Reference notes for The Definition of Art - By David Hamilton
(1) http://dilettantescholar.blogspot.co.uk/2008/05/michael-oakeshott-rationalism-in.html
(2) http://www.kieronwilliamson.com/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1203226/Pictured-Incredible-watercolour-paintings-boy-aged-just-SIX.html
http://www.magnoliabox.com/art/96482/Morning_view_of_Coalbrookdale_1777
Sunday 22 April 2012
Thursday 12 April 2012
The Macpherson Report: “Anti-Racist” Hysteria and the Sovietization of the United Kingdom
The Macpherson Report: “Anti-Racist” Hysteria and the Sovietization of the
United Kingdom
© Frank Ellis 2001-2012 All Rights Reserved
Iapproach the threat of multiculturalism not from the perspective of an anthropologist, evolutionary biologist, psychologist or geneticist, compelling though the insights of these disciplines are, as part of the wider case against compulsory multiculturalism, but from the perspective of a student of totalitarianism. I argue that the grand design of the Soviet experiment provides a powerful and cogent explanation of the coercive, social engineering being conducted under the banner of multiculturalism, especially the pervasive censorship and control of thought and behaviour, generally known as political correctness (itself a term of Soviet origin). Before I discuss The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry: Report of an Inquiry by Sir William Macpherson of Cluny (the Macpherson Reporti), I want to explore, briefly, this totalitarian connection and explain why I consider the Soviet experiment to be relevant for our understanding of anti-racist hysteria. I hope my readers will find this interesting. They should also be alarmed. I shall then consider some of the main assumptions on which the Macpherson Report is based, and some of the key recommendations.
Sovietization
Sovietization was the process by means of which all institutions, cultural activity, politics, sport, education, religion and family life were subject to strict surveillance and monitored in accordance with Marxism-Leninism. Censorship was routine and exceptionally severe. Civil society, in effect, ceased to exist. In National Socialist Germany this process would have been known as Gleichschaltung or harmonisation.
By 1939 the process of Sovietization was complete in Russia. In the aftermath of the German invasion and the Nazi-Soviet partition, Soviet-occupied Poland and the Baltic states were subjected to the full range of Sovietization policies. Typically, the Soviet secret police, then the NKVD, would move in after the first wave of troops. Dangerous suspects such as landowners, teachers, businessmen, members of the officer corps and intellectuals, in short anyone, deemed to be remotely antagonistic to communism, were arrested, in some cases shot immediately, the survivors incarcerated and then deported to the remote regions of the empire. Mass executions, as in the case of the Polish officer corps at Katyn, were common. After 1945, with a much bigger empire acquired from its vanquished National Socialist rival, the process of Sovietization assumed industrial proportions as Soviet commissars, purged and exterminated all opposition to communist control in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Soviet occupation zone in eastern Germany, soon to be the misnamed, German Democratic Republic.
We now have literally hundreds of eye-witness accounts, biographies and personal testimonies of what life was like when every attempt was made to police an individual’s thoughts and behaviour under a communist system. The Lie is everywhere, and, as Solzhenitsyn’s eleventh commandment states: ‘Man shall not live by the Lie’. And indeed man cannot live by the Lie, as a survivor of Soviet totalitarianism, Jules Margoline, notes in a telling example:
It’s the need to tell an endless series of lies to save your life, to lie every day, to wear a mask for years and never say what you really think. In Soviet Russia, free [?] citizens have to do the same thing. Dissembling and lies become the only means of defense. Public meetings, business meetings, encounters on the street, conversations, even posters on the wall all get wrapped up in an official language that doesn’t contain a single word of truth. People in the West can’t possibly understand what it is really like to lose the right to say what you think for years on end, and the way you have to repress the tiniest “illegal” thought you might have and stay silent as the tomb. That sort of pressure breaks something inside people.ii
Ever fearful that an incautious word will be used against them, individuals in a Sovietised society do not trust one another. As the Jewish writer, Isaac Babel, who himself perished in Stalin’s purges, noted: ‘Today a man only talks freely with his wife at night, with the blankets pulled over his head’.iii
As part of a collection of fearful people, individuals, denied access to information routinely available in the West and unable to discuss ideas freely, were vulnerable to artificially-induced hysteria. As the failings of the system became ever more apparent and the solutions ever more distant, so the state propaganda and agitation apparatus created new, artificial enemies, on whom the frustration of the population, denied other avenues, could focus their attentions. Consider that in the early climate of optimism about what equal opportunities and affirmative action were thought to be able to achieve, there was a much greater degree of openness than is possible thirty years after the failure of these policies. Confronted with these failures, we have two possibilities: admit they failed; or deny failure, while simultaneously, and without any sense of contradiction, taking all kinds of steps to root out the “enemies” responsible for the failure. Perhaps this explains Western feminism’s continuing obsession with “the demon of patriarchy” and the endless campaigns to uncover “racists”, which are worthy successor campaigns to the Soviet system’s obsession with “vigilance” and the need to unmask “wreckers”.
Many examples of state-sponsored hysteria and the accompanying extreme violence can be cited: the show trials used to intimidate the so-called bourgeois specialists on whom the party was dependent in the 1920s; the extermination of anything from 11,500,000 to 22,000,000 peasants (kulaks as the communist party called them) in the 1930s; the great show trials of senior Bolsheviks between 1936-1938; and the various anti-Semitic campaigns of Stalin’s last years, most notably the campaign against Jewish doctors - “the assassins in white coats,” as the Soviet media called them - who were supposed to be murdering the Soviet leadership. Even by Soviet standards, these anti-Semitic campaigns were especially vicious.
