Robert Henderson
“These riots were not about race: the perpetrators and the victims were white, black and Asian.
“These riots were not about government cuts: they were directed at high street stores, not Parliament.
“And these riots were not about poverty: that insults the millions of people who, whatever the hardship, would never dream of making others suffer like this.
“No, this was about behaviour…
“…people showing indifference to right and wrong…
“…people with a twisted moral code…
“…people with a complete absence of self-restraint….
“We must fight back against the attitudes and assumptions that have brought parts of our society to this shocking state.
“We know what’s gone wrong: the question is, do we have the determination to put it right?
Do we have the determination to confront the slow-motion moral collapse that has taken place in parts of our country these past few generations?
“Irresponsibility. Selfishness. Behaving as if your choices have no consequences.
“Children without fathers. Schools without discipline. Reward without effort.
“ Crime without punishment. Rights without responsibilities. Communities without control…..
“Some of the worst aspects of human nature tolerated, indulged – sometimes even incentivised – by a state and its agencies that in parts have become literally de-moralised….
“So yes, the broken society is back at the top of my agenda.” David Cameron on 15 August 2011 (http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/2011/08/cameron-post-riots-speech-in-full.html)
Cameron’s words epitomise one half of the British elite’s reaction to the recent riots which began in Tottenham north London, then spread to other parts of London and its environs and other English cities: Birmingham, Wolverhampton, West Bromwich Bristol, Gloucester, Liverpool and Manchester. This side of the elite argument attributed the riots to a racially undifferentiated, morally bereft underclass who did not know right from wrong.
The obvious question to ask Cameron is this: if there was no racial element to the riots why did you feel the need to say it did not exist? The answer is wonderfully simple: Cameron was desperate to avoid addressing the subject which most terrifies British politicians, namely, the disproportionately frequent anti-social behaviour of blacks, and sought refuge in the “All races are in this together” lie to obviate the need to acknowledge that the riots were not the consequence of an underclass but of a particular racial group.
The problem with this explanation is that it was all too clear to the general public, from the voluminous mainstream media coverage and private videos posted on media hosting sites, that the overwhelming majority of rioters were black. In addition, people could not help noticing that all the riots took place in areas with a large black population or in areas close to a large black population. Consequently, no significant disturbances took place outside of English cities and towns because the overwhelming majority of blacks in the UK live in England. The SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Alec Salmond inadvertently drew attention to this fact by complaining that “ it was unfair of broadcasters to describe the lawlessness as “UK riots” because it was an English phenomenon and Scotland has “no history of this sort of disorder”. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/scottish-politics/8693806/UK-riots-Alex-Salmond-accused-of-gloating-over-English-violence.html). Unsurprising as Scotland has few blacks.
The other half of the British elite’s reaction (from the unreconstructed liberal left) was to ascribe the riots to material and social deprivation. Some like the one-time London mayor Ken Livingstone were nakedly political with their claims that the riots were a consequence of the Coalition Government’s public spending cuts (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8687484/Ken-Livingstone-blames-Tottenham-riot-on-spending-cuts.html). Others, like the leader of the Labour Party Ed Milliband , wanted to have their cake and eat it by condemning the riots as inexcusable , then weasel wording their way to the environment explanation by implying that social circumstances were behind the riots as in Miliband’s “Of course these are acts of individual criminality. But we have a duty to ask ourselves why there are people who feel they have nothing to lose, and everything to gain, from wanton vandalism and looting.” (http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2011/08/11/ed-miliband-riot-statement-in-full). The supposedly political neutral heir to the throne, Prince Charles, even managed to interpret the riots as “a cry for help” (http://news.sky.com/home/article/16051601).
The restriction of the riots to areas with or near to large black populations and the visible evidence of the massive black involvement amongst the rioters and looters make both Cameron’s argument (that this was criminality which was race-blind) and the left liberal argument (that it was down to social deprivation) ridiculous. If there was no racial context why were blacks (who only form two or three per cent of the UK’s population) so prominent and whites (who comprise over 90 per cent of the population) so sparse on the ground? Why did areas without any substantial black population in them or nearby not suffer riots? Why did poor white areas not riot? Clearly, being poor was not a sufficient reason for rioting and looting, while being black in an area with a large number of blacks was the most obvious and reliable indicator of who would riot and where riots would occur.
