Mass immigration is plunging our nation into crisis

MASS immigration is a form of institutionalised self-destruction.

By: Leo McKinstryPublished: Mon, July 29, 2013
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Over-500-000-immigrants-arrive-to-Britain-every-year Over 500,000 immigrants arrive to Britain every year

The remorseless in-flux of foreigners, officially running at more than 500,000 new arrivals every year, is weakening our economy, wrecking our social cohesion and obliterating our national identity.

Yet the architects of this revolution still refuse to recognise the scale of the damage they have inflicted on Britain. Fixated by the fashionable ideology of multi-cultural diversity, they try to bully and brainwash the public into accepting their suicidal policy. Through a barrage of deceitful propaganda, they downplay the numbers of those settling here and trumpet the supposed economic gains from mass immigration.

They indulge in vicious smear tactics in support of their insidious cause. Critics of their approach are denounced as racist while the British working-class, the biggest losers from immigration, are portrayed as lazy and stupid compared to diligent foreigners. But the lies spread by pro-immigration fanatics no longer stand up to scrutiny. One of their most shameless acts of dishonesty is to pretend the social revolution is not happening, that the public has an exaggerated picture of migration. Yet the fact is that because of the collapse of our border controls, the transformation of Britain is probably accelerating far more rapidly than the authorities have been willing to admit. Even the official figures are shocking enough. According to the last census, almost 15 per cent of the population in 2011 was foreign-born, while in places such as London and Leicester white British people were significantly in a minority.

But true levels of immigration could be much higher because the Government does not collect proper statistics. As the Commons Select Committee On Immigration reported yesterday the figures that the Home Office sets out each year are "little better than a guess" based on a tiny random sample of just 5,000 passengers interviewed at ports and airports. Given that there are estimated to be more than 106 million journeys into Britain every year the results of that survey are almost meaningless. The census is equally unreliable. Not only is it easy to evade but the sheer scale of immigration, as well as the soaring migrant birth rate, means it is outdated as soon as it is published.

The British public is right to think that it is being misled. Other indicators show the disturbing extent of the change. New national insurance numbers have been dished out to foreigners at an annual rate of between 600,000 and 700,000 for the past three years, far higher than the official rate of immigration.

Similarly one supermarket giant has said that "based on the volume of certain staples it sells" it believes the British population to be closer to 80 million than the 63.2 million reported by the census. Just as the pro-immigration ideologues distort the figures, so they lie about the economic impact of immigration. Not content with constantly telling us how hard all migrants work, they deny that the influx has any adverse impact on our civic infrastructure. But that is patently nonsense. Our hospitals, schools, roads and trains are all buckling under the strain.

employers, european union, eu, foreignThe EU is contributing to the problem by providing grants to British employers who hire foreigners

Moreover a major report at the weekend showed that no fewer than 470,000 foreigners had been given taxpayer-subsided homes over the past decade alone. In total 1.2 million foreign nationals now live in publicly-funded accommodation, with one in eight social housing units going to migrants, the figure rising to one in five in the capital. That represents a spectacular injustice when there are 1.8 million Britons on the housing waiting lists. It is the morality of the madhouse to put the demands of foreigners, who by definition have yet to make a solid contribution to our society, before the needs of our own British people.

But the pro-immigration dogmatists love to sneer at working-class Britons. "Immigrants do the jobs that the British won't," they jeer at their dinner parties as they chortle snobbishly about "chavs" and extol the virtues of Ukrainian nannies. They are the ones full of racial prejudice, though their bigotry is directed at their own people. Yet this is another lie, for migrants are more likely to be economically inactive and in receipt of welfare than Britons. That is one reason why we have such a huge equality industry in this country, endlessly bleating about the economic "disadvantage" suffered by ethnic minorities. According to one report, just 18 per cent of "non-EU, long-term immigrants" came here in 2011 for "work-related" reasons.

"Immigrants do the jobs that the British won't," they jeer at their dinner parties as they chortle snobbishly about "chavs" and extol the virtues of Ukrainian nannies
Even the immigrants who do find work are causing problems. The excessive reliance by many employers on foreign staff is driving down wages and squeezing Britons out of jobs. It is ridiculous that when unemployment stands at almost 2.5 million more than half of all new jobs still go to foreigners.

