In 1811; Arthur William Hodge is executed for the murder of a slave, the first slave owner to be punished as such

1794: Slavery banned in the French Republic. (Later reintroduced by Napoleon, and rebanned after his exile in 1814)

1833: Britain introduces the Slavery Abolition Act1968: Enoch Powell gets sacked from the shadow cabinet after making a very very stupid speech (The Rivers of Blood)

November 2008: American elects its first black president.

As you can see; racism is generally looked down upon now, sadly though, it’s not yet gone from the world, and I don’t think it ever will.The BNP received over 6% of the total votes in the 2009 European election, this means over 3,600,000 don’t see a problem with racism. Funny thing here, the BNP pride themselves on being “pure Britain”, and “outcasts”, the select few. And that there are too many black people in this country.

Thing is; as I mentioned earlier, 6% of the voting population voted BNP, and (according to the 2001 census) blacks make up only 2% of the population. So the “outcast” is apparently bigger than the “majority”. How the hell does that work?

So, why won’t we end racism? Very easy answer; people are bastards, and like to hate. Especially if that hatred is irrational. There is a lot of irrational hatred around the world. How many times do you hear sports fans say they hate supporters of another team? What the hell is up with that? You know the difference between them? Their clothes, that’s all it is. “That person is wearing blue; I only like people who wear red”. And occasionally its “that person is wearing a different kind of red top to the one I am. What an absolute bastard” When you say it like that; football is amazingly feminine.

Political allegiances. I’m not talking about extremist voters; they deserve to be hated for hating in the first place. I’m talking about people who just vote differently. Fox News is a great example of this. It just seems to hate Obama, no matter what he does. Is their any reason for this? No, is just because he’s head of different political party than the one Fox News supports (that “fair and balanced” thing is just bullshit).I really wish I had a point here, I really don’t though. Racism and hatred is far too complicated a thing for someone of my intellect to sort out.

One last thing, the BNP want their genes to continue and populate Great Britain, but is it just me who thinks they are quite ugly? stupid too

Oh, and I am well aware that not everybody voted so their probably is less BNP members than black people. But fuck it, was the best information I could get. You don’t like it? Vote next time

An essence is an unchanging quality. Apples are red and round, essentially. Summer is sunny and warm. Women are – perhaps more difficult to sum up. Ask any English professor and she will list for you a dozen qualities historically deemed “essentially” feminine, most of them unflattering. So perhaps each of these essences has its own story involving a male protagonist standing to benefit from the view that woman are fragile or weak or submissive or unstable. One can imagine similar stories involving ethnic and religious minorities, gays, and foreigners.

Based on this simple observation, English professors have often concluded that essences — along with their close relative, universal Truth — necessarily stand in the way of social progress. If it can be shown that race, gender, and other categories are mere social constructions, the thinking goes, harmful stereotypes will lose their hold over individuals. An analysis of The Prioress’ Tale might, for example, show that Chaucer’s depiction of Jewish violence was a mere “construction” serving the interests of medieval Christians who wished to disassociate themselves from Judaism. Medieval tales of Jewish villainy (there were many) sought to establish firm boundaries between peoples whose respective identities tended to commingle, especially as debtor and creditor. By observing that the categories of “Jew” and “Christian” are interdependent, English professors seek to disrupt negative Jewish stereotypes, both then and now.

Anti-essentialism cuts both ways, however. As Stanley Fish once put the point, no “normative conclusion — this is bad, this must be overthrown — can legitimately be drawn from the fact that something is discovered to be socially constructed; for by the logic of deconstructive thought everything is; which doesn’t mean that a social construction cannot be criticized, only that it cannot be criticized for being one.” Put another way, no logical connection exists between the observation that human identity or belief do not rest on unalterable principles and the belief that patriarchy, capitalism, or some other perceived evil ought to be overthrown.

What does any of this have to do with a book review? The short answer is that Christopher Caldwell’s “Reflection on the Revolution in Europe” mounts a conservative attack on the Islamic presence in Europe without once resorting to universal principles and, in so doing, proves Fish right and his colleagues wrong. (Caldwell’s book takes its name after Edmund Burke’s “Reflection on the Revolution in France,” so there are obviously significant differences between his intellectual heritage and that of English departments.)

It is no coincidence that literary scholars have recently turned their attention to Jews and Saracens in medieval England. While few Europeans today practice the religious faith of their ancestors, the European man-in-the-street continues to look on Islam as an alien, and even hostile force. Elite opinion has changed somewhat since 1215, however, and now aligns pretty closely with the views held by most literary scholars. To list a few truisms: the category “Muslim” is empty of content and conceals important differences among Arabic peoples; too much talk of violence and rioting on the part of Muslims encourages dangerous stereotypes; Europeans are “rapacious and exploitative by nature” (Caldwell’s words).

If elite opinion is relativistic in theory, it is often coercive in practice, criminalizing opinions it doesn’t agree with – denial of the Holocaust, for example. Caldwell seizes upon this point, arguing that neutrality is in practice impossible: one group must always be favored over the others. Europeans must, in Caldwell’s view, either embrace Western values – gender equality, freedom of speech and religion, and so on – or succumb to Islamism. Significantly, Caldwell – at once a social constructionist and ardent conservative — doesn’t defend Western values on the grounds that they are universally valid, but on the grounds that they are Western.

Caldwell’s narrative begins in 1968, when British parliamentarian Enoch Powell made a series of haunting prophesies about the future of immigration. A few weeks after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and ensuing race riots, Powell warned that Britain too might see its neighborhoods transformed into ghettoes if it continued to accept large numbers of immigrants. Later that year, Powell warned that native British citizens would eventually be “dislodged” by immigrants. For decades to come, Powell’s remarks have framed the immigration debate, which, according to Caldwell, has been “essentially, an argument over whether Enoch Powell was right.” Elites have focused on the moral aspect of the question. With the memory of colonialism and Nazism still fresh, many deem Powell, an unrepentant lover of empire, morally wrong in his dislike of immigration. Meanwhile, the British working class has tended to focus on whether Powell was factually right – which he most certainly was.

Leaving aside the moral question for a moment, Europe’s Muslim population has ballooned in recent years from next to nothing in the mid-twentieth century to between 15 and 17 million today, proving that Powell was at least half right. In Britain, the initial immigration boom resulted from the 1948 Nationalities Act, which granted citizenship to Britain’s former colonial subjects. Meanwhile, a post-war labor shortage in France, Sweden, and Germany led these countries to form guest worker programs. At the time, few Europeans imagined that the Indians and Pakistanis arriving in Britain, Algerians in France, and Turks in Germany would settle permanently. Yet that is precisely what many of them did.

For a unique post-war moment, immigration served European self-interest. By the late 1970s, Britain, France, and Germany had come to realize that immigration would not bring to Europe the economic benefits it had promised. And yet foreigners kept coming. At this point, political leaders devised the moral justification for immigration: the duty of Europeans to provide asylum to “those threatened by violence, poverty, or political persecution.” This shift on the part of European elites from arguing on the basis of economic self-interest to arguing on the basis of universal principles – in this case, the ancient tradition of hospitality – would make immigrants extraordinarily difficult to get rid of. As Caldwell explains, the shift was part of a larger change “from a passive population of immigrants to a willful population of immigrants.”

One might almost characterize Caldwell’s method as genealogical. Caldwell describes competing discourses of immigration primarily in terms of their moment of origin – usually some historical rupture or act of violence. As the result of Jewish experience in Nazi-occupied France and similar instances, the twentieth century witnesses an “erosion of the distinction [in the discourse of hospitality] between people who come for refuge and people who come to stay”; decolonization and post-war economic devastation inspires European leaders to welcome immigrants, while the presence of these immigrants has the unintended effect of producing further immigration; the European masses resist this, leading their leaders to invoke hospitality under the new guise of political asylum. Edmund Burke, meet Michel Foucault.

Like the postmodernists whom he would surely despise, Caldwell has little hope that human reason or moral precepts will successfully mediate between competing interests. The West simply arises out of one soil and Islam out of another, with the result that the two cultures are unintelligible to each other. The standard liberal view of riots in Muslim neighborhoods or terrorist attacks is that some legitimate grievance must underlie such violence. In response to the 2005 Paris banlieu riots, for example, the International Crisis Group (ICG) recommended that the French government end police repression of Muslims, encourage their political participation, and address discontent over Palestine and Iraq. The idea was to look at what Europe had done to provoke the riots, rather than view them as an outgrowth of Islam itself. Yet, as Caldwell is eager to point out, the report also observes that the youths “sympathized with jihad,” were “furious partisans of the Arab cause” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine, and embraced an “autodidactic version of fundamentalism that the report’s authors called ‘shaykhist salafism.” Another way to view the riots, then, is as an expression of Islamic identity, with which there could be no negotiating. In a later section of the book, Caldwell builds on this idea, proposing that there is “no course the West can follow to defuse terrorist grievances, because those grievances are numerous and protean.” We cannot even tell if the “basic gripe of al-Qaeda and kindred organizations” is “geostrategic, metaphysical, or sociological.” Islam is – to use a word cherished by postmodernists – wholly other.

