THE BATTLE FOR BRITAIN
(Edited November, 2021)
The current positions of the British
political parties is set out in "UK political parties' positions on
the EU," under CIVITAS EU Facts. A detailed and very revealing
summary of the history of the EU issue in the UK is provided in
Revision: Impact of the EU on British Politics. Some
interesting excerpts:
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Britain’s role in the EU is a major issue
in contemporary politics, but one that political parties have found
difficult to manage
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The two main parties have changed their
policies on Europe, suffered internal divisions and faced problems
exploiting the issue for electoral advantage
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The Conservatives and Labour parties seem
to have swapped positions on Europe in the last 3 decades
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Labour used to be hostile to European
integration but is now broadly supportive
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The Conservatives were generally
pro-European but are now predominantly Eurosceptic
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Since the Treaty of Accession in 1972,
Britain accepted the Treaty of Rome and subsequently the SEA as well
as the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties, and so it can be argued
that Britain has accepted a diminution in its legal sovereignty for
the following 3 reasons:
1. Laws enacted by the EU are directly
applicable to the UK
2. The British Parliament can’t pass laws in
areas where Community Law already exists
3. British courts must accept and enforce
decisions made by the ECJ
+++++
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Some commentators, such as Norman Lamont,
have pointed out that “membership of the EU has not been settled for
all time; it is provisional, not unconditional.” Hence any changes
that have occurred, as a result of membership of the EU can be
undone by leaving the EU, and thus sovereignty is ultimately not
surrendered.
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However the body of commentators view
this argument as a delusion. Due to the level of involvement and the
obvious benefits of membership, it is very unlikely that Britain
would remove themselves from the EU.
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In recent years the British government
had had to amend pensions, social security and equal opportunities “
to bring British law into line with European law” (Alan Davis)
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A number of commentators including
Thatcher agree that powers have been ‘surrendered’ to the EU
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Enoch Powell argued that sovereignty by
its very nature can’t be pooled and therefore “entry into the
community was a surrender of sovereignty because for the first time
an external body could overrule parliament”
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Philip Norton believes that there has
been “a shift of power within the institutions of the UK” as a
result of membership of the EU, which accompanies a shift of power
to the institutions of the EU
The summary appears to apply to the political
state of affairs in United Kingdom in the year 2000. The positions
of the parties at that time are presently unchanged, and the debate for
and against European Union membership rages. (CHANGED
BY BREXIT IN 2020-2021; but struggles continue.) In any event it would be fair to
state that there will be a continuing Battle for Britain; and the tide
runs against the Protestant heritage of the nation. In 2002
ROME’S RESURGENCE both marked the inroads of Roman Catholicism in
the body politic, and the larger ecumenical drive to embrace other
religions such as Islam, which is a part of Rome's New Evangelization.
Jumping forward to September, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Britain
for the first ever visit of by a Pope (Pope
Benedict XVI starts historic tour in Britain.) As the report
states, the visit was not popular with the people (Cf.
Controversy around Britain's first papal state visit deepens.)
That matters little to the powers that be at the top. As reported,
the Queen welcomed the Pope warmly. She had already made her
inclinations clear as stated in Rome's Resurgence hyperlinked
above. Her actions have not been in harmony with nearly 500 years
of British monarchical history (Cf.
The Break
with Rome.) These events are of such a significance as could not
apply in the United States. Adrian Hilton wrote in 1997:
In 1953, the Queen swore on oath at her
Coronation 'to govern the peoples of the United Kingdom according to
their laws and customs' and 'to maintain the Protestant Reformed
religion established by law.' Both of these are negated by the process
of deeper European integration. In a continent in
which 61 million claim a Protestant heritage and 199 million profess to
be Roman Catholics, it is simply not possible to maintain Protestantism
by democratic law. The Protestant constitution of the United Kingdom has
long been a strong defence against Rome's desires for the
'evangelisation' of Britain, which the Pope refers to as 'Mary's
dowry' - hers by right.
This quotation brings into sharp relief the
significance of the Queen's conduct, and the severe repercussions to be
expected from deeper European integration. Both Democracy and
Protestantism are crumbling in Britain. The Queen is no doubt
acting with the advice and consent of the leaders of the British
Parliament, which has been complicit in the movement back to Rome.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was present to welcome the Pope.
Prime Minister David Cameron offered "a warm welcome" to the Pope (Cf.
David Cameron offers
'warm welcome' to Pope in video;
Pope's state visit
criticised in luminaries' letter.) An article in
The
Telegraph dated April 24, 2011, titled
Church blocks reforms over royal marriages, reported that "Nick
Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, began work towards repealing the 1701
Act of Settlement, under which heirs to the throne must renounce their
claim on marrying a Roman Catholic, in order to introduce full equality
between the faiths." The article goes on to state:
Talks were held with the Anglican Church as
part of wider discussions on constitutional reform, which come under his
remit as Deputy Prime Minister. . .
