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AH Run-downs, summaries and general gubbins

Well that looks a bit crazypants, I'm interested.

I wondered what a British version of a Belgian style scenario would look like but rather than the home nations j thought I'd go full heptarchy. Then applied it to my half finished "Angland" universe. Which diverges in about 560 with Catholicism mostly failing in England and going from there.
 
Ooh, that's diverging in the deeeep past, ok. Ambitious to bring it up to the present day!

the original TL got from the 6th to 10th centuries. I had a bunch of notes and ideas of what I wanted the second millenium go to like with a much more seperate Angland, removed from Europe by church. They have a very different and smaller Imperial phase. The reformation also goes differently in Europe with most protestants fleeing to the new world but I'm not quite up to writing 1500-odd years of TL.

the original concept was "What if Britain was more like Japan" but became a thing unto itself.
 
Welcome back to @Izucrisis's Incredible Internationales Iexhibition, once again here to delight and dazzle the posters of ElectionBetting.co.au while I procrastinate on my thesis. First things first, you may notice a change in format. That's right, I've moved the previous entries to my sig instead of posting them at the top, which considering the chaos of doing the Third (goddamn you PKH for finally splitting just after I finished my post on the South-east Asian parties) was a long time coming.

Luckily for sad people, we're now out of a long stretch of functioning and relevant Internationales, and we can settle in for a good stretch of irrelevant oddballs with outsized egos from here...but we gotta cover this luverly bunch first. Sigh.

Member Parties of the Fifth Internationale (The Parisian One)

Defined in opposition to both the Worker Pluralism of the Third Internationale, and the more orthodox Leninism of the Fourth, the first of the Fifth Internationales perhaps should have received a different name, considering its opposition to internationalist ideals. Nevertheless, it remains an Internationale, and so I'm bound to cover it. As much as I wish I wasn't.

You can't really talk about this Fifth Internationale without talking about the Popular Rally of France. Marcel Déat's hissy fit over the Third Internationale's 1928 affirmation of the necessity of soviets (and also probably over letting the Labour Zionists join), and his subsequent walkout from the SFIO was what started the whole sorry enterprise.

Déat's main political theory was called "neosocialism", which despite initially seeming much more moderate than regular socialism with its talk of "revolution from above", was far more hostile to democracy (hence the walkout). He was weirdly schizo about the whole thing, though, considering how he lent on Marianne and other forms of republican symbolism, as opposed to most of the French far-right who were still jerking it to the Sun King. As for economics, it's a little unclear; he claimed to be 'socialist' because he still wanted a system of (technocratic) economic planning, but directly disavowed class conflict and worker's self-government in favour of "class collaboration", which in practice worked out to mean "the boss still treats you like shit but he pinky promises not to". On the social front...yeah, you all know this bit already.


Unfortunately to everyone in Europe, we got to see how this awful mess worked out in practice. I won't bother going over every last little detail--propping up de la Rocque, the Reclaim Alsace speech, the chaos after Déat's little friends in La Cagoule faked a communist attack[1]--but by 1936, Déat and his national revolution were in the French driving seat, and ready to avenge over 20 years of hurt by aiming his new war machine at Germany. And Spain. And Britain. And everyone else around. And also most of the people in his own country. Four years and several million deaths later, someone caught the Marshal hiding in the back of a train to Turin, and the Popular Rally's only major thinker was deservedly executed for his crimes against humanity. The party itself was banned by the Fourth Republic.

I'm doing the Union of Belgian Labourers and the Councils of the Neosocialist Offensive at once like this because from a theoretical and practical perspective, they were both mini-me's of the Rally. Sure, there were a few differences between them. The JoN's political history made it act more similarly to the Italian chunk of the Parisian Internationale, with their attempts at union outreach, and de Man's work on what he called planisme gives him a legitimate case that he was doing neosocialism before it was cool. On the other hand, at the end of the day they worked out quite similar in practice because they were both being propped up by French guns and so their only possible response to Paris saying "Jump" was "how high?". It turns out selling out your country doesn't give you the best platform to explain your personal take on socialism. Shocker.

This is in contrast to the
German National Worker's Party who might have got a chance to be powerless puppets of the Rally if the July Offensive had worked out a bit better, but very much had their own thing going on before that. Technically older than the Rally if you count the bit when they were called something else, the party and its leader Eric Niekisch also had a more complex ideological justification for their bullshit. The bourgeoisie act as the enemy of nationalism because of their internationalism and dabbling in the financial markets [2], so a proletarian revolution is the only hope to form a nationalist state, end the docility of liberal European values, and restore the Prussian-Spartan spirit of hard labour and iron discipline. What, better working conditions? Are you a liberal? Ironically, Niekisch's life would only become harsh and Spartan once he got imprisoned for sympathising with France when the Revanchist War broke out, and without him the Party collapsed. RIP.

Another party that predated the Paris Declaration, the
League of Proletarian Fascisti were, as the name somewhat suggests, working from a similar theoretical basis to the JoN, having taken Maurras' idea of "what if syndicalism but racist" and ran with it.

Edmondo Rossoni, the founder, started as an actual no-shit IWW member, who even helped Haywood flee to the Soviet Union and stalled the police while he packed in the upstairs of the Proletario offices. According to him, though, the anti-Italian discrimination he experienced in New York from other comrades would cause him to reject internationalism, and when he returned to Italy he altered his ideas accordingly. Unlike most of the other parties here, though, he kept with a recognisably left-wing economic policy. Déat is even on record condemning him for "overambitious revolutionary doctrines that throttle national productivity" like *checks notes* a minimum wage. I mean, we all know he was a hypocrite, but it's still a little surprising to see the Maintainer of National Solidarity using the same arguments as our PM, noted socialist radical Campbell Newman.

In case you're starting to think he sounds hopped and/or red-mirrored, he also advocated Italian control of most of the Adriatic coast (claiming that the nation would already possess this if they'd taken part in the Great War [3]), and colonising most of North Africa and using the resources to enrich Italy, which as a "proletarian nation" that had been oppressed by the plutocratic ones needed building up. The irony here seems to have been lost on him. There was also the usual Sorelian bull about violence as the engine of history iron fists of revolution thrusting as one bloodshed makes me hard yadda yadda, which got him into a little trouble when he tried to marshal his followers into a mob to march on Rome in 1941. The military put down the protest with extreme prejudice, Rossoni himself being killed while "resisting arrest", and the party was banned as part of Victor Emmanuel's ascension to direct rule. A few of the survivors kept a sad little Continuity League going in Paris before the Germans shot them all.

Somehow the odd one out in an Internationale of odd ones out, the International Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist-Bordigist), again as the name suggests, were working from a far more orthodox approach to Communism than anyone else in the locality. I already did Bordiga's split from the PCI in the first Fourth Internationale post--popular front bad armchair good yadda yadda--so you're probably wondering how we got here from there. Well, the problem was that the OG Fourth Internationale wouldn't let him back in, and he couldn't form his own because Bordiga was in general impossible to work with. Why the Fifth? Well, rejecting elections and being completely unable to do armed rebellion drives the mind to strange places. Bordiga's latest and greatest Armchair Brainwave (as of 1938) was that Déat was going to overthrow capitalism and then collapse[4], achieving the greatest of Bordigist dreams--a revolution where they had to do absolutely nothing!

In practice, joining the Fifth Internationale meant absolutely nothing for these guys, because they refused to actually work with the rest of the organisation unless the League of Proletarian Fascisti were disaffiliated for *spit* having a revisionist ideological basis. Since the League actually had money and influence, and more importantly were more similar to the Rally, this was met with "lol no mate", so they left immediately. Ironically, this then led to Bordigist militias fighting League redshirts during Iron April...alongside the Popular Front they split from. I hate Italy so much it's unreal.

Anyway after 1944 the ICP claimed they'd never supported the Fifth Internationale at all, and in fact had never so much as heard of this "Paris", and even if that were so they'd done nothing wrong other than enjoying a succulent lasagne, thus avoiding being banned any more so than any of the other Communist parties were banned. Probably less so, given how they kept shopping Communists they disagreed with to the Carabinieri [5].

