A letter to the Sunday Telegraph which was published on 4th February 2007.
The way we can restore the notion of Britishness to our nation (Profile, Comment, January 28th) is by stopping the habit of deferring to people who appear to believe that the supposed interests of newcomers to this country should be the basis of policy in every sphere of Government.
Under this rule by minority interest, the genuinely great achievements of the British peoples, ones which from Alfred the Great onwards have shaped the world (the colossal literature, the scientific enlightenment of the 16th and 17th centuries, the industrial revolution, the founding of the colonies in North America and Australasia, plus the modern states in the Indian subcontinent, the tremendous victories in most major European wars) are ignored in favour of obsessive preoccupation with anti-racist themes designed to make indigenous Britons ashamed.
The democratic fightback has to start in schools: parents must insist that our children are taught a chronological account of our history with an emphasis on its achievements. Actually, most immigrants like to be part of a successful country: they tend to approve of military and business success, not weedy New Labour preoccupations with failure and equality.
A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 11th August 2000.
An unemployed painter rescued 10 times in 12 months by the Coastguard and Lifeboat services at a cost of £30,000 reportedly remarked that “they are there as a [free] service” (report, Aug. 10th). This is all of a piece with people summoning helicopters to help them down Ben Nevis because they are “tired”; failure to catch and punish criminals; and providing council homes for asylum seekers ahead of British citizens.
Such sloppy, indulgent attitudes are typical of the Liberal-New-Labour social consensus, the effects of which its advocates are either personally immune from or, as with the human rights law, actually profit from.
In a properly run country such as Switzerland, calling out the emergency services is followed promptly by an invoice – typically £1,000 plus for a 20-minute helicopter rescue. As a result, people take out insurance against such risks – insurance which is refused for people who are plainly incompetent at activities they indulge in.
Nothing will improve the public services in Britain until the personal financial connection between rights and responsibilities is re-established.
A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published around 17th April 1999.
It’s not institutional racism we have in our country, but instinctive prejudice against the English people on the part of New Labour and its fellow travellers in the BBC and other public services. It is noteworthy that Mr Dewar is not rushing to impose on Scotland what Mr Straw is imposing on England.
Unlike the situation in the USA, ethnic minorities in England are not basically one group, but many – Afro-Caribbeans being the single largest, but still only about a quarter of the ethnic minority population. If Jack Straw’s quotas (sorry, targets) are applied to the police by lumping all ethnic minorities together, then as in certain Inner London Local Authorities, there will inevitably be huge over-representation by some minorities, given the disinclination by other minority groups to join the police for social reasons (as is seen among parts of the English population too). This in turn will mean a further lowering of entry standards as there already has been to facilitate the recruitment of women where the height qualification has been reduced to a ludicrously small 5 ft 4 in.
Again, how are the police going to judge whether or not someone of mixed parentage qualifies for one of the quota vacancies? Will Mr Straw bring in the sort of rules which the Nazis used to decide the maximum proportion of non-German parentage which allowed a person to claim German citizenship?
What Jack Straw is doing is sensitising everyone to race, when he should be doing the opposite. The widespread racial harmony which exists here is clear for anyone with unprejudiced eyes to see in our streets, businesses, shops. Yet Mr Straw, who seems never to express a kindly word for the ever so decent, ever so kindly, native people of this country, is installing what will be a resented if not hated system, at the behest of an unbalanced report and its race industry supporters.
