Well, the 'sabbatical' lasted all of approximately ten minutes!

Thanks to Tim Aker, late of the Taxpayers Alliance and now of UKIP! He has re-started a blog, one that all would do well to blogroll - and from which I quote:

"Oona King, who lost her Commons seat in 2005, today takes her seat in the Upper Chamber and joins Lord Coe (defeated at the 1997 election), Lord Forsyth (defeated 1997), Lord Knight (defeated 2010), Lady Smith (defeated 2010), Baroness Kramer (defeated 2010) and – a case of multiple defeats – Shirley Williams (defeated for the last time in 1987). And Lord Taylor of Warwick (defeated 1992, found guilty of false accounting 2011). There are probably more, I’ve only just skimmed through the list of Peers. But do you see a pattern emerge?

How can anyone justify an MP losing their seat – the privilege to legislate the laws and regulations that govern our lives – and then accept their elevation to a different chamber where they can do exactly what they did beforehand, give or take. We voted them out. They should go, not be wrapped in ermine, given a title and keep their legislative powers."

In this post Tim Aker brings to the forefront a matter which, to my detriment, I had not considered. It is also unfortunate that Tim has pointed the political elite to another policy idea that they can then 'nick' from UKIP as was the case, for example, of a £xx,xxx threshold free of income tax - but I digress, again!

What Tim has done is to highlight yet another method by which the political elite continue to maintain their hold on the democratic process presently 'in being' in this country - and in so doing maintaining their denial of the people's right to a voice in the governance of this nation! I can but thank Tim for re-awakening my abhorrence of all for which the political elite connive to enact 'under our noses'!

May I please be granted the honour of placing the first noose around a politicians neck - if only to make this old man happy - when his/she is introduced to their 'personal' lamp post?

Apologies

Unless there is a valid reason, such as prior commitments taking me away from my laptop, regular readers will know that invariably there are a number of posts on this blog each day.

Today, for reasons I have yet to fathom, I have not been able to summon the will to write. Oh, I could have written some more about the love I have for my country, the monarchy, our green and pleasant land which is like no other, our traditions, the need for the preservation of how our way of life used to be, the 'conquering' of our nation by others with the willing connivance of our politicians - but I have written about that previously.

At the moment I feel nothing but despair for the future of my country - and nothing but pure hate for the politicians who have brought this about. My deepest regret is that I did not take an interest in politics earlier; that I was 40/50 years younger in order that I could physically 'do' something - and boy oh boy, could I 'do' something! As it is, all I have left to offer now is words; and, unfortunately, it would seem that no-one wishes to read those words, other than the 'converted'.

It does seem to me - as the days pass and the grip our politicians have on our country inexorably increases - that they will not be removed through the ballot box, thus meaning that the only way in which they will be removed is by taking a leaf out of the examples set by Romania and others.

It is to my lasting regret that I am not of sufficient physical strength to take part in such a rebellion, however I can but pray that those who are, do - and organise themselves and bring about that change, pdq. My one wish is that before my time on earth is ended I might see the present venal, dishonourable, unprincipled political elite being introduced to the lamp post which has, or should have been, reserved for their personal use.

I have other 'irons in the fire' which involve, hopefully, causing my constituency Member of Parliament, Oxfordshire County Council and my previous Registered Social Landlord a certain amount of 'discomfort'. As a result Witterings from Witney may be taking a short 'sabbatical' - but, on the other hand, how short that sabbatical is will depend on the stupidity of our politicians, so I would plead that I am not removed from the blogrolls of those who have honoured me with my inclusion; at least not just yet!

One thing I can promise those who have, some would say, the misguided impression that my words matter - to quote those of Arnie - I'll be back!

Someone please answer this?

Those of us who hark back to the old days, who are accused of having a sentimental attitude - nay, even a nationalistic attitude - to the problems we are presently experiencing, are accused of living in the past and are told that "those days are over". But I have to ask: are they? Is it not right to wish to preserve a society, country and traditions for which people, holding those beliefs, have fought wars to preserve - and more than once?

Why are there cemeteries in other countries commemorating the ultimate sacrifice that men and women of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth have paid in order to preserve a way of life for which the United Kingdom was held to be a shining example? Ask yourself: why would those, from what was a another country, come to fight for a 'foreign' land? They could hardly be called mercenaries. Should all that be forgotten, purely on the whim of those who wish to denigrate that history and in so doing impose on us a society and governance which is totally alien to our inherent beliefs?

What do the younger generation know of that past and ultimate sacrifice when it is no longer taught in our schools? Should it not be taught in order that those who will inherit the place we presently occupy in this nation - a once proud nation - realise from whence came their heritage as a free people? Is there not a contradiction, come Remembrance Sunday, when those who pretend to be the leaders of our nation parade before the Cenotaph in order to lay wreaths to honour those who paid that ultimate sacrifice, whilst at the same time undoing all that the deceased laid down their lives to preserve?

I have heard it said that wars can be forgotten, that past differences can be forgotten for the common good, to enable the people of different lands to live in peace and harmony - but wars cannot be forgotten. The question of why those wars were fought will never be forgotten, however much the political elite try. The political elite cannot rewrite history unless they first 'kill' a human trait, the thirst for knowledge - as knowledge encompasses history.

Regardless of what they may say, it is believed that all politicians have a hidden agenda; one that includes personal power and personal advancement which necessarily includes personal wealth; an agenda - unforeseen by them due to their disregard of history - which ultimately has resulted in the downfall of all tyrants through the ages, be they democratically elected or self-appointed. The fact that politicians repeatedly inform us that they are elected to represent us and that they act for the general good of our country has been shown to be a scam - a scam inflicted on us and for which we, the people, have fallen time and time again.

That the United Kingdom as a country has been emasculated beyond all recognition to those who know its history, is without question an undeniable fact. That those responsible are those who have perpetrated - and continue to perpetrate - the scam in which they have a vested interest is likewise without question an undeniable fact. That the indigenous people of the United Kingdom are becoming increasing bewildered, asking themselves how the present state of affairs has come about, is also without question an undeniable fact. To those bewildered one can only suggest, to quote from the film "V for Vengeance", that they look in a mirror.

Now to my question: Are we who ask for a change to our democratic system; who yearn for the return of total self-governance for this nation of ours; who wish to recreate the era when our country really was "Great" - are we wasting our time and effort? Are we "dinosaurs" whose days really are over?

Egypt - and Hague

Alerted by this, which leads to this. From the latter we learn:

"He said that the UK was, “in favour of greater freedom and democracy, of a more open and flexible political system............."

Prior to urging another nation to do what is considered right in the name of democracy, it is a great pity that Hague and the government of which he is a member do not practise at home what they wish to export! 

Just a thought.....................

Chaytor 'sprung' from Wandsworth Prison

According to the Mail on Sunday David Chaytor has been moved from Wandsworth Prison, with what would appear to be indecent haste, to Spring Hill Prison in Buckhamshire.

A Freedom of Information request has winged its way to the Ministry of Justice asking a few pertinent questions - and as and when any response is received said response will be published on this blog.

Our Ken surely did not get on the blower to Wandsworth Prison and 'bend' the Head Honcho's ear - did he? You know, something along the lines that there are varying degrees of accommodation offered by the state and that, in view of his previous employment, he was accustomed to slightly better than that presently being experienced in the borough of Wandsworth?

All will no doubt be revealed in due course - unless the Min of Jus decide the information I requested is of a 'sensitive nature' - Ye Ken?

Communitarianism - and d'Ancona can't see it 'cause he is politically blind!

My previous post poured scorn on "the girl with the flaxen hair", aka Melissa Kite. In the interests of fairness - and to exhibit, at least as far as the PC brigade are concerned, this blog's wish to adhere to the philosophy of 'equality' - I now turn to yet another example of 'shining journalism', as demonstrated by Matthew d'Ancona with his op-ed piece in tomorrow's Sunday Telegraph.

Commenting on Cameron's reading of Seth Godin's (and just who the hell has heard of him?) theory, called "The Dip", d'Ancona writes (if that is the correct term):

"Now, four years on, safely installed in Number 10, but at the helm of a government still in its infancy..."

I firstly have to ask what government is it that Cameron is supposedly at the helm of? Cameron can't even issue a statement on the situation in Egypt without 'back-up' of other leaders within the European Union. Cameron is no more head of a government than the Pope is head of the Anglican church - rather, he is in charge of an administrative region of the European Union!

One can only presume that d'Ancona, asked for xxx words, or maybe xxxx words, by some stroke of luck or good fortune, managed to combine them into 12 paragraphs of 'drivel'. d'Ancona may point out that neither Rome (nor Davos) was built in a day, yet fails to mention that Cameron adheres to a belief that an institution created within the last 70 years should replace hundreds of year of democracy - a democracy which this country has fought to preserve on more than one occasion and may well have to do so again.

For d'Ancona to write about the Big Society and that:

"......the sheer scale of the idea is both its greatest asset and its greatest liability....."

without acknowledging, as I have pointed out in a previous post, that it was not actually Cameron's idea but more a case of pre-empting a forthcoming EU 'incentive', hardly does his journalistic credentials much credit. The "Big Society", as envisaged by Cameron, is no more than communitarianism as it is an attempt to balance individual rights and interests within Britain as a whole and thereby shape the cultures and values of the people. It is but another form of social engineering incorporating, as d'Ancona writes, yet more layers of bureaucracy coming between the individual citizen and the bureaucracy of town hall or Whitehall - something we need like we need another hole in our head.

The European Union is communitarianism personified, in that it also intends changing people with differing views and traditions to conform to a 'one size fits all' set of values and life, thereby also being guilty of social engineering. We in Britain are continually being told that membership of the European Union is about trade, yet I have yet to hear one politician offer a convincing argument why it is necessary, in order to trade, that we should submit to ever closer political union - however, I have digressed from the subject of Matthew d'Ancona......

The MSM is the means whereby the people of this country are kept informed of events, political and otherwise. While so-called 'journalists' write 'puff' articles purely to gain favour with the political elite it only allows that political elite to continue with their plans, unchallenged. Until the press in this country employ people worthy of the description "journalist", that profession will remain a joke - as is d'Ancona.

Melissa Kite: A vision of loveliness with flaxen hair - or

Just a dumb blonde? Or a woman just flying one?

The reason I ask is that Melissa, who presumably wishes to be known as a member of the journalistic profession, writes an article in the Sunday Telegraph which poses the question whether Cameron will allow the House of Lords to 'talk out' the AV Bill or whether, as he reputedly threatens, he will implement the 'guillotine'.

Amongst the chauvinistic section of the male it is held that women will never achieve parity as they lack the brain power that such men believe they, as men, have. This is not a view that I hold as I have met many women who could 'run rings' round Cameron intellectually - mind you, as Cameron does not appear to be a 'man' in the accepted sense that men 'believe', it could be argued that I am elevating young Melissa to a level she does not deserve.

This last opinion is formed by the view that if Cameron is 'hard-nosed' enough to limit the debate on a fundamental democratic question such as that posed by the European Union Bill, why would he hesitate to force a decision from the House of Lords - which begs the question why Melissa did not 'pick this up'?

This 'journalist', who one would presume considers herself a 'pro', sorry, professional, not only fails to mention that point, but also writes:

"The issue feeds into wider concerns about the sort of government this is turning out to be. Mr Cameron faces opposition over rushed plans to sell off forests and there is growing disquiet over proposals from nowhere to give prisoners the vote."

Surely Melissa, being a professional journalist and as such one who keeps abreast of modern developments and therefore knows the subject about which she writes, would be well aware that proposals for giving prisoners the vote did not come 'from nowhere'? 

What is even more disquietening - and shows up the paucity of journalistic standards - is the following passage of her article:

"This is about power,” said one senior Tory insider. “Cameron knows that if he doesn’t get these boundary changes through the Tory Party might never win a general election outright again. Labour knows that if the changes do go through they might never win again. This is about power and the pursuit of power."

Here we have confirmation that two political parties are 'fighting' to maintain their stranglehold on the reins of power, at the expense of the people, yet a journalist cannot be bothered, or does not possess the professional integrity, to even mention this fact?

We have truly plumbed the depths of the journalistic profession if this young lady is an example - and which is probably the reason for the fall in the sales of what was once a 'quality newspaper' if she is emblematic of their journalistic staff!

Participative(?) Democracy

"Power may justly be compared to a great river. While kept within its due bounds it is both beautiful and useful. But when it overflows its banks, it is then too impetuous to be stemmed; it bears down all before it and brings destruction and desolation wherever it comes. If then, this is the nature of power, let us at least do our duty and like wise men who value freedom, use our utmost care to support liberty the only bulwark against lawless power, which in all ages has sacrificed to its wild lust and boundless ambition the blood of the best men that ever lived."
Andrew Hamilton, The Trial of John Peter Zenger, 1735

(Applicable not only to the European Union, but our own politicians)

Roger Helmer has a post about "Agoras", which as he say is but a different name for a conference. He writes:

"A year or two ago, the parliament organised a couple of “Agoras”.  That’s a pretentious word for a Conference.  The topics were European integration, and climate change.  I attended both, and was more or less the only dissenter at each.
 
Of course the EU craves democratic legitimacy, and the European parliament exists primarily to give an impression (the word “fig-leaf” springs to mind) of democratic legitimacy to institutions which are palpably corporatist and technocratic, and fundamentally unaccountable and undemocratic, if not actually anti-democratic.  At these Agoras, the idea was openly canvassed that “Representative democracy has failed, so we must move on to a new model of participative democracy”.

