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February 04, 2005
Why More than Just Some of Labour’s Best Friends Should be Worried by Its Ads
‘Labour wants to destroy Mr Howard as a political leader by using his Jewishness against him. They know to a hair’s breadth what they are doing. Of course, any anti-Semitism has been denied; the purpose of the operation is to raise the controversy and then withdraw…. [V]oters who do not like Jews will have been reminded of their prejudice, by modern advertising techniques… It is a dirty, dirty, dirty business and it disgraces both the Labour Party and the Prime Minister …[for]this is his campaign’
Although Labour Party spokesmen vehemently deny any anti-Semitic intent behind them, Labour has now removed the advertisements displaying Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin as flying pigs and Howard in similar guise to Fagin from its official web-site and will not use them in its forthcoming election campaign.
However, the words quoted above from Lord Ress Mogg's characteristically astute and trenchant article in last Monday’s Times continue to have cause to resonate. For they have a profound bearing on an important political issue currently facing this country that has by no means been resolved.
How, one wonders, would the Labour Party have responded had the BNP beaten them to the punch -- as it were! -- by having produced these advertisements before they did? And how would Labour have responded had they done so were this to have happended after it had succeeded in enacting its proposed bill to prohibit incitement to religious hatred?
Again, imagine, in some future time after this bill has been passed and when British Muslims have risen to similar senior rank in mainstream political parties as Jews have. Suppose two Muslims came to occupy the same positions in a future Labour Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet as Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin now do for the Tories. Now suppose the BNP or Tories ran a similar campaign displaying these two British Muslim politicians as flying pigs to that which Labour ran against these two Jews.
Would Labour then be calling for the BNP or Tories to be prosecuted under the act and, if not, why not? Would Tory or BNP denials that they had sought to tap into Islamophobia be at all likely to persuade the Muslim Council of Britain under the circumstances?
In raising these questions, I do not seek to suggest that it will be a good thing if political parties become liable for prosecution under Labour’s proposed bill for running any such such negative campaigns in future. Nor am I suggesting that Labour's proposed law should not be enacted lest it prevent such campaigns from being run.
I raise these questions merely to show how arbitrary and politically tendentious any use of such a proposed law is liable to be in practice.
Laws incapable of impartial application are bad laws. Labour’s proposed bill to make incitement to religious hatred a crime is incapable of impartial application. Therefore, Labour's proposed law is a bad one and, for that reason, should not be enacted.
Sadly, I suspect, it will not be until a band of flying pigs appears on the horizon coming to the resuce of the country that it can hope to be spared this particular piece of legislation.
Still, we can always live in hope. Remember, it used to be said there would never be a woman PM in this country. And remember what happended when there was….
Posted by David Conway at February 4, 2005 11:47 AM
Comments
It is a measure of Labour's style of government that until a few years ago we would surely all have mocked anyone who thought that one of our main political parties would trail a cloak for anti-semitism. But it was Blair's crew who, a few years ago, tried to undermine their two principal political opponents, Hague and Brown, by accusing them of being gay. And now it's Jews. By God, the gypsies had better beware, these fellows might want to go for a full house.
Posted by: dearieme at February 4, 2005 04:08 PM
New Labour know that even modest gains by the Tories in England will bring in to focus the devolutionary mess they have brought about.
New Labour are dead set against the idea of England and England should be dead set against the idea of them.
Posted by: tally at February 6, 2005 09:14 AM
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