Changing to suit the audience

I was searching Google for something else, when I stumbled upon this Guardian article from January 2004. Nominally, it's an interview with Mandy Telford, the then president of that ridiculous far-left talking shop, the National Union of Students (NUS), although in fact it consists primarily of the reminiscences of Telford's egotistical interviewer (and predecessor as NUS president), David Aaronovitch. For the most part, it is, as you would expect, rather dull, but the following extract did amuse me, and serves as a useful illustrator of its subject's character:

My predecessor, Trevor Phillips, now CRE boss, when at the NUS conference, used to change his clothes according to debates he was speaking in. If it was a discussion about race he would wear a bright-coloured ethnic African shirt. For the perennial debate on salaries for NUS full-timers, it was a pair of trousers with a hole in the arse.

Now, of course, Trev sticks to the plain old suit and tie combination. Better at hiding his ever-present charlatanry, perhaps...

More equal than others

It was with mounting anger, but without much surprise, that I read of yet another instance of state-sponsored anti-white discrimination. This time, it's taking place in the education system.

Among the various sources of funding available to schools, is the "Black Pupils Achievement Programme" (BPAP - not to be confused with the similar but much more expensive "Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant" (EMAG)), funded by the government, and therefore the (generally white) taxpayer, to the tune of £1.3million a year. The BPAP, to which over a hundred schools have so far signed up, was instituted in order to rectify the supposed under-achievement of non-white schoolchildren. As part of the programme, schools are given money to send all their pupils on regular trips to art galleries, museums, and the offices of local companies, in order to inspire them to work hard. All their pupils, that is, except those who happen to be white. They are excluded.

Other aspects of the BPAP include altering the school curriculum to ensure that it reflects the "experiences of African-Caribbean and Muslim pupils". As such, children at those schools that have signed up to the programme will now be studying the topography of Caribbean islands in their Geography classes, and will be analysing rap music during their English classes. Will the lyrics studied include those by performers such as Ice Cube and Public Enemy, who openly advocate hatred of, and sometimes violence against, whites, I wonder?

There are two main issues and two subsidiary points to be made here. First, these classes which are now being restructured in order to fit with the "experiences" of blacks and Muslims presumably include white pupils as well: I assume that even they are not excluded from all education. Well, this being so, I would ask what is being done to reflect the "experiences" of white pupils? This is a pertinent question: at the beginning of 2007 Sir Keith Ajegbo's report on citizenship lessons in schools revealed that white working class children often suffer "labelling and discrimination", especially in racially-mixed areas. Sir Keith wrote that white working class children:

...can feel beleaguered and marginalised, finding their own identities under threat as much as minority ethnic children...

With particular relevance to the present case, he added that:

It makes no sense in our report to focus on minority ethnic pupils without trying to address and understand the issues for white pupils. It is these white pupils whose attitudes are overwhelmingly important in creating community cohesion. Nor is there any advantage in creating confidence in minority ethnic pupils if it leaves white pupils feeling disenfranchised and resentful.

Sir Keith cited the example of a white British girl, who, having heard that her classmates came from such centres of vibrant diversity as the Congo, Portugal, Trinidad, and Poland, declared that she "came from nowhere". I cannot see that the negative perceptions that many native children have of their identity will be improved by such measures as the replacement of white poets with black rappers in the English curriculum.

More generally, I wonder why there is this especial focus on non-whites. While it is true that some non-white groups achieve poorer exam results, on average, than whites, it is also the case that white working class boys generally perform worse than any other group. Their results are also improving at a slower rate than those of other groups. So why are no measures being taken to remedy their poverty of achievement? Indeed, why is it that, so far from being helped, they are being actively discriminated against, in the manner detailed above?

To conclude, I would draw readers' attention to the fact that Trevor Phillips, the man responsible for ensuring that discrimination does not occur in Britain, refused to comment on this blatant instance of unfair treatment. I doubt that he would have been so reticent, had the Education Department been using taxpayers' money to send white children on trips, from which non-whites were excluded. And I would ask whether any reader, having observed the manner in which the present elite is thus discriminating against and failing the white working class, can honestly criticise any member of that class who then votes for the BNP? Because I don't think you can.

