Graham StringerWHEN Enoch Powell made his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in Birmingham on 20 April 1968, his main objective was to stop the House of Commons passing the second reading of the Race Relations Bill on the 23 April. In this he failed. However, such was the bigotry of the sentiment and the venom of the language that he has succeeded in polluting and polarising debate on race for nearly half a century.
His failure to do this leads to resentment within the white community who have come to feel that the police and the establishment believe that only white people can be racist.
This after all was a senior and serious British politician who thought that immigrants were ‘agent provocateurs’, MPs who supported anti discriminatory legislation were the equivalent of Nazi appeasers and immigration would inevitably lead to violent interracial conflict.
Enoch PowellThe impact of Powell’s speech can be the only explanation of the dissembling comments from Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Peter Fahy (see main picture) following the recent conviction of nine Asian men for sexual offences against white underage girls.
He said the girls were attacked because they were vulnerable, not white. ‘“Overall, our feeling is that if these girls had been of Asian or black backgrounds it couldn’t have made much difference to these men.”’
Well Chief Constable go and look at your own policy statement which is based on the McPherson Report, following the murder of Stephen Lawrence. A racist incident is there defined as any ‘which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person’.
Mohammed Shafiq of the Ramadan Foundation, the Judge in the case, the victims and their families as well as virtually everybody I have talked to think the attacks were racist; ergo by the police’s own definition they were.
To say that there are racists in the Asian population is no more remarkable than saying there are white racists. It would be wrong and a libel on the Asian community to draw a conclusion that the Asian community was racist. It is not.
Fahy’s justification for ignoring his own policy is bizarre. “I don’t want to undermine a whole community by saying “the Pakistani community has to sort this out””. I can think of no reason why the Chief Constable would instruct the Pakistani community to “sort it out”. His job is to catch rapists, child abusers and other criminals and if there is a racial element to the crime to call it as it is.
His failure to do this leads to resentment within the white community who have come to feel that the police and the establishment believe that only white people can be racist. This leaves fertile ground for the English Defence League, the BNP and other extreme right groups. The exact opposite of what I expect Fahy’s objective is.
Roy HodgsonIf Fahy is misguided the new England manager, Roy Hodgson, seems to have lost touch with football reality in his desire to avoid a row about race. Rio Ferdinand, the manager tells us, has been left out of the England squad for football reasons. This means that he believes that Ferdinand is the eighth best English centre half.
Every other observer (including me) think that over the last six months he has been the best or at least equal first with John Terry. But here lies the rub, John Terry has been accused by Rio’s brother of making racist comments and the England manager’s real judgement is to exclude a player who is mixed race because he wouldn’t be compatible with a man under suspicion of racism. It appears that Roy Hodgson, a decent man, has slipped into a racist judgment and then maybe distorted the facts in order to avoid a more intense dispute about race.
In the omni-shambles of the Conservative cabinet it is difficult to know why any of them are still there. However the decision of the Prime Minister to send Baroness Warsi, Co-Chairman of the Conservative Party, to Sir Alex Allen the Independent Advisor on Ministers Interests but not to refer Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt to him is blatant prejudice.
David CameronHunt is in breach of the Ministerial code. His defence of his special advisors close collaboration with Murdoch’s News International is ignorance. He claims to not know what he was up to but this itself is a breach of the code. He has a responsibility to supervise him. So Hunt is guilty either way but David Cameron has defended him with his Parliamentary majority.
Warsi on the other hand is being accused of fiddling her expenses three years ago. In this she is in a similar position to at least four members of the Cabinet who had to pay back thousands at the height of the expenses scandal.
Baroness WarsiIf Warsi had the right to go to an industrial tribunal she would almost certainly win a case on the grounds of racial and sexual discrimination.
In 44 years after foul racist utterance of Powell we need honesty and clarity over race. The obfuscations and evasions by significant figures in our society are just helping the real racists. The 1968 Race Relations Act was a small step forward in anti discrimination legislation it stopped landlords putting up signs saying ‘no blacks, Irish or dogs’. We now need a large step forward of more honesty.
Rochdale Sex Offenders
