XX 11th April 2002
We now adopted in our four-year cycle of three crops a slight alteration of order, by arranging the two halves of winter wheat to follow each other, rather than be separated by sowing barley between them. We concluded that the weakest, fourth, position of a crop sown before the new rape is best given to barley, while wheat following wheat can be accepted still with changing brands, introducing new type called Zyta, which is sturdy and shorter. As before, we purchase the latest version of the brand at the Agricultural Institute of Strzelce; 500 to 700 kilos, enough for two to three hectares to supply us with sowing grain next year; to buy the entire supply every year would be too expensive and the ʻone year delayʼ seed is good.
Our new drill machine is excellent - with aggregate-teeth and rollers preceding the sowing tubes, easy to calibrate with the special weighing test to the exact amount being sown. We now space the roads at 19 meters intervals, resulting from seven passes of the 2.7 metre drill; this necessitated extending our sprayer by one meter. This is an impressive spacing, as good as one sees anywhere in Western Europe, requires great deal of concentration by the operator, closing 4 tubes every seventh run in opposite direction.
The fantasy of this work is beginning to take one over - and following my emigration in October 2000, and various continental wanderings, I decided to live more in Leszczyn, spending the largest part of the year here, being close to nature, and farming, pretty well full time. What a harmonious challenge. We finished our spring ploughing and look with joy at the crops maturing well from farmerʼs work. Observing political comings and goings of every day, one notes with regret and disquiet, same lies, same distortions, same sanctimonious declarations which seem meaningless, except as leading to a denouement in the future. It does not make it easy, to close oneʼs eyes to it all.
In London I sent a letter to every Labour Party member in Parliament:
| Labour Member | |
| House of Commons | 11.04.2002 |
ʻI met murder on the way
He had a mask like Tony Blairʼ
Dear Labour Member
He has murdered the spirit of our movement and is destroying the Labour Party. I am getting on to eighty; I have lived through the bombing of London, fought for the country in Normandy and fought for the Party in elections of 1945, 1950, 1951 and every one since, except the last one. I say he is a renegade to our Party and that by comparison Ramsay MacDonald was a virgin. In 1997 the trustful and naïve people of this country, ready as always to make sacrifices when necessary, gave Tony Blair the power to make a change. He only had one responsibility, to give back to the people the right to rule themselves and that needed four steps: to give people proportional representation, to give them the right to elect mayors in every town and village, to limit the ownership of the media, to give the influence back to the editor and journalist and to establish widest and most comprehensive education. To trust the people and the rest would have followed naturally from the good sense of the nation.
Instead, he has involved the country in the modernization and globalisation, which many recognise is becoming a worldwide attack on socialism, on the social principles and ecological aims. In the choice between Europe and America he has chosen US and went out to search and ally himself with any right-wing tendency, he could find in Europe. In so far as the people of this country freely chose in 1972 to join the Nation of Europe, he has become an agent of a foreign power, thwarting Europe at every step and denying Britain the right to contribute in its creation. He has made the country into a Vichyite appendage of the big brother; too small to be a Petain he is just a Laval hoping to gain some advantage and no longer believing in creation of a better world without brute force of ʻrobber capitalismʼ, for which we shall all have to pay a price. Dear and trusted peopleʼs and Partyʼs representative, stop him now. The wind of change is in the country, in the Party, and especially with the young.
Yours very sincerely, Matthew Wallis
With the 400 letters sent I received 35 replies*: 15 objecting my thesis, ten staying on the fence, seven positive and three strongly supportive. The rest ignored it, which suggests that about 5 % of our left is ready to face the facts.
Nevertheless the Parliament represents nothing today, certainly not democracy in the country. It is a gerrymandered system to guarantee the return of two and half parties which repeat the same arguments, say, about education every five years to produce the worst educated nation in Europe. The parties are alternately dismissed every 10 years for same reasons: usually the discovery of corruption, endemic to gerrymandering, which people get tired of. The merry-go-round which has continued since the war denies any political discussion. If you take that British people are by and large 25 % Conservative, 25 % Labour, 15 % Liberal, 15 % Hard Left, 10 % Nationalist and 10 % an assortment of others, then, they certainly are not given a chance to express their views in the National Forum. Of the 600, there should be 150 Conservative and Labour each, 90 Liberal and Hard Left, 60 Nationalists and minor other parties, which would give people a chance of political discussion. How is it denied to them? First is the big lie that it would produce a weak government, quite irrelevant, because such governments produced revival in Germany and elsewhere. Second that it would entitle undesirable elements such as Communists or Nationalists to display extreme, un-British views; one remembers the hate that surrounded Harry Pollitt the one Communist member in the fifties. All-in-all if one recalls Abeʼs old saying: “you can fool some people all the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time” then it is likely that the British people will not allow this mendacity to continue much longer.
There are many decent men and women in the parliament, but they are fooling themselves if they believe that their presence there makes things better in hte country. They only help to justify the existence of a faulty national institution. They believe as we all did once in the value of the parties which now are only hegemonic devices to control their personalities and consciences. They should stand aside, however elected, and say “I shall only represent the conscience of my constituency, of the people.”
For Europeans Britain represents on the one hand a balanced and practical view of life, and on the other, in her relative isolation displays many ambiguities: contrasting for instance her elegance with the gaucherie anglaise - what puzzlement: the continentals do not know what to make of her. Britain has not had to re-evaluate her philosophy for a long time. An American Secretary of State once said “Britain has lost an empire and not found cause in return”. The tragic loss of the opportunity to lead Europe, which could have been such a cause after the war is compounded by the fact that it is supported by Labour, who are traditionally international and who always had a wide support among worker and intellectual cadres on the continent. Will Britons continue to follow, in their dupery, that supine road of evil policies adopted “in their name” and dictated by another? In Lincolnʼs Inn Chapel there are a thousand crests, each representing an achievement and pride of a family or guild, one cannot but wonder how can these people accept this subordination of a vassal, calling it a ʻspecial relationshipʼ?