How black were the riots?
The Ministry of Justice has produced a detailed analysis by age, sex and criminal record of the rioters brought before the courts by 12 September but no analysis by race or ethnicity. They promise a further report in October which will “ cover wider socio-economic and demographic characteristics, including ethnicity .” (http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/publications/statistics-and-data/mojstats/august-public-disorder-stats-bulletin.pdf). Whether this will deal honestly with the racial and ethnic make up of the rioters is questionable because British officialdom have a very poor record of supplying crime statistics by race where to do so would raise awkward questions about the greater ethnic minority propensity to engage in crime, especially violent crime. Several years ago I put in a Freedom of Information request requesting a breakdown by race of murders,
manslaughter, serious physical assaults and rapes in the UK. Despite the obsessive collection of race and ethnicity by modern British Governments, I was told that no national statistics were kept of the race of such offenders and all they could supply were incomplete statistics from a few areas in England and Wales.
Judging from the video and still photo evidence available online, the vast majority of those rioting were black. Those breaking into shops were startlingly monochrome. Despite viewing over several dozen videos, I cannot find a single recording of any mass assault on a building to cause an initial break in which is anything other than either entirely or almost entirely
black. Here are a few samples of riot scenes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm8r8I7ApDQ Tottenham London
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aneS6S5UZw&feature=related Peckham London
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuqLLrXYfLY&feature=related Woolwich London
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GxUnVYqp1c&feature=related Hackney London
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ1NLhlNdyM Croydon
I made an analysis of the names of 282 rioters in the first batch of those brought before the courts. These were very suggestive of an overwhelming black involvement in the riots, both by the names themselves and in the context of the rioters being (1) overwhelmingly black as anyone can see from the TV coverage and (2) the riots taking place in areas which either have a large black population, for example, Tottenham, or are close to an area with a large black population, for example, Enfield. The context is important because, for example, a Biblical name like Samuel or Aaron might be possessed by someone black or white in the population at large , but would be likely to be owned by a black in an area with a large black population. The analysis can be found at http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/the-racial-and-ethnic-make-up-of-the-august-2011-uk-rioters-by-group/
The small minority of whites who appear in the still photo and video coverage seem to be “walk by looters”, that is they loot only after coming on the scene following the breaching of shops by black mobs. This perception is supported by those whites who have come before the courts so far, the overwhelming majority having been charged with theft rather than burglary on criminal damage. Interestingly, many of the most prominent white defendants have been people who have not taken part in the riots. Instead they are charged with putting messages on social media inciting riots or those who have received goods stolen in the riots. The most dramatic example of heavy penalties for whites not involved in rioting or looting was the jailing for four years of Jordan Blackshaw and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan for unsuccessfully attempting to incite a riot in Northwich, Cheshire (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8705212/Facebook-riot-inciters-among-those-to-get-toughest-jail-terms-yet.html). Also, many of the whites seen in videos of the riots appear to be no more than bystanders who take no part in the rioting and looting but either look on or are simply caught up in a sudden outbreak of rioting or looting.
Why did any whites join in? There will be an element of criminals seeing an opportunity. There is also the old Adam in man. If white children and young adults see blacks getting away with behaving badly they will be tempted to do it themselves. But although whites may be sucked in when living in areas with black rioters, their numbers are tny in comparison with blacks, a fact made all the more impressive when the proportion of the population who are white (over 80%) is taken into account.
Whether the eventual toll of convictions will be an accurate representation of the rioters is debatable because it will be difficult to identify those wearing hoods, balaclavas or other things which mask their faces and CCTV, especially when the light in failing or night has fallen, is often of little use in identification. There must also be doubts about whether the police will go after the hardest targets such as large black gangs or blacks who are known as being very violent with the same enthusiasm as they would a white “pass-by” looter acting own their own or whites who have posted inciting messages on Facebook or received stolen goods. That brings me to the question of the British police and their attitude to policing ethnic minorities in general and blacks in particular.
