In India for the Southall vote

How many readers recoiled in disgust as they saw in late February the picture of Jack Straw, Her Majesty's Foreign Secretary, no less, sitting with legs crossed at a temple in India, a piece of rag around his head, stuffing his face with some local delicacy and, all in all, looking like some gatecrasher at a fancy dress party rather than the United Kingdom's senior representative overseas?

Mr. Straw was in fact making a visit to the city of Amritsar, during which he further degraded Britain by making a cringing apology for the famed 'Amritsar massacre' thus termed because it involved troops under British command firing on a crazed mob at the Jallianwalla Bagh in the city on 13th April 1919.

The background to this incident has been clouded in the mists of time, and further confused by the constant drip of liberal-left propaganda over 86 years. India at the time was in a ferment, and incidents of violence against British army personnel and their Indian auxiliaries had been reaching a highly dangerous level, particularly in the Punjab. On 9th April savage violence had broken out all over Amritsar. Several Europeans had been murdered, while banks, churches and the railway station had been burnt to the ground. On 12th April two British officers had been dragged from a train near the city and beaten to death.

On the same day Brigadier General Reginald Dyer bought a battalion of troops into Amritsar and issued a proclamation that all public gatherings in the city would be outlawed and that if this were defied his men would shoot the transgressors. The locals had been amply warned.

A huge crowd gathered at the Jallianwalla Bagh, and was being whipped up into a frenzy by several agitators. Dyer, in an act of great courage, ordered his troops to open fire, and thus saved these troops (incidentally Gurkhas) from almost certain annihilation.

Controversy has surrounded the incident ever since. It is now best buried, but that wouldn't have suited Mr. Straw. There are a lot of Indian votes to be courted back in Britain, including Sikh ones. Besides this consideration, the honour of Britain, and of a gallant British officer, are of little account. Brown-nosing was the order of the day, and Jack duly obliged. It churns the stomach that a repulsive creature like our current Foreign Secretary is allowed so to insult the memory of a distinguished soldier whose boots he isn't fit to wipe.

Abortion: the key point

Not a moment too soon, abortion has become an issue in a general election, and the contending parties – and much of the clergy – are locked in bitter argument.

The argument rages over whether there should be a lowering of the time limit on the admissibility of abortions. Tory leader Michael Howard has ignited the debate by saying that in the past he voted for a restriction to 22 weeks but would be prepared to go further and make it 20. A lot of this argument hinges on medical advice of the likely maturity of a foetus, apart from also being affected by religious considerations.

For our part, we take a much simpler view. In fact, we side broadly with the Pro-Life Alliance in maintaining that abortion should be banned completely. We would admit, however, that it could be justified on special medical grounds where birth might endanger the life of the mother. But our position rests not just on moral foundations but, all the more crucially, on racial ones. Among white Britons today there is an alarmingly low birth-rate, and our people simply are not replacing themselves. It has been estimated that some six million children have been lost in the United Kingdom since abortion was legalised in 1967. Whilst some of these would have been born to others from the ethnic minorities, most have amounted to healthy, sound white children being wantonly taken away from our civilisation, thus gravely weakening it. That, we submit, is the essence of the issue rather than arguments about periods of pregnancy. When all is said and done, it amounts simply to his: a lost child is a lost child is a lost child.

Tories facing both ways...

With a general election looming and his nostrils sniffing at the ground in search for much-needed votes, Tory leader Michael Howard decided a couple of months ago to play the 'race card' and came out with some other half-baked proposals for restricting immigration – not enough to make a millimetre of difference to Britain's festering crisis of multi-racialism but just enough, so Mr. Howard hoped, to wean some voters towards Conservatism and away from the BNP.

But these voters should not be fooled into imagining that the Tories have changed. Shortly before Mr. Howard's declaration, the party boasted that it was way ahead of Labour in the fielding of black and Asian candidates. In a report in Blink, the black information link, it was announced that "Michael Howard's party now hope to steal Labour's clothes by representing black and minority ethnic communities." The report went on to say that the Tories could have five new ethnic minority MPs after the election.

A case of the right hand not being supposed to know what the left hand is doing!

But that's not all. In a report in London's Evening Standard on 11th March it was disclosed that potential Tory voters in the South of England were being canvassed by telephone from a call centre in Bangalore, India! And not only that, a Labour voter in Hull got a call from the same source. Apparently, a lady with an Indian accent got on the line to him and asked if he was concerned about immigration. When told where she was phoning to she said she didn't even know where Hull was!

All this might be thought of as playing the 'anti-racist' card.

...And a gay election it looks like being!

The Independent on 19th March carried a front-page headline saying 'First the grey vote, now the gay vote'. The report following focused on the efforts being made by the three major parties to win the support of what are perceived – whether correctly or not we don't know – to be Britain's 2.65 million homosexual electors.

