John Reid:Hard guy/soft guy

Home Secretary John Reid arrived with the intention of smoking the pipe of peace; when he left the tepee was in flames. His peace mission to the Muslims of Leyton in Waltham Forest London had backfired magnificently.

Within a few minutes of taking the podium the Home Secretary had been intimidated and shouted down by Abu Izzadeen the well known black radical Muslim, and by the time he’d finished Reid had unintentionally offended and patronised his audience of Muslim parents by suggesting that they must watch their children closely for terrorist tendencies.

Afterwards Reid said, somewhat unconvincingly, how much he’d enjoyed the experience and mumbled something about the cut and thrust of politics. But if that’s the case then what’s the explanation for the distinctly uneasy smile he wore throughout Izzadeen’s tirade - it was hardly the smile of someone having a good time.

Some commentators have tried to put a positive spin on Reid’s foray into Muslim territory as confirmation of his tough guy credentials. The Daily Mail saw it like this: “Reid faces down hate preachers - Flashpoint as he talks tough in a Muslim heartland,” and “Reid pulled no punches.” If Reid really was punching his weight then he obviously doesn’t pack much of a punch - in response to Izzadeen’s invective Reid offered his cheek and had it slapped, he offered the other cheek and had that slapped too, and then offered it to be slapped again.

And anyway, that interpretation of Reid’s performance as straight talking is for the benefit of ethnic Britons only. Reid’s other face, the one he presented to his Muslim audience, was the face of appeasement. As Izzadeen fired insults and accusations at him Reid tried to cosy up to his abuser, calling him “My friend” on a number of occasions.

This is a perfect example of the establishment’s predicament where now they must serve two increasingly competitive constituencies ‘equally’. Thus in his dealing with the problems created by Muslim communities Home Secretary Reid needs to appear to be tough in the eyes of ethnic Britons and to appear to be understanding and sympathetic in the eyes of Muslims. Hence the abject failure of his mission - you can’t serve two masters at once.

Surrender

The Times was closest to reality: “Reid’s message to Muslims is drowned out by radicals.” But like the Mail its attention was on the theatre rather than on the script. It was doubtless entertaining to see Reid show himself up for the coward that he is by refusing to meet Izzadeen head on, but the curious thing is that Izzadeen was allowed to behave as he did. Why was security so lax?

In an open letter to the Home Secretary, Muslim apologist George Galloway wondered about this too, “The man who harangued you - Abu Izzadine (Galloway’s spelling) - is a well-known and violent extremist from an organisation your own government has proscribed. Yet he was allowed within punching distance of the British Home Secretary. How ? Why ?”

Galloway thinks there is one of two possible explanations, “Either our police and security services are so fantastically incompetent that Bin Laden himself might have slipped in to beard you at your podium. Or someone somewhere wanted to engineer precisely this confrontation to show you in a certain light and to portray the Muslims of Britain in the most aggressive violent and extreme way possible, as a justification for the utterly counter-productive policies you are following.” Galloway comes down on the side of incompetence.

According to the Home Office, while Izzadeen was not invited to the meeting, it is “in the nature of an open community meeting… that some people who were not invited ended up attending.”

The meeting had a number of aims: To get ‘moderate Muslims’ on board; to convince the rest of us that Reid was doing something to tackle the growing threat of Islamic terrorism in Britain; to show Muslims that the government was sympathetic to their plight; to show the rest of us that not all Muslims are carrying a bomb. Reid was walking a tightrope.

He will have been acutely aware that this was a tough call to make; there was a lot that could go wrong. But above all he had to guard against damaging easily bruised egos. And the most likely explanation for the lack of security is the fear of it being interpreted as provocative, by for instance casting aspersions on Islam’s supposedly peaceful intent.

Of course Reid still had his armed guards, but they were dressed in ‘civvies’ and know all about adopting a low profile. But there was an absence of the posse of uniformed and armour-plated police officers that usually accompany senior politicians when they venture into the real world. Reid appeared happy to leave policing to a couple of black security guards who ushered Izzadine out (once he’d said what he had to say) as gently as they could. In fact the only visible police presence in the meeting room was that of a diminutive officer of indeterminate gender and ethnicity - a declaration of surrender if ever there was one.

