BLAIR SPEAKS OUT

‘Look at the funds it receives. Examine the education systems that succour it. And then measure, over the years, the paucity of our counter-attack in the name of peaceful co-existence. We have been outspent, outmanoeuvred and out-strategised'.

TONY BLAIR, speaking to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy,

IN A SPEECH DELIVERED IN NEW YORK to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Tony Blair delivered an original appraisal of the current conflict between the West and Islamism. His thesis is that the liberal West should challenge the ‘narrative’ that we in the West have encouraged extremism because of our ‘oppression’ of  Muslims.

            There are, for instance, many sane Western citizens who actually believe that the CIA, or some other Western agency, was behind the 9/11 atrocity in New York. Of course such people follow a liberal agenda, but this does not make them (despite behaviour to the contrary) crackpots.

            The narrative Blair speaks of  is the one that insist that the West’s actions have spawned Islamic extremism and we, and we alone, are to blame. For a liberal society of the likes of which we live in today, it is a seductive and wholly believable concept.

            Within such a society still suffering the hangover from our colonial past, political correctness, if nothing else, is sympathetic to such a narrative. We have become, after all, a nation whose liberals’ self-flagellate whenever a particular minority brings up imperialism, colonialism, and racism. So when Muslims blame us for their extremism the old guilt-ridden formula works a charm.

            We even have something called a ‘hate crime’ to silence those who wish to speak freely in the language they feel comfortable with. But then it was none other than Tony Blair himself who oversaw the promotion of such an expression to a point where the minimal of objections to the numbers of Muslims allowed to live among us faced criminal prosecution.

            It has been the parrot call of liberal politicians from all parties, that those supporting Islamism comprise a small minority of the 1.5 million Muslims living among us; and Tony Blair has always been agreeable to such an observation. But this has been the standard reply by our politicians to every atrocity committed by Islamic terrorists on our soil.

            So frightened have our politicians been of offending any minority in our multicultural society that we have become nervous Nellie’s of any criticism of any minority; and Tony Blair himself is as much to blame for this sorry state of affairs as the people he points a finger at in his lecture.

WHAT THE LAST LABOUR GOVERNMENT DID from 1997 onwards, was too use all minorities as a cosh to bludgeon the Tories with and accuse them of racism if they dared criticise Labour’s immigration policy, which was to more or less open up our borders.

            Tony Blair’s speech was a good speech, but needed to be delivered by someone other than himself. For the speech will be read and ignored because of the author, who is deeply unpopular in this country.

            This country and the whole of  Europe have sought to integrate the West with Islam via Turkey. But it has failed. For every overture made to Islam by the West is seen as weakness by the Muslim world – and why?

            Because the Muslim world seeks to do what Christianity once sought to do, which is to bring its religion to the whole world. Like Christianity, Islam is also a proselytising religion, but one that, in the 21^st  century, is prepared to use  16^th century methods of proselytising  to secure its religious hegemony in the modern world.

            Yet our liberals still seek compromise with this faith. I almost wish that Islam would become the victor and destroy the weak-willed liberal enemy.

            However, such a conquest would also endanger the traditional majority in England who knew what was afoot but were silenced by political correctness backed up by the law of the land through its discovery of the concept of ‘hate crimes’.

WE WERE ONCE A NATION that only harboured white skinned people, whether they were Romans, Saxons, Vikings or Normans. But all such intruders faced an enemy prepared to fight, and much blood was spilt before they conquered. In other words, at every level we resisted their conquest.

            Yet we have allowed to live among us freely (without any kind of military resistance of the type shown throughout our history) , minorities galore, despite the quiet resistance of the majority of the British people. But, as on other issues, the wishes of the majority of the British people, are held in abeyance to the wishes of the liberal consensus.

            Tony Blair’s reasoning is sound, but he did little to remove islamists from London mosques. Indeed, the French referred to our capital city as Londonistan, because of the Islamic militants it harboured: Tony Blair has shown very little fortitude of the type he now challenges the West to show toward militant Islam.

THE TEACHING OF LIBERAL HISTORY

‘We have a situation where standards have been so dumbed down that even the children know it.