The fundamental error of European liberals is, in Caldwell’s view, to mistake European provincialism for universal Truth. Gender equality, freedom of speech and religion – these are not ideals that Islam can accept, just as Westerners cannot accept jihad. The ideal of religious freedom, for example, arises not out of a European wish to constrain “religion in the abstract” but “Christianity in particular.” What no one had been expecting was that Islam — a “mighty identity, shaping every aspect of a believer’s life and reducing lesser allegiances to unimportance” – would be the primary beneficiary of religious freedom. Few Europeans practice the religious faith of their forbears, with the result that attacks on Christianity, however severe, mostly go unnoticed. Islam has, by contrast, used Europe’s formal neutrality toward religion to its advantage, encouraging the Blair government in 2006 to suppress Salmon Rushdie’s Satanic Verses in a “law against incitement to religious hatred,” for example. And then there was the Danish cartoonist incident, in which depictions of Mohammed – forbidden by Islam – produced bomb threats, violence, and boycotts throughout the Muslim world.

European leaders might have maintained neutrality while nevertheless deciding that freedom of speech trumped freedom of religion in these instances. Instead, they have consistently portrayed Muslims as victims, likening them to European Jews before World War II and censoring criticism of Islam. A compromise was even proposed whereby it would be “henceforth okay to attack ‘religion’ in the abstract . . . but not Islam in particular.” For Caldwell, such retreats from freedom of speech expose European universalism as a self-defeating fraud.

So what is the alternative? Caldwell claims that European cultures depend for their stability on “certain ethical survivals of Christianity,” adding that Europeans would “have a difficult time defending” their values without them. Only Christianity, argues Caldwell, can restore European dynamism — by grounding the ideals of human rights and equality in a specific tradition and encouraging the higher fertility rates necessary for demographic stability. Caldwell’s rejection of universal principles, however, undermines, rather than strengthens, his case for a return to Christian values. To revisit Stanley Fish’s point, the observation that all truths (those of secular Europe notwithstanding) are social constructions has no implications whatsoever. It is impossible to criticize Europeans for straying from their Christian heritage for the sake of tolerance, fairness, and multiculturalism without turning Christian heritage itself into its own universal principle. Caldwell, in other words, confuses the view that Europeans do in fact act according to the self-interest shaped by their customs and collective habits with the view that Europeans ought to act according to self-interest by embracing once again Christianity. The conclusion that one should become a Christian follows only from the premise that Christianity is, in fact, true – a premise Caldwell’s methodology does not allow him to even consider.

One could, I suppose, argue that Christianity is a social construction and, at the same time, the best source of universal principles Europe has at its disposal. This line of thinking would allow Caldwell to argue that Christianity is better – more desirable, that is – to Europeans than secularism, if only because it is better equipped to stave off Islam. While logically consistent, such a claim is a dead-end – for Europeans must either convince themselves that they are true believers or make a travesty of Christianity, which, after all, claims to be true and not merely convenient. (Unlike postmodernists, Burkean conservatives, and Enlightenment thinkers, Christianity bridges the divide between social constructions and human reason via its unique blend of mythology, history, and philosophy.)

Overall, Caldwell’s book offers a powerful critique of European liberalism — particularly its false pretension to neutrality — and an eye-opening account of how Islam has profoundly transformed Europe in a matter of decades. In large part due to its ideology of tolerance, secular Europe has failed to articulate positive ethical commitments in the way that Christianity has in previous generations. A renewed appreciation for the strengths of Christianity need not, however, entail a wholesale retreat into traditional Christian values. Nor is the crusading mentality Caldwell endorses at all helpful. The way to counter militant strains of Islam is not with a militant Christianity, but with an ethically committed Europe — a Europe that reaffirms its tradition of human rights and civil liberties with pride and, yes, authority.

AA Gill is probably right to observe:

“It would be impossible for Nick Griffin now to make Enoch Powell’s speech warning that like the Roman he saw the river Tiber foaming with blood — and Powell was, at the time, in Ted Heath’s shadow cabinet”.

This is just one illustration, amongst many, of the victories secured for decency and civility – perhaps, the politically incorrect terms for political correctness - over the past decade or so. And, as such, it is to be celebrated. But in my relatively short life – not yet into its 30th year – I have seen graffiti that reads: “Enoch was right”. That he obviously wasn’t doesn’t stop me strongly suspecting that there remain those who don’t accept this and wondering what vent these people have for this view.

 Similarly, just as I am confident that the vast majority of Britons find Griffin creepier than homosexuals, I am also sure that there will be some who, appallingly, agree with Griffin that homosexuality is creepy. Recent homophobic attacks in Liverpool and Trafalgar Square make me very worried about the expression of such views.

Essentially, what lengths will the political incorrect go to in increasingly politically correct times? If all they do is become Directors of Policy for Boris Johnson, then we may not have so much to worry about. But the underbelly of unreconstructed Powellites and homophobes amongst us may turn far uglier than this.

Hugh Jend

The merits, or otherwise, of mass immigration isn’t part of this discussion.
What SICKENS me (I cannot speak for the rest of TTAB at this point) is that the very concept that Bliar etc looked to promote could well be DESTROYED!

This article confirms much that many have suggested.The New Liebore Project wasn’t just about making the Labour Party acceptable to the British electorate, it’s aim was to radically change the social make up of the country (oh & to piss off the ‘right’).

This falls right into the hands of every racist, bigot & xenophobe that infest this nation.
Powell predicted ‘Rivers of Blood’….could it happen?

Queen Elizabeth, 1601

“Whereas the Queen’s majesty, tendering the good and welfare of her own natural subjects greatly distressed in these hard times of dearth, is highly discontented to understand the great numbers of Niggers  and Blackamoors which as she is informed are crept into this realm since the troubles between Her Highness and the King of Spain, who are fostered and relieved here to the great annoyance of her own liege people that want the relief which those people consume; as also for that the most of them are infidels, having no understanding of Christ or his Gospel, hath given especial commandment that the said kind of people should be with all speed avoided and discharged out of her majesty’s dominions.”

Her Majesty didn’t have to deal with Jews, of course, because there weren’t any allowed. The good old days. (No offense.) And yet Elizabethan England managed to get by without kosher delis or advice from the ADL on “Hate Crimes”. Go figure…

This cute hoor Elizabitch had Brian MacPhelim O’Neill and his family treacherously slaughtered, but this today would count for naught compared to her thought crime quoted above.

“We are not amused by great numbers of Niggers  and Blackamoors.”

Liverpool Pub, 2009. “She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.”

Aaahh…the good old English pub… Chef $%#&ing Ramsey’s $%#$ing well-loved %!$#ing real #!@$ing pub food! And some dare to say that Enoch was right!?

“Ulster is British … but is England … ?”

“Like the Roman, I see the River Tiber foaming with much blood”

Enoch Powell

1968.04.20 [BBC Documentary: "Rivers of Blood"]

The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature. One is that by the very order of things such evils are not demonstrable until they have occurred: at each stage in their onset there is room for doubt and for dispute whether they be real or imaginary. By the same token, they attract little attention in comparison with current troubles, which are both indisputable and pressing: whence the besetting temptation of all politics to concern itself with the immediate present at the expense of the future. Above all, people are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even for desiring troubles: “If only,” they love to think, “if only people wouldn’t talk about it, it probably wouldn’t happen.”

Perhaps this habit goes back to the primitive belief that the word and the thing, the name and the object, are identical. At all events, the discussion of future grave but, with effort now, avoidable evils is the most unpopular and at the same time the most necessary occupation for the politician.

Those who knowingly shirk it deserve, and not infrequently receive, the curses of those who come after. A week or two ago I fell into conversation with a constituent, a middle-aged, quite ordinary working man employed in one of our nationalised industries. After a sentence or two about the weather, he suddenly said: “If I had the money to go, I wouldn’t stay in this country.” I made some deprecatory reply to the effect that even this government wouldn’t last for ever;  but he took no notice, and continued: “I have three children, all of them been through grammar school and two of them married now, with family.  I shan’t be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas. In this country in 15 or 20 years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.“

I can already hear the chorus of execration.  How dare I say such a horrible thing?  How dare I stir up trouble and inflame feelings by repeating such a conversation?  The answer is that I do not have the right not to do so.  Here is a decent, ordinary fellow Englishman, who in broad daylight in my own town says to me, his Member of Parliament, that his country will not be worth living in for his children. I simply do not have the right to shrug my shoulders and think about something else. What he is saying, thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking — not throughout Great Britain, perhaps, but in the areas that are already undergoing the total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history. In 15 or 20 years, on present trends, there will be in this country three and a half million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants. That is not my figure. That is the official figure given to parliament by the spokesman of the Registrar General’s Office. There is no comparable official figure for the year 2000, but it must be in the region of five to seven million, approximately one-tenth of the whole population, and approaching that of Greater London. Of course, it will not be evenly distributed from Margate to Aberystwyth and from Penzance to Aberdeen.  Whole areas, towns and parts of towns across England will be occupied by sections of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population.

