I’m completely unsurprised by the Rotherham result.

Complete council elections there have often resulted in the return of only Labour councillors so there is no effective opposition to what the ruling clique of the council’s controlling party decides.

However, I can understand why Conservatives in the north of England might be worried by the taunt of Nigel Farage of UKIP that we are moving towards a situation where elected Conservatives will only be returned in a few rural enclaves in the north. But then:

“There are 197 constituencies in the political south. At the 2010 general election ten Labour MPs were returned in the south, 4 in the south west, 4 in the south east and 2 in the east of England.”
http://www.southernfront.org.uk/p/labour-in-south.html

That’s the north-south divide.

My my. The lie Dems did well. Nick Clegg is becoming the Neville Chamberlain of our age. “In my hand I have a piece of paper” Yes Nick, it’s called the coalition agreement, and it is as worthless to you as that paper Chamberlain held in hand all those years ago. For nearly 100 years the liberals have dreamed of power, and when they finally had some, they had no clue how to use it.

When your enemy is drowning, you don’t throw them a lifeline. You throw them an anvil. Cameron was in deep shit after the last election. He promised his rabid base outright power. To do it, he had slapped down the saintly Margaret. He had embraced the environment. He failed, and was being attacked from all sides of the tory party. Then, in waded Clegg, a man with about as much political fight as a folded chair.

It’s all very well the lie Dems claiming that they have held back the worst parts of the tory party. But the damage has been done. Clegg, and the ludicrous Shirley Williams may think they have held back full privatisation of the health service. But they have allowed the tories to wedge open the door in a way that many in the public have yet to realise. In are marching the armies of corporate lawyers, armed with all the NHS confidential financial figures, so slyly leaked by tory ministers to their private healthcare masters. We now have a health Secretary who when handling the sky bid was leaking information to Murdoch every step of the way. This, by the way is what tories call free markets. More like crony capitalism.

In every area of govt Clegg and his moron advisors see only the little picture. What tweak can we claim victory for they say to themselves. What they are missing is the big picture. The damage and ideology is being unleashed in all areas. And the tories can’t believe their luck. On the other hand, maybe this is what lib dems really believe. In which case they have been lying to their voters and the public for 30 years. I think Mr Clegg we have a right to know?

We need to be dispassionate about the analysis.

The Conservatives won the general election of November 1935 with a landslide. That was the last time the winning party at a general election in Britain attracted more than half the votes cast.

Remember that was during the economic depression of the 1930s. But then the south of England was doing relatively well with a speculative housing boom, fueled by low interest rates, and the start up of new consumer durable industries. With no TV, there was a boom in building new cinemas for mass entertainment – those Odeons and Gaumonts. In south Wales, the north of England and Scotland, unemployment rates stayed high.

Btw how come the LibDems so successfully kept the lid on the news about Cyril Smith after the hiatus in 1976 the Liberals had with Jeremy Thorpe as party leader?

UKIP may be eating into the tory vote but the result for labour still depends on the old faithful and they are disappearing in droves. The overall turn-out and the number of votes which labour attracted, particularly in Rotherham and Middlesborough, may be the last warning before those seats fall to UKIP.

Gratifying to see the Lib Dems destroyed. If this plays out nationally I wonder how much would be left to form a coalition with Labour if it was required.

“Btw how come the LibDems so successfully kept the lid on the news about Cyril Smith”

Hmm…. I would be careful about that stuff. Who knows how many men from various parties were involved. Why were the police even showing pictures of Lord McCalpine to the victims? One can only conclude that someone has said senior political figures were involved. Were the police armed with pictures of politicians from 1970s when they interviewed victims?

Who knows? And when you see David Mellor attcking the victim, it shows how difficult these things are to prove.

The BNP continues to lose support. A minor reversal in Rotherham but a disaster in Middlesbrough. As others have pointed out, their vote has gone down in every by election of this parliament.

Green vote up from 2% to 3.5% in Croydon North.

Google Lib-Lab Pact

It could get worse if they cost the Tories a seat they have a chance in!

What these results, coupled with those from three weeks ago, show is that the plague-on-both-your-houses voters who used to vote Lib Dem have become plague-on-all-your-houses voters who vote UKIP. As yet there aren’t enough of them to even win a byelection, let alone a seat at a general election.

@Sally: “We now have a health Secretary who when handling the sky bid was leaking information to Murdoch every step of the way.”

Actually, if you read the Leveson report you’ll see that Jeremy Hunt is exonerated of wrongdoing and Christopher Bryant’s smears are shown to be total lies.

@Sally – It was an amazing display of a total lack of self awareness when David Mellor, of all people, wrote his article attacking a victim of child abuse as a weirdo.

10 yea right. That’s why Hunts so called advisor resigned in disgrace. As usual with tories, the staff take the blame. Consequences for your actions are only for the little people.

11 I know. When David Mellor is calling a child abuse victim a weirdo you know the party of law and order has jumped the shark.

Sally

Forget for the moment David Mellor. The challenges that the police and prosecuting service face is that previous care home residents are disproportionately represented in the prison population and they tend to have above average drug abuse and mental health issues.

For those reasons, they tend to have less credibility as witnesses in trials or in civil action cases. Since many reports of abuse only come to surface years after the events, there is no supporting forensic evidence so cases depend entirely on the court testimony of victims.

All this is well understood by sexual predators, which is why they target care home residents.

The relative success of UKIP, the BNP and Respect show a decisive shift to the Right: why are you treating this like good news?

The real news was the level of abstentions in these by-elections which were high even by by-election standards:
Rotherham: 66% abstention
Croyden North: 73% abstention
Middlesbrough: 74% abstention

Then on top of those masses who abstained from voting you have the spoiled ballots of those who did.
So the majority no longer have any truck with the poltical process. We shall have to see what the ultimate consequences of this will be.

“The relative success of UKIP, the BNP and Respect show a decisive shift to the Right: why are you treating this like good news?”

Surely the BNP voters switching to UKIP represents a (marginal?) shift to the left?

UKIP so far has only been a threat to tories at non general election votes. Local, European , and by elections they provide tories with a place to register a protest vote.

The real story here is the collapse of the Lie dem vote. And this has been the case in other by elections. When you add in the pcc votes where lie dems running as independents, and swearing blind they were not really lie dems you have a party that is toxic.

Still, I’m sure Clegg will come on my TV and tell me that “we were right to do this,…………and right to do that….blah blah blah” still, never mind, Simon Hughes is still looking for his conscience. He has been looking for 2 and half years now.

15. Exactly. For all their faults, the Lib Dems and even the Tories still contain outposts of left/liberal thinking. UKIP and the BNP do not. Would any liberal really prefer a UKIP Government to the (manifestly flawed) coalition? Let’s not revel in these results – they will merely speed up the Tories’ panic driven-lurch to the right.

@ 17 Jimmy

Surely the BNP voters switching to UKIP represents a (marginal?) shift to the left?

Well this is the crux of the old left/right terminology issue. You could say that economically they’re moving further to the right, but socially they’re moving to the left. Then some smartarse will come along and point out that in the 19thC what we now consider to be right-wing ideas like free trade were then left wing ideas, and that the Conservatives then espoused trade restrictions and tariffs.

Maybe it’s easier if we just say that they’re becoming slightly less unpleasant.

@10
That lying shit Hunt was not exonerated, and people that need to hide behind trees to meet up with Murdoch are usualy hiding something.

UKIP getting popular so the left will play the race card, so predictable.

After Rochdale and many other locations it is obvious that socialists can-not be trusted to protect the interests of white people. Social workers had many opportunities to protect young girls, instead opted to protect social cohesion. As the left have failed white people then white people are allowed to look to other political parties for protection. Labour and the lib-Dems have shown they do not care about white people, especially the white working class. I do not think the left realise how bad this is.

Lib-Dems always played the Labour and Tory voters. They are now seen as traitors. In the north no one will want them. In the south Tory voters now see them as sell outs who could join with Labour.

