Dan Hannan and Enoch Powell: make your own mind up

Jim

I imagine that being racist will become much more acceptable as times get harder, especially amongst the left. In Holland we've seen gays abandoning left wing parties because of attacks by muslims on homosexuals. We are also seeing the same thing i Britain.
As people's experience of what multi-culturalism means, we are likely to see support draining away from the left and racism come to the fore.
I take your point that Dan Hannan isn't a racist, but in a year or two, racism will be acceptable and supported b the majority. Both History and economic theory support this conclusion.
Muslims have gone for the tape too early, trying to introduce third world medieval sharia, the backlash will be something quite awesome to see.

James

Enoch Powell was ahead of his time economically and influenced people like Thorneycroft and Josesph who, in turn, helped Thatcher flesh out her ideas.
Remember, when Powell's funeral took place, it was attended by Tony Benn. Is he a raving racialist? Benn recognised a man who beleved in parliament, Britain as a nation and who was a defender of real freedom.
Before I am accused of being a defender of racialism, I will add that I thought his 'rivers of blood' speech, although often misreported, was at best misguided and was wrong in both tone and content.
It is a damning indictment of the state of freedom of speech in this country that I feel the need to add such a caveat.

John B Sheffield

The problem is how sleazy and false Hannan comes over as, in the latest Stateside Trip he even seems to attempt to adopts a mid Atlantic monotone to his voice.

The problem is with Hannan, it is fine to debate as a Party but now he feels he is on the World Stage in the USA to many voters he comes over as a Official Party Spokesman, which he is is not! just an MEP.

charles hercock

The more Mandleson bangs on about Hannan the better.It is clear he is a wild card and the public like wild cards-remember Tony's "John is John" prior to another famous victory

Oscar

This labour politicking is tiresome in the extreme. All they have left is ineffectual negative compaigning that reveals the utter hollowness at the heart of the worn out 'new labour project'. This desperate political pointscoring by Mandy and Co (always seized on with glee by the BBC and other fellow travellers) means we can never get a decent debate on the NHS, immigration or anything else for that matter. It creates a climate ruinous to intelligent, openminded, political discussion. No wonder so many of us turn to the blogs.

Disillusioned

Bit rich Mandelson calling someone else two faced!

Simon Stephenson

Enoch Powell was one of the finest rational thinkers of the 20th Century.

Modern politics is predicated on the idea that original thought is detrimental to the well-being of humanity. That it has no value at all, because it destabilises the existing orthodoxy, rather than nurturing it.

There's not much more that needs to be said.

Oscar

John B Sheffield - two words I would never associate with Hannan are sleazy and false. Hannan's problem is that he has integrity and is sincere - making him vulnerable in the snakepit of UK politics. The lying sleazebags at No.10 seize upon these admirable qualities to stir the political pot.

logdon

Oscar
August 27th, 2009 1:04pm

Jim
August 27th, 2009 12:45pm

Both excellent posts. As for Jim's final point, not before time, is my thought.

My only quibble is the usage of the term racist. If immigrants arrive and openly decry, deny and disparage our way of life, customs and culture who exactly are, to use the overblown and rapidly discredited word,'racists'?

Verity

Charles Hercock - "The public likes wild cards". Good point. They do.

Jim - you say that in a year or two "racialism will become more common" and cite as proof, er, Muslims, who are not a race. Islam is a belief system freely entered into and freely supported. Race is genetic.

Pete writes that the unelected, twice-disgraced-in-public-life Mandelson has said that the "Tory mask" is slipping. Dave and his clique are the only Tories hidden by masks. Most of the rest of us are plain spoken, as we have a right to be regarding the governance of our own country.

Weak, weak, weak. And look at the sleazy source. The sleaziest individual in British politics: Mandelson of all people!

Englishman Abroad

It has been source of disbelief and anger to me, in equal measure; that Labour's seeking to define the terms of debate within their own agenda, has been tolerated for as long as it has.
On the plus side, a couple of years ago, it was impossible to mention immigration without being called a racist, or xenophone.
I hope Hannan keeps at it, he is totally in the clear on this one.
None of this stuff should be 'off limits' for political debate,and the more the goverments' lies are exposed, the better. We need a mass cull of the sacred cows that throttle political discourse.

Marcus Cotswell

@Jim: how exactly do 'History and economic theory' support the conclusion that racism will become acceptable and supported by the majority? I am intrigued. Particularly by the economic theory aspect. Economics has many flaws, to be sure, but it is pretty much completely 'colour-blind' as far as I can ascertain. Explain yourself, man!

