Reclaiming May Day for European workers!
May Day was a traditional European festival long before it was hijacked by American Marxists in 1889.
Linked to the ancient celebration of Beltane (marking the midpoint between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice), May Day is marked in Germany by Walpurgis Night and in England by traditional dances.
One of the most colourful celebrations of Beltane is in Edinburgh, which for H&D readers had a special significance this year because our comrade Vincent Reynouard has been in Edinburgh prison for more than five months. (An interview with Vincent will appear soon on this website and in the July-August edition of H&D.)
Racial nationalists have rightly begun to reclaim May Day as a European festival, and to assert the reality that we are the true champions of European workers.
The so-called ‘left’ has long since surrendered to the demands of global capitalism. Mass immigration is championed both in the name of ‘wokeness’ and to provide cheap labour, directly undermining the wages and working conditions of Europeans.
Meanwhile the so-called ‘right’ sometimes talks about resisting mass immigration, but in reality its reactionary ideology is in many ways worse than the ‘left’, and is even more devoted to the exploitative values of global capitalism: anti-nature, anti-worker, anti-White, anti-European.
On May Day 2023 H&D‘s comrades around the world asserted the eternal values of racial nationalism – the true interests of European workers.
New party set to emerge from Patriotic Alternative
After several months of discussions over whether and when Patriotic Alternative should register as a political party, PA’s national administration officer Kenny Smith and his fiancée Claire Ellis have resigned to create a new party. They are backed by six regional organisers: Si Crane (Scotland), Anthony Burrows (East Midlands), Fraser Patterson (SE England), Laurence Somerset (SW England), Jerome O’Reilly (Wales), and Connor Marlow (West Midlands).
Their new organisation will be known as the Homeland Party. According to a statement issued on Thursday evening, 32 of PA’s 54 officials are quitting to join Homeland.
However, despite speculation in ‘anti-fascist’ circles, PA’s deputy leader Laura Towler and her husband, Yorkshire regional organiser Sam Melia, are supporting PA’s founder and leader Mark Collett, and at least two of the departing ROs have already been replaced.
Unlike earlier splits this seems to be a genuine difference of opinion over movement strategy, not a question of personal bitterness or allegations of impropriety.
In a letter circulated to senior activists on 12th April, Kenny Smith said that he had been concerned about the direction of PA since last December. He wrote of a failure of political direction; “no focus on community politics”; and “no real effort to get registered as a political party”.
He drew the conclusion that PA’s “overfocus on online streaming” meant that PA had become “a glorified social club”.
At first in this 12th April letter, Kenny stated that he would not be “joining any other organisation, but a week later (having been approached by numerous senior figures in PA) he has created the Homeland Party and states that he has the backing of 32 of the 54 PA officers.
The PA leadership’s response has essentially been to emphasise “business as usual”. Mark Collett and Laura Towler (alongside Eastern England regional organiser Steve Blake) addressed an online gathering of more than 60 supporters hosted by Radio Albion on 20th April. Laura maintained that much of the “split” talk amounted to “Chinese whispers” and that outside Scotland only seventeen people had confirmed their departure from PA.
H&D has no reason to doubt the honesty of the leaders of either side in this split. No doubt Laura was being strictly truthful in stating this on Thursday, but equally there’s no doubt that those seventeen will by now have taken significant numbers of PA supporters with them.
There’s good reason to hope that this will not be the sort of bitter division that has scarred our movement in the past, and that even when two separate groups are established – PA and the Homeland Party – they will form part of a racial nationalist movement that moves towards unity rather than atomisation.
PA is moving to a new membership structure but still seems a long way from registering as a political party with the Electoral Commission.
In a live stream broadcast on Thursday night, Mark and Laura addressed three key issues:
– PA’s vetting system; they did not wish to “do away with” the vetting system but felt that it had been applied in too strict a manner that had alienated some potential activists. Mark Collett wanted a more flexible system, allowing regional organisers more autonomy to adopt the level of security vetting they found appropriate.
