and vision, to the exclusion of
talent.
Pope
Francis is in danger of trapping the Church in the infernal 1960s,
David Cameron has trapped the Tories in the 1950s. He is the
re-incarnation of Harold Macmillan, not unlike Macmillan responding
to "Events, my dear boy, events" but with no real personal
vision for the country. The important difference from Macmillan is
that Macmillan represented a Northern seat, so understood at least to
some degree the travails of working people. Even Macmillan was
bold enough to say- with a courage of which Cameron would never be
capable.
It
is only by giving their heads to the strong and the able that we
shall ever have the means to provide protection for the weak and for
the old
-
there is no dignity in poverty, whatever the Pope might say.
Cameron
can never win an election without Scottish, Welsh and certainly
Northern votes and there is a complete disconnnect with the party and
the people. He is a barrier to the return of a Conservative Party
to the plenitude of power with a real working majority in the House
of Commons.
I
waited sixteen long years for the return of the Conservatives to
power and now clearly will be waiting for a few years yet. In Yes
Minister, Sir Humphrey tells Jim Hacker what is the quality that
makes men Prime Minister, it is the Killer Instinct. This
frightened Jim but the real Dave has never had the killer instinct-
he is in a profound sense an accidental Prime Minister. And above
all to have made the coalition work in Conservative interests he
needed that killer instinct. In reality, the LibDem tail has been
wagging the Conservative dog. The LibDems would have been
crucified at any election but they behave as if they are the masters
now of the house.
Dave
never had the will to power indeed he willed the result of the last
election in his heart of hearts. I am all too painfully aware of
that liberalising tendency on the left of the Tory Party, having
worked for Baroness Nicholson, LibDem peer and former Tory MP.
But
return to power, even if it is shared, is not sufficient in itself
without policy.
We
are not expecting the confounded systems of the continentals, but
the pragmatic pursuit of power, practiced by Conservatives for
generations, not least to exclude from that same power to the
greatest degree possible, socialists and liberals, now that does
require vision to be successful.
Take
for instance education. Where is the vision that will return one
grammar school to each and every significant town in the country?
Where is the vision which will restore education in craft and
enterprise, in parallel, and with equal dignity to intellectual
excellence?
Not
in the modern Conservative party.
That
said, until his claims this week that he wished to be the heir to
Blair, I believed that Michael Gove was the one solitary Ministerial
talent of which the government could rightly boast. He had, after
all, distributed King James Bibles to each and every school in the
country to mark the 400th
Anniversary of that most excellent of books. There can have been no
sounder act in the whole history of British government.
But
Blair and his kind have dragged the country into a post-modern ditch,
the very antithesis of the traditionalism for which we all stand.
For his vanity, the lives of British soldiers were sacrificed in
foreign entanglements without clear purpose.
Bliss,
they did say it was that dawn to be alive. Indeed, it could only get
better, when we were trapped on Year Zero of the Blair government,
which put at naught the achievements of the previous generation.
The French Revolutionary calendar had its Year One, and
Conservatives have had to put up with Dave and Theresa pretending
that before them the Tory Party were a nasty party, who were all but
criminal. This is disrespect for your own people. No wonder Tory
councillors are defecting to UKIP.
Now
we have to await a future where Gove proclaims himself the New Man.
We do not need a new Man, we need a Conservative Man or woman for
that matter. The Conservative Party was at her very best led by a
woman.
Mr
Cameron has so modernised the Conservative Party that it no longer
lives up to its name.
As
Burke said of the French Revolution,
Our
Business is interrupted, our repose is troubled, our pleasures are
saddened, our very studies are poisoned and perverted and knowledge
is rendered worse than ignorance, by the enormous evils of this
dreadful innovation.
I
name this dreadful innovation rather the modern Conservative party.
Dave
ought to have seen what happened to the Catholic Church when it
turned modernity into a idol to be venerated. Being trendy appeals
to nobody as there is always somebody more trendy than yourself. It
is like organising a disco service in Church to appeal to youth.
There are plenty of better discos around. The Church will be saved
by her traditionalists, conservatism will be saved by the true
believers in UKIP.
Take
for instance, military spending. It is understood that the coffers
are empty, but where is the future vision of the armed forces that
can enforce the will of Her Majesty's government at two places
simultaneously anywhere throughout the world, without the help of
anybody, unless we are disputing with China or Russia, where I
concede we would need America to lend us a certain degree of
assistance. We have been reduced to sharing French aircraft
carriers. We should not be excessively keen on fighting alongside
troops who might cancel an offensive for lunch, who surrender rather
than having their joie de vivre shattered- somewhere along the
Maginot line, there is a plaque dedicated to a French regiment
“Surrendered without having been defeated”.
Take
for instance, the economy
Cameron
is as embarrassed by capitalism as Ted Heath was, in contrast to
Enoch Powell who said,
Whatever
else the Conservative Party stands for, unless it is the party of
free choice, free competition and free enterprise, unless- I am not
afraid of the word- it is the party of capitalism, then it has no
function in the contemporary world.
I
for one do not mean by capitalism the corporatism practised by Labour
and Tory governments alike which hold the Small and Medium sized
enterprises that make up the bulk of the economy in the same contempt
that they are held in Brussels.
We
will be waiting for ever for a government which contains the
anti-business, business Secretary, Cable to transform the British
economy into the dynamic engine that the country needs. Yet
another deregulation initiative is fizzling out, ground down by the
Sir Humphrey's of this world who have a vested interest not just in
regulation but better regulation. Excessive taxes and regulation
are the drumbeats at the funeral of a civilised society.
