Why does Latvia still honour the Waffen-SS?
No EU member state should be honouring members of the biggest Jew-killing machine in world history.
By Denis MacShane Published 16 March 2012 17:55
This morning, 16 March, a 47-year-old British woman, Monica Lowenberg, placed a wreath at the foot of the Freedom Monument in Riga, Latvia. She was dressed in the ghetto garb the Nazis forced Riga's Jews to wear. Many of her family died at the hands of Germans and their Latvian collaborators.
She stood in silent witness as marchers arrived to celebrate the Latvian Legion of the Waffen-SS, the biggest Jew-killing machine in world history. Latvians pushed Ms Lowenberg to one side to place their own large insignia of the Latvian Waffen-SS in front of the Freedom Monument.
Below is an open letter that Ms Lowenberg wrote to the government and parliament of Latvia to explain why in 2012 she believes, rightly, that no EU member state should be honouring members of the Waffen-SS in an open public ceremony in a European capital city.
Denis MacShane
Open letter to the government and parliament of Latvia on the eve of the Waffen-SS commemoration
My name is Monica Lowenberg and I am the only child and daughter of Ernest Lowenberg, a German Jewish refugee who managed to leave Nazi Germany five days before the outbreak of war in 1939. He was 16. His mother, my grandmother Marianne Loewenberg (née Peiser), born in Leipzig, a violinist and opera singer, managed with the help of the Hinrichsens, owners of the music publishing firm C F Peters, to leave Germany in April 1939 on a domestic's visa.
Tragically, the rest of the immediate Peiser and Loewenberg family did not manage to escape in time and were brutally murdered in the various camps or shot. My grandfather David Loewenberg or Levenbergs, born in 1877 in Libau in Latvia, was one of eight children, as I discovered only last year in the Latvian Historical State Archives in Riga. His two elder twin brothers also left Latvia, like himself, Moishe for Paris (his children worked in the French Resistance and were murdered by the Gestapo) and Abraham for Tehran. My grandfather was, from what I could gather, the only Levenberg who went to university and studied in Dresden, later making a life for himself in Berlin. He was an engineer and an inventor whose factory was taken away from him by the Nazis in 1935, forcing him to place his two sons in an orphanage.
His other brother and three sisters stayed with their parents, Minna and Lazzers (Lazzers had been a soldier), in Libau and most likely helped them out in their furniture shop. From what I have read, I must conclude that my Levenberg family who stayed in Libau were all murdered by Latvian Arajs commandos and auxiliary police in the Libau massacres of 1941.
After many years of searching for family members and even devoting ten years of my life to studying the Holocaust formally at MA and then DPhil level, working at Sussex university and the Wiener Library as an academic and education officer, I decided to go to Riga for the first time last year and try to establish what had happened to my uncle Paul, my father's brother born in Halle, Germany, 20 January 1922.
Paul, who was a year older than my father, had not managed to get out of Nazi Germany and therefore found himself trying to leave for Palestine with the help of a Jewish youth movement. He worked first of all on a farm in Denmark before going to Riga to work in 1940. The last letter my grandmother received from him was dated 8 September 1940. In the Riga archives, I discovered that Paul had been sent to the Riga ghetto on 4 October 1941. There are no records of what happened to him. I must assume that he was killed, aged 19. In 1941 and 1942, 90 per cent of Latvia's pre-war 62,000 Jews were killed, Latvian commandos and auxiliary police taking a leading role in their extermination.
As I am sure you can appreciate, discovering these facts has been exceptionally distressing. However, it was equally distressing to discover that the men actively involved in the mass murders of Latvia's Jews joined the 15th and 19th Divisions of the Latvian SS in 1943. The 15th Division was the most decorated out of all Himmler's SS divisions. In an EU country, these men are today held as "heroes" by many Latvians.
The current Latvian prime minister feels we should "bow" our heads to these Waffen-SS klillers. I also find it of deep concern that British Conservative MEPs in the European Parliament work with the Latvian MEP Roberts Zile and have made an unholy alliance with the party to which he is connected.
Last year two Latvian politicians, Dzintars Rasnacs and Raivis Dzintars, participated in the march to honour the Waffen-SS, the greatest Jew-killing machine in world history. Raivis Dzintars belongs to the national association "All For Latvia!" and was a member of the ultranationalist For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK party, to which Mr Zile is still linked.
