The Civic Platform - A Political Journal of Ideas and Analysis

The British Isles

This issue looks not at England or the UK, but at the British Isles as a whole. Islands, it is said, have longer memories than continental landscapes: “Invaders of islands force defeated natives into hills or mountain retreats, but they remain. Cultural and racial atavism emerge to haunt the living.” At the same time, islands are separted from the mainstream of life, and thus island peoples are “always in danger of stagnating.. .of becoming smug.”

Avalon (’island of the apple’) was also known as Yns-witrin (’island of glass’). The Grail was guarded at Montsalvatch, said by some to be a castle of glass. Could this mean Britian? But “Britain, as opposed to England, has never been psychologically one nation.” And England, too, has psychological problems: “We (the English) are the most conserative people to despise our birthright.” The birthright of freedom, that is, as opposed to that of deportment and ‘correct’ behaviour. In this regard, there is a telling excerpt from a story by Rudyard Kipling called ‘The Flag of Their Country’, which lampoons the spiritual sterility of the average flag-waving jingoist.

There is also a very interesting piece by Michael Walker on the Irish question. Walker is opposed to Sinn Fein not for moral reasons (he points out it is hypocritical for the British government to condemn terrorism after Dresden etc.), but for political reasons, i.e. for its attempts to “impose a new socialist order” on the whole island. The Catholics and the Ulster Presbyterians are the same people, of the same blood, and Walker castigates successive British governments for taking one side over the other. Britain has never treated Ireland on equal terms, and that is why the Irish have turned, out of desperation, to groups like Sinn Fein. Walker examines Irish history and makes a persuasive case that reconciliation has always been “sabotaged by those for whom the land and its people were a colony.” The conflict over the centuries has been characterised by appalling excesses on both sides.

Ireland, he believes, should be reunited with Britain. The true Celts had largely been driven out of Ireland by the 17th century. Those who lay claim to the Gaelic heritage today and call themselves ‘Fenians’ are actually more representative of the pre-Celtic bog dwellers, the Formorians, who have “come out of their holes now that the ancient heroes have gone.” Meanwhile, those of the true Celtic lineage have contributed greatly to ‘English’ literature and culture.

“It is not for Ulster’s sake that Sinn Fein must be defeated. It is for Ireland’s.” Sinn Fein is “a Jacobin organisation, ” and a Sinn Fein victory would “complete the intellectual and cultural pauperisation of Ireland.” Walker predicts (prophetically as it turned out) that Sinn Fein would support non-European immigration into Ireland. Sinn Fein may in fact be the greatest traitors and turncoats in all of Irish history. Walker wants the Jacobin tricolour to be replaced with the true flag of Erin, the golden harp on a background of green…the “flag of the Milesian kings.”

This issue is also notable for Mario Aprile’s article about Julius Evola. Evola is now a household name in nationalist circles, but this article (from 1984) was probably the first time his ideas were introduced to an English-speaking political audience. Further pieces on (and by) Evola would follow over the course of the next few issues. There is also an excellent article on the complex relationship between Nietzsche and Wagner, as well as a fascinating piece on the story of Tristan and Iseult, in which the Judeo-Christian view of love is contrasted (unfavourably) with the superior Indo-European view (ROMA vs AMOR).