– PA’s political direction; Mark resented the imputation that he is not interested in “community politics”; he points out that alongside his regular online streaming, he has himself been on the frontline in many demonstrations nationwide, including most recently the protests outside hotels taken over by “asylum seekers”;
– The paid position offered to Kenny; Mark and Laura said that as late as Monday and Tuesday this week, they had made offers to Kenny in an effort to retain his services with PA; however Kenny and some regional organisers appear to have lost confidence in PA’s national leadership.
PA leader Mark Collett has offered to accept any of the dissidents back into PA, but it seems likely that the outcome of these disagreements will be two separate organisations – one mainly focused on traditional politics including election campaigns, and the other working through podcasts, video streams and the like as well as public demonstrations.
In his own response to the PA crisis, also broadcast online to supporters, Kenny Smith emphasised the poor state of PA security when he was appointed and the undoubted fact that he had made dramatic improvements with the vetting policy, even though this was unpopular in some quarters.
Kenny points out that nationalism has become an “online world” where there is “a massive amount of fear”. He sees the vetting policy as an essential step in converting PA’s recruits into real world rather than online activists, and he stresses that this was never a matter of personal ambition or wages, but rather of acquiring the necessary authority to help taking the movement forward.
Part of the dispute within PA’s national leadership seems to be about the speed and scale of that conversion from the Internet to “real life”. On both sides, the proof will be in the extent to which “community politics” manages to put down real world roots, whether in electoral politics or in other forms of action.
H&D wishes both PA and the new Homeland Party well and looks forward to their complementary contributions to the essential cause of racial nationalism.
British patriots unite in anti-immigration protests
While Rishi Sunak’s fake ‘Conservative’ government attempts to repeat the traditional Tory con trick, British patriots have been increasingly active in taking to the streets for real anti-immigration campaigns. Yesterday in Cannock, Staffordshire, Patriotic Alternative held a protest march against the use of hotels and council facilities for illegal immigrants.
Members of other groups including the British Democrats, as well as unaffiliated locals, also attended.
In Cannock, following earlier protests across the UK, the protesters emphasised the difference between genuine refugees and economic migrants. Events have been held in very different parts of the country, ranging from Skegness to Liverpool, united in resistance to a policy that has been imposed on them by treacherous politicians and Whitehall bureaucrats.
As an earlier PA campaign stressed: “We were never asked!”
An especially positive aspect of recent campaigns has been the level of activism in Scotland: increasing numbers of Scots are rejecting the fake, ‘woke’ nationalism of Nicola Sturgeon’s declining SNP. One main focus of the current protests is Erskine, west of Glasgow, where the Home Office has dumped 200 young male asylum seekers in a local hotel. These migrants have no legal documentation and have yet to be vetted.
Understandably, locals are angry at having these illegal immigrants dumped in their midst. Especially in a council area where almost 400 indigenous Scots are registered as homeless.
Protests are taking place every Sunday at 12 noon near the Muthu Glasgow River Hotel, where the illegal migrants are being housed. Any H&D readers able to travel to Erskine are encouraged to attend.
UPDATE: H&D subscriber John Ings, who has been flying the flag for racial nationalism in Devon for many years, reports below on his long-distance trip to support the Cannock demonstration.
The Cannock protest on the 11th of March meant an early start, my alarm set for 0430 hours with a couple of pick-ups and a car change to allow for.
Once there, the police had arranged with the PA organisers a safe rendezvous site and an en masse march to the protest. Which was welcome as it helped against the cold weather.
It was a combined Patriotic Alternative and concerned locals event to raise the awareness of so-called, asylum seekers being housed in hotels. The eye watering cost to the taxpayers is well known of course, yet the finances are but one piece of the problematic jigsaw open borders cause, and I’m pleased that both the PA and local speakers did address the cultural and numerical aspects as well as the financial burden.
It was to our advantage that the protest was so well organised, as the flag waving PA protesters were able to walk into a charged arena to great applause and cheers from the locals and boos from the mentally-ill, unwashed counter-demonstrators. Who, by the way, seemed confused as to why they were there. Calling for things like “trans rights” for some reason. I’m not so sure the hotel-dwellers would be on the same hymn sheet as them.
