General election campaigning has definitely started! Today, Keir Starmer unveiled his “six steps for change,” the first six things Labour will do if/when they form the next government.
Starmer listed: stabilising the economy, lowering NHS waiting times, securing our borders, setting up a new British energy investment company, “taking back our streets,” and recruiting 6500 more teachers.
All well and good as far as it goes. But how will any of these “steps” mend our broken politics? Starmer doesn’t seem to realise how much danger our democracy is in.
We’re not surprised to see no mention of Proportional Representation, but what happened to Starmer’s 2020 pledges around protecting human rights, strengthening devolution, or democratising the House of Lords? Those original ten “pledges” turned into five “missions” which are now six “steps”. With each iteration, Labour seems to be slowly moving away from strong commitments to democracy.
There’s no mention either of repealing undemocratic voter ID laws, re-establishing the independence of our crucial elections watchdog, restoring our full protest rights, or tackling the dodgy think-tanks and dark money donors eroding the public’s trust in democracy. As a democracy organisation, this is obviously a huge concern to us.
It’s easy to say that fixing democracy isn’t as important as some of the things on that list. But, if anything, it is EVEN MORE important. Because, unless Starmer priortises fixing our democracy, everything his government achieves can be almost instantly reversed by any hard-right government that follows.
Starmer needs to recognise just how rotten our democracy has become. And he needs to understand just how much we all stand to lose if Labour fails to act quickly. A democracy weakened by the corruption and vandalism of recent Conservative administrations is as dangerous for him as it is for us.
If today’s announcement has shown us anything it is that we really have our work cut out for us. We KNOW what needs to be done to revitalise British democracy. Now we also know we need to redouble our efforts to get Labour to listen to us.
Yes, it is a ridiculous idea. Or it would be if Tony Blair hadn’t been so chummy with his old pal George Dubya that he didn’t go to various Republican conventions in the US. Having radicalised and helped wreck the Tories, Bilious Barrage is clearly looking round for another political role, and clearly thinks he can do it with Starmer in charge of Labour. The really frightening thing is that Starmer, as a true, blue Blairite, might just let him. Here’s Open Britain’s analysis of the situation:
‘Dear David,
The UK’s number one power-seeking provocateur has yet another scheme to get into the limelight. Nigel Farage, seeing the writing on the wall for the Conservative party he worked so hard to radicalise, is now proposing an unlikely alliance with Labour. In the event of a Trump victory across the pond, Farage thinks he can be the “bridge” between the American far-right and a new Labour government.
It’s tempting to just dismiss Farage as the opportunist crank he so clearly is. But that would be to ignore the massive influence his movement has had on British politics over the past decade. Farage’s framings of immigration, Brexit, and British identity (unfortunately) continue to shape our political discourse. Like it or not, he’s got a foothold in our political system, and a Conservative defeat likely won’t be enough to see the back of him.
Farage is no bridge-builder. The man who wants to scrap postal voting, who champions racist conspiracy theories like the “Great Replacement” and the “Deep State”, who disparages the civil service, and who throws petrol on every single culture war fire from 15-minute cities to flags may get Trump’s blessing, but his destructive instincts mean he will always be more inclined to sew discord than start dialogue, so he’s unlikely to be of any value at all to a new Labour government.
This is merely the latest attempt by Britain’s US-backed far-right to weasel their way into a flawed democratic system, despite the polls indicating their ideas are about to be roundly rejected at the ballot box. It’s an attempt to draw Britain even closer to America’s burgeoning far-right, steering us even further away from fairness and accountability.
Even if Trump wins this year, we should not appoint one of his agents as a trade envoy. We should not enable his transatlantic far-right network to worm its way into another european democracy. We should not put the national interest in the hands of someone like Farage, a mouthpiece for American billionaires who would happily stomp all over British values and ways of life if it meant making a buck or two.
Instead, we should focus on removing the financial loopholes and repairing the broken safeguards that empower Farage’s far-right. We should build a democracy powered by real people instead of dirty money from the American uber-wealthy and the Russian oligarchs. We’ve got the blueprints…and, with your support, we will build a democracy that works for everyone, before it’s too late.
Bruce Gilley, The Case for Colonialism (Nashville, Tennessee and London, New English Review Press 2023)
Introduction
This is a controversial book that arose from an extremely controversial academic article written by the author. It’s particularly timely as yesterday the Guardian reviewed an exhibition on Black slavery with the approving comment that it was a great rebuttal to those who are now arguing that British imperialism was benign and civilising. Gilley is indeed one of the latter. in 2018 he was moved to write an academic article defending European colonialism after researching Sir Alan Burns, the last British governor of the Gold Coast, now Ghana, and reading positive comments about British colonialism from the anti-colonialist activist and writer, Chinua Achebe. Achebe is regarded as a staunch enemy of British colonialism, and yet Gilley presents quotation after quotation showing that his attitude was more nuanced. Achebe stated that by and large, Nigeria under the British was well run and that they cared for their colonies. He noted that he owed his education to European missionaries who ran excellent schools, the state schools and finally the university founded by the British. He had no animus against the British themselves, and lived in London. He was also attacked for writing in English rather than his native Igbo, despite the fact that an Igbo language press did not exist.
