The Tories still don’t get racism
I didn’t bother writing earlier on the controversy surrounding Tory candidate Nigel Hastilow, who was chucked out of the party for essentially endorsing Enoch ‘Rivers of Blood’ Powell’s views, because I knew it would follow the same old pattern. He would claim that he was only reflecting the “man on the street”, his supporters would claim that he was being censored by “political correctness gone mad”, many in the Tory rank-and-file would bitch and moan but he would be sacked, maybe to be reinstated later (quietly). We’ve been there plenty of times before.
What I find interesting, and perhaps annoying, about the whole controversy, which has been raging for a full 3-4 days now, is how morally bereft and stupid the response has been from the ‘leading lights’ of the Conservatives online.
First we have to start with what Enoch Powell said. The current editor of Birmingham Post, where Hastilow was previously an editor, said this on Tuesday:
Next year marks the 40th anniversary of Enoch Powell’s infamous Rivers of Blood speech, delivered in Birmingham, in which the Tory front-bencher railed against immigration and repeated a constituent’s forecast that in Britain by 1988 “the black man will have the whip hand over the white man”.Powell’s inflammatory language – he told of the last white woman left living in a street in Wolverhampton whose life was made a misery by immigrant families and their children whom he described as “charming, wide-grinning piccaninnies” apt to chant “racialist” at her – shocked Conservative Party leader Ted Heath and Powell was promptly sacked from the shadow Cabinet.
Powell’s point was that brown / black people coming here would wreck this country because they only wished to subjugate white people. He saw no likelihood that Britain could ever be a multi-racial society at ease with itself. White and black could not mix at all. Not only that, he used highly inflammatory language to whip up those fears.
So, lots of credit where it is due, Daniel Finkelstein of the Times nails exactly what was wrong with Enoch Powell.
So what do the Tories think of all this?
The deputy editor of ConservativeHome, hilariously, blamed the BBC and Observer for forcing the Conservative Party’s hands. That really is the height of obfuscation; he doesn’t want to say the Tory head-honchos should grow balls and stand by their racist legacy so instead we get:
Political realities made this resignation understandable but, for me, it’s very disappointing. Most of the blame belongs to the media (particularly the BBC and the Observer) for giving Labour’s press team the scalp they wanted all too easily. There was nothing racist in what Hastilow said. Fact. Is it completely naive to wonder if the Party could have stood its ground? It would be interesting to hear Osborne or Spelman spell out exactly how they disagreed with his comments. Political correctness triumphed over common sense…”
Here we go again – the media, political correctness are to blame… our man is totally innocent… Enoch Powell was right…. yada yada.
Nothing racist in saying that Enoch Powell was right? In other words one can quote or agree with racist bigots without being one yourself? What rubbish.
Meanwhile Iain Dale also concurs that, “Anyone who had actually read what he said would have been hard pressed to find anything racist in his comments.”
Funny that, Iain Dale is on record condemning homophobia, quite rightly, but doesn’t seem to think that agreeing with someone as racist as Enoch Powell should be condemned.
Oh incidentally, he also condemned Simon Heffer’s homophobia, who co-incidentally says in the Daily Telegraph: When will Tories admit that Enoch was right?
I know lots of Tory MPs and peers in receipt of the Tory whip who believe Powell was right on immigration, who know he was no racist and who believe the party’s greatest sin was not to take him seriously. Are they all to be sent to outer darkness, too?
Good question Heffer, thanks for exposing the racist underbelly of the Tories, which you belong to too.
But there is a problem with Hastilow because, as the Birmingham Post’s editor said:
His comments fit the Powellite agenda perfectly – casual references to foreigners, almost as if they are a sub-species, the mythology of immigration, the clear insinuation that a further influx of immigrants to this country must be a bad thing because immigrants are a bad thing. It was Enoch without the Oxbridge classicist allusions – repackaged for a 2007 audience, but Enoch just the same. Once an argument is constructed at this level, it is impossible to have a sensible debate about how best to control the number of immigrants permitted to settle in this country.
The Tories cannot bring themselves to properly condemn racism. They will either blame the media, blame political correctness or pontificate about how difficult it is to step out of line.
Or they launch with bluster into how immigration is so high in the UK, conveniently ignoring that Powell’s speech was about preserving whiteness 40 years ago and most immigrants these days happen to be…. white. While the country is accepting a multi-racial society as fact, the Tory high-command still cannot bring themselves to do it. Their minions scream about political correctness while the head-honchos sack racists almost as if they’re sad to do so.
For all their talk of modernising, the Tories cannot bring themselves to accept that a multi-racial Britain is a fact of life.
I can predict how this thread will weave in the responses. You wil be accused of political correctness, hysteria, of being in denial of the oppression of white Britons by black and asians, and there will probably be a fair few Asians agreeing with that analysis.
I condemn racism when I see it, not when somebody phrases something in a way that could tenuously be construed to being racist.
I read the Heffer article yesterday and didn’t read anything in it to justify your “racist” claim Sunny. But that’s probably because (jerk of knee) I’m a racist underbelly in your eyes too.
I would be interested (and value) a refutation of his key points however because they sounded reasonably convincing to me even though, underbelly though I may be, I doubt I’m actually any more racist than, say, you.
Sorry but you’ve got this all wrong. The fact of the matter is that he WAS representing the views of his local constituents. Here is a frequently ignored quote from the BBC website:
Mary Docker, chairwoman of Mr Hastilow’s local Conservative association, said earlier she did not think he had done anything wrong. She told BBC News 24: “He’s basically just raising issues that have been raised with him when he has been canvassing the area. “All he is doing is just relaying the views of the public, which is what a politician should do.”
And she’s absolutely right.
http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com/2007/11/05/the-river-of-blue-blood/
thanks for exposing the racist underbelly of the Tories
Just wandering what a racist underbelly looks like
And if you’re sight isn’t as attuned as you think?
