Ethnic Conflicts (review)

Tatu Vanhanen

ISBN 978-0-9573913-1-4Ulster Institute for Public ResearchUK £23 hard cover, £18 paperback

By Robert Henderson

This is not a book designed for easy bedtime reading. It is an academic’s work  written first and foremost for academics with a fair amount of statistics in it.   Having said that, if a prospective reader managed to get to grips with, say, The Bell Curve they should be able to absorb the important messages of Prof Vanhanen’s book and understand how he arrives at them.   It is worth making the effort because  he deals with the most fundamental sociological aspect of being human: how do we manage the challenges produced by heterogeneous societies?

The Profesor’s   first  aim was  to measure the relationship  between the ethnic heterogeneity of a society and ethnic conflict..  There are  considerable difficulties in doing this not least  because what may be thought of as ethnic conflict by one person may be seem  by another as conflict based on something else such as class.  For example, an ethnic group which is black and poor and rebels against the better off  in society who are white (a not uncommon state in Latin America) could be represented as being either ethnically motivated or class motivated.

 There is also the  general problem of what constitutes ethnicity.  Prof Vanhanen’s  definition is  very broad and includes racial type, nation, tribe,  language and  religion. While these are undoubtedly all distinctions which cause people to exhibit what might be loosely called tribal behaviour, its breadth  does raise the question of whether   racial type, nation, tribe,  language and  religion are really comparable in terms of how people respond to those inside and outside the group .  For example, it may be that where the ethnic division is one of religion between those of the same racial type and general culture representative government will mitigate ethnic tensions,  while if the division is racial,  representative government may do nothing to stop discord.

There is a further  cause for confusion in that more than one of Prof Vanhanen’s  ethnic  criteria is frequently shared by an ethnic group or even more confusingly by two conflicting ethnic groups.  Muslims are  a good example. In theory there is meant to be no distinctions made between Muslims on the grounds of sectarian allegiance, racial type, tribe  or  nationality. In the real world  there are marked divisions within  the theology  of Islam and tribal and national allegiances which often override the supposed unity of Muslims.  The danger with the very broad definition the Professor uses  is that the process of defining  reduces the world to so many different ethnicities that it becomes difficult to distinguish between ethnic conflict and  non-ethnic violence which he ascribes to the  “endless struggle for permanently scarce resources”.

Having made those qualifications, of which Prof Vanhanen is  well  aware, the project does not utterly founder on them. It is a mistake to imagine that nothing valuable can be gleaned from using  criteria  which have a fuzziness about them.   That is especially so if the sample is large enough because a large sample in social science projects digests anomalies.  As there are few societies now which do not have some basis for significant ethnic conflict the professor is able to cast his net very widely amongst 176 countries, around nine tenths of those currently existing.

But the Professor  wants not only to test whether ethnic heterogeneity  is correlated with ethnic conflict;  he also wishes to see if  ethnic nepotism  is a driver of ethnic conflict: “My argument is that ethnic cleavages divide the population into groups  that are, to some extent,  genetically different.”  (p7).  The concept of ethnic nepotism which  is based on the idea that it is an extension of family nepotism, that those belong to the same ethnic group favour those within  the group  over outsiders. (It is important to bear in mind that  Prof Vanhanen does not claim that ethnic nepotism is the cause of all group based   conflict, merely that it explains why  conflict in many societies is so often based on ethnic divisions).

To test this hypothesis   Prof Vanhanen  devised his own scales of ethnic heterogeneity and ethnic conflict and compares them with non-ethnic measures devised by others  such as the Human Development Index and The Index of Democratisation”.  He found only weak correlations between the non-ethnic measures but  a strong correlation between ethnic heterogeneity and ethnic conflict (p214). In other words his research suggests that  the greater the ethnic diversity in a society the greater the ethnic strife, although there are significant variations between the various traits which he includes in his definition of ethnicity.

I have something of a problem with the concept of ethnic nepotism in the context of  Prof Vanhanen’s definition of ethnicity because it includes non-genetic differences such as language and  religion.  It is true that those who are racially similar will be genetically closer than those who are racially different.  It is also true that those who form a large tribe or a nation in the cultural sense will in practice be genetically closer than those outside the group.   The possession of a particular language  by a group  is also a strong pointer  to close genetic  links unless there is some obvious difference such as race or the language spoken not as a native would speak it.   Religion is more problematic because  that is something that can be  simply acquired. If a man says he is a Catholic or Muslim it does not  necessarily say anything about his genetic connection with other Catholics or Muslims. Nonetheless,  if the Catholic or Muslim comes from the same country or even supranational  area, there is a decent chance that he will have a closer  genetic  relationship with other Catholics and Muslims from the area than would be expected purely from chance.

The difficulty is that although a significant genetic linkage will commonly exist because of the way human beings live in groups,  whether that is a small band or a modern nation,  it does not automatically follow that the genetic similarity is what causes the ethnic nepotism. It could be that the simple fact of growing  up with people creates a tribal feeling rather than genetic closeness.  Moreover, what are we to make of the “imagined community” of any group where the numbers are too great to allow personal knowledge of all those in the group?  I do not doubt that differences of religion, nation, tribe, language  and  race do act as triggers for the separation of groups in competing entities, but  with the exception of race I cannot see that  genetic  influence is proven to be other than accidental.  Where there are divisions in a society based on clear racial lines that is a different matter because there is self-evidently a genetic cause for the preference for one class of person in a society over another class of person.

The book ignores what I would describe as the most basic ethnic conflict, that is,  the behaviour of individuals to disadvantage someone of a different ethnicity without there being any deliberate group decision or action. A good example is the grossly disproportionate number of  black rapes and murders of whites in the USA.   That situation is clearly driven by racial feelings with blacks either harbouring a general resentment of whites or simply seeing whites as outside their group and thus not of consequence. However, the latter explanation does not hold much water because blacks do not attack Asians  with the same frequency.

Are there remedies for ethnic strife? Prof Vanhanen suggests four: biological mixing, institutional reforms, democratic compromises and partition.  Of these only partition even in theory offers a complete  solution to ethnic strife with the prospect of a completely ethnically homogeneous society or at least one in which the minorities are so small as to barely matter.  The problem with partition is that it is probably never possible to simply divide a territory because mixed populations are generally not neatly parcelled up in convenient parts  of the territory.

By institutional reforms he means most particularly the legal and democratic structures which ostensibly protect the interests of each ethnic group and by democratic compromises the satisfying of each ethnic group’s  aspirations to at least a point where violence is avoided.  The Professor finds   some evidence that democratic institutions  can reduce  the amount of ethnic violence, although he allows that “the willingness of competing ethnic groups to solve their interest conflicts by democratic compromises and power-sharing is limited” (p227).

The fourth of his remedies – biological mixing – is the one I have the most difficulty with.  He  claims (p222)  that  biological mixing would reduce ethnic violence  because it would “undermine the  basis and importance of ethnic nepotism”.     He further  observes “ My argument is that the relatively low level of ethnic violence in most Latin American countries is causally related to the fact that racially mixed people constitute a significant part of the population in these countries”. (P221).

I think most people would be surprised  at his judgement that there is a “relatively low level of ethnic violence in Latin American countries”.  I am very dubious indeed about the idea that many of the conflicts which arise in the region are often not ethnic in origin using the Professor’s own definitions. To take just one example:  amongst those with black ancestry, whether that is wholly black or black mixed with other races especially the white, there is in Latin America and Caribbean a customary  hierarchy of  colour with the lightest  skin signifying   standing at the top of the social status ladder and the darkest at the bottom.  Look at Brazil as an example. This country  is beloved by white liberals as a prime example of  a colour-blind country.  The reality is that the reins of power and privilege are still held overwhelmingly by whites. The great Brazilian footballer Pele complained publicly about this some years ago.

The likely outcome of biological mixing on any scale would be for those of mixed parentage to find their natural group amongst those from who most resemble themselves.  This is actually what happens in practice. In Britain the children of one black and one white parent almost invariably represent themselves as black.  It would at best simply change the balance of races within a society and at worst add to ethnic conflict with  those of mixed parentage added to the groups competing within the same territory.

Professor Vanhanen’s overall conclusion is a gloomy one: “The central message of this study is that ethnic conflict and violence, empowered by ethnic nepotism and the inevitable struggle for scarce resources, will not disappear from the world. It is more probable that the incidence of ethnic violence will increase in the more and more crowded world” (p230).

The moral of this book is beautifully simple: ethnically/racially heterogeneous societies are a recipe for discord and violence.   That should give the propagandists of mass immigration pause for thought.

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Published orignially in the Quarterly Review http://www.quarterly-review.org/?p=1610

NB The Quarterly Review is now an online journal only. RH

Margaret Thatcher and the cult of personality

Robert Henderson

Two Cults

Margaret Thatcher was the subject of a cult of personality. This was not the result of calculated  propaganda, but simply the creation of her extraordinary personality. Because the cult of personality developed not in a totalitarian state but a country where public opposition was possible, there were two cults of personality attached to her in a relationship which mimicked the matter/antimatter duality. These were the Thatcherite religious believers fulfilling the role of matter and the Thatcher-hating Left  acting as the antimatter.

Both the matter and the antimatter Thatcher cults were  potent.  The religious believers  bowed down before the great god MARKET (and Thatcher was his prophet) and, when things  went wrong,  did what all religious believers do until they lose their faith, denied reality by simply pretending something had not happened or by giving a calamity some  absurd spin to ”prove” the god had not failed.

For the Thatcher-hating Left she was the personification of the Devil and consequently credited with all manner of evil,  but, as is the way with personifications of the Devil, never portrayed as anything but powerful, a being possessed of a political juju (doubtless ensconced in her handbag) which could wreak any degree of havoc  with all that the Left held dear is if she so chose.   Like all those who believe in evil spirits the Thatcher-hating Left ascribed every act of ill fortune to her.

The attitude of both bands of cult followers was essentially superstitious, attributing powers to the woman which she did not, and often could not,  have.  The religious Thatcherites imagined she could  speak the spells which would miraculously convert Britain from a  country making silly old fashioned things such as steel, ships and cars and mining coal to a country stuffed to the gunnels with entrepreneurs creating new non-unionised service industries; the Left saw her as a witch practising black magic to contaminate and transmogrify the world they knew.

Because the Thatcherite religious believers  and her leftist haters  could not and still cannot see past the woman’s   gigantic political personality,  they made and continue to make the same mistake, namely, seeing the two cult figures as the reality while ignoring  her actual policies and their outcomes.

The reality of Thatcher

The reality of Thatcher is that objectively she achieved little if any of her wishes. It is a bitter irony for the woman (and Thatcherites generally)  that her policies were of a nature which  undermined the  ends  she espoused.  Perhaps the prime example is Thatcher’s  avowed wish to see a strong and wealthy Britain  whilst creating through her  commitment to laissez faire economics the very circumstances that would weaken the country. Under her economic regimen and its lingering aftermath ever since Britain  has become ever less self-sufficient in strategically important economic activity such as the production of  food and energy  and vast swathes of British business were  either bought up by foreigners or ceased to operate from Britain because of offshoring and the absence of government action to protect our own economy.   She simply did not understand that you could not have laissez  faire in both the domestic and international economic sphere and have a strong nation state.   Had Thatcher  known any economic history she would have realised that, but even without such knowledge  common prudence should have told her that a country which is dependent on others for necessary goods and services is a weak country.  Moreover, one of her claimed tutelary heroes Adam Smith readily understood there are things which are either strategically important such as armaments or social goods which are  never going to be supplied universally by private enterprise such as roads.  Thatcher never gave any indication of realising that Smith was not the unrelenting free marketer of her imagination.

Thatcher’s  failures in making policy to  achieve her ends were legion. She  destroyed much of British heavy industry in the belief that those made unemployed would rapidly be re-employed in private sector jobs. The new jobs did not materialise and she was reduced to presiding over massive and long lasting unemployment  which she funded with North Sea oil and gas tax revenue and the receipts from privatisation, whilst fiddling the unemployment figures shamelessly. She sold off state owned  services  (which belonged to the community as a whole not to the government)  in the belief that service would  be improved . It was  not. Instead vital services such as the railways and the provision of energy and water became ever more expensive whilst providing poorer service and less employment. She introduced so-called private business methods into the NHS and higher education in the belief that they would become more efficient. The result was massive increases in  bureaucracy and an ever climbing  cost of  both the  NHS and higher education and a substitution of the pursuit of  money for the public service ethos because money was attached to individual patients and students. She introduced the Community Charge or “Poll Tax” in the belief that it would be fairer than the old domestic rates. The result was widespread unfairness because it took no account of an individual’s means  and  provoked the nearest thing to a national movement dedicated to the non-payment of taxes known in modern times.  She raged against  EU interference in British affairs but signed up Britain to the Single European Act (SEA)  in the belief that it would create a genuine single market within the EEC.  It  did not create such a market and merely presented the EEC with an open goal for ever more audacious sovereignty grabs.  A supposed opponent of further mass immigration, her signing of the SEA also opened the door to free movement within the EU, a situation worsened by her strategy of dramatically widening the EEC.  She signed Britain up to the  She embraced “Care in the Community” for the mentally ill or disabled on the grounds that it was more humane than keeping  such people in long-stay institutions. The result was thousands of people left to largely fend for themselves in the outside world who were quite incapable of doing so. She sold off great swathes of social housing (which belonged to the community as a whole not to government) to tenants in the belief that this would result in a “property owning democracy” whilst more or less ending the building of new  social housing.  The eventual result was the growing housing emergency we have today. She instigated the disastrous “light touch”  regulation of the financial services  industry by abolishing credit controls and  failing to meaningfully regulate the  industry meaningfully after “Big Bang”  in 1986  which  effectively de-regulated the London Stock Exchange to bring in a brave new world of free trading (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8850654/Was-the-Big-Bang-good-for-the-City-of-London-and-Britain.html)  with the dire results with which we are now living.

Even in the few areas where she was ultimately successful such as the Falkland’s War she was at best negligent in ignoring warnings from the Foreign Office of a growing threat to the Falklands  in the months leading up to the invasion and even after the expeditionary force had been dispatched  she agreed to a US organised plan which would have not offered the Islanders either self determination of or any meaningful security (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/10008116/Margaret-Thatcher-how-she-took-on-the-men-and-won.html).

There were also acts of omission and collusion with policies with which she supposedly fundamentally  disagreed.  Most importantly, Thatcher failed utterly to carry her strong views against further mass immigration into her period in office. Not only that but, as already mentioned,  she made things much worse on that front by signing up to the Single European Act. She agreed to the institutionalisation of political correctness in public life, especially in the Civil Service, schools and universities. In addition, she allowed the “progressive” educational establishment to destroy a first rate  school examination system  by swopping the certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) and O(rdinary) Levels  for the dangerous absurdity of the General Certificate of Education (GCSE), an exam   supposedly for all 16 year olds but which was in reality two exams masquerading as one.  Despite the fact that Tory support rested heavily on the countryside  she allowed the de-regulation of rural bus services to occur  which reduced them so  severely that to live in countryside meant owning and driving a vehicle or at least having access to someone who did.  To make matter worse, this was done in tandem with a wilful neglect of the then nationalised railways.

The protests after her death were unsurprising

Just based on her economic disasters the uproar surrounding her death is unsurprising.  In the space of a few years she raised the unemployment  pay claimant count from 1.4 million when she took office in 1979 to 3.2 million by 1986 (http://www.economicshelp.org/macroeconomics/unemployment/measuring_unemployment.html) That bald figure is startling enough but the reality  is ten times worse. She  must have known her policies would result in mass unemployment,  at least in the short term, when she removed the financial support of taxpayers from nationalised industries or sold them off in the belief that private business would be able to do the job more efficiently with  much smaller workforces.   Further, as these industries were concentrated in areas where they were by far the dominant employer she should  have realised that structural unemployment would be created  in many parts of the country.  To imagine, as she did, that new jobs would rapidly sprout in the areas showed  a  shocking lack of understanding of economic history which has no example of such a thing happening on the scale required in 1980s Britain.

What is certain is the fact that she had no doubt about the destructive possibilities of laissez faire economics, viz:

“Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ is not above sudden, disturbing, movements. Since its inception, capitalism has known slumps and recessions, bubble and froth; no one has yet dis-invented the business cycle, and probably no one will; and what Schumpeter famously called the ‘gales of creative destruction’ still roar mightily from time to time. To lament these things is ultimately to lament the bracing blast of freedom itself.” — Margaret Thatcher, Statecraft P. 462

A politician of conviction?

The idea that merely having convictions is praiseworthy is a rum one. Hitler, Stalin and Mao had convictions. But even  if the  quality of a person’s convictions is ignored, this is one of the most mystifying of myths attached to Thatcher.  The reality was she frequently changed her position on the most important issues she faced or adopted methods which went against her avowed policies when she had created a mess, most notably with the massive rise in unemployment resulting from her slash and burn approach to the British economy which greatly  increased the benefits bill for many years and left people unemployed for years, in many cases for decades.