Benefits of Colonialism
Gilley argues that colonialism benefited its subject peoples by modernising their countries with western technology, medicine and industry, as well as fundamental institutions of political liberty as property rights and democracy. It was not regarded as illegitimate by the colonised peoples themselves. The book begins with a letter from the peoples of the Lakes region of Nigeria, now Lagos, for the British to take over their lands to protect them from their tribal enemies and inviting them to stay as long as they liked. Their willing acceptance of colonial authority was shown in the way they moved closer to the centres of colonialism, not away from them, seeking the greater opportunities to be found there. The colonies’ indigenous peoples formed the majority of civil servants, police and soldiers so that the number of White administrators in some of these nations was minuscule compared to the vast populations over which they ruled. And some of the former colonies are coming to a positive reappraisal of the colonialists as the founders of their nations. This is happening in Nigeria with Lord Lugard and the former Belgian Congo with A Brazza. Moreover, the abysmal misgovernment and corruption in these nations is forcing many of them to look back on their former colonial overlords requesting them to return. After the explosion at the port of Beirut several years ago, a petition in Lebanon went up calling for the French to return and take over the colony. 60,000 people signed in the first hours it was up on the Net. Macron acceded to the request, so that the French state acted as a kind of supervisor in an international arrangement in which a western company took over the running of the port. A Belgian journalist, van Reynbrouck, was surprised when he visited the former Belgian Congo by the numbers of young Congolese who came up to him asking when the Belgians would return. In a similar case to Lebanon, the Indonesian authorities were extremely concerned about corruption among the customs officers in Jakarta. They sacked all 3,000 of them and brought in a Swiss company to rebuild it. But the projects to reintroduce elements of western colonialism to genuinely modernise and restore good government and business practice to these countries goes far beyond that. One economist has recommended setting up ‘charter cities’ in the former colonies, with the authorities’ consent. These would be leased to the former colonial powers under 99 years leases, like Hong Kong, and governed by the former imperial masters. At the same time, leases granting residential status would be given to a limited number of migrants seeking to live and work there. In this way modern, democratic government and business would return to the former colonies.
Resulting Controversy
Gilley submitted his article promoting colonialism to two academic journals. One turned it down because it was too controversial. He then offered it to another, the Third World Quarterly. They published it to a storm of outrage. Over a hundred academics, including those of his own university, demanded that he be sacked or subjected to something like a Maoist ‘struggle session where he would be forced to recant his sin. Eventually the article was withdrawn because of threats to lives of the magazine’s editors and staff from anti-colonial fanatics in India.
The book is partly a response to this controversy. The first few chapters describe the affair and respond to his critics. The next part of the book provide examples of the positive influence of colonialism around the world, including iconoclastic reappraisals of German rule in Africa and China and a complete demolition of the claim that King Leopold’s rule in the Congo was genocide resulting in the deaths of 8 million Black Africans. The chapter on German imperialism shows that, rather than proto-Nazis, the Germans had made explicit provision for the good government of their subject peoples leading to their eventual independence at the Congress of Berlin in 1880. They ruthless punished imperial administrators and troopers who abused and victimised the natives. In Qingdao their chief judge was keen to incorporate local, Chinese law into that of the colony and wrote three books on the subject. The genocide against the Herero in Southwest Africa was not planned and was largely the result of forces beyond the authorities’ control.
Refutation of Holocaust Allegations over King Leopold’s Rule in the Congo
In the Congo the real death toll from the exactions of the Force Publicque was largely confined to one section of this vast, sprawling country and consisted of 18,000 people. This was largely the result of tribal warfare, not deliberate policy by Leopold himself. The severed feet and other bodies shown in photographs of alleged colonial atrocities were the result of the traditional way the tribes in the area showed that they had killed their victims. Leopold had taken over the country with the specific intention of eradicating the slavery and cannibalism which plagued the area. The photographs of people with severed limbs were staged recreations of mutilations resulting from these atrocities, and not of horrific punishments visited by Leopold and his servants on those who failed to meet the rubber quotas. These photographs were then taken over by British missionaries and the anti-colonialist British press to show the supposed horror inflicted by Leopold over the people of his private empire. One notorious photo showed a man looking down forlornly at severed feet and an arm. This has been presented as limbs hacked off by the Force Publique on those rubber workers who had failed to meet their set targets. But the original photograph states that the man was looking down on the remains of his wife and daughter after they had been eaten by cannibals.
Black Anti-Slavery Activists Embrace of American Constitution
Another chapter presents the positive case for enslavement in America. He does not seek to present slavery itself as a positive institution benefiting its victims, although that was one of the arguments of its supporters. Instead he notes that in America slaves could, surprisingly, have the benefit of the law. In 1791 in Newport, Connecticutt, a slaver was tried for murder for throwing an enslaved woman with smallpox overboard as a threat to the health and lives of the rest of the ship. The trial lasted five years before the man was acquitted on the grounds that he had acted to protect the others on board against the contagion. Moreover, Black anti-slavery activists were well aware of the anti-slavery implications of the American constitution and its enshrinement of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all. They sought to widen its application beyond White Americans to themselves, in alliance with Whites, writing hymns and other texts supporting this view.
British Attempts to Supply Food to Famine-Struck First Nations in Canada
The book also rehabilitates British rule on the Canadian prairies, stating that they were not indifferent or complicit in a 19th century famine of the indigenous peoples that has now been described as a Holocaust. The British had scant resources in this corner of Canada and did what they could to provide food. They were also seeking to provide the Indians with modern, industrial education in the now notorious residential schools at the Native Canadians own request. They were hampered by distance and the problems of farming in that section of Canada which stumped even season agriculturalists from Ontario and was only solved ten years after the famine. And the same problems afflicted White Canadians. One man, who moved west, suffered from the loss of vital equipment en route. When he arrived, local people, including the Indians, borrowed his equipment but did not return it. The environment itself proved to be too challenging and after sticking it out for three years he finally gave up and returned home.