The three party leaders were then quoted on the subject. On behalf of Labour, Princess Tony, when asked if he could foresee an 'openly gay' prime minister, replied: "Yes, personally, I don't think people would reject a prime minister simply on the basis that he was gay, but there is more likely to be prejudice on the right than on the left." With regard to the question itself, the word 'openly' is an interesting one, and perhaps a key one!

Charles Kennedy, for the Liberal Democrats, volunteered the opinion: "As long as Tories are hung up on gay issues, people think they're weird." The Tories, that is, not the gays!

But it was Tory leader Michael Howard's response that was the most revealing. Way back when as Conservative Home Secretary, he played a major role in the introduction of Section 28, the law forbidding the teaching of homosexuality to schoolchildren. Now, however, the tide of political correctness has evidently got to him. "I've changed my mind on that," he said. "I was wrong." A sinner that repenteth!

The Independent report ended gleefully by saying: "Gay rights are banked and secure."

And it looks as if they are for the moment down Brighton and Hove way. In the local Argus newspaper on 5th March it was reported that "Three gay candidates will fight for city seat." The report went on to say that:-

'An important landmark in British politics will be marked at the next election when three of the four main political parties field an openly gay candidate in a key seat.'

The candidates are standing in Hove. Tory Nicholas Boles, LibDem Paul Elgood and Green candidate Anthea Ballam are declared as 'gay' while Labour representative Celia Barlow, rather surprisingly, is classified as 'straight'.

Some readers will be aware that our editor resides in this constituency. They will perhaps not be surprised to hear that he will be among the abstainers!

Deadlock in Iraq

Just what have the recent Iraqi elections done for the people of the country? In a report in The Daily Telegraph on 15th March it was stated:-

'Iraq's interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, criticised the winners of the January elections yesterday, saying they had "paralysed" the country by failing over the past six weeks to agree on the shape of a new government.'

Apparently, the two main political blocs – the Shia and the Kurds – had yet to reach an agreement, plunging the country into what the report described as "a political limbo."

Perhaps had those who were so keen on political change in Iraq listened to wiser councils they would not have considered it worthwhile sending so many thousands of troops into the country to fight a war for this purpose. Perhaps then the near-hundred British servicemen who have died in this lunatic exercise would still be alive.

Would it be risky to predict a day hence when at least some of those now so wound up over the fate of Iraq will be saying: "Come back Saddam, all is forgiven!"

Invasion alert

"Britain's ladybirds are under threat from an Asian invader, scientists revealed yesterday." So said a report in the Daily Mail on 15th March. It went on to state:-

'The newcomer – the harlequin ladybird – eats more than its fair share of greenfly, depriving its British relatives of food. And when supplies run out, it starts eating our ladybirds.

'The Natural History Museum has called on gardeners, farmers and wildlife enthusiasts to help insect experts keep tabs on the predator's progress across the country.'

Do you not feel as we do, dear reader, that in all this alarm and activity there is the chilling whiff of racism?

Why just England?

The cause of patriotism and love of country saw the recruitment of two strange and unexpected newcomers last month. In an article in the Daily Mail on 15th March (reproduced in a number of places elsewhere) former Home Secretary David Blunkett said to readers: "Let's be proud to be English." He then spent the best part of a page telling us all about the virtues of England, illustrating his theme with a photo of two youngsters with their faces painted with St. George's crosses and with flags bearing the cross in the background. We should, said Mr. Blunkett, celebrate St. George's Day so as to occupy the ground that will otherwise be claimed by the BNP.

And that wasn't all. In the very same issue of the same paper Lord Hattersley, another Labour Party eminence, had an article titled 'In search of England', in which he recounted a trip through Derbyshire which he had immensely enjoyed, providing as it did so many landmarks of what he called "England's heritage."

What is it with these Labourites that, having spent their political careers trying to knock down and destroy everything symbolic of their country, they are now singing its praises? Could it be that they have come to realise that there are votes in it?

But it is curious – or perhaps not so curious – that they speak only of 'England'. The name of our country is Britain – or, if you prefer, the United Kingdom – and our heritage is British, not just English. It has always been our experience that people of left-wing persuasion, while they may make the occasional concession to 'England' and 'Englishness', hate Britain with an absolute poison – indeed so much so that they seem to resent even using the word.

But maybe there is a hidden agenda here. By constantly harping on 'England' – to the exclusion of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – they are antagonising the people of those parts of the Kingdom, thus fanning the flames of separatism and encouraging the country's break-up.

And that has always been a thinly concealed Labour objective.

Britons and Bretons

We didn't know until recently that there are as many as half a million British expats living in France. Apparently, a large number of these are to be found in the north western region of Brittany. In fact there are now so many of them there that the locals are up in arms against what they regard as an invasion, and they have formed an action group, known as A-Stroll, to oppose further influx.