The Con-Dem Government and their nu- Labour predecessors have argued a lot over taxes and spending. However when taxes are increased and cutbacks made, it is often the poorest in society which are hit the hardest.

When considering cutbacks all the major three parties ignore two areas which definitely need cutting back – these being our membership of the European Union and the present United Kingdom. 

Our membership of the EU is well documented – and England puts more in than it gets in return. Membership makes no sense when trade agreements can be written, joint projects conducted and travel across Europe arranged without membership of the EU. The fact remains membership of the EU only benefits large global corporations who feast from the top table whilse the rest of us scavenge for crumbs.

Membership of the United Kingdom is something else which the taxpayers of England subsidise. Every minute taxes raised in England flow across the sea to Northern Ireland and over the borders into Wales and Scotland to fund their government’s. The fact is the other home nations have devolution and the taxpayers of England pay the bill.

When will the English people wake up to the fact that if we liberated ourselves from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland AND the EU, not only would we be able to do away with the proposed savage cuts to the English public services, but we would also be free to protect English firms from hostile takeovers (Kraft) and halt the imminent mass immigration from places such as Bulgaria and Rumania (and Turkey if Cameron gets his way). English independence is the logical conclusion of the current EU and devolution mess and the definite solution to the West Lothian question.

 

We hear a lot of talk of political reform and localism from the Con-Dem government. However do they mean this, or is it yet again all talk and promises, the usual status quo of major party politics.

As English Radicals we seriously doubt whether the ‘ConDemned’ government will have the courage to give local government real power to serve its communities and end the current centralised method of gathering income tax in favour of a local system. By organising the decentralisation of Revenue and Customs and giving control over THEIR citizens taxes to the localities we would see real local democracy in action. Perhaps then, instead of going cap in hand to central government for money to build tramways or schools, local councils would have the revenue base to support borrowing to fund such projects themselves (if their electors so decide). This is the English Radical vision and this is REAL political reform and localism.

The English Radical Alliance challenges Mr Osborne and the Con-Dem government to be truly radical in their cuts to public services, and abolish all government ministries (except Defence and Foreign Office) and hand the power AND the money to local government.  
 

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When people consider ‘an enemy within’ many think of Islamic extremists that seek to abolish traditional English or Christian customs and impose Sharia law. This is true, such people do pose a very serious threat to English culture. Others may think of left wing or right wing extremists, or those that exploit the benefits and taxation system. To some such people also pose a serious threat to the wellbeing of the country. However there exists another enemy within that is a threat to us all. In appearance you would think this enemy was a pillar of society and an almost perfect Englishman or woman. You would think these people were successful business people, helping to turn the wheels of English industry and creating employment for English citizens. However, you could not be further from the truth and such appearances are very deceptive.

This respectable looking ‘enemy within’ cares very little for England or the people of England. What they do care about is the size of their bank balance. To increase the size of their bank balance they will employ the cheapest available labour who will tolerate the poorest conditions. In most cases this will not be workers of English culture or those that have adapted to English culture, it will be economic migrant labour and in some circumstances even illegal immigrants.

It can be argued that this still helps to keep the wheels of English industry turning, albeit with English workers paying the price. However another practice of this enemy within is to actually relocate whole companies overseas or start businesses in the lands of cheap labour. This has no benefit to the English economy whatsoever. Such practices not only deny the workers of England employment it is virtually taking food out of their mouths. These people are far from pillars of society, they are nothing less than economic traitors.

The English Radical vision is for business and industry to work for the greater good of the country and its people. It should provide economic prosperity for the nation and employment, decent wages and conditions for workers. It should be a fair deal all round. In reality, what we have in many circumstances is the exact opposite with unscrupulous economic traitors ripping off the people and the country. Yet the most annoying thing about this is the fact successive Labour and Tory governments have allowed and encouraged this to happen. Therefore it comes as no surprise that the present Con-Dem coalition seem set to continue this practice. Read between the lines of David Cameron’s recent visit to India and you will see he has helped to oil the wheels of Indian industry, whilst merely wiping those of England with an oily rag.

