Labour Affairs Magazine

D) Nazism and the Guilt of Upper London

gwydionwilliams
3–5 minutes

People talk about British guilt for the rise of Nazism. Or else they deny it, and stress what Britain did to defeat the Nazis.

I want to refine this discussion. Add a new term, Upper London, to make it clear that there was a solid political block than included most MPs, newspaper owners and the independent rich. These people have never been out of power, though from the 1940s till the 1980s they conceded much. Conceded things that are now declared ruinous or impossible, for as long as the Soviet Union was seen as a serious threat.

It is not the same as the idea of a deep state. The senior levels of police and military and civil service are in tune with it, but the core of the power lies with the independent rich.

It is also nothing to do with a corporation called Upper London, an advisory service that I found when I googled. I know nothing about them, but I assume they are just another consultancy. Not important enough to have a Wikipedia entry.

Anyway, here are a selection of relevant articles. Most of them speak of ‘Britain’ as guilty, because I only recently developed the idea of Upper London as a distinct entity. Or maybe one should say that I found a clear name for something I had always been aware of.

Also taking a distinct view of what Nazism was:

There is also the matter of who caused World War One. We in the Ernest Bevin Society have long argued that it was the British Establishment that planned to lure Germany into a great war that would destroy it as a trade rival.

Also that Britain had not been a leading force for parliamentary democracy, as is now claimed. Parliament gained power early, but democratizing it took a long time. Incomplete even for the British Isles till the 1920s. Never seriously considered for the British Empire.