Category Archives: laws

Prison for merely speaking…Non-custodial sentences for sustained physical attacks

The white and the black of it

Robert Henderson

Jacqueline Woodhouse  has been jailed for 21 weeks  (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-18251807) after she admitted racially aggravated intentional harassment  on a train in January  (23/1/2012).  Her crime? Well, let Ms Woodhouse  speak for herself  about the iniquities of mass immigration – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZK5ooA1uiI.  She summed up her case succinctly  with  “I used to live in England. Now I live in the United Nations”.

Her  diatribe appears to have been provoked by someone pushing against her – this is her initial complaint  as the youtube recording begins.  Hence, there is the usual YouTube problem of not having the full story.  Much of what follows is provoked by comments from non-white passengers. Had they not made the comments  it is unlikely  Woodhouse would have  said most of what she said because there are significant silences between her comments.  This indicates she had no intention to go on a sustained complaint.

The woman had taken a drink but was far from being  stupid drunk. Rather, she was angry, initially at the push , then at the other passengers who spoke with her and finally by the thought of  what has happened  to her country.   Here language becomes more expletive laden as her anger grows,  but there is nothing extraordinary in the effing and blinding she falls into. You can hear worse everyday in London.  Much of her complaint is directed specifically at the Government, Ms Woodhouse has been jailed for in effect publicly complaining about the  effects of mass immigration.

Ms Woodhouse  is a 42-year-old  white working class woman whose origins lie in London or its environs. In short, she is a  prime example of someone who has had the consequences of mass black and Asian immigration. This immigration has been  thrust onto them by a political elite which respond to any criticism of the policy with laws to criminalise dissent and multicultural  propaganda  which asks the likes of  Ms Woodhouse  not merely to keep quiet about what is happening to their world,  but to acquiesce in the eventual obliteration  of their own culture and society. She has more cause than most to make such a public complaint.

Ms Woodhouse’s public complaint was raw kin its delivery which will alienate some who  share her complaints. But the police response would have been similar regardless of how the ideas were voiced or where they were voiced. Anyone who doubts this should go down to  down to Speakers Corner and try to make a speech using middle class language and a civil  manner in which you complain  about the fact of immigration, immigrants drawing benefits, the double standards relating to what ethnic minorities may say with impunity and what the native white  England man or woman may say and so on.  The police would, at best, immediately intervene and threaten arrest unless the person ceased to speak or, at worst,  quite probably immediately  arrest the person.  What is being punished in Ms Woodhouse’s case is the breaching of the politically correct censorship of matters relating to race and immigration, not the particular manner in which she acted.

The other recent c which illustrates the fanatical nature of  the politically correct on matters of race is that of the Swansea U student  Liam Stacey who was jailed for 56 days after making comments deemed to be racist on Twitter (http://www.newswales.co.uk/?section=Community&F=1&id=24467).  His is a particularly interesting case because the offending comments were not published by the media. His initial post which sparked the exchanges was  referedd top the Bolton footballer Patrice Muamba who suffered a heart arrest in a match with Spurs: “LOL f*** Muamba. He’s dead. #Haha”. This was not  part of the prosecution evidence because it was not racist. The charges against Stacey related to exchanges with other people  so for all anyone outside the court knows his later tweets may have been innocuous. Not only that but there is the strong possibility that the tweets to which he replied in allegedly racist fashion were themselves racist, but again these were not reported by the media, whether because they were not mentioned in open court or reporters who attended refused to quote them. It could be that the remarks directed at Staecy were more crudely racist than those he posted.  The problem is that no one has access to the tweets so we do not know.   Vitoria Coren wrote an interesting piece on the subject regarding the question of open justice – http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/08/victoria-coren-liam-stacey-tweets.

Despite making an abject apology to the court and having no previous racist history, Stacey received not only a custodial sentence,  but draconian action by his university:  “Swansea University said in a statement, “The student concerned remains suspended for the remainder of this academic year and is not allowed to return to campus, but he will be given the opportunity to sit his final exams as an external candidate next year at another venue and, if successful, to graduate in absentia. He will remain excluded from the campus.”

Whatever someone thinks about the Ms Woodhouse or Mr Stacey’s behaviour, I doubt whether many would consider it more serious than a serious and prolonged assault committed by multiple assailants. Yet that is precisely what is happening in English courts.  Here are two cases concluded within the last six months.  Compare the custodial sentences for Woodhouse  and Stacey with the non-custodial sentences imposed on black assailants of white women who engaged in  gangs attacks sustained over many minutes:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2070562/Muslim-girl-gang-kicked-Rhea-Page-head-yelling-kill-white-slag-FREED.html#ixzz1flw8TY6p).   The attack was vicious and sustained – the attack can be viewed at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgIN4kBsNRg.

And

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2149720/Girl-gang-savagely-attacked-legal-secretaries-Royal-Wedding-street-party.html#ixzz1wMlHOG2B

In both instances,  the judges made allowances because the attackers were drunk, something that was ignored in the cases of Woodhouse and Stacey and which is routinely disregarded as a mitigating plea in English criminal cases. The black assailants were not accused of racially aggravated offences despite the broad facts of the case – black assailants on white victims –  and,  in the case of Rhea Page,  the shouting racist epithets such as white bitch. Woodhouse and Stacey pleaded guilty which attracts a lesser sentence,  whereas the defendants in the Rhea Page case pleaded not guilty (which supposedly carries a heavier sentence) and one of the defendants in the legal secretaries case pleaded not guilty and went to an Old Bailey trial.   The double standards in what is supposed to be English justice  where it is black on white crime rather than white on black crime  are so glaring that they scarcely need comment beyond saying that equality before the law is the only real law there is; everything else is simply partiality.

As for Ms Woodward and Liam Stacey, what has happened to them undermines  what English society is meant to be, a place where people can express themselves without fear of a knock on the door by the authorities.  The criminalising of speech is incompatible with a free society and  free expression is a necessary part of democratic politics.  The laws which prevent people protesting about the effects of mass immigration are simply tools of those who committed the most fundamental act of treason by permitting the immigration.  People like Ms Woodhouse are not engaging in mindless or vicious abuse. They are engaging in the most basic form of political protest in which they say my national territory has been invaded with the collusion of traitors in the form of the British political elite.  That is the most valuable political message any person can give for it goes to the heart of what it is to be a nation and have a secure territory under the control of the nation.

Liberals in a multicultural denialfest

Robert Henderson

Nine Muslim men living in Rochdale Lancashire – eight from Pakistan and one from Afghanistan – have been convicted of  various offences arising from what  is coyly  described as “street grooming” , but whose honest description would be at best the forced prostitution of girls under the age of consent  and at worst  repeated gang-rape often accomplished when the girls were too drunk to know what was happening. . (The girls were all under the age of  16 -the British age of consent for intercourse – and abuse began when some were as young as 13).

Strikingly,  every one of the  47 girls identified as being the subject of abuse by the gang were white. Cue for liberals to dash into a  frenzy of terrified make-believe as they desperately tried  to convince themselves and the public that vicious and sustained abuse of  exclusively white girls by Asian men  had no racial motivation.   Thankfully there have been some  honourable exceptions in the mainstream media to this wilful self-delusion,  for example, Allison Pearson of the Telegraph  pointed out the absurdity and  dishonesty of  the denial of racism in pithy fashion:

“Nine white men are found guilty of grooming young Asian girls, aged between 13 and 15, whom they picked up on the streets of London. The girls were lured with free fish and chips before being raped or pimped as prostitutes. One Asian girl from a children’s home was used for sex by 20 white men in one night. Police insist the crimes were not “racially motivated”.

Imagine if that story were true. Would you really believe that race was not a factor in those hateful crimes? Do you think that, despite conclusive DNA evidence from a girl raped by two men, the police would have hesitated to press charges because the suspects were white and it could make things a bit sensitive in the white community? Would the Crown Prosecution Service have refused to prosecute, allowing the child-sex ring to flourish for three more anguished years?’ (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/allison-pearson/9254651/Asian-sex-gang-young-girls-betrayed-by-our-fear-of-racism.html)

The tactics of liberal denial

Any normal human being would have no problem in seeing  the very obvious racial element  in the case,   but white liberals have found no difficulty in calling black white.  Some, such as the ineffable Asian MP Keith Vaz , opted for simple denial: “ Right at the start of this trial the BNP were outside demonstrating saying that this was a race issue. I do not believe it is a race issue.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9253978/Keith-Vaz-says-child-sex-ring-case-not-race-issue.html).

A real gem came from the lips of the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester whose force investigated the case:

‘…following the trial at Liverpool Crown Court, Greater Manchester Police’s Assistant Chief Constable Steve Heywood, said: “It just happens that in this particular area and time, the demographics were that these were Asian men.

“However, in large parts of the country we are seeing on-street grooming, child sexual exploitation happening in each of our towns and it isn’t about a race issue.”’ (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9263050/Claiming-Rochdale-grooming-not-about-race-is-fatuous-Trevor-Phillips.html).  A more exquisite example of the religiously pc state senior police officers in Britain have reached would be difficult to find.  I urge  anyone who believes that  there is nationwide “street grooming”  proportionately undertaken by whites to try to find evidence for this. I should be very surprised if they can come up with such evidence. If it did occur one may be sure that it would be given massive prominence by the media and produce hordes of examples when the subject is Googled.   When I tried Googling  it drew a blank.

The more sophisticated  amongst the liberal deniers have turned to the well tried and tested liberal left ploys of claiming  that the perpetrators  were not true Muslims and  putting up a smokescreen through the creation of a false equivalence between white and non-white sex offenders.  Here is Aljazeera playing the “not true Muslims” card:

“These men convicted in Rochdale may have been nominally Muslim, but they were clearly not practising the true essence of their faith. Many so-called “Muslim criminals” (as identified by the media) are in fact people who might drink, take drugs or engage in other practices considered haram [“forbidden”]. Individuals who commit abuse are abusers, full stop.” (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/201251371618264468.html).

Compare the Rochdale offences with the sex offences committed by Roman Catholic priests. Would anyone want to argue the priests  were only nominally Catholic? I rather doubt it.

Not to be outdone the Guardian sternly advised that “The defendants in question are at most nominally Muslim. Practising Muslims certainly aren’t supposed to have sex with children.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/08/asian-sex-gangs-on-street-grooming?newsfeed=true)

The Guardian managed to be both dishonest in its refusal to address the fact that not only the Rochdale case,  but the large majority of this type of group abuse in Britain is conducted by Muslims, and  profoundly wrong when it claims “Practising Muslims certainly aren’t supposed to have sex with children.” Girls of the age used by the Rochdale groups and younger are taken as wives – not merely betrothed – in the Muslim world  and Mohammed himself did took wives at a very young age,  the latter being especially important because Mohammed is the model of the Muslim man.

The false equivalence ploy consists of comparing apples with oranges  and ignoring the widely differing numbers of whites – and Asians – especially in this context  Muslims Asians – in Britain.   Here is an example:

“Martin Narey, former chief executive of children’s charity Barnardo’s, said there was “troubling evidence” that Asians were “overwhelmingly represented” in prosecutions for street grooming and trafficking of girls in towns such as Derby, Leeds, Blackpool, Blackburn, Oldham and Rochdale.

He told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme: “That is not to condemn a whole community, most Asians would absolutely abhor what we have seen in the last few days in the Rochdale trial, and I don’t think this is about white girls.

“It’s sadly because vulnerable girls on the street at night are generally white rather than more strictly-parented Asian girls, but there is a real problem here.”

Mr Narey, who is [also]  a former head of the prison service, added however that sex offenders were “overwhelmingly white” and that there was evidence that those guilty of online grooming were “disproportionately white”. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9253978/Keith-Vaz-says-child-sex-ring-case-not-race-issue.html).

Narey  begins by comparing  the apples of  the girls repeatedly gang-raped  by the Rochdale group  with the oranges of  sex offenders in  general, an utterly meaningless comparison because sex offences  in Britain can be anything from someone downloading anything deemed to be sexual images of a 17 year old girl  to the rape and murder of a toddler. He goes on to state  ‘that there was evidence that those guilty of online grooming were “disproportionately white”’.    This is a claim made by quite a few  people commenting on the case in the media, for example, by Jane Martinson in the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/may/09/rochdale-grooming-trial-race). She  cites her source as the  CPS’ Violence against Women and Girls 2010/11 report (http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/docs/CPS_VAW_report_2011.pdf).

What the report actually says is this:

“Ethnicity

In 2010-11, 75% of VAWG  [Violence against Women and Girls] crime defendants  were identified as belonging to the  White British category and 79% were categorised as White (as in the previous year). 6% of defendants were identified as Asian, and a further 6% were identified as Black, similar figures to the previous year . Over half of victim ethnicity was not recorded, so is not reported on within this report. “

As  the population of the UK is around 90% white,   the representation of whites is certainly disproportionate,  disproportionately small that is.   It is also interesting to note that the ethnicity of the victims was not routinely recorded and  consequently no figures  are given in the report  for this aspect of the crimes. Could it be that the percentage of white victims is disproportionately large because blacks and Asians  concentrate on white women and girls?

Apart from the misrepresentation of the statistics,   there is the ignoring of  the degree of  the offence.  It is one thing to be sexually abused by a single person , quite another to be gang-raped regularly.   The Rochdale abusers were engaged in the most serious category of sex offences.  Try as I might, I cannot find a case of white men acting in a conspiracy to persistently abuse under-age girls in that fashion.  Nor, perhaps most tellingly, can I find any example of white men gang-raping non-white under-age girls or of individual white men abusing non-white under-age girls.   I can also vouch for the fact that, at least as it is reported in the mainstream media,  sexual abuse of non-whites by whites in Britain  is extremely rare.  For nearly two years I wrote a column entitled The joy of diversity for the  magazine  Right Now! now sadly defunct.  The column dealt with the ever growing ethnic minority criminal mayhem being wreaked on Britain.  To do this I kept a cuttings file  which included  all the serious sexual crimes committed by blacks and Asians.  I also kept a  cuttings file of all the similar  crimes committed by whites.  There was a steady stream of sexual offences by blacks (particularly) and Asians , many of them committed against whites. I  only  once came across a  case involving a white attacker  and a non-white victim.

In the days  following  the claims that there was no racial element to the crimes was increasingly challenged, although  what people thought constituted the racial element was almost invariably a cultural explanation rather than a true racial one.  Trevor Phillips, the black chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission,  eventually joined this new bandwagon  after remaining silent for a week:

“Anybody who says that the fact that most of the men are Asian and most of the children are white is not relevant – that’s just fatuous.

‘“These are closed communities essentially and I worry that in these communities there are people who knew what was going on and didn’t say anything, either because they’re frightened or because they’re so separated from the rest of the communities they think ‘Oh, that’s just how white people let their children carry on, we don’t need to do anything’.”

He said it was important also that the role played by the authorities in the area was properly investigated.

“If anybody in any of the agencies that are supposed to be caring for these children – schools, social services and so on – took the view that being aggressively interventionalist to save these children would lead to the demonisation of some group because of the ethnicity … then it is a national scandal and something that would need to be dealt with urgently,” he said. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9263050/Claiming-Rochdale-grooming-not-about-race-is-fatuous-Trevor-Phillips.html).

Phillips’ intervention is especially interesting because he has a habit of playing what might be described as the liberal’s controlling non-pc card when the absurdities of political correctness become dangerously glaring.  He never becomes honestly non-pc,  just non-pc enough to distract from whatever pc absurdity is threatening to become a focus for serious dissent amongst native Britons.  Had Phillips been unambiguously honest in this case he would not have waffled on about “closed communities”  or  attributed their general silence on the subject to a contemptuous “Oh, that’s just how white people let their children carry on”.  Instead he would have asked why  the “communities” were closed or questioned exactly how those in these “communities” could have honestly  believed that the sexual exploitation of under-age girls, some as young as 13, was acceptable. He would have asked why all the girls were white rather than being drawn from vulnerable girls of all races.  If Phillips had been really daring he would have raised the  most difficult question of all, namely, in what sense are ethnic minority groups meaningfully  British if they see themselves as so culturally separate from the British mainstream that they will happily accept the abuse of young girls drawn from the native white population?

The crimes were objectively racist

The objective facts of the case say the  Rochdale  crimes were racially motivated.  It was white girls who were exclusively chosen.  If the choice  of  girls  had not  been  decided by race, ethnicity or religion, a mixture of races and ethnicities  amongst the victims would be expected.  The culprits could have chosen Asian girls, including Muslims from their own ethnic group .  If they  had decided they would not use Muslims – although making  that choice would have fallen within the definition of racism that is presently used – but everyone else was fair game,  they could have gone after non-Muslim  Asians from the Subcontinent  such as Sikhs and Hindus, Asians of far Eastern ancestry and  black  as well as white girls.

The claim commonly made by  Asians  that Muslim girls or Asian girls generally  are strictly controlled by their families  whereas white girls  are not and consequently white girls are targeted for abuse  simply because they are available and Asian girls are not on offer  will not stand up to scrutiny. Most, possibly all, of the white girls abused in the Rochdale case were in local authority care or from seriously troubled homes .  These were girls who had effectively been left without any adult  guidance or supervision. There are substantial numbers  of black and Asian  girls in the same position Moreover, because  ethnic minorities  in Britain are overwhelmingly  concentrated in the large urban areas  rather than distributed  throughout the country as is the case with whites,  the likelihood of vulnerable black or Asian girls being available in or close to the areas where Asian abusers live is high. This is the case with the Rochdale  abusers, Rochdale being part of Greater Manchester which has both a large and variegated non-white population.

There is also the contemptuous  attitude Muslim men often have  towards white women to bring into the equation. Here is Allison Pearson again:

“I spoke to Mr Danczuk [the local MP]  yesterday, and he strenuously disputes claims that this is a one-off case, or even a recent phenomenon. The grooming of white girls by a small sub-section of the Pakistani community was being discussed in Blackburn council 15 years ago. Recently, the MP was outraged when male relatives of the accused in a similar child-sex case came to his constituency surgery to ask for support. “They spoke about white women in an exceptionally derogatory way. I nearly threw them out.”

