I wrote this letter to Mrs May after her election to PM but I decided she did not need me telling here how to run the country so I never sent it but I still think much of it to be very valid advice.
30th June 2016
16th September 2016
Ref Brexit.docxDear Sir,
This is being written as advice to whoever will pick up the torch to take Britain into the next 30 years after Brexit.
So now we have it. Britain has told the European Union very firmly that its style of government is not for us. The real problem with a European Government is that there is not, and probably cannot be, a firm consensus. There can be no caucus or party line to follow or debate. There are dozens of diverse political parties and there can be no strong will to push forward or oppose a policy. Indeed there can be no policy to follow other than that followed by the European Commission which has so dismayed us on many occasions. That has been about enlarging and enforcing bureaucracy, not about government. One of our MEP's has shown his daily workload on television. Perhaps there was some exaggeration but he showed papers which required him to vote for 460 motions in one day. He could not possibly make an informed decision on more than one or two of those so he was instructed how to vote. That is neither democracy nor wise government but rampant and silly bureaucracy.
I believe it was Abraham Lincoln when asked how often congress should meet replied "every four years should do". To have a parliament which meets for several months of each year and votes on 460 motions per day is utter madness. The Chinese nation was technologically far in advance of the west in medieval times. they developed a pervasive bureaucracy which stifled the whole nation to such an extent that when the western powers finally opened up the country around 1900 the Chinese were five hundred years behind us. This is what Brussels is doing to Europe. We will be much better off outside it.
There is a very good reason why Britain should not give up its sovereignty. The concept and application of Human Rights has never been recognised anywhere other than within a sovereign nation state. Indeed, that is the only body yet invented that can actually make and enforce the rules necessary to ensure freedom of the individual. Britain has an exceptionally good record at recognising and applying the principles of freedom. It is not perfect; it is not even good; but it is one of the best yet invented. Most of the rest are pretty awful. So let us agree to stay with what we have and try to preserve and improve it. The EU is not a good substitute as the repository of freedom.
There are some who claim Brexit will reduce our safety in this world. Our membership of the EU has never added one whit to our safety. Our safety has depended for the last 67 years quite clearly upon the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. There is no reason why that organisation should be reduced, changed or minimised by our withdrawal from a political union. NATO has been a superb success and there seems little reason why it should not remain so. It will certainly be in the interests of the United Kingdom and most other member countries to ensure that its operation continues and that we play all our part in maintaining our contributions to it.
The first purpose of the EU was to facilitate trade between nations. Britain's membership of the EU has seen its trade with many nations hampered by European hesitance. Without this impediment there is little doubt that Britain can compete on world markets just as well, and probably better outside the EU. There is little to fear.
Our membership of NATO sets us firmly alongside the United States which has been our best ally for at least two hundred years despite some minor family disagreements. This relationship is often described as a Special Relationship and most people think that refers to us toadying to the US militarily or hiding behind her military might. The real basis of our special relationship is our mutual understanding and implementation of the nature of Rights.
The evolution of thought relating to human rights was strongest in France and England for most of the last 1000 years. The French went seriously astray with Napoleon but made major contributions to modern philosophy. The Germans have had some useful philosophers but several have taken devious paths. The road to the flowering of the concept of freedom and Human Rights passed mainly through England and its flowering was in the declarations of human rights, firstly in the British Bill of Rights of 1689 and then in the American Declaration of Independence in 1776. The Americans like to claim that the declaration was a result of their separation from England but it was, in fact, one more milestone on a long path of their relationship with England. The United Nations published a modern version in 1948 and there was a European Declaration in 1998.
The Americans who wrote their declaration firstly stated that they were Englishmen who would like to remain so but --- and they then went on to explain why they could not tolerate a mad king and proceeded to issue a declaration firmly based on the prior British Bill of Rights. They had clearly been shown the way by their British cousins. The British nation was overtaken for a while by the American philosophers but we have continued our own development through emancipation and endless parliamentary debates and continued political confrontations and developments. The present hiatus in our parliamentary system may well be seen in future as a seminal change for good in this process.
The essence of the British parliamentary system is peaceful confrontation in which two sides and a few hangers-on confront each other on a regular basis. The House of Commons, divided into two sides, honestly reflects this confrontational system. It confines arguments to one room in one building and has successfully prevented civil war for some 365 years. That is quite an achievement. Add to that almost universal enfranchisement, total religious freedom, almost universal civil rights and a major contribution to the side of right in two world wars and this country has been a beacon of light in an otherwise often dark world.