It also meant that we could present ourselves as decent, concerned (and clean) people. I believe there were a few local hot-heads, but they were limited to shouting through the police line and were not part of the PA group. It does make me wonder if the authorities will learn a lesson from this and in future deliberately engineer physical confrontation in order to get their MSM anti-white propaganda. They certainly have past form for this tactic.
I never attended past National Front marches when at their peak and although this was not on the same scale, it certainly gave an appreciation of how energising they must have been: it did generate an adrenaline charged atmosphere.
Refreshingly, the locals were not cowed by the name calling by our craven low testosterone antagonists, and even cheered when our speakers mentioned white people’s concerns about the invasion. There was even crowd participation when called upon to respond.
There’s no doubt that the local support and a lively audience combined with the excellent PA speakers raised this protest to a more effective level.
I think we can gauge the measure of success by the cheers of the locals and that the MSM have ignored it. For me, I was pleased the usually apolitical public were excited and motivated by the protest, and this shows that old fashioned street activity is, as it always has been, the way to win. We just have to keep going and keep our optics positive.
It was a trek back home, but fuelled by pie and chips in the pub, well worth the effort.
Well done to Patriotic Alternative.
John Ings
Vincent Reynouard case latest: new warrant, delayed extradition hearing
French revisionist scholar Vincent Reynouard – who has been jailed in Edinburgh for almost four months despite not being accused of any crime under Scottish or English law – was handed further charges today while in the dock at Edinburgh Sheriff Court.
As with the previous charges, these have been issued by French prosecutors who are seeking Vincent’s extradition to be tried under the ‘Gayssot Law’, introduced in 1990 by a French Communist MP.
This bans the expression of sceptical historical views about the ‘crimes against humanity’ defined at the Nuremberg Trial and in the 1945 ‘London Charter’ that established that trial.
Most obviously, the Gayssot Law prohibits sceptical research into ‘Holocaust’ history, which is banned in several European countries, though perfectly legal in the UK.
Vincent Reynouard has previously been convicted several times of such ‘crimes’, and is best known for his investigation into the ‘Oradour massacre’ of June 1944. His published work about Oradour dates back to the 1990s, and he recently wrote a comprehensive investigation of this topic, now available (in French) from his website.
The latest warrant seems to reflect an admission by French prosecutors that they made an error in their initial warrant, under which Vincent Reynouard was arrested in Anstruther, Scotland, on 10th November last year. He has been held in Edinburgh Prison ever since his arrest.
An interview with Vincent Reynouard, by H&D‘s assistant editor Peter Rushton, will appear in the May-June edition of Heritage and Destiny. Vincent will next appear in court for a pre-trial hearing on 20th April, and the full extradition trial is presently scheduled for 8th June, again in Edinburgh.
Updates on the Vincent Reynouard case will appear here soon.
Sturgeon’s ‘trans’ obsession wrecks Scottish ‘nationalist’ project
Nicola Sturgeon yesterday announced her resignation as Scottish First Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party: she will remain in post until the SNP completes election of her successor, a process that will last for six weeks.
For several years Sturgeon (who took over the SNP from Alex Salmond in 2014) was rated as the most effective party leader in the UK – so much so that the Conservative Party succeeded at the 2015 general election by portraying then Labour leader Ed Miliband as a likely puppet of Sturgeon, in the event of a coalition government at Westminster.
When her embittered predecessor Salmond launched a rival party (Alba) two years ago, it proved a flop, failing to win a single election at any level.
But in recent months Sturgeon’s core project – Scottish independence, the SNP’s raison d’être – has seemed to be floundering. Opinion polls were starting to show that Scots would reject independence if offered a second referendum, and in any case such a referendum was not going to be offered until the present Tory government loses office in another couple of years.
Meanwhile Sturgeon had become obsessed by an increasingly weird ‘woke’ agenda, typified by the ‘Gender Recognition’ law that was passed by the Scottish Parliament but vetoed by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. (Under the present devolution arrangements, Scotland has devolved powers in some areas, but does not yet have the right to allow a man to call himself a woman and demand access to female facilities.)
