I caught a brief headline on the internet newsfeed yesterday about Starmer getting a bit flustered because a mayor somewhere had urged people not to vote for the Labour party but instead vote Green. This was round about the same time when Guardian journalist and author Owen Jones had written in his column that he had resigned from Labour and urged others on the left to take their vote away from them. Instead they should vote for the Greens or independent candidates. This was because Starmer had reneged on all the promises and pledges he’d made when seeking the Labour leadership. Most of you out there no doubt remember how he set himself up as a continuity Corbynism candidate. He’s said all the guff when he was with Corbyn in government how he admired him, and had pledged to support the renationalisation of the utilities and the NHS, restoration of the welfare state, greater rights for workers and so on. And the moment he got his backside on the chair, or possibly throne as he may see it, as head of the party he set about breaking all of them. The last straw, or last straw but one for Jones, was when Starmer declared he was going to follow the Tories self-imposed fiscal limits, and so keep to austerity. I have mixed feelings about Jones and the Guardian. Jones, I think, was one of those who joined in the fake accusations of anti-Semitism directed at Corbyn, as did the paper he worked for. The Guardian is popularly supposed to be far left, but it’s a Liberal paper that has urged its readers to vote Liberal/ Liberal-SDP Alliance/ Lib Dem far more often than it has Labour. What gives the impression that it’s a far left or at least Labour paper is its concentration on minority rights – anti-racism, feminism and gay and trans rights. But it’s economic outlook is firmly Blairite neoliberalism.
Jones has joined Mike, myself and many others in leaving the party and advising others, who really want genuine change, to put their votes to alternative, genuinely left-wing candidates and parties. Mike has been advising people to think very carefully about who they want to vote for after Labour threw him out for refusing to go on a training course about anti-Semitism, run by the people who had falsely accused him of it. This was Labour Friends of Israel or the Jewish Labour Movement, people who falsely conflate Jewishness with Zionism and anti-Semitism with the mildest criticism of Israel. The kind of people who joined Maureen Lipman in accusing Ed Miliband of being a monstrous Jew-hater almost on a par with the Hitler, about to hit British Jews with a hideous wave of persecution comparable to the bastard’s Third Reich or Mussolini’s Italy. This was because Milliband, hardly any kind of firebrand, had made a few mild and reasonable criticisms of Israel’s barbarous treatment of the Palestinians. Oh, yes, and Red Ed was also Jewish, though I think he was largely secular rather than observant. Not that it matters to these fanatics. I forgotten the precise figures, but about three fifth or four-fifths of the people expelled from the Labour party are Jews who dare to criticise Israel. Which should tell you that their claims to stand up for British Jews against anti-Semitism is just so much balderdash and codswallop.
Starmerism is just Blairism reheated. He follows Blair in his frantic enthusiasm for Thatcher, even waving the union flag and proclaiming his patriotism as she did. And he’s followed Blair in thinking that he could move to the right and appeal to Tory voters, press barons and donors and need not worry about the working class vote, as they would just have to put up with it as there was nowhere else for them to go. That’s no longer true. The Green vote has been growing. In Bristol they’re challenging the Labour party for control of the council. There are alternative socialist movements backing Corbyn in his constituency, aspiring Muslims politicians are standing as Independents. I don’t know, but the Trades Union and Socialist Alliance may still be around, as well as the Socialist Party, formerly the Socialist Workers’ Party, and they may be worth voting for. I’ve heard friends say they’d even vote Communist in preference to Labour, not because they’re Commies, but simply because they think they’d be preferable.
To the right of the Tories, meanwhile, are Reform and various other right-wing outfits, like Laurence Fox’s Reclaim and the New Culture Forum. These are also laying claim to the White, working class vote. Reform are especially – and ludicrously – hungry for a piece of the Tories’ action, with Richard Tice claiming that only his band of dements and not Sunak have a chance of defeating Labour. These fringe parties could very well chip away at the votes of the two main parties. For all the assumption that a Labour victory is certain, I think it’s very far from inevitable. This could be a very interesting general election.
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.
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.
I’m afraid I haven’t posted much over the past few days as most of its been about conflict in Gaza, and there’s just so much coming out about it that I really can’t keep up. I have, however, noticed the anti-left, anti-Palestinian bias of certain news outlets and organisations, such as the New Culture Forum and the Lotus Eaters and the appearance of the current head of the Jewish Chronicle, Jake Wallis Simon, to tell everyone that the protests against Israel and its barbarity towards the Palestinians is just ‘Israelophobia’. I think he’s written a book of that title, telling everyone that hostility to Israel is simply a matter of anti-Semitic prejudice.
Er, no. No, it isn’t. Israel’s critics, like Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker et al, as Jews are naturally extremely well-informed about Jewish history and the history and vile politics of the Israeli state. Greenstein and Walker both took the side of the Palestinians through their own research, not out of some pre-existing self-hatred or hostility towards the Jewish people. In the case of Tony, I think it started when, as a schoolboy, he took the side of the Palestinians in a school debate about Israel and the Palestinians. And what he found and read convinced him that the Palestinians were right, and had been unjustly persecuted. Jackie came to supporting the Palestinians through protesting against apartheid in South Africa. She was asked by a friend why she protested against it in South Africa, but not in Israel. Like Tony, Jackie’s very definitely Jewish, the daughter of a Russian Jewish father and a Black America Civil Rights worker mother. Her partner’s Jewish, and her daughter goes to a Jewish school. Many of the books against the Israeli persecution of the Palestinians are written by Jews or by gentiles, who support them. One of the books I’ve got on it has the title Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. This discusses not only the brutality of Israeli colonisation, but also the contempt the founders of Israel had for diasphora Jewry, which Tony also discusses in several of his articles. There are also Israeli human rights organisation campaigning against the oppression of the Israeli state. These include B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence. The latter is an organisation of ex-Israeli soldiers, which exists to talk about the atrocities they have seen and committed. As for Muslims, the impression I had is that they are very well informed about the Israeli state’s persecution of their coreligionists. The closure of mosques, for example, by the authorities is covered in their equivalent of parish magazines in a way that isn’t done elsewhere.
Hamas are a bunch of terrorist murderers, but the Israeli response has been massively disproportionate and constitutes war crimes in its turn. Also, support for the Palestinians does not equal support for Hamas and support for terrorism, despite the impression given by some of the marchers on the pro-Palestinian protests. There is a question of bias and spin in all this. The Muslim marchers on one protest were supposed to have carried Hamas flags and the black flag of jihad. But Mike didn’t see any evidence of this in the pictures the right produced of this march, and I can’t say I’ve seen any either. Some prats do seem to have been waving the jihad flag around, and there are accusations that some of the participants in another protest were chanting ‘jihad’. It’s certainly possible, but doesn’t mean that everyone there marching wants another genocidal war in the Middle East.
