Terry Field, our Englishman who divides his time between France and Florida, has penned a lamentation, a cry of the heart despairing of the gulf that separates cultures and religions, a separation akin to death itself.  - Glenn N. Holliman

A little note concerning death

by Terry Field

The last few days have been almost unendurable.

My dear wife and I have been distraught; as have vast numbers, in the face of the Manchester abomination. We have been the remote witnesses of the death of so many, courtesy of the television.

                    Fina and Terry on happier days.

I hold the images of my sweet grandchildren close, and would wrap them in safety, were it possible.

In much earlier times, the rhythm of life was less disturbed by such sadness; people simply had no idea of what happened ‘over the horizon’.  For most, life was local, and the human condition was experienced much more personally, more immediately; proximate to the action.

Now we live with concepts.

Ideas concerning the values, opinions, beliefs, and actions of those whose lives are, in reality, remote and disconnected from that which we experience personally. To live in the unconnected and exotically varied world, we are required, in order to make any sense at all of things, to comprehend not only what alien cultures believe, but why they believe what they believe.

Yet this is, in reality, quite impossible.

I can no more understand the mind of a Hindu, a Shia or Sunni Muslim, a Suffi, a Sikh, a Jayne, or a Zen Buddhist than I can the mind of Moley my cat.  That is not to elevate the intellectual performance of Moley, nor is it in any way intended to denigrate the world views of those faiths I have mentioned.

Rather, I simply state that access to the kaleidoscope of the human experience is essentially unavailable.

Foreign minds are unknowable, despite the pretense of government and media claiming otherwise.

I am left, as are most people I would suspect – scratching our heads with incomprehension.

This degree of non-understanding is itself akin to the experience of death; and is as disturbing.

When confronted with the death of a known person – a friend, a relative, a work colleague, the reality of the utterly and irretrievably changed state of the person leaves one in a state of complete isolation. To regard a dead friend, a dead relative is, for me, the thing most able to instill a sense of utter loneliness and a feeling of being without connection.

Without understanding, and without hope.

I have felt all this during this week. Not solely by regarding the faces of the beautiful young, now smashed and mutilated dead children and accompanying parents.

My personal sense of desperate loneliness comes from understanding the killer’s life, mind, feelings, beliefs, motivations are utterly unknowable.

The fact of the killing is another dread reality. But there are two, distinct horrors here. The mind of the killer – or killers – and the act of murdering those beautiful people

There is the real problem for us all.

Within our society, large numbers of people co-exist (maybe not even that now) whose world is, quite simply, completely unknowable by the naïve and settled ‘original’ population.

However much our national media tells us the holders of these imported world views – let us not call them ‘religious beliefs’ – are really just like us.  We are lectured after these periodic killings that we must all ‘stand together’. Many shout their acceptance of this artifice, but most, I suspect, simply do not believe it.

 In our heart of hearts, we only recognize the unrecognizable.

In a dark room, when face with the silence of ourselves, we simply know we share our island with unfathomable strangers.

Most incomers are willing and able to connect to a degree required for some measure of mutual comprehension, or at the least of benign mutual respect.  

That is not a universal experience however, and it is a pernicious untruth to assert that it is. Islam, and its followers, Muslims, are notable for their relatively isolated and economically unsuccessful condition in England.

The degree of isolation, either self-imposed, or now the result of a strong mutual disregard, that Muslims experience of the wider society, and of course in vice versa, is now so chronic, so severe, so crippling of potential for future contentment, that the actions and statements of government in the light of the litany of offenses is not simply dishonest, it is in itself destabilizing.

This makes for a living social death. We are mutually non-comprehending. We are mutually isolated, and mutually traumatized by the knowledge of the unfathomable ‘otherness’ of the opposite – and now, in reality opposing – group.

I repeat, this alone is a sort of death – in – life.

Nothing can come from it, save the putrefaction of relationships.