Danczuk’s reported comments also demonstrate  the most shameful  aspect of this affair: the persistent refusal of the authorities – everyone from the local politicians and  the council care workers to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)  – to  honestly address the complaints of sexual abuse because of a fear of being thought racist and most probably a fear , at least at the political level,  of having such an incendiary topic – immigrants targeting white British girls  for forced sex – brought before a  public who are already deeply concerned with the effects of mass post-war immigration. Tellingly, the CPS prosecutor who  overturned the original CPS decision not to prosecute was a Muslim Nazir Afzal, whose race and ethnicity protected him from charges of racism.

Complaints have been heard from non-Muslim Asians  whose origins lie in the Indian subcontinent – primarily Sikhs and Hindus –  that  media description of the Rochdale gang as Asian  is misleading because it  tars all Asians with the same brush when it is only Muslims who  were involved and are  rumoured to be involved in other similar instances of abuse. They may have a point. Despite assiduous use of search engines I cannot find any instances of Sikh or Hindu gang grooming of  girls. Interestingly, in my searches  I  came across Hindu and Sikh complaints from 2011 that Sikh and Hindu girls are being targeted by Muslims:

“January 11, 2011

Poush Shukla Saptami, Kaliyug Varsha 5112

Amritsar (Punjab): A day after UKs’ former home secretary Jack Straw blamed some Pakistani Muslim men for targeting “vulnerable” White girls sexually, UK’s Hindu and Sikh organizations also publicly accused Muslim groups of the same offence.

Straw, in an interview to the BBC recently, had said, “…there is a specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men…who target vulnerable young white girls…they see these young women, white girls who are vulnerable, some of them in care … who they think are easy meat.”

Feeling emboldened by Straw’s statement, UK’s Hindu and Sikh organizations have also come in open and accused some Pakistani men of specifically targeting Hindu and Sikh girls. “This has been a serious concern for the last decade,” said Hardeep Singh of Network of Sikh Organizations (NSO) while talking to TOI on Monday.

Sikhs and Hindus are annoyed that Straw had shown concern for White girls and not the Hindu and the Sikh teenage girls who have been coaxed by some Pakistani men for sex and religious conversion.

“Straw does other communities a disservice by suggesting that only white girls were targets of this predatory behaviour. We raised the issue of our girls with the previous government and the police on several occasions over the last decade. This phenomenon has been there because a minority of Islamic extremists view all ‘non believers’ as legitimate targets,” said director NSO Inderjit Singh.

Targeted sexual offences and forced conversions of Hindu and Sikh girls was not a new phenomenon in the UK, said Ashish Joshio from Media Monitoring group. 

“This has been going on for decades in the UK . Young Muslim men have been boasting about seducing the Kaffir (unbeliever) women. The Hindu and the Sikh communities must be commended for showing both restraint and maturity under such provocation,” he added.

Hardeep said that in 2007, The Hindu Forum of Britain claimed that hundreds of Hindu and Sikh girls had been first romantically coaxed and later intimidated and converted by Muslim men. (http://www.hindujagruti.org/news/11088.html).

This strikes me as  differing in type from the abuse of white girls described in the Rochdale trial, because the Sikh and Hindu girls seem to have been recruited for conversion  with sex used a  tool to achieve this rather than simply using  the girls as sexual vessels.  Nonetheless, if the report is true –I say if because of the considerable animosity between Muslims and Sikhs and Hindus and the general appetite amongst ethnic minorities for parading their victimhood means  it is best to be cautious about the veracity of the claims – the reported behaviour does display the same contemptuous mentality towards women shown in the abuse of  the white victims in the Rochdale case.

The reported behaviour  of  one of the Rochdale defendants, a 59-year-old man who was not named for legal reasons, most probably because naming him would have identified a minor involved in the case,  during the court hearing  gives  a flavour of the mentality which both drove them to commit the crimes and to excuse themselves:

“The man seen as the ringleader, a 59-year-old who cannot be named for legal reasons, was jailed for a total of 19 years for conspiracy, two counts of rape, aiding and abetting a rape, sexual assault and a count of trafficking within the UK for sexual exploitation.

The defendant was previously banned from court because of his threatening behaviour and for calling the judge a “racist bastard”.

Simon Nichol, defending, earlier said his client did not wish to attend the sentencing hearing and had ordered the barrister not to put any mitigation before the judge on his behalf.

“He has objected from the start for being tried by an all white jury and subsequent events have confirmed his fears,” Mr Nichol said.

“He does not take back any of the comments he has made to your honour, to the jury, or to anyone else in the court during the course of the trial.

“He believes his convictions have nothing to do with justice but result from the faith and the race of the defendants.

“He further believes that society failed the girls in this case before the girls even met them and now that failure is being blamed on a weak minority group.” (http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/crime/arrogant-to-the-end-as-rochdale-child-sex-ring-leader-snubs-sentencing-of-racist-court-7727757.html).

So there you have it, in his mind it was not him but society which is  to blame – and by implication white society and nothing to do with his part of the UK population –  and the only reason he was being tried and convicted was racism on the part of ol’ whitey.

The nature of Islam

The predominance of sub continental Muslims in this type of crime raises a question, what is it that makes them and not non-Muslims  from the same region  commit this type of crime?   It could be that this type of crime is committed by, for example,  Sikhs and Hindus, but there does not appear to be any evidence for it). If that is the true situation it could be that Islam itself encourages the mentality  displayed by the Rochdale offenders  to develop.

The Koran makes no bones about the subordinate position of women by

1.  Sanctioning polygamy – up to four wives  for any Muslim man, although  Mohammed was given a special dispensation to have an unlimited number  and had a reported nine wives plus slave-girls :

“Prophet, We have made lawful to you the wives whom you have granted dowries and the slave-girls whom Allah has given you as booty; the daughters of your paternal and maternal uncles and of your paternal and maternal aunts who fled with you; and the other women who gave themselves to you and whom you wished to take in marriage. This privilege is yours alone, being granted to no other believer. (Sura (chapter):  The Confederate Tribes).

2.  Explicitly saying women are subordinate to men:

“’Men  have authority over women because  Allah  has  made  the  one superior to the other,  and  because   they  spend  their wealth to  maintain  them. “(Sura   ‘Women’). 

3. Sanctioning the corporal punishment of wives by husbands:

“Good  women are obedient.  They guard their unseen  parts  because Allah guarded them.  As for those from whom  you fear disobedience,  admonish them and send them  to  beds  apart and beat them.”  (Sura   ‘Women’). 

4. Allotting a lesser portion of any inheritance to women than is allotted to their male relatives:

“A male shall inherit twice as much as a female…”  (Sura   ‘Women’). 

5. Enforcing  Islam onto non-Muslim women if they wish to marry a Muslim:

“’You shall not wed pagan women, unless they embrace    the faith. A believing slave-girl is better than an  idolatress…’ (Sura ‘The Cow’).

6.  The idea of slave-girls as sexual toys  given by Allah as rewards to the faithful as in the passage cited in 1 above:  “the slave girls whom Allah has given you as booty…”

The general attitude  towards women in the Koran is epitomised by the scorn poured on Arab  pagans who worshipped female deities  and Angels who were the daughters of Allah : “Would Allah choose daughters for himself and sons for you?”  (Sura Ornaments of Gold).

The quotes are all taken from the Penguin English translation by N J Dawood, a native Arabic speaker.

It is easy to see how  any Muslim, even a white western convert, would have difficulty in subscribing to the idea of sexual equality if they were sincere in their faith.  There is not for the Muslim the luxury of re-interpreting the Koran  at will as modern Christians do with the Bible,  because it is the literal word of God  transmitted to Mohammed by the Angel Gabriel.  There are disputes within Islam about how the Koran and supporting texts such as the Hadith should  be interpreted,  but this is generally interpretation  of what  a particular passage or practice means in literal terms  – a good example would be the punishment for adultery which is given at different points  in the Koran  as stoning to death and flogging: the interpreter of the Koran has to decide which is the correct punishment not whether there should be a physical or indeed any punishment for adultery.  Consequently, unlike  mainstream Christianity in Britain, there can be no convenient shrugging off of passages in the Koran  incompatible with modern Western society because they are deemed to be either  unimportant expressions of the social state of former times rather than the core beliefs of the religion  or, more fancifully,  by claiming that they  were not meant as  literal instructions to the faithful.  It is also a  fact that the Koran gives much less scope for plausible “fudging”  of  inconvenient passages (for liberals)  than the Bible,   because it is  both much shorter with fewer contradictions and is, for  Muslims, a  transmission from God  through a single man rather than being a collection of writings -drawn  from many sources, times , places  and people  – working out a religious destiny, as is the case with the Bible.

Any Muslim man would be faced with a dilemma if he wished to adhere strictly to the Koran whilst living in a Western society  because the Koran instructs him to behave in ways which run strictly counter to the values of Western society, including the position of  women.  It is true that  there is  Islamic tradition which require Muslims in countries which are not Islamic to abide by the laws of the society in which  they live, but there is no central Islamic authority which gives such traditions the force of universal  application such as exists with the Catholic church.  Alternative interpretations are handed down by different Islamic authorities.  A Muslim could quite  reasonably  choose an interpretation which suited strict Islamic observance in a non-Islamic country , arguing that it was what the Koran  required and to do any other would be the act of a poorly observant  Muslim.

That would the case of a sincere devout Muslim. But the fact that the Koran gives specific authority to behave in ways, including the  physical chastisement of women ,  which are incompatible with a secular society  such as modern Britain  means it  also gives a green light to less honest  or sincere Muslim men to do what they will with women  simply because it suits their purposes and carnal desires.

It might be objected that men who are not Muslims in many societies have similar ideas on the condition of women.   Most dramatically, the existence of “honour killings”  of women who do not conform to  patriarchal customs  is widespread amongst Sikhs and Hindus and the casual treatment of women by black men is legendary.  But what these non-Muslim men do not have is a religious sanction for such behaviour.  There is a good deal of difference between custom, powerful as that can be, and explicit permission from God, which is the most potent of emotional intoxicants and sanctions.   There is also a qualitative difference between “honour killings” where a female member of the family  goes against  the cultural norms of the ethnic group by , for example,  forming a relationship with someone who is not a member of the group or refusing to accept an arranged marriage,  and taking young girls who are outside the group for sexual abuse.  In the case of the “honour killing”, the act is directed against someone within the group and is intended to preserve the cultural norms of the group. The taking of girls from outside the group is simply the satisfying of sexual desire.

The  age of the girls abused may also have something to do with Islam.  As mentioned previously, girls of the age of those abused by the Rochdale defendants are frequently married in the Muslim world.  In addition, the Koran’s sanctioning of slavegirls  as sexual toys  given by Allah “as booty” to deserving Muslim men may also come into play. It would not be that massive an emotional  stretch for a Muslim man to see white girls as a modern version of slavegirl booty.

There is something else in Islam which may have contributed to the crimes.  The Koran is extremely aggressive towards non-Muslims and makes no bones about the fact that Muslims are the chosen people of Allah. Here are a few example quotes:

‘As  for the unbelievers,  the fire of Hell  awaits  them.  Death shall not deliver them,  nor shall its               torment be ever lightened for them.  Thus shall the  thankless  be  rewarded.’  (Sura ‘The  Creator’).

‘Prophet,  make  war  on the  unbelievers  and  the  hypocrites and deal vigorously with them.  Hell  is their home.  (Sura ‘Repentance’).

‘When the sacred months are over slay the idolators  wherever you find them. Arrest them,  besiege them, and  lie in ambush  everywhere for them.’  (Sura ‘’Repentance’).

 ’Because of their iniquity, we forbade the Jews the  good  things  which  were  formerly  allowed  them;  because  time after time they debarred others  from  the  path of Allah;  because they practice usury  –  although they were forbidden it – and cheat  others  of their possessions.’ (Sura ‘Women’).

The final quote is especially telling because the Jews are one of the peoples of the book who are supposedly given special protection under Islam.

As with the subordination of women, the fact that the Koran – which is the literal word of God for Muslims –  explicitly and repeatedly  states that Islam  and its adherents are above the rest of humanity will feed the idea that Muslims in non-Islamic countries should both remain separate from the majority population and have the right to use members of the population who are not Muslim in a manner which they would not countenance for their fellow Muslims.

How ideologies fail   

The reason why this type of racist abuse  has been allowed to grow is the ever more paralysing effect   political correctness  and its component  multiculturalism has on British society.  Whites, especially white Britons,  have become at best deeply afraid and paranoid about doing something which could get them held up as a racist and at worst have succumbed to the incessant politically correct propaganda so that they believe ethnic minorities are in some curious way granted dispensation from the dictates of both traditional Western morality  and, ironically,   the supposedly essential  maxims of political correctness.  The most grotesque example of the mentality I can think of is the case of a young white girl Rhea Page who was attacked by four Somali  girls whilst walking with her boyfriend. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2070562/Muslim-girl-gang-kicked-Rhea-Page-head-yelling-kill-white-slag-FREED.html#ixzz1flw8TY6p).   The attack was vicious and sustained – it can be viewed at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgIN4kBsNRg –  and the Somalis were  screaming “white bitch” and “white slag yet the judge ruled there was no racist motive and  also refused to jail the Somalis on the grounds that they had taken alcohol which was not part of their culture.

What will happen now? There will be  further action by the police and the CPS on the type of offences exposed in Rochdale – further arrests have already been made (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9261748/Arrests-made-in-second-Rochdale-sex-grooming-scandal.html), but  the question is not whether one or two more trials will be held as tokens  but whether the grip of political correctness  can be loosened.  It is just possible that this is happening already without any conscious decision being made to do so by those with power.

Secular ideologies never  stand the  test  of time if they become the elite ideology.  Marxism is the classic example,  both because of the scope of its ostensible implementation and the length of time it existed, or  arguably still exists in the case of China and North Korea. Such ideologies  fail because they never accord with reality. They may have some truths but  all seriously clash with what is.  This means that those dependent on the ideology have to revise either the reality to accord better with reality or tell lies to cover the gap between the ideology and reality.

Ideologies are also revised to fit the ambitions of individuals and the circumstances of particular societies.  These often further remove the ideology from reality. The first great Marxist revision was the denial by Lenin  that  the proletarian revolution could only take place when a large  degree of industrialisation had created an industrial proletariat. The second great revision was Stalin’s acceptance that “socialism in one country”  had to replace the  internationalist  credo of Marx  for at least a period of time.   To those breaches in Marx’s  system was added the ever growing corruption of the Soviet elite and the demoralisation of the people.  The upshot was that Soviet propaganda became ever more absurd as the reality of Soviet life jarred ever more with fictitious official reports of soaring harvests and industrial production.  This growing discord between what Soviet citizens experienced and what they were told was happening was an important  agent  in the fall of the Soviet Union.

Political correctness is divorced from reality more emphatically than any other dominant secular ideology of the past century.   Marxism, even in its revised Leninist and Stalinist  forms,  at least appealed to a widespread  human desire for equality of material condition and social status, or at least a desire for no great inequality.   Even  at its most pure political correctness asks human beings to deny vitally  important natural human behaviours  by pretending that no distinction can be meaningfully or morally be  made between races, ethnicities, cultures,  religions, sexes or sexual  behaviours.  It seeks to treat all members of homo sapiens as interchangeable, sees  the continuing idea of nations as pernicious and insists that no element of the universal and natural human trait of tribalism be countenanced.

The pure version of political correctness would be very damaging and seriously divorced  from reality. But the version of political correctness that actually exists is not pure and is a political recipe for widespread political unrest. It applies double standards when dealing with different racial and ethnic groups and has been reduced to no more than a means of privileging some groups over others. As those who are privileged are invariably the minorities and those disadvantaged  invariably the majority native populations,  the lies needed to produce  an official narrative in  accord with political correctness become ever more implausible  – the Rhea Page case and the attitude towards the Rochdale  defendants  are stark  examples – and the anger within the majority native populations grows.  There is a growing possibility that at least the multicultural part of political correctness may come tumbling down under the weight of its own fantastic absurdity.

The right of self-defence in England

Robert Henderson

The Current State of Things

If there is such a thing as a natural right it is surely the right to self-defence, for any organism will defend itself when attacked. To deny a man the right to defend himself when attacked would be literally inhuman and, of course, in England we have that right in law. We may defend ourselves even to the extent of killing another if it is to save ourselves or another who is threatened. The problem is that our law has become so hemmed about by conditions and restrictions, that most people are both confused about what is permitted in practice and fearful of the consequences of using force in their defence. This is scarcely surprising when cases where burglars have been killed, such as that of Tony Martin, have resulted in the victim of burglary going to prison, while lesser cases which have resulted in non-fatal struggles all too frequently seem to result in the person who was attacked being punished.

At the same time as this confusion over the law exists, the British state is growing ever more paranoid about the private citizen owning and carrying weapons. Guns are so severely restricted that few people will go to the trouble of applying for a licence for anything other than a shotgun and there is a law against carrying a knife of any sort, even a pocket knife, with a blade of more than 3 inches in a public place without good cause, e.g. for the purposes of work.

The third piece in the jigsaw of our uncertainty is the increasing failure of the police to provide protection to the private citizen, especially in country districts. This was the prime cause of Tony Martin’s action in illegally arming himself with a pump action shotgun to defend himself in his remote farmhouse. (Martin knew from past experience that he regularly was subject to intruders which the police could not or would not do anything to prevent.)

The failure of the police adequately to protect people breaches the implicit contract between the state and the individual in relation to personal safety: the individual gives up his right absolutely to control his personal security on the understanding that the state will provide both physical security and meaningful redress for injuries which the individual may suffer from others. Small wonder that people take things into their own hands on occasion. The police failure to protect also makes the need for weapons more necessary to the individual for self-defence .

The Right to Self. Defence in English Law

The law on reasonable force as it is presently interpreted goes something like this: if you are attacked with a knife you may defend yourself with a knife: if you are attacked with bare fists you may defend yourself likewise. Do more in either instance and you will be in danger of being charged with an offence against the person, anything from common assault to murder. Pedantic proportionality is all. If you carry on assaulting your assailant after he is disabled, you will most likely face charges. If you have the opportunity to run away but do not, that may count against you in any assessment of whether you should be prosecuted. All this is demonstrably absurd. It assumes that people under attack can reasonably be expected to make judgements in the heat of the moment which in reality require calm consideration.

What is Reasonable Force?