Erasure of the History of White Farmers in America
White farmers in colonial era America are also being erased from official history through a movement that claims that the piles of stones they left in their fields are really Native American cairns. This started with a group of old, White men. The founders of the movement were interested in pseudo-history, like finding Atlantis. Farmers in 19th century New England, when clearing their fields of stones, used to pile them up in the centre of the field. They were given to children to play with or sold to workers building roads. When such piles have been excavated, they reveal underneath rusted farm equipment and White American domestic refuse. The indigenous peoples then adopted the idea, passionately claiming that the piles were indeed cairns left by their ancestors. They gained this knowledge after visiting the stones and a few minutes of sacred contact with their gods and spirits. From there it moved on to be adopted by state and county authorities, sometimes as a means of preventing building development of these areas. Yet the fake history presented by this movement damages real colonial history. The stones themselves are the physical remains of the agricultural settlement and abandonment of these areas as the farmers moved to fresh lands further west. Another chapter takes apart this misrepresentation of Malayan colonial rule during the Emergency, stating that most Malayans actually supported British rule against that of the Communist guerrillas.
Achebe and Naipaul on the Benefits of Colonialism
There are two chapters given to the positive appreciation of colonialism by Chinua Achebe and the British Asian writer, V.S. Naipaul. Naipaul believed very strongly that British colonialism had benefited its peoples around the world. For him, it was a universal civilisation that promoted benign values applicable to all humanity. He was sharply critical in his novels of the dictators that took over these countries, plunging them into corruption and horrific bloodshed, and their left-wing White European supporters who followed them around, turning a blind eye to the horrors in the belief that something great and genuinely African would arise. He is also scathing of the hypocrisy behind the critics of British colonialism, who all seek its benefits in London or the West. These include Fazlur Rahman, who led the campaign to the Islamise Pakistan in the 1960s. When this provoked opposition, he fled to a nice tenured academic position at an American university. Vijayamprada Gopal, a professor of Colonial and Post-Colonial Literature at Cambridge University and a favourite with Novara Media, also gets it for her snobbery. She stated that she would no longer teach working class students after the university porters called her by the university’s accustomed form of address of ‘madam’ for all women, rather than calling her ‘doctor’ as she wanted. This conforms to Naipaul’s comment that Oxbridge educated Indians were worse petty tyrants than the Indian landlords, who insisted that their tenants bow and touch their feet.
Criticism of Gandhi
Naipaul was also critical of Islam in Among the Believers, and had scant regard for Gandhi. Gandhi had the right idea when he started out, but then transformed himself into a Hindu holy man, after which he had nothing positive to contribute. It’s controversial, but there have been books and articles written arguing that Gandhi was not the benign figure he’s been presented as. Rabindranath Tagore, another great figure in Indian nationalism, dislike Gandhi because of his tactic of whipping up mobs until they were on the edge of rioting and violence and then pulling back. His sudden embrace of the Dalits in the 1920s was provoked, not by genuine concern for them, but because the British were planning to add an extra clause protecting their voting rights. Gandhi feared that this would lead to them supporting British rule, not Indian nationalism. He also knew absolutely nothing about the Second World War and the nature of Nazism. He wrote a letter to Churchill urging him to make peace with Hitler as ‘he is not a bad man’. On the invasion of Czechoslovakia, he recommended that the Czechs and Slovaks should meet the Nazis with passive resistance. When someone pointed out to him that this would simply result in the Nazis exterminating them, he acknowledged that this would happen, but ‘it would have been glorious’. India today is an emerging industrial and technological global superpower, quite contrary to what Gandhi himself would have wanted for his country. Gandhi hated modern technology with its trains and airplanes. He would have liked India to return to its traditional Vedic social and economic structure. And it is precisely by rejecting his vision that India has developed and become the global force it is today.
Gilley’s View of the Handing of Hong Kong to China
The last chapter is Gilley’s own personal observations of Hong Kong’s handover to China in 1991 under its last governor, Chris Patten and an article he wrote for the final edition of a magazine devoted Asian affairs when this magazine finally folded. Patten comes across as trying to do his level best for Hong Kong and its people despite almost insurmountable opposition from the Chinese. Beijing did not respect the original treaty and simply regarded it as an opportune time to take over the colony. They warned Patten not to introduce democracy just before independence, as the British had done elsewhere. Patten defied them and gave it to Hong Kong anyway. He was very keen to soothe local feelings about colonialism, and so appeared in a lounge suit rather than traditional gubernatorial garb. As for the magazine, based in Hong Kong, this was very much a product of the colonial age in taking a broad view of the politics and economic affairs of the region. But it lost readers with the retreat of colonialism. Instead of a broad, regional view, magazines now presented the specific views of the individual nations, such as India or China, and the broader view was now being lost.
Genocide and Butchery by Post-Independence Dictators
The book also describes the horrors and carnage perpetrated by the colonies’ various dictators, who seized power after independence. Guinea-Bissau’s dictator wanted to destroy the legacy and infrastructure left over by the Portuguese, and so tore his country apart, butchering its people in the process. The British in Zanzibar had set up a multi-party system which sought to balance the interests of African and Arab Zanzibaris. A year after Prince Philip had formally handed power to them, however, it was invaded by anti-colonial forces backed by the Soviet Union and East Germany. Only one in ten indigenous Zanzibaris supported the invasion. The invaders set up a regime of massacre and repression, driving out the Sultan and the Arab and South Asian Zanzibaris. In one massacre, they invaded and slaughtered the tribespeople in one of the islands, whose children were then required to sing suitably patriotic songs celebrating their parents’ deaths.
