MULTICULTURALIST IDEOLOGY (Part One)

A Rationale For Race War Politics

Michael William

Copyright © 2017 Michael William

All rights reserved

Contents

INTRODUCTION

THE PAREKH REPORT

THE PAREKH REPORT (1)

THE PAREKH REPORT (2)

THE PAREKH REPORT (3)

THE PAREKH REPORT (4)

THE PAREKH REPORT (5)

THE PAREKH REPORT (6)

THE PAREKH REPORT (7)

THE PAREKH REPORT (8)

THE PAREKH REPORT (9)

THE PAREKH REPORT (10)

THE PAREKH REPORT (11)

THE PAREKH REPORT (12)

THE PAREKH REPORT (13)

WILL KYMLICKA

CONCLUSION

APPENDIX ONE

Friday, October 07, 2005

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

APPENDIX TWO

Sunday, September 11, 2005

RACE WAR POLITICS

APPENDIX THREE

Saturday, September 24, 2005

THE BRITISH INQUISITION

APPENDIX FOUR

Sunday, June 19, 2005

RACE WAR POLITICS

APPENDIX FIVE

Monday, June 20, 2005

QUOTE OF THE MONTH (bonus)

APPENDIX SIX

Sunday, September 18, 2005

MULTICULTURALISM

APPENDIX SEVEN

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

RACIAL ENGINEERING

APPENDIX EIGHT

8 August, 2005

SOCIALIST SNOBBERY

APPENDIX NINE

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

THE GENESIS OF COMMUNISM

PREFACE

Writing this book was relatively easy, as I drew upon a number of blog posts from the English Rights Campaign written some years ago. Those posts include a key analysis of The Parekh Report (drafted by Parekh as part of the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain), which was initially highly controversial but which has been studiously adhered to by successive governments – even Tory ones. The Parekh Report represents multiculturalist thought in Britain.

I have followed the blog posts with an analysis of two books written by Will Kymlicka – a well-known Canadian multiculturalist. He takes a different stance than the British multiculturalists, especially regarding indigenous national minorities. In Britain, it is the immigrants who attract almost exclusive attention.

Some of the blog posts are punchy and not at all academic. Some of the criticism and terms used can be repetitive. It needs to be borne in mind that these posts were written often weeks, if not months, apart, with other items being put up in the meantime. Therefore, when put together, they are being read not as originally intended. There have been almost no changes to the blog posts.

In addition, I have included in the appendices those further blog posts referred to in The Parekh Report items. This is for ease and completeness. I have not included further items referred to in the appendices (one has to draw the line somewhere), but all these items are, of course, on the English Rights Campaign blog.

The purpose of this book is to give an understanding of the logic of the multiculturalists, which is also dealt with in The Genesis of Political Correctness: The Basis of a False Morality (in the chapter "Citizenship and National Identity"). The ideology of multiculturalism is a major contributory factor in the rising tide of instability, lawlessness, and terrorism across the West.

Michael William

October 2017

Also by Micheal William

The Ponzi Class: Ponzi Economics, Globalization and Class Oppression in the 21st Century

The Genesis of Political Correctness: The Basis of a False Morality

Brexit Means Brexit: How the British Ponzi Class Survived the EU Referendum

Multiculturalist Ideology (Part Two): The Rising Tide of Race War Politics

INTRODUCTION

The English Rights Campaign blog, some years ago, posted a number of items that examined The Parekh Report, the product of a commission allegedly examining the state of race relations in Britain. The commissioners were all lefties and multiculturalists. Bhikhu Parekh was born in 1935 in Gujarat and awarded a life peerage in 2000.

The format of the English Rights Campaign posts was to quote from the report and then respond. The posts are reproduced below almost unchanged. The thirteen posts give a good understanding of the report and highlight the key aspects of it. Other English Rights Campaign items referred to in the thirteen posts are included in the appendices. Much of the race war politics currently being pursued by the Tory, May, Government in 2017 stemmed from The Parekh Report (for example, the race audits).

In addition, after the original blog posts is an analysis of the thinking of the Canadian multiculturalist Will Kymlicka. Kymlicka takes a different view from The Parekh Report and puts more emphasis on the interests of national minorities – as opposed to immigrants. However, he became more concerned with immigrants and became more politically correct. In his book Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, he was more idealistic than in Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship, published six years later. In both books, he was wrong, and he has been proven to be seriously wrong.

Finally, there will be an examination of the contrasts and similarities between The Parekh Report and Kymlicka in the conclusion.

THE PAREKH REPORT

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

THE PAREKH REPORT (1)

It is plain common sense that one can influence a report by the choice of those who are appointed to compile it. In the UK, reports into matters dealing with race are packed with lefties and race zealots, especially if carried out on behalf of the government or one of the lefty pressure groups – such as the Runnymede Trust, which is described in The Parekh Report as ‘an independent think-tank devoted to the cause of promoting racial justice in Britain’.

The Runnymede Trust set up the Parekh Commission in 1998:

‘It was made up of 23 distinguished individuals drawn from many community backgrounds and different walks of life, and with a long record of active academic and practical engagement with race-related issues in Britain and elsewhere. They brought to their task different views and sensibilities and, after a good deal of discussion, reached a consensus. The report is the product of their two years of deliberation.’

So who are these ‘distinguished individuals’ whose 2 years of deliberation produced The Parekh Report? Below is a list of them and their background as in the year 2000, when The Parekh Report was produced.

1. Lord Bikhu Parekh (a Labour nouveau toff) chaired the commission. Lord Parakh was the emeritus professor of political theory at the University of Hull. A former deputy chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) and a trustee of the Runnymede Trust. His publications include Marx’s Theory of Ideology and Rethinking Multiculturalism: cultural diversity and political theory.

2. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, senior research fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre and also a research fellow at the Institute of Public Policy Research. She has served on several other race committees. Her publications include After Multiculturalism (2000).

3. Muhammad Anwar, a research professor at the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations and Head of research at the CRE. Publications include Race and Politics, Race and Elections and From Legislation to Integration?

4. Colin Baily who was chief constable of Nottingham Police. He has also been the Association of Chief Police Officers chairman of the Race Relations subcommittee.

5. Amina Begun, a social worker. Also youth and community worker and trainer in community development and co-founder of Women United Against Racism in Tower Hamlets.

6. Michael Chan, professor of ethnic health at the University of Liverpool, director of the NHS Ethnic Health Unit (1994-97), Chairman of the Chinese in Britain Forum, and a former CRE commissioner.

7. Lord Navnit Dhoakia (a Labour nouveau toff) had previously worked for the CRE and was a member of the Home Office Race Relations Forum.

8. David Faulkner, senior research fellow at the University of Oxford Centre for Criminological Research. Publications include Public Services and Citizenship in European Law.

9. Kate Gavron, who was the commission’s vice-chairman, was a trustee of the Runnymede Trust and a Trustee, Research Fellow of the Institute of Community Studies, specialising in the Bangladeshi community in East London, and a member of the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia.

10. Stuart Hall, emeritus professor of sociology at the Open University. Publications include Questions of Cultural Identity, chapters in Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies and Revising Multiculturalisms.

11. Bob Hepple QC, Master of Clare College and professor of law at the University of Cambridge, and former commissioner at the CRE. Publications include Discrimination: the limits of law (co-editor), and Equality: a new framework, the report of the Independent Review of Enforcement of UK Anti-discrimination Legislation (co-author).

12. Judith Hunt, chairman of Camden and Islington Health Authority. Publications include Fairness of Failure: equal opportunities recruitment (co-author).

13. Anthony Lerman, formally executive director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, editor of Patterns of Prejudice (1983-99), member of the Runnymede Trust Commission on antisemitism (1991-93) and of the Imperial War Museum advisory committee on a permanent Holocaust Exhibition. Editor of The Jewish Communities of the World and Antisemitism World Report.

14. Matthew MacFarlane, chief inspector of Nottinghamshire Police, and responsible for strategy and policy on race and community relations issues. Former staff officer to the Race and Community Relations Sub-Committee of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), and attended hearings during the Lawrence Inquiry on behalf of ACPO.

15. Andrew Marr, BBC political editor and formerly editor of The Independent. Publications include The Battle for Scotland, Ruling Britiannia and The Day Britain Died.

16. Sir Peter Newsam, who had been chairman of the CRE for 1981-85.

17. Sir Herman Ouseley, Chairman of the Caribbean Advisory Group of the Foreign Office, and former chairman of the CRE, former chairman of Lambeth Borough Council and the Inner London Education Authority, and council member of the Institute of Race Relations.

18. Sue Woodford-Hollick, founding commissioning editor of multicultural programmes at Channel 4, vice-chairman of the Caribbean Advisory Group at the Foreign Office, member of the general council of the Royal Commonwealth Society and of Broadcast Diversity Network, and co-founder of EQ, a project to increase black and Asian representation in politics.

19. Sally Tomlinson, emeritus professor of educational policy at Goldsmith’s College, University of London and member of the African Education Trust. Publications include Multicultural Education in White Areas, Ethnic Relations in Schooling and Hackney Downs: the school that dared to fight.

20. Seamus Taylor, head of policy: equality and diversity at Haringey Borough Council, chairman of Action Group for Irish Youth, and adviser to the CRE on research study on discrimination and the Irish community.

21. Anne Owers, director of Justice and former general secretary of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, chairman of Trustees of the Refugee Legal Centre, and was on the Church of England Race and Community Relations Committee. Publications include Providing Protection: asylum determination systems, and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: their implementation in UK law (which she co-edited).

22. Trevor Phillips, Chairman of the Greater London Assembly, Chairman of the Runnymede Trust (1993-98), member of the Home Office Race Relations Forum. Publications include Windrush: the irresistible rise of multiracial Britain (co-author).

23. Sarah Spencer, director of the citizenship and governance programme at the Institute of Public Policy Research, former general secretary of the National Council for Civil Liberties. Publications include Strangers and Citizens, and Migrants, Refugees and the Boundaries of Citizenship.

It will be noted that the above ‘experts’ are nearly all lefties, and the commission is packed with those who are already race zealots. There are no outsiders. The content of The Parekh Report should therefore not come as a surprise.

It would be complacent to underestimate the report’s influence. The Runnymede Trust, on their website, comment on the report today thus:

‘When the report of the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain (The Parekh Report) was launched in October 2000, it "created a bit of a stir", according to its ever-diplomatic Chair. In the words of the editor of the report, it had been "misunderstood, grossly misrepresented, and often deliberately distorted". Three years on, the debate continues, but the "heat" of those weeks immediately after publication has been replaced with the "light" of serious engagement with the vision set out in the report. By the end of 2003, with over two-thirds of the recommendations of the report acted upon, the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain can be seen to have been influential in shaping the latest phase of thinking on race equality.’

Labour has not only acted on the report, but has since promoted several members of the Parekh commission. Anne Taylor, who is now the chief inspector of prisons, has recently been in the news concerning her views on the racism of the English flag. Sir Herman Ouseley has become yet another Labour nouveau toff (they are getting quite common these days).

And of course, Trevor Phillips has been promoted to the chairmanship of the CRE. Presumably, this is because of Labour’s reverence for The Parekh Report. Certainly, Labour cannot plead ignorance of the views of the report (especially as it supports those views), and hence its authors. Whatever policies Trevor Phillips has pursued as head of the CRE, both pre and post 7/7, those policies were predictable and Labour is entirely responsible for them.

This is made all the more obvious by the howls of protest which greeted the report’s publication. This will be dealt with next.

posted by erc @ 10:36 pm

Saturday, October 22, 2005

THE PAREKH REPORT (2)

The Parakh Report was published on the 11 October 2000. Leaks as to its contents had already been circulating and The Daily Telegraph had already condemned it as ‘sub-Marxist gibberish’.

Pre-publication comments by the then Home Office minister, Mike O’Brian described the report as a ‘timely report which adds much to the current debate on multi-ethnic Britain.’

Jack Straw, as Home Secretary, had been present to help launch of the commission back in 1998.

By the day following publication we were treated to the spectacle of Jack Straw, in full retreat, galloping faster than a routed and broken cavalry regiment. Mr Straw even quoted George Orwell (the passage is the English Rights Campaign’s Quote of the Month for this month). Regarding the report’s attack on the concept of Britishness, Mr Straw said that he ‘frankly did not agree’ with the report’s authors who he accused of ‘washing their hands of the notion of nationhood.’

Mr Straw even went so far as to say that he was ‘proud to be British’!

Even The Guardian editorial managed a mild criticism!

The part which the press most reacted to related to Britishness and paragraph 3.30 in particular.

The report asked 'Does Britishness have a future?' and answered the question:

'It is entirely plain, however, that the word "British" will never do on its own. Where does this leave Asians, African-Caribbeans and Africans? For them Britishness is a reminder of colonisation and empire…For the British-born generations, seeking to assert their claim to belong, the concept of Englishness often seems inappropriate, since to be English, as the term is in practice used, is to be white. Britishness is not ideal, but at least it appears acceptable, particularly when suitably qualified – Black British, Indian British…'

Paragraph 3.30 then says (italics are the English Rights Campaign emphasis):

'However, there is one major and so far insuperable barrier. Britishness, as much as Englishness, has systematic, largely unspoken, racial connotations. Whiteness nowhere features as an explicit condition of being British, but it is widely understood that Englishness, and therefore by extension Britishness, is racially coded. "There ain't no black in the Union Jack", it has been said. Race is deeply entwined in political culture and with the idea of nation, and underpinned by a distinctively British kind of reticence – to take race and racism seriously, or even to talk about them at all, is bad form, something not done in polite company. This disavowal, combined with "an iron-jawed disinclination to recognise equal human worth and dignity of people who are not white", has proved a lethal combination. Unless these deep-rooted antagonisms to racial and cultural difference can be defeated in practice, as well as symbolically written out of the national story, the idea of a multicultural post-nation remains an empty promise.'

There are nearly 400 pages worth of such and similar views in the report.

Paragraph 3.30 is as disingenuous as it is evil. The paragraph starts by dealing with race and nationhood, then links race with racism, and finally applies the comments concerning racism to race and nationhood – and it does so in way that the more gullible (i.e. white lefty/liberals and do-gooders) would not notice.

Of course the English, as a racial group, are white! But being English is not the same as having ‘deep-rooted antagonisms to racial and cultural difference’. Nor is being white the same as being English. Nations have historically been formed by racial groups. So what? Being English is not an offence, although the Parekh commissioners treat it as such.

The comment about a ‘post-nation’ is not casual, but a sincere objective. The aim is to destroy any sense of nationhood or patriotism.

The Parekh Report recommended the creation of a 'community of communities' to replace Britain, which was to be required to ‘formally declare itself to be a multicultural society’ (Vince Cable's recent comments have not come out of nowhere). This also needs to be remembered when dealing with Trevor Phillips’s more recent comments about multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism has not been foisted on Britain by the Teletubbies or Pinky and Perky. No, it has been foisted on us by the British ruling class in general and the race war industry in particular, above all, INCLUDING TREVOR PHILLIPS.

Of the report, The Times wrote:

‘The key figure behind the research idea, conceived in 1997 as Labour swept to power, was the broadcaster Trevor Phillips. His idea was to produce a key piece of research looking seriously at how Britain would develop during the early years of the new century. Although the trust says it has kept out of party politics, members hoped that many of its ideas would be used by a Labour Government.’

The product of this report and its implementation by Labour is 7/7.

In promoting the report, Lord Parekh wrote in The Independent:

‘National identity is not given once and for all and cannot be preserved as if it were an antique piece of furniture. The so-called white majority itself consists of groups of people divided along cultural, religious and other lines. This is equally true of the minority. Since Britain does not consist of cohesive majorities and minorities, we should think of it as a looser federation of cultures held together by common bonds of interest and affection and a collective sense of belonging.’

Gary Younge (a black communist) of The Guardian wrote:

‘The Telegraph’s front page headline yesterday: “Straw wants to rewrite our history” begs two central questions. Who do they mean by “our” and precisely what version of history are they talking about... The “our” The Telegraph refers to is essentially white, English and nationalistic. For huge numbers of Scots, Welsh and Irish, not to mention those of Caribbean, Asian, African and Chinese descent the idea that “the description of British will never do on its own” is not news...
Unlike the French tricolore or the American stars and stripes, we do not have a national emblem that stands for a set of notional egalitarian principles or a constitution that would give it meaning. The union flag is a conqueror’s flag that owes its design to the subjugation of England’s neighbours and its reputation to the predatory expeditions which saw Britain steal huge amounts of land, labour and natural resources...
So “Britishness” like the union flag is not neutral.’

Meanwhile, on the 19 October, at the Pavis Centre of the Open University, Stuart Hall made a speech to launch the report. This was ‘webcast to viewers and listeners across the world, including the USA, Mexico and Australia’ (the publication of the report was presented as an international event). Stuart Hall answered questions after his speech, even from as far afield as Mexico City.

The following is a quote from that speech, which is particularly relevant given Trevor Phillips’s recent comments about equality (given that Stuart Hall is a black communist, it is not surprising that the speech is one long tract of race zealotry and communist ideology):

‘The first concern is the tension between difference and equality. The projects for social justice, for an end to racial violence and discrimination; the projects for greater social equality and the guarantee of civic and social rights to everyone as an intrinsic aspect of citizenship – all of these projects have customarily been underpinned by a commitment to equality. We should notice at once – given the frequency with which it is invoked – how deep are the ambiguities around this idea. Liberal theorists who support a universal citizenship founded on civic nationalism and individual autonomy believe difference, in any real sense, has no place in the public domain at all. It should be reserved for the private sphere. And they feel that it is possible these days, although I think it’s heroic of them, to separate neatly what is now public from what is now private. However, the equality which they advance – the equality of opportunity, the equality to compete, the equality of so-called level playing fields (and if I hear that term “joined up government” once more! – it belongs to the lexicon of language which should really be ditched)... that is the kind of equality which they have in mind, the equality of the level playing field where we all begin from the same place. And, of course, given our various talents etc. we are all going to end up in a different place, but that’s the game. This is, of course, a negative version of equality, it is drawn from the repertoire of classical liberalism – no matter how long ago that was – its commitment to end the constraints to enter social competition, which otherwise should recognise no wider, social or collective commitments. Universal as this liberal discourse now appears to have become, it has never on its own been able to bring social justice to particular groups at risk; or to recognise the persistent strength of collective inequalities; or even to acknowledge that, as human beings, we are dialogically constructed – that is to say, we depend intrinsically on other people and on the “other” – and that we are not simply national, calculative atoms but are also always embedded in a variety of particular relationships and forms of life which have real rights, claims and needs of their own.

Racism is one such particularism which has stubbornly refused to yield in response to the negative version of right, justice or the “good life”, and this is because the differences which racism constructs operate at a deeper level that the formal play of citizenship, equality and individual autonomy. This is compounded by the fact that racism, far from having, as it were, one strand, has in the contemporary world radically expanded its forms.

To the biological racism of skin colour or anti-Semitism we must now add the proliferating forms of racism of cultural difference, of ethnic violence and cleansing, and of religious bigotry which the end of the Cold War and the ethnicization of conflict in its wake has brought into existence. This means that what we might, in our cynical wisdom, define as the old anti-racist agenda of racial justice and social equality, not only remains in force but has compulsorily been intensified. Its need now is greater than it was before and this is because the problem of resisting racial oppression, injustice and violence is compounded by the new need in multicultural societies, not negatively to stop disadvantage, but positively to advance a recognition of diversity as a basis of social being and as a positive goal of social action of government practice, of delivery as a political objective. The fact is that multicultural drift, which is the condition we have been experiencing, can co-exist with racism. There is no intrinsic opposition, no necessary opposition, between multiculturalism and racism: both can flourish. In the moment of the celebration of the arrival of Windrush when Britain congratulated itself on having become, having crossed the line to, a multicultural society, the Stephen Lawrence inquiry opened. Does one cancel out the other? Not at all, both exist, both are real, both are to be found in a society.

Quite apart from this society being unified by some 94 per cent consensus among its mainstream majority, I would suggest that, as a rough guess, on the multicultural question it’s divided into three parts. One group simply couldn’t understand modern life without it. They are mainly young and they live in cities. They just wouldn’t understand modern urban metropolitan existence in which people were ethnically and culturally homogenous: they’re with it. Another group sees that it has happened, thinks that you probably can’t do anything much about it. They have mainly moved out of the urban centres and they think that, as long as they don’t go down to the South East or to any big cities, multiculturalism will leave them alone and certainly will not propose to their daughters. The third group are militantly hostile to multiculturalism. It undermines everything about their being, especially it underwrites the degree to which they are not part of so-called mainstream society. And a minority of those are perfectly prepared to stick knives into multiculturalism, or to throw it into the Thames or to set it alight if they pass it on the streets. Now, that is the real situation produced by multicultural drift. It is not some kind of consensual, homogenous unity from end to end that this is a “great thing” and so we don’t need to think about it anymore.

The new claims which arise, then, from this situation, especially among the ethnic minorities, are, in my view, for a genuinely universal racial justice, for equal outcomes to the major social and economic processes and also – also – for the recognition of difference. That is to say, for both a politics of equality and a politics of recognition.’

And:

‘Paradoxically, cultural belongingness is something of which everybody partakes, everybody is particular in this way. It’s what Marx once called a concrete universal. By definition, a multicultural society must always involve practices and debates between more than one group. There has, therefore, to be some framework in which serious conflicts of outlook, belief and interests can be negotiated, and this can’t be simply the framework of one group writ large or universalized – which was precisely the problem with Eurocentric assimilation. The specific and particular difference of a group or community cannot be asserted absolutely without regard to the wider context provided by all the other to whom particularity acquires a relative value.’

The English Rights Campaign has already responded to Trevor Phillips’s concept of equality in the item dated the 24 September 2005, in which the difference between equality of opportunity and the equality of outcomes was dealt with. Stuart Hall deals with this too and condemns the concept of the equality of opportunity as being ‘classical liberalism’.

(In which case the English Rights Campaign is a classical liberal blog and not a right wing one!)

Stuart Hall and Trevor Phillips are in agreement as to the definition of equality, which is not surprising given that they are both communists.

They are also in agreement in their hostility to the concept of a free society. To them the ordinary people, especially the English, are their’s to manipulate and control. They are also both hostile to the concept of assimilation. Both call for a more aggressive prosecution of the British Inquisition.

On the date of the report’s publication, The Daily Mail also had a forceful editorial that included the following observations:

‘In ordinary circumstances, the report’s clunking prose, flawed argument and lamentable ignorance of history would be risible. But this exercise was launched by Home Secretary Jack Straw. Its conclusions have been welcomed by the Home Office. If not yet official policy, the report reflects New Labour attitudes.’

The Runnymede Trust itself now boasts that ‘over two-thirds of the recommendations of the report acted upon’.

That is the problem. Despite the loud complaints at the time, Labour simply kept its head down and then quietly implemented the report. A trick they are also using with regionalisation, if the face of the lost North East referendum, and with the EU constitution, in the face of the Dutch and French referendums.

The Parekh Report oozes Anglophobia and race war politics from every page. It is a thoroughly evil document.

A detailed examination of the report’s contents will begin shortly.

posted by erc @ 1:59 pm

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

THE PAREKH REPORT (3)

‘ “The Rule Britannia mindset, given the full-blown expression at the Last Night of the Proms and until recently at the start of programming each day on BBC Radio 4, is a major part of the problem of Britain. In the same way that it continues to fight the Second World War ... Britain seems incapable of shaking off its imperialist identity. The Brits do appear to believe that “Britons never, never, never shall be slaves” ... [But] it is impossible to colonise three-fifths of the world ... without enslaving oneself. Our problem has been that Britain has never understood itself and has steadfastly refused to see and understand itself through the prism of our experience of it, here and in its coloniser mode.”

From a presentation to the Commission’

‘8.1 “Stories”, writes Ben Okri, “are the secret reservoir of values; change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves and you change the individuals and nations.” He continues: “Nations and peoples are largely the stories they feed themselves. If they tell themselves stories that are lies, they will suffer the future consequences of those lies. If they tell themselves stories that face their own truths, they will free their histories for future flowerings.” ’

(Ben Okri is a Nigerian poet and writer.)

The Parekh Report is littered with such quotes.

The Parekh Commission was very impressed with and resorted to flowery, sickly prose.

The report is further littered with silly photographs. For example, one is of a black man with his arm around a grinning elderly white lady. Both are looking at the camera. Another photograph shows a burly white man cradling a startled black baby in his arms with bottle of milk shoved in its mouth. The man is gazing away from the baby into the distance a with a silly grin on his face.

It is this kind of prose and imagery which the white lefty/liberals and do-gooders become all misty-eyed about.

The above two quotes demonstrate the report’s hostility to Britain and the determination of the Parekh Commissioners to rewrite British history and to subvert its culture.

It must not be forgotten that Labour’s response to the report was to appoint its instigator, Trevor Phillips, as chairman of the so-called Commission for Racial Equality, (other commissioners were rewarded too) and to quietly implement the report’s recommendations.

Birmingham is the city most recently paying the price of that.

It would of course never occur to the Parekh Commissioners or Labour that the British do not want a ‘future flowering’. That they might be more than happy with their history, of which they have every right to be proud. That they do not want to discard their culture. That the British Empire was a force for good. And that the British are fed up with having to endure a never-ending tide of politically-correct, neo-communist drivel.