As time goes on, the proportion of this total who are immigrant descendants, those born in England, who arrived here by exactly the same route as the rest of us, will rapidly increase.  Already by 1985 the native-born would constitute the majority. It is this fact which creates the extreme urgency of action now, of just that kind of action which is hardest for politicians to take, action where the difficulties lie in the present but the evils to be prevented or minimised lie several parliaments ahead.

The natural and rational first question with a nation confronted by such a prospect is to ask: “How can its dimensions he reduced?” Granted it be not wholly preventable, can it be limited, bearing in mind that numbers are of the essence: the significance and consequences of an alien element introduced into a country or population are profoundly different according to whether that element is 1 per cent or 10 per cent.

The answers to the simple and rational question are equally simple and rational: by stopping, or virtually stopping, further inflow, and by promoting the maximum outflow. Both answers are part of the official policy of the Conservative Party.

It almost passes belief that at this moment 20 or 30 additional immigrant children are arriving from overseas in Wolverhampton alone every week – and that means 15 or 20 additional families a decade or two hence. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.  We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. So insane are we that we actually permit unmarried persons to immigrate for the purpose of founding a family with spouses and fiances whom they have never seen. Let no one suppose that the flow of dependants will automatically tail off. On the contrary, even at the present admission rate of only 5,000 a year by voucher, there is sufficient for a further 25,000 dependants per annum ad infinitum, without taking into account the huge reservoir of existing relations in this country – and I am making no allowance at all for fraudulent entry. In these circumstances nothing will suffice but that the total inflow for settlement should be reduced at once to negligible proportions, and that the necessary legislative and administrative measures be taken without delay.

I turn to re-emigration. If all immigration ended tomorrow, the rate of growth of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population would be substantially reduced, but the prospective size of this element in the population would still leave the basic character of the national danger unaffected.  This can only be tackled while a considerable proportion of the total still comprises persons who entered this country during the last ten years or so.  Hence the urgency of implementing now the second element of the Conservative Party’s policy:  the encouragement of re-emigration.  Nobody can make an estimate of the numbers which, with generous assistance, would choose either to return to their countries of origin or to go to other countries anxious to receive the manpower and the skills they represent.  Nobody knows, because no such policy has yet been attempted.  I can only say that, even at present, immigrants in my own constituency from time to time come to me, asking if I can find them assistance to return home.  If such a policy were adopted and pursued with the determination which the gravity of the alternative justifies, the resultant outflow could appreciably alter the prospects.

The third element of the Conservative Party’s policy is that all who are in this country as citizens should be equal before the law and that there shall be no discrimination or difference made between them by public authority.  As Mr Heath has put it we will have no “first-class citizens” and “second-class citizens”.  This does not mean that the immigrant and his descendent should be elevated into a privileged or special class or that the citizen should be denied his right to discriminate in the management of his own affairs between one fellow-citizen and another or that he should be subjected to imposition as to his reasons and motive for behaving in one lawful manner rather than another.

There could be no grosser misconception of the realities than is entertained by those who vociferously demand legislation as they call it “against discrimination”, whether they be leader writers of the same kidney and sometimes on the same news papers which year after year in the 1930s tried to blind this country to the rising peril which confronted it, or archbishops who live in palaces, faring delicately with the bedclothes pulled right up over their heads.  They have got it exactly and diametrically wrong.  The discrimination and the deprivation, the sense of alarm and of resentment, lies not with the immigrant population but with those among whom they have come and are still coming.  This is why to enact legislation of the kind before parliament at this moment is to risk throwing a match on to gunpowder.  The kindest thing that can be said about those who propose and support it is that they know not what they do.

Nothing is more misleading than comparison between the Commonwealth immigrant in Britain and the American negro.  The negro population of the United States, which was already in existence before the United States became a nation, started literally as slaves and were later given the franchise and other rights of citizenship, to the exercise of which they have only gradually and still incompletely come.  The Commonwealth immigrant came to Britain as a full citizen, to a country which knew no discrimination between one citizen and another, and he entered instantly into the possession of the rights of every citizen, from the vote to free treatment under the National Health Service.

Whatever drawbacks attended the immigrants arose not from the law or from public policy or from administration, but from those personal circumstances and accidents which cause, and always will cause, the fortunes and experience of one man to be different from another’s.

But while, to the immigrant, entry to this country was admission to privileges and opportunities eagerly sought, the impact upon the existing population was very different. For reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country.

They found their wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to obtain school places, their homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition, their plans and prospects for the future defeated;  at work they found that employers hesitated to apply to the immigrant worker the standards of discipline and competence required of the native-born worker;  they began to hear, as time went by, more and more voices which told them that they were now the unwanted. They now learn that a one way privilege is to be established by act of parliament;  a law which cannot, and is not intended to, operate to protect them or redress their grievances is to be enacted to give the stranger, the disgruntled and the agent-provocateur the power to pillory them for their private actions.

In the hundreds upon hundreds of letters I received when I last spoke on this subject two or three months ago, there was one striking feature which was largely new and which I find ominous. All Members of Parliament are used to the typical anonymous correspondent;  but what surprised and alarmed me was the high proportion of ordinary, decent, sensible people, writing a rational and often well-educated letter, who believed that they had to omit their address because it was dangerous to have committed themselves to paper to a Member of Parliament agreeing with the views I had expressed, and that they would risk penalties or reprisals if they were known to have done so. The sense of being a persecuted minority which is growing among ordinary English people in the areas of the country which are affected is something that those without direct experience can hardly imagine. I am going to allow just one of those hundreds of people to speak for me:

“Eight years ago in a respectable street in Wolverhampton a house was sold to a negro. Now only one white (a woman old-age pensioner) lives there. This is her story. She lost her husband and both her sons in the war. So she turned her seven-roomed house, her only asset, into a boarding house. She worked hard and did well, paid off her mortgage and began to put something by for her old age. Then the immigrants moved in. With growing fear, she saw one house after another taken over. The quiet street became a place of noise and confusion Regretfully, her white tenants moved out.

“The day after the last one left, she was awakened at 7am by two negroes who wanted to use her phone to contact their employer.  When she refused, as she would have refused any stranger at such an hour, she was abused and feared she would have been attacked but for the chain on her door.  Immigrant families have tried to rent rooms in her house, but she always refused.  Her little store of money went, and after paying rates, she has less than 2 per week.  She went to apply for a rate reduction and was seen by a young girl, who on hearing she had a seven-roomed house, suggested she should let part of it.  When she said the only people she could get were negroes, the girl said, ‘Racial prejudice won’t get you anywhere in this country.’ So she went home.

“The telephone is her lifeline.  Her family pay the bill, and help her out as best they can.  Immigrants have offered to buy her house – at a price which the prospective landlord would be able to recover from his tenants in weeks, or at most a few months.  She is becoming afraid to go out.  Windows are broken.  She finds excreta pushed through her letter box.  When she goes to the shops, she is followed by children, charming, wide-grinning piccaninnies.  They cannot speak English, but one word they know.  ‘Racialist’, they chant.  When the new Race Relations Bill is passed, this woman is convinced she will go to prison.  And is she so wrong?  I begin to wonder”

The other dangerous delusion from which those who are wilfully or otherwise blind to realities suffer, is summed up in the word “integration”.  To be integrated into a population means to become for all practical purposes indistinguishable from its other members.  Now, at all times, where there are marked physical differences, especially of colour, integration is difficult though, over a period, not impossible.  There are among the Commonwealth immigrants who have come to live here in the last 15 years many thousands whose wish and purpose is to be integrated and whose every thought and endeavour is bent in that direction.  But to imagine that such a thing enters the heads of a great and growing majority of immigrants and their descendants is a ludicrous misconception, and a dangerous one.

We are on the verge here of a change. Hitherto it has been force of circumstance and of background which has rendered the very idea of integration inaccessible to the greater part of the immigrant population — that they never conceived or intended such a thing, and that their numbers and physical concentration meant the pressures towards integration which normally bear upon any small minority did not operate. Now we are seeing the growth of positive forces acting against integration, of vested interests in the preservation and sharpening of racial and religious differences, with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population. The cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, that can so rapidly overcast the sky, has been visible recently in Wolverhampton and has shown signs of spreading quickly. The words I am about to use, verbatim as they appeared in the local press on 17 February, are not mine, but those of a Labour Member of Parliament who is a minister in the present government “The Sikh communities’ campaign to maintain customs inappropriate in Britain is much to be regretted.  Working in Britain, particularly in the public services, they should be prepared to accept the terms and conditions of their employment.  To claim special communal rights (or should they say rites?) leads to a dangerous fragmentation within society.  This communalism is a canker;  whether practised by one colour or another it is to be strongly condemned.” All credit to John Stonehouse for having had the insight to perceive that, and the courage to say it.

