Will the British “Wake Up”?

[1]

Sir Edward Burne Jones, Study for the Sleeping Princess in "The Briar Rose," c. 1881

2,077 words

With nationwide race riots and unemployment up to the 3 million mark, the question is being asked again: will the British people at last wake up and register their rebellion against their rulers through the ballot box and by means of their participation in a mass movement of national renewal?

I have kept on hearing that same question through the past quarter-century in which our country has been sliding into ever deeper decline, and each time that events give a negative answer it is followed by another, related, question: what degree of national catastrophe is then necessary before a real national awakening occurs? How much greater scale of race trouble and how many more unemployed are needed, how much further must living standards tumble, and how much worse must become the general breakdown of society before there is a massed revolt by the populace against the lords of misrule?

At one time I joined the ranks of those who were constantly asking these questions, but not any more.

I am convinced today that any political strategy that is based upon the hope that the mass of the people will one day “wake up” and revolt, as if spontaneously, against their political masters is a futile strategy. Such a thing will not happen.

Race riots can double and triple in their intensity, with not just injury but loss of life on a large scale. Unemployment can jump to 6 million. The nation can go completely bankrupt. All these things can happen, and much more—and there will be no massed rising of protest by the people. The people will not themselves take the initiative to bring about radical political change. There will be no “awakening.”

People will still vote largely as they are directed to vote by those who control the vital channels of public information and opinion. There will of course be protest voters, and these may increase in numbers as conditions become worse, but the numbers will be nowhere sufficient to turn the political tide.

And whenever it is thought that the protest vote could become dangerous, bogus movements of “opposition” and “change” will be created with the aid of much media publicity. These may take the form of factions within the old and established parties or, more rarely and as a last resort, an entirely new party. Examples of the first have been the Powellite movement of the early 1970s, and more latterly the Thatcherite movement of the late 1970s and 1980s, both of these being merely minor variations of the old and worn-out Tory themes of international capitalism and personal individualism.

And of course the obvious example of the second device is the creation of the Social Democratic Party, a party which incorporates all the very worst features of the Tory, Labour and Liberal parties that have become manifest in the conduct of national affairs in the post-1945 period but which, by some fantastic verbal trickery has been somehow represented as a movement of “change” and “reform.”

The appeal of the Social Democrats is of course based on a fundamental lie: the lie that the misfortunes of Britain in recent decades are in some way due to political “extremism” and are therefore to be reversed by a return to “moderation.” In fact it is the very “moderation” (which translated into plain English means cowardice and luck of principle) of the SDP that has paralysed Britain at every point in modern times when she has needed to opt for change or go into further decline.

Nevertheless, these truths that are apparent to every politically thinking individual are totally lost on the masses. Indisposed to make any serious enquiry into how Britain has got into its present mess, or what actual practical propositions the SDP has for getting her out of the mess, millions are now likely to vote for this new phenomenon in British politics in the pathetic belief that it somehow represents a change of direction for this country.

And at the present time there is nothing—absolutely nothing—that any of us can do to stop this happening.

Not On

So the great “waking up” process that many nationalists have hoped for for so many years is not going to occur. We can forget about it.

Personally, I have come to doubt whether there was any time in history when any people “woke up” quite in the sense that some nationalists have in mind when they use the term. Every great national or tribal awakening has occurred, not spontaneously, but by means of the leadership of spirited minorities.

Nevertheless, up to a relatively recent stage of history there resided among the masses of certain nations qualities of patriotism, national pride and sense of duty that were sufficiently strong and widespread for great numbers of those masses to respond instinctively to the appeal of leaders which was addressed to such qualities. In that sense the people of those nations could have been said to have “woken up.”

But today it is improbable that such a national and public consciousness any longer exists in any White, Western nation of significant size, and certainly including Britain. Our people in the mass, like those in the vast majority of our racially kindred nations, have been drugged almost into insensibility where vital matters of the national interest are concerned—drugged by the twin factors of propaganda and soft living, allied to the availability of all manner of instant amusements which provide escapism and fill leisure time once devoted to more serious pursuits.

The result, sad though it is for us to have to admit it, is that the British people are not the virile people they once were; they are not the people who founded and built a great empire; they are not the people who provided the bowmen at Agincourt and who manned the thin red lines at Albuhera and Waterloo; they are not the people who, when some of their menfolk were employed building the French railways during the 19th Century, aroused admiration across Europe for their extraordinary industry arid energy.