King Prawn

Are we not seeing the big difference between Blair and Brown.

During the 2005 election campaign, Blair tried to run the campaign on a 'positive' platform (i.e. what we aim to do for the future). Unfortunately, the polls did not look so good and the Labour Party panicked and Brown was grafted on to his side with the result that the Labour campaign turned negative.

A lot of commentators have stated that Brown saved the 2005 election for Labour with the 'Vote Blair Get Brown' platform. I think the opposite. I think the presence of Brown costs votes, especially in Southern England.

The first thing that Brown has done since becoming PM has reversed a lot of Blair's reforms (i.e. cutting the number of private contractors working in the NHS and taking away the independence of the academies).

Yet Brown has not got a clue what his vision for this country is apart from creating more debt and throwing money down the drain.

The next Labour election campaign will be very negative because Brown has nothing to offer.

james

the majority of voters think that 'Enoch was right', so this won't hurt the Tories

Rob Smith

Hannan's propensity to continually attention seek, is even more vulgar than his vile views.

boulay

i am more interested in the process with which this "story" became news. did mandelson approach sky after trawling youtube and write the story for them or did some journalist seriously come up with this and persuade his editor that even though the story is a month old and waslargely irrelevant it was still demanding of third story on sky this morning.

if as i believe the former is true it is a pretty sad indictment of broadcasters today that they can be handed a totally political story to broadcast purely aimed at smearing. if the latter then sky should take a good look at the quality of their journalism.

Malcolm

Enoch Powell was one of the few politicians I admired for his courage, his towering intellect and his plain speaking. To call him a racist is simply ridiculous, and NuLiebour's attempt to denigrate his memory by doing so every time his name is mentioned is, frankly, pathetic.

Next to Powell the current lot are mere pygmies.

THX1138

Yeah great advice from Dan Hannan to the Coffee House whingers- Stop being so bloody angry, the rest of us just think you're nuts.

Hannan is a bit like Galloway in that he is on the fringe of his party and made his name in the US, wonder if he will start his own party too?

I wonder what it would be called?

Publius

Any reminder of Powell's predictions on multi-culti social engineering will only damage Labour further.

BenM

Oh I don't think so called smear-gate has any more traction. People have forgotten that little Westminster village spat already.

Dan Hannan however may prove very useful to the Labour Party. It is that kind of extreme American-type conservatism that really puts the British people off.

Given the way the Republicans are drowning themselves in the vat of their own stupidity, it's very pleasing to see a British member of the Tory Party associating himself with them.

Ian C

The Keith Joseph of the 2010 Tory Party - and probably better than that as he can explain himself clearly and command an audience. A much needed talent with a bit still to learn about UK politics.

Rod

Whoever claims that Hannan was merely praising Powell's views on the "size, scope and role of the state" is clearly being disingenous. Hannan cited first of all Powell's advocacy of a "national" democracy and "an independent country". The dog whistle directed at, respectively, BNP and UKIP voters was all too audible.
Moreover, Hannan has some form on the subject: why doesn't anybody query him with respect to his links to the Nazi-rooted Flemish nationalists of the "Vlaams Belang" party, and his contributions to the "Brussels Journal", edited by Paul Beliën, editor also of the "Eurabia Report" and husband of a Vlaams Belang member of the Belgian Parliament?

Two-faced indeed...

Mel Cannon

You only have to read some of the postings over on Labour List to see how preoccupied they are with Daniel Hannan and how he has obviously gotten under their skin, hence Mandelson's latest pronouncements.

Reading between the lines, I suspect that many Labour supporters secretly wish they had someone as articulate as Hannan who while being a bit of a geek on the periphery of the Tory Party, commands the 'respect'and preoccupation of the opposition.

Harriet

There has been no greater post-World War II politician in Britain than Enoch Powell. I saw this story on the Mail's site and the public are still in awe of Powell.

With most of the decent columnists on holiday, I today read few some of Simon Heffer's old columns. Here he is a few weeks ago on Dave: "I fear he misunderstands (as do so many of his colleagues) the public mood. The old loyalties have gone."

Indeed, Islam and immigration is now destroying the mainstream political parties. So many people just don't see it. Are they blind?

David Ossitt

What a fine; upstanding, honest and articulate young man we have in Dan Hannan.

He should be cherished.