In this current uneven economic playing field, what chance of long term success has any decent business person that wishes to establish a company in England, employ local labour and offer decent pay and conditions? What chance has the ordinary honest working man or woman when he or she is forced to compete against cheap overseas labour? The capitalist system allows companies to relocate abroad or drive wages and conditions down to obtain further profits.  Even if this causes unemployment and social hardships, the ordinary working man and woman or decent patriotic business person will bear the cost to satisfy the profit margins of the economic traitors.

There needs to be a radical approach in order to rectify this situation. However we must never forget what we are dealing with is ‘economic traitors’ who care little for our country and its people. In a new, radical England measures would be introduced to prevent the exodus of companies to ‘the lands of cheap labour’. If a company wishes to relocate it would have to pay its workers a lump sum equivalent to one years pay (on top of any redundancies). This would provide a financial cushion for the workforce and give them the available finance to start their own business if they wish. The sale of the companies premises would be offered first to the workforce at a substantially reduced rate, should they wish to take over and run the business as a co-operative. Favourable financial conditions and training would be made available for newly established co-operatives in a bid to help them succeed. Finally the relocated company would find that it faces stiff import controls of its products into England. Ultimately, an ideal solution would be if someone wishes to relocate their business abroad, let them also surrender their English passport, emigrate to the lands of cheap labour themselves and become a national of that country. England does not need economic traitors.

Economically we also need to address the large multi-national concerns that dominate business and drive smaller companies to the wall. The tide needs to be turned to favour smaller, local and regionalised economies rather than those dictated to us by the multi-nationals. But we have to make sure our future, the smaller businesses of England, stay in England and provide employment for local workforces. England has to deal with its enemies within. If we fail to deal with the economic enemies within our shores we shall continue to fail. We cannot afford decade after decade of governments allowing multi-nationals to run our country and our smaller businesses to relocate abroad. There needs to be a radical solution which involves education, training and economic protectionism.  The English Radical Alliance is the only party that is brave enough to offer that solution.




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WHAT LIES BEHIND THE CON-DEM WINDOW DRESSING
We have all been shopping and bought an item where the description is absolutely wonderful and the packaging leads to all sorts of high expectations. Yet when we return home and take the item out of the box we become disappointed, it’s not as wonderful as we first thought and very often some of the pieces are missing.

In a way politics is a little bit like going shopping. Each of the main parties has a shop window which they dress beautifully, their policies neatly packaged and presented and their tidily dressed well spoken salesmen doing their utmost to seem sincere and understanding. But, like the item which you have bought in the shop, when you return home and remove the packaging what you really have is something you neither expected, nor wanted, and because some of the items are missing it simply doesn’t work.

The present Con-Dem coalition is doing a wonderful job of window dressing their shop window. With the ‘Under new management sign’ neatly placed on the door of Number Ten they have set about refurbishing the store and rebranding the same products with different packaging. Shortly following the new management sign came one saying ‘Under refurbishment – sorry for any inconvenience’, as the Con-Dems announced massive cutbacks in their emergency budget. Finally the store opened for real, and the Con-Dems announce a superb deal on immigration and benefits, all neatly packaged and served by their smiling sales personnel.

So let’s have a look at these special offers from the Con-Dem superstore of politics. To begin with let us look at immigration, or to give it its real titles Economic Migration and Asylum.

Realistically the Con-Dem policies will do little to prevent England suffering further intolerable levels of economic migration and will do very little to prevent our country from remaining  the number one destination for asylum seekers. It is very true; the new Con-Dem policies may do something to prevent people from outside the EU from settling in England, but what worries people most is economic migration from other EU states. Will these new policies prevent thousands of Turkish economic migrants from coming to England? NO! What will happen when Albania eventually joins the EU, will it prevent Albanians from coming to England as economic migrants? NO! Will these new policies prevent the pressure such economic migration shall bring to our schools, housing and hospital services? NO!  Therefore when you take the Con-Dem immigration policy out of the packaging it is not only disappointing, some of the items are missing and it doesn’t really work!