But the right is definitely spinning this as the evil anti-Semitic socialist left allying with the anti-Semitic Palestinians and Muslims to attack the completely innocent and virtuous state of Israel. Muslims and anti-racist activists have already commented on how British Muslims are seen as ‘the enemy within’, and it’s being spread to include the socialist left. One of the right-wing news channels – I’ve forgotten which one – had some pundit on who claimed that if Israel went, the West would be next. And a few days ago GB News had on an academic from a Jewish university in Vienna, who lived in the last Jewish area in the Austrian capital. This gentleman declared the present wave of Muslim unrest over Israel to be ‘the end of Jewish life in the West’.
He gave as his reasons the security threats to European Jewish institutions, such as synagogues and schools, incidents of anti-Semitic abuse and violence and the statistic that 70 per cent of French Jews would like to leave France. I find that hard to believe. No details were given of who carried out the poll, how reliable it was and the bias or otherwise in the questions asked. Back in the 90s and Noughties there were concerns about the way the French state seemed keener to clamp down on cases of Islamophobia than against anti-Semitism. The Financial Times explained it was because there was far more prejudice against Muslims then against Jews. Far more French people considered Jews fellow countrymen than Muslims. The lack of action didn’t come from indifference or hostility to Jews, but from the opposite: the French people, as a whole, were not anti-Semitic and regarded the Jews as part of themselves. Muslims, on the other hand, were far more vulnerable.
The academic was also worried about the loss of Jewish influence. There were only 400,000 Jews in Britain compared to 4 million Muslims. As the Muslim population increased, so would their influence amongst politicos. This is a fair point, but the size of the Islamic population didn’t stop the right-wing British establishment and that part of the Jewish community that considers itself the official leaders and spokespeople for British Jews, the Chief Rabbinate, the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Chronicle and associated grotty journalists running a very successful smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn. And whatever some fanatics scream, the severely normal British public aren’t anti-Semitic. Tony demolished this claim with some stats a few years ago showing that the overwhelming majority of Brits either had a positive view of their Jewish comrades, or didn’t think they were either particularly good or evil. The real anti-Semites were very much in a minority at 7 per cent. I dare say it’s gone up since, but almost certainly not as much as the right would like us all to believe.
And it looks very, very much like shabby fearmongering. Round about the time of the invasion of Iraq, the Spectator published a glowing review of a nasty little novel set later this century. In fact, I think it may have been set about now, in the ’20s. This imagined a future France, where the remains of the socialist left had united with militant Islam to seize power. France was now a Muslim state, and there was a new Jewish Holocaust underway.
And then when Corbyn was leader of the Labour party we had rather excitable individuals making the same exaggerated claims. Various celebs on the internet were tweeting to each other that it was like 1930s Germany all over again. Which it definitely wasn’t. If it had been, they’d have been in absolutely no position to complain about it on the net, nor would they be free to pursue careers or run businesses. And the only public performances they’d be allowed to do would be those designed to humiliate them. There were also various TV executives declaring that British Jews weren’t safe before departing for Israel. I have a feeling that one those saying that actually returned to Britain a few years ago, but I might be wrong.
I don’t see any of that. We had a protest in Bristol against the situation in Gaza. This was just for peace, with no racial denunciations. I haven’t come across any reports of Jewish Bristolians being abused or molested. There was Palestinian embassy in Bristol’s Old City, but I haven’t heard anything about that for years and there hasn’t, as far as I know, been any Muslim demonstrations here calling for the Jewish community’s death. What I do see is a temporary crisis, which certainly has the possibility to get much worse, the racial aspects of which are being grossly exaggerated in order to scare Jews and ordinary Brits into supporting Israel and against the socialist left.
The spectre of Cheddar’s oldest known inhabitant rose again last week in piece of controversy over the Beeb’s Horrible Histories children’s programme. This had included him as part of a segment claiming that Black people had always been part of British history. This has been widely attacked, particularly by one YouTuber who put up an entire video rebutting the programme on his ‘Survive the Jive’ channel. He then appeared with another historian on the New Culture Forum’s ‘Deprogrammed’ series on their channel.
Cheddar man was a late Palaeolithic skeleton found in the Somerset village of that name in 1903. The Concise Encyclopaedia of Archaeology, edited by Leonard Cottrell, and published in 1960, says this in its entry about him:
‘The complete skeleton of Cheddar Man is to be seen in the Cheddar Gorge in England. It is mounted to stand upright in a small museum at the entrance to Gough’s Cave.
The cave has been known since 1877. In 1903 the skeleton was found, together with flint implements and an antler baton-de-commandement, a tool now thought to be a shaft-straightener. Further excavations in 1927 produced some hundreds more flint tools, another shaft-straightener, bone awls, part of an ivory rod, and perforated shells and teeth that could have been threaded as necklaces. Some other human remains also came to light.
The caves in the sides of the Cheddar Gorge were hollowed out in the soft limestone by water. Several of them were inhabited by bands of humans towards the end of the Palaeolithic period. The population of Britain at the time was Homo Sapiens, and tools found with skeletons show that there was close cultural contact with France. The English Channel was not then formed, and once the British ice that corresponded to the Wurm glaciataion had retreated, it was possible for Upper Palaeolithic cultures to develop in Britain.
In Gough’s Cave, the flint tools were of the types associated with the Creswellian culture, as is shown by the small battered-back blades used as knives. This is a pale reflection of the splendid French Aurignacian of the Upper Palaeolithic.
Magdalenian influence is shown by the presence of the shaft-straighteners.
The bones of Cheddar Man were found near the entrance of the cave, for, with little means of artificial light at his disposal, Palaeolithic man was forced to live within the range of daylight. The spot where they were dug up is to be seen on the left-hand side in a grotto below the present ground level.’ (p. 130).
A few years ago a group of three scientists used DNA sequencing and forensic anthropology to reconstruct Cheddar Man’s face and complexion. This was a major advance at the time showing that surviving DNA from such ancient remains could be used to reconstruct the person’s original appearance. This caused astonishment, as from this it appeared that Cheddar Man was dark skinned, albeit with blue eyes. Scientists were amazed that Britons had retained a dark complexion at this late stage of human prehistory. Various anti-racist commenters stated that it gave a space for a Black presence in Britishness. And this is where it becomes controversial.