This political row turned into a scandal when a convicted rapist, Adam Graham, was found to have been moved to a women’s prison having decided that he is now a ‘transgender woman’ called Isla Bryson.
Eventually Graham/Bryson was transferred back to a men’s prison, but the First Minister (usually a fluent media performer) struggled to answer interviewers who asked her whether she regarded this convicted rapist as being a man or a woman!
Polls show that the majority of Scots oppose Sturgeon’s ‘gender recognition’ law, and she had failed to win over even a majority of SNP voters on this issue.
No doubt there were other reasons contributing to Sturgeon’s decision to quit (including personal factors), but there’s little doubt that the ‘trans’ issue derailed her leadership, which depended on holding together a broad coalition in favour of independence, rather than incessantly pandering to the ‘woke’ lobby.
Sturgeon seems to have made the mistake of believing her own legend, and revelling in flattery from her acolytes in the left-liberal media.
Her own favoured candidate for the leadership is Humza Yousaf – from a Pakistani family and theoretically a Muslim, but who fully supports Sturgeon’s woke agenda and is a fellow Glasgow MSP, responsible for Health and Social Care in her cabinet. If Yousaf were to win, it would mean that Scotland’s two largest parties were both led by Pakistanis. (Anas Sarwar has been leader of the Scottish Labour Party for the past two years.) Another possible pro-Sturgeon candidate, who might have had more chance of reuniting the party, her present deputy Keith Brown, a former Royal Marine commando who served in the Falklands War, ruled himself out.
While Yousaf is fully on board with the woke agenda, another candidate who has already launched her campaign is Ash Regan, who was among the leading rebels against Sturgeon’s pro-‘trans’ policy. Regan is an Edinburgh MSP: she resigned from Sturgeon’s government in protest at the “gender recognition” plans. Regan has advocated reuniting Scottish nationalism and bringing Sturgeon’s old enemies back into the party, but has no chance of winning the leadership and is more likely to end up in the wilderness herself, possibly in some future alliance with Salmond’s Alba party.
One likely candidate not standing is the initial bookies’ favourite Angus Robertson, who led the SNP contingent in the House of Commons before losing his Westminster seat in 2017 and restarting his career in the Scottish Parliament. Robertson was disliked for years by the SNP’s left-wing because of his role a decade ago in changing the party’s defence policy to a more pro-NATO stance. It’s likely that today’s left cares more about ‘culture wars’, and after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine there is little support for anti-NATO policies outside the fringe of the fringe (whether left or right). But Robertson remains personally unpopular among many of his colleagues, and clearly found less support than expected.
It now seems that the main challenger to Yousaf is Kate Forbes, Secretary for Finance and the Economy in Sturgeon’s cabinet and presently on maternity leave. Her biggest problem is that she is a practising member of the Free Church of Scotland, which takes a conservative line on ‘culture wars’ issues such as the ‘trans’ debate. Fortunately for Forbes, she was on maternity leave during the Holyrood vote on gender recognition last December, but social liberals and the trans lobby will doubtless vote for Yousaf. Ash Regan’s candidature will allow Forbes to present herself as a relative moderate and ‘compromise’ candidate on social issues, but for now Yousaf is the bookies’ favourite.
[NB: An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the Free Presbyterian Church rather than the Free Church of Scotland.]
Vincent Reynouard extradition update
Yesterday there was another court hearing in Edinburgh on the case of Vincent Reynouard, the French revisionist scholar who despite having committed no crime under UK law, was arrested at his home in Scotland on 10th November. Since then he has been held in Edinburgh Prison.
The French authorities demanded Vincent’s extradition to face charges under their law which forbids challenges to orthodox versions of 20th century history, including the ‘Holocaust’.
Vincent Reynouard is best known for his detailed investigation of the alleged ‘massacre’ at Oradour, in west-Central France, on 10th June 1944, as well as further revisionist research and analysis that can be read at his website.