Frantz Fanon’s Glorification of the Shooting and Murder of Whites
He also attacks Frantz Fanon, the Caribbean psychiatrist whose text on Algerian war of independence, The Wretched of the Earth, is now a classic of the decolonisation movement. Rather than being some kind of benign text on the necessity of Black liberation, Fanon’s book is bloodthirsty, revelling in the genocidal massacre of French colonists and White Europeans, and endorsed with a foreword by Jean-Paul Sartre. Gilley is harshly critical of the western left-wing intellectuals, safely ensconced in their Paris cafes, supporting people who can only be described as monstrous tyrants. No positive view of French rule in Algeria is permitted in the mainstream French press, but there is a large, self-published literature by the Pieds-Noir, the former French colonists, arguing that the mainstream view is incorrect. He also criticised the modern anti-colonial crowd, who angrily denounce America as a colonial power while demanding the right of Africans and Muslims to immigrate there.
Independence Not Expected or Wanted by the Majority of Colonial Peoples
Against this, and attacks on western notions of democracy and human rights, Gilley argues that the independence came unexpectedly and was not wanted by the mass of the colonised. In the Belgian Congo, only 27 per cent of the population supported it, but they were given it anyway, like it or not, by the departing Belgians. The real forces behind decolonisation was European exhaustion following the Second World War. Europe no longer had the ability to afford to run the former colonies and there was pressure from both America and Russia to open them up and decolonise, plus the politics of the Cold War. The countries that did best following independence were those that retained the most of their colonial legacy and infrastructure. This is recognised by many of the former colonies themselves. While colonial rule is hated by the people of most of the former colonies, their rulers are seeking to reintroduce elements of the colonial legacy in order to improve their countries.
Colonialism Preferable to the Alternatives
This all runs counter to what has been taught for decades, at least since the 1970s, about European colonialism, which is still being blamed for the many failures and troubles of the former colonies today. It will certainly not be popular with the Guardian and the other left-wing papers and magazines that hold the view that colonialism was uniformly bad, oppressive and exploitative. But Gilley makes a very strong and clear case. As well as the known facts that contradict the received narrative, it also argues from counterfactuals. What would have happened in the absence of colonialism? There are three possibilities. One is a continuation of tribal warfare and indigenous slavery. The second is the penetration of these colonies by western mercenaries and companies seeking concessions. The third is colonisation by a rival power. None of these would necessarily benefit the indigenous peoples.
As for the brutality of the British and other Europeans, the indigenous rulers and imperial powers were just as ruthless, if not more so. Nader Shah, the Persian emperor, was preparing a common currency for Persia and India, suggesting he planned to invade and annexe the country. During his time in Delhi he massacred 30,000 people. On his return to Persia he gouged his son’s eyes out, castrated one of his generals and had six merchants buried alive for the crime of buying a rug belonging to the imperial court. The British and other colonial powers, on the other hand, erected laws against the exploitation and brutal treatment of natives, sending reports back to the home countries and investigating and prosecuting offenders. This provides the basis for the many works of history denouncing colonialism, which is rather hypocritical in the absence of similar concerns by the indigenous powers presented as being somehow innocent of these crimes.
Arguments for Forced Labour
Gilley also seeks to rehabilitate the system of forced labour the British and other Europeans imposed on their African colonies. Gilley argues that this was indeed to make the colonies pay for themselves in the absence of monetary taxation. He states that the arguments against it are economically illiterate. Perhaps, but in Malawi and no doubt other African countries it was resented as a new form of slavery. He also points out the contradictory arguments against colonialism. For some, it underdeveloped its colonies. For others, it interfered too much. And there is the attitude among many of colonialism’s critics that the British should have provided free education and healthcare to their colonial subjects. In fact, Britons themselves did not have free healthcare until the establishment of the NHS and welfare state by the Labour government in 1948. Education in Britain wasn’t compulsory until the 1870s, and even if it was supposed to be free, the poverty of many working class Brits meant that some were unable to afford items such as school uniforms, pens and pencils and other equipment. It’s a case of presentism, the imposition of modern attitudes on to the past, in this case the expectations of the modern welfare state at a time when it did not exist.
Two Phases of British Colonialism
It is noticeable that Gilley begins his treatment of colonialism when it had entered its paternalistic, liberal phase after 1824. In Britain’s case this followed the abolition of the slave trade in 1809 and the introduction of progressive legislation for the improvement of the slaves’ lives in preparation for their eventual emancipation. The previous phase of British imperialism, such as the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland, James VI’s/I’s plantations and the horrors of the Cromwellian campaigns, in my view cannot be justified. Nor can the conquest of the Caribbean and the New World with the extirpation of the original Amerindian populations and the establishment of transatlantic slavery. Which is, no doubt, why he doesn’t and is silent on this phase of western colonialism. Some anti-imperial historians have written about European colonialism as if it was consciously proceeded according to a pre-set plan. But his was not the case. There was no uniform plan and European imperialism was the result of different economic, political, social and religious forces at different times. The lost of the American colonies and their slave holdings made it easier for the British to ban the slave trade and eventually slavery in theirs. Historians have long recognised that there were two phases of British imperialism, the first in America and the Caribbean, the second in the conquest of India, Africa and Asia. It may well be high time that anti-imperial historians and activists took on board the fact that the nature of colonialism itself changed in these two periods.