The shower of sh** that we now have in the cabinet; can not hold a candle to him.

David Cameron give him a job now; if you do not, he will soon take yours.

Danielle

Thatcher once named Enoch Powell as having greatly influenced her politics. It just shows how successful the left have been that no-one is allowed to even mention Enoch Powell these days. I wish the media and the BBC in particular would tell Labour and co where to go and stop stifling free speech. Labour are very vulnerable on the issue of immigration and so try to smear as racist anyone who says what the average person thinks in order to shut down debate. Unfortunately Cameron takes the bait.

The Oncoming Storm

There's far worse politicians you could claim inspiration from than Enoch Powell. Let's not forget that he was a vehment opponent of the death penalty, helped to legalise abortion and homosexuality and castigated a Tory government for it's barbaric treatment of Mau Mau prisoners in Kenya by giving what Denis Healey called the greatest speech he ever heard in parliament. Were he alive today he would be denouncing Guantanamo Bay, rendition and the whole war on terror. I work for a public sector agency in NI, and the old hands in my office had dealings with him when he was MP for South Down, they were unanimous that he was a very hard working MP who served all his constituents without favour.

He was a very flawed and complex person whose greatest fault was that was so principled that he refused to make the compromises needed to go further in his career. His Rivers of Blood rhetoric was ill judged and incendiary and he inadvertently made race and immigration taboo issues for nearly 40 years.

Despite all this in 40 years time Enoch Powell will still be a revered figure in British political history, whereas Mandelson will be seen as an unprincipled failure.

Boudicca

Hannan's a maverick; he is eloquent, intelligent and independently-minded. He is also very good at calling a spade a spade - as he demonstrated in his wonderful critique of Gordon Brown, to his face, in the European Parliament.

The British electorate generally likes an independently-minded politician who doesn't just blandly follow the party line. Labour may carp on about Hannan, but they're on a loser. The more they draw attention to his independence the more the electorate will warm to him (much as they have to Frank Field).

As for Enoch Powell and his views on immigration - I wouldn't mind betting that if a survey guaranteed to be completely confidential was carried out on NATIVE Brits, a majority would tell you that Enoch's predictions on immigration have already come to pass to a greater or lesser degree and they are unhappy with the levels of immigration into this country.

Verity

John B Sheffield - Any Brit - and probably Aussie - who has lived in the US will be familiar with the need to occasionally slur a word to make it easier for the American ear to pick up on.

There are some English sounds that Americans, other than those who frequent British movies, have difficulty picking up on, and therefore lose the thread. If you don't want your audience to trip up, you occasionally pronounce somthing the American way.

I've done it myself, and so has every other English person who has lived in the US. I am sure James Forsythe slurred every single word, every cough and every sneeze during his time "inside the Beltway".

RobC

JonB Sheffield -You make think Hannan sleazy but a lot of us like to hear a man voice his own opinion in an erudite way and if the price he pays is being smeared by Mandelson and Co well tough luck. If you want to complain about sleaze and falsehood listen to Mandelson,Brown and their mouthpiece the BBC.The trouble is we have had over a decade of it from New Labour and their apologists and are sick to death with the whole rotten lot of them.

David Ossitt

THX1138

"I wonder what it would be called?"

It will not be called anything because it will never happen, he is a proper Conservative.

"Stop being so bloody angry, the rest of us just think you're nuts"

We are the many; you are of the very few and after 12years of "New Blair Labour" we have much to be angry about.

David Ossitt

Rob Smith.

"Hannan's propensity to continually attention seek, is even more vulgar than his vile views"

Please explain; give us a list of what you see in him that is vulgar, a seperate list of any of his opinions that you would class as vile.

Nick Kaplan

I find it interesting that David Miliband, our foreign secretary, can say on radio how much he respects Joe Slovo who was a supporter of Stalin and a man partially responsible for the murder of at least 19 people, and further go on to add how he feels that “terrorism is sometimes justified,” and hardly anyone in the media think it worth reporting.

Dan Hannan, (sadly) only a mere MEP, makes a few comments about a man of great intellect who once, in a long and respectful career, made what was , in some people’s opinion, an ill judged speech, to which Hannan does not even refer let alone endorse, and there has already been wide coverage and calls for him to be kicked out of his party!

Does anyone else find this perverse??

Simon Stephenson

The Oncoming Storm : 6.12pm

"He was a very flawed and complex person whose greatest fault was that was so principled that he refused to make the compromises needed to go further in his career."

