Category Archives: Anglophobia

Politically incorrect film reviews – Outlaw and Made in England

Nick Love and Shane Meadows, two directors of white workingclass origin who like nothing better than to tell the world how much they empathise with the white workingclass world they grew up in. In pursuit of this they make films such as Football Factory (Love) and 24/7 (Meadows). As films their products are watchable but they are also profoundly dishonest. The problem is that both Love and Meadows have donned the liberal bigot coat of many pc colours and the white workingclass world they show is robbed of one essential ingredient: an honest portrayal of the racial friction between workingclass whites and black and Asian immigrants and their descendents.

The dishonesty takes one of two forms: race is either completely ignored (Football Factory) or the story is skewed so that (1) non-white characters are included in an attempt to show workingclass whites and nonwhites “living in harmony” and (2) to allow some of the white characters to be represented as racist boneheads and some to display a white liberal’s appreciation of “the joy of diversity”. Outlaw and Made in England display these latter traits.

Outlaw could have been an English taxi driver. It has a first rate cast which includes Sean Bean, Bob Hoskins and Danny Dyer. The story is of a group of men who form a vigilante gang in response to the supposed crime wave politicians are always feeding the populace. Bean as the leader of the vigilante group gives a dynamic charismatic performance as a workingclass northerner Royal Marine just returned from Iraq to London. . The rest of his gang bar one are entirely plausible, being white and working class Londoners. The “bar one” is a posh black QC who supposedly joins the group because his wife is killed by gangsters on behalf of a Mr Big whom the posh black QC is prosecuting for the Crown. The killer is inevitably white.

The sheer improbability of this scenario – white workingclass lad, posh black QC – alone made the film ridiculous. The clunking political correctness makes it wearisome : the Hoskins character (a serving detective) fawns over the black barrister whom he is part protecting part driving around, utterly robs Hoskins of his normal upfront bluntness, while the rest of the gang never think to say “’ere, what’s this posh black geezer doing with us?” The clear message of the film is that this is that race is utterly unimportant and that everyone no matter what their background is perfectly happy to muck in together and violent crime is really a white thing – none of the characters the gang attacks is non-white. The film is worth seeing for one reason as a film – Bean’s performance.

Made in England is rather more subtle. Here we have a skinhead gang in Lincolnshire around the time of the Falklands (1982). The gang , led by “good guy” Woody ( Joe Gilgun) adopt an eleven year old boy Shaun (Thomas Tugoose) whose father has been killed fighting in the Falklands. The gang, despite being skinhead, has a black member (natch). Meadows attempts to justify this improbable scenario by claiming that the roots of the skinhead phenomenon lay in white boys taking a liking to black music in the late sixties. Whether that is true or not, by the early eighties skinhead culture was resolutely anti-immigrant and the existence of a gang of skinheads who not only have a black member but never mention race even when the black member is not with them, is improbable in the extreme.

All goes along swimmingly in a multi-culti fashion until an ex-con Combo (Stephen Graham) returns from prison and tries to take over the gang and inject a racial element into it. He merely splits the gang between himself and Woody. Bingo! We have the “good” skinheads (Woody) and the “bad” skinheads Combo and the trite little pc agitprop piece is then played out to show how the “bad” skinheads are violent thickos and not at all representative of England while the “good” skinheads are the real English deal, all bubbling with enthusiasm for “the joy of diversity. The film ends clankingly with the Shaun symbolically tossing his flag of St George into the sea. Despite its agitprop by numbers nature, this film does have some very strong performances from the main actors, especially Tugoose who gives one of the great child actor performances.

The PC lesson to draw from the two films is simple: the white workingclass’ real problem is not race or immigration or a lack of national expression it is their social circumstances.

The claustrophobia of diversity

Robert Henderson

In November a 34-old woman Emma West was recorded on a tram in Croydon (near to London) expressing her very no-pc views of  the effects of immigration on England even though she was surrounded by ethnic minorities.   Since her public complaints were recorded by a passenger and put on YouTube other instances of such behaviour have come to light, the most recent to hit the national media being another youngish white woman (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2097142/Woman-filmed-hurling-racist-abuse-Tube-passengers-ANOTHER-video-rant-London-transport.html#ixzz1lgvuUjuO).  I put a few URLs for videos of such behaviour  from England at the end of the article. The examples are all of people who are under the age of 40. Nor does it take long for instances of such behaviour in the USA to be found on media hosting sites.  This goes against the oft made claims by liberals that what they term racial prejudice is restricted to the older generation,  who it is implied “don’t know any better”, while the young are race-blind.

Such outbursts are surprising  because of the risk they carry of assault by the ethnic minorities listening to them. They are doubly unexpected because present day England (and Britain)  is rigid with political correctness.  As  Emma West’s case vividly shows, the authorities are ever more penal in their  repression of dissent.  After her arrest in December 2011  Miss West was kept for weeks on remand in a high security prison for what the authorities coyly called “her own protection” http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/emma-west-immigration-and-the-liberal-totalitarian-state-part-2/) . She  has since been charged but not as yet tried (she appears at Croydon Crown Court on 17 2 2012) with a serious criminal offences  which carry a potential jail sentence of two years. (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/emma-west-immigration-and-the-liberal-totalitarian-state-part-3/).  All of that for simply expressing her anger at the consequences of mass immigration.

But even if people are not charged with criminal offences, to be publicly labelled a racist in England is to risk the loss of a job or accommodation if rented, a campaign of media abuse and social ostracism.  The risk of losing a job is particularly high for public service employees.  In extreme cases such as those accused of  the murder of Stephen Lawrence the persecution may be officially generated and sustained and  last indefinitely and include  the holding of trials which are manifestly unfair because of  hate-campaigns conducted against the accused by both politicians and the mainstream media. (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/stephen-lawrence-gary-dobson-david-norris-and-a-political-trial/).

With these very considerable disincentives to expressing honest views about race and immigration under any circumstances, what is it that drives people to express them uninhibitedly in situations which objectively place them in physical as well as legal danger?  After all the instinct for self-preservation lies at the core of human behaviour   and people are generally media savvy enough these days to realise that  anything they say in public is likely to be recorded and placed on sites such as YouTube.  So why do people like Emma West ignore all these formidable barriers to behaving in this way? Drink or drugs you may think, yet the noteworthy thing about most of the examples caught on mobile phones is that they  show no signs of being seriously intoxicated by either.  These are people who are doing it in the full knowledge of what they are doing and its likely effects. But  even if they were intoxicated with drink or drugs all that would mean is that the brakes of sobriety were removed and the true feelings of the person released.

A clue to what is happening can be found in the fact that their complaints gather around the same theme: that England is being invaded and colonised to the point where, in places such as parts of London,  it  scarcely seems to be England in anything in name.  Their  complaints are not about the particular ethnic minorities with which  they are surrounded when they make their public complaints or against individual immigrants generally,  but the general effects of mass immigration.

These people are suffering from what I call the  claustrophobia of diversity.  They feel that they are being oppressed by immigrants, that the land which is ancestrally theirs  is being colonised to the extent that parts of the country seem no longer to belong to England. Worst of all they see themselves as helpless to prevent it because the colonisation is being facilitated and encouraged by their own elite who  all, whatever their ostensible political colour,  subscribe to the treason and viciously support the suppression of  dissent to the betrayal.  This mixture of the act of elite-sponsored colonisation by foreigners, the failure of democracy through the tacit conspiracy of the political elite  to ensure that no meaningful alternative policy on  immigration is offered by any party capable of forming a government and the inability of the native population to even voice their  protest at this betrayal of their most pressing interests  in the mainstream media produces an ever growing sense of rage, a rage made all the more terrible and onerous  by  the feelings of impotence engendered by the ever more oppressive  restrictions on public expression which British governments have imposed.

These feelings are with the English all the time. If someone  English lives  in an area which  does not have a large ethnic minority population the anger and frustration may  remain bubbling below the surface most of the time, although they will be exacerbated by reports of their fellow county men and women elsewhere being harassed and bullied by the liberal elite into towing the multiculturalist line while ethnic minorities are pandered to ever more grotesquely  with bizarre interpretations of what constitutes a human right and  the constant growth of  interest groups which cater solely for ethnic minorities, for example,  the Refugee Council (http://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/about/board).