I must also add that another party comrade of Mr Zile told the Latvian parliament that LNNK has always been against the trial of Konrads Kalejs and other Latvians accused of Nazi crimes. Kalejs was a close assistant of Viktors Arajs, chief of the bloody Arajs Commando, responsible for guarding and finishing off those Jews who were still alive in the ditches into they fell after mass shootings. Some survived and tried to escape but the Latvians were on hand to kill them.
To raise concern about these Latvian politicians and the Waffen-SS, I launched a petition, started on the anniversary of my uncle's birthday – 20 January 2012 – 70 years to the day of the Wannsee conference when the Final Solution of exterminating the Jews was planned. The petition was called "Stop the 16 March Marches in Riga and Latvians Revising History", as I sincerely believe glorification of pro-Nazi armed forces during the Second World War has no place in a country that is a member of the European Union, Nato, the OSCE and the Council of Europe.
In little over a month, the petition has gained over 5,500 votes from around the world, indicating that I am not alone in believing that such glorification is terribly wrong. One should add that the ECRI, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, had already in 2008 explicitly stated: "All attempts to commemorate persons who fought in the Waffen-SS and collaborate with the Nazis should be condemned. Any gathering or march legitimising in any way Nazism should be banned." The ECRI reiterated the same in its most recent report about Latvia, dated 21 February 2012.
The Latvian apologists and their friends in British politics who refuse to dissociate themselves from Mr Zile should consider the following:
1. Many of the worst Latvian killers served in the Latvian Security Police prior to joining the SS Legion. Honouring such persons would be a travesty of justice and a whitewash of their heinous crimes.
2. The Legion fought under the Nazi high command for victory of the Third Reich. They do not deserve to be honoured for fighting for a victory of the most genocidal regime in human history. Ironically, such a victory would have been a disaster for Latvia because the Nazis had no intention or plan to grant Latvia independence.
3. About one-third of those who served in the Legion were volunteers (two-thirds were drafted) and many of them had served in Latvian Security Police units that actively participated in the mass murder of Jews in Latvia and in Belarus, such as the infamous Arajs Commando squad.
4. When Latvian SS killed Soviet soldiers, they allowed Nazis on the western front to kill British and American soldiers in turn and thus made it possible for Auschwitz and other concentration camps to continue their heinous crimes against humanity.
5. Democratic Latvia should not glorify those willing to give up their lives for victory of the Third Reich. The Latvian Righteous Gentiles would make much better role models.
6. The ultranationalists who support the march are the ones who are seeking to rewrite the accepted narrative of the Holocaust in Latvia. Their efforts will help hide the crimes of local Nazi collaborators and promote the canard of equivalency between communist and Nazi crimes.
7. Ceremonies in churches and cemeteries are also forms of honouring the deceased (whether they deserve it or not). Witness the masses held in Zagreb and Split, Croatia, last December in honour of the Croatian mass murderer and leader of the Ustashe Ante Pavelic.
As these men march from the main Latvian Lutheran Church towards the symbol of Latvian independence – Freedom Monument in Riga's central square on 16 March – will any of these men and politicians spare a thought for their Latvian murdered compatriots who happened to be Jewish? Will they remember how 25,000 of them, in the autumn of 1941, over two weekends, were marched down Riga's streets from the ghetto to Rumbula, shot and thrown into pits using the "sardine method"? Will they say a prayer for them?
With kind regards,
Monica Lowenberg
Denis MacShane is MP for Rotherham and a former Europe minister
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122 comments
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Everyone should be outraged by Mass-Murder, by the Ideologies that produce Mass-Murder.
The World record-holders for Mass-Murder are the Communists. By 12:1, anywhere.
So the pseudo-outraged red yappers here aren't really outraged by Mass Murder, but collecting on the ignorance that they hold the record.
To make it clear: The World Record for Mass-Murder is held by the Communists.
Again:
The World Record for Mass-Murder is held by the Communists.
I would have to say "Amen" to your comments.
Just w.ant to say Long life to the latvians volueer wh fight for thir country and to thiis women to shut her mouth. Think to what jews do the palestinian people.
"the Waffen-SS, the biggest Jew-killing machine in world history."
Wrong.