Firstly, one of the scientists involved retracted the reconstruction and claimed it was impossible to know from the DNA what the skeleton’s original complexion was. This was printed in New Scientist. The panel on ‘Deprogrammed’ did not mention this, but stated that the reconstruction was also matched and influenced by similar reconstructions from the Netherlands and elsewhere. also pointed out that the absence of White DNA does not automatically mean that Cheddar Man had dark skin. East Asians don’t have the same genes for pale skin as Europeans, but nevertheless the peoples of many of these countries have them because they have a different set of genes that do this. And the depth of Cheddar Man’s dark colouring seems to have been influenced by one of the scientists’ own pro-EU and anti-racist beliefs. It seems that there was a range of possibilities how dark this individual was. But this scientist, according to the Forum and its guests, deliberately made him as dark as possible, saying something about attacking Brexit and ‘white supremacy’. And when the reconstruction was photographed, it was deliberately made even darker.
Horrible Histories conflated a dark complexion with explicitly African ancestry. They stated that he was Black, which has a very specific definition in British law. It refers to people of specifically African ancestry, and excludes others, who may be similarly dark-skinned, such as the Tamils from southern India. And all the modern Blacks whose images appeared at the end of the Horrible Histories segment were all of West Indian and Black African ancestry. This, the Deprogrammed panel considered, was deliberately misleading, as it gave the impression that people of specifically African ancestry were present that far back in the Stone Age. They also considered it problematic because in trying to show that the peoples of the British Isles were or included Black people originally, it conceded ground to their opponents in viewing historical priority as a crucial, defining factor in Britishness. In fact, they said, there was nothing wrong in later, recent immigrants being regarded as British without projecting that presence far back into history.
There was much more in the discussion, which stated that the dark-skinned Palaeolithic peoples then gave way themselves to an influx of further, light-skinned people from the Ukraine, and 90 per cent of the Palaeolithic population was replaced within a space of two centuries. They found this difficult to imagine without ‘something terrible’ happening. By which they mean some kind of genocide or war of extermination. They commented on the irony that the new, 21st century scientific techniques were bringing back 19th century models. Which meant the Diffusionist ideas of 19th century archaeologists and anthropologists. These considered that human prehistory had seen a series of invasions and colonisations as one group of early settlers came and conquered its predecessors before being supplanted by later arrivals in its turn. This idea was later rejected in the 20th century by the idea that the underlying populations did not change over time, but simply adopted new cultural trends. The ancient Brits who became the Beaker people were still genetically the people they had always been. It’s just that they accepted the package of Beaker culture that had reached Britain from Spain and north Africa. Now it seems this view is being challenged by DNA information showing that mass invasions and population replacement really had taken place.
I realise this came from the right-wing New Culture Forum, but it seems solid science to me. I don’t think there’s much controversy over the assertion that the very first Homo Sapiens colonists of Europe were dark-skinned. This occurred around 50,000 or so years ago, and I can remember reading decades ago that skeletons from this remote epoch were like those of Aboriginal Australians. At this period, European humans were more archaic and robust in their appearance, with pronounced brow ridges, than their fellows in Africa, who were much more gracile. But it does seem, if the NCF and its guests are to be believed, that liberal, anti-racist ideology had played a part in creating a possibly misleading reconstruction of Cheddar Man’s appearance and the Beeb had also been misleading in claiming that Cheddar Man had been Black.
Since the Second World War western archaeologists have been very keen to avoid nationalist ideologies influencing the reconstruction of the past, including the reconstruction of ancient humans from elsewhere in the world with European features. Early reconstructions of the Scythian skeletons from the Pazryk region of Siberia were originally given Caucasian features by the Russian forensic anthropologists who originally reconstructed them. But later examination and reconstruction has shown that they had, as might be expected, east Asian features.
Now it seems that the racial bias has swung the other way so that scientists feel constrained to reconstruct ancient Europeans as dark as possible without considering this ideologically driven or racially biased.
Regardless of the racial issues involved, Cheddar Man is fascinating. Some of the other human remains that were found show signs of cannibalism. And the scientists who reconstructed his DNA also compared it with people in the village to see if he had any modern descendants. It turned out he did: the headmaster of the local school. His mother, however, strongly objected, wondering what people would think. And the people of the Palaeolithic have contributed to the appearance of modern Brits. Supposedly the genes for blue eyes come from them.
Hat tip to Mike and Vox Political for the meme on the cover.
These past few days I’ve been putting up videos of myself reading pamphlets I wrote and self-published a few years ago against the privatisation of the NHS and academy schools, which actually don’t perform better than normal state schools but support the corporate chains and the corporatist politicians who run them with an income stream. And they also support the Thatcherites by appearing to confirm their ideological view that private, as opposed to state, is always better.
Trev, one of the great commenters on this blog, left this comment about the destruction of the welfare state and the treatment of those, who are unfit to work, by the authorities and how this is ignored by Labour and the trade unions.
‘I’ve noticed they’re using the same language as the Tories (going right back to Cameron & Osborne), it’s always “working people” and “working families”, or “hard working people”, etc. Never just ‘we’re going to help people and famies’ , or even Working Class people, no, it’s got to be “working people”. Just another way of further marginalising those who aren’t working for whatever reason, the “economically inactive”, i.e.Retired, Unemployed, sick, disabled, carers, but for some reason this definition never includes the idle rich. There is a worrying agenda not being opposed or mentioned by either Labour or the Unions, and that is to force as many people as possible into work, especially targeting the elderly, sick and disabled (hence the mandatory Work and Health Programme). And either Labour nor the Unions are saying anything about the destruction of the Welfare State, including the NHS but particularly also our Social Security system. It is no longer possible to go “on the sick”. The Tories have abolished Sick notes and scrapped Incapacity Benefit, as well as increasing State Pension age. Anyone and everyone now are expected to work and are deemed fit enough to do so regardless of age and infirmity. You can get a ‘Fit note’ that says what you fit to do, and make a claim for LCWRUC (Low Capability fir Work Related Universal Credit) but which means you are still in the DWP SYSTEM, still answerable to a Jobcentre Work Coach and possibly still expected to engage with the world of work to some degree, to do some limited amount of jobsearch and attend jobcentre appointments/interviews as required, or face a WCA (Work Capability Assessment). The Tories are obsessed with getting even the elderly, early Retirees, sick and disabled people into work or hounded to be constantly seeking/applying for work, even though we have a near full employment and those people are not fit to work. And no one is saying anything about it.’
This is true, and getting worse. I’ve noticed the populist right – GB News and the New Culture Forum, for example, lamenting that there are supposedly so many millions claiming sickness or disability and demanding that they be used to supply the necessary labour they can no longer get from migrant workers after Brexit.