Now let us open the benefits package. The Con-Dem proposal is to have a purge on the benefit system and to cut the number of claimants. On face value this may seem a good idea, as many of our coastal resorts have a ‘Costa del Dole’ image and there are many people which our benefit system has made into ‘the professional unemployed’ or those who seek to work the system rather than ever finding real work again. However these people are a small minority, and as we have stated are a product of the present system. But on viewing the Con-Dem proposals, our real fears are that it will be the genuine and most vulnerable claimants that will suffer most from the purge on benefits.

Unforunately the worst thing about the whole Con-Dem package of policies is that it will create further unemployment, thus forcing more people on to benefits. Investment in our schools and industry will be reduced. There will be little encouragement for English industries, and therefore fewer opportunities will be created. The Con-Dem ideal is a capitalist one for foreign companies to buy out and asset strip English companies or to keep them going using cheaper economic migrant labour. Therefore we are back to square one.

So if we unwrap the Con-Dem immigration and benefits proposals we can see we have something none of us really want, something which has some necessary components missing and something that will definitely not work. As a result of these policies over the coming years we will still  see high levels of economic migration from other EU countries, an influx of cheap overseas labour, further strains on our housing, schools, hospitals and social services, and more people being driven into benefits with some even turning to crime as a last resort.

As English Radicals we view things from a common sense angle rather than one driven by a capitalist or socialist ideology. We need to deal with ALL forms of economic migration from both inside and outside the EU. We see the EU superstate as something which is far too expensive in the form of our financial contribution and the social costs we have to pay as part of uncontrollable economic migration membership incurs.  We see the current costly benefit system as completely inadequate. It needs replacing with one which offers support for those that are vulnerable or genuinely unemployed but provides a real incentive to return to work. Therefore we believe the present benefit system needs scrapping and replacing with a National Income Scheme, which would provide funding to house, clothe and feed people and allow them to keep this funding when they found employment, thus providing a real incentive for returning to work. Lastly we need investment in the people of England to create businesses and thus create jobs.

ERA provides an alternative range of policies for creating a new, radical and independent England. When you remove the packaging from English Radical policies you will find something that is not disappointing, that has all the components in place and that definitely works. Therefore isn’t it time to take the faulty goods of the main parties back to their plush superstores and start to shop somewhere else. ERA is open all hours for business.


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In grotesque but sadly predictable fashion, Ian Duncan-Smith, the millionaire ex-Guards officer, and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (square peg, round hole), is threatening to stop housing benefit to unemployed people who refuse to uproot themselves in order to find non-existent work elsewhere. In other words, a rehash of the classic “Get on your bikes” Tory dogma from the 80’s. While this proposal will no doubt propel many Daily Mail readers to erotic spasms of ecstasy, the English Radicals are curious to know - which part of the UK has labour shortages at the moment?

Or perhaps he has visions of sending them somewhere even further afield, such as Romania, or Hungary? After all, we’re in the EU now…….

Mr Duncan Smith, here are some facts from the real world for you to think about. 

For every new job vacancy that appears, the number of applicants is in double, sometimes treble, figures. 

Government plans to raise retirement ages for those already employed, will make a bad situation worse by preventing younger people from entering work.

Many newer jobs are currently filled by workers from the EU, mostly young men and women from eastern Europe, prepared to live in overcrowded, cramped conditions, working for long hours and low pay? Back to Victorian values, hurrah! 

Finally - there simply aren't enough jobs to go around in our crowded island.

Ironically, Tory policies from the Thatcher era were responsible for the demise of industrial areas that now have massive levels of unemployment: the “Free Market”, the beloved doctrine of global capitalism-loving Tories everywhere, dictated that foreign made goods made in sweatshop conditions, thus undercutting English goods, should be allowed to flood our markets and kill our home industries, whether it be coal or cloth, shoes or steel. The only solution they can dream up to compete with foreign manufacturers, is for English workers to gradually accept third world pay and conditions - hence this latest Tory plan, to make us compete feverishly for imaginary jobs.