Why the policing of the riots was supine
The riots began in a part of London (Tottenham) which has both a large black population and a history of black rioting from the 1980s when a white policeman PC Keith Blakelock was most brutally murdered by being almost decapitated with a machete by one or more blacks. The recent Tottenham riot was also comprised overwhelmingly of black rioters. The police failed to meaningfully police the 2011 riot by standing off while rioters smashed, looted and burned. Media reports, especially the TV coverage, made it clear that rioters could proceed unmolested by the police. That encouraged other people in different places, to riot, something made easy by modern technology which permitted “flash mob” tactics to be used to assemble rioters at short notice anywhere. The police continued to stand off in these places, a particularly glaring example occurred in Croydon, giving yet more encouragement to others to riot.
Why did the police stand off? The official explanation to begin with was that there were too few police officers available trained in riot control to make active intervention practical at the time of the Tottenham riot. This line became increasingly difficult to take seriously as massive numbers of police were drafted into London and the rioters still went largely unmolested and riots in other cities and towns also showed signs of reluctance on the part of the police to intervene. Other official excuses were made along the lines that the police were containing the trouble by fencing off areas and driving rioters out of areas in which they were rioting rather than intervening because this was the most effective way of dealing with serious public disorder. I rather suspect that those who had their homes and businesses destroyed will have a different view. It is also more than a little absurd to say that arson on the scale witnessed in places such as Croydon was worth tolerating for fear of worse because those were crimes which potentially could have killed many.
The police also played heavily on their ability to bring to justice the rioters using CCTV and other video evidence. The flaws in this argument are obvious. Much CCTV material is of poor quality. The rioting tended to be in evening making CCTV visibility even more of a problem. Anyone masking their face almost certainly avoids detection unless there is some other pointer to who they are such as being part of a gang known to the police which loots and some of the gang members not cover their faces .
The real reason for the failure of the police to act was the fact that the rioters and looters were overwhelmingly black. Over the past 30 years the modern British police and especially those in London, have been reduced to a state of near inertia when dealing with blacks breaking the law, especially when confronted with large groups of blacks doing so.
The process of police emasculation began with the Scarman Report which was commissioned after the 1981 Brixton riots. This argued for police engagement (community policing) with black populations in heavily settled black areas and, where riots occurred, for the police to contain the violence within an area rather than actively seeking to end it by physical action against the rioters. So started the long march towards the present situation whereby the police are rigid with political correctness and terrified of acting against ethnic minorities for fear of being accused of racism.
How far things have changed can be seen from the difference between the Scarman and Macpherson reports. The Scarman Report had no difficulty in making a severe judgement of blacks: “Without close parental support, with no job to go to, and with few recreational facilities available the young Black person makes his life the streets and the seedy, commercially-run clubs of Brixton. There he meets criminals, who appear to have no difficulty obtaining the benefits of a materialist society.” (Beckford, Robert (2006). Jesus dub: theology, music and social change. Routledge. pp. 46–47. ISBN 9780415310192).
The Macpherson Report (1999) into the killing of a young Nigerian boy Damilola Taylor drove the single biggest wedge between the effective policing of ethnic minorities and what the police were prepared to do. Macpherson called the Metropolitan Police “institutionally racist” and made a series of recommendations which severely hamstrung the police (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-47.htm.) These included this astonishing definition of what constituted a racially motivated crime: “A racist
incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person”. The eventual upshot was the acceptance of the accusation “institutionally racist” by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and the adoption of Macpherson’s recommendations by the Met with other police forces in Britain clambering on the politically correct bandwagon afterwards.
The consequence of 25 years of the police increasingly treating blacks with kid gloves is the creation of a mentality amongst blacks that if they act in numbers it is highly unlikely that the police will intervene. The extent to which the police have become paralysed was coincidentally graphically shown in a photograph taken at the Notting Hill Carnival in West London which took place not long after the recent riots. A black man stabbed someone then ran away with the knife in his hand while two white policemen, who were within touching distance as he passed, made no attempt to arrest him (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8730016/Knife-wielding-man-pictured-running-from-scene-of-Notting-Hill-Carnival-stabbing.html).