But those who live in an area which is heavily populated  by ethnic minorities  will face constant triggers for the anger and frustration to come to the forefront of their minds. Every time someone in such an area walks the streets they will be reminded of how the demographic balance has changed and is changing. Every time a native  English  parent seeks a school for their children they will be faced often enough with choices of schools where many, quite often a majority, of the pupils are from ethnic minorities.  A visit to their GP or hospital will find them sitting in waiting rooms outnumbered by ethnic minorities.  When they go for a job, especially if it is low-skilled or unskilled, they are likely to find themselves being asked to work, if they can get such work at all,  in a situation where they are in the ethnic minority and English is  not the common workplace language.  If they go into a shop, cinema or café they are increasing likely to find themselves being served by foreigners with inadequate English for the job.

Everywhere the white English man or woman in an area with a large ethnic minority population looks  it seems that their world is being changed utterly and that they can do nothing about it because of the elite complicity in what has happened and is happening. That is why the public outbursts of frustration such as that of Emma West occur.  They are the bursting of the emotional  dam.  The fact that the episodes recorded so often occur on  public transport  is  unsurprising because it is here that the proximity with those who trigger the feelings of rage and  betrayal is greatest and there is the  least opportunity to escape from these reminders of the surreptitious elite-sponsored conquest of England. The physical claustrophobia of being on a crowded train or bus marries with the social claustrophobia of diversity.

The people recorded in the urls at the end of this essay are white  working class Englishwomen. They of course are  from the class  who had to and have to suffer the main brunt of  mass immigration. They live cheek-by-jowl with the immigrants and their descendants. They send their children to schools where their child may be the only white English child in their class. They live in the tower blocks where they are the only white English family in the block. Not for them the middle class white liberals escape through white flight to the suburbs or countryside or the gentrification of once working class areas such as Islington. It is small wonder that people such as Emma West should feel deserted and betrayed and eventually lose all patience with public silence.

But uninhibited racial language and complaint is not restricted to those without status, wealth, influence and power. Two well know and recent examples are the fashion designer John Galliano  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CQO8q3FSH0) and the actor and director Mel Gibson (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50_qMJSPtqY&feature=relatedso – go in at 1 minute 17 sec). There is far more to these public displays of anger at the fact of mass immigration and the behaviour of the political elite  than simple desperation. It is entirely natural behaviour.  Public expression of dissent can be  partially successful but it will never be entirely complete. Even in extreme autocracies such as the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany there were still voices raised in  opposition. The English have been subject several generations of ever greater elite propaganda and censorship of dissent about immigration and its effects but this has not made them race or ethnicity blind, merely increasingly reticent, fearful and stressed  about immigration and its consequences.  Not only that, but the oppression arising from mass immigration is different in quality from the oppression  of a native  elite which merely tries to enforce its will on the masses. The effects of mass migration are around people all the time. There is no respite.

When people are asked to  suppress their normal feelings  stress occurs. Where the suppression of feelings relates to the most fundamental social and psychological structures  stress is at its greatest. That is what happens when an elite tries to  recreate society by asking the population to override the behaviour which makes a society strong and stable.

Social animals have two universal features: they form discrete groups and within the group produce hierarchies – although both the group and the hierarchy vary considerably in form and intensity.  Why they do this is a matter of debate but it is a fact that this what invariably happens.  Human beings are no exception; whether they are hunter-gatherers or people populating a great modern city they all have a need to form groups in which they feel naturally comfortable and within that group form hierarchies.

But the sense of being separate, of belonging to a discrete group with identifiable characteristics is of a different order of complexity than it is for any other social animal because homo sapiens is high intelligence, self-awareness and most importantly language.  Where an animal may simply accept another member of the species as part of the group through simple and obvious triggers such as scent, markings or imprinting, human beings judge by wide variety of criteria who is and is not part of the group, the most potent of which are racial characteristics and cultural differences. In some ways that makes acceptance of the outsider easier – at least in theory –  but in  others much more difficult than it might be for an animal,  for there are  many more reasons for human beings to accept or not accept someone into the group than there are for a non-human social animal.

Social animals form hierarchies  almost certainly because otherwise there would be no way of the society organising itself to accommodate the differing qualities and abilities  of individuals which arise in any species. Societies which consist of various human groups that  see themselves as separate  from each other disrupt the creation of a healthy hierarchy. Instead of there being a single hierarchy within an homogenous group (defining homogenous as a population in a discrete territory  which sees itself as a group), there are  hierarchies formed within each group and a further overarching hierarchy formed from the various groups themselves with  each group hierarchy competing within the population as a whole.

Man is also a territorial being.  Homo sapiens  need the security of a homeland. Remove that and insecurity is perpetual.  That is why mass immigration is the most fundamental of treasons.  That which  is called racism by liberals and their ethnic minority auxiliaries is simply  political protest of the most fundamental kind. When someone resorts to complaint  based on race, ethnicity or nationality  in their own country they are saying “This is my land, you will not steal it from me without a fight”.  The time to worry is when there are no public demonstrations of dissent to the policy of mass immigration and its consequences.

The package of emotion transmuted into conscious thought we call  patriotism is an essential part of maintaining a society (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/patriotism-is-not-an-optional-extra/).  A society which forgets that is doomed.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pONVYjAd1wc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTocvGIEqOU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfGqwtn3GZY

It must be no to Devomax

Robert Henderson

The leader of the Scots Numpty Party  (SNP) Alex Salmond has a secret love. He has a long-time partner Independence , but also  a burgeoning  affair with  the siren Devomax.    No, this not a relative of the cyber personality Max Headroom, although  it is just as artificial and improbable a creation.

Like all lovers with two mistresses who know of the others existence the SNP leader has been drifting into a fevered incoherence as he tries to keep both the objects of his affection satisfied. Only the other day he said that if Scotland votes for independence  it will still be part of the UK:  “That union, that United Kingdom if you like, would be maintained after Scottish political independence.”  (http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/i_still_want_to_be_in_uk_says_alex_salmond_1_ 2085533)

Exactly what finery  Miss Devomax   should be clothed in when he finally presents her to the world, Master Salmond  has not crystallised  even in his own mind, but he knows that her garb would indubitably involve a skirt of full fiscal autonomy.  As Scotland under the reign of Mistress Devomax would be technically part of the UK,  her political clothes  would also mean  keeping the Queen as head of state, continuing to use the Pound and  sharing defence,  foreign affairs,  EU membership   and the servicing of the  National Debt and all other financial obligations in the UK  including Foreign Aid.   (Strangely,  when speaking of his ever less secret love,  the SNP leader  always omits to mention the  “servicing of the  National Debt and all other financial obligations in the UK”).  In short , it would be Home Rule more or less.

The biggest fly in the Devomax   ointment  is fiscal autonomy which  would mean Scotland raising all its government revenue from taxes which it imposed and collected itself. Some of those  taxes would have to be used to pay a share  proportionate  to Scotland’s fraction of the UK population (around 9%) of the UK defence budget, the foreign affairs budget and the servicing of the  National Debt and all other accrued financial obligations in the UK.   (Devomax would also mean that Scotland would have to fund the  cost in Scotland of  welfare, education,  housing,  the arts, the NHS , transport,  roads, the environment, PFI and PPP projects in Scotland, policing and  justice .  Some of this is already funded from the Treasury disbursement to Scotland but much is not, for example, most of Scottish welfare. )

A fiscally independent  Scotland would radically change the relationship between Scotland and the rest of the UK.  If  the Scots were  paying part of  the expenditure on UK projects such as defence  and Foreign Aid  they would expect to have some say in those projects.  This would cause immense difficulty both in terms of the level of expenditure and  how the UK project  expenditure was deployed.

How much would Scotland have to contribute to the UK budget under Devomax?  It would be a substantial. Let us have a look at the financial year 2011/12. The UK defence budget for  2011/12 is £40 billion,  National Debt interest is £50 billion,  http://cdn.hm-treasury.gov.uk/2011budget_complete.pdf p6), Foreign Aid is £8.7 billion (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1391334/Britain-doles-aid-country-despite-savage-cutbacks-home.html ), the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is £1,6 billion (go to http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/publications-and-documents/publications1/annual-reports/business-plan and click on Business Plan).  The net UK contribution to the EU in 2010 (the latest figure available) was £9.2 billion with the gross contribution being a whopping £19.7 billion. (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100081949/britains-net-contribution-to-the-eu-budget-has-risen-by-74-per-cent-in-one-year/).   The total (taking only the net contribution to the EU into account)  is £110 billion. That would mean Scotland’s share would have been £10 billion. If the accrued liabilities of UK taxpayer funded pensions  at the point of fiscal separation were dealt with at the UK level  as well that would add billions more Scotland would have to put into the UK pot.  In addition, there is the question of how much of the financial chaos created by the Scottish banks RBS and HBOS should be laid at the Scotland’s door.  The headline amounts involved in rescuing the banks are large enough (£45 billion for RBS and £20 billion  for HBOS via the Lloyds Banking Group rescue (http://money.uk.msn.com/news/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=152384309), but the  true figure runs into hundreds of billions (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/nov/12/bank-bailouts-uk-credit-crunch and http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/the-wages-of-scottish-independence-public-debt/.)