And what was New Labour’s answer to the Tory demolition of British and English industry? Borrow money to create public sector non-jobs for the educated middle classes, whilst at the same time using the benefits system to create junkie-like dependency in the working class areas worst affected by industrial collapse, to ensure both groups' future support at the ballot box. Labour were in power for 13 years, yet their poorest seats are even poorer now, incredibly, than when they first took power! The economic mess we are currently in, can be traced back to both party’s short term “fudge” tactics, each one leaving a mess for the other one to clean up, but finding when they return to power much of the original mess is still there, plus some dodgy new carpet stains from the recently evicted tenants. 

It is not the job of government to spend taxpayer’s money hiring people to shuffle paper, or to make unwanted widgets, in order to make unemployment figures look better. The job of government is to protect its home industries - and therefore jobs - from unfair foreign competition, by heavy taxation on cheap, slave made imports, levelling the playing field for our higher waged workers to compete. It is the job of government to encourage foreign manufacturers to build factories here, not by bribery in the form of grants, but by allowing them to be classed as English companies while based here, to sidestep the heavy taxes we would otherwise impose. England is a huge market for any company – if they want to sell here, they should have to “make” here.

Only when your government has done ITS job, Mr Duncan-Smith - when you have created the framework for English industry to flourish, stemmed the tide of potentially unlimited EU economic immigration and allowed the elderly to retire at a reasonable age, will you be morally entitled to ask the unemployed to “get on their bikes” and fill the new jobs as they appear. Until then, the English Radicals suggest you live up to your reputation as the “quiet man” of politics.

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As the 300th British serviceman to die in Afghanistan is laid to rest this week, David Cameron tells us it is “desperately sad”, but “essential for British security” that we are there. I’m sure the English Radicals are not the only ones who find this “security” angle impossible to swallow. On the contrary, the British presence in Afghanistan is endangering the safety and security of the British public, by inflaming the anger of British Muslims – as can be seen from the Islamic “rent a mob” presence every time a regiment returns from a tour of duty. Lest we forget, the 7/7 bombers were almost to a man, British born Muslims, protesting against the British presence in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

And unless the Taliban are planning direct action by driving across Asia and Europe in Toyota 4x4’s to spray us all with semi-automatic gunfire, the security angle doesn’t really bear scrutiny, does it, Dave? 

You can’t invite people with strong links to other countries to live here, and then expect them to keep quiet when you start a war in that country. So in fact, the British presence in these Islamic countries is undermining British life, by dividing its citizens.

The British state wants its cake and to eat it: an idyllic “multi-culti” Britain, with all colours and faiths holding hands and skipping joyfully through the meadow together, while it occupies a land many of those British citizens hold dear, to prop up a corrupt regime on behalf of a bigger corrupt regime. And there lies the real reason Britain is in Afghanistan: to legitimise the American presence there. Why are the Americans there? Because of its strategic importance, oil pipelines, opium (production is up since the invasion, strangely) and mineral wealth recently estimated at one trillion dollars. 

If you look at the operation from an American viewpoint, it’s been a fantastic success: through warfare, thousands of miles from your own borders, you have destabilised a country with incredible resources and strategic value which you are now the ruler of, your local puppets are in place and doing your bidding, all that remains is to strip it of its value, and when that’s achieved you can pull out, job done. What’s a few thousand NATO dead, or a hundred thousand Afghan dead, when there’s big money to be made?

So in effect, the “300” that the title refers to – the dead British servicemen who lost their lives in Afghanistan – did not die to bring democracy to the Afghan people, or to safeguard women’s rights as we are sometimes told, but to promote and safeguard the commercial interests of global capitalism for our “special relationship” partner, America. We really should be more choosy who our friends are.

