Community Strongpoints - Bastions of the Future Resistance
What Is to Be Done? Part 14
By Nick Griffin |
What would a Community Strongpoint actually do, and is the idea based on things which have already worked?
The first question is the crucial one, and we’ll come to it in a moment, but let’s quickly answer the second question. Yes, everything we’re about to consider has been done before – and it’s all worked. As already noted (see article linked below), all sorts of highly successful self-help institutions emerged during the rise of the pre-Labour party working class from the dispossession of the Enclosures and the degradation and demoralisation of the Industrial Revolution.
Friendly and Burial Societies, retail co-ops, Penny Schools and so on helped create the confidence and human networks which led to the setting up of Miners’ and Working Men’s Clubs, as well as underpinning the growth of the trade unions and Labour movement.
In Ireland and parts of industrial Scotland, community organisation was based on religion and tribal sectarianism rather than economics and class, but the institutions which developed were very similar.
The Protestants built Orange Lodges and band halls, the Catholics established Irish clubs (particularly in the diaspora, where they became a very important source of funds and political support for the continued struggle) and the Gaelic Athletics Association. Like their English and Welsh counterparts, community self-organisation started with meetings in other people’s buildings – churches, chapels and pubs – but, as they developed, they solidified their organisations in their own bricks and mortar.
More recently, the Troubles in Northern Ireland produced fresh examples of constructive and legal initiatives which both help communities and also strengthen the influence of political activists within them.
Both sides of the conflict developed prisoner support networks, of which the Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association was the most effective.
Tar Anall supported Republican ex-prisoners, with advice and training, Coiste na n’Larchimi brought together several Republican prisoners’ groups, running advice centres, employment projects and welfare support for former IRA members released under the Good Friday Agreement.
The most widespread and effective example of organisations designed to work with the broader community were the Sinn Fein advice centres. These were the backbone of the efforts by the political wing of the Provisional IRA to overtake the moderate nationalist SDLP and replace it as the primary party of the Catholic working class in Northern Ireland.
The SDLP tended to stay in council chambers and in offices as remote, professional politicians. Sinn Fein set up local advice centres, small, cheap offices in run-down Victorian shopping parades. Mesh grills over the windows kept out loyalist petrol bombs, but their doors were always open to local people.
Not just the ones who wanted to take part in political activities, support ‘the boys’ in prison and so on. Even more important in the battle for hearts and minds were the people with problems - with landlords and rent, or with social services or crumbling marriages. All the things which, in English towns, would normally at the time require help from the Citizens’ Advice Bureau, people living in the poorest parts of Belfast, Londonderry and Newry learnt to go to the Shinners.
Their unpretentious drop-in centres were all the more effective for being small and rough-and-ready. “These people are like us, and they’re here for us” turned general sympathy for the overall struggle against the Brits into political support and votes.
The loyalist paramilitaries set up their own political wings, but they never mastered this approach, and paid for this failure. While they did the fighting, dying and prison terms for defending their people and taking the war to the enemy, they never managed to turn the sympathy this generated into serious political support or votes.
 |
These days, Sinn Fein are far more interested in Third World immigrants, LGBTQ rights and abortion-on-demand than they are in the people they claim to represent. But the reputation they built up - as they helped their community claw its way up from oppressed underdogs to dominating higher education, the civil service, law and media – still gives them a formidable political advantage.
On the other side, it is possible to learn from the local community charity shops which stand in high streets in slightly more well-to-do towns. They are run just like the other charity shops which help keep a bit of life in struggling high streets. They use the same volunteers and appeal to local residents for saleable bric-a-brac, clothes, unwanted household items and all the usual.
They don’t use the money it makes to send bibles to Botswana or to raise money for research into the diseases exploding thanks to ultra-processed food and toxic jabs. Instead, everything raised helps to fund the boxing gym in what used to be the big storeroom out the back. It keeps local kids busy, out of mischief and connected with the wider community.
