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Britain and the British Diaspora

In 1776 the English-speaking world was rent by a Revolution of ideas and expectations that found voice in one of the greatest documents of world history, the Declaration of Independence. What all too few people on either side of the Atlantic appreciate, however, is that many of the ideas adopted by the Founders of the United States originated in the progressive movements of Britain. Whereas we in the New World were able to cast off the past and embrace the future, the Home Islands were not so lucky. They were too much under the thumb of an entrenched Establishment to enact the kinds of reforms that the best minds of the British Empire had developed on self-governance of self-reliant peoples. And so we went our separate ways, not at all happily.

Britain and the United States fought two wars, one from 1774-1783, one from 1812-1814. The first established the independence of the United States and set America upon a revolutionarily different course — republican (anti-monarchist), democratic, religiously and racially pluralistic — from its cousins across "the pond". The second forced Britain to give up hopes the U.S. would fail and the Empire could reannex the shattered parts.

But the British ruling class could not get its bitter defeat out of its craw, and vowed an oath of eternal enmity to the hated Yankee. They did everything in their power to isolate, diminish, or at least hem in the new Nation. Republican democracy was as much anathema to the British ruling class of the late 18th and early 19th Centuries as Communism is to Americans today, and Britain tried with the United States what the United States has tried with Cuba: to isolate it and prevent its influence from spreading. Unfortunately for Britain, American-style republican democracy really was the "wave of the future", unlike Castroist Communism, and there was no holding the United States back.

The resources and resilience of the United States were too great for any European power or combination of powers to thwart, and the U.S. gradually grew — in large part by annexations of territory — into the greatest economic, military, and cultural power in the history of the world, greater than all the nations of Europe combined.

During the U.S. Civil War, Britain tried its best to break the U.S. in two. British newspapers gleefully announced the outbreak of hostilities at Fort Sumter with headlines proclaiming "Untied States". The British "military-industrial complex" of the day tried to persuade the British government to declare for the South and rush aid to the Confederacy. But the government was too wise. They knew that the Union would likely win, for the balance of economic, demographic, and industrial power was too far over to the North's advantage for the South to have any realistic chance. Still, the British government turned a blind eye to efforts to use British territories — including Canada — to recruit volunteers, stock Confederate larders, and supply munitions to an army hard-pressed to supply itself. British shipyards actually constructed warships for the South! Only when the outcome of the war became clear did the British government step in to forbid the last Confederate warships from being delivered to the Rebels.

The balance of power had shifted, and the British ruling class, though they hated the fact, understood that to attack the United States might destroy the British Empire. After the Civil War concluded in a massive Union victory, the enraged Union might storm north and take Canada, sail south and take the British Caribbean, and maybe declare for Irish independence, instigate native revolts in India and Africa, even sail against the Home Islands. So the British Empire let the South be crushed, lest it be the Empire that the Union crushed. To defend British North America, the cunning British ruling elite created the "Dominion of Canada" as an "independent" country the U.S. could not properly take as settlement for its claims against Britain for its aid to the South. Canada wasn't really independent at all, of course, but this pretense did keep Canada British for almost 65 more years. Unfortunately for the Empire, some Canadians actually believed Canada was independent, and gradually moved to make it so in fact. (Britain put its assets in its wife's name, and she decided to take them!)

Shakespeare's cottage.
All English-speaking peoples hold the British writer Shakespeare in highest esteem. At times, Britain's ruling class has cynically used our common language to manipulate the U.S. and other former colonies in ways not always in our own, or this planet's, best interest. USI wants the brilliant "English" language to bring together people who have more reason to be together than apart — but for everyone's good, all over this war-ravaged, poverty-ridden planet.

About thirty years after the U.S. Civil War the British ruling class abruptly changed course: it decided to cozy up to the United States and make Americans think of them as their best friend! After more than 100 years of endless, vicious enmity, this policy of cynical toadying and appealing to bonds of language, marriage, and culture, succeeded in winning over the U.S. ruling class to alliance with its former enemy. So completely won over was it that it intruded the U.S. into World War I, a clash of European empires in which no vital U.S. interest whatsoever was at stake and from which the U.S. would far more wisely have simply abstained. Having made common cause in World War I, the U.S. ruling class was easily persuaded to enter on Britain's side in World War II.

After the war, the U.S. warned European empires not to reconquer territories temporarily 'liberated' by Japan. Nonetheless, Britain, France, and the Netherlands did retake their lost colonies, inspired by that doughty British bulldog Winston Churchill's proud declaration,

"I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire."

And the United States stood idly by, aiding Britain and the rest of Europe in recovering from World War II even as Western Europeans rebuilt their shattered empires. Thus did the United States, which broke from the British Empire in protest against colonialism, actually bolster colonialism over others.