‘When I give them past exam papers to do from 1998, they groan and beg for a 2005 or 6 paper, because they know it’ll be easier.’

KATHARINE BIRBALSINGH (a deputy Head Teacher and ex-Marxist)

PERHAPS THE GREATEST GIFT A NATION CAN give its children is a sound and academically challenging education, where teachers command respect from parents and

pupils alike, and are able to enforce classroom discipline.

            All of the above, one would have thought, needed no clarification. After all, such sentiments have been the backbone of any system of education for hundreds of years. Even today you would be hard pressed to find any member of the education profession who could find any measure of disagreement with such a credo.

            Yet none of it seems to apply any longer in our state education sector, and has not done so for several decades. Slippage has been allowed to occur in our schools through well intended, but destructive new methods of teaching and learning.

            There is no doubt that there was much that was unfair in the old eleven-plus system, but it did allow the gifted working class pupil a chance at higher education through the system of grammar schools. These schools provided and still do, on a smaller scale, opportunities for those pupils whose parents could not afford a private education for their children and whose talents would have otherwise gone to waste. A wastage the country could not afford.

            It was a Labour government, many of whose leaders benefited from such a system, who eventually condemned it in favour of comprehensives. It was the beginning of the downward slide that still continues today.

KATHARINE BIRBALSINGH is a deputy headmistress and ex-Marxist who voted Tory for the first time in this year’s General Election. She gave a speech at this week’s Tory conference in which she tore into the state of modern state education, blaming in part the power of the teaching unions in the educational remit of our children. A remit often endorsed by Labour governments.

            It is the job of the teaching unions to look after the interests of their member’s pay and conditions. They should have no authority over the way our children are taught. The voters decide this by electing governments. If, for instance, this Coalition wished to increase the number of grammar schools, it is none of the teaching union’s business. If it were, there would be no point in people voting for any kind of government if a particular union overrides the democratic decision making.

            Since the system of comprehensive education was first introduced by the then Education Secretary Shirley Williams, the unions have been allowed, by the politicians, to intrude upon the standards and methods of teaching, as well as what is taught. The unions have invaded the terrain of educational standards; a topography that should be free from the union’s political prejudices.

            The unions object to ‘ability’ teaching and are supported by the academic educationalists who taught them the practices of the comprehensive system.

            According to Ms Birbalsingh, children today, ‘live in darkness, without any idea of how they compare to those around them, let alone to those who are educated in the private sector’.       Is this what Shirley Williams intended? Of course not, but only under a comprehensive (egalitarian) system could such a folly achieve such grandeur.

            But it is not only the basic standards of education that is at fault, but also what is taught to our children. The Education Secretary, Michael Gove  mentioned in his speech at the Tory Party conference, the teaching of history which has been traduced by liberalism in compliance with European identity.

            British history had been put on the back burner throughout the last government’s tenure, as if it had been something the people of this nation has to feel ashamed of. So much so that Mr Gove said that children were given, ‘‘a cursory run through Henry VIII, and Hitler at secondary’ before giving up the subject at 14.’

            He has now invited the historian Simon Shama to advise him into once more putting history back on the curriculum: but I fail to see why Mr Gove needs such a presence to encourage what was once for centuries, second nature to any teacher of history.

THE TEACHING OF OUR HISTORY in schools has fallen fowl, like every other aspect of our culture, to Europe. The last government diminished the place of history in the curriculum, not only because of our colonial past, but also because of our historical conflicts with Europe.

            British history, to the last government, became the great embarrassment and was therefore pared to its absolute minimum culminating in the teaching of the war against racist Nazism, which exemplified the profile they wished to teach the next generation in a multicultural society. Thus was the historical emphasis in our schools of the Second World War.

            Ms Birbalsingh is right when she says, ‘League tables tell you nothing about how good a school really is, just how good the school is at playing the system and picking the easier exams,’ The League tables introduced by the last government allowed for exactly this.

            Nothing of any educational significance is measured by such a system except the creative ability of teachers to ‘play the system’.

