The South Has Standards
Leaders of the Southern National Party
1974-1983:
Alexander Thynn
1983-1985:
Colin Bex
1985-1992:
Alexander Thynn
1992-1994:
Tony Linsell
Leaders of the League for Wessex
1994-1996:
Tony Linsell
1996-2000:
Andrew Perloff
2000-2004:
James Michie
2004-2004:
Steve Uncles
2004-2006:
David Campbell-Bannerman
2006-2018: Kelvin MacKenzie
2018-XXxx: Mary Truss
Where Now For A Free South?
Kelvin MacKenzie has brought the League for Wessex higher than ever before--but the contradictions he embraced could break his movement.
By: Ena Vrbanec
The colours of Britain are, allegedly, red, white, and blue. Here in Winchester, one would be forgiven for thinking it was red, white, and gold. With the exception of the Winchester Public Employment Board office, still flying a lonely Union Jack, the whole town is draped in a banner unrecognisable to most foreigners--a red cross on a white field, with a red shield backing a golden dragon in the top-left corner. This flag was first flown here, in 1989, as the symbol of a fringe nationalist movement clinging to the edge of political relevancy. Now, it's a flag widely embraced across the region it represents, and its advocates dictate terms in Westminster. As the delegates for the League for Wessex assemble in Winchester for the party's annual conference, however, the mood is dampened by an elegaic concern. The man more responsible than anyone else for this status is not with them.
While there's been some supposition, even outright accusations, that Kelvin MacKenzie intends to continue running the party from his palatial villa in Ryde, MacKenzie has made it quite clear that his retirement is permanent, and his conspicuous physical absence from the conference--having even sent a proxy to flog his own autobiography--has made clear the truth of these claims. This will be the first conference without his presence, in some form, for decades. After being sent to cover the inaugural conference in 1974, MacKenzie quickly developed an affection for the party's policies and strain of nationalism, and built a rapport with the eccentric leader and largest donor, Alexander Thynn. When he was fired in 1986 from the
Daily Sketch after his claims of Lawrence Daly being an NKVD agent were found to be libel, he took a "temporary" job editing the party's newspaper,
The Wyvern. This would turn into a decades-long tenure, and one of the most important jobs in the party.
While the claims of member-voter suppression and threatening of party officials, alleged by many former members, are uncomfirmed, it's indisputable that MacKenzie adeptly used the role to promote the party's right-wing within the League, and promote himself within the right-wing. More than that, his relentless courting of publicity made him a household name well before his leadership. While some might deplore the effect midget Parliamentary by-election candidates, claiming David Cairns's death was due to HRID, and "Tits Out For Wessex Day" have had on British public discourse, their effect has been undeniable. MacKenzie has made himself the party's permanent face--arguably even outshining his nominal superior, Liam Fox, during his tenure as Deputy Prime Minister. Many still refer to the man as "The Guv", and claim they only joined the party because of him. For these die-hards, the League is no longer itself without Kelvin.
"It's a crying shame he's gone, a crying shame." Mark, 34, an Essex carpenter, has been campaigning for the party since university. "I met him once, you know? We were in a pub, y'know, after [A.A.] Johnson quit the Cabinet, celebrating, and some bloke by my mate Mike's elbow went 'Next round's on me, lads.' and I turned around and--I still get chills thinking about it." His mood turned contemplative. "I kept the glass, I'm thinking about getting a plaque for it. He deserves a rest, but still...a great man. A great man. A real lad. There's no-one like The Guv. I'm not...well, I won't leave, but without him..." He paused for a moment. "Well, what's the point? I got into politics because of him, and now he's out..."
The loss of MacKenzie's personal charisma isn't the only struggle the League now face. With the new leadership, cracks are starting to show in the party's coalition. While Truss initially pledged "to keep the party united in the interim, and step down as soon as a new vote can be held", that was nearly six months ago, and in that time, her leadership has solidified firmly. Her Shadow Cabinet has drawn heavily from her allies in the party's centre-right "Wessex Unchained" faction, and her rhetoric has echoed that. Prioritising the South's economy, and stoking resentment politics over having to subsidise an "unproductive" North, the party has slammed the recent British Shipyard strikes as "classic workshy Scots trying to hold back progress", and implied an independent Wessex would be able to relegalise private liquor sales. Yet for many members, the true downside of Truss isn't what she does, it's who she is, and who her allies are.