The myth of a racially undifferentiated underclass
Ironically, Cameron unwittingly put his finger on the cause f the riots with his impolitic comments about an amoral and uncontrolled group wich has no sense of a general social responsibility. What he failed to to was identify the personnel of that group, namely, the part of the black population which is responsible for so much violent criminal mayhem in England and the circumstances of the wider black population from which the criminals come. Although not all blacks are criminally inclined, the active black criminal’s behaviour is a toxic distillation of the predominant black mentality of suspicion and grievance which drives them to constantly look for “discrimination” and “racism” from whites and provides an excuse in black minds for misbehaviour.
Criminally inclined blacks are not an underclass in the sense of being a social class, but people who see themselves as separate from British society, a society which they view as oppressive of them. The sense of separateness is widely shared by blacks generally. The natural sense of victimhood and paranoia which is evident in any minority group to some degree has been fed voraciously by white liberals who have told them that slavery and colonialism has left them with a justified grievance against British society despite the fact that the generations living now are five or six generations from slavery and two from the Empire (the British abolished the slave trade in 1807 and slavery within the Empire in 1834 while British decolonisation effectively ended by 1970). The black rioters have doubtless readily seized upon the idea that they are consequently entitled to riot and loot and that their “prizes” are somehow reparations for historical white sins.
This masochistic pandering by white liberals to black victimhood has persuaded many blacks in Britain that they do not owe any moral obligation to wider society and as a consequence they believe they may behave as they choose within their own group and with complete amorality to those outside the group. That is the social problem which needs to be addressed, not the +reformation of a mythical racially undifferentiated underclass.
Blacks and violent crimes go together
One person in the media who did raise the question of race in connection with the riots was a mixed race teacher Katharine Birbalsingh who had the shocking bad taste (from the white liberal point of view) of pointing out that the media were ignoring the very obvious racial context of the riots (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/katharinebirbalsingh/100099830/these-riots-were-about-race-why-ignore-the-fact/). In the same piece she also dealt with the reality of black violence in London:
“At school I remember watching a presentation given to the kids by Trident, the Metropolitan Police Service unit set up to investigate and inform communities of gun crime in London’s black community. I didn’t know what Trident was then, and it struck me that all of the photos of people shot (the idea was to scare the kids) were black. So at the end, I approached one of the policemen and asked him what percentage of those involved in gun crime were black. I kid you not, but my question made this thirty-something white man who was, after all, trained to deal with the black community and its issues, turn pink.
“He explained that about 80 per cent of gun crime took place in the black community. I smiled uncomfortably. But no, he said, it was worse than that. Then he told me that 80 per cent was black on black gun crime, and that of the remaining 20 per cent about 75 per cent involved at least one black person: black shooting white, or white shooting black. I pushed to know more. While he kept saying his stats were crude and he didn’t have scientific numbers, on the whole the whites who were involved in these shootings tended to be from Eastern Europe.”
There should be no surprise at that anecdote nor the fact that the riots were black led and inspired. Not only do blacks have a history of rioting in England, they have a much greater general propensity for crime, and especially violent crime, than the general population. According to the report Equality and Human Rights Commission’s 2010 report How Fair Is Britain? “On average, five times more Black people [related to their proportion of the UK population] than White people are imprisoned in England and Wales, where 1 in 4 people in prison is from an ethnic minority background” and “ Ethnic minorities were the victims of around a quarter of homicides recorded in England and Wales between 2006/07 and 2008/09: just over half of these ethnic minority victims were Black. ” (http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/triennial_review/tr_execsumm.pdf). It is scarcely to be wondered at that so many blacks are victims of killings because black-on-black murders are so frequent in London that the Metropolitan Police has a squad named Operation Trident specifically devoted to black-on-black guncrime. (http://www.met.police.uk/scd/specialist_units/trident_trafalgar.htm).
