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The British government, through its mouthpiece Mike O'Brien (Health Minister – no, I'd never heard of him either) is apologising to the victims of Thalidomide for the pain and suffering caused to them by its prescription to their mothers fifty years ago. This is shortly after the British government apologising for the slave trade of over 200 years ago – what's next? The Bubonic Plague? The Crusades? The Norman conquest?

Quite apart from the lesson that governments and the medical profession are often mistaken in their judgements about the safety of drugs and “terror diseases” like Swine Flu, the English Radicals ask: why apologise for something you HAVEN'T done, when there are a hundred things you SHOULD apologise for? For instance:

The thousands of British, Iraqi and Afghan dead, as a result of our devotion to America and their desire to control Iraqi oil and the Afghan poppy crop?

The thousands of English “A” level students who won't get a University place next year, because the British government would sooner fund war in Afghanistan than education?

Our continued membership of the EU, when the majority of English people want out?

Labour’s refusal to have referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, an election manifesto pledge?
 
The scandalous taxation on private pensions, while the cost of taxpayer-funded public sector pensions is going through the roof?

The 88 year old English war hero Spitfire pilot John Mejor, forced to sell his home and make his elderly wife homeless, to pay for his medical care?

The Mosedale family returning to their Tottenham home to find it full of Romanian “asylum” seekers, who have a “tenancy agreement” from a scam merchant, and so cannot be evicted?

The fishermen of England, who watch European super trawlers steal their catch every day and ship it straight to Europe?
 
The coal miners of England, who, unarmed, were forced to face police cavalry to try and save their industry after Scargill and Thatcher decided to have a class war?

The car makers of England, watching their factories being dismantled and shipped to China?

The steel makers of England, as they watch their Teesside steel mill mothballed?

The people of England are facing the same fate as the American Indian – a proud, brave race forced into reservations (council estates) their buffalo (jobs) all gone, with only “fire water” (coke and smack) to dull the pain of their existence, with little prospect of breaking the cycle of despair. That's why we are radicals: we can see the problems, and we have the answers. 

ARE YOU BRAVE ENOUGH TO FOLLOW US? 

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ONE STAR THAT WILL BE SHINING THIS CHRISTMAS
The English Radicals would like to offer their congratulations and best wishes to the new owners of the Star Inn in Broughton, Greater Manchester – the local community who scraped together £80,000 to buy it off the brewery at auction. No mean feat in these difficult times, but they are not the first to do this. That honour goes to the Old Crown pub in Cumbria, which was bought by a consortium of local residents in 2003, and is still thriving today.

This is exactly the type of effort which we, as Distributists, applaud: the Star may have closed for good, like so many others up and down England, but the locals who use it now own it, and it will  presumably be a “free house” – meaning they can buy their beer cheaply from competitive local sources, instead of being forced to buy ale from a “tied” mega brewery, often at inflated prices.

Although pubs are probably ideal for this type of community buyout, we hope to see this practice expand to fund other types of business - because businesses generate employment, which we need desperately now our jobs are being outsourced to the slave labour economies abroad. 

The English Radicals believe that every pub and bar should, by law, be a free house, and we would like nothing better than to see every local pub community owned, and supplied by local breweries, with the global breweries that once owned them forced to compete in the “free” market, instead of running the cosy scam that forces pub managers to buy only their products. 

A toast to the Star Inn, and may they always prosper.

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ALL WE WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS THE RIGHT EQUIPMENT.........

Eight years on from their original deployment and the UK’s armed forces in Afghanistan have just been informed that £150 million will be made available to provide extra funding to combat improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Happy Xmas guys, and Gordon Brown is sorry that after all this time as Chancellor and Prime Minister he didn’t realise that you had to defuse a lot of bombs out there! Nor did he realise that you needed helicopters to get about, because the roads were full of IEDs; nor did he realise that the snatch Land Rovers you have were a tad vulnerable to both bombs and bullets. But you are getting proper armoured vehicles now, even if they don’t like the sand too much. Sad really, when you hear how our armed forces are sent to war without the right equipment; pathetic, even, when you hear that UK generals have been cadging lifts from US Army helicopters, but disgusting when you hear that British soldiers are buying their own body armour and other vital equipment on Ebay. So, Mr Brown, where has all the money allocated to fight the war gone? And, lest we forget, this is not a recent event, for one of the very first British casualties in Iraq in 2003 died because he had given somebody else his body armour due to shortages!

