Tag Archives: Political Correctness

Would a libertarian society deprive individuals of cultural roots and collective identity?

There are many rooms in the libertarian  ideological house.  That fact often derails rational discussion of libertarian issues, but it need not be a problem in this instance because the question being asked is most  efficiently  examined   by testing  it against  the flintiest wing of libertarian thought.   If  that pristine, uncompromising  form of libertarianism is incompatible with the maintenance of cultural roots and collective identity, then  all other shades of libertarianism will be incompatible to some degree. 

The pristine libertarian has no truck with  any form of government, believing that  personal relations  between individuals  will adequately order society no matter how large or complex the society,  and that such ordering will arise naturally if  only the artificially constraints on human behaviour such as governments and laws are removed.   Such a society  would supposedly  work along these lines.    If the society is threatened by an invader,  individuals will join together to defend it out of a sense of self-preservation.  To   those who cannot work for reasons of sickness, injury, age or innate infirmity,  compassion and a sense of duty will ensure that private charity is  extended  to relieve the need. If  public works such as roads and railways are required, self-interest and reason will drive individuals to join to together to build them.   Matters such as education may be safely  left to parents and such charitable provision as arises.   Above all the individual is king and personal choice is only circumscribed if a choice involves the imposition of one individual’s will on another.   You get the idea.  The consequence is a vision of a society not  a million miles away from  Rightist  forms of anarchism.

This concentration on the individual makes for a fissile society. If each person  is to follow his or her  own way  without any requirement to believe anything other than to respect the conditions necessary to realise libertarian ends , that in itself  would definitely weaken  collective identity and probably affect cultural unity.  Nonetheless in a truly homogeneous society, especially if it was small, the probability is that cultural weakening would not be great and the absence of a conscious collective identity would not present a difficulty provided the society was not subject to a serious threat from outside.

Serious problems  for the pristine libertarian  arise if the society is heterogeneous,  because  then there is a loss of collective unity. If the heterogeneity comes from class,  the cultural roots may  be largely untouched or at least develop in a way  which ensures that there is still much cultural  uniformity  and that uniformity is clearly an extension of  past cultural traits. It is also true that in a racially and ethnically homogeneous society, a sense of collective unity will be easily rekindled if the society comes under external threat.

The most difficult society for libertarians to deal with is one which is ethnically divided, especially if the ethnic divide includes racial difference. There a society becomes not so much a society but a series of competing racial and ethnic enclaves.   In such a situation,  it is inevitable that both  cultural unity and collective identity is undermined because there is no  shared general cultural experience and this plus racial difference makes a collective identity not merely impossible but absurd even in concept.

The brings us to the most obvious threat presented by pristine  libertarians to the maintenance of cultural roots and collective identity. That  is the idea that national boundaries  should be irrelevant with people travelling and settling wherever they choose.  This presumes human beings are essentially interchangeable and in this respect it echoes  multiculturalism.  The consequence of such a belief is to greatly increase the heterogeneity of a society through the mass immigration of those who are radically different from the native population.  We do not need to guess what the result of such immigration is because it  has happened throughout the western world in our own time. More specifically, it has happened in those  countries whose populations which are most naturally sympathetic  to libertarian ideas: those which may broadly be described as Anglo-Saxon; countries such as Britain, the USA and what used to be known as  the old white dominions.

The influx of millions of people who  see themselves as separate from the native populations of the countries to which they had migrated has resulted in the Anglo-Saxon states gradually destroying their tradition of freedom. Driven by a mixture of liberal internationalist ideology and fear, their  elites have severely restricted by laws and their control of the media  and public institutions  what may be said publicly about immigration and its consequences.  In Britain it is now possible to be brought to court simply for saying to someone from an ethnic minority “go home”, while any allegation of racist behaviour  – which may be no more than failing to invite someone from an ethnic minority  to an office party – against a public servant will result at best in a long inquiry and at worst with dismissal.  Nor, in practice, is application of the law or the  witch-hunts  directed equally against everyone for it is overwhelmingly native Britons who are targeted.

At the same time as native Britons are being silenced and intimidated, an incessant tide of pro-immigrant and multiculturalist  propaganda is pumped out by government, the public organisations they control such as the civil service and state schools and the mass media , which is overwhelmingly signed up to the liberal internationalist way of thinking.  The teaching of history has been made a non-compulsory subject in British schools after the age of 14 and such history as  is taught  is next to worthless in promoting a sense of collective unity,  both because it fails to give any chronological context to what is put before the pupils  because it concentrates on “themes”  rather than periods and because the amount of British history that is contained within  the syllabus is tiny, often consisting of the Tudors and little else.  The consequence is that the young of the native British population are left with both a sense that their own culture is in some strange way to be valued less than that of the various immigrant groups and the lack of any knowledge about their country’s past.

The most  and sinister  consequence of  post-war immigration and the British elite’s response to it  is the development within Britain of  a substantial number of Muslims who not only do not have any sense of belonging to the broader society in which they live, but who are actively hostile to  Britain and its values.  But if this is the most dramatic example of the fracturing  of British society, it is merely symptomatic of the separatist attitude of  ethnic minorities in Britain generally, especially those from radically alien cultures allied to racial difference.

All of these developments are antithetical to pristine  libertarian ideals,  both because they  undermine  shared values and because they  result in actions to control friction between competing racial and ethnic groups which in themselves undermine the conditions in which libertarian ideals  flourish.  That libertarians so often subscribe to the ideal of open borders despite the overwhelming evidence of  its counter-productive effects for libertarian ends is indicative of the blinkered nature of much libertarian thinking.

The fundamental weakness of pristine  libertarianism is its complete  failure to take  account of  human psychology  and the way humans behave as groups.  This is unsurprising  because of the central position given to the individual.  But by doing this pristine  libertarians  ignore the central fact of being human: we are a social animal. Being  a social animal entails two defining behaviours: all social animals  produce hierarchies  and   all social animals place limits to the group.  Homo sapiens is no exception.

Because hierarchies in the human context arise not only from the personal efforts, qualities and talents of each individual, as is the case with animals,  but from the  position  each individual occupies through the accident of birth, this raises two difficulties for libertarians.  The first is there is not a level playing field and without that the pristine  libertarian ideal of society organising itself through freely  entered into relationships is severely distorted because it is clearly absurd to say that a man born poor is freely entering into a master-servant relationship with a man born rich when the poor man needs money simply to feed himself.  The second difficulty is that the very existence of an hierarchy,  whether or not it is based on merit, undermines the notion of free choice because once it is established different power relationships exist.

The question of hierarchy becomes more complex as the heterogeneity of a society grows whether that be ever deeper division into classes or increasing ethnic and racial diversity . All social animals have to have boundaries  to  know where the group begins and ends.  This is  because a social animal must operate  within a hierarchy and a hierarchy can only exist where  there are  boundaries.   No boundaries,  no hierarchy, because  no  individual could  ever  know what the dominance/submission situation  was  within their species or at least within those members of the species with whom they interact.

The need to define the group is particularly important for libertarians.    Above all libertarianism requires  trust. In the pristine libertarian society this means each individual believing that other people will keep their word and generally behave honestly. But as we all know only too well  people cannot  be trusted to observe societal norms and a society which is fractured by class, race or  ethnicity  is the least likely of all to have a shared sense of what is right.  Therefore,  libertarians need to recognise that however much they would like to believe that each human being is an individual who may go where he or she pleases and do what he or she pleases, the sociological reality precludes  this and that the only sane ideological course for a libertarian is to advocate closed borders and the preservation of the homogeneity of  those societies which are most favourable to libertarian ideals not because the society  consciously espouses them,  but because the  society has evolved in a way which includes libertarian traits.

There will be libertarians who find it immensely difficult going on impossible to accept that the individual must in some respects be subordinated to the group.  They will imagine, as liberal internationalists do, that human nature can be changed, although in the case of libertarians the change will come not from re-education but the creation of circumstances propitious for libertarian behaviour to emerge.  Let me explain why this is impossible because of the innate differences between  human beings and the effects of cultural imprinting.

Because Man is differentiated profoundly by culture, the widely accepted definition  of a species – a population of freely interbreeding organisms sharing a common gene pool –   is  unsatisfactory,  for  clearly Man is  more  than  a brute   animal  responding   to   simple  biological   triggers.  When   behavioural differences  are perceived as belonging to a particular group  by  that group  as differentiating  members of the group from other  men,    they perform the same role as  organic differences for  they divide Man  into cultural species.

An analogy with computers can be made. As hardware,  a particular model of  computer is  practically identical to every other computer which  is classified  as  the same model.  But the  software available to every computer of the same model is not identical.   They may run  different operating systems, either completely different or different versions of the same program. The software which runs under the operating system is different  with different versions of the same program being used.  The data which is input to the computer varies and this in turn affects the capabilities of the computer.