Muggings and rapes (especially gang rapes) are also black favourites , viz:
“A study published yesterday by the Home Office shows that up to 87 per cent of victims in Lambeth, South London, told the police that their attackers were black. Nearly 80 per cent of he victims were white. Black people account for 31 per cent of the population in these areas. “(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article810556.ece)
And
“One of the few police forces to have begun recording the figures of reported gang rape is the Metropolitan Police. In 2008 alone, they received reports of 85 gang rapes. Using the Met’s definition of gang rape – those involving three or more perpetrators – we began to look at the number of convictions. We tracked down 29 cases, from January 2006 to March 2009, in which a total of 92 young people were convicted of involvement in gang rape.
“One fact stood out. Of those convicted, 66 were black or mixed race, 13 were white and the remainder were from other countries including Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.” (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/gang-rape-is-it-a-race-issue-1711381.html).
People who have on average a much greater propensity for violent criminality are much more likely to engage in acts such as rioting and looting because they have already broken the taboos of being violent and breaking the law. It is also true that when someone has a criminal record they have less to lose if they add to it. Blacks, and young black males in particular, are much more likely to have a criminal record than those of either whites or Asians. For that reason alone blacks will be more prone to joining in violent disorder and theft. In that context it is interesting to consider the previous criminal records of those brought before the courts by early September:
“- 68 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 – 40 per cent of males aged 10-17 brought before the courts for the disorder had at least one previous conviction. This compares with 2 per cent of the 10- 17 year old male population who have at least one previous conviction.” (p5 http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/publications/statistics-and-data/mojstats/august-public-disorder-stats-bulletin.pdf).
This has to be treated with some caution because most were arrested from video evidence after the event and that will inevitably lead to those already known to the police being charged in greater numbers than those without a criminal record. Nonetheless, the large difference suggests that there was a much greater propensity for criminality amongst the rioters than within the UK population. It is also true the objection of disproportionate arresting of those with convictions applies to the public at large, because police commonly solve crimes by targeting those already known to them. As blacks are much more likely to have criminal records than the population as a whole and the riots took place in areas with substantial black populations, it is reasonable to assume that they would figure disproportionately amongst the rioters.
The white liberal’s hatred of his own people
Alongside the British elite’s gross misrepresentation of what was happening ran the deep undercurrent of fear, hatred and contempt within the British elite for the white working class , a mentality which has developed over the past 40 years (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/04/26/the-white-working-class-and-the-british-elite/). This could be neatly fitted into the idea that the riots were the consequence of an underclass. The one-time Tory MP turned journalist Matthew Parris provided a good example of the hatred which included the wish-fantasy that the white working class is vanishing:
“What distinguishes (if anything really does) this week’s rioting from the classic and time-honoured English riot is that our underclass is now so small.
“The white working class is disappearing; a black middle class is growing; and the residue – if human beings should ever be called a residue – cannot amount to more than about 1 per cent of our population. They are concentrated in cheerless and decaying pockets, they have no prospects, no education, nothing to lose, and many are socially dysfunctional and barely employable .” ( “After a sunny spring, where did Britain get it so wrong?” – Matthew Parris Times 11 August 2011).
The most interesting thing about that passage is that Parris makes no attempt to talk about a racially neutral underclass, merely a white one. Then there is his bizarre idea that that the white working-class is reduced to “1 per cent of our population”. If Parris sincerely believes this he is in need of psychiatric help. A Guardian survey in 2007 found that not only a majority of the UK population describe themselves as working-class , but the young are more likely to describe themselves as working-class than those who were older . Hence, far from dying out the white working-class is strengthening, viz:
“…the younger the respondent, the less likely they are to consider themselves middle class. Half of all 55- to 64-year-olds claim to be middle class, with just less than half – 48% – identifying as working class. With each drop in age, however, the middle class shrinks, while the working class steadily grows. When you get down to 25- to 34-year-olds – the generation that wears Birkenstocks, drinks lattes and cooks fresh linguini – only just over a third consider themselves middle class, compared with 56% claiming to be working class. For all New Labour’s rhetoric about aspiration and social mobility, and the brisk high-street trade in chandeliers, it is the postwar babyboomers – not the Blair generation – who have realised the middle-class dream.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/oct/20/britishidentity.socialexclusion1). With social mobility shrinking in Britain, the working class is likely to grow further as more and more people become poor.