The law under which he would be tried in France (and under which he has previously been convicted and served a prison sentence there) was introduced in 1990 by the Communist MP Jean-Claude Gayssot and the Jewish Socialist former prime minister Laurent Fabius.
Its original target was the French scholar Professor Robert Faurisson who was prosecuted and heavily fined several times under the ‘Gayssot Law’, and its main target today is Vincent Reynouard.
The court in Edinburgh will have to decide whether Scottish law allows for a man to be extradited for something that is not a crime in Scotland – and the case is therefore an important test of the new extradition arrangements that replaced the European Arrest Warrant system after Brexit.
In 2008 the German authorities attempted to extradite the Australian revisionist Dr Fredrick Töben from London using a European Arrest Warrant, after he was arrested while in transit at London’s Heathrow Airport. However this extradition attempt was defeated in the London courts, and after several weeks detention at Brixton Prison, Dr Töben was freed to return home to Australia.
In Vincent’s case a further preliminary hearing is due on 9th March, with the full case presently scheduled to be heard (again in Edinburgh) on 6th April.
Further reports will appear soon, both here at the H&D site, in our magazine, and at the Real History blog.
Vincent remains in good spirits. H&D readers wishing to send him a letter of support (in English or French) should write to: Vincent REYNOUARD, Prisoner Number 160071, HMP Edinburgh, Scottish Prison Service, 33 Stenhouse Road, Edinburgh, EH11 3LN.
Change to German electoral system – is Sir Keir watching?
This week the German coalition government of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals began moves to reform the Federal Parliament (Bundestag) in what would be their country’s biggest constitutional shake-up for many years.
With electoral reform likely to be on the UK’s political agenda after the Conservatives almost certainly lose the next general election (due by January 2025 at the very latest) the choices made in Berlin are worth examining. Especially because their present government is ideologically very similar to a likely Labour-led coalition in the UK.
Germany has a hybrid system, with some MPs elected on a Westminster-style first-past-the-post system, but others elected via a top-up list so as to make the entire Bundestag represent the nationwide percentage share of the vote.
This hybrid system means that the Bundestag is not simply divided proportionally to match the parties’ share of the vote. For example, to gain proportionally-based seats, a party must poll at least 5% nationwide, or qualify for proportional top-ups if it wins at least three directly-elected seats. This happened recently with the far-left party Die Linke.
On the other hand, a party with a very strong regional base can end up winning more directly elected seats than a proportional carve-up would have given them. This is the case with Bavaria’s conservative party CSU. Extra seats are created to balance out such anomalies and are known as ‘overhang’ seats: these have meant that the present Bundestag is the largest ever, with 736 MPs.
This week’s proposed reform would eliminate ‘overhang’ seats, and fix the number of German MPs at 598.
At a basic level the reform is likely to be popular with voters, since it will save money and cut bureaucracy. And it’s a cunning move by the government because it will weaken the CSU. Even though CSU is the sister party of CDU, the present system of ‘overhang’ balancing takes no account of that, and gives an artificial boost to the combined CDU-CSU strength.
Reforming this would be likely to make any future conservative-led government more dependent on a deal with parties further to the right – presently AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) or whichever party succeeds AfD if it splits/declines. Unsurprisingly, the present reform is similar to a policy that the AfD itself promoted four years ago.
Here in the UK the party in a similar position to CSU (though very different ideologically) is Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party. The present electoral system gives the SNP grossly inflated importance at Westminster, relative to its share of the UK-wide vote. At the last general election SNP won 3.9% of the UK-wide vote, and 48 MPs (i.e. 7.4% of the House of Commons). The system almost doubled the SNP’s importance at Westminster, and this would be far more important in the event of no major party gaining a Commons majority, thus making Sturgeon and her allies kingmakers.
By contrast a more purely proportional system would probably give a populist/nationalist party (i.e. whatever replaces Reform UK and UKIP) more Westminster seats than the SNP. The other big winners from a change to a German-style system would almost certainly be the Greens.
Most importantly for racial nationalists, it would end the ‘wasted vote’ argument that has so far prevented many of those who sympathise with our ideas from voting for a racial nationalist party.