I was reading an article about all this in one of the major newspapers earlier this week, where Enoch Powell apparently claimed that there were many areas where he felt “some of the peoples of India are superior to white British people — intellectually, for example”.
Tying this in to the infamous “whip hand” quote, perhaps this was one of the root causes — he was very threatened by Asians because he felt they were smarter than white people, and would therefore successfully be able to rise to positions of authority and power over them in various areas of British life.
The fact that he clearly thought this authority would be abused to “oppress” white people indicates considerable paranoia on his part. Unless it was due to an awareness of what imperial Britain had done to Africa and the subcontinent, so he was unable to think outside of that mentality and assumed that other people would behave in the same way if they had the opportunity to do so (and/or he thought black & Asian people would be motivated by “revenge”).
Incidentally, Powell was determined to secure the position of Viceroy of India and even learnt Urdu in order to assist this ambition. He was devastated when it became apparent that the drive towards Indian independence was irreversible and that he would therefore not achieve his dream. Gives you a further insight into his psyche, perhaps.
Oh, so we are not even allowed to discuss what he said now, are we? Can you just clarify something? Your remarks seem to insinuate that you believe me to be a racist. I find that deeply insulting, not to say libellous. Yes I do condemn homophobia, and I have also condemned racism many times on my blog. This kind of post brings politics into disrepute.
Bloody party politicians! The Yin-Yang of a perfectly balanced pile of turds. Two faces of the same grubby coin, that by now should have fallen down a drain, into the sewer, where it belongs.
Forgive the over-simplified analysis here, but I think it’s appropriate:
It doesn’t matter who is in power – they think they know what is best, so go headlong into causing massive problems of various sorts. The “opposition” parties simply sit there and pick at these problems, jeering with the benefit of hindsight like a bunch of ironically unintelligent know-it-alls. Reaching agreement is not the aim – just dominating, disagreeing on principle and squabbling like toddlers.
Never mind what’s good for you or I – they couldn’t care less as long as they cling on to power, yet even that’s too hard to manage for some of the more egotistical maniacs.
Population gets bombarded and whipped up by the media (who have a ruthless sell-sell-sell agenda), and harrangued into making their “choice” every five years or so. A “choice” that exists only in name, between a bunch of universally undesirable bastards. Never mind that none of them actually “represent” anyone or anything but their own narcissistic personalities.
We let (though it’s not as if we have any say in the matter by conventional means) a rabble of dangerous, egomaniac, eliteist toddlers take the steering wheel on our behalf, and they balls it up every single time.
WHY?
I mean, I’m under 30, and I’ve spotted the pattern – it’s not as if it’s easy to miss!
Do away with the lot of the useless bastards, so the rest of us can get on with creating functional communities where co-operation, trust and the desire to reach mutually beneficial outcomes rule.
We do not need politicians – they are the problem, and their lust for easy point scoring and short-termist agendas will be the death of us all.
(And when I say “death”, I mean “death”, literally.)
Sunny,
‘Powell’s point was that brown / black people coming here would wreck this country because they only wished to subjugate white people.’
Piffle. Enoch Powell saw his ‘own people’ subjugating the black and brown-skinned denizens of the Third World. His anti-imperialist credentials were so strong he’d make Harold Pinter look like Norman Podhoretz.
After all, Enoch never described himself as a small ‘c’ conservative. His views were libertarian first and foremost.
‘He saw no likelihood that Britain could ever be a multi-racial society at ease with itself.’
Sorry to say this Sunny, but Powell was right. Even Madeleine Bunting, the doyen of happy-clappy left-liberalism, is coming to the realisation that multi-racial societies make us miserable and mistrustful.
‘White and black could not mix at all.’
You need a quote or citation to back this up.
‘Not only that, he used highly inflammatory language to whip up those fears.’
True. The ‘Rivers of Blood Speech’ was hysterical and lacked nuance. I agree.
‘In other words one can quote or agree with racist bigots without being one yourself?’
Hold you horses Sunny. Enoch could speak several Indian languages. And he enjoyed travelling. Hardly a Little Englander?
‘The Tories cannot bring themselves to properly condemn racism.’
Yes, the Conservative Party are SO bigoted that Shailesh Vara, Sayeeda Warsi, James Cleverly, Priti Patel and Adam Afriyie are forced to wear monocles and jackboots to compensate for their ‘inferior’ complexions!
We’re mistrustful of immigration because we’re mistrustful of identity politics – which, as you well know, draws attention to trivial (but potentially explosive) parts of our identity: skin colour and religious dogma.
‘For all their talk of modernising, the Tories cannot bring themselves to accept that a multi-racial Britain is a fact of life.’
You use ‘Britain’ to denote London and the Pennine towns. There are other places in this principality which are a lot less diverse.
“Oh, so we are not even allowed to discuss what he said now, are we?”
Isn’t that in fact what Sunny, and you, are now doing?
Unless your definition of being not allowed to discuss something is when someone disagrees with your interpretation.
Incorrect. The “Vdare” website that paragraph links to even contains the following:
“This was a man who had come into politics to save the British Empire – the good points of which, mysteriously, are now once again mentionable in polite company – above all in India, where he hoped one day to be Viceroy. (He spoke several Indian languages.) When in 1947 the Labor government announced its decision to abandon India, much more precipitously than anyone had expected, Powell wrote that “it was a shock so severe that I remember spending the whole of one night walking the streets of London trying to come to terms with it.” ”
Not exactly an “anti-imperialist”, particularly in relation to India.
You may find this article interesting:
Enoch Powell made the Rivers of Blood speech out of ambition, not conviction
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/bruce_anderson/article3129684.ece
Also interesting to back this up is:
As health minister in the early 1960s (a good one, so I am told), he recruited nurses from the West Indies
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/michael_white/2007/11/enough_of_enoch.html
Further according to Michael White he regretted making the speech:
“He made the 1968 speech – which he is said to have regretted when the damage was done – in protest against Labour’s 1967 Race Relations Act.”