Some idea of what it is like to be on the receiving end of this ideological battering can be gleaned from an extract, taken from Vasiliy Grossman’s Everything Flows. A former party activist looks back at collectivization and the media assault on the kulaks, the “enemies of the people”:
A mere girl at the time, these words started to have an effect on me. Here and elsewhere, at meetings and on special courses of instruction, and in radio broadcasts, at the cinema, writers and Stalin himself, all hammered home the same message: the kulaks are parasites, they are burning grain and killing children. The need to incite the fury of the masses against them was stated absolutely clearly, these damned kulaks, they must be exterminated as a class...It was as if I was bewitched, and it seemed to me that all the world’s woes were the fault of the kulaks and were they exterminated, the peasants would find happiness.iv
The same response to what can only be described as brainwashing or extreme indoctrination in an informationally deprived environment can be observed in all totalitarian states: in the former Soviet Union, communist China, North Korea and Cambodia. Today’s enemies whose vilification and destruction will bring about the brave new world are the “white, heterosexual male” and Western civilization.
Now, if my more sceptical readers find words such as “brainwashing”, “re-education”, “thought control” inappropriate or polemical hyperbole in the context of the West, then I invite them to consider some of the practices used in American universities to promote “diversity” and “race awareness”.v Blue Eyed, for example, [...] ‘is a filmed racism awareness workshop in which whites are abused, ridiculed, made to fail and taught helpless passivity so that they can identify with “a person of colour” for a day.’ As Alan Kors notes, ‘these exercises have become so commonplace that most students do not even think of the issues of privacy, rights, and dignity involved.’ Again, in Blue Eyed, Jane Elliot, one of America’s growing class of “race awareness facilitators”, states that those under her authority will by the end of the day, have a ‘new reality’ created for them.
In another film, Skin Deep, a white student, with all his personal details - name, place of origin, all noted on the screen - turns to the screen and confesses the “racism” of his southern family and says: “It’s a tough choice, choosing what’s right and choosing your family.” Yet another “race awareness facilitator” is Edward J. Nichols who achieved fame in the early 90s with a “racial sensitivity” session in which, according to witnesses:
[...] his exercise culminated in the humiliation of a blonde, blue-eyed, young female professor, whom he ridiculed as a “perfect” member of “the privileged white elite” who not only would win a “beauty contest” but even “wore her string of pearls”. The woman, according to these accounts, sat and sobbed.
To say that this sort of treatment of students and faculty represents something sinister is understatement. It is, however, a perfect example of the fictional, yet prophetic, attempts to drive out heresy, as portrayed by Orwell in 1984 and is a precise copy of the sort of treatment which was routinely used by Soviet psychiatrists and Mao’s “re-educators” against dissidents.
To complete the picture, I cite two examples of “re-education” taken from Mao’s China:
A not negligible number of party activists in the region have committed suicide, have fled, or have become psychotic. The cheng feng method is a response to the principle that “everyone should know the intimate thoughts of everyone else”. [...] All that is personal and intimate is to be displayed shamelessly for public scrutiny. Under the protocol of criticism and self-criticism, the thoughts and aspirations and actions of everyone are on full view.vi
and:
Over the years Mao’s police have perfected their interrogation methods to such a fine point that I would defy any man, Chinese or not, to hold out against them. Their aim is not so much to make you invent nonexistent crimes, but to make you accept your ordinary life, as you led it, as rotten and sinful and worthy of punishment, since it did not accord with the police’s conception of how life should be led.vii
In the context of multiculturalism, such treatment is about the invasion and occupation of an individual’s mind, so that he, like Winston, can behave and think in a way determined by the “race awareness facilitators”.
The Macpherson Report
On the 31st July 1997, the newly-elected Home Secretary, Jack Straw, asked retired judge, Sir William Macpherson of Cluny, ‘to inquire into the matters arising from the death of Stephen Lawrence, in order particularly to identify the lessons to be learned for the investigation and prosecution of racially motivated crimes.’viii Published in February 1999, the Macpherson Report can rightly be regarded as a landmark in race relations in the UK. The near unanimous acceptance of its assumptions and conclusions by the Labour government represents a major victory for those who are striving to undermine long-established British institutions and accomplish the final destruction of the United Kingdom.
The basic facts of the murder are as follows. At about 2230 hrs on Thursday 22nd April 1993, two black teenagers, Stephen Lawrence, accompanied by a friend, Duwayne Brooks, were at a bus stop in Well Hall Road, London. While at the bus stop, Lawrence and Brooks were attacked by a group of white youths. In an attack that lasted some 15-20 seconds, Lawrence was stabbed, dying from his wounds soon after. Brooks escaped. Prior to the assault, one of the white attackers, having, presumably, heard something, asked: “what, what nigger”? (para, 1.3). That the assailants were white, the victim black and that the word “nigger” was used, have all been taken on the part of Macpherson as irrefutable proof that Stephen Lawrence was murdered because he was black. To quote Macpherson: ‘Stephen Lawrence’s murder was simply and solely and unequivocally motivated by racism.’ (para, 1.11, emphasis added). At the inquest in 1997, the jury also agreed that: ‘Stephen Lawrence was unlawfully killed in a completely unprovoked racist attack by five white youths.’ (emphasis in the original, para, 2.5). This assumption, an article of faith, resonates throughout the Macpherson Report.
Granted, words such as “nigger”, “cracker”, “honky”, “white trash” or “devils” (many rappers refer to whites as “devils” without, it seems, any problems from the “music” industry) are offensive, and are known to be. That, however, such words are used as the precursor to physical violence should, in my opinion, not be automatically taken to imply that a murder is racially motivated. To quote John Upton:
It is the lack of a sense of proportion demonstrated by Morrison [the reviewer of a book on the Lawrence murder] and his inability to understand or admit that using the term ‘nigger’, however unpleasant that may be, does not necessarily make someone a race murderer that are symptomatic of a climate in which criticism of anything said or done by the Lawrences or any member of their team must be prevented at all costs.ix
In fact, the introduction of “racism” might sometimes introduce a complicating factor. Stabbing someone constitutes violent physical discrimination in any case. The automatic assumption of “racism” can easily be a false trail. So while offensive language might be a useful guide as to whether a crime was racially motivated, it should, in my opinion, be seen as one of a number of factors, to be corroborated before any final conclusion can be drawn.