I think also of a very interesting visit I made not so long ago to a locally-run community centre in England. Somewhere north of Birmingham is all I will say because, while based on essentially traditionalist Christian values of charity and service, it hasn’t had any problems with the local council, and wants to keep it that way.
The sort of examples we’ve considered so far span well over two hundred years. All of them came into being not because times were easy, allowing their creators to afford such luxuries, but precisely because times were hard. The local institutions they created in response where not luxuries, they were vital tools for survival, or at the very least things which made hard times a little easier and more bearable.
Well, guess what? Times are getting hard again. Our people will respond and rally round each other, and the harder things get the more they will do so.
The problems our people face now are different in some important specifics, but the underlying circumstances also have marked similarities: Ordinary people have no control over their own lives, powerful elites impose policies and conditions which do them and their families enormous harm. If they complain, they are either ignored or suppressed.
‘The Swinish Multitude’, the ‘Great Unwashed’, the ‘Human Herd’, the labels applied to them over the years have changed, but the contempt and fear which the Masters feel for us are as plain as the fact that the neglect and exploitation are despite there being far more of us than there are of them.
 |
“We are Many, they are Few”, as Shelley put it, in his poetic rebuke to those who ordered the infamous Peterloo Massacre of 1819. Those who hesitate to get involved in today’s fight for justice for our people for fear of being ‘doxxed’, or losing a few brainwashed friends, need to remember that basic rights which they thought they could take for granted were not gifted to their ancestors. They were taken from the rich and power, and their militias and their police.
They were won at the cost of lost jobs, broken heads, severed limbs and the hangman’s noose. They were secured because our people stopped complaining and organised to change things for the better.
We are, sad to say, no longer the 99%. It was precisely the fear of facing the wrath of a people united against tyranny and legalised robbery which was part of the reason for the elite’s enthusiasm for the “multiracial experiment” in the first place. But there are still many millions of us, against only thousands of them and a few hundred thousand often cowardly and thoroughly feminised security mercenaries to uphold their petty tyranny.
Even when their policies turn us into a minority, we will still be by far the largest minority, and quite a few of those in smaller minorities will be inclined for various reasons to side with us. We have every reason to be worried about the future, but not to be petrified – literally ‘turned to stone’ by it - and so unable to respond. We should not be scared by the future, but we must take action to avoid still being disunited and disorganised when it arrives.
As long as our communities are united and organised, even dominant minority status is not where we would ideally choose to be. But, since we do not have a realistic choice any more, we must get to work to unite and organise, so that we can make the best of the bad job which various anti-white and anti-Christian lobbies have foisted on us.
So, returning to our notional, typical working-class town, what would its people and their champions need to have put in place before it could classify as a Strongpoint Community?
 |
The RTC Flagsters group and Community Observation Patrol are a given. It is likely that both these concepts will change and adapt in order to resist future efforts by the authorities to close such operations down. But it is even more likely that, despite such challenges, being easy, cheap to set up and run, and very popular among ordinary residents, they will be important starting points for more ambitious ventures into local community organisation and resistance.
We have already examined several of the simplest extensions to these operations, particularly Remembrance Season decoration and mobile soup kitchen teams. Let us assume that, in turn, nationalists and active patriots within this community have got involved with such initiatives. This has given them a network of generally loose contacts and sympathy. What we are going to examine now is what they can build on that as, quite literally, they move into the bricks and mortar of a Community Strongpoint.
It’s probably taken them several years of planning, fund-raising and hard work, but now they have an actual building. Or, possibly, buildings, because while everything we’re about to examine fits together, it doesn’t all have to take place under the same roof. Indeed, having it divided between several different community hubs could have advantages in various ways, from questions of noise to security considerations.
Whatever is decided upon, the sort of properties which will be useful are obvious and pretty much self-selecting. Typically, the main centre will be in a large former shop, with storage and a back yard, on a rundown high street. Or it might be a church or chapel with an attached hall, complete with toilets and a kitchen even before conversion work begins. A closed down primary school would also fit the bill.