The most significant publicly  admitted changes of policy  were on immigration, the Europe and global warming.  Before the 1979 election she had spoken of the need to control immigration  because the country was in danger of being “swamped”:

‘If we went on as we are then by the end of the century there would be four million people of the new Commonwealth or Pakistan here. Now, that is an awful lot and I think it means that people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture.’

She went on to say, ‘The British character has done so much for democracy, for law and done so much throughout the world that if there is any fear that it might be swamped people are going to react and be rather hostile to those coming in.’

 ’If you want good race relations, you have got to allay peoples’ fears on numbers. […] We do have to hold out the clear prospect of an end to immigration…’ (http://www.runnymedetrust.org/histories/race-equality/59/margaret-thatcher-claims-britons-fear-being-swamped.html)

Once in office she did nothing despite still feeling strongly about the subject in private  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/6906503/Margaret-Thatcher-complained-about-Asian-immigration-to-Britain.html).

On Europe she went through the following metamorphosis:

-          1975 she campaigned and voted for Britain to remain within the European Economic Community (EEC – the EU was only formed  by  the Maastricht Treaty in 1993).

-          By 1980 she was convinced that the EEC was not  acting in Britain interests.

-          By 1986 she had  signed the Single European Act giving the EEC immense powers to interfere  with Britain’s sovereignty.

-          In the late 1980s she adopted the policy of enlarging the EEC which meant that a vast new swathe of workers from poor countries would be allowed free movement within the  EEC.  The effects of this also allowed the federalists to press for things such as Qualified Majority Voting on the grounds that the EEC/EU had become too unwieldy to operate under the original  rules and to generally press forward with the creation of a United States of Europe.

-          In 1990  she took the UK into the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM)  despite being opposed to a single currency to which the ERM was a stepping stone with the pound effectively shadowing the Deutschmark.

The idea that Thatcher only realised what the EEC was after taking office in 1979 is simple nonsense. Thatcher’s speech to the  Conservative Group for Europe at the start of the Wilson referendum on the EEC clearly shows her viewing the EEC as far more than a  simple free trading area, viz:

That vision of Europe took a leap into reality on the 1st of January 1972 when, [ Edward Heath] Mr. Chairman, due to your endeavours, enthusiasm and dedication Britain joined the European Community.

 * The Community gives us peace and security in a free society, a peace and security denied to the past two generations.

 * The Community gives us access to secure sources of food supplies. This is vital to us, a country which has to import half of what we need.

* The Community does more trade and gives more aid than any group in the world.

* The Community gives us the opportunity to represent the Commonwealth in Europe. The Commonwealth want us to stay in and has said so. The Community wants us.

 Conservatives must give a clear lead and play a vigorous part in the campaign to keep Britain in Europe to honour the treaties which you, sir, signed in Britain’s name.

 We must do this, even though we dislike referenda. We must support the [ Harold Wilson] Prime Minister in this, even though we fight the Government on other issues.

 We must play our full part in ensuring that Conservative supporters say “Yes to Europe”. (http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102675).

In any case, the Treaty of Rome left no room to believe it was merely a free trade organisation.  No one could read that and be in any doubt  that the intention was to create a United State of Europe. Thatcher, the supposed obsessive  who was a stickler  mastering a subject,   should have read it before the referendum.

As for global warming, she started the ball rolling whilst in office and then reversed her position in her autobiography published in 2003. Here she is speaking to the  UN general assembly, in November 1989:

“What we are now doing to the world … is new in the experience of the Earth. It is mankind and his activities that are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways. The result is that change in future is likely to be more fundamental and more widespread than anything we have known hitherto. Change to the sea around us, change to the atmosphere above, leading in turn to change in the world’s climate, which could alter the way we live in the most fundamental way of all.

“The environmental challenge that confronts the whole world demands an equivalent response from the whole world. Every country will be affected and no one can opt out. Those countries who are industrialised must contribute more to help those who are not.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/apr/09/margaret-thatcher-green-hero)

By  the time she had published her political work Statecraft in 2003 she was thinking along these lines:

“The doomsters’ favourite subject today is climate change. This has a number of attractions for them. First, the science is extremely obscure so they cannot easily be proved wrong. Second, we all have ideas about the weather: traditionally, the English on first acquaintance talk of little else.

“Third, since clearly no plan to alter climate could be considered on anything but a global scale, it provides a marvellous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism. All this suggests a degree of calculation. Yet perhaps that is to miss half the point. Rather, as it was said of Hamlet that there was method in his madness, so one feels that in the case of some of the gloomier alarmists there is a large amount of madness in their method.” (http://www.masterresource.org/2013/04/thatcher-alarmist-to-skeptic/).

There were other issues where her public position was at odds with her actions, for example, the troubles in Northern Ireland and the rule of law. Thatcher claimed that there would never be a surrender to  IRA terrorism.  Yet after she narrowly escaped death in the Brighton Grand Hotel bombing in 1984 (12 October)  the Anglo-Irish agreement was signed little over a year later in November 1985 giving the Republic of Ireland government  a say in what happened in Northern Ireland and committing the British Government to accepting the principle of a united Ireland if a majority were in favour. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/15/newsid_2539000/2539849.stm). There was no obvious reason for such a change of heart beyond the fear generated in Thatcher by the bombing of the Grand Hotel.

As for the rule of law, far from respecting it as she claimed, she laid the basis for the ever increasing authoritarianism of the British state by permitting the police to act unlawfully during the miners’ strike by stopping miners and their supporters from travelling across the country and turning a blind eye to any police excesses as they clashed with the miners and their supporters.

A politician of conviction? Only if you define  someone as such who runs from one position to another while vigorously embracing each  successive position regardless of its  contradiction of a previous  advocated policy or set of ideas.

Nor was she someone who would take responsibility for her actions. When she found her policies were a disaster she either claimed she had been badly advised or cheated (for example, the Single Market, global warming) or attempted to ignore the mess she had created  (for example, enduring mass employment and ) by misrepresenting it, or in the case of unemployment, using North Sea oil  tax revenues,  the privatisation receipts and blatant manipulation of the unemployment statistics to paper over the unemployment cracks.

Why did Thatcher get things so horribly wrong? 

Why did Thatcher get things so horribly wrong?  Her behaviour  strongly suggested that she was seriously lacking  psychological and sociological insight. This meant she constantly made horrendous mistakes such as trusting the EU over the single market and imagining in truly infantile fashion that millions of jobs shed from heavy industry and coal mining would be rapidly replaced by “modern” jobs in the service and light industry sectors.  Her record in choosing people to support or employ was also dismal.

Far from being a free thinker her cast of mind  made her the ready captive of an ideology:

“…as Leader of the Opposition MT once cut short a presentation by a leftish member of the Conservative Research Department by fetching out a copy of The Constitution of Liberty from her bag and slamming it down on the table, declaring “this is what we believe”. (http://www.margaretthatcher.org/archive/Hayek.asp).

It is dangerous to trust anyone who is  susceptible to ideological capture for the simple reason that all ideologies, whether sacred or profane, are inadequate descriptions of and guides to reality.    This means that ideologues constantly have to try to fit reality within the ideology rather than having  reality driving their choices.  Those which include economics are particularly dangerous because their reach is so vast.

Ideologies are the prime example of Richard Dawkins’ memes, mental viruses which capture the individual and direct their thought and behaviour.  Those who are captured by them by them give up their mental autonomy.  That speaks either of a character trait such as that of requiring a source of authority for choices or a  weakness of intellect which seeks ideological  algorithms  developed by others to answer political  questions because the person’s capacity to answer the questions by rational pragmatic examination based on their own knowledge and intelligence  is inadequate.

How good was  Thatcher’s mind? She  is frequently  represented by her adherents as ferociously intelligent.  This view  will not stand up to examination.  She read chemistry at Oxford but only achieved a second class honours degree (http://womenshistory.about.com/od/thatchermargaret/a/Margaret-Thatcher.htm).  Oxford at the time did not divide the second class degree into  upper and lower second classes  and had a fourth class honours division instead.  The old Oxford second  is generally taken to be the rough equivalent of an upper second.  That raises questions over her intellect.  Chemistry at degree level in the 1940s had not become heavily mathematized  as it now is.  Diligence would get a student a long way. This   quality Thatcher  reputedly  had in spades. If she did, the fact that she only took a second suggests that she was not very intellectually gifted. That is particularly the case when it is remembered that she went up to Oxford during wartime when competition for places was severely reduced because so many of the potential male students went into the forces rather than to university. A beta plus mind at best.

What people probably mistook for intelligence was her avid seeking and retention of data. But it is one thing to learn facts or arguments parrot fashion, quite another to mould them into a coherent intellectual whole.  Based on her frequent renunciation of previous positions, it is reasonable to assume that she simply did not have the intellectual wherewithal to put the data she took on board to any useful purpose. She certainly never  gave no indication that she ever saw the bigger picture.

There were also the question of her how fitted she was by experience to fill the role she played, that of the hard-core economic libertarian forever seeking ways of making people take responsibility for their lives both socially and in their work.  When I look at the present Tory front bench I have a similar feeling to that  which I experience when thinking of the Nazi leadership.  The Nazis had a rather noticeable lack of Aryan types amongst them: the present Tory front bench is remarkably short on people who have been entrepreneurs or indeed of people who have any great  experience of work outside the narrow confines of politics.

Margaret Thatcher was a forerunner  in this respect. She graduated from Oxford in 1947.  For the next four years she worked for various private companies as a research chemist. At the age of 26 she married a millionaire. He funded Thatcher’s career change from chemist to barrister. She took the bar exams in 1953 and practised (specialising in taxation) until 1961, the last two years of the period occurring after she was elected to the Commons in 1959.  After that it was all politics.

Thatcher’s experience of the real world of work is at best four years as a research chemist and eight years as a barrister.  However,  being married to a millionaire at the age of 26 rather dulls the idea of her living a normal working life.  The truth is she made her way not as a self-made woman but by the traditional route  for female advancement of marrying a rich man.

There was no need for Thatcherism

The really angering thing about Thatcher’s time in No 10 is that she could have done what she was elected to do, tame the unions, without engaging in the deliberate wholesale destruction and alienation of much of Britain’s heavy and extractive industry and the placing in private hands of the public utilities, especially those of gas, electricity and water.   This was because Thatcher had the great good fortune to arrive as Prime Minister just as North Sea oil and gas was coming on-stream in large quantities.  Those revenues alone would have provided any government with a very large safety net to finance temporary difficulties caused by serious confrontations with the larger trade unions.   She also enjoyed  the very large receipts from the big privatisations such as gas, electricity and BT.  No British government has ever had such a sustained revenue windfall as hers.

There was absolutely no economic need to destroy so much of British industry or place much of the state-owned  organisations  into private hands.  Continental countries such as Germany and Italy retained their shipbuilding; France,  Germany and Italy retained a native mass production car industry.  Germany still has a substantial coal mining industry. Privatisation proceeded at very different speeds throughout Europe.  That no other large industrialised  country followed Thatcherite policies  with anything like the speed or fervour of Britain  yet  survived and frequently out competed Britain economically  demonstrates that Thatcher’s policies were not a necessity but simply an ideological choice.

Her government could have spent the 1980s taming the unions sufficiently to prevent the excesses of the 1970s.  It is true that the very high level of unemployment  of the 1980s was an aid to this, but it was probably not the main rod which largely broke the Trade Unions’ back.  Home ownership had been rising steadily throughout the twentieth century and by the time Thatcher came to power in 1979 not far short of 60%. The highest it reached even after Right To Buy was only 69% – the idea that it was Thatcher who made it possible for the working man and woman to own their homes for the first time is another myth about her(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/houseprices/10005586/Home-ownership-falls-for-first-time-in-a-century.html).  .

The fact that so many people were owner occupiers with mortgages  meant that they were much less willing than they had been to strike at the drop of a hat because they feared losing their home.  Even those who were not owner occupiers had much more to lose in terms of general comfort, security and prospects of greater opportunity for their children than had been the case before, say, 1939.  To take just one example, children from poor families had a greater opportunity than ever to enter  higher education. This growing reluctance to come  out whenever the union called for  strike  was why the National Union of Miners’ leader Arthur Scargill was not willing to hold a ballot of all  his members before calling a strike. He feared such a ballot would be lost.

The combination of this increasing  reluctance to strike amongst union members together with the legal restrictions on unions such as no secondary picketing and severe penalties for strikes called with a formal ballot would have been enough to end the anarchy which prevailed in the 1970s.

Apart from the social and economic upheaval of the Thatcher years, she can also be blamed for a continuation of the damage she caused both in the long term structural unemployment but also in the fact that she subverted  the Labour Party so that it adopted most of what was damaging from the Thatcher period, most particularly in the adoption of her devotion to laissez faire economics and in Labour’s all too ready acceptance of the EU  elite’s desire for comprehensive political and economic union.

The 1980s could have been so very different.  The revenue from North Sea Oil could have been put into a sovereign wealth fund which  by now would be worth hundreds of billions.  If  the Single European Act had not been signed the movement towards a  federal EU would have been halted in its tracks  (national vetoes applied to this area of decision making  at the time). If Thatcher had not argued for an ever wider EEC the poorer nations from the East would not have joined and the immigration threat they carry would not exist.  Indeed,   Britain could have left the EU entirely because the Tory Eurosceptics could have allied with Labour under Michael Foot or even Neal Kinnock. New social housing could have been built with the proceeds of Right to Buy thus obviating to a large degree the shortage of housing now.  If the nationalised industries had been sustained there would have been no serious structural unemployment.  Had proper attention been paid to the strategic importance of  essential economic areas such a food and energy self-sufficiency we should not be so dangerously reliant on foreigners for such things today.  Most importantly, if  that had been the general thrust of politics in the 1980s it is doubtful in the extreme that Blair and NuLabour would ever have arisen.

The tragedy of Margaret Thatcher is that she had a sense of patriotism and probably genuinely thought she was doing the best for her country at the time she implemented or advocated policies (her honesty when policies went wrong was  another matter).  The problem was that her judgement  and understanding was all too often hideously wrong or defective. She so often provided comforting rhetoric, especially on Europe and immigration,  but she never delivered the goods. The fact that she was such an overpowering political figure made things worse because it meant she could steamroller her cabinet on most issues at most times. It is difficult to think of another politician  in the past three centuries who wrought so much damage on Britain.

How governments created the present welfare mess

Robert Henderson

The current attempt by the British Coalition Government to radically alter the welfare state by severely restricting benefits is an exercise in gross  hypocrisy.  Why? Because the  increasingly shrill and uncouth portrayal of those in receipt of benefits as scroungers by Tories’ (and some on the left like Labour MP Frank Field) overlooks one very inconvenient fact: it is the actions of governments of all political hues over the past 35 years which created  the  welfare mess  we have today.    Between them these governments have produced a situation where millions of Britons  cannot either get a job at all  or can only obtain a  job which does not  pay enough to support them and their families  even meagrely.  This has produced the truly mad situation where substantial  benefits are out of necessity  paid to  not only the unemployed but to millions who are  in work, mainly  through tax credits and  housing benefit, because the wages on offer are too  low to allow someone to live an independent life.

Mass unemployment

How did this dire situation come about? Let us begin with the shrinkage of jobs.  Sustained large-scale unemployment did not begin with Thatcher in 1979 but she greatly increased it.  Unemployment was officially 1.4 million in 1979 and rose to over three million  (even by the dole claimant count) by the mid-1980s ( http://econ.economicshelp.org/2007/03/uk-economy-under-mrs-thatcher-1979-1984.html ).

Shocking as the 1979 figure of 1.4 million was at the time, it was primarily  the consequence of the  oil price quadrupling after in 1973, something over which the Labour governments  from 1974-79 had no control over because  North Sea oil was not yet flowing in commercial quantities.   Conversely, the remarkably rapid rise of unemployment in the 1980s was caused by the wilful economic vandalism of the Thatcher government which publicity celebrated (yes, I did say celebrated) destroying much of the UK’s heavy and extractive industries.

Privatisation

Privatisation   was the platform which placed large swathes of the public services into private hands,  including the strategically important providers of  gas, electricity, telecommunications, railways and water.  This alone removed several million well paid and secure jobs from the UK.  It also created areas with structural unemployment. Many of those made redundant in such areas never again obtained anything other than a low paid job or, worse, never obtained a new job.

The early big privatisations , such as those of gas and telecommunications,   were unashamed; other privatisations  proceeded piecemeal through the contracting out of public services to  private business.  Later  from the 1990s onwards came the Private Public Partnership and Private Finance Initiative which involved either joint financing between government and private business or private business providing the money for a project up-front with the taxpayer repaying the debt on generally extortionate terms  over periods of time as long as thirty years. As well as reducing employment and service standards  built up massive amounts of public debt whilst keeping most of it from being added to the official National Debt.  Bizarrely, the supposedly Labour governments headed by Blair and Brown  were  even more enthusiastic than the Thatcher and Major governments about using private contractors for public works. The effect of all these various forms of privatisation was to reduce manpower and conditions of work radically.

