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‘A’ Customs Union? ‘The’ Customs Union? British EU Delusions
This article was first published in The Present Age magazine Vol. 3 No. 12, March 2018 When I was teaching English in Japan many years ago, one of the many difficulties my students had with the English language was the difference between ‘a’ and ‘the’, which language teachers and linguists call the indefinite and definite article respectively. It was not surprising that the students had those difficulties, as there is no article at all in Japanese: in their own language the Japanese get by quite contentedly without...
read moreThe Round Table and the Fall of the Second British Empire
This article was first published in The Present Age magazine Vol. 3 No. 11 Feb. 2018 In the January 2018 issue of TPA, (‘The Anglo-Saxons’ and the European Union Project) I wrote, amongst other things, about a book published by Cambridge Scholars Press in the run-up to the 2016 EU Referendum in Britain titled June 1940, Great Britain and the First Attempt to Build a European Union. The 393-page book was written by an Italian professor of political science who specialises in “the history and theory of European integration”,...
read moreThe Cecils and the End of the British Empire
This article was first published in the monthly magazine The Present Age Vol. 3 No. 7 in October 2017 This is the fourth in a short series of articles about the historical consequences of the rivalry between Philip IV (the Fair) of France (r.1285-1314), who destroyed the Order of the Knights Templar, and his rival Edward I of England (r. 1272-1307) who sought to conquer Wales and Scotland. Philip married his daughter to Edward’s son, and out of this fateful marriage later came the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) between France and England,...
read moreThe Cecils – Uncle and Nephew
This article was first published in the monthly magazine The Present Age September 2017, Vol. 3 No. 6 This is the third in a series of 5 articles which is rooted in the tortuous destiny between England and France, the two western countries which ‘pioneered’ modern nationalism, that view of life that has had such fateful consequences over the past 250 years. The modern western concept of the centralised, administrative state emerged in Britain and France 1300-1600 and there was a gradual identification of the British and French peoples with...
read moreThe Cecils – Father and Son
This article was first published in the monthly magazine The Present Age August 2017, Vol. 3 No. 5 The previous article to this one, in the July issue of “The Present Age” magazine, outlined how and why a certain mysterious and often tragic connection can be said to exist between the deeds of King Philip IV (‘the Fair’) of France (1285-1314) and those of King Henry VIII of England (1509-1547) via the destruction of the Knights Templar, the Hundred Years’ War between the two countries, the sons of Edward III of England, the...
read moreKing Philip IV (‘the Fair’) of France and Henry VIII of England
This article was first published in The Present Age magazine Vol. 3 No. 5 July 2017 In a lecture of 1 October 1916 Rudolf Steiner discusses the superficiality of much of the modern study of history and points out that “when one traces things back to their causes in the superficial easy-going way that modern history largely employs, one comes to positive absurdities. Ultimately, one would have to come to the opinion that the greatest part – perhaps even the most widespread part of what happens – owes its existence not to sense but to...
read moreAspects of the Brexit Referendum – The One and the Many
This article was first published (with slight abridgements) in New View magazine Issue 80 July – Sept. 2016 On 23 June this year Britain’s referendum on membership of the European Union (EU) resulted in a dramatic decision to exit the European Union (EU), but the decision does not change certain fundamental underlying elements of our social and economic life today. The economic establishment has shown very little sign at all of changing its practices since the crisis of 2008, and furthermore, relations between the superpowers, the...
read moreCharlottesville August 2017: Where is the Truth?
This article was first published in New View magazine Issue 85 Autumn 2017 When people in Britain recall the summer of 2017 they may remember the two blockbuster movies showing that season which evoked nostalgia for a summer 77 years earlier – June – August 1940: “Dunkirk” and “Churchill”. On release exactly a year after the Brexit referendum, these two films reinforced the British mythos of national unity in the face of imminent national disaster and threat. Although “Churchill” is about the period immediately before the...
read moreIndividual – Nation – World
This article was first published in New View magazine Issue 84 Summer 2017 One of the major features of human development over the past 100 years has been the relationship between nationalism and what is variously called ‘internationalism’, ‘supranationalism’ or ‘cosmopolitanism’. First, the difference between these latter three terms should be clarified. Internationalism simply organises cooperative relations between nation states while recognising that the basic unit remains the nation state. The League of Nations, founded in...
read more1849 and 2017: Thoughts on ‘Globalisation’
This article was first published in New View magazine Issue 86 Jan. – Mar. 2018 It seems to this writer that there has been a certain similarity between the events of the years 1848 and 1849 on the one hand and those of 2016 and 2017 on the other. In 1848 and 2016 there was a widespread populist revolt across the western world against the existing Establishment which was severely shaken by the upsurge – various governments and prominent figures fell, including the Kings of France and Bavaria, and Chancellor Metternich of Austria, the...
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