If some Nigerian poet does not like Britain, then let him return to Nigeria. The Parekh Commissioners, irrespective of their background, can join him!

(The English Rights Campaign is perfectly capable of being inclusive.)

In examining the report there will be some repetition and overlap. This is inevitable. Especially at the beginning of the report, almost every sentence of every paragraph is an attack upon Britain in general, and England in particular.

Nevertheless, the English Rights Campaign will undertake a very full examination of the report’s rationale.

posted by erc @ 10:42 pm

Monday, November 14, 2005

THE PAREKH REPORT (4)

‘Several fundamental beliefs ... in our view are, or deserve to be, shared by most people in Britain.

First, all individuals have equal worth irrespective of their colour, gender, ethnicity, religion, age or sexual orientation, and have equal claims to the opportunities they need to realise their potential and contribute to collective wellbeing. The principle of equal moral worth cannot take root and flourish within a structure of deep economic or social inequalities.

Second, citizens are not only individuals but also members of particular religious, ethnic, cultural and religious communities, which are comparatively stable as well as open and fluid. Britain is both a community of citizens and a community of communities, both a liberal and a multicultural society, and needs to reconcile their sometimes conflicting requirements.

Third, since citizens have differing needs, equal treatment requires full account to be taken of their differences. When equality ignores relevant differences and insists on uniformity of treatment, it leads to injustice and inequality; when differences ignore the demands of equality, they result in discrimination. Equality must be defined in a culturally sensitive way and applied in a discriminating but not discriminatory manner.

Fourth, every society needs to be cohesive as well as respectful of diversity, and must find ways of nurturing diversity while fostering a common sense of belonging and a shared identity among its members.

Fifth, although every society needs a broadly shared body of values, of which human rights are an important part, there is a risk of defining the values so narrowly that their further development is ruled out or legitimate ways of life are suppressed. While affirming such essential procedural values as tolerance, mutual respect, dialogue and peaceful resolution of differences, and such basic ethical norms as respect for human dignity, equal worth of all, equal opportunity for self-development and equal life chances, society must also respect deep moral differences and find ways of resolving inescapable conflicts. Human rights principles provide a valuable framework for handling differences, but they are never by themselves enough.

Lastly, racism, understood either as division of humankind into fixed, closed and unalterable groups or as systematic domination of some groups by others, is an empirically false, logically incoherent and morally unacceptable doctrine. Racism is a subtle and complex phenomenon. It may be based on colour and physical features or on culture, nationality or way of life; it may affirm equality of human worth but implicitly deny this by insisting on the absolute superiority of a particular culture; it may admit equality up to a point but impose a glass ceiling higher up. Whatever its subtle disguises and forms, it is deeply divisive, intolerant of differences, a source of much human suffering and inimical to the common sense of belonging lying at the basis of every stable political community. It can have no place in a decent society.’

The above is from the Preface of The Parekh Report.

Much of it sounds very innocuous and nice. But it has been written by the politically correct and out-and-out communists, and therefore needs close examination – especially as we can see how it has worked out since.

The above 6 points will be dealt with in turn:

1. Talking of ‘equal worth’ is all very well, although it depends upon what is meant by ‘equal worth’. The term is flannel and designed to engender uncritical agreement.

The sentence that ‘the principle of equal moral worth cannot take root and flourish within a structure of deep economic or social inequalities’ is disingenuous and plain wrong. Someone’s ‘moral worth’ is not determined by the amount of money they have. Morality is not determined by money.

The concept is unworkable. Immigrants from the Third World are bound to be poorer, in general, than the indigenous population as they are coming from poorer countries. That is an inescapable fact. The government cannot wave a magic wand and financially enrich Third World immigrants – nor should it try to do so. The most effective way to help those living in the poorer countries of the Third World is through effective foreign aid and support for refugees in their own or neighbouring countries. Not by transporting them over here. The fact that there has been substantial immigration means that economic inequalities are inevitable.

2. This point shows that Vince Cable’s recent outburst against English nationalists is part of an ideological creed and is not based on any recent objective analysis. The report specifically does not refer to citizens as belonging to a country – either British or English (the report advocates the replacement of the British nation with a ‘community of communities’). It asserts that Britain is a ‘multicultural society’ and makes no mention of the need for immigrants to assimilate into the host society (the report condemns the idea of assimilation as do the politically correct to this day).

3. This point deals with equality. Its definition of equality is that of the politically correct and multiculturalists. It rejects the notion that people should all be treated the same, which it dismisses as a cause of ‘injustice and inequality’. Instead it alleges that equality should be defined in a ‘culturally sensitive way’ and applied in a ‘discriminating’ manner. In effect this is a call for political correctness, a favourable treatment for ethnic minorities, and positive discrimination, which in turn is discrimination against, in the main, the English. It is a call for the English to be treated as second class citizens in their own country.

4. This point is an attempt to reconcile diversity with the need for cohesion. It makes no mention of the need for patriotism or the need for assimilation (or integration for those who object to that term) or the need to assess the ability of immigrants to assimilate into the host nation. Within 12 months of this report, which was published in October 2000, there was 9/11 and the accompanying open hostility among Asians towards Britain (see English Rights Campaign entries dated the 19 and 20 June 2005) More recently there has been the 7/7 bombings and the subsequent failed terrorist attacks. More recently still, there have been the interracial rioting and murders in Birmingham. The report makes no prediction of this, or identify the looming problems which we now face.

This failure shows how useless the report is. It was too busy peddling political correctness and allegations of racism that it ignored/failed to see the looming catastrophe which is now upon us.

It is patriotism which needs to be nurtured and not diversity. People should be allowed to get on with their own lives without a bunch of anti-British politically-correct zealots, in pursuit of their own ideological ends, trying to interfere in order to exploit differences as a means of creating division and hatred.

5. Despite listing a number of values and ethics, the report makes no mention of freedom. No recognition of even the concept of the freedom of the individual. Of course such concepts are completely alien to the politically correct, who believe that only opinions and statements that they approve of are allowed.

Freedom of the individual and the willingness to live and let live, which is intrinsic to a free society, are the means by which traditional British tolerance reconciles differences.

Democracy is also a means of reconciling differences. This too needs to be respected and not ignored as it is in the report. Democracy is more important than so-called human rights, which have simply been interpreted as a means of implementing political correctness. Democracy is a vital ingredient of a free and tolerant society, and should not be dismissed as ‘majoritarian politics’ (to quote Cherie Blair).

Nor is there any mention of the need for, and the merits of, patriotism.

6. Last and not least, needless to say, the report could not resist wallowing in the issue of racism in lurid terms. The report’s definition of racism is important. The dictionary definition is:

‘(1) The belief that races have distinctive cultural characteristics determined by hereditary factors and that this endows some races with an intrinsic superiority over others (2) abusive or aggressive behaviour towards members of another race on the basis of such belief.’ (Collins English Dictionary)

Yet the report inserts its own definition. That definition is capable of wide interpretation, and is widely interpreted in the report. It is so wide as to include almost anything and is to the exclusion of common sense. It draws in ‘culture, nationality and way of life’, and does not confine itself to the common-sense understanding held by most people. It does not confine itself to hatred, race or hereditary factors.

The recognition of foreigners as being so, is not racism. Nor is the recognition of difference the same as intolerance of difference, and certainly not the same as racism. The lack of a quota of ethnic minorities is not racism.

A particular culture might be superior to another. The political culture of the UK, despite all its flaws, is more advanced and superior than that of, say, either Zimbabwe or The Sudan. But to say that, or to recognise that, is not racism.

To speak of the racism of the domination of some groups by others leads to the ridiculous situation of Christmas Lights being banned as being offensive to other faiths. Or of the systematic removal of Christianity, or of British history, from the school curriculum.

Multiculturalism condemns any concept of a national culture, which by its nature will be treated differently to the culture held by those who have only recently set foot in Britain. A national culture will be the dominant culture. That is not racism

Being English is not racist.

posted by erc @ 11:40 pm

Monday, November 21, 2005

THE PAREKH REPORT (5)

‘Having sketched our vision of a relaxed and self-confident multicultural Britain ... we analyse the obstacles standing in its way ... The obstacles include racial discrimination, racial disadvantage, a racially oriented moral and political culture, an inadequate philosophy of government, a lack of carefully thought-out and properly integrated administrative structures at various levels of government, and a lack of political will.’

And:

‘The very language used to describe and define race relations in Britain is a source of considerable conceptual and political muddle. Such terms as “minority” and ‘majority’ signify fixed blocs and obscure the fluidity and heterogeneity of real life. The term ‘ethnic group’ traps the group concerned into its ethnicity, and suppresses both its multiple identity and its freedom of self-determination. The term ‘integration’ is even more misleading, as it implies a one-way process in which “minorities” are to be absorbed into the non-existent homogeneous cultural structure of the “majority”. We are fully aware of these and other limitations of the dominant language of debate. Inventing a wholly new vocabulary does not help, for such a language would be too abstract, artificial and unrelated to the idioms of everyday life to be intelligible, let alone provide a vehicle for meaningful dialogue. We have therefore thought it best to avoid parts of the current vocabulary when we could conveniently do so, and to make suitable qualifications and warnings when we could not.’

The above two quotes are from the Preface of The Parekh Report.

What a lot of politically correct rubbish!

The control of language is of course a key aspect of political correctness. By controlling the language, it makes it more difficult for people to express themselves and it is, therefore, a control on the way people think – which is the intention.

It would seem that the Parekh Commission toyed with the idea of inventing a new language, or possibly even using Esperanto!

But it is too easy to just laugh this off, when it is in fact no laughing matter. The Parekh Commission and their supporters are deadly serious. They really do mean what they say, and Labour was so impressed with this thinking that it appointed the chief mover in The Parekh Report, Trevor Phillips, to the chairmanship of the so-called Commission for Racial Equality.

The above extracts highlight 2 key aspects of the report. Firstly, an unquestioning commitment to multiculturalism and the portrayal of those not in favour of this as racist. Trevor Phillips’s recent statements calling for integration and not multiculturalism by itself need to be viewed with that fact in mind (see the English Rights Campaign entries dated the 18th and 24th September 2005, and the 5th October 2005).

Secondly, Mr Phillips’s recent rejection of the word ‘assimilation’ and his advocacy of ‘integration’ instead, also needs to be compared with The Parekh Report. The report dismisses the concept of integration. A key aspect of the report is the denial of the existence of the British nation – especially an English nation. It denies the existence of an ‘homogenous culture’ and therefore rejects assimilation/integration as being impossible as there is allegedly no national culture into which the ethnic minorities can assimilate/integrate (this will be dealt with in more detail later).

Mr Phillips’s recent rejection of ‘assimilation’ and his advocacy of ‘integration’ is disingenuous. What Mr Phillips now describes as integration he had previously described as multiculturalism in The Parekh Report. He is merely playing with words. His political views have remained unchanged.

The first paragraph quoted above shows how obsessed the commissioners were with race and how determined they were to use government power to impose their views on the rest of society. This is entirely consistent with the specifics of what Mr Phillips has been saying more recently.

The idea that one cannot refer to someone’s race for fear of trapping the individual into a racial group and ignoring other factors is hysterical. The allegation again demonstrates the zealotry of the commissioners. The assertion of ‘multiple identity’ is in keeping with the recent attack upon English nationalism by Vince Cable (see the English Rights Campaign entry dated the 11th September 2005). Again, this shows that the Anglophobia we now face is part of a longstanding and sustained campaign.

posted by erc @ 8:21 pm

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

THE PAREKH REPORT (6)

‘England, Scotland and Wales are at a turning point in their history. They could become narrow and inward-looking, with rifts between themselves and among their regions and communities, or they could develop as a community of citizens and communities. Britain as a whole could be such a community, and so could each part or region, and each city, town and neighbourhood. Building and sustaining a community of citizens and communities involve:

• rethinking the national story and national identity;
• understanding that all identities are in a process of transition;
• developing a balance between cohesion, equality and difference;
• addressing and eliminating all forms of racism;
• reducing material inequalities;
• building a pluralistic human rights culture.’

And:

‘Many customary images of Britain are England centred – and, indeed, southern England-centred – and leave many millions of people out of the picture. Increasingly, in Scotland and Wales people have a sense of multiple identity. Englishness is also in the process of being redefined. People in Britain have many differences, but they inhabit the same space and share the same future. All have a role in the collective project of fashioning Britain as an outward-looking, generous, inclusive society.’

The above quotes are from the Executive Summary of The Parekh Report.

The Executive Summary is quite detailed and consists of an overall summary as well as a summary for each chapter – all 21 of them. This allows the reader can see what he has to look forward to!

For example, the summary for Chapter 2, Rethinking the National Story, states:

‘A state is not only a territorial and political entity, but also an “imagined community”. What is Britain’s understanding of itself? How are the histories of England, Scotland and Wales understood by their people? Of what may citizens be justly proud? How has the imagined nation stood the test of time? What should be preserved, what jettisoned, what revised or reworked? How can everyone have a recognised place within the larger picture? These are questions about Britain as an imagined community, and about how a genuinely multicultural Britain urgently needs to reimagine itself. Among other things, such reimagining must take account of the inescapable changes of the last 30 years – not only postwar migration but also devolution, globalisation, the end of empire, Britain’s long-term decline as a world power, moral and cultural pluralism, and closer integration with Europe.’

The above extracts show that the report and its writers were unquestioningly committed to a multicultural society. They were also taken with the notion of ‘rethinking’/’reimagining’ Britain. What they really mean of course, is that history should be rewritten to suit the purposes of the politically correct. That history should become a lie.

The report is hostile to the concept of English nationhood, notwithstanding the devolution of power to Scottish and Welsh parliaments. The report prefers to blur the issue of national identity and advocates the concept of multiple identity.

The report is dictatorial and elitist. It assumes that it is for the politically correct elite to decide the culture of the nation and not the ordinary people. In fact in a democracy it is not for an elite, no matter how righteous it considers itself to be, to decide ‘what should be preserved, what jettisoned, what revised or reworked?’ – regarding a nation’s culture. Nor is it the role of an elite to tell ordinary people what they are allowed to believe.

Such elitism and intolerance is incompatible with democracy and a free society, and this country is still a democracy and a free society, although such values are continually eroded.

This very Monday, 28 November 2005, there was a conference in London regarding the ‘Values of Britishness’. The speakers at this conference included David Cameron MP who delivered the Keynote Address, and:

Rt Hon Jack McConnell MSP, First Minister of Scotland
Lord Neil Kinnock, Chairman of the British Council
Sir Iqbal Sacranie, Secretary General, Muslim Council
Professor Tariq Modood, Department of Sociology, University of Bristol
Trevor Phillips, Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality
Professor Lord Bhiku Parekh, Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster

There were also speakers, including Sir Gulam Noon, to represent business.

It is presumed that Mr Cameron, who apparently believes that political correctness encourages politeness, was the English representative. This is what is known as equality.

That Lord Parekh is still around dispensing his views on Britishness is positively galling.

posted by erc @ 8:38 pm

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

THE PAREKH REPORT (7)

‘1.2 The interacting forces and trends of the present include devolution, and consequent questions about English, Scottish and Welsh identities; globalisation in a wide range of spheres, including economic, political and cultural; changes in Britain’s sense of itself as a world power; cultural and moral pluralism, especially in views of gender relations, sexuality and the structures of families and households; and – the principal subject matter of this report – the recognition that England, Scotland and Wales are multi-ethnic, multi-faith, multicultural, multi-community societies.

1.3 Each of these changes involves dislocations in the way people see themselves and in how they see the territorial, political and cultural space – “Britain” – where they meet, and where they seek to build a common life. What will emerge? Possibly, and deplorably, a Britain where people are divided and fragmented among the three separate countries and among regions, cities and boroughs, and where there is hostility, suspicion and wasteful competition – the politics of resentment. The prevailing mood could turn out to be one of aloofness and apathy towards other European countries, and disinclination to be involved on the world stage – for example, in action to protect the global environment or international human rights. There could be profound divisions by culture, religion and history, with no joint deliberation among people of different religious or philosophical beliefs, or among people with different perceptions and collective memories of the past. There could be a punitive and impatient attitude towards the poor. There could be widespread intolerance of numerical minorities of many kinds, including communities with roots in Africa, Bangladesh, the Caribbean, Cyprus, Hong Kong, India, Ireland and Pakistan, and of Gypsies, travellers and asylum-seekers. A Little Englander mentality, and its equivalents in Wales and Scotland, could hold sway.

1.4 Alternatively, Britain could develop as what this report calls a community of communities.’

And:

‘1.5 The forging and nurturing of such a society involves, at the outset, reinterpreting the past.’

From the outset, The Parekh Report advocates a multi-everything society, and that it is opposed to an English parliament, with its condemnation of Britain potentially being ‘fragmented among the three separate countries’.

Given that the Scots and Welsh have had power devolved down towards their own parliament/assembly, then there is no reason why the English should be denied their own autonomy. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, in particular, has continued to voice hostility towards an English parliament:

‘I see (Britishness) as subversive of all nationalisms and fundamentalisms ... The transformations I embrace are not those of devolution ... [which has] relegated black Britons to second class status ... I embrace quite a different vision which cannot survive in these smaller stronger nations, not even if a powerful and popular civic bond is promoted by political leaders ... Politically active black and Asian people like myself have spent years fighting against shrinking and simplistic identities which many in our communities are drawn to ... And yes there are the restive English (remember Defoe who said “From this amphibious ill born mob began, that vain, ill-natured thing, the Englishman”) on whose lands most of us live.’

More recently she has written that:

‘Britain could carry on becoming a modern, confident internationalist nation or a sadly balkanised one, progressive hopes turned to ash.’

Alibhai-Brown all too well recognises and is fearful that the creation of an English parliament would be a bulwark against the politically-correct, neo-communist agenda.

The Parekh Report caricatures a false choice between a ‘Little Englander mentality’ and ‘a community of communities’. In fact the outcome has been neither, but 7/7.

The term ‘reinterpreting the past’ is simply a more ascetic way of advocating the re-writing history. The whole thrust is one of thought control. That the English are too prejudiced to be allowed to think for themselves or allowed their own freedom.

Once again, the report’s aim is to tell the public what they may or may not do and think.

This is the true nature of political correctness. It is about the subversion of the national culture and the implementation of thought control as a means of undermining and controlling society.

posted by erc @ 6:25 pm

Monday, December 12, 2005

THE PAREKH REPORT (8)

‘1.6 Notions of Britishness originated in the 18th century, were developed in the 19th century, and were cemented through much of the 20th century. Nevertheless, in the words of the editors of Political Quarterly, in the journal’s first issue of the new millennium:

“The British have long been distinguished by having no clear idea about who they are, where they are, or what they are. Most of them have routinely described England as Britain. Only business people talk about a place called the United Kingdom ... It is all a terrible muddle.”

1.7 If arguing with the past is one simple duty of citizenship, then arguing with the present, it follows, is another. “Suddenly, in the space of a moment,” writes Bill Bryson in his bestselling Notes from a Small Island, “I realised what it was that I loved about Britain.” In a way this travel book about England, Scotland and Wales introduced the inhabitants of these places to themselves. It depicted Britain as an endearingly eccentric place some of the time, and as essentially welcoming, friendly and calm most of the time. The author offered up a handful of criticisms - urban planners insufficiently respectful of tradition, a bossy landlady who interfered with his freedom, a waitress who did not understand him, an inflexible official, someone with a passionate interest he did not himself share – but basically he found Britain as a whole lovable. No wonder the book was a bestseller. This is how he summed it up:

“Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realised what it was that I loved about Britain – which is to say, all of it. Every last bit of it, good and bad – Marmite, village fetes, country lanes, people saying ‘musn’t grumble’ and ‘I’m terribly sorry but’, people apologising to me when I conk them with a careless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, stinging nettles, seaside piers, Ordnance Survey maps, crumpets, hot-water bottles as a necessity, drizzly Sundays – every bit of it ... What other nation in the world could have given us William Shakespeare, pork pies, Christopher Wren, Windsor Great Park, the Open University, Gardners’ Question Time, and the chocolate digestive biscuit? None, of course.”

1.8 It is beguiling but also remarkably limited and excluding list. Consider who and what it leaves out. For a start, it omits Scotland and Wales – the author claims to be writing about Britain (the “small island” of his title), but much of this list, as indeed most of the book itself, is limited to England. Further, the list is limited in effect to the rural southern counties. It leaves out the English regions, with their distinctive identities and needs, and the urban and institutional life that is the daily experience of the vast majority of British people. It also leaves out the third of the population who are, by the government’s own figures, classified as living in poverty. Most are unlikely to think of Gardners’ Question Time and Ordnance Survey maps as epitomising their country. Equally, it leaves out all or most people in Britain who have close family or community links with Africa, Bangladesh, the Caribbean, China, Cyprus, India, Ireland, or Pakistan. There is barely anything in the list that resonates with their experience and perception of the land where they live. The references to Windsor Great Park and Christopher Wren evoke a national story that excludes them, or relegates them to subservient and marginal walk-on roles. Other than mentioning stinging nettles and careless elbows, the list leaves out all conflicts, difficulties and tensions, both in the present and in the past – it is both apolitical and ahistorical.

1.9 Significantly, the list gives no sense of the changes that have taken place in the very world it celebrates – the world of village fetes, country lanes and haymaking. Here, as elsewhere, there are conflicting loyalties and complex identities; profound disagreements about gender equality, sexuality, the upbringing of children, the nature and role of families; concerns about social class, status, life-chances and employment; disputes about the truth or otherwise of religion and the basis of morality; and unsettling anxieties about the cultural and economic dislocations brought on by modernisation and globalisation.’

The rather silly quote from the Political Quarterly does not merit much attention. Most people in this country know ‘who they are, where they are, or what they are’. It is not such a ‘terrible muddle’ as all that.

What is more important is the attack on a travel book. Bill Bryson, an American who was born in Iowa, is a travel writer. His book, Notes from a Small Island, was a best seller and he wrote it as a farewell to Britain just before he returned to the USA. One review of the book describes it thus:

‘After nearly two decades in Britain, Bill Bryson took the decision to move back to the USA. Before leaving his much-loved home in North Yorkshire, he took one last trip around the UK, and in this book, he turns an affectionate but laconic eye on his adopted country.’

Yet this travel book is criticised for being ‘both apolitical and ahistorical’. Bill Bryson himself is sneered at because, ‘basically he found Britain wholly lovable’ and consequently, ‘no wonder the book was a bestseller’.

The sheer political incorrectness of it! A travel book that was apolitical and ahistorical, that actually loved Britain! By God! It was even a bestseller!

AND JUST WHY SHOULD NOT HE FIND BRITAIN ‘WHOLLY LOVABLE’?

Bill Bryson, as are the rest of us, is entitled to his opinion, and entitled to feel nostalgic about Britain. That is not a crime.

It is not obligatory for immigrants to hate Britain.

WE CAN DO VERY NICELY WITHOUT ANTI-RACIST TRAVEL BOOKS.

The Parekh commissioners actually sincerely believe that travel books should be political and subject to their approval – even those written by Americans. This attitude and the comments quoted above betray more about the politically correct than the object of their derision. They reveal their true neo-communist intolerance of free speech, and their contempt for Britain in general and England in particular. They betray the fact that political correctness is not, nor ever has been, about promoting tolerance. It is about enforcing intolerance and encouraging hatred.

The report’s criticisms of the book being limited to the southern English counties is factually wrong and plain silly. Bill Bryson lived in Yorkshire, which is in northern England. The references to beans on toast, stinging nettles, seaside piers, drizzly Sundays etc. are not confined to ‘the rural southern counties’. There are drizzly Sundays in Scotland and one presumes that the Welsh have encountered Marmite.

Yet the report tries to create division between southern England and the ‘English regions’. The report is in favour of regionalisation as are its commissioners to this day. The report further tries to create class division by alleging that the poor are excluded. As if beans on toast is an aristocratic delicacy and as if village fetes are attended only by the well-to-do.

The report further tries to create racial division, by claiming that ethnic minorities are left out. Since the book was written about Britain, then it is not surprising that it does not describe parts of the Indian subcontinent or Africa. The allegation that the book’s references to Windsor Great Park and Christopher Wren ‘evoke a national story that excludes [ethnic minorities], or relegates them to subservient and marginal walk-on roles’ is pure race war politics.

Mass immigration into the UK is a recent phenomenon and so references to events and buildings built before the Second World War will not include references to ethnic minorities, who are, by definition, minorities anyway. What the report is really attacking is the concept of Britishness/Englishness.

As if that is not enough, the report then launches into a sneer about the book’s references to village fetes, country lanes and haymaking. The report alleges that these references do not include ‘profound disagreements about gender equality, sexuality, the upbringing of children, the nature and role of families’ etc. The report cannot abide any view that is inconsistent with the political correctness of its commissioners.

ONE CAN REFER ABOUT HAYMAKING WITHOUT HAVE TO INCLUDE ISSUES OF SEXUALITY AND GENDER EQUALITY ETC.

The problem is the extent of the political correctness and outright communism of the Parekh Commission itself, and not the contents of a travel book or the views of those who buy it.

There is one aspect touched on in the quote from the book which does require further comment. And that is the “musn’t grumble” and the “I’m terribly sorry but” attitude, which the report assigns to the English.