WHAT WE HAVE EXPERIENCED IN EDUCATION  since the middle of the 1960s has been the gradual dumbing down of standards in order to prove the comprehensive theory. Even One Nation Conservatism went along with the experiment despite the many reservations held by their own backbenchers at the time .

            The more one reads and learns about the last government, the more one realises the extent of the damage they have inflicted on this nation. In every sphere of economic and social activity they have meddled in, they have botched it up and left the country in a poorer state than they found it in 1997 – but they will be back again in five years time (or before) to seek power once more, without so much as blush on their thick-skinned faces.

            

Geert Wilders is no Nazi

THE ANTI - ISLAMIST DUTCH MP, GEERT WILDERS has gone on trial for inciting hatred against Muslims. He has compared the Koran to Mein Kampf and faces up to a year in jail, or a 7,600 euro fine. His presence in court is the result of an appeal against an earlier judicial ruling that found he had committed no crime that he had to answer for under Dutch or, presumably, European law.

            Mr Wilders is popular in Holland (and, no doubt, throughout the rest of Europe), having been described by almost all other parties and most of the media as being an extreme Right-winger; a nickname that would no doubt find sympathy in this country among our own political elite from all parties as well as all of the written and visual media; just as it has done in Holland - such is the fear of our political elites, of Islam.

            Geert Wilders has spoken up for the ordinary European citizen who still see themselves belonging to a nation state rather a mere canton of Europe.

            Mr Wilders is not a Nazi as his many liberal detractors seek to label him. If he were he would be demanding that all racial minorities should face eviction from Holland.

            In France, for instance, they are currently, and rightly, seeking to send the Roma community back to Romania. Why therefore is President Sarkozy not standing where Mr Wilders’ is, in some courtroom somewhere in Europe.

            The fact is, is that both politicians are in touch with their people’s concerns, unlike the EU commissioners who are a bureaucratic entity devoid of democratic legitimacy.

GEERT WILDERS has struck a chord with his people and he, despite his somewhat comical Aryan physical appearance, is right. Islamism is the West’s enemy. It is more potent an enemy than Communism ever was because the West has allowed itself to be flooded with followers of Islam by guilt ridden liberals, who to this day feel some kind of culpability for the colonial past their ancestors unleashed upon the world.

            We in the West have tortured ourselves with guilt about our imperial past. In so doing we  have sought an ideal that would hopefully accommodate all cultures. This we, in Great Britain, introduced as multiculturalism, and through its ideology we allowed a multiple of other cultures to live among us as cultural equals, leaving the indigenous culture as a mere equivalent to other cultures, in a land that for thousands of years we called our own.

            If ever there was a concept that would cause, at its mildest, disharmony, then it was the wretched and destructive concept of multiculturalism. Different cultures mean different ways of life. Ways of life that have much significance to those who live the way of life that, in the case of this country, we have fought over for centuries to hold on to.

            Mr Wilders is not the Nazi that the liberal Left wants us to believe he is. What he is against has nothing to do with the colour of a person’s skin, but the person’s culture.

WE LIVE IN A WESTERN CULTURE, and any other citizen of any other culture must accommodate themselves with it if they wish to be part of it. This is Wilder’s message. A message which will hopefully lead to some kind of harmony within, not a multicultural society, but a Western society. Multiculturalism delivers only disdain for the indigenous culture and its colonial past and leads to social conflict.

            Multiculturalism is, like all other liberal creations, well intended and idealistic, but runs dangerously against the tide of public opinion.

            What Geert Wilders seeks to accomplish is the continuance of a mono-cultural Holland, irrespective of the colour of the skins of those who seek admittance to Dutch citizenship. Mr Wilders seeks only the hegemony of Dutch culture. As such he believes that he is anti-multicultural, just as I hope  most British citizens are.

            We had the opportunity of making a multiracial society work; a society I believed could have worked but was displaced in this country by multiculturalism. Multiracialism could have united the different ethnic minorities with the indigenous white majority if those minorities accepted that the indigenous culture that they chose to live within, was to be the dominant one. It would have meant that all minorities had to obey our laws customs and traditions…our culture, and our culture alone, would have been the preeminent one that stood above all others; and if this was not acceptable to any particular minority then they were free to return to their own preeminent cultures in whatever part of the world they were practised.