Imperialists as Colonies’ Real Nationalists
The book is part of a growing mass of literature seeking to present a positive case for colonialism, such as Nigel Biggar’s Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning. Gilley goes further than Biggar, who merely argues that there were certain aspects of British colonialism that were deeply amoral and oppressive, by presenting this phase of imperialism as benign and positive, and takes friendly issue with Biggar on this point. There are even a very few positive facts in favour of Apartheid. One of these is that under it, 100,000 Black Africans a year sought to immigrate to South Africa. But this probably says more about the horrific state of the other African countries than anything really positive about Apartheid. Despite the barrage of abuse and threats Gilley received for his article, the book also reproduces the positive and supportive comments he received from other academics and activists from Africa and Asia, some of whom said that they and their families had greatly benefited from the institutions, especially schools and universities, left by the British. He also claims at one point that the British and other colonialists were these countries’ true nationalists, in that they had a deep interest in the indigenous cultures and their arts and literature that were often being neglected by the indigenous peoples themselves. Naipaul quotes an Indonesian Muslim as saying that his countries’ historic mosques are now preserved by the West, as previously the Indonesians themselves wanted to pull them down.
Necessity of Proper Academic Debate
This is a powerful counterblast to the received narrative about the evils of colonialism. Whatever one feels about it – and looking at the current state of political corruption and creeping authoritarianism in Britain, I am extremely doubtful about the ability of my country to act as a new, benign imperial force – I strongly believe that it and similar books have a place in academic education and discussion. The attempt to silence Gilley, and indeed Biggar on this side of the Pond, with denunciations, personal abuse and death threats is deeply authoritarian and oppressive in its turn. Gilley at one point states that it may take national legislation in America to restore genuine free speech to campuses. And free speech and genuine academic debate are the cornerstones of genuine democracy. Without it, you just have authoritarianism and indoctrination.
Despite his feverish dedication to dysfunctional immigration policy, Rishi Sunak just can’t seem to win on Rwanda. Met with resistance from “lefty lawyers”, human rights organisations, the European Court of Human Rights, the Supreme Court, and a majority of the British public, Sunak’s still desperately pushing for something that he can point to at the upcoming election.
His most recent gambit came in the Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill, the second clause of which unilaterally declares that “every decision-maker must conclusively treat the Republic of Rwanda as a safe country”. No matter what the evidence before our eyes tells us, it states that law-makers and judges must all go along with the delusion.
According to the UN’s special rapporteur for judicial independence, declaring Rwanda safe “constitute[s] an interference with the independence of the judiciary and a violation of international law”. Last night, a good chunk of the House of Lords defeated Clause 2 in Parliament, with one crossbench peer declaring that:
“We are invited to adopt a fiction, to wrap it in the cloak of parliamentary sovereignty and to grant it permanent immunity from challenge. To tell an untruth and call it truth. Why would we go along with that?”
Rishi Sunak, the unelected leader of a deeply unpopular party that has all but lost touch with reality, would likely struggle to answer that question. Immigration is just one of many areas where government priorities are on another planet from the real aspirations of the public. They’re still living in Boris Johnson’s fantasy world, so dedicated to the narrative they tell themselves that they’ve abandoned all sense.
Immigration is a complex and divisive topic, the kind of issue that only functional, developed democracies can seriously contend with.Advanced democracies are able to have a rational debate, to weigh the benefits of both control and compassion, to find consensus at the right spot in the middle. If the Rwanda plan – and all of the gaslighting, delusion, and absurdity that’s come with it – is proof of anything, it’s that we’re not there yet.
But we can be. It’s not too late to fix national discourse by giving our democracy the major upgrade it so desperately needs. It’s long overdue, and we’re not going to rest until we get it.
Last week I came across a video from the New Culture Forum in which a Pakistani-British journalist talked about the possible threat to British secular democracy from Muslim radicals and considered that the Pakistani grooming gangs may ultimately have had their origins in the rape culture of the Punjabi region of that country, amongst a number of other issues. The New Culture Forum can be reasonably described as the culture wing of the Institute of Economic Affairs, the militantly free market, pro-privatisation think tank behind much of Thatcherite ideology. I find their discussion and critique of the contemporary attacks on traditional British culture, values and identity interesting. However, Jim Round, one of the great commenters here, has pointed out that they need to be treated with more than a grain of salt. He’s found that they’re connected to various conservative think tanks in America, and I don’t doubt for a minute that he’s right. The emerging National Conservative strain in British Conservatism also has its origins across the pond. But their video last week seemed to be more moderate than some of the frantic scaremongering about Islamism from GB News and right-wing YouTubers like Mahyar Tousi.
Thanks to Starmer’s refusal until very recently to back a ceasefire in Gaza, support for the party among British Muslims has collapsed. A number of Muslims have therefore taken to standing against sitting Labour MPs as Independents, although they all have the same policies. Patrick Christy, a horrible sprog at GB News, claimed that this followed the Electoral Commission’s refusal to permit the establishment of a Muslim Party of Britain. Christy’s video claimed that one of the people behind the Muslim Independents was a former member of Hisb-ut Tahrir, an extremist Muslim organisation banned by Tony Blair for terrorism offences. Hisb-ut Tahrir called for the establishment of a caliphate and preaches separation between Muslims and non-Muslims. The man in question states that he is no longer a member of Hisb-ut Tahrir, and has no connection with the Muslim Independents beyond doing some initial research for them. Christy and others have been rather keen on pushing the idea that the Independents are a threat to British democracy, and stated that they could be a real force in parliament if they gain as many as 50 MPs. Farage posted a video talking about sectarian parties in Westminster, while another YouTube asked if we were three years away from a sectarian civil war in Britain.