Given what is happening to our country, it is about time that we did grumble, and certainly about time that we stopped apologising. It might only be an expression of politeness, but the reality is that the English have nothing to apologise for. We have been too polite for too long. We have spent too long making the best of a bad job. We have been too tolerant of those who are openly contemptuous towards us.

The time has come to assert our own interests in our own country.

posted by erc @ 8:28 pm

MONDAY, JANUARY 09, 2006

THE PAREKH REPORT (9)

‘1.15 Britain is a land of many different groups, interests and identities, from Home Counties English to Gaels, Geordies and Mancunians to Liverpudlians, Irish to Pakistanis, African-Caribbeans to Indians. Some of these identity groups are large, powerful and long-settled. Others are small, new and comparatively powerless. Some are limited to Britain but others have international links; some of the boundaries are clear, some are fuzzy. Many communities overlap; all affect and are affected by others. More and more people have multiple identities – they are Welsh Europeans, Pakistani Yorkshiremen, Glaswegian Muslims, English Jews and black British. Most enjoy this complexity but also experience conflicting loyalties. The term ‘communities’ can give the impression of stable, coherent, historic groups with tidy boundaries. But situations and relationships are changing. It is simply wrong to think that there are easily measured groups of people – working-class Scots, black Londoners, Jews, Irish, ‘middle’ England – who all think alike and are not changed by those around them. For everyone life is more interesting than that.

1.16 The diversity of its population gives Britain important opportunities in the global markets that now shape the world economy. Britain’s potential to become a community of communities is not something to shy away from – its people should celebrate it. In the world developing now, it is perhaps the country’s biggest single advantage.

1.17 Yet the opportunity is in danger of being squandered. It is endangered by the many varieties of racism and exclusion that disfigure modern Britain and that have been woven into the fabric of British history for many centuries. Racism and exclusion spoil millions of lives and waste the optimism and energy of people who could, and should, be building the country’s prosperous future. Aggressive hostility to Islam is expressed in ways unthinkable in relation to other beliefs. Among the best-educated and prosperous new British, there is a trend for re-emigration to the United States and Canada, countries seen as more open and equal. The state’s attitude to asylum-seekers sends a shiver down many spines. Stories of murder, injustices and outrages – the Deptford fire, Quddus Ali, Michael Menson, Ricky Reel, Imran Khan, the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four, arson attacks on Asian shops, graffiti on mosques – haunt many people’s memories. The inquiry into Stephen Lawrence’s murder and its aftermath confirmed that racist attitudes and assumptions are embedded in the routine working practices and in the occupational cultures of most or all public institutions.

1.18 The essential task, we argue, is to move from “multicultural drift” to a purposeful process of change. Along the way there are profound issues to be resolved. How to decide between the right of a religious community not to be offended by blasphemy or abuse and the right of free-thinkers and secularists to express their views. How to reconcile the right of a newspaper to free speech with the right of groups it attacks to fight back. These are not abstract questions – they crop up all over the country all the time, creating hurt and confusion and mutual suspicion.’

This morbid extract from The Parekh Report is an attempt to paint Britain as being divided and to portray the British – especially the English – as racists.

The comments about the ‘many different groups, interests and identities’ excludes mention of the English as a nation, and only refers to ‘Home Counties English’ as being one of many groups. This is a divide-and-conquer tactic and is also an attempt to deny that the English were ever a true nation.

Those who the report consider to be ‘comparatively powerless’ (a histrionic description) are intended to be the beneficiaries of anti-racism.

The comment about those who: ‘have international links; some of the boundaries are clear, some are fuzzy. Many communities overlap; all affect and are affected by others. More and more people have multiple identities’, is the argument which Vince Cable has recently peddled in his Demos report. It is a long-standing politically correct argument.

Throughout, the English are presented as being one of many groups, and not as being the host nation, or as composing the overwhelming majority of the population (more than 90% of the population of England are English).

The allegation that by being a ‘community of communities’ is a means of competing on world markets is plainly fatuous. The marketability of goods is not determined by the multicultural pretensions of quangos and pressure groups.

The allegation that ‘racism and exclusion spoil millions of lives’ is hysterical rubbish. Such comments as ‘racism and exclusion that disfigure modern Britain’ is pure race war politics. If Britain was so bad, we would not be suffering the present tidal wave of immigration.

The comment about the ‘new British’ re-emigrating is yet more race war malevolence. If immigrants to this country wish to re-emigrate (e.g. as many foreign nurses do in order to obtain better pay) then that is not a sign of alleged British racism. It might also be remembered the recent comments Trevor Phillips has made about the USA following the New Orleans disaster (see English Rights Campaign entry dated 5 October 2005), when he held that as proof positive of the kind of society that Britain was in danger of becoming:

‘This is a segregated society, in which the one truth that is self-evident is that people cannot and never will be equal. That is why, for all of us who care about racial equality and integration, America is not our dream, but our nightmare.’

Those comments are the exact opposite of the allegations he was willing to peddle in The Parekh Report when he described the USA as being a country ‘more open and equal’.

The whole basis of Mr Phillips’s recent arguments concerning racial integration (as defined by him) and ethnic ghettos is opportunistic. He is simply twisting facts and events to suit himself as he goes along.

The list of names cited as being victims of racism or injustice by The Parekh Report are exclusively black or Irish. None are English. Not one.

One also needs to examine the details of those names cited. Apart from the IRA aspect to the Irish who are cited, those who are black are not necessarily victims to the extent that is implied by the report. For example, the Deptford fire resulted in 13 black people killed and 27 injured in January 1981. A Guardian report of the inquest and aftermath dated 14 May 1981 states:

‘The Deptford fire achieved a symbolic significance far beyond the actual tragedy, a significance that laid upon the inquest expectations that it could not possibly fulfil. For the bereaved families in particular and black people in general, the reaction of white society to the fire epitomised the indifference and prejudice which they feel surrounds them all the time. Initial police remarks apparently suggested that the cause of the blaze was a petrol bomb. The Government failed to express prompt condolences, yet reacted publicly and fulsomely to the Dublin discotheque fire. These two developments helped seal an unshakeable belief that the Deptford fire was caused by white racialists and that nobody cared.

The misery and suspicion were fuelled and exploited by the New Cross Massacre Action Committee. It was decided right from the start that the tragedy was a racialist "massacre". There was not a shred of evidence to back up this assumption, apart from the highly inconclusive eye-witness account of a white man seen outside the house with his arm raised as if throwing something towards it. Nevertheless, the emotive impact of this theory, plus disbelief that any partygoer could have started such a conflagration even by accident, meant that before the inquest started it would have been impossible for any black person to have doubted openly that a racialist attack had taken place ...

Despite the involvement of 50 detectives who spent more than 40,000 man hours and £320,000 on their investigation, the inquiry provoked such bitterness among the black community that the inquest degenerated into a conflict between witnesses and the police.

These young black witnesses had signed statements at the police station, some of them in front of parents or clergymen, claiming that there had been a fight between two guests. But they all then told the inquest that there had been no fight; they had made false statements under pressure from the police. These charges are exceptionally serious and mean either that the police were guilty of a perversion of justice or that the witnesses committed mass perjury at the inquest. They told lies somewhere, either at the police station or at County Hall – but where? Both scenarios are plausible. The police, having decided that the fire stated as a result of a fight at the party, put pressure on the youngsters to support this theory. Since many of them were in trouble with the police already, and couldn't care less what they said as long as it got them home, they said what the police wanted them to say. Alternatively, they told the police the truth; afterwards, realising the importance of the fight to the police theory, and under heavy pressure to support the white attack explanation, they lied to the coroner.

The forensic evidence didn't help. The pool of liquid "like paint thinners" on the living room carpet was balanced by the baffling discovery of an unexploded incendiary device in the garden.’

The inquest reached an open verdict as the jury was unable to determine what had happened. Their task was not helped by the self-appointed New Cross Massacre Action Committee which caused much mayhem. The inquest itself was badly disrupted from the public gallery.

Yet The Parekh Report cites this as an example of British racism and injustice.

In fact the English are the main victims of racial violence as a Home Office report highlights. This has always been the case. The fact is that the racial hatred by the ethnic minorities towards the English in England is the main cause of racial violence. The racial minorities might only make up 8% of the population, yet the ethnic minority communities committed 55% of the racial homicides that occurred between 2001-04 (with white people being the victims). This anti-white racism is a long term problem.

That the Parekh commissioners did not cite even one English victim of racial violence is a good example of their own Anglophobia/racism, and of their own twisted ideology.

The Parekh Report's demand for ‘purposeful process of change’ as opposed to ‘multicultural drift’ is simply an argument for more state control over ordinary people’s lives. The Parekh commissioners were simply intolerant of ordinary people being allowed to lead their own lives as they see fit.

The phrase that some might need to ‘fight back’ against a newspaper’s free speech is inflammatory. We already have laws which reconcile free speech with defamation etc. The general public are getting along just fine without yet more state interference. There is not all that much ‘hurt and confusion and mutual suspicion’.

The thrust of The Parekh Report’s lurid portrayal of Britain as racist needs to be compared with the 2002-03 British Crime Survey, which revealed that 2% of blacks claimed to have suffered a racially motivated crime, 3% of Asians and less than 1% whites.

Of course 1% of whites, given that they are the overwhelming majority, constitutes a far greater number than 2-3% of an ethnic minority.

Nor should it be overlooked that there is interracial violence between the ethnic minorities themselves, as has recently been the case in Birmingham where people were killed.

The Parekh Report fundamentally misrepresents the truth for its own neo-communist ideological purposes.

posted by erc @ 10:23 pm

Thursday, February 16, 2006

THE PAREKH REPORT (10)

‘The future of Britain lies in the hands of ... descendants of slave owners and slaves, of indentured labourers, of feudal landlords and serfs, of industrialists and factory workers, of lairds and crofters, of refugees and asylum-seekers.

From a response to the Commission

2.1 The movement towards a multi-ethnic, multicultural Britain has been decisive. However, it has not been the result of a concerted decision. Nor is it yet an accomplished fact. It has evolved as an unplanned, incremental process - a matter of multicultural drift, not of conscious policy. Much of the country, including many significant power-centres, remains untouched by it.

2.2 Attitudes towards multicultural drift vary widely. There are people who warmly welcome, to quote the resonant phrase used in the title of recent and influential documentation about it, “the irresistible rise of multiracial Britain”. The new Britain was vividly seen in the Windrush celebrations of 1998, commemorating the arrival of Britain’s Caribbean and Asian communities 50 years earlier. In those celebrations Britain was affirmed as a place where people of different cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds live together on a permanent basis, and strive to build a common life. However, there are those who accept multicultural drift grudgingly as a fact of life, regretting the passing of the good old days when, they believe, Britain was a much more unified, predictable sort of place. There are also those who militantly resist and oppose it. The Windrush celebrations represented the good side of multiculturalism. The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry report, with its disturbing finding of institutional racism in the police service – and by extension in all public bodies and institutions – was a sombre reminder of the challenges that must be faced.

2.3 As noted in Chapter 1, Britain confronts a historic choice as to its future direction. Will it try to turn the clock back, digging in, defending old values and ancient hierarchies, relying on a narrow English-dominated, backward-looking definition of the nation? Or will it seize the opportunity to create a more flexible, inclusive, cosmopolitan image of itself? Britain is at a turning point. But it has not yet turned the corner. It is time to make the move.’

The second chapter of The Parekh Report is entitled: Rethinking the National Story. In other words, the report intends to re-write British history.

It starts off in style, with an extract of a response to the Commission, which is a nice bit of communist theory. It divides Britain along class and racial lines, and even treats so-called asylum-seekers as if they were a normal part of life. In fact the vast majority are out-and-out illegal immigrants and have no business being here.

No asylum-seeker enters this country from an unsafe country. They travel across many other countries and even entire continents to get here.

The extract does not refer to Liverpudlians, or Yorkshiremen, or Cockneys. Of course, they are all English. The report’s aim is to create division.

The report then reveals its intolerance of a free society. It is contemptuous towards those who do not share the report’s obsession with race.

It is to be noted that the report condemns ‘all public bodies and institutions’ as being institutionally racist. Every single one. This bigotry and race war politics is easy for the twisted minds of the politically correct.

For most of the last century the communist term of abuse against English society was in reference to the ‘class system’ or the term the ‘capitalist system’ which could also be applied to the West generally. Now the term of abuse is ‘institutional racism’.

Paragraph 2.3 moves towards the real thrust of the report, with its attack on ‘a narrow English-dominated, backward-looking definition of a nation’. Britain is English dominated as 85% of the British live in England. The English are by far the most populous nation. Being so, is not something to be ashamed of and nor is it racist.

posted by erc @ 10:01 pm

Thursday, March 09, 2006

THE PAREKH REPORT (11)

'2.20 There has never been a single “British way of life”. The idea that Britishness is universally diffused across society is seriously misleading. For there have always been many, often contested, ways of being British. Outside the heartland (earlier “Home Counties”; more recently “middle England”), Britishness always existed alongside, and was strongly challenged by, the Irish, the Scots, the Welsh, and also by a range of local and regional loyalties. Identification with Yorkshire, the North East, Manchester, Lancashire, the West Midlands, East Anglia and the West Country has co-existed with, and sometimes seems to override, national identity – there have been alternative versions of national identity not only within Britain but also within England itself ...

2.21 Deep differences in social and political outlook and opinion continue to exist, even in today’s less politicised climate, and reflect different, often dramatically opposed, versions of national identity. A young columnist remarked: “It could be argued that a universal sense of “Englishness” is impossible when our class system provides so many different “Englands” ... Exactly the same would be true of Britishness as a whole, as seen from Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, or by people of different genders, regions and generations ... All classes were involved in and benefited from empire, but men and women related to it in different ways.

3.6 Caribbean culture has a distinct social and geographical basis and it the product of a unique historical experience ... British-born African-Caribbeans are socialised through family and neighbourhood into a migrant version of this culture. Following the rediscovery of an African and slave past at home (as communicated through reggae music), and resistance to white racism in Britain, blackness has become an essential part of their self-definition. They are conscious of their subordinate, racialised place in global power systems.

3.9 ... In recent surveys nearly all Asians questioned have said that religion is important to them, but it has not inhibited full participation in the wider society. Recently, Muslims have emerged as the principle focus of racist antagonisms (“Islamophobia”) based on cultural difference. The politicisation of Islam throughout the world has contributed to this. Often, however, what Islam means is that “new ways of living and the process of gradually becoming a part of British society have to be ultimately justified in terms compatible with Muslim faith” ...

3.10 Anti-Irish racism developed in tandem with racisms directed at people outside Europe. There are around 3 million Irish people in Britain today – by far the largest migrant community. All too often they are neglected in considerations of race and cultural diversity in modern Britain. It is essential, however, that all such considerations should take their perceptions and situations into account.

3.12 The generations of Irish born in Britain remain under-researched. However, the few available studies indicate a continuing pattern of low achievement for young Irish men and disproportionate ill health in the second generation. The position of the Irish in Britain as insider-outsiders is uniquely relevant to the nature of its multi-ethnic society. For generations, Irish experience has been neglected owing to the myth of the homogeneity of white Britain, but it illuminates Britishness in much the same way that the experience of black people illuminates whiteness.

3.16 ... Few in the Jewish community would question the significance of the Holocaust or of Israel, but many now say that the focus of communal attention must be on values, culture and religious practice, on positive images of Jewish culture and civilisation, and they are concerned with how to maintain Jewish distinctiveness in British society. Their desire for cultural recognition in a pluralist society offers probably more potential for shared goals with Asian and black people than the shared history of racist oppression.

3.17 The kinds of tension and complexity outlined above are issues also for Gypsies and Travellers. As is the case with Irish people and Jews, they are often neglected in considerations of Britain as a multi-ethnic society, or included only as an afterthought. But they too were defined in the past as an inferior race and are part of the history of British racism ...

3.19 ... Despite the great diversity between and within travelling groups, all are lumped together in the minds of settled communities. They suffer from high degrees of social exclusion, vilification and stereotyping. Anyone who does not fit the traditional stereotype (painted wagon, campfire, swarthy complexion, much gold jewellery) is assumed to be a mere traveller, to be feared and despised.

3.23 Britain continues to be disfigured by racism; by phobias about cultural difference; by sustained social, economic, educational and cultural disadvantage; by institutional discrimination; and by a systematic failure of social justice or real respect for difference. These have been fuelled by a fixed conception of national identity and culture. They are not likely to disappear without a sustained effort of political will. Is it possible to reimagine Britain as a nation – or post nation – in a multicultural way?

3.24 ... Black identities have been positively embraced. Difference now matters profoundly. However, differences are not necessarily either/or – many people are learning to live “in between”, it has been said, or with more than one identity. The famous Tebbit cricket test is not only racially demeaning but is also out of date. People today are constantly juggling different, not always compatible, identities. South Asians and African-Caribbeans support India, Pakistan and the West Indies against England but England against Australia, especially when the English team includes Asian and black players. This is just one aspect of the complex, multifaceted, post-national world in which national allegiance is now played out.

3.25 What broad strategies are shaping the ways in which people deal with this shifting situation? Hope once centred on assimilation. However, this really meant the absorption of so-called minority differences into the so-called majority – people were expected to give up everything in order to belong. But since racism has continued, assimilation has come to be seen as an impossible price to pay – blackness and Asianness are non-tradable. Cultural difference has come to matter more. The awareness that “non-recognition or mis-recognition can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted and reduced mode of being” has led to a politics of recognition alongside the struggle for equality and racial justice.

3.28 Does Britishness as such have a future? Some believe that devolution and globalisation have undermined it irretrievably ... It is entirely plain, however, that the word "British" will never do on its own.

3.29 Where does this leave Asians, African-Caribbeans and Africans? For them Britishness is a reminder of colonisation and empire, and to that extent is not attractive. But the first migrants came with British passports, signifying membership of a single imperial system. For the British-born generations, seeking to assert their claim to belong, the concept of Englishness often seems inappropriate, since to be English, as the term is in practice used, is to be white. Britishness is not ideal, but at least it appears acceptable, particularly when suitably qualified – Black British, Indian British, British Muslim, and so on.

3.30 However, there is one major and so far insuperable barrier. Britishness, as much as Englishness, has systematic, largely unspoken, racial connotations. Whiteness nowhere features as an explicit condition of being British, but it is widely understood that Englishness, and therefore by extension Britishness, is racially coded. "There ain't no black in the Union Jack", it has been said. Race is deeply entwined in political culture and with the idea of nation, and underpinned by a distinctively British kind of reticence – to take race and racism seriously, or even to talk about them at all, is bad form, something not done in polite company. This disavowal, combined with "an iron-jawed disinclination to recognise equal human worth and dignity of people who are not white", has proved a lethal combination. Unless these deep-rooted antagonisms to racial and cultural difference can be defeated in practice, as well as symbolically written out of the national story, the idea of a multicultural post-nation remains an empty promise.'

The last two of the above paragraphs have already been dealt with in the English Rights Campaign entry dated the 22 October 2005, and the press focussed on paragraph 3.30 in particular in its denunciation of The Parekh Report.

Those paragraphs have been included again here in order to present a complete picture of the ideology which is being presented.

Firstly, the report undermines the concept that the British were ever united. To that end it tries to divide up the British and even the English. It seeks to rubbish the concept of nationhood.

We have been spared Trevor Phillips’s and Alabhai Brown’s views on the Irish as of late, but the purported anti-Irish racism was a key part of their attack. The report is trying to portray the British as being no more than a collection of different non-homogenous groups. By trying to draw in the Irish the report reinforces its assertion that the British/English are inherently racist, and that such racism is responsible for all the world’s problems (hence the quiet references to the empire etc.).

Ireland was of course once an integral part of Britain. The idea that those of Irish descent born in this country do not fully integrate, and suffer discrimination and racism, is rubbish.

To speak of the British Empire being a ‘single imperial system’ is rubbish. The British were the rulers and the natives of Africa, Asia and elsewhere were the ruled. Britain was a democracy, the colonies were not. Then there were the Dominions. The British Empire no longer exists, and peoples of the former colonies have no claim on Britain or England – apart from the British ex-patriots and their descendants.

The report’s ideology is political correctness in its true neo-communist form. It seeks to create division and hatred, and exaggerate and invent racism. It is pure race war politics.

IT IS MOST DEFINITELY NOT WOOLLY-MINDED IDEALISM NOR IS IT AN ATTEMPT TO ENCOURAGE POLITENESS.

It is evil.

The report seeks to alienate virtually all minority racial groups (Jews, Irish, gypsies, Asians etc.) against the English, having first tried to divide the English themselves. All these minority racial groups are, of course, supposedly, victims of British/English racism.

The report is aggressive in its assertion that Britain is now a ‘post-nation’. It also asserts that allegiances are to many different entities and not the nation (‘national allegiance is now played out’). This is the line which Vince Cable was pushing in his outburst last year (see English Rights Campaign entry dated the 11 September 2005). All Mr Cable was doing was parroting The Parekh Report (which shows how influential the report is in certain quarters).

A key part of the attack is the assertion that assimilation is impossible. This is not least due to the report’s denial that there is a host nation into which the immigrant minorities can assimilate into (note the reference to Britain being a ‘multicultural post-nation’). Trevor Phillips’s recent quibbling about the problems of assimilation/integration are disingenuous on this point (see English Rights Campaign entries dated the 18 September 2005 and the 5 October 2005). The fact is that he is opposed to assimilation/integration per se.

What he really wants is race quotas and anti-English ethnic cleansing.

Given that Labour in particular, and the British ruling class in general, adhere to such views, then it is little wonder that we are now experiencing increasing racial violence and terrorism.

posted by erc @ 8:47 pm

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

THE PAREKH REPORT (12)

‘4.12 The essential problem with the nationalist or assimilationist model ... is that it is based on a false premise of what Britain is and has been. Britain is not and never has been a homogenous and unified whole – it contains many conflicting traditions and is differentiated by gender, class, region and religion as well as by culture, ethnicity and race. Assimilation is a fantasy, for there is no single culture into which all people can be incorporated. In any case, it seldom leads to complete acceptance, for the demand for assimilation springs from intolerance of difference, and for the intolerant even one difference is one too many. Furthermore, assimilation cannot be justified morally. It attempts to suppress difference and condemns to second-class citizenship, in fact if not in law, everyone who does not accept majority norms. A fundamental practical problem is that assimilation cannot be pursued in an age of increasing globalisation. For no government, least of all the government of a state such as the United Kingdom, can insulate its citizens from cultural, religious and intellectual influences emanating from outside the state’s physical borders.

4.13 ... The first challenge to traditional liberal theory is that the political culture and the public realm are not, and cannot be, neutral. Their values and practices can therefore discriminate against certain members of the community, marginalising them or failing to recognise them. This was seen in the Satanic Verses affair and in the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, for example. The public realm must be open to revision in the interests of those it is in danger of disregarding ...

4.14 A second defect of the liberal model is that its attempt to combine a monocultural public realm with a multicultural private realm is likely to undermine the latter. For if only one culture is publicly recognised and institutionalised, other cultures will be seen as marginal, peripheral, even deviant and inferior. For example, the days of rest supported by British and European law and custom are those that coincide with traditional Christian holidays rather than with the holidays of any other faith. This makes participation in public life convenient for people from Christian traditions but inconvenient for those of other religions, and it implies second-class for all traditions other than Christian ... Furthermore, the separation of public and private realms means that there is little or no intercultural debate, and therefore mutual learning, either in public or in private.

4.15 A third defect concerns the state’s right, and indeed duty, to intervene in the private sphere to protect and promote human rights standards, based on equal respect and dignity ... For example, the state has a duty to regulate how children and older people are treated. It exercises this duty with substantially more legitimacy if it gives public recognition to cultural diversity, and if it is seen to be sensitive to the ways in which universal human rights are realised in different specific settings.

4.29 Like any other society, Britain needs common values to hold it together and give it a sense of cohesion. At the same time it must acknowledge that its citizens belong to a variety of moral traditions and subscribe to and live by a range of values. Therefore, common values cannot simply be the values of one community, even if it is the numerical “majority”, but must emerge from democratic dialogue and be based on reasons that individuals belonging to different moral and cultural traditions can agree on. They should not be so defined that they rule out legitimate moral differences or impose a particular rule of life on all. Nor should they be seen as fixed and settled forever, as new insights and experiences are likely to call for their reconsideration.

4.36 Britain needs to be, certainly, “One Nation” – but understood as a community of communities and a community of citizens, not a place of oppressive uniformity based on a single substantive culture. Cohesion in such a community derives from widespread commitment to certain core values, both between communities and within them: equality and fairness; dialogue and consultation; toleration, compromise and accommodation; recognition of and respect for diversity; and – by no means least – determination to confront and eliminate racism and xenophobia.’

It is worth requoting an extract of paragraph 4.12:

‘Britain is not and never has been a homogenous and unified whole ... Assimilation is a fantasy, for there is no single culture into which all people can be incorporated ... Furthermore, assimilation cannot be justified morally.’

This is the true face of political correctness. It is the true face of Labour policy. It is a communist face.

Is it any wonder that we are now having to deal with Islamist terrorism?

The idea that the terrorist bombings in London last year were simply the result of a few mad mullahs who inflamed innocent Muslims is pathetic and wrong. It is the result, primarily, of Labour policy and of the snobby political correctness of the British ruling class in general. It is the result of race war politics.

Patriotism is the basis of national unity. That we are all in it together, have shared interests, a shared history and have pride in our history and our country. Political correctness seeks to foster hatred and division.