It  clearly makes no sense to say every computer of the same  model  is the same even if the computer is loaded with the same software.   But of  course  not  all  computers  are  of  the  same  model.  They  vary tremendously  in  their  power.  The same software  will  run  at  very different  rates  because of this.  Storage and memory size  also  vary tremendously. Some computers cannot run programmes because the programmes  are too large.   We  may call all computers computers ,  but that is to say little more  than that  all  animals are animals,  for  computers  range  from  the immensely  powerful super computers – the homo sapiens  of  the computer  world  as it were – to the amoeba of the  simple  chip  which controls  lights  being put on or off in a room  depending  on whether someone is in it.

Are the circumstances of computers  not akin to those of  Man?  Do  not the racially based  differences in IQ correspond to the differences  in power  of  older  and  newer computers?  Do not different  languages  represent different operating systems? For example, think how different must be the mentality of  a native Chinese speaker (using  a language which  is entirely  monosyllabic)  to that of a native English speaker  (using  a polysyllabic language) simply because of the profound difference in the structure  of the language. A language will not merely impose limits on what  may  be  expressed it will affect the  entire  mentality  of  the individual,  from aesthetic appreciation to  social expression. Is not the experiential input analogous to the holding of different data?

But the most potent of human behavioural triggers are racial differences,  for they exercise the strongest control over the group in a territory where different racial groups exist. Race trumps ethnicity where the ethnic clash is one of people of the same race but different ethnicities.  Place a significant population of a different race into a territory where ethnicity rather than race is the cause of unrest and the ethnic factions of the same race will tend to unite against those of a different race.

To argue that racial difference is  not important to the choice of a mate is as absurd as arguing  that the attractiveness of a person is irrelevant to the choice of a  mate.

In  Freakonomics  Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner  cite a study made of a  US dating site (the full story is on pp 80-84).  The site is one  of the  largest  in  the US and the data examined  covered  30,000  people equally  divided  between San Diego and Boston.   Most were  white  but there was a substantial minority of non-white subjects.

The  questionnaire the  would-be  daters had to  fill  in  included  a question  choice on race as “same as mine”  and “doesn’t matter”.   The study  compared  the responses  by white would-be  daters  (those  from non-white were not analysed) to these  questions with the race of  the emails  actually  sent soliciting a date.   The result  in  Levitt  and Dubner’s words was:

“Roughly  half of the white women on the site  and  80  percent  of  the white men declared that  race  didn’t  matter to them. But the response data tell a different story  The white men who said that race didn’t  matter sent  90  percent of  their e-mail  queries  to  white women. The  white women who said race  didn’t  matter sent about 97 percent of their e-mail queries to white men.

“Is  it  possible that race really didn’t  matter  for  these  white women and men and that they simply  never  happened  to browse a non-white date  that  interested them?”

Or,  more likely, did they say that race didn’t matter  because they wanted to come across  especially  to potential mates of their own race as open-minded?” In short, around 99% of all the women and 94%  of all men in the sample were  not  willing  to  seek a  date of a  different  race.   How  much stronger  will  be  the tendency to refuse to breed with a  mate  of  a different race?

If sexual desire will not commonly override the natural disinclination to remain racially separate nothing will.

Because the tendency to mate with those of a similar race is so strong  and universal,  both in place and time, it is reasonable to conclude  that the  behaviour  is innate and that cultures  necessarily include  the requirement for a member of the society to be of a certain racial type. The  consequence of this is that someone of a different racial type  is effectively precluded from full integration because one of the criteria for  belonging has not been met.  That is not to say,  of course,  that many  of the habits of mind of an alien culture may not be  adopted  by someone  of  a  different race.  What is withheld  is  the  instinctive acceptance  of the alien and his or her descendants  as members of  the society. Just as no human being can decide for themselves that they are a member of this or that group, no individual can decide that they belong to this or that nation because it is a two-way process: the other members of the group they wish to join have to accept them as a true member of the group. (Stephen Frears the English  film director once wryly remarked that he had known the actor Daniel Day-Lewis “before he was Irish”).

Where does this leave us? In its present form libertarianism is a most efficient  dissolver of cultural roots and collective identity. It is this because it ignores the realities of  Man’s social nature.  This results in the  creation of the very circumstances which are least conducive to the realisation of libertarian ends.  If libertarians are to realise those ends, they must recognise that the society  most favourable to their beliefs  is one which is homogeneous in which the shared values create the platform of trust which must underlie libertarian behaviour.   Of course, that does not guarantee a society favourable to libertarians because  the shared values may be antithetical to them, but it is a necessary if not sufficient condition for libertarian ideals to flourish. To that libertarians must add a recognition that there are profound differences between ethnic and racial groups and identify those societies which are most worth protecting because they have the largest element of libertarian traits within them.

Written for entry to  the 2010  Chris Tame prize

The Archers – An everyday story of age shall not wither them and implausible plot-lines simple folk

Robert Henderson

Age in Ambridge is a remarkably flexible quality.  Take Lillian Bellamy.  The character has a 40 year-old son whom she bore to her second husband when she was in her late twenties.  In real life years she would be pushing 70 and  be reduced by the depredations of age to at least a moderately sedate life and quite probably a distinctly slow one.

Not so in the Archers.  In Ambridge being in one’s eighth  decade  is no bar to conducting  sexual encounters  in a way which would be  deeply embarrassing in  a teenager.  Lillian has an affair with Paul, the half-brother of her partner, property developer cockney wide boy  Matt Crawford. This involves innumerable lovers’ tiffs, making up and some heroically unconvincing sex played out against some distinctly disturbing sound effects.

When Paul conveniently dies, Matt Crawford, takes Lillian off to Istanbul. There he becomes involved with a Russian who claims to be a property developer. After a quarrel, Lillian leaves for home while  Matt goes off to St Petersburg with the Russian. There the   supposedly hardnosed businessman hands over virtually all his capital to the Russian as an investment in a large property development. The Russian later claims he has passed the money to another Russian  who has made off with it leaving Matt broke.     Crawford, whose  age is never explicitly given but who presumably is in the same  approximate  age group as Lillian, implausibly proceeds to beat up  the young Russian who  lost or embezzled his money .

Around  the same time  as Matt is heading for Russia, Brenda Tucker, having broken up with Tom Archer, leaves  Amside, the property company in Ambridge run by Matt and Lillian. Matt persuades her to come to St Petersburg to act as his PA while he is making the property deal  which turns out to be bogus.  She has barely set foot in the place when she  finds herself the boyfriend of a billionaire Russian oligarch, Dmitri. He , remarkably for a Russian oligarch,  is young and devastatingly good looking and could have his pick of any woman he wanted. Despite this he   apparently falls head-over-heels for Brenda , who  can’t be a day under thirty and has a terminally irritating perpetually whining personality.

The story at the moment has Matt and Brenda back in London with Matt shacked up in a cheap hotel and Brenda staying in a flat owned by Dmitri. Matt is still trying to track down his money.   The Russian  who supposedly has his money has been found murdered. What next? Ambridge’s first murder as either Matt kills someone or is murdered himself?

But implausibility does not have to be such high octane stuff in Archerland .  In Ambridge age can be ignored in any number of circumstances. Joe Grundy is well into his nineties yet continues to drive his pony and trap, garden, scheme and drink copiously. Peggy Archer, approaching her nineties,  is still sticking her nose into other people’s business with the same  vigour she displayed thirty years ago; octogenarian Jill Archer still indefatigably races around organising all and sundry;  men in their sixties such as Eddie Grundy,  Neil Carter and Mike Tucker are still performing the type of heavy manual work which would be demanding of  someone in their twenties; Jennifer Aldridge, nearer 70 than sixty is hands-on  bringing  up a young  boy  (the bastard son of her husband Brian)  while  Brian,  who is older than her, is still taking his turn in the lambing shed and on the tractor and combine harvester in between arranging high pressure business deals revolving around agri-business.

As those of us at the more senior end of the age spectrum can vouch for the fact that drinking heavily becomes less and less of  a viable proposition as one moves into old age. Not so in Ambridge. It is not only Joe Grundy amongst Ambridge’s senior citizens who indulges in regular drinking bouts without any seemingly ill effects.  Lillian is an alcoholic, smokes likes a chimney,  seventy-odd years old , but despite this is running a business, engaging in passionate affairs. Generally she is represented as being as fit as a flea.   One might also ask where the poorer Ambridge characters manage to fund their drinking.

Along with their remarkable physical capacities goes  a seemingly perpetual state of sexual attraction. The women of Ambridge whether teenagers  or in receipt of their old age pensions are perpetually concerned with their looks (a grand irony in view of the control of the series having been in the hands of crazed feminists for yonks) and spend immense amounts of airtime worrying about their “relationships”  as though they were in the first flush of youth.    Strangely, again because of the crazed feminists, while there are male homosexual relationships in the Archers there has been no girl-on-girl action.

Ambridge  is truly a remarkable place, resembling one of those remote Bactrian or South American  parts where there are reputedly vigorous 150-year-olds.

The trouble with England

I wrote The trouble with England in 1993. It provided the basis for Is it in the blood? which was published by Wisden Cricket Monthly in 1995. The article is towards the bottom of this blog post –  http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2012/08/29/is-it-in-the-blood-peter-oborne-and-the-question-of-englishness/

The general thrust of the article holds true, although the details of players and performances would be different if I was writing the article today.