A vital part of this system is the Work Capability Tests, brought in by Blair as part of the welfare to work programme. This is a system of tests designed to ascertain whether the claimant is genuinely ill or disabled, or can do some work and so is ineligible for benefit. It was set up on the advice, and following now discredited scientific research of the American private health insurance company, Unum. Which company saw the increased numbers of people thrown off benefits under its system as a huge opportunity to sell them its wares. Blair’s establishment of the Work Capability Tests followed similar legislation, again introduced on the advice of Unum, by John Major’s Tories under Peter Lilley. The system assumes that a certain percentage of claims are always fraudulent, and so this number must always be found fit for work. Even when they blatantly aren’t. There have been cases where terminally ill people have been declared so, and where stupid assessors have asked amputees when they expect their limbs to grow back. And seriously ill and disabled people have died after being thrown off the benefit they need to live on. There have also been a large number of successful appeals.
I wrote the pamphlet when Mike was struggling to get the stats for the number of people who had thus died after being denied benefit. And it was a struggle – the DWP did everything it could not to give Mike the information, although he succeeded in getting some. And the answer of the Tory government to the very many successful appeals has been to introduce legislation to make challenging DWP decisions very difficult, such as denying claimants legal aid.
It’s a profoundly wicked system, but it appeals to the right-wing, tabloid mentality that everyone on sick pay or welfare generally are evil scroungers, as opposed to the ‘hard-working people’ the Tories laud, but never reward. Unfortunately, I have no illusion that Starmer, if he gets in power, will ever reform it.
This story broke yesterday, just as I’d receive a message from Dawn Butler asking me if I’d join the Bernie Grant programme for developing future Black leaders and politicians in the Labour party. Obviously, they’re not aware that I’m white, and so wouldn’t be eligible even if I wanted to. There have been people, who’d declared themselves to be ‘trans-racial’, similar to the peeps who’ve sexually transitioned, but unlike transgender peeps, no-one’s taken them seriously. When they’ve managed to get into posts and positions reserved for genuine Blacks and people of colour, they’ve caused outrage and been ejected. On the other hand, Bill Clinton was hailed as America’s first Black president before Barack Obama, and I think David Beckham was hailed as an important Black role model. Which just shows you how fluid symbolic racial identification can be.
Three of the right-wing YouTube channels, including that of the internet non-historian, posted videos discussing the decision by Haringey local council to begin Black-only lessons on Saturdays at Coldwell School in Muswell Hill. These would be in partnership with the Nia academy and were intended to help Black pupils with their literacy. The children would be introduced to Black fiction and literature, and the teaching would be by race-appropriate people. In other words, by Blacks. These staff would receive £50 per hour.
The internet non-historian considered that this was an attempt to close the academic gap between Blacks and Whites, in which Black pupils significantly underachieve compared to their White and Asian counterparts. The gap has narrowed and widened over the years, but has always remained despite multiple attempts to close it, beginning with the desegregation of American schools. Zena Brabazon, below, Haringey’s head of schools and education, issued a statement which seemed to say that this was the intention, and that the council was committed to giving everyone a first-rate education. Except they clearly aren’t, when Blacks are given extra lessons, but no similar extra teaching is given to children of other ethnicities.
Zena Brabazon
The New Culture Forum posted a video about it, calling it ‘Apartheid in Schools’, which is a fair description of what is a discriminatory policy. They also point out that the section of the population that actually does worse academically are White working class boys, of whom fewer go on to university than Blacks. The policy seems to be copied from America, where there have been reports that schools in California have refused to teach pre-calculus to Whites and Asians and only teach it to Blacks and Hispanics as a way of closing the achievement gap between these ethnicities in Maths. Mahyar Tousi, another right-winger who openly supports Reform, noted on his video about it that someone on GB News had said that Whites were free to set up their own such groups. Tousi was firmly against that, as this would just mean more apartheid. He just wanted everyone to be given the same teaching by the state. He had no objection to voluntary Black organisations giving extra lessons to Black students outside school, in the way that Asians and Poles had done for their communities. My own view here is that if a White group did set up such a school purely to aid underprivileged Whites, it would be viciously attacked by the Guardian and the rest of the self-appointed anti-racist left as horribly racist and supporting White supremacy.
I sympathise with the rationale behind these extra lessons, but this is nevertheless a disgusting, racist policy. It shows that whatever Zena Brabazon and the rest say, they don’t believe in giving Whites and Asians the same academic opportunities as Blacks. It wouldn’t surprise me if those White families that are able to do so, at the very least choose a different school for their children or try to get out of the borough completely. This policy could contribute to White flight and the further segregation of ethnic communities. Though if Whites start moving, the Groan and the rest will accuse them of racism rather than examine the conditions or policies that make them leave.
Nigel Biggar: Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (London: WilliamCollins 2023).
Nigel Biggar is a professor of Moral Theology at Oxford, and this book is his rebuttal of the current attempts to portray the British Empire as a monolithic force for evil, a racist project that resulted in the extermination, enslavement and oppression of millions of the world’s indigenous peoples. A monstrous empire comparable to the Nazis’ Third Reich about White Britons should feel not pride but deep shame. Biggar recognises that the days of empire are over, but considers that the contemporary attacks on British imperialism and legacy are part of a wider attack on White British identity. In this book, he presents the case for the empire as a positive force. He revisits particular incidents and episodes in British imperial history, such as slavery, the Raj and Colonel Dyer and the Amritsar Massacre, the treatment of indigenous Canadians in the mission schools and the mass famine they experienced, British rule in Egypt, the extermination of the Tasmanians, Trevelyan and the Irish Potato Famine, The Anglo-Boer War, the British expedition of 1897 against Benin and the Maoris in New Zealand, and presents a far more positive case. Time after time he shows that damning comments from colonial officials showing them as racist genocides indifferent to the suffering of the colonised have been distorted. In one instance, it was actually made up from parts of three different comments. Trevelyan, the head of the British Civil Service at the time of the Irish Potato Famine, is a case in point. He is rightly admired for his work cleaning out the corruption and modernising the Civil Service, but has been roundly condemned for his supposedly uncaring attitude towards the starving Irish. I’ve forgotten the exact quote, but it runs something like ‘it’s all their fault for not being properly sensible and providing for themselves.’ In fact, this was only half of what Trevelyan said. He carried on to say that he did not believe this was the case, and was fully behind the government giving state relief to the famine victims.