How treacherous is it for a government to despatch men and women to war but not provide them with the equipment necessary to fight that war in the safest and most efficient manner? For that is what this is, treachery of the highest order. Politicians and their banker friends rewarding themselves with mega-bonuses, repairing their moats and their clock towers, fiddling whatever cash they can out of the taxpayer and then denying the funds needed to support our services in the face of a vicious and deadly enemy. Moreover, an enemy that this same Establishment has told us it is vital to take on and defeat to make our streets safe. Yet history teaches us that this betrayal of our armed forces is nothing new. In the First World War there were often supply problems and in one famous incident the artillery that should have been sent to the men who had secured a beachhead at Gallipoli ended up in Egypt. So those men were stuck on the beach, under heavy enemy artillery fire and without the means to respond. In more recent times the first soldiers deployed onto the streets of Northern Ireland waited years to get the proper riot equipment and had to resort to using bin lids and shoving copies of ‘National Geographic’ magazine down their trousers to combat stone-throwing youths. Whilst the Task Force that was sent to the Falklands found that the warships melted when struck with missiles, and even the humble army boot disintegrated when it made contact with the Falklands mud, British soldiers ended up robbing the boots of dead Argentinian soldiers in order to finish their forced march across the island.

The English Radical Alliance does not think that our soldiers should be deployed anywhere in the World except in England to defend our streets and our shores, but whilst our troops are on active service, as they are today, they should be provided with the necessary personal and tactical equipment to do the job. To do otherwise is not only undermining the military campaign, it is also a crime!

.............AND A DECENT ROOF OVER OUR HEADS

Having denied the men in the frontline the proper equipment to do their job, the Ministry of Defence is trying to further undermine their morale by delaying improvements to services’ accommodation in order to help the department save money. In a recent letter from the head of the Army, Sir David Richards, it was announced that there will have to be a 10% cut in capital building programmes in order to help plug the £1.5 billion deficit in the MOD budget and this can only be achieved by postponing promised repairs to barracks and married quarters. Thousands of soldiers currently live in damp, poorly maintained barracks that have leaking roofs, broken windows, faulty heating and blocked lavatories. Just what kind of people inhabit the MOD? These are the same people who took disabled soldiers to Court to reduce their compensation for wounds received on active duty and yet who awarded themselves massive bonuses recently, no doubt from the savings on providing body armour and helicopters to soldiers in Afghanistan. No wonder Gordon Brown wants to send even more soldiers to Afghanistan, that’s less who will need a roof over their head in this country. So, when the General Election comes along and you are thinking about where to place your cross, please remember just how the Labour Party and gutless politicians in the other parties treated the people who they sent out to fight its illegal wars.

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MORE JOBS GO TO THE LANDS OF CHEAP LABOUR
England's last remaining piano manufacturer - Kemble, based at Bletchley near Milton Keynes - has now closed with the loss of more than 90 jobs. Its parent company, Yamaha, is moving production to the land of cheap labour in the Far East. The company which has been owned by Yamaha since the mid 1980's claim the marketplace for mid-range pianos has come under increasing pressure, and in order to improve their long term competitiveness, the best solution is to fully utilise their manufacturing capacity in other locations! In simple terms close down the company here in England and relocate abroad where labour is cheap and working conditions much poorer!

In 1986 when Yamaha first became involved with what was then a family owned company, workers felt the Japanese multinational were their saviours. Yet this action has proved that Yamaha and the entire capitalist system cannot be trusted and that Kemble is just one of a long line of companies who are relocating to the lands of cheap labour at the expense of the workforce here in England.

English Radicals have a very dim view of such action and an even dimmer view of the lack of action by the British government. ERA believes when a company relocates to the lands of cheap labour, its workforce should be paid a lump sum equivalent one years wages on top of any redundancy pay. This would give the workforce a real financial cushion and the opportunity to start their own business if they wish. In addition to this ERA believes that the workforce should be given the opportunity to buy the business at a reduced rate and to run it as a co-operative.

Only ERA offer policies that provide greater job security for the workers of England, reducing the fear at cheap foreign labour taking their jobs, and at the same time offering real opportunity.

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