Sauce for the goose

John Reid’s spin had the Leyton meeting as just another political event; senior politician meets the public sort of thing. And he said that Izzadeen’s rant was nothing new and not confined to Muslims. “It happens all the time,” he said, “.it is part of the political process.”

What political process is that? Senior politicians have an aversion to meeting the public, especially when there is a strong likelihood that the public will be afforded an opportunity to heckle. This meeting was an exception rather than the rule.

The establishment is worried that Muslim alienation will destabilise the multiracial/multicultural society. The establishment is also worried about the alienation of a growing proportion of the ethnic British community and the consequences it may have for society. Yet for some reason senior government ministers are more willing to meet the former than they are the latter.

John Reid says that there are always people who refuse,”…to take part in a dialogue, (and) who will try to intimidate and shout down,” and he should know, he’s one of them.

If the establishment is anxious to engage in dialogue with Muslims to discuss their disenchantment with the status quo, why is it not similarly anxious to engage in dialogue with ethnic Britons to discuss their disenchantment with the status quo? If it’s necessary to meet the Muslims of Waltham Forest, why isn’t it just as necessary to meet the ethnic Britons of Barking and Dagenham?

But can you imagine John Reid organising “.an open community meeting” for ethnic Britons where “.people who were not invited ended up attending”? No, neither can I.

When he was being heckled by Izzadeen, Reid referred to freedom of speech, meaning that it was a give and take thing. That if Izzadeen expected to be heard he should give others the opportunity to be heard too.

It’s highly significant that Reid should take this stance with a black radical Muslim. For while he was prepared to listen to Izzadeen’s claim that Muslims were suffering at the hands of the liberal establishment, it is beyond belief that he’d be prepared to listen to such protests from ethnic Britons. In the latter case Reid and the rest of the establishment are more likely to bleat ‘no platform’ than they are to engage in debate; their usual response to the concerns of ethnic Britons is with the epithets ‘Nazi, fascist, and racist,’ shouted from afar.

And if a miracle did happen and an ethnic Briton got the opportunity to put the case for the British people to the Home Secretary, and he argued his case with the same forcefulness that Izzadeen did for the introduction of Sharia law, how would Reid respond? It’s hard to imagine he’d be as courteous as he was with Izzadeen; “.let the gentleman deal with the authorities,” he said as the heckler was ushered outside.

Clash of cultures

Following the Home Secretary’s address, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair said, in an unusually candid fashion, how “extraordinarily difficult” it was to clamp down on Islamic extremism without offending large groups of Muslims.

Unfortunately Commissioner Blair didn’t expand; I’d like to know how difficult extraordinarily difficult is. But what he appears to be saying is that it’s next to impossible to address Islamic extremism without exacerbating it. There’s another fine mess liberalism has got us into.

Reid bent over backwards. He cut his security to a minimum. He smiled pleasantly, if somewhat uneasily, while being harangued by Abu Izzadeen, “.a violent extremist from an organisation (the Labour Government) has proscribed.” He said nothing in reply to being called a murderer and a tyrant, and an enemy of Islam. And when he was told, “How dare you come into a Muslim area.” Reid’s response was almost apologetic, “There is no part of this country from which any of us are excluded.” Especially Muslims, eh Home Secretary?

And then, to cap it all for the hapless John Reid, the audience of ‘moderate Muslims’ took umbrage when he asked them to keep an eye on their children to ensure they weren’t brainwashed into terrorism. I’ll wager Reid needed a large tumbler of scotch after that meet! He did everything he could to portray Muslim youngsters as innocents and emphasised that the problem was the extremists who sought to seduce them away from righteousness towards terrorism, and still the parents took offence!

What a result - for everybody but Reid that is!

But did he really think it would work? Is he that naïve, this former hard drinking communist who dragged himself up by his own boot straps? I do believe he is. Hiding behind that allegedly tough veneer is a wishful thinking liberal.

Reid is keen to dismiss the idea of a clash of cultures because it undermines everything he believes; he ignores the evidence and refuses to recognise that it’s happening now. And he attempts to explain it away by arguing that the ‘meaning of Islam has been hijacked by extremists who are using it to sustain a violent and indiscriminate war.’ According to Reid the people who bomb, threaten, and kill are not Muslims “in the true sense of the word.” So now Dr Reid is a self-appointed expert on who is and who is not a Muslim - I can’t see that going down too well in the Muslim world.

