How our media defines the immigration issue
Another report on immigration is out today – 5 years on from the signing of the treaty of accession in Athens – ACPO are claiming that stories of a migrant ‘crime wave’ are a myth. In fact, they say, crime in areas with lots of new EU immigrants seems to only have risen in proportion to the general rise in population.
The Telegraph covers it like this:
The report for the Association of Chief Police Officers appears to contradict claims made by several senior officers that forces require extra money to cope with an immigrant crimewave.
Lessons on how to take on the BNP
I can’t work myself into annoyance over the fact that some London newspapers have taken money from the BNP over the upcoming local elections.
I guess this stems from my differing view from many on the left on how to deal with the BNP. Broadly, most of the left focuses on keeping the racists and their chums on the fringes of society.
There was a time when the BNP and the National Front posed a big threat to many ethnic minorities and were in the political limelight. Having successfully made them beyond the pale, they want to ensure they remain there.
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The far left, far right and working class votes
So much for that old labour movement slogan about unity being strength; Marxists of one description or another are contesting seats in the London elections on no fewer than five separate tickets.
The divisions underline a generalised lack of political seriousness, perhaps driven by some sense that the stakes are low. After all, the pumped up borough council that is the Greater Rubberstamp Assembly hardly represents Britain’s most puissant political body, is it? What does it matter that not a single socialist candidate has even a remote chance of success?
Well, it does matter, and this is why. The British National Party is looking good to secure at least one and possibly even two seats. That will confer on it greater legitimacy and a better platform than it has ever previously enjoyed.
The truth is that the BNP has built itself – in the outer eastern suburbs of London, anyway – primarily by articulating real working class grievances. Socialists that still espouse class politics need to ask themselves why the far right is succeeding where the far left has so completely failed.
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Immigration is also a feminist issue
Every single candidate for the London mayoral elections in May – even Tory Boris Johnson – supports an amnesty which would allow illegal immigrants living in the UK for four years or more to follow a “path to citizenship”, The Independent reported yesterday.
Last month Mr Livingstone called for a “fresh start”, with a one-off amnesty for migrants without “regular status”, in spite of his party’s stance. “Migrants contribute hugely to the economic, civic and cultural life of London and the UK,” he said. “To have a substantial number of them living here without regular status because of deep-rooted failings in the immigration system, some dating back over a decade, is deeply damaging to London as well as to them.”
This is really good news.
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Multiculturalism and ‘managed’ migration
The Spectator’s leader contains (at least) two silly claims.
First:
Nobody sane can be opposed to a managed migration system that functions well
Leave aside the fact that a well-functioning managed migration system is just impossible.
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BNP backs Boris, Paddick piles in
Here’s one endorsement he can probably live without.
The British National party has called on its supporters to give their second-preference votes in the London mayoral election to the Conservative candidate, Boris Johnson.In a statement posted on its website today, the far-right party advised people to award its own mayoral candidate, Richard Barnbrook, their first-choice vote, and “the Tory clown Johnson” their second because he was the lesser of two evils.
Libdem candidate Brian Paddick has just released a statement saying:
Clearly the BNP have recognised Boris’s talent for causing offence and creating division. This should be a wake-up call for all decent people who could vote in the Mayoral elections to register their vote. The more votes there are for mainstream parties, the less chance there will be to give racists and extremists a seat.
We need a Mayor who does not make offensive remarks, who does not take sides and who will put all his efforts into uniting all Londoners whatever their background.
Update: A Guardian/ICM poll puts Ken and Boris neck-to-neck.
Libdems / Labour should drop ethnic short-lists
The Labour party is considering them and Libdems have expressed their support, but I think they’re a bad idea. The idea is this. In an effort to boost the number of black or Asian MPs, in certain constituencies the parties will only put forward candidates for selection of a black/Asian background.
It sounds good on paper and Operation Black Vote, who have been pushing this, say it would only be applicable for about 20 years before being gotten rid of. Those who complain this form of positive discrimination won’t let people through on merit are either not acquianted well enough with our current crop of politicians, or understand how nepotistic and unfair the system is anyway.
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Is Nick Cohen getting carried away?
Last week the Observer and Evening Standard columnist used his space in the latter to explain how Brian Paddick can win. The trick is to bring about “a mass defection of voters from Ken to the Lib-Dems in the first round.” Were this to occur, he writes, Paddick would reach the second round of voting, eliminating Livingstone, and then secure the mayoralty on second preferences.
Could it happen?
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Obama, Mississipi and race politics
Barack Obama won the state of Mississipi last night as expected, though by a big margin: 61% to 37%. As many news organisations including the New York Times point out: “The polls found that roughly 90 percent of black voters supported Mr. Obama, but only a third of white voters did.”