To the extent that a young fellow can pack a nail and bolt bomb into a haversack (I assume) take it to the foyer of a children’s concert, and blast himself and those children and parents around him to pulp.

At this point the British government is a failure. It asserts the absurd; it acts ex post and lashes out at those conveniently in its path. Whilst allowing the re-importation of trained murderers from the Middle East into the social space.

Just as Mrs. May acted on perverse instinct to introduce a lunatic measure to deal with home – treated dementia sufferers during the election campaign, so she acts as an automaton in the face of a reality she simply refuses to accept.

The multi-cultural experiment in France and Britain is a failure.

In France, after Bataclan, after the Riviera horror, the government made it very clear that the attempts to work with Islam in France had all ended in failure and this was the last attempt whereby the State would accept the integrity of a joint social progress in tandem with the followers of the religion.

It was made – in public – very clear that should this last attempt end in failure, then there would be no further attempt at co-existence. Failure this time would not mean the freedom of action of the religion and its followers could or would not be guaranteed full future liberty.

Tolerance and delusion now is done in France. That is patent. Integration, mutual normal life, and complete acceptance and respect by each ‘community’ of the life of the other – with a minimization of perverse and mannered difference – is now mandatory in France.

In France, nobody any longer lies about the fantastical unreality of the ‘Islamist’

(a non-existent creature) as compared to the ‘Muslim’. No such excuse for alienated killers is any longer tolerable. The lies are swept away, as they must be, in the light of the dreadful slaughters.

England has not yet accepted this.

Why?

In part, fear of the consequences that would need to be embraced, but, rather shamefully, in part, a sort of arrogant ‘exceptionalism’ – the nonsense idea that Britain is super-tolerant, super-integrated, super-sophisticated, superior to all others.

When this damaging fantasy is abandoned, when the dreadful reality is accepted by those who count, then progress can be made.

Until that happens, the unedifying spectacle of a posturing, essentially dishonest government manipulating both truth and peoples in the light of both forms of death will continue to offend.

Britain has acted irrationally over Europe.

European political elites consider Britain to be no longer either stable or politically rational.

I would apply this criticism to the posture on Islam in Britain.

Dreadful days. - Terry Field

Leo Wiley Plants a Garden

Leo Wiley’s Garden

by Glenn N. Holliman, edited by Grace A. Holliman

Last winter Wiley sent me an email that included photographs of summer flowers from his garden.  He lives in a small Iowa town near the Minnesota border. It’s the same hamlet he lived in forty-nine years ago when he was drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War.  After serving in Vietnam he returned home, taught high school English for decades, and now lives quietly with his partner, Tom.  Wiley and I correspond every few weeks and in his last email he mentioned that he was planting flower seeds for this years’ garden.

In the early fall of 1969 Wiley planted a garden in Lai Khe, 40 miles north of Saigon. He took an empty ammunition box, two and a half feet long by one-foot wide, and filled it with the soil of South Vietnam. In the dirt he planted marigold seeds that had been sent to him in a care package from his mother back in Iowa. He placed the ammo box on the railing outside our office, watered the seeds regularly, and they started to grow. 

January 1970, the marigolds blooming and blooming!

During our tour of duty, Wiley and I were chaplains’ assistants in the 3^rd Brigade, 1^st Infantry Division. Not a bad job to have as far as these things go. Our orders included pulling guard duty, driving and maintaining jeeps, and assisting the chaplain with Sunday services. 

Chaplains’ assistants were also required to type. Wiley and I typed letters home to spouses and parents of the men in our brigade who were killed in action. We used typewriters with black ribbon that left smudges on our fingers. If we made a mistake typing a letter, we had to start over. It required concentration as division artillery was not far away blasting 105 shells day and night. 

One day Chaplain Pender came to Wiley and said, “Your dad just died back in Iowa. You are on the next plane home.” Wiley left Lai Khe and his box of marigolds. He had served ten months of his tour and would be state side for the remainder of his service. I looked after his garden. I weeded, pruned and watered it often. The orange and yellow marigolds blossomed for weeks, then months. They brightened up the corridor and said, “Look, there is beauty here.”

