Video from 2023 H&D Meeting now online
Despite many loud threats from the ultra-left and their financial backers, the 2023 H&D meeting went ahead unimpeded, at a hotel in the Lancashire countryside, just outside Preston.
We are now in the process of uploading video from this event, courtesy of our media team who put in many hours of hard work on the day and during the following week.
The first video to be uploaded is this speech by Laura Towler, from Patriotic Alternative. Laura paid tribute to the political legacy of Sir Oswald Mosley, one of the four men honoured at this year’s meeting, 75 years after the foundation of Mosley’s postwar Union Movement. Some of us at H&D knew veteran Mosleyites, and we are certain that they (and especially Lady Mosley) would have been very happy to know that Laura, her husband Sam, and the PA team are advancing the patriotic cause in 2023!
We now also have the speech by PA’s founder and leader Mark Collett (which for technical reasons is only available in audio.
Mark spoke about his years in the BNP during the first decade of the millennium. As older viewers will remember, he was one of the most effective and hardworking BNP officers of that era, but his work and that of many other sincere patriots came to nothing, due to the corruption and incompetence of BNP leader Nick Griffin. In this frank and cogent analysis, Mark describes what was good about the BNP, and what went so badly wrong.
Also now online is this speech by Professor John Kersey, Vice-President of the Traditional Britain Group. Professor Kersey addressed the broken state of British politics and society, and emphasised that “musical freedom comes the moment you say it isn’t about the money or the fame, or about what anyone, powerful or not, thinks of it. It’s about the need to engage with our culture and community, to create, to communicate and to inspire. The reward isn’t money or fame. The reward is doing it and making your audience feel that you have connected with them in a way that nothing else can.”
‘Anti-fascist’ hysteria during recent days has focused on our European correspondent, Isabel Peralta, who spoke of her conviction that political faith, loyalty, honour and fanaticism can move mountains.
Isabel called on racial nationalists to show the spirit of Leonidas and his 300 Spartans defending Europe at Thermopylae, and of the national socialist martyrs who fell in Munich in 1923, almost a decade before the triumph of their cause.
The true European spirit is alive in our hearts and will triumph: those H&D readers and European nationalists lucky enough to know Isabel Peralta will never doubt it.
The closing speech was given by H&D’s assistant editor Peter Rushton, who also writes the Real History blog. Peter explains who the real “terrorists” are, and exposes their connections to the same establishment and ‘antifa’ organisations that sought to impede this year’s meeting; the same sinister forces that pulled the strings behind UK border security to harass fellow speaker Isabel Peralta.
Paying tribute to the four men honoured at this year’s event – Derek Beackon, Andrew Brons, Sir Oswald Mosley, and Ian Stuart – Peter emphasised that our enemies’ fear is a sign that the flame of European nationalism burns brightly in 2023. As Sir Oswald Mosley told his followers: “Together in Britain we have lit a flame that the ages shall not extinguish. Guard that sacred flame, my brother Blackshirts, until it illumines Britain and lights again the path of mankind.”
Dr Jim Lewthwaite, retired archaeology lecturer, Orangeman, and chairman of the British Democrats, based his speech around an analysis of Professor Nigel Biggar’s new book Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning – which was reviewed in Issue 115 of H&D.
Jim talked about the positive side of the British Empire, as well as slavery and how the British were the first of the major powers of the time to ban it. The British Democrats are now beginning to attract significant numbers of experienced activists as well as those new to electoral politics. Despite disappointing council election results earlier this year, they are presently the main electoral force on the British nationalist scene. And unlike the tragic rump of the BNP (which lives off legacies and does no serious political work), the Brit Dems do not pay any staff. All their funds are spent on building the movement and spreading information about the present crisis of our nation.
Stephen Frost, National Secretary of British Movement, acknowledged that our movement of resistance to multicultural decay is a ‘broad church’ of patriots, not all of whom by any means are national socialists (as represented by BM and Colin Jordan’s earlier organisations). Yet as he emphasised, BM has always been prepared to lend its support to sincere comrades from other groups and parties – at demonstrations, election campaigns and at meetings such as this one.
Steve added that the task of all nationalists is to spread propaganda for our cause by any and every means and format: whether old-school with hard copy leaflets and newspapers or by more modern means using the internet including social media. The propaganda war is bringing increasing numbers to realisation of the essential truth of our values. Stephen Frost and BM have utilised these propaganda methods, via such means as the ‘Under the Sunwheel’ podcast. Colin Jordan’s political legacy continues to inspire new generations of activists.