The elites’ hatred was also seen in the difference in the elite attitude towards ethnic minorities who formed vigilante groups to defend their areas against rioters and white Britons who did the same. The ethnic minority groups were praised uncritically:
“In London at the height of the riots, we saw another clear expression of faith when more than 700 Sikhs lined up to defend their temples from potential arsonists in the suburb of Southall to the west of the capital. The Sikhs have a proud tradition of valuing each human being, male and female, as equal in God’s eyes. Theirs is a religion in which family is paramount.” (A N Wilson –http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2025393/UK-riots-Haroon-Jahan-death-Legacy-society-believes-nothing.html#ixzz1V00FB4DC)
“Some of the most inspiring moments have come when ordinary citizens came out against the thugs. We recall the Turkish and Greek shopkeepers of Dalston and Stoke Newington, who defied police warnings and decided to protect their property with their own fists. “Why should I be a sitting duck? If they come in here, I will bash them,” warned Stella Kallis, the formidable 53-year-old owner of a hardware shop. Ironically, they came to Britain because back in their native Cyprus, Greeks and Turks fought a civil war half a century ago.” (Daniel Johnson – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8695561/The-riots-have-brought-examples-of-real-heroism.html)
But the white groups were treated as beyond the Pale not only by the media, but at the highest political level:
“Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab): For the past two nights in my constituency, I have had a very heavy police presence, owing to right-wing extremist groups focusing on Eltham and trying to create unrest and bad feeling between different racial groups. Although we want to support people who are public-spirited and come out to defend their communities, as some of my constituents have done, will the Prime Minister join me in asking those people not to be diverted from their efforts by those extremists who seek to exploit the situation?
“The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman speaks not only for his constituents, but, frankly, for the whole House in deprecating the English Defence League and all it stands for. On its attempt to say that it will somehow help to restore order, I have described some parts of our society as sick, and there is none sicker than the EDL.” (Column 1086 Hansard 11 August 2011 (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm110811/debtext/110811-0001.htm#1108117000001).
The British media’s idea of balance in reporting the English Defence League (EDL) is nicely shown in a piece by Damian Thompson He begins by describing a YouTube video “which “anti-fascist” campaigners against the English Defence League don’t want you to see. It features a couple of young middle-class supporters of Unite Against Fascism sniggering as one of them describes a “horrible tattooed woman” at a demo being punched in the face “before someone kicks her up the arse”. In the words of Telegraph blogger Brendan O’Neill, these well-bred kids admit that it’s not normally OK to hit women, “but you can make an exception when it comes to female EDL supporters because they aren’t women – they’re dogs”.
All well and good you may think, but Johnson goes on:
‘You might think there’s nothing new in this. The street battles between the Anti-Nazi League and the National Front in the 1970s pitted white middle-class students against white working-class thugs: in both cases there was a sense that the ethnic minorities they were fighting over were almost irrelevant. Actually, the similarities are misleading. The EDL isn’t the
National Front or even the British National Party. It’s not a fascist party, more of an angry white rentamob. And the racism is different, too: not so much about colour, more about culture.’ http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100105484/is-the-edl-the-new-voice-of-the-white-working-class/
So there you have it, the EDL are not Fascist, but they are racist and in Thompson’s eyes best described as “an angry white rentamob. The man is completely oblivious to the fact that the EDL is an entirely natural response by those whose territory has been invaded by the incontinent mass immigration of the post-war period. He also misses the fact that the EDL work
within the confines of politically correctness by emphasising their non-racial membership.
