.

• ALSO Check out:

Caledonian Voice Says … Scrap Austerity! http://nationalliberal.org/caledonian-voice-says-scrap-austerity

English Voice Says … Scrap Austerity! http://nationalliberal.org/english-voice-says-…-scrap-austerity

Ulster Voice Says … Scrap Austerity! http://nationalliberal.org/ulster-voice-says-scrap-austerity

• ALSO Check out:

From The Liberty Wall – Total Democracy – Interested In Total Democracy? http://nationalliberal.org/from-theliberty-wall-–-total-democracy-interested-in-total-democracy

From The Liberty Wall – St. George’s Committee – Interested In The St. George’s Committee? http://nationalliberal.org/from-the-liberty-wall-–-st-george’s-committee-interested-in-the-st-george’s-committee

From The Liberty Wall – Nations without States – Interested In Nations without States?https://nationalliberal.org/from-the-liberty-wall-%e2%80%93-nations-without-states-interested-in-nations-without-states

From The Liberty Wall – National Liberal Trade Unionists – Interested In The National Liberal Trade Unionists https://nationalliberal.org/from-the-liberty-wall-%E2%80%93-national-liberal-trade-unionists-interested-in-nationalliberal-trade-unionists

Interested In The National Liberals?  http://nationalliberal.org/interested-in-facebooknational-liberals

WE NATIONAL LIBERAL TRADE UNIONISTS – NLTU – are neither Capitalists nor Socialists. We feel that both systems are built on exploitation as they ultimately turn workers into mere wage slaves. We also believe that both systems tend to concentrate power & wealth in the hands of the elites. In the case of Capitalism, it’s the corporate bosses – whereas under Socialism, it’s the party bosses. Furthermore, we feel that Capitalism encourages egotism & a disdain for ordinary working folks. Socialism, on the other hand, can lead to an unhealthy social levelling & the stifling of individual natural drive and ambition. Thus, to paraphrase George Galloway, we regard Capitalism & Socialism ‘as different cheeks of the same arse.’

The NLTU favours economic systems which give workers the opportunity to advance & better themselves – without becoming a wage slave. We also prefer self-sufficiency (over imports) and thus support both national & social liberation.

With the above in mind, we feel that trade unionists would find food for thought in this article Restore The Guilds. It was written by Gary Dorrien & was published in the Plough Quarterly – https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/social-justice/economic-justice/restore-the-guilds – a US-based ‘magazine of stories, ideas, and culture to inspire faith and action’. This is the third in the series and should be read directly on from part 1 & part 2 – see links below.

As always, we invite our readers to share their thoughts when this article is reproduced on the NLTU Facebook site – https://www.facebook.com/groups/277840098977231/ – or the National Liberals Facebook site – https://www.facebook.com/groups/52739504313/ It goes without saying that there are no links between Gary Dorrien, Plough Quarterly, the NLTU and the National Liberal Party. We’d also like to point out that whilst the article is written from a Christian perspective, the NLTU and NLP welcome members & supporters from all religions and none. Please note that the NLTU has kept the original US spellings and phrases as they are.

.

Restore The Guilds – What today’s labor unions, democratic socialists, and mutual aid societies might learn from the colorful history of Christian socialism in Britain.

(Left) James Keir Hardie (1856-1915) started his working life aged eight as a baker's delivery boy. By age 11 he was a coal miner, working between 12-14 hours a day. He became involved with the Ayrshire Miners' Union & then the Scottish Miners' Federation. In 1887 he published The Miner, a monthly newspaper. Hardie resigned from the Liberal Party in 1888 & helped organise the Scottish Labour Party, as he believed that the working-class needed its own political party. In 1893 he helped establish the Independent Labour Party - ILP. One of those who helped him establish the ILP was Ulster-born Samuel George Hobson (18701940). Hobson later developed his theory of guild socialism & in 1914 published National Guilds: An Inquiry into the Wage System and the Way Out (Right). This consisted of many articles he’d previously written for the New Age, the influential weekly magazine edited by A R Orage. Hobson advocated that the Guilds should serve as the organs through which industry would be organised in a future socialist society – in a similar way to Syndicalism or Corporatism.

In 1893 a Christian socialist labor leader, Keir Hardie, founded the Independent Labour Party (ILP), which compelled many socialists to make an excruciating choice: Should they stay in the radical wing of the Liberal Party or join the party of actual workers? A worker’s party might be a disaster for anti-imperialism and anti-racism. Joining the ILP might destroy the anti-imperialist wing of the Liberal Party, and it might hand the government to the Tories, which, in fact, it did. Christian socialists Stewart Headlam and Scott Holland stuck with the left wing of the Liberal Party for these reasons. Christian socialists S. G. Hobson (who would coin the term “guild socialism”), Charles Marson, and Conrad Noel countered that socialists had to be with the workers and convert them to antiimperialism, anti-racism, and anti-militarism.

