Are Lib Dem ministers happy with a “wogs go home” message?

Yesterday came news of the government’s latest wheeze to reduce illegal immigration. The Home Office is planning to send large billboards round six London boroughs on the back of advertising vans, carrying the slogan “Go home or face arrest”.

For the full sordid details, read Caron Lindsay’s report on Liberal Democrat Voice, the report in last night’s London Evening Standard, and a statement issued by Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather, which is worth quoting in full:

This is the latest in a string of Home Office announcements that are designed to make the Government look tough on immigration. But I fear that the only impact this deeply divisive form of politics will have will be to create tension and mistrust towards anyone who looks and sounds foreign.

Instead of trying to grab cheap headlines, the Government would be much better advised to tackle the real issues that undermine confidence in the immigration system. Home Office statistics show that decision making by officials is extremely poor and leads to a quarter of initial decisions to refuse asylum being overturned on appeal. And many of those people who the Government are targeting with these policies are either those whose case has been mishandled by the Home Office, or who Ministers acknowledge cannot be sent home because they wouldn’t be safe.

Vulnerable individuals who are fleeing persecution and violence are treated with disbelief and a complete lack of compassion in a rigid and inhumane system. But rather than tackling these problems head on, Ministers are choosing to once more crank up the anti-migrant rhetoric.

These adverts are nothing less than straight forward intimidation and can only have bad consequences for communities like those I represent in Brent, where people from all faiths and races have mixed for decades. We will all be much poorer for it.

Well said, Sarah. The question is why there have been no similar utterances by any Liberal Democrat minister. After all, this is not merely some mildly unpleasant concession the Liberal Democrats have made as part and parcel of the coalition agreement. This is a fundamental issue of principle, where the Tories are indulging in blatantly racist and provocative tactics. It’s not even a practical policy; these billboards will have no impact on immigration but they will help increase racial tension. Any self-respecting Liberal should publicly disown this policy. Instead, not a word.

Might this be the explanation? In yesterday’s Guardian, John Harris noted how all the proud talk of Britain’s diversity we heard during last year’s London Olympics has been dropped by the government. He reported:

Ten days ago, the former Lib Dem education minster Sarah Teather broke cover, and talked not only about initial Tory intentions to restrict the bringing-in of non-European spouses to people earning £40,000 a year or more, but a new subcommittee of government called the Inter Ministerial Group on Migrants’ Access to Benefits and Public Services. No cabinet ministers attends its meetings, but it apparently includes such figures as the Lib Dem education minister David Laws and the Tory immigration minister Mark Harper, and its fingerprints are all over many of the proposals above.

What on earth is David Laws doing participating in such an exercise? Did he consult Liberal Democrat colleagues before agreeing to these racist policies? The man is a complete and utter disgrace to the party.

And why has Nick Clegg failed to respond to criticisms from within his party? In this instance, he would be well advised not to resort to his usual tactic, which is to patronise internal critics as naive children who don’t understand the practicalities of government. Party members already understand perfectly well what nasty game the Tories are playing – the question is, does Clegg?

Postscript: See Liberal Democrat Councillor Lester Holloway’s blog post: “Theresa May and her ministers and officials know full well the impact of this billboard will be on multicultural communities in general rather than the odd illegal immigrant who might be passing by. It reads like a message to the whole community, an attempt to divide communities and harvest the racist vote from UKIP.”

Beyond parody

The front page of this morning’s Daily Express is beyond parody:

(Look in the top left-hand corner, where the red button proclaims: “Cheaper than the Daily Mail”. Yes, I think it probably is.)

UKIP racism row: latest

The Lincolnshire Echo has breaking news about UKIP Councillor Chris Pain, leader of the opposition on Lincolnshire County Council, who has been accused of posting “racist rants” on Facebook:

Chris Pain has stepped down as East Midlands chairman of UKIP amid a police investigation into racist remarks on Facebook.

He is still protesting is innocence, insisting his Facebook account was hacked. Meanwhile, police investigations continue.

We should not be complacent and assume that such rows will necessarily damage UKIP. The party has been embroiled in various scandals before. Two UKIP MEPs, Ashley Mote and Tom Wise, were jailed for fraud but this appeared to have no effect on their party’s reputation.

Indeed, the prosecution of Councillor Pain may even win support among the sort of people who believe this is “political correctness gone mad” and that UKIP is telling you what the establishment “doesn’t want you to hear”.

A very English solution to race hatred

Anyone who would like their faith in human nature restored should read this story.

The far-right English Defence League (EDL) organised a protest today at the mosque in York. However, two wonderful things happened to ward off the threat.

First, a large number of local non-Muslims showed up to express their solidarity with the Muslim community, far outnumbering the EDL protesters.

And second, the mosque invited the EDL protesters in for a cup of tea and a chat.

Whoever said Muslims aren’t assimilating with English culture?

Woolwich: The selective memory of the EDL and BNP

Only hours after yesterday’s horrific killing, guess who showed up on the streets on Woolwich?