            Under such conditions we could have moulded a multiracial society in which minorities were free to come and go, and where the indigenous population could hold on to their own culture, putting it before all others.

            But our politicians, both here and throughout Europe decided to downgrade their indigenous cultures and make them equal to whatever other culture came to live among them; leaving a feeling of bitterness among their peoples. A bitterness that was the outcome of European politicians’ promotion of multiculturalism. Is it any wonder that the ordinary European citizens seek policies further to the Right than any mainstream party or politician is prepared to go?

GEERT WILDERS should not be on trial, but rather our own politicians. Fortunately stupidity is not a crime, if it were most if not all European politicians would be where Mr Wilders is today.

            His attack on Islamism is fully justified, and has been since the events of 9/11. The Islamic faith still lives in the medieval world - a world Christianity escaped from via the Reformation and Enlightenment. Today Islamism is the enemy of the West, as Islam was in the past. Today Islamism recruits from the West, from countries like France, Britain and Germany. It is able to do so because of the 15 million Muslims they can chose from now living in Europe.

            Our politicians are frozen by fear of the numbers of Muslims they have allowed to live among us. Decisions are being made by politicians on basis of not upsetting the Muslim community.

            In Britain, for instance, this has taken the form of not disclosing the numbers of Taliban dead in Afghanistan, for fear of unsettling the I.5 million Muslims living among us.

            I can only assume that what our politicians hoped for with multiculturalism was that (in an inverted form of snobbery) that those other cultures, once having been introduced to the Western ideal, would quickly vacate their own centuries of culture in favour of ours. Is this what multiculturalism hoped would happen?

            Mr Wilders will have his day in court, and probably his year in prison. For I do not think that he will miss the opportunity of martyrdom. The ineptitude of European politicians, elected and unelected, knows no bounds.

            This whole continent including that part of which my country belongs, has never been so ill served by the politicians that govern them today. They have all gambled on a throw of the dice called multiculturalism, and have lost.

           

            

The Commissar and The Beloved Leader

THE REGIONAL ORGANISER OF the Rail Maritime and Transport Union (RMT), Steve Hedley has been detained by British Transport Police following an incident on an RMT picket line, involving an attempt by Commissar Hedley to prevent Tube workers from going to work.

            It seems that the Commissar (as my moniker suggests) is an old-fashioned and unabashed Marxist who talks of class consciousness and of his members being a “formidable fighting force”, as if they were a ready-made army doing his and Bob Crows bidding. Like Arthur Scargill, who was the last trade union leader to send his “troops” to the trenches with its inevitable outcome, both the Commissar and the Beloved Leader, comrade Crow, are about to embark on another attempt at bringing down a government (sorry, Coalition).

            When characters such as these two are involved in industrial action, it is not about any perceived injustice (which they assume to represent) inflicted on the members by an evil employer; although the members themselves believe they are being treated unjustly and to them this is the one and only issue involved in their action.

            But Hedley and Crow have, as all Marxists have, a hidden political agenda which is as far away from what their members are after as the sun is from the earth. I do not believe for one moment that the membership of the RMT share their leaders dreams of a socialist state. They have seen how such a venture has failed throughout that part of the world that was once communist, bringing only rationing, cruelty and censorship.

            Even today we hear from Cuba that employees of the state can no longer depend upon a job for life, as the island bows to the inevitable and seeks to join the modern world. But the likes of Hedley and Crow still believe in jobs for life for their members.

            The RMT members, because of the age old electoral apathy among union members, have sadly been landed with the likes of Bob Crow as their leader and spokesman. Indeed they probably see him as a figure who is prepared to go the last mile on their behalf without realising that he has a hidden agenda.

THE FACT IS, LIKE THE CUBANS, those working in any sector of the economy, but particularly those working in the public sector cannot expect a job for life. The private sector in this country began adapting to this over 20 years ago. Now the public sector has also to adapt to technological advances as well as the economic cut-backs needed to reduce our dangerous economic deficit.

            As far as the RMT  are concerned, they want to hang on to some 800 ticket office and station staff , when, according to the employers’ technology, would be more efficient and save the system money.