Below, Wiley on the left and Glenn on the right, both wearing regulation Australian bush hats.  Note the ammunition box with the just sprouting marigolds in the right center on the railing.  This picture taken October 1969.

Forty-eight years later I was cleaning out my attic and found a box of pictures taken while I was in Vietnam. In one picture I’m standing beside Wiley and in the background is his marigold garden. On the back of the photo I had written the name of the town in Iowa where Wiley lived. After an Internet search I found the phone number of my old Army buddy and  the week before Christmas I spoke to Leo Wiley for the first time in almost fifty years.

At one point in our conversation I told Wiley that I took care of his flowers after he left Vietnam. There was a silence on the other end of the line. I wondered if he remembered the marigold garden. After a moment Wiley said, “Glenn, you have no idea how much that means to me.”

A Thought on my 9th Birthday

Last July in this space one of my precocious grand daughters, Heidi, wrote about unrest in the world. 
This week on her 9th birthday, she penned some more reflections expressing her feelings.  They appear below.  If you wonder where Heidi gets her idealism, please read the second article by her mother - Glenn N. Holliman, aka Grand Dad

Sweaters
by Heidi Jahn

We were at Michael's craft store shopping for my birthday.  When we got there I pulled my grand mommy all the way to the yarn section.  She asked why are we in the yarn section.  I said because I want to make sweaters for homeless people.

And she said, "Well, the soft yarn is $10.00 each."  I said I will save up for it.

Then we went over to the art supplies where she and I searched for art.  All I could think about was making those sweaters.  One day I hope I can and I should never give up.  One should never give up on your hopes and dreams.

Impermanence 

by Grace Holliman

I don’t recall why I hated hiking in the woods with my mom when I was a teenager. Maybe it was because she made me go on hikes. Maybe it was because hiking made her happy and I found my mom very annoying when she was happy. Or maybe I hated hiking because I was a teenager and hated everything.

For the record, I’m now forty-two and love hiking in the woods. I love the gradual uphill climbs, the switchbacks, the navigation of streams while holding my dog’s leash and hoping she doesn’t pull me into the chilly water. I love the views, the mountain laurel, wildflowers and mossy banks. I love the dirt on my legs, the sweat on my back, the song of the birds, and I’m even fascinated by the snakes that cross my path. 

All of these things scream to me, “you’re alive” while whispering, “impermanence” at the same time.

It’s a cool, April morning in Stuart, Virginia. I’m sitting on the porch of Cabin 23 in Fairy Stone State Park. I’m in a rocking chair, sipping hot, black coffee, as the sun rises and steals the fog from the lake in front of me. My daughters, ages eight and eleven, are with me. It’s their spring break from school and at the last minute I rented a cabin for two nights at a state park four hours southwest of our home in Richmond.

Holly, the 11 year old, paddles a canoe

At first my eleven year old balked at the idea of renting a cabin in the woods. “There won’t be anything to do there,” she whined. “Why can’t we go to Florida? I don’t want to just go hiking. I hate hiking.”

“I understand,” I said. I find myself saying that a lot lately, “I understand.” When my eight year old comes to me in the middle of the night because she’s worried about death; her death, my death, her father’s death, I tell her I understand. I could be aggravated by her waking me up over a ridiculous fear, but I’m not, not too much anyway. 

Fear is not ridiculous in the middle of the night when you are eight years old. We sit with fear for a moment and talk about death. The moment passes. We use the bathroom, get a sip of water, kiss the dog goodnight and tuck back into bed. Impermanence.

My mom wasn’t able to join us at the cabin this year. Her husband has had some recent health concerns and she needed to stay home. I know she is thinking of us. I know she would like to be here. Her love is here. Her love of hiking. Her love of uphill climbs, switchbacks, mountain laurel, wildflowers, and mossy banks. Her love of dirt on her legs and sweat on her back -I won’t include snakes, she doesn’t love them, but everything else is here with me and my daughters.

