Thought Crime Roundup (2)

Nigel Hastilow, who, readers will probably recall, was dismissed (or at least, forced to resign), as Tory parliamentary candidate for Halesowen and Rowley Regis, after favourably invoking the name of Lord Voldemort Enoch Powell, has an interesting article in the Telegraph, considering Powell's legacy:

Whatever the accuracy of Powell's predictions, and however strong his language, his main argument was that the country was "undergoing the total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history".

That is more true today than it was four decades ago. The level of immigration in the intervening years has been higher than Powell foresaw; the consequences are more far-reaching.

One of the most obvious is the demand for land, infrastructure and housing. Across Britain, local battles are taking place over plans to build three million more houses to accommodate our ever-expanding population.

The Government's own estimates suggest the number of people living here could climb from 60 million to 110 million in the next 75 years.

Of course we need houses for such an explosion in numbers. And roads, railways, schools, hospitals, shops and jobs. So the spiral of development twists on and on.

This will cost the taxpayer hundreds of billions of pounds and concrete over our countryside. Milton Keynes, for instance, will grow to twice the size of Birmingham. There won't be enough water - new homes there will have showers but no baths. It does not seem unreasonable to question how sustainable all this is.

And that's only the infrastructural impact; he hasn't even considered the cultural one. It does not seem unreasonable to question, say, the desirability of having millions of people in this country who support the imposition of Sharia law, either. As the number is, at present, somewhere around 800,000, that possibility is not remote; rather, it is almost inevitable. But very few politicians dare to talk about it - even Hastilow appears to have shied away from doing so.

Yet when I raised the issue, the Conservative Party was horrified. David Cameron has nurtured a politically correct, BBC-friendly, caring Conservatism which despises "nasty party" throwbacks who bang on about immigration.

In other words, a "Conservatism" bearing an uncanny resemblance to modern liberalism.

The mistake was to mention Enoch Powell.

I was told that to survive as a candidate I should confess to being "incredibly stupid" and submit future articles to Central Office first. So I resigned.

Losing the chance to become MP for Halesowen and Rowley Regis was a bitter blow. But nothing consoled me as much as the overwhelming support I received from strangers. I was inundated with letters and emails, many arguing that this is too important an issue to let go.

For many politicians, immigration is the subject which dare not speak its name.

That's why so many people feel betrayed. Their elected representatives refuse to articulate the voters' concerns with anything approximating honesty. The conspiracy of silence among mainstream politicians is calculated to drive decent men and women into the arms of extremists.

The BNP is bound to flourish when anyone who tries to discuss immigration openly is howled down by cries of "racist".

Sadly, my experience is likely to intimidate other Tory hopefuls into silence. As one of them told me: "I agree with you completely. I'm just glad it was you who said it, not me."

Here we again see the suppression of democracy and debate that I talked about in my previous post. The issue of immigration, and the numerous other issues to which it gives rise, routinely top the list of the most important issues facing the country, in polls of the general public. And yet this vitally important topic is going unmentioned by almost all politicians from the three main parties, because they know that to discuss it openly, honestly, and forthrightly, would, in all probability, be to commit political suicide. This stifling of debate, in which all three main parties, and much of the MSM, are complicit, is making a veritable mockery of our claim to have a representative democracy.

Mr Hastilow concludes with the following sentence:

And I am glad I won't live another 75 years to see the full hideous consequences of today's population explosion.

On the basis of anecdotal evidence alone, I must say that this view seems to be shared by increasing numbers of people. When people start giving up on their country in this manner, it is in large part because of the failure of the political elite to govern in a manner which inspires people with genuine long-term optimism. The failure of the politicians to respond to voters' concerns, and the rendering of widely-held political beliefs as unspeakable heresy, is a major cause of this failure.