As
I rode on my bike in snow on a cold April morning in Wales, I
wondered how many businesses had been put out of business by global
warming dogmatism, which is in it last throws, as even the scientists
realised they have not only deceived others but deceived themselves
in pursuit of state money. A bandwagon that the unprincipled
Cameron was only too happy to ride. I am all in favour, I hasten
to add, on environmentalism based on science- I tested the equipment
that confirmed the hole in the ozone layer and made speeches on the
environment as a Conservative candidate even before Mrs Thatcher.
But in politics, all too often new Green is but old red writ large-
like Cameron they are not concerned with people or indeed the
environment but personal power. Besides, how many people are
concerned about the environment the day after tomorrow when only with
the greatest difficulty does the economy not breath her last today.
The
only way back is through entrepreneurship and transformative
innovation- it is time that the natural genius of the British people
is unleashed instead of being shackled by Brussels and Whitehall.
The only innovation I believe in is economic. Goods and services
must be traditional and form and content- modern methods of
production mean that the finest can be produced and the cheap modern
has no longer an excuse.
Nothing
can really stop a nation that has the imagination to bounce bombs of
water to destroy the Ruhr Damns- Dambusters whose anniversary we
celebrated 2 days ago or drove a destroyer straight through the front
door of Dieppe harbour or broke the Enigma codes to ensure that
Europe should be free from the Nazi menace.
And
so, take for instance, Europe. The things that make politicians
bring them down. Cameron tried to stop the Conservative party
banging on about Europe to secure his position. It was important
then, it is even more important now given the creeping tyranny of
Brussels directed economic governance of Europe.
I
do not know which Brussels Cameron visits when he goes to European
Council meetings. After ten years in Brussels, I was used to
ministers proclaiming victory when they had in fact either made no
difference at all or had been roundly defeated. They did not go
native- they just behaved like the French.
I
was also used to victories that should never have been in question
proclaimed as a miraculous force of arms.
He
is like the enthusiastic young monk who thinks he is going to be the
great reformer of the order which he joins. Destined he is to failure
and disappointment. Not one order has been reformed from within in
the entire history of the Catholic Church. For the other Europeans,
the stakes are too high to let us have our own special way. There
are too many vested interests. And, ah yes, the Single Market, O
Single Market, what crimes have been committed in your name. Lord
Astor says the Tory Party will campaign heart and soul to stay in
Europe. So great an effort will be totally in vain.
I
once as a student was accused by an Oxford don of being a reed in
the wind shaken in the wind. This was a misdiagnosis even in those
days, as I do not do doubt as it is bad for the soul and bad for the
psyche. Little did I expect that we should have a Leader of the
Conservative Party some thirty years later, who despite the
advantages of the very best education, even in the same university as
myself, should be a reed shaking in the wind- too busy responding to
every slight whisper of wind to be effective at the governing of a
great nation.
I
am all for the pragmatic pursuit of power. But Dave's perpeteum
mobile comes over as the personal and craven desire to retain office.
It is so transparent to voters and they are not fooled. Why does
the whole of the European policy have to look like a forced hand?
The truth is he is not a true believer in anything. Thank God for
UKIP- not unlike the brave traditionalists who endured every kind of
opprobrium in the modern Catholic Church, we would not have come this
far without them.
Now
to add insult to injury, Mr
No Name, one of Cameron's charmed inner circle yesterday claimed that
Tory members are mad swivel eyed loons. Just because they are right
and and the PM is wrong on Europe and gay marriage. He should meet a
real swivel eyed loon before casting such aspersions, Idi Amin would
be good but he has gone to meet the devil and is unavailable. The
Iraqi information minister is still alive, and Obama's White House
and the European Parliament could provide excellent candidates for
this research project. Nero fiddling while Rome burns comes to mind
for some reason, as the glory of the Conservative Party is consumed
by modernism. But I can assure Mr Cameron that there are no loons in
the Chipping Norton Conservative Association.
Ironically,
saying that Conservative party are loons indicates a certain
detachment from reality. Physician heal thyself. Both Christian and
Tory were originally insults, UKIP has its Gadfly Club. From this
day on I am proud to be a swivel-eyed loon. Much better than being a
ModCon.
Unlike
the Barque of Peter, the good ship Cameron is eminently sinkable and
should be put to calmer waters, make I suggest the Norfolk Broads,
before she takes Conservatism and even more importantly the Country
with him, shackled to a insignificant little dingy called LibDemery
from whose crew the conservative Captain takes all his orders.
Of
Mrs Thatcher it was said, she thought the unthinkable and thereby
transformed the country. Cameron by contrast, cannot even think the
thinkable. The country remains in the post-modern stasis
established by Blair. She spoke from the heart of England to the
heart of Great Britain in language clear and conservative that moved
all but the most stubborn. She proved forever that the Country can
be led from the right, and must be led from the right, providing
policy is clearly articulated. It is a lesson that Cameron and his
modernising kind are determined to forget, not least because they
have an inability to articulate policy.
To
Mrs Thatcher's eternal memory, we shall see her like again, because
we have to. Our nation needs such as her. Without her, Cardinal
Bergoglio would have sung Te Deum every year in Port Stanley, as he
did on national day every year in the cathedral of Buenos Aires.
Without her, we would be ruled not by Brussels, but by Moscow's
willing satrap, Arthur Scargill. Without her, all hope of future and
better glory for our nation would have been extinguished forever.
This is the flame that we carry, and this is the flame which we
carry with pride.
More
things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, says the
dying Arthur in Tennyson.
Pray
for the soul and body of our nation, epitomised in the great King
Arthur. He is a part-mythical figure but he stands for something
deeper and eternal in our nation, the eternal spring ever renewing
herself in the face of history.
We
cannot be true to ourselves and to our dearest of nations,
spiritually or temporally, unless we be true to tradition and drink
most deeply from that spring.