Labour, UKIP could win Tory seats that might have gone to Labour. I think it is more likely they will stop the Tories from winning these seats.

If UKIP can keep the momentum going when the big guns target them they could be a break through. I will be voting UKIP. We need someone to protect are kids from socialists. Of course the left will play the race card. Lots of mud slinging coming up.

Best news of the day was Respect, the Islamic BNP, getting stuffed.

Shatterface

The relative success of UKIP, the BNP and Respect show a decisive shift to the Right: why are you treating this like good news?

Not really I think. People can switch their vote around all over the place, it doesn’t mean people have necessarily changed that much. Our patronising first past the post system limits people’s political expression, so sometimes they will vote all over the place.

> The Conservatives won the general election of November 1935 with a landslide. That was the last time the winning party at a general election in Britain attracted more than half the votes cast.

Don’t you mean 1931? 1935 saw a decline in their majority.

> Why were the police even showing pictures of Lord McCalpine to the victims?

They weren’t. They were showing pictures they SAID were of Lord McAlpine.

Apparently Tom Watson and the staff of Newsnight travelled back in a time machine and forced innocent police officers to tell this bizarre lie. I can think of no other reason why the outrage over the misidentification of Lord McAlpine as a paedophile has completely ignored the people who were actually responsible for the original smear.

@25 Apparently it was his now deceased cousin Jimmy McAlpine, quite why the coppers would add ‘lord’ as a descriptor to Jimmy however does require some explaining. As well as why the Judge ordered photographic evidence destroyed because the faces of the abusers ‘couldn’t be made out’.

@Daveyyy12 #22:

If UKIP aren’t racist, why would you want to vote for them?

@22

Social workers had many opportunities to protect young girls, instead opted to protect social cohesion.

Unlike how they sprang immediately into action to stop the likes of Jimmy Saville and Cyril Smith…

“27. Robin Levett

@Daveyyy12 #22:

If UKIP aren’t racist, why would you want to vote for them?
”

The above is the kind of scum that has destroyed politics, redicing it to no more than a game.

“. As well as why the Judge ordered photographic evidence destroyed because the faces of the abusers ‘couldn’t be made out’.”

Is that true? I have to be honest, I haven’t really followed this story very closely. But that is scandalous. Has this been widely reported?

“There are 197 constituencies in the political south. At the 2010 general election ten Labour MPs were returned in the south, 4 in the south west, 4 in the south east and 2 in the east of England.”

And yet Londoners still patronise the rest of the country and present themselves as some sort of enlightened, sophisticated political progressives. A bunch of trustafarians, plutocrats and corporate whores who mistake the pursuit of self interest with talent and pretension with sophistication. Catching a tube to work does not make you an egalitarian. It’s pathetic. London kept Thatcher in power FFS.

The left have destroyed politics by making it totally tribal.

Robin Levett, UKIP Racist read what I posted. You will of course play the race card as Respect is using it against Labour, simple trick.

@Blah, buy yourself a mirror. KL pandered to Muslims in an attempt to get the Islamic vote.

@Cylux
They were all white kids……

As for Stephen he is all over the place. Anyone who had a start like he had would be seriously mixed up. He also did this before with the Private Eye. After that anything he says sadly can not be used unless it is collaborated, sadly. To the nasty socialists the chance of smearing a Tory was just to good. It seems that Stephen is not well now. I guess all the fuss is hitting him hard. You guys should all buy a mirror.

@ 7 “Green vote up from 2% to 3.5% in Croydon North”.

I’m not sure if you’re being ironic or not, what do you conclude from that statistic exactly, that there is life in Croydon after all ?

22
If you want to protect kids from socialists you might just as well vote labour although I would be interested in knowing who are the kids you suggest need protection.

@26. Cylux: “@25 Apparently it was his now deceased cousin Jimmy McAlpine, quite why the coppers would add ‘lord’ as a descriptor to Jimmy however does require some explaining.”

Have a look at the Wikipedia page about the McAlpine baronetcy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McAlpine_baronets

Assuming that the coppers did not carry a copy of Debrett’s with them on the job, it is probable that they misunderstood honorifics. Baron, Lord, Sir, The Hon — I suppose the requirement partly explains the book Who’s Who.

“@Blah, buy yourself a mirror. KL pandered to Muslims in an attempt to get the Islamic vote. ”

What the hell are you on about.

Steveb…….. “If you want to protect kids from socialists you might just as well vote labour”

Best line of the day.

Troll…… ” UKIP getting popular so the left will play the race card, so predictable.”

Yea, well your lot would know all about the race card. Remember “If you want a nigger for a neighbor vote labour.”

During the Blair era, mid term by-elections became unusual. MPs of all parties were remarkably healthy and remarkably discrete. If there had been three parliamentary by-elections on one day prior to Blair, one of them would have been exciting.

Three by-elections occurred yesterday and it was a snooze-a-thon. There was a smidge of tension in Rotherham, but UKIP did not have workers on the ground to exploit the aftermath of the child fostering story. (For the record, I do not wish children to be used as electoral puppets; I do not know or speculate whether there was a political setup.)

Those three by-elections were unilluminating. The big story should be that 2/3 of the electorate were uninterested. In Rotherham, the elected candidate could have been outvoted by regular attendees at Rotherham United FC (gate: 12,021).

And the UKIP vote in Rotherham was a bad result for the party, especially after the splash story. In the 2010 local elections, UKIP scored an astonishing 12.4% of the vote in the borough (constituency is part of the borough). At a by-election, as uncorrupted outsiders, UKIP should have expected to double or treble that share. The voter’s choice was clear: Doh.

When voter turnouts are dreadful, conclude that the electorate do not assess the exercise to be purposeful; three parliamentary by-elections were conducted on Thursday.

“We need someone to protect are kids from socialists.”

We’re already on it:

http://www.progressonline.org.uk/

@30 – http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/north-wales-paedophile-scandal-photographic-1426356

Me, working class, council house, was an active member of the Labour Party, never voted BNP, never will as I hate all socialists now.

If the white working class actually knew what you guys thought about them. They are only allowed to vote Labour then sit back while the middle class run the country. UKIP will be attacked as being racist because white people not voting Labour must be racist. That seems to be the socialist definition of racism. All racism is, is a stick to bully your opponents.

@Blah, do keep up. KL, initials of a Labour Candidate for the Mayor of London. His remarks where seen as bordering on the anti-Semitic. So much so many on the left refused to vote for him. Looks like the left are kicking the Jews into touch as supporting them could lose them votes. What does that say about socialists.

Speaking of UKIP. It would appear the ukip adoption case was not quite as simple as was reported. We know the repulsive Gove can never turn down a bandwagon that is rolling, and we know how much he loves dishonest tabloids.

So perhaps the creepy education minister should apologise. Of course it won’t happen. He does not have the integrity. http://t.co/nLlIqHzM

@32

Anyone who had a start like he had would be seriously mixed up.

That is how everyone who targets kids in care or from broken households for their lusts does tend to get away with it yes. The word of a well groomed business owner versus that of someone with all the psychological baggage of being abused? Course everyone believes the offender.
It’s also worth pointing out that McAlpine’s statement was – I am not “the senior Conservative party figure from the days of Margaret Thatcher’s leadership who is guilty of sexually abusing young residents of a children’s home in Wrexham, north Wales, in the 1970s and 1980s.” – you’ll notice the usage of the definitive there, an open admission, while defending himself, that there WAS a senior conservative figure that sexually abused young residents of a children’s home in Wrexham. We already know about Peter Morrison, Thatcher’s former PPS, course he’s dead. Presumably we’ll find out who the other abuser Rod Richard was talking about when that person pops their clogs too.

“Anyone who had a start like he had would be seriously mixed up.”

So you don’t REALLY care about the white working class at all?

@Sally, do not be silly.