As usual the European Union is playing its malign part through a scheme known as EURES, by which British employers receive a bribe of £870 for every European citizen they employ. Under the Government's slavish adherence to the rules of Brussels more than 800,000 positions at job centres are now advertised throughout the EU, making it far harder for our jobseekers to compete.

This kind of state-sponsored self-loathing has to end. The obsession with mass immigration has been a disaster. The first task of the Government is not to uphold dogma but to look after the needs of the British people.

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Excellent Article.

How we are impoverished, gentrified and silenced - and what to do about it
25 July 2013

I have known my postman for more than 20 years. Conscientious and good-humoured, he is the embodiment of public service at its best. The other day, I asked him, "Why are you standing in front of each door like a soldier on parade?"

"New system," he replied, "I am no longer required simply to post the letters through the door. I have to approach every door in a certain way and put the letters through in a certain way."

"Why?"

"Ask him."

Across the street was a solemn young man, clipboard in hand, whose job was to stalk postmen and see they abided by the new rules, no doubt in preparation for privatisation. I told the stalker my postman was admirable. His face remained flat, except for a momentary flicker of confusion.

In 'Brave New World Revisited', Aldous Huxley describes a new class conditioned to a normality that is not normal "because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does".

Surveillance is normal in the Age of Regression - as Edward Snowden revealed. Ubiquitous cameras are normal. Subverted freedoms are normal. Effective public dissent is now controlled by police, whose intimidation is normal.

The traducing of noble words like "democracy", "reform", "welfare" and "public service" is normal. Prime ministers who lie openly about lobbyists and war aims are normal. The export of £4bn worth of British arms, including crowd control ammunition, to the medieval state of Saudi Arabia, where apostasy is a capital crime, is normal.

The willful destruction of efficient, popular public institutions like the Royal Mail is normal. A postman is no longer a postman, going about his decent work; he is an automaton to be watched, a box to be ticked. Huxley described this regression as insane and our "perfect adjustment to that abnormal society" a sign of the madness.

Are we "perfectly adjusted" to this? No, not yet. People defend hospitals from closure, UK Uncut forces bank branches to close and six brave women climb the highest building in Europe to show the havoc caused by the oil companies in the Arctic. There, the list begins to peter out.

At this year's Manchester festival, Percy Bysshe Shelley's epic Masque of Anarchy - all 91 verses written in rage at the massacre of Lancashire people protesting poverty in 1819 - is an acclaimed theatrical piece, and utterly divorced from the world outside. Last January, the Greater Manchester Poverty Commission disclosed that 600,000 Mancunians were living in "extreme poverty" and that 1.6 million, or nearly half the city's population, were "sliding into deeper poverty".

Poverty has been gentrified. The Parkhill Estate in Sheffield was once an edifice of public housing - unloved by many for its Le Corbusier brutalism, poor maintenance and lack of facilities. With its Heritage Grade II listing, it has been renovated and privatised. Two thirds of the old flats have been reborn as modern apartments selling to "professionals", including designers, architects and a social historian. In the sales office you can buy designer mugs and cushions. This façade offers not a hint that, devastated by the government's "austerity" cuts, Sheffield has a social housing waiting list of 60,000 people.

Parkhill is a symbol of the two thirds society that is Britain today. The gentrified third do well, some of them extremely well, a third struggle to get by on credit and the rest slide into poverty.

Although the majority of the British are working class - whether or not they see themselves that way - a gentrified minority dominates parliament, senior management and the media. David Cameron, Nick and Ed Milliband are their authentic representatives, with only minor technical difference between their parties. They fix the limits of political life and debate, aided by gentrified journalism and the "identity" industry. The greatest ever transfer of wealth upwards is a given. Social justice has been replaced by meaningless "fairness".

While promoting this normality, the BBC rewards a senior functionary almost £1m. Although regarding itself as the media equivalent of the Church of England, the Corporation now has ethics comparable with those of the "security" companies G4S and Serco which, says the government, have "overcharged" on public services by tens of millions of pounds. In other countries, this is called corruption.