For these dangerous and divisive elements the legislation proposed in the Race Relations Bill is the very pabulum they need to flourish.  Here is the means of showing that the immigrator communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided.  As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding;  like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”. That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect.  Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century. Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now.  Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know.  All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.

From Simon Heffer’s “When will Tories admit that Enoch was right?” [Telegraph, 2007.11.07]:

The insult to Powell consists in this unsustainable idea that the Birmingham speech was “racist”.

There is a long tradition in the party of not reading the speech. Heath, who sacked Powell as defence spokesman, certainly had not…. Powell did not use the word “race” in the speech at all (this often surprises people who are convinced it is an order to the masses to vilify black people for the sole reason that they happen to be black).

He did talk about areas being changed beyond recognition and without any consultation. He did talk about inevitable tensions arising from mass immigration. He did say that immigration would work if the immigrants could be integrated into existing social mechanisms, but warned that the numbers coming were so large that integration would be impossible. Quoting Virgil, he said that if this situation were not rectified there would be trouble: “As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”

…

Certainly there is inflammatory language in the speech: it is Powell quoting his constituents.

The cloven hoof is shown early on, when Powell says a voter has warned him that “the black man will have the whip hand over the white man”. Powell knew what he was doing. “I can already hear the chorus of execration. How dare I say such a horrible thing? How dare I stir up trouble and inflame feelings by repeating such a conversation? The answer is that I do not have the right not to do so.”

There is the story of the little old lady, another constituent, whose daughter had written to Powell about her misery at living, suddenly, in the midst of an alien culture. “All I know,” Powell concluded, “is that to see and not to speak would be the great betrayal.”

The assault on him at the time was conducted on the basis of scaremongering. His population projections could not possibly be accurate, it was said. In fact, they understated the case. He was accused of blatant racism, even though he had merely been highlighting the danger of the racism of others.

This was a man who loved India and Indians so much that he reached interpreter standard in Urdu, and who in 1959 had made what by popular assent was one of the great speeches ever heard in the Commons, in which he attacked the government of which he was a supporter for the brutal treatment of Mau Mau detainees in Kenya. Powell was about as much of a racist as Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and his warnings in the Birmingham speech have proved grounded.

Moron Eric Clapton, Concert, Birmingham, 1976.08.05:

“Vote for Enoch Powell. Enoch’s our man. I think Enoch’s right, I think we should send them all back. Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white. I used to be into dope, now I’m into racism. It’s much heavier, man. Fucking wogs, man. Fucking Saudis taking over London. Bastard wogs. Vote for Enoch, he’s our man, he’s on our side, he’ll look after us. I want all of you here to vote for Enoch, support him, he’s on our side. Enoch for Prime Minister! Throw the wogs out! Keep Britain white!”

Enoch Quotes:

• “The world is full of evil men engaged in doing evil things. That does not make us policemen to round them up nor judges to find them guilty and to sentence them. What is so special about the ruler of Iraq that we suddenly discover that we are to be his jailers and his judges?” (1990)
• “Those who at the end of the twentieth century wish to keep alive that consciousness of being English, which seemed so effortless and uncontroversial to their forefathers, will discover that they are called upon, if they take their purpose seriously, to confront the most arrogant and imposing prejudices of their time.” (1988)
• “A life peerage is a sort of insult, isn’t it? Look at the people that are given them.” (1995)
• “I just don’t like America, or Americans. It is like saying you like sugar in your tea. De gustibus non est disputandum.” (1986)
• “This nation is an island, and islands, especially islands of sanity, have no business to be attending, let alone hosting, international economic conferences.” (1984)
• “Britain’s fondness for America has turned this country into something horribly resembling a satellite of the United States.” (1983)
• “…Americans’ belief that they are authorised, possibly by the deity, to intervene, openly or covertly, in the internal affairs of other countries anywhere in the world.”(1982)
• “I would sooner receive injustice in the Queen’s courts than justice in a foreign court. I hold that man or woman to be a scoundrel who goes abroad to a foreign court to have the judgments of the Queen’s courts overturned, the actions of her Government countermanded or the legislation of parliament struck down.” (1982)
• “My considered conclusion is that a considerable and increasing proportion of MPs, including most of the occupants of both front benches, do know they are talking nonsense, but they go on doing so because they are ashamed to stop after so long, because it gives them something to say, and because, as everyone is talking the same nonsense, they feel quite safe.” (1978)
• “The EEC is the most un-Tory thing that can be conceived” (1978)
• “I find a certain contradiction in the notion of keeping one’s head down out of conviction.” (1975)
• “There is a German proverb to the effect that against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain; but when the stupidity is fashionable to boot, the frowning battlements are indeed impregnable.” (1975)
• “When the connection of policy with party is assumed to be spurious or reversible, parliamentary politics sink to the level of triviality, and men will begin to look for other ways to influence or control the nation’s affairs.” (1974),
• “A party is not the private property of its leader.” (1973)
• “Independence, the freedom of a self-governing nation, is in my estimation the highest political good, for which any disadvantage, if need be, and any sacrifice are a cheap price.” (1973)
• “I am a politician: that is my profession and I’m not ashamed of it. My race of man is employed by society to carry the blame for what goes wrong. As a very great deal does go wrong in my country there is a lot of blame. In return for taking the blame for what is not our fault, we have learned how not to take the blame for what is our fault.” (1973)
• “The United Nations is, always has been, and always will be, an absurdity and a monstrosity, which no lapse of time and no application of ingenuity and effort can remedy.” (1971)
• “Too often today people are ready to tell us: ‘This is not possible, that is not possible.’ I say: whatever the true interest of our country calls for is always possible. We have nothing to fear but our own doubts.” (1968)
• “…We are told in terms of arrogant moral superiority that we have got a ‘multi-racial society’ and had better like it.” (1968)
• “Yes, I am a virus. I am the virus that kills socialists.” (1968)
• “Often when I am kneeling down in church, I think to myself how much we should thank God, the Holy Ghost, for the gift of capitalism.” (1968) [FAIL! Capitalism is a Judeo-Masonic invention to work in tandem with Communism. Oh well, nobody's perfect.]
• “As a Tory I have great respect for authority, for traditional instruments of authority. But intellectually speaking there is no such thing as authority. Someone may have the right to tell me to do something, but that cannot be authority for a view. The mere fact that 60 or 60 million people happen to think something is so, is neither here nor there. You cannot have anyone else’s ideas but your own — or at least I can’t.” (1966)

Ireland’s dead now too. Replaced with Rothschild Bills.

Well worth the an hour.  It used to be bad when there were three (or four) classes to fight between each-other.  Nowadays though, it seems everything is upside-down, back to front…  just doesn’t feel like home anymore.  And that’s the worst feeling in the world.

Prepare to be raged.

If only politicians has listened to Enoch Powell then maybe this country would not be in such a dire situation regarding the races, we need another Enoch Powell ASAP.

Tipstack till Politiskt Inkorrekt och Kent Ekeroth

/Fröken Sverige

First published 4 September 2009

Recently blogger Left Outside noted, in his entry on Dan Hannan’s praise for Enoch Powell, that:

Discussing immigration is difficult in this country, often it descends into one side calling the other racists. Or more commonly, a writer beginning a piece by stating that it is no longer possible to discuss immigration in this country, without being accused of being a racist. I don’t think that this is a particularly healthy way to conduct debate.

Not healthy indeed. But who is lagging behind? Dialogue on asylum, immigration, migration is very important, but little is said by the left on the subject other than to denigrate the position taken by the BNP.

But to leave a void instead of valid ideas, leaves the issue in the court of the far right and does nothing to counter the argument that the leftist attitude towards migration is anything other than mere contrarianism. (Continue)

Enoch Powell: Was he: A) A dangerous bigot and blot on the history of the Conservative Party? Or B) A bit of a hero?

To answer ‘B’, you have to one of those people who think it was a mistake to intern British fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, during WWII. Or a regular reader of The Daily Mail. Or Daniel Hannan.

Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP, who last week, on American TV, cited Enoch ‘rivers of blood’ Powell as one of his political heroes.

In the American context, that would be like praising Strom Thurmond, a symbol of America’s struggle against civil rights and for segregation of the races. In Britain, Powell’s name carries similar baggage, and while there may be aspects of his politics or career that were untouched by racism, praising him (let alone calling him a ‘hero’) sends as clear a message as a Communist who praises Stalin for his agrarian policies or a Cambodian who thinks Pol Pot was a snappy dresser. No unlobotomised British politician could fail to see what praising him suggests.

