FORTY YEARS AGO TODAY.

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3189
Forty Years On: Sleepwalking Toward the Tiber’s Edge
From the desk of A. Millar on Sun, 2008-04-20 08:35

Anyone who reads the British newspapers on a regular basis will have noticed an alarming repetition. The same few stories, with minor adjustments, seem to appear over and over again: youth violence, mass immigration, Islamic extremism, terrorists planning attacks, compensation and human rights for criminals, an apparent over-sensitivity to religious minorities and an apparent lack of sensitivity to those of the majority religion and ethnicities. Rather than telling the reader something new, news serves only to clarify what he already suspects. Persue readers’ comments and, unsurprisingly, more and more do you find expressions of genuine frustration and anger.

But these voices, which speak for so many, are not heard in parliament, nor does the public seem to make any demands on politicians. A march against war in a foreign country can amass thousands, and protests against China’s treatment of Tibet are frequent, but to defend one’s heritage or culture against erosion by political design, or to voice opposition to such a scale of immigration that one’s way of life is changed or threatened, is seen as potentially dangerous – the first step toward full-blown fascism. History repeats itself, yes; but history does not repeat itself as we might expect. Today, we are obsessively fighting the last war. Everyone’s enemy is a “racist” and a “fascist.” These terms are invoked by the far-Left, Jack Straw, David Cameron, and even the B.N.P., to describe their opponents. Yet at the same time we see an extreme ideology spilling out from politics and becoming increasing absorbed by the judiciary, police, schools, local councils, etc., all against the common sense of the public. And we also see a rapidly expanding Islamic militancy, occasionally becoming linked to public figures such as Ken Livingstone, and, consequently, accepted by the public.

Free speech – which has been so horribly eroded in Britain – was meant to guard against extremism and the persecution of both individuals and larger groups because of the establishment of some dubious ideology. Today, it would appear, that prosecutions for hate speech are based not on what is said but who is speaking. Protests in support of al-Qaeda are deemed free speech, as is downloading terrorist material and discussing the validity and possibility of carrying out terrorist attacks. Similarly, as think tanks such as the Centre for Social Cohesion and CIVITAS have said, Britain’s governmental and judicial establishments have failed to tackle honor crime, with police, councils, and teachers afraid of being branded racist if they make any attempt.

Yet such is the extreme nature of the willingness to prosecute anyone who might be suspected of racism against a non-White British person, that a Down’s Syndrome boy with the mental age of a 5 year old was recently charged by the police with “racism and assault” after he pushed a girl in a playground scuffle. The charge hung over he and his family for 7 months, before they received an apology from the courts. Again, after the English Democrats party put up posters with the slogan “save London from Labour's tartan taxes” the police received complaints that this was racist, and are currently investigating the matter. These incidences are far from unique, but merely 2 reported in the week prior to my writing this article.

The effect is stifling. The accusation or even the mere faint suspicion of racism has silenced debate and even the voicing of discontent about mass immigration, discrimination against Whites in employment by the government or government-sponsored institutions, or the rise of Islamic extremism. When, in 2001, Lady Thatcher said she, “had not heard enough condemnation from Muslim priests,” of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington D.C., her Conservative Party publicly rebuked her. When Margaret Hodge suggested that British people had valid concerns over housing, considering the level of immigration, her fellow Labour M.P.s accused her of “using the language of the B.N.P.” When Lady Warsi (a Conservative M.P. and a moderate Muslim) suggested that people had legitimate concerns over immigration she was accused of supporting the B.N.P., and, again, when Prime Minister Gordon Brown dared to utter the words “British jobs for British workers,” members of his Labour Party were “appalled” and accused him airing a policy of the B.N.P.

With problems so glaring to the ordinary man and so thoroughly repressed by the main political parties, Enoch Powell – M.P., philosopher, poet, man of the people, and visionary – is being rehabilitated, and not just here on The Brussels Journal. Simon Heffer in The Telegraph has said recently that, “Powell was the greatest Conservative thinker in political life in living memory. He foresaw what were then unimaginable tensions caused by forcibly altering the character of a country.” Looking at the visible characters of today’s Conservative Party one could be forgiven for thinking that Powell was the only Conservative intellectual of our time. The Conservative Party seems to have no real vision for the future, and no real appreciation for the past. But, in such an oppressive atmosphere of “political correctness,” and, indeed, political fear, no intellectual development can occur within popular party politics. As such, we are unlikely to see any solutions to growing problems originating with political parties themselves. It is true, of course, that the B.N.P. is the one party that unceasingly opposes political correctness, “Islamification,” etc., but it has yet to transform itself into an intellectual party, and remains one for which the issue of race is central.

Today we are faced with a “multiculturalism” that has eroded British culture and the constant drumbeat of racial “equality” that treats people not as human beings but mere racial blocks. As Rageh Omaar has said in an op-ed piece on Powell’s so-called “Rivers of Blood” speech for The Daily Mail, “Instead of multi-culturalism, we are getting tribalisation,” – a point I made some time ago here. When this is applied to voting and politics it is especially alarming, yet Equalities Minister Harriet Harman, has recently proposed that all-Black shortlists of parliamentary candidates be drawn up, to increase the number of Black and Asian M.P.s – a proposal rejected as “colonial” by those it was designed to promote. Likewise, the Conservative Party now has its own Muslim Forum and the current mayor, Ken Livingstone, is supported by Muslims 4 Ken, while his main rival, Boris Johnson, has also been careful to let his Muslim heritage be known. Again, we have seen the B.N.P. attacked in the last few weeks by Operation Black Vote (which aims to promote, within government, the supposed needs of Blacks and Asians), but on what grounds? Racial exclusivity?

We have reached a point, then, at which racially or culturally distinct ghettos – the unfortunate results of long-term multiculturalism – are mirrored at both lower and higher levels of government and party politics. Moreover, if some young Muslims are surfing the net, and finding inspiration in al-Qaeda and websites peddling Islamic radicalism, so too do we see a similar phenomenon at government level, with, for example, Livingstone now having gained the support of suicide bombing apologist Dr Azzam Tamimi – which he has not rejected. It is remarkable to think that not only Muslims, but Muslim extremists, are now playing an important, if not decisive, role in British politics. Yet, it is not difficult to imagine that Britain fifty years from now will have a political reality not entirely unlike that of Lebanon’s today. We must hope that it does not take the same sort of upheaval – such as Powell predicted for a multicultural Britain – to get there, but such a hope seems to be fading. Two thirds of the residents of Britain now believe immigration will lead to violence.

The last words are Powell’s:


For these dangerous and divisive elements the legislation proposed in the Race Relations Bill is the very pabulum they need to flourish. Here is the means of showing that the immigrant communities can organize to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”