Matters are complicated by the fact that American blacks themselves use the word “nigger” as a term of contempt for other blacks. Certain rap bands, most notably, Niggers with Attitude (NWA), have used the word to make some kind of statement.x Trying to deny the use of the word “nigger” to whites, while retaining the discretionary use for blacks, represents an arbitrary appropriation of language, a form of language and thought control. Similar problems could arise with the expression “white trash”, a contemptuous dismissal of whites which is used by both whites and blacks alike. There is a great deal of hypocrisy here as well. To quote Jared Taylor:
Meanwhile, as whites worry about whether they are using the socially acceptable race words, blacks can call whites anything they like. No one has ever been reported to have gotten into trouble for talking about whitey, crackers, rednecks, honkies, buckra, or white trash. The same double standard has emerged in the fact that many familiar ethnic jokes that were once told about non-whites have been recirculated as jokes about blonds. They can be insulted with impunity.xi
Consider, too, the following assessment about the British film industry. According to Steven Berkoff, films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill ‘are about white middle class trash’.xii Nothing remotely comparable regarding the films of Eddie Murphy would ever appear in print.
One of a number of serious flaws in the Macpherson Report is the assumption that racism is the sole preserve of whites. Only towards the very end, and one suspects that this was added as an afterthought, do we find a grudging reference to the fact that blacks and other non-whites might, conceivably, be guilty of racism.xiii Otherwise, the assumption, relentlessly pressed home throughout the Macpherson Report, is that racism is the exclusive vice of whites.
Absolutely central to Macpherson orthodoxy is the assumption that the police did not conduct the murder investigation with sufficient zeal because the victim was a young black, a point made by Stephen Lawrence’s mother. Mrs Lawrence argued that ‘No black person can ever trust the police’ because of ‘bad experiences with the police’ (para, 4.4). ‘Bad experiences’ run both ways, of course.xiv The police patronise whites as well. In his desire to appear to be fair, Macpherson demonstrates a willingness always to give the benefit of the doubt to the Lawrences and their defenders which is absent when dealing with the police. To quote John Upton again:
The fact that the Inquiry did not consider it necessary to hear from the Lawrences or Brooks suggests that it had already drawn its conclusions before considering the evidence before it.xv
Consider, for example, the assertion from Macpherson when summing up Mr and Mrs Lawrence’s views: ‘Any protestation that Mr & Mrs Lawrence’s attitude stems from perception and not reality must be abandoned’ (para, 4.9). Why, “must”, one asks? And are the assessments of white police officers based on reality or just perception? This is not the way one conducts an objective and impartial inquiry: this is how one treats heretics whose “guilt” has been determined in advance.
Macpherson adopts the same partisan and defensive posture when he tries to justify the behaviour of Duwayne Brooks, who was, we are told, ‘stereotyped as a young black man exhibiting unpleasant hostility and agitation’ (para, 5.12). Macpherson’s willingness to accept without question that the whites who assaulted Stephen Lawrence used the word “nigger” is contrasted with his readiness to doubt the possibility that Brooks used grossly offensive language when the police arrived at the scene of the murder (“pigs” being one of the milder words, see para, 5.13). Macpherson concedes, grudgingly, that Brooks said these things and admits that such offensive language may explain why he was ignored by the police at the hospital (para, 5.13). Nevertheless, ever willing to find fault with the police, Macpherson asserts, too, that: ‘We do not believe that a young white man in a similar position would have been dealt with in the same way’ (para, 5.31). Why are we to believe that a young white man who called the police “cunts” and “pigs” at the scene of a murder and who behaved in an aggressive manner would not have been treated in this way? To take this further, are we to believe that had Brooks been white he would not have been arrested for (allegedly) causing damage to a car? (para, 5.27).
Summoned to the scene of a murder, the police, until otherwise established, were quite right to assume, initially, that Stephen Lawrence could have been killed as a result of a fight with Brooks. Had the police automatically assumed that whites had killed Lawrence, they would have been guilty of the very thing of which they have subsequently been accused: institutional racism (directed against whites). The police are obliged to investigate all possibilities eliminating some as the data and evidence accumulate and certain positive lines of enquiry become clear. Macpherson, in his insistence that the police should have accepted Brooks’s version, at face value, of how Stephen Lawrence was killed, is, in effect, trying to undermine a basic procedure of a murder investigation.
Macpherson’s contribution to understanding problems of race in the United Kingdom is the discovery that the police are guilty of a whole catalogue of “race” crimes. To accusations of individual acts of racism, can be added those of “unwitting racism”, “unconscious racism”, “racist stereotyping”, “institutional racism” and “collective racism”. Variations on the basic theme of racism, these accusations are unremittingly asserted throughout the Macpherson Report. They contribute to the atmosphere of hysteria during and after the inquiry and will, one suspects, create considerable long term problems for the police and the rest of British society. Racism is defined as follows:
Racism in general terms consists of conduct or words or practices which disadvantage or advantage people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. In its more subtle form it is as damaging as in its overt form (para, 6.4).
From this definition it follows that whites, certainly in the USA, and increasingly in the UK, are the victims of racism, since affirmative action and equal opportunities policies punish whites for being white. Policies which set quotas, or, euphemistically, which demand meeting “targets”, for minority recruitment, as called for by the Home Secretary, are, according to the definition in paragraph 6.4 of the Macpherson Report, manifestly racist, since they advantage people for being black.xvi Another problem with this definition arises from the use of the word “colour”. Macpherson severely criticises several police officers for their use of the word “coloured” instead of “black”. Yet the use of “colour” in the definition of racism poses no apparent problem. If “coloured” is an inappropriate word to use of blacks, why is “colour” acceptable? It should be noted that in the USA, the term “people of colour” to refer to blacks is standard (at least for the moment). And the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) shows no sign of deleting “Coloured” from the way it publicly defines itself.