Hat-tip: Battle for Britain

More "racist myths" exposed...

Back in July I wrote about a report in The Times which acknowledged that in some towns there was a significant problem of "Asian" paedophiles preying on underage white girls, and pointed out that the BNP had raised this issue two or three years before, and had been denounced for spreading "racist myths".

Well, another claim that the BNP has made, and for which the party has been denounced as a bunch of lying hatemongers, has been the claim that white British residents in some areas were being put to the back of the queue for council housing, while newly-arrived immigrants jumped straight to the front. Unsurprisingly, Unite Against Fascism, together with a whole host of other leftist organisations, jumped up to denounce the BNP's allegations as - yes, that's right - "racist myths". The Labour MP for Barking, Margaret Hodge, was attacked by many of her fellow leftists when she made a similar point back in May.

And yet, it seems increasingly apparent that the BNP had a point on this issue too. In July Laban Tall reported on a Radio 4 (!) programme in which Barking's director of housing, David Woods, admitted that the "needs-based" system that the borough uses for allocating housing meant that, in practice, local residents, white or otherwise, did often lose out to newly-arrived immigrants. Now I read that Trevor Phillips, head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), has announced that there will be an inquiry into this very issue. Possibly the first useful thing he's ever done...

Of course, having an inquiry into the issue is not the same as concluding that there really is a problem. And, indeed, I am sceptical of the EHRC's ability to actually hold an independent inquiry. However, the very fact that the EHRC, an organisation which is hardly a friend of the BNP, has concluded that the issue is worth investigating, suggests that the evidence that there is a problem consists of rather more than "racist myths" existing only in the twisted minds of BNP thought criminals. Certainly, I do not see how, given St Trev's announcement, the BNP's (or, indeed, Margaret Hodge's) decision to raise this issue can be seen as evidence of deceitfulness, racism, and general wickedness. Indeed, the only people who have been shown to be deceitful, racist, or wicked, have been those people - and there are many of them - who have sought to shut down all discussion on this issue, for fear that truths might be unveiled which did not fit the politically-correct paradigm. If those people had had their way, and if the BNP had kept quiet about this, then you can bet whatever you like that there would be no investigation taking place today.

Stealing our heritage

I see that everyone's favourite race baiter, Trevor Phillips, has told a fringe meeting at the Labour conference that British history is insufficiently "inclusive", on account of the fact that it is dominated by white people, and has said that it needs to be rewritten, to rectify this fault. Thus, whereas in the past it has always been thought that the Spanish Armada was defeated in part by Lord Howard of Effingham's fleet, and in part by the vicissitudes of the weather ("God blew, and they were scattered", etc), children will now learn that, to quote a noted historian (T. Phillips, Esq), "it was the Turks who saved us". Whether or not this is actually true is irrelevant as far as Phillips is concerned: all that matters for him is that non-whites (and, in this particular instance, Muslims) should be represented as having made a sizeable contribution to the development of British society, throughout the last thousand years or more. Perhaps he will also suggest that, as the 100 Great Black Britons website has laughably claimed, Edward III's wife, Queen Phillipa, was in fact black, and that, accordingly, her son, the famous "Black Prince", was a half-caste. Maybe we will now be told that Shakespeare was black. And perhaps that Queen Victoria was Chinese, Dickens Indian, and the Duke of Wellington an Australian Aboriginal.

The fact is, that, regardless of the specifics of what happened to the Spanish Armada, it is simply not true to claim that non-whites have made a substantial contribution to British history. Rather, their contribution has been completely negligible, because their numbers have, historically, been negligible. Our history is overwhelmingly dominated by white people, because we are a historically white country, and those non-whites who now live here are unlikely to have roots in this country stretching back any more than sixty years. This simple fact, of course, is not one which finds favour with the likes of Trevor Phillips. After all, it does tend to undermine the repeated assertion that Britain has always been a "nation of immigrants".