            This is a dilemma as old as industrialisation itself.  I assume both the Commissar and The Beloved Leader Crow, would be familiar with Historical Materialism, Marx’s philosophy of  the dialectical process of economic development.

            Marx believed himself not only a revolutionary but a modernist. He admired capitalism’s technological advance, but sought, on behalf of the industrial working class, to remove the profit motive that drove its development but left poverty in its wake in the 19^th century. A measure he believed that would require nothing less than an assault on human nature through revolution.

            How wrong he proved to be; and how wrong he would have admitted to have been if he lived today. Removing the profit motive in the 19^th century, seeing what it had done to human kind then, would have led any rational human being concerned with society to either bless Marx or the kind of social democracy, that materialised with the Labour Party.

            As  it turned out the revolutionary road that was to have been orchestrated by the Marxian dialectic has proved false. I think that if the old man came back and saw what Capitalism, tempered by social democracy has achieved without the need for the likes of Commissar Hedley and The Beloved Leader Crow, then I think Marx would have had the grace to admit he fell short of the mark - and shoot himself.

THE RMT MEMBERS who are striking cannot turn back the tide of technological development. To succeed in doing so would only retard development itself: not all change turns out to have been beneficial; but change, nevertheless has to occur regardless of its impact. The RMT was after all an amalgamation of three unions, all of whom were losing members fast.

            If Castro’s Cuba can at last understand this process, then why on earth cannot the RMT? The answer appears to be that the union is being lead by a man who believes, despite all historical evidence to the contrary, that the state is the best overlord of the economy. He hates private wealth and profit, despite the fact of his six figure salary and gold plated pension surpasses anything his members can accumulate in a lifetime of work.

            While hating all the works of the City of London, he no doubt relies upon its alchemy to secure his retirement. Hypocrisy springs to mind when The Beloved Leader Crow speaks of  working class values.

            The RMT cannot and should not win this strike. If they do succeed then it will be due to weak management of the type that nearly helped reduce our country’s status to that of a third world economy during the 1970s.

SPARTIST HOLDS BBC TO RANSOM

BBC EMPLOYEES REPRESENTED BY THE NUJ, BECTU AND UNITE, are set to blackout our screens when David Cameron makes his conference speech next week. The unions are calling out ‘our members’ to protect their golden pensions that the license fee payer has subsidised. The timing of the series of strikes is however, ‘purely coincidental’ according to Ian Pollock, a junior journalist at the BBC, and a member of the NUJ, who seems to be the spokesman for his union on the forthcoming suicide.

            Many of the BBC’s most famous names have decided to put pen to paper to write a spirited defence of free speech and impartiality at the world’s greatest self-regarding broadcasting institution. The likes of Huw Edwards, Jeremy Paxman, Jim Naughtie, Nick Robinson and Jon Sopel have all signed the following missive:

            “Dear all, [the unions]

                        We would like to raise our serious concerns about holding a 48-hour strike during the Conservative party conference including on the day of the prime minister’s speech – it risks looking unduly partisan – particularly when none of the other party conferences have been targeted.

            Impartiality is the watchword for the BBC’s political coverage, and we would not wish to give a misleading impression that this is something we no longer value highly.

            This is no comment on the proposed retrospective changes to the pension scheme which has caused widespread anger in the BBC, not is there any disagreement with the principle of strike action.

            However, we are clear that the choice of strike dates is counterproductive.

            We understand that there have been discussions about this issue at branch level but many of us were unable to attend because we were working at the other party conferences, hence this letter to make our position clear”.

THIS ALMOST CRINGING AND WEAK SPIRITED defence of the journalistic ideal by journalists whose interviewing techniques with politicians often boarder on the ruthless (much to the public’s pleasure):  but whose standards have now fallen well short of this paradigm as they go cap in hand to their trade union brethren to plead for absolution for crossing the much sanctified picket line. How any politician can fear these people after such a wilfully insipid offering as a defence of their profession is beyond comprehension.