The story behind the
Comrades of the Silver Badge is pretty convoluted. The party started out as the National Association of Discharged Soldiers, a group intended to safeguard the interests of British veterans of the Great War, who in the 1915 election backed a bunch of Labour and other independent candidates, nicknamed after the silver pin demobbed soldiers received. The fallout from the HMS Centurion mutiny ended up splitting the group, with the right-wingers who wanted the "Sailors and Workers Council" shot or at least discharged leaving[6]. Ironically, it was the left-wing bit that ended up more right-wing overall, because of Infantryman John Beckett's (discharged for heart trouble, but don't mention that) holiday to Belgium. After deciding that planisme and by extension neosocialism was the wave of the future, Beckett went home and, since the rump NADS (ooo-er matron!) consisted of three men and a dog, had no trouble changing course.

Despite being ostensibly still just a veteran's rights movement, the new Comrades' main policy would be one supported by basically no former soldiers--going back to war again, this time on France's side. Well, they were on France's side for some of the war, just--you know what I mean. Anyway the actual proper British far-right were concentrated around various smoking clubs filled with men with more weird racial subcategories than chins, so the reformed Silver Badge failed to find any money and wound down by the Forties after losing a frankly improbable number of deposits. Beckett went on to write a contrafact novel about a reality where Déat embraced Popular Credit and conquered the world, so I'm sure @SortEng will get in touch with his estate very soon w/r/t publication.

Somehow this wasn't as sad as the
Union of Young Russia, whose combination of socialism and monarchism managed to throw simping into an already pathetic ideology. I'm not speaking ironically here, they sent so many letters to Olga Romanov her secretary built a bonfire with them. As you can imagine, their Glorious Protector of the Russian People not wanting to get within five feet of you was somewhat of a blow to the movement, given that the Tsar as infallible manifestation of the revolutionary will was sort of their whole thing. They did put up a decent showing at the 1932 Soviet elections, and even managed to attract some opposition from Kollontai. Specifically, a speech (more aimed at the Nardoniks, but it did mention them) about being dinosaurs left behind by history. While her loss did lead to them making a few funny posters and even a song [7], it kind of turns out she was right--by the time the Soviets joined the Anti-Revanchist War, there weren't even enough of them left to ban.

There were technically a few other major parties that were included. Most notably, the
All-India Forward Bloc of Subhas Chandra Bose had a brief flirtation with them after being kicked out of the original Fourth Internationale (posts passim). It got quite affectionate on both sides, with Déat posing for photos with the Netaji and praising his rebuilding of Kolkata, and Bose crediting the Marshal with being a light of decolonisation, something that was probably news to the inhabitants of Algeria. Of course, this Internationale's whole thing was racism, so even if Bose's developmentalist centralism kind of lined up with their ideas, France's promised military support against the other Indian states never materialised. Bose got his own back by doing the diplomatic equivalent of pretending his phone was out of battery when Déat asked him for military support.

Finally, the most doubtfully included of any party on this list, the
Labour Party of Ireland! No really. You see, despite being a regular-ass social democratic party, Ireland's deep Catholicism and the party's more workerist stance meant that a significant element of the party were cheering on the Kingdom of Spain during their civil war against the atheistic People's Republic. The pro-Nationalist faction managed to get supporting the Kingdom through as party policy because most of the rest of the party were scared of being accused of Communism, and since at this time Paris was desperately fishing for allies they sent a very ambiguously-worded letter to Irish Labour asking for their support for all Catholic workers against the Red Menace. Unsurprisingly, since they weren't crazy people, Labour didn't do much in their new club, but we did get a hilariously awkward photo of William Norton shaking hands with Déat and slowly realising that he's on the baddies' side.

There were of course other minor members, but I don't really feel like trawling through a bunch of ancient newspaper scans to track down the unique Swiss form of What if Leninism but Racist, so we're ending the post here for tonight lads. It's fascinating how, despite representing a theoretically vast body of opinion and recurring time and again throughout European politics, this form of centralised racist socialism never really took off, always weighed down by the theoretical baggage created to hide its own internal contradictions. It could certainly do some damage, but in the end it always petered out from chugging its own fumes.

----------------

[1] Yes it was a fake attack, Deloncle literally went to that steelworks a week before and its owner was a massive donor to Déat. I'm not having this argument again @Hosslin, but if you want another kick? Shoot your shot.

[2] It's weird how many of these people don't want to just say "Jews". There's really no need to dress it up like this, guys. We all know.

[3] [Self-promotion voice] Something which doesn't happen in @Anders68's excellent TL Triple Ententes and Three Emperors, updating weekly on our beloved sister site WargameJournalling.co.au, expertly moderated by (among others) myself! [/Self-promotion voice]

[4] The weird "revolutionary foreign-policy" blog I found described this as coming from "the Kong-vs-Hundun school of international relations". I was tempted to steal that for this review, but the background was so janky I'm genuinely concerned the site put a hidden curse on me.

[5] Amadeo Bordiga Will Return, in...The Revitalised Fourth Internationale (available in forum posts Probably Some Time In April Maybe)

[6] I don't have to cover what happened to the rest because, thank kami, none of them joined an Internationale! If you're lucky maybe @Angry Mayo will find a low-quality library scan of their manifesto and/or the autobiography of the guy who did the tea at their meetings, and he'll somehow wring fifty thousand words of quality content out of it.

[7] Some mad fashy Soviet motherfucker managed to upload a recording of Who Must Go, Kollontai? and it's actually kind of a bop. If your interested, the link is
here.
 
Welcome back to @Izucrisis's Incredible Internationales Iexhibition, once again here to delight and dazzle the posters of ElectionBetting.co.au while I procrastinate on my thesis. First things first, you may notice a change in format. That's right, I've moved the previous entries to my sig instead of posting them at the top, which considering the chaos of doing the Third (goddamn you PKH for finally splitting just after I finished my post on the South-east Asian parties) was a long time coming.

Luckily for sad people, we're now out of a long stretch of functioning and relevant Internationales, and we can settle in for a good stretch of irrelevant oddballs with outsized egos from here...but we gotta cover this luverly bunch first. Sigh.

Member Parties of the Fifth Internationale (The Parisian One)

Defined in opposition to both the Worker Pluralism of the Third Internationale, and the more orthodox Leninism of the Fourth, the first of the Fifth Internationales perhaps should have received a different name, considering its opposition to internationalist ideals. Nevertheless, it remains an Internationale, and so I'm bound to cover it. As much as I wish I wasn't.

You can't really talk about this Fifth Internationale without talking about the Popular Rally of France. Marcel Déat's hissy fit over the Third Internationale's 1928 affirmation of the necessity of soviets (and also probably over letting the Labour Zionists join), and his subsequent walkout from the SFIO was what started the whole sorry enterprise.

Déat's main political theory was called "neosocialism", which despite initially seeming much more moderate than regular socialism with its talk of "revolution from above", was far more hostile to democracy (hence the walkout). He was weirdly schizo about the whole thing, though, considering how he lent on Marianne and other forms of republican symbolism, as opposed to most of the French far-right who were still jerking it to the Sun King. As for economics, it's a little unclear; he claimed to be 'socialist' because he still wanted a system of (technocratic) economic planning, but directly disavowed class conflict and worker's self-government in favour of "class collaboration", which in practice worked out to mean "the boss still treats you like shit but he pinky promises not to". On the social front...yeah, you all know this bit already.


Unfortunately to everyone in Europe, we got to see how this awful mess worked out in practice. I won't bother going over every last little detail--propping up de la Rocque, the Reclaim Alsace speech, the chaos after Déat's little friends in La Cagoule faked a communist attack[1]--but by 1936, Déat and his national revolution were in the French driving seat, and ready to avenge over 20 years of hurt by aiming his new war machine at Germany. And Spain. And Britain. And everyone else around. And also most of the people in his own country. Four years and several million deaths later, someone caught the Marshal hiding in the back of a train to Turin, and the Popular Rally's only major thinker was deservedly executed for his crimes against humanity. The party itself was banned by the Fourth Republic.

I'm doing the Union of Belgian Labourers and the Councils of the Neosocialist Offensive at once like this because from a theoretical and practical perspective, they were both mini-me's of the Rally. Sure, there were a few differences between them. The JoN's political history made it act more similarly to the Italian chunk of the Parisian Internationale, with their attempts at union outreach, and de Man's work on what he called planisme gives him a legitimate case that he was doing neosocialism before it was cool. On the other hand, at the end of the day they worked out quite similar in practice because they were both being propped up by French guns and so their only possible response to Paris saying "Jump" was "how high?". It turns out selling out your country doesn't give you the best platform to explain your personal take on socialism. Shocker.