Anyone who believes that ‘assimilation cannot be justified morally’ is unfit to exercise any form of government power, especially if he is involved in race relations in any way. Labour has gone out of its way to promote the authors of The Parekh Report. That is because such peoples’ views are Labour views.

The report invents and then caricatures several models for dealing with minority cultures. The nationalist model is described thus:

‘The state promotes a single national culture and expects all to assimilate to it. People who do not or cannot assimilate are second-class citizens.’

The liberal model is described thus:

‘There is a single political culture in the public sphere but substantial diversity in the private lives of individuals and communities.’

The pluralist model is described thus:

‘There is both unity and diversity in public life; communities and identities overlap and are interdependent, and develop common features.’

The report itself prefers the creation of a ‘synthesis of the liberal and pluralist models – Britain as both a community of individuals and a community of communities’. The liberal bit is a fig-leaf of unity for their pluralist model, coupled with the idea that the state should promote all cultures equally rather than being a national culture.

It cannot be stressed enough, that the report advocates that Britain should cease to exist as a nation in order to create its ‘community of communities’. Britain is described as a ‘multicultural post-nation’ and the report asserts that ‘national allegiance is now played out’ (this has already been dealt with in the earlier entries on The Parekh Report – e.g. see the English Rights Campaign entry dated the 9 March 2006).

The brief reference to the Satanic Verses speaks volumes and is used to attack ‘traditional liberal theory’. The support for the views of those who wished to ban Salman Rushdie’s book, and kill Salman Rushdie himself, is extremist and unacceptable. At the time, the condemnation of those who advocated the murder of Salman Rushdie was unequivocal. Today, it is those who advocate the murder of some cartoonists who are portrayed as the victims, whereas the cartoonists are condemned.

The report rejects the concept of a national culture, and consequently the concept of nationhood at all. It even balks at the Christian background of national holidays. It is totally intolerant of English national culture.

The report’s third attack on its liberal model is that the state has a ‘right, and indeed duty, to intervene in the private sphere to protect and promote human rights standards, based on equal respect and dignity.’ Human rights as defined by the politically correct, that is. In a free society, which the Parakh commissioners obviously do not believe in, the state’s interference in peoples’ private lives should always be kept to a minimum.

The report uses so-called human rights as a means of by-passing both freedom and democracy. It openly condemns the values of the ‘majority’ and instead believes that the majority (i.e. the English) must be treated as being no different to even the smallest minority. Such a view is completely incompatible with democracy and a free society. It is incompatible with English nationhood. It is a communist view and the true nature of political correctness.

Such Anglophobia has recently caused a small brouhaha in Newcastle where a senior Liberal Democrat councillor wrote:

‘There is no need for an English parliament because there is no England.

Scotland, Wales and Ireland are fairly homogeneous nations, each with its own clearly defined character and culture. That is why devolution (or independence) has been quite successful in all three. In England, the picture is far more complex. There are millions of Scots, Welsh and Irish living in England. The overwhelming majority of non-white migrants also live in England, along with many hundreds of thousands of other Europeans and people from other parts of the world. England is the genuine mongrel nation, and I welcome that. This fact however, makes identity far more complex and difficult than in the other British nations.

For example, I regard myself first and foremost as a Northumbrian, then as British, and finally as European. Here in the north-east we only began to be part of the nation after 1603. Before that, the independent kingdoms of England and Scotland played havoc with the area, and used it (and abused us) for their own dynastic ends. I have no loyalty to England. For me, the British state has meaning and relevance precisely because it has little connection with a brutal past based on ignorance and exploitation.

The answer to the West Lothian question is the creation of a fully federal United Kingdom, based on Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the regions of England. There would still be disparities of size, but these would be far less than a separate English parliament would create. The failure of the referendum in the North-east in 2004 doesn't invalidate the concept. Devolution is working in Scotland and Wales; and independence has given most of Ireland a new lease of life. We just need to expand that successful formula to the rest of the United Kingdom.’

The mongrel who wrote that openly sets out his snobby contempt for the English and that he sees immigration as a means of undermining English nationhood and democracy. Regionalisation is advocated as a means of breaking up England and preventing the creation of an English parliament. The sentiment is pure Anglophobia.

Political correctness has infected all the main political parties and not just Labour. The British ruling class as a whole is fully committed to this creed.

The snobby disdain for democracy was also voiced by Cherie Blair last year in her rejection of ‘majoritarian politics’ (see the English Rights Campaign entry dated the 8 August 2005).

When The Parekh Report calls for a ‘determination to confront and eliminate racism and xenophobia’, it is really calling for the destruction of the English ‘substantive culture’. Once again, this is the communist view and is the true nature of political correctness.

Traditionally, England has depended upon democracy and the freedom of the individual as its defining political culture. That has been steadily eroded by the onslaught of socialism in general, but more specifically by political correctness, which sees the attitudes and activities of ordinary people as an obstacle to the re-ordering of society along politically correct and multiculturalist lines. To the politically correct, the existence of an English national culture is racist per se. The politically correct seek to destroy the national culture by subverting democracy and freedom by citing human rights and multiculturalism. To that end, they favour mass immigration.

Democracy and freedom of the individual need to be reasserted. The various models invented by The Parekh Report should be ignored. With democracy and freedom of the individual, an individual is allowed his minority culture irrespective of government opinion. The national culture is the English culture, as it should be. This is, after all, England. The English are the majority - although Labour’s aggressive policy of mass immigration is intended to end that and reduce the English into being a racial minority in their own country.

Those who advocate race war politics and reject the assimilation of immigrants into the host community as immoral, are treating the ordinary people as toys. They have no place in government, or the various government quangos. These extremists must be unceremoniously rooted out. The quangos in which they inhabit must be closed down.

52 people were killed on 7/7 terrorist bombings last year and many more injured, some seriously.

The fight between English nationalism and political correctness, is the fight between good and evil. It is as clear cut as that.

posted by erc @ 9:13 pm

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

THE PAREKH REPORT (13)

‘5.4 ... Anti-black racism is different, in terms of its historical and economic origins, and in its contemporary manifestations, stereotypes and effects, from anti-Asian racism. Both are different from, to cite three further significant examples, anti-Irish, anti-Gypsy and anti-Jewish racism. European societies, it is sometimes said, are multi-racist societies ...

5.5 ... (“West-East racism”) draws attention to one of the most serious forms of cultural hostility in modern Europe – anti-Muslim racism. But of course so simple an idea can all too readily lead to unhelpful simplifications. One major objection to it, for example, is that it neglects forms of racism directed against people within Europe, for example anti-Irish racism and antisemitism.

5.6 ... Jews see themselves historically as an oppressed group. However, Jews in Britain today face comparatively little discrimination; the number of antisemitic incidents is small; the impact of antisemitic propaganda is marginal; and antisemitism has ceased to be socially acceptable. Moreover, countervailing forces have strengthened. These include the adoption of legislation making race hatred unlawful, growing awareness of the Holocaust, greater acceptance of pluralism and many decades of successful assimilation – the wisdom of which, however, many in the Jewish community now question. Yet not all Jews recognise the improvements. In 1995, 40 per cent of Jews believed that antisemitism was worse than it had been five years earlier, despite the fact that the evidence of declining antisemitism came from data collected by the body that formally monitors such issues on behalf of the community, the Community Security Trust. In view of antisemitism’s murderous consequences in the past, Jewish sensitivity is entirely understandable. Since the Jewish community is long-established, is often seen as part of the white establishment, suffers no colour racism and is often held up as a model of successful assimilation, relations between it and other groups targeted by racism are rather complex. Nevertheless, in policies designed to deal with racism, antisemitism must be included – it remains an integral part of the ideological armoury of racist individuals and groups and has been called “a light sleeper”. It would be perverse, however, not to acknowledge that, however deeply wounding and painful expressions of antisemitism are in Britain today, the racism experienced by Asian, black, Gypsy and Irish communities demands primary attention.

5.7 Anti-Irish racism has many of the features to be found in most racisms: a history of colonisation; the establishment of plantation agriculture to provide primary commodities for the metropolis; the use of indentured labour; migration to the metropolis to furnish manpower (which in the case of the Irish began more than 100 years before the migrations from outside Europe); negative stereotypes about difference and inferiority; discrimination in the criminal justice system and in the provision of jobs and accommodation; and widespread experience of social exclusion. However, anti-Irish racism has been twinned in British history, at least since the mid-16th century, with anti-Catholicism, and frequently for this reason has not been adequately recognised. Until recently, it has largely been ignored by organisations promoting race equality, for since the Irish are perceived as white it is not readily imagined that they might be victims of racism rather than perpetrators. Supported tacitly by academics and other specialists, policy-makers have espoused and propagated “the myth of homogeneity” – the false belief that the population of Britain consists essentially of one large majority or mainstream (“white people”) and an array of various minorities. “Non-white” and “ethnic” in the mental picture are synonymous.

5.8 Anti-Muslim racism has been a feature of European culture at least since the Crusades, but it has taken different forms at different times. In modern Britain its manifestations include discrimination in recruitment and employment practices; high levels of attacks on mosques and on people wearing Muslim religious dress; widespread negative stereotypes in all sections of the press, including the broadsheets as well as the tabloids; bureaucratic obstruction or inertia in response to Muslim requests for greater cultural sensitivity in education and healthcare; objections and delays in planning permissions to build mosques; and non-recognition of Muslims by the law of the land, since discrimination on grounds of religion or belief is not unlawful. Furthermore, many or most anti-racist organisations and campaigns appear indifferent to the distinctive features of anti-Muslim racism and to distinctive Muslim concerns about cultural sensitivity ...

5.9 The essential point to stress is that over the centuries all racisms have had – and continue to have – two separate but intertwining strands. One uses physical or biologically derived signs as a way of recognising difference – skin colour, hair, features, body type, and so on. The other uses cultural features, such as ways of life, customs, language, religion and dress. The two strands usually appear together, but they combine in distinct ways, with one or other prominent at different times and in different contexts. Jews were vilified in medieval times because they were believed to be the murderers of Christ, and because they practised a strict but alien code of dietary law and social behaviour. But they also came to be represented as physically different – with hooked nose, ringlets and a swarthy complexion. In the antisemitic iconography of Nazi Germany they were consistently portrayed as subhuman. Similarly, Gypsies have been discriminated against because of both their nomadic lifestyle and their “non-Caucasian” physical appearance. Most Muslims are recognised by physical features as well as by their culture and religion, and the biological and cultural strands in anti-Muslim racism are often impossible to disentangle. In the 19th century the Irish, who had always been regarded by the British as less civilised, were racialised – represented in the press and popular cartoons as ape-like, a race apart. This tradition continued in the mainstream press into the 20th century. As well as Jews, Gypsies and the Irish within Europe, the targets of racism over the centuries have included peoples and civilisations beyond Europe’s boundaries, including, of course, the colonised peoples.

5.10 Race, as is now widely acknowledged, is a social and political construct, not a biological or genetic fact. It cannot be used scientifically to account for the wide range of differences among peoples ... This does not mean that racism is a myth, for although it does not have a scientific basis it does create social and political realities – those things that men and women believe to be true, it is often said, are true in their consequences; that is, they have real effects. Groups are characterised exclusively in terms of what makes them different, and differences are reduced to a few simple either/or distinctions – a fixed set of oppositions between “us” and “them”, those who belong and those who do not. Difference and inferiority become all but synonymous. Individuals are then seen and judged in terms of the group differences, and “we” have the right to exclude “them” from access to scarce material and cultural resources. Racism, in short, involves (a) stereotypes about difference and inferiority and (b) the use of power to exclude, discriminate or subjugate. It has existed and continues to exist in all societies. Chinese and Indian attitudes to outsiders, and African attitudes to Asians, and so on, show its influence. Here, we concentrate on European racism.

5.13 The image of the African was influenced less by direct knowledge of Africa and more by the wider context of the slave trade. It was based on contact with the sellers of slaves and with the slaves themselves. Though varied in their detail, these views entailed “one universal assumption” – that African skin colour, hair texture and facial features were associated with both the African way of life and the status of slavery. Once this assumption was made, prejudices about class, race and culture blended with a long-standing iconography in European Christian thought, and imagery that counterpoised the goodness of white (the light) against the degradation and evil represented by black and darkness. In the face of the growing anti-slavery movement, racialised ideas of African slaves and slavery became more systematically codified. By the 18th century this general view of the physical differences and cultural inferiority of the African, and the negative social, cultural and cognitive meanings associated with black skin, represented the common-sense opinion of the great majority of the slave-owning planter class and their supporters, as also of scholars and thinkers ...

5.14 In the 18th century European trade enclaves began to develop on a more systematic colonising basis in the East ... At both scholarly and popular levels, a set of stereotyped views of how and why the peoples of the Orient were different and inferior developed. These were based on a set of unbridgeable oppositions between East and West – “and never the twain shall meet”, as Kipling infamously put it. As in relation to Africa and the New World, physical characteristics played an important part in alerting Westerners to oriental difference. But there was a much stronger emphasis on cultural difference within the various types of anti-Asian racism – the East/West divide was delineated primarily by divergences in social customs, sexual mores, social etiquette, family culture, religion, language, dress, cuisine and the rituals of the life cycle. Scholars contrasted the development of modern civilisation in the West with the backward and tradition-dominated East, an opposition that persists to this day. Where African men were stigmatised as violent and sexually aggressive, and the women as openly promiscuous, oriental men were seen as feminine, wily and devious, and the women seductive. But the two strands of racism – the biological and cultural – continued to interweave ...

5.15 The success of the anti-slavery movements in the 19th century represented something of a high point in efforts to contest extreme racist opinion. However, after the middle of the century a new and more virulent form of racism began to emerge in Europe ... It claimed scientific respectability for the idea that human beings belonged to distinct and separate species. Each race was seen as a self-reproducing group whose characteristics were fixed for ever with its own distinctive “blood” and “stock”. A scientific basis was similarly claimed for the principle of arranging races into a hierarchy, and physical and anatomical differences were measured so that groups could be mapped on a neo-Darwinian evolutionary tree, from primitive to civilised ...

5.16 These theories were closely aligned with increased European nationalism and with the rising competition between the European nation-states for a monopoly of markets, raw materials, colonial possessions and world supremacy. Scientific racism spanned the period of high imperialism and two world wars – racial sentiments were valuable supports for military mobilisation and essential ingredients of jingoism. This race-based nationalism interacted with a race-based imperialism. In Britain, for example, the Empire was frequently celebrated as the achievement of “an imperial race”. The revival of rabid antisemitism, leading to the pogroms against Jews in central and eastern Europe and Hitler’s Final Solution, was the product of this pan-European trend.

5.17 Racism exacerbates, and is exacerbated by, sexism – they reinforce each other in vicious circles and spirals, and intertwine to the extent that it is impossible to disentangle them. Racism involves believing “races” are essentially distinct from each other, as a matter of nature. Similarly, sexism involves seeing all differences between women and men as fixed in nature rather than primarily constructed by culture. In both racism and sexism the dominant group holds much the same self/other stereotypes. The self (the male, the white person) is seen as rational, reliable, consistent, mature, capable, strong. The other is perceived and treated as emotional, untrustworthy, feckless, childish, wayward – a threat if not kept under strict control.

5.18 Sexual rivalries in sexist and patriarchal contexts exacerbate fears and fantasies among white people about supposed sexuality, promiscuity and fecundity of people believed to be racially different. Racist stereotypes are then strengthened, particularly those that hold black and Asian people to be closer to nature, unreason and instinct, lacking in integrity and trustworthiness, and needing to be kept under control. White men perceive Asian men as effeminate. Stand-offs between white male police officers and black youths on the street, or between white male teachers and black pupils in secondary schools, are imbued with a combination of sexual rivalry and racism. In all communities such stereotypes and tensions increase the oppression of women and the policing of sexuality. In racist contexts, white people see black and Asian people not only as sexually threatening but also as exotic, mysterious and exciting. The exoticisation and sexualisation of “non-Western” people is a frequent theme in modern advertising. It has the appearance of being non-racist, perhaps, since at least a black or Asian person is visible in a high-profile way. In fact, however, such imagery may reflect and reinforce both racism and sexism.

5.32 ...discriminatory behaviour can create, and not just be the consequence of, prejudiced ideas and beliefs. Police officers, like everybody else, are socialised into particular ways of behaving; only subsequently do they imbibe from their professional culture the range of negative stereotypes and beliefs which they use to explain what they do. Similar dynamics occur in many other occupational and professional settings, as well – for example, in the education system.

5.33 Similarly, a set of power relationships ... can generate the very beliefs, attitudes and behaviours that then act to reinforce them. It cannot be stressed too strongly that all racisms have in common that they arose and developed, and are nowadays maintained, in the context of unequal power relations. “Slavery was not born of racism”, runs a well-known dictum. “Rather, racism was the consequence of slavery”. The unequal power relations between police officers and members of the public, teachers and pupils, health professionals and patients, employers and employees, and so on, are fertile ground for a wide range of prejudices and negative stereotypes, particularly at times of stress and conflict.

5.34 The term “institutional racism”, then, refers to a range of phenomena, not all of which may be present in any one situation, and not all of which are obvious. It focuses not only on the processes of an organisation but also on its output – the benefits or penalties which customers, clients, service users and members of the public get from it, and the extent to which, as a result, it causes more inequality or less in its surrounding environment.

5.35 Racism awareness training was developed in the United States in the 1970s and was fairly widespread in Britain in the 1980s. It was then largely dropped. The Stephen Lawrence report brought it back into prominence, with seven separate recommendations concerning its use. The term “awareness” is problematic, for the aims of training must embrace understanding, skills and practical action, not just awareness ... training should address the two main strands of racism – cultural and biological – and should take account of its roots in imperialism, anti-Muslim hostility and the slave trade, and in often strident opposition to immigration ... it should focus on the interacting components of institutional racism ... and should therefore address the practical actions that participants need to take in their own personal spheres of responsibility.

Box 5.2 Interacting components of institutional racism

Indirect discrimination
Members of black and Asian communities do not receive their fair share of the benefits and resources available from an organisation, and do not receive a professional, responsive and high-quality service. They do, however, receive more than their fair share of penalties and disadvantages.

Employment practices
Members of black, Asian and Irish communities are not recruited to the extent that could reasonably be expected, or, having been recruited, receive less than their fair share of promotion, training and career development opportunities.

Occupational culture
Racist arguments, stereotypes and assumptions go unchallenged in everyday conversation and affect how the organisation treats members of the public. There is cynicism about so-called political correctness, and little or no emphasis on reducing inequalities and valuing diversity. Muslim, black, Asian and Irish staff feel that they do not really belong in the culture of the workplace, for their world-views, cultures and experiences of racism are not acknowledged.

Staffing structure
Senior management positions are disproportionately held be white people.

Lack of positive action
Few or no efforts have been made to recruit Asian and black people to senior positions or to involve them in major decision-making.

Management and leadership
The task of addressing institutional racism is not regarded as a high priority for leaders and managers, either personally or professionally, and is seldom or never considered in mainstream decision-making.

Professional expertise
Few members of an organisation’s staff have skills in intercultural understanding and communication, and in handling and defusing situations of actual or potential conflict and tension.

Training
Few staff have received relevant high-quality training. They do not understand the concept of institutional racism, and do not know what they themselves can do to address it.

Consultation
Organisations do not listen to, let alone seek out, the views and perceptions of black and Asian people.

Lack of information
Organisations do not systematically examine the impact of their policies and practices in order to judge whether or not they have a negative impact on Asian and black communities.’

The fifth chapter of The Parekh Report is entitled ‘Dealing with Racisms’. Needless to say, with a title such as that, the Parekh commissioners really went to town.

With their condemnation of European societies as ‘multi-racist’ societies, and their obsession with supposed anti-Irish racism, The Parekh Report launches into a diatribe against the English.

The English Rights Campaign will deal immediately with the contents of paragraph 5.16. The paragraph refers to nationalism, imperialism and jingoism, and concludes in saying: ‘In Britain, for example, the Empire was frequently celebrated as the achievement of “an imperial race”. The revival of rabid antisemitism, leading to the pogroms against Jews in central and eastern Europe and Hitler’s Final Solution, was the product of this pan-European trend’.

That is a particularly vile lie. Hitler’s Final Solution was not a result of any ‘pan-European trend’. It was the result of Nazi ideology. That ideology had nothing to do with British imperial jingoism. Europe was consumed by World War II in resisting Hitler in which many millions of people died. World War II bankrupted Britain.

To try and attribute blame to the British for the Final Solution, when even Nazi Germany’s allies would never have initiated such a pogrom of their own volition, and when this country and its people made huge sacrifices to defeat Hitler, is contemptible.

Once again, such a lying allegation merely demonstrates that the politically correct are in the business of stirring up anti-British/English hatred and are even prepared to exploit The Holocaust to that end.

In this chapter, the Parekh commissioners reveal their Anglophobia almost to the point of being unhinged. The extent of the misrepresentations and venom is plain to see.

Those who thought racism was racism are in for a shock. Apparently there are all kinds of racisms. European countries ‘it is sometimes said’ (note the objectivity) are ‘multi-racist’.

Here and there such terms as ‘it is sometimes said’, or ‘it is often said’, or ‘as is now widely acknowledged’ etc. creep in to assert allegations as fact. But who is supposedly saying such things? Such people are not identified.

The fact is that it is the Parekh commissioners themselves who are peddling such allegations.

The report concentrates on antisemitism and is comprehensively misleading (in addition to paragraph 5.16 dealt with above). The report alleges that antisemitism has lessened due to the ‘growing awareness of the Holocaust’. It is simple commonsense that those who lived through World War II were rather more aware of the Holocaust than today’s younger generations – or the Parekh commissioners. The attempts by the politically correct to exploit The Holocaust have not played any part in any lessening of antisemitism.

The reference to the ‘antisemitic iconography of Nazi Germany’ as being an example of racism, is as offensive is it is misleading. Nazi ideology was uniquely vile and murderous, and is not in any way representative of British culture.

The report further attributes the lessening of antisemitism due to successful assimilation ‘the wisdom of which, however, many in the Jewish community now question’. Again, this allegation is not evidenced. It is just a bald assertion. Again, this demonstrates that the report (and those who wrote it) is opposed to assimilation in principle.

So desperate is the report to inflate the extent of antisemitism that it refers to one survey taken in 1995 in which 40% of Jews thought that antisemitism had increased. Yet the report does not address the fact that the growing Muslim community in Britain is bound to increase the level of antisemitism given that community’s inherent antisemitism.

It is wholly disingenuous to attribute the antisemitism of Muslims to the English.

Then there are the Irish.

The report is obsessed with the Irish and continually seeks to promote the idea that the Irish are another racial group who are victims of British racism. In paragraph 5.7 the report rattles on about plantation agriculture, discrimination etc. The report ignores the fact that Ireland was actually an integral part of the UK until Eire split away. The report also ignores the hatred against the British generally among the Northern Ireland Catholics and the IRA terrorist campaign.

Instead the report attacks ‘the myth of homogeneity’ – and it is this which betrays the motive. The report is using the old tactic of divide and rule. The report’s intention is to create division within the indigenous British in order to deny that the British – and in particular the English – ever were a homogenous nation at all.

The allegations of anti-Irish racism are rubbish. They should be dismissed out of hand as nothing more than the typical race war politics of the politically correct.

The report goes back as far as the Crusades in order to establish its allegation of anti-Muslim racism. It cites planning delays for mosques, a lack of ‘cultural sensitivity’ (i.e. giving Muslims special treatment), and ‘non-recognition of Muslims by the law of the land’ as being evidence of racism.

The assertion that race is ‘a social and political construct’ is pure Marxism. It is this logic which is the driving force of political correctness. It is a key part of Marxist ideology (it should not be forgotten that Marx described himself as a communist and co-wrote the Communist Manifesto, see the English Rights Campaign entry dated the 27 April 2005) that the proletariat suffer from a sense of ‘false consciousness’. That the capitalist system sustains itself by the ideology advanced by a society’s ‘superstructure’ (the government, the police, the media, the army, the judges etc.). And that therefore the culture of a society is determined by the capitalist system and the ruling class, which in turn are influenced by history.

Consequently, Marxists believe that the desire of, say, women to be housewives is not an inherent aspect of being female or a mother, but a product of the oppressive capitalist and patriarchal culture of society. That if the upbringing of females encouraged them to be engineers instead of mothers, then they would be the same as men.

Likewise, any desire to stop mass immigration is racism and the product of the culture of society.

This is why the politically correct wish to ban Thomas the Tank Engine and gollywogs etc. There is method in their madness!

And they mean it. They sincerely believe that if they can alter the culture of society, by controlling the media, the police, the army etc. (i.e. the superstructure) then they will be able to alter the views of the ordinary people.

The assertion that ‘difference and inferiority’ as being ‘synonymous’ renders any distinction of nationality and immigration control as racist. Once again, the definition of racist is altered so as to include almost anything and almost anyone (provided they are white).

In order to promote the concept of white racism against Africans, the report dredges itself back to a Marxist version of 18th century history and the slave trade – a favourite topic for the politically correct. It omits to mention that the Africans and Asians were the biggest dealers in slavery and that it was the British who stamped it out.

The slave trade offers the politically correct the opportunity to condemn the whole of British, if not Western, society as racist, which is why they attach so much importance to it. If, as they assert, the views of ordinary people are determined by the culture of society, which in turn is determined by a country’s history – then the fact of the slave trade several centuries ago means that British society is racist.

