This is part 2 in a series of articles outlining the reasons for choosing
the name of my political party the Imperial British Conservative Party. If
you haven't already, read Part 1.
British
It is important first to clarify a number of confusions about national
identity, which have developed since the end of the Second World War.
These are producing a sense of alienation amongst peoples who are losing
their roots as a result.
Today the word British is commonly, if wrongly, used to describe
citizens of the United Kingdom. At the same time both the Scots and
Welsh peoples are considering proposals to set up separate sovereign
national governments.
Citizenship Versus Cultural Identity
Prior to the twentieth century, when immigration and emigration grew
exponentially, one's citizenship and one's cultural identity were usually
the same. Most people lived in the same country as their ancestors and
held similar cultural beliefs and practices.
The USA was the first nation founded on the assumption that culture,
with its strong connections with the past, should be broken down in the
"melting pot" and replaced with citizenship based on the future. In
other words, "The American Dream." The recent growth in political power
and economic influence of the USA has produced a world-wide but shallow
culture based on the slavish emulation of new American fads and fashions
in clothes, food, music, sexual customs etc.
Although this has affected all peoples in the world, the
English-speaking peoples are most at risk of losing their sense of
cultural identity. The people of the UK have had some protection as a
result of their rich cultural heritage, particularly with the powerful
British Empire still a living memory, and the congruence between their
culture and their geographical location.
In Canada, Australia and New Zealand, already separated from the British
Isles by thousands of miles, the situation was aggravated by the UK
joining the European Economic Community
National Identity And Geographical Location
When peoples lose their roots and culture they frequently begin to
identify themselves by their geographical location and mistake this for
their national identity in the American manner. At the same time they
unconsciously begin to copy the American way of life.
The Poles have suffered from the opposite problem. There has never been
a clear demarcation of the boundaries of Poland and it has frequently
been occupied by stronger neighbouring states, yet the Poles have a very
strong sense of cultural identity.
Weakened by two world wars, which had the effect of strengthening the
USA, the British Empire began to fade away. First it became the British
Commonwealth and finally the word British was dropped altogether.
Like "The United States" "Europe" and "Western Civilisation", "The
Commonwealth" as a descriptive term eliminates any cultural component.
This is linked with the doctrine of economic determinism, in both
capitalist and socialist versions, which is fast replacing cultural
explanations of "the meaning of life".
During the 1950s, for both political and economic reasons the Australian
and Canadian governments broke their links with the British Isles and
turned towards the USA. The word British was removed from the passports
and history was rewritten, with the enthusiastic help of the French
Catholic intellectuals in Canada and Irish Catholic intellectuals in
Australia.
The new history falsely portrayed the British administrators and armed
forces of the 19th Century as either tyrants or poltroons, and the
settlers as heroic refugees fleeing from an oppressive government in the
British Isles. In Australia, convicts and brigands were transformed into
noble heroes against the wicked British establishment. In New Zealand
the process took longer as there was no similar intellectual grievance
group.
Manipulation Of Indigenous Peoples
Unscrupulous people who want power without responsibility will always
attack established authorities, who can be held accountable for their
actions, so that they may take over and indulge their desire to control
others without such limitations.
They appoint themselves as spokesmen, leaders and guardians of "the
people" and especially any groups who can be turned against the
"Establishment". The use of this technique has brought many "radicals"
rapid social advancement. In Canada, they espouse the rights of the
Native Americans; in Australia, the rights of anyone who is not British;
and in New Zealand, the rights of the Maori tribes.
The Treaty of Waitangi is completely misrepresented as giving the Maori
tribes joint sovereignty when it in fact granted the Maoris the precious
gift of British citizenship, whilst guaranteeing them their ancient
rights to hunt and gather food in their traditional way, if they so
chose. The nineteenth century wars were recently portrayed on a TVNZ written
by an historian from Auckland University as an attack on the noble,
peace-loving Maori people by the usual villainous and/or doltish
British. Those tribes who had embraced British Citizenship for all the
advantages it brought them and fought beside the troops sent from the
British Isles, were portrayed as crawlers and traitors.
The attack on the use of the word British to describe the culture in New
Zealand has been in full force now for a generation. At the same time
the predominant role model for the youth sub-culture has become the
Black American ghetto dweller, inarticulate, illiterate, resentful,
promiscuous and addicted to drugs, sex and rock and roll (rap, hip hop,
etc.)
The new power brokers who run the government, mass media, and mass
education institutions are still suppressing any knowledge that the
people who founded the New Zealand culture of today were not Polynesians
or Europeans but British.
The perfect illustration of this is Te Papa (Our House), the new
national museum of New Zealand. At the spectacular opening there was a
display of multiculturalism where performers from every imaginable
culture were invited to celebrate the occasion. Guess what! There was
nothing at all from the British culture.
Inside the picture is the same. The settlers are described throughout as
"Europeans" and the word "British" mainly restricted to negative
contexts!
What Is British?
It's important not to confuse English with British; this will naturally
enough infuriate the non-English cultures in the British Isles. The
English, who are a synthesis of Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Norman
French, provided the seed for this distinct culture.