That the Home Secretary tried to enlist Britain’s Muslim communities to do more to combat the extremists in their midst is an indication of his lack of understanding of the situation. He makes the mistake of believing that everyone aspires to see the world through the liberal looking glass. It is self delusion of the most dangerous kind. Muslims view the world according to the dictates of their own beliefs; their truths and realities are not the truths and realities of Western middle class liberals. All Muslims have as their long term aim the subjugation of the world under an Islamic theocracy - “Muslims do not need British values. We believe Islam is superior, we believe Islam will be implemented one day.”

Reid and the rest of the utterly gutless creatures that constitute the liberal establishment are trying to appease themselves out of a predicament with Islam that is entirely of their own making. They refuse to recognise that to the Muslim mindset appeasement and diplomacy as signs of weakness to be taken advantage of; Reid’s interventions are encouraging the very clash of cultures that they are designed to deny.

Share

The Commissariat for Integration and Cohesion: An honest debate

When he was Home Secretary, so-called ’straight talking’ David Blunkett called for “An honest debate on immigration.”

His successor so-called ‘political heavyweight’ Charles Clarke did the same. And the current Home Secretary John Reid, the so-called ‘bruiser’, called for it too. Yet we’re still waiting for this debate.

When it comes to the thorny subject of mass third world immigration it seems the establishment’s straight talkers, political heavyweights and bruisers aren’t quite as straight talking and fearless as they’d have us believe. Even talking a good fight is a bit too risky for them; the most they dare do is talk about talking about one.

Former commie John Reid has tried to give the impression that he’s a hard man, and the establishment media has been backing him on this one. But his stance on immigration is timid. He conveniently sidesteps the real threat, mass third world immigration and Britain’s growing Muslim communities, and instead focuses attention on migrant workers from the EU. Some tough guy.

As with Blunkett and Clarke before him, Reid is a coward. And like all cowards his primary concern is his own self interest, which in his case is the maintenance of his membership of the political elite and the enjoyment of the benefits that come with it. Thus Reid took the route of least resistance, the one least likely to threaten his position. Poles as White Europeans are an easier target for him than are third world Muslims; Poles can’t scream ‘racism’, they don’t have the political clout that Muslims do, and they don’t have the same potential for upsetting the egalitarian apple cart.

Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Ruth Kelly is in a similar and closely related predicament, and her efforts to get out of it illustrate even more clearly than Reid’s do just how serious that predicament is. They’re both looking for the same miracle - a way to resolve society’s problems without actually addressing them.

Mass third world immigration led to the multicultural society and to the need for the liberal establishment to redefine Britain. They put their muddled heads together and came up with the idea of multiculturalism - which they subsequently promoted with no expense spared. But it didn’t work.

To make matters worse for them, ethnic Britons in increasingly significant numbers have begun to voice their concerns about mass immigration and about its adverse effects on British society. Stir into that the strident demands being made by Muslims that our society (they now call it theirs) tailors itself to the Islamic way of thinking and you are left with a very potent brew.

John Reid is responsible for managing immigration; Ruth Kelly is responsible for managing its effects. And just as Reid called for ‘an honest debate’ on immigration, so Kelly has called for ‘an honest debate’ on integration and cohesion as an alternative to multiculturalism.

‘Independent’ Commission

The machinery that provides the driving force for multiculturalism is still in place and functioning in local and central government, in education, academia, and in the media, and the reality of the multicultural society is all around us. This makes the executive’s belated efforts to change direction all the more difficult - much of its own bureaucracy is working against it. Many people have a vested interest in the multicultural idea and they’re not going to let go without a struggle, yet at the same time there’s a growing awareness that multiculturalism is turning out to be another word for Balkanisation.

It was the LibLabCon party’s commitment to multiculturalism that legitimised the existence and aided the expansion of minority communities and cultures in Britain. Minorities were encouraged to play their part in society from the point of view of their own culture - that’s what multiculturalism is all about - and Muslims in particular took the establishment at its word. But things haven’t worked out as they’d wished and the establishment is now feeling threatened by the very communities it helped create - the forlorn hope now is that those communities will be willing to dilute themselves in the name of integration and community cohesion. Fat chance!