This is in contrast to the
German National Worker's Party who might have got a chance to be powerless puppets of the Rally if the July Offensive had worked out a bit better, but very much had their own thing going on before that. Technically older than the Rally if you count the bit when they were called something else, the party and its leader Eric Niekisch also had a more complex ideological justification for their bullshit. The bourgeoisie act as the enemy of nationalism because of their internationalism and dabbling in the financial markets [2], so a proletarian revolution is the only hope to form a nationalist state, end the docility of liberal European values, and restore the Prussian-Spartan spirit of hard labour and iron discipline. What, better working conditions? Are you a liberal? Ironically, Niekisch's life would only become harsh and Spartan once he got imprisoned for sympathising with France when the Revanchist War broke out, and without him the Party collapsed. RIP.

Another party that predated the Paris Declaration, the
League of Proletarian Fascisti were, as the name somewhat suggests, working from a similar theoretical basis to the JoN, having taken Maurras' idea of "what if syndicalism but racist" and ran with it.

Edmondo Rossoni, the founder, started as an actual no-shit IWW member, who even helped Haywood flee to the Soviet Union and stalled the police while he packed in the upstairs of the Proletario offices. According to him, though, the anti-Italian discrimination he experienced in New York from other comrades would cause him to reject internationalism, and when he returned to Italy he altered his ideas accordingly. Unlike most of the other parties here, though, he kept with a recognisably left-wing economic policy. Déat is even on record condemning him for "overambitious revolutionary doctrines that throttle national productivity" like *checks notes* a minimum wage. I mean, we all know he was a hypocrite, but it's still a little surprising to see the Maintainer of National Solidarity using the same arguments as our PM, noted socialist radical Campbell Newman.

In case you're starting to think he sounds hopped and/or red-mirrored, he also advocated Italian control of most of the Adriatic coast (claiming that the nation would already possess this if they'd taken part in the Great War [3]), and colonising most of North Africa and using the resources to enrich Italy, which as a "proletarian nation" that had been oppressed by the plutocratic ones needed building up. The irony here seems to have been lost on him. There was also the usual Sorelian bull about violence as the engine of history iron fists of revolution thrusting as one bloodshed makes me hard yadda yadda, which got him into a little trouble when he tried to marshal his followers into a mob to march on Rome in 1941. The military put down the protest with extreme prejudice, Rossoni himself being killed while "resisting arrest", and the party was banned as part of Victor Emmanuel's ascension to direct rule. A few of the survivors kept a sad little Continuity League going in Paris before the Germans shot them all.

Somehow the odd one out in an Internationale of odd ones out, the International Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist-Bordigist), again as the name suggests, were working from a far more orthodox approach to Communism than anyone else in the locality. I already did Bordiga's split from the PCI in the first Fourth Internationale post--popular front bad armchair good yadda yadda--so you're probably wondering how we got here from there. Well, the problem was that the OG Fourth Internationale wouldn't let him back in, and he couldn't form his own because Bordiga was in general impossible to work with. Why the Fifth? Well, rejecting elections and being completely unable to do armed rebellion drives the mind to strange places. Bordiga's latest and greatest Armchair Brainwave (as of 1938) was that Déat was going to overthrow capitalism and then collapse[4], achieving the greatest of Bordigist dreams--a revolution where they had to do absolutely nothing!

In practice, joining the Fifth Internationale meant absolutely nothing for these guys, because they refused to actually work with the rest of the organisation unless the League of Proletarian Fascisti were disaffiliated for *spit* having a revisionist ideological basis. Since the League actually had money and influence, and more importantly were more similar to the Rally, this was met with "lol no mate", so they left immediately. Ironically, this then led to Bordigist militias fighting League redshirts during Iron April...alongside the Popular Front they split from. I hate Italy so much it's unreal.

Anyway after 1944 the ICP claimed they'd never supported the Fifth Internationale at all, and in fact had never so much as heard of this "Paris", and even if that were so they'd done nothing wrong other than enjoying a succulent lasagne, thus avoiding being banned any more so than any of the other Communist parties were banned. Probably less so, given how they kept shopping Communists they disagreed with to the Carabinieri [5].

The story behind the
Comrades of the Silver Badge is pretty convoluted. The party started out as the National Association of Discharged Soldiers, a group intended to safeguard the interests of British veterans of the Great War, who in the 1915 election backed a bunch of Labour and other independent candidates, nicknamed after the silver pin demobbed soldiers received. The fallout from the HMS Centurion mutiny ended up splitting the group, with the right-wingers who wanted the "Sailors and Workers Council" shot or at least discharged leaving[6]. Ironically, it was the left-wing bit that ended up more right-wing overall, because of Infantryman John Beckett's (discharged for heart trouble, but don't mention that) holiday to Belgium. After deciding that planisme and by extension neosocialism was the wave of the future, Beckett went home and, since the rump NADS (ooo-er matron!) consisted of three men and a dog, had no trouble changing course.

Despite being ostensibly still just a veteran's rights movement, the new Comrades' main policy would be one supported by basically no former soldiers--going back to war again, this time on France's side. Well, they were on France's side for some of the war, just--you know what I mean. Anyway the actual proper British far-right were concentrated around various smoking clubs filled with men with more weird racial subcategories than chins, so the reformed Silver Badge failed to find any money and wound down by the Forties after losing a frankly improbable number of deposits. Beckett went on to write a contrafact novel about a reality where Déat embraced Popular Credit and conquered the world, so I'm sure @SortEng will get in touch with his estate very soon w/r/t publication.

Somehow this wasn't as sad as the
Union of Young Russia, whose combination of socialism and monarchism managed to throw simping into an already pathetic ideology. I'm not speaking ironically here, they sent so many letters to Olga Romanov her secretary built a bonfire with them. As you can imagine, their Glorious Protector of the Russian People not wanting to get within five feet of you was somewhat of a blow to the movement, given that the Tsar as infallible manifestation of the revolutionary will was sort of their whole thing. They did put up a decent showing at the 1932 Soviet elections, and even managed to attract some opposition from Kollontai. Specifically, a speech (more aimed at the Nardoniks, but it did mention them) about being dinosaurs left behind by history. While her loss did lead to them making a few funny posters and even a song [7], it kind of turns out she was right--by the time the Soviets joined the Anti-Revanchist War, there weren't even enough of them left to ban.

There were technically a few other major parties that were included. Most notably, the
All-India Forward Bloc of Subhas Chandra Bose had a brief flirtation with them after being kicked out of the original Fourth Internationale (posts passim). It got quite affectionate on both sides, with Déat posing for photos with the Netaji and praising his rebuilding of Kolkata, and Bose crediting the Marshal with being a light of decolonisation, something that was probably news to the inhabitants of Algeria. Of course, this Internationale's whole thing was racism, so even if Bose's developmentalist centralism kind of lined up with their ideas, France's promised military support against the other Indian states never materialised. Bose got his own back by doing the diplomatic equivalent of pretending his phone was out of battery when Déat asked him for military support.

Finally, the most doubtfully included of any party on this list, the
Labour Party of Ireland! No really. You see, despite being a regular-ass social democratic party, Ireland's deep Catholicism and the party's more workerist stance meant that a significant element of the party were cheering on the Kingdom of Spain during their civil war against the atheistic People's Republic. The pro-Nationalist faction managed to get supporting the Kingdom through as party policy because most of the rest of the party were scared of being accused of Communism, and since at this time Paris was desperately fishing for allies they sent a very ambiguously-worded letter to Irish Labour asking for their support for all Catholic workers against the Red Menace. Unsurprisingly, since they weren't crazy people, Labour didn't do much in their new club, but we did get a hilariously awkward photo of William Norton shaking hands with Déat and slowly realising that he's on the baddies' side.

There were of course other minor members, but I don't really feel like trawling through a bunch of ancient newspaper scans to track down the unique Swiss form of What if Leninism but Racist, so we're ending the post here for tonight lads. It's fascinating how, despite representing a theoretically vast body of opinion and recurring time and again throughout European politics, this form of centralised racist socialism never really took off, always weighed down by the theoretical baggage created to hide its own internal contradictions. It could certainly do some damage, but in the end it always petered out from chugging its own fumes.

----------------

[1] Yes it was a fake attack, Deloncle literally went to that steelworks a week before and its owner was a massive donor to Déat. I'm not having this argument again @Hosslin, but if you want another kick? Shoot your shot.

[2] It's weird how many of these people don't want to just say "Jews". There's really no need to dress it up like this, guys. We all know.