That is the position now. By the time a referendum is likely to be held and a decision made, it is likely to be 2015. By then the national debt is projected to be around £1.4 billion as against £1 trillion in 2012. That would add something like £45 billion for Scotland to service.  Foreign Aid is due to increase to £11.5 billion by 2014 (http://www.dfid.gov.uk/news/latest-news/2010/spending-review-2010/).  The EU net contribution is also due to rise after 2013.

Although it is impossible to give more than a rough  approximation of what a Scottish government would have to be handing over to the UK Treasury under Devomax,   realistically it would  be in the region of £20 billion per annum, a sum which would probably represent  at least a quarter of the total Scottish budget by the time Devomax was a fact.  That would  put great pressure on domestic Scottish government spending and heighten the already natural desire of a Devomax Scottish government to demand a strong say in the UK’s affairs.

The general difficulty with UK projects is obvious. Scotland would expect a say on the amount spent and the nature of the spending ,  but the rest of the UK  – which is 91% of the UK population – would overwhelmingly outweigh the Scots  in any democratic procedure to make decisions.  It is impossible have an arrangement which did not have one of two outcomes that  would be unpalatable to one of the two parties. Either Scottish wishes  would be ignored  or the Scottish tail would  wag the rest of the UK dog by giving them a disproportionately powerful  say.

The situation would be exceptionally sharp in the case of defence. The SNP is ideologically against a nuclear deterrent.  There is probably a  majority of the Scottish public who support this view.  Any likely Scottish government for the foreseeable future  will  have the SNP as at least a strong partner in a coalition. This state of affairs has three possible consequences.  If things stay as they are  with the  nuclear facilities  in Scotland continuing,   they would be a  high value bargaining chip for a Scottish government to extract substantial concessions  from  Westminster on other subjects, for example, the servicing of the UK national debt.  Alternatively, if the  nuclear deterrent facilities were placed entirely in England  the Scots will  cavil at paying a proportionate share of its costs even though they would  benefit from the protection it offers.  More generally, a Scottish government ideologically opposed to a nuclear deterrent might try to refuse to  pay anything towards it.

The other great military problem  would be action overseas which would have profound foreign policy implications.   It would clearly be absurd to get into a situation where  Westminster decided on foreign action and the  Scottish government  could  veto the deployment.   There would  also be occasions where even if a fighting role was not being contemplated  disputes could arise, for example,  over the military being used in policing roles such as those in the Balkans or substantial amounts of the military budget being used to defend the Falklands. In addition,  Scotland might well  try to engineer a situation where there were military assets  such as Scottish regiments which,  while they were not formally under the control of the Scottish government,  were in practice always stationed in Scotland or at least in the UK , with an understanding that they were not to be deployed overseas .

The second  immediate and pressing problem would be  foreign policy in general and the EU in particular. Apart from foreign policy relating to the armed forces,  there would also be many points of potential conflict  between Scotland and the rest of the UK.  For example, Scotland might object to funding  or facilitating the British arms trade while the UK government was in favour or the  UK government could be in favour of restricting immigration and Scotland for increasing it.

But those problems would be nothing compared to the  perpetual wrangles over the EU.  Assuming  the UK remains a member of the EU and the EU is not dissolved by the economic acid bath which is the Euro collapse, how would the UK’s relations with the EU be decided with a quasi-independent  Scotland  paying part of the annual membership fee?   Scotland would undoubtedly ask for some form of official representation and however that was delivered it would weaken the hand of the UK government because it would seem to the rest of the EU that the UK was speaking with two voices.  That could provide a lever for the EU to weaken the UK by playing Scotland off against the rest of the UK.

In any discussions of new policy or bargaining over such things as the UK rebate,  fishing  quotas  or the disbursement of that part of the money from the UK EU budget contribution which is returned to the UK in various ways, the UK could find itself in a similar position  to that UK domestic politics is presently in with the coalition government:  no clear  public voice but one perpetually moving as deals are done behind the scenes. Most dramatically, imagine a situation where there is a new EU treaty which greatly increases the move towards a United States of Europe.   Scotland would be in favour: the UK government probably would oppose such a treaty.  Even if the decision  was left to a UK referendum would a quasi-independent Scotland  accept  such a referendum? Would they not seek a referendum for Scotland only?  In the medium term the likely response by the EU would be to try to expand their  long-held regionalist  plan to dissolve the power of nation states  within the EU to allow places such as Scotland  a large and ever increasing autonomy within  the EU while  Scotland  remain legally part of a member state.

The other great immediate Devomax  problem would be the management of the Pound. Many of the problems associated with a supposedly  independent Scotland continuing  to use the pound also apply to Devomax– see  http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/an-independent-scotland-must-not-be-allowed-to-have-the-pound-as-their-official-currency/. Foreigners at both the business and government levels would  begin to see the UK not as single economic sphere but  as two separate economies.  That would create uncertainty which would  of itself weaken the Pound.

If Scotland had a much weaker economy than the rest of the UK under Devomax,  which is probable because of the dangerous narrowness of the Scottish  economy and its massive public sector,  something similar to the Euro situation  would arise. The  value of the Pound against other currencies would be suppressed, just as the Euro  has not reflected the strength of the German economy because of the other weaker vessels such as Greece and Italy.     An artificially low Pound might sound attractive for exports,  but it also means more expensive imports and creates a risk that the currency may slip into the dangerous territory of precipitously devaluing until the credibility of the  currency itself is in danger.   At the very least a Pound dependent on  two separate fiscal policies would mean that the massively larger entity  – the UK minus Scotland – would  to some degree be dependent on the behaviour of the much smaller entity – Scotland.

Fiscal autonomy also means, in theory at least,  no transfer of money from the rest of the UK (in practice from England)  to Scotland if the Scottish economy runs into serious  trouble.   This could easily happen because of the size of the tax take Scotland would have to generate to meet their present  obligations under Devomax.

The quick way of getting a quick approximation of the  amount of money a Scottish government under Devomax would have to raise to fund present expenditure . The total budget projection for £2011/12 is £710 billion (http://cdn.hm-treasury.gov.uk/2011budget_complete.pdf p6). 9% of that is £64 billion.

In 2009/10 – the last year for which there are official Scottish government figures for public expenditure in Scotland : Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland ( GERS)  –  Scottish tax revenues were  £42,201 billion excluding North Sea oil and £48,132 billion with what are coyly called “an illustrative geographical share “ of North Sea oil revenues  with expenditure for the year of  £62.086 billion (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/06/21144516/1). Even with the Oil revenues included there was a shortfall of £14 billion in  tax revenue.

But there  are problems with GERS which could well substantially understate public expenditure in Scotland.  For many items there are no official statistics collected for Scotland alone. Consequently, the GERS figures are often based on extrapolations from UK statistics with methodologies which even the GERS compilers warn do not produce objective data:  “… these methodologies are subjective and therefore the figures should be viewed accordingly” (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/06/21144516/2).  The other  problem is the treatment of North Sea Oil revenues.  The “illustrative geographical share  of North Sea oil revenues”   are based on a study by the University of Aberdeen (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/06/21144516/7).

The fact that both the GERS estimates and the North Sea oil revenue estimate have been made in Scotland rather than by non-Scottish bodies puts a large question mark against their impartiality.   If there is partiality favouring Scotland in the GERS  estimates it does not have to be conscious.  It is human nature to always put the best appearance on things from the individual’s point of view.  That is particularly true when a study is commissioned by those with political power.