“I once wrote a profile of Powell for Radio 4 and concluded that, in the late 1960s, he got the leadership bug and both said and did things that were disreputable in that pursuit. Most of the time he was more disinterested, sometimes barking, but always interesting. It was his friend Macleod who said you always had to get off the train of Enoch’s logic before it hit the buffers.”
Indeed as White points out Powells assertion that”the black man having the whip hand” by the late 1980s did turn out to be wrong.
The speech was made for leadership purpose not out of conviction or vision. As it was the vision was wrong and the leadership ambition died a death.
Those who support Powell fail to see the flawed logic of his speech. With the commonwelath lost and a need for cheap labour, many proporous economies need cheap labour migrants to sustain growth and keep wages in check.
Hence in the USA you have the Mexican and Latin American workforce, in the UK ex-colonials and now Eatsern Europeans, in Spain North Africans, same for Italy.
Powell’s speech was from a period decades earlier when Britain could dictate to the colonies and thus make money. His timing was to make it in the 60’s when he was just plain wrong.
BTW For Powell’s own purposes as a minister he was prepared to bring in coloureds. Then for leadership ambition he said they were bad.
So clearly the speech was for ambition not out of conviction when it was Powell who brought over coloured labour.
It is strange how those who keep saying they are unable to discuss it keep:
1. Highlighting he was right – thus are in fact discussing it.
2. Keep discussing it whilst saying they can’t discuss it. In fact almost every few years they keep bringing up Powell and his speech and saying they can’t discuss it to actually discuss it.
As a speech it has been discussed more often than others with his supporters always sayign it can’t be discussed. It was discussed a few years ago at some anniversary of the speech and now again. But apparently we are told it isn’t discussed!!!!!
Jai
Thanks for the response.
‘Not exactly an “anti-imperialist”, particularly in relation to India.’
According to Simon Heffer’s excellent biography of Powell – Like The Roman – Powell was markedly less supportive of Indian rule toward the end of his career.
Sunny:
Surely the Conservatives condemned racism by (rightly) sacking him? Compare that to Labour’s support for a woman who branded her opponent a paedophile in order to win a seat.
Having read the speech in full for the first time I have to agree with you. Powell’s words were not taken out of context- he was an intelligent man and knew what he was saying.
Surely a sweeping generalisation. On that basis, all Labour people support paedophiles because Margaret Hodge (who presided over a paedophilia scandal) was promoted to Children’s Minister, and the party (and people like Chris Paul) have not distanced themselves from Miranda Grell.
Or is that generalisation inaccurate?
Jai:
I see nothing wrong with that ambition at the time.
You’re striking quite a ‘hard done by’ tone there Iain, do you really feel like you’re (ie a Tory) an oppressed minority or something?
Rumbold #17 spot on.
Sunny you have really come out with your guns blazing on this one
Rather inflammatory language you use making sweeping generalisations about Tories. Labour and other lefties are worried that they are about to be subjugated by the right-wing whipping boys
The Tories sacked the guy who mentioned invoked the dreaded name of Enoch Powell. They do get racism. Acutely. I have talked several times with the black conservative MP Adam Afryrie. Does he too have a racist underbelly?… The Tories you are referring to are the 1% who should be in the BNP not the Tory party.
Leon, I think there can be something said for the literal demonisation of ALL Tories and of the dreaded Daily Mail readers as one evil, contiguous block of people. (Yeh I got that one from LC).
Yes there is, and its this: given that conservatives have plenty of outlets and powerful interests to advance their agenda [some of] them acting like an oppressed minority is a bit rich.
Rumbold,
Not everything is “relative”, my friend. Ruling over foreign populations via forcible subjugation is fundamentally wrong, regardless of which period of history is involved or how commonplace such attitudes and activities may have been at the time.
Actually, I agree with Iain Dale here, that there was nothing racist in Hastilow’s article: It was very carefully worded, so that precisely this claim could be made in its wake.
But that doesn’t make the argument any less unpleasant or intellectually lazy, as I tried to explain earlier this week.
[some of] them acting like an oppressed minority is a bit rich.
Isn’t that what everyone’s doing nowadays, acting like an oppressed minority? Sounds to me like they’re just playing the game like everyone else. That’s the sad state of affairs of poltics in this country!
One could argue that it’s wrong for you to discriminate against wealthy Tories, just because of their background, accent or education. But one cannot be arsed! (And actually doesn’t have a great deal of sympathy either!)
Preview button is my friend
Enoch enoch
Who’s there?
Powell
Powell who?
White Powell
(sorry)
Bad Kismet, go and sit in the corner…
Worth remembering Hastilow wrote the article in question for Enoch’s old local rag. Not so strange he should’ve got a mention really.
I bet you’d have loved the job too eh Rumbold?
Yasmin Auntie has an excellent article on “the new xenophobia” here:
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/yasmin_alibhai_brown/article3129693.ece
Jai
‘excellent article.’
If you regard shrill moralizing as ‘excellent,’ then yes, Yazzmonster’s article is indeed ‘excellent.’
She doesn’t attempt to engage with any of the social, political, cultural or economic problems posed by mass immigration – problems which we know exist. Her article is more akin to an emotional protest than it is to anything else. You don’t learn anything substantive from Yazzmonster Brown. All you get is an annoying, monotonous, repetitious whine.
Yazzmonster brown, predictable, whinging, inaccurate, leftist double speak as per usual.
“Poles and Lithuanians are the new blacks, no question.”
Oh ok. No question. Bugger I was going to argue… She does talk a hell of a lot of crap. But the left laps it up. It’s all about being oppressed and showing solidarity with the oppressed, you see. And it’s about seeing oppression in the evil hegemony of todays society, forcing Poles to come here and earn 3 times the wage they would back home, fully against there will, amid rampant racism against them!
What utter crap.. But they lap it up, still.
Some have more legitimacy than others to make such a claim. Pity the ‘woe is us’ Tory brigade can’t see that.
And what the hell does she mean they’re the new blacks? WTF is she talking about!!!