The point is that even though America may have missed the significance of the remark, we should not.

The reason we should not ignore the remark is because Mr Hannan represents Britain in the European Parliament and he represents a political party that is widely tipped to win the next election. What he says and how he is treated for saying it by his superiors should be of concern to us. A few weeks before praising Enoch Powell, Daniel Hannan was also in the American media, this time attacking the NHS, calling it ‘a 60 year mistake’.

At the time, David Cameron distanced himself from the comment, calling Hannan ‘eccentric’.

And the fact that Hannan has not been punished or even reprimanded by the Conservative Party at the time I write this makes me wonder about the polls that show the Tories in the lead in public opinion. Labour has certainly made gross and disgusting errors during its time in power. So many, in fact, that many disillusioned leftists, liberals and citizens concerned with the social justice that Labour has traditionally fought for have deserted the party and are dismissive of its politicians as hypocrites, liars, and, worst of all from their perspective, Tories.

In many ways, unfortunately, they are right. But is the answer, for a liberal, to vote for a party that has many of the same faults you despise in New Labour, just amplified? Is the answer, for a Christian who is more concerned for the lives of the poor in Asia and Africa than the bankers Gordon Brown has supported rather than punished, to vote for a party that has consistently decreased the UK’s international aid budget and whose members don’t see international development as important?

Who do we vote for when none of the three main parties are even considering a platform of zero economic growth (essential, many academics believe, if we are to combat climate change and the worst excesses of unfair trade)?

I refuse to believe that the answer lies in doing nothing and absenting ourselves from politics to pray in a corner. If party politics is how decisions are made, then that is what we must get involved with, denouncing racism, a lack of concern for the poor and unjust wars as we go, in whatever party we support.

I know who i’m not going to vote for.

Blogger and scum watcher Left Outside has written a very interesting piece on how immigration is discussed in the modern British political sphere, and with less than optimistic conclusions.

With Tory MEP Daniel Hannan’s recent praise for Enoch ‘Rivers of Blood’ Powell as his backdrop,  LO briefs us on the stark similarities in sentiment with which the current popular press share with the racism that appealed to Powell’s speech; a racism that was blunt, explicit and erroneous in its ’swamping’ conclusions.

The conclusions are shockingly correct, as can be found in this entry written by Stirring up Apathy recently, and the hat-tips that inspired that entry. But what interested me most about LO’s entry was the point about discussing immigration. His words;

Discussing immigration is difficult in this country, often it descends into one side calling the other racists. Or more commonly, a writer beginning a piece by stating that it is no longer possible to discuss immigration in this country, without being accused of being a racist. I don’t think that this is a particularly healthy way to conduct debate.

Not healthy indeed. But who is lagging behind? The answer is anyone who ducks out of the question on immigration. This gap in leftist discussion has two effects; it opens up a free space for the far right who pride themselves on speaking up for the silent majority, and it leaves the assumption untouched that the left consensus on immigration is an open border policy. As such there are real problems here.

Do the European left have this same problem with talking about immigration? Of course there are many examples, one being the Dutch Socialist Party who oppose mass economic migration on the grounds that it is the logic of free-market capitalism, exporting workers from abroad to do the jobs that natives don’t need/want to do.

Another example can be taken from the words of Oskar Lafontaine, a German politician and co-chairman of Die Linke, a coalition leftwing group set to be a real challenge to Merkel’s Christian democrats in the next election. Known as a maverick to some, and not one to mince his words, in 1996 said “We have taken in 3.5 million immigrants,” … “In the last few years we have taken in 1 million extra people of working age, and they are walking straight into unemployment – into unemployment benefit or to draw a pension or to get welfare support.” These comments soon turned into an argument in Germany about race, since it concerned many of Eastern Europe’s German diaspora to migrate back “to the Fatherland”. It was, however, revealed soon after that many of the Aussiedler – or settlers – were not really German at all.

The main point here is that for bringing up numbers of migrants, Lafontaine was accused of “populist demagoguery” due to there being an oncoming election, but looked at carefully, Lafontaine’s main focus was not ethnicity or the claim that migrants steal jobs, but rather that migrants are sold the idea that the “Fatherland” is where they will be free, when in fact a lot of those migrants were walking straight into unemployment.

There is a great deal of benefit from migrant communities to any country, but it seems to cross the border of fairness when economic migrants are exposed only to exploitation and poverty in rich countries, which is what the above leftist sentiment seems to demonstrate.

But this is not without its own problems, for example exploitation in the rich west may not have the same character as exploitation elsewhere which is why this life is still preferable to migrant workers. Of course, though this may be the case, exploitation should not be tolerated in any form, and should be curbed by any who can do so.

A reason why the left has to get their case right on immigration is because when immigration turns into a charter for exploitation, when free travel permits workers of poorer countries to become fodder for richer, then a left voice needs to be heard, for the left is the traditional wing against exploitation of all kinds.

Another reason why the left needs its voice heard on immigration is because who a country accepts or denies as being legitimately in need of political asylum may be wrong.

Take homosexuals for example. Diane Taylor reported for The Guardian in August 2004 that following the murder of gay activist Brian Williamson a letter published in the Jamaica Observer the next day read, “To be gay in Jamaica is to be dead.” The article by Taylor further announced that Jamaica was on the British Home Office’s “safe country list” and applications of homosexuals were often dismissed unsympathetically – which paints a different picture than that the far right would have us believe about Britain’s so-called “open-door policy”.

Another example is the case of Pegah Emambakhsh, an Iranian lesbian who escaped Iranian prosecution against homosexuality, after her partner was arrested, tortured, and sentenced to death by stoning. At first in 2007, her asylum demand was refused by the UK government, but after a concerted campaign she has now been granted asylum (the decision was made on the 11th of February 2009) and will be allowed to remain in the UK.

Dialogue on asylum, immigration, migration is very important, but little is said by the left on the subject other than to denigrate the position taken by the BNP, which is as good a reason as any, but to leave a gap in valid ideas of its own, realistically leaves the far right to dominate the argument, and does nothing to counter the argument that the entire left supports a borderless country.

There can only be one thing worse than a policy where all immigration and asylum is curbed (more or less in line with how the BNP stand) and that is an open door policy, for this is the sort of argument sympathised by libertarians and hardcore free marketers (such as Dan Hannan) who embrace a pick of the workforce for as little payment as possible, and a constant wave of unemployment just in case that cheap worker gets silly.

Illegal immigration, too, leaves wide open the opportunity for trafficking and exploitation of the type that occured in Morcombe with the cockle pickers. This is not the reason why the BNP oppose illegal immigration, theirs is a whole host of nonsense such as preserving white identity, racial segregation and “flooding”. A leftist opposition to a borderless country – against leftists who do support such a thing - seeks to disuade the opportunities for the unpalatable forces in the world to hijack and exploit people who are either escaping tyranny or seeking a better chance.

The notion that the left can pursue these opinions are lost, and should be found. Understandably it takes a brave contingent to start of such a debate, but hopefully such a day will present itself, it might even put the politics of immigration into a perspective that not only disects the nonsense peddled by the right and far right wing press, but also draws the dominance of the issue away from the far right, thereby disuading white working class voters away from the lies and race hate produced in the ranks of the BNP.

This entry is in response to Left Outside’s article Dan Hannan, Enoch Powell, Volcanoes and the Daily Mail as part of the Bloggers Circle experiment

The latest in the Hannan saga is his praise of Enoch Powell. Now I am disgusted that such a high profile figure in our political history can have such vile views on race and immigration. But we cannot write off Powell’s failings as purely race related.

Hannan praises Enoch particularly as “somebody who understood the importance of national democracy, as somebody who understood why you need to live in an independent country and what that meant, as well as being a free marketeer and a small market conservative”.  All of those things, in the way Hannan means them, are wrong. We must make the case against the politics of Powell as well as against his racism. Opposition bloggers are correct when they say that Hannan having influences does not mean he subscribes to all the views; but what we need to do is show how this influence is not a good one.

Enoch Powell “understood the importance of national democracy”? My idea of national democracy is not a House of Lords that, in Enoch’s time, was still dominated by hereditary peers. Powell was resolutely against any reform to the Lords. We need to make our case for democracy, show where we have improved it and ensure we keep pushing forward. Powell made it clear he wanted one House to have power, one House to make decisions and one House to have democratic authority. We can debate the balance of power within our system for a long time, but the point is that Enoch Powell did not promote the system of checks and balances that currently exists in the US, a system Mr Hannan seems to envy. We must defend Labour’s record and in the year before the election push for further reforms and show we are still the force of change.