            Where by the way were the likes of John Humphrey, and Andrew Marr? Their names do not  appear on the roll call of the BBC’s great and good at the bottom of this correspondence. Were they asked to sign this pitiful communiqué?

            The BBC has always had a Left of centre bias, just as every public service institution will always have to have in this country. The private sector is often seen as the sector that harbours the greedy capitalist by those working in the public sector.

            This is especially true of one Ian Pollock, the NUJ representative mentioned above. It is to the likes of him that our crème de la crème of  BBC journalism addressed their letter; a letter which invoked  the following response from Mr Pollock:

            “Hi,

            According to the records of the London BBC branch…11 signatories do not appear to be members of the NUJ.

            Taken alongside the recent 9-1vote for strikes it is clear where the concerns of the vast majority of NUJ members lie; with their pensions and not with any temporary inconvenience to day-to-day broadcasting.

            In addition, the points you raised have received almost no support ag recent union meetings.

            Your letter therefore conveys a tiny minority concern.

            Frankly, I do not take kindly to non-members trying to unpick democratically taken decisions of the NUJ.

            There is a simple fact that you appear to be overlooking: the other political conferences would have been too but fell without our scope because of the long-winded niceties of calling strikes.

            Not one NUJ member anywhere, to my knowledge, has suggested we target the Tories ‘because we don’t like them’. They simply happen to be in the first line of any number of high profile broadcasting events.

            If you have any better tactical suggestions for conducting the strikes then all NUJ representatives will be glad to hear them.

            But I tell you that taking Shaun the Sheep cartoons of the air will not cut the mustard.

                                                            Ian Pollock, NUJ BBC London. Branch chairman”

I ALMOST ADMIRE COMRADE POLLOCK after reading the plea from the BBC’s finest that sought to butter him and his ilk up within broadcasting house. At least Ian Pollock submits a far more sterner and convincing defence of his and his union’s position than did the signatories of principled journalism who sought to appeal to the likes of comrade Pollock.

            I am not a supporter of the BBC. It is a publicly funded institution, which means that no matter what the political proclivities of those forced to pay the license fee - like any other form of taxation – they are forced to pay on penalty of a fine or imprisonment.

            Yet even the current Director General has had the grace, in the light of a conservative government, to admit that the corporation has been, in the past, an organisation with a Left-wing bias.

            Like Ed Milliband, who hopes to sweep away much of New Labour’s ghastly past by admitting its many failures; so the BBC’s Director General Mark Thompson hopes to do the same for the BBC. Thomson’s mistake however was to attribute the Left bias to the past, while proclaiming that the BBC today is a different beast altogether.

            But then comes Ian Pollock and the NUJ, Bectu and UNITE to pour cold water over such a claim; but it was, after all, only a claim made to try and secure further increases to the licence fee.

            If the BBC unions fulfil their promise to disrupt the Conservative party conference next week, then both the government as well as those license fee payers who resent their compulsory payments will be drawn ever further towards choice rather than pressure.

            I have been, at 60, a life-long supporter of the Labour Party, but at the last election I fell afoul of Cameron’s rhetoric, just as I had done with Wilson, Callaghan, Foot, Kinnock, Smith and Blair – but Gordon Brown was, however, the final straw for me.

THE BBC, IF IT IS AS popular as it claims to be, should manage quite well without the compulsory payments demanded by the state in the form of taxation. If the BBC is as well-liked and as renowned throughout the world as she advertises herself as being, then why should she be supported through taxation?

            The BBC should once and for all be set adrift to either survive or sink. If the broadcaster wishes to continue then it must be made to compete with pay-per view channels like Sky. The BBC must become a pay-per view channel.

            The BBC’s reputation has never been tested in the commercial world. So any claim it makes for itself is pitiable, unless it invites freely given subscriptions rather than  a compulsory licence fee.

            Under such a system the likes of Ian Pollock would be without any kind of influence. He would be nothing more than what he is, a local branch chairman of a trade union, emboldened by his pigmy status as a London branch secretary of the NUJ.

            

WELL SAID DR FOX

I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT LIAM FOX, the Minister of Defence, had any hand in the leaking of his letter to the PM. He is right to feel angry, and according to reports some thirty of the Met’s finest are at the MoD seeking to find out who the leaker is.

