Twilight racists Dobson & Norris….are they typical?

Immigrating into Britain places responsibilities upon those who do so. They cannot use the Stephen Lawrence case to evade those responsibilities.

As we all know only too well – I mean, all of us still able to think for ourselves regardless of contemporary mores – any and all commentators these days daring to question the accepted liberal/Left polemic on ethnicity and culture soon find themselves drowning in very murky waters. So although as a rule I disapprove of ‘throat-clearing’ at the start of an article, I think this time a little bit of history upfront would be a good bulwark against knee-jerk reactions to the opinion I’ll be expressing.

I was brought up in a very Jewish suburb of Manchester. A way of earning a few pennies on Saturdays (sabbath) was to go into observant Jewish households and do things for the occupants – who were not allowed to do any work on God’s day of rest. From the age of 11 – when I started at Grammar School – I would say that, at any given time, a good 40% of my friends were Jewish.

My father was a cloth merchant, and therefore also immersed in Jewish culture – although he was a Catholic. (My mother wasn’t). He used to joke that he needed an ecumenical hymn called ‘Oiveh Maria’. Jokes like these were daily banter between Christian and Jewish kids at school. The idea that any of us were racist (in those days, the word was ‘racialist’) would’ve been greeted with blank stares. Sure enough, parents on both sides of the religious difference were far from keen on mixed marriages; but that wasn’t seen as racism. It was felt to be far more of a cultural thing. Hold that thought.

At University, I fell head over heels in love with a Liverpool Chinese girl. For the first (and only) time in my life, I found myself on the receiving end of ethnic prejudice: her Dad didn’t fancy his daughter marrying a fangwoi. But my lover and I persevered, and in the end I came to understand a great deal about the Chinese mentality – and why they were not dissimilar to the Jews in their emphasis on familial and community solidarity.

When I moved to Brixton in 1977, I encountered, up close, a West Indian culture way over at the other end of the scale in terms of both family life and career aspiration. I discovered the problems caused by feckless fathers, the ‘cruising’ ganja culture, the misogyny of Rastafarianism, and the speed with which teenage black males could suddenly find themselves thrown onto the streets by intolerant ‘new fathers’ who had appeared on the scene.

At the time, I was working with the Metropolitan Police as an advertising client. The senior ranks of the Met casually referred to the Brixton police force as The Animals. Over several months, the endemic racism of our local police – who were incapable of referring to West Indians as anything other than Spooks – became increasingly apparent. But so too did the rates of burglary, loud parties regularly banging out full-base reggae, and widespread vice run by violent pimps who spent much of the day smoking dope and drinking Red Stripe on Railton Road. Senior officers with whom I worked insisted that there was “no problem”, and that cop/community relations had never been better. Two sets of riots later, I had come to regard any opinion expressed by the Met’s top brass with great caution.

In short, the idea that I might be prejudiced on the basis of race or religion is ridiculous.

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What the Stephen Lawrence case shows us is that incompetent racism as a factor in British policing continued to be hugely important long after I’d left Brixton. What it above all doesn’t show us is that charges of near-universal racism in Britain are justified. However, reading the UK media over the last 24 hours, you could be forgiven for thinking that such incipient bigotry is accepted as being obvious by all those who live here.

We have useless Plod once again to thank for this golden opportunity handed on a plate to all those denigrators keen to show their fellow-believers (and the world) what appalling folks we Brits are. The data don’t support that view – especially when compared to those for other European and Asian cultures – but very few people bother to think it through.

Oddly enough, the very groups put under the spotlight during this trial go a long way towards proving my point. Of the two thugs finally accused and found guilty, one had a drug-dealing father who had schooled his son in the voicing of crude bigotry and extreme violence, while the other has been caught over and over handling and fencing stolen goods. They come from a background – best described by the immortal BBC sitcom Porridge – as that of the habitual criminal.

I don’t care what anyone says, that upbringing is far from typical: in reality, it is hugely, exceptionally dysfunctional. The police themselves tended to recruit bully-boys in the lower ranks where such behaviour was deemed central to the job of controlling feral teenagers and adults. (‘The Animals’ were, on my clients’ own admission, deliberately chosen for their violent tendencies when dealing with armed black gangs and physically abusive pimps). They  too – like the lower police ranks in general – were completely atypical compared to the average Brit.

Yet the Times front page told us this morning that Stephen Lawrence’s murder ‘forced Britain to face the ugly, systemic reality of racial prejudice’. I’m sorry, but that was bollocks in 1993, and it’s even greater bollocks today. The Times goes further, asserting that ‘putting black suspects’ heads into lavatories and beating them mercilessly’ was common police practice. I agree, but was it in the population as a whole? Of course not. Roger Graef (“I’ve been writing about racism since the 1960s”) blithely suggests that ‘Stephen would not be any safer on the streets today. Gang violence is a serious problem in inner cities”. Quite right Rog…and these gangs are, um, largely black or white?