Even if there is no overestimating of the bare figures they would not tell the whole story.  Scotland’s GDP is dangerously  dependent on public spending.  By 2012 it will be in the region of 67% of Scottish GDP (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/4217793/Scotlands-dependence-on-state-increasing.html). The important thing to understand about  tax collection is that tax collected from those drawing their pay from the public purse is that it is simply recycled taxpayers’ money. It is only the money derived from private enterprise which drives an economy.  We can see this graphically in the present UK financial position. Only the private sector can grow the economy to allow larger tax receipts to reduce the deficit.  To have two thirds of an economy dependent on public expenditure is profoundly precarious because the tax base can shrink radically very rapidly. It is doubly dangerous for a small country of only 5 million people which does not have much diversity in in the little there is of a private sector.

Even if 90% of the oil tax revenues were allocated to Scotland this would not, on average,  compensate for the loss of a subsidy of some £8 billion pa which Scotland presently receives from the UK treasury through higher per capita funding  resulting from the Barnett Formula.   Not only that but revenues veer about wildly. In 1991/2 they were a paltry £647 million; in 2008/9 £13 billion; in 2009/10 they dropped dramatically to £6.4 billion.   (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/06/21144516/7).  The remaining oil in Scottish waters is also declining  rapidly and becoming more expensive to extract as the major oil discoveries run down (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/05/14/the-truth-about-uk-oil-and-gas/).  While it is true that overall oil consumption is rising because of the countries such as China and India,  which might be expected to keep the price of oil high, there are also dramatic developments around shale oil and gas so there is no guarantee that the price of oil will remain high or continue to rise.  In any event it would be a rash government to base its future on a single crock of gold.

There is also the strong possibility under Devomax of  the English public sector jobs exported to Scotland being repatriated (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/scottish-independence-yes-but-only-on-these-terms/)  and of  companies in Scotland moving out of Scotland if a Scottish government cannot afford to offer them financial incentives to say.

There would also be a problem  with new  national debt. With a  fiscally independent Scotland  neither England nor Scotland would  wish to run up new UK National Debt.  After Devomax Scotland would have to take sole responsibility for any new finance raised by the Scottish government, while the rest of the UK would assume responsibility for any new post Devomax  debt it incurred. There is the risk of Scotland being unwilling to cut its public financial cloth much closer because it has become substantially poorer and running up unsustainable Scottish debt.

It is only to easy to imagine Scotland getting into the same mess that the Republic of Ireland and Iceland got into by a mixture of reckless spending and a failure to control credit or risky financial operations generally.   The rest of the UK (essentially England for reasons already given) would either have to bail out the Scots or see Scotland go effectively bust with the dire  effect that would have on the Pound  and the UK international financial and political credibility. The latter  would also bring large numbers of Scots to England after jobs, housing, schools and welfare which their own government could no longer afford.  Which option would a UK government take? Almost certainly the bailing out of Scotland with English money because of the damage anything else might do.   This might be done as a supposed loan, but there would be no guarantee that  it would be repaid.

The best that could be hoped for from Devomax  from an English perspective would be that Scotland would not be reckless and would pay their share of UK projects such as defence.  But along with that would come a perpetual uneasiness and clashing of democratic wills. It would be, as mentioned previously, akin to the situation we have with the coalition government  with no clear position on anything.  Unlike the coalition government there would be no end to it.   If Scotland is to leave the UK, it must be as a fully independent state asking no favours from England.

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.

The deaths of Richard Everitt and Stephen Lawrence: compare and contrast

Robert Henderson

The Death of Richard Everitt (see below)  is an article I wrote in 1994. Compare and contrast the elite response to his death and that of Stephen Lawrence.

Richard was knifed to death by an Asian gang approximately 300 yards from my front door. The gang was large, perhaps as many as 15 members. The gang was known as the Drummond Street Posse and had gone out that night specifically looking for a “white boy” to attack because they felt they had been “wronged” by a white boy (http://www.mamaa.org/infalre.html).

The gang were arrested the same night for a separate incident and blood was found on 19-year-old Badrul Miah. This turned out to be a match for that of Richard. Miah, later boasted that he had “stabbed up some white boy”. http://www.mirror.co.uk/life-style/kids-and-family/2008/10/13/exclusive-i-can-t-forgive-my-son-s-knife-crime-killer-115875-20799700/

After nine months the police had arrested 11 people in connection with the murder. The 11 dropped to six and after a committal hearing the number fell to 3. Eventually only two came to trial, Badrul Miah and Showkat Akbar. Akbar was found guilty of violent disorder and sentenced to three years, of which he served 18 months. Miah was sentenced to life but let out on licence after 11 years despite the trial judge describing it as an unprovoked  racist attack (see Mirror link above).

The parents of Richard suffered beyond the loss of their child: “After the trial Mandy and Norman tried to move on but were the victims of threats and racial abuse. They had to leave the home where they raised their children and move out of London to Essex.” (http://www.mamaa.org/infalre.html)

Those are the bare facts of the Everitt murder. Compare the elite response to his murder with their response to that of Stephen Lawrence:

1. Only one person was convicted of the murder even though all were guilty of joint enterprise.

2. There has been no media campaign to bring the others to justice.

3. There has been no public inquiry into Richard’s murder.

4. The one person was convicted of Richard’s murder  was released after 11 years without any media or political uproar.

5. There has been no concerted media campaign stretching over nearly two decades to bring the others in the gang to justice.

6. Unlike the Lawrence case where the Daily Mail accused the five suspects of murder in 1997 (http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/frontpage/lawrence.html) , no representative of the national press or broadcasters called any other member of the gang which murdered Richard a murderer.

7. The gang members who attacked Richard were older than those accused of attacking Stephen Lawrence.

8.  Unlike the Lawrence murder, British politicians from the word go not only refused to adopt the tone of moral outrage which they routinely do when the death of Stephen Lawrence is discussed, but actively tried to play down the racist aspect. Considerable pressure was put on Richard’s parents at the time to go along with the usual Maoist pc line that they were not racist and so on. The local MP, Frank Dobson, was most notable for his silence.

It is often said these days that the grip political correctness has on British society is much worse than it was. It is true that the absurdities get ever greater as the politically correct compete to be the purest ideologue, but as the Everitt case shows in really important matters such as the administration of justice  it was already solidly entrenched two decades ago.

Here is my 1994 article:

The death of Richard Everitt

Robert Henderson

The various mass media and political responses to the murder  of Richard Everitt in Somers Town on 14th August is evidence  of a fundamental rottenness in public life, namely a  stubborn refusal to address the legitimate concerns of the white population about the effects of Asian and black settlement in Britain. More particularly, it shows the profound contempt with which the white working class in heavily settled immigrant areas has come to be viewed by those with power and influence, who see them as at best as an expendable nuisance and at worst as a positive evil.

Comment by politicians and the media about Richard’s death has been extremely muted. Moreover, the main thrusts of the few statements that have been made have concentrated on the dangers of reprisals against Asians and previous attacks on Asians. Sincere expressions of anger or regret by public figures for the death of this white working class boy are notable by their absence. Concern for the predicament of the white working class, who form the native population of the area, has been entirely absent. The contrast with the media and political response to the death of, for example, Stephen Lawrence is startling. Where are the broadsheet editorials? Where the anguished protestations of horror from all political parties? Where the calls from pressure groups for laws to prevent racist attacks? Where the Home Secretary visiting the area to express his horror? Nowhere, that is where.

The coverage of the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs illustrates vividly the extent to which double standards are applied in the reporting of violent attacks that may have a racist motive. Here are the two broadsheet newspapers which are reputedly the most Tory, the most nationalist, the most sympathetic to native British interests. Yet the Daily Telegraph carried only three news reports about the murder, the second of which – only two days after the death – appeared on page 7. All three reports fit comfortably onto a sheet of paper little larger than a side of A4. None of the reports contains any comment. The Daily  Telegraph has printed no letters, articles or leaders on the subject. It has, in fact, made no comment on the matter.

The Sunday Telegraph has carried a single piece written by an Asian, Amit Roy. (Again there have been no letters or leaders). The article’s headline gives its flavour. What could it be? ‘The tragedy of Richard Everitt’? ‘The plight of the white working class’? No, my naive friends of course it was not. The Sunday Telegraph decided that the appropriate headline was ‘Asian victims learn to strike back’. Grossly provocative would seem an apt description.

