Removing the ‘Great’ From Britain
Last month, Britain made a dangerous swing to the left. Private education has been attacked, more public housing, the promotion of environmental Marxism, and much more. But that isn’t to say there wasn’t an unspoken gospel among the main parties concerning the deliberate impoverishment of the British Isles. Merely aesthetic differences separate them.
A distinguished associate of mine told me about his grievances, the attacks against people earning lower wages and the political weaponization used by both major parties to score points from the electorate. He also mentioned the infuriating behavior of leftist Samaritans preaching love, but when people vote contrary to their intentions, spew irascible diatribes.
Disappointing as it is, I am not terribly surprised. It would be a mistake to label the conservatives as oriented by free-market liberalism. Some permitted the organization of market forces; others such as Robert Peel, Margaret Thatcher and John Major were proponents of individual liberty.
The notion of one-nation conservatism, also known as Tory democracy, was conceived by Benjamin Disraeli, espousing the belief of a united nation protecting working classes against alleged abuses of capitalism. As prime minister in the 1870s, his government passed the Employers and Workmen Act and the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act, the latter decriminalizing trade unionism. Social reforms were introduced to smooth relations between Capital and Labor.
Despite these inroads into statism, Britain retained a mostly free-market economy, but the seeds were planted for a seditious social revolution to sprout. As one has read, there are overlaps with socialism. Therefore, it comes as no shock that the first socialist party (Social Democratic Foundation) in Great Britain was founded by Henry Hyndman, a former conservative. His political career foreclosed with his death as leader of the National Socialist Party in 1921.
The calamities of World War I quickly brought Labor into the political spotlight, inspired by the guild socialism of Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Britain abandoned the gold standard in 1931, and in 1945, Labor imposed price control, expropriated businesses and instituted the welfare state, all acquiesced by Winston Churchill, an irreligious “liberal” who maintained the policies of his predecessor — except for the privatization of steel — and praising the powerful trade unions in the name of Tory Democracy at the Conservative Party Conference in 1953; the same inebriate collaborator of Soviet expansionism.
The following decades would be even worse. The Winter of Discontent and severe inflation followed; unprofitable industries were sub
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