Sam Coates: I condemn racism when I see it, not when somebody phrases something in a way that could tenuously be construed to being racist.
Yes we know Sam, he wasn’t being racist but…. Enoch Powell had a point. Isn’t that right? When is agreeing with a racist bigot not racism? He phrased it carefully to say that others were agreeing with Enoch Powell but essentially he wanted to say it. Gimme a break – all you did was pathetically blame the BBC and Observer for those comments.
Iain Dale: Your remarks seem to insinuate that you believe me to be a racist. I find that deeply insulting, not to say libellous. Yes I do condemn homophobia, and I have also condemned racism many times on my blog. This kind of post brings politics into disrepute.
Actually Iain, I can call you a racist if I wanted and it wouldn’t be libellous. It’s called fair comment. But I didn’t. I said you were more fussed about people having to toe the party line rather than the substance of what he was insinuating.
The fact that you’ve condemned racism in the past has no bearing on the fact that your party seems to have suddenly found much love for dear old Enoch Powell.
Boy: I read the Heffer article yesterday and didn’t read anything in it to justify your “racist” claim Sunny.
Why not read the link to Daniel Finkelstein’s blog?
Is comment 1 an example of the kind of sarcasm that brings nothing to the debate and will be deleted on the superblog?
I’m just asking
““Poles and Lithuanians are the new blacks, no question.”
I’ve shared this story before but it still makes me laugh. I was in Forest Gate sometime last year and two elderly Asian men were completely ignoring the begging pleas of an albanian woman complete with the regulation baby
When she gave up and walked away, they muttered in Bengali: “These people are taking over our streets…”
Rumbold: Surely the Conservatives condemned racism by (rightly) sacking him? Compare that to Labour’s support for a woman who branded her opponent a paedophile in order to win a seat.
Sure they sacked him, but it seems to me, going by the reaction from these leading lights, that they’re quite sorry he was sacked. There’s no universal condemnation of his implicit support for Powell. It cannot be compared with Miranda Grell because she’s not being (thankfully) supported by Labour top brass. I don’t agree with her case either.
Or is that generalisation inaccurate?
I’ve never absolved the Labour party of all silly decisions. I don’t think Margaret Hodge is particularly competent or likeable either. But we’re talking here about the leading lights of Tories, especially online.
Though they did this before with that minister who was intially sacked for calling people ‘black bastards’ and then was quietly re-instated.
Sunny, to be fair, the Tory leadership askled the guy to step down.
“Tory candidate Nigel Hastilow, who was chucked out of the party for essentially endorsing Enoch ‘Rivers of Blood’ Powell’s views”
This is dishonest, Sunny. I like that weasel word ‘essentially’.
Hastilow said :
######################################################
When you ask most people in the Black Country what the single biggest problem facing the country is, most people say immigration. Many insist: “Enoch Powell was right”.
Enoch, once MP for Wolverhampton South West, was sacked from the Conservative front bench and marginalised politically for his 1968 “rivers of blood” speech warning that uncontrolled immigration would change our country irrevocably.
He was right. It has changed dramatically.
###################################################
Most people would acknowledge that immigration has changed Britain dramatically, whether they think that change to be positive or negative. I can’t interpret this as an endorsement of the entire Powell package. Hastolow did not ‘essentially endorse’ Powell’s views, he agreed with one of them.
And then you say that the debate ” would follow the same old pattern”. Yup. It sure has. A mighty chorus of ‘See ! The Tory mask has slipped again !’
(I don’t pretend to have studied the works of Mr Powell, but his seeming belief that different races can’t live together(strange for a man who loved India and spoke Urdu) need not necessarily be seen as racist. After all, no less a person than Andrew Marr believes it too, if you take seriously his assertion that racism can best be abolished by “widespread and vigorous miscegenation, which is the best answer” – in other words, racism will only vanish when there are no separate races. A depressing conclusion).
“It cannot be compared with Miranda Grell because she’s not being (thankfully) supported by Labour top brass.”
Er, sorry, but is the Labour Party not funding her appeal?
“Though they did this before with that minister who was intially sacked for calling people ‘black bastards’ and then was quietly re-instated.”
Who is that? To what position has he been reinstated?
I don’t pretend to have studied the works of Mr Powell,
Well then I suggest you do before pontificating about how deliberately referring to such a bigot, but being careful to not endorse him personally, is hardly likely to make non-whites feel any better.
I suggest you read the article by Finkelstein above or by the editor of the B’ham Post.
Jai and Jagdeep:
Sorry, I meant nothing out of the ordinary about such an ambition at the time.
Sunny:
At the end of the day, he lost his chance to become a Tory MP because of this. We Conservatives prefer action rather than words. I only brought up the Grell case to show you that a particular party could not be considered a monolithic block.
Who was that then? I presume you are not referring to Colonel Mercer, who actually seems to have found himself working for Gordon Brown, after being sacked by the Tories.
As Jagdeep said, the Conservatives sacked him. You cannot get more decisive than that. If he had been a member of the Labour Party, he would have said “I am sorry that anyone was offended, and lets all move on and learn lessons from this.” And he would have kept his job. Or if he had been a Lib Dem and praised suicide bombers, they would have given him a peerage.
Powell’s invoking of a future scenario in which ‘the black man has the whip hand over the white’ is really interesting rhetoric, laden as it is with echoes of the slavery plantation, and the frightening inversion of other colonialist fantasies and paradigms.
Invoking such a symbolism is actually a very base kind of racial politics. Saying that the streets will become rivers of blood was an incendiary and dangerous piece of fear-mongering that cast black and Asians as malignant and violent shock troops of a future racial war to subjugate white people.
If there are people who cannot understand why Powell is viewed in terms that preclude rational debate over the issues of immigration or race in the UK, they are either disingenuous, liars, provocative or just (lets be charitable) extremely naïve. Powell was a race baiter. His race baiting still appeals to many, it would seem. To deny these resonances is to argue in bad faith. It also shifts the territory of the debate of these legitimate issues (of immigration and social cohesion) into very squalid, unessecary territory.