Stephen Frost’s co-host at ‘Under the Sunwheel’, Benny Bullman, lead singer of the Rock Against Communism band Whitelaw, spoke in tribute to Ian Stuart, founder of Blood & Honour and lead singer of Skrewdriver, who tragically died 30 years ago this month.
Benny pointed out that Ian Stuart’s dedication to race and nation led him to turn his back on a lucrative career in ‘mainstream’ music (an industry controlled by the usual suspects). Ian achieved far more than the wealth and fame that was accrued by some of his contemporaries after they sold out. The legacy of Ian Stuart and Skrewdriver continues to inspire new generations of patriots throughout the White world.
Video from Ken Schmidt’s speech to our conference will be available soon.
Remembering Four Great British Nationalists – H&D Annual Meeting salutes Derek Beackon, Andrew Brons, Sir Oswald Mosley and Ian Stuart
On 9th September in the Lancashire village of Samlesbury, just to the east of Preston, over 80 nationalists – mainly from the North-West and Yorkshire – attended the annual H&D meeting. Over the past fifteen years or so H&D have hosted cross-party memorial meetings in and around Preston and that tradition continued.
This year the meeting was entitled “Honour the Past – Conquer the Future” and we honoured four great British nationalists, Derek Beackon, Andrew Brons, Sir Oswald Mosley and Ian Stuart Donaldson.
Despite the best efforts of the Lancashire Post, the Preston Blog, Labour Party, SWP, Red Flare (a nutty online Marxist Republican group) and local LGBTQ+ loons to stop it, H&D‘s annual meeting went ahead as planned, with no serious problems. All credit to Lancashire Police who respected our right to hold a legal political meeting in our free and democratic society and did not interfere with it.
While we were holding our successful 80 strong meeting in a first-class hotel in the beautiful Lancashire countryside, the loony lefties could only muster twenty-one (yes 21!) to their pathetic demonstration on Lune Street, many miles away in Preston city-centre! How ironic the loonies holding their demo on Lune Street!
Chaired by former NF and BNP organiser, and longstanding H&D subscriber Keith Axon, the meeting got underway with the traditional one minute’s silence for all the H&D subscribers who had passed away since our last meeting in September 2022, including Mr Ian Lofthouse, Dr. Roger Pearson, Mr K.D. Russell, Mr M. Sharp, Mr Ken Stead and Mr. P. Trelawney.
For only the second time we had two women speakers. This was one of many aspects of this year’s meeting that both on the panel and in the audience (over 20% were female) showed the increasing diversity of European nationalism.
Also, for only the second time we had two overseas speakers; H&D‘s European correspondent Isabel Peralta, who overcame another detention by UK Border Force at Manchester Airport; and Ken Schmidt H&D‘s American correspondent, who thankfully entered the UK without any problems.
Our Spanish and American guests were delighted to meet so many excellent new comrades from all over Great Britain, especially the large delegations from the British Movement and Patriotic Alternative.
After Keith Axon’s opening remarks, he introduced the first speaker of the afternoon; Benny Bullman, a British Movement activist, and the lead singer of the RAC band Whitelaw. Benny gave a fine tribute to the founder of Blood & Honour, Ian Stuart, who was born 66 years ago in the Lancashire town of Poulton-le-Fylde. It’s 30 years now since his death in 1993, but Benny emphasised that great comrades such as Ian Stuart still live with us in spirit, and we are all determined to be worthy of their legacy.
Our second speaker was Professor John Kersey, educationalist and musician, who leads several international university-level institutions dedicated to bespoke professional education for high achievers, gave a cogent analysis of the burgeoning threats to traditional British values and freedoms – and to the Christian values that are the bedrock of British and European civilization. The dictatorial grip of the political establishment is at last being resisted: the forces of resistance are no longer marginalised – our agenda of maintaining and restoring British traditions is now at the centre of political debate.
Our third speaker was Laura Towler, deputy leader of Patriotic Alternative. Laura talked both about Sir Oswald Mosley – this being the 75th anniversary since he formed his Union Movement, after the end of WWII in 1948 – and Patriotic Alternative, which for the past four years has been fighting to get across the message that White Lives Matter – across a broad front of activities from demonstrations to leafletting, mountain hikes to tea retailing! PA has grown rapidly in its four years of existence. Despite the setbacks of the Electoral Commission constantly rejecting their applications to register as a political party, the PA has combined some of the best veterans of older nationalist parties with a proven ability to attract the best of the younger online nationalist community.