[3] [Self-promotion voice] Something which doesn't happen in @Anders68's excellent TL Triple Ententes and Three Emperors, updating weekly on our beloved sister site WargameJournalling.co.au, expertly moderated by (among others) myself! [/Self-promotion voice]

[4] The weird "revolutionary foreign-policy" blog I found described this as coming from "the Kong-vs-Hundun school of international relations". I was tempted to steal that for this review, but the background was so janky I'm genuinely concerned the site put a hidden curse on me.

[5] Amadeo Bordiga Will Return, in...The Revitalised Fourth Internationale (available in forum posts Probably Some Time In April Maybe)

[6] I don't have to cover what happened to the rest because, thank kami, none of them joined an Internationale! If you're lucky maybe @Angry Mayo will find a low-quality library scan of their manifesto and/or the autobiography of the guy who did the tea at their meetings, and he'll somehow wring fifty thousand words of quality content out of it.

[7] Some mad fashy Soviet motherfucker managed to upload a recording of Who Must Go, Kollontai? and it's actually kind of a bop. If your interested, the link is
here.

[EVERYONE IN PSD LIKES THIS AND WISHES S&D WAS MORE LIKE THESE FINE FELLOWS]

Great stuff.
 
Welcome back to @Izucrisis's Incredible Internationales Iexhibition, once again here to delight and dazzle the posters of ElectionBetting.co.au while I procrastinate on my thesis. First things first, you may notice a change in format. That's right, I've moved the previous entries to my sig instead of posting them at the top, which considering the chaos of doing the Third (goddamn you PKH for finally splitting just after I finished my post on the South-east Asian parties) was a long time coming.

Luckily for sad people, we're now out of a long stretch of functioning and relevant Internationales, and we can settle in for a good stretch of irrelevant oddballs with outsized egos from here...but we gotta cover this luverly bunch first. Sigh.

Member Parties of the Fifth Internationale (The Parisian One)

Defined in opposition to both the Worker Pluralism of the Third Internationale, and the more orthodox Leninism of the Fourth, the first of the Fifth Internationales perhaps should have received a different name, considering its opposition to internationalist ideals. Nevertheless, it remains an Internationale, and so I'm bound to cover it. As much as I wish I wasn't.

You can't really talk about this Fifth Internationale without talking about the Popular Rally of France. Marcel Déat's hissy fit over the Third Internationale's 1928 affirmation of the necessity of soviets (and also probably over letting the Labour Zionists join), and his subsequent walkout from the SFIO was what started the whole sorry enterprise.

Déat's main political theory was called "neosocialism", which despite initially seeming much more moderate than regular socialism with its talk of "revolution from above", was far more hostile to democracy (hence the walkout). He was weirdly schizo about the whole thing, though, considering how he lent on Marianne and other forms of republican symbolism, as opposed to most of the French far-right who were still jerking it to the Sun King. As for economics, it's a little unclear; he claimed to be 'socialist' because he still wanted a system of (technocratic) economic planning, but directly disavowed class conflict and worker's self-government in favour of "class collaboration", which in practice worked out to mean "the boss still treats you like shit but he pinky promises not to". On the social front...yeah, you all know this bit already.


Unfortunately to everyone in Europe, we got to see how this awful mess worked out in practice. I won't bother going over every last little detail--propping up de la Rocque, the Reclaim Alsace speech, the chaos after Déat's little friends in La Cagoule faked a communist attack[1]--but by 1936, Déat and his national revolution were in the French driving seat, and ready to avenge over 20 years of hurt by aiming his new war machine at Germany. And Spain. And Britain. And everyone else around. And also most of the people in his own country. Four years and several million deaths later, someone caught the Marshal hiding in the back of a train to Turin, and the Popular Rally's only major thinker was deservedly executed for his crimes against humanity. The party itself was banned by the Fourth Republic.

I'm doing the Union of Belgian Labourers and the Councils of the Neosocialist Offensive at once like this because from a theoretical and practical perspective, they were both mini-me's of the Rally. Sure, there were a few differences between them. The JoN's political history made it act more similarly to the Italian chunk of the Parisian Internationale, with their attempts at union outreach, and de Man's work on what he called planisme gives him a legitimate case that he was doing neosocialism before it was cool. On the other hand, at the end of the day they worked out quite similar in practice because they were both being propped up by French guns and so their only possible response to Paris saying "Jump" was "how high?". It turns out selling out your country doesn't give you the best platform to explain your personal take on socialism. Shocker.

This is in contrast to the
German National Worker's Party who might have got a chance to be powerless puppets of the Rally if the July Offensive had worked out a bit better, but very much had their own thing going on before that. Technically older than the Rally if you count the bit when they were called something else, the party and its leader Eric Niekisch also had a more complex ideological justification for their bullshit. The bourgeoisie act as the enemy of nationalism because of their internationalism and dabbling in the financial markets [2], so a proletarian revolution is the only hope to form a nationalist state, end the docility of liberal European values, and restore the Prussian-Spartan spirit of hard labour and iron discipline. What, better working conditions? Are you a liberal? Ironically, Niekisch's life would only become harsh and Spartan once he got imprisoned for sympathising with France when the Revanchist War broke out, and without him the Party collapsed. RIP.

Another party that predated the Paris Declaration, the
League of Proletarian Fascisti were, as the name somewhat suggests, working from a similar theoretical basis to the JoN, having taken Maurras' idea of "what if syndicalism but racist" and ran with it.

Edmondo Rossoni, the founder, started as an actual no-shit IWW member, who even helped Haywood flee to the Soviet Union and stalled the police while he packed in the upstairs of the Proletario offices. According to him, though, the anti-Italian discrimination he experienced in New York from other comrades would cause him to reject internationalism, and when he returned to Italy he altered his ideas accordingly. Unlike most of the other parties here, though, he kept with a recognisably left-wing economic policy. Déat is even on record condemning him for "overambitious revolutionary doctrines that throttle national productivity" like *checks notes* a minimum wage. I mean, we all know he was a hypocrite, but it's still a little surprising to see the Maintainer of National Solidarity using the same arguments as our PM, noted socialist radical Campbell Newman.

In case you're starting to think he sounds hopped and/or red-mirrored, he also advocated Italian control of most of the Adriatic coast (claiming that the nation would already possess this if they'd taken part in the Great War [3]), and colonising most of North Africa and using the resources to enrich Italy, which as a "proletarian nation" that had been oppressed by the plutocratic ones needed building up. The irony here seems to have been lost on him. There was also the usual Sorelian bull about violence as the engine of history iron fists of revolution thrusting as one bloodshed makes me hard yadda yadda, which got him into a little trouble when he tried to marshal his followers into a mob to march on Rome in 1941. The military put down the protest with extreme prejudice, Rossoni himself being killed while "resisting arrest", and the party was banned as part of Victor Emmanuel's ascension to direct rule. A few of the survivors kept a sad little Continuity League going in Paris before the Germans shot them all.

Somehow the odd one out in an Internationale of odd ones out, the International Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist-Bordigist), again as the name suggests, were working from a far more orthodox approach to Communism than anyone else in the locality. I already did Bordiga's split from the PCI in the first Fourth Internationale post--popular front bad armchair good yadda yadda--so you're probably wondering how we got here from there. Well, the problem was that the OG Fourth Internationale wouldn't let him back in, and he couldn't form his own because Bordiga was in general impossible to work with. Why the Fifth? Well, rejecting elections and being completely unable to do armed rebellion drives the mind to strange places. Bordiga's latest and greatest Armchair Brainwave (as of 1938) was that Déat was going to overthrow capitalism and then collapse[4], achieving the greatest of Bordigist dreams--a revolution where they had to do absolutely nothing!

In practice, joining the Fifth Internationale meant absolutely nothing for these guys, because they refused to actually work with the rest of the organisation unless the League of Proletarian Fascisti were disaffiliated for *spit* having a revisionist ideological basis. Since the League actually had money and influence, and more importantly were more similar to the Rally, this was met with "lol no mate", so they left immediately. Ironically, this then led to Bordigist militias fighting League redshirts during Iron April...alongside the Popular Front they split from. I hate Italy so much it's unreal.

Anyway after 1944 the ICP claimed they'd never supported the Fifth Internationale at all, and in fact had never so much as heard of this "Paris", and even if that were so they'd done nothing wrong other than enjoying a succulent lasagne, thus avoiding being banned any more so than any of the other Communist parties were banned. Probably less so, given how they kept shopping Communists they disagreed with to the Carabinieri [5].