Grace and Heidi on Heidi's 9th birthday

As for my eleven year old who said going to the cabin would be boring, I told her that we would hunt for Fairy Stones once we got there. Fairy Stones are special rock formations that one can seek out in a designated area near the park. I showed her a few Fairy Stones I had collected when I went to the park fifteen years ago. She liked the stones. She liked the idea of going to the cabin for spring break. Impermanence.

Grace Holliman

April, 2017

On the Election of Macron of France

Emanuel Macron is President of the French Republic

by Terry Field of Normandy, France

Nothing can change now. He should be known as Little Macron.

Why?

Because LePen was the bogie he could easily beat, and his support came from those who hate him slightly less than Le Pen.

In retrospect, I should have stood against Le Pen, and offered Crepe Suzette to each French person cooked by the chefs in the Elysee.  

Brigette and Emmanuel Macron

I would  have won. A monkey could win against Le Pen.

In what world then is this real legitimacy?

Similarly in Britain where the very inadequate Mrs May will win ‘big’ as they say in Texas (or in the films of Texas I have watched) because she is a safe version of the populist Farage – but more particularly because Corbyn is so utterly hopeless, and Labour is a historically spent force.

Parisian city sophisticates are now in a rapture of ecstasy. The New Man of Liberal dreams has triumphed. It was interesting to see the body language at the Arc de Triomphe.

Little Macron and Hollande were close and together.  Both state socialists. (Macron’s marketing department told him to dump the word ‘socialist’ and run under ‘En Marchant’.)  A name that means nothing other than movement forward? A Blairlike level of banality hiding continuity.

So – Little Macron and Hollande - A love match of the flabby old and the taught new.   Beyond that, no real difference.

But that is not a trivial relationship. Macron is an ENArc graduate (Ecole National D’Administration), as are most French rulers,  and he has made a few million with venture capitalists and suchlike.

He is clever, erudite, full of concepts, idea, potentials for action.

That is two a penny in France.

They are ALL like that.

They ALL plan extensively.

They ALL have grandiose future strategies.

And damn all happens.

Haha – I see you!

France is like an 18^th Century English country house. The garden around the house is lovely. Beyond is a Haha – a decorative ditch that cannot be seen from the house, but which separates the wild outer countryside and the fields containing the beasts – bulls, cows, piggies, sheep, - from the decorative grounds of the garden.

The animals can be seen from the house, as a sort of rural decoration, but they are physically separated from the elegance of the house, the pleasure of the garden.  Inside look continuous with the full landscape, but it is not.   They are both entirely separate, one from the other.

Paris and the big eastern cities are the house and garden up to the Haha.

 Paris by night....

The rest of France is the decorative wilderness beyond.

That is accentuating, not declining. Little Macron can and will do NOTHING to change this.

The Hun is at the Gate

( actually, it bought the gate, fitted a lock, and opens it only for a fee)

The new French President has said that he wants a new relationship with Europe; that he wants a pan-EU ‘conference’ (or even more than one!)

And why does he want these ‘conferences????  The same, pathetic old reason.

France is bust. It has a German currency (the Euro) it cannot sustain and wishes not to see its economy progressively hollowed out.

It is in the SAME condition as the rest of weak, fractured, agrarian, and semi-agrarian unproductive Europe. It is no partner for Germany. But Little Macron thinks it is. He really thinks Germany will do his bidding. As did the last series of French Presidents, with less and less success.

Germany grew and grew, as all knew it would.

As Margaret Thatcher – by far our greatest British post-war prime Minister - well understood and feared.  She tried to stop it. She saw what Germany would become.

As Kissinger said, Germany – ‘too big for Europe, too small for the world’.

French President Sarkozy made repeated attempts to get Merkel to share bond issuance, budgets, capital spending and other integration economic activity. Merkel always, robustly, refused.