The development took several hundred years and began with the
consolidation of England and defeat of the Vikings. Soon afterwards the
Norman invaders introduced the French language and efficient
organisational procedures. The collapse of Caesaro-papist Christendom
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries led to the emergence of various
language-based kingdoms. Until the Protestants opted for closer ties
with Anglican England, Scotland was controlled by Roman Catholic France.
Earlier Elizabeth I had arranged for her throne to pass to the Scottish
King James to continue her policy of avoiding unnecessary wars.
In the eighteenth century the world's most democratic people entered into a
Union of Scotland with England and Wales and the granting of voting
rights to the Irish produced a new culture which became known as
British.
Shakespeare's beloved England became the United Kingdom or Britannia,
and a maritime empire began to grow. Part of North America was lost but
Australia and New Zealand provided space for emigration and India became
the "jewel in the crown".
Unlike Napoleonic France, the USA, or USSR in the nineteenth century, this
empire was based on mutual trading advantages and improving local
economic infrastructures rather than on land conquest and elimination of
local ancient traditions. Anyone who has studied history without wearing
blinkers will realise that the peoples in Asia, Africa, India and
Australasia were fortunate that they were colonised by the British
rather than the Germans, French, Russians or Japanese.
There Is No "New Zealand" Culture
In spite of vociferous, chauvinistic assertions, there is no New Zealand
(or Australian) culture. The impossibility of finding one when its true
roots lie in the British Isles has produced predictable consequences.
These include a worship of landscape, which is largely irrelevant to a
civilised culture, an obsession with sporting achievements in place of
intellectual and spiritual achievements, and the placing of absurd
emphasis on such things as Pavlova cakes (also claimed by Australia),
Vegemite, (a variation of the English Marmite), and the Buzzy Bee!
Nearly everything called Kiwiana has been imported from British or
American sources.
Turning Into Pakehas
This alienation from the culture of their ancestors has produced a most
revealing development in New Zealand. The superficial Maori revival in
New Zealand resembles the totalitarian Nazi and Communist revivals of
"peasant culture" to replace the sophisticated democratic Christian
establishments which they overthrew.
Racist retreat to sentimental and dysfunctional pre-civilised values has
been fostered by government action. The Maoris have been persuaded by
anti-British intellectuals in the schools and universities that they are
no longer British, with all the rights and responsibilities that this
entails.
Nearly all Maoris are descended from a mixture of British and Maori
ancestors yet they are being pressurised to completely reject the
British side of their inheritance. They are, moreover, being led to
believe that they are the only people in New Zealand with any real
culture, everyone else is "multicultural", a mixture of European,
Polynesian and Asian. When told that they are "New Zealanders" and
should integrate with the majority of the population naturally enough
many of them object.
The non-Maori ruling elites in New Zealand have begun to refer to
themselves as "Pakehas". This is most revealing. Since the word Pakeha
simply means non-Maori, they regard themselves as people with no
cultural identity at all! The majority of the people in New Zealand have
become a residual category.
I hope the reader has taken my point. This is alienation on a really
disastrous scale. Use of the word "Pakeha" should only be tolerated on
maraes or as an informal slang term, like "Mick", "Pom", "Jock",
"Whitey" or "Darkie". It should never be used in schools, universities,
churches, government publications or the mass media.
The Politics Of Alienation
Political parties are organisations of citizens attempting to win
elections so that they can exercise governmental power. If they don't
know who they are in the first place, how on earth can their policies
make sense?
The names of the parties in New Zealand are almost completely empty of
meaning. "New Zealand First" and "National" suffer from not knowing what
"New Zealand" means in terms of culture, its history, religion, customs,
laws and so on. "Labour" and "New Labour" are not organisations run by
and for British working men and women but by professional ideologues
with no culture themselves except discredited economic master- plans for
*master-plans
running other people's lives.
"Green" values seem both sentimental and inextricably mixed up with
materialistic beliefs. I will outline a more rational approach to
conserving the environment in my third and last article when I will give
my reasons for choosing the word "Conservative".
My Thesis Confirmed
A few days after sending this article to the NZine editor, I read in the
Christchurch "Press" that Tau Henare, having just
announced that he was forming a political party solely to represent the
Maori culture, was invited to speak to an indigenous
peoples' human rights conference in Auckland.
He slammed New Zealand's "Pakeha icons, "Buzzy Bees, black singlets and
gumboots", and told the delegates that "New
Zealand lacked soul and identity". He claimed that the nation was
built on the backs of Maori and Pacific Island people and
offered "a dream for those who dare", of an alternative New Zealand
as a Pacific nation "with a strong identity that included
Maori, pakeha, and Pacific Islanders". I note that, unlike Maori,
neither Pakeha or Pacific Islander, as a descriptive term, gives
any indication of cultural identity.
Footnote
It took much courage to choose the word 'British' to describe
the deep cultural values that my political party wished to protect,
advance, and if necessary amend, particularly in those countries like
New Zealand, Canada and Australia, who have "sold their birthrights for
a mess of pottage!" Since this was an extremely difficult and
controversial decision, I welcome any criticism that may cause me to
change my mind.
Read Part 3.