You guys only care about Stephen because you think you can get Tory. If Stephen had said it was a Labour minister you would not care. It would be the all party have paedophiles excuse, pathetic and nasty. As for care, check out Brent council.

@Sally
UKIP adoption, Council spin starting. Socialists are very nasty people.

@45

If Stephen had said it was a Labour minister you would not care.

Actually Labour are pretty fucking tainted by it all too – Grahame Nicholls, who ran the Chester Trades Council when Morrison was the local MP, wrote describing how he’d often met Morrison, who was by the 1980s pretty well constantly drunk.

“After the 1987 general election, around 1990, I attended a meeting of Chester Labour party where we were informed by the agent, Christine Russell, that Peter Morrison would not be standing in 1992. He had been caught in the toilets at Crewe station with a 15-year-old boy. A deal was struck between Labour, the local Tories, the local press and the police that if he stood down at the next election the matter would go no further. Chester finished up with Gyles Brandreth and Morrison walked away scot-free. I thought you might be interested.”

Now if it were a working class guy being caught in those situations back then, you can bet your ass they’d be in jail their reputation ruined, not ‘standing aside’ with two political parties, the press and police finding that to be enough.

We have a ruling elite of corrupt, lying, thieving, conniving, self-serving, paedo-enabling Blatcherite scum, with a bent press and a pathetic excuse for a justice system. Put ALL their heads on pikes! Or pay for another of their duck moats, whichever suits ya best.

45 You’ve a moron. UKIP will suit you down to the ground.

But don’t think they will protect the white working class. They are even more addicted to neo liberal economic bullshit. They will just hand sovereignty to global capitalist corporations. In fact their argument against the EU seems to be it puts a break on the power of big business to play one country off against another.

The irony of this is that it will make Britain less Independent, and more likely to become the 51st state of the US. So much of what was British has been sold off on the throne of free markets, and privatisation. Only this week we have seen where the true power lies. Not 10 Downing street or parliament. But the board rooms of Rupert Murdoch, and the Berkeley brothers .

45

Which socialists are you talking about, as you’ve already pointed-out, labour aren’t for the working-class, which I assume that is why you no longer support them. You are, of course, correct, labour do not support the working-class but neither are they a socialist party.

46
Agreed.

@Davey12 #41:

never voted BNP, never will as I hate all socialists now

You are seriously confused, Davey me lad. The BNP – socialists?

UKIP will be attacked as being racist because white people not voting Labour must be racist.

No. UKIP will be attacked as being racist because it is racist. Have you read its manifesto? Were you aware (for example)that Theresa May’s Bolivian cat story was originated by Farage; except that he lied even more extensively about it – or alternatively simply jumped on someone else’s lies without factchecking because the story confirmed his prejudices.

@Steveb.. Labour are socialist and socialism is just window dressing for hatred.

@cyclux the left have history of ignoring faults in there heroes. Anyone found abusing kids should be hung or jailed for a very long time. Working class view of justice I know. Castro has killed more people than Pinochet. Castro refuses the people of Cuba a vote. We all know he would be voted out if he they had a vote.

@Robin

Hitler was a socialist.. Check out all the socialist who visited Assad before the fighting in Syria. Assads party is a Nazi party, it has a swastika as an emblem and a party anthem similar to the German National anthem. His party is rooted in Nazism. Yet the socialists had no trouble partying with him. Hitler hated capitalism and hated the jews. Mosley was a Fabian and he got on with his fellow Fabians.

@Sally. Stupid insults just make you look stupid.

50

Labour are neo-liberal, a political theory which supports industrial capitalism not socialism. But you are a typical example of why a large number of working-class have turned away from labour after Blair, but don’t mistake Blairism with socialism.

Nazism was a national socialist party but you need to be aware of the difference between that and international socialism which focuses on the working-class not national identity. Beware of misleading labels, you may be supporting ideologies which do not reflect your own views.

50 Have you or any of your family ever relied on the NHS to save your life?

It’s socialist. Good luck funding £100,000 for operations from your savings when the Right wing have flogged it off to American corporations who answer only to their American share holders.

I do hope your white working class mates have pots of money. Because they are going to need it, to pay for all the service they can now rely on.

I don’t blame you for your distrust of Blair’s New Labour. But always remember this. Blair did not allow mass immigration into this country for “cultural” reasons. He did it to appease corporate interests that wanted cheap labour. Business played Blair for the fool he was. They new they would never get all that cheap immigrant labour from a tory govt.

@Sally,

I have no problems with a health service. I would choose a German insurance style system. Anything that stops socialists having anything to do with it.

As for immigration.. I see it everyday, I see private landlords making a fortune renting out homes to ten poles. They will work for a few pounds an hour. They live on beans and send every penny home.

Houses up as private landlords buy anything to rent out and wages down as our own people have to complete with the entire planet for a job. That’s the ones with a work ethic.

Thanks Labour, well done. Starting to realise why you are hated.

@ 52 He did it for both reasons. The Marxist wing of the labour party thought it would negate “right wing” (i.e. white working class) anti-immigration sentiment (they obviously know sweet FA about social psychology then) and, as you correctly say, business wanted a pool of cheap, exploitable labour – “a flexible workforce” I think it was described as at the time. Personally I think Blair was fully aware of both motives.

I do so wish self-avowed leftists would give up rewriting history. It looks bad.

Bismarck, first Chancellor of the German Empire, introduced social insurance to cover personal healthcare costs in 1883. Attlee’s Labour government introduced the NHS on the Beveridge Plan in 1948. Bismarck was anything but a socialist but he did start what eventually became the European Social Market.

There are many varieities of capitalism. Try Andre Sapir on: Globalization and the Reform of European Social Models (2006):
http://www.ulb.ac.be/cours/delaet/econ076/docs/sapir.pdf

Btw in 2007, general government expenditure as a percentage of national GDP was a whisker higher in Britain compared with Germany and lower than in Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands or France. So much for the myth that government overspending in Britain caused the financial crisis. Try also: “As these figures show, in 2006 and 2007, immediately before the financial crisis, the UK’s debt, as a percentage of GDP, was considerably lower than that of most other major economies.”
http://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2011/05/26/public-debt-how-does-the-uk-compare/

One explanation for the byelection results is that electorates are realising the government has continued to lie to them about the causes of the crisis. Another, in today’s news, is: “Prosperity across the South is hiding a recession in much of Britain”

@Davey12 #50:

Hitler was a socialist.

Of course he was. And Cromwell was a monarchist.

@Davey12:

To expand a little; any socialism in the Nazi party died on the night of the long knives.

49. Robin Levett

You are seriously confused, Davey me lad. The BNP – socialists?

Sure. They are basically defending the same political manifesto that the Labour Party stood on in 1945.

51. steveb

Nazism was a national socialist party but you need to be aware of the difference between that and international socialism which focuses on the working-class not national identity. Beware of misleading labels, you may be supporting ideologies which do not reflect your own views.

In actual practice what does that mean though? The distinction is probably not as clear as you think. Take a hero of the Left, Ho Chi-minh. A Communist. But also, as we are often told, a fierce nationalist. So where do you put him on the political spectrum?

57. Robin Levett

To expand a little; any socialism in the Nazi party died on the night of the long knives.

That is an interesting claim. I had not thought of Roehm as a particular socialist. But given Hitler went on to greatly expand the social welfare state and even went as far as nationalising large scale industries, why do you think this? In fact I would claim that Hitler’s plunder of first the Jews and then the rest of Europe, provided Germany with the only successful model of socialism in the 20th century. Assuming socialism means something more than Bismarck’s Social Welfare Market model.

@Robin,

Sorry guys, read all the same books that you read. Now I look at them differently, that means I see the world differently. For economic policies most citizens in a communist or fascists state would have trouble seeing the difference between a communist or fascist state.

See the depravity of socialists societies and compare them to capitalist societies. Capitalists societies win on Human rights, workers rights and quality of life every time.