Just before the lunch break, Keith Axon and meeting organiser Mark Cotterill auctioned off a number of books, a George Lincoln Rockwell magazine, framed photographs, Ulster flags and a Whitelaw LP that had been donated by H&D subscribers. The auction raised over £300.
The meeting was then adjourned for a twenty-minute lunch break. An excellent buffet was provided by the BM’s Women’s Division, who as always put on a fine spread.
Keith Axon then opened the second part of the meeting and introduced the afternoon’s fourth speaker Dr. Jim Lewthwaite, an archaeologist and former Bradford city councillor, now chairman of the British Democrats. His speech was based around Nigel Biggar’s new book Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning – which was reviewed in Issue 115 of H&D. Jim talked about the positive side of the British Empire, as well as slavery and how the British were the first of the major powers of the time to ban it. The British Democrats are now beginning to attract significant numbers of experienced activists as well as those new to electoral politics, however their results at this year’s council elections were disappointing.
Our fifth speaker of the afternoon was Isabel Peralta (speaking in Spanish with an English translation being read by Peter Rushton): she explained that the NS revolution did not end with the defeat at Berlin in 1945, and that faith in the true European cause was capable of moving mountains. She spoke of the great Spartan army, led by Leonidas, whose 300 Spartans stood fast and fought to the death against the mighty 200,000 strong Persian Army at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. The Spartans showed the true spirit of Europe that we again need now.
The spirit of unity in the real Europe which Isabel spoke about, will soon be reflected in stronger connections between European nationalists – keep checking our website and magazine for details!
Our sixth speaker was Stephen Frost: National Secretary of the British Movement, longstanding friend of Colin Jordan and author of the Colin Jordan biography ‘TWAS A GOOD FIGHT’! He acknowledged that our movement of resistance to multicultural decay is a ‘broad church’ of patriots, not all of whom by any means are national socialists (as represented by BM and Colin Jordan’s earlier organisations). Yet as he emphasised, BM has always been prepared to lend its support to sincere comrades from other groups and parties – at demonstrations, election campaigns and at meetings such as this one. He said the task of all nationalists is to spread propaganda for our cause by any and every means and format: whether old-school with hard copy leaflets and newspapers or by more modern means using the internet including social media. The propaganda war is bringing increasing numbers to realisation of the essential truth of our values.
Just before the second break of the afternoon H&D Editor Mark Cotterill held the raffle, ably assisted by one of the young ladies who were manning the H&D merchandise stall. There were around thirty raffle prizes this year – again all kindly donated by H&D subscribers.
Keith Axon then opened the third and final part of the meeting and introduced the afternoon’s seventh speaker Ken Schmidt. Ken has been an activist and writer in the American nationalist movement since the 1980s. He writes a regular column in H&D entitled “From the other side of the Pond”. He is now a member of the League of the South, although he is now living back in the north – in New Jersey.
He spoke firstly about Donald Trump and the US presidential election and then about how the USA as a country is breaking up due to multi-racialism/culturalism. And then about the various movements who support secession and the break-up of the USA as the only long-term solution if White people are to have any future in North America.
Our eighth speaker was Mark Collett, the former chairman of the young BNP, director of publicity and editor of the BNP magazine Identity. Mark is the leader of Patriotic Alternative which he formed in September 2019. Mark has been an active nationalist since the turn of the century and is the most debanked person in the UK! The PA is the fastest growing nationalist organisation in Great Britain and holds regular activities and events every single week. Mark’s speech was about his ten years inside the BNP, working his way up from the very bottom to the very top – what the BNP did right and what they did wrong, and how modern-day nationalists can learn from their mistakes.
Be sure to check this website in a few days time so that you can see videos of our event’s speeches, including Mark’s excellent insight into our movement’s recent history, which conveys important lessons for a new generation of activists.
Our ninth and final speaker of the afternoon was Peter Rushton: H&D‘s Assistant Editor and webmaster, historian, author of the new Real History Blog, and TV commentator. In his speech concluding the event, Peter mocked those ludicrous fake leftists who (with lavish funding from the usual suspects) had set out to stop our meeting. They had pulled out all the stops to defeat us, not because they feared “terrorism”, but because they feared the truth. “Anti-fascists” and their useful idiots (some of whom call themselves “nationalists”) spend most of their time spreading foul slanders (including against some of our guest speakers), but we carry on regardless with the task of rebuilding the true Britain and the true Europe.
