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.

The Bruges Group meeting From Here to the Referendum held on 12 February 2013

Robert Henderson

The Tory  MPs Peter Bone and Richard Shepherd were the speakers . (http://www.brugesgroup.com/eu/from-here-to-the-referendum.htm?xp=speeches).  Both are in favour of the UK leaving the EU, although that of course begs the question of on what terms.   Much of their speeches were not directly to do with the referendum . To get the parts which were go  into  the Peter Bone speech at 9 minutes 27 seconds and the Richard Shepherd speech at 11 minutes and 50 seconds to get to their views on the future and the prospective referendum.

The MPs were frank about why no referendum could be held in this Parliament:  a consequence of the lack of a Commons majority and the deadweight of the Lib Dems on the government. Both admitted that  prospects of a referendum being held  in the next Parliament  (the  audience was decidedly sceptical on this point)  were far from certain, but they were distinctly more optimistic than most of the people at the meeting.

The most positive move suggested by the MPs was for a campaign by Tory Eurosceptic MPs  to get Cameron to introduce a paving Bill for an in/out referendum  before the next General Election for a referendum in the next Parliament.  This would put both Labour and the Lib Dems in a difficult position because, if they did not support and pass such a bill,  it would allow the Conservative Party to go into the next election as the only major party promising a referendum. If such a paving Bill were passed, it would then be effectively impossible not to have a referendum in the next Parliament.   In principle, this is a sound tactic but of course it does beg the question of the terms of the referendum and how it would be done.  Reports appeared  in the media for precisely such a Bill on 17 February (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/active/9875024/Tory-MPs-want-new-law-to-lock-in-EU-referendum-pledge.html) .

Apart from the question of whether  a referendum will actually be held, there were two things of note  about the meeting: a widespread legalism which led  a number of the questioners from the audience to fret over the restrictions placed on a member state leaving by Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and an  undue  concentration by both the speakers and audience on economics as the ground on which the anti-EU and pro-EU camps would fight. (Richard Shepherd in his general comments  did show himself to have a strong sense of  nation and to understand that the core issue at stake was being masters in our own house, but still fell back on economics when it came to his doubts about how the public would respond).

When I asked  a question I prefaced it with a refutation  of the idea that leaving the EU meant invoking  Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty .  I did this by pointing out that international law is no law,  but merely agreements between sovereign states. For laws to have meaning, they must be  applied equally within the jurisdiction. International law patently does not do this, a  fact due to  the absence of  any practical means to make all states abide by the law (who would invade China or the USA to enforce breaches or  impose sanctions? )  Richard Shepherd thanked me for making the point with which he agreed. After the meeting a number of people sought me out and did the same.  I suspect this would have widespread appeal in a referendum campaign.

As for the concentration on economics, this is simply playing into the hands of the Europhiles.  The general public simply will not take the detailed economic arguments  on board.  At worst they will simply hear the frightening false claims about millions of jobs being lost.  The campaign to leave the EU should be centred on the question “Do we wish to be masters in our own house?” That will be readily understandable to anyone of normal intelligence and will tap into the innate tribal sense of human beings.  If the stay-in camp have to fight on ground other than the economic they will have no sure footing, their only argument  being the demonstrably false one that the EU has prevented war in Europe for 60 years. (This argument can be readily punctured by pointing out that for its first twenty years there were only six countries involved and only until the 1980s.  It was the  Cold War that kept the peace).  The economic arguments must be addressed but they  should be subordinate to the political issue of sovereignty.

When I got to my question,  I took the subject  beyond the next election and painted a future in which   the  Tories had been returned with a working majority, the in/out referendum had been held and the vote had been to leave the EU. I then asked what confidence we could have that whoever was in power would not sell us down the river by renegotiating  terms which would in practice lock us into the EU through such things as the “Four Freedoms”  of the EU, the free movement of goods, services, capital and most importantly people not only within the EU states but the larger European Economic Area which includes the likes of Norway.   I particularly stressed the importance of regaining control over our borders when it came to immigration, something which got the loudest murmur of agreement of the night.   I got no meaningful answer from the MPs  on that point –  the best they could offer was the tactic already described of pushing for a paving Bill for a referendum.

Apart from the question of the EU, it was very interestingly to see how disenchanted both Bone and Shepherd were with Cameron’s leadership  and the issue of gay marriage in particular. Shepherd spoke of Cameron “racing against his party” (Go into his speech at 5 minutes).   The audience was very much in sympathy with both their general dissatisfaction and their opposition to “gay marriage”.

There were  approximately 60 people attending.

Politically incorrect film reviews – A Lincoln convertible

Robert Henderson

Main cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, James Spader,  David Strathairn, Peter McRobbie, Lee Pace (There is a very extensive cast, but Day-Lewis is so dominant in terms of screen time that the main cast could have been him alone)

Director Stephen Spielberg

Running time: 150 minutes

What is the most damning word  that can be applied to a film? I suspect  it is dull. That is the word for Lincoln.  Too many characters, too much poorly orchestrated verbal  scrummaging in Congress, an avalanche of posturing earnestness and  a good deal of ham acting -  yes, that’s you James Spader I am particularly wincing at for your  Republican fixer William N. Bilbo and you Tommy Lee Jones for your painfully  ridiculous abolitionist Thaddeus  Stephens, a man unable to open his mouth without engaging in abuse.   The only performance of any note is that of Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln.

If there was ever an actor capable of single-handedly rescuing an  indifferent film  it is Day-Lewis. He did it magnificently in Gangs of New York with his riveting performance as Bill the Butcher.  The man does his level best here and in truth is a pretty convincing Lincoln, but  the film is so generally  flaccid, overly wordy and positively cartoonish in its representation of the debate over the Amendment to abolish slavery  that he cannot obscure its seriously disabling weaknesses.  Day-Lewis is also handicapped by the character of Lincoln which is devious while he maintains a façade  of reasonableness. It is too quiet, too restrained  a personality  to rescue  a poor film by obliterating the mediocrity around him, especially one of this length.