That blacks are disproportionately active in street crime in the UK and elsewhere and thus more likely to encounter the police means that the police are especially vulnerable to accusations of racism. The black criminal who is arrested can certainly claim that he is being treated differently from his fellow citizens who do not commit crimes. Whether he deserves our sympathy is another matter. The working assumption made by the police that large numbers of blacks are likely to be involved in criminal activity is perfectly reasonable if the day-to-day reality of police officers, as opposed to mere perception, brings them into contact with large numbers of blacks who are indeed criminals. (I add in passing that the same working assumption would be entirely reasonable for black officers who routinely dealt with white criminals). To assume in the face of such reality that blacks were less or as equally likely as whites to be involved in criminal activity would be bad policing.xvii On the streets, at the sharp end, the police deal with probabilities and the probability in many American and British cities is that where there are large black populations, there will be more crime. To pretend in the face of such evidence that this was not the case would be dangerous for police officers (black or white) involved, and the law-abiding public (black or white), who, not unreasonably, expect to be protected from predators (black or white). From the perspective of the institutional anti-racists the fact that the police have different assumptions about the frequency of blacks in street crimes - because in their experience blacks do commit more crimes of this nature - is indisputable evidence of unwarranted hostility towards blacks, that is “stereotyping”, or “unwitting racism”, the latter defined as follows:
Unwitting racism can arise because of lack of understanding, ignorance or mistaken beliefs. [...] It can arise from racist stereotyping of black people as potential criminals or troublemakers. [...] Furthermore such attitudes can thrive in a tightly knit community, so that there can be a collective failure to detect and to outlaw this breed of racism. The police canteen can too easily be its breeding ground (para, 6.17).
And are whites alone, one wonders, in forming tightly knit groupings which resist outsiders? These days, in fact, any manifestation of collective white identity would be viewed as racism or at the very least something distasteful, which, curiously, does not apply to non-whites, who are encouraged to celebrate “diversity”, “difference” and “otherness”.
“Unwitting racism” can be used to attack the police for being “colour-blind” in their treatment of crime. This approach, according to some witnesses, is flawed for the following reasons:
A colour blind approach fails to take account of the nature and needs of the person or the people involved, and of the special features which such crimes and their investigation possess. As Mr Dan Crompton, Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary (HMIC), helpfully said to us it is no longer enough to believe “all that is necessary is to treat everyone the same. ...it might be said it is about treatment according to need.” (Part 2, Day 2, p.57) (para, 6.18).xviii
So, on the one hand, the police are attacked for being racist, that is, for treating blacks differently, but they are nevertheless subject to the demand that blacks be treated differently, according to the Marxist idea of need. Thus to behave in a “colour blind” manner is not something that treats everyone the same, irrespective of race or colour, but as something that recognises difference and needs, so treating them differentially because of race and colour, behaving, in other words, in a way which is paradigmatically racist according to the Macpherson Report’s own definition of racism. If certain racial groups are to be treated differently, then there is no equality before the law.
Having attacked the iniquities of “colour-blind policing”, Macpherson, with no sense of any embarrassment, notes with obvious approval, the summing up made by Justice Curtis (the judge at the trial of the three arrested suspects):
The burden and standard of proof and the legal principles involved govern all cases, and there must never be differential rules or standards applied because of the horrendous nature of a case (para, 41.19).
After Macpherson’s sustained tirade against the police and the repeated demand that the police recognise the special needs of the victims, the inclusion of Justice Curtis’s reminder, reveals breathtaking inconsistency and some astonishing incompetence in editing. In another equally astonishing display of inconsistency - after what has been said about “colour-blind policing” - we find the following:
Different rules and standards cannot be applied to crimes which are particularly horrific or spurred on by particularly evil motive unless statute so provides. Unless there is evidence available which establishes guilt beyond reasonable doubt there can be no conviction (emphasis added, para, 43.45).
The discussion of racism and variations thereof raises some serious questions about balance which go well beyond Macpherson’s treatment of the Lawrences. He notes with some approval the contribution to the discussion of institutional racism in Stokely Carmichael’s Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (1967) and displays no sense of embarrassment at all in taking evidence from the MPS Black Police Association. Like Carmichael, this organisation is hardly an unbiased bystander and its own definition of institutional racism highlights some serious weaknesses for the practical application of the term:
The term institutional racism should be understood to refer to the way the institution or the organisation may systematically or repeatedly treat, or tend to treat, people differentially because of their race. So, in effect, we are not talking about the individuals within the service who may be unconscious as to the nature of what they are doing, but it is the net effect of what they do (para, 6.28).
Two things stand out here. First, the notion that any sane individual can be “guilty” of something, but be unconscious thereof is a rather odd idea to find in Britain (but not in the former Soviet Union or communist China). Second, note the emphasis on there being a distinction between ‘the institution or organisation’ and ‘the individuals within the service’. Nothing, however, is said about the minimum number of individuals in the ‘system’ which constitutes a crossing of the threshold from ‘individual racism’ to ‘institutional racism’. So when those who use ‘institutional racism’ maintain that they are not targeting ‘individuals’ but then go on to accuse the ‘system’, without providing numerical data, they are, in the absence of such data or definition, withdrawing their concession that ‘we are not talking about individuals.’ This absence of clarity means that the anti-racists can have it both ways. If it suits their various agendas, the remarks of one individual will be taken as prima facie evidence of “institutional racism”, and thus as justification for wholesale purging of the particular institution (police force, universities, schools, armed forces and so on). And are members of the MPS Black Police Association - a black-only organisation - exempt from accusations of institutional racism in the way they police the majority white population? And if yes, why? And why have the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) and the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) maintained such a deafening silence about black-only organisations when any white organisation that closed its doors to blacks, even were it do so on grounds of free association, would be hounded mercilessly?
Institutional racism can be detected, according to Macpherson, in the way the Lawrence family were treated at the hospital, family liaison and the failure of many officers to recognise that Stephen Lawrence’s murder was ‘a purely “racially motivated” crime’ (para, 6.45, (a)). In this series of accusations we see the real dangers of applying something as nebulous as institutional racism and a graphic illustration of the problems arising from the MPS Black Police Association’s definition. The actions of those officers involved are taken to be representative of the whole organisation. This is the notion of collective guilt. One “guilty” officer means that the whole police force must be deemed to be guilty. That blacks are disproportionately stopped and searched is taken as evidence of institutional racism, not that blacks commit more violent crimes.