Consider a few of the variables in assessing what is ‘reasonable force’. Women, the disabled, children, and older men cannot reasonably be expected to defend themselves from a simple physical assault from a fit, strong assailant. Other things being equal, a small man cannot be expected to fight a large man; an older man a younger man, a fit man an unfit man. But, of course, other things  are often not equal. Many men who are physically capable of fighting are absolutely hopeless at it. I have known a man of six and a half feet allow himself to be beaten by a man a foot smaller. Fighting is a matter of  heart above all else.

But it is also a matter of practice. Most men throwing a punch at someone’s face would be more likely to harm their fists than their opponent because they have never been taught to punch correctly. (For those without any experience of fighting, I would recommend the knee in the groin or a good old-fashioned head butt.) More importantly , those who are not used to fighting (and middle-class men generally fall into this category) are not psychologically prepared for a fight. This will mean one of two things: the person either capitulates utterly or goes into a berserk rage and keeps on damaging their opponent until the rage passes.

To these disparities of size, sex, age, and mental and physical competence, we may add others. Someone who is assaulted does not know whether an assailant is going to restrict themselves to simple assault without a weapon. They may be armed for all the victim knows. Nor need this be obvious. Take a  well-publicised case, that of Kenneth Noye who was convicted of murder in a road-rage incident. Noye carried a knife when he got out his car to confront his victim, but he only produced and used the knife when he began to get the worse of things as the two fought. (Noye is also a good example of the effect of age on the ability to fight. He was 48 at the time of the murder. His victim was in his twenties. Noye was a career criminal with a reputation as hard man. Yet until he produced a knife, he got the worst of a fight he might reasonably have expected to win. Age had caught up with him.)

It is also true that even if an assailant does not have a weapon, the victim cannot know how far the assailant is likely to go. Will he restrict himself to punching? Or is the assailant the sort to put the boot in when someone is on the floor? No one can know. Perhaps even the assailant does not know.

The obviously armed assailant presents a particular problem in judging what constitutes proportionality of response. If someone comes at you with a knife, is it in order to use a gun? If the assailant has a club, may one use a knife? The law as it stands gives no clear guidance. It is all “every case has to be judged on its merits”.

Then there is the question of what happens should you disable your opponent. Suppose that a small man fells a much larger man with a lucky blow of, shall we say, a candlestick. The smaller man is then left with the problem of what to do next. If he allows the more powerful man to recover, the smaller man will in all probability end up being badly hurt. The smaller man might be able to avoid that fate simply by running away (this is what the law would want you to do), yet he may be unable to reasonably do this even if he wishes to. That would be the case if the temporarily disabled man was a burglar and the smaller man’s wife and children were in the house where the fight took place. Let us further assume that there is no phone and the house is isolated, as was the case with Tony Martin. In such circumstances, it could be argued with some force that it was reasonable deliberately to disable the burglar by a further assault while he was unconscious to prevent the chance of violence from the burglar when he recovered consciousness.

Behind all these circumstantial problems stand the very human emotions of panic and rage. When one is attacked, the only desire is to ensure one’s safety. Adrenaline flows and to say that any human being is in control of themselves in such circumstances is patent nonsense. The law does in practice take into account panic, but again it is all very hit-and-miss. Rage on the other hand is no excuse for what is judged a disproportionate assault.

The law as it presently stands effectively ignores human nature. It says that someone who is attacked must exercise truly marvellous self-control. In defending himself, the victim must not lose his temper and carry on attacking the attacker after the attacker has been disabled. This is utterly unrealistic. Someone in a blind rage or panic is manifestly not in control of their actions. There are good evolutionary reasons for that. When someone is responding to an attack, an uncontrolled response is the best way of responding to protect oneself. The evolutionary bottom line is: dead attacker equals safety.

What is a Reasonable Law of Self-defence?

What then is a reasonable law of self-defence? The great bugbear at present is proportionality of response. In drafting a new law, I would start from the premise that an attacker forfeits his right to the protection of the law, that he literally takes his life into his hands.

If the attacker is seriously wounded or even killed, that should be seen simply as a reasonable consequence of the attack. The test of ‘reasonable force’ would become defunct. All that would have to be investigated after an assault was whether there was evidence that suggested that the claimed attacker was in fact not the attacker.

Provided such evidence did not exist, the person assaulted would have no case to answer. I would also remove from an attacker who suffers injury any opportunity to take civil action against his victim.

The great danger with such a law is that murder could take place under the guise of self-defence. I would make two responses to that. Firstly, murder is very rare in Britain: approximately 800 murders take place in England and Wales each year. The majority are ’domestics’, that is,  the murder of a sexual partner. Murder for purely criminal reasons, for example,  robbery, is rare.

Murder has also been rare historically. The Canadian criminologist Elliott Leyton published a study of murder in England a few years ago entitled Men of Blood. He found that throughout history murder in England had been abnormally low, so low as to be inexplicable except in terms of the social norms of the society. In other words, there are good sociological reasons to believe that few murders would take place under such an amended law.

My second point is that a claim of self-defence would still have to conform to the facts of the death. It would be no use, for example, claiming that a fight had taken place at on the morning of May the 3rd,  if the forensic evidence dearly showed that the body had been dead before that time.

I would introduce one further criterion to determine whether self-defence was proved, namely was the threat offered by the assailant credible. For example, most people have encountered the mad old lady who suddenly for no apparent reason sets about people in the street with a newspaper or some other equally inoffensive instrument. Clearly, such a person would not present a credible threat to anyone other than another old lady or a young child. It would be ridiculous for a fit, younger adult to be able to claim self-defence against such an assailant. If on the other hand that same old lady entered someone’s house uninvited in the middle of the night and was struck down and killed by the householder in the dark under the apprehension that she was a burglar, that would be self-defence.

A law on the lines that I have suggested would not be perfect. There would still be problems about establishing who was the assailant and who the victim. But that problem already exists under the present law. What such a law would definitely do is prevent the prosecution of householders such as Tony Martin who surprise those within their homes.

My proposal would also accommodate perhaps the most contentious part of self-defence, namely, pre-emptive action. An assault that results in physical action against someone is clear-cut. But the law does not say that to commit assault physical violence has to be used. A person may believe themselves to be in imminent danger of being assaulted someone may be making threatening statements or carrying a weapon or coming rapidly towards someone else. In such circumstances, the law gives the person who fears he or she is about to be assaulted the right to defend themselves before they are assaulted However, a person who engaged in such behaviour as things presently stand would have the greatest difficulty in sustaining such a claim if reliable witnesses were not present at the time. And if such witnesses were present, a prosecution might well result on the grounds that the presence of witnesses made an assault unlikely or one that could have been resisted. It is a ticklish problem to say the least. But one could use one of the main criteria for determining whether a physical assault had taken place to decide whether an assault was likely to take place, namely the credibility of the witnesses.

In short, all my law would require someone to do would be to show that they had been assaulted by an assailant in circumstances where a credible threat existed. If that was proved, no prosecution would take place. There might be some rough justice in that, but less than there is at the moment. Moreover, what rough justice there was would most probably be at the expense of the wrongdoer rather than the law-abiding citizen.

The Right to Own and Carry Weapons

The right to self-defence is intimately connected with the right to own and carry weapons. If a man or woman cannot keep a weapon, in many circumstances he or she will be effectively defenceless. The problem in Britain is that the possession of any weapon by the private individual is being made increasingly difficult, ostensibly on the grounds of public safety, but in reality from of a desire by those with political power to control the general population. This elite behaviour is merely conforming to the historical norm.

The desire to restrict the possession of weapons has always come from those who wished not only to monopolise power but to do so on their own terms. When the crossbow was invented, the medieval nobility attempted to ban it because it reduced the effectiveness of the armoured and mounted knight. Failing in that, they attempted to restrict, with some success, its ownership to people they could control. The Samurai in Japan enforced ruthlessly their rule that only Samurai should carry swords. When the demobbed conscripts of British Army returned to Britain after the First World War, the British government passed the first serious laws regulating gun ownership not because they feared that the British would begin to murder one another in great numbers but because they feared Red revolution.

As things stand in Britain, legal gun ownership has become so onerous, that many long-time licence holders have given up. The effort in obtaining a licence and in maintaining it is considerable, because of both the Draconian storage conditions required by the police and their eagerness to engineer the revocation and denial of licences. Even if you legally own a gun, woe betide you if you are spotted openly carrying it in a public place. Assuming you are not gunned down by over-excited policemen, you will not merely have your licence revoked but probably end up in court as well.

As for other weapons, if the police want to pick you up for possessing an offensive weapon there is a fair chance they can do so even if you do not mean to carry one. Forget about knives or coshes, which are complete no, nos, you are conceivably committing an offence if you have an aerosol of hairspray about your person or a hammer, for the 1953 Prevention of Crime Act creates a general offence of possessing an offensive weapon in a public place,  an offensive weapon being anything from a gun to a piece of wood or stone or a kitchen knife which is made, adapted or intended to cause physical injury to a person.

Is There an Historical Basis for Private Weapon Ownership in England?

This is an impossible question to answer categorically. It is undeniably true that weapons were held widely by private individuals. Feudal military obligation was in fact built on the private provision not merely of men but of arms and equipment. In late medieval times, statutes were enacted to encourage longbow practice. The Spanish Armada that attempted to invade England in 1588 was repulsed by a mixed English fleet of private and Royal ships.

Yet although weapons were commonly held by private individuals for many centuries, the right of the individual to hold weapons, especially guns, was far from being absolute or accepted by authority. The Bill of Rights passed after William of Orange came to the throne in 1689 stated:

“By causing several good subjects, being Protestants, to be disarmed, at the same time when papists were both armed and employed, contrary to law.” (Clause 6 of the Bill of Rights 1690.)

“That the subjects which are Protestants, may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions , and as allowed by law.” (Clause 7 of the Bill of Rights 1690.)

There are four points to note. First, Catholics were not thought to have the right to have arms. Second, the clear implication is that Protestants were to be armed to defend themselves against Catholics. Third, the very fact that such a clause was included means that the right to weapons was not so much part of English life that it was taken for granted. Fourth, it uses the phrase “suitable to their conditions”. This must mean that the right to weapons was limited and not limited merely in the sense that a private individual might not have a cannon but might have a musket.

It is also illuminating that when the US Bill of Rights was created a century later it ran:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” (American Constitution Second Amendment.)

The American Bill of Rights was based firmly on English tradition, the founding fathers of the USA considering themselves to be preserving English liberty when it had fallen into corruption in England. Yet they did not say that a man has the right to bear and keep arms full stop. They say he has it because of the need to maintain a militia.

Nonetheless, the 1690 Bill of Rights does grant right to bear arms of some sort. Leaving aside the question of what arms are permitted, does the Bill of Rights have any force today? The problem for those who would say it has is that the Bill of Rights is simply an Act of Parliament. It has no special constitutional status, any more than does any other British law with constitutional implications. As such, it is difficult to see how it cannot have been amended by the subsequent passing of laws restricting the ownership of weapons. It is true that none of those laws specifically nullifies the Bill of Rights, but it is a long established practice in English law that the passing of a new law which contradicts a previous law is treated a automatically nullifying the earlier law. Whether this practice is entirely sound in law is perhaps debatable, but I cannot imagine the Lords overturning the de facto principle retrospectively simply because of the immense implications of doing so if the illegitimacy of the practice was allowed (all past laws not explicitly repealed by later Act would have to be considered ‘live’ where the) clashed with later Acts. The result would be legal chaos. The best that could be reasonably expected from Government is an Act making an future legislation require the specific repeal of Acts or clauses where a fresh Act contradicts the original Act.

It is true that the judgement in the recent so called ‘Metric Martyrs’ (2001/2) case appeared to create two levels of law and sanctioned the idea that later ‘ordinary’ Acts do not implicitly repeal through simple contradiction, the earlier, superior constitutional’ Acts. However, I believe that the judgement was a literal absurdity. As stated previously, in Britain there is no such thing as a constitutional Act in the sense that it has any superior status to any other Act. What we have are Act that deal with constitutional matters. Consequently, I cannot see that judgement has any basis in law or customary British practice.

It is also argued by some people that a Common Law right to bear and own weapons exists because in the past men were permitted to own and bear arms and a Common Law right developed accordingly. Whether this is true or not is irrelevant. A Common Law right can be removed by statute and indeed the vast majority of our law today is Statute law. Our present gun laws are all statute based.

The position with regard to history is dearly confused and contradictory. Resting a claim for a right to bear arms on it is pointless because those who resist such a thing will simply point out the lack of certain evidence and the evidence that contradicts the idea. Much better to rest the argument on the twin reasons of self-defence and the means to resist an intolerant and oppressive state should one arise.

What the Position Should be in a Free Society

In my perfect world, a man would be able to purchase a gun and ammunition in England as easily as he might buy a pound of potatoes. Similarly, a man should be able to carry any other weapon or implement he chooses. He should have the right to keep and carry weapons not merely for self-defence, but because otherwise arms are left in the hands of governments and criminals and denied to the ordinarily law-abiding citizen. Not only should a man be able to own a gun (or any other weapon) he should be able to do so without accounting for it to the police.

What, you say, anyone able to own a gun and no licences to boot? Would not that result in Britain being turned into the Wild West? The answer is no. Consider this, at present there are plenty of guns in private hands in Britain, whether held illegally or legally, yet gun crime remains pretty rare: less than 100 gun murders in 2001.

Even if all guns were made illegal, there would still be a large and by all accounts increasing number of illegally held guns in private hands. Now comes the clincher. The vast majority of gun crime is committed with illegally held guns. In other words the present wearisome system of licensing and the penal conditions of security under which guns must be stored on private premises have next to no effect on solving gun crime.

If guns were allowed to everyone without restriction, the situation would be essentially the same as it is today. Gun crime would be committed with weapons that were unregistered. But would not more guns mean more gun crime? ‘That presumes there would be a massive increase in gun ownership. This is far from being certain. Before serious legal restrictions on gun ownership in Britain were enacted, gun ownership was not the norm. Nor does the ownership of a gun mean the owner will habitually carry it any more than the near universal ownership of lethal knives has meant that most people carry such knives. It is also worth reflecting on the fact that even criminals in Britain rarely use guns, despite their widespread availability in our larger cities. If criminals do not routinely use them to kill and wound , why should we believe the law-abiding citizen will?

Generally, it does not matter if people are not policed because Man, being a social animal, will not normally act in a fatally harmful way to others. Moreover, in a very law abiding society such as ours, there is less chance of seriously socially disruptive behaviour than in most, perhaps all, other societies.

As mentioned previously, the English have a remarkably low murder rate generally (about 800 a year in a population of 60 million) and always have done. The paucity of English murder is not the result of a careful control of weapons through the ages, especially guns, for as mentioned above for much of our history weapons were available. The only rational explanation for it is that there is something in the English character and society, that has made extreme personal violence rare. If any people can be trusted to own weapons the English can.

That guns do not equal mass homicide can also be seen from the example of Canada where seven million guns are owned legally in a population of 30 million. They have a higher rate of gun killing than England, but it is still very low. Switzerland with its citizen army with all males of military age having a gun at home is another example of widespread ownership with a low gun crime rate.

 What weapons should people be allowed?

Should private individuals be allowed to have anything from a revolver to nuclear bombs (as Michael Moore suggested in Bowling for Columbine)? Well, there is a compromise that is self-policing. The individual should have any weapon that the state is willing to use against the individual.

If you want a lethal weapon you can always get one quite legitimately because there are so many things which will do. The Government bans commando style knives? No problem, you just go to your local hardware store and buy a decent 6 inch blade cook’s knife. Or why not make yourself an old-fashioned cheese cutter out of cheese wire with a couple of pieces of wood to act as grips and Bob’s your uncle once you have the wire wound around someone’s neck. The state trying to outlaw lethal weapons is like the state trying to outlaw pornography in the age of the internet.

Published in THE INDIVIDUAL FEBRUARY 2003

 

Leveson Inquiry: Robert Henderson’s application for core participant status

The Leveson Inquiry- Note on the Directions Hearing 25 1 2012 in Court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice

Robert Henderson

I attended a directions hearing  for the decision on whether I would be designated  a Core Participant.  I shall not be Core Participant (unless I can somehow persuade Lord Leveson  otherwise), but I could be a witness.

Regardless of whether or not I end up as a witness, the hearing was far from being a waste of time.   I was able to put my case  before a sizeable number of people (probably 50), including  lawyers  representing various people  who have been mistreated by the media, other applicants for core participant status and members of the public, some of whom were  mediafolk.  In addition, the negligent  and superficial way the applications for core participant status were treated showed the Inquiry in a bad light.

Leveson began the proceedings by blithely announcing that he had not read any of the submissions  for core participant status.  Consequently, he made his decisions purely on the oral testimony given at the hearing by the applicants for core participant status.   This was not only odd in itself,  but became doubly so when placed in the context of the advice given to Core Participant applicants before the directions hearing:

“Dear Sir
You have made an application for Core Participant status for module 2. The Chairman will consider your application at the directions hearing which is listed for 2pm on Wednesday 25th January.  It is not necessary for you to attend the hearing, but you may do so if you wish.  If you do propose to attend, please let me know by 2pm on Tuesday 24th January.
Regards
Sharron “

If an applicant had chosen not to appear, it is probable their application would have been dismissed without their submission being considered.

Leveson  further hamstrung  the applicants by saying that he would not get into the detail of individual cases. I did manage to overcome this restriction  but as a method of proceeding it was absurd for an inquiry into press misbehaviour. The final shackle he  put around the applicants was the  danger of  jeopardising   legal action outside of the Inquiry.  Although there was no question of sub judice  because no charges had been brought, I decided not to name  the ex-editor who had committed perjury before the Inquiry by denying any knowledge of receiving information illicitly from the police.  I did this because  I wish Leveson to refer  to the police the perjury, the receipt of information illicitly from the police and the failure of the police to investigate meaningfully the receipt of information illicitly given by a police officer and illicitly received by the ex-editor and his staff.   If I submit the complaints the likelihood is that the police will repeat their behaviour and refuse to investigate meaningfully or at all.  Nonetheless, if I do not get a positive indication from Leveson I shall submit the complaints.