A 100-strong group of English Defence League (EDL) members marched in the near-by area last night and British National party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin took to Twitter this morning to call for a protest – ‘United against Muslim terror’ – for this Saturday.

There were no similar protests by EDL or BNP supporters after the mass murder committed by Anders Breivik in Norway. I wonder why?

UKIP: Police probe ‘racist’ councillors

The front-page headline in today’s Lincolnshire Echo: “Police probe ‘racist’ councillors in Lincolnshire”.

This news follows last Sunday’s post about the UKIP group leader’s comments on Facebook.

Three councillors are under investigation but all insist that their Facebook accounts were hacked:

Cllr Pain, leader of the opposition at Lincolnshire County Council, insists his Facebook account had been hacked into at least three times.

At least three times? If that were the case, did it ever occur to Councillor Pain to change his password?

UKIP’s new councillors: the revelations continue...

More sordid details of UKIP councillors have come to light.

Following the resignation of “race-ranter” Eric Kitson from Worcestershire County Council, today’s Sunday Mirror has unearthed more racist rants on Facebook.

The Mirror reports several nasty outbursts but pride of place must go to Chris Pain, UKIP leader of the opposition on Lincolnshire County Council and the party’s East Midlands regional chairman. He wrote:

“Have you noticed that if you ­rearrange the letters in ‘illegal ­immigrants’, and add just a few more letters, it spells, ‘Go home you free-loading, benefit-grabbing, resource-sucking, baby-making, non-English-speaking ********* and take those other hairy-faced, sandal-wearing, bomb-making, camel-riding, goat-********, raghead ******** with you.’”

Councillor Pain came up with a predictable excuse:

Mr Pain said the comments on his Facebook pages were “not my original posts or writings”, claiming his ­account had been hacked.

What Councillor Pain cannot deny is a report in the Lincolnshire Echo that his group made a unanimous decision to refuse to sign an anti-racism declaration.

The UKIP group took this decision in a week when, just a few miles from the county council offices, there were commemorations at RAF Scampton to mark the sacrifices of the Dambusters who died fighting the Nazis. It is probably safe to assume that Councillor Pain failed to notice the irony.

Postscript: Three UKIP councillors in Lincolnshire are now being investigated by the police.

UKIP’s new councillors: the implosion begins...

It’s started.

In Worcestershire, UKIP “race-ranter” Eric Kitson is embroiled in an on-off controversy over whether he has resigned as a county councillor, only a few days after being elected.

UKIP’s national office says he has resigned but the county council confirms he has not – at least not yet. The council is nevertheless investigating Kitson’s racist comments on Facebook.

In case you doubt the terms “race-ranter” and “racist”, consider this:

The posts made on Mr Kitson’s facebook profile, which has now been taken down, included one of a Muslim being spit-roasted on a fire fuelled by copies of the Koran.

He also said, in reference to Muslim women: “Hang um all first then ask questions later.”

UKIP admitted it had not been able to vet its candidates before this May’s elections, so we can expect more such episodes in the coming months. But given that the pre-election media hatchet job seemed to have no adverse effect on UKIP’s vote, don’t assume any post-election embarrassments will necessarily damage UKIP.

Postscript (1): Eric Kitson’s resignation is now confirmed. Kitson has also been interviewed by the police.

Postscript (2): More revelations here.

Migrants and benefits: fact or myth?

David Cameron made a speech yesterday promising a crackdown on abuse of the welfare state by migrants. If you suspected that this crusade is based on dodgy assumptions, you’d be right.

Full Fact has analysed the facts and found that this is not exactly a case of evidence-based policy making. But then it rarely is in this age of tabloid hysteria and poll-driven policy.

No wonder Cameron’s speech is already unravelling. And as with Nick Clegg’s recent speech, no matter what protestations they make about the good side of immigration, merely to discuss the subject in terms of the anti-immigrant agenda is to validate that agenda.


Postscript: Chris Dillow has published a very good blog post on the facts about immigration, and the causes of popular irrationality.

What’s wrong with rights

Our thanks to the grumpy old blogger Grumpy Old Liberal, who recommends a new book called Defending Politics by Professor Matthew Flinders of the University of Sheffield. The publisher’s website summarises the book’s central thesis:

Matthew Flinders makes a highly unfashionable but incredibly important argument of almost primitive simplicity: democratic politics delivers far more than most members of the public appear to acknowledge and understand. If more and more people are disappointed with what modern democratic politics delivers then is it possible that the fault lies with those who demand too much, fail to acknowledge the essence of democratic engagement and ignore the complexities of governing in the twentieth century rather than with democratic politics itself? Is it possible that the public in many advanced liberal democracies have become ‘democratically decadent’ in the sense that they take what democratic politics delivers for granted? Would politics be interpreted as failing a little less if we all spent a little less time emphasising our individual rights and a little more time reflecting on our responsibilities to society and future generations?

