In his October 10, 2007 webcast, American statesman Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. called for the United States to resume the mission for which it was founded: to destroy the British Empire (known today as “globalisation”, but still run out of the City of London) and in order to usher in a new, worldwide order of cooperating sovereign nation states. (See p. 5-6.) The best of our own political leaders, from Rev. John Dunmore Lang down to Whitlam’s Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer Jim Cairns, all proclaimed that our struggle was against the tyrannical financial power wielded by the City of London.
If we are to finally win that war and secure our own independence, it will have to come in alliance with the true America, that of Washington, Hamilton, Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and LaRouche—not that of Cheney, Bush and the anglophiles of Wall St. That alliance of the real America with Australia is exemplified by Prime Minister John Curtin and FDR’s collaboration to win the war in the Pacific, against the treachery of the British, who intended to abandon us to Japanese conquest. In our 1999 pamphlet, The fight for an Australian Republic: From the First Fleet to the year 2000, we documented how our own most courageous political leaders always looked to the tradition of this real America. The following quotes are drawn from that pamphlet.
Rev. John Dunmore Lang (1799-1878), our greatest statesman.
Lang wrote in 1837, “It is natural that Australia should look upon the United States with more than ordinary interest. Throughout the whole of her history, there are certain broad features bearing no imaginary resemblance to our own. America was once a British dependence; Australia is now. America receives her language, her manners, her literature and the germ of her laws and political institutions, from the British Isles; so also has Australia. America at length outgrew the trammels of national juvenility, and asserted the prerogative of matured manhood which she in the end compelled her reluctant parent to acknowledge. It is perfectly consistent with loyalty and with common sense to predict, that at some future period— far distant no doubt it is—Australia will pursue a similar course with similar success. …
“I have taken it for granted that in the event of Australia becoming free and independent, she would adopt, as a matter of course, a Republican form of government. I look upon this as a settled point, in the present circumstances and conditions of a civilised world—not however, as being the result of reasoning from abstract principles, but simply ... from the necessity of the case.”
After visiting the United States in 1840, Lang spent the years 1846-49 in England, attempting to secure modest concessions of self-rule from the British Empire. He was rebuffed at every turn, and so upon his departure for home, wrote this stinging letter to British Colonial Secretary Lord Earl Grey:
“I am now returning to Australia with the bitterest disappointment and the deepest disgust, cherishing precisely the same feeling as the celebrated Dr. Benjamin Franklin did, when he left England as a British subject, for the last time.
“In reviewing the intercourse I have thus had with your lordship’s department for the last three years I cannot but express the extreme regret, not unmingled with indignation, which I cannot but feel as a British colonist, when I reflect that I have myself experienced much more courtesy and attention, merely as a British traveller, from the President of the United States of America, in his marble palace at Washington, than I have done as a representative of the people of New South Wales from the paltriest underlings of your Lordship’s department. Like the mutes in the Sultan’s palace at Constantinople, these familiars of your lordship regularly strangle honest men and every honest measure connected with the colonies, in the dark recesses of their political inquisition; and the people of England never hear of the matter any more than the Turks used to do of those hapless victims whose bodies were thrown at midnight into the waters of the Bosporus… Very moderate concessions would have satisfied the colonists three years ago, but such concessions will not satisfy them now. To use a vulgar but expressive phrase, which your lordship will excuse, they will now ‘go for the whole hog’ or for nothing at all… .
“For three years past, you have been knocking on the gate of futurity, for the President of the United States of Australia. Be assured, my Lord, he is getting ready, and will shortly be out; and will astonish the world with the manliness of his port and the dignity of his demeanour.”
Immediately upon his return, Lang set up “The Republican League“, dedicated to securing Australian independence. To stop his skyrocketting influence, the British in 1853 foisted the scam of “responsible government“ upon us, i.e. impotent parliamentary rule under the British Crown, with which we are still plagued.
William Guthrie Spence (1846 - 1926), founder of the Australian Workers Union and Australia’s greatest trade union organiser, who also helped found the ALP.
Spence called for social and political reforms on behalf of “common humanity” so farreaching that they would, he said, “deserve the name of ‘revolution’”, albeit a “quiet one”. In his speech below, note the unmistakeable polemic against the “buy cheap, sell dear” free trade-centred British Empire, and, conversely, the influence upon him of the ideals by which America had been founded, particularly that of the “general welfare” enshrined as the bedrock of the U.S. Constitution, and which was called the “Common Good” by Spence and old Labor.