Despite all these seeming grave handicaps to free expression I managed to get a good deal of embarrassing material  into my testimony.  This included the Blairs’ attempt to have me prosecuted in 1997 (that produced a real murmur); the Mirror’s libelling of me and failure to offer me any right of reply and  the PCC’s abject failure to deal with my complaints honestly .  I also, without giving names,  described the perjury of the ex-editor, his admission of having received information illicitly from the police and the police’s refusal to meaningfully investigate the ex-editor’s admission that he had received information illicitly from  the police.  I emphasised that the Inquiry had been in possession of all these facts for more than a month and that if I was not to be a core participant I certainly wished to be a witness.

All that ensured that there are now substantial numbers of people who know that the Leveson Inquiry  has facts which by definition must fall within  the ambit of the Inquiry. Leveson himself acknowledged that  the receiving of illicit information from the police was  indisputably pertinent.

After the hearing  I discussed my situation with the Chief Solicitor to the Inquiry Miss Kim Brudenell.  I got her to agree to a number of actions.  These are:

1. to ensure that my submissions are brought to the notice of Lord Leveson.

2.  to advise me if a formal witness statement  is required after you have reviewed what I have already submitted.

3. to advise me  when and  how  the evidence I have of  the ex-editor receiving  information illicitly and his subsequent perjury before the Inquiry should be  reported to the Metropolitan Police.  I am  willing to make the complaint myself, but  I think it would be most appropriate for the this to be done  under the auspices of the Inquiry, not least because the perjury was committed at the Inquiry. (I wrote to the Inquiry on 22 December advising Lord Leveson of the perjury).

4.  to  advise me when and  how the failure of the Metropolitan Police to meaningfully investigate my complaint to them that the ex-editor had admitted receiving information illicitly from the police – the investigating officer told me that no one at the paper  had been interviewed – should be reported to the Metropolitan Police as a complaint of a perversion of the course of justice.

Stephen Lawrence, Gary Dobson, David Norris and a political trial

Robert Henderson

The conviction of Gary Dobson and David Norris for the murder of Stephen Lawrence is a savage and sinister travesty of justice. That is not because the defendants are necessarily innocent . What is profoundly worrying is the decision to prosecute regardless of the feeble quality of the new  evidence,  the placing in double jeopardy of Dobson (who had been formally acquitted in 1996 of the murder  when a private prosecution was brought) ,   the general  difficulties of a trial held 18 years after the event, the all too perniciously potent legacy of the Macpherson Report  and the almost continuous media circus which has accompanied the Lawrence killing for nearly 19 years and repeatedly savaged the reputation of the defendants .

The impossibility of a fair trial

The question of whether Dobson and Norris could get a fair trial should have been tested before the case was heard.   Despite assiduous attempts, I can find no  media reports that either Dobson or Norris’ lawyers applied to have the trial struck down on those grounds.  If no application was made by their lawyers ,the defendants would have every reason to feel cheated  because if ever there was a case where a fair trial would have been impossible this is it.

To understand exactly how outlandishly contaminating the circumstances surrounding the defendants were  it is necessary to  know of the  previous attempts at prosecution,  the scandalous behaviour tolerated at the Macpherson Inquiry, especially the behaviour towards the suspects,  and the virulent and extended  hate campaign waged by the British media against Dobson and Norris (and other  suspects).

The police originally had five  white  youths in the frame  for the murder, Dobson and Norris plus  Luke Knight and the brothers Neil and  Jamie Acourt.  The CPS refused to prosecute in 1994. The parents of Stephen Lawrence  then initiated a private prosecution   against  the five suspects, but only Jamie Acourt, Gary Dobson and Luke Knight  stood trial. The granting of a private prosecution is rare for any crime because the Attorney-General has to sanction such prosecutions; for a charge of murder it is unprecedented at least  in modern times( http://www.independent.co.uk/news/first-private-prosecution-for-murder-3-held-1616684.html.)

The trial collapsed when the judge ruled that the identification evidence of  Lawrence’s friend Duwayne Brooks, who had been with him on the night, was inadmissible (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-41.htm#41.3). That was scarcely surprising as Brooks originally told  the police he could not positively identify any of the attackers then later changed his story and said he could and picked out Neil Acourt and Luke Knight. As by his own story, Brooks ran away as fast he could when the attack happened and the  attack took place at night (around 10.30 pm on 22 April), it would seem improbable that he could have identified  the attackers with any certainty.  It is worth adding that (1) identification evidence is notoriously unreliable, especially where strangers are involved, and (2) the three independent witnesses to the attack were unable to identify any of the attackers.  The attack was also over very quickly.

Despite the failure to mount a criminal prosecution by the CPS and the abject failure of the private prosecution, the British media continued their campaign against those suspected of the murder. In 1997 the Daily Mail ran a front page which accused the five suspects of murder and challenged them to sue for libel (http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/frontpage/lawrence.html).    This was an act of outright cowardice by the Mail because they knew none of those they accused could afford to sue them.  A libel case against a the Daily Mail would have probably  have cost, at 2012 prices,  £1m to fund  because the Mail were determined to take it to court. But even if  the case was  won,  the judge would probably not have awarded  the plaintiff their  costs in full or even at all  and any  award would certainly be far less than the plaintiff’s  costs and probably derisory. If  the case was lost the plaintiff  would have to bear his  own costs and those of the Mail which would mean at least £2 million at today’s values.

The one family amongst the accused which had some degree of affluence at the time of  murder was that of David Norris, whose father Clifford was reputedly running  the drug trade in South London.  But Clifford Norris was jailed for nine years in 1994 and served seven years which reduced him to penury. In 2006 the Guardian found him living in a bedsit (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/aug/06/politics.lawrence).

But  even if a libel suit  had by some miracle been mounted, it is dubious if it would have succeeded because of the public demolition of the suspects’  characters over years. That would almost certainly have seriously biased any jury against them and  it could have been argued that the plaintiff(s) had no reputation to lose. Even if  a suit was successful, any damages would probably have been derisory on the same grounds of little reputation to lose.   It is worth mentioning that the editor of the Mail, Paul Dacre, knew Stephen Lawrence’s father  Neville, because Neville  had done some plastering work for him.

In 1998, through a combination of the more or less perpetual  media campaign and the religiously  politically correct  Blair Government,    the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry began presided over by a   senior judge,   Sir William Macpherson. This contained truly amazing scenes. In what was  a quasi-judicial proceeding there was an atmosphere close to mob rule.  Within the Inquiry  frequent interruption occurred in the public galleries, especially when the police were giving evidence.  At one point members of the Nation of Islam invaded the building and fought with the police (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1999/02/99/stephen_lawrence/282378.stm).

When the five suspects left the Inquiry after giving evidence  they were met by a mob and were physically attacked  by missiles and  directly assaulted by members of the mob (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/123608.stm).  Why they were expected to walk  through a mob when they left the building is a mystery because the police must have realised the crowd was likely to attack. Nor did the police show any urgency to either protect the suspects or arrest their assailants.

The publication of the Macpherson Report  in 1999 on the evidence given at the  Inquiry ensured the  Lawrence murder remained in the mainstream media throughout the eleven years leading up to the recent trial.   In addition, Macpherson’s  “anti-racist” recommendations, which included a dangerously broad definition of a racial incident as ” any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person” (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-47.htm),  were adopted throughout public service and then by private and not-for-profit  employers, especially the larger ones, many of which rely heavily on public contracts.

Politicians  of all mainstream parties competed to be the most enthusiastic  about this new quasi-Maoist “anti-racist” regimen under which  to make any comment which could be construed as “racist”,   however absurdly,  would probably mean the end of a career of a politician or public servant.  Unsurprisingly, public servants at all levels became eager to demonstrate how politically correct they were, both to advance their careers and to protect themselves.

Perhaps the single  most sinister  consequence of Macpherson  was the institutionalising of “anti-racism” – extremely crude  propaganda in practice – within the British state education system (http://www.schools-out.org.uk/teachingpack/stephenlawrence.htm), but the effect on  the police and justice system runs it close.

Macpherson did not believe that  racism did not  have to be consciously motivated.  He labelled the Metropolitan Police “institutionally racist”  (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-06.htm#6.6) ,  by which he meant, as far as he meant anything, unwitting racism arising from the general culture of  a corporate body.  The Metropolitan police at first rejected the tag of institutional racism but eventually  caved in, after which the other police forces in Britain followed suit.

To attack police racism, whether  deliberate or unintentional, Macpherson recommended that the police be directly placed under race laws:   “47/11That the full force of the Race Relations legislation should apply to all police officers, and that Chief Officers of Police should be made vicariously liable for the acts and omissions of their officers relevant to that legislation.” (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-47.htm).   This was enshrined in law in the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/34/contents)

The effect of Macpherson on  the police was to render them, and especially the most senior officers,  rigid with political correctness – the toxic fruits of which  can be starkly  seen in the police statement that the recent killing of the Indian student Anuj Bidve by a white attacker in Salford was a “hate crime” despite the fact that  the police admitted  there is no evidence for this  (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/white-attackernon-white-victim-racist-motive-non-white-attackerwhite-victim-no-racist-motive/).   This mentality has continued to drive the Stephen Lawrence case.

The publication of the Macpherson Report provided the mainstream media with a never ending stream of stories related to the Lawrence killing. He became the lead icon for “anti-racism”. No area of life escaped. Not only schools and the police but every workplace was directly or indirectly affected by the consequences of the Lawrence murder.  Stephen’s mother Doreen ceaselessly  campaigned for further investigations  into the death . The ever expanding band of “anti-racist” interest groups were ready at the drop of a hat to use his death as a lever to get other perceived racist affronts into the public eye.    The mainstream media, without exception dominated  by enthusiastic “anti-racists” and “multiculturalists”, was  always willing to run another Stephen Lawrence story and only too eager to seize on any claimed example of racism and give it an airing, frequently with reference to the Lawrence murder.

Because of the constant media’s constant return to the Lawrence story there was never any chance that it would fade in the public mind.  Any trouble the  five suspect got into, including criminal convictions,  was given great prominence in the media.   The period after 1993 was also the time when the Internet took off so that no mainstream  story is ever really taken from the public fold.  Details of Norris and Dobson’s criminal past may not have been allowed into evidence at their trial, but anyone googling their names would have soon discovered the material.

With all that history,  is it conceivable that a jury could be empanelled which  was not aware of the defendants’ past  and was not influenced by the massive amount of adverse and often crudely abusive media coverage they would have inevitably experienced just in the normal course of living? To not be aware of the media’s  representation of the Stephen Lawrence case and Dobson and Norris’ involvement in it, the jurors would not  have read newspapers or listened or watched news bulletins or current affairs programmes over the past 18 years;  not found such information when using the Internet; not attended  “antiracist” courses in their workplace  and not been at school (and probably university)  after 1999  because of the institutionalisation of “antiracism” propaganda  (with Stephen Lawrence at its centre)  in British schools following the recommendation  that this be done in the Macpherson Report (Recommendation 67 – http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-47.htm).  .

Even  if by some miracle twelve people could be found who were unaware of the Lawrence case and the reputation of  Dobson and Norris,  there would still be the hurdle to overcome of the intensely politically correct atmosphere that has been gradually  created by the British elite over the past forty years.   Whites in Britain have been conditioned to believe that  it is dangerous not to play the multiculturalist game. To fail to accept the Lawrence case narrative presented to them and find Dobson and Norris not guilty would expose them to the dreaded charge of racism.  At the same time non-whites have developed a tremendous sense of victimhood  which leaves them unlikely to approach a trial such as this in disinterested fashion.

However the jury was comprised the jurors would have had good cause to return a guilty verdict regardless of the evidence.  If the jury was all white they could, and almost certainly would have been,  be portrayed, at best,  as whites  looking after their own. If the jury was racially mixed it would be very difficult for the white members to argue for a not guilty verdict if the non-white members were against it.  Conversely, a non-white member on the jury who did not believe guilt had been proved would be nervous – for fear of being seen as an uncle Tom – about voting  for not guilty, if such a vote would mean there was a unanimous  verdict and consequently it would be known that they had voted that way.

(I have not been able to  discover any details about the composition of the  jury other than that it was comprised of 8 men and 4 women  and people from the locality of the killing were excluded (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15735026). If anybody has details of the age, class, race and ethnicity of the jurors please let me know. )

If there is an equivalent case  in terms of sustained adverse  media coverage which has gone to trial I would glad to know of it.

The racist video

A video made secretly by the police of some of   the suspects including,  Dobson and Norris, during the original investigation   into the murder shows Dobson and Norris (and the others) engaging in extremely crude racist talk. Here is an example:

Neil Acourt. Sequence 11. “I reckon that every nigger should be chopped up mate and they should be left with nothing but fucking stumps….”

David Norris. Sequence 50. “If I was going to kill myself do you know what I’d do? I’d go and kill every black cunt, every paki, every copper, every mug that I know..

I’d go down to Catford and places like that I’m telling you now with two sub-machine guns and I’m telling you I’d take one of them, skin the black cunt alive mate, torture him, set him alight …. I’d blow their two legs and arms off and say go on you can swim home now …. (laughs).”

Gary Dobson. Sequence 27. “He said the fucking black bastard I am going to kill him. I cracked up laughing. I went what black geezer. He went the Wimpy one the fucking black nigger cunt, fucking black bastard. I went what the Paki……”

Luke Knight. Sequence 11. “…. it was Cameroon, a fucking nigger country… Fucking our presenters saying oh yeah we want Cameroon to win this, why the fuck should he want niggers to win it when they’re playing something fucking like Italy…..”  (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-07.htm#7.11)

It is astonishing that the video was allowed in evidence because there is a principle in English law  that  nothing can be introduced into evidence if it is not direct evidence of the crime and  would be likely to serious  bias jurors. The prime example of this is the long-standing refusal to allow evidence of previous convictions into evidence (this has been weakened as a principle too,  but still obtains in most criminal cases).  The video clearly falls into this  category because there is no admission in the recording that the suspects had committed the crime.

It has been suggested that those involved suspected or even knew they were being bugged,  and deliberately went over the top with their language to taunt the police.  But there is no hard evidence that this is the case.  Moreover, if the prosecution seriously believed that  the recording was made  when those recorded knew or suspected they were being recorded, that would have been another reason for  excluding it from evidence because it did not represent Dobson and Norris’ normal behaviour.   Because of the  conditioning to the “antiracist” mindset  outlined above, it is difficult to believe the playing of the recording to the jury followed by the evidence given by Dobson and Norris about the recording would not have had an adverse effect on the jury.

The fact that no admission of having killed Lawrence was made in the secret recording is  a pointer to their innocence.   To build on that instance there is a considerable  amount of surveillance over the years which failed to catch any of the suspects  making any admission of involvement in the murder:

“ Just weeks before the Macpherson report was published in February 1999, then Met Deputy Commissioner John Stevens asked one of his top detectives  John Grieve, to launch a no-expense spared new probe.

Career detective Mr Stevens told Mr Grieve, a deputy assistant commissioner, he could recruit the best detectives in the force.

At its peak, 120 officers were working on Operation Athena Tower, which lasted four years.

Yard chiefs were in constant contact with the then Home Secretary Jack Straw, the only person who could authorise telephone intercepts on the suspects.

Yard Assistant Commissioner David Veness approved dozens of bugging operations on the gang’s cars, homes and workplaces, while a surveillance team was constantly on their trail.

A source said: ‘It was run like a big anti-terror operation. The team had every piece of kit you have ever heard of. It was pure James Bond.’

It was during this phase that a house was purchased in the same street as one of the murder suspects, and an undercover officer tasked with infiltrating the gang.

TV INTERVIEW AND A SPY HELICOPTER

Two months after the Grieve probe started, the five suspects agreed to be interviewed by Martin Bashir on ITV’s Tonight With Trevor McDonald.

Programme makers were in close contact with the Met before the programme was recorded but for legal reasons, detectives ruled out suggesting the line of questioning.

Had they done so, defence lawyers could have argued they had used Bashir as ‘an agent of the police’ – scuppering the possibility of using it as evidence at any future trial.

Bedrooms and other pre-selected rooms in the secret house in Scotland where the interview was filmed had recording devices installed.

Scotland Yard even had a helicopter hover over the group as they played golf nearby, recording their comments, relayed by satellite from tiny microphones hidden in their golf trolleys. But the ‘bugged golf buggies’ did not provide any vital new leads – and neither did the TV show.

In May 2004, the CPS announced there was insufficient evidence to bring murder charges. One detective remarked at the time that the Yard’s best hope was if one of the suspects ‘became a vicar’ and gave a true account of what happened”. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2081901/Stephen-Lawrence-trial-Police-bugged-killers-homes-cars-pubs.html  – this Mail article is worth reading in its entirety).

The fact that, despite the immense surveillance efforts made over a long period, no admission was ever recorded or heard by undercover officers pretending to be their friend strongly points to their innocence.  The temptation for young  men, adolescents when the crime happened,  to boast  amongst themselves about the crime if they had committed it would have been very strong because that is the way of young men.  Imagine keeping quiet about it for years on end even when you are drunk and  amongst people you think are your friends. It would argue for an iron self-discipline that few could muster and would be vanishingly  unlikely  to be found in every one of a group of five or more.

The breaching of double jeopardy

The ancient English law principle of no double jeopardy  – that there should be no more than one trial on the same offence or evidence after an acquittal  has been gained – was diluted by the Criminal Justice Act 2003. This provided for  more than twenty offences  to attract the possibility of a second trial on the same charge after being acquitted previously.  Murder is one of the qualifying offences. (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/44/part/10).   The breaching of double jeopardy was one of the Macpherson  recommendations – no 28  – although he was making the suggestion only in relation to racist crimes. (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-47.htm).

The removal of double jeopardy is dangerously wrong  in itself,  because of the opportunity it gives to the state to behave in an oppressive manner. To that  ill  is added that of de facto retrospection, for it is not only crimes committed after the 2003 Act which are caught by it but any crime committed before the Act was passed. Dobson was acquitted during  the private prosecution  and  until the 2003 Act was passed could not have been retried.   He is also a victim of retrospection.

There are supposedly strong safeguards against the abuse of power built into the 2003 Act.  The court of Appeal  has to quash the original acquittal and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP)  has to give the go ahead for a new prosecution.  There is also a seemingly stern test for the new evidence on which a fresh trial will be based. Section 78 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 requires that the new evidence must meet the following tests:

78 New and compelling evidence

(1)The requirements of this section are met if there is new and compelling evidence against the acquitted person in relation to the qualifying offence.