Like the fire sale of the power utilities, water and the railways, the sale of Royal Mail is to be achieved with bribery and the collaboration of the union leadership, regardless of its vocal outrage. Opening his 1983 documentary series Questions of Leadership, Ken Loach shows trade union leaders exhorting the masses. The same men are then shown, older and florid, adorned in the ermine of the House of Lords. In the recent Queen's Birthday honours, the general secretary of the TUC, Brendan Barber, received his knighthood.

How long can the British watch the uprisings across the world and do little apart from mourn the long-dead Labour Party? The Edward Snowden revelations show the infrastructure of a police state emerging in Europe, especially Britain. Yet, people are more aware than ever before; and governments fear popular resistance - which is why truth-tellers are isolated, smeared and pursued.

Momentous change almost always begins with the courage of people taking back their own lives against the odds. There is no other way now. Direct action. Civil disobedience. Unerring. Read Percy Shelley - "Ye are many; they are few". And do it.

This article first appeared in the New Statesman

Magistrate 'mystified' over Dennis MacShane expense claims case delay


A magistrates has been left "mystified" after former Labour minister Denis MacShane asked for a court hearing over his £13,000 parliamentary expenses to be put off until after his summer holiday so he has time to consider the documents.
Russia launches attack on Labour MP Denis MacShane
Former Labour minister Denis MacShane asked for a court hearing to be put off until after his summer holiday Photo: PA
By Sam Marden11:55AM BST 30 Jul 2013
Denis MacShane, 65, who served as Europe minister under Tony Blair, is accused of making claims for research and translation services that were never actually carried out.
Due to the complexity of the case, he has asked for the court case to be put off until after his summer holiday so he has more time to consider the documents.
He was charged earlier this month with false accounting, a charge under the Theft Act 1968, over expenses claims totalling £12,900.
The first hearing was scheduled for Westminster Magistrates' Court in central London today but neither he nor his lawyers attended.
Instead his solicitors sent a letter to the court requesting an adjournment so they could have more time to go through the documents in the case.
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They asked for the rescheduled legal hearing to be held after Mr MacShane returns from his holiday at the start of September.
Howard Riddle, the Chief Magistrate, said he was "a little mystified" that the request for an adjournment had been granted by another district judge.
William Hays, prosecuting, said the letter from the former MP's solicitors asked for Tuesday's hearing to be put back.
He told the court: "It refers to the first appearance to take place today. It refers to the gravity and complexity of the matter, and makes the submission that it may be difficult for Mr MacShane and his solicitors to make progress on that date.
"Therefore the request is for the hearing date to be moved administratively to a date after September 4, the reason being that Mr MacShane has a pre-booked holiday at the end of August and is returning on September 4."
Chief Magistrate Howard Riddle said: "I am a little mystified but the decision has been taken and I cannot look behind that decision."
He granted Mr MacShane bail until a new hearing at the same court on September 10.
The Metropolitan Police began examining Mr MacShane's claims nearly three years ago after allegations about abuses of the parliamentary expenses system surfaced, but later dropped the case.
However, detectives reopened the investigation in the wake of a report from the Commons Standards and Privileges Committee last November.
It included letters from the former Labour minister to the standards commissioner that had not previously been seen by police.
Mr MacShane stood down as the MP for Rotherham in South Yorkshire last year.
He is currently in a relationship with Vicky Pryce, who was jailed earlier this year for accepting speeding points on behalf of her then husband Chris Huhne, the former Liberal Democrat MP.
When he was charged, Mr MacShane said he was "disappointed" at prosecutors' decision to launch proceedings against him.




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After Told He’s Racist, UW-M Student Rejects Further Diversity ‘Training’

by Jennifer Kabbany - Associate Editor on September 23, 2013
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Jason Morgan, a University of Wisconsin-Madison student earning his doctorate there, has told his supervisor he objects to the school’s mandated diversity training for teaching assistants (TAs) because leaders of the first session he attended essentially called him – and the whole class – racist.