The story behind the
Comrades of the Silver Badge is pretty convoluted. The party started out as the National Association of Discharged Soldiers, a group intended to safeguard the interests of British veterans of the Great War, who in the 1915 election backed a bunch of Labour and other independent candidates, nicknamed after the silver pin demobbed soldiers received. The fallout from the HMS Centurion mutiny ended up splitting the group, with the right-wingers who wanted the "Sailors and Workers Council" shot or at least discharged leaving[6]. Ironically, it was the left-wing bit that ended up more right-wing overall, because of Infantryman John Beckett's (discharged for heart trouble, but don't mention that) holiday to Belgium. After deciding that planisme and by extension neosocialism was the wave of the future, Beckett went home and, since the rump NADS (ooo-er matron!) consisted of three men and a dog, had no trouble changing course.

Despite being ostensibly still just a veteran's rights movement, the new Comrades' main policy would be one supported by basically no former soldiers--going back to war again, this time on France's side. Well, they were on France's side for some of the war, just--you know what I mean. Anyway the actual proper British far-right were concentrated around various smoking clubs filled with men with more weird racial subcategories than chins, so the reformed Silver Badge failed to find any money and wound down by the Forties after losing a frankly improbable number of deposits. Beckett went on to write a contrafact novel about a reality where Déat embraced Popular Credit and conquered the world, so I'm sure @SortEng will get in touch with his estate very soon w/r/t publication.

Somehow this wasn't as sad as the
Union of Young Russia, whose combination of socialism and monarchism managed to throw simping into an already pathetic ideology. I'm not speaking ironically here, they sent so many letters to Olga Romanov her secretary built a bonfire with them. As you can imagine, their Glorious Protector of the Russian People not wanting to get within five feet of you was somewhat of a blow to the movement, given that the Tsar as infallible manifestation of the revolutionary will was sort of their whole thing. They did put up a decent showing at the 1932 Soviet elections, and even managed to attract some opposition from Kollontai. Specifically, a speech (more aimed at the Nardoniks, but it did mention them) about being dinosaurs left behind by history. While her loss did lead to them making a few funny posters and even a song [7], it kind of turns out she was right--by the time the Soviets joined the Anti-Revanchist War, there weren't even enough of them left to ban.

There were technically a few other major parties that were included. Most notably, the
All-India Forward Bloc of Subhas Chandra Bose had a brief flirtation with them after being kicked out of the original Fourth Internationale (posts passim). It got quite affectionate on both sides, with Déat posing for photos with the Netaji and praising his rebuilding of Kolkata, and Bose crediting the Marshal with being a light of decolonisation, something that was probably news to the inhabitants of Algeria. Of course, this Internationale's whole thing was racism, so even if Bose's developmentalist centralism kind of lined up with their ideas, France's promised military support against the other Indian states never materialised. Bose got his own back by doing the diplomatic equivalent of pretending his phone was out of battery when Déat asked him for military support.

Finally, the most doubtfully included of any party on this list, the
Labour Party of Ireland! No really. You see, despite being a regular-ass social democratic party, Ireland's deep Catholicism and the party's more workerist stance meant that a significant element of the party were cheering on the Kingdom of Spain during their civil war against the atheistic People's Republic. The pro-Nationalist faction managed to get supporting the Kingdom through as party policy because most of the rest of the party were scared of being accused of Communism, and since at this time Paris was desperately fishing for allies they sent a very ambiguously-worded letter to Irish Labour asking for their support for all Catholic workers against the Red Menace. Unsurprisingly, since they weren't crazy people, Labour didn't do much in their new club, but we did get a hilariously awkward photo of William Norton shaking hands with Déat and slowly realising that he's on the baddies' side.

There were of course other minor members, but I don't really feel like trawling through a bunch of ancient newspaper scans to track down the unique Swiss form of What if Leninism but Racist, so we're ending the post here for tonight lads. It's fascinating how, despite representing a theoretically vast body of opinion and recurring time and again throughout European politics, this form of centralised racist socialism never really took off, always weighed down by the theoretical baggage created to hide its own internal contradictions. It could certainly do some damage, but in the end it always petered out from chugging its own fumes.

----------------

[1] Yes it was a fake attack, Deloncle literally went to that steelworks a week before and its owner was a massive donor to Déat. I'm not having this argument again @Hosslin, but if you want another kick? Shoot your shot.

[2] It's weird how many of these people don't want to just say "Jews". There's really no need to dress it up like this, guys. We all know.

[3] [Self-promotion voice] Something which doesn't happen in @Anders68's excellent TL Triple Ententes and Three Emperors, updating weekly on our beloved sister site WargameJournalling.co.au, expertly moderated by (among others) myself! [/Self-promotion voice]

[4] The weird "revolutionary foreign-policy" blog I found described this as coming from "the Kong-vs-Hundun school of international relations". I was tempted to steal that for this review, but the background was so janky I'm genuinely concerned the site put a hidden curse on me.

[5] Amadeo Bordiga Will Return, in...The Revitalised Fourth Internationale (available in forum posts Probably Some Time In April Maybe)

[6] I don't have to cover what happened to the rest because, thank kami, none of them joined an Internationale! If you're lucky maybe @Angry Mayo will find a low-quality library scan of their manifesto and/or the autobiography of the guy who did the tea at their meetings, and he'll somehow wring fifty thousand words of quality content out of it.

[7] Some mad fashy Soviet motherfucker managed to upload a recording of Who Must Go, Kollontai? and it's actually kind of a bop. If your interested, the link is
here.
I am absolutely jealous of your ability to build a world.
 
[EVERYONE IN PSD LIKES THIS AND WISHES S&D WAS MORE LIKE THESE FINE FELLOWS]

If the original gets 50 likes I'll do a sequel where the Revitalised Fifth Internationale is just two of those Romanian parties and George Galloway. I swear it solemnly.

I am absolutely jealous of your ability to build a world.

That's really lovely of you to say cikka, but like 50% of the reason I made this was to sneak in that TNO meme. Please do not take me as a role model.

Sickosyes.jpeg before I even click

I mean, what else could I have put, Bolt? I'm not made of stone here.

My favourite name of all of these is Comrades of the Silver Badge, for not thinking Pin is cool sounding enough

The OTL group this is loosely descended from were called Silver Badge as well, and to be fair it is a legit badge:
1637446654652.png
Like, you wouldn't look at that and call it a pin.
 
Factions of the American Interconstitutional Era in the Far South:

Texarkana Clique:
Descended from the forces of General Robert Howze in the Civil War, they refused to recognize the San Francisco, St. Louis, or Philadelphia Constitutions, and instead began to align themselves with the Rio Bravo Confederation. This alignment eventually came in handy following Arkansas and Louisiana falling to the Red Mississippians, when the rump Clique joined the Rio Bravo. Governor Ferguson’s critics said it was because he felt more at home in such a personality-driven nation, but the reality was their forces were the key to maintaining the State’s territorial integrity.
  • State of Texas (Houston)
  • State of Arkansas (Hot Springs)
  • State of Louisiana (Shreveport)
Second Republic of Texas: A short-lived attempt to reestablish an Independent Texas centered on the state capital of Austin, it collapsed in the face of a combined Texarkana-Rio Bravo offensive.

National American Indian Union: During the Civil War, the NAIU was created in Tahlequah as a unified front of the Indigenous peoples who opposed the Junta (which was almost every major Nation.) They enjoyed the loyalties of most of the major reservations in Sequoyah as well as throughout the Midwest. A narrow vote in 1922 saw the vast majority of NAIU Signatory nations join the Plains Republic, with an unprecedented autonomy granted including a Native Legislature.

El Paso Clique: The only major Unionist Force West of the Mississippi, the El Paso Clique was alone in a sea of hostile governments. Collapsed following a series of internecine power struggles following the fall of Tweed City to the Chihuahua Branch of the FAN, with Rio Bravo picking up the pieces and admitting the remnants.
  • State of Seward
  • State of Comanche
Rio Bravo Confederation: The Confederation has its origins in a short-lived insurgency against the government of Santa Anna in 1840. Although the initial ‘Republic’ was quickly defeated by the Mexican government, it was reborn by force of American Arms during the Mexican-American War. It spent the next 60 years as an American puppet, except for a brief stint aligned with the Southron Republic. However, during the Nullification Crisis of 1909 that preceded the Civil War, the Confederation sided with the Coalition and eventually came to own most of the Far South.