The implication may be that Obama can’t win white votes. But clearly that’s not true since he won states like Iowa, Kansas and Vermont that have a negligible black population. It seems more the case that in racially diverse states Obama splits the vote, whereas in largely homogenous states white voters have no problem supporting him. Why might this be the case?
Is it like white flight in a residential area where one or two black/brown neighbours are ok, but as soon as the percentage gets high enough, white people start moving out in droves? Or is it the case that in racially mixed states, whites know that blacks will support him so they take HRC’s side? Or is it that in racially diverse states, whites have a less benign view of blacks generally and that affects their voting behaviour? Not much research seems to have been done into this.
Trevor Phillips on Obama: not black enough
What on earth is Trevor Phillips up to? Britain’s most prominent black public figure has launched an attack on Barack Obama in this month’s Prospect, reported prominently in The Independent today, accusing the leading Democrat of ‘cynicism’ which will hold back black Americans and hold back the politics of race.
Trevor is entitled to his view, and clearly he is rooting for a Hillary Clinton comeback. But, whatever happens, he ought to acknowledge the Obama achievement and its extraordinary resonance.
The worst part of his argument, especially since he heads the Equality and Human Rights Commission, is his implication that Obama is a less legitimate black leader because he isn’t descended from slaves. What happened to opportunity for all? Trevor Phillips has been controversial because he has challenged and criticized the tendency of multiculturalism to stress differences and create inter-ethnic tensions. Why retreat to the old politics of race, and this discredited question about whether Obama is black enough, when black voters have made it pretty clear what they think?
Phillips doesn’t really present much of an argument for the claim that Obama will set back the cause of post-racial politics. Yes, Obama is a politician. He isn’t the new messiah. He has been out looking for votes, and stirring up hope. But if anybody can think of a less cynical political campaign in the last thirty years, I would be surprised.
We need a shift in the politics of race, as Sunny Hundal and the New Generation Network have argued. The challenge to race leaders is to remember that they should be trying to put themselves out of business. Trevor Phillips has wanted to champion that cause. It would be a great shame if, just as we got there, he decided that to see change, after all, as a threat.
Call to Prayer, Eastern Spice
Its been a while since a good multicultural conundrum came along to bother us. For a while, I thought that the issue of the mosque in Oxford that wants to broadcast its call to prayer might be one such issue, but while reading a couple of articles in order to write a blog, I came across this quote from the Telegraph:
“We want to fix a loudspeaker to our minaret to broadcast our call to prayer. We would like to have three two-minute calls a day, but if that is not accepted then we would like to have it at least on Fridays.
“In Islamic counties the call is loud so people are reminded to come to prayer. We do not need the volume to be loud, that can be adjusted because our members have a time-table for the prayers. But we want to have the call in some form because it is our tradition.”
Now this doesn’t look like a culture clash to me, so much as groups engaging in a dialogue with a local authority, just as they should in a liberal democracy.
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Can we create a ‘Progressive Immigration Policy’?
Over 150 people crammed into committee room 9 last night for a lively and informed debate on migration. The meeting was chaired by the country’s leading social policy commentator Polly Toynbee. The debate first heard from the Minister for Immigration, Liam Byrne who set out the reasons why he believes the policies being implemented by Labour are “firm but fair”.
Byrne drew on his own heritage as the decendent of a migrant family coming to work in the UK. Forwarding a “work hard and play by the rules” argument Bryne drew on the economic arguments for a progressive immigration policy and even touched on the moral ones. However, when it came to answering a question on what the differences were between Tory and New Labour policies Bryne did seem to struggle.
Byrne was followed by an impassioned speech by Don Flynn of the Migrants’ Rights Network, and editor of the Compass publication, Towards a Progressive Immigration Policy, who set out a critical view of the government’s record and called on the government ‘to stop moving the goal posts’, strongly urging that the government put social justice at the heart of policy, in order for its rhetoric to live up to the reality.
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How goes the War On Ken?
No surprises in the Evening Boris yesterday – just the usual three pages devoted to demonstrating that Ken Livingstone is a turd. Boris Gilligan reported that Brenda Stern, the former LDA manager, is threatening to sue over what Livingstone said about her on the Today programme on Thursday. Boris Dovkants wrote an unflattering spread about Rosemary Emodi, the Livingstone aide (and Lee Jasper’s deputy) who got caught in a lie about how a flight to Nigeria was paid for.
Meanwhile at New Statesman and at Comment Is Free Martin Bright has been insisting that his Dispatches programme has been vindicated by Livingstone’s own words since its broadcast. And at The Times, Camilla Cavendish – I wonder which inner city comp she went to – likened Livingstone to “the dictator of a small third world country.” The London Mayor himself has decamped to Davos where he’s found time to blog a broadside in his own defence. It’s been a bruising week for him. But how badly damaged is he? And where do the week’s hostilities leave the state of the mayoral race?