The New Culture Forum’s video came a few days before these developments, which may be why it contradicts some of these assertions. One of the people speaking on it was a British journalist of Pakistani origin, who had emigrated to Britain and taken out British nationality not because he was an economic migrant, but because he admired our country and wanted to be British. He was doubtful that the rising Muslim political discontent would be a threat to British democracy and would lead to a separate Muslim party. He claimed that British Muslims tended to vote for whatever party offered them the most, and this mixed ethnic matters with religion. It had been the Labour party, but it need not be and could just as well be another, which needn’t be explicitly Muslim.
He also said something extremely interesting regarding the cultural background of the Pakistani rape gangs. He stated that they were specifically Punjabi, rather than just broadly Pakistani. This is one of the most backward regions of Pakistan. During the 1960s the Pakistani government constructed a series of dams in the Mirpur region. Harold Wilson invited immigrants from that region in, so the journo claimed, to keep the White working class down. I think Wilson probably did invite immigrants from the affected districts, but probably as a humanitarian gesture as well as solving the labour shortage which had hit industry after the War. It would very definitely not have been done to depress the White working class.
The Punjabi region has its own language separate from Urdu, the national language of Pakistan. And rape is used as a weapon in the clan feuds in the region. He gave an example of a lad, who had been kidnapped and raped by a rival clan as part of such a feud, even though the lad himself had not been responsible for whatever action sparked the feud. The lad’s sister tried to have the rapists prosecuted, but she was also raped by them on her way to court. This case became notorious, so much so that the Pakistani authorities tried to get it hushed up. However, this brutal rape culture wasn’t representative of Pakistanis as a whole. There were groups campaigning against it Pakistan, and the urban sophisticates of the country’s capital, Karachi, looked down on the Punjabis for the primitive customs. He also said that they looked down on British Pakistanis who came to their country boasting of their Pakistani heritage. Thanks to the cultural isolation in Britain, they were more Muslim than Pakistani Muslims and had a weird accent that wasn’t actually Pakistani, so that they got the monicker ‘Plastic Pakistanis’ in the same way that the Irish call Irish Americans ‘Plastic Paddies’.
This sound about right, although the Pakistani rape gangs also included men from a number of other ethnicities, including Whites. I’ve come across other videos that suggest there’s a very nasty rape culture in the Punjab. A few weeks ago I found a video with a British Punjabi woman campaigning against it. She described how she had been used as a skivvy for her family as a young child before being gang raped by her father and his brothers and friends when she was 13. She claimed that this culture of extreme misogyny was widespread in the Punjabi community, but was not discussed, let alone fought. A situation that she obviously wanted to change.
I can see how this tribal rape culture would translate into the horrific abuse the grooming gangs inflicted on their White victims. Back in the ’90s or early part of this century there was a report by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown into anti-White racism among Black and Asian Brits. Some Muslims certainly resent and despise White women for their sexual freedom. The police denied that racism was a cause of the abuse, but a female Muslim councillor, who had done much to uncover and fight it, said that she grew up in that culture and it certainly was. This doesn’t change the fact that the perps were predatory, evil men, but it does seem to me that the rapes and assaults were based in very primitive cultural attitudes towards women and despised outsiders.
The Pakistani journo noted, however, that the multicultural education being promoted did not include the negative aspects of cultures like Pakistan, so that the people who prided themselves on their familiarity and openness to such cultures knew much less than they thought they did. I think here also he had a point. The multicultural education he describes was brought in to tackle White racism against ethnic minorities and their cultures. But these cultures, like all others, have their own negative aspects. If these aspects are behind crime and violence, then it is right that they should be addressed without fear and accusations of racism. And it’s very clear from what the journo said that the gangs were not representative of the whole Pakistani community, nor, I suspect, of the specifically Punjabi community either.
There comes a time in every government’s life cycle when the public just stops listening. After fourteen years of dysfunctional policy, unethical conduct, and inept leadership, it seems that moment has officially arrived for our Conservative government. The public wants change. No matter how much Rishi Sunak or his allies rattle on about woke lefties or small boats, there’s little he can do or say to change their minds.
The results in Kingswood and Wellingborough yesterday gave us yet another premonition of an absolute knock-out General Election later this year. In Kingswood, the opposition ate into the Conservative’s old majority significantly, claiming victory with nearly 45% of the vote. In Wellingborough, the Conservative vote fell by a whopping 37.6 points, yet another hall-of-fame electoral swing for the history books.
For many of us, it’s been clear for some time. The Conservatives’ multiple attempts to “reset” themselves have only set them up for new and calamitous failures. Boris Johnson’s scandalous premiership, Liz Truss’ disastrous 49 days, and Rishi Sunak’s embattled tenure have all completely failed to address the party’s reputation for ineptitude and sleaze.
As the party’s moderates gradually filter out, embarrassed, the Conservatives’ centre of gravity has shifted to the raucous and the radical. Hardliners like Jacob Rees-Mogg, Suella Braverman, and Liz Truss increasingly own the ideological core of the party today, tripling down on the culture war nonsense and the political extremism rather than conceding their own unpopularity. The pretence is barely holding anymore.
Now would be a sensible time to reflect on their failures, call an election, and spend the intermittent period solving their out-of-control identity crisis. Unfortunately, these people aren’t really the introspective types.
All of this re-affirms that our plan to influence the (likely) future Labour government – and stop wasting time trying to convince the Conservatives that democracy is important – was the right one.
