Friday, September 28, 2007

Rewriting History.

At the Labour conference Trevor Phillips , head of the CRE (and soon to be head of the replacement organisation) made some comments which have been widely criticised as being both profoundly ill informed and representing a certain agenda:
He suggested that the story of the Armada should include the role that Muslims had played in the British victory, adding: "It was Turks who saved us by holding up the Armada at the request of Elizabeth."
The fact checking of this claim has already been done with great aplomb both by Tim at Conservative Party Reptile and Laban Tall (who predicted that 'the Turks' defeated the Armada' was a liberal myth in the making as far back as 2004) here, so I have little to add to that part of Trevor Phillips's statement. However one thing that I don't believe has been mentioned is that this call to airbrush British history to serve political ends is not a one off gaffe by Phillips but rather a central plank of the race grievance industry.

From 1998 to 2000 Trevor Phillips, along with Lafy Gavron, Andrew Marr, Lord Parekh, Herman Ousley and many more, served on the slightly Orwellian sounding 'Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain', which was set up by the Runnymede Trust and launched by Jack Straw. This commission's proposals were welcomed by the Home Office, until an adverse press reaction brought about a shameless U-turn by Jack Straw, these proposals included the demand to that our history needed to be "revised, rethought or jettisoned" and must include more black and ethnic minority figures (do the Japanese ever worry about the shortage of Welshmen in their national story?). Along with various demands to make police bashing a national hobby (I paraphrase) and one member of the committee, Lady Gavron, saying that Prince Charles should marry a Bangladeshi or Black woman, the selfish bastard must not have listened to her.

Ironically given the Prime Ministers British speech where he mention Britishness repeatedly in a very British way, because he is British at the Labour conference the Runnymede report also denounced 'British' as because:
It says the description of its inhabitants as British "will never do on its own", largely because the term has "racist connotations".
This is how the people who govern us think when they aren't aware that they are being observed by a wider audience, these attempts to diminish Britain are not a fleeting here today gone tomorrow craze, but something integral to their core beliefs.

1 comment:

James Higham said...

I wonder what part the Muslims played in my first marriage, come to think of it.