Helmer makes the point that the EU believes representative democracy has failed as when the people are consulted, invariably they return an answer that the EU does not want. Participative democracy, on the other hand, involves civil society, which is basically quangos and NGOs - to which two bodies I would add 'government'.

Helmer's post is most pertinent when considering this entry on The Albion Alliance Presents, the rolling news service of all EU announcements, which in turn leads to this. Now 'googling' the phrase "modernising public procurement" produces two current entries, besides the eu links; one being from Turkey and one from Ireland. However going to the Cabinet Office website and inputting "modernising public procurement" produces two results, both dated 7th December 2010. The first is here and the second, which goes into greater detail is here and note that the latter document, the Green Paper, ends the consultation period on 5th January 2011, ie just 4 weeks. Bearing in mind that all "stakeholders" would have received notification of this document, just what notification did the general public have and how many of that group would have any understanding of what was involved? It is also obvious that the short period of consultation was necessary in order that our government could prepare its own submission to the EU by the required date of 18th April 2011.

At this juncture an accusation of misleading the public can, once again, be levied at this government, said accusation also encapsulating an element of being selective with the facts, ie lying through omission. Having had a quick 'skim' of both government documents, not once is there any reference to forthcoming EU legislation that is immediately apparent, only a reference to the Coalition promise to develop new opportunities for civil society organisations in public service delivery. It does not take possession of a degree in rocket science to realise that the EU Green Paper has not just 'appeared' and that it has been months, if not years, in preparation. (in fact EU "interest" in public procurement goes back to 2004) It therefore follows that the last Labour government - and likewise the Coalition politicians - knew of this prior to it being published publicly. As with the "Big Society" not being a Conservative idea, so is the modernisation of public procurement not a Conservative idea - it is in both cases pre-empting EU legislation that politicians knew was in the pipeline and with which they would have to comply.

Anyway, reverting to the EU documents, it appears they have produced a "Citizen Summary" a document that at the beginning contains an objective with which the EU lamentably fails - big time. Think EU Waste Directives - in relation to which the following extract is totally ironic:

"Public purchasers must get the best possible value for taxpayers' money without having to invest disproportionate time and money in the procedures."

The Green Paper that the EU has produced - which is only at this stage, a 'draft' - seeks to impose a 'one size fits all' procurement policy across the EU and in so doing removes the ability of this country to organise its own internal administrative procedures for its own benefit - as does so much else of EU legislation. It is no more than an exercise in rebuilding the EUSSR incorporating yet more central planning and more over regulation - and therefore, regardless of what Cameron and his cohorts may tell us, it constitutes yet another loss of power. Note also how the EU Green Paper pushes the 'green' and 'equality' agendas, both areas that require the investment of a disproportionate amount of time and money to carry out what amounts to a policy of 'social engineering'.

Setting to one side the EU question and the 'conquering' of our nation with the assistance of our Quisling politicians, what really sticks in my craw is the fact that people who would have the public believe they are "Honourable" can be so dishonourable as to lie, deceive and cheat those they are supposed to represent.

When we do rid ourselves of those for whom power has no bounds and who have no understanding of the word "Honourable", it is without doubt that the blood of our best men will, indeed, be spilled - but our politicians should realise, especially as it does not appear to have entered their limited intellect, that the greater amount of blood spilled will undoubtedly be theirs.

Of course they should!

The BBC are reporting that Sir Gus O'Donnell (otherwise known as GOD) has suggested that, bearing in mind the developments in Egypt, our intelligence services should be monitoring Facebook, Twitter etc with a view to obtain advance knowledge of 'unrest' amongst the people.

Seems reasonable to me, after all if you were in their shoes would you not want to know how close you were to 'decorating' a lamp post?

A classic

From The Albion Alliance Presents comes this statement from the European Economic Social Committee (EESC) announcing a seminar.

"This is an appropriate moment to discuss how the media landscape will evolve and subsequently impact on public sector communication. When print newspapers and regional media are struggling for survival, pundits worry that there will be less democratic accountability, if some of these newspapers go under. Others dismiss the danger on the grounds that newspapers are still widely read. Moreover, the local media industry will surely not miss the chance to cash in on its position as a trusted content provider by innovating and investing in new technologies."

The press do not provide democratic accountability and most definitely are not a trusted content provider - and as for Government Press Officers................

Multi-Tasking

 

 Obviously the 'key' to multi-tasking is being able to do it 'gray'iously and without complaining.

Written Ministerial Statement

The Treasury has released the above, dated 18th January 2011.

Concerning the Economic and Financial Affairs Committee (ECOFIN), it is worth noting:

"Presentation of the Presidency Work Programme

Hungarian Finance Minister Matolcsy presented the Presidency work programme for ECOFIN for the first half of 2011. He identified his main priorities as the European Semester, economic governance, financial services and the creation of the European Stability Mechanism." (Emphasis mine)

"Follow-up to the December European Council meeting

The Council took note of the Presidency’s plans for the follow-up to the European Council’s meeting on 16 and 17 December which called for work on legislative proposals aimed at strengthening EU economic governance to be accelerated, so that they can be adopted by June this year." (Emphasis mine)

"Review of draft National Reform Programmes (NRPs)

Ministers discussed a review of Member States’ draft National Reform Programmes (NRPs) which set out Member States’ reform priorities and plans. The Government is content with the Commission’s positive assessment of the UK draft NRPs and believes that the focus of all Member States NRPs should be on tackling bottlenecks to growth. In March the Spring European Council will provide guidance to Member States for finalisation of their Stability and Convergence Programmes (budgetary policies) and national reform programmes (structural reforms). Full NRPs are due in April." (Emphasis mine)

The BBC advises the nation that:

"Ministers say the coalition's proposed EU bill provides sufficient safeguards as it requires a referendum before ""  significant powers"   pass to Brussels." 

And we all know that the inability to fully control the content of a nation's budget and thereafter to administer full economic governance is not a loss of power - don't we? Of course we do!

So, What happened, Mr Cameron?

"My freedom is more important than your great idea."
Anonymous

Reverting to a subject that Cameron would rather everyone forgot, let us go back in time to his infamous "declaration" - which incorporated what is probably the greatest example of 'back-peddling' ever known - following the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.

"If we win the next election, we will amend the European Communities Act 1972 to prohibit, by law, the transfer of power to the EU without a referendum. And that will cover not just any future treaties like Lisbon, but any future attempt to take Britain into the euro. We will give the British people a referendum lock to which only they should hold the key - a commitment very similar to that in Ireland. This is a major constitutional development."

Ok, he may not have "won", but he ended up in 10 Downing Street, so one could ask: and the difference is? Anyway, there is nothing in that statement that stated the British people would be denied that lock until after 2015.

Cameron continued:

"But I believe it is now the only way to reassure the British people that powers cannot be given away without their explicit approval in a referendum.It is not politicians' power to give away - it belongs to the people......Let me repeat: a Conservative government will guarantee a referendum if there is any attempt to transfer further powers from Britain to the EU. "

 So the fact that this nation no longer has total control over settings its own budget is not a loss of power? Ok, it may not be a Conservative government - we all appreciate that in reality it is a Liberal Conservative government and one that is Conservative led, but again one has to ask: and the difference is? So, where is our referendum then, Mr. Cameron?

Cameron also said:

"Because we have no written constitution, unlike many other EU countries, we have no explicit legal guarantee that the last word on our laws stays in Britain."

Err, from the Bill of Rights 1688 (still on the Statute Book, I believe):

"And I doe declare That noe Forreigne Prince Person Prelate, State or Potentate hath or ought to have any Jurisdiction Power Superiority Preeminence or Authoritie Ecclesiasticall or Spirituall within this Realme Soe helpe me God."

Lost your ability to read and sense of understanding of our language then have you, Mr Cameron?

It is also worth noting this sentence:

"The third area where we will negotiate for a return of powers is criminal justice."

The Government must decide by 2014 whether a whole raft of EU police and justice laws agreed before the Lisbon Treaty took force in 2009, including the European Arrest Warrant, will continue to apply in the UK beyond 2014. So besides negotiating for a return of powers in criminal justice, Cameron will not be agreeing to the continuation of the raft of policies mentioned in the previous sentence, presumably?

All things considered - and bearing in mind the quotation at the head of this post - perhaps Mr. Cameron would take his idea of EU membership and deposit it in the repository of all the other bad ideas; said repository being one item of office equipment that, like all offices, Cameron's presumably has!

What is coming........

is that on which you, the people of this nation, have never been asked to vote, over which you have no voice in the implementation thereof and which is going to affect each and everyone of you.

Courtesy of The Albion Alliance Presents, the rolling blog of what is happening within the European Union, comes notice of the Commission Work Programme 2011.

And still the comedians in Westminster believe that they 'govern' our nation..........!

Foot 'n Mouth - and finally......

ePolitix has a post entitled: "UK unprepared for foot and mouth outbreak", so I thought it worth having a look, purely from a political point of view, you understand. As "Head Man", or "Top Dog", let us concentrate on David Cameron.

Here's what he told Jeremy Paxman in an interview on 23 April:

"We have absolutely no plans to raise VAT. Our first Budget is all about recognising we need to get spending under control rather than putting up tax."

Before that, in April 2009, Cameron promised he would not raise a tax that "hits the poorest the hardest". He said:

"You could try, as you say, to put it on VAT, sales tax, but again if you look at the effect of sales tax, it's very regressive, it hits the poorest the hardest. It does, I absolutely promise you. Any sales tax, anything that goes on purchases that you make in shops tends to . . . if you look at it, where VAT goes now it doesn't go on food obviously but it goes very, very widely and VAT is a more regressive tax than income tax or council tax."

During a pre-election Cameron Direct event, the Tory leader issued this "read my lips" pledge:

"I'm not going to flannel you, I'm going to give it to you straight. I like the child benefit, I wouldn't change child benefit, I wouldn't means-test it, I don't think that is a good idea."

On the weekend before the general election, Cameron memorably told Andrew Marr that a Conservative government would not cut any front-line services. He said:

"What I can tell you is, any cabinet minister, if I win the election, who comes to me and says: "Here are my plans" and they involve front-line reductions, they'll be sent straight back to their department to go away and think again. After 13 years of Labour, there is a lot of wasteful spending, a lot of money that doesn't reach the front line."

Then we can add: funding/not funding the Booktrust; Free milk; the infamous pledge on the Lisbon Treaty; repatriation of EU powers; reversing the hunt ban; trying to fix the chairmanship of the 1922 Commitee; speaking to the BBC's Politics Show, he explained: "We're not talking about swingeing cuts. We're talking about making a start in reducing our deficit."; the cull of quangos; the "Referendum Lock" that won't become effective until after 2015.

I think we are well prepared for an outbreak of Foot 'n Mouth - we seem to have had nothing but since May 2010!

Finally: last, but not least, I believe there was a 'minor' change to the Lisbon Treaty which allowed a new mechanism to be instigated in order to cover future bail-outs for those nations in the euro zone, a treaty change to which the UK has agreed. How can we, the people, agree to change a treaty to which we had never agreed in the first place, as the promised referendum was withheld? And please don't quote Article 48, as logically it cannot apply. The politicians may have signed it, but they did so without our authority, ergo our signature is not, therefore, on that treaty! Likewise, the Nice Treaty and the Maastricht Treaty are - as is the Lisbon Treaty - in effect, contracts and no contract is valid in law unless it bears the signatures of those to whom the contract has effect. Also bear in mind that to sign a contract on behalf of another, or others, it is necessary to have the legal authority so to do - and I for one signed nothing.

Just though it worthwhile raising that last point.............

The case against the EU and Supranationalism

Cross-posted (without any comment by me) from IanPJ on Politics and which is a post to be remembered and 'bookmarked' as a reference.


Today I bring you an essay written by D. Andrews.

D. Andrews is a writer and researcher who lives in England, loves his country and is deeply concerned about the decline of freedom in his own land and the rest of the world.

This essay should be put against the calls of patriotism by certain politicians, who speak the language of communitarianism, not left or right politics, but centralist communitarianism. It is a shame that our politicians feel the need to lie, cheat, and hoodwink the British public in this way, surely they must know it will all come back to haunt them.

FREEDOM IN JEOPARDY:

THE CASE AGAINST THE EU AND SUPRANATIONALISM
BY D. ANDREWS

NOTE: The extensive end notes are not merely to reference sources but also contain much supplemental and elaborative material. Please stop and read the end notes as they are referenced in the main text.
Sections: Freedom brings Happiness ~ History is the Story of the Rise and Fall of Freedom ~ There are Two Forces at Work in the World ~ What is Sovereignty? ~ Nationalism versus Supranationalism ~ A Brief History of Civil and Common Law ~ Common Law versus Corpus Juris ~ History of the EU ~ The Powers Behind the Scenes ~ The Grand Design of the EU ~ A Resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire? ~ A Brief Review of Treaties and Legislation ~ Structure of the European Union ~ Separation of Powers ~ The EU, Common Law and Natural Rights (Above the Law, Power of Arrest, The Right to Own and Control Property, The Right to Free Speech (and to criticise the EU), The Right to be Left Alone, The Right of Self-Defence, The Right of Free Association, The Right to Trial by Jury) ~ Economic Independence – A Pillar of National Sovereignty ~ Economic benefits of the EU – Fact or Fantasy? ~ The Shadow of Communism ~ Military Independence – A Pillar of National Sovereignty ~ Common Law, Constitutions and Governments: Is the EU Legal in Britain? ~ The EU Constitution ~ Treason at Westminster ~ Conclusion and a Plea ~ End Notes ~ Suggestions for Further Study ~ About the Author ~ Essay Version ~ Feedback Form.