Colonel Patrick Mercer’s downfall:
What’s that got to do with this thread Rumbold?
Sunny,
Yes we know Sam, he wasn’t being racist but…. Enoch Powell had a point. Isn’t that right? When is agreeing with a racist bigot not racism?
Enoch did have a point. He predicted the rise of identity politics.
More diversity means more money spent on quangos, equality commissions, race-relations commissars, diversity sensitivity consultants, community ‘spokespeople,’ multi-lingual broadcasters and multi-cultural re-education camps.
Diversity debases democracy and it interferes with our right to speak freely.
Fact.
#36 Kismet
Hehehe. Regulation baby. LOL.
Yes of course there’s black/asian/ethnic hostility towards the Poles. Even quite hostile attacks
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6609119.stm
Many would have you believe it’s just the white Daily Mail readers. Nevermind, that, most of the people I see reading the Daily Mail on the trains I get are asian or black! Lots of black and asian people are right wing, and anti-immigration – and more right wing than many white people. Are they being racist, or just protecting their their status quo? Is that so wrong?
If you work at a company for 15 years, wouldn’t you expect a bit of loyalty, as to compared a new comer?
Sunny – were you referring to Patrick Mercer?
To what position has he been reinstated??
albanian woman complete with the regulation baby
kismet, i have a feeling you mean roma woman
#45 Jagdep “What’s that got to do with this thread Rumbold?”
Context, obviously.
The corporal in question promoted several black soliders, and his biggest defender was a black soldier.
So democracy can only be achieved in a ‘non-diverse’ society?
So presumably, for example, the United States of America is a ‘debased’ democracy?
Or maybe like Britain today it is not a a democracy at all, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda.
No — the word you’re looking for is ‘Bollocks’
“kismet, i have a feeling you mean roma woman”
They’re all the same anyway
(ok that was irony for those j0nz haters)
jOnz
Please explain the context that it places this discussion in. I genuinely don’t know.
Rumbold, if you’re going to make an intervention like that it’s probably better if you explain your point explicitly.
Oh I get it Rumbold, just read chris c’s reply.
Well, I wonder if some of the people here understand what Powell’s speech represents to non-white folks in Britain. Remember, this wasn’t a measured reflection on the issues. It was a provocative piece of race-baiting. Powell was adopted by the National Front and he never ever disavowed this association, even though his name became synonymous to Black and Asian people with skinhead racist violence, the NF marching down the streets with Union Jacks and swastikas. He had decades to at least comment on, and distance himself from this tendency, but he never did. So when you introduce his name into the debate, it’s not going to have the same resonances for ethnic minority people as it is to Tories, or whoever, who are oblivious, or actually enjoy the thrill of the race-baiting aspect of his rhetoric. That’s the way it is. Do people like Iain Dale or our own Rumbold even realise this?
Jagdeep
‘So presumably, for example, the United States of America is a ‘debased’ democracy?’
Yes it is. If you read Hugh Davis Graham’s Collision Course or Nica Vace’s The Presumed Alliance you’ll start to think twice about America’s supposed ‘democratic’ credentials.
America’s political system is dominated by special interest groups and race-relations hucksters like Abe Foxman and Jesse Jackson.
What’s more astonishing, however, is the colour of crime. Follow the hyperlink and prepare yourselves for some jaw-dropping statistics. ‘Rivers of Blood’ sounds quite apt, methinks.
Simon Heffer is a buffoon, which is anyway, by trying to make Enoch Powell’s speech about culture not race. Given that Powell said: the black man will have the whip hand over the white man”. – the idea it could be about culture and not race is just stupidity.
To make it clear, I’ve never been supportive of neither Patrick Mercer nor Digby Jones being part of Brown’s “govt of all talents” either.
I hear you Jagdeep.
You have the common touch needed in a good communicator.
Fellow whiteys. Listen hard. He has a point.
Why play the EP card unless 1) you’re trying to reach out to a certain type of person or 2) you’re trying to provoke another.
Tories and race.
A report by a left-wing think tank that is unpublished and misrepresented is demonising minorities, yet not a word from our Rumbold over Mr Haitslow, despite asking him for a reaction to his comments. Priorities.
Mike, your conception of what a democracy actually is is flawed. Democracy is a cacophony, a perpetual shifting palette, and the existence of special interest groups is a part of this process. Their claims are refuted, debated, or accepted. Only if you perceive democracy to be a form of majoritarianism within an ethnically singular society in which minority groups of any kind do not exist, can America be in any way described as a ‘debased’ democracy. But that’s just because your understanding of democracy is moronic. Your characterisation of America as not being in any way a democracy is simply idiotic. It’s a V-Dare fantasy, one that allows you to conflate ‘democracy’ with a racial fantasy, and very attractive to you. But it’s still a load of bollocks, predicated on racist assumptions that are self justifying and dependent on half-cocked, mangled understandings of what a democracy actually is.
Jagdeep
Well, I wonder if some of the people here understand what Powell’s speech represents to non-white folks in Britain.
Emotional blackmail won’t get you anywhere with me.
Remember, this wasn’t a measured reflection on the issues. It was a provocative piece of race-baiting.
No, it wasn’t measured. But I’d be hard stretched to call it ‘race baiting.’ As a housing minister in 1956, Powell sat on a cross-departmental committee that considered aspects of the effects of mass immigration. He was acutely aware of the problems from a very early stage.
‘Powell was adopted by the National Front and he never ever disavowed this association’
Powell’s views on almost everything were anathema to the NF’s.
That’s the way it is. Do people like Iain Dale or our own Rumbold even realise this?
You’ve just proven my previous point: diversity debases democracy. Instead of engaging with the substance of Powell’s speech, you resort instead to self-pity and self-righteousness – a toxic combination.
But I’d be hard stretched to call it ‘race baiting.’