Outsourcing

Privatisation was followed and after the 1980s accompanied by outsourcing. The Thatcher  years broke the back of mainstream political resistance to laissez faire in both the domestic and foreign markets.  British companies exported jobs to the Third World incontinently squeezing the available jobs further both in terms of numbers and pay and conditions. This trait was propelled to a significant degree by the willingness of British governments of any political colour to allow British companies to be purchased by foreign countries. These had even less reason to retain jobs in Britain than British owned businesses.

The European Union

When the Single European Act  (SEA) was signed in 1986 the UK effectively  lost control of its borders and  its commerce and industry because the SEA required member states to allow the free movement of “goods, persons, services and capital”. (http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/institutional_affairs/treaties/treaties_singleact_en.htm).  Later treaties whittled away the UK’s sovereignty a good deal further.

The signing up the SEA  fitted the laissez faire economics of the Thatcher government in one sense – a single market within the EU – but  not in another because it restricted UK trade with the rest of the world.  The Thatcherites also found the remnants of state economic control in the EU  such as the Common Agricultural Policy  unpalatable. As time passed they also had a growing concern about  the growing extent of EU  ambitions to remove sovereignty.

For all these reasons the Thatcher government developed a policy of enlarging the EU.  This policy was eventually adopted by all British governments up to  this day – David Cameron is  even now pushing for  Turkey’s admission  (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/seealso/2010/07/daily_view_camerons_turkey.html).  The policy of enlargement was to have  profound consequences for immigration as  the EU expanded as workers from poor EU states, especially the new entrants from the old Soviet Bloc such as Poland flooded to the UK from 2004 onwards ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/17/eastern-european-uk-migrants).

Immigration

On top of all this came immigration from outside the EU.  This really took off from the advent of Blair as Prime Minister  in 1997.  The combined net immigration from both the EU and the rest of the world (RoW) was  50,000  in the year before Blair took office . This rose to 250,000 in 2010, the year Labour lost power  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9713954/Interactive-graphic-how-UK-migration-has-changed-1964-2011.html).   The British population has officially  increased by a net 3 million from immigration  since 1997 (http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/).   How far these figures are accurate is debatable, but they certainly do not overstate the numbers which rest on the 2010 UK census.  It is probable that they substantially understate it as illegal immigrants  will not appear in a census for obvious reasons and foreigners generally may be cautious about registering for a census because they come from countries where the state is not trusted in any way.

Massive immigration  produced severe competition for jobs, most of them low-skill or unskilled, but also for skilled workers especially in the building trade.  The immigrants not only took jobs from native Britons but did so by accepting much lower wages.  The huge influx of immigrants also had the adverse effect of helping to raise housing costs, both for buying and renting.

Housing: the poison in the UK economy

House prices were inflated by the failure of all governments to continue to build enough new social housing from the mid-eighties onwards,by the introduction of Right-to-Buy (RTB)  which greatly reduced the existing stock of social housing by giving tenants the opportunity to buy the properties they rented at huge discounts and the lunatic absence of controls over the  provision of mortgages,  which at the height of their absurdity were being offered at 125% of the value of a property.   Come the crash of 2008 no deposit mortgages vanished and lenders began to demand deposits of 20-30%. The result was property prices too high for most first time buyers because they could not raise the deposit  and a general weakening of the housing market  as those with mortgages found that they could not re-mortgage on affordable terms when short term deals came to an end or obtain mortgages for a new property.  The freezing of the property market  meant that more and more needed to rent. Most could not find social housing and  were left at the mercy of  private landlords  who relentlessly raised rents to unaffordable levels for large sections of  even the employed.

To understand exactly how inflated property have become  compare the prices today with what they were in 1955.  Then the average residential property price was around £2,000. Uprated for inflation the average price of properties today would be around £40,000.  It is housing costs which are  the primary poison in the British economy. If there was sufficient housing to both rent and buy at the sort of  prices to wages ratio  which existed even  20 years ago, much of the general problem of rising benefit costs would not exist.

The manipulation of the UK’s unemployment statistics

Today the official unemployment figure for those drawing unemployment  benefit (the claimant count) is 1.54 million, which is the nearest to the way the 1979 figure is calculated. The 2013  Independent Labour Organisation measure of those seeking work has unemployment at 2.52 million. (http://www.hrmguide.co.uk/jobmarket/unemployment.htm) However,  the contrast between  the 1979  unemployment figure  (1.4 million) and the one now  is a false one because the figures are not really comparable.   This is because there has been a massaging of the unemployment figures, many  more pupils staying on a at school after the age of sixteen and a dramatic rise in those going into higher education.

Thatcher began the government’s  habit of fudging the employment figures by cynically shifting people from the unemployment registers to long-term sick benefit. By 2011 2.6 million were claiming such benefit. (http://statistics.dwp.gov.uk/asd/index.php?page=statistical_summaries).  In 1979 around 600,000 were doing so (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jan/19/lax-benefit-rules-not-responsible-more-disability).

To this distortion was added the constant changing of the rules for eligibility for claiming benefits, the definition of who was unemployed and the exclusion from the unemployment claimant figures of those engaged in government training schemes receiving what was to all intents and purposes unemployment benefit .  To put the cherry on the massaging of the statistics those in training were counted as employed in the total workforce  statistics. This suppressed the unemployment figure as expressed as a percentage of the total workforce.  There were also issues with students. Between November 1986 to September 1990 they could claim some unemployment benefits in the summer vacation. They were excluded from the unemployment count.  ((http://www.radstats.org.uk/no072/article4.htm).

These changes to and exclusions  from the unemployment statistics had considerable repercussions. The Bank of  England wrote in 1991 “…although unemployment is falling because there are more jobs, it is also true that much of the decline in the claimant count which has occurred since mid-1986 has been due to a shift in the unemployment/employment relationship resulting from changes in the Government’s range of Special Employment Measures – especially the introduction of more rigorous availability for work tests and the rapid growth of the Restart programme (quoted in SSAC, 1991, p. 59). Ibid.

On top of all this came the vast increases in the numbers in post-16  education. The 1980s saw the beginning of the governmental drive to have much larger numbers of  schoolchildren staying at school  until they were eighteen . By 2011 they had almost doubled from the rate of those staying at school after the age of  sixteen  from what it was in in 1980  (see p10 www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn04252.pdf).  From 2015 all those under the age of 18  will, in theory at least, have to be either in education or training – http://www.sec-ed.co.uk/news/warning-over-raising-of-school-leaving-age-to-18).

The expansion of  higher education   was even more dramatic. In 1980 only 13% of young Britons went to  into higher education (page F152 – http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/nmg/1468-0297.00102.pdf).  More than forty per cent of British school-leavers are now going on to start degree courses.  (The last Labour government had a target of 50% of school-leavers entering higher education  and in 2010/11 47% of those between the ages of 17-30 were in higher education  -http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/419496.article)

The false classification of people as long-term sick rather than unemployed, the rise in children saying on at school and the increase in students taking degrees means the official statistics  considerably understate  the true level of unemployment.    The wrongful classification speaks for itself,  while the extended schooling and increased university participation is important because it  delayed the point at which millions entered the employment market.

Exactly how distorting these interferences with the unemployment statistics are compared with those before 1980 is debatable, but its effects must be very substantial.  Those between the age of 16-64 deemed economically inactive  were 9.04 million according to the  official figures issued in October  2012  (http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/october-2012/statistical-bulletin.html.  This  gives an indication of the huge numbers who should really be listed as  unemployed.  Even if  the schoolchildren above the age of 16, the students and the sick and disabled were discounted, there would be several million left. Add that to the official unemployment rate of around 2.5 million and the true unemployment rate could be in the region of 5 million or even more.

But the picture is even bleaker than that because  large numbers of those now counted as employed are on short time. Many of those and the full time employed are on short contracts and have no security of employment.

Working tax credits

All of this – the destruction and export of jobs,  mass immigration,  and the government driven housing market  –  produced a  Britain which had become both a low-wage economy and an extremely expensive place to live. Many people in full time employment  could not afford to live on their pay.  As rents soared housing benefit was increasingly taken up by even those who ordinarily would not have been thought of as being at the bottom of the income pile. Eye-watering amounts of housing benefit  were paid for those with large families (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/5663014/Family-claims-147000-a-year-in-housing-benefit-for-seven-bedroom-home.html) ,  especially to those  in London where by 2013 families  in private rented accommodation were paying 59% of their household income according to the housing charity Shelter (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-20943576).

In April 2003, the Blair government tacitly acknowledged that wages for many were simply inadequate  to support life by introducing working tax credits. (http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/taxcredits/start/who-qualifies/workingtaxcredit/work.htm).  This had several pernicious effects. It acted as a subsidy for employers which allowed them to offer ever lower wages secure in the knowledge that the taxpayer would subsidize business by making up their inadequate wages with working tax credits.  The regulations for working tax credits also allowed people to claim them when they were working part-time.  This provided an incentive for employees to work the minimum hours,  which were as little as 16 hours for a single parent. The employer also had an incentive to employ a number of part-timers rather than full time employees because the wages of the part timers could be kept below the level  at which national insurance had to be paid .  It thus became cheaper to employ two or three part-timers rather than one full timer.

The effects of working tax credits were made worse by the Blair and Brown governments ideologically driven desire to have every woman of working age out at work. This resulted in childcare tax credits (http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/calcs/ccin.htm#1) whereby mothers were paid to leave their children in the hands of other women while they went out to work.

The benefits situation  needs fixing but the way the Coalition is going about it is unreasonable. They are not starting from where we are now and taking regard of the effects of their changes in policy on people who are already encased in the circumstances of high unemployment, low paid and often insecure jobs and ever rising rents. Instead they are using the blunt instrument of cutting benefit suddenly and seriously disrupting the lives of millions.

Housing is the main bugbear.  it makes no sense to say housing benefit will be capped if this makes continued residency in an area impossible because of rental costs way beyond their means or the £26,000 cap on benefits. The policy may well drive many people in employment out of the area in which they not only live but work causing them to become unemployed.  Even if people are unemployed forcing them to move any real  distance will have effects on those with children at school and take away the informal support mechanisms of family and friends.

Similarly, the attempt to move those in social housing out of their properties if they are deemed to be too large for those now resident there (the “bedroom tax”)  is absurd unless there is smaller social housing accommodation they can move into. If this forces social housing tenants to move a long way from where they live they will suffer the same problems that those who move because they cannot afford private rented accommodation.  If social housing tenants have to rent from private landlords that will cost more than the social housing. Such tenants on housing benefit would be more expensive for the taxpayer to support.

What should be done?

What should be done? The answer is to change the general circumstances which cause the welfare bill to be so high. This can be done by creating an economy  in which any  full time wage will at least support a person and ideally will maintain a family. This can be done by adopting these policies although Britain would need to leave the EU or get the EU to agree to change the rules governing free movement of labour, goods, capital and  services to impose  many of them):

1. Cease all further mass immigration.

2. Address the housing shortage by introducing rent controls and much stronger legal backing for secure tenure  in  private rental properties, engaging in a massive programme of social house building, restricting all future social house tenancies to those born British citizens, abolishing  Right-to-Buy, banning  buy-to-let mortgages,  banning  foreigners from buying residential properties and giving private builders an incentive to build by taxing the land they hold until they build.

3.  Place a tax on employers for every foreign worker already here they employ to discourage their employment.

4. . Remove benefits from all foreigners to encourage those already here to return home.

These policies would have short term and longer term effects. For example, rent controls  and strong tenure conditions could  be brought in very rapidly giving tenants in private property both an assurance that they could continue in their rented  property for a long time with a rent that did not suddenly rise beyond their means. Building large numbers of new properties would take several years to gain momentum but there should be a considerable increase in the housing stock within five years.

Policies such as stopping further mass immigration and  incentives  for foreign labour already here  to leave like placing a tax on  employers if they employ foreigners and removing all benefits from foreigners should tighten the labour market . This will raise wages and make employers use labour more efficiently.

A tighter labour market will produce higher wages which added to much cheaper housing will lessen the need for people to draw benefits whilst in work and the cost of housing benefit generally should reduce substantially.  That will draw most of the poison from the benefit debate.

Even as things stand, the current hysteria about benefits is unjustified in its own terms. Most of the public say that it is right that the old and the ill or disabled are looked after by state action. That is very interesting because most of the benefit bill is spent on the old, the sick, the disabled and, this is the real  tragedy, on those in employment who simply cannot live on their wages.  (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2013/jan/08/uk-benefit-welfare-spending#zoomed-picture). The British elite are very successfully pursuing a policy of divide and rule by setting the less well-off members of society at each other’s throats. It is both highly distasteful and unjustified. The real culprits for the mess we have now are all the politicians who have produced the situation we have now and their all too compliant media supporters, especially over the past 25 years.

Housing: to the haves shall be given….

Robert Henderson

The central plank of the 2013  UK Budget  – boosting house building and sales activity –  was both morally disgraceful and criminally reckless. The Government proposes to underwrite mortgages to the tune of 20%  of the value for both first time buyers and those with properties who are trying to move up the housing ladder and from 1st April 2013, even more recklessly,  to provide loans of 20%  of the value of  new build properties up to the  value of £600,000  for three years from April 2014.   The loans will be interest free for five years after which  an annual fee of 1.75% will be levied on the government loan, with the fee rising  annually by the retail prices index (RPI) inflation plus  1%. The loan can be paid off at any time up to and including the time when it is sold. ( http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/10012.htm ). The amount taxpayers will risk on the underwritten mortgages is  estimated  to be  £12bn  with the full value of the mortgages underwritten  totalling  £130bn,  while £3.5bn of taxpayers’ money will be committed to the loans.

This policy is morally disgraceful because it is yet again favouring the haves over the have-nots . It is  made doubly offensive because  it is being done at a time when the Coalition Government’s attitude towards those in social housing  is increasingly shrill  with a constant portrayal of those in social housing as being parasites on the taxpayer because they do not pay the market rent for their properties while owner occupiers  pay their way.

The reality is rather different. Social housing tenants have long received far less subsidy than owner occupiers who have been granted  massive benefits by governments since at least 1969 when Roy Jenkins introduced Mortgage Interest Relief At Source (MIRAS).  MIRAS lasted until 2000 when it was ended by Gordon Brown.  In addition to MIRAS   owner occupiers receive  or have received these benefits:

1. Right-to-Buy (RTB). The gains from RTB both from a considerably reduced purchase price (way below the market value)  and the huge rise in property values in the period 1980 to 2008.  The rules to qualify were tightened and the discounts offered were gradually reduced in the period,  but have been boosted again by the Coalition Government which announced a discount of up to £100,000 in the Budget (http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/budget-2013-100000-off-righttobuy-a-london-home-8540690.html).

2. Private residence tax relief. No capital gains tax is paid on a property used as a private residence when it is sold.

3. No inheritance tax (IT)  is paid on a private property when it is inherited by a spouse who is resident in this country. Regardless of who are the beneficiaries, no IT is paid on a property if it forms part of an estate worth less than the inheritance tax exemption limit (£325,000 in 2012-13). No IT is paid on a private property if the private property has been gifted to someone else more than 7 years before the death of the person making the gift.

4.  Housing benefit for the interest paid on a mortgage.  This could be received by  someone unemployed or employed,  but with an income so low they qualified for housing benefit.

5. A surprisingly large number of taxpayer funded schemes  providing substantial grants, especially for energy saving improvements (http://www.freegive.co.uk/grants.htm).

6. The lax credit policies  from the mid-1980s onwards which allowed mortgage providers to grossly inflate property  prices before the 2008 crash by granting no deposit mortgages and even mortgages up to 125% of the purchase price.  In addition, “light touch” regulation of the banks and their ilk greatly increased the money supply which also inflated  property prices. Finally,  prices were inflated further by  the permitting of  massive  immigration during  the years of the Blair  and Brown Governments which added some three million to the UK population.

7.  Since the crash of 2008 successive British governments have offered massive  direct and indirect aid to those with mortgages. The direct aid has been  such things as mortgage  payment  holidays (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/dec/04/brown-mortgage-interest-break-repossessions),  and indirect protection, for example,  keeping Bank Rate at microscopically low levels.

Whilst all this has been going on social housing has become ever scarcer as several million social housing properties have been sold off under RTB (http://www.politics.co.uk/reference/right-to-buy) and the provision of new social housing since the mid-1980s has been meagre in the extreme.

Criminal recklessness

Morally obnoxious as the policy may be, the fact that it is criminally reckless is even more worrying.  The almost certain short term effect of this taxpayer funded largesse is that house prices will rise because there will be more money chasing scarce housing.  This will make purchase even with the helping taxpayer hand more and more difficult, especially for first time buyers who will be tempted to pay over the odds because the terms look so easy and the participating mortgage lenders will be willing to lend more in the secure knowledge that the taxpayer will either cover a substantial minority of them mortgage or provide a buffer against future negative equity because of the  significant amount of equity resented by the taxpayer funded loan.  Suppose a house is purchased for £500,000. The purchaser pays a 5% deposit and the taxpayer makes this up to a  25% deposit with a 20% equity loan to the purchaser.  This leaves the private mortgage provider to find  £375,000. Provided the property can be sold for  £375,000 the mortgage provider will lose nothing.  If it is sold for just £375,000,   25% of the original purchase price (the total deposit) will be lost. The taxpayer would lose £100,000.