Desperate measures are required. Enter Ruth Kelly as Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government who on 24th August ‘06 delivered a speech launching her Commission on Integration and Cohesion. You can always tell when things are getting difficult for the politicians, they call for a quango.

Ruth Kelly’s response to the crisis of the effects of immigration is the same as John Reid’s is to the crisis of immigration. Reid’s solution is to get someone else to make the decision. He thinks a non governmental body consisting of businessmen should decide on immigrant numbers according to the needs of business. He wants to take the politics out of immigration - it’s a bit too risky for him to deal with. Ruth Kelly’s the same. She wants the Commission on Integration and Cohesion to tell her what to do, that way it’s easier to duck responsibility for the fiasco that’s bound to ensue. She wants to take the politics out of the effects of immigration, even though immigration and thus its effects are the direct result of post WWII politics and politicians.

Like the rest of the LibLabCon party, Reid and Kelly are worried about being taken to task for the mess that they and their predecessors have made of Britain.

According to the blurb “The independent Commission will consider innovative approaches looking at how communities across the country can be empowered to improve cohesion and tackle extremism,” and it will report back sometime in June ‘07 to Ms Kelly with its recommendations for making Britain better.

So how independent will the Commission on Integration and Cohesion actually be?

Chairman of the Commission is Darra Singh and six of his thirteen commissioners are ethnic minorities. Of the remainder, Professor Michael Keith is a former Labour leader for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets “.where he helped transform the borough marked by social polarisation to a position where it was awarded Beacon status for Community Cohesion in 2003-2004.” Leonie McCarthy manages Peterborough’s New Link New Arrivals Partnership, a government-funded pro-asylum seeker organisation which “.won the 2005 UK National Housing Award for Excellence in Promoting Community Cohesion.” Frank Hont is the North West Regional Secretary of UNISON and a member of the Board of the Migrant Workers North West organisation. Ed Cox works for the Local Government Information Unit on cohesion. Harriet Crabtree is Deputy Director of the Interfaith Network for the UK. Sam Tedcastle is Managing Director of The Participation - a Burnley ‘company’ that focuses its work on building meaningful dialogue between different groups “.in order to improve services and community life.” The seventh member of the non-minority group is Superintendent Steve Jordan an operational police commander in Northwest Birmingham, “.an area of very mixed ethnic and religious make-up.”

So there’s no change there then. As per usual ethnic Britons are to be ignored unless they concur with the liberal establishment. We weren’t asked when they opened our borders to mass immigration and when they subjected us to multicultural social engineering, and they’ve no intention of asking us about enforced integration either.

Honesty or deceit

Ruth Kelly talked about the need for honesty, “I believe it is time now to engage in a new and honest debate about integration and cohesion in the UK. (The debate) will have considerably more value if we can be open and honest about the challenges we face.” And like John Reid she played to an increasingly anti-PC audience, “We must not be censored by political correctness, and we must not tiptoe around important issues. I agree with the Home Secretary; it is not racist to discuss immigration and asylum.”

Yet for someone who refuses to be censored by political correctness Kelly remains remarkably constrained by it. She opened her speech, “I want to start by saying that I believe that Britain’s diversity is a huge asset to our country. Immigration has helped transform our economy, supporting growth and boosting productivity. Immigration has helped enrich our cultural life. the capital’s diversity (is) now commonly acknowledged to be one of its key attractions. migrant workers have been vital to supporting our public services. I believe that we should celebrate and clearly articulate the benefits that migration and diversity have brought.” She may not think it racist to talk about immigration and asylum, but it appears she thinks it’s racist to say anything but good about it.

Kelly’s deeply ingrained political correctness dictates that she praises the ‘benefits of immigrants and immigration’ - though predictably nowhere does she specify precisely what those benefits are, and her dishonesty ensures that she ignores their costs. But doesn’t the need for her Commission indicate that indeed there are costs?

Commission Chairman Darra Singh is similarly in denial, “.what we are experiencing now is an increasingly complex picture of diversity. It brings significant benefits economically and culturally. But it can bring tensions.” Note that. He was happy to mention “.significant benefits” but he couldn’t bring himself to talk about “significant costs”, preferring instead the word “tensions” which shifts responsibility away from immigrants to share it with the host population; tension being a two way thing.