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Who do we support for London Mayor?
Given Martin Bright’s documentary on Channel 4 last night (I was out, didn’t get to watch), who should be supported for London Mayor? Ken is still the only left-wing candidate for London. Paddick is somewhat leftist on some issues and Boris Johnson is an annoying buffoon. I’d rather eat my monitor than support the latter. Fellow conspirator Dave Osler’s written this defence of Socialist Action and isn’t a fan of Nick Cohen, saying:
Similarly, unless it can somehow be proven that O’Neill and Woodward are somehow not up to their jobs, then why shouldn’t they be working for the Greater London Authority? Remember, too, that Livingstone was elected as an independent. Labour Party members potentially faced expulsion for taking the Red Ken shilling, so his choice of appointees was limited from the start.
And what if Socialist Action continues to have private meetings in a room above a pub in Islington? Lots of people have private meetings. As a punter, I cannot just barge in on get togethers of the Jockey Club; although I am member of the Labour Party, I have no right to sit in on sessions of the cabinet. Having meetings is what political groups of all stripes do, and cannot be adduced as evidence of undesirable clandestinity.
Cohen – sometimes given to sending me the odd abusive personal email for no reason in particular – asks how the media would react if a Tory mayor of London appointed British National Party supporters to his cabinet.
This point is as offensive as it is plain damn stupid. Whatever one thinks of Trotskyist political prescriptions, revolutionary socialists are politically motivated an entirely noble desire to see an end to exploitation, oppression, poverty, violence, hunger, racism and injustice across the planet.
What say you folks? Is Ken Livingstone guilty enough that the left should no longer support him? Or is he still your default candidate? What did you think of the documentary?
England, only a nation for whites?
Anthony Barnett on the OurKingdom blog has done a brilliant job of laying into the claim, by one of its readers, that England is a nation only for whites:
A nation is not a biological entity. Neither nationalism nor patriotism are racisms, even when racists avow them. Nationalism is an attachment to a polity, or would be polity. This is not a biological concept, its members are its citizens whatever their race. Benedict Anderson’s study ‘The Imagined Communities‘ shows why this is so in terms of the original development of nationalism. Perhaps knowing that any attempt to define a nation racially won’t work Gibson tries to use skin colour as if this was a “racialist principle”. But this is ridiculous. Any argument about skin colour soon forces us back to inner purity. We know where this leads.
…
20th century fascism, and even more so Nazism, was an imperial belief. It claimed the superiority of a race and set about to cleanse the surrounding parts of the planet. Gibson’s is a defensive fascism, which just asserts that England belongs to those he says are biologically qualified. But the claim is made with force despite the appearance of reason. The call to be strong, to oppose those who smell of weakness, to allege that anyone who does not “stand firm” merely accommodates out of a spineless desire for a quiet life, this is the language of the recruiting sergeant who exploits people’s anxiety with the appeal of potency.
Read the whole thing, it’s very good.
Why I’d like a British constitution
Last week I wrote an article for CIF on why we need a constitution as a glue that binds us together.
I believe we need a constitution that explicitly codifies the rights and responsibilities of British citizens. It would not only be a vital tool in politically educating existing Britons of their rights and responsibilities as citizens, but would also be a source of empowerment for immigrants. It would accord them civil rights and responsibilities and signal that they are part of a new home and they have to adjust to that.
…
I’m talking here about a nation bound together not by race or culture (when has Britain ever been mono-cultural?) but common political values, expressed through a strong parliamentary democracy, freedom of speech and expression, secularism, stronger civil liberties and more transparent political engagement.
To which Anthony Barnett at OurKingdom responded with several points:
Firstly, he says Britain is already multi-national, so a constitution would only apply to England, and Scotland wants its own. I hadn’t considered this to be honest. I thought a single constitution would have been an ideal way to keep England, Scotland, Wales and N Ireland together politically, while they could become more decentralised over time. Oh well, point taken.
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Martin Amis in Manchester
Given the furore over recent weeks about Martin Amis’s comments on the legitimacy of harassment of Muslims, I thought a little trip to Manchester University’s Whitworth Hall to hear him battle it out with Terry Eagleton might be, well, interesting shall we say.
Unfortunately, Eagleton couldn’t make it so we’re left with only Maureen Freely and Ed Husain to debate with Amis. But that’ll do for me.
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Morrissey: Oh god not again!
I see my hero Morrissey is in a spot of bother with the NME again, this time for failing to hold views that they find acceptable on the subject of immigration. The last time some of you may recall he was in hot water for being racist, not that he actually did anything racist unless you count waving a union flag at a concert as racist. Which I accept that some folk do for reasons that are utterly beyond me.