British Governor of Tasmania: A Defender, Not Genocide, of Aboriginal Tasmanians
The same is true of the British governor of Tasmania in the early 19th century, who attempted to round up aboriginal Tasmanians in a vast net in order to deport them from mainland Tasmania to an offshore island well away from White settlement. He is supposed to have said something about indigenous Tasmanians being doomed to extinction by Whites as part of the natural, inevitable process of events and that they should be expelled from the country in order for it to be given to Whites. The governor did say that, but as with Trevelyan, it was only half of what said. He continued by stating that he did not believe this to be the case. Indeed, he was intensely concerned about the maltreatment and murders of the Tasmanians by the White settlers. His attempt to round up the remaining indigenous Tasmanians and relocate them offshore wasn’t done to benefit Whites, but was intended to protect the Tasmanians from White brutalisation and abuse. And so he goes on, throughout the book, going back to the original sources and documents to show how specific incidents and individuals have been misrepresented as part of the attack on British imperialism. There’s even something positive to say about that blackguard Cecil Rhodes. Biggar acknowledges that Rhodes isn’t a poster boy for the British empire. Nevertheless, there are instances where he showed genuine concern for Black Africans. For example, during the 19th century a small Black electorate emerged in South Africa. It was numerically tiny, consisting of about 5,000 people. Nevertheless, it existed. And when there a move by the South African authorities to disenfranchise them, Rhodes stood up to oppose it. In another incident he personally went deep into African tribal territory to settle a dispute over land he had acquired for White settlement with the African nation from whom he had acquired it. His party was small, consisting of himself and a few colleagues. As part of the settlement reached with the indigenous people, he returned several hundred acres to them. And when he founded the Rhodes scholarships to Oxford, he deliberately left it open to students of any colour.
Controversy Over Biggar and His Investigation of Imperialism
Imperialism, and especially British imperialism, is intensely controversial and Biggar has personally suffered for his attempts to investigate and examine it away from the assumption that it is automatically malign. He wanted to teach a course at Oxford on imperialism. This was to be not just about British imperialism, but also that others, such as China. This resulted in a storm of protest and denunciations by hundreds of people, including not just students but also Oxford faculty. These protests in turn led him to write the book. Its publication was troubled. It was originally taken up by Bloomsbury, but they cancelled their contract, but fortunately Biggar found another publisher in WilliamCollins. Since then, he has spoken about the controversies about the British empire and his book on the New Culture Forum and the National Conservative convention. I realise that his attitude towards present-day British and western international diplomacy is very different than mine. He is fully behind the use of military force by the west acting as the world’s policeman, and is scornful of those who oppose it. These people, he believes, want Britain to become something like the minor European countries who remain morally pure by never using their military forces in defence of justice elsewhere in the globe. Having looked at the recent western military campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq and the toppling of Gaddafy in Libya, I believe that these ventures were not done from any kind of altruistic concern for these countries’ peoples, merely the entirely selfish interests of western multinationals and the oil industry. Despite my disagreement with his views of present-day international politics, I do believe he has done an excellent job of defending the British empire.
British Concern for a Multicultural Egypt
For example, when it comes to the British takeover of Egypt, he quotes British colonial governors and officials telling the Foreign Office that if there was a conflict between orders from Britain and the interests of the Egyptian people, they would back the Egyptians. This was entirely accepted by their superiors back in Britain. When it came to drafting a constitution for the country, they were concerned that Egyptian citizenship should not be restricted to ethnic Egyptians, but should also include the Christian Copts as well as Armenians, Greeks and other resident ethnic groups. Reading this, I wondered if this was the ultimate origin of the same multicultural attitude that has determined that Britain’s ethnic minorities are as equally British as the indigenous Whites. And the British did not intend to rule the country forever. Initially, they expected to be in charge of the country for only a few years until the Egyptians themselves had learned and mastered modern system of government. But as time went on, this process was increasingly difficult and drawn out, and so the time spent governing the country lengthened. But as imperialism wore on, there was the expectation that Britain was only temporarily holding these territories in trust until their peoples were capable of governing themselves.
Massacres Committed by Indigenous Allies and their Enemies
Elsewhere he shows that British officials themselves were not always racist thugs. Far from it. He quotes travellers to Africa, who observed that the District Commissioners, far from disdainful of the peoples over whom they ruled, were in fact intensely interested in them, keen to show particular items and features of interest to visitors. Some of the atrocities committed by British forces, such as those during the conquest of India and the Mao-Mao rebellion were perpetrated not by White British forces, but by their indigenous allies. In the case of the Mao-Mao, these were generally the result of tribal feuds. And the Mao-Mao were perfectly capable of committing horrendous massacres themselves and atrocities themselves. He quotes one British diplomat or soldier, who entered one African village with Black soldiers after the Mao-Mao had attacked and butchered its people. This was right down to elderly women. Part of the Kikuyu’s motives for rebelling was opposition to British attempts to ban female circumcision. This resulted in a squad of Kikuyu attacking an elderly female missionary known for her opposition to it in her bed. They forcibly circumcised her before murdering her.
Colonel Dyer and the Amritsar Massacre
One of the other atrocities committed by the British army was the notorious Amritsar massacre by Colonel Dyer, in which the British army opened fire on a mass independence demonstration in Amritsar Square. Dyer was afraid that the meeting would result in further disorders and erupt into a rebellion like the Indian mutiny. The massacre has since become a byword for British brutality in India. But the attitude of the British authorities and public at the time was outrage and condemnation, not support. Dyer was recalled to England, there were speeches denouncing his actions in the House, and the Colonel tendered his resignation following notification that the army would not longer employ him. Dyer himself, surprising, appears not to have been racist. He enjoyed mixing with Indian soldiers as much as White British. When he was recalled to Blighty, he found that a squad of Indian NCOs and squaddies had voluntarily drawn up an honour guard to accompany him to the train station. He also demonstrates the hypocrisy of the denunciations of Dyer’s actions, while Indian forces have done exactly the same. There have been 11 massacres of protesters in Amritsar by Indian troops since Dyer. This included one episode where the Indian army forced protesting students to crawl the length of one street just as Dyer had forced his Indian victims.
Annexation of the Transvaal
Biggar also presents an alternative interpretation of the annexation of the Transvaal. This has also become notorious as a British invasion of an independent Afrikaner state. But Biggar goes into some of the issues involved to show that it was rather more than simply a cynical grab for land and imperial dominance by the British. There were concerns about the Afrikaner treatment of the Uitlanders, who formed a sizable minority in the Transvaal. These were frequently White Brits working in the mining industry. And they were especially worried that an independent Transvaal would promote a general Afrikaner rebellion through South Africa resulting in the downfall of British authority. This would not only be bad in itself, but they also feared that it would lead to the enslavement of Black South Africans due to the Afrikaner opposition to the ban on slavery in the British empire.
Benin, ‘City of Blood’
The book also critically examines the literature denouncing the 1897 British expedition against Benin. This has become controversial because the army carried off as spoils of war the famous Bronzes, sculptures of chief’s heads, which formed part of shrines to their vital spirit. It has been seen as yet another attempt by the British to grab land and establish a trade route past Benin to the peoples further north. Benin was an obstacle to trade, true, but another issue was that Benin was actively attacking and raiding other African states for sacrificial victims. This was described by Bacon, the British intelligence officer on the expedition, in his 1909 book, City of Blood. He describes people lying, pegged out on the ground or on sacrificial alters, with cross-shaped cuts in their abdomen by which they were disembowelled. Anti-imperial writers have tried to discredit this account as inventions or exaggerations. One of those who has done so is Dan Hicks, an archaeologist and now museum director who has thrown his weight solidly behind the decolonisation movement. Biggar criticises these attempts, one of which is simply an assertion that it must be an invention.