The foreign invasion of English professional team sport applies to all our major team games, most notably cricket and football but also rugby union and rugby league. The invasion has been massive and,  in the case of football’s Premier League, has reduced the number of English players to a small minority of the total number of players.

It is just sport I hear you says? Far from it because the  question of foreigners in English sport goes far beyond the activities themselves.   Games such as cricket and football are accelerated microcosms of what English society will become if mass immigration is not stopped.

Apart from the  dilution of English representation in our national  games,  our national sports teams act as propaganda vehicles for the multiculturalists. It is also true that individual sports such as athletics can and are used to proselytise for the benefits of one worldism.

To ask what constitutes an English  national sporting team is a proxy for asking what constitutes English nationality.

Robert Henderson 22 August 2013 

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The trouble with England

In May 1991 I argued in Wisden Cricket Monthly that the primary reasons for England’s increasingly poor performances were the selection of sides containing players who lacked an instinctive commitment to England (or Britain for the pedantically inclined) and the employment in county cricket of Official Overseas Players and many cricketers of foreign
parentage or upbringing – let us call the latter Interlopers. A further two years of ever increasing, and I believe unparalleled – because England is losing to even the weakest
cricketing nations – humiliation prompts me to return to the subject.

Recently there have been some public murmurings about the appropriateness of playing men without unequivocal ties to this country. However, the matter is still not being discussed honestly because of that bugbear of modern English society, fear of being called a racist. A Test Match Special discussion on the first morning of the Manchester Test neatly illustrates the problem. Doubts were expressed about white Interlopers such as Smith and Caddick (who both, incidentally, have two British parents), but not a word was
uttered against the playing of men of colour, for example, Devon Malcolm and Gladstone Small, who similarly came to England in their late adolescence, but without any ties of
parentage or culture.

Derek Pringle  writing in the Daily Telegraph of 21st June perhaps came the nearest of any regular commentator to acknowledging the general problem when he wrote “…there
will be people claiming that playing for one’s country is surely motivation enough. Perhaps it still is, but with a team whose individual origins are as diverse as a vat of Heinz baked beans, unquestioning patriotism cannot be taken for granted.” He then provided a good example of the negative public mindset of the English professional cricketing world for, having crossed the Rubicon of admitting that players’ origins might be at least partly responsible for England’s failure, he did not draw the obvious conclusion that, if this is so, England would be better off with eleven unequivocally English players even if they were no more talented than the Interlopers, even perhaps, if they were less talented, for team spirit and the will to win is an immense part of Test cricket. Instead, he tacitly accepted that nothing can be done to change the composition of the England eleven and restricted himself to a few banalities about bowlers bowling more imaginatively and talent at the county level being ”focused and encouraged” as the means of improving England’s cricketing circumstances.

If commentators are reluctant to publicly question the England qualifications of coloured players who came to this country in their late adolescence or early manhood, they dismiss the question as irrelevant when it comes to those who were either born here or arrived at an early age. The party line is that a man’s qualification for a Test side should be determined by where he learnt his cricket. This is something of a nonsense because it takes no account of players who spent their childhoods in several countries. Nor is it satisfactory for those players who were brought up in one country, but clearly think of themselves as belonging to a different culture. This last point is of crucial importance because it strikes directly at the purpose of a national side.

Qualifications based on legal definitions of nationality, birth or residence are practically irrelevant in the context of national sporting teams, for the instinctive emotional commitment and sense of oneness, which are an essential part of a successful national side, cannot be gained so mechanically. And that is often true even where a conscious decision to emigrate has been made by a player’s parents. A sense of national place is demonstrably not simply derived from living in a country – as Wellington said to those who insisted on calling him an Irishman, ‘Just because a man is born in a stable it does not make him a
horse.’

The natural criterion for Test selection, apart from cricketing talent, is surely the sense a man has that he is naturally part of a nation, for if national sides do not embody the nation what distinguishes them from any collection of disparate individuals? What is it that gives a man such a sense of place and a natural loyalty? There are, I think, three things which determine this sentiment: parental culture/national loyalty, physical race and the nature of the society into which the immigrant moves. Their relationship is not simple and, as with all human behaviour, one may speak only of tendencies rather than absolutes. Nonetheless, these tendencies are pronounced enough to allow general statements to be made.

Where an immigrant physically resembles the numerically dominant population, the likelihood is that his children will fully assume the culture and develop a natural loyalty
to their birthplace. Hence, the children of white immigrants to Australia and New Zealand will most probably think of themselves as Australian or New Zealanders. However, even in
such a situation, the child’s full acceptance of his birthplace community will probably depend on whether his parents remain in their adopted country. If the parents return to their native land, their children, even if they have reached adulthood, often decide to follow and adopt the native national loyalty of their parents. Where a child’s parents (and hence the child) are abroad for reasons of business or public service, the child will almost always
adopt the parent’s native culture and nationality as their own.

Where the immigrant is not of the same physical type as the physically dominant national group, his children will normally attach themselves to the group within the country which most closely resembles the parents in physical type and culture. Where a large immigrant population from one cultural/racial source exists in a country, for example, Jamaicans in England, the children of such immigrants will make particularly strenuous efforts to retain a separate identity, a task made easier by their physical difference from the dominant group. Where a child is the issue of a mixed race marriage he will tend to identify with his
coloured parent, although this tendency may be mitigated if the father is a member of the racially dominant national group.

Using the criteria detailed above, there should be little doubt about the instinctive loyalty of the children of white immigrants to England, because such people will normally be fully accepted, and feel themselves to be fully accepted, by English society, in short, to be English. Moreover, the number of white immigrants to England is comparatively small. This gives them less opportunity to form ghettos and more incentive to integrate fully. (Perhaps the nearest to a culturally self-contained white immigrant group in England are the Greek Cypriots.) In any case the children of white immigrants from places other than the old Dominions have made little, if any, impact on county cricket, so the question of the commitment of the children of white immigrants who do not share what might be broadly described as Anglo-Saxon culture, is academic at the moment. The position is rather different with the children of coloured immigrants to England. The point is powerfully demonstrated by Nasser Hussain.

In an interview with Rob Steen published in the Daily Telegraph (11/8/89) he said ‘If anyone asks about my nationality, I’m proud to say ‘Indian’, but I’ve never given any thought to playing for India. In cricketing terms I’m English.’ Mr Hussain has an English mother. He has lived in this country since he was six. He attended an English public school and an English university. Of all the England qualified players with black or Asian blood currently playing county cricket, he might be thought to have had the best chance of a full integration into English life. Yet here we have him saying that he is proud to describe himself as Indian. I do not criticise Mr Hussain or any other player of foreign ancestry for feeling this way. It is an entirely natural thing to wish to retain one’s racial/cultural identity. Moreover, the energetic public promotion of “multiculturalism” in England has actively encouraged such expressions of independence. However, with such an attitude, and whatever his professional pride as a cricketer, it is difficult to believe that Mr Hussain has any sense of wanting to play above himself simply because he is playing for England. From what, after all, could such a feeling derive? If Mr Hussain has such a lack of sentimental regard for the country which nurtured him, how much less reason have those without even one English parent or any of his educational advantages to feel a deep, unquestioning commitment to England. Norman Tebbit’s cricket test is as pertinent for players as it is
for spectators.

It is even possible that part of a coloured England qualified player rejoices in seeing England humiliated, perhaps subconsciously, because of post imperial myths of oppression and exploitation. An article in the August 1991 edition of WCM entitled ‘England’s  Caribbean Heritage’ by Clayton Goodwin, a white English journalist with particularly
pronounced Caribbean sympathies,lends credence to such a view. Mr Goodwin argues that children born in this country of West Indian parents do not feel part of English society
and, consequently, tend to identify only with sporting heroes who share their own physical race – significantly, no white or Asian sporting figure supported by this group is mentioned
in the article, although many negroes are. A few quotes will give the flavour:-

“Naturally those West Indians who came as immigrants have a nostalgic respect for their
‘home’ region – longing for the lost ‘good old days’ is not solely the white man’s preserve. Their children, humiliated and made to feel inferior in every aspect of their day-to-day life, will relish the chance of using the success of others sharing the same physical attribute [blackness] for which they are downgraded to show, however vicariously, that they do have worth.”

“You can’t blame the put-upon black people of Britain for feeling similar justifiable pride when Viv Richards and his team, who in other circumstances might be regarded as ‘second class citizens’ like themselves, have put one over their detractors.”

“The youth of Peckham, Brixton, Pitsmoor and the Broadwater Farm would want any of Nigel Benn, Chris Eubank, Michael Watson or Herol Graham, black Britons who have grown up among them and shared their social experience, to beat the Jamaican middleweight boxer Malcolm MaCallum if the opportunity should arise.”

“The ethnic majority [the white population] are not aware of how isolated and shut out from the national cricket game the black population is made to feel. That is not solely to question why Surrey have included only one regular black player, Monte Lynch…” [In fact, England qualified players of West Indian parentage are well represented in County cricket having more than 6% of places on County staffs, a percentage well above their share of the national population].