Some of these potential venues might have been effectively unthinkable only a few years ago, but the rise of populist parties is already opening up the possibility that, after decades where local councils were run by leftists, we may be moving to a time when – in some areas at least – a community group won’t have to be Muslim, black or run by someone who thinks ‘they’ are a dog or a witch in order to be allowed a cheap, long-term lease on a redundant council building.
In the side with the old shop window, middle-aged ladies run the charity shop. Local people donate to it, happy to know that every penny raised goes back into their community, rather than to some bunch of foreign ingrates or the overpaid executives of a big charity which has lost touch with its roots. Local pensioners often drop in for a cup of tea and to warm up in winter.
A small office provides private space for the advice centre. Cutbacks have drastically reduced the number of Citizens Advice Bureaux. This is opening up a huge gap; despite the availability of every sort of advice online, the dedicated advice room with trained volunteers, connected to the online database of the CAB, is hugely appreciated by local people.
This is one of the things which the BNP just touched on but, frankly, we too tied up in the last possible moment in which an electoral challenge might have turned things around. We learned that councillors for other parties could obtain on request copies of the CAB’s centrally produced and regularly updated database. All the questions a local councillor or advice centre would ever be asked were there, carefully indexed, and with all the answers, on CD-ROM disks.
Recognising the potential, we sort to get hold of copies, but the CAB refused point blank to give them to “racists”. We should have fought that decision, using the liberals’ own language and anti-discrimination rules to secure for our people the rights granted freely to everyone else. Their bigoted position was not just direct discrimination against our elected councillors, but also indirect discrimination against the English, who would be more inclined to turn to people they had elected than to anyone else.
We failed to develop such offensive lawfare capabilities, but essentially non-political community groups would probably be able to secure access to the CAB’s online database without encountering any resistance. If not, then any one of the well-funded populist parties or ‘right-wing’ pundits making a fortune through monetised social media will be able to fund the necessary legal action without even feeling the cost.
Towards the back of the premises is a gym for youngsters. A meeting room and kitchen are used by various groups. Pensioners evenings, bingo and so on are popular. There’s a PA system for budding young musicians, it’s not the biggest live music venue, but it’s theirs and its safe. The last drugs dealer was encouraged to leave the area more than a year ago now.
Community meals are prepared and enjoyed for festivals, socials and fund-raising events. The Mothers & Toddlers group also uses a section of the storeroom, which allows it to store prams and baby gear until they are given out to new parents.
The storage and meeting facilities provide a base for all sorts of teams which work out in the community. There’s a clean-up team and a homeless aid group, as well as the community replacement for the Meals On Wheels operation closed down due to council cutbacks. An independent, non-woke, cubs and scouts group is based there too, as is the recently-founded marching band and a choir.
Out in the back yard, several local handymen have covered a section of it. This provides the space in which several retired but active tradesmen run hands-on taster training sessions for youngsters. Basic engine maintenance, welding, bricklaying, plumbing, electrics and plastering are all provided. It isn’t just about actual career opportunities, it’s about connecting the generations, and giving young men confidence in their own abilities.
The latest step forward has been the use of the local council power to acquire land to enlarge the allotments. Fund-raising is going on to build a Men’s Shed down there, after the community minibus took the chaps working on the idea to see several already in existence in towns nearby.
As confidence grows, even more becomes possible. Each setback adds to the collective experience available; each success provides a springboard to the next project. Coming up soon is a scheme to support for home-schoolers. A small room upstairs is earmarked for a local branch of a credit union.
A planning sub-group is working on perhaps the most ambitious project since the premises itself was opened. This is a minicab firm, providing carefully vetted local drivers – including women – for local people. Its office and radio equipment will be based in the Strongpoint Centre.
Residents are eager for the day when they no longer have to rely on the usual minicab providers. While the local council has still not yet turned populist – and is therefore hostile to the plan – the necessary licences are all going to be issued by a much more amenable council.