That people might be able to make up their own minds, or that society might reflect the opinions of the people, or that the Marxist interpretation of 18th century history might not be reliable or relevant, are issues that the Parekh Commissioners ignore.

Quite how the white members of the Parekh Commission, unlike all other white people, apparently, remain unaffected by the slave trade is not explained. Nor are the prejudices of the non-white Parekh Commissioners examined given the backwardness of the Third World where even suttee and cannibalism were common into the 19th century, and cannibalism was not even unknown in Africa in the 20th century and practised by some African dictators in modern times. The stoning of those who have committed adultery in many Muslim states, and the Indian caste system are practices which remain to this day.

Out of cultural sensitivity, the English Rights Campaign will refrain from speculating on such issues.

The underlying ideology of the Parekh Commission is communism.

At paragraph 5.14, the report comments: ‘African men were stigmatised as violent and sexually aggressive, and the women as openly promiscuous, oriental men were seen as feminine, wily and devious, and the women seductive.’ These bald assertions are made by those who criticise others of stereotyping!

The comments about past attempts to understand and explain racial differences should be ignored. It is only understandable that those who encountered other races who were less developed should conduct such attempted explanations as to why that was so. It is juvenile for people today with the benefit of modern understanding and technology to condemn those of earlier centuries.

The report’s wild comments about sexism and racism (‘they reinforce each other in vicious circles and spirals, and intertwine to the extent that it is impossible to disentangle them’ etc.) are hysterical and a good example of the demented mentality and communism of the Parekh Commission.

The assertions that the differences between men and women are ‘primarily constructed by culture’ again is communist, politically correct ideology. Girls are supposedly different to men because of the alleged sexism of Thomas the Tank Engine, for example, rather than anything more obvious.

The mind boggles.

Paragraph 5.18 is worth re-reading in order to marvel at its sheer lunacy. The lunacy of the paragraph is matched only by those who promoted it’s authors to such positions of influence (e.g. Trevor Phillips to the chairmanship of the so-called Commission for Racial Equality and now to the new Commission for Equalities and Human Rights superquango). Paragraph 5.18 demonstrates the mentality of Labour and its cohorts.

It is no wonder that this country is now afflicted with ongoing Muslim terrorism.

The obsession with purported ‘unequal power relations’ is at the heart of communist ideology. In the past the communists would rant about the class system. Today, the neo-communists have fastened upon alleged racism, sexism etc., and minorities as the oppressed groups who they hope will rise up in revolution – rather than the proletariat. The allegations of the police being ‘socialised’ into alleged racist behaviour, or that ‘racism was the consequence of slavery’ is pure communist ideology. It is the attempt to convince the ethnic minorities that they are victims of a racist society and the victims of ‘institutional racism’.

Of course, to prevent such ‘socialisation’ and ‘institutional racism’ there is a need for political correctness to ensure that the values and opinions of ordinary people are vilified and condemned and that only the neo-communist view prevails.

It is telling that the report wallows in the concept of ‘institutional racism’. The term was the defining product of the MacPherson report into the death of Stephen Lawrence. That the police failure to secure a conviction of the alleged murderers was due to ‘institutional racism’. The allegation was a cop out and noted as being so at the time. Nevertheless, it has been treated with more reverence that the Holy Bible. It is a term bandied around by all those seeking to establish their politically correct credentials.

However, we now know that the real reason for the police failure to obtain a conviction was not simply incompetence, or any alleged ‘institutional racism’, but because one of the officers was corrupt (and this has been openly stated in a television documentary) and was allegedly taking bribes to obstruct the investigation.

The whole charge of ‘institutional racism’ is rubbish. Yet not one of those on the MacPherson enquiry, who wrote the MacPherson report, has seen fit to apologise for the untruthfulness of their report or the consequent race war politics it unleashed – and that they intended it should unleash.

Shame on them.

The Parekh Report goes so far as to declare that the output – regardless of how that output was produced – of an organisation is enough to condemn that organisation as institutionally racist unless it affects all ‘equally’. Again, this is pure communism.

To combat such supposed ‘institutional racism’ the report asserts that there should be ‘racism awareness training’ (although it objects to the term ‘awareness’ as not going far enough) and that such ‘training’ (i.e. communist indoctrination) ‘should address the two main strands of racism – cultural and biological – and should take account of its roots in imperialism, anti-Muslim hostility and the slave trade, and in often strident opposition to immigration ... it should focus on the interacting components of institutional racism’.

According to The Parekh Report, even opposition to immigration is tantamount to ‘institutional racism’. The definition of ‘institutional racism’ and its purported roots are simply Anglophobia – a racial hatred of the English – and nothing more. It is an attempt to vilify those who do not positively support the Labour pogrom of anti-English ethnic cleansing and of turning the English into a racial minority in their own country as racist.

The Parekh Report is so obsessed with purported ‘institutional racism’ that it even sets out a special Box to identify the supposed ‘interacting components’.

Given that we now know that it was corruption and not supposed ‘institutional racism’ that was the likely cause of the failure to secure convictions for the murder of Stephen Lawrence, one might be tempted to laugh at the Parekh Commissioners making fools of themselves. But this is no laughing matter. Britain has been plagued by allegations of supposed ‘institutional racism’. Those who have been peddling this untruth are unrepentant, remain in positions of authority, and intend to continue peddling their untruths and race war politics regardless.

The implied consequences of the report’s ‘analysis’ of the ‘interacting components of institutional racism’ are race quotas (even for the Irish), a condemnation of ‘cynicism about so-called political correctness’ as racist, multiculturalism and supposed ‘diversity’, mass immigration accompanied by anti-English ethnic cleansing and Anglophobia to ensure that the racial profile of any institution reflects the dilution of the English make up of England (e.g. that institutions may not have the same percentage of Polish people in senior management in proportion to the number of Polish immigrants who have recently entered the UK is therefore evidence of ‘institutional racism’), so-called positive discrimination (i.e. anti-English ethnic cleansing, as we are now witnessing in several police forces, for example), an obligation to accept that ‘institutional racism’ exists, training (i.e. neo-communist indoctrination) to ensure that staff ‘understand the concept of institutional racism’, and special treatment for ethnic minorities.

All of which is pure race war politics, and like all of communist ideology, is based on a pack of lies.

posted by erc @ 8:31 pm

WILL KYMLICKA

Parekh does not have a monopoly on the ideology of multiculturalism (nor does his commission). Will Kymlicka is a Canadian academic who has written several books on multiculturalism. His views are not identical to those of Parekh, and a comparison between the two is useful. Of importance to Kymlicka is the issue of indigenous peoples in Canada and how they relate to the government. This gives rise to a different perspective that, in particular, the English might consider.

In his book Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, tracing the development of minority rights, Kymlicka rightly focused on the historical problems in Europe with minorities appealing to a 'kin state' for support. This gave rise to treaties with foreign powers to protect their kin in other countries. Obviously, such interest and treaties, and divided loyalties of the minorities, gave rise to conflict, war, and general mischief. The start of WWII is a good example, as Nazi Germany encouraged and then responded to appeals for intervention from ethnic German minorities in Czechoslovakia and Poland. Another example might be the involvement of the European powers in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire regarding the Balkans, in particular the Russian concerns for the Serbs.

Kymlicka commented on the post-WWII attempt to protect people with human rights laws and standards: 'The leading assumption has been that members of national minorities do not need, are not entitled to, or cannot be granted rights of a special character. The doctrine of human rights has been put forward as a substitute for the concept of minority rights.'[1] He claimed that the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights 'deleted all references to the rights of ethnic and national minorities'.[2] Universal human rights were seen as the way forward, not only to protect ethnic and national minorities but also religious minorities; religion was also a source of conflict and war in previous centuries. Kymlicka said:

'These conflicts were finally resolved, not by granting special rights to particular religious minorities, but by separating church and state, and entrenching each's individual freedom of religion. Religious minorities are protected indirectly, by guaranteeing individual freedom of worship, so that people can freely associate with other co‐religionists, without fear of state discrimination or disapproval.'[3]

This separation of state and religion was seen as 'a model for dealing with ethnocultural differences as well'.[4] Apart from offering the protection of human rights, the state's role was one of 'benign neglect', and the private expression of ethnic heritage or identity was not a matter for the state: 'This separation of state and ethnicity precludes any legal or governmental recognition of ethnic groups, or any use of ethnic criteria in the distribution of rights, resources, and duties.'[5] However, for Kymlicka:

'The problem is not that traditional human rights doctrines give us the wrong answer to these questions. It is rather that they often give no answer at all. The right to free speech does not tell us what an appropriate language policy is; the right to vote does not tell us how political boundaries should be drawn, or how powers should be distributed between levels of government; the right to mobility does not tell us what an appropriate immigration and naturalization policy is. These questions have been left to the usual process of majoritarian decision‐making within each state ... To resolve these questions fairly, we need to supplement traditional human rights principles with a theory of minority rights.'[6]

Kymlicka wrote: 'A comprehensive theory of justice in a multicultural state will include both universal rights, assigned to individuals regardless of group membership, and certain group‐differentiated rights or “special status” for minority cultures.'[7] Importantly, Kymlicka distinguished between 'national minorities', who had been previously self-governing but had been incorporated into larger states, and 'ethnic groups' in 'polyethnic states' where 'cultural diversity arises from individual and familial immigration'.[8] Crucially, for Kymlicka, 'national minorities' 'typically wish to maintain themselves as distinct societies alongside the majority culture, and demand various forms of autonomy or self‐government to ensure their survival as distinct societies'; by comparison, 'ethnic groups' 'typically wish to integrate into the larger society, and to be accepted as full members of it. While they often seek greater recognition of their ethnic identity, their aim is not to become a separate and self‐governing nation alongside the larger society, but to modify the institutions and laws of the mainstream society to make them more accommodating of cultural differences.'[9]

Kymlicka highlighted the special treatment afforded to national minorities, who may have been conquered or voluntarily incorporated into the state. Minorities in the USA, for example, had special rights, such as those in Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Indian tribes: 'In short, national minorities in the United States have a range of rights intended to reflect and protect their status as distinct cultural communities, and they have fought to retain and expand these rights.'[10]

Regarding immigrants, importantly, Kymlicka contrasted the pre-1960s expectations with the present arrangements:

'Prior to the 1960s, immigrants to these countries were expected to shed their distinctive heritage and assimilate entirely to existing cultural norms. This is known as the “Anglo-conformity” model of immigration. Indeed, some groups were denied entry if they were seen as unassimilable (e.g. restrictions on Chinese immigration in Canada and the United States, the “white-only” immigration policy in Australia). Assimilation was seen as essential for political stability, and was further rationalized through ethnocentric denigration of other cultures.'[11]

Although Kymlicka accepted that it was possible 'in theory' for immigrants to become national minorities (they would need to congregate in localities and assume self-governing powers), he described such as being colonialism and that:

'This is what happened with English‐speaking colonists throughout the British Empire, Spanish colonists in Puerto Rico, and French colonists in Quebec. These colonists did not see themselves as “immigrants”, since they had no expectation of integrating into another culture, but rather aimed to reproduce their original society in a new land. It is an essential feature of colonization, as distinct from individual emigration, that it aims to create an institutionally complete society. It would, in principle, be possible to allow or encourage immigrants today to view themselves as colonists, if they had extensive government support in terms of settlement, language rights, and the creation of new political units. But immigrants have not asked for or received such support.'

Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights was written in 1995, it should be noted. For Kymlicka, colonization was 'the systematic re‐creation of an entire society in a new land', while immigration 'resulted from individual and familial choices to leave their society and join another existing society'.[12] Things have moved on since 1995, and the West now has had the experience of very large numbers of Muslim immigrants (as well as large numbers of other immigrants from the Third World), many of whom have been aggressive in making a variety of demands. The scale of Muslim immigration has been unprecedented, and the immigrants have settled in localities. There are many cities across the West where there are Muslim-majority neighbourhoods.

Kymlicka advocated that 'National membership should be open in principle to anyone, regardless of race or colour, who is willing to learn the language and history of the society and participate in its social and political institutions.' He rejected 'descent‐based approaches to national membership' as having 'obvious racist overtones' and being 'manifestly unjust'. He believed that 'It is indeed one of the tests of a liberal conception of minority rights that it defines national membership in terms of integration into a cultural community, rather than descent.' He continued: 'What distinguishes “civic” nations from “ethnic” nations is not the absence of any cultural component to national identity, but rather the fact that anyone can integrate into the common culture, regardless of race or colour.' The word 'can' is key and has a loose meaning, as does the word 'integrate'. It must be the desire of immigrants to integrate, and it must be possible for them to do so. The word 'integrate', as defined by multiculturalists such as Parekh, has been corrupted, though, into meaning race quotas, ethnic cleansing, and colonization. Kymlicka himself opposed assimilation.

Kymlicka acknowledged the importance of national unity:

'For liberals like Mill [an English philosopher], democracy is government “by the people”, but self‐rule is only possible if “the people” are “a people” – a nation. The members of a democracy must share a sense of political allegiance, and common nationality was said to be a precondition of that allegiance. Thus T. H. Green [an English philosopher] argued that liberal democracy is only possible if people feel bound to the state by “ties derived from a common dwelling place with its associations, from common memories, traditions and customs, and from the common ways of feeling and thinking which a common language and still more a common literature embodies”. According to this stream of liberal thought, since a free state must be a nation‐state, national minorities must be dealt with by coercive assimilation or the redrawing of boundaries, not by minority rights.'[13]

Kymlicka defined the culture he was concerned with as 'societal culture', as 'a culture which provides its members with meaningful ways of life across the full range of human activities, including social, educational, religious, recreational, and economic life, encompassing both public and private spheres. These cultures tend to be territorially concentrated, and based on a shared language,' and 'not just shared memories or values, but also common institutions and practices'. He described a societal culture as being 'the everyday vocabulary of social life, embodied in practices covering most areas of human activity. And in the modern world, for a culture to be embodied in social life means that it must be institutionally embodied – in schools, media, economy, government, etc.' In setting this out, Kymlicka at least appreciated the pervasiveness and power of culture, but he dismally failed to appreciate that because of its nature, culture cannot be changed or discarded like a pair of shoes.

Kymlicka rejected the notion of the USA having a common culture but insisted it had a 'dominant culture'. Immigrants were expected to integrate into this culture and were comprised of individuals 'rather than entire communities', who settled across the country instead of forming 'homelands'. They were expected to learn English. Importantly, Kymlicka said:

'Immigrants are no longer expected to assimilate entirely to the norms and customs of the dominant culture, and indeed are encouraged to maintain some aspects of their ethnic particularity. But this commitment to “multiculturalism” or “polyethnicity” is a shift in how immigrants integrate into the dominant culture, not whether they integrate. The rejection of “Anglo‐conformity” primarily has involved affirming the right of immigrants to maintain their ethnic heritage in the private sphere – at home, and in voluntary associations. To a lesser extent, it also involved reforming the public institutions of the dominant culture so as to provide some recognition or accommodation of their heritage. But it has not involved the establishment of distinct and institutionally complete societal cultures alongside the anglophone society. (By “institutionally complete”, I mean containing a full range of social, educational, economic, and political institutions, encompassing both public and private life.)'[14]

Of those he described as 'national minorities', Kymlicka said that 'The determination they have shown in maintaining their existence as distinct cultures, despite these enormous economic and political pressures, shows the value they attach to retaining their cultural membership.'[15] National minorities already had their own culture in their own land, and their struggle was to retain that distinct cultural heritage. Kymlicka totally ignored the attachment that a national majority might have to their culture and 'cultural membership'.

Kymlicka turned to Islam, which he asserted had 'a long tradition of tolerating other monotheistic religions, so that Christians and Jews can worship in peace. But proselytization, heresy, and apostasy are generally prohibited. This was true, for example, of the “millet system” of the Ottoman Empire.'[16] Kymlicka took a very tolerant view of what some might regard as backward cultures and said:

'The aim of liberals should not be to dissolve non‐liberal nations, but rather to seek to liberalize them. This may not always be possible. But it is worth remembering that all existing liberal nations had illiberal pasts, and their liberalization required a prolonged process of institutional reform. To assume that any culture is inherently illiberal, and incapable of reform, is ethnocentric and ahistorical.'[17]

Kymlicka regarded all cultures as having 'illiberal strands', and hence it was too simplistic to designate another culture as 'illiberal'. He went further and said: 'The task of liberal reform remains incomplete in every society, and it would be ludicrous to say that only purely liberal nations should be respected, while others should be assimilated.'[18] At this point, Kymlicka's argument was convoluted and contradictory. He criticised liberal nations as having had 'illiberal pasts' and still having 'illiberal strands' but then argued that those nations should take responsibility for liberalizing 'non-liberal nations', which, of necessity, would mean overruling certain aspects of the culture of those 'non-liberal nations' despite the antagonism that that would cause and despite the fact that such a policy of liberalization would be at odds with the policy of multiculturalism that Kymlicka advocated. Kymlicka was trying to look both ways at once.

Regarding immigration, Kymlicka took a typically liberal, apologetic outlook: 'The line between involuntary refugees and voluntary immigrants is difficult to draw, especially in a world with massive injustice in the international distribution of resources, and with different levels of respect for human rights.'[19] He cited as an example an Ethiopian who 'emigrates' to the USA having only a limited voluntary decision to do so, as such emigration 'may have been the only way to ensure a minimally decent life for herself or her children':

'Indeed, her plight may have been as dire as that of some political refugees. (This is reflected in the rise of the term “economic refugees”.) Under these conditions, we may be more sympathetic to demands for national rights. We may think that people should not have to give up their culture in order to avoid dire poverty. Moreover, the plight of the Ethiopian peasant is at least partly our responsibility. I believe that rich countries have obligations of international justice to redistribute resources to poor countries, and had we done so, perhaps she would not have faced this awful choice. Enabling immigrants from poor countries to re‐create their societal culture may be a way of compensating for our failure to provide them with a fair chance at a decent life in their own country.'[20]

Kymlicka did not explain why the West's more advanced economic, political, and social development constituted injustice, why those who might think so should be allowed to help themselves to taxpayer's money to give away to Third World countries rather than use their own money, why the sheer scale of foreign aid might solve the various problems of Third World countries or stop the immigrants from migrating to the West, or why immigrants should be encouraged to 're‐create their societal culture' in the West – when that culture will reflect the reasons for the problems of the Third World in the first place (such as corruption or religious extremism) rather than a lack of handouts. He simply assumed all these things. He further completely ignored the interests of the West.

Kymlicka's handling of the immigration issue was compounded by his complacency regarding the host nation: 'In a democratic society, the majority nation will always have its language and societal culture supported, and will have the legislative power to protect its interests in culture‐affecting decisions. The question is whether fairness requires that the same benefits and opportunities should be given to national minorities. The answer, I think, is clearly yes.' This, of course, has been proved wrong. In the 21st century, the host nation is denigrated, and its culture under relentless attack from state institutions, with any dissent being condemned as racist. Of importance, Kymlicka compared the 'majority nation' with the 'national minorities' but did not set out the rights of the majority.

Turning to ethnic groups – immigrants – Kymlicka believed that there was also 'an equality‐based argument' that there should be 'polyethnic rights' too. Kymlicka advocated state measures to integrate immigrants, including 'fighting patterns of discrimination and prejudice'. But 'this is more a matter of rigorously enforcing the common rights of citizenship than providing group‐differentiated rights', although 'even here equality does justify some group‐specific rights'; he cited religious holidays as an example.[21]

Kymlicka sought to examine the millet system in detail. He explained:

'The Ottoman Turks were Muslims who conquered much of the Middle East, North Africa, Greece, and Eastern Europe during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, thereby acquiring many Jewish and Christian subjects. For various theological and strategic reasons, the Ottomans allowed these minorities not only the freedom to practise their religion, but a more general freedom to govern themselves in purely internal matters, with their own legal codes and courts. For about five centuries, between 1456 and the collapse of the Empire in World War I, three non‐Muslim minorities had official recognition as self-governing communities – the Greek Orthodox, the Armenian Orthodox, and the Jews – each of which was further subdivided into various local administrative units, usually based on ethnicity and language. Each millet was headed by the relevant church leader (the Chief Rabbi and the two Orthodox Patriarchs). The legal traditions and practices of each religious group, particularly in matters of family status, were respected and enforced through the Empire. However, while the Christian and Jewish millets were free to run their internal affairs, their relations with the ruling Muslims were tightly regulated.'[22]

There were restrictions, for example, on the building of churches and on faith intermarriages. Non-Muslims had to pay special taxes. Non-Muslims were free to worship and run their own schools. Kymlicka described the millet system as 'generally humane, tolerant of group differences, and remarkably stable', but 'it was not a liberal society, for it did not recognize any principle of individual freedom of conscience' and 'there was little or no scope for individual dissent within each religious community, and little or no freedom to change one's faith'. The Muslims were intolerant of heresy (disputing the orthodox interpretation of Islam) and apostasy (abandoning Islam or converting to another faith), both of which were punishable. Kymlicka summed up: 'The millet system was, in effect, a federation of theocracies. It was a deeply conservative and patriarchal society, antithetical to the ideals of personal liberty'. Kymlicka recognised that the millet system was the toleration of other religions by a dominant Muslim state and that those who laud the system do so because 'What they want is the power to restrict the religious freedom of their own members.'[23]

In admitting that the Muslims were dominant in the millet system, with those of other faiths being discriminated against to a far greater extent than Kymlicka chose to understand, Kymlicka discredited his claim that the system was 'a federation of theocracies'. It was a system born out of the Muslim conquest and subjugation of non-Muslim peoples. The end product was the Armenian genocide.

Kymlicka advocated a 'differentiated citizenship' and quoted Parekh in saying that citizenship 'is a much more differentiated and far less homogeneous concept than has been presupposed by political theorists'. He believed that there needed to be group rights to secure the 'recognition and accommodation of their “difference”', which he felt might be ignored by a 'majoritarian democracy'.[24]

Kymlicka dismissed concerns that 'polyethnic rights' would 'impede the integration of immigrants by creating a confusing half‐way house between their old nation and citizenship in the new one' and said that 'these worries seem empirically unfounded' and that 'experience to date suggests that first- and second- generation migrants who remain proud of their heritage are also among the most patriotic citizens of their new countries'. He went further: 'Moreover, their strong affiliation with their new country seems to be based in large part on its willingness not just to tolerate, but to welcome, cultural difference.' He asserted that:

'Indeed, there is strikingly little evidence that immigrants pose any sort of threat to the unity or stability of a country. This fear was understandable 150 years ago, when the United States, Canada, and Australia began accepting waves of non-English immigrants … the idea of building a country through polyethnic immigration was quite unique in history, and many people thought it untenable. But that was 150 years ago, and there is no longer any reason for such fears to persist. It has become clear that the overwhelming majority of immigrants want to integrate, and have in fact integrated, even during the periods of large‐scale influxes. Moreover, they care deeply about the unity of their new country. To be sure, they want the mainstream institutions in their society to be reformed, so as to accommodate their cultural differences, and to recognize the value of their cultural heritage. But the desire for such polyethnic rights is a desire for inclusion which is consistent with participation in, and commitment to, the mainstream institutions that underlie social unity.'[25]

Once again, Kymlicka's argument was convoluted and contradictory. He claimed that immigrant communities wanted to 'integrate', but also that they wanted society to 'be reformed' to 'accommodate their cultural differences', etc. Once again, Kymlicka ignored the interests, views, and rights of the majority host nation. Kymlicka condemned the reluctance to grant polyethnic rights to immigrants in terms of race, as some rights had been granted to Jewish and Christian groups:

'But when accommodations were made for non‐white, non‐Christian groups, people started complaining about the “tribalization” of society, and the loss of a common identity – even though these newer polyethnic rights are in fact primarily intended to promote integration! It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that much of the backlash against “multiculturalism” arises from a racist or xenophobic fear of these new immigrant groups.'[26]

This allegation of racism or xenophobia was an indication of an underlying political correctness that would become more pronounced. In a subsequent book, Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship, published in 2001, Kymlicka took a more stridently politically correct view. The language was more morbid, and the minorities, immigrants in particular, were portrayed as victims. Kymlicka still differentiated between the two categories: 'The injustices faced by indigenous peoples are not the same as those faced by immigrants, and this is reflected in the sorts of minority rights they claim.'[27] He believed that 'in the Western democracies, [there] is a complex package of robust forms of nation-building combined and constrained by robust forms of minority rights … the two are interrelated'[28] and that 'We need to replace the idea of an “ethnoculturally neutral” state with a new model of a liberal democratic state – what I call the “nation-building” model',[29] where 'the burden of proof equally falls on defenders of difference-blind institutions to show that the status quo does not create injustices for minority groups'.[30]

Kymlicka advocated that 'The aim of a liberal theory of minority rights is to define fair terms of integration for immigrants, and to enable the national minorities to maintain themselves as distinct societies.'[31] He believed that this was necessary to avoid conflict, pointing out:

'[William] Pfaff and [Michael] Ignatieff treat nationalism as a matter of either political principle (civic nationalism) or ethnic descent (ethnic nationalism). But insofar as both civic and ethnic nationalisms are cultural phenomenon, any plausible account of national identity must examine people's attachment to their culture, which Pfaff and Ignatieff largely ignore.