To those considerable weaknesses  can be added the film’s  gross dishonesty in representing Lincoln’s position on   slavery and blacks generally. This misrepresentation is made simple by restricting  the action in the film to a few months at the very fag end of the American  Civil War  during which the 13^th  Amendment to the US  Constitution abolishing slavery was brought to the House of Representatives, debated and eventually passed.  The short time span allowed Lincoln’s earlier equivocal and changing positions on the relative importance of abolishing slavery and respecting state rights and  for modern liberals his distinctly embarrassing views on blacks to be almost entirely hidden from view.

What did  Lincoln’s think of slavery?  He was very much the Lincoln convertible, with different messages, often subtly different, for various audiences and political circumstances.  But there is a clear line to be followed in his thought.  There is no reason to believe that he did not find the institution obnoxious in the abstract  and the actual mistreatment of slaves distressing. But the fact that Lincoln was distressed  when  for example, he saw blacks being transported chained – a story repeated in the film – did  not mean he thought of blacks as the equals of whites or wanted them to have full legal equality with whites. Here he is putting his views unambiguously in 1858:

“I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the White and Black races – that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes – nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to inter-marry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and Black races which will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality, and in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race.” (ABRAHAM LINCOLN, in his debate with Senator Douglas at Quincy, IL, on Oct. 13, 1858 and quoted in Abraham Lincoln – Complete Works, published by The Century Co., 1894, Vol. I, page 273).

Lincoln’s belief that white and black could not live in equality led him to be an advocate of colonisation, which in this context meant  the transfer of blacks in the USA to other parts of the world , especially Liberia in West Africa.  He had doubts of the practicality for  in the Douglas debates   we find him saying “My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia,—to their own native land. But a moment’s reflection would convince me that whatever of high hope (as I think there is) there may be in this, in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough in the world to carry them there in many times ten days.

But if that is not the answer Lincoln has no ready solution for he goes on to say:

What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery, at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough to me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question, if, indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot, then, make them equals. It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but for their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South.” ( http://www.bartleby.com/251/12.html).

Despite his concerns at the practicality of colonisation, Lincoln was still promoting the idea during his presidency. He mentioned it in his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 and created  a special office to oversee the process of colonisation under the control of the Rev. James Mitchell of Indiana and established a Bureau of Emigration.

Lincoln’s feelings towards slaves are suggestive of those  of  the man who sees animals being cruelly treated and wishes for the mistreatment to stop. Those feelings do not signify  that the animals  would be welcome round and about the homes of the pitying onlooker merely that the onlooker wished the mistreatment to stop.

Then there is the question of priorities. When he became president Lincoln had no hesitation in making clear his first concern was the preservation the Union. He did this in his first inaugural presidential address on March 4, 1861 when he offered no objection to the pending Corwin Amendment which ran “No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.” ( Volume 12 of the Statutes at Large at page 251).

This would have effectively made the abolition of slavery by Congress impossible by reserving the power to be a  free or slave state to the individual states Lincoln said this at his inauguration:

 ”I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution . . . has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.” (http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html)

Well into the war Lincoln was unequivocal about the priority of the ends for which the war was fought, the primary end being the preservation of the Union:

“I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free…” Lincoln, Abraham. “Letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862″. In Miller, Marion Mills. Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln. Current Literature. Retrieved 2011-01-24.

The film’s presentation of the pro and anti-abolition arguments  will ring a bell with anyone who is familiar with the BBC’s idea of balance.  The pro-slavers are allowed to say something but they are always outnumbered and are never allowed the last word. Moreover, the fact that Day-Lewis’ Lincoln takes up so much of the screen time allotted to argument that any other voice is lost in the general babble of an overloaded cast.  Interestingly, the pro-slavers in the film engaged in argument  while the abolitionists readily turned to crude abuse. This is very reminiscent of the way modern liberals behave in real life (see http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/the-liberal-bigot/).   There is also the gaping hole of a virtually absent Confederate voice, not so much to give  the pro-slavery arguments  but those of the  state rights versus federal powers conflict.

Perhaps the most telling facet of the film is the depiction of the double dealing of Lincoln and his fellow Republicans. Opponents of the amendment are shamelessly bribed with offers of government jobs with the full approval of Lincoln  who also engages in a piece of gross dishonesty by delaying the arrival of a peace delegation from the Confederacy  to ensure the Amendment passes.  This also requires him to give a lawyer’s evasion to the question  of whether such a peace delegation exists by answering that he knows of no such delegation in Washington rather than saying he knew of no peace delegation.    All of this skulduggery is portrayed as a legitimate means to an end, which of course,  is the besetting sin of liberals today who eagerly embrace any enormity provided it is intended to move some part of the world towards their nirvana of unalloyed political correctness.  The problem with such dishonesty and is that even if it gains the immediate object –which often it does not – it invariably has a corrosive effect on political trust .  Even today there are still the lingering resentments in the states of the Confederacy over their treatment after the war during the reconstruction era.

In the end the question has to be asked, was the abolition of slavery as it was done worth 600,000 dead and many more injured, often hideously?  What was the greater good, no civil war and the retention of slavery for a time or the immediate abolition of slavery bought at the costs of  huge numbers of  killed and maimed ?  It might seem a simple calculus to us today  because slavery to us is self-evidently beyond the Pale,  but in mid 19^th century America things looked very different, just as they have looked very different to every society which has had a form of legal servitude, which includes most societies in most times and places with servitude ranging from full blown chattel slavery through serfdom to indentured labour.  It is also worth bearing in mind that the free poor in the vast majority of societies throughout history have in practice been in a de facto servile position because of their material circumstances and  the general imbalance of power between employer and employed. Indeed, the iconic  English  abolitionist William Wilberforce  was much taunted with the fact that while he made a great uproar about slaves he bore with equanimity the abject poverty of many of his countrymen.

