John Tyndall on how democracy works

Tyndall (1934–2005) was a prominent English nationalist. Wikipedia article.

Right now the UK and the West in general are in upheaval about immigration. Tyndall has seen such outbreaks of righteous fury before but predicts that the elites will find a way to channel the anger into yet another feckless alternative to the current situation. One thinks of Boris Johnson and the Tory promises to drastically reduce immigration. So now theyhave Labour, which is worse but still making promises to cut immigration.

From John Tyndall’s The Eleventh Hour (p. 225ff; Albion Press, 1988).

In effect, what we have in Britain is an ongoing state of national disunity and civil war, chaos, inefficiency and weak and flabby government — without, at the end of it all, even the free choice and sovereignty of the people that are supposed to justify these things.

For government in Britain is not democratic government; it is oligarchic government, operating within a purely nominal framework of democratic institutions and procedures; nor is it oligarchic government of the type that might be justified: an oligarchy bound in devotion to nation and people and the guardian of their welfare; it is oligarchy which, at least in modern times, has been consistent in its betrayal of nation and people at every juncture of affairs.

In the hands of this oligarchy of power, the politicians and their parties have become nothing better than marionettes, to be paraded before the people each at his appointed hour and then withdrawn from the stage as soon as he has served his purpose, to be replaced by new performers with a new act, though of course manipulated by the processes by which they are governed. Indeed, it is virtually impossible to put the ordinary people of this country in a position of having less power over national affairs and less freedom to choose how they will be governed than they have today. An alternative system of government designed to produce leadership of the quality for which I have called, and which empowers it to act effectively, is by no means incompatible with the objective of giving the people greater freedom and a more influential voice in national affairs. On the contrary, the establishment of such conditions of government would, without question, meet a need that is yearned for by millions of Britons as never before.

It is quite ridiculous to place a man who has never had a driving lesson in the seat of a motor car and then tell him: “You are now free to drive this car anywhere you like!” Ridiculous and also dishonest. The dishonesty is then compounded if the lay-out of the streets in the area is such that, whichever one he takes, he is bound to end up at the same destination.

It is equally dishonest to tell a man that he has the freedom to determine what government he wants by exercising his vote at election time if he is completely lacking in the information needed to use that vote intelligently and discriminately and if, furthermore, his effective range of choice is limited to candidates and parties whose policies, at the end of the route, land him in the same place!

If the freedom of the individual to influence the course of politics — supposedly the first foundation-stone of ‘democracy’ — is to have any meaning, it must be in the context of that individual having the capability to exercise that freedom by understanding the political issues. Without this, ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ are meaningless catchwords. That is a cardinal truth which must be taken into account in any effort to formulate an alternative political system for the achievement of sound government.

The next truth which must be accepted is that it is futile a government being elected to carry out policies approved by a majority of the people if, from the moment it takes office, it is engaged in a nonstop civil war in parliament in which every possible device is used to sabotage its effective operation.

Likewise, the will of the people, just supposing that we have a way of clearly ascertaining what that is, cannot be carried out by any government effectively if its power of action is hampered at every turn by the need to appease various vested interests and bend to the pressures of the various lobbies, invariably representing organised minorities, which bay at government’s heels. Here we come back to the truth recognised by Mosley in the 1930s and dealt with in an earlier chapter. Under the old system, as Mosley said, the power of finance “can affect the lives of the mass of people more closely and more provided a useful safety-valve for those voters who might grow disillusioned with both Tories and Labour. By courtesy of The Guardian newspaper, it was ensured that the Liberal Party did not fade into total oblivion but, on the contrary, was always there at election time to soak up the protest vote just in case that vote rose to unmanageable proportions. This of course happened at Orpington in 1961 and has happened on a number of occasions since, thus corralling safely into the establishment pen any maverick steers that might be so bold as to break loose from the general herd.

In the 1980s, a similar device was employed by the creation of the Social Democratic Party. Again, the establishment astutely judged the public mood: sensing that a larger than usual number of voters and members were deserting Labour, and realising that not all of these could be relied upon to drift into the Liberal camp, our real rulers did everything possible to encourage and nurture the infant SDP, giving it a rousing send-off in the press and thereafter generously publicising the daily utterances of its leaders and the pastiche of old-gang clichés that it tried to pass off as ‘policies’. In consequence, the voter who had grown tired of the Tory/Labour cycle of misgovernment of the previous half-century now had, not one alternative, but two! Well, just for a while at any rate. As is known, the Social Democrats later went out of business when their main rump was swallowed up by the Liberals, leading to the formation of today’s ‘Liberal Democrats’. The latter party incorporates just the same flabby potpourri of internationalism, free trade, racial suicide and ‘wet’ prescriptions for social problems that form the bases of the manifestos of their rivals. Whatever way the poor voter tries to turn, he ends up down the same blind alley.

This is the reality of the political system under which the people are deluded that they have a ‘free choice’, and under which every symptom of governmental weakness and ineptitude is glossed over by the consoling cry that Britons are favoured by the benign smile of providence to live in a ‘democracy’.

No meaningful effort to grapple with our immense national problems will be possible until this ludicrous and wholly unworkable system is done away with and we institute an effective system of government capable of bringing to the fore a high calibre of national leadership and then properly equipping that leadership with the necessary powers of action.

There will be those who will ask if such a change would threaten the framework of ‘democracy’ and the ‘freedom’ of the people that is supposed to lie at the centre of that ideal. To them, let us straightaway reply that at present no such framework of ‘democracy’ exists which can be threatened and no freedom exists for the people to control the processes by which they are governed. Indeed, it is virtually impossible to put the ordinary people of this country in a position of having less power over national affairs and less freedom to choose how they will be governed than they have today. An alternative system of government designed to produce leadership of the quality for which I have called, and which empowers it to act effectively, is by no means incompatible with the objective of giving the people greater freedom and a more influential voice in national affairs. On the contrary, the establishment of such conditions of government would, without question, meet a need that is yearned for by millions of Britons as never before.

It is quite ridiculous to place a man who has never had a driving lesson in the seat of a motor car and then tell him: “You are now free to drive this car anywhere you like!” Ridiculous and also dishonest. The dishonesty is then compounded if the lay-out of the streets in the area is such that, whichever one he takes, he is bound to end up at the same destination.

It is equally dishonest to tell a man that he has the freedom to determine what government he wants by exercising his vote at election time if he is completely lacking in the information needed to use that vote intelligently and discriminately and if, furthermore, his effective range of choice is limited to candidates and parties whose policies, at the end of the route, land him in the same place!

If the freedom of the individual to influence the course of politics — supposedly the first foundation-stone of ‘democracy’ — is to have any meaning, it must be in the context of that individual having the capability to exercise that freedom by understanding the political issues. Without this, ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ are meaningless catchwords. That is a cardinal truth which must be taken into account in any effort to formulate an alternative political system for the achievement of sound government.