Happy St Andrew’s Day
H&D wishes all our Scottish and Ulster-Scots readers, a very happy St Andrew’s Day.
William Macleod, a former BNP member, writes from Newry, County Down:
In case you don’t know, St Andrew’s Day is held every 30th November, and is celebrated not just in Scotland, but by Scottish and Ulster-Scots folk all around the world.
In the early 1600s, Sir James Hamilton instituted a two-day Fair celebrating the occasion at Killyleagh, where he had his seat; the Belfast Benevolent Society of St Andrew has been providing philanthropic help to those in need for over 150 years; and St Andrew’s Parish Church in Glencairn, the historic seat of the Cunningham family in Belfast, was opened on St Andrew’s Day in 1971.
The historical Andrew was one of Jesus’ Apostles and was the brother of Peter. They were fishermen in Galilee (now part of northern Israel) and when Jesus approached them on the shore he said, “Come with me and I will make you fishers of men”.
After the Crucifixion of Jesus, Andrew continued to spread the Gospel message, but eventually he too was arrested, tried, found guilty and crucified, in the Greek city of Patras, around AD60.
St Andrew is traditionally held to have been martyred on a large X-shaped cross – which he asked his captors for – because he felt he was unworthy to be crucified on a “normal” cross in the same manner as Jesus was 27 years earlier.
So how did it come about that one of the Apostles, who lived and died in the Near East and never travelled anywhere near to Britain, became Patron Saint of Scotland.
According to Scottish tradition, the answer lies in a battle fought close by the East Lothian village of Athelstaneford in the Dark Ages.
An army of Picts under King Angus, with support from a contingent of Scots from Dalriada (the kingdom encompassing north-east Ulster and western Scotland), was invading Lothian (at that time still Northumbrian territory) and found themselves surrounded by a large force of Saxons led by Athelstan.
Fearing imminent defeat, Angus led prayers for deliverance and was rewarded by seeing a cloud formation of a white saltire (the diagonal cross on which St Andrew was martyred) against the blue sky.
King Angus vowed that if, with the saint’s help, he gained victory then Andrew would thereafter be the patron saint of Scotland. The Scots won and Andrew became Scotland’s saint, while his cross, white on a blue background became Scotland’s new flag.
The Saltire, as it is known, is believed to be the oldest national flag in Europe.
The story of the Battle of Athelstaneford and its legendary link to St Andrew and Scotland’s flag is told at the Parish Kirk in the East Lothian village. A monument telling the story of the Saltire flag was erected there in 1965.
It includes a battle scene, carved in granite, showing the two armies facing each other between the St Andrew’s Cross in the sky. A Saltire is permanently flown from the flagstaff beside the monument.
In 1996, a doocot (Scots for dovecote) behind the kirk, first built in 1583, was restored and converted into the Flag Heritage Centre, where visitors can enjoy a short audio-visual presentation of the traditional origins of Scotland’s flag. An adjacent viewpoint affords views over the reputed battlefield. If you enjoy history and are ever in the area, it is well worth a visit.
When I was living in Glasgow during the 1980s and ’90s, I attended a number of St Andrew’s Day Rallies organised by the British National Party (BNP) and heard both John Tyndall and Richard Edmonds speak a couple of times. They were good days and hope it’s not too long in the future before nationalists (and I mean true racial-nationalists not the phoney nationalists of the SNP, who are a really sad and pathetic bunch) can again reclaim St Andrew’s Day, and the Saltire flag for the real Scots.
French scholar arrested in Scotland by ‘anti-terrorist’ police
French revisionist scholar Vincent Reynouard was arrested in Scotland on Thursday 10th November. He is presently in an Edinburgh prison cell, where he will remain at least until 23rd February next year, when a court will determine whether he should be extradited to France, where he would be jailed under that country’s laws restricting historical and scientific enquiry. (There will be a further hearing in Edinburgh on 8th December this year, but the main case will not be heard until February.)