Having, I think, accurately described the generally resentful and separatist mentality of the West Indian descended population in England – doubters should cast their minds back
to the riots of the eighties, take a stroll around Brixton, Deptford, Hackney, Moss Side, St Pauls et al and think of Haringey cricket college which I believe never had a member who was not a negro – Mr Goodwin goes on to claim that ”…surely nobody would doubt that the players [England caps of West Indian ancestry] are proud to represent England.”
Exactly why he is so confident of their pride is unclear. There would seem to be no obvious reason why players such as DeFreitas and Lewis should not share the mentality he ascribes to the general West Indian derived population. At the very least, it is difficult to see how playing for England could be anything more than a means of  personal advancement and achievement for players of West Indian ancestry. Of what else could they logically be proud if, as Mr Goodwin claims, they feel excluded from and humiliated by English society?

The obverse of the commitment coin is the effect the Interlopers have on the unequivocally English players and consequently on team spirit. One’s common experience of mixed groups makes it immensely difficult to accept that a changing room comprised of say six Englishmen, two WestIndians, two Southern Africans and a New Zealander are going to develop the same camaraderie as eleven unequivocal Englishmen.

The problem for the England selectors is perhaps that of England as a nation. For thirty years or more those with authority in education, assisted by politicians and those in the mass media have conspired, in the sociological sense of creating a climate of opinion, to produce a public ideology designed to remove any sense of pride or sense of place in
the hearts of those who are unequivocally English. It has not been entirely successful, but it has had a profound effect on the national self-confidence of many Englishmen. Indeed,
perhaps even some of the unequivocally English players lack a sufficient sense of pride in playing for England. (All the more reason to ensure that the team is unequivocally English
so that the majority can infect any fainthearts with their pride.)
In summary, the essence of my case is that for a man to feel the pull of ‘cricketing patriotism’ he must be so imbued with a sense of cultural belonging, that it is second nature
to go beyond the call of duty, to give that little bit extra. All the England players whom I would describe as foreigners, may well be trying at a conscious level, but is that desire
to succeed instinctive, a matter of biology? There lies the heart of the matter.

It is not only the possible lack of commitment and the effect on team spirit which should raise English eyebrows. Even on pure cricketing grounds the selection of most of the Interlopers is dubious. As can be seen from the table [insert table one somewhere within the text] the record of most of those who have played for England since 1969 has been mediocre. Only Robin Smith and Tony Greig have produced figures which put them in the front rank of Test players. Of the rest, Allan Lamb has achieved an average competence. Interestingly, all three players have two British parents. Indeed, the performance of the white Interlopers has been generally superior to that of the coloured which is further circumstantial evidence that physical race and/or parental culture does have an effect on performance at Test level.

The Interlopers’ overall career records mirror their Test records being generally mediocre, with white players performing decidedly better than coloured. Their respective global career records are:

batting average bowling average

White          37.70                  29.06

Coloured     25.92                  31.36

Remarkably, despite mediocre performances, many of these players have continued to hold England places for long periods, a tolerance rarely extended to unequivocally English
players, even established ones. There are plenty of English batsmen outside the Test team who would, in all probability, have exceeded Hick’s Test record given his opportunities, for example,  John and Hugh Morris, Bailey, Moxon, Fordham, Benson, Taylor, Darren Bicknell, Thorpe and Curtis.
Then there is the mysterious case of DeFreitas, Malcolm and Lewis who have taken most of the pace bowling places in England sides since 1989. Are we to believe that any three from Martin Bicknell, who has particular cause for complaint, Mallender, Newport, Millns, Igglesden, Cork, Ilott, Munton, and Watkin would not have been able to at least match their collectively abysmal record of 221 wickets at 37.24 in 77 Tests?

Christopher Martin-Jenkins perhaps expressed the feelings of many Englishmen when, after Neil Williams’ selection in 1990, he complained on a Radio 2 Sportsdesk that the England selectors “Seemed to have a fixation with West Indian born fast bowlers”. However, as this season has shown, it might be truer to say that the selectors have a fixation with any England qualified bowler who is not unequivocally English. Caddick’s case is, I think, particularly illuminating of the selectors’ mentality.

His record in his one full season was no more than averagely good and poorer than that of a number of unequivocally English bowlers. Yet he was immediately selected for the ‘A’ Team, rushed into the England side at the first opportunity and retained after taking only one wicket in his first two Tests. Readers might like to contrast this with the cases of
Watkin and Mallender who took five and ten wickets respectively in their first two Test Matches and were promptly dropped.

Without being privy to the selection process, one cannot do more than guess at why Interlopers should be so often preferred, but several possible explanations present
themselves. The first is that the selectors have what might be described as the slave mentality. By this I mean they believe, again perhaps subconsciously, that someone from
their own community cannot be the equal of members of other communities. The second is that the selectors have a desire to seem to be fair to all men regardless of origin and overcompensate by selecting players who are not unequivocally English at every opportunity. (As I write the news has just been released of Keith Fletcher’s wish to take
Van Troost on the next England ‘A’ tour). The third, which only applies to coloured players, is that the selectors are scared of selecting teams which do not contain some coloured
men because of people like Mr Goodwin who complain about lack of coloured representation – think, also, of the insidious pressure being placed on Yorkshire to play a
Yorkshire born Asian effectively regardless of merit – and having once selected such players, are reluctant to drop them for the same reason.

I believe these three considerations also work at county level, together with another, the idea that quick success should be gained without regard to any ill effects this may have on the national side. (During the Trent Bridge Test Neville Oliver told an illuminating story
of county clubs which have written to Australian state sides asking for details of players with an England birth qualification).

The extent to which the Interlopers have infiltrated the English first class game is probably not realised by most cricket followers. According to the 1993 Playfair Annual there are 416 contracted players on county staffs. Of these no fewer than 63 are Interlopers, the majority (42) having black or Asian ancestry.  Add the 18 Overseas Players to the Interlopers to produce a total of 81 and a fifth of county places are taken by players who either cannot play for England or whose commitment is doubtful. In fact, the case is
worse than that because Overseas Players have an almost guaranteed place in their sides and 30 (50%) of the Interlopers are capped players – a good guide to first eleven inclusion – as opposed to 130 (40%) of the English players. Hence approximately 50 (25%) of the 198 first team places are generally taken by the disqualified and the dubiously committed. The effect is most pronounced in pace bowling.

There are thirty six new ball places in county sides. Twelve are normally taken by official Overseas Players. Add Mortenson, Van Troost, Lefebrve and Curran, who enjoy the anomalous status of being qualified to play in county cricket but not for England, and the total of new ball places for England qualified bowlers is reduced to about twenty. However, some of these are taken by players who are never going to come under serious consideration, for example Cooper, Radford and Connor. The pool of current England qualified bowlers, even including Interlopers, who frequently take the new ball and who merit serious consideration for selection, probably comes down to the following fifteen: Cork, Foster, Ilott, Watkin, Igglesden, Taylor, Mallender, Bicknell, Newport, Jarvis, Malcolm, McCague, DeFreitas, Lewis, Caddick. Five of these are Interlopers, three of whom have already been given extensive opportunities and been found wanting. It is small wonder that the selectors have problems with selecting a first rate pace attack from such a restricted field.

The position with batting is healthier – I will stick my neck out and say that there are at least two young players – Ali Brown (a stupendously talented player) and John Crawley – who will be recognised as great by the end of their careers. It is unlikely to be a coincidence that the unequivocally English batsman gets far more opportunity than his bowling counterpart because of (1) the preponderance of bowlers amongst the Overseas players and Interlopers and (2) the greater number of top order batting places – say the first four – compared with opening bowling opportunities. Spin bowling and wicketkeeping have not been significantly affected by Overseas Players and Interlopers, although the
practice of employing fast bowlers as Overseas Players may well have contributed to the emphasis on pace in the past fifteen years.

The question of England’s cricketing strength is not simply a parochial matter, for the finances of other Test playing countries benefit hugely from tours of England. If England
continues to fail consistently, or even succeeds with a side which is not felt to represent England by the unequivocally English, eventually Test attendances in this country will
fail from want of pride or identification. The same will probably happen when England tour abroad. Then all will be impoverished, some countries perhaps to the point at which
they cannot continue to play Test cricket – I think particularly of the West Indies – Moreover, although other nations may enjoy beating England now, continual winning will
soon dull their pallets. Then, I suspect, they will realise that a successful England is not merely financially desirable, but an important psychological feeding block around which they all enjoy mustering.