“Show me a patriot and I will show you a true lover of humanity. Show me a man who says he loves all equally and I will show you a man who lacks discernment and loves none but himself.” ~ Fletcher of Saltoun, Scot Patriot, 1653-1716.

Freedom brings Happiness

All people desire freedom. We can only grow and learn to the degree that we are free. We can only know true fulfilment to the degree that we are free. It is only through being free that mankind can reach his potential. In short, we can only be happy to the degree that we are free, for those things which bring us true joy can only be obtained through the use of those faculties which freedom vouchsafes to us; and through experience we know that being forced or coerced is anathema to both the human spirit and human enterprise – loss of liberty brings only misery.

History is the Story of the Rise and Fall of Freedom

And yet freedom is something we can easily take for granted – and just as easily lose. History’s repeated cycles are evidence enough of this. Countless civilisations have come and gone, many of them destroyed because they surrendered their freedom little by little until it was too late. For a nation to lose its freedom there need be no military attack. It can be lost because the citizens of that nation have allowed themselves to be deceived through apathy, distractions, fear, ignorance and ebbing morals.Britain is not immune.

There are Two Forces At Work in the World

Throughout history there have been two competing philosophies of government. One holds to the idea that sovereignty lies in the people and that people have inherent and inalienable natural rights[1] that precede the formation of, or exist prior to, the establishment of government.[2] This philosophy is called Common Law.The other philosophy teaches that sovereignty lies in an absolute ruler or body of rulers and that rights exist only inasmuch as such rulers grant them. In effect there are no rights, only privileges. This philosophy has a number of names but most popularly is called Civil Law.
Common Law and Civil Law are two opposites. They cannot be reconciled.
J. Reuben Clark, one of the foremost U.S. Constitutional lawyers and statesmen of the Twentieth Century, Under Secretary of State during President Calvin Coolidge’s presidency, and author of the masterful Memorandum on the Monroe Doctrine, had this to say about these opposing philosophies of government:

“During the centuries, these two systems have had an almost deadly rivalry for the control of society, the Civil Law, and its fundamental concepts, being the instrument through which ambitious men of genius and selfishness have set up and maintained despotisms; the Common Law, with its basic principles, being the instrument through which men of equal genius, but with love of mankind burning in their souls, have established and preserved liberty and free institutions.”[3]

What is Sovereignty?
In order to fully grasp the gulf between these two ideologies we will need to understand the meaning and importance of sovereignty.
In terms of a nation, sovereignty is the exclusive right to make and enforce its own laws, and to judge disputes of the law. Under Common Law the government can only act because the people (the creator of government) have authorised it. Hence the people are sovereign.[4] The government derives its just powers from the governed. Such a government, based on Common Law, cannot justly possess powers that do not first exist in the individual. In other words, the people cannot authorise government to do something that they in the first place have no right to do, and neither can government take to itself those powers the people have not specifically delegated to it.
Sovereignty can be thought of as existing on many levels but in reality this is only representative as it ultimately resides in (and is never taken from) the people as individuals. It is the people who are the masters, government the servant.
The three cornerstones of national sovereignty are political, military and economic independence.

Nationalism versus Supranationalism

Though nationalism was once very similar in definition to patriotism and independence, it is now often used to refer to a negative rather than a positive concept. Supranationalism, given much more popular publicity than the latter, is the concept that the nation state no longer matters, that interdependence is better than independence, and that it is necessary to form regions of countries into centrally-controlled blocs with the probability of merging those blocs later on to form a world government. Thus supranationalism is merely the process of political globalism. Let us now define nationalism. Perhaps one of the finest explanations came from Herbert Hoover who said:

“We must realise the vitality of the great spiritual force which we call nationalism. The fuzzy-minded intellectuals have sought to brand nationalism as a sin against mankind. They seem to think that infamy is attached to the word ‘nationalist’. But that force cannot be obscured by denunciation of it as greed or selfishness – as it sometimes is. The spirit of nationalism springs from the deepest of human emotions. It rises from the yearning of men to be free of foreign domination, to govern themselves. It springs from a thousand rills of race, of history, of sacrifice and pride in national achievement.”[5]

Nationalism, then, is an awareness of, and a willingness to defend and promote, the character and sovereignty of our country (patriotism); it is based upon the same feeling we have to grow as individuals, to be self-reliant and to otherwise enrich our character and defend our right to self-determination.
Ezra Taft Benson, Secretary of Agriculture under Eisenhower, conveyed the attitude a nation should consider regarding its own national sovereignty:

“There is one and only one legitimate goal of…foreign policy. It is a narrow goal, a nationalistic goal: the preservation of our national independence.”[6]

Today the foreign departments of the major governments of the world seem to be much at odds with Benson’s belief – Indeed, the very opposite. In a time when, history’s lessons forgotten, there is again a centralist movement towards the few governing the many, we must ask ourselves if this is wise. What does history teach us? How does it measure up to tried and true principles? Does it make sense in light of self-evident truths and plain old common sense?
One of the reasons why some support the spirit of “supranationalism” (whether it be globalisation or regionalisation) is because of a Utopian or (what they suppose to be) a religious ideal. Ezra Taft Benson put straight those with such ideas in no uncertain language:

“We must put off our rose-colored glasses, quit repeating those soothing words but entirely false statements about world unity and brotherhood, and look at the world as it is, not as we would like it to become…We would be committing national suicide to surrender any of our independence, and chain ourselves to other nations in such a sick and turbulent world.”[7]

To those who think that changes in the world somehow change the rules of human nature and the principles of government, Benson further adds:

“The world is smaller, you say? True, it is, but if one finds himself locked in a house with maniacs, thieves and murderers – even a small house – he does not increase his chances of survival by entering into alliances with his potential attackers and becoming dependent upon them for protection to the point where he is unable to defend himself. Perhaps the analogy between nations and maniacs is a little strong for some to accept. But if we put aside our squeamishness over strong language, and look hard at the real world in which we live, the analogy is quite sound in all but the rarest exceptions.”[8]

In conclusion to this section here are, I submit, the problems with supranationalism:

• Centralising power from the hands of many into the hands of a few goes against the most basic tenets of wisdom and all the lessons of history; for it only makes it easier for evil men to gain control of more people; and such centralism itself provides only a stronger attraction for ambitious and greedy individuals
• Political agreements do not change the nature of people (and thus nations). Nations become more united (and less given to war) only through free, mutual and natural relationships. In other words, political agreements play no part except as a danger to stirring up contention by employing coercion rather than influence
• Our first love and responsibility should be toward our own nation, as with our family above other families. To not love our own country first will not engender a genuine love for all other countries. To think otherwise is to be under the delusion of a false Utopian hope based on neither principle or an understanding of human nature
• Centralising power will diminish individual liberty; the powers of a just and free government should reside with the people mainly, with a few powers delegated to local governments, and even fewer to the central government
• The Prime Minister (or anyone else) is not authorised under law to act within a foreign political organisation or to yield sovereignty (this is treason). He is the Prime Minister of his country, elected to that responsibility and paid by the taxpayers of his country.

A Brief History of Civil and Common Law

As far as modern times are concerned, Civil Law originated chiefly from the Roman Empire.[9] For this reason it is sometimes called Roman Law. This philosophy spread over continental Europe[10] and, in the Eighteenth Century, the Civil Law ravaged France in what became known as the Reign of Terror. Today, born of its past and present geographical sway, Civil Law is also known as European Law.Common Law has its roots in antiquity. Some believe it to have originated from the divine law of statutes and judgements given to the Israelites by Moses. Whatever its origins, it was brought across Europe and to Britain by the Anglo-Saxons. It was a law common to all those peoples and hence became known as Anglo-Saxon Common Law.[11] In Europe Civil Law was the legacy of the later Roman Empire, but England remained free of this influence and thus the Anglo-Saxon Common Law eventually came to be called English Common Law.
English Common Law was seriously compromised during the Norman Conquest which brought over the European Civil Law and imposed that system on Britain under the name of Feudalism. However, after long and bloody centuries, rights and freedoms were gradually won back and restored. Perhaps the primary and most notable date of this period is AD 1215 when the Magna Carta was signed – a document that is still held to be binding today as an important part of the British Constitution.[12]
The Framers of the Constitution of the United States drew heavily upon Common Law when drawing up that remarkable freedom document. William E. Gladstone (1809-98), the British Prime Minister, was so impressed with the US Constitution that he said it was “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man”. American freedom drew many of its constituent parts from English Common Law.[13] Ireland, Malta, Australia, Canada and New Zealand also adopted (to some degree) the English Common Law in the founding of their own governments. The same cannot be said for Europe.

Common Law versus Corpus Juris

Common Law is a body of concepts and laws in harmony with natural rights and justice. Corpus Juris (Latin for “body of laws”) is a system of judicial laws or tenets rooted in Civil Law and thus based on privilege and the whims of rulers. The following table contrasts the practises (in theory) of the two systems. I have added explanatory notes in the first column in an attempt to highlight the importance of each point and its relationship to and/or effect upon natural rights. Table 1.0 Common Law versus Corpus Juris

COMMON LAW (UK/US system)*	CORPUS JURIS (European system)
No arrest without evidence – thus the citizen is free from harassment by the police and other government officials	Can be arrested without evidence
No holding of suspects for more than a fixed and very limited time unless charges presented in open court – this prevents governments from violating the liberty of citizens by unduly detaining them or holding them for reasons other than criminal. Habeas Corpus (Latin for “having the body”) is the right (formally recognised in the Magna Carta) to have the prime evidence against any suspect considered publicly by a court of law within a very short period of arrest (usually 24 hours).	Can be held indefinitely
Right to face your accuser and see evidence – anonymity of accusers would mean the government could fabricate testimonies; accusers (or witnesses) should be known so that they can be held accountable; the accused has no come back where this is not so. Evidence must be known to the accused or else government again could fabricate the same and give the accused no way to prove it false	Accuser may be anonymous; no right for accused to see evidence
Lay Magistrates Right to trial by jury of one’s peers ‘Adversarial’ model – under Common Law the really important matters are reserved to the people. It is the people of the country (represented by a jury) who act to provide a final legal check on the government by refusing to find a person guilty if they feel the law itself is either unjust or unjustly applied[14], and by limiting sentencing of criminals so that excessive punishments cannot be imposed. The people (peers) are sovereign and must make the final decision. To deprive a country of trial by jury is to deprive its people the last legal means of countering the government, leaving only the right of revolution as an option	Tried by professional judges No right to trial by jury ‘Inquisitorial’ model
Right to an open court – a defendant must have the right to public witnesses in a trial or else government can act illegally in secret as well as bribe those who it knows will attend. Public and free access to a trial thus helps defend the defendant against miscarriages of justice	Closed court
Presumption of innocence (innocent until proven guilty) – Common Law always gives the benefit of doubt in favour of freedom. Unlike Corpus Juris it does not treat everyone like a potential criminal. This is perhaps the most important tenet, for with such an attitude of non-judgement many Corpus Juris laws would not have come into existence in the first place	Held to be guilty until proven innocent
Protection against double jeopardy (cannot be tried more than once for the same criminal offence) – Clearly this right protects the defendant from being repeatedly tried until he is found guilty and thus affirms his right to the presumption of innocence	Can be subjected to repeated trials on the same charges until found guilty
Burden of proof on prosecutor (it is up to the prosecutor to prove you are guilty) – This is an integral part of the right to presumption of innocence (see above). A part of the right to free speech is to remain silent. Under Common Law there is no requirement or force used on the defendant to testify against himself. In a very real sense it is the charges themselves that are primarily on trial and the integrity of those who have brought them. If the burden was on the defendant to prove himself innocent many accusations made by enemies (knowing the burden would not be on them) could be brought to bear, and the defendant would be continually oppressed with the task of defending himself with eventually no recourse to the resources necessary to clear his name	Burden of proof on defendant (you are presumed guilty and must prove your innocence)

* Sadly even these have diminished (both in the US and UK) as governments have departed from the tradition of Common Law. It is hoped from the explanations above, and self-evident truth, that the reader will see that Common Law is founded in the liberty of the individual and Corpus Juris on the destruction of the same.

