The publication yesterday of Anthony Browne’s book The Retreat of Reason: Political correctness and the corruption of the public debate in Britain, has led to extraordinary scenes here in the office. Quite apart from the flurry of media attention, resulting in a stream of interviews with various national and regional television and radio stations, there were an almost unprecedented number of requests for the book – trumped only by another Civitas bestseller, Our Island Story – and a slew of emails pledging support and thanking him for his courage and acuity. It seems that the book has hit a nerve. People, weary of intolerant political correctness, of the hegemony of the liberal heresy that says no one that is protected as part of a victim group can be subjected to criticism, have had enough.
Yesterday morning, Anthony Browne was interviewed on the Today programme along with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, the Independent columnist. What began as a discussion ended up with the producer cutting the microphones because Ms Alibhai-Brown was throwing so many toys out of the pram. The only thing remarkable about Ms Alibhai-Brown’s contribution was the extent to which she exhibited the intolerance they were there to discuss. She performed Anthony’s point perfectly. His comments on this encounter can be read in The Times today.
Two pieces of news have been timely in this respect. The first concerned reports, such as that in The Times, about the government’s reforms to incapacity benefits. With 2.7 million people on incapacity benefits, of which half may be malingerers getting away with benefit fraud, John Hutton has talked of ‘helping’ (a handy euphemism for pressurising) those who are ‘trapped’ on benefits back into work. It is the first serious return to the old Blairite dictum – old in the sense of it being pronounced in 1997 and not being heard since then – that there should be work for those who can, security for those who cannot. All of which is, of course, controversial for backbenchers don’t like the whiff of anything ‘harsh’ being done. Yet in Wisconsin in the US the number claiming incapacity benefits were halved when a new policy was adopted in 1996: the basic premise was that if people could be doing something they should be doing something.
The second article of news, reported today in The Times, is that Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the head of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that same-sex relationships risked damaging the foundations of society, and scientific evidence showed that homosexuality carried high health risks. This offers itself as precisely the sort of PC quandary that Anthony Browne highlights in his slim volume. Peter Tatchell was outraged by these comments, but he has offended the pro-Muslim PC-ers before: ‘Would [Ken Livingstone] greet a Christian fundamentalist who advocated, as al-Qaradawi does, the creation of a theocratic state… where gay sex would be punishable by death…?’ This exposure of double standards in the PC brigade fatally undermines the moral ‘certainties’ that it so sanctimoniously peddles.
Comments (5)
Mr Browne uses the wrong argument about 100 metre runners. The key fact here is that no Caucasian has ever beaten the 10.00 seconds barrier over this distance whereas over 200 sub 10.00 second times have been recorded by runners of WEST AFRICAN descent.
Strangely, some of the physical qualities that allow this group to dominate this discipline do not assist them in other 'power' events. Swimming is the most striking example. Only one swimmer of West African extraction has ever won Olympic gold (Sandor Nesty).
The inhibiting physical charateristic is bone density. Because of greater bone mass those of West African descent are simply not as buoyant as other racial groups.
The physical differences exisitng between those of West African descent and other African populations are even more marked to the extent they are virtually polar opposites (in athletic terms at least).
East Africans are reknowned for middle and long distance running (although environmental factors such as living at altitude and the selectively beneficial genetic effect of breeding from successful cattle rustlers over several centuries must be taken into account).
The West African 'fast twitch' musculature is best suited to disciplines requiring explosive power. 'Slow twitch' East African are better adapted to endurance events.
Posted by Joseph | January 16, 2006 9:02 PM
Posted on January 16, 2006 21:02
I thought the cover-up by media and politicans of Charles Kennedy's inability to do his job also smacked of PCism. Would the media and the PC brigade have been so silent if Lord Tebbit or John Redwood had a similar problem? Or would we be fed the normal sanctimonious line that they had to leak the story as the public has a right to know? When Iain Duncan Smith alluded to Kennedy's problem a couple of years ago, the allusion was sniffily dismissed as being in the poorest of taste by the 'cognoscenti'. But when PC is Truth, Truth PC - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Posted by Philippa Pirie | January 10, 2006 5:16 PM
Posted on January 10, 2006 17:16
Mr Browne's lucid and well argued pamphlet is excellent, however his claim that no white person has ever won the (men's) 100 metres at the Olympics might surprise the Ukrainian Valeri Borzov who, running for the USSR, won in 1972. The muscular Scot Allan Wells won in 1980 when the USA, who always field a powerful black sprint team, boycotted Moscow.
Mr Browne must also have missed the film 'Chariots of Fire' which tells the story of how Harold Abrahams won the title in Paris in 1924. There were other white winners too in the early years of the competition, though the event has certainly been dominated by black runners since 1984.
In an article whose point is, quite rightly, to emphasise the primacy of fact over prejudice perhaps this error could be corrected? My apologies if the error is mine in misreading the page (77) concerned.