The expedition was also launched as a reprisal for the murder of a British governor and his party, who had gone to the city lightly armed in order to negotiate some kind of settlement to the dispute. They were subject to an unprovoked attacked, the indigenous bearers shot and butchered, and the governor and his White colleagues murdered and sacrificed.
He also deals with the allegation that the British army’s forcible acquisition of the Bronzes constituted looting under the articles of war. In fact, it was common practice for the British army to seize treasure from defeated enemies, which were then sold to defray the costs of the expedition and provide for the widows of fallen officers. This only became illegal in 1899, two years after the expedition.
Britain and Famine Relief in Ireland
He also considers several instances where the British appeared indifferent to suffering of the colonised peoples, especially from famine. One of these is the notorious Irish Potato Famine. But contrary to the impression given, the British did try to provide famine relief. They opened soup kitchens. However, there were fears that this would lead to welfare dependence, and so the provision of food by the British government was curtailed. It was supposed to be handed over to the Irish relief systems, paid for by the country’s ratepayers. But the British failed to realise that there were far fewer ratepayers in Ireland than in Britain, and as a result the Irish were unable to provide the amount of relief needed. And some parts of the Irish nationalist movement come out of this just as badly. Some nationalists believed that proud, self-respecting Irishmen and women should not demean themselves by accepting British charity.
He also tackles the Easter Rising and the Irish Revolution, showing that initially the mass of ordinary Irish people were against it. By 1919, as the rebels themselves recognised, the causes of popular resentment had been removed. For example, the political disabilities of Roman Catholics had been gradually removed following Catholic Emancipation in the 1830s. One of the rebels’ leaders actually said that the Irish rising was the only rebellion where the majority of the population was against it. What turned Irish public opinion against the British was the brutality of the British forces, and particularly the Black and Tan auxiliaries, charged with putting it down.
British rule in India has also been accused of being responsible for the repeated famines its people suffered. But the book shows that this was due to the country’s climate. There had been repeated famines during the 18th century and 19th century due to these conditions, which were well out of the Ray’s control. As for the notorious Bengal famine, this was caused by the Japanese cutting off grain supplies from Burma.
Canadian First Nations, Famine and the Mission Schools
The book also tackles the maltreatment of indigenous Canadians in the mission schools set up to give them a modern education. These have become notorious for the abuse, starvation and deaths from disease their indigenous inmates suffered. But as with so many things, this is only part of the story. In fact, the British authorities expected indigenous Canadians to become part of wider Canadian society. The western education given in these schools was to prepare them for this. Moreover, the indigenous Canadian nations themselves had appealed to the British to provide them with modern industrial and agricultural training. And just as there were terri8ble schools where the pupils were brutalised and maltreated, so there were others where they were well-cared for with friendly teachers. Former pupils at these schools have written their accounts of their happy schooldays, but these have not been published in the press. Instead, they appear in diocesan and old school magazines. If this is true, then it’s nothing but left-wing censorship and a deliberate distortion of the historical reality.
It then goes on to deal with a terrible famine affecting the north-western Canadian First Nations. This has been denounced as a holocaust, and the British and Canadian authorities accused of deliberately withholding needed aid. But the book demonstrates that such aid was actually beyond the ability of the state to provide it. At the time the north-western territories were governed by only a tiny number of officials and policemen. The number of Mounties in the region number only about 24. And despite the angry denunciations of the famine as a genocide and holocaust, the number of deaths was tiny: 42 or so. I dare say that this could have been proportionately great, given that many First Nations number perhaps a couple of hundred, but this is hardly comparable to the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust.
In New Zealand, the British governor reserved four seats on the legislative assembly for Maoris, who were given universal manhood suffrage decades before White men, who were still subject to property qualifications.
Economic and Industrial Benefits of British Colonialism
The book also describes some of the benefits that came with imperialism. Free trade has been blamed for much of the ills that beset its indigenous peoples, but the book shows that at the time, people of all classes of British society passionately believed in it. And not just as an economic system. It was believed that through free trade, nations would no longer go to war with each other. Similarly, across the world the British built railways, established irrigation systems and there was the transfer of technology and scientific expertise from Britain to its colonies. For example, a party of Indians journeyed to Britain to study the new techniques of iron founding and went back to set up India’s own iron and steel industry. They also established the former colonies’ universities. The founders of the Raj were also intensely interested in Indian culture and literature, and it was they who revived the study of Sanskrit. The book recognises that racism did exist. Indeed, he quotes Indian nationalists as stating how they learned to hate Britain due to the abuse they received serving with Whites in the armed forces. But this is just one part of the imperial story.
There are, of course, episodes of imperial history that cannot be remotely justified, such as the slave trade. So that first chapter describes how Britain went from slavery to become the world’s policeman in combatting it across the globe.
Moral Principles and Critical Assessment
As a moral theologian, Biggar is careful to lay out the philosophical principles by which a particular action or course of actions should be judged good or bad. While he is a theologian, the principles themselves are rational and so can be accepted by atheists and religious sceptics. And he is very critical of the ideological qualifications of the empire’s critics. They are, he states, not historians but largely literary critics using a very narrow range of texts. This is a good description of the various academics and students of Postcolonial Studies. Like Critical Race Theory, this is a philosophical revision of Marxism. One of its fundamental texts is the writings of Frantz Fanon, a Black Caribbean author and observer of the Algerian rebellion against France. Fanon’s writings are something of a classic, and published as such, but his attitude towards the truth was, ahem, elastic. He wasn’t interested in whether something was factually correct, only if the narrative served the revolution.
Conclusion
This is a hugely fascinating and informative book, which I enjoyed immensely. But I also felt annoyed, even angry while doing so, as time and again it showed the falsehoods I had grown up with or which have since been produced as part of the ideological attack on the Empire. I felt I had been lied to by perfectly decent people for perfectly understandable reasons. I hope this book helps to clear away those lies.
The history of the British Empire is always going to be controversial, and there are horrendous episodes of brutality and exploitation. The book recognises this complex history, and states that the bad cannot be separated from the good. Niall Ferguson appeared on a radio programme a few years ago to give his views on the British empire. When asked whether he thought the empire had been a force for good, he recognised that much evil had been done, but considered the good narrowly outweighed the evil. I believe that any fair assessment of the British Empire should recognise both aspects in order to come to a fair assessment. At the moment there is considerable pressure to present only negative views and accounts of the British Empire. I hope this book adds balance to this debate.