"I'm not racist, but that Fred Kwarteng--he's a bit off, isn't he?" David, 65, a car salesman from Devon, is a long-time voter, but is this is his first time attending the party conference. "Funny type. You couldn't imagine getting a pint with him, could you? Bit of an intellectual, too urban, too polished. Not your ordinary man in the street, and that's the problem. Look at what Truss was doing in university--she was a Young Communist, for chrissakes! The party's been taken over by a bunch of big city technocrats who'll sell Wessex down the river! Don't know how they talked The Guv into resigning, that is, if they didn't off him like they did to Kennedy Young, eh?" At this point, I was forced to step back, to avoid a wagging finger. "Mappin's a
proper bloke, and if he doesn't get in in this vote, the party is doomed. Truss and Kwarteng just don't represent the party!"
The problem is, they do. The unique thing about the League for Wessex has always been the case it made for independence. Most of the prominent nationalist-seperatist movements in Europe--the Meridione, Wallonia, or our own Macedonians--represent economically-deprived peripheral areas, and make their cases based on emotional sentiment more than economic logic. Wessex, on the other hand, is largely
defined by economic logic. When it was refounded in the late Nineties, the League defined itself in contrast to the romantic nationalists of the remnant Southern National Party by focusing on the wealthy south-east, as opposed to the more historic and agrarian south-west. Despite a recent turn to being more of a "national" party, much of their rhetoric still centres around the alleged vast sum the financial industries and small businesses of the South spend propping up the deindustrialised workers and rampant unions of the North. It's certainly not an unpopular platform--and more to the point, popular among donors.
"I was sympathetic to the party before, but, well...the stunts put me off. Beyond the pale, some of them." Rishi, 38, is a financial analysist based in Southampton, here representing his firm. "Still, I could always understand the appeal. I had a job up in Richmond for a few years, during the big break-up of British Steel, and the working culture there was grotesque. Feet on desks, lunchbreaks for half the day, offices that stank of beer--the cleaners wouldn't come in unless they were featherbedded three to a shift! That was the state of things up North. We can't go on like this! My mum and dad studied hard to give me opportunities they could only dream of, and it was the South that gave them those opportunities. I think Truss and her team are the right people for the job, and we need them--not comforting fairytales from the lunatic fringe."
Still, it wouldn't do to discount the harder edge of the party. A growing faction since the League's formation, the far-right "Wessex for the Wessexers" grouping have a major ace up their sleeve. The sudden propulsion of the party into the spotlight was done by expanding their coalition not ideologically, but geographically. Thanks to Campbell-Bannerman's "National Turn", a solid handful of seats held by the League are now well outside the boundaries of their definition of Wessex--most bizarrely, a defection from the Unionist Party has given them a seat on Doncaster City Council. These voters, peeled off from the other right-of-centre parties, aren't interested in Southern vs Northern. To them, the League is a party that offers independence for the whole UK, an independence from international law, modern liberalism, and foreigners taking jobs. The right's challenger to Truss, John Mappin's keynote policies reflect this vision, with far more interest in ritual slaughter in Islington, troops in Cyprus, and kirk schools in Scotland, than in the region he supposedly represents.
"It's utterly ludicrous, what's happened to the party." Jeff Kent, 66, was involved in the old Southern National Party, but currently belongs to the Campaign for Real Politics (part of the Radical Democratic Alliance). "Mappin's a great symbol of that. A millionaire hotel owner with no connection to the soil, focused on stirring up division instead of bringing unity, and elected representing occupied Kernow. This is the man half the members want at the helm of the Aenglisch cause!" He took a long sip from his pint at this point, before continuing. "At this point, the League is no more about Wessex than the Archers is about farming. It's just another aristocrat-run right-wing greviance party, taking old Orange Order talking points and slapping a big Wessex dragon on them. Still, at least the beer here's still good. Got that right at least."
Despite having gone from strength to strength, the League might be facing the biggest crisis in its history. The niche it's found for itself and the niche it was originally built to live in are too far apart. On the one hand, upwardly-mobile immigrants and young professionals in the commuter towns, but on the other, downwardly-mobile Anglos and embitterred pensioners north of Watford. These cracks were papered over by belligerent charisma and a skill at reading the national political mood, but now the League is being forced to choose between them. Truss's vows to seek Wessex's membership in EFTZ, and Mappin's attempts to court the Liverpool-based Protestant Conservative Party for an alliance, clearly mark an awareness of this. Either choice will still mean cutting off a significant source of votes. While the League still believe Wessex can survive independent from the United Kingdom, it remains to be seen if the party can survive independent from The Guv.
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Ena Vrbanec is an investigative journalist whose work has appeared in Sažetak, Sarajevski Dnevni, and many other magazines. She is currently the Western Europe correspondant for Novi List. Her book
Sewers, Grass, and Eccentrics: Political Notes from a Small Island is due to be published in September.