Germany has progressively bought the French debt. France has issued its own debt on terms it could never get if Germany were not, in effect, a co-guarantor. In other words, Germany controls France.

It controls the financial landscape of Europe. It has not forgotten its efforts to integrate and dominate Europe, in 1870, 1914 and 1939.  It is liberal propaganda to suppress the reality that Germany continues with its project of control and domination n Europe. I am not being neurotic in saying this. It is simply as plain as a pikestaff.

Clausewitz said war was the prosecution of normal civil objectives by other means.

The tool of warfare is simply replaced with the Commission, financial domination, structural direction from Berlin. Now the traditional means have been applied and continue to be applied.

The lickspittal Juncker of the Commission transparently does Germany’s bidding.

Germany is unchanged; it is the same place. It remains the same country, with the SAME geopolitical interests.

It acts accordingly.

France thought it could control it; for a period after 1945 it seemed able to do so.

Now that is entirely gone.

Left,  French country house named Mansion Field

Thus France has become what it always HAD to be – a vassal state. The populist rebellion in France against the drift to the cities leaving the country behind, plus globalisation and the intolerably powerful currency German that overburdens it will receive a minimalist response from Germany via Little Macron.

Germans will offer just enough - in their assessment – to stop total social meltdown in France. And that will be it.

In return, there will be a fast track European integration, as a very fancy marketing ploy, with France Germany, Holland, Poland (don’t forget lebensraum) maybe Denmark included but that will NOT be with a commonly - controlled financial structure.

Power will continue to concentrate in Berlin; only it will be masked from sight for the mass of the European population.

And why all the coming subterfuge??  Again, simple to see.  If Germany were to share its wealth with the weak others, Germans would revolt, and there would be, at the minimum, a cancellation of the apparent sharing – and there may be a full-scale German revolt and a German exit from Europe.

There is always a place for a cow-pat

The same applies in reverse with France.

Europe is in a vice. It is being crushed by lunatic energy policies, lunatic border access policies, lunatic imbalances in trade, and France is the most politically and socially naïve and dysfunctional society in the developed world.

To illustrate the corrupted opportunistic absurdity of France post Little Macron, in less than 48 hours, the previous Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, declared that the socialist party (his party) was now ‘dead’ and he would seek to stand for parliament under Macron’s new party banner.

This is typical.

France will pick its legislatures with corrupt, inward-looking placemen – tatty opportunists - but they will work assiduously to stop any real change that Little Macron wishes to propose.

For those of you outside the UK and Europe who know of the sectarian divisions in Northern Ireland, expand this level of structural failure, call it France, and you have a good picture of the reality.

Let them eat cake (or Brioche, Pain au Chocolate, Tuilles, Mille-feuille) – anything to divert them from comprehension.

Below, French cakes in Paris

Little Macron cannot succeed, since the financial structure that enriches Germany will not be modified. The established abusive orthodoxy that so revolts David Lott – and rightly so – will continue almost unchanged.

Germany will continue unaffected with its lapdog, the European Commission, a regrettably fundamentally undemocratic power-broking horror – there to enforce its will.

SO

The correct description of Europe being in a structural depression will continue. Vast numbers of the excluded will have no more hope.

Other than rebellion.

Macron was elected because Le Pen had a gory press image, but consider her actual program proposals:

1 Scrap the Euro after the French vote so to do.

2 Leave the EU structure after the French freely vote so to do.

3 Control borders.

4 Act against murderous terrorism.

All of the above are reasonable and probably unavoidable anyway.

The assault of the media simply treating her as a ‘fascist’, or a ‘holocaust-denier’ was

 the only commentary, and it was relentless.

SO let me make myself clear here.

For the purposes of formulating rational economic and social policies I have NO interest if the proponent of said rational policies has a problem with the holocaust. I loathe that denial, but I do not care about it. It is a matter for the past, but the crisis in Europe – in France – is a matter for NOW.