Posted by Nick Mallory | January 9, 2006 8:08 AM
Posted on January 9, 2006 08:08
Brilliant knee-jerk PC response. (1) Slavery ended because anti-slavery societies in Britain badgered Parliament into banning the slave trade. Then Parliament -- using _British_ taxes -- bought off the white slave-owners to bring about emancipation: peacefully.
(2) The mass of the population in LDCs that were once part of the British Empire are far ahead of other LDCs: compare (even) Nigeria with Chad & Ethiopia. Compare Malaysia with (even) VietNam.
(3) Natural resources in Africa are the property -- de facto -- of the _rulers_ of those countries. Of course the masses don't benefit. How naive can you get?
(4) The bulk of exports from (eg) India under the Empire consisted of _peasant_ products: jute, hides & skins, bones, wheat, rice, cotton, oilseeds, etc. Imports of gold & silver -- peasant savings -- shot up be several hundred percent. What price 'historic impoverishment'?
(5)'continuing abuse of others' -- common law for at least two centuries has had remedies for defamation, slander, libel. Where has anyone been denied these remedies because of their skin colour?
Posted by Sudha Shenoy | January 5, 2006 5:51 AM
Posted on January 5, 2006 05:51
Amidst all the Muslim clamouring of islamophobia and racism following the July Seven bombings I wondered how had we arrived at this topsy turvey situation? People were dead. People were irrevocably and irreparably maimed. People were subjected to unimaginable psychological stress. Who cared? How many tales like this were told? None as far as I am aware.
Meanwhile the likes of the MCB's Iqbal Sacranie were completely ignoring the fate of the unfortunate Londoners, rather concentrating on rights, rights and yet more rights. His visit to Beeston in Leeds where bomber Sidique Khan came from wasn't to talk of the event and how they should compassionately deal with it but to preach about police invasion of privacy and promising that he'd discuss this with 'his friend' the Assistant Commissioner the very next day.
In fact from then on you wondered who were the victims. The real ones from that day, pushed aside in a weird howling screech for Muslim rights or people complaining of bad looks, verbal abuse and ill treatment. It opened up a whole Pandora's box of real attitudes and sympathy for the dead and disfigured played no part whatsoever.
The MCB, guided by Sacranie, mounted it's campaign until a timely Panorama programme stopped him in his tracks. He was well and truly rumbled, trounced by the truth and we then saw clumsy attempts at hijacking the Holocaust Memorial Day, turning it into a 'broader' ceremony, well and truly rejected.
Funny but all the causes they wanted, to maintain 'inclusiveness', were Islamist. Chechnya, Kashmir and Palestine figured highly, then realising they'd shot themselves well and truly in the foot on this one, Rwanda added as an afterthought. It was clumsy and pathetic yet they carried on as if we were all imbeciles. Comparing Chechnya with the Holocaust is crazy yet obviously in their minds it demands the same reverent memory. Obviously Beslan wasn't mentioned!
Even the BBC aided and abetted this madness, jumping on a 'threatened minority' bandwagon and set up an interactive site, not for memories by the victims of the day but Muslims who felt they'd been badly treated. One woman's message complained bitterly of the 'highly racist' way we pronounce Islam with a 'z' instead of an 's'! Another of how her girl's hand had been trapped by her pram against a rail on a bus and not one person helped! Obviously highly important stuff in view of the carnage perpetrated in the name of their faith?
What they failed to grasp amongst all of this was the disgust amongst the general population at the callous opportunism. The absolute self centred attitudes. The lack of care and compassion for the real victims. Recently even Moazim Begg, released from Guantanamo by strenuous effort on our behalf talked of the London bombing as nothing, airily dismissing it as something which had happed and now in the past, not worthy of further thought. That's thanks for you.
What astounds me is that the vast majority these people are British citizens just like the victims. One time they, or their forebears stood on a dockside or airport thanking God that they'd got here and been accepted. How has it changed? Are they so insulated by religion that pity towards the infidel is not even on the radar?
Meanwhile the true victims have to get on with it and I know from my experience it won't be easy. Seeing someone die violently is the worst of the worst. The blood. The body. The horrendous realisation that in grim and unchangeable fact that person alive only seconds ago is not anymore. There is absolutely nothing you can do. It never really goes away and the first few years are as near to Hell as it get's. There's no escape especially at 3am after yet another night with no sleep and blood drenched flashbacks invading your mind each time you close your eyes. Or the sweat pouring out, soaking sticky, clammy and cold sheets. Or the futile attempts at diverting the mind by reading only to forget the last paragraph as your brain struggles to cope with the overload of conflicting, unwanted information bombarding it. The only answer is to give in, lie there, let it happen as gradually sheer weariness takes over and maybe an hour or two of unconscioiusness takes it all away until the inevitable jolt as the memory instantly pounds the horror back into into your brain. That's how it is.