We’ve got time, and we’re going to use it productively. We’ll continue to sit tight and develop pathways to meaningful policies (the ones mentioned in our report, for a start) that bring regular people back into Westminster and finally restore a semblance of trust in politics. We’ll push Labour to act for democracy rather than give into complacency. And we’ll keep an eye out for whatever mutated monsters crawl out of the ruins of the Conservative party.
To that end, our petition calling on Keir Starmer to listen to his party members and embrace Proportional Representation just hit 25,000 signatures… help us keep the momentum up by signing it if you haven’t already!
I’ve watched with interest a number of videos put up by the right-wing New Culture Forum. I don’t share their Toryism, but generally share their critiques of the woke ideologies that paint Britain and its White population as intrinsically racist, colonialist and oppressing Blacks and other people of colour. In a recent video they discussed the re-emergence of the demented Liz Truss, now attempting a political comeback with her Popular Conservatives. Someone has now asked how many Tory factions there are now. There was the launch of the National Conservatives just a few months ago, and there are various plotters and intriguers keen to put Boris Johnson back into No. 10, quite apart from whoever in the party still supports Sunak. Truss, you will remember, is the moron who took her ideas and her advisors from the Buxton Street thinktanks like the Institute of Economic Affairs, keenly promoting a supercapitalism where everything’s privatised, and the welfare state cut to the barest minimum and a very firm support for Brexit. Within just over a month she’d so catastrophically damaged our economy that even the Tories decided they’d had enough of her and she was removed in yet another coup, to be replaced by Sunak.
I thought the New Culture Forum would be behind Truss, given what I believe are their connections to the I.E.A. But they didn’t. They declared that she wasn’t really a Conservative, but a Libertarian. Worse, she was really a Lib Dem, and had as one of her advisor another former Lib Dem. She had promoted disastrous extreme right-wing economic policies. Worse, she wasn’t hard enough on immigration and definitely didn’t really support the social conservatism she claimed to be embracing. They also couldn’t work out why Nigel Farage was hanging around with her. In fact they had such a low opinion of her that they said she was fit only to be the headmistress of a junior school, as this was the only way she could talk to people on an equal level. Presumably they meant the school children, rather than the teachers, auxiliary staff and their parents.
This was surprising coming from a right-wing organisation. It shows that the New Culture Forum, as part of their rejection of wokeness, are moving close to the National Conservatives’ positions. They’ve rejected the extreme Thatcherite individualism – the kind that declared that ‘there is no society, only people’ and that people should be allowed to do whatever they want with their money. This has led, in their view, to a decline in fundamental social institutions like the family and the nation. The Spectator’s Rod Liddle laid this aspect of the social conservative right’s ideological critique of wokeness in a speech he made at one of the universities.
And it is interesting that Liz Truss is now too right-wing even for elements of the right like the New Culture Forum, and especially the rejection of her libertarianism, which I expected they’d share.
Yesterday I also put up a piece from the pro-democracy organisation, Open Britain, commenting on the threat to traditional British civil liberties after Sunak announced he was passing legislation cracking down on protests. Among the practices that would now be outlawed was the wearing of balaclavas, setting off fireworks and desecrating our ‘sacred war memorials’. The last piece of phraseology reminded me of Torquemada, the future grandmaster of an imperial and intensely racist far-future Earth, who had turned humans hatred of other intelligent, alien species into a religion in the ‘Nemesis the Warlock’ strip in 2000 AD. This follows right-wing outrage at pro-Palestine protesters who climbed on to various war memorials and plastered them with stickers and Palestine flags.
Sunak’s announcement of these laws was critiqued in a video from Mahyar Tousi, a very right-wing vlogger, who attacks Islam, immigration, socialism and so on. Tousi pointed out that far from being innovations, the police had these powers already. So, although he didn’t say it outright, it looks like an attempt by a flailing Sunak to shore up some kind of support by pretending to do something about an issue that he knows fires up the right without actually doing anything.
This is another excellent petition from the internet democracy organisation that I’ve had absolutely no hesitation in signing.
‘David, the Government has broken a promise to protect thousands of vulnerable households from fuel poverty, without even having the courage to admit it.
Despite promising more than once to publish a plan for a social tariff on energy bills – which would make them more affordable for those struggling with costs – it’s now being reported that the plan has been “quietly shelved” and is “no longer a priority.” [1] This is shameful.
The Government has been under pressure for months to introduce this plan. In September Martin Lewis and a coalition of 140 charities, consumer groups and MPs wrote to Rishi Sunak asking for urgent action to introduce a social tariff for energy bills. [2] With letters of no confidence coming in from his own MPs, you can bet Sunak will be feeling the heat – he won’t want this broken promise to make the headlines. [3]
Energy bills and the rising cost of living is the biggest worry for many people like us, more than immigration, the environment or even the NHS. [4] The Government will want to be seen to be taking action on this, so if hundreds of thousands of us call them out for their lack of action, it could force them to publish these plans.
David, if you think the Government should keep their promise, will you join the campaign to introduce a social tariff? It only takes a few seconds to add your name.
A social tariff is a discounted rate for energy bills for vulnerable households. [5] They already exist for broadband and phone bills and there have been many calls, from the likes of Martin Lewis, Age UK, Citizens Advice and others, to introduce one. [6] We can’t sit by and let them get away with breaking this promise.