In the nature of things, it cannot be proved conclusively that England is failing primarily because of selection policies, at national and county level, which unduly favour the employment of Interlopers and Overseas Players.  Conversely, it cannot be conclusively disproved. But the balance of probability, as our legal friends say, is overwhelmingly in that direction. England’s performance has declined steadily since the relaxation of qualification rules in 1969. Perhaps most significantly, England’s fortunes have waned most dramatically since the mid eighties, by which time most of the pre-1969 vintage of English players had retired and since when more and more Interlopers have entered the game. To argue, as some still do, that the employment of great foreign players has raised the standard of the English game is demonstrable nonsense. It is also noteworthy that while England have been employing Interlopers, the rest of the Test playing world has retained, in practice, strict
national selection policies. In the case of the West Indies, they have even ceased to select white and Asian players, since when they have become the most powerful cricketing
nation. (This is almost certainly a deliberate policy. Viv Richards, I seem to recall, has proudly described the Windies as ‘An African side’.) Interestingly, in the old West Indian sides one has the nearest analogy to the present England Team, full of racial tension and inter country rivalry and so often unsuccessful when on paper they had a strong team.

That is the problem described. What can be done to improve matters? Official Overseas Players should be excluded completely, preferably immediately. This could be done by the
TCCB meeting the existing contractual financial obligations. This would not only have the beneficial effect of freeing many new ball bowling places for England bowlers, but would remove a damaging psychological effect. At the county level the Overseas Player has occupied the place of the League Pro. This trait has been particularly pronounced in the case of pace bowlers. The result has been that young English players have not learnt to take responsibility and without doing that the transition to Test cricket becomes doubly difficult. Negatively, England would benefit because Overseas Players would be denied opportunities to take responsibility and gain knowledge of English conditions.

The position regarding Interlopers is undeniably difficult. Nonetheless, I think a combination of rules, restraint and common sense can produce a workable solution. I suggest that any white player raised abroad with a birth and/or parental qualification for England should only be accepted as England qualified if his parents have not formally emigrated or, if they have, the person has been continually resident in Britain for ten years. If it is legally possible, such a player would be expected to take British nationality and renounce his original nationality. White players without at least one British parent and a British upbringing should be absolutely excluded.

Because of legal restraints, it is currently impossible to formally refuse cricketing registration to British and other EEC nationals on grounds of race or origin. However, the
counties could exercise a self-denying ordinance and refuse to employ other EEC nationals such as the Dutch and Danish. As for those born in Britain of black  and Asian parentage, I
would simply suggest that county clubs and the England selectors think carefully about employing such players in view of their generally poor performance in the past. They might, in particular, care to think of the inordinate number of county opportunities given to graduates of Haringey Cricket College (for example, to Ricardo Williams, Carlos
Remy, Steve Bastien) and the staggeringly poor return which has resulted from such an investment. (Only Alleyne and Piper command regular county places). Coloured immigrants without a British upbringing should be absolutely excluded. Both England and county selectors would benefit from understanding one of the fundamentals of moral philosophy: the fact that something is legal does not necessarily mean it is morally right.

The counties should reflect on the fact that Derbyshire has the lowest membership and the highest number of Interlopers and ask themselves whether the two facts are related. Members need to identify with their players, perhaps to an even greater extent than England supporters. What must a Derby member feel when he sees his average team comprised of three West Indians, an Australian, a South African, a Dane and five
Englishmen?

Perhaps the most fundamental argument against playing men of doubtful commitment remains to be made. Let us suppose that an England eleven comprised largely, or even entirely, of Interlopers was supremely successful. What would be the point? If national sides are to have any meaning they must represent nations in fact as well as name. That is their raison d’etre. A respectable case can be made against the idea of national sporting representation. None can be made for ersatz national sides. Let us hope that we never see a Dutchman opening the bowling for England.

Ashes news – “Australia’s experiment with their Asian immigrant population will be shelved.”

I sent this letter to the Daily Telegraph on 13 August:

Sir, 

 Scyld Berry’s piece on the fourth Test Ashes win  (Those scars will last until winter – 13th August) ) included this in my paper copy: 
“Usman Khawaja will be roasted for the limp defensive prod that he aimed at Swann when Australia were 147 for one. He could well be replaced in the Oval Test by Phil Hughes and Australia’s experiment with their Asian immigrant population will be shelved.”  
 
It has transmogrified into this on the Telegraph Website:
“Usman Khawaja will be roasted for the limp defensive prod that he aimed at Swann when Australia were 147 for one. He could well be replaced in the Oval Test by Phil Hughes. “
    
Why the change?
Yours sincerely,
Robert Henderson

Bruges Group meeting 23rd April 2013 – Immigration: Can we control it?

Robert Henderson

Speakers: Sir Andrew Green (MigrationWatch UK)

Philip Hollobone (Tory MP for Kettering)

Gerard Batten (UKIP MEP for London)

This was a meeting truly remarkable the vehemence and explicit nature of the anti-immigrant feeling which was put forward not only by members of the audience during questions but by the speakers.  Some made s show of a few token gestures towards fitting their complaints within the pc envelope but most were explicit in their recognition that what matters is the qualitative societal change mass immigration brings.

Sir Andrew Green

Green performed as he usually does, sticking in the main to statistics. Nonetheless he was more forthright than he used to be in his language and statistics alone can be very telling.  These quotes will give a flavour of his talk:

“I would suggest to you that the present scale of immigration represents the greatest threat to our social cohesion we have ever faced and I would further suggest that the failure of the political class to address this issue has undermined confidence in our entire political system. “

“ The public are not in the least convinced   by nonsense they are told about this being a country of immigration.  We are not and never have been.  The number of net migrants in 2010 exceeded the number between 1066 and 1950. “

(Green’s  assertion that more immigrants arrived in the UK  in  2010 than came between 1066 and 1950 is very plausible,  even if  the  figures have to be guesstimates because of the  lack of adequate  records before the 19th century. We can be pretty sure that there was little immigration because populations in Europe were very small by modern standards at the beginning of the period and were reduced dramatically by  the Black Death in the 14th Century which is generally reckoned by historians of the period to have  carried off a third to half of Europe’s inhabitants.  Tellingly, there was a lack of serious riots in England  against foreigners simply because they were  foreigners or against what would now be called ethnic minorities between the expulsion of the Jews in 1290 by Edward I and the arrival of  Protestant Huguenots,  who  arrived  from Catholic France after the revocation of the Edict of Nante in 1684 removed the limited toleration they had been given by the French monarchy.  Their  numbers were not great because they cannot have been great because the population of France was still overwhelmingly Catholic and was probably only 15-20 million during the period in question.  They were followed by an influx of  Jews in the 18th century and bursts of Jewish immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as they fled first the pogroms of eastern Europe and then Hitler.  The numbers involved were very small compared with the vast numbers who have arrived since 1945 and particularly in the period since 1997 (tens of  thousands compared with millions in the modern period).

Green made these statistical points:

–          Most of the immigration to the UK comes from outside the EU. Therefore, the UK should be concentrating on reducing that while we remain within the EU.

–          If net immigration  continued to run  at 200,000 pa, the figure which it has averaged for the past ten years, the UK population  would reach 70 million by 2027.

–          The Coalition has managed to make significant progress towards  their target of reducing net immigration to tens of thousands by 2015. However, the right to free movement granted to Romania and Bulgaria from 1 January 2014 could easily undermine these efforts.

–          The Coalition may fudge things by not including the 2014 Bulgarian/ Romanian figures in the immigration statistics before the next general election.

–          Very large numbers of Bulgarians are already in Spain and Italy and may well move northwards to escape the difficult  economic circumstances in those countries.  Green also mentioned that there are 1.5m Roma in these countries.

–          The official immigration figures massively understate the true level of  EU immigration, perhaps by 2-3 times.

Green raised the question of leaving the EU but did not explore it, although he stated .  He suggested instead that when the proposed renegotiation with the EU  took place,   access to benefits by EU migrants should be one of the prime subjects for Britain to put on the agenda.

Although Green did not wholeheartedly go for the policies which would allow Britain to  really control her borders such as leaving the EU and repudiating any other treaty which restricts Britain’s ability to control her borders,  both he and MigrationWatch have  come a long way in the past ten years. There was a time when Green would have disregarded the EU dimension and spoken only about restricting immigration from outside the EU. Nor would you have heard him using such blunt language and sentiments as those contained in the two passages I have quoted above.  The movement of Green and MigrationWatch (most of it in the past five years) is emblematic of a general movement in the rhetoric if not the action of the mainstream British Parties and the British elite in general in recent years.

Philip Hollobone

For a Tory MP, indeed for any MP,  Holbone was startlingly frank.  He is a member of the “Better off Out” group  and maintains  that the demands of EU membership is “not a price the British people wish to pay”. This allowed him to embrace the idea that the UK could only regain control of its borders by leaving the EU.

While the UK remained within the  EU he advocated that the Government should (1) challenge the EU by refusing  to accept the lifting of the transitional rules  for Bulgarians and Romanians and (2) do what other countries in the EU such as Spain and officially register foreign workers and keep tabs on them.

Hollobone also railed against the pressure immigrants  brought on  infrastructure and  the crime they committed,  declared that the NHS was “ the National Health Service not the World Health Service” and stated  that UK  citizenship was granted far too  easily and should require 15 or 20 years  of well behaved residence in the country before someone was considered for citizenship.

