What do we mean by treason today?
Treason is a famously slippery word, not least for the reason
enshrined in the oft-quoted but still potent piece of
doggerel:
Treason never prospers,
What's the reason?
For if it does
None dare call it treason.
Yet elusive as it is, treason clearly has an objective
reality, a reality, moreover, whose essence is changeless.
That quality is betrayal which goes beyond the personal.
If a friend betrays you to another friend that is not
treason. If a fellow countryman betrays you to an occupying
power that is.
The concept of treason arises from the fact that Man is
tribal. He naturally forms groups. That being so, there is a
need to protect the group. Part of that need is met by the
concept of loyalty to the group. Long before treason became a
legal concept, it existed in practice. It is, in fact, an
inescapable part of being human.
As a legal concept, it has gradually been re-focused during
the past millennium. In a dynastic context, where the king
is king in executive fact as well as name, treason is the
betrayal of the sovereign by a person who owes him
allegiance. That betrayal may be through disloyalty or an
attempt to harm the person of the monarch (and generally his
family). By extension, the same applies to those to whom the
monarch's executive power is delegated. Kill the King's man
and you attack the King. That seems straightforward, but the
practice, at least in Europe, has been rather complex.
In truth, European monarchs have rarely if ever been able
to act indiscriminately in their own interests and to their
own whims. Indeed, European monarchs have been remarkably
unsuccessful in creating efficient and lasting despotisms.
The greatest exponent of what historians like to call
absolutism, Louis XIV of France, might say L'etat c'est
moi, but that was more boast than reality. With its local
laws and courts, inefficient tax farming and unstable public
finances, France ultimately constrained Louis as it
constrained his predecessors.
Because European monarchs were rarely successful despots
even for short periods, their subjects never truly succumbed
to debilitating ideas such as the divine right of kings.
Rather they expected of a king duty as well self-promotion
and satisfaction. The concept of the unjust prince was well
developed by 1100 and culminated in the doctrine of
tyranicide developed by John of Salisbury in the 12th
Century. Here is Manegold of Lautenbach writing in the
11th Century:
No man can make himself emperor or king; a people
sets a man over it to the end that he may rule
justly, giving to every man his own, aiding good
men and coercing bad, in short, that he may give
justice to all men. If then he violates the
agreement according to which he was chosen,
disturbing and confounding the very things which be
was meant to put in order, reason dictates that he
absolves the people from their obedience,
especially when he has himself first broken the
faith which bound him and the people together.*
* Quoted by A.J. and R.W. Carlyle in A history of Medieval Political
Theory in the West , Vol. III, p. 164, n. 1.
For Manegold a people's allegiance to its ruler is a promise
to support him in his lawful undertakings and is consequently
void in the case of a tyrant. In a sense, a tyrant committed
treason by dishonouring the office of monarch and its implied
and inherent obligations.
Restraints on the monarch were given formal status by their
coronation oaths. In England, Magna Carta (1215) moved
matters on to another stage where a monarch was forced to
agree to direct constraints on his power. The example of
Magna Carta in turn led to the development of the English
Parliament, which moved from a petitioning and tax granting
body in the 14th century to the point where it practically,
if not in theory, usurped the power of the king.
But treason in dynastic circumstances was not a
straightforward matter of simply plotting against the king
or attempting harm to the king's person or doing the same to
his representatives. A great noble or courtier close to
the king might well lose his head through being deemed to
have given "evil counsel" to the monarch, even though that
counsel had been accepted and acted upon by the king. The
"evil counsellor" would be blamed (and probably executed)
to ensure that the monarch was not held to account.
The idea of "evil counsel" had an important effect in English
constitutional development and a consequent broadening of
the idea of treason. Evil counsellors were generally
identified not by the king but by others, most notably
Parliament. Thus the practical application of the idea of the
evil counsellor both reinforced the idea that the monarch
was not a completely independent agent and created the idea
that any man involved in politics owed not merely his formal
loyalty to the king (and later the people), but also should
take care to act and speak in a way which would not be to the
disadvantage of the king and his subjects.
As the power of monarchs waned, the emphasis of who was
betrayed gradually moved to the idea that the entire
population of a country was an entity in itself and betrayal
of that entity amounted to treason. The shift from monarch
to people was completed with the advent of the formally
democratic state, where, in theory at least, the general
population became the sovereign.