The SS that guarded the concentration camps were the Allgemein SS, the Waffen SS were soldiers. Yes many did commit war crimes, but most of these men fought and died in the war, not for hitler, but for the existence of their country, and to declare all of them evil jew killers demonstrates a lack of knowledge of basic history. That the Waffen SS was an entirely separate organisation. The latvians should honour their dead anyway, be they left wing or right wing. The soviet union wasn't going to come to Latvia to hand out chocolates, they were there to assimilate Latvia into their regime. Or is the soviet union the right kind of totalitarianism? Everyone should be judged individually. to claim that any german who fought in the war deserves no remembrance is frankly disgusting, its easy to condemn them all now, but you dont understand the context, most soldiers at the front weren't criminals, they were like any other soldier from any other nation. they knew nothing of Auschwitz or Treblinka. Im not a nazi, there were many in that regime who deserved everything they got and more.
Many French, Belgians, Norwegians, Danes and Russians also fought against Bolshevism and towards the end of the war many in the Wehrmacht weren’t even German. The victors always write the history books, but many forget millions of European lived under totalitarianism long after the war had ended: or was that the right kind of totalitarianism? The only real difference between these two political monstrosity [Nazism and Communism] was one murdered more noncombatants over a longer period of time then the other. http://www.furniturehq.org/
You are a pathetic attempt to be a human being. I would love to meet you in person at the freedom monument here in Riga. Just let me know when you can be there. I would love an opportunity to shut your big mouth.
May, I hold your coat ?
Arminius yeah I chatter on too much well anyway one more question for you what do you make of aleksandr solzhenitsyn? He wrote a book called gulag archipelago he survived the communist gulags and described atrocities almost unimagineable so he won all kinds of awards for it ect ect than he writes 200 years together and in it he makes the claim that all communist higher ups were jews and that more than half the party members were jews and he basically says communism was a jewish conspiracy interestingly enough his book 200 years together has never been allowed to be translated into anything other than german and french I had to learn german to read it and it was horrendous to read but the jews do that to the palestinians now so its not a real shock what do you think could hitler have been correct and its a fact that lenin was funded 100% by american and world jewish organizations
Stuart Eels - Where's the love? It is quite possible that Churchill wrote these things since the British press was full of such scare stories in the years following the Bolshevik Revolution.
Ask your fellow smellies in the UAF what Churchill was like. The man who put tanks on the streets of Glasgow and locked Scottish soldiers in their barracks whilst English soldiers patrolled the streets. Such a man was Churchill and the moral degenerates of the Tory Party.
Arminius repeating the slogan 'moral degenerates' on every occasion. I quite like 'entartete Kunst'. Of course the Nazis couldn't tolerate it (in public of course. In private their usual hypocrisy).
Arminius the Teuton obviously likes Kitsch.
Stuart eels are you like jj where you are both payed to troll web sites and suppress historical facts from reaching the people? You come back at my exhausting documentation of facts with little more than child like mentality? Here is another embarassing fact for you have you ever read any books authored by your winston churchill? I believe in his early life he authored books about the jews being engaged in a worldwide conspiracy to set up a world dictatorship you know before he was bought off by zionism what yhou have to say about that you little troll also explain to me the newspapers worldwide in 1933 declaring worldwar on germany by judea? Fully ten years before the holohoax supposedly began you have judea declares war on germany in american and other newspapers boycott german goods what was that all about oh yeah they set up a for real economic system and took back their ability to survive from zionists bankers destroying there economy hit with some facts you pathetic excuse for a man
Stuart Eels - I do not think I refered to you as a troll and my references to trolls on this blog are aimed at JJ. Just a reminder to you that the World does not revolve around you sonny.
Apparently you think I should find some common ground with a Zionist nutbar but you see no reason why you should try to understand or seek common ground with Mike. It seems you have found some common ground with JJ after all - arrogance.
JJ - Would that be that same as the orgasm you had when you heard of the Afghans being killed by a US Army S/Sgt?
@Start Eels and Arminius 'Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, it's the war room!!'
And the first one of you to guess which movie that was from gets the prize: A copy of a book of Herzl's speeches!
In spite of all the desinformation, my respects to the Latvians by showing such respect and tribute to the Waffen SS.
JJ - Obviously you don't see putting armed troops and heavy armour up against unarmed civilians as moral degeneracy since your beloved Israeli Judeofascists do this on a regular basis.
I think I have used the phrase 'moral degenerates' once maybe twice on this blog which is rather far from repeating it on every occasion. I've told you a million times not to exagerate. Us Islamo-Pakistani-Teutons etc...etc... don't like it.