Trevor Phillips' demand that our history be rewritten is yet another example of the willingness of many on the liberal-left to abuse the education system in order to further their own ends. It does not matter to them whether what is taught as being British history is true or not. Rather than schools teaching our children what is true, they want our children to be taught what they think ought to be true. And since they think that it ought to be true that Britain was historically multiracial and multicultural, that is what they want other people to believe. I very much doubt that they will actually succeed. No matter what people like Phillips may claim, I think (and hope) that the majority of ordinary people are sufficiently intelligent and well-informed to realise that our society has historically been neither multiracial nor multicultural. But for Phillips and others in the race relations industry to claim that one of our greatest naval victories was in fact someone else's victory, or that our national heroes, or our greatest writer, were in fact black, constitutes nothing less than a racist assault upon the cultural heritage of the native white British.

Cross-posted from ATW, where David Vance has added his own comments regarding Trev's somewhat, ahem, dubious grasp of history.

Trevor Phillips Interviewed

A veteran of race politics, it was Phillips who declared that multiculturalism wasn’t working, sounding the death knell for that oh so British doctrine that for 30 years decreed we should live alongside each other, let different communities and races do their own thing and not worry about integration, helping immigrants learn English or inculcating British values. It was a doctrine that died on 7/7 when British-born Muslim suicide bombers murdered their fellow citizens.

Though undoubtedly the right thing to do, Phillips’s condemnation of multiculturalism made him massively unpopular with many of his former brothers – as I found out when I interviewed him about his new job on stage at the CRE’s farewell race convention last year. I was there to talk to him about the role of the new commission. Questions from the floor were hostile. Voices were raised. Many veterans of the race riots of the 1970s saw Phillips as a sell-out, furious that the focus on race was to be lost as the CRE merged into a wider body. Phillips was taken aback by the “bullying” attitudes.

Not, of course, that this has stopped him dishing out similar treatment to others. Trevor Phillips may not be the most extreme race hustler around, and he may find that he is himself targeted by the more hardline elements of the race relations industry, but a race hustler he nonetheless remains. He's right about multiculturalism, though.

This time we are in his offices in Victoria Street without an audience, but he is still uncompromising on his old comrades. “They have to grow up. That militancy must be consigned to the dustbin of history. The CRE was set up to deal with a different set of circumstances. Now we have to chart a course for how we can deal with difference. We have to be more proactive and more friendly.”

Race is, as he puts it, “no longer black and white”. In terms of life chances, a black African girl is likely to do better than a white British boy. A Chinese baby born today will probably be much better paid than his or her white contemporaries. It is no longer the case that ethnic minority kids get a raw deal because of white racism.

Indeed, it could arguably be said that some white children are getting a raw deal because of anti-white discrimination in the education system. After all, there is £178 million set aside each year specifically to help poor non-white pupils, but no comparable funding aimed at the white working class.

But despite such progress, Phillips is aware of the challenges we face to integrate the new arrivals. “We are now in the age of difference, not just in our big cities, but everywhere. We are all struggling to get used to this. But people like Andrew Green at Migrationwatch are saying these new arrivals can’t fit in. I believe that shows contempt for the tolerance of the British people. As a nation, because of being Welsh, Scots, Irish, English and still British we are pretty good at absorbing people. Once we get our brains in gear and stop being frightened about race, we are pretty good in this country at doing the immigration job. We just have to treat it positively. We have to tell immigrants the rules and what we expect.” Tell that to Cambridgeshire police.