The intentions of the Government – to boost house building, enable first time buyers to get on the housing ladder and loosen up the property market generally – are likely to be undermined further because  it appears Britons buying second homes and foreigners will be able to access the taxpayer funded privileges (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9947031/Wealthy-homeowners-could-use-state-backed-loans-to-buy-second-homes.html and http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/borrowing/mortgages/9952998/Foreigners-can-qualify-for-state-subsidised-mortgages.html)

The danger in the longer term is that the housing market will tank as the Irish and Spanish ones have done  and property  prices halve.  This is a significant  possibility,  because  apart from the general economic turmoil in the EU,  UK interest rates will have to rise substantially sooner or later  and this alone will suppress the market dramatically as very large numbers cannot meet their mortgage payments.   If  property prices do collapse it  will leave the taxpayer taking a severe  financial hit. Osborne is effectively betting the national farm on a recovery in the housing market.

What housing policy should the Government be pursuing?

I suggest this:

1. Use  the money they have earmarked for the underwriting of risk and the 15% deposits in new build properties up £600,000 to engage on a massive social housing building programme.

2. Put a tax on land held by property developers with planning permission while they refuse to build on the land as per the planning permission.

3. Ban Buy-to-let mortgages.

4. Introduce rent controls on private landlords. If rents were frozen for a number of years this should not impact too seriously on most private landlords, the majority of whom will either own their properties or have small mortgages on them . Even those with large mortgages should be able to survive in the low interest environment which looks as though it will continue to several years at least.  If they can pay the mortgage now they should be able to keep in paying it until interest rates rise significantly. By that time

All of those policies could be done whilst we remain within the EU. If we left the EU it would be possible to:

5. Deny all social housing to foreigners.

6. Ban foreigners from purchasing residential property.

7. Put an end to further mass immigration.

These policies will greatly increase the supply of housing in the medium term if not sooner . If even 1-4 were implemented  this would do a great deal to bring the cost of housing to a level where  those on the average wage could  afford to rent in most areas and

Governments bear the responsibility

For thirty years or more British Governments have been almost entirely responsible for the truly dismaying rise in the cost of property  both to buy and to rent  through a failure to ensure enough housing both private and social was built, by removing rent controls,  ending credit controls on mortgages,  failing to control mortgage  lending generally  and, most dramatically, by allowing mass immigration to add between three and four million people to the population in the past 15 years.

To understand exactly how inflated housing costs have become compare property prices today with what they were in 1955.  Then the average residential property price was around £2,000. Uprated for inflation the average price of properties today would be around £40,000.  (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/24/the-vicious-poison-in-the-british-economy-is-the-outlandish-cost-of-housing/). Makes you think.  If that was the case now,  even those on half  of the average national wage (half of the present average  wage  would be about £13,000 ) would be able to purchase a property of some sort.

Wages and welfare benefits are not comparable

Robert Henderson

The Coalition’s line on benefits will not hold water.   The Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith claims it is unreasonable for benefits to rise in line with inflation when wages are not doing so (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9787094/Iain-Duncan-Smith-raising-benefits-with-inflation-would-be-absurd.html). This ignores two things: what it costs to live even at a subsistence level and the effects of those in work drawing benefits, especially working tax credits.

To compare benefits with wages is nonsensical. Wages may be at any level from the plutocratic to that which is insufficient to fund  even a basic standard of living.  Benefits are fixed and are far from generous.  The real question to ask when considering the uprating of benefits is not whether they are too generous but whether they are sufficient to allow someone to live at the subsistence level.  To do this the distribution of expenditure at  different levels of income must be taken into account. The poorer a person is the more of their money will go on essential such as housing, food, clothing travel and energy.  These are items which apart from clothing have been rising rapidly over the past year or two. It could reasonably be argued that those on benefits (whether in work or not) require an increase much larger than the average wage rise.

The idea that people can live the life of Riley on benefits  does not hold water. For those who have signed on as unemployed the Jobseekers Allowance is £56.25 (single person under 25), £71 (single person over 25)  and £111.45   (couple both aged over 18),    £71  (Lone parent 18 or over) £56.25  (Lone parent under 18) https://www.gov.uk/jobseekers-allowance/what-youll-get .  If you are single without children or a childless couple,   living on benefits is self-evidently not going to be a great deal of fun. (The figures and qualifications for benefits I shall give are those under the  present circumstances. These will change when the Universal Benefit goes live in April this year).

What pushes benefits payments up to the high figures often cited by the media are child related benefits and above all housing-related benefits to pay   mortgage interest or  rent and Council Tax. But to bring in the money for  children you need quite a few.    Child Benefit is £20 for the first child and £13.40 for each subsequent child.  If a family has ten children this would mean they received £140.60. Useful, but not a vast amount when applied to the costs of raising ten children.  The benefit goes in full  to anyone with children whether working or not, provided their income does not reach £50,000 and in part for anyone earning between £50,000 and  £60,000.  (http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/childbenefit/payments-entitlements/payments/rates.htm#1).  In addition, both the unemployed and employed can draw Child Tax Credit for dependent children (under the age of 18) , which can be up to £2,690 for an able bodied child and up to  £4,140 for the most disabled children (https://www.gov.uk/child-tax-credit).   Those figures are of course dependent on the family’s total earned income where the claimants are in work and the amount of savings whether in work or unemployed.  Someone claiming Job Seekers Allowance or Income Support  and not breaching the maximum savings  before benefit starts to be withdrawn  (currently £6,000),  the parent (or other responsible adult) will receive  £64.99 per week for each child (http://tinyurl.com/anpea3u).  The notional family with ten children would get £650 a week in addition to the £140 child benefit, but of course  such a family  would be very much the exception.  The average family with two children wholly dependent on benefits would (excluding mortgage interest or rent and council tax benefit) have £274.85 (£111.45 for the couple; 2 x £64.99 for the JSA/Income support payments for the children  and £33.40 child benefit).

The real poison in the benefits system is the cost of Housing Benefit.   Those who are unemployed or on low incomes are likely to be living in rented accommodation. Rents have gone through the roof in the past few years as mortgages become hard to get and new build housing has slowed to a trickle. (http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/families-facing-squeeze-as-rents-rise-fastest-in-the-suburbs-8442313.html). To get private rented accommodation in London suitable for a family of four  ( a minimum of a three bedroom flat) would cost between £1-2,000 per month even in the cheaper areas.  A rental of £1,500 per month is £18,000 per year which takes around 70% of the new proposed cap of £26,000 for total benefits paid to any family.  Outside of London rents are not so high,  but in many places , especially the South East, they have risen substantially.  Here is an example from Croydon in Surrey:

“Henrietta Bergman-Janes lives with her husband Michael and their daughter Adelaide, three, in a privately rented two-bedroom flat in south Croydon.

The family survives on an income of about £19,000 from his job in a bank and £400-a-month housing benefit. The rent of £825 a month leaves just enough to live on — but nothing more. They hardly ever go out, cannot afford holidays and saving for a deposit is out of the question.

Mrs Bergman-Janes, 24, said: “We would love to buy our own place and stop being at the mercy of the whims of a landlord, but we can’t even stay out of our overdrafts or pay off our credit cards, how are we supposed to magic up a £25,000 deposit?”

She said rents in Croydon were rising steadily. When the couple were first looking in 2008 small flats were about £600 to £650 a month. “But before we moved into this place we were going to estate agents and said £800 was the most we could afford. They just started laughing at us saying ‘you can’t get anything for that price’.” (Ibid)

An added complication is that millions of those who work also draw various working tax credits or income support (paid to those working less than 16 hours a week – https://www.gov.uk/income-support/overview) which raise incomes to subsistence level. In addition, many of the employed also draw housing  (vide the £400 per month claimed in the example above) and council tax benefit.  If all benefits are claimed, no individual or couple without children  should  probably be no worse off than those under state retirement age who are unemployed because in work benefits are on a sliding scale. A  family with children  or a single parent could be worse off  if they have to pay a professional child minder, although even there the state provides subsidy through Childcare tax credits  with up to 70% of the costs up to a maximum of  £175 per week for a single child and £300 for two or more children. (https://www.gov.uk/help-with-childcare-costs/childcare-tax-credits) .  However, those in work will often be no better off than someone  who is unemployed.

The Working Tax Credits for the low paid are substantial.  For example, a couple with three children  with an annual income of £10,000 would qualify for tax credits of £11,815 (http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/taxcredits/people-advise-others/entitlement-tables/work-and-child/work-no-childcosts.htm ). Working Tax Credit can be paid if a claimant is off sick (http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/taxcredits/keep-up-to-date/changes-affect/work-changes/no-work-illness.htm).

There is the intriguing possibility  that a single parent in work  or a  couple  in work on a low income  with  two or more children might  receive more in overall benefits through Childcare  Tax Credit, Child Benefit, Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit than the £26,000 cap for the unemployed coming in with the proposed Universal Benefit in  April 2013.

There are pernicious effects of working tax credits.  These have the effect of a very substantial subsidy to employers who can keep their wages below subsistence level in the knowledge that the taxpayer will make up the difference between what they pay and what is needed to live.  Even if a worker is in full time employment,  this is highly unsatisfactory because it distorts the labour market and places an ever growing burden on the taxpayer.  It also provides encouragement to the immigrant  to work in Britain over and above the great incentive of earning even the minimum wage in the UK which allows them to save a few thousand a year, savings which are worth multiples in terms of purchasing power in their homelands of their purchasing power in this country.

But working tax credit are not restricted to full-time workers. At present the  rules for those under 60 who are able bodied are:

What hours do you need to work?

You don’t have children

If you’re not responsible for children, you need to work the following hours to get Working Tax Credit:

if you’re aged 25 or over, you need to do paid work of at least 30 hours a week

if you have a disability and are aged 16 or over, you need to do paid work of at least 16 hours a week

if you’re aged 60 or over, you need to do paid work of at least 16 hours a week

How to work out usual working hours for your tax credits claim

You have children

If you’re responsible for children you need to be aged at least 16, and work the following hours to get Working Tax Credit:

if you’re single, you need to do paid work of at least 16 hours a week

if you’re in a couple, your joint paid working hours need to be at least 24 a week, with one of you working at least 16 hours a week

So if you’re a couple and only one of you is working, that person will need to work at least 24 hours a week.( http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/taxcredits/start/who-qualifies/workingtaxcredit/work.htm#1)

These rules provide strong incentives for people to do just the minimum hours needed to qualify for the tax credit.  Imagine the temptation for a single parent who only needed to work for 16 hours a week  or a couple with one working who was only required to work  24 hours a week to prefer to do only the hours needed rather than a full week’s work.  If it is a mundane low paid job,   which almost certainly it will be,  in either case the pay for the hours worked plus working tax credit would probably be the same as if the person worked a 40-hour  week.

The rules also  provides an incentive to employers to offer  minimum wage part-time jobs with the minimum qualifying hours, which should also allow the employer to avoid both the employers’ and employees’  national insurance (http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/paye/rates-thresholds.htm#1).

The reality is that no firm line can be drawn between the working and the unemployed. The attempt at resurrecting  the Victorian idea of the deserving and undeserving poor, a part from being obnoxious,  is a non-starter when so many want a job or are forced  to work part-time or take jobs which do not pay a living wage.

Britain’s low wage economy

The problem is really Britain’s low wage economy.  This is a consequence of mass immigration , which has risen to alarming heights in the past ten years  and has resulted in both a reduction in wage levels and increased competitions for jobs,  the offshoring of huge numbers of jobs, the contraction of  public sector employment since the crash following Lehmann Bros failure in 2008 and the reckless inflation of the cost of housing, both purchased and rented, resulting from massive immigration, the loose monetary policy of the Blair and Brown governments and the failure of all governments since Thatcher to build sufficient social housing.

To remedy these ills Britain must regain control over its borders by leaving the EU and repudiating any other treaties which give foreigners the right to settle here; engage in a programme of social housing building on the scale of the 1950s;  reserve social housing for those born British citizens;  penalise private developers who  hoard land by placing a tax on the land while it remains unbuilt on ; subsidise public transport more heavily and engage in judicious protectionism to preserve necessary commerce and  industry.

The  new social housing and  further subsidy for public transport can be easily funded by reducing current public spending massively by  ending foreign  Aid (saves £11 billion); reducing the per capita Treasury payment to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by reducing it to the English figure   (saves £16 billion)  and leaving the EU (saves £11 billion  on the difference between what the UK pays in and what it gets out  http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/336667/Now-our-payments-to-the-EU-hit-53m-each-day) . That releases  £38 billion for the Government to spend.

These steps will have the effect of reducing the price of housing and raising pay both in real terms and because much less of a wage or salary will have to be spent on housing and travel costs.  That will gradually reduce the dependence on Working Tax Credits which ideally should be abolished because of their pernicious effects.  Higher wages  and reduced housing and travel costs will also mean  less pressure for women to go out to work when they have pre-school age children. That will reduce the need for highly paid childcare.   The long-term aim should be to reach a situation where it is  the norm for  a single wage to be  enough on which to raise a family.

The US and Ethnic voting – Why white America (and the rest of the West) has to play the ethnic card to survive

Robert Henderson

1 White liberals get dangerously over excited

2. The election’s voting patterns.

3. Romney as a candidate

4. The demographics

5. A programme to maintain the white majority

6. The rest of the West

7. Another “End of History”

8. The danger of ideologies

1. White liberals get dangerously over excited

Even by the demanding standards of adolescent inanity set by them in normal times white liberals have been getting dangerously over-excited following the Obama re-election. His victory has induced industrial quantities of self-indulgent masochistic politically correct fantasy revelling in the belief that the USA is locked into an inescapable demographic trap which will mean, within a generation or two, the end of the white majority and the dominant culture which has shaped the country not only since independence but in the previous one hundred and eighty-odd years of the American colonial experience. This , the white liberal fondly and ludicrously imagines, will mean the triumph of political correctness with a wondrously multicultural and multiracial USA of the future standing as the very model of social and historical development at its evolutionary summit.

This is truly an epic fantasy. Even if mass immigration does continue and makes whites a minority in the USA it does not follow that the multiculturalist dream of a multiplicity of groups living in harmony will arrive. Indeed, we can be sure it will not, because never in the history of Man has a territory occupied by racially or ethnically differentiated groups produced societal harmony. The best that is ever achieved is an uneasy armistice enforced by a socially and culturally detached (often formally imperial) overlord. The result of increasing the size of various racial or ethnic minorities relative to the white population will not create a rainbow alliance against the white population, but greater competition amongst the ethnic minorities with the largest groups amongst them vying to become the most dominant of the racial or ethnic minorities other than the now minority  but still largest minority group American whites.

This enthusiasm of white liberals for a future in which they are at best reduced to part of a group which is no more than just another ethnic minority in the USA is extended to their claim that inescapable decline is also the fate of the Republican Party, unless, that is, the GOP gets with the right-on programme and begins to pander to blacks, Latinos, gays, feminists , the young and immigrants generally, while dropping any pretence of trying to stem immigration and signing up to all the shibboleths of political correctness. In short, it must cease to be what it has been and just about still is, at least at the grass roots level, a conservative party with a sense of nationhood trying to hold the line against an ever more aggressive political correctness, and become the ideological Tweedledum to the Democratic Party’s Tweedledee. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/republicans/9669468/Republicans-may-drop-opposition-to-granting-illegal-immigrants-residency.html).

The chief  fly-in-the-ointment for the white liberal’s prescribed redefining of the USA and the GOP is that the demographic future for the USA does not have to be as they paint it. Mass immigration could be stopped if there was the political will and this would at least greatly slow down  the projected demographic shift to whites being in the minority by 2050 or even possibly by the 2040s (http://www.npr.org/2011/06/27/137448906/us-will-have-minority-whites-sooner-says-demographer   and http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/08/13/census.minorities/index.html).

But even on the most aggressive demographic projections put forward by liberals there is no compelling reason to believe that in the next 15 years Republicans will be excluded from controlling Congress if they do not change their policies to radically politically correct ones. In short, there is still considerable time for the GOP to do what is necessary to defeat the supposedly pre-determined US demographic and political future by ending mass immigration and adopting a programme designed to appeal to whites. More on the detail of that later.

2. The election’s voting patterns

( http://www.people-press.org/2012/11/07/changing-face-of-america-helps-assure-obama-victory/).