However, the plan to abolish the Act of
Settlement was quietly shelved after the Church raised significant
objections centring on the British sovereign’s dual role as Supreme
Governor.
Church leaders expressed concern that if a
future heir to the throne married a Roman Catholic, their children would
be required by canon law to be brought up in that faith.
This would result in the constitutionally
problematic situation whereby the Supreme Governor of the Church of
England was a Roman Catholic, and so ultimately answerable to a separate
sovereign leader, the Pope, and the Vatican.
To the shelving of the plan to abolish the
Act of Settlement, the Catholic Herald of the UK boldly raised
the question "Why
shouldn’t there be a Catholic ‘Supreme Governor’ of the Church of
England?." The fact that we are blessed with a constitutional
separation of church and state should not dim our perception of dangers
posed to the historical identity of Britain as a Protestant nation.
In a lecture delivered at the European Institute of Protestant Studies
titled
The conspiracy Behind The European Union What Every Christian Should Know,
Professor Arthur Noble presented some of the history and ramifications
of the European Union plot. The following are quotations from the
lecture:
What is the real nature and purpose of this
Europe into whose heart the British people are being dragged with
increasing resistance? I contend that behind the
respectable European mask is a plot to destroy our sovereignty and to
re-align the whole balance of power world-wide.
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Which brings me to the subject of
religion. What further aspects of our national sovereignty are
envisaged for the sellout in later treaty amendments? Will an
attempt at religious unity follow in the wake of monetary and
political unity in this "imperialist" Europe? After all, that is the
confessed vision of Pope John Paul II when he speaks about European
unity on his numerous propaganda jaunts, now numbering about sixty.
His message has consistently been that European identity is
"incomprehensible without Christianity" (for "Christianity", of
course, read "Romanism"). In other words, his vision of European
unity is based on the principle of strong Vatican influence on
political governments, reminiscent of the situation in the Middle
Ages.
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Rome's plan to unite
Europe politically and the world religiously by ushering in a seventh
revival of the Empire was announced by Pope Pius XII as early as 1952 in
his Christmas broadcast, which envisaged "a Christian order which alone
is able to guarantee peace. To this goal the resources of the Church are
now directed." This arrogant and cunning fanatic, who helped Hitler to
power, blessed Mussolini's troops and colluded with the Nazi Ustashi in
Yugoslavia in slaughtering 240,000 Orthodox Serbs and forcibly
converting over 750,000 to Roman Catholicism, exhorted the faithful of
Rome in February, 1952: "The whole world must be rebuilt from its
foundations." The plans for this gigantic task, about which the world
knows little, were subsequently laid under cover by the Vatican's
diplomats. The concept of a United, Roman Catholic European superstate,
which is presently emerging in Europe, was to be the first step in world
domination.
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Historically, the concept of the nation-state
has been anathema to the Vatican, whose tactics have been to rob
sovereign nations of their nationhood and reduced to mere states or
provinces of a single European nation-state controlled by her,
even subdividing them internally where it suited her purposes.
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Are our leaders blind to what is going on in
Europe, or are they naively stupid, or knowing collaborators?
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The Catholic Herald recently stated: 'The
days of the Anglican Church are numbered, and most of its worshippers
will return to the true faith of their distant mediaeval forebears.'
It is almost a symbolic fulfilment of that prophecy that the
20-pence coin of the British colony Gibraltar, issued by Parliament and
approved by the Queen, bears an engraving of Mary crowned 'Queen of
Heaven' and titles 'Our Lady of Europa'. The head of the Queen on the
other side is simply titled 'Elizabeth II - Gibraltar', without her
usual titles of D.G., REG., F.D. - Queen by the Grace of God, Defender
of the Faith. As portentous as such Roman Catholic symbolism is,
the British postage stamps issued in 1984 to
commemorate the second election to the European Parliament went even
further. They depicted a whore riding a beast over seven mounds or
waves. Such imagery has startling similarities to passages from the book
of Revelation which a succession of theologians from Wycliffe to
Spurgeon has identified as representing Papal Rome.
Roman Catholic imagery is endemic in Europe, and has been wholeheartedly
embraced by the European government. The design of
the European flag was inspired by the halo of 12 stars around pictures
of the Madonna, and appears prominently on the Council of Europe
stained-glass window in Strasbourg Cathedral. The window was unveiled to
the world on 11th December 1955, coinciding with the Roman Catholic
feast of the Immaculate Conception.
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Conclusion
If we do not pray and if we do not act, Rome
will once again succeed in establishing her evil system in this country.