In the article Mr Roy’s primary concerns are to (1) paint the Asians as the real victims and (2) issue oblique threats of further Asian violence through the device of bruiting the names and “hardness” of various Asian gangs. Mr Roy does not, of course, say he approves of such behaviour but then he does not need to, the headline and the general tone of the article ensure that the reader gets the message. As for Richard Everitt, well, Mr Roy very generously says that he ‘appears to have been innocent of any kind of racist behaviour’. Would it have made any difference if he had been? Would Mr Roy then have thought the murder acceptable? I would not wish to bet against it. As for The BBC, they thought the matter was of such little importance that it merited, the day after the killing, no more than two minutes at the end the Radio 4 programme ‘The world at One’.

I live very close to where Richard died. I can tell you that such a tragedy is unsurprising. The area is a poisonous racial brew in which the Bengalis are merely the most toxic ingredient. The reality of mixed populations is directly contrary to the liberal fantasy of peaceful multiculturalism. Coloured immigrants actively resist integration and where, as in the case of the Bengalis, they form a sizable population they are not even circumspect in their behaviour towards other racial groups. Hence the Bengali gangs. Hence the regular police presence, prior to his death, outside Richard’s school. Hence the harassment of elderly whites by Bengali gangs. Hence the constant air of tension which pervades the area.

The truth of the matter is that the English white working class has to bear the consequences of the liberal establishment’s enthusiasm for multiculturalism, while the liberal establishment avoids the consequences by making damn sure that they either live far away or by forming self-contained colonies on the edges of immigrant areas, which device allows them to further inflate their already monumental smugness by claiming that ” I live in Hackney” when they effectively live in Islington or “I live in Notting Hill” simply because their address happens to be one street away from Bayswater.

How many liberals would be happy to send their children to a school such as Richard’s in which all but two of the class were coloured? Imagine how isolated the boy must have felt simply by being in such a situation. Moreover, the children Richard will have mixed with will not be the products of middle class, westernised immigrants, but, in the main, the children backward Bengali peasants who speak little or no English and whose primary desire is to prevent their children becoming westernised.

The government of 18th Century Britain has been memorably described as ‘aristocracy tempered by rioting’. That, in fact, is a good description of the inherent circumstances of any form of government. Unless the political class addresses the problem of race honestly, they will be most assuredly “tempered”. No people will tolerate for ever a ruling class which so cravenly acts against their interests.

SNP 2011 XMAS Novelties

Independence Puzzle

Based on the Rubik Cube principle,  when solved the puzzle represents  a map of the Scotch mainland with the word INDEPENDENCE  in the its centre.  WARNING: this is a very demanding puzzle and even the brightest players will almost certainly find it impossible to solve

Guess the English Subsidy Sweepstake

Each player puts  part of their English subsidy into a pot. Players write down  their guess  for a given year. The winner is the person with the guess which is closest to the actual figure. They collect the pot. The other players say it isn’t fair and send a petition to Westminster asking for even more English money.

Educational moneybox

The money  box is in the shape of mainland Britain. When money is to be saved it is put into an opening situated over central London  from where it slides quickly  to a point north of the Tweed. When money is  to be spent a lever is pressed and the money is disgorged  from another opening  placed over Edinburgh.

Jock-in-a-box

When opened a  figure   modelled on Alex Salmond  pops up saying with the characteristic whine of the Jock-in-a-box either  INDEPEEENDENCE or DEVOOO MAXXX .   The choice of word uttered when the box is  random. Bet on which it will be every time the box is opened.   Hours of innocent fun from this traditional favourite!

Independence  Crystal Ball

Look into the Crystal Ball to see when Independence will be gained.  WARNING: an inability to see any date is not evidence of  the item not being of merchandisable quality.

Tartan Snap

The cards contain various tartans. When two cards with the same tartan are placed down  consecutively  SCOTT is shouted in honour of Sir Walter Scott who created  the  idea of clan tartans to amuse George 1V on his visit to Scotland.

Animatronic  SNP Member

Dressed in a kaleidoscope of various clan tartans with a shape which resembles a beachball in human form,  the toy  Has a library of 50 phrases  including  “It isnae fair”, “t’Anglish are stealin’’ ouir oil”, “We wunt muir t’Anglish money” , “Independence an’ t’Anglish money” , “It’s  the fault of t’Anglish”.   Unlike the 2010 model , the phrases “Arc of Prosperity” and “Independence in Europe”  are not included in  the repertoire of phrases. Startlingly lifelike

The deep-fried cookbook

Contains SNP MSPs’ favourite recipes. Everything from the classic deep fried Mars Bars to deep fried porridge balls. Base your diet on these and look like your average SNP MSP!

My little Loch Ness Monster bath  toy

Spends most of the time submerged but surfaces every now and then to display the words  “Independence for Scotland Sometime! ” illustrated on its coils.  Bright pink, it will appeal to  girls as an alternative to My Little Pony.

Devolution Max Jigsaw

This is a jigsaw with a difference.  It comes with the pieces marked with legends  such as “Armed Forces”;  Unemployment Benefit”, “Sick Benefit”, “State Pension”, “Westminster Parliament”,  and “Continuing English Subsidy”. The trick is to form the jigsaw picture with the “Continuing English Subsidy”  at the centre even though the pieces are cut so as not to fit together.

Oil Monopoly

A game for a maximum of six players. Instead of a  board marked “Victoria Station”;  “Mayfair” and “Gasworks” and so on , there is one consisting  of squares carrying legends such as “Shetlands”, “Aberdeen Refinery” and   “English North Sea Oil and Gas” . When players pass  GO they receive £200 of English money.  The Community Chest   and Chance cards are marked  with messages such as “There is a LibLab Coalition government,  collect  £1,000 extra from England” and “Independence is cancelled. Return the “Wee Pretendy Parliament money to England” .  The winner is the player who accumulates most of the oil and gas assets around the UK. Oil and gas in English waters scores treble.

Porridge Oats Modelling Set

A kit consisting of a set of moulds, oats, mixing bowl  and  measuring jug.  Oats and water are mixed and then poured  into the mould.  Moulds include  Alex Salmond,  The Wee Pretendy Parliament and the Edinburgh tram system.

Warning: toxic: not to be  put in mouth

HURRY…HURRY…HURRY… WHILE JOCKS LAST

Emma West, immigration and the Liberal totalitarian state part 2

Robert Henderson

Emma West has been remanded in custody until 3rd of January when she will appear at Croydon Crown Court (http://uk.news.yahoo.com/tram-race-rant-woman-court-052333359.html).  By 3rd January she will in, effect , have served a custodial sentence of 37 days,  regardless of whether she is found not guilty or found guilty and given a non-custodial question.  37 days is  not far short of being the equivalent of  a three month sentence which, in England,  automatically attracts a 50% remission.  It often takes burglars in England to be convicted three or even more times of burglary before they receive a custodial sentence.

Miss West has also been separated from her children who may well have been taken into care and will have the great trauma of both wondering what is happening to them and whether they may be taken off her by our wondrously politically correct social services.

Bizarrely, Miss West is being held in a category A prison HM Bronzefield  in Middlesex. A Category A prison is the highest security prison and is reserved for “prisoners are those whose escape would be highly dangerous to the public or national security”.  For someone charged with an offence which could have been dealt with in a magistrates court  to be remanded to such a facility  is truly extraordinary.

The court’s excuse that she was being held in protective custody to protect her from attack is both sinister and absurd.  Unless Miss West is kept in solitary confinement,  she will be  in more danger in the prison than she would be on bail because there will be black and Asian prisoners in the prison who will be violent because  any  category A prison will contain such prisoners . If she is being kept in solitary, that would be unreasonable because it will adversely affect her  mental state and be a de facto punishment in itself.   The general Category A regime is also severe . Both the imprisonment of Miss West and the use of a Category A prison suggest a deliberate policy of intimidation by the authorities designed both to undermine her resolution and send a most threatening message to every white Briton.

Compare and contrast her treatment with that of a criminal case which was decided on the same day that Miss West was further remanded. Four Somali Muslim girls  – Ambaro and Hibo Maxamed, both 24, their sister Ayan, 28, and cousin Ifrah Nur  28 – viciously attacked a white British girl Rhea Page, 22.  They  were charged with Assault occasioning Actual Bodily Harm (ABH),  having torn part of Miss Page’s  scalp away, knocked her to the ground and repeatedly kicked her, including kicks to the head (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2070562/Muslim-girl-gang-kicked-Rhea-Page-head-yelling-kill-white-slag-FREED.html#ixzz1flw8TY6p).  Miss Page was left traumatised and lost her job as a result of the lasting effect the attack had on her.