The abolition of US slavery was reckless in its execution  because it was  made without compensation (with the exception of  Washington DC)  to slave owners  and was  not staggered over several years.  The British abolition of slavery in British colonies used both devices (the British taxpayer expended the then colossal sum of £20 million in compensation which represented two fifths of the annual British budget) and, though far from an easy transition, it did remove both the problem of the ruination of a very large part of the colonial economy (the slave related part) and provide the wherewithal for the now ex-slave owners to continue their various economic enterprises by paying wages and to make the necessary practical adjustments .  It also brought time for the transition from slave to wage-earner to be psychologically absorbed.  Slavery is the ultimate form of institutionalisation .  A man or woman born to  slavery and  knowing nothing but servitude may find themselves disorientated when suddenly freed even if they have long dreamt of freedom, just as long-term prisoners or mental patients  often do when released. That had benefits for both slave owners and slaves because it was preferable to the sudden disorganised shock of immediate and uncompensated

Had Congress arranged to compensate the slave owners at an honest price and staggered the ending of slavery there is good reason to believe the Civil War could have been avoided and slavery ended within a relatively short period of time. As it was the abolition as it stood made a mess of slave owning states economies, left the freed slaves in a precarious position to be subject to Jim Crow laws and segregation for nearly  a century and often the recipients of the practice of convict leasing whereby convicts  were effectively sold to private contractors for a set period of time.

If  the abolition of slavery been peacefully accomplished it would also have had the great benefit of leaving state rights and powers unsavaged by the  gross violations of the Constitution which Lincoln perpetrated during the war with his proclamations made as commander-in-chief which included the suspension of Habeas Corpus and his ignoring of rulings by the Supreme Court.   (http://www.civilwarhome.com/pulito.htm). Interestingly, the question of legality of his proclamations was addressed at some length by Lincoln in the film,  although primarily in the context of the legality of his Emancipation Proclamation.

It should be  very difficult for any person without a political axe to grind to come away from the film without seeing Lincoln as a slippery hypocrite with no regard for the truth.  Needless to say in these PC times  you would not guess it from the reviews. The  critics have generally grovelled before the film’s prime politically correct subject matter. The review by  Rupert Christianson  of the  Daily Telegraph (a Tory newspaper) gives a taste of the tone in the British media:   “I cannot vouch for the movie’s historical accuracy – so much about Lincoln remains contested – but, without resorting to pomposity or sentimentality, Spielberg has built the story into a stirring drama of dilemma worthy of Racine or Schiller… The word that came to my mind as I left the cinema is an unfashionable one: noble. This is a noble film, about noble people. Quentin Tarantino doesn’t do noble.” ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/baftas/9857721/Baftas-2013-Spielbergs-Noble-Achievement.html).

Should you go and see this film?  Well, if you do, visit  it in a spirit of inquiry into exactly how blatant in their bias the politically correct  can be when  producing what can only be described as unashamed  propaganda. Talking of modern liberals, the film  has provided me with some amusement. Discussing it with the politically correct  in Britain it is remarkable how many believe Lincoln to have been a Democrat and the opponents of slavery in the film to have all been Republicans. It is a treat to watch their credulous little faces drop when I tell them the truth.

The significance of borders –why Representative Government and the Rule of Law Require Nation States

Author: Thierry Baudet

Publisher: Brill

ISBN 978 90 04 22813 9

Robert Henderson

This a frustrating book.  Its subject is of the greatest interest, namely, how human beings may best organise themselves  to provide security and freedom.   It contains  a great deal of good sense because   the author understands that humans cannot exist amicably unless they have a sense of shared identity and a territory which they control.   (Anyone who doubts the importance of having such a territory should reflect on the dismal history of the Jews.) Baudet  vividly describes  the undermining of the  nation state  by the rise of  supranational bodies: the loss of democratic control, the impossibility of taking very diverse national entities such as those forming  the EU and making them into a coherent single society;  the self-created social divisions caused by mass immigration  and the rendering of the idea of citizenship based on nationality effectively null by either granting it to virtually anyone regardless of their origins or by denying the need for any concept of nationality in the modern globalised world.  He also deals lucidly with the movement from the mediaeval  feudal relationships of fealty to a lord to the nation state;   correctly recognises representative government as uniquely European;  examines the  concept of sovereignty intelligently and is especially good on how supranationalism expands surreptitiously, for example,  the International Criminal Court is widely thought to only apply to the states which have signed the treaty creating it. Not so. The nationals of countries which have not signed who commit crimes on the territories of states which have signed can be brought for trial before the ICT.

That is all very encouraging stuff for those who believe in the value  of the sovereign nation state. The problem is Baudet  wants to have his nationalism whilst keeping a substantial slice of the politically correct cake. Here he is laying out his definitional wares:  “I call the open nationalism that I defend multicultural nationalism – as opposed to multiculturalism on the one hand, and an intolerant, closed nationalism on the other. The international cooperation on the basis of accountable nation states that I propose, I call sovereign cosmopolitanism – as opposed to supranationalism on the one hand, and a close. Isolated nationalism on the other. Both the multicultural nationalism and sovereign cosmopolitianism place the the nation state at the heart of political order, whole recognising the demands of the modern, internationalised world. “(p xvi).