@all

Strange capitalist countries have to build walls to keep immigrants out. Socialist/Communist build them to keep people in. You want to stop immigration elect a communist regime.

As for Stephen, all the talk here is yet again to smear a Tory. Now you want to smear the UKIP couple. Nasty people, very nasty.

Ask yourself the question, why do communist regimes fail?

@55

I do so wish self-avowed leftists would give up rewriting history. It looks bad.

What’s actually happened is that right wing politics and the elite they are designed to serve have changed in the intervening period, with the ruling elites becoming people of no nation building corporate empires rather than colonial empires, it stands to reason that policies that would have benefitted the old landed elites now appear ‘left wingish’ in comparison.

@Cyclux,

You would be surprised how nationalistic Multi-Nationals are. The footsie 100 pay billions in taxes, employer, employee, NI, rates and lots of other taxes. They employ millions in this country. They invest heavily in this country and when buying tend to use companies they know. These companies earn billions from all other the world. This is why the poor in the UK can live in luxury.

After the second world war a decision to expand trade was made so that we would have no more wars, we could all live in peace and prosper. No grand conspiracy or elites just people trying to do the right thing.

@SMFS & Davey #58-59:

To both of you – if you redefine “socialism” to mean totalitarianism, then the Nazis were socialists; but so were Julius Caesar, Chinghis Khan and Attila the Hun.

That is an interesting claim. I had not thought of Roehm as a particular socialist.

Strasserist, perhaps; but the Strasser brothers, who were both ideological opponents and political rivals of Hitler, were beefsteak Nazis (brown outside, red inside). That term, BTW, is not mine, but used by Hitler’s circle pretty contemptuously about the Strasserists, who were prominent in the SA. The implication is they were communists using Nazism as a flag of convenience. Otto Strasser was expelled from the NSDAP in 1930; Gregor was killed in the night of the long knives. Roehm’s ideology was Strasserism plus violent revolution.

There’s a short account of this at:

http://www.suu.edu/faculty/ping/pdf/NAZISM.pdf

Orwell, talking about Fascism in Europe and the UK in the 30s, really didn’t think that it was in any way socialist; see my earlier post on this:

https://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/02/01/how-left-wing-are-you/#comment-231355

Or how about this from the horse’s mouth (Mein Kampf):

“the suspicion was whispered in German Nationalist circles that we also were merely another variety of Marxism, perhaps even Marxists suitably disguised, or better still, Socialists… We used to roar with laughter at these silly faint-hearted bourgeoisie and their efforts to puzzle out our origin, our intentions and our aims.”

The central plank of Nazism, for Hitler, was the Fuhrerprinzip; which is pretty much as far from socialist as you can get.

But given Hitler went on to greatly expand the social welfare state and even went as far as nationalising large scale industries, why do you think this?

Well, I don’t think either of those is true. IG Farben, Siemens, Krupp (the 3rd, 5th and 6th largest employers in pre-war Germany) all remained in private hands. Vereingte Stahlwerke (4th), having been partially nationalised by the Weimar government, was denationalised by the Nazis.

They did, in 1938, nationalise the railways (1st) – for military, not ideological reasons. They also expropriated Jewish holdings and handed/sold them to supporters. That’s about it.

For completeness – the 2nd largest employer was the Reichspost.

How (in your view) did Hitler expand the “social welfare state”; and to what extent was this driven by socialism, and to what extent by his master race Volkisch ideology?

Sorry guys, read all the same books that you read. Now I look at them differently, that means I see the world differently

Indeed. I can’t argue with that.

@61

No grand conspiracy

I’m always a bit suspicious of people who pretend I mentioned a grand conspiracy, when I in fact did no such thing. Plus it appears you’re now arguing in favour of greater immigration, given your stance at 59.

@58 SMFS

I’m sure Robin can speak for himself, but in referencing night of the long knives I’d imagine he was thinking more of Gregor Strasser, rather than Rohm. Strasser did believe NSDAP should be a socialist movement, but had been expressly repudiated by Hitler at an earlier party conference.

There’s no question that Hitler was brought to power by right-wing elements (the military, big business, private financiers, extreme Conservatives) who saw him as “one of them”. Whether they were correct in that assumption is another matter. Hitler was famously uninterested in economic matters, initially leaving the rebuilding of the German economy to Schacht, who it is possible to regard as a Keynesian.

58

Don’t ask daft questions SMFS, it’s like asking me to comment on an individual raindrop in a storm.

59

At first glance capitalism appears to be far more attractive than actual communist states (there’s never been a socialist state ever) but you need to be aware that most communist states have emerged from unstable peasant/feudal societies, indeed in Imperial Russia, there were still serfs in 1907. Capitalism evolved over several hundred years and it took 130 years before the state introduced education for all. Compare the USSR which, in 1917 over 90% of the population was illiterate peasants, and by 1970 its’ technical and scientific staff far exceeded the USSR. You see everything is relative but what isn’t relative is marxist socialism with a focus on eliminating the state, facsism depends totally upon a strong central state. Now you no doubt will point-out the centralized state of the USSR and the notion that it was marxism, but just as you would not blame Jesus for the Spanish Inquisition you cannot blame Marx for the USSR.

55

You have a good point about Bismarck, a C/conservative, as many socialists now interpret NI and the welfare state as being little more than nobelesse oblige with the state acting as a thinly disguised broker. Since the emergence of Blairism, it is more apparent that Marx accurately described the function of the state and would have sent out strong warnings against Fabianism.

@65

Meant to write ‘far exceeded the USA’.

@62

Nail/head. I’m always having to introduce these people to the Strasser Brothers and point out the massive differences between their ‘socialism’ and the real thing. This whole Nazis = Socialist, because they have the word “socialist” in their name is lazy thinking on their part but they also know that it’s a smear.

53

Just noticed your comment about having to compete with the rest of the world, this is what underpins capitalism, although you seem to have changed your mind @61 when you assert that the poor in the UK live in luxury.

@steveb

65

I am not interested in Christianity let stick to your religion.

Sadly Russia was a true communist country. According to Marx, communism in a single single sentence is: The abolishment of private property. When Stalin came for the small holdings of the peasants in the Ukraine, to make the collectives it started a war of attrition that cost the lives of 20 million people. Did you know Steve that workers on the collectives needed a passport to leave them.

As for USSR exceeding the USA, in what exactly. The USSR had to import wheat from the USA. A scientist in USSR would earn less than someone on the dole in the west. A fool in the west would have a better quality and standard of life than 95% on the USSR population.

@Buddyhell

67

Read my posts and you will realise I know enough on this subject not to be that lazy.

@Steveb

53

It does not underpin capitalism it underpins globalisation. Capitalism is a method of trading, a method of exchanging goods, a method of allocating resources. It is up to us how we use it. We can decide to use it to generate wealth for ourselves. That is what a nation is about. Sadly the left do not want that and neither do the liberal elites.

If yo do not like the working class do not ask us to vote for you.

@52 “..Blair did not allow mass immigration into this country for “cultural” reasons. He did it to appease corporate interests that wanted cheap labour..”

Oh and the Labour party sees immigrants as a locked-in vote and has continually relied on them to get elected.

“..The seats the party expects to win every time usually have a large urban working class majority. Immigrants through first and second generations are likely to be living in these same areas and also see Labour as their best representative in parliament. By the third generation we begin to lose this locked-in vote as wealth moves them up the social ladder and they migrate to more suburban constituencies. We can see this over the last hundred years or so with Irish, Jewish, Caribbean and Indian immigration, although some move faster than others..”
http://labourhome.org/2011/08/labour-reconnecting-with-its-core-vote/

62. Robin Levett

To both of you – if you redefine “socialism” to mean totalitarianism, then the Nazis were socialists; but so were Julius Caesar, Chinghis Khan and Attila the Hun.

