The Gardiner family feel as though they have always been here, too. 'My father was one of the first truly organic farmers and a founder member of the Soil Association. He started in 1927 down the vale two miles away, embarking on land reclamation in Cranborne Chase after much of it had been felled for shipbuilding and the railways.
'It was a broken-down landscape of scree and brambles, gorse and rabbits. With my great-uncle [the composer] Henry Balfour Gardiner, he established four million trees over the next 30 years. Initially, he employed up to 30 men who were glad to have the work in forestry when agriculture was so depressed in the Twenties.
Interesting interview in the Observer food and drink magazine today with Sir John Eliot Gardiner, composer and organic farmer. His father Rolf Gardiner, put on the road by his interest in social credit/monetary reform, was one of the most important far right greens of the 20th century.
This is kind of glossed over by the Observer...
Today would be right wing greens hail him as an inspired English nationalist, who in his maturity engaged with 'national socialism'
Gardiner liked to describe himself as “a plain, practical working farmer, forester … an ameliorator of the land”. Nonetheless, his thinking was heavily influenced by the work of blut und boden ideologue Walther Darré whom Gardiner visited in Germany before the outbreak of World War Two. Gardiner also corresponded with Darré after 1945 hailing him as the inspiration for Britain's organic farming movement. Another key influence on Gardiner was Jorian Jenks, agricultural adviser to the British Union of Fascists. More here
A sad story of someone moving from the progressive green left to the far right, even to the extent of corresponding with Hitler's agriculture minister....so be careful when you met up with the 'nice' monetary reformers worried about banks, usury and debt free money!
Ofcourse debt free money does not equal fascism, neither does tree planting but when I plant a tree I don't ring up some National Front members for help, assuming this to be a shared interest....likewise monetary reformers should not have to network with the far right but sadly they do...and even more sadly I get a lot of flack from them for saying they should not.
For more back ground have a look at my article on ecofascism....in the form of people like Alistair Mcconnachie far right greens are still about today sadly.
Mcconnachie was even flagged up by green economists FEASTA, despite being kicked out of UKIP for holocaust denial!
Tuesday 3rd Oct 2006 2006- 19.30 - 21.30
Alistair McConnachie - "Stopping the Debt Driver - why reforming the way our money is created holds the key to halting unsustainable growth."
Alistair McConnachie has been involved in the field of Monetary Reform for the last 12 years. He is the Editor and Publisher of PROSPERITY: Freedom from Debt Slavery, which is a 4-page journal, based in Glasgow, and dedicated to reforming the money system and campaigning for publicly-created, debt-free money
Feasta details here
8 comments:
No-one in Feasta had any knowledge of McConnachie's objectionable attitudes when we asked him to give a lecture on monetary reform. I asked Davie Philip, the organiser of the course, whether he had picked up any unpleasant vibes during the event. Davie wrote:
"No I did not pick up any fascist tendencies or smell a far right connection in his lecture. He came across as a pleasant young man passionate about money reform. His presentation was very basic."
Thanks Derek..didn't know that about John Eliot Gardiner's father. (To be honest, I suspect that many of my fellow music-lovers may not be all that interested....) This is the sort of thing that shows how urgently we need a Green Left movement, to combat the 'Blut und Boden' tendency!
In this context, about 2 yrs. ago, also in the Observer, there was an article by a journalist who infiltrated the BNP, and one of its members said that he had 'left the Green Party because it was feminist and multi-cultural'.
So, a sort of unsolicited tribute to the Green party!
the link to 'ecofascism' doesn't work....!!
the link works now!
Good to see people are keeping on top of this.
Monetary reform has been the perfect wedge, for a century, for the far right to recruit from the left. As the idea is completely without merit, this recruitment seems to be its only purpose.
In my time in the Green Pary, any discussion of economic policy was poisoned by monetary reform and therefore near impossible to conduct.
Thanks - just printed out the article on ecofascism, not a cheery story....!
...so be careful when you met up with the 'nice' monetary reformers worried about banks, usury and debt free money!
Look at the BNP's current economic policy. It's mostly Old Labour social democratic mixed economy stuff. Does that mean people who espouse social democratic economics are lurching towards the BNP? Of course not.
Marxists get mad when anyone says that their strident criticism of Israel is hidden anti-semitism but they're happy to use the same weasily trick to ideologically cleanse discussion of debt-money from green economics.
Marxists have been anti-semitic. Even Karl himself wrote anti-semitic words. Let's move on and call all forms of racism a cancer rather than try and discredit opponents by trying to unearth imaginary racism or, worse, the beliefs of their parents to pile on guilt by association. That's just grubby...
On the contrary, it's a question of being explicit about what you do and don't support. Marxists have generally been very explicit indeed about denying any support for anti-semitism; the fact that their enemies don't always take their denials at face value doesn't diminish the fact that they do deny it. Any discussion of Social Credit, to pick a not very random example, needs to be prefaced by disowning the far-right associations of the historical Social Credit movement, in just the same way that anti-Zionists routinely restate their opposition to anti-semitism.
Some wouldbe radical Greens give the impression of wandering into an ideological minefield without any suspicion that their professions of good faith might not be enough to get them out again unscathed.
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