Free Army of the North: The FAN is merely another entry in a long line of rebels in the region, although, unlike Cortina and Garza, were not crushed, being funded by the Confederation as well as the Mexican Government. While the Chihuahua Branch was successful beyond their wildest dreams, the Sonora was less lucky, although they did eventually manage to get some concessions toward Mexican Rights out of San Francisco.
  • Chihuahua Branch
  • Sonora Branch
Western Union: Most of the WU does not lie within the former Far South but is mentioned here because of the FAN insurgency against the government of its State of Arizona. Although relations with the Confederation were chilly at first, the two eventually came to a rapprochement with the Santa Fe Agreement.
  • State of Arizona
  • State of Colorado
 
Public Holidays in the Pacific Republic

New Year’s Day - January 1

Independence Day - January 18

A simple holiday memorializing the date California seceded from the Union. Celebrated with family gatherings and some fireworks.

Forty Niner's Day - January 24

Intended as a day to remember the California Gold Rush and the so-called "Forty-Niners" that made the West Coast what it is today.

St Patrick's Day - March 17

Emancipation Day - March 18

Signed into law as a federal holiday by Alphonzo E. Bell Jr. (1914 - 2004) in 1973, Emancipation Day is for memorializing the date that President Harry Lane (1855 - 1920) officially abolished slavery, freeing the last of the African-Pacificans that were still considered "property" by slaveowners in the State of Colorado.

Resurrection Sunday - April 4

Cinco de Mayo - May 5

Pie & Beer Day - July 24

The holiday known as "Pioneer Day" was initially celebrated by the Mojave Mormon community, but it received criticism from many for its lack of inclusiveness. Because of this, non-Mormon Mojave citizens started celebrating Pie and Beer Day instead of the traditional Mormon holiday. Over time, the holiday went national and is a widely observed holiday as of 2021. The actual name is a play on words: "pie and beer" sounds like "pioneer." The day is celebrated with the consumption of the namesake alongside songs, dances, potlucks, and pioneer-related activities.

Murrieta Day - July 25

Celebrated on the death of Joaquin Murrieta (1829 - 1853), the near-mythical Californian outlaw and vaquero many referred to as "The Robin-Hood of the West". Though the date is on his death, the day is actually used as a chance to honor his legend of revenge, outlawry, and freedom. Originally the day was really only commemorated by Hispanic Pacificans, however, its popularity grew and became celebrated throughout the nation.

Labor Day - September 6

Labor Day commemorates the history of the Pacifican labor movement and the contribution of the workers to the nation's prosperity. The holiday is celebrated with parades and a long weekend. It has also gathered some controversy over the years due to the holiday's founding having connections with the Workingmen's Party's history of white supremacy and Sinophobia.

Thanksgiving - November 26

Christmas - December 25

New Year's Eve - December 31
 
List of Cliques of the American Interconstitutional Era in the South

Free State of Kanawha: The Western counties of the State of Virginia have long conflicted with the rest of the State, and the sectional divisions boiled over with a disagreement within the delegation to the Second Philadelphia Convention. Eventually, Kanawha would become a signatory of the Chicago Constitution and has remained a Sovereigntist stronghold to the present day.

Mississippi Delta Autonomous Authority: Was at the time considered one of the Black Belt Free States but are separated due to their eventual affiliation with the MWR.

Texarkana Clique: See Far South

Black Belt Free States: Not strictly speaking a single entity but refers to a handful of States formed by the African Diaspora and their supporters in the Union Party. All of these were eventually defeated by the Southron Army, with many refugees fleeing to either the MWR or the North.

Republic of Acadiana: The Cajuns declared independence with French backing during the Civil War and continued their insurgency under President Cyr. Following the advent of the Workman’s Republic, they negotiated a special autonomy agreement including a Cajun Syndicate in the Worker’s Congress

Mississippi Workman’s Republic: The State of Louisiana was home to some of the deadliest fighting in the war, mostly due to the guerilla activities of the Cajuns, the Kuklos, and Unionist Militias. Even after the end of the Civil War proper, the fighting raged on in the bayous, and eventually, the workers had enough. ‘Big’ Bill Hall, a union organizer from New Orleans led a Revolution that united the state, and eventually took over most of Arkansas and the Mississippi Delta, before being stopped at Memphis, where the border has remained to this day.

Richmond Government: the Richmond Government was one of two entities in the Interconstitutional Era to have accepted the Second Philadelphia Constitution along with Roosevelt’s Philadelphia Government. Richmond represented a minor faction but managed to kick the Southron Republic out of Virginia and Kentucky by throwing their lot in with the Leavenworth and Annapolis Cliques.

Southron Republic: The Southron Republic was the second such state of its name, the first having failed to secede in the 1860s during the War of Southron Rebellion. This iteration was born of the Parallel Government established by the Kuklos Khruseos following the mass disenchantment of veterans following the Rebellion. The Republic sponsored splinter state governments in Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Virginia, and successfully took the Deep South after crushing the Black Belt Free States. The Southron Republic would eventually be pushed into just Florida following the Southron Bush War in the 1960s, and the remnant would be invaded by the Concordat of Brotherhood following the events of the Bombardment of Gainesville and the Florida Revolution in the 90s.
 
In the 2016 leadership challenge, Jeremy Corbyn feels pressured to prove he can still get the MP votes needed to stand like he did in 2015 - he does not. Owen Smith and Angela Eagle end up competing, with Smith winning - Labour sees a partial exodus of Corbyn supporters, but Smith's decision to call for a second referendum on Brexit makes Labour the only game in town for left-wing remainers. The Lib Dems suffer from having nothing to rally around and continue to decline.

All of this could be irrelevant as Theresa May is still Prime Minister since there's no snap election in 2017 (Smith not feeling Labour's ready). Unfortunately for May, Brexit negotiations are a grim slog and getting it through the UK's political parties is even grimmer - the deal fails to pass Commons. May tries for a snap again in 2018, this time on a slogan of Brexit Shall Be Passed, and Smith feels ready this time. It's now an outright battle between May's Brexit deal and a second referendum, as well as a battle between May's drab record in power and Smith's promise of Nice Things. The result sees Labour make gains at the expense of the SNP and Tories, in former Lib Dem heartland seats and a few of the flipped-to-Blair seats, while the Tories make gains in a number of northern Labour seats. This is a big shock all around, a political realignment...

...but also, the Tories have a narrow majority. May has her mandate and in one more heave, gets her [OTL] deal through. Brexit will happen in 2019. Smith resigns and Angela Rayner wins the leadership election.

The next parliament is going to be a messy one. May barely has a majority for much and every vote is a knife-edge; Labour is in deep internal conflict over to regain its 'rightful' seats without losing the new one; the SNP are not happy that Labour pushed back on their gains and these losses, combined with a growing internal conflict over Salmond, will start to cut at Sturgeon's position; the Lib Dems are searching for a cause; UKIP is decaying now its reason to exist has gone and it can't easily rebrand, with an army of potential replacements rising up. Nobody's sure what will happen next. Something has to give.

What gives is the government, once covid hits and a hard core of Tory MPs revolt against May's harsh measures and she has to get Labour votes to get them through (and Rayner takes her pound of flesh with things like higher sick pay). There's a leadership coup during the autumb, a snap election - and Labour, pointing to the ongoing covid threat and the need for the sort of measures only Labour will now do, narrowly win. Now there's a knife-edge Labour majority and PM Rayner learns her first big decision, the thing that will be remembered for her whole term and in the next election, is to Cancel Christmas. Oh no.
 