The ethnic vote was overwhelmingly for Obama: blacks 93% , Hispanics 71% and Asian s 73%. Obama also captured 55% of female votes and enjoyed a large advantage over Romney amongst younger voters taking 60% of the 18-29 group and 52% of the 30-44 age group. Romney took 59% of the white vote to Obama’s 39%

There are important lessons to be taken from these statistics. A majority formed of several ethnic minority groups is certain to be neither a stable nor a harmonious political constituency simply because there is no example of such a coalition ever being other than this; the overwhelming black support for Obama may is almost certainly a phenomenon which attaches itself only to a black candidate; the Hispanic vote is racially disparate and the white Hispanic part of this ethnic group may in time simply see themselves as white Americans rather than hyphenated Americans ; the Asian constituency is still small and disparate and Asians probably voted for Obama to a significant degree simply because much of the group is comprised of recent immigrants and as recent immigrants they will naturally go for the most immigrant friendly candidate, a tendency that will weaken as the generations pass and the descendants become distanced from their ancestral culture which will when encountered seem ever more alien to them; the youth vote for Obama dropped significantly compared with 2008 and, finally, the split of the female vote gave Obama a healthy but importantly not overwhelming advantage.

The last point is highly significant because women represent the largest group of voters who are supposedly set to consign the Republicans to the dustbin of history unless they change their supposedly outmoded and reactionary ways. A five per cent shift in women voters to the Republicans (something perfectly plausible with different candidates and circumstances ) and the Republican women problem vanishes. This could easily happen.  For example, faced with a white non-Hispanic Democratic candidate, the non-white minority female vote could be reduced substantially by female voters failing to vote in such numbers as they have voted for Obama simply because the candidate was white or, less probably, voting for other candidates whether Republican or third party. Another possibility would be a white Hispanic Republican candidate who could capture a large part of the now Hispanic Democratic vote whilst not alienating non-Hispanic white voters.

As for the (under 30) youth vote, 51% of that portion of the white vote went to Romney against 44% to Obama . This reversed the 2008 election where Obama won 54% of the under thirty white vote and McCain 44% (http://www.people-press.org/2012/11/26/young-voters-supported-obama-less-but-may-have-mattered-more/) . This is significant because the substantial drop off for Obama in young white voter support shows how fragile is the race factor in voter preference amongst whites. Obama was a novelty in 2008; he is increasingly seen as just another tired failed politician. Any black candidate in the future will be just another candidate who will not benefit from the immense deference Obama has enjoyed and to a large extent still enjoys from the mainstream media. It is also true that younger voters often change their political allegiances as they grow older, normally by moving from the left to the right.

Because the descendants of recent immigrants, of whatever racial and ethnic origin, will have an ever weaker attachment to their ancestral land and culture as the generations pass, their preference for candidates and parties which are soft on immigration will weaken because they will no longer think there is  a pressing need to bring in more of those from their ancestral lands.  The effect of that would be to reduce support for immigration generally amongst  ethnic minority groups, because  support for immigration amongst recent immigrants is very strongly driven by the desire to bring in extended family members and friends.  More dramatically,  there are many examples of those of immigrant ancestry wishing to pull up the drawbridge to prevent  further immigration  even where the would-be  immigrants are connected by national origin or ethnicity to  those opposing their settlement . Anglicised Jews from families long settled in Britain complaining about Jews from Eastern Europe entering in the nineteenth century is e a good historical example of this trait (http://www.movinghere.org.uk/galleries/histories/jewish/journeys/journeys.htm).

Such behaviour is unsurprising because once an immigrant is in a country any further immigration, especially that of immigrants who are different in race, nationality  or ethnicity from those already there, will mean greater competition for jobs, housing, education healthcare and so on. That is a particularly strong motive for immigrants to oppose further immigration if the country they have settled in a First World state with a comprehensive welfare system.

There is also the fact that as ethnic\racial solidarity within a country lessens, the willingness of the population to fund welfare weakens (Frank Salter: On Genetic Interests: Family, Ethnicity, and Humanity in an Age of Mass Migration (http://edna.machighway.com/~franksal/EthnicResearch/Background.html). Mitt Romney was much castigated for saying that 47% of the population were on benefits and would not vote for someone who would not at worst unambiguously support present benefit levels. Contrariwise, Obama offered the promise of continuing welfare benefits. Whether the USA can afford the level of benefits it currently provides is debatable, but there must be some unsustainable limit to public spending. What if the 47% became 60% or 70% who were dependant on benefits? As a matter of simple arithmetic, there has to be a point where benefits simply cannot be maintained let alone increased if the numbers who are net tax contributors become so small they cannot support welfare levels.

That would be a serious difficulty in a very homogeneous society: in an increasingly fragmented one it is a recipe for racial and ethnic strife which at its least violent will see a reluctance by the ethnic and racial groups least benefitting from taxpayer funded schemes becoming more ever more reluctant to fund such spending. In addition, those within ethnic and racial groups who have done better will almost certainly tend to see themselves in class terms rather than ethnic or racial terms. It is also true that the spread of wealth and poverty within ethnic and racial groups can and almost certainly will change over the years. There is no certain perpetual advantage or disadvantage for any particular group.  This could mean that state provision becomes greatly reduced, something which would discourage  future prospective immigrants.

3. Romney as a candidate

There were numerous drawbacks to Romney as a candidate. He is a rich man who made his wealth in the now widely despised and hated financial industry. He is a leading member of a religion with cultish elements which troubles even mainstream Christian voters. He has a tin ear for what should not be said when you are courting the general public, most notably his claim (mentioned above) at a fund raising dinner that 47% of voters were never going to vote for him because they were dependent on taxpayer funded goodies. In an electoral race where personality counts for so much he comes across most of the time as wooden and incapable of engaging with voters. In truth, he was pretty poor as a campaigner and unimpressive as a public personality ( http://www.people-press.org/2012/11/13/lessons-from-the-2012-election/).

But there was more to his deficiencies than that. Romney also added radical policy shifts on subjects with a good deal of traction right across the US electorate . He moved  from being what is politely called a moderate Republican (translation closet liberal) on subjects such as immigration and gay marriage to a significantly less pc line. Many liberal commentators are now arguing that this made him unelectable because it alienated Hispanics, blacks, gays, the young and women. Equally  plausible reasons for Romney not benefitting from those policy shifts are either people not believing his change of heart was sincere or thinking that Romney was not being coherent and full hearted in presenting his new “hardline” views. Such behaviour probably lost him votes on both sides of the US political divide.

There was also a general air of diffidence about Romney, as though his heart was not wholly in the fight or even that he might be scared of the post of President. Interestingly, since the election media reports suggest that Romney was a very reluctant candidate:

“After failing to win the 2008 Republican nomination, Mr Romney told his family he would not run again and had to be persuaded to enter the 2012 White House race by his wife Ann and son Tagg.

“He wanted to be president less than anyone I’ve met in my life. He had no desire… to run,” Tagg Romney said. “If he could have found someone else to take his place… he would have been ecstatic to step aside.”

Mitt Romney “is a very private person who loves his family deeply and wants to be with them. He loves his country, but he doesn’t love the attention,” his son said. ‘ (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-politics/9764312/Mitt-Romney-didnt-want-to-run-for-president-son-claims.html).  If true, that will have been signalled to voters by the unconscious signals which humans cannot control such as body language and vocal traits.

In addition to benefitting from Romney’s considerable and numerous  weaknesses, Obama had in his favour the fact that he was the sitting president. Since 1945 only Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Bush senior in 1992 have failed to gain re-election. He also had the reduced but still significant boost from the fact that he was the first black president. Balanced against that Obama had presided over the most difficult US economic situation since the 1930s for four years, but as the recession started during the term of a Republican president and in the public mind, at least at the headline level, was created by bankers and their ilk who were generally Republican supporters, voters seem to have widely accepted that this was a mess not created by Obama. They may have blamed Obama for not ending the economic troubles, but they blamed the last Bush administration more. In these circumstances Romney’s past as an investment fund manager made him by proxy part of the cause of the present mess in the eyes of many voters.

Despite the balance of electoral college advantage lying heavily with Obama his win on the popular vote was not massive:

Obama 64,428,975 (50.80%)

Romney 60,227,548 ( 47.49%)

Total vote 126,832,750

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2012

It really was not an impressive win in terms of popular support. The split between the candidates in electoral college votes was vast 332 to 206, but many of the Obama state  wins were narrow ones.  If  approximately 850,000 Obama voters spread over the closely contested  states  had switched to  Romney he would have won.  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/liamhalligan/9770870/The-US-cliff-one-small-part-of-a-huge-debt-crisis.html)

There have also been numerous complaints about machine voting with claims that voting machines registered for Obama when Romney was selected, for example, Any form of machine voting  is difficult to check for faults, wilful or otherwise. Machine voting which relies on computers makes  meaningfully checks of flaws  or deliberately introduced biases into voting all but impossible.  There were also doubts raised by very high Obama voting and voter registration  in particular districts (http://www.wnd.com/2012/11/did-voter-fraud-swing-election/) . Whether  any of these complaints  are indicative of wilful or widespread fraud remains to be seen, but if widespread irregularities favouring Obama are demonstrated,  then future elections may be more closely scrutinised and the chance for fraud reduced. This could aid Republican candidates if voter fraud is more prevalent amongst Democrats than Republicans. In the 2012 elections this  appears to be the case,  because complaints by Democrats against Republicans alleging voting  irregularities favouring them were thin on the ground going on non-existent.  This might be explained by the fact that Obama won, but it would be a natural response to claims of bias towards Obama for Democrats to cite cases of machines favouring Romney or exceptionally high voter registrations or votes for Romney.

Taking the broad picture, there  are no compelling reasons to believe that the groups which failed to provide sufficient  support for Romney would behave in the same way towards a future Republican presidential candidate in the next fifteen to twenty years, especially one faced with a Democratic candidate who was not black.

4. The demographics

It might be thought from the liberal media excitement that whites are on the brink of becoming a  minority group in the USA. In fact they still form the large majority of the population.

The 2010 US census arrived at a figure of 308.7 million, an increase of 27.3 million people since the 2000 census ( Table 1 http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf – all references to 2010 census statistics come from this PDF file) . This represented an increase of 9.7% over ten years. The non-Hispanic white population increased numerically from 194.6 million to 196.8 in those years (63.7% of the population). Moreover, whites in the USA also include large numbers of Hispanics, this being a classification based on ethnicity not race. The census counted 50.5 million Hispanics of which 26,735,713 are white (Table 2) . This raised the white component of the population in 2010 to 223,553,265 or 72.4% of the entire US population (Table 1)).

It is true that white Hispanics may have a general group solidarity with Hispanics of a different race or a mixture of races, but as pointed out previously, with the passing of the generations the descendants of immigrants become less and less engaged with the ancestral homeland. That is particularly so where there is neither racial difference from the dominant population in a territory or a wilful attempt to stand aside from a dominant culture such as that made by orthodox Jews.

The other fly in the demographic ointment for liberals is the number of people qualified to vote who did not vote. The latest (2011) US census estimate of the total US population is 311,591,917. (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html). Those under 18 constitute 23.7% of the population or approximately 72 million people. Not all of those will be US citizens but the vast majority will be. It would be reasonable to assume the potential voter population is at worst around 225 million. At the presidential election just past on 126 million voted. That means 100 million-odd white votes are presently up for grabs.

As the US becomes more and more polarised along ethnic and racial lines, the likelihood is that voting will increase. But an increase in voting will not necessarily  be uniform. While they are the majority, whites can vote for white favouring candidates and policies without any conflict of interests for a party or candidate offering pro-white policies can gain election simply by appealing successfully to enough white voters. The same is not true of the various minority populations. They will all be competing for political attention with different demands and needs. No single party or candidate is going to be able to satisfy these disparate claims. Already there is friction between blacks (the largest racial minority) and Hispanics (the largest ethnic minority) over the spoils of positive discrimination, something which is likely to intensify if the Hispanic population continues to swell and Asians (admittedly a very mixed group) increase as predicted.

The other thing in favour of the white population is that even on the most aggressive demographic predictions of the point at which Non-Hispanic whites are in the minority allows for at least a another generation to pass before it occurs and quite possibly not until 2050. In addition, there is the possibility previously mentioned of white Hispanics simply becoming Americans in a generation or two. That would delay the point of white minority status even further. All of this means that there is plenty of time for both the Republican Party and whites generally to act to change the demographic future by voting for candidates and parties which will control immigration and cease to pander to ethnic and racial minorities.

But even if the white population (whether defined as non-Hispanic whites or whites including white Hispanics) becomes a minority it would remain by far the largest minority for a considerable time. That could bring into play the a coalition of whites and one or two smaller partners to create a white dominated political grouping which excluded the largest of the non-white minorities. That would leave the white population in a position of considerable power.

5. A programme to maintain the white majority

In principle any party  in the USA, whether existing or new, could adopt the programme,  but it is  unrealistic to expect a new party to arise which can challenge the duopoly of Democrats and Republican. As the  Democrats are wedded, at least for the foreseeable future, to the politically correct ideology, the only real option for such change in the USA lies with the Republicans for the foreseeable future.

The logical and natural thing for the Republican Party to do  is  what neither they nor any other mainstream party in the developed world has done is to play the racial/ethnic political game by unambiguously appealing to whites in the USA. To be effective the political platform would have to be adopted by Republican candidates across the political board not merely by presidential candidates.  That would go against the US party tradition which is much looser than it is in many European countries, especially the UK.  Perhaps the most likely way that such Republican policy uniformity could arise is for it to be adopted first at state level and then after it is shown to be successful to gradually morph into a national policy. A  movement such as the Tea Party has been on taxation and spending, could  also prove to be a potent lever to shift  party policy on race and immigration at the national level.

At the core of this appeal to the white majority must be a promise of an end to mass immigration of those who cannot be assimilated into the American mainstream to prevent the demographic advantage of the white majority being further seriously eroded. This promise must be accompanied with a credible plan to prevent further mass immigration of the unassimilatable . That would require both practical measures such as the building and ample manning of a truly formidable barrier along the entire length of the Mexico/US border, the strengthening of coastal surveillance and the proper policing small airfields. In addition a change in the federal immigration policy to allow immigration to revert to something similar to what it was before the passing of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abolished the country of origin quotas established by the Immigration Act of 1924. This had limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States in 1890. That would favour white immigrants.  None of that would require a constitutional amendment . It would be useful if the constitution could be amended to remove automatic US citizenship from those born of non-citizens on US territory.  However, constitutional amendments are notoriously difficult to make.

There is also the question of the millions of illegal immigrants already in the USA. The claim that they could not possibly be forcibly removed because of the numbers is not a self-evident truth. In 1954 Operation Wetback (http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0706/p09s01-coop.html) saw more than 1 million Latin Americans (mainly Mexicans) leave the USA either as a result of arrest and forced deportation or by illegal immigrants choosing to leave for fear of being arrested. This was achieved by a border force of little more than 1,000. Whether the expulsion of millions today would be the best course of action – it could be plausibly argued (although not  by me) that it would be smarter to accept those who are already in the country and concentrate on future immigration, thus giving those already here some incentive to accept the new regime without protest – but it is manifestly not impossible to expel very large numbers of people when there is the political will and the place to where they are being deported shares a border with the expelling country. A large-scale expulsion of illegal immigrants from the USA would of itself signal more than any other act the Federal Government could take to the white population that at last a party was willing to act on their behalf.

Other inducements for whites to vote for a party which promised to defend their immediate and long term interests would be a pledge to make illegal all forms of “positive” discrimination, overt or covert, and the provision of any form of taxpayer funded state aid at every level from the federal downwards , whether that be welfare , healthcare or education , to illegal immigrants .  None of that would be unconstitutional because such changes would not mean that anyone would be treated less favourably than any other. Indeed, it would return to the status quo of the constitution under which all citizens are equal in terms of the civic rights at least.

A change in the language used by the GOP when dealing with race and ethnic issues would also be necessary.  Trying to fit non-pc ideas into a pc framework or speaking the language of political correctness one moment and putting forward non-pc ideas at another and being awkward whenever challenged  about views which are not considered entirely pc creates uncertainty in the white voter’s mind. Nor can such equivocation inspire any white American to believe that at last there are politicians   willing to speak up for white American (one might say American) interests and needs.   To re-capture the trust of white Americans Republican politicians must state unambiguously that both they and their party are jettisoning political correctness, especially that part of political correctness which relates to the suppression of white America’s interests and the legal privileging of ethnic and racial minorities.  Not only must they make clear that political correctness is being discarded not because it is outmoded or impractical,  but  from a belief that it is a totalitarian creed whose central tenet of non-discrimination affects every aspect of life and whose imposition of necessity requires the suppression of any other view.   Republicans  should constantly reinforce the absolute necessity for free expression in a democracy and the value of the First Amendment.