What’s more, the next session – on how to support transgender students – is something Morgan said he cannot support, as it runs in direct contradiction to his religious beliefs.

The letter, sent by email Sept. 22, states all new TAs in the university’s history department are required to attend one orientation session, two training sessions, and two diversity sessions. Morgan, in his letter, called the first of the two diversity sessions, held Friday, “an avalanche of insinuations, outright accusations, and suffocating political indoctrination (or, as some of the worksheets revealingly put it, ‘re-education’) entirely unbecoming a university of our stature.”

Below Morgan’s letter has been reproduced in its entirety. Morgan, a College Fix contributor, also sent copies of the letter to various Wisconsin news outlets:

Dear Graduate Director Prof. Kantrowitz,

Please forgive this sudden e-mail. I am writing to you today about the “diversity” training that new teaching assistants (TAs) are required to undergo. In keeping with the spirit of the Wisconsin Idea, I am also blind-copying on this e-mail several journalistic outlets and state government officials, because the taxpayers who support this university deserve to know how their money is being spent.

As you are probably aware, all new TAs in the History Department are required to attend one orientation session, two TA training sessions, and two diversity sessions. Yesterday (Friday, September 20th), we new TAs attended the first of the diversity sessions. To be quite blunt, I was appalled. What we were given, under the rubric of “diversity,” was an avalanche of insinuations, outright accusations, and suffocating political indoctrination (or, as some of the worksheets revealingly put it, “re-education”) entirely unbecoming a university of our stature.

Students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and students at probably every other public institution of higher education in this country, have long since grown accustomed to incessant leftism. It is in the very air that we breathe. Bascom Hill, for example, is roped off and the university is shut down so that Barack Obama (D), Mark Pocan (D), and Tammy Baldwin (D) can deliver campaign speeches before election day. (The university kindly helped direct student traffic to these campaign events by sending out a mass e-mail encouraging the student body to go to the Barack Obama for President website and click “I’m In for Barack!” in order to attend.) Marxist diatribes denouncing Christianity, Christians, the United States, and conservatives (I am happy to provide as many examples of this as might be required) are assigned as serious scholarship in seminars. The Teaching Assistants Association (TAA)–which sent out mass e-mails, using History Department list-servs, during the attempt to recall Governor Scott Walker, accusing Gov. Walker of, among other things, being “Nero”–is allowed to address TA and graduate student sessions as a “non-partisan organization”. The History Department sponsors a leftist political rally, along with the Socialist Party of Wisconsin, and advertises for the rally via a departmental e-mail (sent, one presumes, using state computers by employees drawing salaries from a state institution). In short, this university finds it convenient to pretend that it is an apolitical entity, but one need not be particularly astute to perceive that the Madison campus is little more than a think tank for the hard left. Even those who wholeheartedly support this political agenda might in all candor admit that the contours of the leftism here are somewhat less than subtle.

At the “diversity” training yesterday, though, even this fig leaf of apoliticism was discarded. In an utterly unprofessional way, the overriding presumption of the session was that the people whom the History Department has chosen to employ as teaching assistants are probably racists. In true “diversity” style, the language in which the presentation was couched was marbled with words like “inclusive”, “respect”, and “justice”. But the tone was unmistakably accusatory and radical. Our facilitator spoke openly of politicizing her classrooms in order to right (take revenge for?) past wrongs. We opened the session with chapter-and-verse quotes from diversity theorists who rehearsed the same tired “power and privilege” cant that so dominates seminar readings and official university hand-wringing over unmet race quotas. Indeed, one mild-mannered Korean woman yesterday felt compelled to insist that she wasn’t a racist. I never imagined that she was, but the atmosphere of the meeting had been so poisoned that even we traditional quarries of the diversity Furies were forced to share our collective guilt with those from continents far across the wine-dark sea.

It is hardly surprising that any of us hectorees would feel thusly. For example, in one of the handouts that our facilitator asked us to read (“Detour-Spotting: for white anti-racists,” by joan olsson [sic]), we learned things like, “As white infants we were fed a pabulum of racist propaganda,” “…there was no escaping the daily racist propaganda,” and, perhaps most even-handed of all, “Racism continues in the name of all white people.” Perhaps the Korean woman did not read carefully enough to realize that only white people (all of them, in fact) are racist. Nevertheless, in a manner stunningly redolent of “self-criticism” during the Cultural Revolution in communist China, the implication of the entire session was that everyone was suspect, and everyone had some explaining to do.