My point is very simply this: the police’s idiocy and foul prejudice created the environment in which this crime not only occurred, but also went unsolved for nearly two decades. But the evidence strongly suggests that there is very little to choose in this case between the cops and the perpetrators. In truth, the main thing that binds them together, in the view of most UK citizens with a brain, is that they are utterly unlike the rest of us.

What I would like to raise at this point is a controversial ‘chicken or egg’ element into the debate. That is, were the Brixton police (say) always horrid racists…or did they have experiences that created or reinforced their prejudices?

I would further love to have a reasoned debate about when racism isn’t racism at all – but rather, the indignant reaction of indigenous residents to those from a different – some would say antithetical – culture genuinely making their lives a misery. Be they offensive demonstrations against free speech or very loud music at all hours, the bottom line remains the same on a commonsense basis: surely those coming to an alien culture should make an effort to integrate and make allowances for local sensitivities?

But I won’t expand upon these subjects, because the police (and hypocritical media) have made the environment an impossible one for free thinkers. So instead, I will move on – applying the point about ‘local sensitivities’ to other EU States.

Racism in soccer is very much on the liberal agenda at the minute. Whatever Luis Suarez of Liverpool said to Patrice Evra of Manchester United, such abuse as has been alleged is a daily occurrence on the streets of Spain. In France, any deviation from acceptance of French standards is treated with merciless criticism. There is a reasonable chance that the next French President will be virulently anti-immigration. Germany does not allow gastarbeiter ( ‘guest workers’, mainly Turkish) to have citizenship except under very special circumstances. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has declared the multicultural ideal “a terrible mistake”. Dutch feeling against Islamics runs at a far higher level than in the UK. The Poles remain as anti-Semitic as ever they were.

Frankly, the idea that Britain is a racist haven is at best inaccurate and at worst deranged. We are amazingly tolerant of immigrants – French politicians would call us ‘soft’ – and over 130 years of recent history, we have absorbed Jews, Chinese, Africans, Indians, West Indians, Pakistanis, Ugandan Asians, Sri Lankans and Arabs. No other State apart from the US comes even close. Our conditions for citizenship are incredibly relaxed – some would say lax…..and to be honest, I’m one of them. For an island of our size that is already overpopulated, our record on ethnic tolerance is unequalled.

If you’re still holding that earlier thought about culture, then think on this: the Guardian tendency only ever talks about multi-culturalism when suggesting all that is good about the future….and only ever talks about racism when referring to the past and present. I believe this is both a conceit and a deceit. For myself, I can only say that crude, violent racism of the kind that led to Stephen Lawrence’s death flourished between 1955 and, roughly, 1980. After that, it became increasingly rare. But today, a large proportion of acts and views dubbed as racist by the Elite are in fact an objection to our indigenous culture being both disrespected and ignored.

The liberal/Left accusations of racism in 2012 are almost always a red herring. The tension has nothing to do with ethnicity, and everything to do with minority intolerance of majority culture. Skin colour is not an issue for my generation, and those who came afterwards. The issue now is more focused on the baggage of culture. Whether it be the flagrant disregard for our values in relation to women, marriage, genital mutilation, job aspiration, parenthood or loyalty to the State, we must stop listening to robotic idiots who insist that we are the bigots.

When I tried to explain to a French acquaintance three years ago that it was quite common for West Indians and Pakistanis to support the national cricket teams of their country of origin when on tour in England, she was astonished. She is very, very liberal:  but she could not conceive of any State willing to tolerate such ‘State within a State’ attitudes.

So here’s what I think. I expect new immigrants to struggle with British culture, religion, structures, eccentricity and conventions. I don’t see why I should tolerate non-acceptance of that from their children. And I really do not see for a single second why I should be expected to accept their crass ideas about women, free choice, legal exceptions just for them, illiberal religious beliefs, fatwahs, book burnings, shame killings, prostitution, hard work, homosexuality, and insurance fraud.

The police reaction to the mess they helped create has been to indulge in an orgy of spin. Senior officers fall over each other in their dash to complete courses about cultural diversity and underprivileged single mothers. In doing so, they display the same miserable cowardice they showed thirty years ago when bullying suspects on the basis of their skin pigment. Sadly, I find myself coming back to where I started, albeit with an additional degree of congruence: not only are the police just as bad as the racist minority, they are sucking up to the even smaller minority of radical immigrant chancers determined to push the indigenous Brits to the limit. The three groups deserve each other.