Oh my word, what a couple of nut jobs, how did they ever find a site like the New Statesman? How do they ever find the time to work? does anyone ever listen to them for more than five minutes?
I sincerely believe, after reading their last few posts that they both should spend a little time in a controlled environment with steel doors- a Mental Insititution for the feeble minded.
Don't bother to communicate with them JJ it's a waste of time.
Stuart eels you're such n idiot coward first of all I'm an american so we are on different time zones second I'm a stainless steel tig welder I work 12 hours every day you want a link my chairbound friend here you go reformed-theology.org who's the child here hey who has to be dragged to the truth and when you get there still claim it doesn't exist? You can easily find this on your own coward after
Here is the story of a Latvian soldier that MacSahane would have the World believe was part of "the biggest Jew-killing machine in world history". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C4%93teris_Dzelz%C4%ABtis
This article is a disgusting slur and a vile distortion of history that would make even a Stalinist blush. Such is the level of integrity of a Labour MP in 2012, masquerading as a public servant.
Stuart Eels - You have posted in fairly vitriolic terms what you think of Mike but what exactly is it in my posts that have you dismiss me as a nut job(assuming of course that you have read them)?
It may come as a shock to you but the NS site is not the sole preserve of the left and if you are only interested in views similar to your own you should stick to your UAF meetings.
As for being feeble minded, I have seen nothing in your posts to indicate that you are particularly mentally stable, educated or even in possession of a triple digit IQ.
I will not afford you the politeness I showed JJ so the simple message to you is f off.
@Victor-
You have not answered my rebuttal to your point 1 in your original post. You are probably responding to a point I didn't make.
Also, could you please clarify what you said here; I'm unsure as to the point you are trying to make: 'In this light, 7,000,000 Ukrainians and all of the other millions Stalin killed has everything in the world to do with the topic of the article!'
Thank you.
Swine vomit yeah that's you stuart I work 12 12 hour days in a row and get 2 off I get lots of over time which means time and a half idiot thanks to the man who came up with time and a half adolf hitler after all your own king edward 8 was a supporter of hitler and national socialism as you well know which is why he was forced out I don't believe for a second ms wallace simpson was a big enough deal to make someone abdicate
It seems to me that this neo-Fascist glorification of Latvian Nazis has more to do with the suppression of the Russian minority (almost half the population) than with anything else. Whether or not the Russians "belong there" is a moot point. They are there and they need to be granted equal rights regardless of what language they speak.
JJ - It might come as a surprise to you that some other read about things other than in red top tabloids. The Paul Rassinier to which Mike refers did indeed exist and was a pacifist, Communist, anti-Nazi resistance fighter with was imprisoned in Buchenwald and Dora (the injuries that he sustained at the hands of the SS and Kapos led to becoming an invalid and to his premature death). His views on the Concentration Camp system and holocaust deviate from the norm and thus his works are shunned and dismissed as "holocaust denial". As a prisoner in 2 Conentration Camps (where he spent much of the time in hospital) I do not think that he can have had a complete view of the Concentration Camp system but I do not think that his writings on the subject should be banned as they are in Germany. But why am I wasting my time telling you this, the man who cannot tell the difference between the 15th and 19th Latvian SS Divisions even with the help of Wikepedia.
I don't eat kosher or halal food on the grounds of animal cruelty. In the spirit intended in your post, I will have the oven baked ham.
As far as jews being shot in france that you alluded to I don't know anything about it but every time this happens you always here it was a guy under total surveillance by the government almost like he was being handled and I hear this algerian muhhamed? Whatever was formerly in an afghan prison and escaped and made it back to france to shoot some jews come on give me a joke this sounds like a staged event to me the zionists in charge hate jews as much as anyone else they could care less anyway hope you have a breakdown about your idol churchill you know its true just google it or follow the link I gave you and even an idiot like you will find it have fun in your chair today while I work pathetic excuse for a man stuart swine vomit
Stuart isn't this riga article about the fact that you lost your nationnal sovereignity? Don't you care that the unelected eu comissars tell you what you can and can't think?
Steve L, you obviously know nothing about Postmodernism, then.
And exceeding your or JJ's attention span does not make something "waffle". What *are* you two doing on this site? How have you ever even heard of the New Statesman?
And is anyone going to answer the questions? Why object to this sort of thing and not to the Far Left, including the memory and symbols of the Soviet Union? Why object to this sort of thing and not to the EU, which subjects us to the legislative will both of the Far Right and of the Far Left? Why object to this sort of thing in today's Latvia but not in 1990s Yugoslavia?