All well and good, but sadly and pathetically Hollobone tried to excuse himself and other politicians from not speaking out until recently because it was only the advent of white immigration from the EU which had “given permission”  to the British to complain about immigration.  He needed to be “given permission” before speaking  out? That is the problem with mainstream British politicians in a nutshell: they have not got an ounce of courage.  When it comes to emotive and serious subjects, what counts is speaking when it is dangerous not when it is safe.

 Gerard Batten   

Batten was even franker than Hollobone. As a UKIP member, he is of course in favour of leaving the UK, (which he stressed was the only way to regain control over the UK’s borders), but he also favours withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights, repealing the Human Rights Act, making over-staying a visa a criminal offence and only allowing visitors into Britain if they either have health insurance or the UK has reciprocal medical arrangements with the visitor’s country.  Batten also suggested that immigrants  whose status could be illegal should be forced to  register with the government  if they wanted their cases  investigated.  Failure to register should, he said,  result in expulsion from the UK  without any chance of appeal.

Batten  slated the great increase in immigration from the Blair government onwards , an increase which he attributed to a deliberate Labour policy designed to change the ethnic make-up of the UK.  (The grounds for  this belief is the Evening Standard article by Andrew Neather in 2009 in which he claimed that “mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural”  (http://www.standard.co.uk/news/dont-listen-to-the-whingers–london-needs-immigrants-6786170.html).

Batten derided the British MEPs other than those from  UKIP who had recently voted  in the EU Parliament for the adoption of a report advocating the entry into the EU of Turkey, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo, countries with a combined population of 80 million.

The importance of breaking the liberal censorship

The vehemence of many of the audience was considerable. Not only were  very strong opinions against the politically correct  status quo expressed, the tones of voice and the  body language were both extremely animated.

Although there was no effing and blinding or crude racist language,  the ideas being put forward by both the speakers and the audience  were far more inflammatory in their implications  than many of those  who have been charged in recent times with  being “racist” because of what they have said or written in public.   Take  Green’s “the greatest threat to our social cohesion we have ever faced” or Batten’s belief that Blair had used immigration as an instrument of policy to fracture the ethnic solidarity of the UK.   Is that really different in sentiment from the white working class Englishwoman Emma West who is charged with a racially aggravated  public order offence for saying in a public place things like  “‘You ain’t English. No, you ain’t English either. You ain’t English. None of you’s ****ing English. Get back to your own ****ing… do you know what sort out your own countries, don’t come and do mine.”?  (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/emma-west-immigration-and-the-liberal-totalitarian-state/).

The audience questions were heartening because they  were based mainly on the social rather than the economic impact of immigration.  The competition for jobs, housing, medical treatment, education and welfare is of course important,  but the primary objection to mass immigration is the general change it brings to society. Mass immigration which results in numbers of particular nationalities, races and ethnicities arriving which are sufficient to permit the development of settlements with separate ways of living  from the host population is a covert form of conquest.  Mass immigration of the unassimilatable is an act of the most profound treason by those with political power who permit it, and, in the case of the Labour governments of  Blair and Brown, made doubly so by those who positively encourage it as a matter of policy.  It is treason  because the effect of such immigration is to effectively allow the unassimilatable to colonise territory by settlement.

I attempted without success to be called to put a question. Had I been called my question would have been “Before there can be proper public debate about immigration and its consequences the restrictions on free expression which result in people being charged with criminal offences, losing their jobs or being the subject of a media hate campaign when they speak honestly on the subject must be removed. What will the speakers be doing to remove those restrictions?” Unfortunately no one else asked the question so it went by default.

There is undoubtedly a changed and  changing public rhetoric on race and immigration, but it is still being controlled by those with power and influence. To get the change on immigration policy which is required – an end to mass immigration and the policy of multiculturalism – the general public must be able to express their views as they choose without fear of prosecution or other penalties such as the loss of employment.

This question also has serious implications for those who wish to leave the EU. Immigration is the prime driver of anti-EU sentiment in the UK. If the present straitjacket of fear  about expressing non-pc views on immigration remains,  the politically correct can stifle and manipulate debate on not only immigration  but also EU membership by  representing those who wish to leave the EU as xenophobes at best and racists at worst.

The Archers: an everyday story of simple feminists saying “Men!” folk

Robert Henderson

The white male characters in the Archers are invariably  either louts or cringing wimps who are treated as children by the female characters.  (Ethnic minority male characters are of course exempted from this rule, being invariably middleclass and if not always models of moral decorum never pathetic).

In recent weeks the dissatisfaction   with men of the crazed feminists who control the programme has reached new levels of intensity and scope.  Everywhere in the fictional village female characters are treating their menfolk with a disdain and lack of consideration unusual by the very high standards of contempt and condescension they normally display towards them. This feminine misbehaviour is of course not misbehaviour at all in feminist eyes but female “empowerment”.

Brenda Tucker has given her long-time live in boyfriend Tom Archer the old heave-ho for  the high-octane feminist reasons that (1) she wants to follow her own career and (2) is determined not to have children.   The announcement of this opened the way for the script writers to have Tom trying to blub his way to getting her back and sundry female characters saying how understandable it was that Brenda had decided to put her own feelings and career first.

Chris Carter, who was recently in intensive care after having an accident  after  being distracted at his work by his wife  Alice being selected  for a job in Canada and expecting  him to drop his own business as a farrier to join him there on spec.  Nothing daunted in the feminist selfishness stakes,  Alice  spent weeks during his recovery still thinking about going to Canada before eventually deciding against emigrating  – for the moment.

Lillian Bellamy’s excruciating geriatric affair with the overtly ineffably wet Paul has hit a rocky patch with Paul revealing more and more of his distinctly sinister side with  possessiveness  and pettishness alternating, while Lillian continues to show no remorse about betraying her live-in partner Matt Crawford.

Darrell Makepeace and his Albanian wife are at odds over Darrell’s inability to get regular work and is even more concerned over what he is doing to bring in the money he does bring in. Darrell being white, English and working-class  is fair game for misbehaviour to be allotted to him. He arrived in the series with a prison sentence behind him and has now been plonked into a storyline which has him caught up in a dog-fighting ring which is where he is getting his money from.

Pip Archer, arguably the most irritating female character ever to hit the airwaves, is permanently in a rage with her father David for daring to expect her to help about the family farm whilst she is living there rent and board free during her time at university.

But it has not quite been all feminist abuse of men. Helen Archer,  well into her thirties and replete with child obtained through artificial insemination from an unknown donor, is dating again in the manner of a 15 year-old. Nothing disastrous has happened yet but this being Helen it will. And needless to say, she and  the other main female characters will be saying “Men!”

On the everyday story of disabled folk front, the Downs child Bethany born to Mike and Vicky Tucker when Mike is in his sixties and she in her forties, is now greeted with cries of joy by every Archers’ character. This week the “normalisation of disability” in Ambridge took another step forward with the local WI putting on a talk given by a mother and her adult age Downs son. The event  was of course  greeted with universal praise.

Finally, the introduction of the Muslim character Iftikar Khan into the Archers core family  has been at least temporarily delayed. An attempted kiss and embrace between the chatelaine of lower Loxley Elizabeth  Pargetter and Khan resulted in a rebuff, gentle of course, from Elizabeth,  on the grounds that  she was “Not quite ready for a relationship”. But diversity lovers should not fear. It is only a matter of time before they are an item.  Indeed, the white, English  characters  are already preparing the ground . When gossip about a romance was developing between Khan and Elizabeth, a number of them talked about it without batting an eyelid at the prospect of a Muslim ending up as the squire of an English country estate with doubtless the patter of tiny feet of  a Mohammed or Fatima or both echoing in the ancient Lower Loxley halls.  Will Elizabeth have to convert to Islam is the big question.

Truly amazing what the BBC thinks goes on in an English farming village.

Emma West’s trial scheduled for the sixth time

Robert Henderson

Emma West was due to stand trial at Croydon Crown Court for  two racially aggravated public order offences  arising from her complaint about  mass immigration and its effects made on a Croydon tram  in November 2011 . The trial has been delayed yet again and she will now (allegedly) stand trial on 10 May.[1]

The authorities are extracting the bodily fluids if they expect the general public to believe there is a legitimate reason for the delay.  The 10 May will be the sixth (yes, that is the sixth) trial date Ms West has been given since she was arrested .  By 10 May she will have been waiting to be tried for just short of eighteen months. The delay  is patently unreasonable.

The latest  excuse  given for the inordinate delay are “legal reasons”.   The only likely reasons are political ones, namely, her trial will challenge to politically correct status quo. This is because unlike virtually everyone else who has been charged with these type of offences she has made it clear she will be pleading NOT GUILTY.   The authorities simply  do not know what to do with her.

There is an added complication. When the previous re-scheduling happened the charges of assault against two police offices during the investigation of her case were also delayed  -they were originally due to be held on 3 March and were re-scheduled for 15 April.[2]

It will be interesting to see if these cases (to be heard in a magistrates’ court) go ahead on the 15 April or are put back yet again.   The authorities may have decided they want these cases to be heard before the racially aggravated public order offences. That could be to her disadvantage not just because it would taint her with  a criminal conviction before her Crown Court trial, but even more  dangerously because a criminal conviction for violence could provide the local social services with grounds for removing or threatening to remove her young son.  That might well be used as a lever to persuade her to plead guilty.  It is all too easy to imagine the cant the social services could come out with: “If you show remorse, Emma,  it may be possible to let you keep your child because it shows willingness to change. But if you stubbornly stick to your  not guilty plea we may have to take your son away from you because you are an unfit mother.”