Similarly, both misrepresent the nature of nationalist conflict. They argue that ethnic nationalism is the cause of nationalist conflict, because of its ethnic exclusiveness. In fact, nationalist conflict is often due to attempts by civic nationalists to forcibly incorporate national minorities.'[32]

Kymlicka cited as an example the plight of the Kurds being forced to be Turkish and being denied their own country, Kurdistan. Once again, Kymlicka ignored the idea that the same desire for nationhood might also apply to the majority. Furthermore, he tended to deviate from the more favourable view of so-called civic nationalism that he had previously stated, now pointing out that it was a potential source of conflict. The inclination and extent to which minorities 'can' 'integrate' was now only a matter for minorities, and the views of the host nation were presented as a threat. He went further and embraced the legalistic political correctness and globalization as being essential:

'Our aims should be twofold: (a) to supplement individual human rights with minority rights, recognizing that the specific combination will vary from country to country; and (b) to find new domestic, regional or transnational mechanisms which will hold governments accountable for respecting both human rights and minority rights.'[33]

In fact, there is already a means by which Western governments are held accountable – it is called democracy. They are accountable to their electorates. What Kymlicka proposed is that democracy should be subverted by globalist and other unaccountable, bureaucratic institutions. He made no explanation as to why it would be in the interests of the host nation that their democratic rights should be taken away from them.

His globalist outlook included the duties of citizenship: 'We are citizens of a nation, but also citizens of the world, and sometimes the interests of others can – indeed should – take precedence over our national interests.'[34] He cited foreign aid as being an example of the duties of 'citizens of the world', where the national interests came second.

Whereas in Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Kymlicka gave most attention to national minorities as opposed to immigrants, in Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship, Kymlicka's demands for special treatment for immigrants became far more extensive:

'Immigrants can demand fairer terms of integration … this demand has two basic elements:(i) we need to recognise that integration does not occur overnight, but is a difficult and long-term process that operates inter-generationally. This means that special accommodation (e.g. mother-tongue services) are often required for immigrants on a transitional basis; (ii) we need to ensure that the common institutions into which immigrants are pressured to integrate provide the same degree of respect, recognition and accommodation of the identities and practices of the majority group. This requires a systematic exploration of our social institutions to see whether their rules and symbols disadvantage immigrants. For example, we need to examine dress-codes, public holidays, even height and weight restrictions, to see whether they are biased against certain immigrant groups. We also need to examine the portrayal of minorities in school curricula or the media to see if they are stereotypical, or fail to recognise the contributions of immigrants to national history or world culture.'[35]

Kymlicka even went so far as to set out a detailed list of policies advocated by multiculturalists that he asserted were desirable:

'1. Adopting affirmative action programmes which seek to increase the representation of immigrant groups (or women and the disabled) in major educational and economic institutions.

2. Reserving a certain number of seats in the legislature, or government advisory bodies, for immigrant groups (or women and the disabled).

3. Revising the history and literature curriculum within public schools to give greater recognition to the historical and cultural contributions of immigrant groups.

4. Revising work schedules so as to accommodate the religious holidays of immigrant groups. For example, some schools schedule Professional Development days on major Jewish or Muslim holidays. Also, Jewish and Muslim businesses are exempted from Sunday closing legislation.

5. Revising dress-codes so as to accommodate the religious beliefs of immigrant groups. For example, revising the army dress code so that Orthodox Jews can wear their skullcaps, or exempting Sikhs from mandatory motorcycle helmet laws or construction-site hardhat laws.

6. Adopting anti-racism educational programmes.

7. Adopting workplace or school harassment codes which seek to prevent colleagues/students from making racial (or sexist/homophobic) statements.

8. Mandating cultural diversity training for the police or health care professionals, so that they can recognize individual needs and conflicts within immigrant families.

9. Adopting government regulatory guidelines about ethnic stereotypes in the media.

10. Providing government funding of ethnic cultural festivals and ethnic studies programmes.

11. Providing certain services to adult immigrants in their mother tongue, rather than requiring them to learn English as a precondition for accessing public services.

12. Providing bilingual education programmes for the children of immigrants, so that their earliest years of education are conducted partly in their mother-tongue, as a transitional phase to secondary and post-secondary education in English.'[36]

After explaining these proposed measures in some detail, Kymlicka asserted that they 'involve[d] a revision in the terms of integration, not a rejection of integration per se. They are rejecting Anglo-conformity, but not integration' and could 'realistically be seen as helping to fight the potential sources of marginalization.'[37] He concluded: 'In short, none of these multiculturalism policies for immigrant groups necessarily promotes either minority nationalism or marginalization. The first ten policies are, I believe, clearly integrationist, and, while the latter two involve short-term forms of institutional separateness, they can be seen as promoting long-term institutional integration.'[38] The interests of the host nation were of no concern to Kymlicka. The twelve measures are pure political correctness and race war politics. They treat the immigrants as victims who are in need of special measures, subsidies, and race quotas to advance their interests. They treat the host nation and its culture as something to be attacked and the national culture as something to be diluted if not destroyed. The measures are divisive.

Regarding Muslims, in Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship, Kymlicka wrote:

'Some people try to typecast Muslim immigrants … as a group which rejects the norms of liberal democracy, and so retreats into a self-contained world where these norms are rejected. But this is a fantasy. The overwhelming majority of Muslims in Western democracies want to participate in the larger societal culture, and accept its constitutional principles. The majority of their demands are simply requests that their religious beliefs be given the same kind of accommodation that liberal democracies have historically given to Christian beliefs.'[39]

It is easy to criticise with the benefit of hindsight, but Kymlicka was, in both these books and with increasing contempt, hurling abuse at those who dared to disagree with him. Those people were not voicing concerns with the benefit of hindsight, but using their better judgement at the time. Kymlicka was wrong in his assertions and wrong on key statements of fact. Kymlicka's comments on Muslim immigration were, at best, wishful thinking, and his presentation of the millet system was positively starry-eyed.

Kymlicka did not learn the obvious lesson from the Ottoman Empire in that it lasted five centuries with the millet system and yet still failed to build an Ottoman nation. The former provinces of the Ottoman Empire across North Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans, and even Turkey itself are riven with conflict and war to this day. The bloodiness of that conflict and those wars owes much to the intolerant, supremacist ideology of Islam.

Muslim immigration into the West has had catastrophic consequences, with accompanying increases in crime, sex attacks (even against children), and terrorism. The Muslims have done precisely what Kymlicka said immigrants would not do: they have settled in chosen localities and acted as colonists, with the local populations being steadily driven out. The peace and stability of the host nation is under very serious threat. Objections to Muslim immigration are met with name-calling by the multiculturalists. None of this would have happened with Anglo-conformity assimilation that Kymlicka was so keen to condemn.

To put the multiculturalist ideology into context, the West needs to protect itself against Muslim extremism – with ISIS currently being the focus of attention (there are many other Islamist organizations, such as al Qaeda). Immigration is a key part of the ISIS strategy – ISIS set out its five-step development strategy in their English-language magazine, Dabiq: hijra (migration), jama'a (congregation), destabilization of taghut (tyrants), tamkin (consolidation), and khilafa (establishment of the caliphate).[40] ISIS has further been actively engaged in people smuggling.

As did the Nazis, and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, ISIS has targeted children for indoctrination. When ISIS seized control of Raqqa in Syria, schools were closed and the 'books of the infidels' destroyed. Once reopened, the schools focused on religious and military training, including training for suicide attacks.[41] A UN report described the indoctrination of children as a 'vehicle for ensuring the long-term loyalty' by creating a 'cadre of fighters that will see violence as a way of life'.[42]

For example, in 2012, a Pew poll revealed that in most of the countries surveyed across North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, at least half of the Muslim populations believed that they would witness the coming of the Mahdi, who is believed will arrive/or reveal himself on the Day of Judgement, when the world will end. The poll found that 83% of Afghans, 72% of Iraqis, and 67% of Tunisians believe this. It is prophesied that the Mahdi will appear with an army bearing black flags. The Antichrist, who the Mahdi is prophesied to kill, will also appear. All non-Muslim territories will be conquered, and the masses converted to Islam. One jihadist in Syria told a Reuters reporter: 'If you think that all these mujahideen came from across the world to fight Assad, you're mistaken. They are all here as promised by the Prophet. This is the war he promised – it is the Grand Battle.'[43]

For example, of democracy, one Muslim radical in Jordan said: 'You can be a member of Parliament and still be a good Muslim. If someone is elected because he wants to serve the people, that's being a good Muslim. But if he believes in democracy – if he believes in rules made by men – he is an infidel.'[44]

One could cite other issues such as the Muslim support for Sharia or Islam's treatment of homosexuals and women. There are major irreconcilable differences between Islam and the West. None of these issues will be easily or quickly reformed, nor is it the responsibility of the West to try and reform or liberalize Islam. The threat posed by mass immigration, including that of children, is obvious given the ISIS involvement in exploiting it and their indoctrination of children. It is the responsibility of Western governments to protect their nationals. The mass immigration of Muslims into the West has been a reckless and dangerous policy, and the allegedly integrationist measures listed by Kymlicka would only exacerbate the division between Muslim immigrants and the host nation. With an Anglo-conformity immigration policy, there would be none of these problems.

Kymlicka was correct to differentiate between immigrants and those he described as national minorities. National minorities have unique interests compared to the majority host nation. They can demand some flexibility to accommodate their culture and history. But Kymlicka did not take account the host nation, preferring to assume that the majority interests are always accommodated or, where they do conflict with minority interests (including those of immigrants), that the interests of the majority should be ignored. The logic of this is inconsistent. For example, under Kymlicka's rationale, the interests of the English nation would be of concern to Kymlicka and would benefit from his theories only after they have been reduced to a minority in England (a serious prospect). There is no valid reason why English interests should be ignored in England simply because they are the majority.

Kymlicka acknowledged that national minorities had managed to fasten special arrangements for themselves, but then he advocated that some overarching liberal theory was needed to decide such things. That special arrangements had already been achieved proved that there was no need for such a theory. Nor was there any need for quangos and globalist bureaucracies to which democratic governments were to be answerable. Democratic governments should be answerable to the electorates of sovereign nations. There needs to be more patriotism, more democracy, less globalization, and less political correctness.

CONCLUSION

By packing the Parekh commission with ardent lefties and multiculturalists, the Runnymede Trust guaranteed that the output would be politically correct and anti-British – anti-English in particular. The Runnymede Trust boasted of the report's influence, and many of the commissioners went on to be promoted. Parekh was given a peerage, and Trevor Phillips was appointed to the chairmanship of the CRE. Despite the monopoly of the multiculturalists on government policy, they escaped being held in any way accountable for the rise in extremism and terrorism.

In distancing himself from the report, the then home secretary, Jack Straw, claimed to be 'proud to be British' and accused the authors of 'washing their hands of the notion of nationhood'. Yet the report went far further than simply the washing of hands; it positively was anti-patriotic and openly sought to destroy nationhood – at least for the English. The report was specific: 'Race is deeply entwined in political culture and with the idea of nation … Unless these deep-rooted antagonisms to racial and cultural difference can be defeated in practice, as well as symbolically written out of the national story, the idea of a multicultural post-nation remains an empty promise.'

A critical assertion of the report was its rejection that immigrants should assimilate. It claimed that ‘Britain is not and never has been a homogenous and unified whole' and consequently 'assimilation is a fantasy, for there is no single culture into which all people can be incorporated', that 'assimilation cannot be justified morally' as such would 'suppress difference', and 'that assimilation cannot be pursued in an age of increasing globalisation'. The advocacy of integration, where immigrants are promoted regardless of their beliefs and loyalties, was lauded instead. This could do no other than undermine cohesion and unity – and was intended to do so. Supplementing this was the report's redefinition of racism to include 'culture, nationality and way of life' instead of racial hatred – what most would regard as racism. The report alleged that 'Race, as is now widely acknowledged, is a social and political construct, not a biological or genetic fact,' condemned European societies as 'multi-racist societies', and even went so far as to assert that Britain's pride in its empire was part of a 'pan-European trend' of which 'Hitler’s Final Solution' was a component. That was a malevolent lie designed to stir up anti-British hatred.

The report openly advocated the rewriting of history. It stated that 'Britain could develop as what this report calls a 'community of communities' and that 'The forging and nurturing of such a society involves, at the outset, reinterpreting the past.' This was part of a process of proposed indoctrination and thought control – i.e. political correctness. Even a travel book was condemned because it 'found Britain wholly lovable'. Apparently, only travel books that encourage a hatred of Britain should be allowed. As far as the report's authors were concerned, 'national allegiance is now played out'.

By comparison, Kymlicka was less rabid. His book Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights was idealistic. One might comment that Kymlicka was representative of the wet liberal wing of political correctness, whereas The Parekh Report was representative of the communist wing (which is consistent with the composition of the commission).

Kymlicka focused on trying to develop a liberal theory which could be used as a mechanism for the treatment of both national minorities and immigrants. This was impractical and unnecessary. He readily cited the various treaties and deals done to accommodate a variety of national minorities in Western countries. These arrangements arose without any liberal theory; they were practical solutions to practical problems.

At the end of Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Kymlicka revealed his underlying political correctness with the casual allegation that those who opposed multiculturalism were motivated by a 'racist or xenophobic fear' of immigrants. That political correctness became far more pronounced in Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship, published six years later and at around the same time as The Parekh Report. One might wonder if there were any cross-contamination and if Kymlicka were egged on by what was happening in Britain.

In Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship, Kymlicka focused more upon immigration, and his list of points for integration took no account at all of the views and interests of the majority host nation. The list treated immigrants as victims and, in response, offered special treatment, quotas, and race war politics. He did not believe in democracy (or 'majoritarian decision-making') and openly wanted the creation of global bureaucracies to which democratically elected governments would be subordinate. He openly promoted the idea of people being 'citizens of the world'.

In both of the books examined, Kymlicka made a number of assertions and assumptions about immigrants that have been proven to be wrong. The problems with Muslim immigration had yet to impact across the West, yet Kymlicka insisted that immigrants wanted to fit in, would not create their own separate communities, and would be peaceful. That was completely wrong. Kymlicka ignored and dismissed the policy of Anglo-conformity assimilation. The abandonment of that policy has had profound adverse consequences for the security and even existence of the West. 'Descent-based approaches to national membership', which Kymlicka dismissed as having 'racist overtones' and as being 'manifestly unjust', would not have led to the present ethnic conflict.

Kymlicka’s wet liberal complex came to the fore regarding immigration: 'rich countries have obligations of international justice to redistribute resources to poor countries … Enabling immigrants from poor countries to re‐create their societal culture may be a way of compensating for our failure to provide them with a fair chance at a decent life in their own country'. Why 'rich countries' are obliged to 'provide' those in the Third World 'a decent life in their own country', Kymlicka left unexplained. Many of those 'poor countries' from which much of the immigration stems are in fact very wealthy in natural reserves such as oil. They are poor because they are badly run and/or chronically corrupt and/or riven with conflict. The collapse of European power after World War II and the consequent collapse of the European empires gave way to the self-governance the Third World countries demanded and were prepared to kill Europeans to get. With self-governance comes responsibility. For example, Rhodesia gave way to Zimbabwe as a result of war, with the result that the white Rhodesians were violently driven out and the breadbasket of Southern Africa became a communist basket case. Britain is not 'obliged' to fund Zimbabwe nor 'obliged' to allow Zimbabweans to 're-create the societal culture' in Britain because the British did not 'provide them … a decent life in their own country'. British aid to Zimbabwe has already been generous.

Furthermore, Kymlicka baldly asserted: 'there is strikingly little evidence that immigrants pose any sort of threat to the unity or stability of a country', and 'It has become clear that the overwhelming majority of immigrants want to integrate, and have in fact integrated,' and 'they want the mainstream institutions in their society to be reformed, so as to accommodate their cultural differences, and to recognize the value of their cultural heritage', but they still have 'a desire for inclusion which is consistent with participation in, and commitment to, the mainstream institutions that underlie social unity'. Behind this lies Kymlicka's innocent view of Islam and the millet system (which he describes as 'generally humane' and 'tolerant'), with his bald assertion that the 'overwhelming majority' of the Muslim immigrant communities accept Western culture and that the 'majority of their demands are simply requests that their religious beliefs be given the same kind of accommodation that liberal democracies have historically given to Christian beliefs'. This is dangerously untrue.

Kymlicka's innocent views are made worse by his bland assumption that the West can 'liberalize' illiberal cultures and that 'To assume that any culture is inherently illiberal, and incapable of reform, is ethnocentric and ahistorical.' The power of culture is deep, and one does not change culture as one might change a pair of shoes. Islam will not be reformed either easily or quickly, nor is it the responsibility of the West to so reform it. Muslim immigrants consist of a very large number of people who completely reject Western values. Muslims have acted as colonists (despite Kymlicka's assumptions on this), and they are drawn back to their kin in the Middle East and elsewhere – except the 'kin states' they are drawn to are not always their own and might be, for example, ISIS. Muslims submit to the will of Allah as interpreted by their imams, mullahs, and ayatollahs. To Muslims (especially the fundamentalists), the word of Allah is not a matter for debate or subject to revision. They reject the values of the West and those they regard as infidels. They intend to take over, and many Muslims admit this. They have settled in local communities, built mosques (with Muslim chanting blaring out from a loudspeaker several times a day), set up Sharia courts, donned burqas and implemented other discriminatory dress codes, and driven out the local indigenous populations. They intend to take over by continued mass immigration and by their very high birth rates. Many Muslims are boastful of this aim, and Kymlicka was dangerously wrong.

Despite defending the interests of national minorities, Kymlicka was blind to the interests of national majorities. He would only defend a nation if it was a minority – a majority nation was of no interest to him. Yet the scale of immigration into the West is now so great that, if continued, the host nations face the certainty of being reduced to minorities in their own countries. Whereas The Parekh Report was open in its desire for this and, sort of, put together a programme to achieve that result, Kymlicka did not. This was a glaring omission.

The result of the policy of multiculturalism across the West is that the racial conflict, anti-Western hatred, lawlessness (in particular sex assaults on women and children), and terrorism that The Parekh Report in part advocated and in part was indifferent to, and that Kymlicka denied would happen, have happened. The multiculturalists are wrong, and the policy of multiculturalism is harmful. The multiculturalists should be ignored, and the policy of multiculturalism should be discontinued.

APPENDIX ONE

Friday, October 07, 2005

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

‘It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during “God Save the King” than of stealing from the poor box.’

George Orwell

posted by erc @ 8:16 pm

APPENDIX TWO

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2005

RACE WAR POLITICS

The left wing think tank, Demos, has caused a small brouhaha this last week with the publication of a report written by Vince Cable MP, who is the Lib Dem Shadow Chancellor.

Mr Cable is the MP for Twickenham. Although born in Yorkshire, he attended and was a lecturer at Glasgow University, and was also a Labour councillor in Glasgow from 1971-74. He is married to a Goan. He has spent much of his life abroad. This background might help explain his views.

In his report, Mr Cable states the following (italics are English Rights Campaign emphasis):

‘Anecdote is reinforced by fact: census data confirms that a significant majority of non-white ethnic groups living in Britain regard themselves as British or British in conjunction with other identities.

The threat to harmonious social relations in Britain comes from those who insist that multiple identity, including Britishness, is not possible: white supremacists, English nationalists, Islamic fundamentalists. This is the opposition and they have to be confronted.’

It is to be noted that Mr Cable only condemns English nationalists as being on a par with white supremacists and Islamic fundamentalists – not the Scottish or Welsh nationalists, nor even the Irish nationalists of Sinn Fein/IRA. He singles out the English.

The English Rights Campaign is not an English nationalist blog, in that it does not advocate the breakup of the UK. What it does, is demand that the English are granted equal treatment within the UK, that they should not be treated as second class citizens in their own country, and it further campaigns against the evil of political correctness (which Mr Cable describes as being ‘much maligned’).

However, it is clear that Mr Cable is attacking the views of this blog regarding the rights of the English and definitely attacking the views of this blog regarding political correctness.

Mr Cable’s report is called ‘Multiple Identities: living with the politics of identity’. The report is written as a follow up to a previous report written by Mr Cable for Demos called: ‘The World’s New Fissures: Identities in crisis’ in 1994.

To promote the report, Demos has issued a press release entitled, ‘Abandon Multiculturalism’, and says:

‘Britain must abandon multiculturalism if it wants to build a strong, tolerant and inclusive sense of national identity, a new report argues.’

Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the so-called Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), criticised multiculturalism last year. Although it is clear that many who supported Trevor Phillips’s criticisms did not properly read what he was saying and/or did not understand the full implications of it.

Mr Cable also demands that the UK adopt a new racial political creed:

‘We should focus on multiple identities and on individuals rather than on obsolete models of multiculturalism, and that we need to address a series of issues, from immigration and Europe to localism and strengthening of global institutions, in ways which draw the sting from the dangerous, exclusive forms of identity politics which are now presenting a direct challenge to our shared public life.’

Mr Cable’s report does not confine itself to the UK, but comments upon many countries from all around the globe (e.g. USA, Botswana, Uruguay, France, Sri Lanka, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, India and Iceland). It makes no mention at all of the unfairness of the Barnett Formula (which guarantees the Scots and Welsh extra subsidies), or the undemocratic outrage of the West Lothian Question (whereby Scots and Welsh MPs vote on English affairs) and the manner in which Labour have rigged the constitution in order to rig the election and hence cling onto office.

Instead, Mr Cable prefers to adopt a sociological approach and theorises as to how the world should be. His analysis is that the world has moved on since the end of the Cold War. That the old Left-Right politics are no longer relevant. Instead, he believes the real political debate is about identities, between those who advocate exclusive group identity, and those who advocate inclusive multiple identity.

Put simply, Mr Cable argues that the concept of exclusive group identity is basically nationalism and a belief in the nation state, whereas inclusive group identity no longer recognises the nation state as the primary source of allegiance or identity. Mr Cable advocates the concept of an inclusive multiple group identity and believes that there is a gap in the UK political spectrum, ‘and the Lib Dems are well placed to fill it’.

Needless to say, Mr Cable believes that there should be yet more government intervention:

‘A more positive approach is to give more thought and attention to how issues of cultural identity should be approached and managed. After all, vast creative energy has been devoted to the issue of how to manage “mixed economies” to secure the optimum mix of markets and government intervention. Much less sustained attention has been devoted to the question of how cultural identity can be reunited with powerful competing claims of local identity, and wider, cross-border or global identities.’

Of course management of the economy is something for which government is responsible, whereas the management of people’s beliefs and sense of cultural identity is less under government control. Indoctrination is the antithesis of a free society.

The “mixed economy” of which Mr Cable speaks was a failure and large parts of the government sector were privatised by the Thatcher government in the 1980s. Those nationalised industries that remain, such as the NHS, remain a failure.

To launch his concept of multiple identity Mr Cable makes the following assertion:

‘There are hardly any countries in the world which could be described as ethnically homogenous in any meaningful sense: possibly Botswana, Iceland and Uruguay might qualify ... A useful starting point for the UK is to debunk the myth that before the arrival of black and Asian migrants in the decades after the Second World War, Britain was a homogenous and harmonious unicultural society. Quite apart from deep historical differences of region, class and religion, there had in fact been previous waves of immigrants...’

Mr Cable then goes on to cite the Huguenots and Irish immigrants among others. Ireland was of course an integral part of the UK, which Mr Cable ignores. The immigration of previous centuries was a minor fraction of what it is today, which Mr Cable also ignores. More immigrants enter the UK in a few months today, than entered in many whole previous centuries put together.

The reference to region, class (a traditional communist obsession) and religion is simply an attempt to exploit any differences within a country as a means of denying the nation ever existed. It is a neo-communist trick and should be ignored.

The fact is that Britain was a homogenous and harmonious country. It may have consisted of a union of more than one country, and there may well have been debates as to the future direction in which the country should go. But that is a part of a healthy democratic debate of a healthy democratic country, and is certainly not a justification to allege that Britain has never been united or a justification for mass immigration and race war politics.

Mr Cable openly acknowledges the scale of immigration:

‘The identifiable, ethnically distinct, non-white, part of the population – now roughly 4.2 million – has doubled between 1981 and 2001 but at 8.5 per cent of the total is not large in relation to other Western countries.’

Other Western countries (e.g. USA, Canada, Australia) are immigrant countries and promote immigration into their underpopulated territory. Other European countries, such as Holland and France, have their own immigration problems. Britain is traditionally an emigrant country, not an immigrant country. This island is already overpopulated and does not want or need immigration.

Britain is already occupied.

The doubling of the size of immigrant communities as a proportion of the total population every 20 years will inevitably lead to the English becoming a racial minority in England within roughly 50 years. That is an arithmetical fact. Needless to say, Mr Cable does not deal with this at all.

Mr Cable’s view is that:

‘In a more open, integrated world, a liberal approach to the movement of people is both inevitable and to be welcomed. The idea that goods, services, capital, news and information should flow freely across frontiers while people remain sealed in nation states is absurd and untenable.’

People are, of course, not inanimate objects. They have beliefs, customs, needs etc.

Mr Cable misrepresents the current history of immigration:

‘Until the mid-1990s immigration was roughly balanced by emigration of British people, so the question was essentially one of the changing composition of the UK population. But with gross immigration of 200,000 a year or more in recent years and net immigration of over 100,000 there clearly is an immigration issue.’