And this potential threat - now being realised in the aftermath of publication - to extend the various concepts of racism to institutions other than the police reveals the anti-white agenda at the heart of the Macpherson Report. As stated by one of the anti-racist gurus: ‘It could be said that institutional racism in this sense is in fact pervasive throughout the culture and institutions of British society, and is in no way specific to the police service’ (para, 6.31).xix
The anti-police agenda of the Macpherson Report is evident in the scandalous treatment of police officers, who, to Macpherson’s fury, resisted his attempts uncritically to accept that this was a racially-motivated crime. Questioned whether this was racially-motivated murder, Detective Sergeant Davidson made the following case:
[...] because these lads had attacked whites before, very similarly with a similar knife I believe this was thugs. They were described as the Krays. They were thugs who were out to kill, not particularly a black person, but anybody and I believe that to this day that was thugs, not racism, just pure bloody minded thuggery (para, 19.34).
As many as 50% of the officers involved in the murder investigation accepted this view. Their arguments cannot simply be brushed aside as Macpherson is trying to do. Yet Macpherson attacks the police for daring to hold a different point of view:
They know, and so do we, that this was a totally unprovoked racist murder and consequently the obdurate attitude of DS Davidson and of other officers who took and expressed the same opinion must be severely criticised. It is insensitive and untenable to suggest that this was or might have been a motiveless crime or even a crime of mixed motives (para, 19.37).
and:
We simply do not understand why DS Davidson and others were unable to accept that this was the simple and uncomplicated position. We consider that their inability to accept that the murder was racist is a manifestation of their own flawed approach and of their own unwitting collective racism (para, 19.38).
Unable to convince by force of argument and unwilling to consider alternatives to the fanatically asserted insistence that this was a racially-motivated murder, and clearly frustrated by DS Davidson’s sticking to his guns, Macpherson accuses those who do not accept his assumptions as being guilty of “unwitting collective racism”. Indeed, at times, Macpherson is like a believer whose faith, threatened by the very existence of non-believers, begins to doubt his belief in God and so resorts to endless repetitions of “God exists!” in an attempt to bolster his weakening faith. Macpherson’s response to DS Davidson’s reasonable interpretation typifies the hysteria that has accompanied the inquiry. According to Macpherson, DS Davidson’s refusal to accept that this crime was racist ‘may well have affected his approach to the case.’ (para, 19.44). To which one must add that Macpherson’s handling of the inquiry, especially his treatment of the police, has been markedly skewed by his uncritical acceptance that this was a racially-motivated murder.
Macpherson has come to this inquiry with the assumption that this was a racially-motivated murder and when confronted with experienced police officers, officers who know what takes place on the streets of London, shows himself to be psychologically quite incapable of any form of objective appraisal of DS Davidson’s evidence. If an experienced police officer believes that the thugs who murdered Stephen Lawrence would have been just as likely to kill a white, then that is a view that should not just be dismissed in a fit of hysterical abuse in order to propitiate the Lawrence team and the largely hostile British media.
Macpherson refuses, significantly, to acknowledge the fact that the alleged suspects were also implicated in the stabbing of two white youths, Stacey Benefield and Lee Pearson (para, 19.36). I find the view expressed by DS Davidson that those who killed Stephen Lawrence would have been just as willing to kill a white very persuasive. It is a credit to this police officer that he, unlike some of his superiors, refused to allow himself to be intimidated and browbeaten when cross-examined by Mr Mansfield Q.C.
In the same spirit, Macpherson laments the fact that DS Davidson appears to have persuaded a colleague, Detective Constable Budgen, that factors other than those of race, needed to be considered. In other words, the process of sifting and analysing evidence, the essence of a police investigation, is itself under attack. Detective Constable Holden was also criticised for her refusal to accept the party line. The definition of a racist incident, then in force, was used by Ms Sikand on behalf of the Commission for Racial Equality to attack her.xx In effect, Sikand argued, since senior police officers accepted that was a racially-motivated crime, DC Holden should have accepted this as well. (Officers are allowed to hold any views, provided they concur with Macpherson’s). Consider the following attempt to monopolise the truth, to stifle any opposing viewpoints:
If officers expressed the view that they did not believe that the case was purely motivated by racism, when it so clearly was [emphasis added], then the perception [emphasis added] of the black community in particular, and all who heard the evidence at this inquiry is inevitably that such an unjustifiable stance reflects inherent racism in the officers involved and in the police service. DS Davidson and others have only themselves to blame for the perception that they were “institutionally racist” (para, 19.44).xxi
The question begging so typical of the Macpherson Report is on display: it has indeed been asserted, yet by no means demonstrated - ‘so clearly’ - that the murder of Stephen Lawrence was racially motivated. Note, too, the thoroughly unwarranted assertion that, since some of the officers did not agree they must be “institutionally racist”. This is not argument: this is intimidation and it is an ugly and pervasive feature of the Macpherson Report. The logical impossibility of individual police officers’ being “institutionally racist”, as Macpherson asserts, is nevertheless revealing. It demonstrates that in the search for “institutional and unwitting racism” one individual will be enough to initiate a witch hunt. In the Macpherson universe any police officer who does not accept that Stephen Lawrence was the victim of a racially-motivated murder, must, by that very fact, Macpherson implies, harbour some dark secret. He is a “racist”, an enemy who, like Winston in Orwell’s 1984, must be compelled to believe in something he holds to be false. This has nothing to do with justice: this is intellectual violence, the sort which typified Marxist sophistry. If we, the high priests of scientific communism are right, then anybody who disagrees with us must be wrong; our opponent is a class enemy, an “enemy of the people”.
The police, generally, have allowed themselves to be browbeaten. By caving into the pressure from the media and the “black community” and conceding that this was a “racist” murder and then having had their undeniable incompetence exposed, the conclusion follows, to many, that the police are “institutionally racist” rather than intolerably and unacceptably incompetent in certain areas. By not challenging the assertion that this was a “racist” crime from the beginning, the police have allowed themselves to be put on the defensive.