The other possibility is that if the assault charges  are heard on  15 April and she is found guilty, she might be sent to prison. This would be very unusual for common assault cases, but the fact that the alleged victims are police officers might give the magistrates grounds for doing so. If that happened her son would probably be taken into care.  Whether she would ever get him back is a moot point. This scenario could of course also be used to frighten her in pleading guilty.

Margaret Thatcher: the most useful of idiots is dead

Note: Undoubtedly a gigantic political personality, but that is disastrous if the politics and understanding of what she was doing are missing. One of her favourite claims was that she had been “badly advised”.  Just what you don’t want as PM.  What is needed is someone who understands the consequences of what they are doing. RH 

Margaret Thatcher: the most useful of idiots

Robert Henderson
With his mixture of vaulting intellectual ambition and howling mediocrity of mind, Lenin is the MaGonagal of philosophers. (Connoisseurs of intellectual incompetence and pretension should browse through Lenin’s ‘Materialism and Empririo-Criticism’ for an especial treat). Nonetheless, like Hitler, the man possessed a certain low animal cunning and a complete absence of moral restraint, which qualities permitted him to make a few acute psychological and sociological observations. Amongst these is the concept of the useful idiot.
For Lenin this was the role to be played primarily by simpleminded bourgeois dupes who unwittingly aided the movement towards the proletarian revolution, a revolution utterly antipathetic to the ideals and aspiration of the simpleminded bourgeois dupes. But the concept is of general political utility. The useful idiot is any person who acts in a way which unwittingly promotes political interests which are opposed to his own political ideals.
The best of all useful idiots are those in positions of the greatest political advantage, both because they have power and their propensity to be deluded by their egos into believing that they are utterly beyond manipulation or mistaken in their policies. They also display a serious want of understanding of the probable consequences of their actions.
It was this combination of circumstances and mentality which made Margaret Thatcher so potent a useful idiot in the liberal internationalist cause. As I wrote that last sentence, I saw rising up before me the opposing hordes of her admirers and haters, singularly united in a ghastly embrace of disbelief. Was she not the Iron Lady, the Hammer of the Left, the destroyer of union power, the slayer of the socialist dragon? Did she not speak of turning back the tide of immigrants? Was she not the rock from which the European Leviathan rebounded? Did she not ensure that Britain was respected in the world as she had not been since Suez? Was she not a mover and shaker in the nationalist cause?
In her own rhetorical world Mrs T was all of these things, a veritable Gloriana who enchanted some and banally persuaded many more, but in practical achievement she was none of them. This discrepancy between fact and fancy made her an extraordinarily potent tool for the soldiers of the ascendant ideology of the post-war period, the sordid bigotry that is liberal internationalism.
The hard truth is that she allowed the primary British political corruptions of the post war period – immigration, multiculturalism, “progressive” education, the social work circus, internationalism, the attachment to Europe – to not merely continue but grow vastly in scope during her period in power.
A harsh judgement? Well, at the end of her premiership what did Britain have to show for her vaunted patriotism, her wish to maintain Britain’s independence, her desire to drive back the state, her promise to end mass immigration? Precious little is the answer.
Her enthusiastic promotion of the Single European Act, which she ruthlessly drove through Parliament, allowed the Eurofederalists to greatly advance their cause under the guise of acting to produce a single market; her “triumph” in reducing our subsidy to Europe left us paying several billion a year to our European competitors whilst France paid next to nothing; our fishermen were sold down the river; farmers placed in the absurd position of not being allowed to produce even enough milk for British requirements; actual (as opposed to official) immigration increased; that monument to liberal bigotry, the Race Relations Act was untouched, the educational vandals were not only allowed to sabotage every serious attempt to overturn the progressive disaster, but were granted a great triumph in the ending of ‘O’ levels, a liberal bigot success amplified by the contemptible bleating of successive education secretaries that “rising examination success means rising standards”; foreign aid continued to be paid as an unforced Dangeld extracted from an unwilling electorate; major and strategically important industries either ceased to be serious competitors or ended in foreign hands; the armed forces were cut suicidally; the cost of the Welfare State and local government rose massively whilst the service provided both declined and Ulster was sold down the river with the Anglo Irish Agreement. Most generally damaging, she promoted internationalism through her fanatic pursuit of free trade.
At all points Britain was weakened as a nation. Such were the fruits of more than a decade of Thatcherism. Even those things which are most emblematic of her – privatisation, the sale of council houses and the subjection of the unions – have had effects which are contrary to those intended. Privatisation merely accelerated the loss of control which free trade engendered. We may as customers celebrate the liberation of British Telecom and BA, but is it such a wonderful thing to have no major car producer or shipbuilder? The trouble with the privatisation of major industries, which may be greatly reduced, go out of business or be taken over by foreign buyers, is that it ignores strategic and social welfare questions. Ditto free trade generally. Both assume that the world, or at least the parts which contain our major trading partners , will remain peaceful, stable and well disposed towards Britain for ever, an absurd assumption.
Margaret Thatcher also engaged in behaviour which led to a corruption of public life which undermined and continues to undermine her intended ends. Politicians should always think of what precedent they are setting when they act for bad precedents will be invariably seized upon by later governments. She consistently failed to address this concern. Take her attitude to privatisation and the unions. In the former case she displayed a contempt for ownership: in the latter she engaged in authoritarian actions which were simply inappropriate to a democracy. Such legally and politically cavalier behaviour has undoubtedly influenced Blair and New Labour, vide the contempt with which parliament is now treated, constitutional change wrought and incessant restrictions on liberty enacted.
There is a profound ethical question connected to privatisation which was never properly answered by Tories: what right does the state have to dispose by sale of assets which are held in trust on behalf of the general public and whose existence has been in large part guaranteed by taxpayer’s money? This is a question which should be as readily asked by a conservative as by a socialist for it touches upon a central point of democratic political morality, the custodianship of public property. The same ends – the diminution of the state and the freeing of the public from seemingly perpetual losses – could have been achieved by an equitable distribution of shares free of charge to the general public. This would have had, from a Thatcherite standpoint, the additional benefit of greatly increasing share ownership. By selling that which the government did not meaningfully own, she engaged in behaviour which if it had been engaged in by any private individual or company would have been described as fraud or theft.
The breaking of union power was overdone. As someone who is old enough to remember the Wilson, Heath and Callaghan years, I have no illusion of exactly how awful the unions were when they had real power. But her means of breaking their abusive ways, particularly during the miners’ strike, were simply inappropriate in a supposed democracy. Passing laws restricting picketing and making unions liable for material losses suffered when they broke the rules were one thing: the using of the police in an unambiguously authoritarian manner in circumstances of dubious legality such as the blanket prevention of free movement of miners, quite another.
The Falklands War displays another side of her weakness in matching actions to rhetoric. Admirable as the military action was, the terrible truth is that the war need never have been fought if the government had taken their intelligence reports seriously and retained a naval presence in the area. The lesson went unlearnt, for within a few years of the recovery of the Falklands, her government massively reduced defence expenditure.
But what of her clients, the Liberal Ascendency? Would they not be dismayed by much of what she did? Well, by the time Margaret Thatcher came to power liberals had really lost whatever interest they had ever had in state ownership or the genuine improvement of the worker’s lot. What they really cared about was promoting their internationalist vision and doctrine of spurious natural rights. They had new clients; the vast numbers of coloured immigrants and their children, women, homosexuals, the disabled. In short, all those who were dysfunctional, or could be made to feel dysfunctional, in terms of British society. They had new areas of power and distinction, social work, education, the civil service ,the mass media to which they added, after securing the ideological high ground, the ancient delights of politics.
Although the liberal left distrusted and hated Margaret Thatcher (and did not understand at the time how effective her commitment to free trade was in promoting internationalism), they nonetheless had the belief throughout her time in office that Britain’s involvement in the EU and the Liberal Ascendency’s control of education, the media, the civil service and bodies such as the Commission for Racial Equality would thwart those of her plans which were most dangerous and obnoxious to the liberal.
Margaret Thatcher greatly added to this wall of opposition by her choice of ministers. Think of her major cabinet appointments. She ensured that the Foreign Office remained in the hands of men (Howe and Hurd) who were both ardent Europhiles and willing tools of the FO Quisling culture, the Chancellorship was entrusted to first Howe and then Lawson who was also firmly committed to Europe. The Home Office sat in the laps of the social liberals Whitelaw, Hurd and Baker, Education was given to Baker and Clarke. Those appointments alone ensured that little would be done to attack the things which liberals held sacred, for they were men who broadly shared the liberal values and who were opposed to Thatcherite policies other than those on the economy, which of course was the one Thatcherite policy guaranteed to assist liberal internationalism. By the end, she was so weak that she was unable to prevent the effective sacking of a favourite cabinet minister, Nicholas Ridley, by the German Chancellor.
The constant cry of Margaret Thatcher after she left office is that she did not understand the consequences of her acts. Of course she does not put it in that way, but that is what it amounts to. She blames Brussels and the Foreign Office for the unwelcome consequences of the Single European Act. She readily admits that this minister or that in her government proved unreliable or treacherous, but does not conclude that her judgement in choosing them was at fault. She blames the Foreign Office for the Falklands War. But nowhere does she acknowledge her fault.
In her heart of hearts, has the second longest serving and most ideological prime minister in modern British history ever comprehended, however imperfectly, that she was a prime mover in the Liberal Internationalist cause? I doubt it, because self deception is at the heart of what makes a useful idiot.