David, thousands of people like you have been fighting with 38 Degrees for what’s right over the last year – and we’ve made a real difference. From forcing ministers to increase Universal Credit as prices skyrocketed, to 20,000 of us telling Ofgem’s consultation to keep energy customers safe, 38 Degrees supporters keep issues top of the agenda. [7]
So will you sign now to demand the Government brings in a social tariff for energy, so no one goes cold or gets into debt this winter?Together, we can make life better for those who need it most.
A few days ago Richard Tice, the head honcho of Reform, appeared on the New Culture Forum’s YouTube channel to give the benefit of his wisdom – or what he thinks is his wisdom – to host Peter Whittle and the viewing public. Tice has been running around telling everyone that Reform is a growing force in British politics that’s threatening the status quo and particularly the Conservatives, who have betrayed the country. Especially over immigration. Whittle agreed with him about Reform’s growing popularity. According to him, Reform is now the third largest party, though Whittle allowed that under the British electoral system, this didn’t necessarily mean they’d actually see any MPs in parliament. This is doubtless one reason why Tice would like to see First Past The Post ditched in favour of Proportional Representation, like many other, smaller parties and organisations from the opposite end of the political spectrum, such as Open Britain. Tice was scathing towards both parties. The Tories had broken Britain, but a Labour victory would finish it off in a ‘Starmergeddon’. I don’t see a Labour victory at the next election doing much for the country either, but that’s because Starmer’s just another Thatcherite. Thatcher’s free enterprise zombie economics have severely harmed this great nation and its great people, not socialism, and more Thatcherism will create even more chaos, poverty and starvation. I think a Labour government will probably be better than the Tories, however. But you can’t tell Tice that. He’s one of the far right nutters who believes that both the Tories and Labour are ‘socialist’.
The interview began with the two discussing the changes and threats to British culture from mass immigration and the need to end the leftist indoctrination of British schoolchildren to rescue British culture. He has a point here, in that teaching Critical Race Theory would be a form of indoctrination if it was taught as unchallengeable fact without balancing it with other views. But Tice wants British schoolchildren taught to take pride in their country. This is also a form of indoctrination, like some of the woke education going on in some places that Britain has been a terrible force for evil for which we should all be ashamed. Neither is true. Britain has done some great things and also committed some horrors. What we should have with history teaching is balance, with children being told the facts and given the intellectual skills and freedom to make their own minds up on certain issues.
He then moved on to tackle immigration. itself Now he also has a point here. There are problems with mass immigration and the challenges of integrating peoples from very different cultures. Tice mentioned the riots the year before last between Hindus and Muslims in Leeds, and that he had been heckled and made to feel very uncomfortable when he went down to take a look at a pro-Palestinian march in London. He also talked about how there were Muslim communities that wanted to be ruled by sharia law. This is another valid point. In the ’90s I was vainly trying to study Islam in Britain. I found passages in some of the books published by the British Islamic press Taha calling for the establishment of autonomous Muslim communities in Britain governed by sharia law. Only about five per cent of British Muslims want Britain to be governed by Islamic law, but the demands from this section of the Muslim community haven’t stopped. About ten years ago I found the demand repeated in another Islamic book in one of Bristol’s bookshops. This argued for the acceptability based on Britain’s colonisation of North America. The first British colonies allowed foreign colonists to settle and populate their territories, keeping their own language and culture. The only requirement was loyalty to the crown. Thus Britain should allow Muslims to establish similar enclaves in Britain. This is sheer colonialism, but I’ve never seen it discussed by the British press or media. I think it’s because it’s far too close to what the real Nazis were saying about mass non-White immigration as an invasion.
As regards the current Tory scheme to tackle immigration, In addition to the left’s objections to putting asylum seekers on a plane to a country with vicious human rights abuses, the right have also been attacking the Rwanda plan on the grounds that it isn’t actually going to work. But Tice has a solution. He plans to cut immigration down to net zero. The numbers allowed into the country would be the same as those emigrating every year. But where would industry find the labour it needs? Easy. There are too many people on sickness benefit. There are more people off sick than ever before. We have to cut benefits to force them back into work and do the jobs currently done by migrants.
This seems to be the view of the Tory right, and particularly its broadcasting mouthpiece, GB News. I note they were off today ranting that there were too many people on sickness benefit, who should be made to work. We’ve heard this nonsense for nearly a year now. There’s no thought that the people off sick are genuinely ill, or any consideration why they should be so, like poor working conditions, the mental stress of having to feed themselves and their families and heating their homes on low wages, or forced into insecure work through zero hours contracts and the like. No, they’re all malingerers and scroungers, who need to have their benefits cut even further to make them do an honest day’s work. Britain’s welfare state is already so broken that needy claimants are left waiting weeks for the benefits they need and people are being thrown off them under the sanctions system for the most trivial of reasons. And if people are on sickness benefit, it’s because that right at this moment they’re so sick even the wretched DWP can’t find a reason to deny giving it to them. Besides which, if Tice, Reform and the Tories really wanted to make work pay as they’ve been loudly claiming for the past decade and a half, they should actually do something to ensure that their filthy rich corporate donors use the money they’ve given them in tax cuts to pay better wages. But this would contradict one of the other tenets of Thatcherism, that we need wage restraint to stop inflation.
Tice made it clear that he wants a multi-ethnic Britain, united by a common culture. This is fair enough, as without a unifying culture there is a danger that the different ethnic and religious communities will move further apart. He quotes Tony Blair as well as a number of others as saying that multiculturalism has failed.
But his vision of Britain is one of oppressive Thatcherism, with its exaggerated patriotism and contempt for the poor, the sick and the unemployed.
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