If. But as I am not, it does not matter. If you stick to the traditional definition of a socialist as someone who wants to expropriate the Capitalists and give power to the workers, then Hitler was a Socialist. Genghiz Khan I am not so sure about, but he certainly did engage in massive collectivisation and redistribution of wealth from the Haves to the Have-nots so you may have a point.

Strasserist, perhaps; but the Strasser brothers, who were both ideological opponents and political rivals of Hitler, were beefsteak Nazis (brown outside, red inside). That term, BTW, is not mine, but used by Hitler’s circle pretty contemptuously about the Strasserists, who were prominent in the SA. The implication is they were communists using Nazism as a flag of convenience. Otto Strasser was expelled from the NSDAP in 1930; Gregor was killed in the night of the long knives. Roehm’s ideology was Strasserism plus violent revolution.

No the implication is that their socialism was more radical than Hitler’s. Both of them were expelled, but the Nazi Party retained a “National Communism” stream as well as a more mainstream socialist one. I don’t think you can seriously link Roehm to any ideology, but it is not important.

Or how about this from the horse’s mouth (Mein Kampf):

“the suspicion was whispered in German Nationalist circles that we also were merely another variety of Marxism, perhaps even Marxists suitably disguised, or better still, Socialists… We used to roar with laughter at these silly faint-hearted bourgeoisie and their efforts to puzzle out our origin, our intentions and our aims.”

Notice what he does not do there – he does not deny that they are Socialists. He simply laughs at the fears of people who are afraid he might be. I am assuming you have never actually read Mein Kampf.

The central plank of Nazism, for Hitler, was the Fuhrerprinzip; which is pretty much as far from socialist as you can get.

There is nothing remotely non-socialist about the Fuhrerprinzip. Revolutions need leaders. The Left likes a charismatic leader as much as anyone else. If you took this line, Communism would not be socialist either.

Well, I don’t think either of those is true. IG Farben, Siemens, Krupp (the 3rd, 5th and 6th largest employers in pre-war Germany) all remained in private hands. Vereingte Stahlwerke (4th), having been partially nationalised by the Weimar government, was denationalised by the Nazis.

It is not really a matter of debate. The claim about welfare is undeniably true. And I did not say he nationalised all of them. Just some of them. It is true that these companies technically remained in private hands, but even there the Nazis had a major say in how they were run.

They did, in 1938, nationalise the railways (1st) – for military, not ideological reasons. They also expropriated Jewish holdings and handed/sold them to supporters. That’s about it.

Expropriating Jews is not that minor.

How (in your view) did Hitler expand the “social welfare state”; and to what extent was this driven by socialism, and to what extent by his master race Volkisch ideology?

The two go hand in hand so it does not matter. Hitler increased taxes in order to spend on guns as well as butter. He brought in a great deal of welfare spending to improve the lives of German workers. He created much of the post-War German Social Market state. How can that not be socialist?

64. Badstephen

Strasser did believe NSDAP should be a socialist movement, but had been expressly repudiated by Hitler at an earlier party conference.

Strasser himself was repudiated, but that does not mean the idea that the Nazis should be socialists were. You simply sound like Chomsky’s little friends who say that because Stalin expelled Trotsky, the USSR ceased to be a socialist country.

There’s no question that Hitler was brought to power by right-wing elements (the military, big business, private financiers, extreme Conservatives) who saw him as “one of them”.

Sorry but there is a vast amount of debate about that question. Or rather there was as Marxists insisted it was true, despite all the evidence that everyone else kept pointing out to them. The Nazis were probably the second to last choice of the German industrialists. They preferred the mainstream Nationalists. But if given a choice between the Nazis and the Communists, they opted for the Nazis. The military, likewise, showed no great liking for the Nazis. Since the collapse of the USSR, I don’t know of a single competent historian who has continued to maintain the Nazis were brought to power by the traditional right.

@69

If yo do not like the working class do not ask us to vote for you.

What makes you think the people you are arguing with aren’t members of the working class? I certainly am, I’m a bleeding warehouse worker.

Socialism is evil, it is just fascism. Argue all you want, that is what it is. Look at this thread and Stephen. Your main drive is to get a Tory. Not the issues of child abuse or Stephens health.

Me, hang all paedophiles as they will always try to have sex with kids. That way we save the lives of thousands of Stephens. Party politics is of no importance. Nope, it is finding a Tory paedophile that matters here.

Stephen is just a stick to beat the Tories with.

@Cylux

Sorry,

But, do you think the elite in the Labour party like you?

69

Marx also asserted that socialism would abolish the state. I know it’s difficult to throw off the half-truths and myths surrounding Marx, not least because from the beginning of the cold war, anti-socialist propaganda was the only source the vast majority had about socialism.

I not sure who you think I am asking you to vote for, in fact, from your contradictory position, I would be hard pressed to guess your real beliefs, my guess is that you don’t really know yourself. Your view that ‘we’ can use capitalism as ‘we’ please is comforting but delusional.
The USA probably had the same view as yourself about the scientific and technological advancement of the USSR, until they put the first man into space, and those staff earned a pittance compared to the scientists in the USA.

71

Eric Hobsbawm is with you relative to who brought Hitler to power, the fact is, Hitler appealed to different social groups for different reasons, he really was an evil genius.
Also, as I have already mentioned, Nazi equated to nationalism and more, biological nationalism, marxism is about internationalism and class. Equating the two is tantamount to stating that a dog has four legs and a tail therefore all four-legged animals with a tail are dogs.

74

Do you think that Cylux cares whether the elite in the labour party likes him/her?

75

“Hitler appealed to different social groups for different reasons, he really was an evil genius.”

Absolutely. As we came to learn, Senator Prescott Bush, GW Bush’s grandfather, was a fund raiser for the Nazis before Hitler became Reich Chancellor in January 1933. Lloyd George went to visit Herr Hitler in Bertesgarten in August 1936 and wrote a piece for the Express on his return to Britain saying what a great leader Hitler is. Try this assessment by an American sociologist:

“The Nazi Party leaders were savvy enough to realise that pure racial anti-semitism would not set the party apart from the pack of racist, anti-semitic, and ultranationalist groups that abounded in post-1918 Germany. Instead, I would suggest, the Nazi success can be attributed largely to the economic proposals found in the party’s programs, which in an uncanny fashion integrated elements of 18th and 19th century nationalist-etatist philosophy with Keynesian economics. Nationalist etatism is an ideology that rejects economic liberalism and promotes the right of the state to intervene in all spheres of life including the economy.”
William Brustein: The Logic of Evil – The Social Origins of the Nazi Party 1925-33 (Yale UP (1996)), p.51

After the indecisive elections for the Reichstag in November 1932, when the Communist vote increased, conservative factions saw Hitler and the Nazis as a way of stopping the Communists gaining power in the event of another election. Remember this was at the time of the terrible famine in the Ukraine in the winter of 1932/3 when millions died as the result of the Soviet collectivisation of agriculture and Stalin’s policy “to eliminate the kulaks as a classs”, announced in a speech he made in December 1929.

77. Bob B
As we came to learn, Senator Prescott Bush, GW Bush’s grandfather, was a fund raiser for the Nazis before Hitler became Reich Chancellor in January 1933.

No we didn’t come to learn that because it is not true. This is just part of the Bush Derangement syndrome of the Left. They will believe any lie as long as it is about the Bush family.

Lloyd George went to visit Herr Hitler in Bertesgarten in August 1936 and wrote a piece for the Express on his return to Britain saying what a great leader Hitler is.

Was presumably. So he did. What a fool. But on the other hand the Webbs said the same thing about Stalin. The Hard Left did worse and even worked with Hitler to make sure France and Britain lost in 1940.

“No we didn’t come to learn that because it is not true. This is just part of the Bush Derangement syndrome of the Left. They will believe any lie as long as it is about the Bush family.”