Fault? I call this an attribute. What's the point of a career if pursuing it means having to do things you believe to be wrong?

Moreover, there will undoubtedly be those who will say that his talent was wasted through his not achieving high office. I think this understates the ability of top-quality people to influence policy outside office. Who is to say what policy would have been followed without highly articulate criticism from the likes of Enoch Powell outside office. This is what Politics, in its literal sense, is all about - not how it is viewed today, as railroading through undebated decisions after having won a general election.

seb

The nastiest, the most visceral, the most mindless racist attitudes I encounter are those expressed by Labour's natural supporters. Men who work in the police and the skilled trades. Men and women who loathe anyone with posh accents.

I'm amazed to read that Blair attended Powell's funeral. Powell's warning was not any sort of a racist outburst. Powell was warning us about the potential racist backlash of the very people St. Anthony saw himself championing. Did Tony get any of this? I think so. Did his party do anything whatsoever to acknowledge or deal with its core voters' dislike of immigration? Of course not. Consistent, if nothing else.

BarbaraS

Rob Smith- Why would you suppose discussing serious issues that every right thinking citizen wants to have addressed be
"attention Seeking" Only Mr Hannan and Nick Griffin can think or speak out side of the 'political' box and both are gaining public support and respect for their insight.

Jez

This is absolutely hilarious.

How the hell can you find so many ways to lie about a situation?

The Times tonight is celebrating the UK's population breaking the 61 million mark.... and 'hey', it's not down to immigration- it's down to a 'baby boom'.

Who's baby boom exactly?

Honestly, you couldn't make this up.

Totally and utterly unsustainable- i bet you...

and i'll tell you why;

The locals move out of the enriched parts of town that are young family age.

These areas then become exclusive to the culture that has spearheaded the settling- until they break their boundries and do the same to an adjacent area- by having a far higher birth rate than the locals that have origionally moved- like in Bradford, Leicester, Birmingham, large parts of London, Bristol, Stoke, East Leeds, Oldham, Burnley.

These areas are unique and have a seperate hybrid culture. This of the one they have come from with a far higher living standard, which is made to work with a vastly expensive equality machine wrapped around these places that ensures that the host has to adhere to the new comer and not the other way around.

But lets celebrate.

egh

I agreed with Enoch Powell at the time; and the present situation proves him right.

So now we're supposed to misinterpret him, pretend we like the invasion, and beg to be ruled by anyone but indigenous British people?

Is that how all the foreigners imagine they'll unplug the inevitable blood-bath?

And anyway, just what do said foreigners hope to gain by this destruction of what they think they want to own and push around? All they do is make Britain more horrible than anywhere said foreigners come from!!

I say bring Hannan to power; let him have men about him with similar intellect and courage; and sort out said foreigners!!!

THX1138

Nick Kaplan

Matthew Parris a former Tory MP also said in the same programme that terrorism was sometimes a legitimate weapon in a political strugle.

Don't forget thaat Joe Slovo's wife Ruth First was murdered by the teorrist South African state.

Joe Slovo was a hero and Milliband was right to pick him as a Great Life

Nick Kaplan

I wasn’t aware that Paris (who I often disagree with but usually respect) had agreed with Miliband, although I had read that he defended him by saying his critics were ‘‘mindless and unfair.’ But if Paris said that he believed terrorism can sometimes be justified then his views on this subject are beneath contempt.

The Joe Slovo you so ridiculously call a hero was an unrepentant leader of the South African Communist party which fully backed the mass- murderer and tyrant Joe Stalin. Moreover Slovo himself was involved in the murders of over 19 people through his role in Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the ANC, for which he helped to design explosives.

There are plenty of peaceful, decent and effective ways to protest against governments with which you disagree; think Gandhi and Martin Luther King. There is no excuse for resorting to violence, murder, and support for one of history’s most vile dictators.

I hope both you and Paris were ignorant of these facts, if not then your spineless refusal to condemn Miliband for his idiocy is disturbing to say the least.

RDM

"Beneath contempt"? Parris, in his column on the subject, used the French Resistance as an example of a time when terrorism could justified. Were they "beneath contempt"?

MikeF

A retreat from multi-culturalism does not mean a rise on racism. With its emphasis on separation and exclusive identity multi-culturalism is a deformed cousin of outright ethnic racism.

Enoch Powell thought that a multi-ethnic sosciety could not be socially cohesive. He was wrong in that view. But he was right to warn that things could work out that way - in other words if ethnic diversity was used as an excuse to promote factionalism i.e exactly what multi-culturalism does.