Quite. And, far from Sir Andrew Green showing contempt for the British people, I think that it is Phillips who is doing so. After all, he appears to imply that any failure of immigrants to integrate is down to a failure of tolerance on our part, with the immigrants themselves bearing little or no blame. Of course, this is completely wrong. The British people have been exceptionally tolerant of immigrants - too tolerant for our own good, some might say. Those immigrants who have wanted to integrate have been embraced with open arms. However, most immigrants, particularly Muslim ones, have actively rejected British society. After all, given the diametric opposition of our culture and theirs, Muslims at least could not embrace British culture unless they rejected every tenet of their own culture and religion. And given the extreme tolerance we have extended to them, whatever their behaviour, they have had no incentive to do so.
Another particular problem has been the level of immigration. It is notable that those immigrant groups which have integrated best tend to be those that are small in number - the Chinese, for example. By contrast, those that have come here in bulk, such as the Pakistanis or the Bangladeshis, are the least well-integrated. After all, they have been able to retreat into substantial ghettos comprised entirely of their own people, and to thereby minimise their contact with native British culture. A somewhat more "intolerant" attitude towards mass immigration, resulting in a substantially reduced number of immigrants, would have compelled those immigrants that there were to have more to do with the natives, substantially increasing the likelihood of their full integration.

“Governments since the 1960s have been terrified of talking about race because of the spectre of Enoch Powell,” says Phillips. “They are scared of raising these issues for fear of being branded racist. But we must be able to have an honest conversation about racial difference and immigration. We must recognise diversity, not pretend it doesn’t exist. It is okay to say ‘I don’t like what you do’, but not okay to say ‘I don’t like what you are’. Many of us don’t know how to talk to each other. My job is to work out how to make it work.”

It's good to hear that Phillips objects to the label 'racist' being used to stifle debate about racial and cultural issues. But, once again, what he says has the faint reek of hypocrisy about it. After all, Phillips has been prominent among those quick to stick the 'racist' label on the BNP, often for saying things not much different from what he himself has lately come to advocate.

So what are his proposals? He thinks that in divided communities such as Oldham or Burnley that rather than quotas to mix the races in schools, or bussing pupils from one part of town to another, the key is getting different kinds of kids together for music or sport – or sending them on summer camps (all things his new body will be advocating and funding).

I don't believe that these plans are likely to work. The children will go away to Summer camp together, probably get along reasonably well, and then go back to their own, separate, lives. If there is to be genuine integration and community cohesion, the key is to genuinely annihilate multiculturalism. And that is going to entail destroying the non-white ghettos, in which cultures utterly alien to our traditional way of life fester. Whether this can be done is unclear.
It is also going to entail what I have already mentioned: an end to mass immigration. Since integration can only be achieved with a limited number of immigrants, it is essential that immigration be very limited. Too many immigrants, and you get the creation of ethnic ghettos, after which, fostering integration becomes difficult, if not impossible.

I will leave off the quotes from the interview here. Suffice to say, that Phillips's ideas for bringing about an integrated society are that we should promote "Britishness", and that everyone should speak English. While I have no objections in principle to either of these aims, I do not believe that they will succeed, at least not in the situation this country is presently in. For a start, "Britishness" has become an utterly meaningless concept. When asked to define it, our politicians blether on about tolerance, fair play, and democracy; all things good enough in themselves, but utterly inadequate as an attempt to truly describe British culture. Tolerance and fair play are indeed part of British culture, but so too is our history, our arts and literature, and, yes, our national religion (Christianity, for those who might mistakenly have assumed that it was Islam). If we are going to promote British culture, and we should, then it must include all these things. Anything less will simply serve to belittle, and, ultimately, to undermine, it. Certainly, one cannot build a common culture out of fair play and tolerance. Nor can one build it out of a shared language. The evident linguistic differences between immigrants and natives are merely veils hiding the more substantive cultural and, yes, racial differences.

I do not know whether we can succeed in creating a unified society. Certainly, I do not believe that we can if we merely promote Britishness of the half-hearted kind generally favoured by politicians. Even if we promote Britishness as I define it, then I am dubious as regards the chances of success. For example, the Muslim population in Britain is numbered in its millions, and growing fast. I cannot see that Islam is in any way compatible with Britishness, correctly understood. Unless they renounce their religion, can those millions of Muslims ever be truly integrated into our society? And that is without considering the tension caused solely by racial differences, a tension that I regard as unlikely to go away, even in the unlikely event that a unified culture is forged.