The Stephen Lawrence killing: Are we in for more legally rickety convictions?

Robert Henderson

It is reported that  Gary Dobson, one of the two men convicted of the murder of  the black teenager Stephen Lawrence,  has dropped his appeal against conviction (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2293994/Gary-Dobson-drops-fight-appeal-conviction-Stephen-Lawrence-murder.html#ixzz2Nhn1xdoO).  However, the dropping of the appeal does not necessarily mean Dobson has admitted the crime.  It is unclear from media reports including the Daily Mail report (see url above) whether he has simply dropped the appeal or has  made a confession. If it is the latter, this raises the possibility that he may turn Queen’s evidence in an attempt by the state to prosecute others for the crime.

It is worth noting that the man convicted with Dobson, David Norris,  has not withdrawn his appeal. This could be a pointer to Dobson simply having dropped his appeal.  Why would Dobson simply drop an appeal if he was innocent? Mental and emotional exhaustion, perhaps, but it could also be because he has been advised that the appeal if unsuccessful could extend his  stay in prison because of the latitude given to the Parole Board over the release or otherwise of life sentence prisoners. This latter consideration could also have a role to play if Dobson has admitted to the crime.

If Dobson  has admitted to the murder why would he do so now when he had denied it for some twenty years,  including at the trial which convicted him in 2011?  (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/stephen-lawrence-gary-dobson-david-norris-and-a-political-trial/).  Almost certainly it would be in the hope that  his judge-recommended minimum sentence (the tariff) of 15 years and 2 months (as he has a life sentence it could be much longer) would be reduced or even that he will get out when the recommended minimum sentence has been served. Indeed,  Dobson would have  good reason to believe that as things stand he will not be released after the minimum sentence has been served,  because when the sentences were handed down there was a good deal of media and political frothing about the length of the minimum sentences handed down to Dobson and his fellow defendant  David Norris,  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8994957/Stephen-Lawrence-murder-Attorney-General-to-review-sentences.html),  despite the fact  that they were aged  17 and 16 at the time of the killing and were consequently sentenced as juveniles (http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/sentencing_-_mandatory_life_sentences_in_murder_cases/#an07).

There is also another reason.  The English parole system no longer requires as a matter of course an admission of guilt before someone with a life sentence is granted parole : ”It is encouraging that the typology has been embraced by the prison service and the parole board for prisoners maintaining innocence while serving indeterminate sentences (where the prisoner has no release date and does not get out until a parole board decides he or she is no longer a risk to the public). Previously, such prisoners were treated as “deniers” with no account taken of the various reasons for maintaining innocence, nor the fact that some may actually be innocent.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/may/08/innocence-network). However, this is a recent development and only those deemed to have a strong  chance of being innocent are likely to  escape the innocent prisoner’s dilemma of choosing between admitting guilt or not being released when the minimum sentence has been served. Bearing in mind the general atmosphere surrounding the Lawrence case,  it is improbable that Dobson  would have had any real chance of being released  when his minimum sentence was  served if he had not confessed.

If Dobson has admitted the murder and is willing to appear as a witness for the Crown in the prosecution of others he claims were also responsible, it is  far from clear  what weight his evidence could be given.  To begin with there would be the problem that he is a proven liar. In addition he would be vulnerable to questioning about  vested interests in making the admission and of giving evidence  (leniency in the application of his life sentence and possibly the gaining of  privileges within prison).

Then there is the nature of the evidence he could provide. Unless he could do something  dramatic such as reveal where the murder weapon was kept and that  weapon could be found and be shown to have contained the DNA of Lawrence and the DNA or prints of others,  presumably all  Dobson could offer would be his testimony of having been engaged in the murder with others who he has now identified.  Then it would simply be his word – the word of a proven liar – against the word of  others.   That would surely not meet the Crown Prosecution Tests of a better than 50% chance of conviction before they proceed with a prosecution.

Even if a prosecution did go ahead simply with Dobson’s testimony as evidence, there would be grave pitfalls for the prosecution over and above Dobson’s record of lying, assuming that any admission he made was genuine.  The killing took place twenty years ago.  Consequently, there would be every chance that defence lawyers would be able to throw considerable doubt upon anything Dobson said in evidence simply by confusing him under cross examination by catching him out on contradictions, wrong dates and so on.  If Dobson’s admission was not genuine, but just made to try to obtain leniency from the Parole Board the position would become next to impossible for the prosecution because the it is rare indeed to find anyone who can produce and maintain  a coherent and consistent story if it is untrue.  (Inconsistency can be misleading because a too consistent story is suspicious in itself because it suggests fabrication and coaching. However, juries will not generally realise this. All they will see is the contradictions in evidence).

Would all this mean that no one would be convicted simply on Dobson’s testimony? Sadly, no. The trial of Dobson and Norris was severely flawed both because it was impossible for the two defendants to get a fair trial because of the intensive political and media hate campaign directed at the pair for 18 years and because of the feeble new forensic evidence which was the justification for the trial. The full details of that trial can be found at http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/stephen-lawrence-gary-dobson-david-norris-and-a-political-trial/.  Because of the politicisation of this case  it is not unreasonable to suspect a prosecution on Dobson’s evidence alone would be made and convictions gained from a jury simply because of the background to the case. Let us hope that is not the case.

 

Emma West trial scheduled for the fifth time

Robert Henderson

A fifth, yes that’s fifth,  date for the start of Emma West’s trial on criminal charges arising from her complaint about  mass immigration and its effects made on a Croydon tram  in November 2011 has been set  for  9th April (http://www.thisiscroydontoday.co.uk/New-date-trial-alleged-Croydon-tram-racist-Emma/story-18324751-detail/story.html#ixzz2NP2WTqtB). Assuming it actually takes place it will have taken over sixteen  months  since being charged with racially aggravated public order offences. (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/emma-west-immigration-and-the-liberal-totalitarian-state/).

Justice delayed is justice denied. The delay here is unconscionable because her comments on the tram were recorded by a fellow passenger and the only points at issue are (1) whether the recording has been doctored; (2) whether what was said or happened before the recording began have relevance to the context of the remarks, for example, was there any provocation offered to Miss West; (3) whether the remarks were racist or fair comment and (4) the condition of Miss West at the time.  None of this should take such an age to determine.

The  delay is plausibly not down to any practical or legal reason,  but the fact that Miss West has done something very unusual by maintaining a plea of Not Guilty throughout her ordeal, despite being imprisoned for two weeks in the nearest there is to a Category A prison in England for women HMP Bronzefield after being refused bail on the bogus grounds that it was “for her own safety” and having the threat of her child being taken away hanging over her.

The powers-that-be cannot be doing with  people designated as having committed politically correct crimes not coming quietly by pleading guilty and making a Maoist-style public confession of fault . That is especially the case where the accusation is one of racism.  Emma West represents real danger to the authorities because a not guilty plea raises the possibility of that being discussed  in public which the politically correct most dread: the policy of mass immigration of the UK, overtly and covertly practised by ever government since the war, and its effects.  The ridiculous delay has been in all probability simply a cynical ploy to wear Miss West down and get her to plead guilty.

During the time since the original charges, Miss West has been further charged with assaulting two police officers at her home. These charges were due to be heard in a magistrates court  on 3rd March but have been delayed until after her trial on the  racial harassment charges.  Presuming she did not attack them with a deadly weapon or seriously harm them – something suggested by the cases being dealt with in a magistrates court – is it really in the public interest to prosecute her considering the stress she has been placed under by the oppressive action of the state in charging her for what is an illegitimate crime in a free society, her imprisonment, the threat of taking her child away and great the delay?  If this alleged assault merely consisted of, say, Miss West pushing the officers, or resisting when she was  physically held by the officers, a prosecution would be wholly unreasonable in the circumstances.

The authorities may simply have decided they can no longer string things out and have to bring the case to trial or drop the charges.  However things could be rather more sinister.  The delaying of the assault charges could be used as a carrot to get her to plead guilty (you plead guilty and we will drop the charges) or,  if she is found not guilty of the racial harassment charges, a means of punishing her by convicting her of assault which could be a lever for the social services to take her son into care.

If the case is delayed again it will be impossible to offer any plausible  explanation but deliberate interference with justice by those with power and influence.