Such an approach does not mean turning back the clock forty years or so and simply saying this is what should be done or that observed as a cultural practice.  The appeal should be to what humans understand without being told: that men and women have different priorities, that the idea of same sex marriage is wrong because it  both does violence to language and permits those with political power to indulge in the sinister practice of deciding the meaning of words and,  most importantly,  a recognition of the  tribal nature of human beings.  Republicans should base their appeal on freedom and personal choice  and contrast this with the demands made by political correctness  which says only the politically correct view is to be permitted.  Above all,  they must make clear that the values  and general culture of the founding and ancestral  white population of the USA  are precious things which the white population have both the right and ability to defend.  They should invite the ethnic  and racial minorities already in the USA to embrace  those  values and culture, to become not hyphenated Americans but simply Americans.  A law, or even better a constitutional amendment,  stating that English was the national language of the USA and genuine fluency in it a  requirement for American citizenship would be a good start to achieving this.  Whether the ethnic and racial minorities would be able or willing to embrace the native values and culture of the US is debatable, but the offer itself would assuage white doubts about the programme because it would be seen as a form of inclusion.

The programme I have sketched would have great appeal to the white American population which in the main does not believe in the politically correct  agenda . White Americans pay  lip service to the creed or stay silent about their dislike and resentment  of its enforcement  for fear of losing jobs, being denied jobs, suffering  socially ostracism (because  those held up as politically incorrect become objects of fear to others), attracting civil suits for damages  or even facing the force of the criminal law.  Once mainstream politicians have  the courage to  attack political correctness  regularly and unashamedly in an intelligent manner,  some of the mainstream media at least will come on board and the ordinary white American will lose their fear and their  long pent-up resentment  at what has been done to their country over the past fifty years will  be released as water from a breaking dam.

The adoption of such a platform by the GOP would put the Democratic Party in a very difficult position. When first put forward it would force Democrats to make a very difficult decision: would they unashamedly go after the ethnic minority vote by promising ever more privileges to them  to counter the GOP’s appeal to the white majority?  If Democrats did decide to do this they would alienate some, perhaps many,  of the white Democrat voters because they would have to say in effect , look ethnic and racial minorities, vote for us because the Republicans are not going to pander to you but we shall continue to do so and offer you even more.   Even if  the Democrats  simply  remained  clutching   their present  policies  which are attractive to  ethnic and racial minorities,  they would also be likely to lose substantial numbers of white voters because they would have nothing new to offer white voters to counteract the white enticing programme of the Republicans.

If the Democrats lost substantial ground amongst white Americans they would almost certainly start to shift their own policies away from political correctness and towards the new programme of the Republicans.  That would  help to move the political debate and language  away from political correctness towards reality.

6. The rest of the West

What applies to the USA holds true for the rest of the white developed world. The programme I suggest for the Republican Party (or any other US party in principle) applies with equal force to any other state with a largely homogeneous native white population which has been diluted by and fractured by mass immigration. In many such states the task will be politically easier than it is in the USA because, unlike the USA , their political systems are based on elections which do not have the complication of an electoral college. They may elect an executive president by a simple one round of voting popular vote or some form of the popular vote mediated by several rounds of voting or multiple choice voting. Alternatively there will be a parliamentary system such as the UK’s elected by first-past-the post or some form of proportional representation  with the executive within the legislature.

The other advantages many First World countries have over the USA are two: their parties are more coherent and unified in ideology and organisation than those of the USA and they are much smaller countries, a fact that makes it much easier to create a party with the unified programme that is required.

In principle, the UK would be best placed amongst larger First World countries to create such a party and have its programme followed through. This is because the UK has no written constitution; no superior constitutional law (any law passed by Parliament has the same status and can be repealed by a simple Act of Parliament); no executive head of state; a first-past-the-post electoral system for the main Parliamentary chamber (the House of Commons ) and an executive drawn, with one or two exceptions, from that  House of Commons. It is true that the UK is presently enmeshed in the EU and various other treaties and conventions such as the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Convention on Refugees, but these could all be abrogated and repudiated by a simple Act of Parliament.

The main barrier to political change resulting in the protection of the interests of the white native majorities in the USA, the UK and elsewhere is informal, a matter of political ideology and custom. If the political will exists, the change can be effected.

7. Another “End of History”

Where do the  predictions made by white liberals about the USA’s political future based on demographic projections and extrapolations from voting patterns over a few elections come from? Such ideas have a long history. The last time something similar hit the headlines was after the publication of  Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 article The end of history? This, readers will remember, maintained that liberal internationalism was the pinnacle of human social development and that the long march of human social evolution had come to a halt (http://www.kropfpolisci.com/exceptionalism.fukuyama.pdf). Wittingly or not, the present outpouring of liberal triumphalist glee is an offshoot of the Fukuyamian world view which itself was in the line of historicist claims that history was not simply a series of random events but a process which had some ultimate end, willed either by God or an ineluctable consequence of cause and effect.

Fukuyama did not foresee a cessation of strife in the near future. Rather, he engaged in something altogether more ambitious and arrogant. He worked from the premise that liberal democracy was an inevitable consequence of the evolution of human social organisation. A few quotes will give a flavour of Fukuyama’s mentality to demonstrate exactly how wrong-headed he was:

“ The triumph of the West, of the Western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism…”

“What we may be witnessing in not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. This is not to say that there will no longer be events to fill the pages of Foreign Affairs’s yearly summaries of international relations, for the victory of liberalism has occurred primarily in the realm of ideas or consciousness and is as yet incomplete in the real or material world. But there are powerful reasons for believing that it is the ideal that will govern the material world in the long run. To understand how this is so, we must first consider some theoretical issues concerning the nature of historical change.”

“…at the end of history it is not necessary that all societies become successful liberal societies, merely that they end their ideological pretensions of representing different and higher forms of human society.”

“But it is not clear that nationalism rpresents an irreconcilable contradiction in the heart of liberalism. In the first place, nationalism is not one single phenomenon but several, ranging from mild cultural nostalgia to the highly organized and elaborately articulated doctrine of National Socialism. Only systematic nationalisms of the latter sort can qualify as a formal ideology on the level of liberalism or communism. The vast majority of the world’s nationalist movements do not have a political program beyond the negative desire of independence from some other group or people, and do not offer anything like a comprehensive agenda for socio-economic organization. As such, they are compatible with doctrines and ideologies that do offer such agendas. While they may constitute a source of conflict for liberal societies, this conflict does not arise from liberalism itself so much as from the fact that the liberalism in question is incomplete. Certainly a great deal of the world’s ethnic and nationalist tension can be explained in terms of peoples who are forced to live in unrepresentative political systems that they have not chosen…”

“The automatic assumption that Russia shorn of its expansionist communist ideology should pick up where the czars left off just prior to the Bolshevik Revolution is therefore a curious one. It assumes that the evolution of human consciousness has stood still in the meantime, and that the Soviets, while picking up currently fashionable ideas in the realm of economics, will return to foreign policy views a century out of date in the rest of Europe.”

“The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one’s life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands. In the post-historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy, just the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history. I can feel in myself, and see in others around me, a powerful nostalgia for the time when history existed. Such nostalgia, in fact, will continue to fuel competition and conflict even in the post-historical world for some time to come. Even though I recognize its inevitability, I have the most ambivalent feelings for the civilization that has been created in Europe since 1945, with its north Atlantic and Asian offshoots. Perhaps this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again.”

Immediately they were published Fukuyama’s ideas struck me as pathologically naïve . He was peddling the idea of predestined human social and intellectual evolution favoured in their different ways by Hegel and Marx (who famously claimed to have turned Hegel on his head by substituting the material and the empirically verifiable for Hegel’s idealist philosophy of the whole, with the clash and evolution of ideas as the driving force of history for history as the product of causal relations and class conflict, not dialectical conflict between ideas. Hegel’s ideology is at best incomplete because he ignores events which have no human agency and has no means of verification of when the end (the realisation of the whole through the dialectic) is ultimately achieved and logically inconsistent in his political theory which lauds the nation state because if the most perfect reality is the whole, then world government not the nation state is closer to reality (and hence closer to perfection) than the nation state. Marx, unlike Hegel, produced a theory which could be tested by events and has been found wholly wanting by the historical story told over the past two centuries.

That Fukuyama , unlike Marx and Hegel, felt a quiet dismay at the likely consequences of his analysis of social evolution is neither here nor there in terms of the mentality he peddled. It may be a soulless unexciting world he sees unfolding inexorably , but the message is the same as earlier progenitors of what might be called mechanical sociology envisaged: this is how it is going to be in the long run and there is nothing anyone can do to prevent it. Add in Fukuyama’s allowance that eventually “history” may begin again and there is a clear parallel in the idea of the physical universe moving towards a state of absolute entropy before perhaps rewinding to begin the process of expansion all over again. It is chocolate box sociology/philosophy with no need for the individual to search further for any explanation of what needs to be done or what might be done for the best. All the human race has to do is lie back and accept whatever the  social laws of motion dictate.

But although Fukuyama was dismayed at the future, that is not true of the legionaries of the one-world ideal where there are no nations, no nation states, no borders and ultimately no distinction between people regardless of race or ethnicity. That idea, as unexciting as it may be to Fukuyama, has a religious intensity for true one-worlders. That is for several reasons. First, it is the working towards a goal, a goal moreover which is assured and promises a world which, for the one-worlder, will be perfect (or at least greatly superior to what now exists) when it is reached. That has the intensely exciting and liberating effect of absolving the true believers from responsibility for the here and now. It also fosters the idea that anything which is done now is legitimate regardless of its moral consequences in much the same way that Marxists decried “bourgeois morality”, that is morality, and permitted any atrocity provided it was part of the historical motor which drove society to its final and perfect end. Moreover, even if the one-worlders believe that is the inevitable end of human society they may also believe, as Marxists do, that despite the inevitability of the final end the speed at which it arrives may be hastened by conscious action on the part of its adherents. They could even imagine that their actions and words are part of the inexorable movement of history and they can do no other than they do. It is worth noting the similarities between Marxism and the one-worlders, because the adherents of the latter are the type of people who thirty years ago would have been Marxists.

8. The danger of ideologies

The dangers of ideologies such as those of Hegel, Marx and Fukuyama lies not in how close an approximation to reality they are. It  would not have mattered what they had predicted because all of historical experience shows that it is inherently impossible to predict even the broad march of human history let alone its specific organisational detail. That this is so should surprise no one. All any person has to do to realise that prediction is a mug’s game is to look at their own lives and they will see how often, no matter how intelligent and erudite they may be, that they can no more reliably predict what will happen to them over the course of their own lives than they could regularly predict winning horses or the results of the lottery.

Anyone who allows themselves to become the prisoner of an ideology whether sacred or profane is dangerous. That is because no ideology is a complete description of the world and the attempt to accommodate an ideology to reality must result in fantasy, a fantasy which the ideologue insists on forcing upon others if he has the power to do so. The most dangerous ideologies are those which say there is an definite and inescapable end which cannot be altered by human agency.

But there is one  difference of great significance between the ideology of Hegel and Marx or the Fukuyaman belief that liberal democracy is the sociological end game and the claims being put forward by liberals about the Republican Party and more broadly about political correctness. There is an aspect of the claim that if the Republican Party (or any other party in other advanced white a white majority countries) does not embrace political correctness uncritically and unambiguously it is heading for extinction because of demographic change   which distinguishes it from predictions such as those of Marx, Hegel and Fukuyama.   The difference is that there is a mechanism already in existence  created by human agency which patently can achieve at least part of the prediction. The mechanism is mass immigration. If there is no party in a country which will take action against further mass immigration of those who will not or cannot integrate then the numerical dominance of the majority native population will be steadily eroded until it becomes a minority or even a small majority of the population. (The latter  is a very real danger in a small country such as Norway).  The prevention of future mass immigration is an essential part of the part of the programme I have outlined.

The liberal voices calling for the Republicans to “wake up and smell the ethnic coffee” and get with the multiculturalist project are siren voices. They are asking whites in the US to commit political suicide by allowing ethnic and racial victimhood to become the driving force of their party as well as that of Democrats. That would remove any chance of an effective stand against mass immigration. The logic of USA ethnic and racial change tells the Republicans to use the still white majority to safeguard their position as soon as possible by stemming further mass immigration. Ethnic and racial  politics may be toxic, but if that is what all the other players in the field are peddling except you, then you have to play the same game as a matter of individual and national self-preservation.

Will Republicans seize the day and embrace their only rational way forward, to become the standard bearer for white America?   It is a tremendous psychological hill  for them to climb  because of the  past fifty years of every growing political correctness and sectional politics which have pushed the interests of the white majority not simply to the back of the room but under the carpet.  Left to their own devices Republican politicians might well accept the fate laid upon them by white liberals and their ethnic minority auxiliaries. But they may well not be left to their own devices because hard economic times are making white Americans angrier and angrier at the way they have been betrayed by their elite.

Following Obama’s re-election there have been petitions gathering substantial numbers of signatures in many US states arguing for the State’s secession from the USA. (http://rt.com/usa/news/petition-white-house-secede-688/). These are just expressions of exasperation by white Americans at present , but they are indicative of a growing sense among whites that there is no way to alter matters  within the Union.   If  mainstream American politicians remain divorced from the wishes of the  still white majority demands for secession may become more than an expression of exasperation.

It is not inconceivable that the USA could fracture if mass immigration, especially from Latin America,  is allowed to continue . If that happens territory is what counts.   The most striking thing about the 2012 US Presidential Election map is this, a large  majority of physical territory voted Republican. In the end control of physical territory, whether through the overt exercise of power or the passive fact of being the dominant population by numbers in the territory, is the most important fact about any state. Keep a grip on that fact.

Opt out of opting in or out

Robert Henderson

The government has refused to make an automatic filter for pornography a legal requirement for ISPs with those wishing to access it having to opt out of the filters. They have not done this out of any concern for freedom of expression but  because the government has

“…now decided that this type of “opt-in” system “can create a false sense of security” because it does not screen out all harmful content.

There were also fears it could have “over-blocked” useful websites giving children access to “helpful information on sexual health or sexual identity”. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/9746421/David-Cameron-rejects-automatic-block-on-porn-to-protect-children.html). 

But,  as with so many political issues these days, having said no to  legislation the government attempts to achieve the same ends  with a mixture of non-statutory demands backed by threats of legislation if the ISPs do not do what the government wants , viz:

 “However, the Government’s consultation response yesterday said it would instead rely on the voluntary co-operation of internet companies to strengthen controls on pornography.

It will now urge the companies to “actively encourage parents, whether they are new or existing customers, to switch on parental controls”. All users should be asked whether they have got children and parents would be guided through a process of installing anti-pornography filters.

Ministers will also ask the big internet service providers to make sure the person setting up controls is over 18.

Companies could face legislation in future if the Government feels they are not making enough of an effort to shield children from adult material. (Ibid)

If implemented, those non-statutory requests to ISPs could result in a database containing the opt in details of users which would have much the same effect and dangers as one arising from a statutory  requirement on ISPs.  There is also  a good  chance that whatever the ISPs do it will become a legal requirement in the foreseeable future because the children’s lobby is a powerful one.

What are the dangers of having computer users opt in for pornography?  The same general reasons why opting in or out of anything  desired by the government is dangerous. Once someone has to opt in or out of something they become part of an identifiable group against whom both state and private agencies may act .  Take one of the most frequently advocated opting in or out issues,   that of organ donation. It might seem harmless at first glance,  but you can bet your life that the information will eventually  be used to disadvantage those who opted out, for example, by refusing them medical treatment which was available to those who opted in (this could include non-transplant treatment) or  through the  releasing of  the information to insurers who might decide to charge more to someone on the register because those not on it  were deemed  to have a stronger sense of self-preservation.

In the case of pornography there are also two specific dangers.  First, there is no objective test for what is or is not pornography. Anything might be classified as such on a state whim. Think back to when cameras had film to be developed and recall all the cases of parents being accused of child abuse because they had taken photos of their young children in the bath, on the beach and so on.   Second, those who opted in would be identifiable. That could easily lead to such information becoming part of a CRB  check  which could disqualify  the person involved  from a large and  growing number of jobs or  render a person liable to police investigation if it is deemed that looking at pornography is indicative of a propensity towards committing sexual crimes.  Parents who opted in could find themselves scrutinised by the social services. Those wishing to adopt or foster  would almost certainly be deemed unsuitable if they opted in. The information  could also be used to blackmail people or ruin their careers.

All of those things and more could happen even if a computer user never looked at pornography but   had simply opted in because the filters were excluding sites which no rational person could consider pornographic.   Anyone with experience of  computers where filters are in operation will know how random they can be in what they both exclude and allow through.  It is also worth remembering that the evidence that an opt in had been activated would probably be permanently held by ISPs or on some other database.  Someone might have opted in when they were twenty but not opted in since they were 25 and still find it counting against them when they were 50.

Beyond pornography,  the  it could also be the thin end of the wedge for other  subjects on the Web to be made subject to opting in or out.  The most likely candidate today would be any website deemed to be  carrying “hate crime” material (anything non-pc would qualify) or even simply deemed  right-wing  by the oh so  politically correct British establishment  might require opting in.  But anything political could qualify.  Let the web be filtered for one thing of which the state disapproves and nothing is beyond such surveillance.