In fact, this country was an emigrant country, which is how countries such as Australia, USA, Canada and New Zealand were colonised, up until the late 20th century when immigration overtook emigration. The scale of gross immigration is at double the level cited by Mr Cable.

(According to the Office of National Statistics, the total number of people immigrating into the UK with the stated intention of staying for more than 1 year in 2003 was 407,000, excluding British citizens returning from abroad. Then there is illegal immigration. Net immigration in 2003 was 151,000.)

The changing composition of the UK population is a problem in itself, especially since most immigrants settle in England and it is England which is so dramatically affected.

Mr Cable deals with so-called asylum seeking separately and states (italics are English Rights Campaign emphasis):

‘There are practical problems surrounding the definition of asylum in the case of people fleeing political persecution, of determining asylum claims, and of dealing humanely but firmly with failed claims; but the principle of granting asylum should not be an issue.’

The principle of the concept of asylum seeking is most definitely an issue. The English Rights Campaign has raised the issue before (e.g. the blog entries dated the 28 June 2005, 16 February 2005 for the item dated the 31 December 2004, and Futurus report in the blog dated the 26 February 2005). There is no justification at all for a never ending tide of so-called asylum seekers, mostly fit young men, to be paying organised crime rackets to smuggle them across a multitude of countries and even several entire continents before they are then smuggled into England where they then destroy their identity papers and use the magic words: ‘I claim asylum’.

The UK should unilaterally withdraw from the 1951 UN Convention and refuse to accept any further asylum seekers. The continuance of so-called asylum seeking is not only impractical, not least due to the scale of abuse and the complete breakdown of the system, but is also morally indefensible.

Mr Cable has not made out any case for the continuance of so-called asylum seeking at all.

Regarding immigration proper, Mr Cable avers that what is needed is another quango to decide how many immigrants are allowed in:

‘There has to be some form of regular, objective assessment about what the overall level of immigration should be, taking into account the state of the economy and social impacts. The model of the Low Pay Commission, setting a reasonable level for a minimum wage, is a plausible one.’

And that:

‘The temptation to use work permits as a route to a Swiss/German “gastarbeiter” system should be resisted in favour of an American-style Green Card approach which acknowledges from the outset the probability of settlement and incorporates that assumption in the overall limit.’

In fact the overwhelming majority of English people wish to see an end to mass immigration. Mr Cable takes no account of that view. There is no need for another bunch of neo-communist quangocrats to be advocating mass immigration.

But as a means of foisting mass immigration upon the country and in furtherance of his neo-communist desire to destroy the British nation state, he advocates his concept of inclusive multiple group identities. His views of the English and English interests are openly contemptuous:

‘It is, however, perhaps best not to be too romantic about localism which can be parochial, selfish and occasionally – thoroughly nasty. Nothing sets the pulse of many a local community racing faster than the sight of a gypsy caravan... Local identity is part of the multiple identity which will keep a diverse society together.’

And:

‘Minorities make good scapegoats and disadvantaged minorities can in turn align themselves with co-religionists or related ethnic groups overseas rather than their fellow countrymen. It is altogether too facile to attribute breakdowns in ethnic relations, where they occur, let alone terrorism, to poverty and inequality. But in Ulster, in some Muslim groups in Britain and France, and among black minorities in the US and the UK, inequality, real and perceived, is an issue reinforcing other forms of alienation.’

And:

‘We should be equally grown up in accepting that, provided the law is fully respected, and there is no violence or threat of it, some British Muslims will wish to identify with some deeply obnoxious and reactionary regimes and individuals. Where war, or near war, exist, tolerance will be strained, perhaps to breaking point. But it is a tribute to the maturity and stability of Indian democracy that, despite three recent wars and the threat of nuclear confrontation, some Indian Muslims feel able to fly the green flag at Indo-Pakistan cricket matches (while others support India). Britain could do no worse.’

So much for the war on terror!

Supposed disadvantage, or poverty, or supposed inequality, had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the 7/7 bombings in London. The terrorists who carried out those attacks included people who had been white water rafting in Wales, and who had been globetrotting to Pakistan. Those in poverty cannot afford such jaunts.

Those bombings were the result of a hatred of this country and its people. They were the direct consequence of race war politics and mass immigration which have encouraged and enabled those who do not consider themselves to be British at all, to carry out terrorist attacks against the host population. Those terrorists who were born in this country did not consider themselves to be British. They were Muslim fundamentalists. Needless to say, Mr Cable ignores all this.

The English do not want to live in an England riven by war, or ‘near war’, or terrorism. Nor do they want to be treated as second class citizens in their own country. They want to be able to exercise their rights as any other independent and free people.

Mr Cable does not believe in the nation state. His concept of multiple identities asserts that people’s allegiances are to other entities such as the EU, or regions, or religion. Even regarding the EU he condemns the ‘strong resistance to the historically important task of enlargement to incorporate Muslim Turkey’. He does not even have the gumption to respect public concern over that.

Mr Cable has no concept of patriotism or the importance of it. The lack of it is one factor behind the recent terrorist bombings. Patriotism is a force for good and needs to be nurtured and encouraged.

Mr Cable is quite happy for people to describe themselves as ‘British Jews’ or ‘Scots and British’. But English and British? His report does not mention such a concept. He even makes an erroneous comment about ‘English nationalist parties like UKIP’. In fact UKIP is strongly hostile to an English parliament. It is not an English nationalist party in any sense.

Mr Cable’s report is disgrace. He does not make out the case for asylum seeking at all. He boldly asserts 2 falsehoods (that the British were never unified and that there has always been mass immigration) and then extrapolates a whole line of argument based on those falsehoods.

He compares English nationalists with neo-Nazis, organisations such as Hizb ut Tahrir and the Saviour Sect, and the likes of Omar Bakri, Al-Masari, Abu Qatada et al. It is a grubby smear to cover up the grubby and evil creed of political correctness.

The English are perfectly entitled to demand that their nationhood and nationality is respected, and have every right to object to the manner in which they have been denied that. They have every right to object to the scale of the subsidies which they are having to pay to Wales and Scotland, and the rigged constitution which allows Welsh and Scottish MPs to continue to vote on English affairs.

The English are perfectly entitled to be consulted about these matters, and are perfectly entitled to their own parliament.

Mr Cable can keep his grubby little smears to himself.

posted by erc @ 4:25 pm

APPENDIX THREE

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2005

THE BRITISH INQUISITION

Below is an extract from the recent speech given by Trevor Phillips in Manchester.

‘Equality

At the core of our equality work lies our enforcement of the Race Relations Act. We are this year spending over a million and a half pounds on support of meritorious legal cases brought either to the CRE or to our local grassroots partners. We intend to continue that support.

There has been some suggestion that the CRE has, in recent times, been less than vigorous in its enforcement work. This is particularly surprising since we have just seen a record award in an employment tribunal in a case of race discrimination – an award of £1.6m. It is surprising given that the CRE is spending well over a million pounds on grassroots legal support, in addition to handling several hundred cases directly. This year we expect to win in excess of a million pounds in settlements of cases handled by CRE staff; this will be multiplied several times by our partners in grassroots law firms, RECs, trades unions and CABx.

We have begun and concluded nearly 300 enforcement actions against public authorities in the past 18 months; we started and completed the largest ever formal investigation – into the police – in the Commission’s history; and we have just expanded our enforcement team after many years of its being starved of resources.

It may be that in the past, people got used to the CRE talking a lot and doing little. We now prefer it the other way around.

But we intend to go further. We will step up our efforts to work with government and public authorities to enforce the race equality duty. A vital weapon in this work is our race equality impact assessment. We will expect public authorities, including government departments, to conduct serious impact assessments on anti-terror laws, or whether, for example, the move of jobs from London will have a disproportionate and adverse impact on ethnic minorities.

If the answer is yes, we expect the policy to change. And let me be clear, if it does not change, we will seek redress in the courts.

But in our equality work we won’t ignore the fact that racial inequality and disadvantage strikes all kinds of people. Our investigation into the treatment of Gypsies and Travellers is all about people who are white; and the work we are doing on the educational achievement of boys may pay as rich dividends for white boys as I hope it will for black boys.

We will also be seeking new approaches to tackling institutional racism in both the public and private sectors: equality audits, new powers for company directors to demand information about equality performance of potential partners, and new incentives for shareholders to hold their boards to account on equality issues.’

The extract comes about 80% of the way into the speech. Presumably, Mr Phillips believed that by dealing with his plans for a more aggressive prosecution of the British Inquisition this late into his speech, and after a lot of flowery language, that by then people would be slumbering and not notice/understand what he is saying.

Given by the widespread response, if that was his calculation then he was right.

Mr Phillips is openly boasting of the number of prosecutions he is hoping to bring, boasting of the expansion of the ‘enforcement team after many years of its being starved of resources’, and boasting of the manner in which the CRE is pushing public authorities around. He even threatens to prosecute the government if it does not do as he says!

This is an unelected quangocrat talking.

Even the private sector can expect the CRE to tell it what it can and cannot do and faces the extra red tape of so-called ‘race equality impact assessment’, the enforcement of a ‘race equality duty’, the demand for information of ‘equality performance of potential partners’, ‘equality audits’, ‘and new incentives for shareholders to hold their boards to account on equality issues’.

To Mr Phillips, equality means race quotas. This is all about the enforcement of race quotas. Be there no mistake, no matter how much he may seek to deny it, that is what he is advocating. And as the ethnic minorities increase as proportion of the population (the proportion is doubling every 20 years), then so will the size of the race quotas. This will eventually result in the English becoming a persecuted racial minority in their own country. Mr Phillips is advocating racial engineering and the ethnic cleansing of the English in England.

It is a thoroughly evil policy.

Nor should it be forgotten that this is the man, an unreconstructed communist, who has been chairman of the CRE in the period following 9/11 and in the run up to 7/7. His tenure of the CRE has been a disaster for the country.

Both Mr Phillips and CRE should be consigned to the dustbin of history. The CRE should be immediately closed down.

Mr Phillips’s speech has even won support from the Tory party – needless to say. They have not even objected to Mr Phillips’s concept of equality, which is simply the persecution of the English and the abolition of a free society.

That is why the English can no longer rely on the old decadent establishment parties. We need our own nationalist party to represent our own interests.

(There will be a more complete response to Mr Phillips’s speech shortly.)

posted by erc @ 1:11 pm

APPENDIX FOUR

Sunday, June 19, 2005

RACE WAR POLITICS

Labour’s latest move to legitimise mass immigration into the UK involves the introduction of a citizenship test. This test does not require immigrants to understand British history.

However, it does require immigrants to understand their ‘rights’. These rights include sex discrimination laws, race discrimination laws, how to get unemployment benefit, how to get council tax benefit, how to complain about the police, the Human Rights Act, homosexual partnerships, legal aid, and how to get the local council to provide a house.

Apparently, knowing how to allege that a police officer is a racist is more important than understanding Britain’s past and hence its culture.

David Davis, the Tory shadow Home Secretary, has said: ‘These citizenship tests must not become another costly New Labour gimmick. It is vital that a British citizenship test is about Britain – not how to claim benefits’.

It is to be noted that David Davis does not object to mass immigration, only the manner of it. Nor in his interview with Jonathan Dimbleby last Sunday, did David Davis oppose foursquare the introduction of the proposed new law outlawing incitement to religious hatred. He thought that it would have been better to amend the existing law rather than create a new one.

Also, David Davis has in the past described the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) as ‘an important public institution’. The CRE is certainly a very self-important institution and a very nasty one. The CRE has itself been charged with racial discrimination on many occasions, and even former members have called for its fundamental reform if not abolition.

One former CRE commissioner, Raj Chandran, who had been one of 3 Tories on the commission (all of whom were purged under Labour) wrote in April 2001:

‘My message is that the CRE has grossly exceeded and distorted its mission, which was defined by the 1976 Race Relations Act as being to fight discrimination and to foster good race relations.

Instead, this generously funded and largely unaccountable body has fostered prejudice and self-pity. It devotes its energies to stigmatising the white majority population and stirring up resentment among Britain’s black and Asian minorities.

It attempts to perpetuate two myths: the first is that all racism, prejudice and discrimination is a matter of dominant whites mistreating downtrodden members of ethnic minorities.

The second is that the ethnic minorities are a single group bound together by their experience of prejudice and discrimination.

But this is simply not the case. Last week, parts of Bradford burned during riots which – to simplify greatly – were rooted in bitter conflicts not just between Asians and whites but also between Hindus and Muslims, and within the Muslim community.

In Oldham, Asian youths were attempting to turn their rundown council estates into no-go ghettos from which whites would be excluded for fear of violence.’

Mr Chandran’s comment about ‘dominant whites mistreating downtrodden members of ethnic minorities’ is a description of neo-communism: that there are oppressed groups in society which the neo-communists seek to politicise against the oppressors (in original communism it was the oppressed working class against the bourgeoisie, now it is non-whites, homosexuals, feminists, travellers etc. against western society in general and the English in particular).

David Davis is the ‘right wing’ front runner to be the new Tory leader. One shudders to think what the other so-called modernisers (i.e. lefties and do-gooders) are like. Once again, the Tories have demonstrated that they are not prepared to oppose either political correctness or mass immigration in principle.

For the avoidance of doubt, the English Rights Campaign believes that the CRE should be abolished.

posted by erc @ 1:21 pm

APPENDIX FIVE

MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2005

QUOTE OF THE MONTH (bonus)

'Britain is engaged in a full-scale war with the Taliban government of Afghanistan. Yet hundreds of our own citizens, young British Muslims born and bred here, have volunteered to fight for our enemy.

Already, it has been reported that six have been killed, and according to the hardline group Al-Muhajiroun there are ‘thousands’ more willing to die for the cause of Islam in the battle against the Allies.

And regardless of such militants, there also appears to be little support for the anti-Taliban campaign among the younger generation of Muslims who have been educated here and who choose Britain as their home.

Indeed, an opinion poll by an Asian radio station, Sunrise, showed yesterday that 98% of Muslims in London under the age of 45 would not fight for Britain, while 48% said they would take up arms for Osama Bin Laden.

This anti-British mindset carries with it two deeply depressing conclusions.

First, it gives the widespread impression that all Muslims are hotheads and could create a backlash against the majority who certainly do not share the anti-British view of this minority.

Second, it is a terrible indictment of the policy of multiculturalism, which has allowed extremism to flourish and which has failed to generate any feelings of national allegiance among some of our biggest ethnic minorities.’

Manzoor Moghal, writing in October 2001

The Sunrise opinion poll was not the only one at that time (just after 9/11) which highlighted the extent of the anti-British hostility in the Muslim population. An opinion poll in the Sunday Times revealed that 40% of Muslims believed that Bin Laden was justified in fighting a war against the USA, and a similar percentage believed that those British Muslims who chose to fight with the Taliban were right to do so.

A subsequent opinion poll by ICM revealed that 57% of Muslims disagreed with Tony Blair’s assertion that the war was not a war against Islam and 80% opposed the war in Afghanistan.

Such anti-British views were not confined to the opinion polls. One extremist, Abdul Haq, who was speaking on behalf of the Al-Muhajiroun organisation on the Jimmy Young Show, stated that: ‘When you are bombing the people of Afghanistan, you are attacking my land and my brothers and my sisters. If I was capable of fighting I would like to go.’ He further stated: ‘What the West have failed to realise is that our identities are not based on nationality, they are based on belief.’ He dismissed democracy as ‘just the civilised face of dictatorship’.

Haq was quite open that his aim was to bring about a world Islamic state and he intended seeing the Islamic flag flying over Downing Street.

Few could forget the shameful Question Time programme immediately after the 9/11 attacks. It was so bad that the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation was forced to issue an apology. The panel consisted of Lord Ashdown (the former Lib Dem leader), Phil Lader (a former US ambassador), Tam Dalyell (a Labour MP) and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (a Marxist). Tory and Labour frontbench MPs were disallowed, and the audience had been selected as a result of replies to questions as to their opinions about the USA rather than being a randomly selected. The programme attracted widespread criticism, although Yasmin Alibhai-Brown described it as ‘a really good, thoughtful programme’.

It was not only idle talk and bravado that blighted the UK at that time. 10 days after the 9/11 attacks, 17 year old Ross Parker was attacked and killed by 3 Asian thugs in Peterborough, for no other reason than he was white. He was unknown to his attackers. The ringleader, having attacked Ross Parker so violently that he had almost been decapitated, then held up the knife and said: ‘Look at this. Cherish the blood.’ The 3 Asians were convicted of murder. Peterborough, like Oldham, has anti-white no-go areas.

There have been other anti-white racist attacks and killings since, but these are not as dramatically nor persistently reported as the Stephen Lawrence murder. One cannot imagine why.

This last week Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed has urged Muslims to kill kaffirs (non-Muslims). In reference to the US embassy he said: ‘We’re going to incite people to do jihad, incite people to hate the new pharaoh [President Bush]. Why not do more? Maybe take over the embassy’.

In reference to kaffirs, Bakri said: ‘Wherever they are killed I feel happy’.

It is against this background that Labour has decided to press ahead with its new law outlawing incitement to religious hatred. This law had been promised to the Muslim pressure groups before the election in an attempt to get votes from those Muslims disenchanted with Labour as a result of the Iraq war.

Muslim pressure groups have been very adept at taking on the role of victims since 9/11, claiming that Muslims are victims of ‘Islamophobia’. Labour is now making good its shoddy promise. Those convicted of inciting religious hatred can expect to be jailed for up to 7 years. The proposals have attracted widespread denunciation.

Be there no doubt, the law is designed to appease Muslim pressure groups. There is no call for it from anyone else. It is, and is intended to be, an erosion of free speech. The recently knighted Sir Iqbal Sacranie, in reference to any discussion as to the number of Muslims in the UK who support Islamic terrorism, has stated: ‘There is no such thing as an Islamic terrorist. This is deeply offensive. Saying Muslims are terrorists would be covered by this provision’.

This new law is another perfect example of the underlying neo-communist nature of political correctness. It portrays the Muslims as victims, it feeds Muslim antagonism against the host population, it undermines English culture, and completely debunks Christianity.

It is one thing for a Christian society to tolerate and respect minority religions, it is quite another to equate religions as being equally valid. Muslims account for only 3% of the population. Those who are genuine Christians believe that Christianity is the truth. The truth cannot be equated with untruths.

The new law treats Christianity the same as Rastafarianism, Satanism, devil-worship, witchcraft, paganism, agnostics, atheists, and presumably Jedi knights – as well as any and every other religion conceivable.

Even without this law, there has already been convictions for ‘religiously aggravated threatening behaviour’, under the provisions of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act. Not long after the 9/11 attacks, 2 neighbours got into an argument in Exeter. One of those, Alistair Scott was arrested, charged and convicted on 3 counts of religiously aggravated threatening behaviour as a result of a complaint from Mohammed Hudaib. Both men had been abusive and Mr Hudaib had shouted that 9/11 had been a great day, that Osama Bin Laden was a great man and all Americans deserved to die. Mr Hudaib admitted that he ‘could have said that Osama Bin Laden was a great man and that all Americans deserved to die and are stupid’. Mr Hudaib was neither arrested nor charged.

One of the most outrageous examples of the British Inquisition was the arrest of Robin Page who made the following remark at a country fair: ‘If there is a black, vegetarian, Muslim, asylum-seeking, one-legged, lesbian lorry driver present, then you may be offended at what I am going to say, as I want the same rights that you have got already’. For daring to make this joke, the police even advertised that they would ‘like to hear from anyone who was upset by the commentary’. In this case, the charges were ultimately dropped.

Be there no mistake, if this new law is introduced then there will be an increase in similar arrests and even convictions. The British Inquisition has acquired far too much power and momentum. The history of multiculturalism and of Labour’s race war politics speaks for itself.

This illegitimate Labour government is pouring fuel onto the flames of Islamic extremism.

posted by erc @ 11:30 pm

APPENDIX SIX

Sunday, September 18, 2005

MULTICULTURALISM

Trevor Phillips has caused something of a stir over the last 18 months, with his criticism of multiculturalism. Some Tories have jumped on a bandwagon to endorse his reported sentiments, although it is clear that they have not properly examined what he is saying.

The initial problem is to try and define multiculturalism. Most would regard it as being the tolerance of distinct cultures existing side by side in the UK. But within that definition there are nuances. Mr Phillips himself wrote last year:

‘In 1978 the tabloids reported what seemed like a threat from a hairy, dashiki-wearing student radical, that “we (black Britons) are here and here to stay”. People called this multiculturalism.’

Clearly Mr Phillips is not calling for an end to black people being here. So what does Mr Phillips actually mean?

In the same article, Mr Phillips wrote:

‘When I remarked last month that it was time for Britain to move on from divisive, 80s-style "multiculturalist" policies, I thought it might cause a mild stir among Britain's diversity professionals and activists. In fact, it unleashed a passionate argument both at home and abroad. I have even, as one friend grumpily complained, ruined a couple of dinner parties where the "Britishness" debate got ugly.’

It would seem that the Islington dinner party circuit was somewhat disconcerted!

But the statement about it being time to ‘move on’ shows that Mr Phillips is not turning against multiculturalism, but that he believes that it is time for a new policy to supplement it in the 21st century. This belief is also held by that fellow communist, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, who was flogging her book ‘After Multiculturalism’ as long ago as in the year 2000. In an article in the Telegraph, Alibhai-Brown wrote:

‘Treating black people differently has enabled white institutions to carry on as if nothing substantive has changed since the arrival of Windrush from the West Indies. As long as “ethnic minorities” were given some money and space to play marbles in the ghetto, nothing else needed to happen. Whether you look at the BBC or the top FTSE companies, the multicultural answer has failed to transform anything very much.’

Alibhai-Brown clearly agrees with Greg Dyke who once described the BBC as being ‘hideously white’, and also thinks the same of Britain’s leading companies too. Being white is unacceptable, apparently.

Both Alibhai-Brown and Mr Phillips have also made adverse comment of the all white composition of the Scottish parliament and Welsh Assembly. In the autumn of 2002, Alibhai-Brown wrote:

‘The brand new, young, rediscovered Scottish nation, locked as it is in an ethnic redefinition of itself, found no space for the visible communities... They relegated black Britons to second class status. Ditto Wales.’

Since the ethnic minorities make up less than 1% of the populations of Scotland and Wales, there is no reason why, even statistically, there should be ethnic minorities in either the Scottish parliament or Welsh Assembly.

It would seem that the Scottish and Welsh are the wrong colour.

Both Mr Phillips and Alibhai-Brown are strongly opposed to devolution in general, and an English parliament in particular. In that sense they are not very multicultural at all and never have been.

However, writing in 2004, Mr Phillips set out his criticism of multiculturalism thus:

‘The institutional response to the demand for inclusion has been cynical and bureaucratic – a series of bribes designed to appease community leaders coupled with gestures to assuage liberal guilt, while leaving systemic racism and inequality untouched. Multiculturalism is in danger of becoming a sleight of hand in which ethnic minorities are distracted by tokens of recognition, while being excluded from the real business. The smile of recognition has turned into a rictus grin on the face of institutional racism.’

And:

‘The prevailing orthodoxy for 40 years was that we could not change the behaviour of the majority community until we changed its attitudes. Some of us now think differently. What matters is what people do rather than what they say they think. That is why the CRE is now focusing on delivery of race equality outcomes – measured in numbers of people employed and resources distributed – rather than on declarations of goodwill.’

Mr Phillips has set out his views for racial engineering. He intends to manipulate and control the English in order to fit in with his view of a multiracial Britain. As the head of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) he intends to statistically re-order society.

In May this year Mr Phillips repeated his views and upped the ante by condemning ‘corporate multiculturalism’ and claiming that unless there was integration then ‘what we will end up with is a Los Angeles in flames’, in reference to the 1992 Los Angeles race riots in which 50 people were killed.

Mr Phillips continued (italics are English Rights Campaign emphasis):

‘By integration, I mean that it is a society in which your life chances, whether they be chances of a job, chances of becoming an MP, or chances of living in a particular area or chances of going out with someone of a different race should be utterly unaffected and statistically unrelated to your race. At the moment this is not the case.

A perfectly integrated society is one in which your ethnicity would not be able to determine the outcome of your life. Some minorities, Jews historically, Vietnamese, arrived and soared, some are anchored to the bottom – Afro-Caribbeans, Somalis, and so on.’

One can either have equality of opportunity, or equality itself. But one cannot have both. Mr Phillips wants equality (as might be expected for a communist). He wants those who, for whatever reason, be it skill, determination, luck or whatever, are able to do well for themselves, to be held back so that those who did not do as well are equal. He seeks to manipulate this in order to statistically integrate ethnic minorities and re-order society.

To concentrate on statistics essentially means race quotas. That is inevitable. If statistically an organisation does not have a proportion of ethnic minorities, then it must be judged racist, prosecuted, and compelled to recruit a quota of ethnic minorities. This is currently happening with the Metropolitan Police.

Mr Phillips is advocating quotas. He even seeks quotas for who people date! Presumably there will be undercover race zealots in nightclubs and pubs to ensure that people racially ‘integrate’.

The choice of the word ‘integrate’ is not haphazard. Mr Phillips does not use the word ‘assimilate’. The reason for this will be explained in the near future.

This statistical integration needs to be considered alongside the policy of mass immigration, which is now so vast that the English will be reduced to a racial minority in England in roughly 50 years. If Mr Phillips has his way, then as the proportion of ethnic minorities grow as a proportion of the population, then so will the size of the quotas and hence the statistical integration.