Vincent Reynouard built his scholarly reputation with a detailed re-examination of what had been termed the ‘Massacre of Oradour’, and went on to become one of the world’s leading sceptical investigators of the ‘Holocaust’. Francophone readers should visit his excellent website.
British and American readers might be shocked that a specialist squad of police from SO15 – the Counter-Terrorism Command, directed from London – swooped on a small Scottish village to arrest this 53-year-old scholar, who is not accused of anything that would be a crime in the UK.
Yet in fact this is simply the latest example – though an especially important example – of an increasing trend across Europe, where politicised courts and prosecutors, aided by politicised police forces and intelligence agencies, are seeking to crush any dissent and enforce a quasi-religious obedience to one particular view of 20th century history.
We shall report on the case as it develops. Scottish readers able to assist Vincent should contact H&D as soon as possible.
15th November update: As a sequel to my article about Vincent Reynouard’s arrest, this morning I expose the background of the veteran politician who acted as intermediary, lobbying the British authorities to spend time and money pursuing this law-abiding French scholar.
There is no “anti-nazi law”: the French authorities are seeking Vincent Reynouard’s extradition under a law banning critical enquiry into ‘Holocaust’ history. No such law exists in the UK and it is shameful that Police Scotland collaborated in this arrest.
The Monarchy, Football and the Movement
It should not surprise many of us that the recent death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was marked by mockery and disrespect from many in the Irish, Scottish and Scouse Republican movements, including some Shamrock Rovers supporters singing sick songs during a European game against Djurgården at Tallaght Stadium in Dublin; and a motorcade and fireworks in Londonderry, probably organized by the Saoradh party, and/or Republican Sinn Fein who are linked to the New IRA or Real IRA. Other outbreaks of Republican celebrations at the news of the Queen’s death were reported from Belfast, Glasgow and Liverpool.
What was very surprising was the booing and chants of F*** the Queen, by a small group of Hearts supporters. An impromptu minute’s silence before the second half of Hearts’ clash with İstanbul Başakşehir had to be cut short by the referee after some supporters jeered and shouted obscenities. However, they were drowned out by Hearts Loyalists who sang “God Save the Queen”. Hearts was always regarded as a “Loyalist club”, but recently more and more young SNP supporters have been turning up at Hearts games.
At the two European games that went ahead in England on Thursday evening at the London Stadium (West Ham United) and Old Trafford (Manchester United), the minute’s silence was observed immaculately. I watched the Manchester United game in my local pub and you could have heard a pin drop. Full credit to the Manchester United supporters for their respect (even though the club is known to have a sizeable left-wing republican following.)
At the London Stadium, West Ham United fans (who – unlike Manchester United – have a large ‘right-wing’ Loyalist following) sang the National Anthem a number of times during the game. And full credit to the Hammers as well.
Very wisely, all football in the UK was called off this weekend but will resume again on Tuesday.
God only knows what would have happened at Anfield and Parkhead, where a large percentage of Liverpool and Celtic fans are known for their pro-republican / anti-Royalist views (very ironic in the case of Liverpool FC, which is a club founded by Conservative/Unionist Orangemen! – see H&D #109 for a review of the book Merseyside’s Old Firm).
There was an interesting statement from Michelle O’Neill, Northern Ireland’s first minister in waiting, and vice-president of Sinn Fein (which is the political wing of the IRA), the day after the Queen’s death.
O’Neill (whose uncle was an IRA terrorist and has no time for the Royal Family) has appealed for her people (i.e. Irish Republicans) to be respectful following the death of the Queen. She made her comments after being asked about reports of footage on social media which appeared to show a cavalcade of cars and fireworks being lit in apparent celebration following the Queen’s death.
Some anti-Royalist graffiti, mocking the Queen’s death had also appeared on walls in Belfast, Londonderry and Newry in Northern Ireland, as well as in Dublin in the Irish Republic.
O’Neill said: “This is a time for everybody to be respectful. …Queen Elizabeth has died, there is a family that is mourning her loss. …At the end of the day, she may have been the Queen of England, but she was also a mother, a grandmother, I think people should be very respectful.”