JJ - "And the first one of you to guess which movie that was from gets the prize: A copy of a book of Herzl's speeches!" - I prefer Andrex quilted thanks.
Arminius
Stop getting your knickers in a twist, I know the world would never revolve around me. The only reason I don't address you as I do Mike is because, I know the type too well, I've been in counter demonstrations to the EDL and expect he would be marching with them!
Stalin's Russia was just as bad as Hitler's nazis, especially if you were one of the Baltic states raped over by the Soviets in 1940-41. Whether you fought for Hitler or Stalin you fought for Totalitarianism and Mass Murder.
Somewhat understandably given the history Latvians consider the Soviets to be a greater evil than the Nazis. Obviously it would be better if they definitely excluded those implicated in both Nazi and Soviet atrocities, but it is certainly not as simple as Latvians commemmorating Jew Killers. To view it that way and to ignore the rest of the history that is very important to the people on the ground is a patronising and condescending approach.
Oh, and if it's being done purely for the party political process of smearing the conservatives by association. Taking this hsitoricaly complicated and deeply emotional issue and distorting it just to smear one's British political opponents would be contemptible and disgraceful.
mike
Don't believe a word you are saying, you spend too much time on computers to be working 12 hour days, still waiting for the link, or is that so much more b******t from you again.
If you are a yank, go and do something about your citizens thrown out of their houses and living in tents outside your failing cities before you come on here lecturing me on all things you think evil about my country you halfwit.
Arminius
Good grief, I decided to withdraw my love and peace to you because you appear to be nearly as obnoxious as addled mike.
Stuart Eels - You're the guffy that wanted to teach the world to sing and buy it a Coke.
If you have been in counter demonstations to the EDL then you are probably UAF and thus equally repelant to me.
To JJ: I believe I did answer your point. Also, I think the second point I made is also clear.
The apologists for fascism posting on here are beyond the pale. You are disgraceful human beings.
I would like to say that it is a fact that the jews are the biggest mass murderers of history that the germans and nazis and ss are completely inocent of the holocaust story which I would like to remind you made the jews a lot of money after world war one because they claimed the kaisers army had murdered six million jews in a holocaust just look up the american hebrew magazine of 1919 by martine glynn I have a copy so I dare you to challenge me anyway the jews reused this story in ww2 without changing a bit of it I also have a book written by a french resistance fighter named paul rassinier he was in buchenwald and dora and he immediately wrote several books stating that the holocaust didn't happen and there were no gas chambers by the way the wanasee protocols are fakes lady whoever wrote them didn't know german every other word is mispelled and anyway than you have aleksandr solzhenitsyn who's book gulag archipelago won nobel prizes ect ect...he is considered to be one hundred percent reliable on the communist gulags having survived ten years in them so how many people know of his follow up to gulag archipelago called 200 years together? The world jewish organizations have succesfully stopped its english translation but I have the book in german and russian It is about the jews in russia in the book he makes the claim that all the communists were jews and he is absolutely correct lenin trotsky stalin here are there real names ulianov bronstein and dzhugasvilli the last name stalins real name translates as son of a jew so anyway here you have the jews murdering the russians the beloruse the ukranians the balts the latvians so defending yourself from jews trying to murder you makes you the criminal hey we now know that the pictures of starved bodies are actually russians and otthers murdered by the jewish communists I mean after all lenin received all of his funding from international jewish organizations and the communists closed and destroyed christian churches but never touched one damned synagouge? Does anyone know why all the camps of the germans were in poland because the polish were given jewish money to build the camps for germans to be put in from the territory stolen and given to poland ironic that the jews paid for the camps and tried to kill germans in them? The germans of course first installed heaters in the rooms and also the delousing facilities to stop the spread of typhus but they won't show you that on the guided tour the holocaust is another jewish money scam nothing more the germans deserve to be vindicated you can also research the final solution it is actually just a resettlement plan first called the madagascar plan but since nobody wanted the jews it was later to decided to send them home yeah that's right to khazaria seeing as how the european jews are not from palestine but are from the khazar empire that converted to judaism in the eigth century ok so back to this whining lady about the waffen ss which was a voluntary army of more than 30 countries and including blacks and muslims it was about freedom from the international organizations which are still crippling us today my god people wake up the jews are lying to you and buying off your politicians and media its not hard to figure out but ask yourself this if the jews really suffered in the holocaust would the first thing you would do after being freed is go to palestine and deport all the ethnic hebrews and put them and the palestinians into death camps? I don't think so they are murderers and pedophiles just look at the state of isreal purchasing 90% of the worlds sex slaves every other building in isreal is a brothel and they have as law the legality of owning someone as long as they are not jewish I mean come on people its well past the time to wake up here
I would like every one of you idiots who believe in the holocaust to answer to me why it is that aleksandr solzhenitsyn who is a renowned historical writer of the jewish communists revolution in russia has written a book called 20
One of the many deeper questions the article raises is the nature of the regimes and the peoples and the governments which ought to be a part of the EU. We would never tolerate membership of the EU being granted to a state where the Government or the majority of the people were Holocaust denialists, and quite righly too, or if they were openly racist.