History of the EU

The idea for a single European state did not end with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire around the turn of the Nineteenth Century. Many individuals set out plans or notions for a united Europe including Leon Trotsky who wrote in 1917:

“The Federated Republic of Europe – the United States of Europe – that is what must be. National autonomy no longer suffices. Economic evolution demands the abolition of national frontiers…Only a Federated Republic of Europe can give peace to the world.”[15]

Many European, especially Italian, socialists and communists were taken with the idea of European federalism. This was spear-headed by communist writer and political activist, Altiero Spinelli, who was the chief writer behind the Manifesto for a Free and United Europe written not long after the start of the Second World War – and after the War that paper became the basic document of the European Federalist Movement. Spinelli was a powerful shaper of what today has become the EU, being the major force most recently (until his death in 1984) of the move to make the EU a state in and of itself to which Mrs. Thatcher, then Prime Minister of Britain, said “No! No! No!”. Spinelli was able to push forward his centralist ideas by promoting “subsidiarity” which turned out to be a meaningless concept and deception.[16]
Jean Monnet, a Frenchman and a senior figure in the League of Nations, was a proponent of the supranational state. He was disappointed, for instance, that the member nations of the League of Nations could exercise a national veto. In 1931 he published The United States of Europe, a collections of papers which addressed the idea of building a Federal Europe within the framework of the League of Nations. Monnet was supported by another senior member of the League of Nations, Arthur Salter. He was British and every bit as much a supranationalist as Monnet.[17]
Paul-Henri Spaak was one of the “founding fathers” of the EU. He openly described himself as a national socialist (Nazi) and considered Hitler’s achievements “magnificent”. Hermann Goering in 1940 made the first reference to a “European Economic Community” and Kaiser Wilhelm in this same year spoke of a “United States of Europe”.[18]
In fact the blueprint for the EU’s Treaty of Rome is believed by some to have been developed by Hitler’s European “architect”, Reinhard Heydrich, who called it “The Reich Plan for the Domination of Europe” (this was widely published in 1942 but copies mysteriously disappeared later so that few now exist).[19]
The following list (tabulated below) can be found in the work cited in the table title. It shows that the EU architects and the Nazis did share concepts and terminology.
Indeed the authors of this work, Rodney Atkinson and Norris McWhirter, went as far as to write:

“To say that the European Union was based on the Nazi version of Europe or that there are parallels would be an understatement. The entire ‘European’ enterprise since the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 (and given an enormous boost by the Maastricht Treaty on European Union) is an exact replica of the Nazi’s ideas for Europe…”[20]

However, it should be noted that the idea of a single Europe pre-dates Hitler’s Nazism,[21] though this is not to say that the same hidden interests[22] were not supportive of both Nazism and the European movement, perhaps supporting the former to facilitate the latter. But it was Monnet, at least visibly, who was to found and develop the structural beginnings of the EU and to be accredited as “the Father of Europe”.
Table 2.0 Comparison of Nazi ideas for Europe with modern policies of the EU. Taken from pages 124-125 of “Treason at Maastricht” (see “Suggestions for Further Study” at the end of this article).

HITLER’S EUROPE	TODAY’S EUROPE
“Europäische Wirtschaftgemeinschaft” (European Economic Community)	European Economic Community
Lebensraum (living space)	European Space
Collective “access” to basic commodities	Common energy, fishing and agricultural policies
European Currency System	European Exchange Rate Mechanism
Europabank (Berlin)	European Central Bank (Frankfurt)
European Regional Principle	Committee of the Regions
Common Labour Policy	Social Chapter
Economic and Trading Agreements	Single Market
European Industrial Economy	Common Industrial Policy
“The transformation of the laws of supply and demand.”	Resistance to GATT
“Replacing capital with organised labour”	European Works Councils

The Powers Behind the Scenes

There are two contending schools of thought on history. The first, and by far the most popular, is “The Accidental View of History” which holds that history is largely a series of unrelated events or events which are related only by accident or simple cause and effect; the second school of thought is “The Conspiratorial View of History” which holds that superintending forces have directed many of the important events of history.[23] Is there evidence to suggest that there are “powers behind the scenes” which have supported and financed the organizations and individuals that have promoted the move toward modern European union? This question can undoubtedly be answered in the affirmative.
In September 2000, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, EU reporter for The Telegraph, wrote a story reporting on recently declassified US government documents showing “that the US intelligence community ran a campaign in the Fifties and Sixties to build momentum for a united Europe. It funded and directed the European federalist movement.”
Mr. Evans-Pritchard wrote:

“Washington’s main tool for shaping the European agenda was the American Committee for a United Europe [ACUE], created in 1948. The chairman was [William] Donovan [head of the American wartime "Office of Strategic Services", which was later to become the CIA], ostensibly a private lawyer by then. The vice-chairman was Allen Dulles, the CIA director in the Fifties. The board included Walter Bedell Smith, the CIA’s first director, and a roster of ex-OSS figures and officials who moved in and out of the CIA. The documents show that ACUE financed the European Movement, the most important federalist organisation in the post-war years. In 1958, for example, it provided 53.5 per cent of the movement’s funds.
The European Youth Campaign, an arm of the European Movement, was wholly funded and controlled by Washington…”[24]

Donovan, Smith, and Dulles were all members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a group that along with its British sister-organization, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and the Bilderbergers, has strongly but secretively supported and financed globalist movements – including National Socialism (Nazism), and International Socialism/Communism – with a view to establishing a “New World Order”.[25]
Joseph Retinger, another of the founding fathers of the EU, was a polish socialist who, though having no visible means of support, travelled between the US, Mexico and Europe during the 1920s and 30s. It was he who recruited the ex-SS Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands to establish the secretive Bilderberg Group. In his diary Retinger wrote:

“In November 1946, I had a very long talk with Mr. Averell Harriman, American Ambassador in London…. Averell Harriman was my sponsor and arranged my visit [to the U.S.]…. At the time (the end of 1946) I found in America a unanimous approval for our ideas among financiers, businessmen and politicians. Mr. Leffingwell, senior partner in J.P. Morgan’s, Nelson and David Rockefeller, Alfred Sloan, Chairman of the Dodge Motor Company … George Franklin, and especially my old friend, Adolf Berle Jr., were all in favor, and Berle agreed to lead the American Section. John Foster Dulles also agreed to help us…. Later on, whenever we needed any assistance for the European Movement, Dulles was among those in America who helped us most.”[26]

All of those men mentioned in this entry were members of the CFR.

The Grand Design of the EU

Paul-Henri Spaak encourage his fellow EU founders that “the most effective way to disguise their project’s political purpose was to conceal it behind a pretense that it was concerned only with economic cooperation, based on dismantling trade barriers: a ‘common market’” (emphasis added) and Jean Monnet supported this dishonest approach.[27] In the closing words of his memoirs, Monnet wrote:

“The sovereign nations of the past can no longer solve the problems of the present: they cannot ensure their own progress or control their own future. And the Community itself is only a stage on the way to the organised world of tomorrow.” (emphasis added).

And in a communiqué of 22 August 1962 this same man spelled out the grand design of Europe when he wrote:

“It is impossible to solve problems between European States who preserve full sovereignty. We are convinced that our times must see the creation of vast units like the United States and the USSR, and to establish a [world-wide] organisation to ensure co-operation between all those vast units. It is this organization which will create the new world order.” (emphasis added)

It seems beyond doubt now that regionalisation, despite initial promises to the contrary, was and is about the elimination of national sovereignty – and is itself a pre-planned stage toward globalisation (the joining together of regionalised blocs into a world government). The true story behind Europe can be ignored no longer.[28]

A Resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire?

Rome (the Pope) has sought to supplant English Protestantism with Roman Catholicism for many centuries. The power of Rome, founded upon the philosophy of the old Roman Empire, espouses Civil Law and Corpus Juris (Civil Law is also called Roman Canon Law). The Vatican therefore is most supportive of the EU, seeing it as a means of establishing the largest Holy Roman Empire the world has ever seen.[29] Our forebears, being quite aware of this through direct experience, wrote into the British Constitution the “Coronation Oath”, part of which states that the British monarch should “maintain the Protestant Reformed religion established by law.” Some have also expressed concern at the “spiritual” meaning of the symbols used by the EU.[30]

A Brief Review of Treaties and Legislation

Treaty of Rome, 1957 – This treaty’s purpose was…

“to lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe…the constant improvement of the living and working conditions of the people, the reduction of differences in wealth between regions…”

That is to say, it espoused both socialism and the concept of an ever-increasing union among the nations of Europe. In fact this document was actually a constitution disguised as a treaty because, unlike a treaty, it did not leave the several parties’ national sovereignties intact. Common Market, 1973 – Section 2 of the European Communities Act (the enabling legislation to enter into the Common Market) set down the principle that British Law would always from then on be subordinate to European Law; that, when the two conflicted, it would be the European and not the British Law that would prevail. Thus the supremacy of Parliament was overthrown.
Single European Act, 1986 – this provided the means by which Britain entered the Single Market of 1992. It eroded Britain’s already-diminished decision-making powers by extending QMV (Qualified Majority Voting) to more areas.[31]
Maastricht Treaty, 1992 – This was the treaty that established the idea of European citizenship and the Euro currency. It also surrendered the Queen’s power in Parliament to an unelected body in Europe.[32]
Amsterdam Treaty, 1998 – the European Union gained a “legal personality” giving it such powers as the ability to sign treaties that bind all its member states; it also gave greater scope to the European Court of Justice, and the Council of Ministers was given powers to punish any member state that persistently breached the treaty.
The Schengen Agreement, 1990 – signatories gave up their right to police their own borders. Borders are an integral part of liberty, both nationally and locally.[33]
Treaty of Nice, 2000 – Further centralised Europe. Britain here gave up its veto in thirty more areas of policy setting.

Structure of the European Union

Presidency – this is largely symbolic in nature
European Commission – Unelected body that meets in secret. Consists of 1-2 commissioners from each nation. This is an extremely powerful body that makes EU law. The Treaty of Rome forbids commissioners to represent the interests of their own nation; they must put the Union first.
European Council – Extremely powerful. Meets in total secrecy. Its deliberations are seldom published and when they are it is only after they have been implemented. Comprises the leaders of the member states and their foreign secretaries.
Council of Ministers – This has the role of developing the EU. It consists of ministers from the member states, which minister attends depends upon the subject being discussed. Due to Qualified Majority Voting it is very difficult for Britain to stop anything it disagrees with. It is not answerable to any elected institution and meets behind closed doors.[34]
European Parliament – this is a part of the EU Government which serves the purpose of creating an appearance of democracy. In reality the EP has very little influence. It does not pass laws, only resolutions and the manner in which it does so is far from just. Its members are called MEPs (Ministers of the European Parliament). It acts more like a discussion group though the Commission has no obligation to follow its recommendations. Although it ratifies the Commission’s laws, in reality it is quite powerless to ultimately prevent such laws being passed: MEPs are often confused and misled, laws can be grouped and voted on by block, and such votes go through before they have time to be discussed (in fact each MEP gets just 90 seconds (at best) per week to speak – their microphone is cut off after their allotted minute and a half), and all MEPs not in attendance are considered to be voting for the law by default![35]
European Court of Justice – Not an independent judiciary or check on the legislative or executive, but a political court to enforce the several treaties/EU Constitution (i.e. to enforce the Union and its aims).
European Central Bank – The ECB is not accountable to any elected institution and meets in secret. Those states within the single currency effectively lose all control over the amount of money and credit in circulation and the ability to fix interest rates. All these and other powers are centralised into the powerful ECB.[36]

Separation of Powers

One of the most important principles of a free and just government is what is known as “separation of powers” and the concomitant “checks and balances” – this structures governmental powers in such a way as to make it as difficult as possible for any individual or faction to gain overall control of the three powers of government (i.e. having the power to make law, enforce law and adjudicate disputes of the law).[37]However, with the EU we find that the executive is not elected and holds all the power, and the legislature is elected but has no power![38] The judiciary is under the control of the executive and thus cannot do anything but enforce the whims of the executive. It has been said that the concentration of powers is the very definition of tyranny.[39]

The EU, Common Law and Natural Rights

The EU is based on Civil Law and a Corpus Juris judicial system.[40] It is in every instance listed in table 1.0 above an exact opposite of the traditional US and British system of Common Law. The European system is simply not acceptable to anyone who loves freedom under law.Listed below are some of those areas in EU law and policy where natural rights, upon which Common Law is based, are infringed…
Above the Law
Agents of the EU government cannot be prosecuted. All those who work for the EU have a life time’s immunity from prosecution. The buildings, records and files of the EU cannot be searched. They are above the law.[41]
Power of Arrest
A portion of the principle of the separation of powers can be seen in the concept of a warrant for arrest. When the police (a part of the executive branch of government) want to arrest someone they must go to a judge (a part of the judicial branch of government) and receive a warrant to do so. This means they need to convince the judge that they have a reasonable cause to make an arrest. The judge, hopefully independent of the executive as a member of the independent judicial branch of government, will have to agree before the arrest warrant is issued.
The EU has effectively dismantled this important check on government tyranny and at a European level to boot. New extradition procedures empower the EU with the “European Arrest Warrant”[42] which strips the British Government of doing anything to stop European officers from coming into the country and taking whomsoever they want away for incarceration. They do not even need to possess the warrant. There does not even need to be a warrant! The British Government will be powerless to stop them (as eventually with all EU laws). The Right to Own and Control Property
In his classic and (in the opinion of this writer) inspired book, The Law, Frédéric Bastiat, the French economist (1801-1850), states:

“Life, faculties, production – in other words, individuality, liberty, property – this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it…”

Under Common Law depriving people of their property can only be justified as a punishment for a criminal offence wherein the offender has been found guilty of seeking to illegally deprive, or actually depriving, another of his property, life (person) or liberty.
Indeed, governments are set up to protect property rights in the first place and it is the right to own and control property that facilitates every other freedom (see end note [2]). The right to own and control property precedes and is superior to government. Governments that unjustly violate property rights are ignoring one of the prime purposes for their existence in the first place.
So what is the EU’s take on the right to own and control property? From the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union we read that:

“no one may be deprived of his or her possessions, except in the public interest…”[43]