Of what does treason consist in the formally democratic
nation state? Generally it must be the conscious decision to
act in a way which will weaken the integrity of the nation
state. Betrayal in the old manner of spying or acting
otherwise for an enemy in war is still part of that. The
overthrow of a government by undemocratic means might seem to
be treasonable by definition, but that begs the question of
whether the formally democratic state is operating in a
manner to deny meaningful political participation to the
masses or whether those in power are behaving in a
treasonable manner. If either of the latter conditions apply,
the overthrow of a dictatorship in democratic clothing or a
treasonable government might well be considered the very
reverse of treasonable, provided, of course, that those who
enact the overthrow then instigate a political system which
does not have those failings nor attempt an overt
dictatorship.
But the primary treason in the modern formally democratic
state is more insidious. It is the abrogation of the
sovereignty of the nation state by immersement in larger
political entities and through the signing of treaties which
restrict the opportunity for national self-determination.
This raises the question of the position of the elected
politician? Can an elected politician commit treason? If the
treasonable activity is not part of an election manifesto, or
is not put to a referendum if it is not part of a manifesto,
the answer is a straightforward yes. This must be so,
because otherwise a politician could never be held to account
for indubitably treasonable behaviour such as spying for an
acknowledged enemy or pursuing certain policies on receipt
of a bribe from a foreign power.
More interesting is the question of whether an elected
politician can commit treason if the treasonable activity is
part of an election manifesto or it is put to a referendum.
This is undoubtedly very difficult ground because the
textbook answer would be that ultimate sovereignty in a
formal democracy lies practically and morally, if not always
legally, with the electorate. An electorate which elects a
party or individual on a manifesto or votes yes in a
referendum is considered to be tacitly granting the policy
legitimacy. However, there are strong objections to this
interpretation.
The first is that the treasonable activity may be
misrepresented by the party or politician. A classic example
of this is Britain's entry into what is now the European
Union (EU). The British electorate were undeniably
deliberately misled by the 1970 Tory manifesto into
believing that they were merely joining a free trade area.
They were deliberately misled again during the 1975
referendum on Britain's continued membership. They have been
deliberately misled consistently in the 25 years since the
referendum, being told by every government that British
sovereignty is not being lost, when massive amounts have been
ceded. That is treason by any meaningful definition that has
ever been used in the past.
A good test of that claim is to ask what would have been the
likely response if before the British electorate had told the
truth about what membership of the European Economic
Community (EEC) would entail before we joined in 1973?
Suppose Heath had said in the 1970 Tory election manifesto
that membership would mean Britain would incur the vast
cost of supporting the Common Agricultural Policy and the EU
bureaucracy, would allow the EU and the European Court of
Justice to persistently interfere in the minutiae of British
life, would force Britain to adopt disadvantageous EU laws
and Commission edicts without effective protest, make the
British taxpayer subsidise the development of poorer EU
areas and develop a massive trade deficit with EU members,
or that we would not be able to use our own weights and
measures and stood fair in time to lose our currency and
suffer political emasculation as a nation state. Suppose all
that had been made clear and then ask whether anyone can
reasonably doubt that we would have remained outside the EU?
The rational answer just has to be no.
But what if all the sovereignty which had been ceded had been
done after it was presently honestly to the electorate?
Suppose every change had been the subject of a referendum.
Suppose those referendums had been conducted with absolutely
fairness. What then? Here the old idea of "evil counsellors"
has utility. In the modern formal democracy, politicians play
the role of counsellors. Where their counsel is bad and the
results of it disadvantages the people to which they owe
their good sense and loyalty, then that might be said to be
treasonable. Our representatives owe us their best judgement
and courage. If they act in a way which is compromised by
considerations other than their honest judgement and that
action has results which are treasonable, they are guilty of
treason. Not only that, but the representative must be honest
about the foreseeable consequences of what they propose. In
the representative's special position, treason may be
committed though acts of omission as well as commission,
through not pointing out consequences.
There is also the question of whether an electorate can in
perpetuity commit to an irreversible act. In the British
context, the constitutional position on perpetual alienation
of sovereignty is clear. No parliament has the power to
alienate in perpetuity Britain's sovereignty, for if the
British Constitution has one overriding principle it is that
no parliament can bind another. More importantly, for it
underpins the constitutional position, such an alienation
cannot logically or practically be made whilst free
national elections exist, because nothing can prevent a
party standing on a platform calling for the amendment or
complete repudiation of the Treaty of Rome, however amended
that document may be. In fact, no statute, treaty or
institution can be sacrosanct under an elective system of
government, not even where there is a written constitution
and an interpretative constitutional court, for a party may
stand on a platform which states such and such a change will
be made regardless of what the constitution, laws and
treaties decree, and make of electoral success a legitimate
mandate. By extension, the same argument obtains for
decisions made by referenda.
