NEWS ........

Corporatism, Kenneth Clarke and the Tory Reform Group

Dateline: 1st September 2002

Since the last election some Tory MPs have called for the removal from the Conservative Party of "extremist" groups. One group which must be considered for removal on that basis must surely be the Tory Reform Group, whose President is Kenneth Clarke MP.

Following the election of Iain Duncan Smith as Leader of the Conservative Party, the corporatist groups and individuals who contributed most to the catastrophic electoral defeats of 1992 and 1997 have been attacking the new leader and his supporters. They have been trying to turn logic and history on its head. They claim that the Tory Party must "change" - to what? To embracing more of the very politics which destroyed it between 1990 and 2001. Under Major, Clarke, Maude, Heseltine and others the Conservative Party became a Corporatist party. That is one which abandoned traditional pillars of Conservatism like the individual, the family, the rule of law, the nation state, the community and personal capital formation. They substituted the committee, the region, the State, the Superstate and collective capital in the City controlled by a few. No wonder that Blair's Labour Government looks very similar to Major's Conservative Party and Ashdown's Liberal Democrat Party.

In this process of the destruction of Conservatism no organisation played a bigger role than the Tory Reform Group and the Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1993 to 1997, the Rt. Hon Kenneth Clarke MP.

CLARKE ON EUROPE

"The sooner the House of Commons becomes a county council the better"
Kenneth Clarke in conversation with Norman Lamont

In this contempt for democratic nationhood, and in his support of a European State, Clarke is at one with a hero of his youth - Sir Oswald Mosley, the Leader of the British Union of Fascists. As the Chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association Clarke personally invited Sir Oswald Mosley (for what would have been a second visit in two years) to address the Association. As a result another student Michael Howard (the future Conservative Cabinet Minister) resigned from the Committee because he "took exception to this since I thought it inappropriate for Oswald Mosley to become a regular visitor to CUCA".

That certain kinds of Conservative have a natural sympathy with the ideas of Oswald Mosley - or the present corporatist European Union - should come as no surprise, given the cross party appeasement of 1930s Fascism and the desire of many in the Conservative Party for "strong Government", State and collective solutions to problems and more money for "public" (i.e. State) services!

This attitude is summed up in the politics of the so called Tory Reform Group of which Clarke has been a long time president. The TRG likes to think of itself as "left wing", "compassionate" etc. but in fact it is reactionary, authoritarian and tending towards the fascist. It was at a Conservative student meeting at the 1992 Tory Party conference that towards the end of a meeting of eurosceptic speakers a group of young TRG members entered and stood in solid ranks at the back of the room, calling out insults to the platform and obstructing the view of those behind them.

During the disgraceful dragooning of Conservative MPs in the Maastricht votes in 1993 such physical bullying tactics were used by some Tory MPs to support the policy of John Major and Kenneth Clarke (vote for more constitutional surrender to the EU or lose the election Major threatened to call). Hardly a month goes by without some policy paper or statement from members of Kenneth Clarke's Tory Reform Group attacking Conservatives and traditional Conservative beliefs, the most fundamental being the protection of the parliamentary democracy of our nation.

3 years after his government had signed the Maastricht Treaty on Economic and Monetary Union (which introduced the EURO) in a letter to an inquirer about an international meeting he attended, Clarke wrote: "I can assure you that I am totally unaware of anyone considering the "abolition of national currencies". I do not believe there was anybody there who could have contemplated such an agreement or that it would have had the slightest effect."

This demonstrated Clarke's complete and dangerous incompetence as a Cabinet minister. It is of course a natural consequence of his having admitted (Tory Party conference 1992) that "I have not read the Maastricht treaty but it doesn't matter because I know what it says." His denial of the real meaning of the "Single European Currency" shows he hadn't a clue what the Maastricht Treaty or the Euro or the whole "European Project" were all about and this is the man who sought to lead the Conservative Party."

This affair also demonstrates the ignorance among leading europhile politicians of what they were doing when they signed European Treaties. "Britain in Europe" in which Clarke, expressing the views of the Tory Reform Group, is joined by Blair and Brown is nothing more than the blind leading the ignorant and Kenneth Clarke's track record in Government demonstrates the consequences of their ideas.

Kenneth Clarke's thuggish reputation among doctors, dentists , teachers and many others is reflected in the bullying and authoritarian tactics of the organisation of which he is president - the Tory Reform Group. It is typical of such authoritarians that their response to their convincing defeat at the hands of the Conservative membership is to seek to ban their opponents. It is also a tragedy to witness the new leader of the Conservative Party elected by that large majority who reject the corporatists, appeasing the latter while attacking true Conservatives.

IF there is a candidate for removal from the Conservative Party it is the Tory Reform Group and the debilitating corporatism which they have always represented and whose highest expression is in that European Union which is so detested by the British people.

Exposure Of Kenneth Clarke and The Bilderberg Group

The Campaign reported Kenneth Clarke MP to Sir Gordon Downey the then Commissioner on Standards and Privileges. Clarke was subsequently condemned by the Standards and privileges Committee (HMSO 0102012989) for non-declaration of gifts received from the Bilderberg Group (including luxury Hotel accommodation). Their report was the first official document in Britain to acknowledge the existence of the Bilderberg Group. We also exposed Paddy Ashdown and The Sunday times ran that story. The Campaign's exposure of Clarke, Ashdown and Bilderberg demonstrated how those politicians which the media habitually call "centre" or "centre left" or "on the left of the Tory Party" are in fact privileged corporatists, operating behind the backs of the electorate.

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A SUMMARY OF KENNETH CLARKE'S FAILURE

1. Openly admitted he wished to turn the House of Commons into a 'county council'.
2. As a student at Cambridge he invited, for what would have been a second year running, Oswald Mosley the war time leader of the British Union of Fascists, to address the Conservative Association.
3. Did not realise the Euro abolished national currencies.
4. Was responsible for the biggest tax rises in one peacetime budget =7p in the pound.
5. Put such high taxes on cigarettes and beer that British manufacturers and pubs made big losses. Smuggling is now out of control. He is paid £100,000 a year as Deputy Chairman of British American Tobacco.
6. Was responsible for the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) fiasco which drove up interest rates in 1992 to 15% and drove unemployment to 3 million.
7. Tried to have Conservative MPs expelled from the Party for opposing the payment of ever more billions into the EU budget - which suffers fraud worth $6 billion per annum. The last time Tory MPs had been expelled from the parliamentary party was during the war when some declared for Hitler!
8. His reforms of the NHS raised the number of admin managers from 500 to 22,000.
9. His reforms of dentistry drove so many dentists out of the NHS that today it is difficult to find an NHS dentist.
10. Praised the productivity of a steelworks in Consett which had been closed for 15 years.
11. Was condemned in an official report by the House of Commons standards and Privileges Committee for not declaring his considerable expenses (flight and hotel costs) to attend the 1996 Bilderberg meeting in Greece.