A very large part of the British people today consists of lazy, mindless, scruffy and indolent slobs, lacking even the elementary personal pride that is the basis of pride in nation and race. They chuck litter about our streets with the same abandon as they get drunk in foreign tourist resorts, bringing disgrace upon their country as much as they annoy the local citizens and police. Young football mobsters are the worst of these species and, although they may be deemed a small minority of the population, are nevertheless a minority not equalled anywhere abroad.

Another large part consists of those who are sober, respectable folk, who behave properly in private and in public, who do an honest day’s work, who look prim and smart and who observe the law but who are total sheep when it comes to political awareness, let alone political action, and who have cultivated the faculty of isolating themselves behind their double-glazed windows and privet hedges into a little private world of their own in which they are responsible only for family, home and job and can ignore the filth, squalor and bankruptcy of the country around them.

Will a nation today compounded mainly of these two elements “wake up” and take its destiny into its own hands, turning on its misgovernors and recovering its will to greatness? Not a chance!

But that does not mean to say that we should be discouraged. That does not mean to say we should take an attitude of pessimism. It does not mean that victory for us is not possible. It simply means that victory by the process that has dominated the minds of many nationalists for many years—the process of mass awakening and mass action—is not on, and that victory by other processes must be pursued.

It merely underlines what has been true throughout history and what is more true than ever today: that great political change; whether for better or for worse, is made by small minorities who understand and who are able to utilise the mechanics of political power.

Let us not forget that the sloppiness and inertia of the mass has never been regarded by out enemies as a barrier to their political success; those enemies have simply worked with that sloppiness and inertia rather than against it; they have turned it into an asset rather than a hindrance.

First in our enemies’ scale of priorities has come the recruitment, mobilisation and organisation of a politically activated and determined minority. Then has come the acquisition of the vital amenities for communicating with the people on a wider plane and directing them to these enemies desired purpose. With these amenities have come amenities equally important, i.e. those necessary to sustain our enemies in permanent political business, independently of any transitory ups and downs at the polling booths.

Not before this vital infrastructure has been built have our enemies battered their heads against the stone walls of mass inertia and ignorance, hoping for political success through some great popular “awakening” to the magnificence of their message, thereby causing the walls to crumble and the shafts of enlightenment to pour in. The walls have been left as they are, as was the Maginot Line, and they have been circumvented by intelligent strategy and tactics which has penetrated the nerve centres of the victim’s defence.

Masses Follow the Strong

Ultimately, the masses, however great their simmering discontent and however obvious the failure of those leaders in whom they have entrusted their affairs in the past, will only follow leaders and parties that are able to give the impression that they are established and strong; they will not follow anyone who, whatever the soundness or goodness of their message, clearly is lacking in this basic attribute. A St. Paul or a John the Baptist may orate in the market place; unless he has behind him the vital battalions of power, wealth, largeness, and organisation, he will be despised and rejected.

And those vital battalions are acquired only by years of work by active minorities allied to a systematic plan of development which is pursued undeviatingly as well as intelligently arid which exploits all the apparatus of political power appropriate to the age.

The British people in this day and age will not “wake up”; but they can within certain limits “be woken up” by whomever has in his possession an alarm clock powerful enough for the purpose. And then when woken up they can, barring only a tiny minority of them that is incurably biologically degenerate, be restored to their former standards.

Our task at the moment lies in the construction of that alarm clock, i.e. the vital apparatus of organisation, money and communicative resources to be effective in modern political terms. The task can be accomplished, but it can only he accomplished by a drastic readjustment on the part of many of us of their sights, their targets, their range and their time-scales.

We can have no use for the merchants of panic, who stipulate that there must be a mass awakening of the people within such-and-such a number of years or else all is lost—either through expresso-style massed racial mongrelisation, a Soviet invasion or some other fantastic creation of a paranoid mind. If we allow such folk to dictate our strategy and tactics, we will certainly be doomed to continue bashing our heads on stone walls.

But this does not mean that we should listen to the advocates of complacency, who aver that as long as we have God and truth on our side all will come right for us in the end, irrespective of what we ourselves do and the energy and sense of urgency with which we do it.

We have a task to accomplish in as quick a time as it is possible to accomplish it, and if we do not accomplish it in the time hoped for we must simply go on working at it until it is accomplished—always being prepared to be flexible in our tactics, sometimes even reviewing parts of out strategy, but above all never losing our heads.

This is the way our enemy thinks, and he has so far won all the previous rounds. If we learn from this, we can eventually beat him.

Source: Spearhead, no. 158, December 1981, pp. 4, 14.