And the Charter of Fundamental Rights (Article 52) allows the EU to limit rights “where necessary” in the “general interest” of the EU. It is the European Court that will decide what is both “necessary” and what exactly constitutes the “general interest”.
There is no such person as a “public interest”; what this means is that the EU Government will deprive people of possessions when they so choose – for they will decide what the public interest is.
The Right to Free Speech (and to criticise the EU)
The European Court of Justice has ruled that it may lawfully suppress political criticism of its institutions and leading figures; that dissent can be restricted to “protect the rights of others” and punish those who “damaged the institution’s image and reputation”.[44]
The Advocate-General of the ECJ gave a legal opinion (ref. case C-274/99) that criticism of the EU was akin to blasphemy. Punishing someone for allegedly criticising the EU, whether such allegations were proven or not, were (said he) not an infringement of free speech.[45]
Another example of the EU’s attitude toward freedom of speech is their Weights and Measures (Metrication Amendments) Regulations 2001 which will make it a criminal offence to even so much as mention imperial measurements at work or in any official capacity.[46]
The EU is also creating “new crimes” whereby it can make illegal expressions it deems to be “xenophobic” or “racist”. Terms it will define of course. The Right to be Left Alone
The right to be left alone, emanating from if not synonymous with the right to liberty, is one of the most crucial freedoms in a free society. Again, the EU has little respect for this right and the privacy of its citizens.
Europol, the new European Police force, is not accountable to an elected body. It answers to a committee formed by the Council of Ministers. It has a much wider function than fighting crime, being possessed of the ability to store information on a central database (provisions for which were made under the Maastricht Treaty) on anyone (criminal or not), including a record of an individual’s political and religious affiliations.
Historical precedence has shown that ID cards and other ways of recording personal information have always been abused – if not by the government that established it, then by a successor. Anonymity is an important part of the right to be left alone. Contrary to popular belief information-storing and ID cards do not decrease crime, they serve only to control and impede law-abiding people in their rights and liberty.[47]
Worrying powers have already been exercised when in 2002 the Council of Ministers instructed police to place on their database suspected political “troublemakers” with a view to preventing them from leaving their home countries and attending protests directed at EU summits.[48]
Common Law presupposes that everything is permitted that is not expressly forbidden by law whereas the Civil Law of Europe takes the view that everything is illegal unless expressly permitted by law. Under Common Law all men are presumed innocent and given the benefit of the doubt, under Civil Law all people are seen as potential criminals, presumed guilty and given no benefit of doubt. Hence the right to be left alone, the right to anonymity, is in total harmony with Common Law but in diametric opposition to Civil Law.
The Right of Self-Defence
Like Hitler, Mussolini and other tyrants, the EU wants all its citizens disarmed. The final right of people to remove their government by force of arms is hardly possible when they have had their right to keep and bear arms removed from them. On this subject Henry St. George Tucker wrote:

“This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty . . . . The right of self defense is the first law of nature. . . . Wherever . . . the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.”[49]

The right to keep and bear arms is enshrined in the English Bill of Rights (1689) which, in part, reads: “The subjects…may have arms for their defence suitable to their condition and as allowed by law.” This is a declaration of a lawful right and is not subject to infringement by governments of the day; its inclusion was and is for the very purpose of protecting from such infringement.[50]
The Right of Free Association
The EU is also looking to fund political parties with taxpayers’ money, a proposal that is so clearly wrong it is a wonder anyone could support it. Although the EU claims this will bring more democracy and transparency (which it will not) the real effect of state funding will be that the EU will control which parties are legal and which are not.
One Polish MP, currently an observer Member of the European Parliament, gave this warning when he found out about the proposed EU statute on European political parties: “This is exactly what the Communists did in Poland…They didn’t ban elections: we had elections all the time…All they did was to ban the opposition parties from contesting the elections. And do you know what their official excuse was? Exactly the same as this. They said it was to stop fascist parties. Only pretty soon that came to apply to everyone except the Communists and their Agrarian allies.” (emphasis added) [51]
This voice of experience should be a wake-up call to us all regarding the true nature of the EU.
The Right to Trial by Jury
This is not the only reference in this essay to trial by jury, and deliberately so. It’s a crucial freedom. In addition to what has already been written, let’s read what Churchill said on the matter:

“…the great principle of Habeas Corpus and Trial by Jury…are the supreme protection invented by the British people for ordinary individuals against the state. The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him judgment by his peers for an indefinite period, is in the highest degree odious, and is the foundation of all totalitarian governments.” (emphasis added)[52]

Provisions exist in the Amsterdam Treaty[53] for the Corpus Juris legal system. This can be introduced by Qualified Majority Voting even if the British Parliament is totally against it. The British Government has already been trying to abolish trial by jury for certain offences, no doubt as a preparatory stage to accepting Corpus Juris.
The European Public Prosecutor (set up by Corpus Juris) will initially have powers over cases involving fraud against the budget of the EU but which will later extend to all criminality (or what the EU deems criminal).[54]
The House of Lords, not to mention many lawyers and liberty groups, are opposed to the abolition of these rights protected in the Magna Carta, which might explain at least one of the reasons why the Government is so keen to rid itself of that House and introduce judicial “reform”.

Economic Independence – A Pillar of National Sovereignty

Joining the EURO means Britain’s gold reserves go to Germany and into the vaults of the EU’s Central Bank. All other tangible assets such as silver will almost certainly be relinquished. This means that Britain will find itself incapable of regaining its own independence! Political agreements can be torn up, but should we ask for our gold back one day would it be given? The answer is no – the terms state the transfer is irreversible.[55] The EU has not had its own accounts signed off by auditors in eight years; the EU is rife with fraud and corruption.[56] Should we trust the EU to make economic decisions for us?

Economic Benefits of the EU – Fact or Fantasy?

This is another area where what is stated by pro-Europeans, or what is commonly accepted, simply contradicts the facts… Most of our trade is not with Europe. The value of exports and services to the EU is just 16% of UK Gross Domestic Product (GDP).[57]
We do not have the majority of our investments in Europe. The EU costs us a lot more money by being in than out; costs on food alone have been reported as £940 more per family per year than they would be if we were outside the EU. Britain pays far more into the EU than it gets back. Britain’s involvement in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) was economically disastrous (and unemployment increased by 1.2 million) and it will be worse under full-blown Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) with the Euro as our currency.[58] Let’s not forget that the burdensome VAT is also a tax of European origin.
The majority of British businesses do not support a single currency. Both the Institute of Directors and the Federation of Small Businesses (by far the largest business organisation in the UK with 185,000 members) oppose the Euro.[59] In fact the FSB recently held an Annual Conference where the votes were 104,568 in favour of not signing the EU Constitution (5,292 voted were in favour).[60]
According to one survey the cost to firms would reach £51 billion to convert to the Euro.[61] The bottom line on why the Euro and economy cannot work is because what is being done is chiefly political and not economic.[62]
One more myth to address here is that of unemployment. Leaving the EU will not cause mass unemployment. Distorted reports and false claims that big companies would leave Britain if we came out of the EU have been spread by certain groups and interests who seem to care very little for the truth. One such pro-EU group, called Britain in Europe, leaked a report from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research and claimed it showed eight million jobs in Britain would be lost if Britain left the EU. The director of the Institute, Martin Weale, condemned Britain in Europe‘s distortion of the research as…

“pure Goebbels. In many years of academic research I cannot recall such a wilfull distortion of the facts…Britain in Europe‘s claims are absurd. Nobody could plausibly believe the figures. As the experience of the 1960s indicates, there is no reason why being outside the EU should necessarily involve mass unemployment.” (emphasis added)[63]

The Shadow of Communism

Some, and with considerable justification, have compared the EU to the Soviet Union.[64] Perhaps the most well-known statement came from Mikhail Gorbachev (see quotation below). Christopher Story of the London-based Soviet Analyst described Romano Prodi’s manifesto of 2000, setting out the Commission’s agenda for the subsequent five years, as:

“purely a Communist program, which is why Mikhail Gorbachev, when he visited London shortly thereafter, in March of that year, was correct in describing the EU as ‘the new European Soviet’. One does not need an advanced degree in Leninist studies to see this.”[65]

Dr. Uno Silberg, PhD and Chairman of the Estonian Movement NO to the European Union, has tabulated comparisons between the European Union and the Soviet Union, and reports that “in the eyes of many Estonians the present EU is nothing less than a disguised Soviet Union.”[66] And they should know.
Staying in Estonia, we find Christopher Bollyn of the American Free Press reporting:

Former Estonian Prime Minister Edgar Savisaar, and others, has compared the EU with the Soviet Union. “The forced propaganda of the European Union is reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s methods and brainwashing,” Rolf Parve, wrote in Kesknädal, the weekly paper of the Center Party. “Moscow and Brussels differ only in one point,” professor Igor Gräzin, one of the leading anti-EU voices in Estonia says: “The Soviet Union theoretically allowed nations to leave the union. Brussels is creating organs, however, which would kill that idea in the bud.”[67]

Beyond direct comparisons there is also the evidence of communist influence in the EU itself (both now and in its founding). One only has to look to EU leaders and officials to see ties to the KGB and a whole other assortment of dubious connections and damning evidence.[68]

Military Independence – A Pillar of National Sovereignty

Commitments to unified military action were made under Article 5 of the Amsterdam Treaty. The EU Constitution, as it presently stands, under Article 15, would require total obedience to the EU:

“the Union’s competence in matters of common foreign and security policy shall cover all areas and all questions relating to the Union’s security. Member states shall actively and unreservedly support the Union’s common foreign and security policy in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity and shall comply in this area.” (emphasis added)

Common Law, Constitutions and Governments: Is The EU Legal in Britain?

The rights affirmed in the Magna Carta will be null and void if Britain forms a political union with the EU. The Magna Carta ensures that these rights (including presumption of innocence and the right to trial by jury) should be possessed “fully and completely, for themselves and their heirs from us and our heirs, in all matters and in all places for ever.” To enter the EU is to act in opposition to the British Constitution.This document, the Magna Carta, is the foundation of our Constitution and it cannot be broken[69] by Parliament. It is a covenant between the Constitutional Head (the Sovereign monarch) and the subjects. Common Law and this covenant pre-date Parliament and are therefore not subject to abolition by that body. The purpose of Parliament is to give expression to Common Law, to strengthen that expression but never to weaken or suppress it).
Let’s put this principle another way because it is vital we understand it if we are to avoid confusion and deceit by unscrupulous political rulers, bodies and movements…
The Common Law represents the natural rights and sovereignty of citizens, these pre-date and are superior to both constitutions and governments.
Just constitutions are based on Common Law whereby they affirm by declaration the natural rights and freedoms of man. Constitutions also establish a structure for government and a framework in which government may fulfil its responsibility and purpose (namely to protect the Common-Law rights of the governed). Governments are therefore inferior to constitutions and Common Law, being born of and bound by them.
Though the people of Britain by revolution may change the Constitution, the Government may not. Parliament exists only to give expression to those rights affirmed in a constitution. Its duty is thus to deal with procedural and not substantive law (i.e. it cannot abolish or create rights; it cannot yield sovereignty).
Under the British Constitution it is understood that…

“Parliament…has…the right to make or unmake any law whatever; and, further, that no person or body is recognized by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament.”[70]

The principle that no Parliament may bind its successors is clearly violated by signing agreements which claim to trump the supremacy of Parliament and bind future generations to laws they cannot revisit. In this connection it should be noted that the EU itself acts under a doctrine called acquis communautaire (the text of which has been reported as at least 80-100 thousand pages, some sources giving a figure of 320,000 type-written pages as far back as 1998!) which holds that once a power, or area of legislative authority, is gained it never again gives it back. The EU cannot become less centralist, only more centralist. It is in diametric conflict with the British Constitution and the authority and very nature of Parliament.
Some have also argued that Parliament has shared sovereignty, or that it has been pooled. This is a contradiction in terms; sovereignty is an exclusive attribute. You either have it or you do not.[71] Furthermore, sovereignty resides in the individual and, as such, Parliament represents that sovereignty. It cannot yield it or give it away. It is not in their power to surrender it because it does not belong to them. To use an analogy, it would be rather like an employee of a company going to a meeting with another company and selling off or merging his employer’s company without any authority or instruction to do so.
Many other points could be raised here too, such as the fact that the Maastricht Treaty was only valid in Europe if ratified by all countries involved. It was not.[72] Another point, in addition to those already discussed, is our own Act of Union which again has been violated by the Maastricht Treaty and invalidated both the union of Scotland and the rest of the UK as well as Parliament’s own authority.[73]
It is evident from the material above that those seeking to bring Britain into political union with Europe, unwittingly or not, may well be committing acts which are both illegal and treasonable[74] in addition to being unlawful.