Permitting state ordered filtering of material on the web would be another stage in the ever tightening constriction exercised by the British state through the increasingly frequent criminal prosecution of those deemed to be resisting the totalitarian ideology that is political correctness (think of the cases which are almost daily reported in the mainstream media of someone arrested for alleged  racial or  homophobic  “hate speech/writing”).  Such control of the Web  needs to be resisted now before it becomes the norm.

Gay Marriage, political correctness and Newspeak

Robert Henderson

The commonly made objections to Gay Marriage are  (a) marriage is traditionally between a man and a woman, a fact underpinned for  many opponents by religious beliefs that only a man and a woman can be  married,  (b)  claims that  expansion of the definition of marriage to include same sex relationships will  undermine the family  and  (c) such a novel status creates a legal anomaly whereby homosexual relationships  become in some areas privileged over  close non-sexual relationships between people of the same sex, for example, two elderly spinster sisters  living together.

The problem with these objections is that although they have a considerable moral traction to the supporters of marriage as being between a man and woman ,  they are not intellectually conclusive.  Supporters of gay marriage can point to the  differences in what counts as marriage in different times and places – everything from pristine monogamy to polygamy and polyandry.  Religious justifications for opposition will cut no ice with those of no religion or  those of a different religion or strand of a religion. In addition  civil partnerships  already create much the  same legal as situation as gay marriage would do.  Unless the opponents of gay marriage also oppose civil partnerships,  and many do not,  they do not have much of a case if they wish to base their argument on the damage to the institution of  marriage deriving from the formal  legal equality gay marriage would bring. (http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/england/relationships_e/relationships_living_together_marriage_and_civil_partnership_e/civil_partnerships_and_living_together___legal_differences.htm).

But opponents of gay marriage need not despair. There is an objection which is far more powerful and  fireproofed against finessing and abuse.   It can appeal to people of  widely differing views because it is not attached to any of the direct arguments for and against gay marriage. It is also beautifully simple: in a free society language should evolve naturally through common usage.  If governments are allowed to change the meaning of words by redefining them in law  we are  in the realm of 1984 and Newspeak .

The purpose of Newspeak was beautifully simple. It was to make whatever thoughts were deemed undesirable by the party impossible to formulate. This was done most radically by removing words from the vocabulary.  For example, negative words such as bad and  poor were not available in Newspeak. To say something was bad or poor the Newspeak user had to say ungood which could be heightened to plusungood or doubleplusungood.  It was still possible to signify that something was bad or poor in Newspeak, but it could only be done using words which were much less emotionally potent because they were both new and had echoes of the positive word good.  (Orwell wrote an appendix to 1984 which developed the idea of Newspeak considerably to show how dangerous control of language can be.).

Newspeak also altered the meaning of words by simply  redefining them. Most famously the Party Slogans in 1984 are:

War is peace

Freedom is slavery

Ignorance is strength

That is what the proponents of gay marriage are doing. In England  marriage  has always  meant one man and one woman.     To alter the word to mean any sexual combination is to deny  its usage in England from time immemorial. Moreover, whatever the variations on marriage or sexual cohabitation that have existed and may exist today in other parts of the world, one thing is certain: marriage has everywhere been a heterosexual relationship. A more radical change in the meaning of a word  it is difficult to imagine.

If  gay marriage does pass into law it will  become unreservedly  illegal for any corporation or individual offering a product or service to treat a homosexual marriage differently from  that between two heterosexuals.   It is also probable in the increasingly authoritarian imposition of political correctness generally that a refusal to recognise relationships between two people of the same sex as a marriage  will be treated as a hate crime.

A re-definition of marriage also  leads to other related words –  adultery, divorce, consummation (of marriage)  - being  of necessity redefined  so that behaviours and events which now only concern heterosexual relationships also concern relationships between those of the same gender.  In addition, it will mean the removal of the terms mother and father from  many laws and legal documents.

Granting the right of marriage to homosexuals is  taking away something from  heterosexuals  not simply giving something to homosexuals. That something is  the institution of marriage being their  sole possession, of being something special to them.  Nors would there be true equality between homosexual and heterosexual marriages because  there can be no possibility of children in the case of the former. It is true that some marriages between men and women are childless,  but the possibility is there  and in the overwhelming majority of cases  also the intent to have children.  In addition, gay marriage would raise other awkward questions such as the question of  the prohibition against  siblings  marrying. As there would be no question of children the banning of  sibling marriage – either two brothers or two sisters  marrying – would have little force on rational grounds .

The drive for gay marriage is part of the general  plan of the politically correct to force their ideas onto society as a whole.   This  requires people to  deny reality and accept that which is abnormal as  normal.  Objectively homosexuality is abnormal because most do not practice it.  Objectively, men and women fundamentally differ because their biology and biological functions  are  different .   Objectively discrimination generally is not an evil but a necessary part of existence,  for all animals including homo sapiens because to make a choice is to discriminate. Objectively  discrimination on the grounds of race and ethnicity exists universally  and to suggest that this is the result of  social conditioning arising in every society across the world stretches credulity  far beyond breaking point.

A fundamental tool in enforcing  such ideas is the redefining of words by the exercise of power.  The push for gay marriage is simply a symptom of   something much more sinister: an  attempt to change not only the outward appearance of society radically but to persuade people to  believe that the wholesale calling of black white involved in political correctness is reality itself or failing that to come to believe that  denying the maxims of the creed is dangerous.  It is the stuff of Year Zero, a mentality that can lead to any abomination. .

The “wrong” sort of indoctrination (for the left)

Robert Henderson

An unnamed (because they did not want the children identified) Rotherham couple experienced in fostering  have had three of their charges peremptorily  removed by Rotherham social services (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/9700001/Foster-parents-stigmatised-and-slandered-for-being-members-of-Ukip.html). The reason? The couple are members of  the United Kingdom Independence Party  (UKIP) which opposes  further wholesale immigration including that from the EU and multiculturalism.  These policies were  deemed racist by Rotherham social services:

‘They [the fosterers] were told that the local safeguarding children team had received an anonymous tip-off that they were members of Ukip.

The wife recalled: “I was dumbfounded. Then my question to both of them was, ‘What has Ukip got to do with having the children removed?’

“Then one of them said, ‘Well, Ukip have got racist policies’. The implication was that we were racist. [The social worker] said Ukip does not like European people and wants them all out of the country to be returned to their own countries.’

The fact of UKIP membership was enough to damn the foster parents as unsuitable to raise three East European origin children because according to  Joyce Thacker, the council’s Director of Children and Young People’s Services, the UKIP couple could not meet the children’s  ”cultural and ethnic needs”.  Despite the fact that the UKIP couple had been exemplary foster parents  for a number of years. After being removed from the UKIP foster parents the children were split even though they are siblings (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9704964/Ukip-fostering-row-children-were-split-up-when-removed.html). The claim  of meeting the children’s “cultural and ethnic needs”  is made even more absurd by the fact that the UKIP couple were foster parents trusted to take in children in an emergency,  a fostering status which often resulted in the  foster periods being short.

Since the story about the Rotherham foster parents broke a UKIP candidate has come forward to say that she was not allowed to be a volunteer with the children’s charity Barnardos because of her UKIP connections:

A row over two UKIP members having their foster children removed took a new twist last night when another woman claimed she had been barred from looking after children because she was a party candidate.

Nigel Farage, UKIP leader, condemned ‘another appalling case of discrimination’ after former district nurse Anne Murgatroyd said she had been prevented from volunteering as a mentor for young adults by leading children’s charity Barnardo’s….

Responding to a Mail on Sunday reporter, she wrote: ‘I’d almost gone through their process and been accepted when I told them I’d be standing for UKIP in locals . . . They checked with managers, discussed it, couldn’t accept me due to issue of multi-culturalism.

‘Their rationale was that because UKIP opposes multi-culturalism it would not be appropriate for me to mentor young people coming out of the care system. My argument was that, yes, I do oppose forced marriage and female genital mutilation and family killings but that does not make me unsuitable to befriend young people.’ (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2238037/UKIP-leader-fury-member-banned-Barnardos-caring-children.html#ixzz2DDOYxVs1).

These two cases suggest that within the social work world, whether state funded or charitable, UKIP have been placed on some sort of black list. This is positively sinister because once agents of the state, whether directly employed or subcontracted labour in organisations such as charities, are allowed to make political judgements in their work anything potentially goes,  including the imposition of blanket bans on those belonging to parties deemed not to be within the ideological Pale of the public servant or organisation.

What Rotherham Social Services and Barnardos are both saying  in effect is that only those signing up to an uncritical political correctness can be considered for participation in childcare socialwork.  However, that is not entirely correct because,   as we shall see,   UKIP’s policies on immigration and multiculturalism are not radically different from those of  the Conservative  Party; neither are they  a million miles from those of Labour.  To the best of my knowledge there is no example of a member of the Conservative or Labour Parties  being denied participation because of their attitudes towards immigration and multiculturalism.  The implication of this is that UKIP is seen as a fringe party with limited power which  can be excluded with few consequences , while the power, influence and money at the disposal of the major  parties makes them too hot to challenge – it is also worth remembering that the funding for social services and much of the funding for major charities comes from the taxpayer so those in socialwork have a vested interest in keeping mum about the parties which do or potentially will allocate the taxpayers’ money.

The double standards are further seen in the complaint of the politically correct that UKIP members would indoctrinate the children with UKIP beliefs. But these people are more than happy to tolerate the indoctrination of children with their own views. There are no calls to  prevent the politically correct, purveyors of multiculturalism, Marxists and  Internationalists from adopting and fostering.  The politically correct deem these to be the “right” kind of indoctrination.

What UKIP, the Conservatives, Labour and the BNP say about immigration and multiculturalism

This is UKIP’s immigration policy including its position on multiculturalism:

• End mass, uncontrolled immigration. UKIP calls for an immediate five-year freeze on immigration for permanent settlement. We aspire to ensure that any future immigration does not exceed 50,000 people p.a.

• Regain control of UK borders. This can only be done by leaving the European Union. Entry for work will be on a time-limited work permit only. Entry for non-work related purposes (e.g. holiday or study) will be on a temporary visa. Overstaying will be a criminal offence

• Ensure all EU citizens who came to Britain after 1 January 2004 are treated in the same way as citizens from other countries (unless entitled to ‘Permanent Leave to Remain’). Non- UK citizens travelling to or from the UK will have their entry and exit recorded. To enforce this, the number of UK Borders Agency staff engaged in controlling immigration will be tripled to 30,000

• Ensure that after the five-year freeze, any future immigration for permanent settlement will be on a strictly controlled, points-based system similar to Australia, Canada and New Zealand

• Return people found to be living illegally in the UK to their country of origin. There can be no question of an amnesty for illegal immigrants. Such amnesties merely encourage further illegal immigration

• Require those living in the UK under ‘Permanent Leave to Remain’ to abide by a legally binding ‘Undertaking of Residence’ ensuring they respect our laws or face deportation. Such citizens will not be eligible for benefits. People applying for British citizenship will have to have completed a period of not less then five years as a resident on ‘Permanent Leave to Remain’. New citizens should pass a citizenship test and sign a ‘Declaration of British Citizenship’ promising to uphold Britain’s democratic and tolerant way of life

• Enforce the existing terms of the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees until Britain replaces it with an Asylum Act. To avoid disappearances, asylum seekers will be held in secure and

humane centres until applications are processed, with limited right to appeal. Those seeking asylum must do so in the first ‘designated safe country’ they enter. Existing asylum seekers who have had their application refused will be required to leave the country, along with any dependants. We oppose any amnesties for failed asylum seekers or illegal immigrants.

• Require all travellers to the UK to obtain a visa from a British Embassy or High Commission, except where visa waivers have been agreed with other countries. All non-work permit visa entrants to the UK will be required to take out adequate health insurance (except where reciprocal arrangements exist). Those without insurance will be refused entry. Certain visas, such as student visas, will require face-to-face interviews, and UKIP will crack down on bogus educational establishments

• Repeal the 1998 Human Rights Act and withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. In future British courts will not be allowed to appeal to any international treaty or convention that overrides or sets aside the provisions of any statue passed by the UK Parliament

• Reintroduce The ‘Primary Purpose Rule’  (abolished by the Labour Government),  whereby those marrying or seeking to marry a British citizen will have to convince the admitting officer that marriage, not residence, is their primary purpose in seeking to enter the UK

• End the active promotion of the doctrine of multiculturalism by local and national government and all publicly funded bodies

• Ensure British benefits are only available to UK citizens or those who have lived here for at least five years. Currently, British benefits can be claimed by EU citizens in their arrival year (http://www.ukip.org/content/ukip-policies/1499-immigration-ukip-policy).

Most of those policies are either formal Conservative policy or have considerable traction within the Parliamentary party.  In the case of multiculturalism David Cameron since becoming Prime Minister has repudiated it for its fracturing effect on society(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12371994 State multiculturalism has failed).  Here is the official  Conservative Party policy on immigration:

 IMMIGRATION

We are restoring order to our immigration system to bring annual net migration down to the tens of thousands – rather than the hundreds of thousands we saw under Labour – by the end of this Parliament. We have capped economic migration, reformed the student visa system, and we’re changing the family visa rules. We have made reforms at our borders, to ensure they are safe and secure.

The bigger picture

• Our annual limit on non-EU economic migration will not only help reduce immigration to sustainable levels but will protect those businesses and institutions that are vital to our economy. The new system was designed in consultation with business. Employers should look first to people who are out of work and who are already in this country.

• A properly controlled and regulated student visa system is a crucial component of our policy to reduce and control net migration. That is why we have radically reformed student visas to weed out abuse and tackle bogus colleges. And our reforms are starting to take effect: in the year to June 2012, there was a thirty per cent decrease in the number of student visas issued compared to the year to June 2011.

• We welcome those who wish to make a life in the UK with their family, work hard and make a contribution but a family life must not be established here at the taxpayer’s expense. To play a full part in British life, family migrants must be able to integrate – that means they must speak our language and pay their way. This is fair to applicants, but also fair to the public.

• The Government’s priority is the security of the UK border. The right checks need to be carried out to control immigration, protect against terrorism and tackle crime. We are maintaining thorough border checks. And despite those robust checks, the vast majority of passengers pass through immigration control quickly. http://www.conservatives.com/Policy/Where_we_stand/Immigration.aspx

The Labour Party do not have an up to date  immigration policy on their website  but their 2010 manifesto stated:

5.2 • Control immigration through our Australian-style points-based system, ensuring that as growth returns we see rising levels of employment and wages, not rising immigration, and requiring newcomers to earn citizenship and the entitlements it brings. http://www.labour.org.uk/uploads/TheLabourPartyManifesto-2010.pdf

The Labour leader Ed Miliband said this in April 2011 to explain why Labour lost the 2010 election:

“I think the problem is that we lost trust and we lost touch particularly in the south of England.

“I think living standards is a big part of it; immigration is a big part of it. I think maybe a combination of those two issues.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/8462411/Ed-Miliband-immigration-lost-Labour-votes.html

Even if the three parties’ policies are not exactly the same there is much overlapping. Moreover the objections of Rotherham Social Services and Barnardos were  on the general grounds of finding  opposition to immigration and multiculturalism objectionable, so the exact detail of the objections is irrelevant.

UKIP may not be at the top of the politically correct pantheon of  secular devils, but the British National Party indubitably is. The BNP’s current policy on immigration is:

- Deport all the two million plus who are here illegally;

 - Deport all those who commit crimes and whose original nationality was not British;

 - Review all recent grants of residence or citizenship to ensure they are still appropriate;

 - Offer generous grants to those of foreign descent resident here who wish to leave permanently;

 - Stop all new immigration except for exceptional cases;

 - Reject all asylum seekers who passed safe countries on their way to Britain. (http://www.bnp.org.uk/policies/immigration)

That goes  substantially further than UKIP, the Conservatives and Labour.  Nonetheless,  if  Conservative  and Labour party spokesmen were asked to comment on what should happen to illegal immigrants, foreigners who commit crimes or whether citizenship should be removed from those with dual nationality who commit serious crimes,  I doubt whether any would say illegal immigrants  should be allowed to stay, foreigners who commit serious crimes should not be deported or British citizenship should not be taken from foreigners who have gained it and gone on to plot  terrorist attacks on this country.

As for the rejection of  asylum seekers who have passed through safe countries,  Britain has a legal right to do this under the various treaties which cover asylum.  Nor could there be any objection in principle to the use of payments to voluntarily repatriate people because the government has been happy enough to pay failed asylum seekers to leave Britain in the recent  past (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1572669/Row-over-payments-to-failed-asylum-seekers.html) and http://www.irr.org.uk/news/the-politics-of-voluntary-returns/.

It would be difficult to make a case for the BNP policy on immigration being so utterly different from that of the Conservative and Labour parties that the party  deserved to be  treated differently. As for the BNP’s rejection of multiculturalism, that is no different in principle from that of the Conservatives and UKIP.  Multiculturalism is something you either  support or oppose.  It is a general policy not one of specific detail being simply a belief that different ethnic/racial groups should be able to follow their own ancestral cultural norms.  Beyond that It does not stipulate what the relationship between the groups  should be.