When William Tyndale, captured and burned in 1535 by Belgian Papists for
having dared to translate the New Testament, uttered his dying cry:
"Lord, open the King of England's eyes!"
God's eventual mighty answer
came in the form of the King James (or "Authorised") Version of the
Bible (1611). It fell to Protestant Britain to spread the Gospel
worldwide and check the power of Rome. I am convinced that that is our
divinely-appointed task once again. We can no longer rely on our
political leaders or even our Royal Family to carry the torch of
Biblical Truth. Let us therefore pray: "Lord, open the eyes of the
British nation!"
From
Principality and Power of Europe - Britain and
the emerging Holy European Empire hyperlinked above comes another
cogent quotation:
A system of government
based on a throne which is Protestant by law seems to invite charges of
bigotry, out-datedness and political incorrectness.
It may not be surprising that the Roman
Catholic-dominated press and other media are waging a propaganda war,
but the consequent ascendancy of Roman Catholicism in public esteem and
respectability causes concern. Protestantism, meanwhile, is being
marginalised and dismissed. The demeaning of the name, the drives for
unity in the ecumenical movement, and the search for compromise and
peace have effectively rendered it politically incorrect to be known as
a Protestant. The Protestant truth is the foundation of the British
Constitution and social fabric. Considering there
are only five million Roman Catholics in Britain, with fewer than a
million regular church-goers, the high media profile of the Roman Church
is utterly disproportionate. (Cf.
Making America Catholic, which deals with the influence of the
Church of Rome in America.)
THE PROPHETIC SIGNIFICANCE OF REGIONALISM
There are some who suggest that the ten kings
of Rev. 17:12 represent the original divisions of the Roman Empire.
This is not exegetically logical. In the first place, three of the
ten horns of the Book of Daniel were "plucked up" by the little horn.
They ceased to exist (Dan. 7:7-8; 20 & 24.) Next, the internal
evidence of Rev. 17:10 is they were future, and they probably still are.
Here is where the European Union may provide a clue to the ultimate
manifestation of these ten kings.
In
FREEDOM IN
JEOPARDY: THE CASE AGAINST THE EU AND SUPRANATIONALISM
under the heading "What is Sovereignty?" the author D. Andrews states:
Though nationalism was once very similar in definition to patriotism and
independence, it is now often used to refer to a negative rather than a
positive concept. Supranationalism, given much more popular publicity
than the latter, is the concept that the nation state no longer matters,
that interdependence is better than independence, and that it
is necessary to form regions of countries
into centrally-controlled blocs with the probability of merging those
blocs later on to form a world government. Thus supranationalism
is merely the process of political globalism. . . (underscored emphasis
added.)
Under the heading of "The Grand Design of the
EU" the author states the following concerning European Union founder
Jean Monnet:
In the closing words of his memoirs, Monnet
wrote:
"The sovereign nations of the past can no
longer solve the problems of the present: they cannot ensure their own
progress or control their own future. And the
Community itself is only a stage on the way to the organised world of
tomorrow." (emphasis added).
And in a communiqué of 22 August 1962 this
same man spelled out the grand design of Europe when he wrote:
"It is impossible to solve problems between
European States who preserve full sovereignty.
We
are convinced that our times must see the
creation of vast units
like the United States and the USSR, and to establish a
[world-wide] organisation to ensure co-operation between all those vast
units. It is this organization which will create
the new world order." (emphasis added)
It seems beyond doubt now that
regionalisation, despite initial promises to the
contrary, was and is about the elimination of national sovereignty - and
is itself a pre-planned stage toward globalisation (the joining together
of regionalised blocs into a world government). The true story
behind Europe can be ignored no longer. (Underscoring for emphasis
in the original; italics emphasis added.)
The question arises whether the concept of
the regional unions of nations represents the blueprint for emergence of the ten kings of Rev. 17:12? This raises the questions
of how countries such as China will be roped in; and into what regional
union will Russia be drawn, since the USSR no longer exists.
Is it possible
that fulfillment of the prophecy will not be fully matured until after
the appearance of Satan as the ultimate antichrist, fulfilling Rev. 17:8
& 11? It is worthy of note that the beast referred to in Rev.
17:12, is not the papacy, but the dragon, defined by Rev. 12:3-9 as
Satan. Rev. 17:12 states that the ten horns receive power as kings
with the beast for one prophetic hour (15 literal days;) but it does not
state that the beast's appearance on the earth will be limited to that
period of time. Also, how long after the conquest of Britain will it be
before the end comes? At the present time, there remains the vexed
issue of Jerusalem, and the fulfillment of Dan. 11:45. There
appears to be no movement there, but that problem may be resolved
suddenly.
CIVITAS EU Facts
UK political
parties' positions on the EU
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