This is the legacy of the four men whom we honoured at this event. If the authorities or the anti-fascists wished to talk about terrorists, Peter said, we were very happy to do so. We are happy to talk about the Zionist terrorists who bombed London, one of the worst of whom is still alive in Paris and untouched by the British counter-terrorist squad, who prefer to carry out political harassment of H&D writers such as Isabel, Peter and Mark. And we are happy to talk about the IRA terrorists to whom Conservative and Labour governments alike have betrayed our nation.
We should be in no doubt, Peter concluded, that reactionary Conservative capitalists are an even worse enemy than the so-called “Left” – the Tweedledum and Tweedledee whom Mosley ridiculed decades ago. Soon after the arrival of the Windrush in the 1940s, Labour MPs had warned about the consequences of mass non-White immigration, using language that would nowadays lead to them being raided by police. Peter thanked Mark Cotterill and his colleagues who have to remain nameless, for making this excellent event possible. He said he was proud to be fighting alongside his fellow speakers and audience members – drawn from many different groups and tendencies within the racial nationalist family – confident in the ultimate victory of our race and civilisation.
H&D editor Mark Cotterill ended the meeting by thanking everybody who helped organise the event and those in the audience who had made the effort to attend, some travelling considerable distances, including two from the USA, Germany and Spain.
Before the meeting and during the two intervals our audience browsed the many literature/merchandise stalls. Apart from the H&D table there were stalls from British Movement, Candour, Patriotic Alternative, The Supplement, Historical Review Press and Yorkshire Forum.
The evening before the meeting we held a social in a nice city centre pub, and after the meeting we returned back to the very same pub, as the landlord (an ex-squaddie himself) was so welcoming the first night, we thought we would give him another evening’s business! Around twenty nationalists attended both socials, some staying until just after 1am on the Saturday – a few sore heads on Sunday morning were reported!
And finally, special thanks again to the British Movement Women’s Division who provided an excellent buffet; and to the British Movement Leader Guard who carried out security duties in their usual highly efficient manner to ensure that our speakers and audience were entirely safe from the loonies of Lune Street, had they been able to afford the bus fare up to Samlesbury – which of course they could not!
Hopefully we can hold another similar event next year, maybe in a different part of the country, but only time will tell.
Fascism, Women and Democracy – by Mosleyite veteran Norah Elam
Many British publications and institutions – including the National Archives, British Library, and universities throughout the UK – are celebrating Women’s History Month.
But few are likely to mention the fact that Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists was supported by many of the women who had previously been active ‘suffragette’ campaigners.
Among them was Norah Elam (1878-1961) who was imprisoned in 1914 for her militant campaigning in favour of votes for women, and was interned at the same London prison – Holloway – in 1940 because of her active role in Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists.
Though she lived with fellow Mosleyite Dudley Elam (who was similarly interned without trial under the notorious Regulation 18b) and she took his name, Norah was never actually married to him, as she could not obtain a divorce from the husband she had married in 1909, so legally remained Norah Dacre Fox.
Alongside her prominent role in the women’s section of the BUF, Norah Elam was also a militant campaigner for animal rights and against vivisection.
As part of H&D‘s contribution to Women’s History Month – and as a tribute to those women who continue to play important roles in the intellectual and practical leadership of racial nationalism – H&D is republishing online this essay by Norah Elam, first published in The Fascist Quarterly in 1935.
Fascism, Women and Democracy
“Experience shows that in all countries today democracy can develop its nature freely, the most scandalous corruption is displayed without anyone considering it of use to conceal its rascalities… Democracy is the land of plenty dreamt of by unscrupulous financiers.” – Georges Sorel, Reflexions sur la Violence.
To a genuine cynic who lived through the struggle for votes for women from 1906 to 1914, no spectacle is more diverting than the post-war enthusiast whose one obsession seems to be the alleged danger to enfranchised women in a Fascist Britain.
This unsuspected solicitude finds its most insistent champions in unlikely places, and those who were so bitter against the pre-war struggle have today executed a complete volte face. Our new-found patrons are second to none in their determination that women shall be denied nothing in principle, even if in practice they are to be denied most things essential to their existence.