Both of these groups had contentious relationships with the mainstream of the Fabian Society, an activist powerhouse led by sociologist Sidney Webb, his wife Beatrice Webb, and literary star George Bernard Shaw. The Fabians contended that British socialism did not need Marx’s glorification of revolutionary violence or his exotic doctrines; all it needed was to proceed on its present course. The reach of government grew every year. This process was relentless, beneficial, and civilizing. It tamed the predatory impulses of capitalism, making society rational. Soon the flow of progress would civilize England and the entire world. All manner of late Victorians believed the world was progressing toward higher forms of civilization and democracy. Even Marxists held a version of the belief in progress. The Fabians turned this belief into an argument for bureaucratic state collectivism. Socialism was government ownership directed by elite managers, that is, Fabians(1).

But Christian socialists fit their ideology to their ethical convictions, not the other way around. Even those who joined the Fabian Society fought for the ethical difference when it arose. It arose repeatedly over imperialism and racism. Britons were schooled in the lore of the British Empire, a tale of mercantile colonization under the Stuarts and Cromwell; war victories against the Dutch, French, and Spanish in the seventeenth century; the acquisition of eastern North America; slave-trading outposts in Africa; commercial interests in India; and Disraeli’s incursions into Egypt, India, Afghanistan, and South Africa during the 1870s. In the 1880s a new kind of imperialism emerged, one that had to be opposed differently than the old kind. Old-style anti-imperialists conceived of empire as a problem of power lust and military overreach cured by left-liberal politics. The new imperialism was driven by fierce economic competition for new markets, and it grew no matter which party won office. John Hobson wrote about this historical turn as it happened, publishing ten books before he wrote his famous book Imperialism in 1902, contending that modern capitalism was unsustainable without exploiting colonized markets. Hobson did not say that economics explains everything. He made moral and political arguments, providing sermon material for Christian socialists. Noel, Marson, Holland, and Charles Gore blasted the Boer War and the plunder of Africa. They fought against Shaw and the Webbs for touting their patriotism with racist arguments. British Christian socialists were vocal anti-imperialists right in the belly of the beast. Some made bishop anyway, notably Gore and William Temple, because that was England too (2)

(1)  Sidney Webb, Socialism: True and False (London: The Fabian Society, Fabian Tract No. 51, 1894); Webb, Twentieth Century Politics: A Policy of National Efficiency (London: The Fabian Society, Fabian Tract No. 108, 1901).

(2)  John A. Hobson, Imperialism (1902; reprint, London: Allen and Unwin, 1948).

• THIS ARTICLE should be read in conjunction with the following:

From The Liberty Wall – National Liberal Trade Unionists – Restore The Guilds (Part 1)  http://nationalliberal.org/ from-the-liberty-wall-–-national-liberal-trade-unionists-–-restore-the-guilds-part-1

From The Liberty Wall – National Liberal Trade Unionists – Restore The Guilds (Part 2)  http://nationalliberal.org/ from-the-liberty-wall-–-national-liberal-trade-unionists-–-restore-the-guilds-part-2

• READ issue 1 of Liberal Worker – The Voice Of The National iberal Trade Unionists  (NLTU).  To get your FREE pdf copy, simply e-mail natliberal@aol.com

THE LAST BreXit Now! article produced by Liberal Future (LF) was published on 29th January. This was two days before the UK formally left the European Union.  The article – Glamorgan, Merioneth & Monmouthshire Youth  Say  …  The  Struggle  Continues  –  BreXit  Now! http://nationalliberal.org/liberal-future-glamorgan-merioneth-monmouthshire-youth-say-…-the-struggle-continues-–-brexit-now – made one important prediction.  Here, we noted that we were:

‘more than confident that we’ll formally leave the EU at 11pm on Friday – irrespective of whether Big Ben bongs or not! Indeed, we believe that many Welsh freedom lovers will be celebrating here. Others may even travel to London to join the main Brexit celebrations which’ll be held in London’s Parliament Square. We understand that some of the celebrations will be televised, so we’re hoping to see a few Red Dragon flags – Y Ddraig Goch – flying.’

Thankfully, we were bang on the money.  As everyone now knows we eventually left the EU at the end of January – a mere three and a half years after the original People’s Vote (aka the EU Refenendum) of 23rd June 2016!

Many Welsh freedom lovers held private celebrations to celebrate ‘Independence Day’.  Others travelled to London to join thousands at the main Leave Means Leave rally.  And although not enough money could be raised to speed up repairs to Big Ben (so that it could symbolically ring at 11pm) we did spot several Welsh flags in the crowd.

However, celebrating Brexit and seeing it over the line are two completely different things.  As we’ve mentioned before, LF has never shared the jingoistic & over-simplistic view (mainly promoted by what we’d term as the ‘reactionary right’) that getting ‘our country back’ will be a simple matter of leaving the EU.