1991-1997: Neil Kinnock (Labour)
1991 (Majority) def: Kenneth Barker (Conservative), Paddy Ashdown (Liberal Democrats)
1995 (Majority) def: Michael Howard (Conservative), Paddy Ashdown (Liberal Democrats)

1997-1999: Gordon Brown (Labour)
1999-2004: Michael Portillo (Conservative)
1999 (Majority) def: Gordon Brown (Labour), Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrats)
2003 (Majority) def: Andrew Smith (Labour), Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrats), George Galloway (Straight Left-Stop The War)

2004-2010: Andrew Lansley (Conservative)
2005 (Majority) def: Andrew Smith (Labour), Evan Harris (Liberal Democrats), Robert Kilroy-Silk (UKIP)
2010-2013: Peter Hain (Labour)
2010 (Majority) def: Andrew Lansley (Conservative), Evan Harris (Liberal Democrats), Robert Kilroy-Silk (UKIP)
2013: Tessa Munt (Labour Caretaker)
2013-2015: Jim Murphy (Labour)

2015-2021: Theresa May (Conservative)
2015 (Majority) def: Jim Murphy (Labour), Stewart Hoise (SNP), John Leech (Liberal Democrats), Collective Leadership (Left Alliance)
2019 (Majority) def: Dan Jarvis (Labour), Stewart Hoise (SNP), John Leech (Liberal Democrats)

2021-2022: Matt Hancock (Conservative)
2022-: Liz Truss (Conservative)

Active Political Parties within the Left Alliance, Circa 2022:
Green Left:
The original founding party of the Left Alliance in 1999, Green Left’s foundation came from the splintering of the Greens in 1990 due to inability of the Green 2000 group to reform the party, whilst Dave Cook’s Alliance For Green Socialism found itself the much popular left voice for change in the wake of Kinnock’s departure for European Commissioners job and the arrival of Brown. Green Left would be the rebranding of the AGS in 1997 to and the shed it’s CPGB heritage in it’s wake. Currently has 2 of the 3 Left Alliance’s MPs (in the shape of Penny Kemp and Rachel Maskell) and managed make a number of gains in recent years particularly in the aftermath of the scandal ridden Hain-Murphy premiership which allowed the party to gain six MPs. It’s decrease to a more sustainable number has been noted and it’s steady and enduring presence causes many to ponder if Labour will ever be able to gain a convincing majority ever again, Smith believes he can.
Scottish Socialists-RISE: The Scottish Socialist Alliance started separately to Green Left but in 1999 it was decided to pool resources to ensure proper success (the SSA having gained one MSP due to a defection). Since then the group has been a constant thorn in both Scottish Labour and the SNP due to SSA gaining voters highly sort after by both parties and has managed to wrangle one MP in the form of Tommy Sheppard. The addition of RISE, a social campaign cum defection group has allowed the party to expand further in reach outside of the cosy former Militant strongholds and become a more prominent force in Scottish politics.
Forward!: Ron Davies’s political machine is still rather active, despite all the controversy’s there leader has endured since 1995. Not as strong as it’s other counterparts it does still do a lot of campaigning with the Welsh Green Left and it’s connections to Bleau Gwent People’s Voice means that it still does well in certain areas of Wales. Currently only had one member in the Senedd which is Green Gartside, formerly of Scritti Politti.
People Before Profit: Technically not a part of the Left Alliance Britain, due to the chaotic and bizarre nature of Northern Irish Politics it was decided that Green Left and the PBP would work together on political campaigns and present a united front particularly during ‘British’ Campaigns. The only person that has ever campaigned as a PBP-Left Alliance Candidate was Seamus Lynch for the 2012 NI Assembly which after it’s lack of success caused many to disregard the whole ‘PBP-Left Alliance’ name as anything substantial.
Movement for Socialism: A recent addition to the party, it’s origins lie in the attempted ‘Not the Labour Leadership’ campaign during the 2016 leadership contest with Jon Trickett touring the country and discussing the future of the Labour movement. Popular with younger members of the party, the campaign would eventually coalesce into the Movement for Socialism, which would in 2018 get into a messy legal battle with Labour over the expulsion of several of it’s members causing the majority of the group to vote to unite with the Left Alliance.

Doesn’t have much political representation but does have youth activists and it’s recent campaigns over Trans Rights at a number of Uni Campus have caused a burst of support for the movement particularly with attempts to get Shon Faye selected for some form of leadership role leading to a simmering row that has been occurring the background of the Left Alliance to appear as foreground.
 
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Republic of China, 2011

Government

United Nationalist Front: Wearing corruption like an old coat has consequences it seems. They're on track to lose the Assembly by the largest margins since Zhu De rode into Beijing on an armored train, a reckoning that's been building for ten years at least.

Nationalist Party: The Chongqing land use scandal has resulted in dozens of sackings at the municipal level and the resignations of both the mayor and the provincial governor. Hopefully this will be the final nail in the coffin for the narrative of "princelings vs. modernizers" that the western commentariat love harping on; the general public always knew they're one and the same. Oh, and the development company at the heart of the whole fiasco? Literally headed by Zhou Enlai's grandnephew.​
Tridemist Labor Party: Their one tenuous connection to the concept of labor is close to unraveling, as the chairman of the Shanghai Trade Union Federation has brought them to court for covering campaign expenses with union funds, apparently common practice for years. Oops. They don't seem like they're hurting too bad financially though, just look at how extravagant their last Double Ten Day gala was! With the centennial fast approaching, they've surely got something amazing planned this year.​
China Islamic Party: It's hard to criticize them for being a hereditary enterprise when they make tracing their leaders' lineage back to the generals who defected from the Dungan Revolt a point of pride. May the Ma dynasty reign for a thousand years more as the protectors of Islam in China, never mind that they seem to devote most of their energy these days towards violence against other Muslims and migrant workers. Recently their party workers in Yunnan have gotten into several violent clashes with Land Power militants, forcing local police to respond.​
Tibet Progressive Party: In a much stronger position than its sister parties by virtue of dominating all sections of Tibetan society from the underworld on up ever since the lamas lost their temporal power, there is much speculation over whether they'll leave the Front and cut a deal with the opposition to keep the subsidies and goodwill flowing. The two major obstacles to such a turn are the party old guard who have sentimental ties to the Nationalists, and the fact that the ARD have been ambivalent at best on cooperation with regional ethnic parties.​

Opposition

Democratic Alliance for China: There are so many insignificant parties attached this time around, all with trite names and ideologies like "patriotism", "prosperity", "the Three Principles"; it's futile to list them all. The important thing is they'll all dance to Yu Dage's tune once the Nationalists are out.

Patriotic People's Party: The Party of Government to Come. Nationalist pundits have charged the ARD with being a shallow cult of personality impossibly promising to be all things to everyone, while incapable of satisfying anyone. A fair assessment, but since it also describes every major non-Nationalist party since the end of the first warlord era it's a rather weak condemnation. Inertia is the easiest enemy to rally against, and to their credit they do have a coherent program and a robust party organization thanks to poaching talent from village associations. Whether or not they'll actually re-implement the death penalty for state embezzlement ("financial treason") when they control the Assembly and the Presidency remains to be seen, but it's left plenty of current officials sweating.​
Self-Sacrifice Nationalist Party: The euphoria of finally forming their own thing has worn off somewhat, and now the leadership is doing a lot of soul-searching about what exactly their appeal is. Anti-corruption is a noble sentiment, but it's also a niche more convincingly occupied by other parties with actual mass movements behind them that aren't a bunch of ex-Nationalist grandees harboring thirty-year grudges and their tax-evading relatives salivating at the chance to form new patronage networks. Well, at the very least they'll get a couple cabinet posts in the new government.​

Land Power People Power: "We've lost our rifles but still carry machetes." The violence endemic to the southern countryside in the 80s and 90s may have subsided, but China's Only Peasants' Movement has been reluctant to abandon its roots and remains an unwieldy amalgamation of political party, guerilla group, secret society, and farmers' union, happy to debate price floors in the Assembly one day and form a grievance committee to lynch a reticent landlord or troublemaker the next. The national leadership have officially rejected joining the Democratic Alliance, but on a local level there is ample cooperation between Land Power and ARD candidates.
 
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Junimea: Romanian literary society that ran in Iași between 1863 and 1866,created to stimulate the cultural life in the city and banned after the dissolution of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia and Nicolae Roznovanu's coup d'etat that happened during the Russo-Turkish War of 1866-1868.

Fate of Its Main Founders:

Titu Maiorescu:
sent to jail for 25 years for protesting dissolution of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia and writing ''Unionist propaganda",as well as for attacking Roznovanu and the boyars backing him for refusing any form of change and ''plotting against the general interest of the people for their sole wellbeing''. Constantly watched afterwards by Protecție (Protection) and his works banned (especially the extremely anti Roznovanu and anti Russian essay Gargoyles of Byzantium),died during the siege of Iași by the Romanian army in 1906 by accident after choking on a fish bone.

Petre Carp: abandoned literary pursuits,entered politics as a White/National Conservative supporter and became an MP/Minister in various National Conservative governments,wrote in Cugetarea and Revista Dunării articles attacking both Red/liberal and left wing ideas and absolute monarchism,as well as the policies of the Russian and Moldovian governments. Conflicted by Romania's entry in the First World War (1905-1908) due to being both pro German and anti Russian,retreated from politics and eventually public life,dying peacefully in 1919 while trying to finalize the publication of Maiorescu,Rosetti and Pogor's complete works.