More worrying inconsistencies are revealed in the Macpherson Report, as they affect the police. Members of another gang with convictions for racially-motivated crimes were not known to the investigating officers. Having earlier lambasted DS Davidson and other officers for their refusal to accept the race factor in Stephen Lawrence’s murder, Macpherson, three pages later, has no sense of embarrassment in stating: ‘The view of many of the team that the murder of Stephen Lawrence was not solely motivated by racism may well be reflected in this failure to obtain readily available local intelligence’ (para, 20.14). Whether this failure was due to incompetence is not clear but it surely mitigates Macpherson’s accusations of “institutional racism” levelled in paragraph 19.44.
Later, and in the midst of his crude attempts to bludgeon the police into accepting that the murder was racist, Macpherson, with breathtaking disregard for his own tirades, points out that:
The Stephen Lawrence murder investigation should formally have been a “B” category investigation. This is one “where the victim is known but the motive and suspect are unknown” (para, 32.8).
This acknowledgement on Macpherson’s part reveals, yet again, confusion and incompetence. Determined to pursue the agenda of institutional anti-racism, Macpherson refuses to accept that: (i). the motive might be unknown, as demanded by a category B murder or; (ii) that it was anything other than racially motivated.
Recommendations
Some of the recommendations, from a total of seventy in all, go way beyond the confines of policing. Indeed, some represent a serious threat to civil liberties and free speech in the United Kingdom.
We might start with the Macpherson definition of a racist incident which replaces that in force at the time of Stephen Lawrence’s murder. Macpherson rejects the existing definition for two reasons. First, because he finds the word “racial” unacceptable. Second, in the climate of worshipping the “oppressed”, many of whom, I suspect, will not be aware that they are indeed being “oppressed”, he wants to make the definition more “victim oriented” (para, 45.16). Rejection of “racial” or “racially motivated” is justified thus:
We believe that the use of the words “racial or “racially motivated” are in themselves inaccurate and confusing because we all belong to one human race, regardless of our colour, culture or ethnic origin. When referring to crime or incidents involving racism we believe “racist” to be the appropriate adjective (para, 45.17).
Only at the very end of the Macpherson Report do we find Macpherson expressing concern about the words, “racial” and “racially”, despite his having accepted and used them until the very end of the document. Recall, too, that this is the same Macpherson whose covering letter to Jack Straw speaks of ‘racially motivated’ crimes. There is a strong suggestion here, I think, that this attempt to differentiate between “racial” and “racist” has been added at a much later stage, possibly under the influence of outside agencies. It provides further evidence of poor editing and presentation, a characteristic of the Macpherson Report and, more worryingly, but not unexpectedly, bears witness to Macpherson’s willingness to acquiesce to the agendas of various pressure groups. (One might also ask in passing that if we all belong to the same race, how is it possible to treat people in a “racist” manner?). “Racial” is to be rejected because, according to Macpherson, the notion of race is, in some unexplained way, fallacious, whereas “racist” is not. Is the Commission for Racial Equality aware of this point? Macpherson wants it both ways. He desires the root “race” and its derivatives, as in “racist”, for its intimidating effect, but at the same time strives to reject any association with race as a biological reality. Perhaps he should be using the word “ethnicist”. On this issue I cite Roger Pearson:
[...] the term “ethnic” does not exclude the reality of genetic causality, it strongly connotes the pre-eminence of cultural differences, whereas the use of the term “race” clearly implies biological differences.xxii
‘A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person’. So states Recommendation 12. Such a definition puts us firmly in Orwellian territory. This is a charter for every malicious, envious and vindictive type to make trouble, the sort, who in the former Soviet Union and STASI-infested East Germany, would denounce their neighbours for making critical remarks about Stalin or Honecker, in the hope of securing some material advantage or to avenge some real or imagined slight. We should ask ourselves whether we really want to live in a society where every utterance has to be weighed up before we speak; where all verbal spontaneity is lost; where we speak in sound-bites and officially-approved slogans. Such a society would, in effect, fall silent, its citizens fearful that anything they say could be used against them by the Thought Police and self-appointed seekers after “hate crimes”. The Macpherson definition of racism is more than just an attack on free speech: it is an attack on speech itself, that most wonderful of man’s faculties. Is this what we want?xxiii
Recommendation 13 goes so far to say that ‘the term “racist incident” must be understood to include crimes and non-crimes [emphasis added] in policing terms.’ The concept of a “non-crime” - a word that surely belongs in the dictionary of Doublethink - represents the criminalising of everything, so as to justify police intrusion into every aspect of our lives. At this point one must ask whether we should reject multiculturalism and all its works outright, if such draconian recommendations against the indigenous white population have to be enacted in order to ensure the success of the multicultural experiment.
The provisions of Recommendations 11, 12, 13 and 14 have a synergistic effect, which is not immediately apparent. Thus, Recommendation 11 states that: ‘Chief Officers of Police should be made vicariously liable for the acts and omissions of their officers relevant to that legislation.’. And Recommendation 13, as noted, states that: ‘the term “racist incident” must be understood to include crimes and non-crimes in policing terms. Both must be reported, recorded and investigated with equal commitment.’ As if that is not bad enough for the police, Recommendation 14 states that the definition of a “racist incident” ‘be universally adopted by the Police, local Government and other relevant agencies.’ Given therefore, as provided for in Recommendation 11, that senior police officers are to be “vicariously liable” and, additionally, that the term “racist incident” is to be adopted by ‘other relevant agencies’, there are some alarming consequences for universities. Although not expressly included under the heading ‘other relevant agencies’, the thrust is clearly intended to cover the public sector. Thus a university administration which feared that it might be made ‘vicariously liable’ for ideas expressed by members of the faculty, might well consider it prudent to implement an internal policy of vetting before allowing publication of written work or lectures. This could easily be made to apply to the internet as well. The effects on free speech would be devastating. Given the readiness with which university administrations capitulate on any issues connected with race and multiculturalism, the chances that they would resist additional pressures are unlikely. We shall see.