The EU Constitution

“The European constitution…shall have primacy over the law of the Member States.” (Article 10.1, proposed EU Constitution)

Romano Prodi, President of the EU Commission, in an address to members of the European Parliament said:

“Europe must assume responsibility for peace and development in the world…With a single voice we can wield real influence. Only united can we put our own humanist stamp on globalisation and infuse it with Europe’s social values…I am convinced that we need a constitution to mark the birth of Europe as a political entity…[The Union] is not an alliance between States or a federation. It is an advanced supranational democracy that needs to be strengthened.” (emphasis added) [75]

Ashley Mote – MEP, author, broadcaster and constitutional historian – says of the proposed Constitution for Europe: “Essentially, it is not a constitution at all. It is little more than an elaborate attempt to legitimise the seizure of power by a ruling elite,” (emphasis added) and he goes on to list six of the fundamental defects in the document:

“It is vague, grandiose, imprecise, deliberately complex, confusing and extremely long.
It is proscriptive rather than enabling. It makes law, instead of creating a framework for law-making.
It offers no effective checks and balances to control future law-makers.
It consolidates power for a system of government by a self-perpetuating bureaucracy.
It puts that elite group above the law to be imposed on everyone else.
It turns the member states from theoretical masters of the house of Brussels into its servants.”[76]

The Constitution also designates the Euro as the currency of the Union, which means Britain’s opt-out of the Euro becomes meaningless if it signs up for the Constitution.[77]
Article 58 of the Constitution reaffirms previous provisions when it provides for a member state to be reduced to colony status, with no voting rights but all obligations to the EU still in force, when she is considered by others to have violated “human rights” and “the rule of law”. Of course, these latter terms are undefined and will be interpreted as the EU’s arbitrary will decides.[78]
The so-called “exit clause” for member states to withdraw from the EU includes a two-year forced waiting period during which the member state loses all decision-making powers in the EU and during which the Union can exercise such powers as it sees fit upon the rebel state.[79]
Any MP who votes to accept the EU Constitution, with its irreversibility (or “pretence” thereof), will be in breach of their Oath of Allegiance which is to defend the Queen as sovereign – and she can remain sovereign only if she is the head of a sovereign state (i.e. an independent, self-determining state which is subordinate to no other).[80]

Treason at Westminster

“Few men have been desperate enough to attack openly, and barefaced, the Liberties of a free People. Such avowed Conspirators can rarely succeed: The Attempt would destroy itself. Even when the Enterprize is begun and visible, the End must be hid, or denied. It is the Business and Policy of Traytors, so to disguise their Treason with plausible Names, and so to recommend it with popular and bewitching Colours, that they themselves shall be adored, while their Work is detested, and yet carried on by those that detest it.“Thus one Nation has been surrendered to another under the fair Name of mutual Alliance: The Fortresses of a Nation have been given up, or attempted to be given up, under the frugal Notion of saving Charges to a Nation; and Commonwealths have been trepanned into Slavery, by Troops raised or increased to defend them from Slavery…”[81]

The above was originally written in 1720. Little has changed since then. Through the complicity of prominent and influential figures and factions in the Conservative and Labour Party, both employing deceitful and wholly corrupt means,[82] the UK has not only joined but become further entrenched in the EU.
Perhaps we will draw to an end with the now infamous words of Prime Minister Edward Heath. As Prime Minister, in the House of Commons on 25th February, 1970, in the build up to EEC entrance, Heath said: “There will not be a blueprint for a federal Europe.”
Yet in 1991 he was asked: “the single currency; a United States of Europe; was that in your mind when you took Britain in?”. Edward Heath replied, “Of course, yes.” (emphasis added)[83]
And in a White Paper published in July 1971 concerning Britain’s entrance into the supposedly for-trade-only Common Market:

“There is no question of any erosion of essential national sovereignty…There are some in this country who fear that in going into Europe, we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty. These fears I need hardly say are completely unjustified.” (emphasis added)

Time has shown this to be false. What is more, documents released later showed this statement to have been an outright lie.[84]
Have Ministers been deceiving the British public? As early as 1962 Ministers were formally instructed regarding Common-Market membership:

“Ministers should in public speeches avoid accepting specific commitments or giving explanations of the Government’s general commitments which might prove embarrassing when the final terms (of membership) become known in detail.”[85]

And what about those who want to reform the EU from within? It is simply not possible. The way the EU is structured, our increasing minority status, and a host of other factors spelled out in this essay, stop this from being in any way achievable. The Hansard Society has said:

“Any attempts by any government to try to amend Community legislation to its own wishes are doomed to failure…Parliament has little, if any, input upon the process of European law-making…” (emphasis added)[86]

Conclusion and a Plea

The opening quotation of this article is from Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun. He spoke great wisdom in those words. Truly, unless we first love our own, we can never truly love another; unless we put first our own kin and country in the dispensing of our charity and duty, we will never truly develop the character and feelings necessary to “love [and treat] all equally”. This is a natural truth founded upon free will (itself the reason for sovereignty’s existence) and cannot be forced by political means. Britain, in stark contrast to Europe, has had a long tradition of liberty of the individual. Today, despite our own domestic problems, our oversea investments are far larger than any European nation; two thirds of all “European” investment into the USA come from Britain; Britain is second to only the United States in terms of investing overseas; over half of all commercially viable inventions discovered in the last sixty years have come out of Britain; British firms were the purchasers of nearly half of international acquisitions and mergers in the first part of 1999 alone. We are the fourth largest economy in the world. This is a triumph of a good system. Yes, it could be improved. Yes, there are problems. But there will be many more problems if we join the EU and, what is more, we will not possess the power to put them right.
Everything Common Law stands for, everything patriots have ever fought for, and everything freemen have ever loved and dreamed of, is now under threat of extinction. Will Britain remain a free nation? That is what hangs in the balance. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.