Her approach to protectionism is ludicrous. Petit Macron is right about that, and Europe trades about 75% with itself, so there is NO place for national protectionism. But there IS a place for a state leader in Europe who says that redistribution to the skilled working poor, the semi-skilled working poor and the unskilled working poor must be accomplished to take the sting from globalisation.

Germany has done that by balanced budget redistribution. France has spent 30 years of degenerate socialist politics doing nearly all of it by state debt issuance.

Hence France is bankrupt.

Hence Germany is not.

This is of axiomatic significance and ALL policy discussions with Petit Macron and his Euro-conferences will centre around this fact.

In addition:

France retires at 60!

Germany at 67 and up.

France does a 35 hour maximum, Paris works 30 hours a week – the least in the world!

Little Macron says he will not change the retirement date.

Why?

Because France is an irrational, potentially ultra-violent powder-keg. Any real assault of labour conditions would provoke such a revolt it would be – and it has been tried before by DeVillepin ( the one-time Prime Minister) – stopped in its tracks by riot and afray.

Macron will do a bit of cosmetic labour law changes. That will be it.

Decline will continue.

Terry Field serves fruit de mer with farm-fresh Norman  asparagus

He has said he will preserve the French social protection system.

This system, in reality impoverishes, hollows out work, encourages idleness, forces youth unemployment, destroys viable businesses, supports the idle liberal elites in the cities. It destroys the countryside.

It is a lunatic hangover from an imagined liberality that sprang from a bloody horror of a revolution.

Maybe France is unable to change, except by extreme street violence.

The national debt in France is absurdly high. Petit Macron says he will reduce the civil service and state employees by about 10%- when it is already 11 times the size of that in Britain, a nation lf similar population, slightly larger GDP!

SO -more of the same.

But he has been made to smell fragrant by the presence of Le Pen and media distortion.

Here we go again round the Muberry Tree! All good fun for you and me!!!

I will write the future here.

The EU will continue cosmetically tidied up.

Germany will appear to offer something, but in fact offer nothing.

France will be subjected to a media campaign and diversionary nonsense to appeal to the natural fascistic and nationalistic tendencies rife in France. To that end, Britain will be attacked and such as the Le Touquet agreement will be scrapped.

Kent will be awash with migrants. The ‘frogs’ will laugh at the ‘rosbifs’

There will be police intervention to control the Muslim population in France. But the police and the internal military are extremely stretched already and the rate of illness amongst officers threatens cohesion and viability in some areas of the country.

One can only police potential killers for so long without becoming seriously unwell.

It will not stop the killing but that will abate as the Middle-East slowly comes under order. If that does not happen, French people will continue to die.

There will then come a point when the country erupts into extreme inter-communal violence – unless Macron does what his opponent has long suggested.

France has two communities effectively at war with each other.

The media lies about it, suppresses it. But it is nonetheless true.

And on. And on.

The nasty reality will be more failure, decline, fracture, poverty, deindustrialisation and internal rage and resentment. The political tribes loathe each other in France as in no other advanced state.

Petit Macron will, in all probability, usher in full-blown fascist dictatorship.

Be careful what you vote for.

Some Thoughts from England

David Lott is no stranger to these pages.  For several decades he has argued consistently that the United Kingdom should go it alone without membership in the European Union. Last year, the members of his party, the United Kingdom Independent Party, helped lead the charge for Brexit.  In this tome, David, a founding member of UKIP, a veteran of the Royal Air Force and a son of a Battle of Britain hero, reflects on why the current state of Western politics seems to be trending toward populism, or some would argue a return to democratic nationalism. - Glenn N. Holliman

Thoughts on Populism

by David Lott, Englishman

Since the beginning of civilisation there has been rebellion against civil and military governments. The populist uprising in our times is certainly not new and common throughout history. Each authority whether Empire, Nation or even Tribe come to live in fear, sometimes paranoia when a threat from within appears inside their horizon. There are such a remarkable variety of examples of rebellion that there is a danger in being selective as it can be the enemy of objectivity. I will try my best to be fair but brief in order to avoid boring you.