You have always been very kind to me, Prof. Kantrowitz, so it pains me to ask you this, but is this really what the History Department thinks of me? Is this what you think of me? I am not sure who selected the readings or crafted the itinerary for the diversity session, but, as they must have done so with the full sanction of the History Department, one can only conclude that the Department agrees with such wild accusations, and supports them. Am I to understand that this is how the white people who work in this Department are viewed? If so, I cannot help but wonder why in the world the Department hired any of us in the first place. Would not anyone be better?

There is one further issue. At the end of yesterday’s diversity “re-education,” we were told that our next session would include a presentation on “Trans Students”. At that coming session, according to the handout we were given, we will learn how to let students ‘choose their own pronouns’, how to correct other students who mistakenly use the wrong pronouns, and how to ask people which pronouns they prefer (“I use the pronouns he/him/his. I want to make sure I address you correctly. What pronouns do you use?”). Also on the agenda for next week are “important trans struggles, as well as those of the intersexed and other gender-variant communities,” “stand[ing] up to the rules of gender,” and a very helpful glossary of related terms and acronyms, to wit: “Trans”: for those who “identify along the gender-variant spectrum,” and “Genderqueer”: “for those who consider their gender outside the binary gender system”. I hasten to reiterate that I am quoting from diversity handouts; I am not making any of this up.

Please allow me to be quite frank. My job, which I love, is to teach students Japanese history. This week, for example, I have been busy explaining the intricacies of the Genpei War (1180-1185), during which time Japan underwent a transition from an earlier, imperial-rule system under regents and cloistered emperors to a medieval, feudal system run by warriors and estate managers. It is an honor and a great joy to teach students the history of Japan. I take my job very seriously, and I look forward to coming to work each day.

It is most certainly not my job, though, to cheer along anyone, student or otherwise, in their psychological confusion. I am not in graduate school to learn how to encourage poor souls in their sexual experimentation, nor am I receiving generous stipends of taxpayer monies from the good people of the Great State of Wisconsin to play along with fantasies or accommodate public cross-dressing. To all and sundry alike I explicate, as best I can, such things as the clash between the Taira and the Minamoto, the rise of the Kamakura shogunate, and the decline of the imperial house in twelfth-century Japan. Everyone is welcome in my classroom, but, whether directly or indirectly, I will not implicate myself in my students’ fetishes, whatever those might be. What they do on their own time is their business; I will not be a party to it. I am exercising my right here to say, “Enough is enough.” One grows used to being thought a snarling racist–after all, others’ opinions are not my affair–but one draws the line at assisting students in their private proclivities. That is a bridge too far, and one that I, at least, will not cross.

I regret that this leaves us in an awkward situation. After having been accused of virulent racism and, now, assured that I will next learn how to parse the taxonomy of “Genderqueers”, I am afraid that I will disappoint those who expect me to attend any further diversity sessions. When a Virginia-based research firm came to campus a couple of years ago to present findings from their study of campus diversity, then-Diversity Officer Damon Williams sent a gaggle of shouting, sign-waving undergraduates to the meeting, disrupting the proceedings so badly that the meeting was cancelled. In a final break with such so-called “diversity”, I will not be storming your office or shouting into a megaphone outside your window. Instead, I respectfully inform you hereby that I am disinclined to join in any more mandatory radicalism. I have, thank God, many more important things to do. I also request that diversity training be made optional for all TAs, effective immediately. In my humble opinion, neither the Department nor the university has any right to subject anyone to such intellectual tyranny.

Thank you for your patience in reading this long e-mail.

Sincerely,

Jason Morgan

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British Education: Creeping Sharia

by Soeren Kern
October 3, 2013 at 5:00 am
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Many Muslim groups...have been marketing themselves as "inter-faith" schools in an effort to qualify for [free school] government funding. More then 80 free schools -- at least a dozen of which are catering specifically to Muslim students -- are currently operating in Britain and another 200 are in the planning stage.