In other words, Mr Phillips is bent on supplementing multiculturalism by introducing a form of ethnic cleansing in order to push the English aside and replace them with ethnic minorities.

This is a thoroughly vile policy and no one believing in a free England should have any truck with it.

posted by erc @ 2:43 pm

APPENDIX SEVEN

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

RACIAL ENGINEERING

Trevor Phillips’s recent speech regarding race in the UK has received a large amount of publicity. This is following newspaper reports that the speech was coming, with fairly accurate leaks as to its contents which could only have come from Mr Phillips himself.

The speech, entitled ‘After 7/7 Sleepwalking to segregation’, has been quite controversial, with attacks on Mr Phillips from a variety of quarters including the Muslim communities.

However the speech is merely a repetition, with some updating, of previous speeches that Mr Phillips has given (e.g. see English Rights Campaign item dated the 18 September 2005). Mr Phillips is now perceived by some as being opposed to multiculturalism. This is simplistic.

What is important about the speech is that Mr Phillips is setting out the agenda the so-called Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) will adopt for the future. Given that the speech is following the recent bombings in London, then it might expected that it is response to the recent acts of terrorism. That is not the case, as Mr Phillips criticised multiculturalism more than a year ago and has been making other comments since.

But the main point is that Mr Phillips is telling us what the CRE will be doing. He makes that clear in his speech. He is not passing an opinion or engaging in a debate. Despite being an unelected quangocrat, he is dictating.

Notwithstanding Mr Phillips’s tenure of the CRE in the run up to 7/7, he does not take any responsibility for the complete failure to predict those bombings, but he is very eager to take full credit for the CRE for allegedly smoothing things over afterwards:

‘People talk a lot about the race relations industry, usually disparagingly. I am proud to say that this summer, our industry did its part in holding communities together at a time of great stress. We experienced no major conflicts...This is in no small part due to the work of the people often casually abused as race relations busybodies, working on the ground, calming, cajoling and conciliating. Many are paid, but tens of thousands are unpaid, and do it because they want our country to be a better place.

So I want to take this opportunity to say thank you to all those who worked with us in that period: the so-called race relations industry showed itself in reality to be a vital post-emergency service.’

It may well be of course that the reason why there was not widespread violence was because the English are a peaceable nation.

Mr Phillips devotes a large part of his speech sorting out New Orleans and the reasons for the humanitarian disaster there. In this speech he prefers to cite New Orleans as an example rather than the Los Angeles riots which he had cited previously.

The USA is completely differently to the UK. The USA is traditionally an immigrant country whereas the UK is traditionally an emigrant country. The USA did have widespread slavery, an issue which sparked the American civil war, and has had legally enforced segregation and discrimination up until the 1960s. Non of that applies to the UK, for which the legacy of the end of the British Empire is more important.

Mr Phillips describes the USA as being a segregated society:

‘This is a segregated society, in which the one truth that is self-evident is that people cannot and never will be equal. That is why, for all of us who care about racial equality and integration, America is not our dream, but our nightmare.’

Based on that assertion, Mr Phillips maps out a different scenario for Britain. He advocates integration. He immediately deals with the issue as to what he means by integration and rejecting assimilation:

‘There are some old-fashioned types who think of integration as just another word for assimilation. But no-one seriously believes that we should all, speak, look, dress, worship and act the same.

However, there has to be a balance struck between an ‘‘anything goes’’ multiculturalism on the one hand, which leads to deeper division and inequality; and on the other, an intolerant, repressive uniformity. We need a kind of integration that binds us together without stifling us. We need to be a nation of many colours that combine to create a single rainbow.

Yes, that does mean recognising diversity and rejecting assimilation.’

Mr Phillips is playing with words in that he is trying to differentiate the difference between integration and assimilation. Enoch Powell, in the speech quoted in the English Rights Campaign item dated the 15 July 2005 said:

‘To be integrated into a population means to become for all practical purposes indistinguishable from its other members.’

This is not what Mr Phillips means at all. He simplifies the definition of assimilation and then rejects it. The concept of assimilation, as defined by Mr Phillips, would never exist in Britain in practice. This is because Britain is a free society and how people lead their own lives is their own business. The recognition and respect for the freedom of the individual and the willingness to live and let live tempers and makes practical the concept of assimilation.

But Mr Phillips also rejects ‘an “anything goes” multiculturalism’ on the grounds that it will lead to division and inequality. His definition of equality, as he sets out in his speech, has already been dealt with in the English Rights Campaign item dated 24 September 2005. By equality he means race quotas. He objects to ‘an “anything goes” multiculturalism’ as it will not enforce the correct quota of ethnic minorities of every organisation in the country.

Mr Phillips calls for more integration as a means of avoiding segregation. In furtherance of that end, he sets out ‘what being British is all about’:

‘First and foremost, our shared values: for example an attachment to democracy, freedom of speech, and equality, values which anyone who expects to live in Britain must respect and abide by, both notionally and in practice.

Second, we share common traditions which, whatever we do at home, we all agree to respect and observe in our everyday encounters. Central to these I would say are our common language, our good manners, our care for children.

We also cherish a tradition of poking fun at politicians, priests and do-gooders, and – though I qualify for mockery on two counts – I think that is a tradition not to be tampered with lightly. And as long as new customs do not conflict with our values, let’s embrace them as part of the fabric of our community life. They too will one day join our shared traditions, the outstanding example of course, being the Indian restaurant – now not Indian at all but almost wholly British.

Thirdly, we maintain diverse, individualistic, even eccentric lifestyles in our private lives. No-one tells us how to speak, how to dress, what we should eat or how we should worship. These are all individual choices, to be respected as long as they do not interfere with our fundamental values, or our long-cherished traditions. And unlike some other countries, we tend to embrace new additions to our lifestyle choices – whether it is new music, or new kinds of clothes.’

Of the 3 main points which supposedly define Britishness, Mr Phillips’s first point (and ‘foremost’) relates to shared values. Yet not only is it patently obvious that a very large number of the immigrant communities do not share these values (e.g. Muslim fundamentalists regarding freedom of speech and even democracy), but there are also large differences of opinions regarding equality. The English Rights Campaign does not share Mr Phillips’s concept of equality at all, and nor would most of the general public.

Mr Phillips’s second point relates to traditions. Most would like to agree that we do have a rather English sense of humour unique to us, and we do laugh at our politicians. But this is an aspect of Britishness and it is not enough in itself. The same can be said of the third point Mr Phillips raises.

In fact one could apply a very large part of the points Mr Phillips cites to almost any Western country. Are not the French, or Dutch, or Australians etc. also believers in democracy and freedom of speech? Do they not also have good manners or care for their children? Do they not also like new kinds of clothes?

These matters are not enough to define Britishness.

What defines Britishness, or Englishness, is a shared culture – political, religious, language, customs and national character (e.g. the stiff upper lip). But Mr Phillips cannot cite these as he also advocates multiculturalism and continued mass immigration.

Multiculturalism dictates that the cultures of the immigrant communities are equal and must therefore be integrated into society on the same terms as the host culture, in the name of diversity. Immigrants already have their own culture. So the combination of continued mass immigration and multiculturalism must dilute British/English culture – especially when combined with so-called anti-racism (which condemns British/English culture as racist).

(Mr Phillips has previously denied that there is any such thing as a host British/English culture! This will be examined in the near future.)

Nor does Mr Phillips cite the most important aspect of all – patriotism. A belief in one’s own country and a pride in its culture and history. This is usually reinforced by a shared history. Mr Phillips cannot cite this, as immigrants do not have a pride in British history as they are foreigners and already have their own loyalties. They may respect Britain, but that is not the same. Also Mr Phillips, as with all communists and their fellow travellers, hates this country and its history. His whole political career is based on his contempt for Britain and he has spent a large amount of time attacking British history.

Mr Phillips then sets out what he regards as Britain’s drift towards segregation, which he splits into hard and soft segregation. Hard segregation is the issue of where people live and which school or which university they go to. Soft segregation is with whom people socialise.

Mr Phillips is of the opinion that universities have ‘started to become colour-coded’ and that ‘residentially, some districts are on their way to becoming fully fledged ghettos’. He defines ghettos as being ‘places where more than two-thirds of the residents belong to a single ethnic group’.

Mr Phillips points out that the number of residential ghettos are increasing:

‘The number of people of Pakistani heritage in what are technically called “ghetto” communities trebled during 1991-2001; 13% in Leicester live in such communities (the figure 10.8% in 1991); 13.3% in Bradford (it was 4.3% in 1991).’

Not only does Mr Phillips complain that certain districts are becoming ghettos, but he believes that schools are similarly affected:

‘A study by the Young Foundation in London’s east end, to be published as ‘‘The New East End’’ next February, shows that, despite heroic efforts by the local education authority, the choices made by parents themselves in Tower Hamlets are also entrenching segregation. There:

In primary schools in 2002, 17 schools had more than 90% Bangladeshi pupils; 9 schools had fewer than 10%.

In the 15 secondary schools, figures from Ofsted reports since 2000 show that three denominational schools (of which two are Roman Catholic) had fewer than 3% Bangladeshi pupils, whereas two schools had over 95% Bangladeshi pupils and a further three over 80%.’

Regarding soft segregation, Mr Phillips cites CRE statistics that:

‘Last year, we showed that most Britons could not name a single good friend from a different race; fewer than one in ten could name two – and even in London, which is one-third black or brown, a derisory proportion of whites had non-white friends. Just as alarmingly, we showed that young people from ethnic minorities were twice as likely to have a circle of pals exclusively from their own community, as were older ethnic minority folk.

This year we repeated the exercise.

Behaviour in white Britain has not changed a bit. Last year, 94% of white Britons said that all or most of their friends are white. This year it is 95%. Once again a majority – 55% – could not name a single non-white friend, and this was true of white Britons of all ages, classes and regions.

What the figures tell us about the behaviour of ethnic minority Britons is even bleaker. Last year, 31% of ethnic minority Britons said that most or all of their friends were from ethnic minority backgrounds; we found that this trend was stronger among the young than the old. This year the figures show a marked turn for the worse.

The 47% of ethnic minority Britons who last year said that most or all of their friends were white has now shrunk to 37%; and the proportion who have mainly or exclusively ethnic minority friends has grown from 31% to 37%. This is way beyond any statistical fluctuation.

It also remains true that younger Britons are more exclusive than older Britons. It must surely be the most worrying fact of all that younger Britons appear to be integrating less well than their parents.’

Mr Phillips recognises the scale of the dilemma when he points out that ‘within the next decade’ both Birmingham (England’s second largest city) and Leicester will become cities in which the English are a racial minority.

According to Mr Phillips, the solution to the problem of segregation is integration and an integrated society ‘has three essential features’:

• ‘Equality: everyone is treated equally, has a right to fair outcomes, and no-one should expect privileges because of what they are.

• Participation: all groups in the society should expect to share in how we make decisions, but also expect to carry the responsibilities of making the society work.

• Interaction: no-one should be trapped within their own community, and in the truly integrated society, who people work with, or the friendships they make, should not be constrained by race or ethnicity.’

Mr Phillips further states:

‘One crucial error we could make is to forget that equality is an absolute precondition for integration. A society in which most ethnic minority Britons are poorer, less well educated, less healthy and less politically engaged won’t be integrated.’

Once again, Mr Phillips’s definition of equality, as he sets out in his speech, has already been dealt with in the English Rights Campaign item dated 24 September 2005. By equality he means race quotas.

As far as immigrants being poorer, this is inevitable. Ethnic minority immigrants mostly come from the Third World which is poorer. Many are asylum seekers. Many have paid what are very large sums of money for them to organised crime rackets in order to be smuggled here. It is inevitable that statistically ethnic minorities will be poorer on average. It is wholly wrong to cite this as a barrier to integration and if it is, then it is a further reason for mass immigration to be ended.

And in order to achieve what he sees as an integrated society Mr Phillips says:

‘This autumn the Commission is setting out its plans for an ambitious new programme to encourage greater integration. It will inform everything we do, and we want the whole CRE family to play a part in this work.

At its heart will lie three aims:

• a relentless focus on greater equality;

• a drive towards more equal participation; and

• steps to promote renewed interaction between Britons of different backgrounds and different traditions.’

Furthermore:

‘We know that real commitment to equality in government, in our neighbourhoods, and in the workplace won’t happen until minorities have a voice. That is why this year we will be working with you to increase the diversity of those appointed to public bodies and positions such as health boards, school governors and cultural institutions.

We also intend to start the drive early to make political parties more inclusive in their nominations for parliamentary and council seats. Since 2001 the proportion of ethnic minority councillors in the UK has slumped. There are still only 15 ethnic minority MPs when there should be more than 50. That has to change.’

So we cannot complain that we have not been warned of coming attractions!

Mr Phillips continually assumes that only ethnic minorities can properly represent ethnic minorities. This might make him very important, but it is untrue. True representation is determined by principles and not skin colour.

It is to be noted that the Tories have not condemned this speech, despite the prospect of being told who they may appoint as candidates. One presumes that they are eager to seek Mr Phillips’s approval.

There are 2 fundamental flaws in Mr Phillips’s rationale. These flaws stem from Mr Phillips’s politically correct and communist politics.

Firstly, he has set out what he believes to be a problem of growing segregation. He believes that this problem must be solved by government action to ensure integration. To that end he has produced a series of proposals which he is going to implement via the CRE irrespective of public opinion. These proposals include some carrots such as summer camps for children and spending £2million on ‘integrated sport’. Other proposals are sticks, such as the proposals for altering school catchment areas, and the extra red tape of so-called ‘race equality impact assessment’, the enforcement of a ‘race equality duty’, the demand for information of ‘equality performance of potential partners’, ‘equality audits’, ‘and new incentives for shareholders to hold their boards to account on equality issues’.

In other words, there will be a more aggressive prosecution of the British Inquisition.

All of this is to force people to behave in such a way that is consistent with the theory of the multicultural experiment and mass immigration. Mr Phillips is not developing policies to suit the interests of the public. He intends to try to control and manipulate the public to suit the interests of the political theory.

It will not work. Communism had a whole host of theories and they did not work. Communism has collapsed throughout eastern Europe and we only have to look at Zimbabwe to see how it works out in practice.

Even in the UK, we had the theory of Keynesian economics, which advocated increasing the money supply as a means of solving unemployment. The result was inflation and higher unemployment. So the government tried to solve that by introducing public sector wage norms, private sector wage norms, going rates, price controls, wage controls, exchange rate controls, mortgage controls, beer and sandwiches at Number 10 for union barons etc. in order to try and stop people reacting to the billions of extra pounds being pumped into circulation.

It all failed and ultimately we ended up with the Winter of Discontent (or the 3 day week under the Tories). The theory was wrong and eventually Keynesian reflation economics was abandoned.

The theory of multiculturalism and mass immigration is wrong. It should be abandoned. Mr Phillips may be able to make people’s lives miserable with all his meddling, but he will fail to control the public. This is a democracy and not a totalitarian state (at least not yet). Mr Phillips cannot control how people think and what they believe.

The second fundamental flaw in Mr Phillips’s rationale is his blind commitment to mass immigration despite its direct and predictable consequences. Mr Phillips is not so foolish that he is unable to see the inevitable attack he will face on this and he tries to fob it off in his speech:

‘I can imagine the glee in some quarters at the picture we are reporting. But those who see this as an argument against immigration should not take comfort from what I am saying. History does not support their case. The speed and scale of immigration have had little impact on the levels of integration in the past sixty years.

For example, among minority groups who seem to have found integration easiest, East African Asians arrived in a rush – over a period of months, whilst Jews took decades to get here in numbers. There are twice as many African Caribbeans as there are Bangladeshis, but their levels and ease of integration are very different.’

He is open about his intention to support mass immigration and that he intends to see the continued rise in the numbers of ethnic minorities as a proportion of the total population. He cites a YouGov poll in support:

‘CRE research shows that for the first time in sixty years we are growing more relaxed about our ethnic differences. We accept that there is a need for immigration:

• in our April YouGov poll, one quarter of our respondents said there should be no arbitrary limit on the proportion of the UK’’s population which is immigrant; while

• two-thirds think a proportion of over 15% is okay.

Since the migrant and ethnic minority populations are still below 10%, we have a way to go before Britons feel threatened by pure numbers.’

This is hogwash. If Mr Phillips genuinely believes that the English people, who are bearing the brunt of mass immigration, want to see more immigrants in the country, that they want to see themselves to being reduced to a racial minority in Birmingham and Leicester and ultimately in England as a whole, then he is delusional. Even a majority of the ethnic minorities wish to see an end to so-called asylum seeking, especially as it is so widely abused.

Writing in February this year, Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch UK said:

‘After years, even decades, of being bludgeoned into silence by false insinuations of racism, people are saying what they really think about present levels of immigration. Sneering at ‘‘the tabloids’’ by the usual suspects will no longer wash.

The opinion polls say it all: 77 per cent disagree that the Government has immigration under control; 75 per cent are concerned about extra pressure on public services and a similar number believe that there are too many immigrants in Britain.

These are astonishing numbers. And it gets worse for the Government. Three quarters of the public do not believe it is being open and honest about immigration and 45 per cent say it will influence their vote at the forthcoming General Election. This explains the hints, nudges, winks and leaks that emerged over the weekend in the lead-up to yesterday’s announcement of a ‘‘five-year plan’’ for asylum and immigration.

It also explains an extraordinarily defensive article by the Prime Minister in yesterday’s Press. He claims that the reason immigration is a difficult subject is nothing to do with political correctness, nor the risk of being accused of racism.

Really? He could have fooled me. His spin doctors have been smearing my organisation, Migrationwatch, for years.’

Like Vince Cable in his recent Demos report, Mr Phillips intends to see the ethnic minorities continue to double every 20 years as a proportion of the total population. His aim is to reduce the English to being a racial minority in England in about 50 years.

The CRE’s YouGov poll did not ask their respondents if they were in favour of that!

It is plain common sense, as Enoch Powell recognised long ago, that the scale of mass immigration was bound to make integration more difficult as the immigrants would not need to interact with the host community and would create their own immigrant communities instead. People will prefer to mix with those with whom they have something in common. Even in communist Russia the government found that engineers tended to socialise with other engineers, doctors with other doctors etc. It is human nature and no amount of meddling will alter that.

The scale of mass immigration will therefore in turn create segregation and ghettos. This is inevitable especially given the complete disregard as to the compatibility of the immigrants to the host English community. The solution is to end mass immigration. If we cannot cope with the size of the immigrant communities already here, then there is no point in letting in millions more immigrants.

But Mr Phillips simply cannot contemplate such a thing. He is a bigot in the true meaning of he word in that his mind is closed (bigot: ‘a person who is intolerant of any ideas other than his own’ - Collins English Dictionary). He is incapable of accepting the obvious and can do no other than bawl racist at those who dare to disagree with him. The vast number of opinion polls which demonstrate the anger at continued mass immigration are completely ignored. As far as Mr Phillips is concerned those opinion polls do not exist and such opinions are racist.

There is a choice of analysis. On the one hand there is that analysis of Mr Phillips that it is the people who are wrong and the theory of multiculturalism and mass immigration is correct. That what is needed therefore are new measures to force people to behave in ways consistent with the theory.

Alternatively, the theory is wrong and we need to revert to the common sense of patriotism, and an end to mass immigration and the politically-correct multiculturalism that is presently accompanying that mass immigration.

Mr Phillips’s route involves a greater role for the CRE and the British Inquisition, the alternative involves the disbandment of the CRE and the British Inquisition and the rejection of political correctness.

Although that is the choice, we have no means of making it. Mr Phillips is an unelected, unaccountable quangocrat who enjoys Labour’s full support. He will impose his views on the rest of us whether we like it or not.

posted by erc @ 9:56 pm

APPENDIX EIGHT

8 AUGUST, 2005

SOCIALIST SNOBBERY

Despite the recent terrorist attacks in London(istan), Cherie Blair remains unrepentant regarding so-called human rights legislation and the extent of the political correctness of the judiciary.

Mrs Blair is herself a part-time judge. She was speaking to 1,000 Muslim lawyers and academics in Malaysia as part of a lecture tour.

Regarding the London blasts, Mrs Blair said:

‘It is all too easy for us to respond to such terror in a way which undermines commitment to our most deeply held values and convictions and which cheapens our right to call ourselves a civilised nation.

Were it otherwise, it would not have been necessary for the Islamic Human Rights Commission to have warned London Muslims after the attacks to stay at home for fear of reprisals.

Our institutions are under threat, our commitments to our deepest values are under pressure, our acceptance of difference and others is at a low point.’

Mrs Blair added that the courts had to act, ‘as guardians of the weakest, poorest and most marginalised members of society against the hurly-burly of majoritarian politics.’

Mrs Blair cited the detention of so-called asylum seekers who had been detained as terrorist suspects in Belmarsh prison, which the judges had ruled was unlawful and which led to the release of those foreign terrorist suspects into England. The Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act of 2001 was ruled to be in breach of the European Convention of Human Rights.

It should be remembered that in overturning the above legislation regarding the Belmarsh detainees, Lord Hoffman pronounced:

‘The real threat to the life of the nation... comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these.’

This is of course a very easy thing for a Law Lord to say, given that he is most unlikely to be found on a bus or a tube train.

Mrs Blair’s term ‘majoritarian’ is a revelation and shows how the socialist mentality works. The majority are of course the English. She is more concerned about the ‘rights’ of so-called asylum seekers and terrorist suspects to enter this country.

Since Labour is a minority government, gaining only 36% of the vote and relying on Scottish and Welsh MPs for their parliamentary majority in the governance of England, it is hardly surprising that Mrs Blair thinks the majority vote is beneath her.

As we know, with socialists, some people are more equal than others – and some votes count for more than others.

posted by erc @ 1:42 am

APPENDIX NINE

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

THE GENESIS OF COMMUNISM

Below are extracts from the ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’, written by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels in 1848.

The extracts have been chosen as being the most relevant to the 21st century. Large tracts of class war politics have been ignored.

It will be seen that so-called political correctness is really nothing more than communism. The attack on the family, Christianity and nationhood is communist based.

Labour’s, and for that matter the Conservative Party’s, willingness to undermine marriage, our Christian heritage and our nationhood is not some sort of enlightened, modern, sophisticated wisdom. It is bog-standard, unimaginative, clapped-out 19th century communism. It is an act of oppression – not tolerance.

The full Manifesto is as lacking in objectivity as it is oozing in hatred. It is the poisonous theory of the malevolent few. It is evil in its purest and most undisguised form. When Marx and Engels speak of the ‘forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions’, there should be no doubt that they are advocating violent revolution.

The only surprise is that so many, even today, give communism (aka Marxism) the slightest respect.

That is especially so since communism was responsible for the deaths of at least 100million people in the 20th century and is still responsible for mass murder to this day, as the tragedy of Zimbabwe demonstrates.

‘MANIFESTO OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY’

PART ONE

‘In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industry labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.’

‘Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.

In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.’

PART TWO

‘The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only:

(1) In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality.

(2) In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.

The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.’

‘The distinguishing feature of communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.’

‘In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society, capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.

By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.

But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other "brave words" of our bourgeois about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the communist abolition of buying and selling, or the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.’

‘Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among proletarians, and in public prostitution.

The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not intended the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

The bourgeois claptrap about the family and education, about the hallowed correlation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.

But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus.
The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.

He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.

For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce free love; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's wives. (Ah, those were the days!)

Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalized system of free love. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of free love springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.

The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.

The workers have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.

National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.

The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action of the leading civilized countries at least is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.

In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.

The charges against communism made from a religious, a philosophical and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.

Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas, views, and conception, in one word, man's consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?

What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

When people speak of the ideas that revolutionize society, they do but express that fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.

When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the eighteenth century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge.

"Undoubtedly," it will be said, "religious, moral, philosophical, and juridicial ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change."

"There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience."

What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.

But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.

The communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.

But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to communism.

We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.’

PART THREE

‘As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has clerical socialism with feudal socialism.

Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a socialist tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the state? Has it not preached in the place of these, charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic life and Mother Church? Christian socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.’

‘The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Proletarians of all countries, unite!’

posted by erc @ 10:47 pm

1Innis Claude, National Minorities: An International Problem, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., 1955, quoted in Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 3

2Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 3

3Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 3

4Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 3

5Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 3

6Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 5

7Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 6

8Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 6

9Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 10

10Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 12

11Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 14

12Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 95

13Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 52

14Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 78

15Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 79

16Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 82

17Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 94

18Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 94

19Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 99

20Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 99

21Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 113

22Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 156

23Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 156

24Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 176

25Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 178

26Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press, New York, 1995, page 178

27Will Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, page 2

28Will Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, page 3

29Will Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, page 26

30Will Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, page 33

31 Will Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, page 55

32Will Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, page 247

33Will Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, page 88

34Will Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, page 173

35Will Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, page 30

36Will Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, page 163

37Will Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, page 165

38Will Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, page 167

39Will Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, page 61

40Charles R Lister, The Islamic State, Brookings Institution Press, USA, 2015, page 52

41Joby Warrck, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS, Transworld Publishers, London, 2015, page 394

42Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger, ISIS: The State of Terror, William Collins, London, 2016, page 93

43Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger, ISIS: The State of Terror, William Collins, London, 2016, pages 219-222

44Joby Warrck, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS, Transworld Publishers, London, 2015, page 47