Rubbish. Senator Prescott Bush’s links with the funding the Nazis on their way to power are well-documented
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

“But on the other hand the Webbs said the same thing about Stalin.”

Not just the Webbs. George Bernard Shaw and HG Wells, as well after their visit to the Soviet Union to meet Stalin. Not to overlook the Cambridge Five: Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt and John Cairncross, who regarded the Soviet Union as a bulwark against the Nazis and Facists.

In fact, Britain was the bulwark against the Nazis and Fascism in Europe. The Soviet Union signed a Friendship Treaty with Nazi Germany on 28 September 1939 when Britain and France were already at war with Nazi Germany. Recap: the Conservatives won the last election (November 1935) before the outbreak of war on 3 September 1939.

79. Bob B

Rubbish. Senator Prescott Bush’s links with the funding the Nazis on their way to power are well-documented

No they are not. Because they do not exist. That article lied just as you are lying now. But even so, what do you think in that article shows Prescott Bush lifted one finger to help the Nazis?

@74 Given that I called for their heads to be put upon pikes up @46 I very much doubt that they do, no. What makes you think I’m a labour voter, Mr self appointed spokesperson for the working class?

SMFS: “The death toll from Palestinian terrorism grossly outweighs that of the Revisionists by several orders of magnitude.”

Rubbish. The Israelis started on the massacres route. Irgun blew up and sank the ship Patria in Haifa Harbor in November 1940 as some sort of stupid, murderous stunt:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patria_disaster

Avraham Stern – who founded the infamous Stern Gang, later renamed Lehi Group, tried to do a deal with the Nazis to hamper Britain’s war effort. That’s how sick and murderous Israeli terrorists are. Stern duly disappeared, almost certainly killed by British agents.

For the start of jewish immigration to Palestine, inspired by the Zionist cause, try Avi Shlaim: The Iron Wall (Penguin Books). The Palestinians wanted to hold on to their land but fled in fear for their lives after the Deir Yassin Massacre in April 1948.

“The Hard Left did worse and even worked with Hitler to make sure France and Britain lost in 1940.”

That’s more rubbish. Britain didn’t lose the war in 1940. The British Expeditionary Force in Frnace was badly equipped and organised but hundreds of thousands of British troops were got out at Dunkirk and returned to Britain. Chamberlain resigned as PM and Churchill became PM. In early May 1940, Churchill with the full support of his Labour collegaues in the war cabinet, decided that Britain would fight on. The Battle of Britain ensued in the late summer and early autumn of 1940. With Luftwaffe losses running at over twice those of the RAF, Hitler, who had expected that Britain would sue for peace, decided to postpone the invasion of Britain.

One reason why the British Expeditionary Force was so badly equipped in 1939 was because rearmament spending from 1935 onwards was increasingly spent on air defence and then the navy – very sensibly so. Had Britain sued for peace in 1940 or lost the Battle of Britain that year, there could have been no Normandy invasion in June 1944.

82. Bob B

Rubbish. The Israelis started on the massacres route.

So Bob changes the subject to disguise the idiocy of his argument. I did not comment on who started it. I made comment on who killed more. A comment which is true and utterly unrefuted.

But even if you try to go down the childish “He started it” route, I will point out that the massacre of 67 Jews in Hebron and another dozen or so in Safed in 1929 pre-dated any incident Bob mentions by some years.

That’s more rubbish. Britain didn’t lose the war in 1940.

I didn’t say they did. I said the Hard Left worked to make sure they did. Again Bob changes the terms of debate once his arguments are shown to be bullsh!t.

And then he blusters about things we haven’t even raised yet.

SMFS

Those “Hard Left” folk seemed to have done a pretty bad job ensuring Britain lost the war.

Fact is that an awful lot of folk in America tried to keep America out of the war in Europe leaving Britain to make it alone when Britain’s population was only half that of the combined populations of Germany and Austria.

Try that speech of that great American aviator Charles Lindbergh on 11 September 1941 on the extent of American commitment to defending freedom against the Nazis:

“The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration.”
http://www.charleslindbergh.com/americanfirst/speech.asp

In Britain, Churchill had the support of Labour members of his war cabinet as well as popular support. There was no clamour for a peace settlement with Nazi Germany in May 1940, just a grim determination to carry on. Even after Pearl Harbor in December 1941, by the account of William Shirer in Washington, a majority of Congress wanted to avoid getting entangled in a war in Europe. Hitler resolved the issue for Congress by declaring war on America.

@71 SMFS
“I don’t know of a single competent historian who has continued to maintain the Nazis were brought to power by the traditional right.”

Well, I’m always open to new experiences. If there’s a competent historian who can show von Papen and Hindenburg did not have a central role (albeit grudging) in Hitler becoming Chancellor, I’d be fascinated. Likewise, a competent historian who can prove the Nazis were not bankrolled by the likes of Thyssen and IG Farben in the expectation of an anti-socialist, anti-union agenda.

@SMFS #71:

If you stick to the traditional definition of a socialist as someone who wants to expropriate the Capitalists and give power to the workers, then Hitler was a Socialist. Genghiz Khan I am not so sure about, but he certainly did engage in massive collectivisation and redistribution of wealth from the Haves to the Have-nots so you may have a point.

I’d have thought that the realisation that Chingis Khan could be a socialist under your definition might have caused you to question the definition…but I forgot that I was dealing with SMFS.

Firstly, your definition is decidedly not traditional. The standard shorthand for socialism is social cotnrol of the means of production and distribution, and co-operative control of the economy.

Hitlerian Nazism doesn’t even fit your definition, still less the standard one; the capitalists weren’t as a whole “expropriated” – for example the four largest industrial employers certainly weren’t – indeed one was denationalised; and the proceeds of expropriations that did take place were not distributed to the workers, and the workers were certainly not given power.

If Hitlerian Nazism fits your definition, then William the Conqueror was also a socialist. He did after all expropriate the assets of the rpevious rulignc lass and redistributed them to his supporters, justa s did Hitelr. he gave the workers just as much power as did Hitler. The divine right of kings and the Fuehrerprinzip have a lot in common…

No the implication is that [the Strasser brothers’] socialism was more radical than Hitler’s. Both of them were expelled, but the Nazi Party retained a “National Communism” stream as well as a more mainstream socialist one.

Really? Any evidence of that? Apart from your (unevidenced) claim that Hitler “went as far as nationalising large scale industries”, that is; which falls apart on inspection.

By the way: even large parts of the railways were partially nationalised before the Nazis took power; and Germany had a tradition of the state taking over the railways for military reasons. The Nazis completed the job in that tradition and in fact paid for the shares.

Notice what he does not do there – he does not deny that they are Socialists. He simply laughs at the fears of people who are afraid he might be. I am assuming you have never actually read Mein Kampf.

Not the whole book, no; but I have read the section that my quote appears in. He is laughing at the fears of those people who were taken in by the Nazis’ use of a red flag and some elements of Left rhetoric to believe that they were Marxists or socialists. He’d have been laughing at you, for example…

The claim about welfare is undeniably true. And I did not say he nationalised all of them. Just some of them. It is true that these companies technically remained in private hands, but even there the Nazis had a major say in how they were run.

So he “went as far as nationalising large scale industries”, but didn’t actually nationalise any major companies. He is a socialist bnecause he “exproriated the capitalists” but he didn’t actually expropriate them. All he did was exactly what Churchill did on the other side of the Channel in 1940, and what Bismarck and other had done before him in Germany – placed the national economy on a war-footing.

Expropriating Jews is not that minor.

Oddly, I don’t remember having said that it was. What I would say was that it wasn’t nationalisation, or socialist – it was an expression of the Mazi Volkisch philosophy, and the proceeds went not to social control, but to reward those individuals who supported them. A favour for a favour, you might say.

He brought in a great deal of welfare spending to improve the lives of German workers. He created much of the post-War German Social Market state.