Ruth Kelly studied politics, philosophy and economics at Queen’s College, Oxford, followed by an MSc in economics at the London School of Economics. Her first job was as an economics reporter for the Guardian and then she moved on to the Bank of England where she was deputy editor of the quarterly inflation report. You may not like her ideas, but you’d still expect her to be able to string a few coherent sentences together and her speeches to follow a consistent thread.

And if she can’t do these things, it either means she’s not as bright as her qualifications and experience suggest or that she’s trying to make sense out of nonsense and isn’t doing a very good job of it. Or maybe it’s a combination of the two.

But if nothing else Kelly’s speech showed how proficient she is at talking out of both sides of her mouth at once, “It is also clear that our ideas and policies should not be based on special treatment for minority ethnic or faith communities. to make sure everyone can be treated equally, there are some programmes that will need to treat groups differently.” What is it about these liblabcons that blinds them to such obvious contradictions? Didn’t she read through her speech before she delivered it? Didn’t she do a dry run beforehand to make sure it made sense? It is inconceivable that she didn’t, yet still she put forward mutually exclusives as compatible. Is it any wonder the country is in chaos when people like Kelly are running the show?

Honesty from the liblabcons? They wouldn’t know honesty if it came up and slapped them across the face.

Liblabcon problems

Kelly’s task and that of the rest of the liblabcons is to deal with the problems caused by mass third world immigration without identifying mass third world immigration as a problem. She’s tops when it comes to praising, “.we should celebrate.the benefits that migration and diversity have brought,” but not quite as forthcoming when it comes to criticising, “.but while celebrating that diversity we should also recognise that the landscape is changing, changing rapidly. And we should not shy away from asking - and trying to respond to - some of the more difficult questions that arise.” Unfortunately she shies away from telling us what she thinks those “difficult questions” are; she daren’t even commit herself to saying what prompted them, they just “arise” as if out of the ether. Is this woman really going to sort out this mess?

“I believe it is time now to engage in a new and honest debate about integration and cohesion in the UK. If we are to have an effective, progressive response to these issues, then we must be honest about the challenges we face and be prepared to meet these head on with renewed energy and impetus.” But what issues is she referring to?

She talks about ‘questions’ and ‘issues’ but doesn’t define them. She’s ducking and diving.
And even when Ms Kelly does specify a problem the language she uses seeks to absolve its cause of responsibility; for her the conflicts on our streets between various ethnic minorities in Britain have nothing to do with open-door immigration policies. According to her they’re caused by “.increased global interconnectedness” and “.global tensions being reflected on the streets of local communities.” She explains, “New migrants protect the fierce loyalties developed in war-torn parts of Europe. Muslims feel the reverberations from the Middle East. Wider global trends have an impact.” But if liblabcons like Kelly hadn’t invited ‘migrants’ here in the first place their conflicts wouldn’t be playing out on our streets. Yet still we should “.celebrate the benefits that migration has brought.” Remind me again, what are those benefits?

The other side of the equation is occupied by an increasing number of discontented ethnic Britons. Kelly articulates it thus, “.there are white Britons who do not feel comfortable with change. They see the shops and restaurants in their town centres changing. They see their neighbourhoods becoming more diverse.

Detached from the benefits of those changes, they begin to believe the stories about ethnic minorities getting special treatment, and to develop resentment, a sense of grievance.” Damned right we’re not comfortable with this change!

Note how Kelly words it. She says that we “.do not feel comfortable with change,” rather than saying we do not like the changes that have been foisted on us without as much as a by your leave. She says that we see our “.neighbourhoods becoming more diverse,” rather than saying we have become alienated from our neighbourhoods because of their increasing diversity. She says we are “Detached from the benefits of those changes,” as though our inability to appreciate those alleged benefits is a shortcoming rather than a natural response to a change for the worse. She says we believe “.the stories about ethnic minorities getting special treatment,” as if there is no truth to them.

But she’s right about one thing; we are developing resentment and a sense of grievance, although it’s not directed at the ethnic minorities. It’s directed at the double-talking double-dealing traitors that constitute the liberal establishment and of which Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Ruth Kelly is a prime example.