So, what do I make of Trevor Phillips? Well, he is to be congratulated on recognising the wrongness of multiculturalism, and the extent to which the word 'racism' is used to stifle debate. However, I do not believe that he understands what is necessary to build a cohesive society, nor do I believe that he has really cast off the mantle of the race hustler. I continue to dislike and distrust him, and it will take more than this interview to change that.

Trevor Phillips: Britain's Greatest Living Idiot?

Well, it's between him and Madeleine Bunting, with Rowan Williams a distant third. In his latest bid for this supreme honour, Trev, as I affectionately call him, has attacked Gordon Brown over the composition of his new cabinet. Well, nothing too wrong with that: they're all a bunch of bloody idiots! But Trev's complaint has nothing to do with the quality of Brown's cabinet. Rather, it is to do with who is in that cabinet.

Specifically, Trev thinks that there are too many of those evil white men in the cabinet. Apparently, the cabinet is now 100% white, and the number of female cabinet ministers has fallen from eight, under the Blessed Tony, to five, under Prime Minister Clunky Fist. Trev, who was described as being "hopping mad about this", has even threatened to resign his position. A nation prepares to mourn...

Really, though, I'm unsure what it is that Trev actually wants. Does he believe that blacks should be guaranteed at least one post in each cabinet, regardless of merit? Because that's what it sounds like.
That would, of course, be idiotic, as would any form of affirmative action programme, in government or anywhere else. What we want from a government is a group of people who will do what is best for Britain. Any policy which required that higher quality candidates for office be passed over because they didn't conform to the requirements of some "equal opportunities" directive would be idiotic in any situation, and potentially disastrous if applied to appointments to the highest governmental posts in the land.

I would add the point that Trev should get his own house in order before he lectures anyone else on diversity and representation. After all, in 2004, when Trev was head of the Commission for Racial Equality (he now heads the Commission for Equality and Human Rights - plus ca change), a mere 38% of CRE staff were white, as against over 90% of the total population. If one didn't know any better, then with under-representation of that degree, one might almost feel that the CRE was "institutionally racist".

Supermarkets: The Hidden Evil

I went to Tesco today. This is not a particularly unusual occurrence, although I do sometimes go to Sainsbury's.

I had thought that what I was doing was innocent, normal. But now I realise, to my eternal shame, that I was actually supporting wicked racism, albeit inadvertently. By shopping at Tesco, I was rendering myself equivalent to those who stood by and watched the Nazi atrocities, but did nothing.

Or at least, so says Trevor "untermenschen" Phillips (the man responsible for promoting 'equality' in Britain, by which is meant, turning the native population into second-class citizens, and calling us racist if we object), for whom supermarkets are the new frontline in the battle against 'racism':

Supermarkets have expressed concern after Britain's race watchdog said they should be forced to recruit more ethnic minority [staff] by positive discrimination.

Trevor Phillips said retailers should have new powers making it is easier to attract employees to reflect the make-up of their local communities.

The new Commission for Equalities and Human Rights chairman told MPs that his body should have sweeping powers to permit positive discrimination to prevent jobseekers from migrant communities being disadvantaged.

Now, I don't know why Trev has picked a fight with the supermarkets. He certainly hasn't produced any evidence to support his assertion that they are hotbeds of racial discrimination. Indeed, I don't know about you, but I don't think that non-whites are exactly under-represented among the employees of supermarkets. In the whole of London I cannot recall ever having been into a supermarket where the overwhelming majority of staff were not either black or Asian. The Tesco store I go to has no white staff, the Sainsbury's store one. Given that Fulham is one of London's whiter areas, I hardly think that this reflects the "make-up of the local community". Perhaps I should write to Trev, and ask him to pop round, and order them to sack some of their existing, competent, staff, and hire the first white layabout who comes their way.

But I suppose Trev would answer that the high percentage of white people round here simply means that we are all wicked racists ourselves. Applying Trev's principles, perhaps some of us should be evicted from our houses, and replaced with blacks and Asians, in order that the area might be made more 'diverse'!