Spence: “The masses must not only take a deeper interest in political questions, but they must make the politics of the country. The welfare of the people must be raised to the first place—must be the uppermost and foremost consideration. How best to secure the good of all without injury to any should be the aim—not commercial supremacy, not cheap production regardless of the human misery following, but rather the broadest justice, the widest extension of human happiness, and the attainment of the highest intellectual and moral standard of civilised nations should be our aim.... Let each remember that man had failed before because each carelessly left to some other the work of the Common Good. We must reverse that. Each must take his or her share. With unity above all as our watchword, the Common Good our aim, we will soon find common ground of agreement as to the way in which the goal should be reached. The best start we can give to our children is the certainty of better conditions; the sweetest memory of us to them the fact that we did so.”
King O’Malley (1858 - 1953), longtime ALP Federal parliamentarian, and founder of the Commonwealth Bank.
In a five-hour speech in Parliament on September 30, 1909 motivating the adoption of a national bank, O’Malley proclaimed, “I am the [Alexander] Hamilton of Australia! He was the greatest financial man who ever walked the earth, and his plans have never been improved upon. … The American experience should determine us to establish a national banking system which cannot be attacked.”
Again echoing the “general welfare” and “posterity” clauses of the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, O’Malley proclaimed: “We are legislating for the countless multitudes of future generations, who may either bless or curse us. ...We are in favour of protecting, not only the manufacturer, but also the man who works for him. We wish to protect the oppressed and down-trodden of the earth…. I propose the institution of a Government national bank for managing the finances of the Commonwealth and the States....Cannot honorable members see how important it is that we should have a national banking system ... a system that will put us beyond the possibility of going as beggars to the shareholders of private banking corporations?... The private banking system of the Commonwealth is only a legalised monopoly for the gathering of wealth from the many, and its concentration in the hands of the privileged few. ...
“However great the natural resources of a nation, however genial its climate, fertile its soil, ingenious and enterprising its citizens, or free its institutions, if its money volume is manipulated by private capitalists for selfish ends, its credit shrinks and prices fall. Its producers and business people must be overwhelmed with bankruptcy, its industries will be paralyzed, and destitution and poverty prevail.”
However, if Australia implements a national bank, King O’Malley said, a glorious future will open up for it:
“In the Commonwealth, the National Banking System will so greatly reduce interest rates that useful productions will increase by leaps and bounds. Wealth, instead of accumulating in the hands of the few, will be distributed among producers. A large proportion employed on relief works, building up cities, will be expanded in cultivating and beautifying the country. National improvements will be made to an extent, and in a perfection unexampled in the history of the world. Agriculture, manufactures, inventions, science, and the arts will flourish in every part of the nation. Those who are now nonproducers will naturally become producers. Products will be owned by those who perform the labour, because the standard of distribution will neatly conform to the natural rights of humanity.”
Jack Lang, (1876 - 1975), Premier of New South Wales, who declared a debt moratorium against the City of London in 1931-32, in order to defend the people of his state from the ravages of the Great Depression. And, foreshadowing actions necessary again today, he implemented an Anti-Eviction Bill to stop mass foreclosures and evictions, and a Moratorium Act, to stop farmers from being driven from their land.
In his memoirs, Lang noted that he had had “many opportunities to study the machine” of the City of London “in actual operation” while NSW Treasurer, before he became Premier.
“The City of London for more than two hundred years dominated the financial affairs of the world. It had mastered the technique of the management of money. London was the exchange hub of the world. With the Bank of England, Lloyds of London, the great investment brokers, the underwriters, the insurance combine, and its shipping trusts, it was able to gather together all the intricate strands of the world’s most efficient money machine. Most countries paid their tribute in the form of dividends, interest and premiums. The sun indeed never set on the far-flung dependencies of the City of London.”
However, when King O’Malley and his ALP parliamentary colleagues (including Spence) forced through the establishment of the Commonwealth Bank in 1912 as a national bank modeled on that of the First National Bank founded by U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, with other colonies including Canada and South Africa threatening to follow, Lang recorded the City of London’s scheme to meet the threat:
“Basically it was a problem of banking. Some formula had to be devised which would enable such local institutions as the Commonwealth Bank of Australia to be drawn into the City of London’s net. The financial experts studied the problem deeply. Out of their deliberations emerged the plan to centralise the control of all banking throughout the Empire by channeling it directly into the supervision of the Bank of England.