End Notes

1. “Rights are not gifts from one man to another, nor from one class of men to another; for who is he who could be the first giver, or by what principle, or on what authority, could he possess the right of giving?…It is impossible to discover any origin of rights otherwise than in the origin of man; it consequently follows that rights appertain to man in right of his existence only, and must therefore be equal to every man.” (Thomas Paine, Dissertations on First Principles of Government; emphasis added). Hence Paine explains that the philosophy of Civil Law is unnatural, and that rights are natural (they exist by virtue of nature or God, not because others have granted them to us); he also concludes that they must therefore be equal to all.
2. “[I]n spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God [the natural right to individuality (life), liberty, and property] precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” (Frédéric Bastiat, The Law, pp. 2; emphasis added). To understand why the right to own and control property is necessary in order to exercise any other right, and why no society can truly be free, or rights secure, where there is no right to own and control property please read Clarence B. Carson’s excellent article The Property Basis of Rights available on-line at
   http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/the-property-basis-of-rights/.
3. Stand Fast By Our Constitution, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, pp. 139.
4. The word “sovereignty” has reference to that which is supreme or the highest. Sovereignty exists within the individual because of his free will and so his natural right and power to make his own decisions and to act upon them. It is this power in the individual that, when delegated to government, gives life and authority to the power of government to make and enforce laws. “There are,” said Thomas Paine, “but two divisions into which power can be arranged. First, that of willing or decreeing the laws; secondly, that of executing or putting them in practise. The former corresponds to the intellectual faculties of the human mind which reasons and determines what shall be done; the second, to the mechanical powers of the human body that puts that determination into practise.” (Thomas Paine, Dissertations on First Principles of Government)
5. As quoted by Eugene W. Castle in Billions, Blunders and Baloney, p. 259 (as referenced by Ezra Taft Benson in his address, United States Foreign Policy given at the Farm Bureau Banquet in Preston, Idaho, June 21st 1968 – see “Suggestions for Further Study” below).
6. Ezra Taft Benson, United States Foreign Policy given at the Farm Bureau Banquet in Preston, Idaho, June 21st 1968 (see “Suggestions for Further Study” below).
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. In AD 438 the Roman Senate rubber-stamped the Theodosian Code. This code of laws was created by a group of jurists appointed by both the Eastern Roman Emperor (Theodosius II) and the Western Roman Emperor (Valentinian III). J. Reuben Clark said “[These laws] had provisions covering such so-called modern concepts…as price fixing, black markets, excessive taxation, socialized medicine [a national health service], conscription of labor, anti-semitism, inflation, corruption in government bureaus, the relationship between Church and State – all phrases familiar to our ears. Under these laws the entire population was organized as in one vast army. All, including the highest officials, were strictly classified, and even the least had a station. In substance this meant that everyone did what he was told, and did not act without permission. There was a great body of secret police to report disobedience; there was a ‘special’ secret police appointed to watch the ordinary secret police. These laws were framed to provide security. We of today have heard the same kind of security talk. But, in fact, all this bred not security, but scarcity of grain, of materials, of men. The mere making of laws, even in an absolute despotism, does not change the great laws of nature and economics – neither then nor now, for there can be no permanent stability where men are not free. In fewer than forty years from the issuance of the Theodosian Code the Empire of the West fell, notwithstanding the operation, under complete autocratic powers, of economic devices enacted to promote the welfare of the people and to preserve the empire; some of these devices were the same ones that we have been told will rebuild our economic structure and preserve our free institutions. These devices failed with Rome; they will ultimately fail with us.” (Stand Fast By Our Constitution, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, pp. 140-141).
10. Not many decades after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire the Byzantine (Eastern Roman Empire) under Emperor Justinian established a new set of laws called the Justinian Code. This set of laws became law throughout all the Eastern Empire in AD 529. When the Empire fell in AD 1453 the philosophy spread west across all Europe as the Byzantines fled the Moslems. Thus the Justinian Code became the system of continental Europe. It is said that the laws of the Justinian Code, a Corpus Juris system, were so many that they filled 2000 books (around 3 million verses). Whereas the absolute power of the ruler was implicit in the Theodosian Code, it was boldly stated in the Justinian Code.
11. “Here are the principal points of People’s Law [Common Law] as practiced by the Anglo-Saxons (see Colin Rhys Lovell, English Constitutional and Legal History [New York: Oxford University Press, 1962], pp. 3-50): 1. They considered themselves a commonwealth of freemen. 2. All decisions and the selection of leaders had to be with the consent of the people…3. The laws by which they were governed were considered natural laws given by divine dispensation…4. Power was dispersed among the people and never allowed to concentrate in any one person or group. Even in time of war, the authority granted to the leaders was temporary and the power of the people to remove them was direct and simple. 5. Primary responsibility for resolving problems rested first with the individual, then the family, then the tribe or community, then the region, and finally, the nation. 6. They were organized into small, manageable groups where every adult had a voice and vote. They divided the people into units of ten families who elected a leader; then fifty families who elected a leader; then a hundred families who elected a leader; and then a thousand families who elected a leader. 7. They believed the rights of the individual were considered unalienable and could not be violated without risking the wrath of divine justice as well as civil retribution by the people’s judges. 8. The system of justice was structured on the basis of severe punishment unless there was complete reparation to the person who had been wronged…treason… [was] considered [a] capital offense… 9. They always attempted to solve problems on the level where the problem originated. If this was impossible they went no higher than was absolutely necessary to get a remedy. Usually only the most complex problems involving the welfare of the whole people, or a large segment of the whole people, ever went to the leaders for solution.” (The 5,000-Year Leap, Dr. W. Cleon Skousen [USA: National Center for Constitutional Studies, 1981], pp. 12-14).
12. “…men in our kingdom shall have and hold all the aforesaid liberties, rights and concessions well and peacefully, freely and quietly, fully and completely, for themselves and their heirs from us and our heirs, in all matters and in all places for ever.” (Magna Carta, AD 1215). Those rights include the right to due process of law, the right to trial by jury, and the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
13. “Jefferson’s great ambition at that time was to promote a renaissance of Anglo-Saxon primitive institutions on the new continent. Thus presented, the American Revolution was nothing but the reclamation of the Anglo-Saxon birthright…” (Gilbert Chinard, Thomas Jefferson: The Apostle of Americanism, 2^nd ed. Rev. [Ann Arbor, Mich.: The University of Michigan Press, 1975], pp. 86). It is interesting to note that the members of the committee set up to design the Seal of the United States (Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin) originally intended one side of the seal to show the Children of Israel in the wilderness and the other side to show Hengist and Horsa (according to tradition the first Anglo-Saxons in England). These ideas proved too detailed for a small seal and a simpler design was agreed upon. The Founders were well acquainted with Common Law and that both the Israelites and Anglo-Saxons were governed by it.
14. “For more than six hundred years – that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215 – there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge of the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws.” (An Essay on the Trial by Jury, 1852, Lysander Spooner; see Vigilance: A Defence of British Liberty, pp. 70-71; see also “Suggestions for Further Study” below). The power of the jury is greater than that of government; without the jury’s consent no person can ever be punished, no unjust law ever applied, and no just law ever misapplied. To take away trial by jury exposes every citizen to a government that acts as both judge and jury – it may do whatever it wants with none to check it! For a brief article on the importance and powers of the jury, see Trial By Jury: An Essential Safeguard For a Free Society available on-line at http://www.freedom-central.net/trialbyjury.html. In Europe and under European Law there is no genuine trial by jury anywhere.
15. Leon Trotsky, October 30th, 1917, at Smolny, Petrograd. As quoted in John Reed’s book, 10 Days That Shook the World.
16. Godfather of the European Union: Altiero Spinelli by Lindsay Jenkins available on-line at: http://www.brugesgroup.com/mediacentre/?article=104.
17. The Great Deception: The Secret History of the European Union by Christopher Booker and Richard North, p. 4-17 (see “Suggestions for Further Study” below).
18. This information taken from Vigilance: A Defence of British Liberty by Ashley Mote (see “Suggestions for Further Study” below).
19. Some of the papers present at Heydrich’s meeting at the University of Berlin in 1942 included such ominous titles as: “The Economic Face of New Europe”, “Development of the EEC”, “European Agriculture”, “European Transport”, “A European Currency”, “European Trade and Economic Treaties”, “Is Europe a Geographical Concept or a Political Fact?” – words that are all familiar to us today of course. For more information on the EU, Nazi Germany and Reinhard Heydrich read Phillip Day’s excellent article, The German European Economic Community? available on-line at http://www.campaignfortruth.com/Eclub/101002/germaneec.htm. The original papers have recently been translated into English and made freely available on-line at:
    http://www.silentmajority.co.uk/eurorealist/germany1942/index.html.
20. For more information on the authors’ views on the subject of Nazi origins of the EU see their work Treason at Maastricht, page 123 and also chapter 18. (see “Suggestions for Further Study” below)
21. See The Great Deception: The Secret History of the European Union by Christopher Booker and Richard North, p. 18-30, Chapter 2, “The Nazi Cul-de-Sac: 1933-1945″ (see “Suggestions for Further Study” below). See also the on-line article, The Fascist Inheritance in the European and Blair Projects by Edward Spalton. (see “Suggestions for Further Study” below).
22. It seems well documented that certain figures and interests involved with building up the Nazis also financed and supported the movement to build a united Europe. The connection between these conspiring parties and the EU is addressed elsewhere in this essay. For their connections to Nazism readers may wish to study Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler by Antony C. Sutton; the text of this book is freely available on-line at http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/.
23. For an introduction to the conspiratorial view of history the author recommends A. Ralph Epperson’s The Unseen Hand published by Publius Press. Once you’ve read this you will never view history the same way again. Available for purchase from Amazon UK at http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0961413506/.
24. See Global Tyranny…Bloc by Bloc by William F. Jasper, “The New American” magazine, Vol. 17, No. 8, April 9th, 2001. Available on YouTube at:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TenIjbnqO0&feature=channel.
or in written form here: http://web.archive.org/web/20041212071621/www.stoptheftaa.org/artman/publish/article_8.shtml.
25. For more information on Bilderbergers and other groups try http://www.bilderberg.org which has a huge list of articles and links on the matter. Also, The Chronological History of the New World Order by D.L. Cuddy, Ph.D, gives a more general listing of dates and quotations charting the globalist agenda from the beginning of the 20th century; viewable on-line at:
    http://www.silentmajority.co.uk/eurorealist/nwochronology. Inclusion of these links should not be taken to mean that the author of the essay you are now reading agrees with everything written or linked to on these sites. Readers may also be interested in the Portman Papers in this connection (see “Suggestions for Further Study” below).
26. For more information on Retinger and others behind the development of the EU, see Rogues’ Gallery of EU Founders by William F. Jasper; availabe on-line at: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JZS/is_14_20/ai_n25093084/. www.stoptheftaa.org looks at the way the same efforts are being made in America and Canada to establish an EU-style superstate – under the guise of economic treaties, and supported by some of the same characters and organizations that have been involved with the founding and growth of the EU.
27. “Europe’s nations should be guided towards the superstate without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation.” (Communiqué, 30 April 1952, by Jean Monnet, emphasis added). For Paul-Henri Spaak reference see The “New European Soviet” by Vilius Brazenas quoting The Great Deception: The Secret History of the European Union (see “Suggestions for Further Study” below for both sources).
28. For a full history of the European Union read The Great Deception: The Secret History of the European Union by Christopher Booker and Richard North (see “Suggestions for Further Study” below). A free paper entitled The Bilderberg Group and the project of European unification (by Mike Peters) is also available for download (in text format)at http://www.bilderberg.org/bblob.rtf. According to WorldNetdaily.com’s story, “Guess who’s at super-secret Bilderberg meeting today: Italy hosts 50th-anniversary confab of mysterious society of world leaders” (Friday, June 4th) – available on-line at http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38783 – attendees from the EU included Frits Bolkestein, Commissioner for the Internal Market in the European Commission; Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, Director, European Central Bank; Rockwell A. Rockwell A. Schnabel, US Ambassador to the EU; Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank; Antonio M. Vitorino, Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner of the European Union; and Gijs M. de Vries, EU Counter Terrorism Co-ordinator.
29. “Pope John XXIII envisaged a European religio-political monster which he called ‘the Greatest [Roman] Catholic superstate the world has ever known’. (The Papal Nuncio in Brussels was later to describe the EU as ‘a [Roman] Catholic confederation of States’). United within the ancient boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire by the common spiritual bond of religion, in a burgeoning and booming industrial economy, situated geographically in the world’s most productive industrial complex, it would march onto the scene of world history – so said Pope John XXIII – as ‘the greatest single human force ever seen by man.’” (Professor Arthur Noble, The Conspiracy Behind The European Union: What Every Christian Should Know, delivered at the Annual Autumn Conference of the United Protestant Council in London, Saturday, November 7, 1998; emphasis added. Complete address available online at http://www.ianpaisley.org/article.asp?ArtKey=conspiracy). As far back as 1975 Shirley Williams, a British Labour minister and later the co-founder of the Social Democrats, commented: “We will be joined to a Europe in which the Catholic religion will be the dominant faith, and in which the application of the Catholic Social Doctrine will be the major factor in everyday political and economic life.” For more information the reader is referred to The Principality and Power of Europe: Britain and the Emerging Holy European Empire by Adrian Hilton (see “Suggestions for Further Study” below).
30. For example, see http://www.inplainsite.org/html/european_union.html
31. Qualified Majority Voting is the practice whereby each member state is assigned a number of votes weighted approximately by population. Britain has 29 votes (from May 2004) out of 345, and 258 votes are required to enact legislation. QMV is extending to more and more areas of legislation as the EU grows – supposedly to prevent “total paralysis” – and Britain has no chance of defending its interests when they differ from EU member states (which they invariably will due to our differing system, traditions and values). We have much to lose. Some assurances have been given that a veto (i.e. no QMV) will apply to important areas such as defence but the truth is there are many “back-doors” through which QMV can impose any and every law upon us, not to mention the compromises the Government seems to be all too willing to engage in (see “Britain yields to EU over criminal justice” by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and George Jones, The Telegraph, May 19th 2004, on-line at: http://www.openeurope.org.uk/media-centre/article.aspx?newsid=238).
32. “When the Maastricht Treaty was before Parliament John Major forced it through by ruthless whipping and unacceptable personal pressures. It surrendered sovereign powers of the Queen in Parliament to an unelected body in Europe without a clear mandate from the electorate.” (Sir Peter Smithers, former Secretary General of the Council of Europe, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph, 4th January 2000).
33. Borders and Liberty by Andrew P. Moriss, “The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty”, July 2004, and available on-line at: http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/borders-and-liberty/. In connection with this article by Andrew Moriss, the author of this essay strongly feels that a country should be established along federal and not national lines. In using these terms the reader should not be blinded by modern usage (which is often wrong). In this essay the author has used “national” to contrast with “supranational”, and espouses nationalism in its non-political sense. The author, however, remains committed to the idea of a union of distinct states or provinces within a country such as existed under the original US Government which was a federal (but since has increasingly become a national) government. Such divisions would no doubt be by county or regions of counties in the United Kingdom.
34. “One Conservative minister, writing about his first visit to an EU ministerial conference, remarked that on entering the conference chamber he was given a copy of the final communiqué. When he pointed out that the subjects had not yet been discussed he was told: ‘Oh no, sir, the decisions have already been made. You are here only to sign the communiqué.’” (see Vigilance: A Defence of British Liberty, pp. 12; see “Suggestions for Further Study” below)
35. “Individual MEPs are not an essential, nor even an important, part [of the EU]. We are interchangeable bit-part actors, spear-carriers, participating in a mockery of the parliamentary process. Oratory plays no part. Reason plays no part. Conviction plays no part. Our votes cannot change a directive. We are there merely to furnish an illusion of democracy, providing a veneer to conceal what is a fundamentally undemocratic process.” (Jeffrey Titford, MEP, speaking of his experience of the European Parliament as quoted in Vigilance: A Defence of British Liberty, pp. 27; emphasis added. See “Suggestions for Further Study” below)
36. For more information on the ECB please read A Sceptical Introduction to the European Union (see “Suggestions for Further Study” below).
37. “In all tyrannical governments the supreme magistracy, or the right of both making and of enforcing laws, is vested in one and the same man, or one and the same body of men; and whenever these powers are united together, there can be no public liberty…But where the legislative and executive are in distinct hands, the former will take care not to entrust the latter with so large a power, as may tend to the subversion of its own independence and therewith of the liberty of the subject.” (Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England). Compare this with what Montesqueieu said: “When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate [legislature] should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner…Again, there is no liberty, if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for the judge would then be the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with violence and oppression.”(Charles de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, Great Books of the Western World, vol. 38 [Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952], p. 70)
38. Referring to the European Parliament, Ashley Mote writes “In the unlikely event that a resolution is voted down, under a procedure known as ‘conciliation’, the vote is overturned and the original reinstated. The parliament itself has no legislative powers.” (Vigilance: A Defence of British Liberty, pp. 27; see “Suggestions for Further Study” below)
39. “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” (James Madison, Federalist Papers, No. 47).
40. In the Corpus Juris document published by the EU it reads, in part, “…designed to ensure, in a largely unified European legal area, a fairer, simpler, and more efficient system of repression.” (page 40, paragraph 3). The document also makes reference to professional judges (26), indefinite detention (20,iii), loss of double jeopardy and thus presumption of innocence (27,ii), loss of the right of the accused to be informed of evidence against him (29,iii), secret trials (34), extradition (21,I,b). This document alone exposes the real tyrannical nature of the EU.
41. “In the territory of each member State and whatever their nationality, officials and other servants of the Communities shall…be immune from legal proceedings in respect of acts performed by them in their official capacity, including their words spoken or written. They shall continue to enjoy this immunity after they have ceased to hold office…” (Chapter V, Article 12 of Protocol 36 on the Privileges and Immunities of the European Communities, Treaty on European Union; 8 April 1965). These privileges are also included in the EU Constitution under Article III-340 which states: “The Union shall enjoy in the territories of the Member States such privileges and immunities as are necessary for the performance of its tasks, under the conditions laid down in the Protocol of 8 April 1965 on the privileges and immunities of the European Communities. The same shall apply to the European Investment Bank.”
42. See “EU Arrest Warrant Comes Into Force”, European Institute of Protestant Studies, taken from The British Church Newspaper, January 9th 2004, available on-line at: http://www.ianpaisley.org/new_details.asp?ID=183
43. Chapter II, Art. 17; see also The Human Rights Act 1998, incorporated within British law, Protocol 1, Art. 1.
44. See “Watch What You Say” by John Hilliker, Philadelphia Trumpeter, July 2001, available on-line at: http://www.olusa.com/politics/free-speech-dying.htm.
45. “Now It’s Blasphemy to Mock Europe” by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Spectator, 18th November, 2000. This article can be read for free on-line but you will need to subscribe first: http://www.spectator.co.uk.
46. S.I. 2001, No. 85. The exact areas where this infringement of free speech occurs is in public health, public safety, administration and trade. Read the House of Lords debate of March 20th, 2001 at http://www.bwmaonline.com/Political%20-%20Motion%20on%20March%2020th.htm
.
47. One Government-supported “reason” for ID cards in the UK is to combat social security fraud. This is interesting as Richard Thomas, the new Information Commissioner and Head of the UK Data Protection Office recently said: “A second justification [for ID cards] is social security fraud. Well, the empirical evidence is that the vast bulk of social security fraud is caused by fraud about people’s circumstances, not about their identity…” (“ID Cards ‘will be boon for forgers’” by Alan Travis, home affairs editor, The Guardian, January 8, 2003); full article available on-line from Guardian Unlimited at:
    http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,11026,870470,00.html. For an excellent argument against ID cards see Sean Gabb’s pamphlet, Identity Cards: Some Brief Objections available online at http://www.seangabb.co.uk/flcomm/flc087.htm; see also a short article by the author at http://www.freedom-central.net/idcards.html which also references many resources for further research.
48. Government Paves Way for EU Identity Cards by Marc Glendening, Tribune, August 1st 2003; full article available on-line at: http://www.democracy-movement.org.uk/main/tribuneAug03.html.
49. Henry St. George Tucker, in his edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries, Vol. 1, p. 300 (1803).
50. For more information please read All The Way Down The Slippery Slope: Gun Prohibition in England and Some Lessons for Civil Liberties in Amercia by Joseph E. Olsen and David B. Kopel, on-line at: http://www.guncite.com/journals/okslip.html.
51. “Why I am going to the European Court” by Daniel Hannan, MEP; from Freedom Today, May/June 2004, p. 25
. View article online at http://www.hannan.co.uk/news.htm.
52. Winston Churchill, minute to the Home Secretary, 21st November 1943.
53. Section II, Chapter 8, heading (d): “Measures for countering fraud against the financial interests of the Community.” The House of Lords interviewed two EU representatives who stated that Corpus Juris could be, and would be, introduced under Article 280 of the Amsterdam Treaty (see pages 84-85 of the 9th Report, House of Lords, 1998).
54. EU Commission proposals (Directorate General XX) detail EU criminal code and procedure. Article 26.1 provides for cases (with sentences up to seven years) to be heard by courts “consisting of professional judges, excluding simple jurors and lay magistrates.”
55. Protocol annexed to Maastricht Treaty of 1992. Article 30 requires Britain, on her entrance into the EMU, to transfer £8000 million of gold and dollar reserves to the ECB in Frankfurt, Germany. This cannot be reversed once done. Article 42 of this same Protocol allows for all remaining reserves to be transferred if a majority of the other EMU countries ask for it – Britain could not veto this.
56. In 1999 the entire European Commission was forced to resign due to corruption charges; but most who “resigned” just carried on as normal. The House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee has the view that corruption is endemic and unreformable in the EU (see PAC report issued 25th August 1999). For more on EU financial corruption see Ashley Mote’s site at: http://www.ashleymote.co.uk.
57. The Pink Book 2003, United Kingdom Balance of Payments, HM Government, Central Statistics Office, 2004.
58. See EuroFAQs, The European Union faq, p. 7-9 available as html or pdf on-line at http://www.eurofaq.freeuk.com for full explanations and official sources.
59. ICM survey of 1000 company chief executives, April 2004.
60. Sovereignty Journal, April 2004, letter from Donald Martin reporting on FSB Annual Branch Conference held in Blackpool 19th to 21st March 2004.
61. KPMG Consulting survey based on responses from 300 firms.
62. “For continental European politicians a single currency is above all a political not an economic issue … In the 19th century there were three failed attempts in parts of Europe to create monetary unions. The German monetary union was fully fledged by the 1870s but it began some 40 years before, initially as a customs union. The Prussian Thaler – as the currency was called – held sway while Bismarck dominated. The French attempt at a Latin Monetary Union started in 1865 and included Belgium, Italy, Greece and Switzerland, and at the time Walter Bagehot warned that if Britain did nothing we would be left out in the cold. We wisely declined to join and never regretted it. In 1873, Sweden, Denmark and Norway started a monetary union which was dissolved in 1924. This albeit limited history shows that monetary unions fail…” (Lord Owen, in The Economist, 24th January 1998; emphasis added).
63. The Times, 19th February 2000.
64. Why the New EU is like the Old USSR by Vernon Coleman (quoting Vladimir Bukovsky) available on-line at http://www.vernoncoleman.com/tneuiltou.htm.
65. From Euro to Union by William F. Jasper, 28th January 2002, Vol. 18, No. 2 of The New American magazine, available on-line at http://www.usnationhood.com/fromeuro.html. For more information (and also American issues) read “Regional Mergers on the Road to the Global Total State” by the same author, published on-line at: http://www.stoptheftaa.org/artman/publish/article_41.shtml.
66. The article from which this extract comes no longer seems to be available on-line. There is something akin to it by the same author entitled The Real Purpose of the EU’s Enlargement at: http://www.teameurope.info/node/214. I would suggest contacting Uno Silberg if you want to find the original article (EU and Soviet Union – the same federal socialism ).
67. “Estonians Wary of European Union” by Christopher Bollyn, American Free Press, 20th August 2003; available on-line at: http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?read=35726.
68. “Avalanche of doubts leaves Prodi bruised” by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 10th May 2003, The Telegraph, available on-line at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/05/10/wfile10.xml. See more related information at: http://www.kc3.co.uk/~dt/RProdi.htm.
69. Defence of the Realm, p. 5; see “Suggestions for Further Study” below.
70. The Doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty, as explained by Professor A.V. Dicey’s accepted and classic definition given in 1885. See The Law of the Constitution by the same author, 10th edition. (1959), p. 67-68.
71. “Sovereignty for a nation is hard to come by and even more difficult to retain. It cannot be shared, for then sovereignty becomes something else, and, for want of a better word, when sovereignty is lessened the end-product is internationalism. Sovereignty is neither more nor less than self-government.” Ezra Taft Benson, United States Foreign Policy given at the Farm Bureau Banquet in Preston, Idaho, June 21st 1968; emphasis added (see “Suggestions for Further Study” below).
72. See Chapter 11, pp. 75-78, of Treason at Maastricht (see “Suggestions for Further Study” below).
73. In 1706 the people of Scotland effectively decided to share their King and Parliament with England and Wales. Thus was created the United Kingdom. The new Parliament was to be in England, the Scottish Parliament was to no longer exist. The statute which dealt with the terms of this union was called the Act of Union. This vital part of the British Constitution guaranteed that Parliament would not encroach upon the rights of the Scots. If this happened, the Act of Union would be null and void. This would mean the United Kingdom would cease to exist in its present form. It also would mean that Parliament’s authority would cease to exist because that authority originated in the Act. By consenting to the Maastricht Treaty, and thus violating the rights of the Scots, Parliament has invalidated its own authority.
74. For an explanation of the 8 counts of treason levelled at those involved with signing away British Sovereignty to Europe, see Treason at Maastricht, chapter 4 (pp. 43-51) (see “Suggestions for Further Study” below). For more information on the British Constitution and the EU Constitution’s incompatibility with it, read John Bingley’s excellent The EU Constitution is Incompatible with Ours (see “Suggestions for Further Study” below).
75. Shaping Tomorrow’s EU, Brussels, 4 April 2002.
76. From The Proposed EU Constitution is a Weapon of Mass Destruction of all the Member states, an article by Ashley Mote. No longer available on-line but a report of what may have been that speech can be found on-line at http://www.bullen.demon.co.uk/acml20.htm. Ashley Mote can also be contacted at his site (see above).
77. The European Constitution against The British Constitution: A Short Critique by Torquil Dick-Erikson, M.A. (Oxon), published by the UK Independence Party, April 2004; pp. 6
78. Ibid. pp. 15.
79. Ibid. pp. 15-18.
80. Ibid. pp. 6.
81. Number 17, Cato’s Letters, Saturday, February 18, 1720; from The English Libertarian Tradition: From the Writings of John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon in “The Independent Whig” and “Cato’s Letters” [Fox & Wilkes, San Francisco, 1965], p. 52. Cicero’s own words on the matter of treason are also poignant here, said he: “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very hall of government itself. For the traitor appears not traitor – he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation – he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city – he infects the body politic so that is can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared.” (in a speech to the Roman Senate, 42 B.C.)
82. For details on the deception, vote-rigging and other underhanded schemes of British politicians see The Great Deception: The Secret History of the European Union, chapter 8, “The Real Deceit of Edward Heath: 1970-1975″ (see “Suggestions for Further Study” below)
83. Question Time, BBC, speaking to Peter Sissons, 1st November 1991. Heath also said: “There is no danger of a single currency.” (EEC membership information leaflet, 1975).
84. These quotations on Europe, and many others (all referenced and checked) have been compiled on-line at: http://www.liebreich.com/LDC/HTML/Europe/00-Intro.html.
85. Minutes of the Cabinet Meeting of 23rd October 1962 (released under 30 Year Rule, 1st January 1993).
86. The 1996 Inter-Governmental Conference: The Agenda, Democracy and Efficiency and the Role of National Parliaments, House of Commons Select Committee on European Law, 1996.