Baudet’s  “multicultural nationalism” is  the idea that culturally different  groups ( he eschews racial difference as important) can exist within a  territory and still constitute a nation which he  defines  as “a political loyalty stemming from an experienced collective identity…rather than a legal, credal or ethnic nature ” (p62) . How does Baudet think this can be arrived at? He believes  it is possible to produce the  “pluralist society, held to together nevertheless  by a monocultural core”. (p158).    Therein lies the problem with the book: Baudet is trying surreptitiously to square multiculturalism with the nation state.

The concept of a monocultural core is akin to  what multiculturalists are trying belatedly to introduce into their politics with their claim that a society in which each ethnic  group follows its own ancestral ways can nonetheless  be bound together with a shared belief in institutions  and concepts such as the rule of law and representative government.  This is a non-starter  because a sense of group identity is not built on self-consciously created  civic values and institutions –witness the dismal failure of post-colonial states in the 20^th century -  but on a shared system of  cultural beliefs and behaviours  which are imbibed unwittingly through growing up in a society.  Because of the multiplicity of ethnic groups from  different cultures in  modern  Western societies,  there is no  overarching single identity within any of them  potent enough to produce Baudet’s   unifying “monocultural core”. Moreover, the continued mass immigration to those societies makes the movement from a “monocultural core” ever greater.  In practice his “Multicultural nationalism” offers  exactly the same intractable problems as official multiculturalism.

Baudet’s idea of a “monocultural core”  would be an unrealistic proposition if cultural differences were all that had to be accommodated in this “pluralist society”, but he  greatly magnifies his conceptual difficulties by refusing to honestly  address the question of racial difference.  However incendiary the subject  is these  differences cannot be ignored.   If human beings did not think racial difference important there would  there be no animosity based  purely on physical racial difference, for example, an hostility to blacks from wherever  they come.  It is their race not their ethnicity which causes the hostile reaction.

The idea that assimilation can occur if it is actively pursued by governments is disproved by history. France, at the official level,  has always insisted upon immigrants becoming fully assimilated: British governments since the late 1970s have embraced multiculturalism as the correct treatment of  immigrants. The result has been the same in both countries; immigrant groups which are racially or radically culturally different from the population which they enter do not assimilate naturally.  The larger the immigrant group the easier it is for this lack of assimilation to be permanent, both because a large population can colonise areas and provide a means by which its members can live their own separate cultural lives and because a large group presents a government with the potential for serious violent civil unrest if attempts are made to  force it to assimilate.

The USA is the best testing ground for Baudet’s idea that there could be a common unifying  core of culture within a country of immense cultural diversity.   Over the past two centuries it has accepted a vast kaleidoscope of peoples and cultures, but  its origins were much more uniform. At  independence the country had, as a consequence of the English founding and  moulding of the colonies which formed the USA , a dominant language (English) , her legal system was based on English common law, her political structures were adapted from  the English,  the dominant general culture was that of England and the free population of the territory was racially similar.  Even those who  did not have English ancestry almost invariably prided themselves on being English, for example,  John Jay, one of the founding Fathers of the USA who was  of Huguenot and Dutch descent, passionately wrote:  “Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people — a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.” (John Jay in Federalist No. 2).There was the presence of a mainly enslaved black population and the native Amerindians, but the newly formed United States at least at the level of the white population had a degree of uniformity which made the idea of a core monoculture plausible.

From the mid-sixties after US immigration law was slackened migrants arrived in ever increasing numbers and with much more racial and ethnic variety. The result has been a balkanisation of American society with a legion of minority groups all shouting for their own advantage with the  original “monocultural core” diluted to the point of disappearance.

There are other weaknesses in Baudet’s  thinking.  He is  much too keen to draw clear lines between forms of social and political organisation. For example,  he considers  the nation state to be an imagined community  (a nation being  too large for everyone to know everyone else)  with a  territory  it controls  as opposed to tribal or universal loyalty (the idea that there is simply mankind not different peoples who share moral values and status). The problem with that, as he admits, are the many tribes which are too large to allow each individual to know each other (footnote 23 p63).  He tries to fudge the issue by developing a difference between ethnic loyalty and national loyalty, when of course there is no conflict between the two. Nations can be based solely on ethnicity.

Another example of conceptual rigidity is Baudet’s  distinction between  internationalism and supranationalism.  He defines  the former as the traditional form of international cooperation whereby nation states make agreements between themselves but retain the ultimate right to decide what policy will be implemented (thus preserving their sovereignty) while the latter, for example the EU, is an agreement between states which removes,  in many areas of policy , the right  of the individual contracting states to choose  whether  a policy  will be accepted or rejected.   Although that is a  distinction which will appeal to academics,  in practice it rarely obtains because treaties made between theoretically sovereign states often results  in  the weaker ones having no meaningful choice of action.

Despite the conceptual weaknesses ,  the strengths of the book are  considerable if  it is used as a primer on the subject of national sovereignty.  Read it but  remember from where Baudet is ultimately coming.

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.

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

Effects of Mass Immigration on Canadian Living Standards and Society

The Fraser Institute’s Effects of Mass Immigration on Canadian Living Standards and Society

Edited by Herbert Grubel  – a compilation of essays by  12 authors

Published by the Fraser Institute of Canada  in 2009 ISBN 978-0-88975-246-7

Massive numbers of immigrants who are either unable or unwilling to integrate with the society into which they come; cities increasingly dominated by ethnic and racial ghettos;  laws which grant immigrants rights which make it next to impossible to stop them entering the country or to deport  them once they are there;  employers greedy for cheap labour;  immigrants depressing wages and forcing up native unemployment; immigrants taking more out of the communal national pot in benefits than they put in through taxes;  a political elite which is  sold on the idea that immigration is an unalloyed good at a naïve best and a source of new voters  for parties which support mass immigration at  a venal worst; a bureaucracy which religiously carries out the politically correct  dictates of  the elite embraced  multicultural ethos ; the development of  an “immigration industry” comprised of vested interests such as lawyers, pressure groups, charities; public servants  appointed to act as what are effectively political commissars for multiculturalism; a mainstream media which ceaselessly propagandises on behalf of the wonder of multiculturalism and value of immigration whilst censoring any opposition;  a rabid state-inspired  suppression of  dissidence at any level by a mixture of  laws banning honest discussion of immigration and its consequences  and the engendering of a public culture which puts  anyone who voices anti-immigration views, however cautiously, at risk of losing  their job or political position and to  ostracism from their social circle  if they are judged to have committed a “crime” against multiculturalism.