Just listen to this. Is it self-delusion or a calculated lie? Kelly, “.we have moved from a period of uniform consensus on the value of multiculturalism.” Uniform consensus! What consensus! There’s never been a consensus.
Multiculturalism was forced on the British people by liblabcon politicians. We couldn’t have consented to it because we were never asked. Kelly’s rationale is transparent. She’s making a desperate effort to convince the rest of us that we’re equally culpable for the chaotic mess that the LibLabCon party has made of this country.

And after years of liblabcon sponsored mass third world immigration Ruth Kelly thinks that now, “. we need a controlled, well managed system of immigration.” Not because mass immigration has brought the country to its knees, but to, “.counter exploitation from the far right,” - by which one must presume she means the BNP.

It is obvious that we’ve reached a ‘tipping point’ for the liberal establishment. Things have gone beyond their control and from now on they’ll be forever playing catch up. And in their efforts to catch up they become increasingly absurd - illustrated by the absurd Commission for Integration and Cohesion.

What is to be done?

The liblabcons have an inability to think outside the box. And so any solution they propose can only mean more of the same and thus can only make matters worse for ethnic Britons - Kelly’s Commission will be no different.

The official website of the Dept. for Communities and Local Govt. says that the aim of the Commission is to “empower” local communities to move towards being cohesive and more integrated, which suggests some measure of choice in the matter. This is disingenuous; in reality there will be no choice, as Chairman Darra Singh confirms, “.integration is not just an issue for minority ethnic communities.” In other words ethnic Britons will be compelled to integrate with minorities. The liblabcons plan to combine the disparate parts into a united whole - the ethnic British community is just as much of an impediment to their evil design as are minority communities.

In a feeble attempt to justify this enforced integration Kelly cites, “.evidence at a national level, via the regular Government Citizenship Survey, (which) consistently shows that people who live in the most ethnically diverse areas are the ones that have the most positive perceptions of ethnic minorities.” Her argument is that the more integrated we are the more positive our perception of minorities and by implication the better we’ll get on and the happier we’ll be. But according to the 2005 Government Citizenship Survey, “People living in London were less likely to have positive views of their neighbourhood” - the very same London of which Kelly fantasises, “.the capital’s diversity (is) now commonly acknowledged to be one of its key attractions.” Acknowledged by whom?

The Commission intends to examine the issues that raise tensions between different groups in different areas that lead to segregation and conflict. As if they need examining. The causes are there for anyone who cares to look - the segregation is a consequence of people choosing to live with others of their own kind, the conflict is a consequence of competing cultures occupying the same living space. What the Commission really means is that it will look for an explanation that diverts our attention away from these readily observable facts.

In addition the Commission has been asked to suggest “.how local community and political leadership can push further against perceived barriers to cohesion and integration.” But what if local communities wish to maintain those barriers to cohesion and integration, ‘perceived’ or otherwise? What of we don’t want to integrate? What if we want to maintain our Western way of viewing the world? Are community and political leaders intending to deny their constituents their democratic and human rights to live as they so choose?
Apparently they are - so much for the liblabcons’ commitment to democracy and human rights.

Singh believes that the solution is to brainwash our children. The way forward, “.must be based on those local ideas that have national potential - such as school twinning, and projects aimed at bringing young people of different backgrounds together.”
So there it is in a nutshell. Even before this ludicrous Commission has begun its phoney investigation the conclusion has already been made. The plan is to force our children to mix with the children of immigrants and asylum seekers. Our children will be made to question their own way of life and weaken their cultural ties so as to pave the way for ‘integration’; they are to be sacrificed at the altar of egalitarianism to save the liblabcons.

The Commission on Integration and Cohesion is the establishment’s pitiful response to the fracturing of our society along racial and cultural lines. They and their predecessors sponsored mass third world immigration in the belief that they’d create an egalitarian utopia; instead they got aggressive Muslim communities and Islamic terrorism. The liblabcons are way out of their depth. They are too cowardly to deal directly with this assault on our way of life and so look for an easy way out; their desperate plan is to enforce mixing in the hope of surreptitiously watering down the Islamic threat.

Share