Suggestions for Further Study

Books

Vigilance: A Defence of British Liberty by Ashley Mote. This book is a must-read. The author presents the case very well and in an easy-to-read manner. This book is the one book that, if everyone read, would truly wake up the people of Britain and the free world to their own blessings and the very real threat of the draconian European Union.
http://www.author.co.uk/vigilance or http://www.ashleymote.co.uk/?p=688
NOTE: You may download and print out for free a text file with excerpts from this book at:
http://www.silentmajority.co.uk/eurorealist/pdf/VIGILANCE%20Ashley%20MOTE%20Intro.rtf)

Defence of the Realm by Ashley Mote (booklet). Looks at the cogent argument that the EU treaties, et. al., are actually illegal in Britain. The text of this booklet can also be found in the appendix of the above book.
http://www.silentmajority.co.uk/eurorealist/MagnaCarta

Treason at Maastricht: The Destruction of the Nation State by Rodney Atkinson and Norris McWhirter. This book is a testament to the patriotic and highly knowledgeable Norris McWhirter who sadly died of a heart attack the same week that it was reported that the Prime Minister had agreed to hold a referendum on the EU Constitution. Norris, together with Rodney Atkinson, brought charges of treason against certain individuals in the British Government. This book looks at the eight treason charges, the British Constitution, the Nazi and Bilderberger involvement in the EU, Winston Churchill’s real vision of a future Europe, and the threat that exists to British and American sovereignty today.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0950935395

The Last Days of Britain: The Final Betrayal by Lindsay Jenkins (foreword by Norman Lamont)
Detailing the decades of dishonesty as both Labour and Conservative governments have betrayed Britain and her people.
http://www.junepress.com/reviewpic.asp?BID=652

Britain Held Hostage by Lindsay Jenkins (foreword by Frederick Forsyth)
Reveals the truth about who really created the EU and why.
http://www.junepress.com/reviewpic.asp?BID=554

The Great Deception: The Secret History of the European Union by Christopher Booker and Richard North.
One of the most professional and detailed works on the history of European union from 1918 to the present. Thoroughly recommended.
http://www.ukip.org

The Principality and Power of Europe: Britain and the Emerging Holy European Empire by Adrian Hilton.
Available from Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/Principality-Power-Europe-Adrian-Hilton/dp/0951838628/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265374197&sr=1-2

The Law by Frédéric Bastiat. Classic work on the proper role of law in a just society (book). Held in high regard by Britain and the US but ignored in his own country of France, no doubt because he was no friend to statist continental philosophies.http://www.lfb.com
On-line Articles & Essays
Historical Deceptions: European Union by Joel Skousen (on-line essay). Insightful and informed commentary on the dangers of the EU and how it affects all of us. Taken from World Affairs Brief.
http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com/keytopics/EU.shtml
An Essay on the Trial By Jury by Lysander Spooner (on-line essay). Excellent essay on the real importance and role of the jury. Once you’ve read this you’ll never look at trial by jury the same again.
http://lysanderspooner.org/node/35
A Sceptical Introduction to the European Union by Richard Greaves (article). As the title suggests, an introduction to the EU touching upon its major institutions, monetary and banking system, Europol, Corpus Juris, and other prominent elements. From The Sovereignty Journal.
http://www.sovereignty.org.uk/features/articles/euintro.html

Corpus Juris and the Threat to British Common Law Rights (web article)
http://www.silentmajority.co.uk/eurorealist/corpus_juris.html

The “New European Soviet” by Vilius Brazenas (magazine article). Mr. Brazenas at ninety plus remembers most of the major events of the last century. He claims the EU is rapidly descending into totalitarianism and tells us exactly why it could be no different.
http://www.africancrisis.co.za/Article.php?ID=3945&
The Law is Above You: The Christian Roots of English Common Law by Michael A. Clark and others (web article) http://www.britishisrael.co.uk/showart.php?id=31

Britain’s Unique Heritage of Law Threatened by an E.U. Police State: A Napoleonic System of Repression Now Confirmed in Corpus Juris (web article)
http://www.britishisrael.co.uk/old/articles/05.htm

Corpus Juris by Stealth. Long web page with updates on current British-EU topics and how they affect our freedom. (web article)
http://www.kc3.co.uk/~dt/CorpusJuris.htm
The Fascist Inheritance in the European and Blair Projects by Edward Spalton. Available on-line at http://klub.org.pl/pipermail/central-europe_klub.org.pl/2004-August/000115.html.
United States Foreign Policy (speech) by Secretary of Agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson). An elaboration on national sovereignty and the true meaning of nationalism; given at the Farm Bureau Banquet in Preston, Idaho, June 21^st 1968.
http://www.latterdayconservative.com/articles/ezra-taft-benson/united-states-foreign-policy
Europe’s New Constitution: Philadelphia It Is Not by Patrick Basham and Marian L. Tupy (web article). A comparison of the proposed EU Constitution and the US Constitution. This article was published by Scripps Howard News Service, March 4, 2003.
http://www.cato.org/dailys/03-07-03.html
The EU Constitution is Incompatible with Ours by John Bingley (speech). A plain and well-argued address pointing out the illegitimate position of the EU Constitution within the context of the British Constitution.
http://www.newalliance.org.uk/incompat.htm
Videos

Visit the UKIP shop for all the latest books and DVDs on the EU at
http://www.ukip.org/shop/category/view/books-dvds

Organisations

The June Press
http://www.junepress.com
Excellent source of political, economic and historical publications. Also publishes the fortnightly Eurofacts newsletter available on-line at: http://www.junepress.com/eurofacts.asp. Highly recommended.
EuroFAQ
http://www.eurofaq.freeuk.com/
Written and maintained by an independent group of journalists, businessmen, politicians and academics who believe Britain’s membership of the European Union has been a political and economic disaster. Very clear and well-presented questions and answers about the EU and Britain. Highly recommended.
The Bruges Group
An all-party independent think tank seeking to stop the centralising of power to Brussels. Many good links and articles. Rt. Hon. Baroness Thatcher is the Honorary President.
http://www.brugesgroup.com

The Freedom Association (TFA)
http://www.tfa.net
Readers might also want to study the article Conservative MEPs and the European People’s Party: Time for Divorce, by Martin Ball and Jonathan Collet, available on-line at http://www.brugesgroup.com/mediacentre/index.live?article=94).

Freedom-Central.Net
News and Resource Portal for Freedom-loving People Everywhere…
International site listing only the most liberty-loving and reliable sources of information from around the world.
http://www.freedom-central.net

Periodicals & Other Publications

Portman Papers
Excellent professional quarterly focusing on the threat to British sovereignty and the Constitution from the EU and other internationalist forces. Portman Papers is not afraid to go into detail about some of the less-accepted truths other publications avoid. Highly recommended.
http://www.portmanpapers.co.uk
Other Resources

EuroFAQ’s European Constitution Resource Page
Includes a summary of the powers of the EU Constitution, the Government and EU position, news and information on the EU Constitution and referendum, and other links.
http://www.eurofaq.freeuk.com/constitution
New Alliance Constitution and Documents Archive
The official site of the EU, like its legislation, is somewhat hard to navigate and find what you want. So here’s an excellent link resource from New Alliance where you will find all that you need including links to the various EU treaties and a link to the latest translation of the reader-friendly draft EU Constitution published by EU ABC (you may wish to review the PowerPoint presentation found via that particular link too): http://www.newalliance.org.uk/constdoc.htm. The official EU site is at http://europa.eu.int.

About the Author
D. Andrews is a writer and researcher who lives in England, loves his country and is deeply concerned about the decline of freedom in his own land and the rest of the world. You can view his Video Primer page at http://www.freedom-central.net/video
If you feel there is any misrepresentation, error or omission in this article then please contact the author through the feedback form provided below.
NB: As this article is continually being updated and expanded, please check for the latest version at http://www.freedom-central.net/euandbritain.html if you are not currently reading it from that page. This Version: 17.09.04. Word count: c. 16,300