A taxpayer-funded Muslim school in England has inflamed public anger after it emerged that the institution is operating according to Islamic Sharia law.

Islamic fundamentalists running the Al-Madinah School in Derby, an industrial city in central England, have ordered all female teachers -- including those who are not Muslim -- to cover their heads and shoulders with a hijab, an Islamic scarf.

In addition to the strict dress code, pupils have been banned from singing songs, playing musical instruments, or reading fairy tales, activities deemed to be "un-Islamic," according to non-Muslim staff members at the school.

The Al-Madinah School in Derby, England.

Girls as young as four are required to sit at the back of the classroom, behind the boys, regardless of whether they can properly see the chalkboard. Girls must also wait for all the boys to get their lunches before they can eat.

When teaching children the alphabet, staff are prohibited from associating the letter 'P' with the word "pig." Female staff are banned from wearing jewelry and are instructed to avoid shaking hands with male teachers to prevent "insult." Naturally, all non-halal food is outlawed at the school.

The revelations about the un-British goings-on at the Al-Madinah School -- some staffers have compared the working conditions at the school to "being in Pakistan" -- are fueling outrage over what some are describing as underhanded attempts to establish a parallel Islamic education system in Britain.

Critics say the school -- which originally marketed itself as an "inter-faith" school in order to qualify for taxpayer monies -- promised that at least 50% of its students would be non-Muslim. Now that it has obtained £1.4 million (€1.7 million; $2.25 million) in government financing, however, the administrators of Al-Madinah are switching gears by operating the school according to Islamic law, apparently to ensure that the school will be 100% Muslim.

The Al-Madinah School opened in September 2012 as a so-called free school, which is similar to a private school in that it operates beyond the control of local authorities, but is different from a private school in that its operations are paid for by British taxpayers.

Free schools were introduced by the ruling Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government in 2011 based on the argument that such schools would create more competition for public schools and thus drive up educational standards.

The new free school policy makes it possible for parents, teachers, charities and businesses to set up their own schools, along with the freedom to decide the length of school day and term, the curriculum, teacher pay and how budgets are spent.

More than 80 free schools -- at least a dozen of which are catering specifically to Muslim students -- are currently operating in Britain and another 200 are in the planning stage.

British Education Secretary Michael Gove has said that Muslim fundamentalists would not be allowed to set up free schools, and the Department of Education has established guidelines to discourage Muslim separatism. As a result, many Muslim groups seeking to establish free schools have been marketing themselves as "inter-faith" schools in an effort to qualify for government funding.

The Al-Madinah School, which caters to 240 students between the ages four and 16 (eventually, the school plans to have up to 1,100 pupils), appears to have employed just such a strategy.

The Muslims behind the Al-Madinah project initially hired a non-Muslim principal, Andrew Cutts-McKay, and a non-Muslim deputy principal, Suzanne Southerland, to run the school, apparently in an effort to assuage fears about Islamic fundamentalism.

In a May 2012 interview with the local newspaper This is Derbyshire, Cutts-McKay said: "We will honor all faiths and envisage a school where 50% of pupils are Islamic and the other half aren't. During the day, the timetable will be flexible with time for Islamic teaching but pupils will be able to opt out of this and there will be a chance to learn about other faiths."

After just over a year in their posts, however, both Cutts-McKay and Southerland have resigned. Both allege that they were "forced out" after being "bullied and sidelined" by the school's Muslim board members.

The tensions came to a head in August, after non-Muslim staff said they were told to sign new contracts which force them to wear the hijab. Not only that, but the dress code at the "inter-faith" school has been updated to state: "The design of the clothing must not display any symbols of other faiths [other than Islam]."

Around half a dozen teachers at Al-Madinah who face losing their jobs if they refuse to comply with the new rules are now seeking legal advice from the National Union of Teachers.

In an interview with the newspaper Derby Telegraph, a local representative National Union of Teachers, Nick Raine, said: "We are very worried about the school and the education of the 200 children there. There are worries over practices concerning the discrimination between male and female pupils in the school, with the girls being told to sit at the back of the class regardless of whether they can see the board properly."