The reaction by rulers to rebellion is mostly authoritarian leading frequently to tyranny. Those in charge convince themselves they are behaving reasonably and their idea of the status quo is sound. They tell themselves the troubled protesters are either mad, simple or a deplorable destabilising threat, whilst fear courses through their veins and colours their response. Occasionally enlightened rulers perceive merit in their opponents’ arguments or perhaps they are simply pragmatic but in both cases upset and violence are avoided. More often than not the Authority has a mindset that cannot be changed which is, in the majority of cases, at the root of protest in the first place as rational argument simply cannot prevail.

Members of David's family take a spring walk amongst the English bluebells!

Protest comes in many forms with many perils. Some are led by the evil as in the rise of Adolph Hitler and his Nazis which was avoidable had not France determined to beggar Germany with its insistence upon unpayable reparations. A little magnanimity would have done wonders.

Other rebellions begin with the best of intentions led by the high minded against oppression or simply poor and/or corrupt government but these idealists are regularly thrust brutally aside by sly selfish and greedy conspirators lurking in their midst. The most recent example of a just rebellion being usurped by evil was that of the the Arab Spring which was traduced by religious fanatics. The desire for democracy was overwhelmed by carefully placed religious freaks from within. 

Unfortunately, political leaders in the West, since the outrageous tragedy of 9/11, have been painfully blind to the forces of evil that circumvented the Arab Spring’s desire for secular change. The financiers of religious extremism subsequently, in an act of madness, became our allies in the Middle East. As a result, we created a state of affairs that fuels hatred, violence, gruesome brutality and servitude that should have no place in the ‘enlightened’ West’s foreign policy, a policy which results in terrorism at home and death by drowning for the thousands in the Mediterranean seas.

Some revolutions simply exchange one set of tyrannical leaders for another as ideals become corrupted by power as in the communist revolutions in the 20^th century.

The perils of revolution were very much in the forefront of our minds of those of us who struggled for over 20 years to free ourselves from the tentacles of the European Union and break free to once more have the freedom to govern ourselves.  

Just because there have been examples of tragedy following the usurped intentions of various uprisings of populism in the last century it does not mean to say it always leads to disaster or regression, far from it. The US War of Independence followed a successful uprising against the arrogant and inflexible British leading to the creation of the greatest nation on earth. What a wonderful achievement, you wished to govern yourselves and you succeeded brilliantly.

Oliver Cromwell’s uprising led to civil war and victory over monarchical rule. His rule, though austere, allowed Britain to transition from a largely autocratic model of government to that of a democratic kind subsequently adopted throughout much of the world.  Many would argue that the outcome ended better than the bloody French revolution 150 years later. It certainly ended better than Wat Tyler’s peasants’ revolt in 1381 which so very nearly succeeded when his force occupied London. He was too easily appeased by a deceitful King and paid the ultimate price. Yet another example of the perils of rebellion.

Today’s rise in populism in the West is not happening because all is fine and dandy with the governing class.

The reasons are highly complex but in very general terms faith has been lost in the veracity of the ruling elite who seem to believe their corruption, their abuse of privacy and a telling air of superiority has not registered with much of the electorate. Many on the liberal left too often despise the merit within their own country’s culture and nationhood. The preservation of which seems unimportant to them. Much better that home culture is watered down with mass immigration, as immigrants can be used as voting fodder. Hillary Clinton to her credit was openly honest about watering down national characteristics in a drive towards global governance during her campaign for the presidency. Today’s President elect in France holds the same beliefs.

None but the most dyed in the wool supporter of the current rulers can say there is no reason to protest. My worry is that there are a huge number of such leopards that cannot change their spots who simplistically see the populist opposition as anything other than a deplorable threat to their power. Populism thrives does it not, when poor, deaf, arrogant, deceitful, corrupt and undemocratic politicians rule? And boy is it thriving.