The united States of America has a similarly successful history with the abolition of slavery, the recovery from a dreadful civil war and the subsequent absence of internal military strife. They have reached almost universal suffrage and both countries have, as a direct result of freedom, experienced previously unprecedented growth of wealth. This was a direct result of the Industrial Revolution which started in the free conditions of England and flourished here and in the United states. This is the glorious history which is the basis of the Special Relationship. Not toadying or war or politics but the mutual promotion of freedom to create wealth.
The concept of Human Rights is the most important thing on earth and it was in the Declaration of Independence that it found its finest expression and that was the final flowering of a long line of English thought. That is why the British and Americans should remain friends and allies and continue to defend the concept of freedom which is always under attack from some quarter. It is, indeed, a very special relationship. Probably the only one on earth based on freedom.
We should not forget that we have many supporters and potential trading partners in Canada, Australia and New Zealand and throughout the world in numerous countries such as India and South Africa who are generally very pleased to trade with us. In many instances this is because they recognise our contribution to the philosophy and practices of freedom which have given them their freedoms. No one else on earth has ever made a better contribution to freedom. Our detractors have tried to highlight the difficulties and failures of the British Empire but they conveniently ignore our massive achievements which have benefited the majority of people on earth. That is our legacy, that is the cornerstone of the world we have built.
On a more practical level we need to rediscover the simple fact of civilised existence. To survive a civilisation must have physical products. Without houses and cars, beds and chairs, cutlery and kitchens, toilets and bathrooms we have no civilisation. Try taking off all your clothes and go live in a field for just one day. You will be lucky if you survive the night. Our artefacts are our civilisation and to make them we must take materials from the ground by mining or farming and convert them into the million and one products which make our lives practically possible. This is called manufacturing. It is not possible on the face of this planet to make goods in any other manner. Mining, Farming and Manufacturing. That is what sustains our civilisation.
I am not going to presume to dictate or guess what products we will make or how. Technology is always changing and the pace of change is becoming almost frantic. But if we do not perform these functions we are not creating wealth and that will ultimately show up in the bottom line of the nation's accounts. It is quite likely that the present huge fiscal deficits are related to the strange and horrifying neglect of the nation's manufacturing capability evidenced by the last fifty years of destruction of manufacturing. Certainly, we cannot possibly manufacture everything there is to make and there are a million different tasks to do to make a product but we have allowed to come into place a distinct aversion to manufacturing such that the majority of young people see it as an offensive occupation - and these are the functions that make our civilisation possible. This aversion to work in this country is much more than simple laziness - it is an almost universal self-abhorrence. To hate that which supports life is a serious illness.
We must choose carefully what products we make with reference to technical advance, market performance, security of supply, national security, profitability and sustainability. But manufacture we must.
It has become fashionable and probably profitable to expand our university system to educate people from abroad who are willing to pay well to have their children educated. This is fine but its future depends upon drawing in the latest advances in manufacturing and science. The amount of new knowledge generated depends directly upon the amount of manufacturing and scientific activity being conducted in society. Much of this new expertise is held within large corporations which offer no allegiance to this country. Exactly how we resolve that I do not know but we must try. It should be noted as a start to resolve this that limited companies only exist under licence from the state and by this route, from its people. The terms of those licences seem much too lax and generous. Perhaps that is where we need to start thinking about this dilemma.
This brings me naturally to the problem of the banks. They, too, only exist due to exclusive, monopolistic and highly profitable licences from the state which should control and curtain their operations. But the banks have negotiated the terms of their licences so that they now represent one of biggest and most dangerous operations of the state. They have beguiled and besotted us with mumbo jumbo disguised under technology and greed on all sides to print money as debt in such amounts that no one can now afford to pay the interest on their debts so the government has to keep interests rates at or below zero to prevent a massive breakdown of the whole financial system. The banks have a licence to literally print debt and charge us fat fees and interest at almost no cost to themselves - and they still go bankrupt. That corruption of a the gift of an exclusive monopoly is pretty difficult to achieve and highlights the massive corruption which underlies the system.
Negative interest rates which are now reality mean that we are paying the banks and institutions to look after our money even though they will charge us an arm and a leg if we need to borrow from them. This has rarely happened before in the history of civilisation and is new territory. It really amounts to a new form of taxation as only the government has control of it and the government is by far the biggest debtor. The government only got into that position by continuously offering political bribes to the electorate and making promises to spend taxpayer's money which no one can actually afford. It should be noted that this is not a British problem but most of the advanced nations are now in so much debt that it can never be repaid and most cannot even pay the interest - hence the governments holds interest rates at zero. This is more madness and cannot last. The system must break down in the not too distant future.