(2)Evidence is new if it was not adduced in the proceedings in which the person was acquitted (nor, if those were appeal proceedings, in earlier proceedings to which the appeal related).

(3)Evidence is compelling if—

(a)it is reliable,

(b)it is substantial, and

(c)in the context of the outstanding issues, it appears highly probative [Having the effect of proof, tending to prove, or actually proving] of the case against the acquitted person.

(4)The outstanding issues are the issues in dispute in the proceedings in which the person was acquitted and, if those were appeal proceedings, any other issues remaining in dispute from earlier proceedings to which the appeal related.

(5)For the purposes of this section, it is irrelevant whether any evidence would have been admissible in earlier proceedings against the acquitted person. (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/44/part/10).

The problem with such putative safeguards is that they  allow a great deal of latitude in their interpretation and the decisions,  whether or not to quash the original acquittal or mount a fresh prosecution, are made by members of the  elite who are often associated with politicians.  For example, the present DPP,  Keir Starmer, is a member of the Labour Party (he was named after Keir Hardie) and was  appointed by a Labour government.   Consequently , there is also a  “Who shall guard the guards” element to fret over.    But I shall leave that  question  to the judgement of the reader. What I shall go into in some detail is the question of the “New and compelling evidence” on which the re-trial was based.

The new forensic evidence

This consists of a minute blood stain identified as Lawrence’s blood, two human hairs of 1mm and 2mm  respectively (which could only be tested for maternal DNA because the hairs had no root) and a small amount of fibre identified as coming from Lawrence’s clothes which was found on clothing taken from  the defendants’ homes after the murder.   Technology was not advanced enough in 1993 to have extracted a complete DNA profile from the blood stain, but that is irrelevant because, according to media reports,  the blood stain was not spotted in 1993. The stain was tiny but not invisible being 0.25mm by 0.5mm (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2081758/Stephen-Lawrence-verdict-The-evidence-convicted-David-Norris-Gary-Dobson.html).  

In the 1990s two separate forensic examinations were made of the clothes and other items gathered by the police in 1993 as possible evidence.  The first was conducted by Adam Wain  who was working with the police. The second  by Dr Angela Gallop who acted for the Lawrence family in 1995 when the private prosecution was being prepared.  Both found blood and textile fibres; both came to the same conclusions: that there was too little blood to test and  the connection between Lawrence and any of the suspects’  clothing was thin,  in Dr Gallop’s words  “Even in combination these fibres provide only very weak evidence of any association between Lawrence’s and Dobson’s clothing.” (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-25.htm – this is section 25 of the Macpherson Report)

But there were  fibres which had some similarity with the garments worn by Dobson and Lawrence:

“ 25.7 In summary, the conclusions of Mr Wain were really as follows: First, amongst the extraneous fibres removed from the bag from the right hand were two brown wool fibres that had the same microscopic and colour characteristics as those from Mr Dobson’s cardigan. One of these had similar dye components as those from the cardigan. The other one was too small for dye testing. 

Also he found that one grey cotton fibre from Stephen Lawrence’s jacket had the same microscopic characteristics as fibres from Mr Dobson’s jacket. That discovery was made in June 1994. Also a single white polyester fibre found in the bag from Stephen Lawrence’s right hand had the same microscopic characteristics as those from Mr Dobson’s jacket. As that fibre was white no further relevant tests could be carried out.”

25.8 The report of Mr Wain continued as follows … “Evaluation conclusions … where fibres are found to match the component fibres of a garment, this does not mean that they necessarily came from that garment. They could have come from another garment of the same type or another source of similar fibres. Therefore, in my opinion, there is weak support for the assertion that the two brown wool fibres recovered from the bag that was covering Stephen Lawrence’s right hand came from an exhibit ASR/2, namely a cardigan recovered from Dobson’s home”, and that, “there is very weak support for the assertion that the single grey cotton and white polyester fibres that were recovered from Lawrence’s jacket and right hand bag came from item LA/5, namely a jacket found at Dobson’s home.” (Ibid)

The importance of these early findings on the fibres are twofold: (1) it shows that extensive searches for fibres and their extended  testing was undertaken when the evidence was fresh and less likely to be contaminated (2) that  similarity of fibre was weak evidence of  where the fibre came from.

It is rather difficult to see how two highly experienced forensic scientists could have missed the fibres which were presented as evidence in the trial just concluded.  More to the point, even if they did miss them,  why are these putatively new  fibres any more potent as evidence now than those  found and tested in between 1993-1995? There would seem to be no ready answer to that because a fibre is just a fibre, a dye is just a dye.  There has not been  technological advance which will identify the  particular garment from which a fibre has come.

Even if there was other evidence, forensic or otherwise,  the new  fibre evidence  would add little to it simply because of its uncertainty.  If there was a great deal of evidence which pointed to Dobson and Norris being involved with the killing it might add a small  circumstantial something  but that is all. But there was not a great mass of strong evidence in this trial. The two hairs  found on Norris’ clothing could have been simple contamination as the evidence bags nestled together, unwitting transferred during other tests or even transferred by the officers initially  collecting evidence who also visited the Lawrence home.  It is worth adding that the clothes from which fibres were taken were not  collected for several weeks after the murder and the police themselves thought it unlikely that any fibres  from Lawrence would have been left on the clothes after that time(http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-25.htm) .

The only really  important new evidence put forward was the microscopic blood sample on Dobson’s jacket collar (http://news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/16141534) and the two hairs.   The fibre and hair evidence really added nothing to this. The DNA evidence either stood or fell on its own merits. As  there was no blood evidence against Norris (only inconclusive  fibres and the two tiny hairs). He should have been acquitted because there was no meaningful evidence against him.

The blood evidence against Dobson presents more complex problems.   The defence did not question the blood  DNA analysis. Instead they attacked its veracity as evidence by claiming contamination.  There were solid grounds for doing this.   The blood stain was not seen  by the two forensic scientists who had examined the jacket in the 1990s. The evidence  had been stored for 18 years.  The clothes were stored in paper  evidence bags sealed only with sellotape – the original forensic scientist  Adam Wain warned of the  dangers of contamination as the bags and sellotape seals degraded (http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/2011/11/24/stephen-lawrence-murder-trial-forensic-expert-had-concerns-about-contamination-of-evidence-old-bailey-hears-86908-23585745)  Evidence bags containing Lawrence’s clothes and effects were stored with those containing the Dobson and Norris evidence.   Detective Sergeant John Bevan and Detective Constable Linda Holden, two of the officers involved in the initial investigation,  visited the Lawrence home as well as taking raids on the suspects homes (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8908314/Officers-may-have-contaminated-Stephen-Lawrence-evidence.html).  An officer on the case  DC Paul Steed  deliberately  sabotaged his records relating to the forensic  evidence (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/12/09/stephen-lawrence-trial_n_1139000.html . A forensic worker Yvonne Turner  mislabelled evidence in 1993, including the garments at issue in the Dobson/Norris trial (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/23/stephen-lawrence-trial-evidence-mislabelled)  It is also true that contamination of forensic evidence is a not uncommon problem in many cases which heavily rely on it.  (http://www.impactnottingham.com/2012/01/can-we-really-rely-on-forensic-science/).

Having said all that there is the question of how the blood soaked into the Dobson jacket collar. Three other flakes of blood which tested as being that of Lawrence were found loose in the evidence bag, although again these had been missed in the earlier forensic examination.  They could plausibly have been in the bag as  the result of contamination by a simple mechanical transfer of material.  Dobson’s defence rested on the fact that the blood on the collar could have been caused by the liquid with which the jacket was sprayed to test for saliva. This could have softened another scrap of dried blood which allowed the blood to soak into the collar.

The prosecution brought Rosalyn Hammond as an expert forensic witness to say this was “practically impossible” (http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/2011/12/08/stephen-lawrence-murder-trial-contamination-not-to-blame-for-bloodstain-on-accused-s-jacket-says-expert-86908-23620646/).   Prosecuting counsel in his final speech to the jury said the blood on the collar could not “realistically be caused by contamination”. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16271736). Note that neither the witness or the prosecutor say it was actually  impossible. In fact, they used  the sort of phrases that people use when they are trying to paper over the cracks in an argument. Nor  is the spraying for saliva the only plausible way the blood could have got onto the collar. For example, someone opening the bag which had been contaminated with loose tiny flakes of blood could have had water or another liquid on their hands and without knowing it transferred both blood and liquid to the Dobson jacket.  It is also rather curious that only a tiny amount of blood would have soaked into  the Dobson jacket if it had been transferred during the attack or conceivably after the attack with blood from the knife or hands.  The fact that the blood was on the collar makes it even less probable because staining elsewhere – the sleeve or front of jacket would have been more likely  than the collar, especially if the blood was transferred in the attack. It should also be remembered that the blood stain and the three other loose flakes in the evidence bag were missed by both forensic investigations in the 1990s.

There are further strong circumstantial reasons to doubt the blood sample. Much was made in the Macpherson report of the failure to arrest any of the suspects for two weeks  after the killing and the fact that on two occasions before any arrests were made Dobson and Jamie Acourt  were seen leaving their homes carrying black plastic refuse sacks which might have contained items of clothing (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-18.htm).  The Macpherson report concluded that  this might have been clothes worn at the killing which were being disposed of to destroy any potential forensic evidence, a rather large assumption to say the least.   But If that was indeed the case why would they have kept any of the clothes? Common sense would have told anyone who had been involved in the killing to get rid of everything. . In  addition,  it should be remembered that David Norris’ father Clifford was a heavyweight villain who reputedly ran the drugs trade in South London at that time.  If he knew  his son and others had been involved with the murder  it is difficult to believe he would not have told his son  to make sure all those involved got  rid of any clothing or anything else they were carrying or wearing in case  these  provided  forensic evidence.

Exactly how the Court of Appeal and the DPP concluded this was “New and compelling evidence” I am at a loss to understand.   As for the jury, the judge warned them they had to accept the forensic evidence as being beyond reasonable doubt before moving to the question of whether Dobson and Norris were guilty.   Whether the jury understood the full ramifications and complexity of the forensic evidence we shall never know, but it is difficult to see how they could have met the steep test of “beyond a reasonable doubt”  on any rational basis.

The viciousness of the  white liberal

Nothing I have written is meant to suggest  that Dobson and Norris (or the other suspects) are  admirable human beings.  However, it is interesting to see the hypocrisy and viciousness of   modern day liberals as they respond to this case.

If this had been black defendants from similar backgrounds to those of the five accused the mainstream media would have been full of broadcasts and articles saying their environment was responsible for their misbehaviour, how disadvantaged they were and so on.    Nor has any meaningful  allowance has been  made by the mainstream media for the youth of  Dobson (17) and Norris (16) at the time of the attack or the fact that Norris had a father who was a serious criminal. It should also be borne in mind that the suspects lived in an area of heavy non-white immigration, unlike the regulation issue white liberal who,  curiously you may think for those putative worshippers of diversity, so often manage to  arrange their affairs so that they live in very white worlds.

As they are white working class men,   white liberals (and their black and Asian auxiliaries) feel free to casually vilify them in the crudest manner which demolishes any pretence they have to actually believing in the “liberal internationalist, be understanding, don’t blame anyone”  credo they continuously promote.

That bastion of liberal sanctimony the Guardian greeted the convictions with the tabloid worthy headline Monsters in the dock (http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jan/06/1?newsfeed=true) while the Daily Telegraph from supposedly the other side of the political spectrum  thought it relevant to comment on the physical appearance of the three members of the original five suspects not charged in this trial – The Acourt brothers and Luke Knight – and to sneer at the difficulties which the all but Jamie Acourt have experienced since the Lawrence murder (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8974918/Stephen-Lawrence-murder-Jamie-Acourt-Neil-Acourt-and-Luke-Knight-profiles.html).

The vindictiveness of the liberal can be seen in their howling for longer sentences for Dobson and Norris – despite the fact that they were aged 17 and 16 at the time of the murder –  and the willingness of those with power to pander to the public cries. The Attorney-General  – a politician in the British government – has already agreed to review the sentences to see if they are “unduly lenient”  because one or more “members of the public” have requested that he do so  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8994957/Stephen-Lawrence-murder-Attorney-General-to-review-sentences.html)

It might be thought that the liberal dominated media would at least have been disturbed by the diluting of double jeopardy, but with a few honourable exceptions such as Peter Hitchens  (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2083636/Stephen-Lawrence-murder-I-dont-believe-man-stand-trial-twice-crime.html#ixzz1irbOpuHd) there has been a ghastly silence.

The unpleasant truth (for liberals) is that modern liberals, far from being interested in truth and fairness and  treating all human beings alike, are just like every other human being: they favour those they approve of and attack those they deem beyond the Pale.  In fact, liberals today are more likely to behave viciously towards those of whom they disapprove than the general run of Britons because they are rigid ideologues and like all ideologues they carry their beliefs to any length of sinister absurdity.

Shades of the Barry George conviction

When Barry George was convicted  of the murder of the  television presenter Jill Dando in 2001 I  wrote a pamphlet for the Libertarian Alliance entitled  Barry George and the celebrity effect  [http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/barry-george-and-the-celebrity-effect/ ]. In it I argued  that the evidence  was very weak and entirely circumstantial and the conviction palpably wrong.   The prosecution case, like that in the Dobson/Norris trial, also rested on dubious  forensic evidence.

I attributed the jury’s willingness to convict on such feeble evidence  to  Dando’s  celebrity and the massive amount of irrelevant character assignation of George which occurred during the trial, character assassination which  was then gleefully amplified  by the media. Barry George was acquitted on appeal in 2008 when the weakness of the case against him was finally officially recognised.

Something similar seems to have  happened in the case of Dobson and Norris.   The police, the DPP, the  Court of Appeal  had obvious reason not to bring the case to trial or, in the case of the jury, to reach a verdict of guilty. Dobson should not have tried again because of the breach of double jeopardy and even under the new rules on second trials after an acquittal,  neither Dobson nor Norris should have been retried because of the patent impossibility that they would get a fair trial because of all that had occurred in the previous 18 years.  In addition, the new forensic  evidence was seriously compromised by the very real risk of contamination. This should have caused the case to fail to meet the “new and compelling” criteria for a new trial. The jury should have come to a not guilty verdict because clearly the “beyond a reasonable doubt”  standard was not met because of the risk of contamination.   The only plausible explanation for all of these things not happening is the creation by the media, politicians and interest groups of an atmosphere in which none of those involved in the process from gathering evidence to giving a verdict felt it possible to do anything other than allow the process of re-trial to proceed.

It is not necessary for those involved to have consciously made a decision not to do what circumstances and facts said they should do. All that it required is for those involved to have been in effect brainwashed by the coverage of the Lawrence case over 18 years and the ever increasing grip which  “antiracist” propaganda has on Britain which makes many white Britons believe that in some curious way whites are always in the wrong when black complaints of abuse by whites are involved.

This was a political trial pure and simple.  The desire for a conviction became part of the “anti-racist” crusade which the murder generated.  No expense has been spared  with an estimated £50 million having been spent on it  (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2081901/Stephen-Lawrence-trial-Police-bugged- killers-homes-cars-pubs.htm). At its height 120 officers were employed on the case full time (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2081901/Stephen-Lawrence-trial-Police-bugged-killers-homes-cars-pubs.html). Even today there are 25 officers doing the same and suggestions that they should be re-deployed to other duties is causing media uproar.  The squad may well continue, viz.: ‘ Scotland Yard has denied reports that the team investigating the murder of Stephen Lawrence is being disbanded but it admitted the case is currently “dormant”’. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16435790)

Compare the Lawrence case with the investigation of  the murder of a fifteen year old white boy Richard Everitt by Asians in 1994. (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/the-deaths-of-richard-everitt-and-stephen-lawrence-compare-and-contrast/). One person was convicted of the murder  and released after 11 years. Upwards of ten were in the gang which killed him who went looking for a white boy to attack. Unlike the Lawrence case there has been no sustained  median campaign to bring the others to justice, no Public Inquiry like that of Macpherson, no ongoing massive police  squad devoted to a continuing investigation, no outcry by the media at the release of the convicted killer after only 11 years.  This was a murder which the British elite wished to sweep under the carpet as quickly as possible.  The double standards of the British elite are howlingly obvious and disturbing.  The British public can see what is happening and are becoming increasingly disenchanted with the “white, wrong; black,  right”  policies and mentality of those with power and influence in this country. That could be the ultimate legacy of the Stephen Lawrence circus: the straw which broke the grip of the “antiracist” multicultural propagandists on British life.

Stephen Lawrence’s murder was just that, a murder.  It was as grave a crime as any other murder arising from the similar circumstances of a gang attack. No more, no less.

Emma West, immigration and the Liberal totalitarian state part 3

Robert Henderson

Emma West appeared at Croydon magistrates court on 3rd January.  She  will stand trial  on  two racially aggravated public order offences, one with intent to cause fear. She will next appear in court  – Croydon Crown Court –  on 17 February 2012.

The  charge with “intent to cause fear “ arises because a passenger, Ena-May Eubanks, claims Miss West  hit her left shoulder  with a closed fist.   This charge comes under section 31A  of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/37/section/31). It carries a potential sentence on  conviction on indictment of  “ imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or to a fine, or to both”.

Anyone who has watched the video on YouTube will think the idea that she intended to cause fear when she was a white woman surrounded by hostile ethnic minorities laughable. ”   The CPS are clearly playing the pc game by hitting her with the most severe charges possible.  (The official line on what is a racially aggravated offence can be found at http://www.cps.gov.uk/news/fact_sheets/racially_aggravated_offences/).

Miss West has yet to plead,  but the fact that she  has opted for a  Crown Court trial (which will mean the case is heard before a jury) rather than a hearing in a magistrates court strongly suggests  she will plead not guilty ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jan/03/woman-accused-tram-race-rant).   This is because she  risks a heavier sentence in the Crown Court and it would make little sense to opt for  the case to be heard in the Crown Court if she does  not intend to plead not guilty.  There is of course the danger that she may be intimidated into pleading guilty by the promise of a lighter sentence.