But what about where a large minority within the country hold abhorrent opinions on political issues and the Government of that country takes no stand against it, as is its right within its own borders. What then?
Stuart Eels - Since you are evidently an übertwat, I have no problem with this. Reserve you "love" for your unwashed red associates. The actions of UAF and other assorted groups of red dross seldom have anything to do with love or peace.
JJ and Arminius.
Behave the pair of you, just because I don't want any truck with halfwit Mike doesn't mean I share the views of either of you.
I can't for example forget that Israel was formed by a load of terrorists and that the London bombings were carried out by a load of Islamic nutjobs!
@Mike - you deviated from the script. You should have started your er...piece, with the obligatory: 'As a Jew/As someone who is half Jewish...'
By the way, Mike, is it the booze or the drugs?
Victor, what a sad person you are, you can't deny what has happened, thers no need for these sort of marches that glorify the sickest bunch of bastards ever to walk on earth.
David Lindsay, up to your usual sick tricks again, how do you live with your mind?
JJ
I would say neither, I would hazard a guess that he's a born again BNP ranter or EDF foot soldier with a tat on his head.
David Lindsay is best left in his own little world and not disturbed, he will bore himself to death hopefully.
Ah well,you can't win them all, have a sad life.
Many Finns also fought with the Germans against the Russians does that make them also Nazi collaborators? Many French, Belgians, Norwegians, Danes and Russians also fought against Bolshevism and towards the end of the war many in the Wehrmacht weren’t even German. The victors always write the history books, but many forget millions of European lived under totalitarianism long after the war had ended: or was that the right kind of totalitarianism? The only real difference between these two political monstrosity [Nazism and Communism] was one murdered more noncombatants over a longer period of time then the other.
Stuart Eels - And you with your fellow smelly reds of the UAF/Tooting Popular Front.
Stuart Eels - You really don't know what my views are so you have no idea if you share any of them or not. My post was merely to highlight that the moral degenerate JJ will stoop to any level whilst trolling this site.
Zionists have attacked the 3 Baltic Republic since they regained their independence and have used the (Jewish) Holocaust as some sort of blackmail tool to influence the internal and foreign policies of these countries. It is morally repugnant to try to tar all of these soldiers from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia with the same "Nazi" brush when it is clear that the majority of them were only interested in fighting for the freedom of their countries. This is witnessed by the fact that many of these soldiers fought on long after Nazi Germany had capitulated in guerrilla groups collectively known as the Forest Brothers.
@Peter - no one is denying the crimes of the Soviet Union in this thread. The piece is about something else completely. Go and peddle your so called balanced approach elsewhere.
David Lindsay - never misses an opportunity to tie himself in knots.
Shrieking, and picking up of skirts, at the recognition of a new Europarty made up of the BNP and such like. The Europarties are not identical to the Groups in the European Parliament, but the crossover is considerable, the Europarties have the sole right to campaign in European Elections (we have yet to see the full consequences of that), and they are maintained at public expense, as are their attendant think tanks, the Eurofoundations. Your money and mine will now be funding a party and a think tank for Nick Griffin and his brethren.
It beats me why there is any fuss over this. These and other deeply unsavoury people have been legislating for us ever since we went into the wretched thing, both in the European Parliament or in the predecessor European Assembly, and in the coalitions represented in the Council of Ministers.