Now I'm not denying that this is also the fate of thousands of innocent, bombed, bereaved and maimed Iraqis and for that Blare has his legacy but Iraqis now seem to be taking over where the coalition left off. They are still being bombed and shot, only this time it's their own who are doing it. Where do you take any logical or political argument on their behalf from there? Ghandi once said an eye for an eye only leaves people blind. I think we should all remember that. Muslims and Christians alike.
Muslims have also to remember that in Britain they are in fact 'in Britain' just as in Europe they are not in thrall of Islamic domination but in a place where debate and freedom are the main argumentative tools of persuasion. It doesn't belong to them or any other individual or religious group. We are a democracy and as argued by many philosophical and political theorists it's the best of a bad job with, by it's very fundamental nature, dominance by the majority. As Jim Morrison once talked of the US Government versus American protestors during the Vietnam war, 'they've got the guns but we've got the numbers' and that's how it pans out. Our human rights and liberal history levels out victimisation of minorities but they are minorities and should remember that whilst being allowed to freely practice their faith they are in no way empowered to use violence in it's name. Or to assume excessive zeal in an attempt to subjugate us to it's thrall.
But we have to learn a lesson also. Invading an Islamic country, the wrong one as it was obvious right from the start is crazy when millions of adherents of its religion live amongst us. That's the practical argument, the moral one is a given. There is a war going on though and its not confined to traditional battlefields. Or even the Vietnam model for that matter. It's an amorphous shadow of a shadow, sometimes inflated and sometimes hidden by institutionally dishonest politicians, so to think it will be solved by gung ho grunts wading into areas they haven't the slightest clue about will only spread the virus like a ruptured cancer. It's happened in Iraq and is coming back to a sorely abused Afghanistan where by neglect we are throwing away any goodwill earned by removal of the Taliban.
In a way we are fucked and so are Muslims. We won't 'win' that is obvious, but if hidebound Islamists carry on in Europe in the way they are, neither will they. The tide has changed and enough is enough is the message. They should accept this, settle back a notch or two or a serious backlash could happen. I'm not talking of outright war in the streets but the signs are there. Paris and Birmingham all suffered and little majority public sympathy was shown to the rioters. But on the plus side we didn't get Christian militia retaliating in kind. Denmark, Holland and Germany are talking a lot tougher than a few years ago and France has banned headscarves. Following on from that theme Shebina Begum may have won her uniform battle but certainly lost the war, blowing any support by blaming Britain on her self caused loss of education and complaining bitterly of oppression and outright racism just because she couldn't get her ridiculous and pathetic way.
Maybe it's not too late and really Muslims associations should be addressing this one, possibly organising a special national combined memorial for victims and condemnation of the perpetrators yet strangely they haven't and somehow I can't see it. They complain at our lack of contribution to the earthquake fund in Pakistan but where is the fund set up purely by Muslims for the victims of this one? Think of the goodwill that would engender? Not just a few fawning words but reality. Hard cash talks.
The earthquake was an unavoidable natural disaster, bombing tubes and buses isn't and there is no doubt after watching Sidique in his al Jazheera video that his was a statement of war with British Muslims on one side and the rest on the other. His use of 'you are bombing and gassing my people' was an astounding ideological reversal of reality with the 'you' and 'my' twisted in a statement of rejection of his Britishness. Muslims should either make some sort of public statement denouncing this because silence only suggests some sort of admiring complicity. If he is not to be perceived as a kind of warped spokesman they should proclaim their rejection but we've not seen much of that either.
What depresses and in so doing obsesses me is the sheer mind numbing futility of it all. Feuding over a religion in the 21st century? It is a madness not seen on our continent for hundreds of years. (Northern Ireland is a bit more complex than mere Papists and Proddies.)
What happened to the hard fought progressions of thought from Martin Luther to Sartre? Yet again Frances famed impartial secularism is ridiculously called islamophobia as Muslims wishing to assert their religion publically and politically are stopped from doing so. Officially France calls them French like any other citizen, not Morrocan or Arab, just French and you'd have thought this public stance of equality was the peak of theoretical politics but no, they want a sub group and a separation almost of how they are perceived, governed and treated. The origins and ideals of the revolution are dear to any thinking Frenchman's heart and quite rightly this is just not on. It takes the place back to the days of papal indulgences and corruption looked on in horror by this socialistic thinking nation. It wipes away years of struggle and advancement which were needed to reduce the power of the Church. Who wants that again? Well it looks like they do but with a different brand name on the package
But back to my sadness at how the world is panning out. All this fear and death and loathing in the name of someone who never existed. A phantom who's all powerful, controlling reality is only in the minds of fundamentalists and bigots because let's face it you have to be one or both to use that Deity's name in the extreme pursuit of the sexist, homophobic, insular and truly bile laden customs and attitudes pushed out by the Political Islamists who are calling the shots in their communities right now.
Ed.: Brian Williamson attaches a sensitively written, acute, moving article that was published in the Observer on New Year's Day. Highly recommended: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,1674911,00.html
Posted by Brian Williamson | January 4, 2006 10:41 PM
Posted on January 4, 2006 22:41