Welcome to the Canadian experience of the joy of mass immigration. Sounds familiar? It certainly will to British ears, but the same could broadly  be said of any First World country for the globalist ideology has become the creed of elites throughout the First World.   This makes the book generally valuable as a primer on the dangers of mass immigration.  This utility is enhanced  by significant reference being made to immigration as it affects  the  USA, Britain and France.

There are of course differences of detail  between the Canadian and British experience.  Canadians   traditionally have seen themselves as a nation of immigrants whereas the British  have not and do not.  This means that  Canadians have, like Americans,  at least the residue of the sentimental  idea that immigration should be the natural order of things and  that it is somehow wrong to deny  to others what they or their ancestors enjoyed. The Canadian elite have taken this to extremes  according to   Stephen Gallagher of the Canadian International Council because “….more than any other country  Canada has bought into the  cosmopolitan logic that there can exist a ‘civic nationalism in the absence of any ethnic or cultural majority, shared roots or social coherence” (p188). His claim is borne out by the objective evidence of modern Canadian immigration policy and its consequences.

The problem with the “civic nationalism” mentality is it is one thing to have immigration consisting overwhelmingly of people who are broadly  similar in race and culture into the receiving society  – as happened throughout most of Canada’s history  -who  can  assimilate rapidly; quite another to import immigrants in large numbers  who are radically different in race and culture and either cannot or will not assimilate.  That is what has happened to Canada in recent decades.

Over the past quarter of a century  immigrants to Canada have come  overwhelmingly from Asia. The result is that at the last Canadian census  5 million  (16 per cent) out of the Canadian population of 16 million  were  “visible minorities” (p5).   The size of the overall population also counts hugely:  16 per cent of 33 million is considerably more concerning than 16 per cent of, say, Britain’s currently  estimated 62 million.

It might be thought that the geographical vastness of  Canada   would mean there is  not the same sense that the country is being  physically swamped as there is in a geographically small country such as Britain, but  Canada  is a very urbanised country with   25 million Canadians  living in towns or cities and most  immigrants  are concentrated  in a few places.   60 per cent of the  5 million “visible minorities”  live in the Metropolitan areas of Toronto and Vancouver (p5).  In Toronto  in 2001  those classified as  “English (Anglos ) “only  formed a majority in  in a quarter of metropolitan “census tracts” (p180).  The sense of conquest by stealth is as apparent in those particular places as it would be in London or Birmingham.

Reckless Canadian immigration  took off in the  1990s. In 1990 the annual limit was raised to 250,000 by  a Progressive Conservative government with the  Minister responsible, Barbara McDougal, arguing that this would help the party with the ethnic  minority vote, the clear implication being that a large portion of the additional immigrants would be black or Asian (p4). Since then  immigration has averaged nearly 1 per cent  of the population (p4. )Things worsened after the 2001 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act was passed.  This  set selection criteria for immigrants without putting any limit on the numbers who could come in. As there were vastly more people who could meet the criteria than  Canada  could readily accommodate and there was no flexibility to adjust to changes in economic conditions generally or to  the Canadian labour market in particular, the system soon ran into trouble. A backlog of would-be immigrants waiting to be processed formed which is estimated to reach 1.5 million by 2012 (p7) to which did not include refugees who number is considerable.  Canadian asylum policy became so lax in the 1980s that over the past 25 years more than  700,000 asylum seekers were admitted (p14).  Canada has taken steps to amend the  Immigration Act,, but even if those are effective the existing backlog of 1.5 million will be processed under the old rules (p5).

All but one the most sacred cows of the pro-immigration, pro-multicultural lobby are precisely dissected before being put out of their misery.  Overall, immigrants  do not add to Canada’s per capita wealth (p104), not least because less than 20% of immigrants come in based on their work skills or training (p3);  cultural diversity does not equal an enhanced  society  but a divided one with an ever weakening national identity and  bringing in huge numbers of  young immigrants will not solve the problem of an ageing Canadian population – Robert Bannerjee and William Robson (chapter 7)  estimate that to even stabilise the  Old Age Dependency ratio – the ratio between those of working age  to those over retirement age – and those   from what it is at  present would take decades of annual  immigration amounting each year to 3% of the Canadian population (p142). The effect of that would be to effectively end any concept of a Canadian nation as it has been and still largely is.  It would be a classic case of  the transformation of quantity into quality.  A place called Canada might still exist but  he  existing Canadian nation would be no more.

The sacred cow which remains standing if more than a little nervous,  is the question of the incompatibility of races.  Nonetheless ,  some of the contributors (especially those in chapters 9-12)  come close to venturing onto this currently forbidden territory, for example :-

“..the analysis of Sammuel Huntingdon (2004), who argues that a nation is the function of the identity of its majority population  and in the United States this identity is rooted  in the original founding Anglo-Protestant  culture and a value system described as the American Creed.” (Stephen Gallagher P188).

“What guarantee do we have that diversity in itself is a desirable objective? At what point does diversity mutate into a form of colonisation? (James Bissett p6).

The book is also good at flagging up consequences which are not immediately obvious. For example, Marcel Merette  makes the important point that as higher skilled immigrants increase the differential in wages between the skilled and the unskilled shrinks  (p159). This discourages  Canadians from taking the trouble to acquire skills because the advantage of doing so would be lessened.