The British Diaspora

At one time the British Empire was the greatest overseas empire in history, second, if at all in history, only to the contiguous land empire of the great Mongol lord, Jenghis Khan. One fourth of the world's population and one fifth of its territory has at one time or another been controlled by England, and there is a sizable diaspora of Brits and Briticized natives all over the former British Empire. "The sun never sets on the British Empire" is a boast that could accurately be made in 1914 and can almost be made today, for Britain retains a number of small possessions all around the globe. (Captain John Smith — of Pocahontas fame — wrote as early as 1631, "Why should the brave Spanish soldier brag the sun never sets in the Spanish dominions, but ever shineth on one part or other we have conquered for our king?" )

The British Empire failed not all at once, nor even in a few dramatic acts, but only gradually, over generations. It perished because it refused to federalize. Americans didn't want out; they wanted in: representation in Parliament. London refused. Canada didn't want out either, but Parliament still, 91 years after the Declaration of Independence, wouldn't let Canadians into Westminster but created Canada a separate country with its own parliament. Nor would it let in Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Indians, Jamaicans, or any other member from any other colony — but Ireland; and curiously, that didn't work out.

The colonials went on flying the Union Jack, or flags of their own that incorporated the Union Jack; kept swearing allegiance to the King or Queen; kept thinking of themselves as British. The first Prime Minister of Canada, John A. Macdonald, said only months before his death, in office, after years as head of government of an ostensibly independent Canada,

"A British subject I was born; a British subject I will die. With my utmost effort, with my latest breath, will I oppose the 'veiled treason' which attempts by sordid means and mercenary proffers to lure our people from their allegiance."

The Canadian Red Ensign, unofficial national flag in the 1950s

(He was referring to free trade with the United States.) But Macdonald, a foreigner in Canada till his death, could not keep Canada British, because Britain refused to admit Canadians to Parliament and Canadians eventually tired of their unrequited love for the British Empire, so made Canada truly independent of England.

The present Australian flag

Still, many Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and other people from former British colonies look wistfully to the past, to that once great and enormous Empire that spotted the globe, and wish it could have held together.

The present New Zealand flag

Britain persuaded most of its former colonies — not, however, including the United States — to form a club, the "Commonwealth of Nations" (originally, "British Commonwealth"), to preserve some trace of their former associations. But the Commonwealth is only a club. It is not a union, federation, or nation, nor even a real organization of consequence, with real powers.

Commonwealth flag

Some former colonials in the upper echelons still send their children to school or college in England. British diplomats and businessmen have hosts of contacts, from colonial days and these latter-day schoolmates, in dozens of countries, and they communicate in English. Hundreds of thousands of Britons reside abroad, scattered to the four winds by their own or their parents' having been assigned to distant outposts, or drawn to the exotic and the far-away by an expansive habit of mind that sees the world — or at least as much of it as speaks some English — as their oyster.

Cambridge University

If that diaspora can be mobilized to promote political union of the English-speaking peoples, using their influence everywhere they have ties, they can accomplish wonders.

Many of them wonder why we have so many separate countries all speaking English, when one federal Union would do. They should ask that question aloud, in all the places they reside, and form themselves into a network of activists to persuade the mighty and humble alike to join our needlessly separated countries into one.

Recently, some people in the United States have expressed aloud a will to heal, at least partly, the breach opened between America and Britain by the Revolutionary War. They have suggested that the United Kingdom (or, as we prefer to call it non-monarchically, Great Britain) join NAFTA, even if to do so would mean it would have to leave the European Union. In early 2000, Senator Phil Gramm of Texas asked the United States International Trade Commission to research the likely costs and benefits to all NAFTA countries of such accession. In October 2000, the ITC issued its report, which found that there could be significant though not extraordinary benefits — but insignificant costs — to such accession, even if Britain had to leave the EU to join NAFTA.

We believe the benefits, both economic and noneconomic (cultural, political, military) of British accession to NAFTA were grossly understated in the ITC report, and the costs exaggerated, for after a brief period of readjustment there would be much more for Britain to succeed at within the NAFTA area than within "Europe".

Since many Britons regard the EU as arrogant and stiflingly over-bureaucratic, it would be highly appropriate for Britain to apply for membership in NAFTA — which would, if its application were accepted, become a "North Atlantic Free Trade Area". If the European Union would not permit Britain to belong to both NAFTA and the EU, Britain should leave the EU for NAFTA.

This would, USI's British friends feel, be a very good beginning on the road to a grand rapprochement of the English-speaking world, in which all of the old British settlement colonies might eventually reunite federally under the Constitution of the United States.

People interested in promoting British accession to NAFTA; or Australian, New Zealand, or some other former British Empire territory's merger into the United States, should contact:

Jeremy Pender
c/o Maria Garza Schumacher
9 Church Close
Market Weighton, York
England YO43 3BD
Tel.: +44 (0) 14 3087 9791 or +44 (0) 79 3267 9052
Email: jeremy.pender@btinternet.com

One of USI's Charter Members, the Expansionist Party of the United States, has two presentations about British-U.S. merger, both are which are accessible from either.

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This first poll is for Britons ONLY. A poll for AMERICANS only follows.

This next poll is for AMERICANS only.

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