Perhaps the most ingenious attempt to square the “all races are in it together” lie with the fact of large scale black rioting came from the historian David Starkey. He claimed on BBC2’s Newsnight that the riots were multiracial events but monocultural because the white rioters had become culturally “black” . Speaking to fellow guest Owen Jones, who wrote Chavs: the Demonisation of the Working Classes, Starkey said: “What has happened is that a substantial section of the chavs that you wrote about have become black…What has happened is that a substantial section of the chavs that you wrote about have become black.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/13/david-starkey-claims-whites-black).
Unfortunately for Starkey he had begun his explanation by referring to Enoch Powell in terms which fell short of the unreserved condemnation required by the liberal intelligentsia. This put him on the back foot from the start, but it did not really make that much of a difference in the end because his argument was confused and questionable in terms of factual accuracy.
The confusion in his argument is his claim that the black culture adopted by whites is a particular type of black culture: lawless, amoral and violent. The problem is he did not describe what other types of black culture in Britain there might be. Worse, when pressed on what he meant during the Newsnight programme, Starkey cited the case of the black Labour MP David Lammy as an example of a more desirable black because if you heard his voice without knowing he was black you would not know Lammy is black because he sounded English. Starkey was implying that only by thoroughly assimilating would blacks become other than the feral variety which he had described.
As for factual accuracy, I have long been puzzled by the claim that large numbers of white children have adopted black mores including speaking in a mock-Jamaican patois. It is true that if you put a child in social circumstances where they are in the ethnic or racial minority they will naturally tend to adopt the manners and speech of the majority, at least when they are with members of the dominant group. Against that I have lived and worked in parts of London with large black populations for over forty years and it is not a common affectation in my experience. Where it exists I suspect that it is no more real than the fictional posturings of Ali G or those of the real-life white , very middle class, son-of-a-bishop DJ Tim Westwood(Ali G is by far the more believable creation).
It also worth noting Starkey’s contempt for his own people. He has no hesitation is speaking of a white underclass and accepting the highly abusive term chav. He also omits Asians and immigrant whites from the rioting picture.
Some white media commentators such as Leo Mckinstry did stand against the general liberal consensus “when it comes to criminality they[left liberals] indulge in the most grotesque double-standards, refusing to demand the same standards of conduct from ethnic minorities that they expect from white people.” (http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/263582), but they were few and far between.
The disconnected British Elite
The behaviour of the British elite – politicians, the mass media and social commentators – has been both sinister and absurd. Everyone who is not blind will have seen the TV coverage showing the dominant role played by blacks; everyone who lives in the cities and towns involved will know that the areas affected are heavily populated by blacks. Yet the British elite in a manner evoking 1984 call black white and insist that what people see, read and hear is not reality and that reality is the liberal multiculturalist fantasy they retail incessantly. This fantasy
in theory allows no distinction to be made on grounds of race or ethnicity, but in practice it is only applied where it is to the benefit of ethnic minorities.
The desire to avoid acknowledging that race lay at the heart of the riots was the prime reason for the lie, but the disconnection of the British elite from British society in general also played its part. The Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith bleakly demonstrated the divide:
“Writing in the Times newspaper, Mr Duncan Smith said: ‘Too many people have remained unaware of the true nature of life on some of our estates.
“This was because we had ghettoised many of these problems, keeping them out of sight of the middle-class majority. ‘Mr Duncan Smith added that the estates on which the riots took place were blighted by a ‘welfare dependency ‘‘Occasionally some terrible event would make it on to our front pages, but because they were small in number people were able to turn away from the problem.
“‘But last month the inner city finally came to call, and the country was shocked by what it saw.’
“He said it was not possible to ‘arrest our way out of the riots’ and a social response was needed.”
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2037574/Iain-Duncan-Smith-The-riots-gave-middle-class-taste-real-world.html#ixzz1YFVv4UDd).
Those words could have been spoken in the 19th Century as the haves discussed the problem of the poor as though they were a different species. It is both contemptuous and contemptible.
If these had been largely white riots have no doubt that the British elite’s narrative would have been very different. There would still have been the contemptible talk of a lumpen underclass and feral young men, but it would not have been represented as a racially neutral event. It would have been the “white lumpens underclass” and feral white boys”. The narrative the elite offered was simply an attempt to avoid addressing the fact that these were black riots and by extension the general problem of black misbehaviour.