Nor is any change in the type of immigrants without ill consequences. For example, if immigrants are restricted to the young (which might be thought a god thing in an ageing society) that  disadvantages the native young because it means they face greater competition for jobs from the immigrants in their age group.

There is also the effect on the one long-standing substantial Canadian minority, the French-speaking  Quebeccers . They are increasingly finding their language and culture undermined both by the presence of immigrants who will not integrate and by  having to compete for attention and privileges from the majority population with the new minority groups.

Rather touchingly, Gordon Gibson (chapter 11)  imagines that the position is much healthier in Britain because there is at least growing public discussion here and  an organisation such as MigrationWatch UK  to ostensibly provide a  focus of concern about immigration (the  final  essay in the book is by the head of MigrationWatch UK  Sir Andrew Green).   But public debate can be not merely useless but positively harmful if it is controlled.

It is true that there is vastly more  public discussion in Britain now than there was under  the Blair Government when any many of immigration and its consequences brought squeals of “racism” from politicians, the left-liberal dominated media and any pressure group or individual  able to climb onto the “anti-racist” bandwagon.   But public discussion does not equal action and  despite Cameron’s  Coalition  Government’s rhetoric about cutting net immigration to Britain “from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands a year” , the  numbers remain much the same as under the Blair and Brown governments.

The extent of  the growing disquiet amongst Canadians is indicated by the very existence of the book.  The editor has brought together a  wide-ranging group of contributors:  economists, political scientists, think tank members and retired ambassadors. These are not the class of people who would  commonly be found  publicly expressing  concern  about immigration,  for they are by background part of the broad elite which has embraced the multiculturalist  ideal.  That they are willing to write pretty forthrightly about the dangers speaks volumes in itself.  The message it sends is that they are so worried by the observable effects of mass migration that they are willing to put their heads above the parapet  and risk, at the least, social, political and academic ostracisation.

The failure to address the question of race as a social separator is frustrating but understandable in the present politically correct circumstances, but it cannot be ignored forever. Those who say physical differences in race are unimportant and  that race is merely a social construct should reflect upon the fact that if there was no natural mechanism to stop humans of different physical types breeding as  freely together  as those of a similar physical type then there would be no broad physical groups which we call races . These group separations cannot be ascribed to humans evolving in separation from one another  because  throughout history there has been an immense amount of movement of peoples  with every  opportunity for inter-breeding. We see the same thing happening today in places such as London where,  despite the open invitation to inter-racial breeding and the incessant multi-culturist propaganda over several generations, a surprisingly  small percentage of the population does interbreed.

I can unreservedly recommend this book because it provides almost all the ammunition needed to  refute the multiculturalist propaganda . It is not the easiest of reads  because most of the contributors take an  academic approach, which means a fair number of  charts and tables plus a decent dollop of jargon. But the book is  not very heavy going and its message is  the most important which can be given to the developed world at present: guard your own societies against this surreptitious form of conquest or  they will die.

Anders Breivik and the problem of political trials

Robert Henderson

The  Norwegian court judgement that  the mass killer Anders Breivik is sane and can be held in prison rather than treated as a psychiatric patient in a secure hospital (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19365616) shows how difficult it is to hold a meaningful trial where a case is heavily politicised.

There can be little doubt that the Norwegian elite would have much  preferred Breivik to be declared insane because then his motives for committing the killings could have been swept under the carpet. They wanted this because his motives  challenged everything that the religiously  politically correct Norwegian elite hold most dear: multiculturalism, mass immigration and  the feminisation of Norwegian society as they attempt the transformation of Norwegian society  from one of peaceable homogeneity to a fractured heterogeneity and the creation of a new human being fit  to live in their imagined multicultural paradise in the  manner of Stalin working to breed the New Soviet Man.

Had it been left to the Norwegian elite Breivik would have vanished into a psychiatric limbo. But there were two problems with this. The Norwegian public have not been brainwashed to the extent that they have become so  devoid of all natural human emotion that they will treat someone who has killed so many people as the victim,  and an unwitting one at that if he had been judged insane.  They quite naturally wanted Breivic  tried and convicted as a criminal. So ironically did Breivik, although of course he does not view himself as a criminal.  It is noteworthy that the panel of judges – two professional and three lay members – all agreed Breivik was  sane (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19365616). Such unlikely  unanimity strongly  suggests that they were responding to Norwegian public opinion rather than acting on the psychiatric testimony.

The second difficulty for the Norwegian elite was the opportunity it would provide  for further public questioning of their politics if Breivik  had been found insane. He  would undoubtedly have appealed against the ruling of insanity.  That would have allowed him  to both deride the Norwegian justice system as being no justice at all because it was politically manipulated and Norwegian politicians for being unable to counter  his  justifications for his actions. An appeal against insanity would also have provided an opportunity to repeat and expand upon those  justifications.

That politics not  psychiatric  opinion drove  the court to a  judgement of sanity is shown by the prosecution’s desire to have Breivik declared insane and the court’s ignoring of court commissioned psychiatric opinion which found Breivik to be insane.   It is a  very odd situation  for the prosecution to be asking for a mass killer to be declared insane and not responsible for his actions and the defence to be insisting that the defendant is sane and responsible.   The norm  is for the defence to claim insanity and the prosecution to try to rebut the claim.