I see…. so the point about a black man subjugating the white man was…. a pipe dream?
diversity debases democracy.
What you mean to say is you don’t like your views challenged,
Emotional blackmail won’t get you anywhere with me.
Clearly, logic won’t either.
Again… you misunderstand my points:
Mike, your conception of what a democracy actually is is flawed.
Not at all. I believe in deliberative democracy – a decision-making process based on public consultation and political participation.
Their claims are refuted, debated, or accepted.
Not when it comes to party political donations.
Your characterisation of America as not being in any way a democracy is simply idiotic.
Of course it’s a demcoracy… Just not a particularly enlightened one. Professor Robert Dahl agrees. And if you read Fareed Zakaria’s The Future of Freedom, you’ll come across a section on interest groups making exactly the same point.
It’s a V-Dare fantasy, one that allows you to conflate ‘democracy’ with a racial fantasy, and very attractive to you.’
Ad homonym insults. Grow up.
It’s worth considering the central imagery of Powell’s speech. Powell was a man who chose his words carefully. He was a speaker of many different languages, was an artful orator of the old-school variety, a classicist, a Latin grammarian of some incredible fastidiousness . This was a man who knew exactly what he wanted to say, what he wanted his words to mean, and what resonances his words would have to his audience.
The secondary central image of his speech (after the streets flowing like the River Tiber with blood), was that soon, ‘the black man would have the whip hand over the white’. Let’s consider this. Because in a speech that references general ‘Commonwealth’ immigration, he specifically invokes an incredible image that will be lost on many people, even Asians who don’t have this image in their collective historical memory as African-Carribeans do.
Powell is invoking the slavery plantation here. The whip hand is the right hand of the white overseer of the sugar-cane or cotton fields, who would whip the black slave in the plantation fields if they disobeyed or did not work hard enough. It would probably be impossible to invoke, psychologically speaking, a more degrading, humiliating, provocative and racist construction to address the dynamic of black and white relations in Britain, than this one. No image more loaded with acute pain and starkness to Afro-Carribean people than this. Powell knew what he was doing. He knew what he was saying. And he inverted it to say to his white audience — ‘the white mans natural place, of holding the whip over the hand of the black slave, will be changed, and he will soon hold the whip over us instead’
This is the imagery, implication and resonance that Powell employed in his speech. He was a race-baiter who chose his words carefully, who lived for decades knowing that his iconography and rhetoric was in constant use for these purposes, and who employed the basest rhetoric of racial domination to demonise and provoke. That is Powell’s legacy. It is why his invocation is so incendiary. Yet there is still some incredulity at this, amongst Tory bloggers and some white folk.
Mike, your conception of what a democracy is, is a V-Dare racial fantasy. A racial majoritarian society is a democracy according to your V-Dare bollocks rendering, and the United States of America is reduced to the status of a ‘debased’ democracy because of this.
Anyone who disagrees with you is debasing democracy? Like I said, the advocate of a majoritarian racial franchise as the benchmark of what a democracy is will always find anything other than that (including disagreement) to be a fatal miscegenating debasement of that purity. You project too much — self-pity and self-righteousness are at the heart of your moronic contentions, a toxic brew indeed.
Sunny – sorry to bug you.
Can we just clear this up.
You implied that the Tories had reinstated Patrick Mercer.
Is this in fact true?
Take your own advice and refrain from asserting those who stick a needle in your eye as indulging in self-pity or victimhood you pompous twunt.
Jagdeep making good points here. So however did Powell – hence the Immigration Act 1971. It comes down to the language used, Powell was talking against immigration but his whole tone made it clear the decisive factor was skin colour. It wasn’t acceptable then, and it isn’t acceptable now.
Hastilow evoked Powell’s speech, but he didn’t evoke any of the racist parts of it. I think certainly he should have been called to account for his sources, but I think forcing his resignation was taking it too far – it’s going to be a debate-stifler even among those who’d never dream of quoting Powell and for whom the immigrants origins are less of an issue than his skills.
Sunny,
I see…. so the point about a black man subjugating the white man was…. a pipe dream?
If you look at figures for black-on-white rape in the United States (compare them to the relatively low figure for white-on-black rape), the ‘whip analogy’ isn’t so far off the mark.
What you mean to say is you don’t like your views challenged
There’s a difference between ethnic diversity and diversity of opinion. The latter is essential for societies to function properly. And no: unlike the Stalinist Left or the ‘left-liberal’ Left, I’m a big believer in the adversarial tradition. I practically encourage conflicting viewpoints.
Clearly, logic won’t either.
Cheap insult… *yawn*
Jagdeep
‘Mike, your conception of what a democracy is, is a V-Dare racial fantasy.’
‘My’ conception of democracy is similar to John Rawls’ conception of democracy. V-Dare is a Web site devoted almost exclusively to race-related issues and to the ongoing immigration debate. It doesn’t really touch on the airy-fairy question of democratic governance.
‘Anyone who disagrees with you is debasing democracy?’
Disagreement is fine. It’s just the way in which you express your disagreement. Instead of addressing Powell’s speech in a mature and responsible fashion, you go on a complete tangent – talking absolute gibberish about slavery plantations. You then proceed to make spurious, ideological references to vDare magazine. And then you gesticulate about what a ‘horrible’ person I must be for not agreeing with the left-liberal consensus on Enoch Powell.
But that’s what happens when a society becomes too diverse. The politics of victimhood consumes everything and everyone.
Why on earth is Mike droning on about the USA? There are no parallels at all.
No — that was Enoch Powell and his racist epigones (like you) talking gibberish about slavery plantations.
Translation —–> uppity piccaninnies (the diverse) who respond to and address racist fantasy and demonisation debase the purity of a racial majoritarian fantasy of democracy.
You have the biggest self-pitying victimhood complex here, and like all self consumed victimhood morons, you project it in a spluttering paranoia all around to those who disagree with you.
As opposed to the calm, measured response to it from yourself and jOnz, eh Mike ?