What are the great particular treasons of our time? They can
be defined in terms of what causes damage to the viability of
the nation state. The most dramatic formal act of breaching
British sovereignty is our membership of the EU. But that is
only one of a number of serious attacks on the British state
and people. The permitting of mass immigration is a profound
form of treason, for mass immigration is a form of conquest.
North America is now dominated by the white man because of a
slow accretion of settlement not through sudden and violent
conquest. To that treason is linked its sister act, the
attempted cultural cleansing of the native population of
Britain in general and the English in particular, through
the wilful denigration of the native population of this
country, the deliberate denial to them of their history in
our schools and the suppression of dissent through the power
of the state, willingly assisted by the mass media.
To those may be added these others which are patently
against our interests. Entering into treaties which remove
freedom of action from the country, for example those
governing membership of the World Trade Organisation. The
failure to maintain the country's military capacity and the
use of what military we have in foreign adventures in which
Britain has no natural interest. The deliberate refusal to
ensure that the country's economic capacity can supply all
essential items in time of emergency, in particular the
securing of the food supplies. The spending of taxpayers'
money on foreign peoples.
We are currently in the grip of Liberal Internationalism.
That creed has brought a new problem of definition to
treason. Indeed, it might seem to be a direct challenge to
the very idea of treason, for where neither the primacy of
the nation nor the authority of a sovereign is recognised,
against whom is treason committed?
The answer is that what is increasingly called The New World
order has not abolished treason, merely redefined it as any
action which goes against the ideology of the New World
Order. Where only one ideological permission is permitted in
a jurisdiction, then resistance to it effectively becomes
treason, whatever the crime is called.
In fact, the Liberal Ascendancy does not need to formally
charge people with treason. They control through their
supremacy in public life (including the media). This means
that the Liberal Ascendancy can exclude anyone who
disagrees with their views from public life and persecute
them by enforcing laws which protect their ideology.
People in Britain who act against the liberal's wishes are
increasingly being punished by prosecution or civil action
under such laws as the Race Relations Act or Equal
Opportunities Legislation, or forced from their jobs without
compensation.
Where formal treason may re-emerge is in the context of a
United States of Europe, where either secessionist calls or
an unwillingness to fight wars in the USE's name could well
be treated as treason.
What is wrong with the supersession of the nation state by
larger bodies such as the EU? Man is naturally a tribal
animal. To give coherence to his individual and social
existence he needs clearly defined group boundaries. Those
boundaries may successfully encompass anything from the
small band of a few dozen people to the nation state
comprising hundreds of millions. Supranational bodies do not
provide such boundaries. Even the nation state is more often
than not an artificial creation in one degree or the other.
But where it works, it is the best answer yet found to
allowing large populations to live peacefully and exercise
democratic control over the elite.
The ultimate administrative problem with the supranational
state is accountability. Just as something which is
everybody's responsibility ends up being nobody's
responsibility, so a ruling elite with no clearly defined
electoral responsibility is responsible to no one.
The Liberal Internationalist propaganda has been so
successful that treason has an old fashioned ring to the
modern Briton. It seems to be something to mock along with
the very idea of patriotism. So long have the British been at
peace, so safe does everyday life seem, so ruthlessly have
the liberal elite and their educational and media
nomenclatura promoted the idea that the time of the nation
state is passed, that even naturally patriotic Britons find
the idea of treason an uncomfortable one.
That is a dangerous idea because a belief that treason may
be committed is vitally important if we wish to maintain our
independence. It is so because the nation state requires it
as a foundation of its integrity. We need to grip hard to
the idea that we shall remain our own masters or perish as a
independent people. To do that we need to understand the
nature of treason and act upon it.
The most urgent action needed to accomplish that goal is a
counter to the incessant anti-British, anti-English
propaganda peddled by our elite. Nations are like people,
they require a sense of self respect as well as identity.
What would we think of a man who went around saying "I'm no
good at anything, have no manners and am generally
worthless." I think there is only likely to be one response
we would despise him. We need to destroy soon that mentality
as it applies to Britain and England.
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