“The Bank of England was to become the super Bankers’ Bank. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia was to be responsible for the local administration of Bank of England policy. It was to be the junior Bankers’ Bank. The first step was to take control of the Note Issue Department away from the Treasury and hand it to the Commonwealth Bank, as was the case in Britain. The Commonwealth Bank thus obtained a monopoly over the note issue, and if this could in turn be controlled, the effective currency pool of the country could be operated like a bathroom tap, to be either allowed to run free or turned off entirely.
“The Bank of England took up the idea of Empire control most enthusiastically. It was even decided to aim at a World Bank, to be run by the League of Nations, which would direct the credit of the world. The grand idea was that one single Board of Directors would make the decisions which would determine the economic policy of the world. The bankers were to be the supreme rulers. Naturally, the Governor of the Bank of England expected to be at the apex of the system.
“If, for example, the Bank of England could control the Commonwealth Bank of Australia there should be no impediment in the way of controlling the Government of the country as well. ...The death of [patriotic Commonwealth Bank governor Denison] Miller removed at a critical moment [1923] the one man capable of defending the citadel of Australian financial independence.”(emphasis added)
The City of London is still by far the world’s largest financial power, just as Lang described it.
Frank Anstey, (1865 - 1940), longtime Federal Labor MP and a member of O’Malley’s “Torpedo Brigade” which founded the Commwealth Bank. He blasted the City of London as the centre of the world “Money Power”. John Curtin said of Anstey, “Of all the men who have influenced me, he influenced me the most”.
Anstey: “To carry out these vast flotations and speculations in war or in peace, it is necessary to control vast credits. To control credits it is necessary to control the banks. Whosoever controls the banks controls industry. This control is exercised in every country by a small group—the inner circle of great Capitalists.
“This group is designated ‘The Money Power’.... Industrial capitalism is observable and understandable. Financial capitalism lurks in vaults and banking chambers, masquerading its operations in language that mystifies or dazzles, and this power that holds the monopoly of the instruments of exchange, is the overlord of every other monopoly.
“The key to the power of this group is combination and concentration. It controls banks, trust companies, insurances— the main depositories of the peoples—savings or the reservoir to which they flow. It controls all credit. It advances or withholds credits, builds up or destroys. It controls the daily press; finances the dope propaganda; wields an unseen sceptre over thrones, cabinets and populations; and is the dominant ‘behind the curtain’ power in the government of modern States.
“Such is the modern ‘Money Power.’ ”
As a minister in the Scullen Labor government, Anstey fully supported Lang’s moratorium against London, while Anstey’s protégé and soon-to-be prime minister John Curtin wrote a pamphlet entitled, Australia’s Economic Crisis and the £55,000,000 Interest Bill: How the Years of Money Power Extortion Have Brought Misery to the Nation.
And, when the Whitlam Government (1973-75) attempted to take back control of our nation’s vast mineral wealth from British firms led by Rio Tinto, and to build a vast infrastructure grid to unite and develop the continent, the British and their Murdochdominated Australian press concocted a scandal known as “the loans affair”, under cover of which British agent Sir John Kerr sacked Whitlam, as documented in the CEC’s The Fight for an Australian Republic. Whitlam’s Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer Jim Cairns later observed, “We were conscious of the opposition of the Bank of England and the English establishment”. Queen Elizabeth personally bestowed the Royal Victorian Order upon Kerr for his deed as well as upon his private secretary Sir David Smith, who actually read the proclamation sacking Whitlam.
The present form of the British empire is more subtle than it was when the Queen sacked Whitlam, though it is for that very reason more deadly. Any thoughtful person will be aware that the plagues of “privatisation”, “deregulation”, and “competition policy” all issued forth from the City of London during the era of British PM Margaret Thatcher, as, for that matter, did the scam of “global warming”, as the latter was documented in British TV 4’s famous The Great Global Warming Swindle. The British also cooked up the anti-Aborigine, anti-Australia fraud of “land rights”, as the CEC has chronicled in detail. As in their 19th Century imperial heyday, the City of London-centred financial oligarchy intends to wield such weapons to destroy agroindustrial nation states, and thereby ram through the most far-reaching imperial looting in history.