The maximum penalty for  ABH is five years. The judge  Robert Brown sentenced  the attackers to six month suspended sentences plus 150 hours of unpaid community work for all but for Hibo Maxamed, who needs dialysis three times a week for a kidney complaint and  received a four-month curfew between 9pm and 6am.   The sentence was absurdly light for a serious case of ABH. Indeed, the crime could well have been judged to have been the more serious Grievous Bodily Harm.

Despite the fact that they were screaming white bitch” and “white slag at Miss Page, the attack was not treated as a racially motivated and hence aggravated crime. Had it been treated as racially motivated the sentence would have been more severe.

The judge is reported as saying that he took into account the fact that Miss Page’s partner  Lewis Moore, 23, had used unreasonable force to defend Miss Page.  No details of this “unreasonable force” appear in media reports, but the mind does boggle a bit at what could be considered “unreasonable force” when four girls are savagely attacking a man’s girlfriend .  The judge also made allowances for the fact that the girls had been drinking and had behaved as they did because as Muslims they were unused to alcohol (I am not making this up honest”).

There was an attempt by Nur to claim that Mr Moore had been racially abusive. The prosecution did not accept this. However, let us suppose that he had been racially abusive in such  circumstances could any rational person think it was unreasonable?

The Mail reports  that “After the sentencing, Ambaro Maxamed wrote on her Twitter account: ‘Happy happy happy!’, ‘I’m so going out’, and ‘Today has been such a great day’.” They are under no illusion that they have got away with it.

So there you have it, no jail and the crime is not treated as racially motivated and the culprits effectively put two fingers up to Miss Page. If this was a plot used in a work of fiction it would treated as absurd.  Actually, in the monstrously politically correct world that is modern England the writer of such a plot would almost certainly have been accused of racism.

This type  of grotesque double standards in the treatment of white Britons and blacks,  Asians  or even white immigrants is commonplace.  Another good example occurred when white Christopher Yates was murdered by an Asian gang who were heard to make racist comments  such as “That will teach the white man for interfering in Paki business.”                (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4416988.stm).  The Judge Martin Stephens  bizarrely did not say the crime was racially aggravated because “Between you that morning, you attacked people of all races, white, black and Asian”, this being based on the evidence that “They racially abused a black resident and then moved on to a curry house where they assaulted an Asian waiter”.  Note that they did not racially abuse the Asian waiter. Moreover,  it is mistaken to lump all Asians under one heading.  The assaulted Asian could have come from a different ethnicity.

Apart from the disparity  in the treatment of  white Britons and ethnic minorities by the law, there is the striking difference in the behaviour of politicians and the mainstream media in reporting allegations of white and allegations of  ethnic minority racism.  An attack by a white assailant on a black or Asian is routinely accepted as racist without any meaningful  proof, the simple fact of it being a white assailant and a black victim being taken as proof enough.  The reverse is the case where the assailant in  black or Asian and the victim is white.  There is also a massive difference in the elite response to white on black and black on white assaults or verbal racial abuse. Politicians and the media  remain very quiet when the alleged racist is black,  but are incontinent in their eagerness to condemn the alleged white malefactor.  The never ending Stephen Lawrence saga is the prime example of the latter behaviour.

A striking fact about Emma West’s case is the limited media coverage and the nature of what exists. There have been press reports but very surprisingly little in the broadcast media and the press coverage is mostly straight reportage of the court hearings  rather than comment.  It is not difficult to imagine what would have happened if a black woman had been treated as Miss West has been treated. The media would be swamped with opinion pieces emphasising the black woman’s struggle against white racism, the historical legacy of slavery, her impoverished circumstances  and so on.

Miss West  has opted for a jury trial rather than being dealt with by the magistrates so presumably she will plead not guilty. The danger is she will be intimidated by her incarceration in a Category A prison , the pressure put  upon her by an army of criminologists, social workers and possibly her own lawyers and, most contemptibly, by  threats that her children will be taken away,  to engage in a Maoist-style public confession of fault , with a plea of guilty and the ghastly stereotyped statement  so common these days read by her lawyer after the conclusion of the case. This would  be along the lines of  how the views do not represent what Miss West actually thinks, says she has many black  and white foreign friends and   attributes her  words on the train to provocation,  stress , drink or  drugs, thus implying that no sane person who was in a normal state of mind could possibly hold such views. Let us pray  that it does not happen.

The message of Emma West’s treatment is simple: Britain’s  ruling elite  are terrified of anyone who will not accept the liberal credo,  because  the liberal’s fantasy multicultural, politically correct society  is only sustainable while no one is allowed to point out that the emperor’s new clothes do not exist.

Miss West’s solicitor is David Ewings . He can  be contacted at David.Ewings@CharterChambers.com

Charter Chambers

33 John Street

London

WC1N 2AT

If you wish to support Miss West you can  write to

Emma West

C/O HMP Bronzefield

Woodthorpe Road

Ashford

Middlesex

TW15 3JZ

 

Stop Press

There are reports circulating on the web that Emma West’s protests against the consequences of mass immigration were sparked by a black passenger spitting near her and her son. I have not seen any mainstream media report of this so for the moment store it away in your mind but treat with caution.

The black-instigated and dominated 2011 riots and the Great Elite lie

Robert Henderson

The politically inspired fog covering the race and ethnicity of those  involved in the August riots is beginning to clear. The Ministry of Justice have produced a further  analysis of people  arrested and brought before the courts  for offences committed in the rioting in England between  6th and 9th August       (http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/publications/statistics-and-data/mojstats/august-public-disorder-stats-bulletin-241011.pdf).  The data is complete to 12th October.

The Home Office has also produce a report dated simply October
2011 (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/crime-research/overview-disorder-aug2011/overview-disorder-aug2011?view=Binary).
There are differences in the mode of collection of data between the two reports, but the message is broadly the same.

The large majority of those brought before the courts committed their  alleged crimes in
London.  1,984 people had appeared before the courts by midday on 12th October 2011. By riot area the figures are:

• London – 1,386

• West Midlands – 174

• Nottingham – 64

• Greater Manchester – 200

• Merseyside – 62

• Other areas – 98

(http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/publications/statistics-and-data/mojstats/august-public-disorder-stats-bulletin-241011.pdf  – p4). The overwhelming majority of those brought before the courts were from areas with large non-white populations.

The reports include an ethnic/racial breakdown of those arrested and those brought before the courts.  These demonstrate clearly that blacks were grossly overrepresented, Asians proportionately  represented and whites grossly underrepresented in proportion to their part of the population of England. Here is  the Ministry of Justice:

Comparisons by ethnicity (where ethnicity was recorded) show that 42 per cent of those brought before the courts were White, 46 per cent were from a Black or mixed Black background, 7 per cent were from an Asian or mixed Asian background, 5 per cent were other. The proportions vary significantly by area. However, caution is needed when analysing these figures as the comparisons with the local population have not been fully age adjusted (p4).

This broadly agrees with the ethnic  breakdown of those arrested  given in the Home Office report :

Forty per cent of all arrestees described their ethnicity as White, 39 per cent as Black, 11 per cent as from a Mixed ethnic background, eight per cent as Asian and two per cent
from some other ethnic background. (p4).

There are two ways of looking at the figures: by comparison with the population of England as a whole and by comparison with  the populations of the areas in which the
riots took place. (I have had to use the estimates for England and Wales because the ONS  treats England and Wales as a single entity. However, the distortion is minor because Wales’ population is only approximately 3 million).

The Office of National Statistics estimates of the ethnicity of England and Wales  in 2011 are

% White, British 82.79

% Mixed 1.85

% Asian or Asian British 6.11

% Black or Black British 2.94

% Chinese 0.85

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/may/18/ethnic-population-england-wales)

Blacks with 2.94 of the population comprise  46% of those brought before the courts , while whites (which includes white immigrants) with 82.79% of the population provide only  42% of this group. Asian representation approximately reflects their percentage of the UK population. The comparison with the populations of the riot areas  showed an even greater black involvement. This was true even in the few areas where there was only a small non-white population, for example;

 Salford – of defendants brought before the court who lived in Salford, 94 per cent were White and six per cent were from a Black or mixed Black background; whereas the
resident population, under the age of 40, comprised 88 per cent white and two per cent black or mixed Black backgrounds.