If this publisher’s blurb is anything to go by, Flinders is right on the money. We need more emphasis on the need for a just society, in which people’s life chances are not diminished by social class, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or any other factor beyond their control. The emphasis on individual rights has hindered not helped the cause of social justice. It has turned the debate into a pissing contest between self-interested groups with competing claims to victimhood, while those most in need have been left behind.

Things went wrong in the 1980s. The main reason the left completely failed to mount a serious intellectual challenge to Thatcherism is that it had become self-obsessed. As I wrote in my chapter of Reinventing the State:

The right may have believed that ‘there is no such thing as society’ but there is a tendency to forget that, during the 1980s, the left became just as self-indulgent. It was the decade of being ‘right on’, when the left abandoned its traditional social concerns and instead emphasised the solipsistic obsessions of identity politics, a movement that rapidly descended into our present-day culture of victimhood.

We can see this phenomenon at work within the Liberal Democrats. The party has set up a ‘Candidate Leadership Programme’ “to identify, develop and support some of the best candidates from under-represented groups within the Party”. Yet some of the 40 places on this programme have been allocated to privileged white women at the expense of ethnic minority candidates, which has led to a furious dispute between those responsible for the programme and Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats. Such outcomes are inevitable when attempts to create greater justice are perverted by competing claims to victimhood, especially when this enables the sharp elbows of the middle classes to hog resources and opportunities originally intended for those who are genuinely disadvantaged.

Self-centred demands also create a problem for democratic politics in general, because they are bound to lead to dissatisfaction. With the best will in the world, democratic politics simply cannot satisfy millions of individualised wants simultaneously. Markets can do that, which if fine if you are choosing a car, a washing machine or a packet of breakfast cereal – and you have sufficient money to make a real choice. But when it comes to the ‘commonweal’, our shared interests, democratic politics is the only power available to most people to make meaningful choices. However, the job of democratic politics is to reconcile rather than gratify. It cannot function properly without a sense that we share the same space and are not merely out to seek personal advantage or instant gratification.

Liberals are always vulnerable to charges of promoting selfish individualism. We must always be clear that, when we talk about individual liberty, we are cherishing the uniqueness of each and every person, and seeking liberty and life chances for each and every person. But this approach can work only in the context of a society in which mutual respect is fostered. That is why we should always place individual rights in the context of an overall demand for social justice, and why demands for ‘rights’ irrespective of other people’s needs are wrong.

So the next time you hear a wealthy and privileged party member pleading victimhood to gain personal advantage, challenge them with this simple question: “Why is it always about you?”

History repeats itself

In Memphis, Tennessee, I once visited the National Civil Rights Museum, which has been built behind the façade of the Lorraine Motel where Dr Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.

One of the museum’s exhibits is a 1950s-vintage bus from Montgomery, Alabama, with racially segregated seating, similar to the bus in which Rosa Parks made her famous protest in 1955. The seat occupied by Rosa Parks is wired up so that, when you sit in it, an automated driver’s voice instructs you to move to the back of the bus.

I was reminded of this by today’s news from Israel and the Occupied Territories, where segregated bus services have started (see the Guardian, Independent, Daily Mail and the Israeli daily Haaretz). The Israelis claim they are introducing Palestinian-only bus services to benefit Palestinian passengers, but a more likely explanation is the frequent ejection of Palestinians from regular buses because illegal settlers don’t like sharing buses with them.

Israel and its supporters may baulk at the description ‘apartheid state’ but, given the gradual transformation of the occupied West Bank into a series of Bantustans and now racial segregation on buses, observers can be forgiven for finding the comparison apt.

One such observer remarked, “Creating separate bus lines for Israeli Jews and Palestinians is a revolting plan. This is simply racism. Such a plan cannot be justified with claims of security needs or overcrowding.” The source of that quote? Jessica Montell, director of the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.

Racist Headline of the Month

What with all the racist and xenophobic bile poured out by the tabloids every day, this is a tough competition to win. But last week’s Sunday Express triumphed with:

‘Avoid London, it’s full of Pakistanis,’ Romanians warn fellow migrants

Combining hatred of Pakistanis and Romanians is enough to give any bigot an orgasm. But what clinches it is the opening paragraph:

Romanians preparing to swamp Britain next year are insulting British towns and cities and making racist comments about fellow immigrants on the internet.

Yes, the Express is being racist while purporting to criticise “racist comments”. Cant is piled upon cant when a UKIP spokesman is wheeled out to condemn xenophobia.

The Daily and Sunday Express are owned by Express Newspapers, a subsidiary of Northern & Shell (which also owns the Daily Star and Channel 5 TV), which in turn is 100% owned by former pornographer Richard Desmond. Actually, the man Private Eye calls ‘Dirty Des’ is not a ‘former’ pornographer since, although he no longer publishes smutty magazines, his company still owns several adult TV channels.

The soft porn we can live with, since the worst that is likely to happen is a few sprained wrists among adolescent boys. It’s the whipping up of race hatred that is inexcusable, and with this story the Express has shown that it is willing to promote not only hatred of ethnic minorities but also hatred between ethnic minorities.