Any doubts, however, about the Orwellian provisions of the Macpherson Report should be completely dispelled by Recommendation 39, which states:
That consideration should be given to amendment of the law to allow prosecution of offences involving racist language or behaviour involving the possession of offensive weapons, where such conduct can be proved to have taken place otherwise than in a public place.
Even privacy has to be sacrificed to make the multicultural experiment work. The logical outcome of this recommendation is the routine electronic surveillance and bugging of private households and private gatherings, and a huge increase in taxes to pay for the hordes of spies and bureaucrats who will monitor us. Nor, I suspect, will it stop at bugging. The next step will be that one’s children will be encouraged to report back any remarks to their teachers (part of their “race awareness training”). Do we really want our children to behave like children did in both Soviet Russia and National Socialist Germany where they were encouraged by the state-run Pioneers and the Hitler Youth to report on “enemies of the people”?
Campaigns against “racism” thus become another powerful weapon against the nuclear family and individual freedom. And where “anti-racism” leads, the “anti-sexists”, “anti-homophobes” and the “anti-everything-else” mob will surely try to follow. The final consequence of this is that real community which relies heavily on spontaneous interaction and trust is grievously wounded. Big Brother Bureaucracy becomes the final arbiter of all our thoughts and behaviour.
Recommendation 39 can properly be compared with the extensions to paragraph 10, Article 58 of the 1926 Soviet Criminal Code which regarded ‘face-to-face conversations between friends or even between husband and wife, or a private letter’ as legitimate settings to seek out anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, with everything that meant in Stalin’s Russia.xxiv Add to this brew recommendation 38, which calls for the ‘power to permit prosecution after acquittal where fresh and viable evidence is presented’, and we are well on our way to destroying ancient safeguards forever. None of us is safe, and this includes those who would complete the Macpherson revolution from above.
Many of Macpherson’s recommendations are characterized by the demand that “cultural diversity” be valued. Not only are the police, as part of their training, to be inculcated with the ethos of multiculturalism, but, and here we see the much wider ramifications of the Macpherson Report, the public sector and, above all, the educational system are to promote “cultural diversity” and address “racism”. Not once in the Macpherson Report do we find the slightest qualification or caveat concerning multiculturalism and the possibility that many of the “racist” incidents might just be a function of compulsory multiculturalism. As with Macpherson’s fanatical insistence that Stephen Lawrence’s murder was racially motivated, so we encounter the same article of faith that multiculturalism and diversity are inherently desirable. On what basis Macpherson himself comes to this conclusion is not clear. He is, it seems, patently unaware that the Soviet Union, the largest multicultural experiment of the twentieth century, could only be held together by coercion and centralised power (and then not forever). The same was true of Yugoslavia, and the emerging United States of Europe seems utterly determined to repeat the Soviet experiment. The record of multicultural societies is, to put it mildly, not good and this, as well as the other disadvantages, such as the exponential growth in state bureaucracies and the assault on ancient institutions and freedoms, which accompany compulsory multiculturalism, are just ignored. And if you object, well, you must be a “racist” or “fascist”.
Conclusion
The dominant characteristic of Sovietization was extreme violence against all opposition followed by coercive state intervention in the lives of all citizens. The crucial thing to bear in mind is that once society has been broken and traumatized by violence, the threat of violence and selected terror are quite sufficient to maintain the party’s position, but not indefinitely. The social engineers in the West who for a long time looked admiringly at the Soviet Union have not been able - so far - to use the violence routinely employed by communist systems, though they applaud it from afar. What they have done is to study and to refine the techniques of control and they fully understand the need to control the judiciary, the universities and government bureaucracies, thus bypassing the ballot box.xxv This is where we find the process of Sovietization. I wonder whether there is some grim symmetry at work here which has yet to run its course. The Soviet Union experienced a period of prolonged violence which then degenerated into harsh and inflexible bureaucracy. Are we in the West experiencing this process in reverse?
There is something to be said for the view expressed by John Upton that ‘the most dangerous legacy of the Inquiry lies not in its specific recommendations but in its sentimentalised and unbalanced approach to the consideration of controversial issues’.xxvi This lack of balance is apparent in the fanatical assertion that Stephen Lawrence was murdered because he was black, not that he might have been murdered because he encountered a gang of equal-opportunity killers on the prowl. The assumption of a racial motive is the crucial part of the Macpherson Report for the commissars of multiculturalism. If this assertion can be shown to be weak or weaker than Macpherson et al have claimed, then the whole edifice of institutional racism, together with the intrusive and Soviet-style recommendations, is built on very shaky foundations. This explains why Macpherson insists, so fanatically, on the murder’s racial motive and why anyone who challenges it is vilified as a “racist”. Without it, the institutional anti-racists have a much weaker case, maybe no case at all.
The hectoring, bullying tone used against individual police officers throughout the inquiry, evident in the Macpherson Report, brings to mind the bullying and spiteful tone adopted by Stalin’s judge Andrei Vyshinsky during the show trials of senior Bolsheviks or that adopted by Roland Freisler, Hitler’s pet judge who presided over the trial of German officers involved in the July bomb plot. The Macpherson Report is a grossly disproportionate attack on the British Police. It must be seen as both a symptom and cause of institutional decay and the loss of confidence on the part of people who in normal times one would expect to be some of the first to lead the charge against the PC vandals. As I argued some seven years ago:
Nor is there anything new in the academic spinelessness and chicanery which make it possible for PC to flourish. Those traditionally responsible for ensuring that the pursuit of truth takes place in a spirit of open enquiry are often among the first to thrust themselves forward to spit and to trample on the very freedoms without which no university, or the society that supports it, can function. The society which sanctions this behaviour lends succour to the mob, disenfranchises the citizen and empowers the tyrant.xxvii
What I argued then at a time when awareness of PC was just starting to grow in the United Kingdom has been well and truly vindicated. How else are we to explain the fact that a senior British judge can attack the British police both in the twisted language of, and on the terms set by, Neo-Marxists and other enemies of the West? While one could argue that all is not well in the police, all is certainly not as bad as Macpherson and his hordes of special-interest advisers would have us believe. The real target of the Macpherson Report is Britain itself and this includes the naive judge who lent his name to this disgraceful document.