The broader question

The broader  question raised by the Rotherham  case is why it is thought an unquestioned good that children brought up in this country should be raised in a way which will make them see themselves as separate from the native population.   If a child is to grow up, live and work as an adult in a country , which is probably what the children involved in the Rotherham case will do,  the  security and life chances of the child will be best secured by assimilating as completely as possible not by remaining separate from the native population.  To deliberately set a child apart from the native population by insisting that they are brought up by those deemed culturally compatible  (which is often social worker code for being of the same race) is to generate suspicion on the part of the native population of the  outsider and paranoia on the part of the outsider that he or she is always under  threat from the majority.  That is healthy for no one.  It is a recipe for racial and ethnic conflict./

Where does the extreme political correctness in public bodies come from?

The political correctness of public bodies is not accidental.   Legislation such as the Race Relations (Amendment) Act  2000 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/34/section/1)which lays a duty on public bodies to not only be non-discriminatory but to prove they are being so, have institutionalised political correctness with  arguably the rightness of multiculturalism as its core belief.   Such laws should be repealed because they entrench a political creed in law.

Another buttress of institutionalised political correctness is the   use of organisations such as Common Purpose (CP).  ( It is interesting that  Joyce Thacker,  Rotherham council’s Director of Children and Young People’s Service  is  reported to be a Common Purpose  graduate  - http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100191270/rotherham-hislop-common-purpose/).  CP represents itself as a leadership training organisation which is something of an oddity in itself.  It is very successful in persuading public bodies to send staff for this “leadership training”  for which COP is paid millions a year.  Courses  are offered for people aiming to become leaders to those who are already well up the ladder of their career path.

 Here are a few passages from the COP website which positively shout the message of political correctness:

“Leadership resources

Common Purpose is interested in all aspects of leadership – when, what and how people choose to lead, and how they become better at it. We are also interested in all leaders, from all backgrounds; people at the beginning of their careers keen to develop their leadership potential to those looking to use their leadership skills in retirement.”  (http://www.commonpurpose.org.uk/resources).

“We value diversity and constantly strive to provide equality of opportunity as an employer and in the provision and delivery of all our activities. We positively encourage applications from all sections of the community and are working hard to ensure that our courses and services meet the requirements of people with disabilities.

Why do we do it?

What underpins all Common Purpose courses is a belief that society benefits from people of all ages, backgrounds and cultures working together to help guide and shape the future of their organisations and communities. This is best achieved when leaders are able to realise their full potential, through broadening their horizons and establishing firm roots in their communities.” (http://www.commonpurpose.org.uk/about/what-we-do)

No one opposed to political correctness, either wholly or in part, could take part in such a course honestly or willingly. ( For an extensive list of CP “graduates” and the positions held by them go to http://cpexposed.com/graduates).  The  aims of CP  and the courses  offered bear a strong resemblance  cadre training in the Marxist-Leninist mould.  It is probable that the ever growing political correctness in public service is to a significant degree engineered by the CP graduates who may act as a kind of freemasonary as well as promoting the idea as individuals.  There is consequently  a very strong case for banning any public servant from attending its courses.

What else can be done?

David Cameron may have spoken against multiculturalism and promised to legislate against the practice of social workers of placing children for  adoption  (and fostering) based on racial and cultural compatibility.  But he has not done this after several years in office.  Until this is done social workers  and their ilk in not-for-profit  bodies such as charities will continue to promote the politically correct and multicultural and nothing-else- will- be permitted message through their control of who is allowed to participate in their work.  There needs to be a specific legal bar to taking the political views of would be adopters, foster parents, volunteers and, indeed,  social workers themselves into account when deciding on adoption or fostering, recruiting volunteers  or employing people to engage in childcare social work.

That does not mean that  individuals should never be disbarred from such positions because of their views, but the views for which they are deemed unsuitable should be their own and not those  attributed to the person simply because  they show sympathy for  a political party, ideology or movement.   Nor should views be a disqualification unless they are directly relevant to the position sought, for example, someone espousing the view that the age of consent should be abolished who was seeking to become a foster parent might reasonably be considered unsuitable to look after children.    Opposition to immigration or multiculturalism should  not be grounds  for the thumbs down; nor should a belief in an open door immigration policy and multiculturalism result in rejection.  Finally, it should always be remembered that the behaviour of people is often at odds with their political and moral views.  Behaviour is a surer guide to the character of a person than what they say.

That those in the childcare department of Rotherham Council knew that what they were doing was dubious at best and illegal at worst is shown by their attempts to silence the couple involved; their failure  to confirm in writing the reasons for the children’s removal despite repeated requests from the couple and their refusal to publish the results of their internal inquiry into the matter. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9706739/Ukip-fostering-row-mafia-council-told-us-to-keep-quiet-say-parents.html).

The attitude of the local Rotherham politicians is illustrated by Josephine Burton, a cabinet member at Labour-run Rotherham metropolitan borough council. She told a member of the public  “It may be advisable to wait until you have a better understanding of fostering and the current legislation that surrounds it, before wading in to pass judgement.” (Ibid).  No apology by the council has been offered to the couple involved.

Too many people – the world’s worst enemy

Published in the Quarterly Review (www.quarterly-review.org)   in 2010

Too many people – the world’s worst enemy

ROBERT HENDERSON says Third World overpopulation and industrialization are the real threats to the global environment

This is an article about climate change with a difference. It does not deal with whether man-made global warming is occurring, for circumstances render that question redundant. Global greenhouse gas emissions will inexorably rise far above their current levels thanks to the industrialisation of the developing world and the still rapidly increasing population of the Earth.

This article is about is the futility of the industrialised world imposing limits on its greenhouse gas emissions when it is clear that the developing countries continue incontinently to increase their emissions. I shall also cast a jaundiced eye over at the reliability of greenhouse gas emission estimates from the developing world.

Our overcrowded planet A hulking elephant sits ignored in the green crusaders’ room. Amidst all the angst about man-made greenhouse gases, the greatest and most obvious cause of increases is ignored by mainstream politicians – the already great and rapidly rising population of the world and the rapid spread of industrialisation to major parts of what until recently was the Third World . The world population is projected to reach 7 billion in 2011. Extrapolations to 2050 go as high as 9.5 billion (1). At a generous estimate, a billion live in the developed world in 2010. If the 9.5 billion projection for 2050 comes true, the disproportion between what are now the developed countries and the developing countries now will have become even more skewed in favour of the developing world, because the populations of underdeveloped countries have startlingly younger populations than those of the developed world, viz:

“One of every six people on earth is an adolescent. In the developing world, more than 40 percent of the population is under age 20. The decisions these young people make will shape our world and the prospects of future generations.” (2)

The US Bureau of Census projections for the populations of individual countries for 2050 show only one country (the United States) from the currently developed world in the largest twenty countries by population in 2050, with the first European country (Germany) coming in at number 22 (3).

If the swelling world population was overwhelmingly due to increases in the still very white First World , you may be sure that we would be daily berated for our selfish breeding. We would be told that any increase in our population was at the expense of the Third World , that the production of every extra Western mouth to feed, house, clothe and supply with energy was absolutely unconscionable. Western governments would be signing up to programmes of ever more punitive reductions in their countries’ greenhouse emissions and some of the bolder would be advocating the rationing of children.

But the overwhelming majority of people living today do not live in the developed world and the projected future expansion of the world’s population is due almost entirely to increases in the developing world, the developed world having at best stabilised their native populations and at worst actually set themselves on the path of decline through a mixture of contraception and too readily available abortion (4). Such population increases in the developed world as occur have been primarily due for several decades to immigration from the Third World and any increases in the next half century in the present developed world will probably come from the same source.

The subject of a rising world population and its ever growing effect on greenhouse gas emissions goes largely unmentioned by politicians because it is beyond the Pale for the liberal internationalist elites who currently control the developed world to suggest that the developing world either restrain its breeding or its economic development and it is not in the interests of the developing world to raise it. This conspiracy of silence renders the debate about man-made global warming meaningless because the gross population imbalance between the developed and developing world obliterates any chance of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.

Let us suppose for the sake of argument that global warming is occurring largely or wholly because of man-made emissions. Even in those circumstances it would be madness for Britain or any other developed country to load themselves with taxes and other burdens, because quite clearly the five sixths of the world’s population which does not live in the developed world is going to carry on industrialising without regard to what the developed world is doing. China is already the largest carbon dioxide emitter and has reached that point much more rapidly than anticipated:

“ China , one of the fastest growing economies of the world is all set to overtake U.S as the leading air polluter by as early as 2010; a whole decade faster than the previous estimates of 2020.” (5)

Of course, vast and rapidly growing as she is, China is simply part of a larger picture of the developing world’s greenhouse gas output. Take the second largest country on Earth , India . Just as China is happy to build old-fashioned coal-fired power stations with abandon (one a week, if media reports are to be believed), India is content to engage in a policy of small wood-powered stations, a policy which not only introduces CO2 into the atmosphere but results in deforestation which reduces the natural capture of CO2.

India is changing its greenhouse emissions contribution very rapidly:

“Greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, contribute to global warming and climate change. According to the US-based ‘think tank’ the World Resources Institute, India was responsible for over four per cent of total emissions in 2000 – making the country the sixth largest emitter in the world. Emissions are set to rise further still over the next 20 years as the Indian economy rapidly develops. Both the International Energy Agency and the government of the United States ’ Energy Information Administration predict over 90 per cent growth in carbon dioxide emissions alone by 2025….

“ India ’s coal consumption has increased from 110 million tonnes in 1980 to more than 350 million tonnes in 2000, representing an annual growth rate of almost 6 per cent. Natural gas consumption has grown similarly, at 5.6 per cent a year, to 75 million cubic metres in 2000.

“But petroleum consumption has grown fastest since the 1980s, at an annual rate of 14 per cent, to over 350 million tonnes in 2000….

“ India emitted 16 million tonnes of methane in 1990, and 24 million tonnes in 2000 — a little under 35 per cent of the country’s overall greenhouse gas emissions.” (6)

The hopelessness of the liberal internationalist’s belief that the West sets an example to the developing world is clear. Even if the developing world population was stabilised immediately and they restricted their emissions growth to half of the average of the developed world (roughly 13 tonnes per capita, although which countries are included in the developed world is debatable), something wildly improbable, that would increase global emissions by several times the current levels. If the developed world ceased to emit anything at all, the increase in the rest of the world’s emissions, through development and expanding population, would still push the emissions level way beyond today’s levels and what climate scientists who support the idea of man-made global warming consider to be safe. This can be seen from the current differences in per capita CO2 emissions between developed and developing countries:

United States               19.10 tonnes

United Kingdom            8.60 tonnes

China                             4.57 tonnes

India                              1.18 tonnes (7)

As will be seen shortly, there are problems with the way that CO2 statistics are collected and the treatment of greenhouse gases other than CO2. But regardless of their veracity, the statistics have great importance because they are used by supporters of man-made global warming to justify the differential treatment of emissions between the developed and developing world. If the advocates of global warming honestly believe the statistics which support their case then they can draw only one rational conclusion: if greenhouse gas emissions are to be kept to the levels they advocate, the developing world must stop industrializing.

Calculating emissions How is that the developed world, with only one billion of population at most living in countries which monitor and control their emissions ever more rigorously, is judged to be so much more at fault for emissions than the six billion who live in countries where most energy is generated either by the direct burning of fossil fuels or through power stations, mainly coal-fired, which pump pollution into the air with poor filtration and who are responsible for far more agricultural generated greenhouse gas emissions than the developed world? The answer lies in the availability of statistics and the convenience of scientists. The UN Environment Programme website gives the game away:

“Central to any study of climate change is the development of an emissions inventory that identifies and quantifies a country’s primary anthropogenic sources and sinks of greenhouse gas. Emissions are not usually monitored directly, but are generally estimated using models. Some emissions can be calculated with only limited accuracy. Emissions from energy and industrial processes are the most reliable (using energy consumption statistics and industrial point sources). Some agricultural emissions, such as methane and nitrous oxide carry major uncertainties because they are generated through biological processes that can be quite variable.” (8)

In other words, scientists rely on models primarily based on the sort of statistics which the developed world produces (and the developing world does not) while ignoring at worst and grossly under-estimating at best emissions which are not readily calculated or available. Take the cases of methane and nitrous oxide, the most plentiful greenhouse gases after water vapour and carbon dioxide:

“The primary sources for the additional methane added to the atmosphere (in order of importance) are rice cultivation; domestic grazing animals; termites; landfills; coal mining; and, oil and gas extraction…an accurate estimate of how much methane is being produced from rice paddies has been difficult to ascertain. More than 60% of all rice paddies are found in India and China where scientific data concerning emission rates are unavailable. Nevertheless, scientists believe that the contribution of rice paddies is large because this form of crop production has more than doubled since 1950. Grazing animals release methane to the environment as a result of herbaceous digestion. Some researchers believe the addition of methane from this source has more than quadrupled over the last century. Termites also release methane through similar processes. Land-use change in the tropics, due to deforestation, ranching, and farming, may be causing termite numbers to expand…Methane is also released from landfills, coal mines, and gas and oil drilling.” (9)

There is an important point on methane from domesticated animals, important because it is another string to the bow of those who wish to demonise the developed world as arch-polluters because the diet of the developed world is much more dependent on meat than that of the developing world. The implication is that fewer domesticated herbivores would equal less methane. This makes the unwarranted assumption that the land freed by having fewer domesticated grazing animals would not be turned over to methane-producing agriculture such as paddy fields or be left to Nature to populate it with large wild herbivores or to turn it into methane-producing marshland. As for nitrous oxide:

“Sources for the increase of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere include: land-use conversion; fossil fuel combustion; biomass burning; and soil fertilization. Most of the nitrous oxide added to the atmosphere each year comes from deforestation and the conversion of forest, savannah and grassland ecosystems into agricultural fields and rangeland…The use of nitrate and ammonium fertilizers to enhance plant growth is another source of nitrous oxide. How much is released from this process has been difficult to quantify. Estimates suggest that the contribution from this source represents from 50 % to 0.2 % of nitrous oxide added to the atmosphere annually.” (10)

As with methane, the major emitters of nitrous oxide seem to come from the developing not the developed world. It is also important to understand that the quantity of the various gases in the atmosphere is not a simple guide to their effectiveness as greenhouse gases. Methane and nitrous oxide are thought to be much more effective than carbon dioxide at warming the atmosphere. According to the campaigning group Envocare, the global warming potential (GWP) of methane is 21 times that of carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide 310 times. (11)

Where responsibility really lies

The only sensible conclusion to draw from the foregoing is that nothing is going to prevent a massive increase in greenhouse gases as the developing world industrialises. This being so, the rational response of Western politicians would be to stop burdening their own countries with expensive green laws and concentrate instead on dealing with the effects of global warming, if they materialize, insofar as they affect their own countries. This should not be impossible because any changes will be gradual and our technological ability, already very substantial, will increase greatly over the next century.

If man-made global warming really is occurring, the two main arguments used to justify the call for swingeing cuts in the CO2 emissions of the developed world whilst developing countries have no such restrictions placed upon them make no sense.

The first argument is that the developing world has the right to industrialize in a polluting way because that is how the developed world industrialized. The second argument is that greenhouse gas levels should be calculated on a per capita basis rather than the total emissions from each country, that is, each person living should have the right to generate the same greenhouse gas emission. Both arguments are clearly absurd if man-made global warming is true, for what is important is the global total of greenhouse gas emissions not whether the developed world or whether there can be worldwide equity in greenhouse gas emissions.

Western politicians should start pointing out certain facts to the developing world. These are that greenhouse gas emissions from the developing world are on schedule to dwarf those of the developed world – that developing countries must take responsibility for their population growth, the pollution they create and its effects on their own people – and that the developed world should no longer be expected to pay for the ill-effects of industrialization created by the developing countries. Overpopulation, headlong industrialization, and the resultant greenhouse gases, deforestation, pressure on resources and mass migration are all the responsibility of the developing nations. If they cannot or will not reform their practices, it is they rather than we who should take the consequences.

ROBERT HENDERSON is a freelance writer in London who blogs at livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com

NOTES

1. See GeoHive – http://www.xist.org

2. See Oxford University ’s Department of International Development website at www.forcedmigration.org

3. GeoHive, ibid.

4. Britain does not have a fertility crisis but an abortion crisis, with 200,000 abortions being carried out a year. If those babies were born, Britain ’s birth rate would be above replacement level

5. themoneytimes.com, 11 July 2006

6. SciDev.Net, 31 August 2006

7. www.carbonplanet.com/country_emissions

8. www.maps.grida.no, National carbon emissions per capita, 2002

9. www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7a.html

10. www.physicalgeography.net, ibid.

11. http://www.envocare.co.uk/aboutus.htm