To the woman who took part in that historic fight, and, regarding the vote merely as a symbol, believed that with its help a new and a better world might be possible, this kind of patronage is as distasteful as was that of a generation ago. She thinks, and with some justification, that it is humbug that those who in all those weary years never raised a hand to help her, but on the contrary were wont to describe her as an unsexed virago or a disappointed spinster, should in the hour of success endeavour to exploit her sex in the interests of a reactionary and decadent system. Such effrontery is possible only because those who resort to it entirely misunderstood and still misunderstand the meaning of that struggle, and construed the demand for political liberty as a desire for personal licence.
The time has come when the principles which underlay that remarkable and determined manifestation for ordered change, not only in the position of women but in the accepted attitude to them, should be restated.
What was it then, which underlay the passionate stirring that moved the hearts of thousands of women, and guided their heads, in those stormy years? It was not, as so many imagined, the ignoble desire of individual sex-interest, nor a struggle on behalf of women for their own sex alone. On the contrary, from the leaders to the most humble of the rank and file it was the fundamental belief, that in a world peopled by men and women and under a political system controlling the destinies of both sexes, the country which shut out from its councils the influence, viewpoint and talents of more than half its people, would be to that extent handicapped in working out the best system of government. If men were the victims of chaotic economic conditions, women suffered with them. If the social conditions under which men dragged out an almost hopeless existence were intolerable, they were equally so for their womenfolk.
Looking round on the great cities of their land, from north to south and from east to west, they saw housing conditions which man and woman agreed were a disgrace to modern civilization; watching the labour market, they gazed with apprehension on the spectre of insecurity which haunts the wage-earner and which is inherent in the old system. In the political field, they noted that, both in Home and Foreign policy, affairs were being conducted in such a manner as to strike terror into the heart of any person who cared deeply for Britain or realized the decadence that had already begun its erosion upon all parties of the State. They rose to demand that women should be called in on equal terms with men, to lend a hand before it was too late.
This uprising was in short a challenge to the old antagonisms and a call for co-operation in the corporate body of the State.
In this conception of practical citizenship, the women’s struggle resembles closely the new philosophy of Fascism. Indeed, Fascism is the logical, if much grander, conception of the momentous issues raised by the militant women of a generation ago. Nor do the points of resemblance end here. The Women’s movement, like the Fascist movement, was conducted under strict discipline, and cut across all Party allegiance; its supporters were drawn from every class and Party. It appealed to women to forget self-interest; to relinquish petty personal advantages and the privilege of the sheltered few for the benefit of the many; and to stand together against the wrongs and injustices which were inherent in a system so disastrous to the well-being of the race. Like the Fascist movement, too, it chose its Leader, and once having chosen gave to that Leader absolute authority to direct its policy and destiny, displaying a loyalty and a devotion never surpassed in the history of this country. Moreover, like the Fascist movement again, it faced the brutality of the streets; the jeers of its opponents; the misapprehensions of the well-disposed; and the rancour of the politicians. It endured the hatred of the existing Government, and finally the loneliness of the prison cell and the horror of forcible feeding. Its speakers standing in the open spaces and at the street corners were denied the right of free speech; it champions selling their literature spat upon and reviled; its deputations were manhandled. Suffragettes became the sport of any rowdy who cared to take the law into his own hands. To make the analogy the more exact, no calumny was too vile and no slander too base to set about the moral character of its leaders, or the aims and objects of the women who owed them allegiance.
Thus it came about that women welded together in such association had no illusions about political and party shibboleths, and when the sacred words “Democracy” and “Individual Liberty” were a commonplace on the lips of their detractors, they remembered that these things were done under a Liberal Administration, and by the champions of a Party which had made the democratic system the summit of its political wisdom. That under it, they were classed with criminals, lunatics and children. They argued and with some cogency, that if this were democracy then women had little to hope for from it.
Their experience as outlaws from the democratic system was as nothing compared with that which faced them, when they found themselves honoured citizens under its doubtful protection. They had earned, it is true, the right to individual liberty for a very brief space once every five years, but when they had put that fatal cross upon the ballot paper and closed the door of the polling booth behind them, from that moment they found themselves completely helpless before the democratic machine.