Her bail conditions are  that ” she does not travel on a tram within Croydon and Sutton, lives and sleeps  at her home address and does not comment on the case. ” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16394046).

Bearing  in mind that Miss West was remanded in custody against her will for “her own safety” , it does seem rather rum that the same court is insisting she stays in her own house when her address was read out in court.

The ban on travel on the local tram system could  be pretty penal because she has two small children and the tram system may be the only means she has of taking them with her when she has to leave her house.

Her  blanket gagging so she cannot comment on the case is remarkable.   Engaging in any of the following can  breach the sub judice rules and constitute  contempt of court:

1. obtaining or publishing details of jury deliberations;

2. filming or recording within court buildings;

3. making payments to witnesses;

4. publishing information obtained from confidential court documents;

5. reporting on the defendant’s previous convictions;

6. mounting an organized campaign to influence proceedings;

7. reporting on court proceedings in breach of a court order or reporting restriction;

8. breaching an injunction obtained against another party;

9. anticipating the course of a trial or predicting the outcome; or

10. revealing the identity of child defendants, witnesses or victims or victims of sexual offences. (http://www.out-law.com/page-9742)

Only   4, 6, 7, 8 would seem to have any application in the context of banning her from commenting on the case.  Number 9 might  seem to have relevance,  but by pleading one way or the other the outcome of a case is anticipated. It would be absurd if it applied to a defendant.

Nos  4,6, 7,8 could have been dealt with by banning those specific acts, although it is unlikely she would be in a position to do these things. For example, it is wildly improbable  she could mount an organised campaign to influence proceedings.   It is also true that cases can be discussed while a case is active in the context of a discussion of public affairs, for example, it would be acceptable to discuss Miss West’s case as part of an examination of how the justice system treats the treatment of black on white offences compared with white on black offences.

What does her  general gagging  tell us?  Simple. The liberal elite are truly terrified that the politically correct house of cards they have built will be blown over if any of the vast resentment and anger at mass immigration and its consequences  within the native British population is allowed into the public fold.

Piers Morgan lied to the Leveson Inquiry

Piers Morgan lied to the Leveson Inquiry  (20 12 2011) when he claimed he had never illicitly received  information from the police when Mirror editor.   I can say this categorically because he admitted doing so in a letter to the PCC in 1997 when he wrote “”The  police source of our article (whose identity we have a moral obligation to protect) gave us the detail of the letters that we then published”.  Had the information been given to the Mirror legitimately there would have been no reason not to divulge the informant’s name because the only way information can legitimately be given to the media by the police is if it is done on an attributable basis.  Here is the full text of the letter with my comments interpolated in the square brackets marked RH:

FROM THE EDITOR

By fax (0171-353 8355) & by post

16 October 1997

Your ref: 970738

Christopher Hayes Esq

Press Complaints Commission

I Salisbury Square

London

EC4Y 8AE

Dear Mr Hayes

Mr Robert Henderson

I refer to Mr Henderson’s complaint as outlined in his letter of 23 September.

As you are aware, we have been in contact with Mr Henderson for some time due to his propensity to bombard individuals and this office with correspondence. [RH Translation: Mr Henderson sent more than one letter because the Mirror refused to reply].

There are certain irrefutable facts that escape emphasis in Mr Henderson’s correspondence.

Far from ignoring any of his correspondence we have written to him on the 20 May, 22 July and 6 August. [RH The letter of 20 May merely said he was not going to enter into correspondence. The other two letters were from his legal department in response to Subject Access Requests I made under the data Protection Act]. We have consistently made it clear that we have no intention of entering into any further correspondence with him.

Be that as it may I will address his concerns:-

In essence, the basic “sting” of the article, of which he complains, was that he had been sending numerous insulting letters, some with racist undertones, to Mr and Mrs Blair which had been passed to the Crown Prosecution Service for consideration.

Mr Henderson himself admits that he sent Mr and Mrs Blair at least thirteen letters. I have no way of directly knowing of the content of those letters because I have not had sight of them. However, clearly they sufficiently concerned Mr Blair’s office to be passed to the Crown

Prosecution Service [RH The CPS said as soon as they saw the letters that they were entirely legal] and I think the Commission is perfectly entitled to draw an adverse inference on the contents of those letters as a result of that referral.

I cannot accept Mr Henderson’s explanation for writing to Cherie Blair.

To do so was clearly designed to intimidate.

In Mr Henderson’s draft article “Moral Simpletons Target Innocent Man” the bile that he shows on the second page of that article clearly illustrates his capacity to insult in his letters to Mr and Mrs Blair [RH an absurd deduction. What I wrote to the Mirror says nothing about what I wrote to the Blairs] (to the extent that they be referred to the Crown Prosecution Service). I would also refer the Commission to Mr Henderson’s gratuitous reference to a “Blaireich”.

He also admits to expressing his disgust (we can only guess in what terms) of the decision of Mr and Mrs Blair not to send their son to a school whereby a white schoolboy was, apparently, murdered by five other boys (and that that murder was racially motivated). [RH This was the Richard Everitt murder].

The police source of our article (whose identity we have a moral obligation to protect) [thus the police informant behaved illegally by supplying the information] gave us the detail of the letters that we then published. Nothing that Mr Henderson writes has convinced me that the article was anything other than accurate.

Perhaps one can get a flavour of his correspondence with Mr and Mrs Blair by examining the final sentence of his draft article in which he states “It was a cargo of ancient male gonads”.

The Commission may be aware (I am attempting to get hold of the article) that the article of Mr Henderson’s that appeared in Wisden’s Cricket Monthly in 1995 gave rise to an extraordinary amount of controversy and resulted in Wisden paying substantial libel damages to the Cricketer, Devon Malcolm, whom the Commission will be aware is a coloured fast bowler for England. As I understand the matter, and Mr Henderson will correct me if I am wrong, the article implied that coloured players will not try as hard when playing for England as white players. [RH The article put it forward as a possibility, no more].

I have discussed the legal position with the newspaper’s solicitor, Martin Cruddace [Cruddace is a proven liar. He made a declaration to my Subject Access Request under the Data protection Action to the effect that the Mirror held no qualifying documents. Eventually after I had done some detective work, he had to admit that the Mirror had a small matter of 118 pages of documents relating to me], and he has assured me that the law has recently developed whereby words (be they written or spoken) can constitute assault if the pattern of those words is such as to make the recipient of them either anxious or ill. It has developed as a reaction to the former impotence of the law on stalking. [RH: No person in the UK has been convicted of such a crime. The definition of GBH has been extended to non-physical abuse such as abusive phone calls but it requires a psychiatric illness to be proved to be caused by the alleged abusive behaviour. Mere emotions such as fear do not qualify. The failure of the police to consider such a course and the CPS’ immediate definition of the case as “NO CRIME” shows that my letters were entirely lawful] .The law has therefore developed since the publication of the dictionary reference on which Mr Henderson relies.

I cannot accept that the taking of the photographs of Mr Henderson, given the clear public interest concerning the subject matter of The Mirror article, could possibly constitute harassment under the Code.[RH it was an unequivocal offence because the photographer took the photograph within my property].

I am most concerned not to waste any further time in dealing with Mr Henderson’s complaint but, naturally, if the Commission wishes me to address any further matters then I will endeavour to do so.

However, I hope that the above is sufficient to convince the Commission that the basic “sting” of the article is accurate and that Mr Henderson’s complaint ought to be dismissed.

Yours sincerely

Piers Morgan

I obtained the letter from the PCC after I made a complaint against the Mirror following their publication of extraordinarily libellous story about me.   The details of that episode  can be found at http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/the-failure-to-charge-piers-morgan-with-illicitly-receiving-information-from-the-police/

The Leveson Inquiry  has had a copy of the letter for a month together with my submission relating to it and other matters. The text of my submission to the Leveson Inquiry is at http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/11/25/the-leveson-inquiry-the-blairs-the-mirror-the-police-and-me/ . The fact that Leveson refused to confront Morgan with the letter and the failure to call me as a witness despite the startling evidence I had  provided to them  is clear evidence that the Inquiry will not be pressing the mainstream media hard. At worst it will be no more than a Government PR exercise.

Apart from Morgan’s lie to the Levenson Inquiry, there is a tremendous story of political misbehaviour which surrounds it

http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/when-tony-and-cherie-blair-tried-to-have-me-jailed/

The racial and ethnic make-up of the August 2011 UK rioters by group

Robert Henderson

I have taken the same Daily Telegraph data used in my earlier analysis (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8698443/UK-riots-suspected-looters-statistics-and-court-cases.html) and divided the names into groups which give the strongest pointer to race and ethnicity. During this process I discovered various duplications in the Daily Telegraph’s data and the total of named people is now 278.

The various group totals are:

21 Biblical names

37 British surnames but non-British forenames

4 Double barrelled surnames

21 African names

48 Muslim names

5 Non-Muslim Asians

16 Foreign European names

126 Those with British names who could plausibly be white or black

The first thing to note is that those with British names who could be  plausibly white or black comprise less than half the named charged rioters and looters. If every one of the 126 is assumed to have been white and British that would still mean around 53% of the rioters were either black or Asian, despite the fact that they formed less than 8% of the UK population at the time of the last published census in 2001. That gives a false picture of  Asian involvement,  because apart from Muslims only five Asians appear and it is a fair bet that some of the Muslims are black rather than Asians.

It is also improbable in the extreme that all of the 126 in the either black or white group were white. Bearing in mind (1) the overwhelming dominance of blacks in the riots which is readily apparent from the voluminous footage of the rioting and (2) the fact that the riots occurred overwhelmingly in areas with a large black population, it is reasonable to assume that many  will have been black.  If it is assumed that only 50% of the 126 are black, the number of white Britons involved in the 282 group of those charged was probably around 60-70. It may well have been substantially less than that.

Group Data

Those with Biblical names – these are most probably black

Nathan David Evans,Male,21,11/14/1989

Nathan Anthony George Henry,Male,

Nathan Dempster,Male,18

Joshua Mathias Courtney Jones,Male,30,8/16/1980

Levi Nesbitt,Male,20

Aaron Mulholland,Male

Aaron Israel,Male,21,4/24/1990

Aaron Young,Male,20,3/19/1991

Aaron Grima,Male,22

Aaron Samuels,Male,29

Aaron Hugh Mulholland,Male,30,7/5/1981

Aaron Warwood,Male,18

Micah Lammie,Male,22,3/18/1989

Samuel Green,Male,22

Samuel Konneh,Male,30

Samuel Thomas Green,Male,22

Daniel Bell,Male,30

Daniel Hourd,Male,21

Daniel Moran,Male,26

Medad Coker,Male,30,10/21/1980

Cain Larden,Male,25

Total 21

Those with regulation British surnames but forenames which are used primarily by blacks.