I suspect you don’t work for an organisation which supports and promotes diversity as part of its business ethos and corporate culture (or you just choose not to subscribe to it).
Diversity facilitates a range of different viewpoints which enable a greater strategic understanding of any given situation or subject, a less insular and parochial worldview, an increase in the competitiveness of the group concerned, an increase in creative, lateral thinking, and a mitigation of the risks associated with linear, homogeneous thinking and experiences.
Extrapolate that to an entire country, and you’ll begin to gain an understanding of why diversity is a positive attribute for a nation.
Given the history of black people in the United States, your point is fundamentally flawed. If one is going to use the situation of American black people as ammunition to condemn immigration and diversity, let’s not forget that the majority of the African-American population (not counting more recent immigrants from Africa) didn’t exactly have much choice about their migration to America.
I expect that’s why the NF actually asked Powell to join their group, an invitation he declined ?
Perhaps you should group up too, given your usage on this very thread of ad hominem (spell it correctly) insults such as “Yazzmonster”, “annoying, monotonous, repetitive whine”, and (aimed at Jagdeep) “emotional blackmail”, “self-pity and self-righteousness”, and “absolute gibberish”.
Less hypocrisy please, Mike. Perhaps you might find that Jagdeep and others here would engage with you in a more constructive manner if you utilised a less dismissive, condescending tone, and you weren’t attempting to bully them into submission.
Let me just clarify this point…
‘If you look at figures for black-on-white rape in the United States (compare them to the relatively low figure for white-on-black rape), the ‘whip analogy’ isn’t so far off the mark.’
Statistical realities notwithstanding, however, I do not support racial politics or groups with a racial agenda.
Identity politics is evil. Period.
Jagdeep,
This is exactly what I was saying in the “demonisation of minorities” thread yesterday. People like this want Ganga Din to know his place and remain Gunga Din.
Mike, are you implying that Enoch Powell was saying that having too many black and Asian people in the UK would eventually result in a disproportionately high number of white women being raped by them ?
Jai – some good points
Thanks for the response.
That’s the kind of debate we need in this country.
Good stuff.
Jai,
‘Mike, are you implying that Enoch Powell was saying that having too many black and Asian people in the UK would eventually result in a disproportionately high number of white women being raped by them ?’
Enoch was making a point about subjugation in general. He made no explicit reference to black-on-white rape.
Here’s the statistic:
‘Every year there are about 15,000 black-on-white rapes but fewer than 900 white-on-black rapes. There are more than 3,000 gang rapes of whites by blacks—but white-on-black gang rapes are so rare they do not even show up in the statistics.’
Frightening
Mike is your surname Hunt?
Frightening! Yes.
Sorry, your point relates to the UK how? Are black/Asians here more likely to rape white women? Do you think they have something inbuilt in them to want to subjugate white women? Do you think they’re naturally violent?
Let’s get the bottom of what you’re trying to say Mike.
Sunny — please check your e-mail, cheers.
So why are you making an explicit reference to it, Mike ?
Sunny – have the Tories reinstated Mercer as you stated, or not?
Sunny
‘Do you think they have something inbuilt in them to want to subjugate white women? Do you think they’re naturally violent?.’
I don’t know. Sociobiologists seem to think so – i.e., lower hereditary intelligence and higher hereditary testosterone causes more crime. Anthropologists, on the other hand, have traditionally looked at the role of culture and of family.
Why? Are you a criminologist?
‘Sorry, your point relates to the UK how?’
Jagdeep suggested that democratic governance in the United States worked well with ethnic diversity.
I disagreed.
‘Let’s get the bottom of what you’re trying to say Mike.’
A witch hunt? Geez, I’m flattered
BTW, I personally agree with the anthropologists – culture and family.
But the original point I was trying to make was this: The United States is not a race-relations Utopia.
Jai,
‘So why are you making an explicit reference to it, Mike?’
Because ethnic diversity causes problems which many of us here are unwilling to discuss.
Yes, Enoch Powell’s speech was full of hyperbole and laughable metaphors.
But he did make a good point about identity politics.
That’s my point.
“lower hereditary intelligence and higher hereditary testosterone causes more crime.”
Equally applicable to gun-toting sister fucking rednecks, no?
Mr. Hardy – probably.
…..which implies that such behaviour is more to do with class and economic background, rather than race.
Jai
‘…..which implies that such behaviour is more to do with class and economic background, rather than race.
Class, economic background, and race.
All three are important.
A Marxist analysis is too restricting
I.e., a racial motive.
Okay…
I dunno…!!
I’m not a criminologist, goddamit!!
Yes, you dunno. You just want to make the links. Stop boring me Mike… you’ve actually done nothing to convince us with ANY of your lame arguments.
Mike,
‘I dunno…!!’
Welcome to PP. Hold that thought.
I reckon that I must be the only person on this forum who as ever met and spoken at length with Enoch Powell and I will say this, Enoch Powell wasn’t (in my humble opinion) a racist. That’s different from saying that what he said during his infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech wasn’t racist as it most definitely was but the man himself, was no racist. All he was doing was reflecting what he encountered on the street, amongst his constituents and knowing the white people of Wolverhampton, like I do, I knew exactly where he was coming from. The Dude
Tell us more about your meeting with Enoch Powell, The Dude.
The problem I had with Hastilow’s article wasn’t that it was racist, it was that he was quite clearly hiding behind the views of those he “spoke to” when he was too cowardly to come out with them himself. The granny of the family said the immigrants took all the housing; “many” say that Enoch was right; immigrants themselves tell him that the migrants of today come to freeload off the welfare state. All he suggests is that we “roll out the red carpet” and that we should deport “bogus” asylum seekers and abandon the “human rights merry-go-round.” He knew full well how offensive Powell’s initial speech was, as he mentions in the article in a round-about way. It was a calculating dog whistle article that he wrote to see if he could get away with it, and he didn’t. It’s that simple. Personally I think he shouldn’t have resigned or been sacked and let his constituents themselves decided whether they wanted such a man to be their MP.