Though we shall be told that this was what we had fought for, a moment’s reflexion will show that this was regarded as but the symbol. Women never made the fatal error of imagining that because men voted they were necessarily free. It is the mark of the unintelligent woman today to suppose that a woman is free because she also votes, or that democracy can ever offer anything but the careful and organized exploitation of men and women who suffer it to exist.
Given the vote on a limited basis at the close of the War, women were also granted the right of entering Parliament, and the election in the late autumn of 1918 gave them their first opportunity. The Party system was already beginning to show the first signs of decay, and by the inexorable law of retributive justice, the Party which had given birth to democracy in Britain was in full retreat before its ungrateful offspring. Nevertheless, women in the first flush of their triumph turned to the then existing parties either as voters or prospective candidates.
My own distrust of Party politics made me chary of turning in this direction, and I preferred to stand as an Independent, going down with all the other women candidates on this occasion, save one. The exception was the Sinn Fein Countess Markievicz, who though a notorious and avowed enemy of Britain, found it a perfectly simple matter under the democratic system to secure election to the Parliament of the country which she had openly boasted that she would destroy, disintegrate and discredit. She was, if I remember rightly, returned unopposed. The next example was hardly more encouraging, for the first woman to be elected for an English constituency was an American-born citizen who had no credentials to represent British women in their own Parliament, save that she had married a British subject who found himself forced to the Upper House on the death of his father. Detractors of the Women’s Movement pointed with a hardly disguised satisfaction to this denouement, and were at pains to hold up this lady as a sorry specimen of feminine irresponsibility. They need not have been so personal, for she was no better and no worse than any other woman elected to the British House of Commons, as a result of years of effort and struggle of the militant women. It is a sorry fact, though none the less true, that the subsequent election of Party women to Westminster has not made one tittle of difference either to men or to women, and though many able women have joined the ranks of our elected representatives their influence has been wholly negligible on the destinies of Britain or her Empire. They, like their men colleagues, are simply cogs in the Party wheels of the democratic system, marching into the lobbies at the crack of the Party Whip, helpless before the Juggernaut of the official machinery which rolls on, crushing all initiative and independence before it, and reducing every person who owes it allegiance to a mere cipher for the carrying through of its policies and its measures. And if this be true of Parliament – and who can deny it? – it is even more true of the woman voter. She, too, is caught up in this inexorable system, a veritable slave to her Party organization.
To those who challenge this, the question must be put: What power has the woman member or the woman voter, under the present system, to alter any one policy of any government yet elected? Does the most enthusiastic admirer of the present system allege that women, no matter to what party they belong, are satisfied with the existing position of this country? Are they willing to see economic conditions whereby the employment figures have reached the incredible total of between two and three millions remain unchanged? Do they rest content with the spectacle of those derelict areas which strike despair into the heart of every living person? Are they indifferent to the decay of the agricultural districts and the plight of the farming industry and unconcerned with the appalling housing conditions which all parties alike deplore?
Turning to the vast field of Imperial and Foreign politics, is it to be contended that the bulk of British women desire to see the disintegration of the Empire, or the orientation of the present foreign policy of the alleged National Government, whereby pacts and commitments are being made in their names and in secret with the avowed enemies of this country, while at the same time we are being left defenceless, not only for the purposes of our own immediate defence, but if the need should arise to honour those commitments? Do we indeed know to what we are being committed; what this policy of collective security involves, or what is the sinister power which dictates it? “Democracy is the land of plenty dreamt of by unscrupulous financiers,” says Georges Sorel. Have enfranchised women any power to check a Home or a Foreign policy dictated for the purpose of making that dream a living reality? Let it be remembered that when the time comes to foot the bill, we shall be driven as sleep to the slaughter, helpless before the results of these policies. What is the value of so-called freedom if it cannot give us the power to alter these momentous issues?
If it be true that the average woman voter wants none of these things, why, if she be free under the democratic system, does she permit them? If she possesses this freedom, is she not doubly and trebly guilty in suffering them for one hour longer? This is the test of her claim to a responsible part in the government of her country. If she has gained the necessary power and liberty under the existing system, the charge that she is incapable of playing a citizen’s part in the affairs of her country, and is in fact unfitted for responsibility, is proved up to the hilt.