Today people have woken up to the Globalist agenda that thwarts democracy through corrupt malleable politicians and waters down distinct and admirable civilised cultures. War has actually become a method of distracting people from the underlying agenda. Thanks to social media the people no longer buy the established line and the press is losing the battle of information. Social media has more factual credibility than mainstream media with the ordinary man and woman on the street. We now see government trying to influence the organs of the social media such that they deny freedom of speech. It is a sterile unimaginative approach that will be scorned.

In Europe the EU provides profoundly undemocratic, corrupt and incompetent government. Its only policy body, the European Commission, is not even elected. Its ability to take decisions requires 28 once sovereign countries of very different viewpoints and cultures on geopolitics to agree! If they do not comply, they can be, and sometimes are punished. It is no wonder this process leads to paralysis when negotiating trade agreements. And always Germany lurks behind the scene pulling their puppet strings. The EU will fail, the leaders may hold hands after a terrorist attack but any real solidarity is dissolving rapidly as the tide of independence swells.

I have mentioned corruption being rife. There are 30,000 lobbyists in Brussels entertaining officials in every field with flattery, nice lunches, holidays and finally juicy jobs when their time is up within the institutions. The situation in Washington is not dissimilar.

EU and German leaders are deaf to the cries of Greece, now governed in terrible austerity linked to an overvalued Euro that denies any escape from penury.Germany’s unilateral opening of EU borders, automatically supported by the EU directly leads to the cries of alarm from Hungary, the Czech Republic, Holland, Austria, Italy, France, Sweden and Poland on the subject of mass Islamic migration. The culture of these people is perfectly easily absorbed into our own when small numbers are involved. 

Spring in England can be chilly, but what would England be without lovable dogs and the early bluebells of the season.

But many within this tsunami bring a different legal system of Sharia and refuse to integrate which generates fear from north to south and east to west in Europe, especially in the case of female safety from molestation, grooming and rape. Many individual governments are refusing to dance to the German tune played dutifully by the EU’s orchestra.

Time is so ripe for rebellion that of course there are populist groups rising, as so many criteria for their existence are met and the only answer seems to be more faceless Globalism and more EU forced integration. Unless EU leaders take note opposition will grow and grow.

Interestingly in the UK the government of the day seems to have listened (but I am wary and only time will tell) to the voice of the people who, I am proud to say, have been provided with populist leadership that has prevailed in its intention to leave this failing institution of the EU. Let us all hope that populism has done its job in the UK. The people seem to think so at the moment. As I write this there has been an extraordinary protest at the England and Wales local elections in favour of a government determined upon its course to leave the EU.

The UK Independence Party, under the leadership of the charismatic Nigel Farage, of which I am a part, brought about our successful result in a referendum and the application by the UK Government to leave the EU. This was achieved completely from outside the Westminster arena. It was an extraordinary example of popular uprising and it looks at the moment that the General Election is turning into a second referendum upon our EU membership with those advocating to remain in the EU losing massively. Our Ukip vote has collapsed and gone to those with the task of implementing the departure from the EU; the Conservative party.

This is a real worry as we got where we did through honest toil and dedication spanning more than 20 years of superhuman effort sustained by conviction and iron determination. Prime Minister May will need the same qualities to see this through. She voted to Remain in the EU so it is only natural we suspect some backsliding as she is unlikely to have our conviction – how could she?

The Labour Party is collapsing and may split, the Liberal Democrats as a pro EU outfit will remain in limbo. The last Prime Minister the pro EU David Cameron was forced from office and all this achieved through populism led by the UK Independence Party. This was an immense and unprecedented victory for the people and an underpinning of democracy with huge political realignment bringing change to our country.

You see folks it can be done if you are determined enough, without bloodshed and within democratic parameters, but I can assure you it was very hard work!

Some say that in reality Mrs. May is the new Ukip Leader! However, there is much water to still flow under the bridge and our Party will continue ready to surge forward again should this Conservative government fail to deliver. Unlike Wat Tyler we have learned the lessons of not being too easily appeased. - David Lott