Longer, similar post: http://www.septicisle.info/2007/11/enoch-powell-was-right-and-completely.html
ZinZin:
Er, this is what I said in #16:
It seemed a fairly open and shut case to me; Tory candidate makes racist comments, and is deselected by Tory party.
Or is he. It seems his local party are considering not accepting his resignation.
http://icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk/mail/news/tm_headline=enoch-powell-row-tory-nigel-hastilow-could-be-back%26method=full%26objectid=20080059%26siteid=50002-name_page.html
The local papers, both the Birmingham Mail and the Wolverhampton Suppress and Slur have been full of the sort of hideous readers letters that make dog-whistle politics so popular and full of urban myths about housing etc.
Sunny, opening bid : “Nigel Hastilow, who was chucked out of the party for essentially endorsing Enoch ‘Rivers of Blood’ Powell’s views”
Some time later : “… how deliberately referring to such a bigot, but being careful to not endorse him personally …”
Thank you. You can always edit the post.
And what’s the “is hardly likely to make non-whites feel any better” ? Are we all so easily wounded ? And I don’t exactly get a sense of low self-esteem coming from your writing !
Jagdeep –
a) Powell was quoting a constituent on the ‘whip hand’
b) it was a fairly common expression – I thought it came from racing, but maybe I’m wrong
c) Powell studied Greek, not cultural studies at SOAS. While I’m not a Powell scholar, and life’s too short, I’m pretty certain Powell’s speech was aimed at indigenous Brits, not chosen to frighten the maximum number of incomers. What would the point of that be ? He was trying to convince the natives.
At least people aren’t raising “piccaninnies”, a common expression for children in the West Indies – still used today as ‘pickney’.
Councillor:
Interesting- but I suppose they cannot force him to stay.
Sunny and ChrisC:
From what I can tell from his website, Mercer holds no shadow cabinet brief:
http://www.patrickmercer.org.uk/type3.asp?id=96&type=3
I’ve just had a surreal moment flicking through the channels.
“1-0 to the Arsenal” on something called Raj TV Worldwide sponsored by the Britannic cash & carry in Birmingham followed by the “Great Immigration Debate” hosted on TV and Radio Five Live with that guy from the Big Breakfast who used to make people run in the streets wrapped in bacon. Weird.
Didn’t Mercer for a time hold a position for Gordon Brown as an advisor on security? I seem to remember that there was considerable frothing at the mouth about it over on ConservativeHome.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2941845.ece
Councillor:
Yup.
Laban Tall,
What is quite interesting is that Enoch Powell seemed to think quoting rabid constituents as evidence was A-OK. And what do we get, forty years later? Another playing exactly the same game.
“T’ain’t me sir, ’tis these poor disempowered folk” Consequences? What consequences?”
Robert has a very good analysis of Hastilows game, here:
http://www.robertsharp.co.uk/2007/11/05/rivers-of-bloody-words/
I’d agree that both knew what their constituency was, if that is the point you are trying to make, and ‘dog whistle politics’ sums it up. What they were both trying to do was appeal to lowest common denominators amongst the white population. Frankly, neither gave a monkeys how it played out elsewhere. Cheap nasty little demagogues, the both of them.
It is incredibly cowardly to hide behind a constituents words, for example ‘the whip hand’ remark, and pretend that you are thus completely disassociated from it.
And you, sir, are disingenuous in the extreme. The phrase that Powell quoted was:
“the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.”
There is nothing to suggest it is anything other than an allusion to the slavedriving that Jagdeep so clearly posited. I take it that Powells’ audience were not all media studies graduates?
What is quite interesting also, is that the Powell speech is up on this site:
http://www.natfront.com/powell.html
I despair, I really do.
Rumbold -
I think Sunny overplayed his hand a little.
Implying that the Tories had “reinstated” Mercer.
In fact it was his beloved NuLab Gordon who had taken him on!!!
Anyone watching Michael Hesltine kicking that neo con assholes ass on the Nigel Hastilow racism story. Check out the repeat it’s well worth it.
neo con assholes ass
You’re beyond parody, y’know. Being kicked by Heseltine is like being savaged by a dead sheep.
Heh if you think that you should have seen that neo con tosser, he was unbelievable. The guys from another planet, truly!
My first and only meeting with Enoch Powell was on a intercity train to London, 30 years ago. He walked through my carriage and I (along with a few others) followed him into 1st class. At the time I was a swotty nosed teenager but already I was well versed in all things Enoch Powell or so I thought. I thought he was nothing more than a straight up racist thug and Moseley blackshirt. Now you’ve got to remember one thing. IMHO, Wolverhampton was and remains one of the most racially divisive towns in England. White people then, as now barely tolerated black. It was the number one reason I ended up becoming a Arsenal fan, because at Wolves all you got was spit. Powell on the otherhand, I was to learn was a totally different kettle of fish. First off, though most of his constituents were as thick as shit, I quickly realised that he WAS NOT! Then came his love of all things Indian and the British Raj. I came to realise that in many ways his perspective on the common or garden Englishman were in many ways very similar to my own. We were both outsiders looking in. Powell’s greatest mistake was his attempt of intellecturising the views of the very common man because he couldn’t. However hard he tried he always ended up in Shit Creek. What he had gain great intellect, he lacked in common sense. He was naive!
I’m off to bed, more tomorrow. The Dude
The guys from another planet, truly!
Yeah, a planet where people don’t march to keep a genocidal fascist dictator in power and then are proud of that fact.
[...] you can’t complain if the hounds pursue you.” This issue also brought out the claim that “The Tories still don’t get racism” from Sunny of Pickled Politics. Unfortunately it seems that he hasn’t actually read – or at [...]
[...] is a very good article on Powell’s speech at Pickled Politics, and it links to a good article by Danny Finkelstein of The [...]
Earth Satelite…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…
Sports Illustrated…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…