The behaviour of the Breivik prosecution  is doubly odd because it is very difficult to see how Breivik could have been plausibly thought to be criminally insane.  Breivik did not have voices in his head telling him to kill. He had well-developed ideas which provided his motive.  He spent a great deal of time in preparation for the crime and  produced a 1,500 page manifesto. In addition,  Breivik was fully aware of what he was doing and the terrible nature of his act.  Had he committed such a crime in England the question of his sanity  would have been determined  by the McNaghten Rules. These  rest on whether a person accused of a crime knew they were doing something wrong or were suffering a defect of reason through mental illness,  most commonly paranoia, which drove them to commit the crime in the belief that it was necessary to commit it , most probably because of a belief that they or someone else was in danger. Clearly Breivik  was aware of what he was doing and how it would be viewed by society. That leaves only the question of whether he was acting under a delusion. That test would fall because manifestly what he fears, the objective threats to his society from mass immigration, multiculturalism, political correctness and Islam, are concrete facts. How far they could be judged to be mortal threats is another matter, but no one could reasonably argue that, in particular, mass immigration and Islam are not real and substantial  threats to the nature of Norwegian society.

It is also worth bearing in mind that terrorists are not rarely if ever  treated as mad by Western courts. The fact that Breivik killed so many in brutal fashion does not mean he is insane, or at least no more disturbed than others who kill for political reasons.  The prosecution’s attempt to have Breivik ruled mad is most plausibly  explained by a simple desire to produce a situation where his political ideas and actions could be dismissed as the ravings of a madman leaving, at least in the Norwegian elite’s eyes, their ideology without meaningful challenge.

Court-appointed psychiatrists disagreed on Breivik’s sanity.  He was examined twice. Breivik cooperated with the first team but not the second. The first  team which examined him came up with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/you-must-be-mad-if-you-dont-believe-in-the-liberal-globalist-credo/) , but  the second found Breivik to be  sane. In England that might have resulted in each evaluation cancelling out the other,  but in the Norwegian justice system the presumption is that even if it is not certain that someone is insane,  they should be treated as such if there is any doubt about their sanity as judged by supposed psychiatric experts. During the trial the lead prosecutor Svein Holden said  ‘ the prosecution had not been convinced by the delusion the authors of the first report, Synne Sorheim and Torgeir Husby, advanced as their core evidence that for Breivik’s schizophrenia: that he believed he had a mandate which gave him the right to decide who should live and who should die.

But they [the two prosecutors Holden and Inga Bejer Engh) said that under Norwegian law, this was not enough.

“It is worse that a psychotic be sentenced to custody than a non-psychotic is sentenced to psychiatric care”.  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/9347018/Anders-Behring-Breivik-should-be-declared-insane.html).

Apart from noting  the  chilling idea that it is reasonable to subject someone sane to psychiatric  treatment just in case,  it is clear that  Norwegian law has been cavalierly  overturned  in Breivik’s case.

The question of Breivik’s  sanity is not absolutely settled. The prosecution could appeal against the finding of sanity.  It would also be possible for Breivik to be declared insane during the course of his imprisonment.

Had the prosecution not insisted on pushing for an insanity ruling, the trial could have been conducted in a manner much closer to  that of a normal criminal case.  By doing so they shifted the focus from the killing and why Breivik committed the act to whether he was or was not sane.  That  gave credence to Breivik’s claim that the whole of the Norwegian power structure is a conspiracy to enforce the politically correct ideology at all costs.

No appeal

Breivik has said he will not appeal his conviction  because  he does not recognise the court as it is (in his view)  an illegitimate body which is a  tool of the politically correct elite who are his enemy. By appealing  against conviction he believes he would tacitly accept the court’s legitimacy.

I think Breivik has missed a trick here. If his appeal was based on his claim that the court was illegitimate his objection would dissolve and he would be left free to reiterate his complaints against the Norwegian elite.  It could be objected that the appeal itself would be made to a courts or courts which were appointed by the same class of  people who appointed the court which tried him and which were consequently also illegitimate.  However,  if his appeal failed, as it surely would, Breivik  could then move beyond the Norwegian courts to the European Court of Human Rights. Eventually he would run out of legal road,  but he could argue that in his appeals  he was not legitimising the courts but simply demonstrating the politicised nature of justice both in Norway and at a supranational level.

The unanswered questions

What has not been addressed by the Norwegian elite are Breivik’s complaints against them and their politics.  Where these touch on mass immigration and Islamicisation they are all too  real. Although there are elements of the ridiculous about Breivik’s writings, such as his obsession with uniforms and the Knights Templars,  his concern about the rapid turning of Norway from a homogeneous  into a  heterogeneous  society as a matter of policy is self-evidently reasonable and vitally important.  Norway has a small population of less than 5 million (http://www.ssb.no/english/subjects/02/befolkning_en/).  If mass immigration of those who cannot or will not assimilate fully continues at the pace it is running at, it is quite possible that within a couple of generations native Norwegians will be outnumbered.  Imagine a situation where Muslims became the largest population group in Norway. Does anyone believe they would,  as a group , subscribe to Norwegian customs and morals or if they become the majority would not try to create and Islamic state?

What the Norwegian elite has been doing is engage in an orgy of self-congratulation about how civilised the country is to allow Breivik the full protection and access to the law and that this national tolerance has nullified Breivik’s message .  This has been eagerly echoed by the British media. Here is an example  of the political goo even conservative commentators have been ejecting:

“Reading the reports, the first thing that strikes you is how pathetic Breivik sounds, like a teenage boy fantasising about being a soldier: describing shoot-em-up computer games as “training”, claiming that he used “Japanese warrior meditation techniques” to “de-emotionalise” himself, writing a 1,500-page “manifesto” describing his half-baked racist theories and his ludicrous self-identification with the Knights Templar. Breivik himself, with his idiotic beard and self-satisfied smile, looks less like the personification of evil and more like an irksome pub bore.

 But when you drag your attention away from him, you notice how clear-eyed, how sane, the Norwegian response has been.