            However Dr Fox’s views have hit the mark. What they show is that at last we have a minister in charge at the MoD who puts military considerations  before any party political ones, which is more than could be said of Gordon Browns’ puppet at the ministry, Bob Ainsworth

            The full content of Dr Fox’s letter is highly critical of George Osborn’s demands as far as the defence budget is concerned. Dr Fox realises that if he is forced to make the cross governmental cuts announced by the prime minister, then the defence of this country and its worldwide capability, which the Foreign Office depends upon to back up its diplomatic rhetoric, will disappear.

            Dr Fox’s letter has nevertheless been published and reads as follows:

            “Dear David,

We are nearing the culmination of the work we promised to deliver on our approach to national security; the NSC meeting tomorrow is a key opportunity to set out the risk and consequences of that work for our NSC colleagues. This is not a letter I am copying to others ahead of tomorrow's NSC but I wanted to let you know my views, which are shared by my ministerial colleagues.

            Frankly this process is looking less and less defensible as a proper SDSR (Strategic Defence and Strategy Review) and more like a 'super CSR' (Comprehensive Spending Review). 

            If it continues on its current trajectory it is likely to have grave political consequences for us, destroying much of the reputation and capital you, and we, have built up in recent years. Party, media, military and the international reaction will be brutal if we do not recognise the dangers and continue to push for such draconian cuts at a time when we are at war. 

I am very grateful to Peter Ricketts and Jeremy Heywood for the help they have given officials who have worked strenuously to bridge a gap that is, financially and intellectually virtually impossible. I am concerned that we do not have a narrative that we can communicate clearly.

            On 22 July the NSC endorsed the 'Adaptable Britain' posture because we decided that it was impossible to predict what conflict or global security scenarios may emerge in the years ahead. 

            That meant ensuring the maintenance of generic defence capability across all three environments of land, sea and air - not to mention the emerging asymmetric threats in domains such as cyber and space -with sufficient ability to regenerate capability in the face of these possible future threats were it required.

            How do we want to be remembered and judged for our stewardship of national security? We have repeatedly and robustly argued that this is the first duty of Government and we run the risk of having those words thrown back at us if the SDSR fails to reflect that position and act upon it.

            I suggest we start tomorrow's discussion by asking whether we are really prepared to see Defence spending reduced to this level. The impact on capability, particularly in the maritime domain, would be more substantial than one might imagine from the paper.

            Our decisions today will limit severely the options available to this and all future governments. The range of operations that we can do today we will simply not be able to do in the future. In particular, it would place at risk:

            The reduction in overall surface ship numbers means we will be unable to undertake all the standing commitments (providing a permanent Royal Navy presence in priority regions) we do today. 

            Assuming a presence in UK waters, the Falklands and in support of the deterrent is essential we would have to withdraw our presence in, for example, the Indian Ocean, Caribbean or Gulf.

            Deletion of the amphibious shipping (landing docks, helicopter platforms and auxiliaries) will mean that a landed force will be significantly smaller and lighter and deployed without protective vehicles or organic fire. We could not carry out the Sierra Leone operation again.

            Deletion of the Nimrod MR4 will limit our ability to deploy maritime forces rapidly into high-threat areas, increase the risk to the Deterrent, compromise maritime CT (counter terrorism), remove long range search and rescue, and delete one element of our Falklands reinforcement plan.

            Some risk to civil contingent capability, including but not limited to foot and mouth, fire-fighting strikes, fuel shortages, flu pandemics, Mumbai style attacks and the 2012 Summer Olympics

            The potential for the scale of the changes to seriously damage morale across the Armed Forces should not be underestimated. This will be exacerbated by the fact that the changes proposed would follow years of mismanagement by our predecessors. It may also coincide with a period of major challenge (and, in all probability, significant casualties) in Afghanistan.

            Even at this stage we should be looking at the strategic and security implications of our decisions. It would be a great pity if, having championed the cause of our Armed Forces and set up the innovation of the NSC, we simply produced a cuts package. Cuts there will have to be. Coherence, we cannot do without, if there is to be any chance of a credible narrative.