Frank Ellis, University of Leeds, England
Notes
i. The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry: Report of an Inquiry by Sir William Macpherson of Cluny, CM 4262-I, The Stationery Office, 1999. Internet: http://www:official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262//4262.html
ii. See Stéphane Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, trans., Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer., Harvard University Press, London, 1999, p.318.
iv. Vasiliy Grossman, Everything Flows (Vse techet), 2nd edn., Possev Verlag, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1974, pp.117-118.
v. Alan Charles Kors, ‘Thought Reform 101: The Orwellian Implications of Today’s College Orientation’, Reason Magazine, http://www.reason.com, March 2000. See, too, Frank Ellis, ‘Multiculturalism and Marxism’, in American Renaissance, vol 10, 11, 1999, pp.1-5.
ix. John Upton, ‘The Smallest Details Speak the Loudest’, review of The Macpherson Report and Brian Cathcart’s, The Case of Stephen Lawrence, Viking, London., 1999, in The London Review of Books, Volume 21, number 13, 1st July 1999, p.9.
x. See the vicious anti-white rap lyrics cited in American Renaissance (Vol 11, No 5, May 2000, pp.14-15). For more rap lyrics see: http://home.att.net/~phosphor/introtogrammys.html. Some of these lyrics preach hatred of whites and are, yet again, another example of the pervasive, sickening double standard on issues of race. In one song the rapper, Ice-T, glorifies murdering police officers. Charlton Heston has attacked the hypocrisy of the recording company’s director: “If the song were entitled Fag Killer or if the lyrics went ‘die, die, kike, die’, would you still sell it?” See Susan Ellicott, ‘Cop killer’ record brings down Wrath of Moses on media giant’, in The Sunday Times, 19th July 1992, p.16.
xi. Jared Taylor, Paved with Good Intentions: The Failure of Race Relations in Contemporary America, Carroll and Graf Publishers Inc., New York, 1992, p.221.
xiii. ‘Racist prejudice and stereotyping can work and be evident both ways.’ (para, 45.25). Given the fury directed at the police, this single sentence is hardly an impressive example of trying to be balanced.
xiv. For example, the way the London Police treated a disabled white woman and were forced pay £20,000 compensation. See “Met pay £20,000 after arrest of disabled woman”, The Daily Telegraph, 22nd March 2000, p.3.
xvi. For discussion of this persecution see, Frederick R. Lynch, Invisible Victims: White Males and the Crisis of Affirmative Action, Praeger Publishers, New York, 1991. See, too, Chapter 5, “Affirmative Action” in Michael Levin, Feminism and Freedom, 3rd edn., Transaction Publishers, London, 1994. See, too, chapters 4, 5 & 6 in Jared Taylor, Paved With Good Intentions:The Failure of Race Relations in Contemporary America, Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., New York, 2nd edn., 1993. See, too, chapter 21 in Balint Vazsonyi, America’s Thirty Years War: Who is Winning?, Regnery Publishing Inc., Washington, D.C., 1998. See, too, chapter 12, “The Dilemmas of Race”, in Richard Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline, Regan Books, New York, 1997. See, too, Dinesh D’Souza, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus, Vintage Books, New York, 1992. See, too, Ray Honeyford, Race and Free Speech: Violating the Taboo, Claridge Press, St Albans, 1992 and The Commission for Racial Equality: British Bureaucracy and the Multiethnic Society, Transaction Publishers, London, 1998.
xvii. See Paul Sheehan’s taboo-breaking article, “Race War of Black Against White”, Sydney Morning Herald, 20th May 1995 and Larry Elder, “When the Bad Guy is Black”, Jewish World Review, 10th March 2000, http://www.amren.com. Electronic archive.
xviii. Note the harsh criticism of Inspector Little for arguing that: ‘everybody should be treated the same’ (para, 12.60). Note the following: ‘“Colour-blind” policing must be outlawed. The police must deliver a service which recognises the different experiences, perceptions and needs of a diverse society.’ (para, 45.24).
xix. For purposes of the Macpherson Report the following definition of institutional racism is used: ‘The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people’ (para, 6.34).
xx. The definition used at the time of Stephen Lawrence’s murder was as follows: ‘A racial incident is any incident in which it appears to the reporting or investigating officer that the complaint involves an element of racial motivation, or any incident which includes an allegation of racial motivation made by any person.’ (para, 45.16)
xxi. Note, too, the same unwarranted assumptions on the part of Macpherson in response to the evidence of Detective Constable Crane who was not entirely convinced that the murder was racially motivated: ‘This collectively held view is a firm example of institutional racism, and how in a tightly knit group such views persist’ (para, 24.20).
xxii. Roger Pearson, Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe, Introduction by Hans J. Eysenck, 2nd edition., Scott-Townsend Publishers, Washington, D.C., 1997, p.78.
xxiii. Given the far-reaching effect of recommendation 12, and that anything can be deemed to be racist, recommendation 57 is especially worrying for the police, since it provides for disciplinary proceedings (‘such conduct should usually merit dismissal’) to be used against police officers who have been shown to have used “racist words”. PC Steve Hutt, who referred to a black youth struggling, while being arrested, as a “black bastard”, was one of the first victims. He was sacked after many years of exemplary service. See, ‘Sacrificing of a First-Rate Copper’, Daily Mail, 1st March 2000, pp.18-19. Contrast Hutt’s sacking with the fact that another police officer, Detective Constable Colin Goring was not disciplined even after admitting that he had a cannabis and cocaine habit.
xxiv. See Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918 1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Volume 1, trans., Thomas Witney, Harper Collins, 1991, p.66.
xxv. See chapter 6, Robert H. Bork., Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline, ReganBooks, New York, 1997.
xxvii. Frank Ellis, ‘A New Word Order for a Brave New World’, in The Salisbury Review, vol., 12, no 1, 1993, p.9.
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