This is a massive personal problem for many people but the biggest criminal is the succession of governments which have curried favour with the people by offering them more and more sops to their fecklessness and idleness. It has been reported that of the total disposable income to the population of Britain at least 51% now comes through state channels. This is a very dangerous situation as it is essentially irreversible. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas. But the real problem is that the profligate and indebted government, which essentially controls the interest rates in collusion with the banks and dared not raise interest rates or they will bankrupt themselves. By holding interest rates at negative levels - which are actually real, the government is effectively charging the least profligate citizens to fund its cheating profligacy.
The very purpose of government is to protect its citizens. The vast majority of people are perfectly capable of looking after their own affairs for most of their life. The one thing they cannot get other than from their government is protection. To achieve this the government is given by the citizens a monopoly on the control and use of force. The government is supposed to use this to operate and control the police force and the armed forces and the law courts. All of these functions have in recent years been subjected to massive funding cuts and their effectiveness is debatable. The courts have been inundated with a welter of restrictions which has brought them to the point of laughter. Their burdens have been increased by the licensing of solicitors to advertise and offer no-win-no-fee services which promote endless undefendable and indefensible claims against innocent parties.
On the other hand very little funding has been removed from the schools which promote liberal education which is clearly not fitting most of our children to participate in an industrial society. This does not allow the nation to pay its way in the world. Huge sums are thrown at social services to support what is often sloth, stealth, cunning and idleness. Throwing money at these problems does not diminish them. On the contrary it is like fertiliser and encourages them to grow. Similarly the National Health Service spends a lot of resources patching up self-abuse by people who simply cannot be bothered to take responsibility for their own health. The vast majority of people now think they can hedonistically abuse themselves in any manner they choose and let someone else pick up the consequent bill.
Green policies have heaped regulations and subsidies upon us and forced us into a position where we will be very lucky if the lights do not start going out soon. We certainly need to address the issue of global warming but endless edicts from the mandarins of Brussels or Whitehall are not going to solve the problem. The solution will come from the application of new and cleaner technology - quite probably not even yet invented - and not from bureaucratic overload. Freedom is the name of the game. The vast majority of people will act sensibly if given the facts and the chance.
Scotland is a sad case. A few chancers in Scotland have taken charge of world-wide dissatisfaction to persuade the people that their real beef is with the English government in London. The figures appear to show that Scottish spending on health and pensions and social services exceeds that per head of England. They certainly do not seem hard done by compared to England. The Union has been quite fair to Scotland and the problems are ones of the world financial system rather than political problems between the two nations. Let them go their own way if that is what they genuinely want. Unpicking three hundred years of Union will be much harder than unpicking forty years of EU membership.
Just let them know they must make a genuine separation and cannot expect the English taxpayers to subsidise them. Strike a hard deal on ownership of North Sea oil, let them have their own currency - the Euro if it is still around, and let them send my pension pot back to England. I probably have Scots ancestry myself so I will wish them Good Luck.
I also have quite clear links to Ireland and the 'tatty famine' which I believe allows me to at least comment. So maybe it is time to try to sort the political mess that is Northern Ireland. The plebiscite showed a clear division between Belfast and its hinterland and I imagine this reflects the clear division between the Loyalists and Republicans. I am writing this on the day of the one hundredth anniversary of the battle of The Somme and in my mind are my memories of that beautiful and poignant monument at Thiepval and I cannot separate them from my vision of Northern Ireland if we were to try another separation or settlement. Our principles demand that all people are entitled to self determination and the Orangemen are no different in this matter. I think the whole thing is best left alone for now.
Westminster has tried to quell growing discontent at the proliferation of big government by offering devolution. This was nearly achieved by Scotland and a watered down substitute has been forced upon regional councils by Westminster. This is hardly a satisfactory solution and, in fact, increases the amount of regulation and control by adding yet another layer of government. As Abraham Lincoln indicated, the most desirable state is minimalist government . We want less government, not more.
The financial system is an utter mess. Everything I read within it seems to indicate they think they create the wealth of the nation. They certainly have a vital part to play but that is to fund mining, manufacturing and farming to create wealth. Only manufacturing creates wealth. Everything else redistributes it. "The City" has never produced a single pennyworth of wealth.