Even so, like all history, people need to read both sides of the debate before coming to their own, independent conclusions. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the aim of the Critical Social Justice movement, which increasingly demands that only its views should be taught and accepted in schools, universities and business.
Policy Exchange is one of those wretched right-wing think tanks that has been poisoning British politics for decades. I think apart from the Tories they were also a force influencing New Labour policies. But this is interesting, nonetheless. I found an article from them on their website, ‘White Departure from Inner City Britain Halting’, which cites their research showing that Britain is slowly becoming less segregated. Some of this is from Blacks and other ethnic minorities moving out of the inner cities to the suburbs. But it also shows that the ‘White Flight’ from the inner cities has stopped has stopped and may actually be reversing. This is an important issue. One of the factors behind the Oldham race riots a few years ago was that the very strong separation between White and ethnic minority communities. They lived in separate areas and had little contact with each other, which allowed for the extreme right to spread their noxious ideas. Much of the article comes from interviews with senior politicians done by the widower of Jo Cox, the Labour MP assassinated by a White supremacist. Nevertheless, it also notes that just under two-fifths of Brits say they feel like foreigners in their own country. This has been a strong influence in Whites leaving multiracial and multicultural areas, in some cases along with hostility from the ethnic minority population. A little while ago the New Culture Forum as part of their ‘Heresies’ series posted an interview on YouTube with the author of the book The Demonization of the White Working Class. He stated that working class Whites were being squeezed out of large cities like London by ethnic minorities and the new global rich. The influx of Whites to Black and Asian areas is causing a different set of problems, however. The extract below states that it’s professional White moving into areas like Brixton. This gentrification has provoked Black and Asian resentment as those minorities become priced out of their home areas by these wealthy incomers. The extract I’ve posted here also discusses the implications these demographic changes have for both Tories and Labour. The article, which is part of a longer report against the politicisation of the courts, How and Why to Constrain Interveners and Depoliticise Our Courts, begins:
‘The decline of the White British population in inner city Britain appears to have halted and may even have reversed, according to a new report on ethnic integration and segregation.
The new demographic analysis for Policy Exchange by the Webber Phillips data analytics group confirms that neighbourhood segregation has been slowly declining for most ethnic minority groups as they spread out from inner city heartlands into the suburbs but it also finds that the level of mixing between ethnic minorities taken as a whole and the White British majority is barely moving at all. It is a similar story in schools, with over 40% of ethnic minority pupils attending a school that is less than 25% White British.
This confirms previous trends, but what is new is the stabilisation of the White British population in big cities like London, Birmingham and Manchester. And in some parts of inner city Britain there appears to have been an actual increase in the White British as white young professionals move in and poorer minority residents are driven out by higher rents, think Brixton in south London.
Brendan Cox, the widower of Jo Cox the MP murdered by a white identity extremist and now a campaigner for more cohesive communities, argues that “Britain is on the verge of a diversity boom” yet the issue of integration has been a political orphan with no consistent lobby for it and with neither of the main political parties having a strong incentive to pursue it.
Cox’s analysis is based on anonymised conversations with politicians of all parties including former prime ministers David Cameron and Tony Blair, five former Home Secretaries (Amber Rudd, Charles Clarke, David Blunkett, Jack Straw, Jacqui Smith) and other experts and leaders of ethnic minority organisations. A full list of those interviewed can be found in the report.
One of the former PMs is quoted as saying, “Later in my term I started to feel this was one of the most important issues, that there was nothing more important… The tough questions are schools, housing, immigration, you start with wild enthusiasm then look at the policies that stem from it and say ‘oh christ do I really need to do that.’”
And a former Home Secretary is quoted as saying: “It feels like a poisoned chalice. Long timelines, multi departmental approach and lack of definition about what we mean and controversial policy areas, are all real brakes on strategic action. It’s seen as unclear, potentially messy and with indeterminate benefits.”
Integration only tends to surface in response to terrorism or immigration crises, says Cox, and both of the main Westminster parties have historic legacies or ideological baggage that directs them away from the issue. For the Conservatives, argues Cox, “when it comes to integration and minority communities it’s not simply about fears of being seen as a nasty party but a racist one .”
For Labour, according to MPs interviewed for this report, “the political challenge comes from a political reliance on minority voters in particular areas of the country.” Cox says in theory this might incentivise engagement in integration given high levels of support from minority voters but many community leaders, especially in Muslim areas, are either ambivalent about integration or see it purely through a discrimination and anti-racism lens.
In other words parts of the left still view integration mainly as a problem of inequality, while the right avoids it out of fear of being branded racist. Cox, however, argues that there are some grounds for optimism. This is partly because the issue of integration and segregation has ceased to be an “us and them” issue and has evolved into an “everyone” issue. A 2021 YouGov poll found that 38% of British people agreed with the proposition that: “Sometimes I feel like a stranger in my own country.” And more than a fifth of people in England say they are always or sometimes lonely.’
This is going to be controversial, but I think this video is important as it exposes the biases and distortions in the official reportage of the Pakistani grooming gangs and the fear of being accused of racism that allowed them to get away with their crimes for decades. I’m very much aware that the New Culture Forum is part of the free market fanatics, the IEA and that GB News is a Conservative media outlet pushing the culture war issues because the Tories don’t really have anything else to use to boost their image. But this is a very, very real issue, and the ingrained refusal to investigate and prosecute these men because of their religion and ethnicity has led to the horrific abuse of 1,500 + extremely vulnerable girls in Rotherham alone. And it also demonstrates how this scandal has its deeper roots in the refusal to tolerate anything that contradicted the multicultural dogma that states that ethnic minorities and immigrants somehow automatically adopt British culture and values when they immigrate to this country. These men didn’t, and the interviewees state that this was partly due to the nature of chain migration itself and the backward culture of the region from which most of the groomers came – the Mirpur region of Pakistan.
The video is part of a new series, ‘Deprogrammed’, being launched by the NCF, Presumably the title means that its against the supposed falsehoods with which we’ve been programmed like robots by the lamestream media. The video features Harrison Pitt, a writer for the European Conservative, interviewing Evan Rigg, a Canadian freelance journalist, and Charlie Peter, a presenter on GB News who produced a documentary on the Pakistani grooming gangs. It begins with Sajid Javid’s 2018 investigation of the gangs. Despite expectations, this turned into a whitewash as the Tories were sensitive about race in the wake of the Windrush scandal. It therefore concluded that the majority of abusers and gang members were White men. The report was originally withheld from publication and it took an internet petition with 180,000 signatures to get it released. In fact, the report on which Javid’s report was based contradicted its findings. It stated that the collection of statistics for ethnicity had been so poor, it was impossible to say which race the majority of offenders was composed of. What evidence there is stated that White men constituted 30 per cent of offenders, and Asians 28 per cent. This was despite Whites constituting 85 per cent of the British population and Asians 8 per cent. By these statistics, Asians are massively overrepresented as groomers and abusers.