"It's one thing to have a dress code which we can challenge and quite another to build it into a contract," he added. "The school is publicly accountable so there needs to be a greater level of transparency."

A spokeswoman for the Derby National Union of Teachers, Sue Arguile, said: "This school was first launched as based on Muslim principles and not as a Muslim school. If the school is not sticking to the original reasons behind why it was set up, then it does call into question whether public money is being used properly and for its intended purpose."

The Al-Madinah School -- which is already being investigated by the government over alleged financial irregularities -- has been unapologetic. The school issued a statement saying: "Like all pioneers, we are on a journey, and as a new school open for just one year (and only a few days in our new, wonderful, secondary building) we simply ask for time to get going and grow into an excellent school."

The Al-Madinah controversy is not unique. In July, the Department for Education (DfE) blocked plans for the creation of the Northern Lights Free School in Halifax, a town in West Yorkshire, over alleged links to Muslim fundamentalists.

Organizers of the proposed school were dogged by allegations of extremism after a letter -- sent to scores of homes in Halifax -- warned parents to attend a meeting that was "more serious than death." Also known as the "Hell Leaflet," the letter stated: "There have been several incidents recently where children in various settings have been forced to do things against Islam."

The document was sent by Akeel Ayub, the director of the Sunniyy School, a Muslim school in Halifax with close links to the proposed Northern Lights Free School. Evidently, the letter was seeking to apply pressure on families to enroll their children in the new free school.

Many parents in Halifax were furious at receiving the leaflet and the DfE launched an investigation after receiving a letter from a local politician, David Whalley, who wrote: "The local authority is concerned that the rise in issues being reported regarding uniforms for Muslim pupils, Muslim pupils participating in musical activities in school, Muslim pupils participating in curriculum activities related to Christmas etc. have increased and schools have alleged that parents are being influenced by views espoused by the Sunniyy School."

"The local authority is led to believe that there are close links between the Sunniyy School and the proposed free school and therefore the potential risk of a negative impact on community relations within the area is high," Whalley added.

Other Muslim free schools that have generated controversy are the Tauheedul Islam Boys' School and the Tauheedul Islam Girls' School in Blackburn, a large town in Lancashire, England. Blackburn is an area where too many people live "parallel lives" and there is a need for integration rather than separation, according to the Lancashire Telegraph.

The official body for inspecting schools, known as Ofsted, has pledged to keep tabs on Muslim free schools. But Ofsted has long been accused of "whitewashing" hardline Islamic schools that are helping to radicalize a new generation of young British Muslims.

An opinion essay penned by Manzoor Moghal, a well-known writer and commentator on Islam and Muslim affairs in Britain, argues that Islamic schools that oppose the Western lifestyle are a breeding ground for potential social problems in the future.

The essay, "Veils, Segregated Schools and Why We Risk Sowing the Seeds of Islamic Terror in Britain," states:

For far too long, the British authorities have turned a blind eye -- out of misguided fear of being seen as racist -- to the creeping prevalence of militant Islam in our midst. We see this same fearful attitude in the official tolerance of informal Sharia courts in Muslim areas of urban Britain. Such tribunals should not be allowed to operate. Muslims do not need separate judicial institutions. Under the great English tradition of justice, we are all meant to be equal before the law, regardless of status, wealth or religion.

...
How can people ever integrate if the authorities allow separatist enclaves and customs to take root, as we now see all the time in places like Birmingham, Dewsbury in Yorkshire, or Leicester? ... My great worry is that, if the British authorities continue to allow the Islamic hardliners to have their way in the name of choice when it comes to segregating boys from girls in schools, or Sharia courts, or insisting that women should be allowed to wear veils in all circumstances, then those hardliners will feel they are pushing at an open door.

Moghal sums it up: "We must, sadly, accept that there are people in our midst who want to see a hardline Islamist caliphate in Britain. And while the security and intelligence services are nothing less than heroic in their fight against Islamic extremists, continuing to foil terror plots on a regular basis, our civic institutions have in contrast been far too cowardly in their reluctance to challenge fundamentalism."