In the aftermath of the attacks, Jens Stoltenberg, the Norwegian prime minister, told a gathering in his capital’s cathedral: “Our response is more democracy, more openness, and more humanity.” He went on in an interview with this newspaper: “It was our democratic, open society that was under attack… it was quite logical to say that the answer was more of what was attacked. (Tom Chivers –  http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100177883/norway-gives-a-dignified-lesson-in-how-to-deal-with-horror/)

The truth is rather different. The justice Breivik has been given is in its way a show trial, not one as obvious as those of, say, Stalin, but one emanating from the cloyingly politically correct society which Norway has become.   Far from allowing Breivik to put his case publicly,  his access to the Norwegian public has been very limited.  He has spent most of his time since his arrest without contact with other prisoners. (According to reports, after his conviction  Breivik  is to be kept without  contact with other prisoners  for the time being).  He was denied any  opportunity to see news programmes  after he was arrested and this may be continuing. When the trial was finally held,  Breivik’s testimony and that of his witnesses were not broadcast, while the prosecution’s submissions and witnesses were put on air.  When Breivik has been allowed to speak in court he has been frequently interrupted and harassed by the presiding judge.  This happened again at his appearance during the  court judgement where he was declared sane and sentenced to 21 years with the strong possibility that he will never be released as the period of imprisonment  can be increased if a prisoner is deemed dangerous at the expiry of their  formal sentence.

Apart from Breivik’s treatment, it is reasonable to consider the general fairness of the Norwegian justice system.  The use of the jury is rare even in serious crimes and the readiness to put people in psychiatric unity just in case  places a serious question mark over whether anyone charged with a crime which challenges the Norwegian commitment to political correctness could expect a fair trial.  Latterday liberals have a mentality very similar to that of Marxists which allows them to persuade themselves that the end justifies the means and consequently  those who fall outside the parameters of whatever are the limits of political correctness at the time – like all ideologies it shifts its shape continuously – are not to be allowed any scope for challenging political correctness, indeed, cannot be allowed to do so because widespread challenge would bring the ideological house of cards down.

No country’s justice  is immune from  political taint

The problem of politics contaminating justice affects any country  at some level, no matter how good  its general record on providing untainted justice as far as that is practically possible – the prejudice of jurors, judges and magistrates cannot be legislated away and there is always the problem of the rich being able to buy access to the law when the poor cannot do so.

Political correctness is now a strong driver of the politicisation of justice  in much of the West.  A first rate example of   politicised justice In England is the trial and conviction of  Gary Dobson and David Norris (both white)   for the murder of Stephen Lawrence  (black) was driven not by a desire for justice based on strong evidence but an hysterical desire by the British liberal elite to see people not only convicted for his murder to but the people who were convicted  should be those labelled as racist whites  (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/stephen-lawrence-gary-dobson-david-norris-and-a-political-trial/).  Their  trial was obviously  illegitimate simply on the grounds of public prejudice against the defendants generated by a 17 year hate campaign orchestrated by the media, politicians and various interest groups – a campaign probably unique in English history –  but the new “evidence” presented was also risibly fallible, depending  as it did on highly questionable forensics which could not  legitimately have passed the English law beyond a  reasonable doubt test for criminal conviction.  In addition, police videos obtained secretly of Dobson and Norris (with others)  engaging in racist behaviour  and discussing the Lawrence killing but making no confession of responsibility or even saying anything which implied they were responsible, were played to the jury despite  defence objections that it was unreasonably prejudicial-  a well established principle in English law –  because it  reinforced the idea of the defendants (who were respectively aged 16 and 17 at the time of the murder in 1993)  as racists without  providing any meaningful evidence that they were responsible for the murder.

Despite the highly questionable convictions, Dobson and Norris’ attempt to have the convictions overturned have been stopped at the first hurdle with  their application to appeal – not an appeal note but merely an application to make an appeal  -  having been turned down in short order (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2192830/Stephen-Lawrence-killers-refused-leave-appeal-life-sentences-racist-murder.html#ixzz24SjMdeTO).  That is not the end of the matter because they can appeal against the refusal and there is also a theoretical eventual possibility of the Criminal Cases Review Commission considering the case. However, in the prevailing political climate in Britain it is not unreasonable to presume that any avenue of appeal , let alone the overturning of the convictions,  will be blocked regardless of the quality of  their grounds for appeal.

If national justice systems are intermittently  fallible because of political interference,  supra-national bodies such as the  Nuremburg  tribunal which tried Nazis  for war crimes,  the tribunals set up by the UN such as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda  (created in 1994 by the United Nations Security Council in Resolution 955) and  the International Criminal Court  are invariably contaminated by politics.  This is because the alleged crimes are political in nature and there is no possibility of any big fish brought before the tribunals or courts being found innocent because too much political capital has been invested in the prosecutions by powerful nations for someone like Milosevic to go free. A few lesser fry may be found not guilty because their acquittals, in terms of the public’s  perception,  are swallowed up by  the conviction of the important defendants and  such acquittals also have the beneficial effect for those running the  courts  of giving their proceedings generally a specious appearance of fairness.

There are also courts such as  the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the EU’s European Court of Justice (ECJ) which deal  with a mixture of what in England would be called criminal and civil cases, the vast majority being civil cases which involve the behaviour of national governments in making and applying laws which breach the treaties to which a country has signed up.  They are less obviously political in the sense that cases are not  brought for obvious  political reasons, but the manpower and conduct of  such courts is frequently open to question, for example, many judges in the  ECJ and ECHR  are drawn from countries, most notably those within the old Soviet bloc, which have no tradition of unpoliticised  justice.

The  fundamental question Breivik posed

The fundamental question which Breivik’s actions and motives pose is this: what non-violent means can be employed to prevent political elites in the West from turning their countries from natural homogenous nations into multicultural and multiracial messes when the elites make any serious non-violent opposition to such policies practically impossible?