For instance, 1st February represented the start of the official transition period.  Here the UK would no longer have to stand by EU laws and would be free to sign trade deals with other countries.  However, in practical terms this means that we’re more at the mercy of a Tory Brexit than ever before.  And as most people know, we at Liberal Future wouldn’t trust the Tories as far as we could throw them!

An article in The Independent – https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-uk-leave-eu-parliament-square-event-nigel-farage-a9312426.html – reflected our caution when it correctly noted that:

‘Brexit is done – technically.  But so much of Mr Johnson’s work is still ahead of him, and it remains to be seen whether the eventual outcome is what these jubilant Leave voters envisioned when they cast their ballots.

The prime minister must now negotiate trade deals with Brussels, Donald Trump’s Washington, and other capitals, balancing all their demands against the living standards Britons have become used to over half a century of EU membership.’

That was published on 1st February.  The intervening nine months has seen Brexit play second fiddle to Covid-19 in the main news headline.  Every so often we’re given a brief hint of what’s being discussed & agreed to behind closed doors.  Additionally, we’ve been stuck with ‘silly season’ (so called as parliament wasn’t usually sitting in July & August and there weren’t a lot of really serious stories in the media) and to some extent, both pro and anti-Brexit forces are rattling their sabres as this article from The Telegraph illustrates https://www.msn.com/en-gb/ news/brexit/michel-barnier-tells-mark-francois-that-brexit-is-pointless/ar-BB16zadJ?ocid=sf

Despite all this, Liberal Future is convinced that a deal will be done between the UK and the EU. However, given all the bluster & sabre rattling by both sides since the June 2016 EU Referendum, we wouldn’t be surprised to see negotiations go on right up to the wire (and even beyond?).  For some bizarre reason, the politicians seem to love and thrive on drama – or as Britney Speers would have it, All Eyes On Us.

However, there’s two reasons why we think that the current negotiations will be completed by the end of the year.

Firstly, whilst sorting out the ‘European Question’ has meant the political graveyard for so many Tory leaders, Boris Johnson seems more than determined to buck the trend.  We feel that he’s already got his eye on the history books & wants to be remembered as the Conservative who finally sorted out the UKs relationship with the EU. In some sense it’s his ‘vanity project’.  Many people are taken in by his bumbling manner & wild appearance but – to us at least – he’s a sharp cookie: How else would he have risen so far in the British Establishment?  And let’s not forget it takes a wise man to play the fool!

There’s a second reason why we feel that a deal is more than on the cards.  And that is because the EU – at heart – is a rich man’s club for powerful corporate big business and banking elites. (Their underlings – the politicians – are happy enough with the trappings of power.)

As we know, the one thing that really motivates the capitalist elite is money.  As long as they’re making money, even if it’s from ‘Famine, War and Plague’ they’re more than happy.  A ‘no deal’ scenario will eat into their profit margins & upset investors.  For them money makes the world go around.  A ‘no-deal’ will cost them, but capitalism will eventually recover from such an outcome.  But why lose  money when you don’t have to?  It makes perfect sense for the capitalist elites to get the politicians to make a deal that’ll allow both the UK and EU to wave their respective flags and claim ‘victory’.

Once again, Liberal Future is reasonably confident that its reading the runestones correctly.  The UK and EU will make the deal.  But will we be right – or will we end up with egg on our face?  Deal or no deal?  Our next article in this BreXitNow! series will tell the tale.

• CHECK OUT Liberal Future on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/706779429376233/

• THIS ARTICLE should be read in conjunction with the following:

Liberal Future: For A Europe Of Free Nations – BreXit Now! http://nationalliberal.org/liberal-future-for-a-europe-of-free-nations-brexit-now

Liberal Future: County Londonderry, County Antrim & County Down Youth Say … Independence From the EU – BreXit Now! http://nationalliberal.org/liberal-future-county-londonderry-county-antrim-county-down-youthsay-…-independence-from-the-eu-–-brexit-now

Liberal Future: Anglesey, Brecknockshire, Caernarfonshire & Ceredigion Youth Say … Blood Over Gold – BreXit Now! http://nationalliberal.org/liberal-future-anglesey-brecknockshire-caernarfonshire-ceredigion-youth-say-…-blood-over-gold-–-brexit-now

Liberal Future: Carmarthenshire, Denbighshire & Flintshire Youth Say … Ignore The Establishment Media Narrative – BreXit Now! http://nationalliberal.org/liberal-future-carmarthenshire-denbighshire-flintshire-youth-say-…-ignore-the-establishment-media-narrative-–-brexit-now

Liberal Future: Glamorgan, Merioneth & Monmouthshire Youth Say … The Struggle Continues – BreXit Now! http://nationalliberal.org/liberal-future-glamorgan-merioneth-monmouthshire-youth-say-…-the-struggle-continues-–-brexit-now