In areas where the non-white population was substantial, the proportion of those  brought before the courts  who were classified as wholly or partially black  was stark. For example;

 Haringey – of defendants brought before the court who live in Haringey, 34 per cent were White and 55 per cent were from a Black or mixed Black background; whereas, the
resident population, under the age of 40, comprised 62 per cent were White and 17 per cent were from a Black or  mixed Black background.

 Nottingham – of defendants brought before the court who lived in Nottingham, 32 per cent were White and 62 per cent were from a Black or mixed Black background; whereas, the resident population, under the age of 40, comprised 71 per cent were White and nine per cent were from a Black or mixed Black background.

 Birmingham – of defendants brought before the courts, 46 per cent were from a Black background, 33 per cent from a White background and 15 per cent from and Asian background.Whereas the resident population, aged under 40, comprised 58 per cent  , 30 per cent from Asian and nine per cent from Black backgrounds. http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/publications/statistics-and-data/mojstats/august-public-disorder-stats-bulletin-241011.pdf
– pp16/17)

The figures do not necessarily represent the actual ethnic/racial participation in the riots. The sample depends  on those arrested and brought before the courts self-identifying their racial group.  5 per cent did not  identify their race.   Which group would be less likely
to refuse to identify their race? I think it  unlikely that whites would do so because  in Britain being white does not carry any stigma or sense of being outside the mainstream.  Most  of that 5%  could probably be assigned to non-whites.

There is also the willingness and ability of the police to arrest and investigate members of  all racial and ethnic groups with equal vigour and success and the willingness of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to prosecute without any regard to ethnicity or race.

There can be no certainty about  the even handedness of the police and CPS  because the public does not have access to the police data including the vast amount of CCTV evidence.
Nonetheless, it is possible to say what is probable.  As everyone who watched the TV coverage or viewed the many postings on sites like YouTube of TV coverage or private recordings, it is clear that where gangs of rioters were breaking into shops and other
buildings the rioters were overwhelmingly black. Despite assiduous efforts to find a white gang making the initial breach into a property I have found none.   Nor have I been able to find a white gang rioting or looting in any circumstances.  Whites actually looting either appear  in ones or twos or  occasionally as part of a predominantly black gang.

If that interpretation of how the riots evolved is correct – black initiation and domination of the rioting and looting followed by opportunistic white involvement –  it is probable that the police have disproportionately arrested whites compared with blacks.  This would be because whites, not being in gangs, would be easier  and safer to arrest than blacks, both during the riots and afterwards.  The  police would also be chary of tackling non-whites and especially black gangs both during the riots and later because of the politically correct ideology which has taught the police that dealing with blacks is dangerous because of accusations of racism.    There is some indication of that this may have happened   because the Home Office report on the riots http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/crime-research/overview-disorder-aug2011/overview-disorder-aug2011?view=Binary – p5 ) downplays the role of gangs:

Overall 13 per cent of arrestees (417) were reported to be affiliated to a gang. Outside London, the majority of forces identified fewer than ten per cent of all arrestees as gang
members, and only two non-London forces estimated figures in excess of this – West Yorkshire (19%) and Nottinghamshire (17%). For these two forces, these percentages only represent relatively small numbers of arrestees (13 and 20 respectively; see Table A15 in Annex). In London, police reported that 19 per cent of arrestees – 337suspects, drawn from 169 different gangs – were identified as gang members. This is far more numerous than those arrested in all other forces combined. However, even in London, the great majority of arrestees (81%) were not identified by the police as being members of gangs. It should be noted that the way in which gang members were identified was not completely consistent between forces as no standard definition of gang membership was used. (p 18).

The relatively small percentage of those identified as gang members could be the consequence of  a failure to arrest or investigate a large proportion of the black rioters and looters. It should also be understood that gangs are generally a black and Asian phenomenon. The 13 per cent is probably drawn overwhelmingly from the the  non-white rioters.

The white component of those brought before the courts is  problematic because although it is  low compared with the group’s dominance of the English population,  there is no clear differentiation between foreigners and native white Britons nor a figure for the total numbers of foreigners brought before the courts.  (I made and an analysis of arrested rioters names in August –  http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/the-racial-and-ethnic-make-up-of-the-august-2011-uk-rioters-by-group/–  which  shows some rioters with European names. It is a fair bet that most of these were white).

The number of foreigners sent to prison either after sentence or on remand  was  110  at 30th September (http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/publications/statistics-and-data/mojstats/august-public-disorder-stats-bulletin-241011.pdf  – p18). This constituted  13 per cent of those sent to or remanded in prison.  It is a reasonable assumption that a significant proportion of these people were white and further that those brought before the courts but not jailed will also contain a  proportion of white foreigners.  If, as the video evidence suggests,  the white foreigners like whites generally   tended to be opportunistic looters rather than engaging in violence against people or property,  they would be less likely to be sentenced to prison or remanded in custody than blacks who clearly were
responsible for most of the serious assaults on initial property (the breaking into shops and other premises).  That could mean that their appearance in the overall totals of those arrested and those brought before the courts but not held in custody could be higher than
those sent to prison.

The course of the riots also supports the view that blacks instigated and dominated the rioting and looting and other racial groups took advantage of their seeming  freedom from
police action after the police stood off in the first days. Here is the Home Office description of  what happened during the five days:

Day 1 Saturday, 6 August – Incidents of unrest in Tottenham with vehicles, shops and residential buildings set alight, and looting of shops.

Day 2 Sunday, 7 August – Further incidents of disorder occur in others areas of London affecting principally Enfield, Wood Green, Brixton, Walthamstow and Islington.

Day 3 Monday, 8 August – Disorder becomes widespread in London, with disorder occurring across almost all London boroughs. Incidents of disorder also occur in Avon and Somerset (Bristol), West Midlands (Birmingham) and Merseyside (Liverpool).

Day 4 Tuesday, 9 August – Although disorder in the London area begins to dissipate, disorder becomes more widespread throughout parts of Thames Valley (Reading, Milton Keynes), West Yorkshire  (Leeds), Leicestershire (Leicester) and Greater Manchester (Salford, Manchester). Unrest also continues in Bristol, Liverpool and Birmingham.

Day 5 Wednesday, 10 August – Disorder continues into the early hours on Wednesday in Birmingham, Nottingham, Leicester and Merseyside. Widespread disorder has now largely died out, though isolated disorder continues throughout the evening into early hours of Thursday. Some low-level isolated unrest continues over the following days. (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/crime-research/overview-disorder-aug2011/overview-disorder-aug2011?view=Binary – p7).

The flow of the disorder is clear: it started in areas of heavy  black settlement and gradually spread to places with smaller proportions of blacks in the population. In those areas a much smaller amount of  looting and  criminal damage occurred.

The dominant  element of criminal intent (as opposed to political protest) in the riots can be seen from the high proportion of those brought before the courts with a criminal
conviction or caution:

• Overall 76 per cent of those who have appeared before the courts for the disorder had a previous caution or conviction

• 80 per cent of adults and 62 per cent of juveniles had a previous caution or conviction.

•71 per cent of adult males who have been brought before the courts for the disorder had at least one previous conviction compared to 28 per cent of males aged 18-52 in the
population as a whole who have at least one previous conviction

 •45 per cent of males aged 10-17 brought before the courts for the disorder had at least one previous conviction. This compares with two per cent of the 10-17 year old male population who have at least one previous conviction

(http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/publications/statistics-and-data/mojstats/august-public-disorder-stats-bulletin-241011.pdf  – p7).

These statistics should be viewed in the context that the police will have been much more likely to identify  people with a criminal record or caution  from CCTV and other images than those who are unknown to them. However,  there were many arrests at  the scene of crimes and the difference between the general population and those brought before the courts is so stark that is unlikely to be wildly inaccurate as a representation of  the rioters in general, whether arrested or not.

There was a strong  age  bias towards the young.:

Comparisons by age show that 26 per cent of those brought before the courts for offences relating to the public disorder were aged 10-17 (juveniles) and that a further 27 per cent were aged 18-20. Only five per cent of those appearing before the courts for the disorder were over 40 years old. (http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/publications/statistics-and-data/mojstats/august-public-disorder-stats-bulletin-241011.pdf
– p3).  Because the age profile of blacks and Asians in Britain is significantly younger than that of whites,  it is probable that a higher percentage of  blacks and Asians are included in the  younger offender groups than amongst the overall group of those brought before the courts.