Powell promoted an independent nation? Hannan is clearly referring to Enoch’s opposition to Britain joining the EEC, a debate we have had in British politics for a long time.  We have rightly been asked to make the case for a social Europe, in light of the recent financial uncertainties we learn that working with other nations is essential in saving a globalised economy; and this can only be ensured if nations have real economic bonds. But it is more than this; European wide financial regulation, minimum tax rates and other social advances can only be made from within the EU.

The same can be said for Enoch’s belief in the small market. We must continue to believe and continue to make the case for intervention. We must ensure that everyone hears that real help is required during tough economic times, that by creating automatic stabilisers we can secure the long term future for the economy and by bringing forward capital investment we do not just create jobs to save a generation, but we also benefit from the resulting infrastructure. These are basic arguments, we must make them effectively. This is the key dividing line between us and Dan Hannan, who represents a much larger section of Conservative opinion than Cameron accepts.

To see what exactly Daniel Hannan said about Powell, take ten minutes and watch this. It is a ten minute clip worth watching. As for Powell himself, Hannan did specifically refer to his views on national independence (not surprising for a Eurosceptic) and advocacy of small government, not his views on immigration.Anyway, it is nice to see some room for dissent in a major party.

Why does Daniel Hannan get such flak for saying among his political heroes is Enoch Powell? He’s one of my heroes too. That doesn’t make me a racist, nor does it make Daniel Hannan a racist. It’s the simple bigoted sloganeering by the left.

No, I didn’t listen to his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, nor did I agree with it’s message, nor am I linking to it.

Back in the mid 1960’s my brother and I journeyed from our home in Shropshire to listen to a speech by Enoch Powell on the economy, in Birmingham’s wonderful classical Town Hall. Enoch’s speeches were works of art, logical in structure, powerful in there message, and passionate in there delivery. I’m not sure about the rest of the audience, but for us it was an uplifting experience to listen to a political speech that mattered. How we marvelled at his brilliance on our train journey home. 

Later on I lived in Wolverhampton when Enoch Powell was one of it’s MP’s. He was my MP. I’m proud to have met him, canvassed with him, and understood his appeal to voters, whether they were a dustman or duke. Did I agree with him on everything. Hell no, he resigned from the Conservative party just prior to the  1974 election, leaving the local party in the lurch.

While I understood his reasons for doing so, he was against our joining the EEC. I never truly understood the reason, for at heart he was a conservative. Though a flawed a one. Perhaps all great men are flawed in one way or another. Possibly nature’s way of balancing things out.

I’ve struggled to read Simon Heffer’s biography of Enoch Powell. I think it lacked the excitement, lucidity, and logicality of a Powellite speech. Also, perhaps it’s the peering into the reasons for his character flaws. However, I’d love to read a book of his speeches. To read his little rhetorical flourishes that were pointers to great political insights to come. Oh, just to conjour up an image of the great man in my mind all over again.

Dan Hannan has tripped over the line in the sand again with his favourable comments on Enoch Powell, again on American television. All the bigger left blogs have spoken about how they feel and they can roughly be divided into Sunny (Hundal, who notes that even the mere implication of Powell’s name is deserved of condemnation) and Sunder (Katwala, who notes that Hannan was in no way alluding to Powell’s immigration views, but rather his euroscepticism, which is in tune with Hannan’s overall project).

Both make good points, with Sunny the notion that mention of Powell can conjour up images of NF banners “Enoch was right” has real weight, but Sunder points out that in 2007 Hannan specifically pointed out in an article written in the Daily Telegraph that Powell was right on the idea of an independent Britain andn specifically erroneous on the subject of immigration.

It is enough to criticise Hannan on the things we can be sure of (all of which can be found in various places on this blog). Firstly there was the issue with Hannan encouraging British ex-pats in Spain to vote for a party with traditionally Francoist roots, then Hannan pledged support for Kaminski when his antisemitic past was revealed, and what’s more is Kaminski soon after pledged his own support for the Lisbon Treaty, which Hannan is vehemently against. Then there is the issue with Hannan pouring scorn on the NHS in the US where healthcare reform is being debated, Hannan using some rather dubious arguments such as Singapore does healthcare better, and that the NHS does not provide, despite this being an out and out obfuscation of truth.

Hannan has plenty to be criticised about, now that he is back from his holiday, but with this latest incident, headlines by the Mirror such as NHS-hating Tory Daniel Hannan at centre of racist storm do run the risk of moving the goalposts and losing the real point of Hannan’s wrongdoings. Certainly this will be an embarrassment for the Tories – already struggling to downplay all the attention Hannan is getting – but will calling Hannan racist put into proper context how deeply wrong this MEP really is?

I see from Monday’s Guardian that old companion of my youth Simon Heffer has been awarded a doctorate -

“Monkey also hears that Simon Heffer has been awarded a Cambridge PhD, in a rather unusual arrangement in which his 1998 biography of Enoch Powell was accepted in place of a doctoral thesis”

No truth, then, in the all too prevalent canard, promulgated by one or two right wing commentators, that some degrees awarded by English universities these days are scarcely worth the paper they’re printed on.

Country clearly not going to the dogs after all.

…Or should that be “death row”, not death-throe…? LOL [Ed.]

David Davis

The current Bill to make it difficult or impossible for MPs to have paying outside interests and careers may look like a “measure against sleaze”. But all it will do is turn Parliament, as Heffer states in that link, into a further-removed-from-reality Enemy Class – nay, an Enemy Superclass – of professional political hacks – which is to say, GramscoFabiaNazi by definition.

MPs, to be able to be truly representative of The People, should have been an Integral Part Of The People. They can do this by having run businesses such as retailers, and factories, or selling second-hand cars. Or by being employees of these firms. Or they can have been good Classical scholars-turned-General Officers such as Enoch Powell.

For MPs to turn into a political Enemy-Superclass, employed by (which is to say paid only by and through) the State, via machinery set up specifically to ensure they can’t do anything else worthwhile, is to permanently sunder them from those whom they were elected to represent the wishes of. It is so elementary but it needs restating clearly.

There are no conditions under which I believe for a second, that this Bill is intended to to anything other than finally break the link between electing MPs and their being actual, democratic representatives. This is deliberate and pre-meditated wickedness, all over again, and they are always at it and always will be, as long as the socialism meme thingy lasts. It   __must__  be extirpated. They understand fully how to destroy liberalism, by making its concepts unsayable and therefore unthinkable. there musy be a lesson here for us, other than Ian B’s fine suggestion in the comment thread of this post of ours here….

This is what Ian B said:-

The answer is simple, David. There is only one weakness in their fortress, and it is only a slight weakness, but this is the weakness we must exploit. Education.

Every belief system requires control of education. Every authoritarian religion knows this. Every political movement knows this. If we are to triumph, we must take their schools away from them- or rather, take the children away from the schools.

Our task then is to discredit schooling. Not to campaign for better schools, or for private schools, or for vouchers or other wealth transfers. We must fight for no schools. To do this, we must fight for real education; that is, the separation of the concept of intellectual development of inviduals from the system of factory schooling.

Our task is to denormalise schools. Our task is to turn schooling into a thing of horror, like child labour; we must seek a state in the future where people will discuss their forebears forced into schools as they now discuss infants forced up chimneys and down coalmines.

Home education, unschooling, self directed learning, individual development. Private tutelage, community tutelage, voluntary learning.

These are our levers. Think of the children they say, using the children as a crowbar. Well, the children must become our crowbar; but whereas our enemies destroy children, we seek to free them. Where our enemies seek to smother them, we must fight for their right to breathe freely.

Down with skool. That is how the evil will end.

A senior Tory MP has castigated journalists for not properly covering the business of the House of Commons.

Cheryl Gillan, the Shadow Welsh Secretary, was speaking during the third reading of her Autism Bill, which was approved.

The bill is one of one a handful of private member’s bills per session that receive government backing and has a chance of becoming law.

There has been cross-party support for the legislation, which requires the Secretary of State for Health to publish an adult autism strategy and issue associated statutory guidance for local authorities and NHS bodies.

“When we are trying to do something that will affect so many people’s lives and that shows the House of Commons at its best, I think it is a shame that there are no hordes of journalists in the Press Gallery here to see what the House really does for this country,” Mrs Gillan said.

“I see a sole, single, lonely journalist up there, perhaps reporting on these matters.

“He is to be congratulated, and it is a great shame that more people outside the House do not concentrate on the good that we do as a group in it rather than on the subjects covered in newspapers today.”

Later in the debate her Tory colleague John Bercow praised Mrs Gillan for her cross-party approach to the bill.

“However, there are always cynics who do not necessarily think that it is a good idea,” he said.

“It makes sense and we have benefited from it.

“As far as the media are concerned, and perhaps I can conclude on this point, I think it was the late Enoch Powell who said that politicians complaining about the media are like sailors complaining about the sea—it is a completely pointless and fruitless activity.

“Doubtless that is the case, but it is sad that when we work together in a concerted, principled and effective fashion it gets no attention or coverage.