The immediate ill consequences of the great white liberal lie that there was no racial aspect to the riots are twofold: the white working class and the poor in general will be demonised further and nothing will be done to address the real cause of the riots which is the existence of a large numbers of blacks who have been led to believe that the white British elite will tolerate and excuse black misbehaviour because they are burdened both with the liberal’s self-indulgent white guilt and an ideology (political correctness) which has as its central tenet “anti-racism”, an idea which in practice means looking for discrimination against blacks and Asians by whites or “white society”.
But there is a greater general ill embodied in the lie. The British have been asked by the Government, politicians of all mainstream parties and the vast majority of the mass media to believe that which is obviously untrue. Whether or not the general public believe the lie is largely immaterial, because the public narrative is controlled by the British elite, both through laws and newly engineered social conventions which ensure that no one who tells the truth can hope to be elected to Westminster and by the willingness of the mainstream media to censor views which fall outside the limits permitted by political correctness. (Even where an individual or group manages to breach the censorship they do so by trying, like both the BNP and EDL, to place themselves within the shackles of political correctness by, for example, trying to represent themselves as “non-racist”.) Because the British elite can control the public narrative, the logic of the lie can be followed to produce public policy which is completely at odds with reality because there is no contrary voice or power holder allowed into the decision making. It is the type of situation envisaged in 1984 and which was realised in states such as the Soviet Union where those with power tell obvious lies and the people are helpless to prevent either their telling or the policies which flow from them.
If the real problem was acknowledged – that of a black population with many disaffected and morally disconnected people – what could be done to resolve it? It is doubtful that much could be done in terms of changing black behaviour fundamentally. It is a stark fact that black populations throughout the world, whether they be in the majority or minority, display similar anti-social behaviours: strong tendencies to violence, rape, male desertion of children and women bringing up children by multiple fathers on their own. These behaviours alone are guaranteed to produce widespread criminality and social dysfunction.
If it is difficult to see how such behaviours could be changed, there is also the straightjacket of victimhood – something particularly strong in Britain – to deal with. You cannot persuade people to change deeply embedded behaviours when they have it in their minds that in some way not responsible for their behaviour or, worse, that they are entitled to behave badly as a form of reparation for ancestral wrongs.
The fact that widespread serious anti-social black behaviour is found in so many different societies suggests that there may be a genetic component to it. Blacks have consistently scored poorly at IQ tests compared with other racial groups. They also have on average higher testosterone levels compared with whites and Asians. The British psychologist and the Finnish economist Tatu Vanhanen have calculated that the average IQ of black Africans is 69 (see their IQ and the Wealth of Nations) and Americans blacks (who unlike Africans have a large admixture of white genes) score around 85. Most psychologists working in the area of intelligence testing think that an IQ of 75-80 is the point at which an individual struggles to live an independent life in an advanced modern society. It could be that what is seen as black misbehaviour is either a response to the stress of living in a society which they cannot cope with or is simply behaviour which would be sustainable in a tribal society but is incompatible with more complex societies. I address this question more extensively at http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/blacks-the-odd-man-out/.
But if there is an innate tendency for anti-social behaviour and/or an ingrained culture of accepting it as normal or at least tolerable within black populations, that does not mean nothing can be done to control such misbehaviour. Properly enforcing the law against blacks would be a start. Politicians ceasing to pander to ethnic minorities would change the social climate and make it clear to blacks and Asians that they will be judged by the same standards as white Britons. Repealing all the legislation which places ethnic minorities in a de facto privileged position such the Race Relations Act and the Race Relations (Amendment Act) 2000 would underline that message. Removing all public funding for the promotion or provision of ethnically based ideas or services would signal that the multicultural gravy boat is over. Most powerfully, those with power could end further mass immigration.
Is there any chance of such things happening? Not in our present circumstances, but politics can move very rapidly. Elites have only one settled principle, to do whatever is necessary to maintain their power and privilege. Let public disorder created by ethnic minorities get the point where it frightens those with power and they will change their ideology without blinking.