Those coalitions might nominally be single parties: off to Brussels in the Thatcher and, to a lesser extent, Major years trooped Ministers who were members of the Western Goals Institute or the Monday Club, with their crossover, via things like the League of Saint George, to overt neo-Nazism on the Continent, to the Ku Klux Klan, to apartheid South Africa, to Ian Smith's Rhodesia, to the juntas of Latin America, to Marcos and Suharto, to the Duvaliers, and so forth. For that matter, the Cabinet Minister who took us in under Heath, Geoffrey Rippon, was a Monday Club stalwart. "Europe a Nation" was Mosley's slogan, and the whole idea's affinity with Fascism could not be more obvious.
It needs to be brought home to our people, among others, to whose legislative will we are now subject. Let there be a European Senate to which each of the Europarties, currently 11 in number, would nominate one member from each member-state at the same time as the elections to the European Parliament. That would give a total of 297, or 308 once Croatia has had the bad taste to join up.
I would rather like the European Free Alliance to nominate a member of Mebyon Kernow, because I think that it might be fun, perhaps even illuminating. But just imagine if at least the more politically aware people in this country were confronted with the figure of David Irving, or of someone who held equally noxious views about the gulags, the Holodomor and the Cultural Revolution. Imagine those potted newspaper profiles of our 11 new European Senators.
Hell, why not make them all members of the House of Commons, and allow each of the Eurofoundations to nominate a Crossbench Peer? No, probably better not to, home though that would certainly bring the point. Their numbers might turn out to be just enough to stop anything from being done about it.
The European Senate would have the power to propose amendments which the European Parliament would then be obliged to consider, and before the final text went on to the Council of Ministers the Senate would have the power to require unanimity there rather than Qualified Majority Voting. On that second point, it might even do some good.
Each member-state also needs a European Legislative Council elected by and from among the elected members of the national Parliament. 25 members would do. Seat-taking MPs would organise themselves into caucuses. The largest caucus would elect five by voting for one candidate and with the top five getting in, the second-largest would thus elect four, the third-largest three, the fourth-largest two, and the fifth-largest one.
On present figures, there would be five Conservatives, four from Labour, three Lib Dems, one each from the SNP and Plaid Cymru by arrangement between them, and one from the DUP. All seat-taking MPs would then by the same means elect 10, which would be one more from each of the Conservatives, Labour, the Lib Dems, the DUP, the SNP and Plaid Cymru, plus one from the SDLP, and the self-appointment of each of Caroline Lucas, Naomi Long and Sylvia Hermon.
At least two of the Conservatives would be from the people who for some reason think that Margaret Thatcher was a Eurosceptic, and the consistently sound school of pro-Commonwealth, anti-neoconservative Keynesians which is now given a Commons voice by Robin Walker and which has always been given a Commons voice by Sir Peter Tapsell; a third seat for a sceptic of some stripe might also be possible. At least two from Labour would be a Campaign Group member and someone like Frank Field, Kate Hoey, Gisela Stuart or Roger Godsiff. At least one Lib Dem would be of the slowly rising sceptical tendency on those benches and in that party, to whose arguments Long might also be open. The SNP members would be persuadable, and increasingly so. Anyone from the DUP or Plaid Cymru would be solidly sceptical, as are Lucas and Hermon.
Each of the European Legislative Councils would again have the power to propose amendments which the European Parliament would then be obliged to consider, and before the final text went on to the Council of Ministers half or more of them would again have the power to require unanimity there rather than Qualified Majority Voting.
And why not give the EU some Lords Spiritual? Let each member-state nominate two permanent offices the occupants of which would always be members of the European College of Guardians, or the European Board of Visitors, or what have you, one representing the country's religious and spiritual sources of moral sense and cultural identity, and the other representing the country's secular and humanist sources of moral sense and cultural identity. All very Blessed John Paul the Great.
The former offices are far easier to identify, but they could both be done, especially in academia: the Professor of Moral Philosophy at the ancient seat of learning, that sort of thing. In either case, which office it was could not be changed without the consent of all of the office-holders in the same category. Half overall, or two thirds in either category, would have the right to require unanimity in the Council of Ministers.
At present, there would be 15 Catholic hierarchs (16 with Croatia), six Lutheran ones of considerable diversity, four Orthodox, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and someone Dutch Reformed, again most obviously drawn from the ranks of senior academia rather than from among those who changed every year. There would be those who would argue that the Catholic Church ought these days to have the British, Dutch or German place, but that would only antagonise those whose support we needed.
All of this must be within the context of wider reform at our own national level - a href="http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com/2012/03/how-pro-eu-are-lib-dems-really.html.