“The media are just not interested. What a shame. They ought to be. We have done the right thing.”

This week as many of you may already know, Former Birmingham University Conservative Future President Dan O Doherty was expelled from the Conservative Party for allegedly wearing a Hitler moustache to a fancy dress party- and then posting a picture of said incident on Facebook. Right, so that’s the gist of what’s happened- but let’s take a moment to analyse the circumstances surrounding this unfortunate incident.

Comments on the article posted on Conservative Home yesterday decried the CF ‘Thought Police’ while Party Officials are said to have contacted Mr. Doherty to criticize his actions and expel him from the party. That won’t be the end of Dan, however. We all know Matt Lewis, of Maddygate fame is said to be active once again in the Conservative Party- for shame I say, but not for the shame of the action, more the shame of the lack of judgement of the individual.

Perhaps one might have felt that no longer being in an executive position within BUCF, he could get away with doing these things? Perhaps it was an alcohol-fuelled student error, which is not a strange thing to happen in an organisation with an average age of 18. True or false, when you’re in these societies, in these positions and representing and national political party (on any scale) you need to watch it. WATCH IT. Let it be a message to the lot of us.

Quoted as saying, “I don’t hate everyone, I just hate women” and known for once defending Enoch Powell’s, “Rivers of Blood,” speech and then later seeming to backtrack on his endorsement, Mr. Doherty is not a malicious or racist individual, but one perhaps lacking the media savvy and what one might call Diplomacy 2.0 skills.

So once again, Conservative Future is learning lessons- as if the organisation wasn’t without it’s problems before. KeepRightOnline suggests that right now is the time for strong leadership for CF, and for decisive action to be taken in asking the members if they really have what it takes to represent the Conservative Party proper (this is no reflection on Mr. Doherty). Perhaps some are looking for a title, some are looking for networking or drinking buddies, most of us however, are in it for the good. The good of the party, good of our communities and the good of the country.

Let’s KeepRight, people.

Update 26/05/09: Daniel O’Doherty has since commented that the statements made on his Facebook profile, specifically those regarding the hatred of women were in fact satirical and taken from a television show, whilst other quotes in the same vein were friend’s quotes, listed in a tongue-in-cheek manner. This blog has, since the original story broke- maintained confidence in Mr. O’Doherty.

David Davis

In the midst of all this Tulkasian levity, which we seem to be able to generate as is right and British about our travails, it’s time for the Scumbag-Speaker Michael Martin to do the right thing and resign. Nothing very much will change, about our Enemy Class, at least not this decade, or the next, but a point can have been made.

In time, people who feel the need to “enter Parliament” will be rather older than is now usual. Gordon Brown for examploe is much too young to know how to behave, and David Cameron is a mere boy who has done nothing whatsoever that had value as a way of givng value for reward received, before he “entered” Parliament. David Davis’s contributions are not quite so marginal, but he is still a bit young to be taken quite seriously, specially as he had a portico built onto his house.

The right people will have already completed the bulk of the great actions of their lives, in Classical liberal occupations.

They will feel no need to gain more money from the Treasury, since they will have more or less enough to do what they need, and they of course will want only to offer the benefit of their wide world experience and wisdom to those of us who know what should be done in a minimal State: a State whose function is to prepare and possibly provide only against “preventable evils”, but we outside this groupare busy, and have not the time or the resources to help it out.

These people will have the leisure time to do their Good Works by authorising monies for the building, say, of a Public Park with statues of Great Historical Figures who discovered The Universe, and the like. In it, perhaps, there will be a full-scale model Coal Mine, down which primary school children can descend on Saturdays and Sundays, for no money.

The LPUK offers hope here.

What they have done will be such as:- (in no special order)

manufacturing,

soldiering in reality, with guns, while States or Quasi-Religious-Pre-Capitalist-Conqueror-Memes  (such as socialism and some “religions”) yet threaten humankind,

selling things that people would like to buy,

or epic Scientific Discovery, and the endowment of free and independent institutions of Learning and Philosophy.

We want, insofar as these people are prepared to give up time in the evening of their lives to help direct the small and ample resources of a State, to what we can still regard as “the common good” (even as the libertarians we are), to be able to respect them, and not to despise them for petty Wireless Tele Vision type venality about things such as money.

I den konservatism jag bekänner mig till är utrikespolitik och internationella förhållanden en integrerad del. Härvidlag intar Förenta staterna (USA) en nyckelposition. Ty USA har som världens viktigaste demokrati och för tillfället enda supermakt en skyldighet att värna frihet och demokrati världen över. När jag, såsom aktiv i Demokratisk Allians i början på 1970-talet tog ställning för antikommunismen (som sedan dess varit en omistlig del i min konservatism), var det ofrånkomligt att också stödja USAs ansträngningar att bekämpa kommunismen inom ramen för  konflikten i Indokina och på andra ställen.

Efter att ha blivit konservativ under påverkan av främst SvD-skribenten Gunnar Unger (se mitt blogginlägg “Därför är jag konservatism II”) föll det sig, mot denna internationella bakgrund, naturligt att jag intresserade mig för den amerikanska typen av konservatism. Det som gjorde att jag fick upp ögonen för den amerikanska konservatismen var boken “The Conservative Intellectual Movement In America Since 1945″ av George H. Nash (1975). Jag skrev bland annat följande i en recension av boken i Svensk Tidskrift (4/1976):

“Förutsättningarna för uppkomsten av en intellektuell högerrörelse i USA bottnar i den vänstervridning på universiteten och i massmedia, som upplevdes mycket starkt av främst konservativa akademiker i Förenta staterna i slutet av 40- och början av 50-talet. En av dessa akademiker var den unge William F. Buckley, Jr (1925-2008). Han pläderade för en samordning av de konservativa resurserna för att på ett effektivt sätt kunna bemöta vänsterdominansen.”

William F. Buckley, Jr. har kallats den amerikanska konservatismens gudfader.

Buckley slog igenom som skribent och debattör med boken “God and Man at Yale” (som kom ut mitt födelseår 1951), vilken redogjorde för spridningen av ateism och vänsteridéer vid Buckleys alma mater, det berömda Yale-universitetet. Vid denna tid fanns redan ett antal högerinriktade tidskrifter i USA, men Buckley och ett flertal andra upplevde ett starkt behov av ett samlande organ som kunde fungera som huvudforum för den konservativa åsiktsbildningen i landet och nå inflytande i samhället. Ur detta behov föddes 1955 tidskriften National Review (NR), som alltfort är den intellektuella konservatismens flaggskepp i USA (och sedan länge mitt eget husorgan). NR samlade snart en rad viktiga konservativa skribenter såsom Whittaker Chambers, James Burnham, Frank Meyer, Willmore Kendall, William Rusher, Jeffrey Hart, L. Brent Bozell, ja till och med senator Joseph McCarthy medverkade då och då.

1950-talets amerikanska debatt ledde till att två konservativa tankeskolor utvecklades: den traditionalistiska skolan, främst företrädd av Russell Kirk, samt den libertarianska skolan, där Frank S. Meyer hade en ledande roll. Den förstnämnda varianten betonade tradition, auktoritet och norm och orienterade sig mot den europeiska konservatismen och dess ideologiske fader, Edmund Burke. Meyer vände sig mot detta ideologiska synsätt och menade att Kirk och hans meningsfränder bortsåg från individualismen. Det bör här erinras om att Meyer, efter ett förflutet som trotskist, hade blivit en extrem individualist.

Det blev dock libertarianen Frank Meyer som skulle söka vägar mot en syntes mellan traditionalismen och libertarianismen i det han myntade begreppet “fusionism”, vilket kan sägas vara Meyers livsverk och den typ av konservatism som dominerat den amerikanska scenen alltsedan dess. Meyer blev en uppburen medarbetare i National Review, som också blev det viktigaste organet i syfte att föra fram fusionismen som ett fungerande verktyg när det gällde att föra ut konservatismens idéer i det amerikanska samhället. Meyer såg således med skepsis på Kirks auktoritetstro men förnekade inte att individens sanna värde emanerade ur “Guds och sanningens auktoritet”.

National Reviews betydelse när det gällde att omvandla konservatismen från en marginell företeelse till en huvudfåra i det amerikanska politiska livet kan inte nog betonas. Det var William F. Buckley, Jr. som utmönstrade extrema företeelser såsom Ayn Rands så kallade objektivism med dess fanatiska ateism och den obalanserade antikommunism som representerades av John Birch Society ur den seriösa konservativa rörelsen; Buckley bannlyste också antisemitismen och såg till att NR blev en proisraelisk tidskrift. När senator Barry Goldwater utsågs till republikansk presidentkandidat 1964 var det i mångt och mycket NRs och Buckleys förtjänst. Goldwater förlorade visserligen stort till demokraternas sittande president Lyndon B. Johnson, som lyckades framställa Goldwater som extremist, men grunden för konservatismen som politisk rörelse var lagd.