Edward McLaughlin

THX 1138

Anger? Specophiles? Nay lad.

Read yourself once more at:

http://www.conservativecabbie.com/american-politics/senator-ted-kennedy-has-died/#comments

Compare with the measured tone of this thread.
Perhaps by anger you mean voices of valid opposition which cause you anxiety?

David Lindsay

Enoch was wrong. Wrong about immigration, at the time. Wrong about economics, although his followers were and are much worse than he was. Wrong in his inability to that the implementation of his economic views was impossible without the huge-scale importation of people as much as of anything else, as part of that system’s overall corrosion of everything that conservatives exist in order to conserve.

Wrong to scorn the Commonwealth. Wrong in the bitterness of his anti-Americanism. Wrong to support the retention of capital punishment, of the two ultimate expression of statism as idolatry. Wrong to support the Monday Club, although he never joined it, when it was supporting the Boer Republic set up as an explicit act of anti-British revenge in a former Dominion of the Crown (a move fiercely opposed by Nelson Mandela and the ANC), and that Republic’s satellite, which first committed treason against Her Majesty and then very rapidly purported to depose her, removing the Union Flag from its own, something that even the Boer Republic never did.

But Enoch was also right. Right on Europe and on nuclear weapons (the other ultimate expression of statism as idolatry), on both of which he correctly lined up with Tony Benn against Margaret Thatcher. Right about the normalisation of Northern Ireland, conventionally known as total integration, which will almost certainly never now happen, since the place has been carved up between a bizarre fundamentalist sect and a fully armed Marxist terrorist organisation. Right to oppose the subordination of our foreign policy to a foreign power. Right to oppose the first Gulf War, which we fought as if buying oil from Saddam Hussein would somehow have been worse than buying it from the al-Sabahs (or the al-Sauds).

Right to reprimand Thatcher that “A Tory believes that there is no such thing as an individual who exists without society”, pointedly referring to Tories, and age-old culture or series of subcultures, rather than the Conservative Party, a late and strictly conditional vehicle for Toryism. Right to oppose abortion (unlike Thatcher), to oppose easier divorce (unlike Thatcher), and to support the decriminalisation of male homosexual acts between consenting adults in private. Right to predict that the Soviet Union would collapse anyway. Right to fight against grotesque erosions of our liberties, such as reversals of the burden of proof in certain cases.

His present-day admirers should learn the lessons.

Verity

I lived in a genuine multicultural - soi-disant; it is 88% Chinese - society and the Government of Singapore had/has to work very, very hard all the time on social cohesiveness.

There are the Chinese, who are not the indigenes, but are definitely the engines of prosperity and organisation; the indigines, the Malays (Mulims), who have special educational privileges - i.e., they officially get passes in exams with lower marks than either of the other two groups, and places at universities are reserved for them and them only; and the Indians, the descendants of the the imported labour of 200 years ago brought in to work on the plantations and now highly, highly successful in business and the professions.

While it is a democracy, with regularly held elections and genuine opposition, the ruling party is very strong and keeps getting elected because it delivers success. This strength enabled them to engage in the above-mentioned social engineering. When they built their huge social housing projects - I think in the '50s or '60s - they made certain that the ethnic make-up of the country was represented in every building - and indeed, they preferred not to put two families of any race next door to each other. So all three races were forced to judge their neighbours on a personal, not a racial basis.

Frankly, this is what it takes.

The races in Singapore get along very well, although they all mutter darkly about one another in private. ("Well, of course, they're Chinese, you know ... They're like that.") ("What do you expect? They're Indian! They lie about anything!") But the population is less than 5m and they are living in a wealthy society, and there are penalties for rocking the boat.

It works in the East, which has, in any case, an authoritarian mindset. It does not, as is being proved, work in the liberal West.

Labour intentionally imported primitive immigrants as a weapon against our culture and our own people. This must be reversed.

Warwick Jeremiah

Rivers of Blood may well have been misguided in tone, but it does not justify the way in which Powell's name has been dragged through the mud ever since

Robert Hopkins

England resembles Yugoslavia 1990/1 post Tito. Same tensions, same decay at the centre. Parts of the country more or less openly run Sharia law - nobody in our marxist state seems able or willing to do anything.
I myself dont see a new Tito on the horizon.
Enoch no doubt would have said that its all too late anyway if you reach this stage in a nations collapse.