I remember it well because I was in my final years of school at the time and I incurred the wrath of the folk with Anti-Nazi League stickers on their schoolbags for being an unrepentant fan. They of course were easily dealt with by asking them how in a school with a population that was 60% Asian they had managed to avoid making one single Asian friend or acquaintance. But that was fifteen years ago. More recently I found myself in the remarkable and unique position of receiving death threats and abusive emails of a mainly graphically sexual and sexist nature after this appeared on Indymedia whilst also receiving threatening emails from folk claiming to be affiliated with the BNP for some snide remark or another. Mind you it’s nice that both the racists and anti-racists have something to unite them even if it his just their violent urges towards women.
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Let’s have more honesty in politics
Whatever side you are on in the Martin Amis controversy, it is notable how far his now-infamous comments on Islam depart from the mainstream of political and intellectual discourse in this country. On the left or the right, it is still rare to see hatred, fear and anger expressed this directly by a member of the intellectual or political elite.
Whereas populist, Richard Littlejohn-style discourse freely expresses itself in vivid ways, the mark of elite discourse is its aspiration to rationality and good sense. Although elite discourse is not always polite – far from it – the dominant trend is to not present oneself as a creature ruled by passion and prejudice, but as someone whose passions are harnessed for the good of society.
How far our society is ‘enlightened’ is open to debate, yet the legacy of the enlightenment remains profound. The consensus is still that engagement in politics requires a careful analysis of social problems and a determined attempt to right-wrongs in a way that is good for society as a whole.
Yet the enlightenment consensus, I would suggest, has become a straight-jacket on modern politics.
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Casting the net – More woes for the government
Welcome to Casting the net, Liberal Conspiracy’s daily blog review.
More woes for the government
Gordon Brown would have hoped that the funding scandals that marred the latter days of Blair’s tenure would be over. Sadly for the brooding Scot, this is not the case. Peter Watt resigned as the party’s General Secretary last night [Guardian], after admitting that he knew a millionaire was using intermediaries to secretly funnel cash to the party. This is the latest blow to land on a government fighting desperately to retain its credibility.
Labour blogger Jon Worth asks if it can “get any worse?”, adding: “It feels like there is some sort of tornado blowing through the corridors of Westminster, relentlessly tearing into the conventions and traditions.” Paul Burgin is depressed. But the Herts-based Labour activist says we shouldn’t forget “the good work we have done and the hard work of many decent MP’s who could lose their seats over this fiasco.”
Peter Kenyon, another Labour blogger, believes that plans for the state-funding of political parties are “being dusted down by Jack Straw MP in the wake of yet another momumental Labour Party blunder over party funding.” This will delight councillor Cllr Andrew Burns who believes that unless some ‘enhanced’ form of public funding is established, the situation “will only get worse, not better.”
Steve Webb MP thinks it’s “time for a severe cap on donations – people should indeed be able to support a party of their choice if they wish, but no-one should be in a position either to buy influence or to appear to buy influence.” Other Lib Dem’rs have some questions: Duncan Borrowman asks if Peter Watt is an “idiot or liar?” and Mike Smithson wants to know just “How dangerous is the ’sleaze’ tag for Labour?”
Blogs on the BNP/David Irving Oxford Union Debate
Antonia Bance – Frontline
Hug A Hoodie – BNP debate at the Oxford Union: an eyewitness account
Andy Mayer – Hate-campaigners in Oxford
Mike’s Little Red Page – Fascists – and facists’ pandars – out of Oxford!
Elsewhere…
The Poor Mouth – Oh so she was an adulterer, well that’s alright then…
bowblog – Cynical? Moi?
Disgruntled Radical – Annapolis – the long view
Spy Blog – Biometrics – Labour Government are still clueless about the technology
If you would like your blog or site to be considered as source material for future reviews, drop me an email at aaronh [at] liberalconspiracy [dot] org with the relevant url. I can then enter it into my RSS reader and monitor it for suitable content to be included. Likewise, if you have a specific article/post you feel deserves a little more traffic, get in touch.
You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or rss feeds.
» How bad is the feline obesity crisis?
» Why don’t MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours?
» Obama is right to slam BP – and why capitalists should too
» Why does Phillip Blond see civic cohesion as a security issue?
» So what if the Labour candidates went to Oxbridge?
» Last night’s Labour hustings: will it get interesting or turn to torture?
» It’s now down to Ken to win London for Labour
» The Labour people need
» Blog Nation: what would you like to see discussed?
» The Labour leadership’s token contender.. and it’s not Diane Abbott
» In defence of these fraternal nominations
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