Peter’s stated that one effect of his documentary was that it had helped changed the law. The news about the gangs in Rotherham had first been broken a decade ago by Andrew Norfolk, after which more reports from other towns flowed in. However, these reports were mealy-mouthed and heavily censored. More documentation on the ethnic composition of the gangs is needed, along with the imprisonment of their members. Many of those convicted served only light sentences and returned to the same areas in which their victims were living afterwards because of a reluctance to send offenders to Britain’s overstretched and crowded prisons. He supported the launch of Cruella’s National Crime Agency taskforce because local authorities and police forces and had been too mired in political corruption. The problem was that these organisations prioritised community cohesion and multiculturalism over the safety of women and girls. The girls were further regarded by politicians and the media as belonging to the underclass, wild girls whose unsafe lifestyle brought their abuse on themselves. There was the further problem in that it had gone on for decades, but the people who initially talked about it were far right. In fact, they were often ordinary, decent people who were branded far right because they talked about this taboo topic. When patriotic, decent, socially conservative members of the left spoke about it, they were bullied and harassed. Anne Crier was ignored when she spoke out in 2003. Jack Straw was pilloried for complaining about it, and Sarah Champion was similarly removed from Labour’s front bench for the same reason. Peters therefore considered Braverman very brave for taking on the rape gangs. He was struck by her comments that the truth wasn’t racist as something that needed to be said to defend a government policy.
The abused girls were targeted because they were White. This was a result of mass migration, which had produced a very insular and clannish community. The immigrants involved came from the very backward Mirpur and Kashmir regions of Pakistan. It was chain migration operating through first cousin marriage. This prevented these communities from establishing links with the wider community and entrenched the traditional gender power structures that gave men immense power and control over women. It also meant that these abusers were extremely difficult to catch because family members did not want to inform on each other. This occurred at the same time the social solidarity of the wider community was declining due to the economic devastation of local industries and a process of social atomisation. Sexual behaviour became more licentious during the ’90s and Noughties, when it became acceptable to go out of an evening for casual sex. But this was also contrasted with the moral conservatism and judgmental attitudes of the tabloid papers.
The emergence of the Pakistani rape gangs flew in the face of the classical liberal doctrine that held that relentless waves of unwanted migrants would not lead to the destruction of social bonds, and especially the left-wing mantra that ‘diversity is strength’. Peters here contrasts the state of three of the countries with the highest rates of diversity – Liberia, Congo and Papua New Guinea, with very homogenous societies like Denmark, Japan and South Korea. Nevertheless, the assumption is that the more Britain becomes diverse, it can still function like Denmark and the other two nations. It’s assumed new immigrants will assimilate, but assimilation only goes so far. The Canadian journalist remarked that although he comes from a very similar nation, he will never be British. How will people from very different cultures like Liberia do so? Will it be their children or grandchildren who become British? Some migration is needed for countries to remain dynamic. The problem in Rotherham was that it was too much, too quickly and unwanted. And as the new immigrants could join the electorate after a few years, this resulted in the creation of a new electorate without the consent of the old one.
He then discusses the noxious activities and careers of some of those involved in the gangs and the suppression of action against them. One of these ratbags was Maruf Hussein, Rotherham’s Community Cohesion Officer, who refused to accept the reports that 1,500 + girls were being molested. The gangs were also assisted by White female converts to Islam, such as Shifra Ali. Ali set up a bogus taxi hotline which was supposed to supply taxis to take the girls to school. She died in 2009, unfortunately, before she could face justice. After Hussein resigned, he rebranded himself as an anti-racism activist. It has also been alleged that Hussein also launched a failed accusation of racism against a Labour colleague on the council for expressing concerns about the grooming gangs. He was then found working for NHS England as a diversity and inclusion officer. on £49,000 p.a. It is a disgrace that the doctrine of diversity hasn’t been harmed and even been strengthened by it, because it showed how such monstrous crimes could be ignored through censorship and lies. Once again the 2020 report is mentioned for its conclusion that the majority of abusers were White men. It showed that the ‘blob’, the right-wing name for the obstructive civil service and the diversity industry could spin the gangs as a White problem. This is despite the fact that there were 19 trials in which the gangs were composed only of Pakistani men. And while the police may not collect statistics on ethnicity, the names are included in the trial records. Further studies have also shown that Pakistani men dominate this issue. But the blob, Sayeeda Warsi, the Guardian and parts of the government will accuse you of racism if you talk about this.
The conversation then goes back to 2015 and comparison with the way the continental countries such as Germany were able to combat the Syrian rapists in Cologne and other cities. The interviewees make the point that Syria isn’t the same as Mirpur and Kashmir. England also has a particular nervousness when it comes to migration and accusations of racism. Peters then goes back to 1870 and Gladstone’s violent denunciation of the Turks’ atrocities in eastern Europe. His comments, if made now, would result in his being thrown out of every political party except, perhaps, Reform and the SDP. And there is the problem of the ethnic composition of constituencies affecting what their politicians are prepared to say about particular issues. Would Gladstone have made his comments, if his constituency had included a large Turkish population? He mentions the comments Tracey Brabin, the mayor of West Yorkshire, made three weeks ago on the Daily Politics. Brabin dismissed Cruella’s comments about the grooming gangs as ‘dog whistles. This is two years after a teacher in Batley was forced into hiding for showing cartoons of Mohammed in class as part of a lesson on free speech. It’s also just a few weeks after the controversy when an autistic boy scuffed a Quran, and his mother was dragged before the local mosque to beg its congregants’ forgiveness in what is described as a ‘Maoist struggle session’. Present at this kangaroo court was a police inspector urging restraint. Peters saw parallels here with the grooming gangs, especially as Maruf Hussain had also spoken to the police. If Brabin cannot tell the truth about these problems, what else will she cover up?
The video ends with a discussion of what ordinary people can do. They state that there are good resources out there about what people can do if they feel their children are being abused. The NSPCC is one, although they have reservations about them because of the charity’s statement that different communities should not be singled out. They are particularly impressed with Maggie Oliver and her campaign and organisation against the gangs.
Peters is questioned about the response by the working class to the documentary. Did they regard him as a hero? Peters replied by stating that he was only a documentary film-maker and not a hero. The real heroes were the survivors of the abuse, who put their lives at risk to talk to him. He was immensely grateful to them. It was easier talking to them and editing their accounts than talking to politicians as there was no waffle. As for Braverman’s proposed actions, the proof would be in the pudding. He would be very impressed if the offenders were imprisoned and deported. The survivors were cautiously optimistic, and Peters said he would be there to hold the government to account if it failed them.
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