Yours

Liam Fox

SUCH A LETTER WOULD BE OF little significance to an Old Labour government determined on a course of restricting the military capability of these Isles in the interests of international brotherhood. But for a supposedly Conservative government to demand such a decline in our nation’s defence spending, while ring-fencing oversees aid is not only bizarre but dangerous to this nation’s defence; which is what historically, has been the politician’s priority.

            The number one priority for any conservative should be the country’s national defence. It may challenge Health and Education, but should never be put before Oversees Aid, which this so-called Conservative Party has chosen to do.

            We are entering unsettled times, when we will rely once more on our armed services. I think it almost criminal for politicians (especially Tory ones) to contemplate cuts to our nation’s defences under the fraudulently named Strategic Defence and Strategy Review. As Dr Fox rightly suggests it is taking the form of Comprehensive Spending Review. It will not be the first time that politicians have deliberately confused the two in order to make cuts to the nation’s defences.

            When the last government said it was commissioning two modern aircraft carriers I told myself I would believe it when I saw them. At the time I thought that it would be the government who announced them that would cancel them. But it now looks as if it will be a Coalition government, half of it calling itself Conservative, who will seal the fate of these two vessels.

            Necessary cuts, as those to be announced by the Coalition certainly are necessary, but should be subjected to priorities, starting with the nation’s defences. Having rightly ring-fenced health as a priority, surely the nation’s defence comes second, before oversees aid, which has also been ring-fenced.

            I would not want defence spending to be ring-fenced if it meant the MoD carrying on as normal; the department is overmanned and wasteful. The MoD’s procurement record is a national disgrace. Projects are overrun not by weeks or months, but years. In some cases, the technology is out of date by the time it is eventually deployed, at a cost overrun amounting to billions of pounds. On top of which the MoD buys British regardless of cost and effectiveness in order to protect British jobs. This may be patriotic but it slows down advances and, in some cases, renders them out of date by the time they are deployed, while short-changing our servicemen and women to the point where (in extremis) lives are lost.

            Billions can be cut from defence; maybe not by as much George Osborn would like, but it must not be, and need not be cut, from the front line of any of our three services.

            I am sorry to keep harping on about oversees aid, but I find it incredulous that when ring-fencing departmental spending is talked of, that oversees aid should be given priority over this nation’s defence.

            Dr Fox spells out admirably the cost to this nation of its ability to defend itself as well as to its prestige that such cuts demanded would mean. Not only would they impact upon our country’s defences, but what pull would the Foreign Office have in the world if its backbone were allowed to be weekend? For there is no doubt that it is this nation’s military capacity that gives us a diplomatic presence on the world stage.

            We punch above our weight, not because of the diplomatic sophistry of the Foreign Office, but because our diplomacy, if required, can backed up by our armed forces. Be it in alliance with NATO in Afghanistan, or on our own as with the Falklands.

           

THE GREATEST MISTAKE any leader of any nation can make, is to underestimate the times in which they live. George Osborn, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is hell bent on his own crusade of personal achievement. His cause of financial rectitude is both just and much needed, but his judgement is wrong. Ultimately, our chancellor will one day hope to become prime minister, and what he does in the coming years will either destroy, or make that ambition a reality.

            Dr Fox, on the other hand, has not underestimated the times in which he or we live and, as a true Tory, is thinking of this nation’s defensive capabilities. We are an island that has historically, almost uniquely, had to rely upon our navy. There has never been any safe time in which to live for our nation. We are, as an island nation, dependent upon our navy; we are also well regarded as a military nation, dependent upon our army; we, as an island nation that was nearly overcome from the skies in 1940, are permanently dependent upon the RAF.

            This country’s defence is the bottom line. It is there when all else fails. Our defence capability is ultimately the measure of this nation’s survival. If we fall short we will, sooner or later, become captives of some other nation, as befell Poland, Holland and France 70 years ago.

            A nations defences are what has historically kept them a nation. If we forget this fact of history then we deserve Mr Osborn’s premiership. But perhaps this Coalition, like the last government, is seeking to wean us off of nationalism and make us a province of Europe.