Vasile Pogor: sent to jail for 25 years for protesting dissolution of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia and being part of Junimea,as well as for attacking Roznovanu and the boyars backing him for refusing any form of change and ''plotting against the general interest of the people for their sole wellbeing''. Arrested again and sent to jail for 10 years in 1895 for writing “evolutionist heresy“ and “plotting against the Sacred Church” by writing articles critical of Orthodox Christianity. Died in jail due to an untreated infection caused after an altercation with a guard.

Theodor Rosetti: sent to jail for 20 years for protesting dissolution of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia and being part of Junimea,as well as for attacking Roznovanu and the boyars backing him for refusing any form of change and ''plotting against the general interest of the people for their sole wellbeing''. Translated numerous important works of Italian literature in Romanian,some of which were banned for “being politically radical or having the potential of being interpreted as politically radical”. Constantly watched by Protecție,died during the First World War in Russian arrest in 1907.

Iacob Negruzzi: sent to jail for 20 years for protesting dissolution of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia and being part of Junimea,as well as for attacking Roznovanu and the boyars backing him for refusing any form of change and ''plotting against the general interest of the people for their sole wellbeing''. Managed to leave Moldova for the Kingdom of Romania in 1890 after bribing various border guards and Protecție agents,failing however to help his friend Rosetti and his family escape as well. Wrote numerous plays and essays,his most well known work being Our Man Sluguță,ocasinally took part in politics as a National Conservative supporter. Continued Petre Carp's work of finalizing the publication of Maiorescu,Rosetti and Pogor's complete works,died in 1932 surrounded by his family and loved ones.

Nicolae Gane: sent to jail for 25 years for protesting dissolution of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia and being part of Junimea,as well his out spoken unionist views. Died in jail in 1887 due to having contracted cholera,named post mortum Martyr of the Nation.


Mihail Eminovici/Mihai Eminescu: Austro-Hungarian poet and Romanian nationalist irredentist,best known for his failed assasination attempt on Emperor Franz Joseph in 1875 and his virulently antisemitic and ultranationalist manifestos/poems,often quoted by Romanian far right unionists and also by the Romanian far left at times.

Ion Creangă: Minor Orthodox priest from Neamț,elaborated numerous materials for children to help them learning,arrested in 1867 by the Moldovian authorities and Russian military during the many peasant uprisings of the early Roznovanu reign. Mistaken thought to be the leader of the uprising in Humulești,condemned to 30 years of hard labour,formed a splinter reformist branch of the Romanian Orthodox Church while in jail,died during an epileptic crisis in 1889. His ideas have been continued after his death by his followers,Orthodox-Peasantry becoming a popular sect in several rural areas in Moldova before and after WW1.
 
War of Secession (1861-1863): Confederate States and Pacific Republic vs. United States
Cause of war: Slavery states’ rights
Winner: CSA & Pacifica
Territorial changes: Independence of the CSA and Pacifica from the USA.


Gadsden's War (1884-1886): Confederate States, Pacific Republic, Great Britain (1885-1886), and French Empire (1886) vs. United States
Cause of war: Construction of the Gadsden Transnational Railroad
Winner: Anybody but the USA
Territorial changes: Columbia (f. USA t. Pacifica), New Mexico Territory (f. USA t. CSA), Missouri (f. USA t. CSA), Northern Maine (f. USA t. Canada)


The Great War (1912-1915): French Empire | Confederate States | Pacific Republic (1912-1914) (Triple Powers) vs. Great Britain | German Empire | Russian Empire | United States (Entente)
Cause of war: Alsace-Lorraine border incident
Winner: Entente
Territorial changes: French West Africa (f. France t. Britain), French Equatorial Africa (f. France t. Germany), French Indochina (f. France t. Germany), Kentucky (f. CSA t. USA), Missouri (f. CSA t. USA), Northern Virginia (f. CSA t. USA), Arizuma (f. CSA t. USA), New Mexico (f. CSA t. USA), West Texas (f. CSA t. USA), Columbia (f. Pacifica t. USA)
 
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War of Secession (1861-1863): Confederate States and Pacific Republic vs. United States
Cause of war: Slavery states’ rights
Winner: CSA & Pacifica
Territorial changes: Independence of the CSA and Pacifica from the USA.


Gadsden's War (1884-1886): Confederate States, Pacific Republic, Great Britain (1885-1886), and French Empire (1886) vs. United States
Cause of war: Construction of the Gadsden Transnational Railroad
Winner: Anybody but the USA
Territorial changes: Columbia (f. USA t. Pacifica), New Mexico Territory (f. USA t. CSA), Missouri (f. USA t. CSA), Northern Maine (f. USA t. Canada)


The Great War (1912-1915): French Empire | Confederate States | Pacific Republic (1912-1914) (Triple Powers) vs. Great Britain | German Empire | Russian Empire | United States (Entente)
Cause of war: Alsace-Lorraine border incident
Winner: Entente
Territorial changes: French West Africa (f. France t. Britain), French Equatorial Africa (f. France t. Germany), French Indochina (f. France t. Germany), Chihuahua (f. French Mexico t. USA), Sonora (f. French Mexico t. USA), Kentucky (f. CSA t. USA), Missouri (f. CSA t. USA), Northern Virginia (f. CSA t. USA), Arizuma (f. CSA t. USA), New Mexico (f. CSA t. USA), West Texas (f. CSA t. USA), Oklahoma (f. CSA t. USA), Columbia (f. Pacifica t. USA)
Stop he's already dead!
 
Britain,18 January 1951

Goverment

Labour:
freshly won its second consecutive general election despite the Bevanites betraying the movement and splitting the vote because of MoRaL ObJeCtIoNs regarding Herb's policies which is just silly and shows how little they care about the needs of the working man of the Empire.

Yes granted there have been problems with the war in India and things may have escalated there and in Malaysia and Palestine but it's a small price to pay for healthcare for all and local counsils having more power like they should. And besides we MUST defend our Empire-our boys died fighting home and abroad to keep it.

The Opposition and others that are in Parliament

Conservative:
still suffering due to Halifax and Hoare's (and old Freddie Marquis but not as much,trust us) actions during the war and half of the beaches in South West still being full of dead Germans,as well as due to the ideological divisions at times,but managing to recover slowly. Next time Wab or Salisbury will win and the Party will be return to its rightful place and sort the mess Caligula Morrison (yes yes I know,blame Beaverbrook,he and Esmond like using it and it stuck) and his horse Hugh created.

Hopefully by then Anthony and Harold will be pleased somehow and stop banging on and on about modernisation.

Liberal: old Clem didn't quite managed to win us any seat per se,but he made it so that we hadn't lost either and honestly that's good enough,we don't have the funds that the Tories,Labour and SDP have and it's a miracle we managed a full slate of candidate in November. Still,we must fight on-Morrison represents everything wrong with our society,the Tories can't wait to destory the few good things Labour did these few years and the SDP is just a bunch of well meaning intelectuals but who will never go anywhere beyond 9 seats-15 at best if Morrison starts eating Princess Elizabeth's first born children. Liberalism will remain relevant in British politics and help everyone in society. The fight will go on. The new blood will help things-Jo's a fine young reformer and Jezza and 'arold have PM written all over them.

Socialist Democratic Party: look,the split was necessary-Morrison and Dalton made things too unbearable for other things of socialists and we couldn't remain in a party run by people who make Marquis look moderate on imperialism. Nye knows what's he doing,a point HAS to be made. We won seats-granted not as much as we wanted but still,more and more people are coming to us for an alternative that isn't the old relics of Liberalism,the Stalinists in the CPGB or that twat Acland and his gang of sicofants (god,no wonder Priestley switched to us). And no the SNP doesn't count,shut up.

Fret not lads and lasses,one day Nye will become PM and True Socialism will be achieved in government with Babs and Jennie and all the others,now stop worrying and have this free edition of the New Statesman-Dickie wrote a lovely article attacking the war in India and that Yugo chap Nye and Jennie are friends with did an wonderous manifesto attacking Stalin.

Commonwealth: FUCK PRIESTLEY,FUCK BEVAN AND FUCK MORRISON,ACLAND IS THE TRUE SOCIALIST LEADER NOT THEM,PRAISE BE GOD AND MARX AND EAT SHIT,WE'RE STILL RELEVANT GODDAMNIT

SNP: Scotland, Bonnie Scotland,

From the east coast to the west,

Tartan, Tartan Arm-wait no we aren't comitting treason officer,NO WAIT WE CAN EXPLAIN
 
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