Mr Byron Cawley,Male,19,3/14/1992

Sanchez Banton,Male,18

Samuel Jolly,Male,18

Curtis Dejean,Male,

Jacques Samuel De La Lubie,Male,18

Lorriane Andalinda Mcgrane,Male,

Byron Cawley,Male,19

Tyrrel Shannon,Male,19

Pierre Wilkinson,Male,20,10/7/1990

Miss Shereece Ashley,Female

Jerome Lewis,Male,20,1/3/1991

Alicia Smith,Female,20

Stefan Hoyle,Male,19,1/21/1992

Jordan Blackshaw,Male,20

Jordan Kelly,Male,20,1/9/1991

Harrison  Mccalla,Male,20

Travis Cadogan,Male,22,9/1/1988

Shonola Smith,22

Kairo Lawson,Male,21

Kaine Stephen Thorpe,Male,24,5/1/1987

Felix Jones,Male,25

Byron Payton,Male,26

Lloyd Mansfield Mcgregor,Male,27,7/30/1984

Chammel Chrison Pusey,Male,27,9/14/1983

Asha Mcdevitt,Male,28

Antany Edwards,Male,23

Marvin Seymour,Male,24

Dayle Blinkhorn,,23

Brice Haddan Green,Male,23,7/9/1988

Lance Prince,Male,20,11/10/1990

Saffron Armstrong,Male,21

Jade Wallace,Female,22

Troy Mcleod,Male,27,9/19/1983

Reiss Wilson,Male,21

Shelly Bishop,Female,36

Rodney Benoni Davis,Male,18,4/28/1993

Ashton Alexander,Male,18

Kellie Hall,Female,25,4/15/1986

Total 37

Double barrelled surnames – these will most probably be black

Reece Davis-james,Male,18

Alexander Elliott-joahill,Male,18,4/16/1993

Alexander Elliott-johill,Male,18

Gary Howe-sampson,Male,20

Total 4

Those with African names – these will definitely be black

James Antwi,Male,18,12/19/1992

David Attoh,Male,18,

Ohene Bamfo,Male,20

Olufemi Akande,Male,20

Lloyd Coudjoe,Male,20

Fredrick Osei,Male,22,1/3/1989

Gassam Ojjeh,Male,22

Ryan Kaputula,Male,21

Jason Akinole,Male,22,12/3/1988

Dammy Sofekun,Male,23,3/14/1988

Anthony Akueruka,Male,23,6/3/1988

Samon Adesina,Male,23,9/11/1987

Sanh Ngan,Male,24,7/31/1987

Nana Kwame Sarpong,Male,25,4/8/1986

Roxwell Yeboah,Male,33

Nosakare Aigbogun,41

Paul Obanyanyo,Male,42

Paul Obonyano,Male,49,9/26/1968

Sayon Leroy Armstrong,Male,31,2/10/

Banye Kenon,Male

Gareth Okoro,Male,30

Total 21

Muslim names – these are unlikely to be white

Samir Drissi,Male,18,3/6/1993

Arjun Tassinari,Male,18,9/7/1992

Jamaal Hakim Hislop Whall,Male,18,12/24/1992

Ali Ladji Ford,Male,18,9/25/1992

Omar Muktar Farah,Male,18,11/14/1992

Ahmed Al-jaf,Male,18,3/22/1993

Zishan Hussain,Male,18

Abdul Majid,Male,18

Amir Shar,Male,18

Beidir Amin,Male,18

Jamal Ebanks,Male,18

Samir Shah,Male,18

Taryk Claytonabdorahman,Male,

Karmail Rizvi,Male,19,

Adel Driouch,Male,19,11/11/1991

Adewumi Adebayo ,Male,19,6/3/1992

Ahmed Diakhaby,Male,19,2/20/1992

Kumail Rizvi,Male,19

Hamza Alamin Abubakar,Male,19

Quamai Nugent,Male,19

Hodan Hussain,Male,20

Abdiasis Ibrahim,Male,20

Badawi Elbadawi,Male,20,3/27/1991

Omar Talab,Male,20,6/29/1991

Abbas Larti,Male,22,2/11/1989,

Munir Zaman,Male,20

Abdullah Ansari,Male,22,5/25/1989

Ishmail Lokko ,Male,22,2/28/1989

Farshad Dousti,Male,22,3/31/1989

Imran Khan,Male,23

Youssuf Addow,Male,25,3/4/1986

Haramein Mohammed,Male,25

Ahmed Farah,Male,27

Adellah Snape,Female,30

Abdelhak Hamraoui,Male,36

Hassan Halloway,Male,39

Hamza Abubakar,Male,19

Khuram Iftikhar,,21

Adam El-wahabi,Male,21,3/30/1990

Amir Mostafa,Male,21,10/19/1989

Youssef El-idrissi,Male,19

Sallah Osman,Male,32

Dirye,Male,19,7/22/1992

Adam Ozdas,Male,19

Armin Naserbakht,Male,22,7/23/1989

Marouane Rouhi,Male,21

Mourouane Rouhi,Male,21

Daniel Ullah,Male,22

Total 48

Non-Muslim Asians

Shourov Chowdhury,Male,19,2/2/1992

Jamie Hoang,Male,19,7/1992

Donness Bissessar,21

Amerpreet Gill,Male,23

Gurmeet Tarmeet,Male,35

Total 5

Foreign European names

Peter Bugososlavsky,Male,20

Bennie Acato,Male,19,10/31/1991

Adam Sieniuc,Male,20

Mr Piotr Dziedzic,Male,22,2/27/1989

Leandro Santos Desaevasconcelos,Male,21

Lucian Trufia,Male,24

Nina Yavarianfar,Female,27

Stefan Phidd,Male,31,11/19/1979

Lee Montaldo,Male,40

Maurice Edward

Dubois,Male,41,11/23/1969

Barry Naine,Male,42,6/25/1969

Paul Raune,Male,46,6/28/1964

Sebastian Praxitelous,Male,18

Michael Caillaux,Male,18

Samuel Caillaux,Male,20

Tony Gustave,Male,33

Total 16

Those with British names who could plausibly be white or black

Kyle Smith,Male,18,4/2/1993

Miss Victoria Holmes,Female

Graeme Paton,

Christopher Edwards

Dale Siddall,Male,18

Dane Williamson

Laura Cook,Female,18,

Joseph Moran,Male,18

Liam Allan,Male,18

Michael Binns,Male,18

Ricky Gemmell,Male,18,,

Ryan  Brack,Male,18

Shane  Collett,Male,18

Lee Anthony  Slade,Male,

Sean Mitchell,Male,19,8/22/1991

Laura  Johnson,Female,19

Christopher Clark,Male,19

Callum Powell,Male,19

Carl Pine,Male,19

Charlie  Herron,Male,19

Heather Russell,Female,19

Michael Doyle,Male,19

Peter David  Morgan,Male,20,4/22/1991

Max Doran Raven,Male,19,7/30/1992

Danielle Mcshane,Female,20

Thomas Anthony Livingstone,Male,20

Curtis Burke,Male,20

David Lukeman,Male,20

John Alexander,Male,20

Oliver  Johnson,Male,20

Billy Bennett,Male,21,9/25/1989,

Billy Watson,Male,21Oliver Tetlow,Male,22

Jack Lamb,Male,22

Andrew Britten,Male,22

Clive Morris,Male,22

David O’Neil,Male,22

Gregory Coleman,Male,20

Perry Atherton,Male,20

Ronnie Whitby,Male,20

Darren Aiken,Male,21

Gavin Richard Edwards,Male,21,3/13/1990

Conrad Mcgrath,Male,21

Ricky Farrant,Male,21

Reece Mcdonagh,Male,21

Craig Moody,Male,22,1/31/1989

Fraser Giscombe,Male,22

Lee Mcaloney,Male,22

Mark Anthony Baker,Male,22

Tom Skinkis,Male,22,12/29/1988

Rhys Cleary,Male,23

James Oliver Tomlinson,Male,23,3/3/1988

Christopher James Harte,Male,23

Mr Nicolas Robinson,Male,23,8/3/1988

Christopher Hart,Male,23,

Callum Nugent,Male,23

Christopher Heart,Male,23

Luke Blakemore,Male,23

Nicholas Robinson,Male,23

Richard Mccoy,Male,23

Ross Jackson,Male,23

Jason Hedgecock,Male,24

Natasha Mavis Reid,Female,24,10/25/1986

George Austin,Male,24,11/18/1986

Linda Boyd,Female,24

Ross Lynch,Male,24

Natasha Reid,Female,24

Craig Fullerton,Male,24

Dwaine Spence,Male,24

David Gordon,Male,25,10/9/1985

David Swarbrick,Male,25

Andrew Barlow,Male,25

David Benjamin,Male,25,4/4/1986

Kieron Samuels,Male,25,8/21/1985

Mark Burns,Male,25

Barry Paisley,Male,25

Stephen Carter,Male,26, ,

John Millbanks,,26

John Joseph Millbanks,Male,26

Craig Cave,Male,26

Gareth Rees,Male,26

Liam Cornwell,Male,26

Daniel Tony Watson,Male,27,5/20/1984

Ryan Doyle,Male,27,10/17/1983

Ian Blaize,Male,27,11/10/1983

Karl Brown,Male,27

Ricky Hudson,Male,27

Michael Hayden,Male,28,2/2/1983

Karl Kaynor,Male,28,

Natalie Lee,Female,28

Eoin Flanagan,Male,28,1/1/1983

Robert Dnison,Male,28

Tony Williams,Male,30

Katie Lovett,Female,30

Julie Aldrich,Female,31,5/25/1980

Mark Phillips,Male,32

Jeffrey Ebanks,Male,32

Keith Adrian  Mitchell,Male,33,1/9/1978

Mark  Cunningham,Male,33,

Jean Brown,34

Paul Williams Newman,Male,34,8/24/1976

Stephen John Williams,Male,34,6/10/1977

Jason Matthews,Male,35,8/22/1975

Terry Payne,Male,35

Jason Matthews,Male,35

Mr Robert Wayne Campbell,Male,38,9/1/1972

Michael Wilson,Male,38

James Best,Male,38

Anthony Winder,Male,38

Jason Ullett,Male,38

William Jenkins,Male,40,5/11/1971

Joseph Levy,Male,41

Karen Anne Turner,Female,42,6/23/1969

Stuart Gallagher,Male,42

Sean Havens,Male,43

Steven Keith,Male,43

Terry Monaghan,Male,44,2/26/1967

Martin Burton,Male,44,6/19/1968

Kenneth Michael Hunnisett,Male,45

Darren Byrne,Male,46

John Mcneil,Male,46

Bernard Moore,Male,46

Michael Coffey,Male,47

Gary Herriott,Male,48

Peter Ellwood,Male,50

Ingrid Smith,Female,58

Jack Onslow,Male

126

In evaluating how many white Britons are amongst the 278 these facts need to be understood:

1. Those with double barrelled British surnames are most probably black because it has become the fashion for blacks in Britain to use both their parent’ surnames because there are so many illegitimate births and half-brothers and half-sisters in black families.

2. Those with first names such as Tyrone or Byron or standard white names spelt differently,for example Daveeed for David, are likely to be black.

3. Those with African names such as Akinole will be black unless a white woman has married an African.

4. Those of black West Indian origin or ancestry will generally have British surnames because the slaves took their masters names.  Some will have names which are indistinguishable from British names. However, they often use first names  rarely used by native Britons such as Delroy and Winston or unusual Biblical names such as Micah and Esau.

5. Those with Muslim names are unlikely to be white or native Britons. The could just conceivably be white converts or whites who have married Muslims.

6. Those with names such as Singh or Patel are most probably Asian,  although if it is a female who is older than a schoolgirl they might be white women who have married Asians.

7. Those with foreign surnames drawn from European countries will generally be white, but may well be first generation immigrants, especially if they come from Eastern European countries.

Using these criteria as a guide,  I estimate that at worst 70 of the 295 could have been white.  I say at worst primarily because there is no way of testing the question of whether some of those with traditional British names are blacks from the West Indies.   Of those who are white, a significant minority could be recent immigrants.

Not as white as they are painted

Robert  Henderson

Those of us who do not share the liberal’s ostensible love of the multicultural mess they have made of modern Britain  will be gratified to hear that  the latest communal outbreak of the Joy of Diversity has brought  the riotin’, lootin, whinin’ folk to their doorsteps.
The riots and lootfests   currently occurring throughout London and other cities  either “blessed” with large black populations or close to those which do have them  – Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham, West Bromwich, Wolverhampton, Leicester, Bristol and Liverpool – have spread from black ghettos such as Tottenham,  Brixton and Hackney to richer areas such as Lambeth, Ealing, Notting Hill and Chalk Farm.
The last is of particular interest because Chalk Farm abuts the ancestral home of liberal bigots, Hampstead, and the rioters and looters got to the boundary of the Chalk Farm/Hampstead divide.  How the collective population of Hampstead –which is preternaturally white for an inner London borough – must be sighing with dismay that they did not personally  experience so vivid an  outbreak of the “joy”, especially as
they experience so little of it in normal times due to the terrible shortage of
black and  brown  faces  in their midst (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/16/how-the-well-to-do-liberals-choose-to-live-a-lesson-from-primrose-hill/).

White liberals in Notting Hill  had cause to be  especially excited. According to BBC Radio 5 (the 10.00 pm show 8 August) police warned a householder who rang them to report
looting  to stay inside his home because there were allegedly rioters going about armed with machetes.   Just think of  how he  must have shaken fit to burst  with excitement as they thought of what blacks in Africa generally do with machetes.

Enough of the funnies.  This is serious. Nothing equivalent has happened in Britain  before.  UK Race riots since the late 1950s have been restricted to the ghetto areas themselves and were much less widespread  as a consequence. Nor was there anything like
the scale of  destruction of  property or looting we are presently witnessing.  The widespread use of  arson this time is particularly striking. It would probably be necessary to go back to  the anti-Catholic  Gordon Riots of 1780 to find greater destruction of property in London.  However, the Gordon Riots were genuinely concerned with a particular political issue rather than being primarily an excuse to loot and destroy.

Why has this happened now? Thirty years of pandering to blacks by the British elite in all its guises – politicians, mediafolk, big business,  public servants and  educationalists – has taken its toll.   Blacks have  been taught that two things by Britain’s liberals: nothing is their fault and everything they do wrong  is down to ol’ whitey who just can’t stop oppressing them . On the white liberal side,  they  get their emotional rocks  off by engaging in paroxysms of white  guilt whilst cynically using  ethnic minorities  as a client class, of whom blacks are their unequivocal  favourites.  (The white working class used to be the clients of the liberal left, but that changed in the 1980s when the unions would not play ball with the Labour Party hierarchy and three successive defeats at the hands of Thatcher persuaded most Labour politicians that dumping the white working class was necessary if they were to get into power before they were on their Zimmer frames).

The response of white liberals

Initially, white liberals and blacks  claimed  that looters were protesting about the shooting dead of a black man Mark Duggan by police  in Tottenham on Thursday 4 August 2011 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14459516).This response  was   obvious nonsense  – violent protest is one thing, looting quite another. Unable to write this off as a peaceful political protest gone wrong, Liberals and their black quangocracy  clients (the blacks who are  treated as “community leaders” , those who receive considerable amounts of public money to run “multicultural” projects or  given highly paid publicly funded sinecures) are in a quandary.  They know that these riots  are being conducted overwhelmingly by blacks. They know  that the general public understands this  because of the voluminous media coverage. They realise that to deny the  fact that this is a black event puts them in the position of “Comical Ali” during  the Western attack on Iraq when he denied allied attacks were  getting through  as allied planes bombed the land close behind  him.  But  they  are only too well aware that to admit the truth (that this is a black problem) would  undermine the politically correct  virtual world they have created in which everyone in a position of power or influence  in  Britain has to give lip service at least to the idea that ethnic and racial diversity is a good in itself and infinitely preferable to homogeneous societies.

Faced with this profound difficulty liberals and their ethnic minority clients have taken one of  two paths. The first mode of evasion is to portray the riots as having no racial
context and to rely on the intimidatory effect of decades of multicultural propaganda together with liberal control of the media to allow them to call black white without attracting too much public ridicule.  BBC reporters have been especially addicted to this nonsense by stressing at every opportunity that there are “people of all races” taking part in the riots. The more daring ones emphasise the fact that there are white rioters – it would be interesting to know the national origins of the few  white rioters because  eastern
Europeans  and gipsies in particular  have a liking for theft and mayhem.   Best of all the BBC  (bless their liberal bigot hearts) have repeatedly  described the rioters and looters as protestors. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8690267/London-riots-BBC-criticised-for-branding-thugs-as-protesters.html).

Getting on to BBC phone-ins to point out the black genesis of the riots has been next to impossible. On 7th August I did manage to take part fleetingly  in a phone-in on the BBC
Radio 5 Stephen Nolan programme (10.00 pm -1.00 am). After half an hour of listening to Nolan and his guests chatter happily about the riots without mentioning the racial aspect , I rang to mention  that, try as I might to believe them,  I could not help noticing that  the vast majority of the rioters were black and consequently it was not a general social problem but a black social problem. I attributed the source of the problem to  a near universal sense of victimhood amongst blacks.   I bolstered this latter judgement with the fact that I,  unlike white liberals who almost invariably arrange their lives to live in very white worlds,   have lived for most of my adult life  and live now in parts of London which have a large black  population and consequently I engage daily with blacks, many of them, shock horror! poor and  uneducated.

It took me another forty minutes to get on air,  during which time the programme continued to parade a gallery of  politically correct grotesques that included a Metropolitan Police officer who is a leading light in  the black police association.  When I eventually was allowed to broadcast  my comments provoked outrage from this individual and I was immediately cut off, most frustratingly,   before I could point out to him that he had unambiguously  identified himself as a racist by joining a black-only representative group .

Later in the programme Nolan had as studio guests  Edwina Currie (the one-time Tory Minister) and a retired suffragan bishop by the name of Stephen Lowe. Their job was to review the papers. Lowe castigated the Telegraph for having a long gallery of photographs
showing blacks rioting and looting. He objected to this because – wait for it – the coverage made it look as though this was a black riot.  Hilariously, this earned a stern rebuke from
Currie who repeatedly accused Lowe of bringing race into the equation by mentioning the racially monochrome nature of the Telegraph photos.   Not to worry, the Telegraph made up for this terrible blunder  next day by publishing a series of photos released by the police of rioters. Guess the colour of the first rioter shown. Yes, that’s right, he is white. As was the person in the  third photo. Sadly, the pretence of it being a racially neutral riot could not be sustained and the rest of the 14 photos were overwhelmingly black.  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/uknews/8690951/London-riots-CCTV-pictures-of-suspects-are-released-by-the-Metropolitan-Police.html).   The Telegraph have continued to disgrace themselves in politically correct eyes by printing another series of black villains in their 9 August issue.

The early signs from court appearances resulting from the riots suggest there is something very odd going on when it comes to the application of the law.  As anyone can see from the media coverage,  the vast majority of rioters are black, but the number of those  appearing in court who are white is much  greater than  their proportion of the rioters and looters. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2024767/Man-charged-riot-incitement-Facebook-London-rioters-guilty.html#ixzz1UjYYfl00)

I suspect one of two things is happening: either the police have concentrated on arresting white rioters because they  are (1) unlike the black culprits, often not part of a gang of rioters/looters and (2) arresting them does not cause any ethnic mayhem . Alternatively, the police/CPS are deliberately pushing white cases to the front of the queue to give the
false  impression that the rioters are not overwhelmingly black.   The other thing which looks suspicious is the routine showing of black rioters  in groups and whites in what look like cropped photos in which a single person is shown. These could be  extracted from scenes showing one white rioter amongst a crowd of blacks.

The other general  liberal tactic is to blame it all on economics and preferably Tory cuts. This has the advantage of leaving race out of it altogether.   Harriet Harman, a minister in both the Blair and Brown Governments, was sure that this was linked to  the rioting and looting. (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/neilobrien1/100100392/harriet-harman-and-the-intellectual-bankruptcy-of-the-progressive-left/). Mary Riddle, a Labour Party media groupie employed by the supposedly Tory Daily Telegraph,  was in no doubt that the  riots are due to social deprivation in general and the creation of an uneducated underclass in particular: “London’s riots are not the Tupperware troubles of Greece or Spain, where the middle classes lash out against their day of reckoning. They are the proof that a section of young Britain – the stabbers, shooters, looters, chancers and their frightened acolytes – has fallen off the cliff-edge of a crumbling nation.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8630533/Riots-the-underclass-lashes-out.html.

If  Harman and Riddle were correct all poor areas would be susceptible to this behaviour and most of the rioters would be white.  This is not the case. The reality is that the criminality is, as anyone can see from the press and TV, overwhelmingly being perpetrated by blacks. Moreover, the first of the rioting arose in black ghettos.  Most tellingly, no  town or city which does not have a  substantial black population or such a population close by  has seen rioting.  This also gives the lie to the claim from the Conservative side that  the riots are down to the  lax discipline in schools and the undermining  of parental authority  which has produced a generation of youngsters without respect for the law or any authority .

Clearly the causes  of these riots lie in something other than poverty, a lack of school discipline  or poor parenting.   Ostensibly the behaviour is caused by 30 years of our  elite pandering to the black population of Britain by telling them how oppressed they are and how racist Britain is. This has undoubtedly stoked their appetite for victimhood and given
them a belief that they owe nothing to society in general. That gives them the moral release to riot and loot.

The black response to the killing of Mark Duggan demonstrates the difference between blacks and whites. The police in Britain kill very few people compared with virtually anywhere else, not least because they are not routinely armed.  Most of those they  kill are white. Violent protests or protests of any sort rarely if ever occur when the person killed is white because whites still trust the police (just) to behave reasonably . When a  black man is killed it is assumed by blacks that it is tantamount to a murder and violent protest is more often than not the eventual outcome.   It remains to be seen what the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) report concludes about the Duggan shooting, but if as has been reported  by the media Duggan had a gun on him it is difficult to see how the police could be criticised for killing him if he either had it in his hand or it was near him and he was reaching for it when he was shot .

But there is a deeper problem. Blacks display the same general type of uncontrolled  behaviour in societies of very different types throughout the world, whether it be where
they are in the racial majority or minority, in an advanced industrial country or one from the depths of the Third World. There is genocide and mutilation  in places such as Rwanda and Sierra Leone; rioting, looting and episodic murder in Britain.  The degree of misbehaviour may vary but  its general type is the same; a lack of self-control  expressing itself in gratuitous violence.

That places the victimhood justification for misbehaviour in Britain in a different light. It is simply a rationalisation of general black social behaviour.  Why do blacks tend to  behave like this?  Part at least of the answer is  probably to be  found in the inferior average  IQ of blacks.  In IQ and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations (2002), the British psychologist Richard Lynn and  the Finish economist Tatu Vanhanan  included their  estimations of the average national IQs of 185 states .  They reached the estimates
either by using studies of IQs conducted by others or where these were not available, by extrapolating from neighbouring countries which did have IQ studies.  For example, if the estimate based on studies of country X was 80, a  neighbouring country Y which had no studies would also be taken as 89. In the case of all black African countries  the estimated average IQ  was 69. (http://www.rlynn.co.uk/pages/article_intelligence/t4.asp).

Such a low average black IQ was unsurprisingly greeted by  widespread disbelief and objections were raised  about the validity of the studies used and the practice of extrapolating from other countries where no studies existed .  In 2006 Lynn and Vanhanan published IQ and Global Inequality which addressed the objections and,  while not removing them altogether, did show that  the correlation between the imputed
IQs  and IQ studies of the states in question  made after 2002 were strong (.91) (http://www.people.vcu.edu/~mamcdani/Publications/McDaniel%202008%20book%20review%20IQ%20and%20global%20inequality.pdf).

But even without the African studies and estimates, it is known that black IQs are inferior to those of whites or East Asians such as the Chinese.  The average American black IQ is a well established 85, considerably higher than the 70 of black Africans but still way below the average white IQ of 100. Moreover, black Americans have a large admixture of white genes, so an average IQ between the black African and the white American average IQ is
exactly what would be expected if it is granted that IQ is strongly dependent on genetic inheritance.  It is reasonable to assume the blacks in the US without a white admixture would have an average IQ closer to the 70 estimated  for black Africans.

What is the consequence of such a low average IQ? The first thing to understand is that people with low I Qs are not monsters but simply people who have a different level of
mental competence. They have less capacity for abstract thinking, are more literal minded, live more in the present . In short, they are childlike.  This makes them more susceptible to
irrational and uncontrolled behaviour http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/blacks-the-odd-man-out/).  This could be the root of the strong propensity for violence and a lack of social awareness seen amongst blacks. Other factors such as higher testosterone levels in blacks may also have some effect.

But there could also be another factor in play which is a corollary of the low IQ. Someone with a low IQ  may  find living in an advanced society  extremely stressful because they
cannot cope with the intellectual demands which the society exerts on them. It is interesting that some types of mental illness are linked to low IQ (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/11/27/a-low-iq-individual-in-a-high-iq-society/).  This could be part of the reason at least  for the fact that  diagnosis of  mental illness, especially schizophrenia, amongst blacks is high in Britain. It is claimed by some, especially educated blacks,  that this is due to racism within the  British mental health services. This is  difficult to take this seriously in these pc times. If diagnosis of mental illeness was to be skewed by bias it would be more likely to result in fewer diagnoses of mental illness amongst blacks not more. Plausibly, blacks become disproprotionately mentally ill in Britain  simply because they cannot cope.  The paranoia  engendered
by the victimhood fostered by white liberals will not help their mental state either. (http://www.blackmentalhealth.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=154&Itemid=139).

The emasculation of the police

The most chilling thing about reports from the scene of the riots and looting has been the persistent claims of those at the scene but not part of the criminality that there  is either an  absence of any police or where there were any police,  they were ineffective.