The claims of social deprivation do not stand up. This is not because  the rioters were  not  poor or at least came predominantly from areas of social deprivation.  They  did. Moreover, their  educational attainments were below  average – see p 20 http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/publications/statistics-and-data/mojstats/august-public-disorder-stats-bulletin-241011.pdf.  The reason why the claims fall is because there are many other parts of the country equally poor  with populations lacking educational success which did not riot.  The difference is that these areas had small or non-existent black populations.  

Calling black multi-coloured

What is clear is the determination of the British political elite to deny the reality of the riots. Instead of accepting that these events were black riots and lootfests which encouraged opportunistic looting by a small percentage of whites and a larger percentage of Asians, they have painted the riots as being racially undifferentiated  and the product of variously “broken Britain”, “an  underclass” , “social deprivation”  and “feral children”.  At best they are sweeping a problem under the carpet and at worst cynically tarring the native white population with a brush filled with a politically correct lie.

I submitted this prospective epetition (https://submissions.epetitions.direct.gov.uk/)
:

The Commons to debate why the true nature of the black-instigated and dominated 2011 riots has  been denied by politicians of all parties who have insisted on the  false equality of participation of all races and ethnicities in the riots,  despite the fact that anyone watching the voluminous TV and private video coverage of the riots could see that  blacks were involved out of all proportion to their presence in the population, a fact given statistical support by the Ministry of Justice analysis of those brought before the courts which showed 46 per cent being black or mixed race and 7 per cent being Asian – http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/publications/statistics-and-data/mojstats/august-public-disorder-stats-bulletin-241011.pdf

Almost needless to say it was turned down.

 

 

 

Remember, remember the fifth of November – it speaks to us today

Robert Henderson

Anyone taking their cue from the mainstream British media would imagine that Guy Fawke’s night is merely an archaic piece of religious bigotry. The papers and airwaves are alive with mediafolk and politicos tut-tutting over  the “anti-Catholic festival”,   with the more advanced liberal  bigots amongst them musing whether it should be banned as it
“incites hate”, while the less straightforward propagandise  for its abolition under the shelter of “health and safety”  with a recitation of the tremendous risks involved with bonfires and fireworks.

The truth, as ever with liberal bigots, is  the exact opposite of  what they claim. To equate   anti-Catholic feeling in 1605 (and for many years afterwards) with simple, wilful hatred is to display a howling ignorance of both history and of societies which are dominated by
religious belief. By  1605 England had endured 70 years of incessant Catholic threat since
the breach with Rome.*  Under Mary Tudor she had had a very dirty  taste of  what a Catholic Restoration would mean, with burnings and general persecution.  Before English eyes were the constant  sufferings of Protestants on the  Continent.   The re-conversion of England to Catholicism would mean  at best the intolerance of the Inquisition   and at worst   a Catholic foreigner  such as Mary’s husband Philip II of Spain sitting  on the English throne.  The great massacre of French  Protestants on  St Bartholomew’s Day in 1572  was dreadful warning of  what  fate might await  Protestants  under a Catholic monarch.

Throughout the reign of Elizabeth, the fate of  Protestantism  hung by precious  few threads, the sturdiest of which was England. On the continent only Sweden and the nascent power of the Dutch Republic stood between  the power of Spain, the great  agent of the counter-Reformation. Most  of  Europe  remained Catholic. The two greatest continental kingdoms,  Spain and  France were  Catholic and the (Catholic) Holy Roman Empire under the Hapsburgs was still a considerable  force.   Had England fallen to Rome  the Counter-Reformation would in all probability have triumphed.  Had the Dutch Republic failed  England would have been utterly isolated as a Protestant kingdom.

An  analogy with the position that England found itself under between the 1530s and 1605 would be that of Britain  in WW2 before America joined the war. Yet the Elizabethan situation was more perilous by far. The WW2 situation lasted for less than 30 months; that of England in 1605 had lasted 70 years and would last the Lord knew how much longer. Worse, there was no great overseas help to be had because there was no  Elizabethan equivalent of the USA or the Empire and the population of England was tiny  (3-4 million at best)  compared to the powers which opposed her.

During the 45  years following Elizabeth’s accession (1558)  Spain had three times tried and failed to invade England (1588, 1596, 1597). As recently  as   1601 Spain invaded Ireland and joined with Irish forces, but was defeated at the battle of Kinsale in Co. Cork.

To these external threats may be added the incessant Catholic plots against Elizabeth’s life throughout her reign,  with the shadow of Mary Queen of Scots  covering  most of them until her long overdue execution in 1586.

The mentality of  those  English Catholics who were prepared to act against the Crown was treasonable in the extreme. They’re cast of mind is exemplified by Reginald Pole, whom Mary Tudor rewarded with the Archbishopric of Canterbury and the Pope rewarded with a  cardinal’s red hat. Pole fled England after falling out with Henry VIII. He then wrote
a pamphlet imploring all Catholic powers of the day from the emperor Charles V to Frances I of France to invade England  and for all Englishmen to support the invaders.

For men such as Pole religion was all.  To make England Catholic was their only end. There was no arguing with them. Like the fanatic Muslim today everything else subordinate to their religion.  As Catholics,  their loyalty was to the Pope not to their king or country. The Catholic traitors of Elizabeth’s reign  would have willingly allowed a creature  such as the Duke of Alva to land and devastate England as he had devastated the Low Countries. Nothing was too terrible if it meant England  was to became Catholic once more. Truly, England in 1605 had no reason to  doubt that   she was under threat from  within and without her shores.

The modern  British mind has difficulty with understanding that religion was a very different beast to what it is today.  It does not understand that religion was not a quiet, private activity then but rather something which coloured the whole of life. Unbelief if it existed kept its head well buried. Intelligent, educated men were often ecstatic in their devotion and the poor if deficient in theology mixed their  Christianity with a healthy dose of pagan superstition, vide the  witch mania of the time.

Because religion was taken seriously, not only the fate of the individual soul but the fortunes of a country seemed to rest on the performance and nature of the religion of the country. Hence, to a Protestant the maintenance of England as a Protestant nation  was as
vital as its  re-conversion  to Catholicism was to a Catholic. This belief,  coupled with the actual behaviour of Counter-Reformation Catholic countries towards Protestants , was enough to persuade any English Protestant that  nothing worse than a Catholic England could be envisioned.

Religion was then a political question, the most important political question of the day and  Catholics of necessity were traitors because they had to give their loyalty to the Pope.  That was the long and short of it for Protestant England.

The response to the gunpowder plot was, in  the context of the day, extraordinarily mild.  The plotters had encompassed a plan the like of which had never been attempted before and which arguably has never been made reality anywhere ever. They designed to kill the entire English ruling elite, including the King,  in one fell swoop. A  more clinical and diabolically simple means of  revolution cannot be imagined. No  wonder the English elite  were terrified and the people easily roused to rage. There was some tightening of the laws and their enforcement against Catholics, but  there was no English St Bartholomew’s Day
against them.

The creation of a day of commemoration by Parliament on the 5th  of  November was a brilliant political act which kept the danger of further  Catholic plots and invasions before the people. Its popularity and longevity as a truly anti-Catholic festival  shows that Parliament was  utterly  in tune with the people.

The festival has renewed relevance today with the re-importation of fanatic religion in the form of Islam whose adherents acknowledge no country  and who, like the Catholic church of old, seek nothing less than the encompassing of the world within their faith. Plus ca change…

Today Britain is subject to a foreign power (the EU) to whom she pays an annual tribute (the difference between what is paid to Brussels and what we get back) and from whom she suffers constant interference with her internal affairs (virtually everything). In addition, Britain  has to bear institutions on her territory which are controlled by the foreign power (foreign inspectors of various sorts)  and the foreign power is attempting to make allegiance to the foreign power superior to Britons allegiance to Britain. (EU citizenship, the EU  Constitution).
*England’s  position before  Henry VIII’s  breach with Rome has startling similarities with  Britain’s position  today. Catholic England was a country subject to a foreign power (the Papacy) to whom she paid an annual tribute (Peter’s Pence) and from whom she  suffered constant interference with her internal affairs (clerical appointments). In addition, Catholic England had to bear institutions on her soil which were directly controlled by the foreign power (religious houses  founded under the direct authority of the Papacy) and every English man and woman owed their first allegiance to the Pope as Christ’s vicar on
Earth.