I’d love to see a reference for that. Most of us in the reality-base community thought that the foundations of the modern German welfare state were laid in the Weimar Republic. Which bits were Hitler’s creation, that weren’t Volkisch and didn’t die with the Nazis?

84. Bob B

Those “Hard Left” folk seemed to have done a pretty bad job ensuring Britain lost the war.

So they did. Although they certainly had more success trying (and yet still failing) to make sure the Soviet Union won the Cold War.

Fact is that an awful lot of folk in America tried to keep America out of the war in Europe leaving Britain to make it alone when Britain’s population was only half that of the combined populations of Germany and Austria.

So they did. And while I can see you need to change the subject I will point out that at least the Isolationist Right, hell even the Fascists for that matter, came out and supported both Britain and America once the war broke out. Unlike the Left in both countries in every dispute we have ever had.

85. Badstephen

Well, I’m always open to new experiences. If there’s a competent historian who can show von Papen and Hindenburg did not have a central role (albeit grudging) in Hitler becoming Chancellor, I’d be fascinated.

Now you are changing the subject.

Likewise, a competent historian who can prove the Nazis were not bankrolled by the likes of Thyssen and IG Farben in the expectation of an anti-socialist, anti-union agenda.

No one thinks this any more. Only the pro-Soviet lobby ever did. Certainly money flowed from these companies to all sorts of political groups – businesses need political protection and so often give to all parties. But there is no denying that Thyssen for instance was openly pro-Nationalist rather than pro-Nazi and would have probably preferred the Kaiser to return.

86. Robin Levett

I’d have thought that the realisation that Chingis Khan could be a socialist under your definition might have caused you to question the definition…but I forgot that I was dealing with SMFS.

On the contrary, the problem is your’s. You are so closely identified with your politics you do not see the nose before your face.

Firstly, your definition is decidedly not traditional. The standard shorthand for socialism is social cotnrol of the means of production and distribution, and co-operative control of the economy.

Which would go with the expropriation of the capitalists wouldn’t it? In fact my definition is tougher than yours because Hitler may not have taken factories from their owners but he certainly insisted on the social control of them. And the economy as a whole was certainly brought under the co-operative control of Speer.

Hitlerian Nazism doesn’t even fit your definition, still less the standard one; the capitalists weren’t as a whole “expropriated” – for example the four largest industrial employers certainly weren’t – indeed one was denationalised; and the proceeds of expropriations that did take place were not distributed to the workers, and the workers were certainly not given power.

The capitalists as a whole were not – although they also no longer had any real control over their factories. And one of those four is Thyssen whose owner spent the war in Dachau. His company was most certainly run by the State.

The proceeds of the expropriations of all sorts of people actually did go to the German people as a whole and especially to workers. The Nazi occupation of Europe was enormously profitable to ordinary soldiers for instance. And needless to say, neo-Nazi parties tend to be vastly more working class than any other. So the Nazis certainly brought a whole range of workers to power.

If Hitlerian Nazism fits your definition, then William the Conqueror was also a socialist. He did after all expropriate the assets of the rpevious rulignc lass and redistributed them to his supporters, justa s did Hitelr. he gave the workers just as much power as did Hitler. The divine right of kings and the Fuehrerprinzip have a lot in common…

So he did. I have no problem with the idea that monarchs can be socialists too. Some of them in the modern world say as much to this day. It would be hard to argue the point – except that William did not really redistribute the wealth to ordinary British people. Mostly just to foreigners. Unlike Hitler.

Really? Any evidence of that? Apart from your (unevidenced) claim that Hitler “went as far as nationalising large scale industries”, that is; which falls apart on inspection.

It has not even been challenged yet much less fallen apart. But if you want to deny the existence of groups like the Reichswerke Hermann Göring, by all means, feel free to do so.

By the way: even large parts of the railways were partially nationalised before the Nazis took power;

Well yes. You may note I am not bothering to discuss the railways at all.

He’d have been laughing at you, for example…

I would hope so. No doubt you think he wouldn’t be laughing at you.

So he “went as far as nationalising large scale industries”, but didn’t actually nationalise any major companies. He is a socialist bnecause he “exproriated the capitalists” but he didn’t actually expropriate them. All he did was exactly what Churchill did on the other side of the Channel in 1940, and what Bismarck and other had done before him in Germany – placed the national economy on a war-footing.

Except he did. The Reichswerke Hermann Göring is an interesting example because he forced the existing German steel makers to “lend” money more or less interest free so that the Nazi state could create a massive competitor. The largest company in Europe by 1941. Which grew by taking over iron and steel concerns elsewhere – some 50% of Czech industry for instance. Those industrialists were expropriated. As was, for instance, Hugo Junkers. I have no idea what he did to annoy the Nazis but he was forced to hand over all his patents, and then his company and then he spent the war under house arrest.

To compare what Bismarck did with what either Hitler or Churchill did is absurd. It is true that Churchill also brought in many controls – although much less so than the Germans did. The point is that it was a war time measure in Britain. It was a permanent way of life in Germany.

What I would say was that it wasn’t nationalisation, or socialist – it was an expression of the Mazi Volkisch philosophy, and the proceeds went not to social control, but to reward those individuals who supported them. A favour for a favour, you might say.

Social control is a term capable of many meanings so it is hard to see what you mean. I would probably object. Sure, much of it went to reward people who supported them. The German working class for instance. Many of whom became richer because they got furniture or flats or even whole companies from the Nazis.

I’d love to see a reference for that. Most of us in the reality-base community thought that the foundations of the modern German welfare state were laid in the Weimar Republic. Which bits were Hitler’s creation, that weren’t Volkisch and didn’t die with the Nazis?

To call yourself part of the reality-based community is amusing. Which parts? The Trade Union movement. The entire post-War German Trade Union movement is an out growth of the Nazi suppression of Social Democrat, Communist and Catholic Unions and replacing them with industry-based nation-wide Unions. In fact I am not sure the Weimar Republic made any real contribution to the German welfare state. Some of it was Bismarck – health insurance for instance – and some of it was the Nazis. What did Weimar do?

To drag the discussion back on track.

Firstly, the Lib Dems probably had no choice but to support the Tories, for three reasons (in increasing reson of importance): first, Labour was perceived as having lost, and it would have looked bad to back them; second the numbers were against them (Labour + Lib Dem was still not a majority); and finally senior Labour figures made it perfectly clear that they would not back any agreement. The Lib Dems mistake was coalition. Given the relative numbers, they were always going to be in trouble. They would have been better off backing them from the back benches on an issue-by-issue basis, with a “supply and confidence” agreement.

Secondly, I don’t think the Tories have much to fear from UKIP. Some research has been done, it is indicates thet the UKIP core vore is drawn pretty nearly equally for all parties and none, but they can draw on a large Tory voter surge to them in elections percieved to be uniportant. For Tory voters in the two northern bye-elections, voting UKIP was win-win. The Tories had no chance, a large UKIP vote sent a message of disaffection to Cameron, and, if they had actually managed to win, it would be a Labour loss.

Thirdly, it is Labour who has most to fear from a UKIP advance in the north. The Tories are a tainted brand there, with no chance outside a few rural enclaves. If UKIP can hoover up the Tory and right-wing Lib Dem vote, and then start to pull Tory-deserters from Labour, Labour could be in trouble in a few areas.

@SMFS #87:

On the contrary, the problem is your’s. You are so closely identified with your politics you do not see the nose before your face.

Are you under the delusion that I’m a socialist? It is to laugh.

Which would go with the expropriation of the capitalists wouldn’t it? In fact my definition is tougher than yours because Hitler may not have taken factories from their owners but he certainly insisted on the social control of them.

My apologies – typo. Social wonership of the means of production and distribution, and cooperative control of the economy.

No, Hitler did not insist on social control of the factories.