If the first riot in Tottenham had been quashed there is a good chance that the others might not have happened or have  been much less serious.  Quashing a single riot should have been within the power of the Met which has more than 30,000 officers, not immediately but within an hour or two after they had re-directed  officers from other parts of London.  Instead the police in Tottenham  stood back and watched the looters  for many hours.

Why have the police been so supine? It  is primarily a consequence of  the injection of political correctness into police officers’ minds with its most potent strand being “anti-racism”. A lesser secondary cause is the ever more stifling culture of “health and Safety” which the police have embraced . (see  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13319812
and http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1997/42/contents). This has resulted in the police putting their own safety before that of the public, a straight reversal of  what used to be the case. Effective  policing system cannot operate on such a basis.

The British elite’s  official pandering to ethnic minorities  goes back to 1965 when the first Race Relations Act (RRA) was passed followed by a second  stronger Act in 1968 which was one of the things which provoked Enoch Powell to make his “Rivers of Blood” speech in the same year. (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/enoch-powells-rivers-of-blood-speech/). A third RRA with considerably more teeth arrived in 1976 which elevated ethnic minorities to a de facto protected status,  not only by  strengthening the penalties for “inciting racial hatred”  but by its provision of  a wide range of  privileges to ethnic minorities in the areas of work, education  and social provision.
(http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1976/74)

Then came the Scarman report into the Brixton Riots of 1981. Lord Scarman  did not accuse the Metropolitan Police of racism,  but called for the development of community policing, the recruitment of more black officers and laid part of the blame for the riots on social deprivation, particularly the high rate of unemployment in Brixton. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/25/newsid_2546000/2546233.stm)
This began the long march towards  the police policing ethnic minority areas not on the basis of what crime was occurring in them,  but what they could get “community leaders” – who tended to be self-appointed – to agree to and the ascribing of virtually  any black
behaviour to deprivation.

The next and longest  nail in the coffin of rigorous policing of blacks (and ethnic minorities generally) came with the Macpherson report into the death of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-47.htm).  Macpherson accused the Metropolitan Police of being “institutionally racist”, that is racist not consciously but through the prevailing  ethos (“canteen culture”)
within the force, an accusation which was eventually embraced wholeheartedly by the Met followed by all the other UK police forces. Macpherson defined racism and institutional racism as:

‘RACISM

6.4 “Racism” in general terms consists of conduct or words or practices which advantage or disadvantage people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. In its more subtle form it is as damaging as in its overt form.

6.34 “Institutional Racism” consists of the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic
origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.’

A  good examination of the ill effects of  the acceptance of the existence of “institutional racism” can be found at http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/cs06.pdf).

Macpherson also provided an absurd and dangerous definition of what constituted racist behaviour which should be investigated:

DEFINITION OF RACIST INCIDENT

12. That the definition should be:

“A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person”.

‘13. That the term “racist incident” must be understood to include crimes and non-crimes in policing terms. Both must be reported, recorded and investigated with equal commitment.

‘14. That this definition should be universally adopted by the Police, local Government and other relevant agencies.’

This meant that any complainant who was malicious or simply burdened with a sense of victimhood could turn an ordinary crime into one which was racist or even worse turn an incident which had no meaningful criminal content into a criminal act.

Macpherson continued:

‘REPORTING AND RECORDING OF RACIST INCIDENTS AND CRIMES

15. That Codes of Practice be established by the Home Office, in consultation with Police Services, local Government and relevant agencies, to create a comprehensive system of reporting and recording of all racist incidents and crimes.

16. That all possible steps should be taken by Police Services at local level in consultation with local Government and other agencies and local communities to encourage the reporting of racist incidents and crimes. This should include:

– the ability to report at locations other than police stations; and

– the ability to report 24 hours a day.

17. That there should be close co-operation between Police Services and local Government and other agencies, including in particular Housing and Education Departments, to ensure that all information as to racist incidents and crimes is shared and is readily available to all agencies….’

And

‘PROSECUTION OF RACIST CRIMES

‘34. That Police Services and the CPS should ensure that particular care is taken at all stages of prosecution to recognise and to include reference to any evidence of racist motivation. In particular it should be the duty of the CPS to ensure that such evidence is referred to both at trial and in the sentencing process (including Newton hearings). The CPS and Counsel to ensure that no “plea bargaining” should ever be allowed to
exclude such evidence. ‘ (Ibid)

To put the cherry on  pc policing, in 2000 the Blair Government passed the Race Relations
(Amendment) Act . This extended the obligations laid down in the 1976 Act for private bodies such as companies and charities to the police and other public  authorities  so that “ It is unlawful for a public authority in carrying out any functions of the authority to do any act  which constitutes discrimination.   (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/34).

Faced with that battery of multiculturalism supporting law and the ever more fervent support of  the political elite for political correctness,   unsurprisingly  the British police became  paranoid about being seen as “racist”. The “anti-discrimination ” credo has put any officer judged to have been racist – and this might be no more than a bit of banter suggesting that a black officer is difficult to see in the dark  – at the risk of instant dismissal. It has also given a lever for non-white officers with the police to go on the
grievance trail (http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/217239_43_gmp_officers_in_police_racism_claims).
The upshot is that police officers from newly minted constables  to grandees such as chief constables and the Metropolitan police commissioner  have become not only extremely  of what they say,  but reluctant to act forcefully against suspected black  criminals.  This reluctance is particularly marked in situations such as riots where they know they will be  filmed by the mainstream media and  private individuals.

In 1989 the Metropolitan Police changed its title from the Metropolitan Police Force to the Metropolitan Police Service.  Other police forces followed suit.  The change of name is symbolic of the  profound  change in attitude.  The British police moved from being keepers of the peace and catchers of criminals to quasi-social workers crossed with political commissars who are ever eager to enforce political correctness by investigating
any alleged “hate crime” even though the idea of a hate crime only has a spectral
existence in English law.    No absurdity is beyond them  as shopkeeper Gavin Alexander found in 2007 when the police swooped on his shop and took several golliwog dolls into custody (http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23389075-police-seize-golliwogs-in-racism-probe.do).

Needless to say, as political commissars the police are less than eager to investigate complaints  which do not fit into the pc regime. In 2001 I made a complaint to the Racial and Violent Crime Squad against the BBC Director-General Greg Dyke who described his own organisation as “Hideously white”.  This met all the necessary criteria for prosecution:  Dyke was a public figure, he headed the largest media organisation in the world and his words indubitably incited hatred against whites.  The police refused to register the complaint let alone investigate it even,  though I persuaded an MP to write to the Met complaining about double standards (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/the-ever-increasing-madness-of-political-correctness/).

The future

The situation is potentially  very serious. Imagine a situation where riots and looting such as these could be called up regularly without an adequate police response. It would be close to anarchy.  This is what we risk. Potential rioters and looters have seen the police reduced to helplessness. They will think they can do it again whenever they choose.

This was flash mob rioting using social networking. Those on a network simply need to wait until they receive a message telling them where  the next meeting point for a riot
is and head for it.  They get their loot and riot, then get another message telling them to move on elsewhere. The police can be run ragged. The same applies to any violent political protest rather than straightforward criminality. Any society can be reduced to chaos if enough people refuse to respect the law.  That is the message which comes out of these riots.

What will happen now? Even if the police could identify them, the numbers  are too great to bring to meaningful justice. Numbers are always difficult to assess where there is a fluid crowd, but the sheer volume  of riots and the length of time they have lasted must mean there have been thousands of people committing criminal acts.  Even if each incident only involved a couple of hundred people it would be easy to run up a figure of 10,000.  Many of the crimes – arson, serious criminal damage, serious theft – would have to carry a heavy prison sentence if  adequate punishment is to be administered.  To  process that number of people through a police investigation, the  Crown Prosecution Service and the courts would be a colossal task. Those who are old enough to remember the Poll Tax fiasco will recall how the magistrates courts became choked trying to process Poll Tax refuseniks.  This would be much worse because the crimes would all go before a jury in the higher
unless a guilty plea is entered.  There would also be the strong likelihood of appeals, something which did not arise often in the case of a refusal to pay  the Poll Tax.
Even if these problems  could be overcome, there would be no obvious place to incarcerate those convicted because our prisons are already so jam-packed everything is done to avoid
imprisoning people and desperate remedies such as letting prisoners out early a frequent resort.

If  people are not brought to justice or are brought to justice without any serious
punishment  resulting , the numbers of those who   are willing to riot and loot
will grow.  This will drag in blacks who have not been willing to loot and riot before.
It will also tempt other ethnic minorities to join in on the basis that if the blacks can get away with it why shouldn’t  they  have some of the spoils. A proportion of whites will also be tempted if they see ethnic minorities getting away with murder.  That is the truly pernicious nature of what is happening:  it continually encourages more disorder.

The point to cling onto is that without the mass immigration of blacks none of this would be happening. If some whites are engaging in the disorder it is only because the black rioters have provided the platform for them to behave in that way.  We can safely say that because rioting to loot just has not happened in British society when there was no large black population here. Nor do we find such rioting happening in areas dominated by native white Britons.

The riots have all taken place in England. The reason is simple: the vast majority
of  post-1945 immigrants have settled in England not the rest of the UK. It is the English who have had to bear the brunt of  mass immigration’s most obnoxious consequences.

What should be done? I suggest this. All attempts by government to appease ethnic minority groups should stop. No more money for community leaders, ethnic based charities or public projects which promote the interests only of minority ethnic groups.  All the laws such as the Race Relations Act and the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000
which give de facto privileges to ethnic minorities and prevent honest objections to immigration and its consequences should be repealed.  The police should be banned from playing the role of political commissars and get back to honest coppering; catching villains
and maintaining order. Institutionalised political correctness should be stripped from public service  and any organisation which receives public money.
Most importantly, politicians and the mainstream media should  stop incontinently  promoting the liberal fantasy of multicultural heaven and recognise that it is not heaven but at best purgatory.

What will the Coalition Government do?   Sadly, the odds must be on more appeasement
of blacks in particular and probably ethnic minorities in general.   Over the past 30 years  vast sums of taxpayers’ money has been poured into appeasing blacks and Asians.   A
good example is the permitting of Housing Associations which, overtly or covertly,  provide social housing for particular ethnic groups (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/the-truth-about-social-housing-and-ethnic-minorities/).  In addition to spending money, politicians and the mainstream  media have given a grossly disproportionate amount of time and publicity to telling blacks and Asians how valuable they are to Britain.  Like foreign Aid, the attempts to create
a  healthy society by pouring money into alienated and naturally separate communities are doomed. They  simply take the money and attention and then ask for more of the same without becoming any more responsible either individually or to the wider society . They will undoubtedly be coming back for largesse and attention  now and  it is difficult to imagine a political class which has wholeheartedly  signed up to the wonders of diversity  refusing them another hand-out. Perhaps the moving of the Joy of Diversity into the districts inhabited by white liberals will change their  public views  but do not bet on it.  They are well aware of the ill-effects of mass immigration which is the reason they take such care to live in very white worlds themselves.  Provided they can arrange things to keep the immigrants from intruding into their own lives they will probably keep quiet and carry on peddling the same tired multicultural nonsense.

Those who still think that multiculturalism can work need to understand that not only is it more psychologically comfortable for minorities to remain separate, but that it can be advantageous if the host community is soft enough to pander to it.

See also

(http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/the-position-of-minorities/.

http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/03/20/black-and-asian-cultural-separatism-in-the-uk/

Scottish independence? Yes, but only on these terms

The Scots Numpty Party (SNP) has managed to defeat the  attempts of the unionists who deliberately devised the electoral system to thwart single party government (and hence leave independence off the practical political agenda) and get a majority in Scotland.  The SNP leader Alex Salmond  can  now call  a referendum on independence . However, to have a referendum which is binding,   the SNP needs the sanction of the UK Parliament. From  his public comments David Cameron appears to accept that such a referendum would be binding because he has stated since this SNP victory that if a referendum was held he would campaign for a NO.

Whether or not Scotland would vote for independence is debatable.   Polls consistently show a majority against, although there are always a substantial number of “don’t knows”.  In a  referendum held only in Scotland with the YES campaign headed by  Salmond and the  NO campaign led by Scottish non-entities or people from outside of Scotland such as Cameron, it is possible  that a Yes result might be obtained.

I have no visceral objection to Scots independence, but the strongest objection to Scotland walking away from the Union  without taking full responsibility for themselves and leaving the English to pick up the financial mess which a mixture of regular English subsidy of Scotland and the massive costs of the rescuing  the Scottish banks RBS and HBOS.   To this end the conditionsCameron should lay down for Scottish independence are these :

1. Scotland to take a share of the UK National debt (excluding the costs involved in supporting Scottish  banks and building societies, mainly the RBS and HBOS banks)  proportionate to the percentage of the UK population in Scotland.  The servicing of this debt to be the first charge on Scotland’s public financing.

2.  Scotland to pay for the past and future costs  of bailing out  Scottish  banks and building societies.

3.  The huge English subsidies to Scotland to cease immediately on  a Yes vote being achieved.

4. All English public sector jobs which have been exported to Scotland to be brought back to England.  This would include not merely traditional civil service posts,   but facilities such as those supporting UK nuclear submarines.

5. Scotland to launch its own currency or join the Euro.  If they remain tied to the pound they would have no true independence and practically be  dependent on England for the macro management of their economy.

6. The division of the oil and gas fields to be made on the basis of  extending a line at the angle of the coastline on the England-Scotland border.  This is in accordance with the UN  convention  on the Law of the Sea article 7  – see http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf.
This would give England a substantial proportion of the oil and even more of the gas fields.

7. Scotland to be gifted any state owned building in Scotland but to have no claim on publicly owned facilities in the remainder of the UK.

8. Nuclear submarines and any other  fundamentally important military equipment to
be moved to England

9.  All military research to be moved to England.

10. All future UK defence expenditure to be made in the remainder of the UK.

11.  Scotland to form its own armed forces. These will have to be capable of not only defending Scottish land but also of policing Scottish  territorial waters.

12. Scotland to be gifted all military  establishments  in Scotland , but Scotland to have no claim on military establishments elsewhere in the UK or abroad.

13. Military equipment. Scotland to be gifted existing equipment sufficient to equip whatever forces Scotland forms provided this equipment does not exceed what is available to similar UK forces.

14. All publicly funded non-military research in Scotland to be moved to the remainder of the UK.

15. Scotland to be responsible for the payment of all public sector pensions earned in Scotland before independence.

16. Scotland to be responsible for  a share proportionate to the percentage of the
UK population in Scotland  of  EU related pension earned before independence.

17. Scotland to be responsible for the  financing all government contracts relating to
building, goods and services supplied in Scotland which were entered into before
independence.

18. Property relating to UK diplomatic missions to remain the property of the remainder of the UK.

19. Scotland to be responsible for  a share  of diplomatic pensions earned before independence proportionate to the percentage of the UK population  in Scotland.

20. Scotland to be responsible for  a share  of any  public service pensions other
than those related to the diplomatic corps which is earned abroad  before independence proportionate to the percentage of the UK population  in Scotland.

21.  Immigration to Scotland from outside the EU and for any future new EU members to be controlled on the same basis as the UK  controls immigration.

22. Scotland to make its  own application for EU membership  without support from the Westminster government.

23. If the remainder of the UK or England alone leaves the EU, the following  may be put in place:

a) border controls between Scotland and the remainder of the UK

b) Scotland to be treated as any other member of the EU would be treated

c) UK protectionist barriers to  Scotland

d) an end to free movement from Scotland to the remainder of the UK

e)an end to Scots citizens enjoying the benefits of the UK Welfare State

24. If Scotland is unable to gain EU membership, all of  23  may apply apart from (b).

Conditions 1-22 can be enforced while  the UK  without Scotland remains in the EU. If  the UK without Scotland leaves the EU or England alone leaves the EU,  then condition 22 is legal.

Scots will  complain about not being given a share equivalent to their proportion of the UK
population of  the material assets of the UK armed forces or of diplomatic assets abroad. However, it is not unreasonable to advantage the remainder of the UK because England has massively subsidised  Scotland since the Union in 1707.  The subsidy began with the Act of Union, viz:

“Clause IX. THAT whenever the sum of One million nine hundred ninety seven thousand seven hundred and sixty three pounds eight shillings and four pence half penny, shall be enacted by the Parliament of Great Britain to be raised in that part of the United Kingdom now called England, on Land and other Things usually charged in Acts of Parliament there, for granting an Aid to the Crown by a Land Tax; that part of the United Kingdom now called Scotland, shall be charged by the same Act, with a further Sum of forty-eight
thousand Pounds, free of all Charges, as the Quota of Scotland, to such Tax, and to proportionably for any greater or lesser Sum raised in England by any Tax on Land, and other Things usually charged together with the Land; and that such Quota for Scotland, in the Cases aforesaid, be raised and collected in the same Manner as the Cess now is in Scotland, but subject to such Regulations in the manner of collecting, as shall be made by the Parliament of Great Britain.” Act of Union (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/the-act-of-union-1707/)

The population of England was five times that of Scotland in 1707. Had Scotland  paid the  tax listed in Clause IX at the same rate as England  they would have paid £400,000.
Instead they were required to pay only  £48,000, roughly a ninth of the pro rata sum.

As for the oil and gas revenues, a substantial  part of that has come from oil and gas English  waters. Moreover,  oil revenues have only been flowing for around thirty years and Scotland was being subsidised by England for the better part of three centuries before that.   Nor is it true that oil and gas revenues have been consistently high because the oil and gas price was very low for a decade or more. In most years since 1980 Scotland would not have been contributing more to the UK Treasury than they took out even if ALL the oil and gas tax was allocated to them.

If the Scots wished to start claiming they should be compensated for things such as the UK  military expenditure , the retort would be all right we will let you  have that,  but in return we will expect you to repay all the subsidies Scotland has received since the Union began.

It is very improbable that Scotland would vote for independence on the terms I have outlined, but anything less would mean that England was taken for a ride and Scotland allowed to evade their responsibilities.  There is a very real danger that Cameron would pander to the Scots and let them escape these obligations. That is why English campaigners should begin now to press politicians to make sure the Scots are not allowed an easy ride to independence at England’s expense.