I find it odd that, even in Glasgow, and even among voters who were far too young to recall the late ’60s, voters who voluntarily reference Enoch Powell are not hard to find.
And they don’t reference him in a disparaging way. During a local council by-election campaign in 2013 I was forcibly assured by a potential voter on whose door I had knocked one Saturday morning that “Enoch Powell was right”.
I have always suspected a fairly large reservoir of support for the controversial figure’s views among white working-class voters, a support that was shadowed by resentment that they felt restrained from voicing such support in polite company.
Trevor Phillips speaks the uncomfortable truth that continued mass immigration will inflame racial tension
Trevor Phillips seems to feel no such reticence. His observations in a paper published by the Civitas think tank are every bit as incendiary as Powell’s were in 1968. Except that whereas the late Tory MP’s infamous “rivers of blood” speech got him sacked from Ted Heath’s front bench and spelled the end of his political career (or at least the end of his political influence), no such ostracising awaits the former head of the Commission for Racial Equality.
Phillips may well have coined the 21st century equivalent of “rivers of blood” by highlighting what he sees as “the dark side of the diverse society”. Our leaders, he points out, are too “touchy”, “smug”, “complacent” and “squeamish” to talk about race.
“Squeamishness about addressing diversity and its discontents risks allowing our country to sleepwalk to a catastrophe that will set community against community, endorse sexist aggression, suppress freedom of expression, reverse hard-won civil liberties, and undermine the liberal democracy that has served this country so well for so long,” he insists.
Enoch Powell, the former Conservative MP, speaking in 1971Credit: Anthony Marshall
But in one respect at least, Phillips has hit the bull’s eye. So maybe his thoughts are worth considering before, rather than after, he’s dismissed by the Multicultural and Diversity Industry.
Phillips points out that some of the cultural inheritance of some of our immigrant communities feature rather un-progressive views on women’s rights, homosexuality and, dare I say it, anti-Semitism.
From such attitudes has the repulsive philosophy of Islamism been encouraged, a political form of Islam which seeks to subvert all mankind under Sharia law through the restoration of the “Caliphate”, or worldwide Islamic government.
Everyone who believes in true diversity and democracy, in equal rights for women and homosexuals, in respecting the opinions of people of other religions and none – these are the people who would, by any logical approach, be utterly intolerant of Islamists and the neo-fascism they promote.
But this is where Phillips’ observations are accurate. Your average hard leftist – more often than not an educated, well off middle-class person who can afford to do without a Labour government while they march and protest instead for their perfect utopian socialist alternative – will gladly walk arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder with Islamists whose views on Iraq and Afghanistan happen to coincide with their own.
Trevor Phillips, the founding chair of the Equality and Human Rights CommissionCredit: Graham Jepson
Scratch the surface of that Islamist (please do not, on any account, scratch the skin of anyone, Islamists included) and underneath his admirable opposition to the Imperialist western aggressor and a speechless indignation at the notion that any Arab nation would ever own or use weapons of mass destruction, you would find a pungent sewer of vitriol towards any number of minorities.
So what do our well-mannered, sensitive middle-class types do? They choose to ignore such views. They choose not to scratch the surface. They choose to be tolerant of cultural and moral relativity, believing that such an attitude is progressive, rather than admitting it as cowardly and immoral.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Labour today has been tarred with the brush of anti-Semitism. Its leaders and members march in step with people who are shameless about their hatred of Jews and their determination to see the destruction of Israel with their own eyes. Ah, but they’re Muslims – challenging their views would be imperialist or colonialist… or something. Wouldn’t it?
So if these middle-class Leftists, these useful idiots of the peace movement are in any way representative of the wider (white) population whom Phillips has described as smug, complacent and squeamish, then he’s probably right about a lot of his other observations too.
And you don’t have to be a fan of Enoch Powell to accept that.
I find it odd that, even in Glasgow, and even among voters who were far too young to recall the late ’60s, voters who voluntarily reference Enoch Powell are not hard to find.
And they don’t reference him in a disparaging way. During a local council by-election campaign in 2013 I was forcibly assured by a potential voter on whose door I had knocked one Saturday morning that “Enoch Powell was right”.
I have always suspected a fairly large reservoir of support for the controversial figure’s views among white working-class voters, a support that was shadowed by resentment that they felt restrained from voicing such support in polite company.
Trevor Phillips seems to feel no such reticence. His observations in a paper published by the Civitas think tank are every bit as incendiary as Powell’s were in 1968. Except that whereas the late Tory MP’s infamous “rivers of blood” speech got him sacked from Ted Heath’s front bench and spelled the end of his political career (or at least the end of his political influence), no such ostracising awaits the former head of the Commission for Racial Equality.
Phillips may well have coined the 21st century equivalent of “rivers of blood” by highlighting what he sees as “the dark side of the diverse society”. Our leaders, he points out, are too “touchy”, “smug”, “complacent” and “squeamish” to talk about race.
“Squeamishness about addressing diversity and its discontents risks allowing our country to sleepwalk to a catastrophe that will set community against community, endorse sexist aggression, suppress freedom of expression, reverse hard-won civil liberties, and undermine the liberal democracy that has served this country so well for so long,” he insists.
Having been pilloried by exactly those self-appointed guardians of diversity once before for a piece I wrote criticising the cultural problems thrown up by an influx of Roma into the south side of Glasgow, you’ll appreciate my reluctance to get drawn into this debate this time round.
But in one respect at least, Phillips has hit the bull’s eye. So maybe his thoughts are worth considering before, rather than after, he’s dismissed by the Multicultural and Diversity Industry.
Phillips points out that some of the cultural inheritance of some of our immigrant communities feature rather un-progressive views on women’s rights, homosexuality and, dare I say it, anti-Semitism.
From such attitudes has the repulsive philosophy of Islamism been encouraged, a political form of Islam which seeks to subvert all mankind under Sharia law through the restoration of the “Caliphate”, or worldwide Islamic government.
Everyone who believes in true diversity and democracy, in equal rights for women and homosexuals, in respecting the opinions of people of other religions and none – these are the people who would, by any logical approach, be utterly intolerant of Islamists and the neo-fascism they promote.
But this is where Phillips’ observations are accurate. Your average hard leftist – more often than not an educated, well off middle-class person who can afford to do without a Labour government while they march and protest instead for their perfect utopian socialist alternative – will gladly walk arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder with Islamists whose views on Iraq and Afghanistan happen to coincide with their own.
Scratch the surface of that Islamist (please do not, on any account, scratch the skin of anyone, Islamists included) and underneath his admirable opposition to the Imperialist western aggressor and a speechless indignation at the notion that any Arab nation would ever own or use weapons of mass destruction, you would find a pungent sewer of vitriol towards any number of minorities.
So what do our well-mannered, sensitive middle-class types do? They choose to ignore such views. They choose not to scratch the surface. They choose to be tolerant of cultural and moral relativity, believing that such an attitude is progressive, rather than admitting it as cowardly and immoral.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Labour today has been tarred with the brush of anti-Semitism. Its leaders and members march in step with people who are shameless about their hatred of Jews and their determination to see the destruction of Israel with their own eyes. Ah, but they’re Muslims – challenging their views would be imperialist or colonialist… or something. Wouldn’t it?
So if these middle-class Leftists, these useful idiots of the peace movement are in any way representative of the wider (white) population whom Phillips has described as smug, complacent and squeamish, then he’s probably right about a lot of his other observations too.
And you don’t have to be a fan of Enoch Powell to accept that.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/10/britains-real-problem-with-race-and-multiculturalism-the-left-to/