For the love of Allah, Dave, grow a pair, stand up to “hopey-changey” Obama, and pull our troops out of Afghanistan, before another “300” die in vain. British Muslims will thank you for it (could be votes in it, Davey boy!) and the wider British public will thank you for it. As you are fond of telling us, sometimes difficult choices have to be made: you make one for a change, and see how you like it. The English Radicals would do it in a heartbeat.


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Even before they’ve got their feet under the Cabinet table, the Conservative-LibDem Coalition government has drawn up plans to force the weakest in our society to pay for the mistakes of the wealthy. Cameron says that ‘we’ will all share the pain of the next few years of financial austerity, but with eighteen millionaires in the Cabinet I very much doubt that ‘we’ all will. The fact is that the capitalist system under which we live needs to keep its foot on the throat of the poor so that they are ‘industrious’ – in other words work for next-to-nothing – and targeting the unemployed and the older citizens, by forcing them to work longer before pension age, is part of the process.

Recent surveys have shown that, on average, there are five unemployed claimants chasing every job vacancy, in some areas this rises to fifteen, especially in the north of England, the very areas that will also be targeted for cuts in public service jobs. In fact, these public service jobs that the ConDems now seek to wipe out, were actually created in areas of high unemployment; areas that had once contained major manufacturing, or mining, jobs that were then wiped out by a previous Tory government. So for the present regime to target these jobs is not just cynical, it is criminal, because every loss of public service employment affects the vulnerable in society, whether as clients or as workers.

If we examine the background to these plans to target the poor a bit more then we can see the real cynicism of capitalism and its political frontmen. The ConDems have announced plans to do away with the default pension age, despite evidence that there are hundreds of thousands of men over fifty who are long-term unemployed and facing age discrimination wherever they look, and nearly a million under-25s who are unemployed and can’t get onto the job ladder to start with. The fact is that if they do away with the pension age then the unemployed sixty-five year olds will now get £64 Job Seekers Allowance, instead of £100 pension and a bus pass, along with a gateway to many other age-related benefits, thus saving money for the government (and putting it into the pockets of the bankers). Similarly, by forcing the unemployed to do menial work for their £64 weekly JSA, it can create an unemployed labour army to replace the thousands thrown out of work from public services. It can then add to this unemployed labour army (similar to what the Nazis set up in 1933 by the way!) by forcing the disabled to work and pushing young mothers out to work earlier (and then the Tory right will complain when all the little Jakes and Joshes start running riot on their estate through lack of parental supervision). The new mastermind of the government’s attack on the vulnerable is an expert on poverty, Frank Field MP, whose Birkenhead constituency has consistently been one of the poorest, not just in Britain, but in Western Europe. Of course, Frank’s Labour government actually increased the gap between rich and poor so, coupled with his thirty years of watching Birkenhead live below the breadline, he really is the man to help the ConDems create more poverty.

As English Radicals who know our history, we have witnessed this cynical attack on the weak before, ever since the onset of the industrialisation of our country, politicians and businesses have worked cap-in-hand to force the poor to be ‘flexible’; ensuring they make slave labour wages acceptable by deterring men and women from claiming benefits. The capitalist system needs competition for jobs to keep wages low, and this means either maintaining high unemployment, or encouraging mass immigration; with the former the system will then make claiming benefits difficult, with the latter it highlights ‘racism’ and ‘xenophobia’ to prevent opposition to its activity. Both high unemployment and mass immigration force poorer communities into more hardship, whilst the capitalist system benefits. But, as we are now seeing, Governments also force the poor to pay the cost when there is economic failure; so the banks get bailed out whilst the unemployed and pensioners suffer. Capitalism is evil and the politicians who cynically front it are criminals.

The English Radical Alliance is different to every other political party in that we wish to see the capitalist system replaced by one which protects English workers from exploitation and encourages more people to run their own businesses or own shares in the company they work for. We wish to see a system that breaks up the monopoly of the big banks and localises more of our financial services, so making them more accountable to people at the grassroots. This system, Distributism, is a much fairer and more tolerant than the evil system that we have now, and we call upon the unemployed and the elderly to join us now in a crusade to wipe out capitalism in our country, and the criminals who run it.