On the 11th September 2001 I sat and watched the television in shock and horror. I taped the unfolding story and marked on the tape WW3. After 15 years I have not changed my mind. The resurgence of Islam should not cause the west pain but it seems that a small part of it does. We in Britain need to address this with tolerance and the firmness of a clear law. Britain has been a Christian country for at least a thousand years and it pervades every aspect of our life. The development of the philosophy of freedom owes much to the church despite several turns and twists in the story. In recent years the Church of England has had the guts to allow its people to construct a secular society based firmly on the principles of universal human rights. The Church has not played a large active part in this but neither has it obstructed the process. That is a great strength and a great service to mankind and to the purpose of civilisation.
Our position with respect to Islam must be to accept that every person may behave in any way he or she wishes subject only to the - very real - restriction that he/she must totally observe the equal rights of every other person. Rights belong equally to every single person capable of observing them. Rights cannot be given because they belong to you as of right. But they can be taken away by bad law and bad behaviour. The correct way to construct good law is to make an inviolable constitution to protect the citizens against the government and then to elect a government to make laws to protect the citizens from each other and from outside forces. The government may do only what the constitution allows. Within such a system any person may believe and do what they wish subject only to the reality that they leave every other person to do the same in peace. Force of any kind is forbidden absolutely and it is the task of government to enforce this requirement.
The techies tell us that by 2050 the robots are likely to be as clever as us. After that they will be in charge of their own development and we are likely to see a massive surge in their abilities. It is very likely that we will become irrelevant. I do not see how we can possibly stop this and should probably prepare for it. There is unlikely to be an accommodation with this superior life form. They will rule the world if they wish and I can think of no reason they would not want to. Every other life form has promoted itself and robots would probably be no different. For the last 100 years or so scary movies have tried to warn us that alien beings will attack the earth. The probability of that is so infinitesimally small that it can safely be ignored but we are creating our own alien creatures right here on earth. They may not treat us well at all.
Euthanasia has to be a serious matter for the future. The population cannot go on expanding for ever and old people must be removed. Nature had a way of doing it called disease and aging and we have spent fortunes slowing down this natural attrition. It has become fashionable for old people to want to go on living. Why? I have seen several relatives decay to pointlessness. A life without purpose is not a life and I certainly do not want to linger around this planet unable to look after myself, to think, to act and to have purpose. I will want to go. A debate on euthanasia is an urgent matter.
Finally HS2. I have a personal interest because I have spent 50 years as a Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers which was founded by railway engineer Robert Stevenson mainly because the British Association would not admit a mere technician as a member. My views do not necessarily reflect the views of that organisation. HS2 is quite unnecessary. Its proponents claim it will help reinvigorate the Midlands and North. No it won't. Connect two masses together and the larger will naturally pull more mass into itself. There are a billion star systems to illustrate this natural phenomena. London will simply pull more activity into itself if travel to it becomes easier. The real, hidden, agenda here is that it is planned to relive the existing network to allow more local commuter trains into London. The whole idea is about London.
I have become part of a group rail workers who make the present system operate and they have an alternative which will provide good connections between ten times as many cities as HS2 proposes. The correct solution to a communication problem is to make the system nodal and our system does this. The single spine of HS2 is a death wish waiting to happen. There are many improvements to communications needed to improve the performance of industrial England. The A14 trunk road and M6 motorway are ongoing nightmares. We have considered a rail link from Felixstowe to Birmingham but it would probably not work. We need an east-west motorway on that route and another north-south motorway through the north midlands. The M5 is not much better and trans-Pennine communications are poor between Manchester and Sheffield. There are many improvements which could be made but HS2 is little but a means of shifting huge amounts of money from the taxpayer into the hands of big corporations. The rewards to the country will be poor indeed. Cancel HS2. Substitute some sensible developments.
We need a new motorway from Bristol to Birmingham and to Manchester and one from Felixstowe to Birmingham. The M5, M6 and A14 are all a horrible joke. We need new railways on a nodal system between Newcastle, Sheffield, Leeds,
Lincoln, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol and Leicester amongst others. This is where we should produce the goods that are real wealth. This is where new infrastructure should be built.I trust these notes will prove useful to you in your Herculean task. If nothing else it might help you understand why the people of Britain are seriously upset. These are the issues which beset the punters, most of whom find them far too complex to put into context. I hope that is what I have done for you and for them.
Finally, you should not forget that you create wealth by taking materials from the ground by farming or mining and transform them to products by manufacturing. There is no other way. We in the midlands have known this for 300 years. You in London seem to have forgotten it.
Colin Walker
3 October 2016