James Burnham förutspådde kommunismens fall.

Bland National Reviews medarbetare fanns, som nämnts ovan, James Burnham, vilken i likhet med Frank Meyer hade varit trotskist. Burnhams grundläggande förtjänst bestod i att han försåg antikommunismen med den teoretiska formel som krävdes för seger i det Kalla kriget. Burnham, liksom så många andra vänsteranhängare, övergav sitt prokommunistiska engagemang i samband med Molotov-Ribbentroppakten mellan Nazityskland och Sovjetunionen i augusti 1939. Efter att i ett antal böcker ha dokumenterat sitt provästliga engagemang kom Burnham att dra slutsatsen, att kommunismens strävan efter världsherravälde tagit sin början i Andra världskrigets efterdyningar och att Tredje världskriget därmed hade inletts.

Enligt Burnham var det endast Förenta staterna i egenskap av ledande västmakt som kunde förhindra en kommunistisk triumf. Förlikning och overksamhet betydde nederlag. Det enda alternativet till kommunistiskt världsherravälde, menade Burnham, var ett amerikanskt imperium som med alla tillgängliga resurser – inklusive militära och underrättelsemässiga sådana – måste bemöta kommunistiska hot på olika håll i världen. Burnham förutsåg med boken “The Coming Defeat of Communism” (1950) en lyckosam utgång av Tredje världskriget.

James Burnham tillhörde det relativa fåtal som blir profeter i sitt eget hemland, på vilket redan USAs engagemang i Koreakriget 1950-53 tydde. Det står alldeles klart att såväl Truman-administrationen som efterföljande amerikanska administrationer i hög grad hade påverkats av James Burnhams tankar. I en artikel om Burnham i tidskriften Contra (2/1999) skrev jag följande:

“James Burnham var sammanfattningsvis en av de röster som försåg den fria världen med viktiga argument i den ideologiska kampen mot den kommunistiska totalitarismen. När det Moskva-ledda kommunistväldet slutligen brakade ihop, så kunde detta ske därför att väst med USA i spetsen fört en politik som på ett väsentligt sätt hade påverkats av Burnhams tankar: Ronald Reagan och många av hans nära medarbetare var mycket väl orienterade i den burnhamska tankevärlden.”

Låt oss för ett ögonblick lämna den amerikanska scenen och i stället förflytta oss till Storbritannien, där Enoch Powell (1912-98) under några decennier under 1900-talets andra hälft tillhörde landets mest betydande konservativa politiker. Jag kan inte säga att Powell tillhörde mina idoler, men jag imponerades av hans vältalighet och insikter även om jag inte alltid drog samma slutsatser som honom. Powell har av britter kallats “the best Prime Minister we never had” och var en ytterst begåvad man, som 1937 blev professor i grekiska vid universitetet i Sydney vid 25 års ålder; han hade då misslyckats med sin målsättning att slå Friedrich Nietzsches rekord att bli professor vid 24. Vid Andra världskrigets slut lyckades dock Powell med konststycket att bli den yngste brigadgeneralen i den brittiska armén (han avancerade till brigadgeneral efter att ha börjat som menig).

Enoch Powell varnade för massinvandringen i Storbritannien – och fick rätt.

Enoch Powell representerade Tories i underhuset 1950-74, därefter lämnade han det konservativa partiet till förmån för the Ulster Unionist Party i Nordirland, som han förblev troget till 1987. Han kom därmed aldrig att bli en del i Margaret Thatchers konservativa revolution. Powell väckte stor uppståndelse med ett tal som gått till historien som “River of Blood” 1968, då han förutsåg att den accelererande invandringen till Storbritannien från det brittiska samväldet skulle leda till elände och blodsutgjutelse. Powell, som på 1950-talet innehaft en underordnad regeringspost, tvingades efter detta tal bort från sin post som försvarsminister i Edward Heaths “skuggkabinett”. Tyvärr skulle han i tidernas fullbordan bli sannspådd.

Enoch Powell hade en djup klassisk bildning och översatte bland annat den grekiske historieskrivaren Herodotos till engelska. Han var en gång i tiden militant ateist men blev med tiden en övertygad anhängare av den anglikanska kyrkan.

Åter till USA. Här hade, efter det amerikanska debaclet i Indokina och Nixons avgång i samband med Watergate-affären, antikommunismen fått ett dåligt rykte. Detta ledde till att Sydvietnam, Kambodja och Laos lämnades åt sitt öde av Ford-administrationen, och med Jimmy Carter som president fortsatte den amerikanska passiviteten. Det var först med Ronald Reagans tillträde som USAs 39e president som Amerika återtog sin position som Västvärldens ledarnation, vilket ledde till den fria världens seger i det Kalla kriget (Tredje världskriget). Bakom den utvecklingen stod den intellektuella högerrörelse som initierats av William F. Buckley och National Review.

Många trodde efter Berlinmurens raserande, det sovjetiska uttåget ur Afghanistan och Sovjetunionens upplösning att världen stod inför en varaktig fredsera, rentav att historien hade nått sitt slut. Jag måste bekänna att jag själv ett tag tog intryck av sådana stämningar. Det kom emellertid ett ganska brutalt uppvaknande med Saddam Husseins aggression mot Kuwait 1990, något som resulterade i Gulfkriget som dock slutade utan ett riktigt avgörande i form av Saddams detronisering.

Under 1990-talet byggde islamska extremister, sporrade av segern över ryssarna i Afghanistan och ursinniga över Saudiarabiens uppslutning på anti-Saddam-krafternas sida, upp en styrkeposition och genomförde en rad terrorattentat riktade i första hand mot amerikanska och israeliska mål. 2001 fick denna utveckling sin kulmen med attackerna i USA den 11 september, en händelse som därefter kommit att prägla världspolitiken. President George W. Bush fattade rätt beslut med invasionerna av Afghanistan 2001 och Irak 2003, och slutligen kunde de allierade styrkorna under USAs ledning slutföra det ofullbordade jobbet från 1991 genom att gripa och avrätta Iraks blodbesudlade diktator Saddam Hussein. USAs framgångsrika krig mot terrorismen gjorde att det till dags dato aldrig inträffat några fler terrorattacker på amerikansk mark.

Bush den yngre insåg att USA även efter Kalla krigets segerrika slut hade en skyldighet att värna frihetens och demokratins värden runt om i världen, även om det ibland kostar på. Med Bushs avgång efter två mandatperioder, den inträdande ekonomiska recessionen och socialisten Barack Obamas tillträde som USAs 44e president har dock en ny global situation uppstått som gör framtiden osäker.

Också den amerikanska konservatismens framtid ser i hög grad osäker ut för tillfället, och någon tänkbar konservativ utmanare till Obama är det i nuläget svårt att se. Dock finns tidskriften National Review kvar som konservativt flaggskepp, och den kan sägas kompletteras av den konservativa dagstidningen The Washington Times som grundades av Reverend Sun Myung Moon i mitten på 1980-talet.

I nästa artikel om min konservativa utveckling och mina konservativa förebilder avser jag att sammanfatta mina erfarenheter och peka på de värderingar en kraftfull konservativ ideologi enligt min mening måste omfatta.

Poor Ken Boston. Forced to resign, and traduced, he believes, by Ministers. After a distinguished career in Australia Ken Boston came full of hope to head the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. He did not know about Powell’s Law. Here in England public service lives tend to end in failure, as Enoch Powell said of political lives, unless by chance they are cut off mid-stream at a happy juncture.

If only Boston had searched the files. Consider what has happened since the government decided it ought to know what was going on in ‘the secret garden’ of the school curriculum. In the beginning the Minister created a Curriculum Study Group. Within a couple of years this Group joined the long standing Secondary Schools Examinations Council to form the Schools Council. Soon after a major government inspired reform, Ministers scuttled the Schools Council and split its responsibilities between a Schools Curriculum Advisory Committee and a Secondary Examinations Council. 

After many days these begat a National Curriculum Council and a Secondary Examinations and Assessment Council. And NCC and SEAC begat the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority. And SCAA knew the National Council for Vocational Qualifications and they begat the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. And its chief priests Nick Tait and David Hargeaves sojourned  only a short while in the tents of the QCA, and its mighty ruler Sir William Stubbs was summarily dismissed by the Chief Minister.

We hardly need to know how often Ministers urged Ken Boston to stir himself, or if they ever did. What is clear is that Education Ministers and their officers have no regard for what was one of the great glories of England’s unwritten constitution, the arms length relationship between government and public bodies.  The moment Ministers take office they contract a pathological itch to interfere.

If only Ken Boston had exercised ‘due diligence’ he might have chosen a quieter, well respected role at home. And if only Government were transparent we would all know how much they have poured down the drain in redundancy payments, early retirements, legal fees, and out of court settlements.

DIOGENES