In the weeks and months ahead, ERA will be campaigning against the government’s attack on the vulnerable, and encouraging the unemployed to seek legal advice regarding their conditions in connection with the minimum wage and employment rights. If the unemployed are punished at a time when there are fifteen vacancies for every claimant AND the government itself is creating unemployment through public service cuts, then this may well need to be addressed in the courts; governments are not above the law. ERA stands firm besides the vulnerable in our society and will defend the right of every English man and woman to live in a dignified manner.


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The English Radical Alliance today launched an archive service for its News and Radical Views. It is hoped this service will demonstrate the wide ranging issues ERA campaigns on and allow website browsers to see how ERA has been at the forefront of many campaigns.
The comments section to the news items is currently closed.

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David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ proposals on face value admittedly look quite promising from an English Radical perspective. However there is a certain fable about the scorpion and the frog that rings alarm bells in our ears. For those that are not familiar with the tale a frog offers a scorpion a ride on its back across a river, only for the scorpion to sting the frog half as they were midstream. ‘Why on earth did you do that?’ asked the frog, ‘Now we shall both die?’
The scorpion shrugged and replied, ‘I could not help myself. It is my nature’.

The Tories have their own distinctive nature. Cameron’s Conservative Party remains the party of big business, of the multi-nationals and of the Lord Ashcroft’s of this world. They are poles apart from the sole traders, local shopkeepers and small businessmen of this country and die-hard Tories would shun any thought of encouraging co-operatives. Like the scorpion, the Tories are a party with a sting in their tale.

Yet Cameron’s Conservative’s ‘Big Society’ wishes to return decision making on planning and housing to local councils. Communities will be given powers to save local facilities threatened with closure such as pubs and Post Office’s and have the right to bid to take over local state run services such as libraries.  A bold move, and one on face value we as English Radicals thoroughly support as it is in line with our distributist principals. However I think a lesson can be learnt here from history.

In the Thatcher years of the 1980’s there were other superb opportunities offered to ordinary people. We were told we could be shareholders in our utility companies and become players on the stock market. Enter characters such as ‘Buzby’ and ‘Hissing Sid’ to sell the idea to the trusting public, an idea snapped up by people thinking they could make a tidy sum within a few months. To be honest, many did make a profit – but years down the line we are all now paying the price for the family silver being sold.

So how is that relevant to Cameron’s big society? To begin with the Conservative’s are a capitalist party, a party of big business and not a distributist party, a party of community interest and co-operatives. When they talk of returning decision making to local councils they do not mean to local people as we do in the English Radical Alliance. They mean local council’s hiring more expensive consultants, that often have no connection with the local area. This will be at the council taxpayers expense.  When they talk of communities taking over shops, pubs and libraries, they do not mean supporting these, they mean the capitalist ideology of ‘sink or swim’, ‘survival of the fittest’. Just as large, very often foreign owned companies came in and snapped up the ordinary peoples share in our utility companies, you can be assured vultures will be circling over the heads of these new community initiatives waiting to pick off the weakest. Nothing will be put in place to prevent community managed shops and services from facing unfair competition or helping to support them. It is the way of the sting in the tail capitalist Conservatives. 

Mr Cameron is playing distributist politics, but only offering part of a distributist package. It is like selling you a car with no engine and then expecting you to take your driving test in it straight away. The English Radical Alliance believes in real community initiatives and a complete distributist package. Local decision making by local people, local economic networks, opportunities and support for community initiatives, co-operatives and small businesses and doing our utmost to ensure all survive through training and ensuring unfair competition does not exist.

The fable of the frog and the scorpion may be an ancient tale, but history does have a habit of repeating itself and I am sure ‘Buzby’ and ‘Hissing Sid’ lurking somewhere in Cameron’s closet are now waiting to embark on their comeback tour.

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