None of these things is true. The truth will be found in the fact that there is no freedom either for men or for women under the present antiquated system. What fetters both men and women is that the Party system is in decay, and this is the more noticeable since the granting of adult suffrage under an unbridled democracy. Throughout the world the same decadence has set in, by the inevitable march of time and circumstance, the change from a world of poverty to a world of boundless plenty makes ordered planning not only requisite but vital to existence. Under these changes the methods of the old world are obsolete and must give place to the new. If women are to be worthy of their place in the councils of the nation, they must face as realists the new world conditions which are gathering round them. Sooner or later they must choose. The decision is momentous, for upon it will depend the status of women for a considerable period of time. It is therefore no light matter that they should weigh well in the balance the history of the world.
There are two courses open to women. The first is that she should struggle on with the decaying system of the old world, content to be the handmaid of the professional politicians of the various parties to which she attaches herself. Of this it may be said that she has given it a long and faithful trial, and that if under it she could have accomplished any practical change in the direction of social, political or economic freedom, she has lamentably failed. She must now consider whether the fault lies within herself or within the system to which she still clings. In this connexion she will note that the separate parties are themselves gradually disappearing. The Liberal Party has passed into the twilight of the past; the Conservative Party is in rapid disintegration, and we know upon the assurance of its own Leader, that there is no hope of its regaining its independence. The same fate awaits the Socialist Party, since it too must travel along the same road which has sucked the other two parties under the quicksand of Social Democracy.
She must therefore look for some better system; one more in accord with modern conditions. What is to take the place of the tottering edifice of the past?
Every student of politics realizes that the issue now lies between Fascism and Communism. So far as British women are concerned, Communism makes little appeal. To go no further, it is the philosophy of destruction, and is the negation of the natural instincts of womanhood. It is the antithesis of every principle and practice which women value and require.
Fascism seems to be the only solution. It has within it every principle peculiarly suitable and adaptable to the genius of the British character. It offers real freedom and liberty to all men and women of goodwill towards this country. Lest there should be any misunderstanding, we shall define these so often loosely-used terms, in words with which no democrat will quarrel, for they are taken from that apostle of unadulterated democracy, John Stuart Mill.
“The sole end,” he wrote, “for which mankind are warranted individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others.”
This is precisely the Fascist conception of individual liberty, and it is obviously a conception that so far as women are concerned gives them every opportunity that they can legitimately require in their future status as women citizens. In no other system are these principles embodied. Moreover, in the machinery of the Corporate State, Fascism assures women an equal status with their menfolk, for it holds within it the only means whereby they will be enabled to direct and control the conditions under which they shall live; thus Fascism alone will complete the work begun on their behalf by the militant women from 1906 to 1914. In addition, it will rescue them from the vitiated atmosphere of corruption inherent in the Party system, and for the first time it will give an opportunity, through the machinery of their own special Corporations, tackling with some hope of success those great questions which so closely concern their own and their children’s lives.
In the economic field it will assure security with equal pay for equal work, that eternal bone of contention which has rent the sexes asunder with such dire results to industry.
In the social sphere, it removes all class barriers, while in the political, it gives justice and equality for the first time in the history of the Women’s struggle.
And most important of all, Fascism comes to lay for ever the haunting spectre of war, by removing the fundamental causes, which exist and have their being in Internationalism, an instrument forged for the purpose of enabling “unscrupulous financiers” to take advantage of that “land of plenty” called “democracy” of which they dream.
To enable all this to be accomplished, Fascism will require that women equally with men should offer a disciplined cooperation in the welding together of an ordered State, and Fascism will rightly lay upon all the citizens of the State the responsibility and the duty of working in harmony, not in the interests of any section or class but for the benefit of all its people. It will call upon women as upon men, to subordinate all selfish individual privileges, that the less fortunate may under its protection be safe from exploitation.
This is Fascism. All else is mirage. Is it to be said that British women cannot rise to this great occasion in the history of their country? Those who would bid them reject this opportunity are the enemies not alone of women, but of all progress and of civilization. Those women who endured the ordeal of the great struggle of pre-war days have at least learned the right to challenge the people who once again would enslave them in the subjugation of the past, and fetter them within a system which denies them all opportunity to play an honourable part in the necessary reorganization of their country. British women have never failed or faltered when Britain has had need of them. They too, with the men of their generation, will raise aloft the banner of British Fascism, and bearing it high above the turmoil and sordid quarrels of the Party system, will hasten that day which shall see their nation reborn. In that triumphant hour, they will have truly earned the proud right to pay homage to a regenerated and Great Britain, and to rest at last within the Peace, Security and Prosperity of her Sovereign People.