Interesting words from O’Neill, especially about Queen Elizabeth being “Queen of England”. Obviously, we know O’Neill does not recognize the Monarchy as head of Northern Ireland, but now she has extended this to take in Scotland and Wales as well!
Asked about jokes about the death of the Queen on social media, O’Neill replied: “The British people, people from a unionist identity here are grieving her loss and I think everybody should be very respectful of that and not engage in anything that is anything other than respectful. …I don’t think it’s appropriate for anybody to be engaged in any kind of jokey-type behaviour, someone has died and I think it’s important that we are all respectful.”
O’Neill was speaking after signing the book of condolence at Belfast City Hall for the Queen – as my old friend JR from the States would say: “You just could not make this sort of thing up”!
Most of us will take O’Neill’s comments with an extra-large pinch of salt, as she and her party are our enemy, just as the SNP are, and under a British nationalist government they would all be banned.
However, what is surprising – to me anyway – is the amount of abuse, and mockery, and in some cases pure hatred aimed at our late Queen and her family, not by Irish or Scottish republicans or deranged plastic Mickies in Liverpool (we expect that), but by some so-called British racial-nationalists. It’s really incredible (and in some cases quite upsetting) what many of these Facebook/Twitter warriors from ‘our side’ have been posting on social-media since Thursday evening.
Some sanity did return yesterday, when one of our subscribers – a long-standing racial-nationalist activist from Scotland – posted this reply to them on Facebook. And to use the old adage – “I could not have put it better myself”.
“As an individual I have never been remotely interested in the Royal Family. Granted, as a British patriot I do enjoy the pomp and circumstance, tradition and pageantry that goes with many of the Royal occasions. However, as a Pagan, neither do I have any religious attachment to the Church be it Anglican, Scottish or any others. But across these isles many of my friends and comrades, particularly here in Scotland and over in Ulster, have strong religious beliefs and identify with the monarchy as head of these churches. I respect that entirely and I know that recent events have meant a lot to them. I am however sad that some in our movement have chosen to mock and demean fellow comrades simply for expressing a loss that means so much to them. I like to think I am an ‘O come all ye faithful’ racial nationalist – in that if you are Protestant or Catholic, Pagan or Christian Identity, Royalist or otherwise and you can equate your beliefs with the 14 Words then that is fine by me. So I finish by saying surely there are sometimes people should think twice before they let their bellies rumble, dividing comrades, and just haud yer wheesht – Haud yer weesht (Ed- in English it means shut your mouth or be quiet!)”
His statement brought in some replies (see below) from other long-standing racial nationalists.
“I’m almost the same, a lot of my friends are devoted Monarchists and I am not, I am not a fan of any of them, however I am keeping a respectful silence because I think love or loathe them, you can’t blame the woman for the shameful behavior of her progeny and when she passed people have to remember that she was a mother, grandmother to someone, so as I said I will remain silent!”
“On October 20th 1954, I took the Queen’s Shilling and gave in return a solemn oath of allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. I have never wavered from that standpoint. Even since leaving HM’s Forces I have remained loyal. My stance has often met with less than sympathy from various sources, including members of my own family. I deplore the actions of such Royals as Prince Harry and the revolting creature he married. But that in no way detracts from my continued loyalty to the Monarchy, now extended to King Charles III. Long live the King!”
“I agree with you 100% comrade. Some of the ‘Facebook warriors’ attacks on our brothers, just because they support something that we may not wholeheartedly support ourselves, is very disrespectful and sad. No wonder our little movement is in the sad state it’s in.”
As Peter Rushton quite correctly pointed out on Thursday evening on the H&D website, shortly after the Queen’s death was announced: – “Now is not the time for detailed political and constitutional discussion, nor for speculation as to whether the monarch could realistically have done anything to prevent some of the disastrous policy decisions made by governments of different parties during her reign. But we can all wish King Charles III well, and hope that he presides over a very different, revitalised political scene in the years to come.”
The time for such a discussion on the British racial-nationalist movement’s stand on the monarchy will come, and will be thoroughly debated within the pages of H&D magazine – but not this year.