Another group of enthusiasts are meeting in the community café section once a month as they develop plans to buy an old steel narrow boat, moor it on the local canal and renovate it as a training programme and to provide canal excursions for locals and tourists alike.
I am sure that you will be able to think of other equally exciting possibilities, and look forward as always to your comments here, which will be considered and where suitable incorporated into the eventual printed What Is to Be Done?
Do please remember that none of this is unrealistic, or mere theory. Everything proposed here has already been done, and worked. Very often in many places and over many years.
The only thing that has not been done yet is to bring such things together in the service of our people in the changed and challenging times which are coming, as opposed to the changed and challenging times in which they served them well in the past. Whether in problems or solutions, there really are very few new things under the sun.
When you first read the headline about “Strongpoint Communities”, you might have thought that – at a time when alternative media outlets maintain a constant background drumbeat about ethnic conflict and ‘civil war’ - I was going to speak of walls and barbed wire, or even of the weapons with which men will be forced to guard them. As you have just learned, I do not.
Such things are probably already inevitable, but to concentrate on them will still be to miss the point. The most important ‘strongpoint’ is in the hearts and minds of the people. If the confidence, unity and spirit are there, those who step forward to man the physical defences will build or acquire them very quickly. But if those three things are missing, all the defences and weapons in the world won’t help them or their community.
I understand if you still find this a bit uncomfortable. It’s a long way from casting a ballot every five years. Many will continue for a while yet to pretend that none of what we have been considering is necessary. The lazy, the cowardly, those paid to keep the the movement inactive or busy with useless things, and those who make money selling political snake oil cures – all will try to ignore this call to constructive and realistic action.
Being part of a community which is organising in a siege mentality may not sound attractive, but visualise life for your family in a Strongpoint neighbourhood. I can tell you; it’s going to be richer, more connected, more genuinely ‘vibrant’ than anything in mainland British living memory – except perhaps among the very oldest, who are still just about within memory of the ‘Blitz Spirit’.
The more the multicultural disintegration of our old society bites, the more the alienation and sheer disruption of the so-called 4th Industrial Revolution and the chill of the Demographic Winter kick in, the more what I describe will be the sort of community which our people will need. And in which they will find themselves more happy and genuinely alive than anyone at present can believe.
To live within the tribe is the basis of real humanity. The nuclear family is part of our nature, but even traditionalists who cling to that aspect of our nature have somehow forgotten that we are also hardwired to live with extended families, and with a tribe.
We’ve had a dead century, a deeply anti-human period in which tribe and belonging have been crushed between atomised individualism and the emptiness of universalism. The dangers and injustices which are driving us back to tribalism are not things any of us can want, but among the consequences – if we face the threats right – will be things that serve us well and even make us happy.
What starts as a plan for a Community Strongpoint leads us to build a Strongpoint Community. The former is simply a building which various people use. The latter is the living thing which those efforts help to bring into being.
The initial impetus may be fear, a sort of desperate attempt to hang on, but what will quickly come out of this time of darkness is a better way of being than we’ve had in living memory. The ideas given here are only a very simple outline, a basic sketch of the sort of things which can and must be done. All sorts of better ideas and more sophisticated institutions will be worked out and built on the long road back which still lies ahead of us.
How honoured are those to whom it falls to take the first steps, and to point out the path ahead. How lucky are those young enough to help build the institutions and the bulwarks of our tribe. How fortunate those who will be born and raised in a time and in places where they grow up knowing exactly who they are, what they belong to, and what is to be done to advance the day when we will have our home again.
If you’re one of the realists who is able to face the truth, while not giving way to depression as you ponder the apparently dark future, I believe you will greatly appreciate this series. If so, I urge you to scroll back on my Substack website (it’s easier to use) and read the earlier sections. And to become a paid subscriber, because ideas alone are not enough. We need organisation, and that costs money. I’m sorry if that’s rather un-English, but it’s a fact. So how about it? Thank you!
Subscribed
