You may have seen this billboard for UKIP (BNP for the Mail-reading accountancy classes), the United Kingdom Independence Party, recruiting Winston Churchill to their anti-European cause. (As an aside, how do they manage to oppose the European Union while defending the United Kingdom Union?). The accompanying election poster declares, amidst a load of largely inaccurate bullshit, that Winston wouldn't let it happen.
"I wish to speak to you today about the tragedy of Europe. (...) Yet all the while there is a remedy which, if it were generally and spontaneously adopted by the great majority of people in many lands, would as if by a miracle transform the whole scene, and would in a few years make all Europe, or the greater part of it, as free and as happy as Switzerland is today. What is this sovereign remedy? It is to recreate the European Family, or as much of it as we can, and to provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom. We must build a kind of United States of Europe. (...) The first step in the recreation of the European Family must be a partnership between France and Germany."
Winston ChurchillSpeech at Zurich University 19th September 1946
(http://www.historiasiglo20.org/europe/anteceden2.htm)
Now UKIP might claim that Winston wanted an EU to keep France and Germany peaceful without Britain necessarily being a member, but there's no denying that he was a fan, and the Franco-German union is merely 'the first step'. Even better than this, fact fans, is his plan presented to Parliament in 1940 for a united British-French nation. Eat that, a-historical little Englander bigots.
(I'm an itchy, intolerant leftwinger. Traditionally the left sees the EU as a capitalist plot, whereas the right sees it as a socialist plot). In many ways, they're both right - but I'd rather have a reformed united Europe than the centre-right government we have now).
3 comments:
"We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked but not comprised. We are associated but not absorbed. And should European statesmen address us and say, 'Shall we speak for thee?', we should reply, 'Nay Sir, for we dwell among our own people'."
or maybe
"And when I have to choose between Europe and the wide open seas... I will always choose the wide open seas."
Yes Churchill was a supporter of the growth of the European Union, but like a buttress, from the outside.
UKIP are in no way a facist party, if anytrhing we are a small state libertarian party. The BNP are as I am sure you are well aware is a national socialist party.
Excellent - one of them bites.
Despite the poor spelling, he can presumably read. Winston said 'We must build a kind of United States of Europe'.
What's this about a 'small state libertarian party'? I presume that means he supports independence for Wales, Scotland and England then.
For a bunch of people opposed to taking European money, they're quite keen to do well out of it personally:
Tom Wise MEP - charged with fiddling thousands in expenses.
Ashley Mote MEP - convicted of benefit fraud
He's right you know though Vole. UKIP aren't a Fascist party. They are a one-issue party (albeit one run by Fascists).
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