The capitalists as a whole were not – although they also no longer had any real control over their factories. And one of those four is Thyssen whose owner spent the war in Dachau. His company was most certainly run by the State

Yes, Thyssen was the heir to a 26% share of Vereinigte Stahlwerke; he was quite happy about suppression of the Communists and Social Democrats, and the unions, and the removal of the risght to strike. He helped persuade Hitler to suppress the SA. He was happy to sack his Jewish workers. Kristallnacht, however, was a step too far, and war was right out… That was why he ended up in Sachsenhausen in 1943 and (for a month and a half) in Dachau.

VSt, however, remained under its prior management and directors. Voegler remained at its head.

So he did. I have no problem with the idea that monarchs can be socialists too. Some of them in the modern world say as much to this day. It would be hard to argue the point – except that William did not really redistribute the wealth to ordinary British people. Mostly just to foreigners. Unlike Hitler.

There is no evidence whatsoever that Hitler distributed expropriated assets to the ordinary German people. Certainly you have merely asserted it.

Instead, he distributed them to those with the money to buy it, or those to whom he owed favours (like William I).

The Reichswerke Hermann Göring is an interesting example because he forced the existing German steel makers to “lend” money more or less interest free so that the Nazi state could create a massive competitor. The largest company in Europe by 1941. Which grew by taking over iron and steel concerns elsewhere – some 50% of Czech industry for instance. Those industrialists were expropriated.

“Spoils of war”. You are arguing that the creation of a conglomerate under the direct control of the Nazi Party (via Goering), and hence of Hitler, is in some way socialist in its inspiration?

As was, for instance, Hugo Junkers. I have no idea what he did to annoy the Nazis

Apart from actually being a socialist (and indeed a pacifist), you mean?

but he was forced to hand over all his patents, and then his company and then he spent the war under house arrest.

Most of his companies had already gone in the 20s, when he defaulted on Weimar government loans… His patents were on techniques that the Nazis considered useful for the war effort. He no longer had any economic power. Why would a totalitarian state not take them from him?

To compare what Bismarck did with what either Hitler or Churchill did is absurd. It is true that Churchill also brought in many controls – although much less so than the Germans did. The point is that it was a war time measure in Britain. It was a permanent way of life in Germany.

It was a wartime measure in Germany during the 1930s; Hitler knew war was coming – he intended to start it.

To compare what Bismarck did with what either Hitler or Churchill did is absurd. It is true that Churchill also brought in many controls – although much less so than the Germans did. The point is that it was a war time measure in Britain. It was a permanent way of life in Germany.

Having said that, when Churchill put the British economy on a war footing, he did so further and faster than the Germans – it wasn’t until 1943 (as I recall it) that the German government controls on their economy went as far as the British.

The entire post-War German Trade Union movement is an out growth of the Nazi suppression of Social Democrat, Communist and Catholic Unions and replacing them with industry-based nation-wide Unions.

Your argument for the contribution of the Nazis to the german welfare state begins with the suppression of the unions? The “representation” of the workers by a state-run organisation with no say in their running? The removal of the right to strike? Yes, there was an element of pane et circense in the Kraft durch Freude movement – but this was hardly “welfare” as we know it.

In fact I am not sure the Weimar Republic made any real contribution to the German welfare state.

Sickness and unemployment benefits? Expanded healthcare? The cost of the Weimar welfare state was a significant contributor to its demise.

Some of it was Bismarck – health insurance for instance – and some of it was the Nazis. What did Weimar do?

88
Well said.

89. Robin Levett

Are you under the delusion that I’m a socialist? It is to laugh.

I don’t recall commenting on your socialist leanings or lack thereof at all. Although if you quack like a duck …

My apologies – typo. Social wonership of the means of production and distribution, and cooperative control of the economy.

Which would exclude pretty much every Social Democratic party in Europe from being socialist. And the Labour Party too. But did Hitler greatly increase the social ownership of the means of production? Yes. He very much did so with the means of distribution. And control of the economy was entirely co-operative in the sense the government directed it.

No, Hitler did not insist on social control of the factories.

Actually yes he did.

Yes, Thyssen was the heir to a 26% share of Vereinigte Stahlwerke; he was quite happy about suppression of the Communists and Social Democrats, and the unions, and the removal of the risght to strike. He helped persuade Hitler to suppress the SA. He was happy to sack his Jewish workers. Kristallnacht, however, was a step too far, and war was right out… That was why he ended up in Sachsenhausen in 1943 and (for a month and a half) in Dachau.

I am not sure he was happy to sack his Jewish workers, but the rest seems about right. You seem to think all of that is a crime crying to heaven. I note that when the Nazis turned to violence against Jews, he objected and objected so strongly he ended up in a camp.

VSt, however, remained under its prior management and directors. Voegler remained at its head.

Which is beside the point. They saw what happened to their previous owner and were now socialised. They did not challenge Hitler’s plans.

There is no evidence whatsoever that Hitler distributed expropriated assets to the ordinary German people. Certainly you have merely asserted it.

Actually there has been quite a lot of recent research showing precisely what and how he did just that.

Instead, he distributed them to those with the money to buy it, or those to whom he owed favours (like William I).

He did a lot of that too, but that is inevitable in any socialist economy. Compare it to, say, that darling of the Left, Algeria’s FLN. Undeniably socialist. Yet they too plundered the French and the Jews, handing out land and property all over the place. Often to those whom the party owed favours. Are they not socialist?

“Spoils of war”. You are arguing that the creation of a conglomerate under the direct control of the Nazi Party (via Goering), and hence of Hitler, is in some way socialist in its inspiration?

It is by your definition socialist. The social ownership of the means of production. You are now claiming what? That when the Labour Party nationalised the coal industry and stuffed it with party members, that was not socialism? Of course it was socialist in its inspiration. They said so.

Apart from actually being a socialist (and indeed a pacifist), you mean?

Well that would do it.

Why would a totalitarian state not take them from him?

You are evading the issue. It is irrelevant whether they should have or could have or whatever. They did. Thus an industrialist was expropriated.

It was a wartime measure in Germany during the 1930s; Hitler knew war was coming – he intended to start it.

That misses the point. Hitler thought war was always coming. That was his point.

Your argument for the contribution of the Nazis to the german welfare state begins with the suppression of the unions? The “representation” of the workers by a state-run organisation with no say in their running? The removal of the right to strike? Yes, there was an element of pane et circense in the Kraft durch Freude movement – but this was hardly “welfare” as we know it.

No, I said the suppression of sectarian trade unions. Not all of them. Because Hitler created one large nation-wide Trade Union – the German Labour Front. The post-war Trade Union movement was simply an outgrowth of this institution. Of course they had a say in its running. Well, some of them. Hitler promoted many workers. Actively sought them out. And of course, again, by your new definition the USSR was not socialist.

Why is that not welfare as we know it?

Sickness and unemployment benefits? Expanded healthcare? The cost of the Weimar welfare state was a significant contributor to its demise.

The idea that welfare played any role in the demise of Weimar, compared to all the other massive costs they had, is interesting. But it is also irrelevant. Sickness, health insurance and unemployment benefits come with Bismarck, not Weimar. Every German regime has extended them and made them more generous – including Hitler.

So we are back where we started. Hitler was a socialist.

91

Hitler was a national socialist, get it right. And social democratic countries are, as you point out, not socialist, they are capitalist with a welfare state to redistribute market failure in a capitalist society.

You seem not to have taken on board my dog analogy @75, The Elizabethan Poor Law (1572) was introduced during the time of absolute monarchy. Social welfare is ancient not modern, it is the central state which is modern.

The UK also took central control of the economy during and after WW1 and WW2 and all powers, from absolute monarchs to liberal democracies, have procured utilities/services/goods from suppliers who are not owned by the state.

You seem to have a bad case of tunnel vision which makes any action of the state appear to be socialist.

The most important thing about the results was the destruction of Respect and how they blatantly lied about their polling returns. Jasper lost his deposit in a constituency with a high African Caribbean population so even they rejected him.