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

Whitehall's campaign against democracy
Post EarthsAngel on Thu Sep 01, 2011 10:03 am

Whitehall's campaign against democracy
The Mandarinate, Whitehall if you will, is very happy with the condition of Britain's political parties. Like Whitehall, they are central, exclusive, metropolitan bodies that look inwards and exist without any measure of either popular support or accountability. Fewer than 1% of the UK electorate are members of one of the big three parties, and this, too, suits Whitehall - the less the effect of grass-roots influence on the parties, the easier a cosy accommodation between the central State and the central parties may be reached. And the last thing Whitehall wants is political change, new parties gaining ground and the upsetting of this convenient State alliance.


Some of you may recall the utter contempt with which this blog greeted Hayden Phillips' meretricious recommendations on tax-funding of the parties, based on their electoral share in the previous election, thus enshrining and advantaging incumbency and acting as a permanent barrier to political change. I recall a howl of public outrage at the suggestion, and even an opinion poll that demonstrated overwhelming opposition to the proposal. This isn't, of course, the way Hayden Phillips remembers it;

"When I produced my report and negotiated with the parties, public funding wasn't a big bone of contention. I think there would be much more reluctance now even though I still believe it is the right solution. The political party system is essential to democracy. It is a perfectly reasonable thing to provide a stake in the way parties are is funded."

He tells the Guardian, proving that he's grown neither in wisdom nor honesty in the intervening years. In contrast the co-Chairman of the Conservative Party Lord Feldman is of the view that:

It is commonly argued that additional state funding for political parties is the solution to dealing with the loss of income resulting from a donations cap. However, it seems highly unlikely that the public would accept handing over significant sums of taxpayers’ money to political parties at a time when the Government is having to make tough decisions and cut public spending. In the aftermath of the expenses scandal, greater state funding of political parties simply risks further undermining the reputation of politics and politicians in the eyes of the voter.

But more importantly, there is a matter of principle here. Political parties should belong to the people, not to the state. General state funding would represent a significant constitutional shift and would risk turning our political parties into little more than public utilities. Furthermore, state funding based on past election results acts as a significant barrier to entry. New parties would find it all but impossible to spring up without access to donor or state funding. That would be significantly detrimental to the democratic process.

For Feldman to strike a position so diametrically opposed to Whitehall's strategy of establishing 'tamed' and institutionalised permanent State parties seems brave enough, but consider that the Conservatives alone are capable of surviving a donations cap without additional funding.


It seems Christopher Kelly's committee's long overdue report and recommendations on tax funding of the parties will not see the light of day before the party conference season. Once it is released, Nick Clegg will lead cross-party talks. This is a bit like putting Bob Diamond in charge of printing banknotes; the LibDems have seen a flood of members leave since the coalition, their finances are parlous and Clegg has said openly before now that without taxpayer support for his party, it's doomed. And you can bet that 'cross party talks' will include only those parties already represented in Westminster - excluding UKIP and the nascent parties. So whatever Kelly recommends, Clegg will seek to make party capital of it - precisely the outcome wanted by Whitehall.


I can't overstress the importance of the principles at stake here. The issue of Whitehall's establishment of State parties is the battleground over which we must fight to regain democracy in Britain. If the Mandarins win this one, we're irrevocably lost.
at 07:27
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Labels: hayden phillips, state funding Posted by Raedwald
11 pithy observations:

SimonF said...

If we ever do get state funding of political parties, heaven forfend, does that mean we all become members of all parties? Wouldn't it be fun to organise mass attendance at, say, the Labour conference and vote in a new leader ever year.
31 August 2011 08:19
Anonymous said...

I'm not at all sure about the health of our democracy full stop. I don't see the much vaunted localisms bill gaining ground, I don't see quangos cut, I don't see spending cut, I do see taxes rising and I do see living conditions worsening by the day as the living conditions of politicians improve by the day. I see the private sector groaning and dying under the continued rise and rise of the public sector middle and upper management and I see the collapse of this nation as we know it before too long.

Beam me up Scotty, I'm in the shit down here!

Coney Island

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