Free Life Commentary,
an independent journal of comment
published on the Internet
Editor: Sean Gabb
Issue Number 114
2nd November 2003

Thoughtcrime and The Secret Policeman:
A Case Study in Discourse Theory
by Sean Gabb

I have just watched a recording of The Secret Policeman. This is a
documentary programme first shown by the BBC on Tuesday, the 21st
October 2003. In this, a reporter posed for six months as a police cadet
and then as a police officer, while secretly filming his colleagues.
Some of the language caught on film expresses strong dissent from the
established opinions on race and immigration. One of the officers put on
a white hood and discussed the merits of burying a "Paki bastard under a
railway line". He also insisted that Stephen Lawrence - a black youth
whose death ten years ago led to a report all about "institutional
racism" - had deserved his end. He added:

"Isn't it good how good memories don't fade? He fucking deserved it, and
his mum and dad are a fucking pair of spongers."

Another officer said of his Asian colleagues:

"Truthfully? Fuck them all off. I'll admit it - I'm a racist bastard. I
don't mind blacks. I don't mind black people. Asians? No."

Another said of Asians in general:

"A dog born in a barn is still a dog. A Paki born in Britain is still a
fucking Paki."

As soon as the programme was shown, the chorus of disapproval swelled to
full volume. The Acting Deputy Chief Constable of the North Wales Police
said:

"I felt physically sick as I watched The Secret Policeman."

The Deputy Chief Constable of the Manchester Police said:

"I was shocked, sickened, ashamed and saddened by what I saw."

The newspapers and the electronic media not only reported, but joined in
the expressions of outrage. Five of the officers filmed resigned the day
after the showing. Another was suspended.

Even forgetting the nature of the language used, it is hard to feel
sorry for these officers. They are police officers. They are "the pigs".
They are the unintelligent, semi-literate dregs of their section of the
working class, who have been given a supervisory power over everyone
else, including their betters - and who use and abuse this power to the
full. They are inefficient. They are incompetent. They are corrupt. So
far, only five of these people have resigned. It would be a better
country by far if they could all be persuaded to resign. We could then
save on the costs of their well-padded salaries. As for crime control,
we could go back to the good old days of arming ourselves and otherwise
relying on the hue and cry and private prosecutions.

We need, however, to look away from the beastly nature of the people
concerned, and look instead at why the programme was made and why the
responses to it were so emphatic. Look at the response of that Welsh
police chief - he described himself as "physically sick" at what was
said. "Physically sick"? When was the last time any of us felt that
about something read or heard? For myself, cat droppings, rotten meat,
certain medical conditions - these can set my stomach heaving as if I
were some teenage anorexic. But I really doubt if, once in the past
forty years, I have read or heard anything that came near to provoking a
physical response. And these were the words of a senior police officer.
It has long been his professional duty to acquaint himself with matters
that require a greater than average firmness of mind. "Physically sick"?
I somehow doubt it.

But what those police officers said was not merely tasteless and
uncharitable. Nor was it merely embarrassing to their senior officers.
So far as their senior officers were concerned, and so far as the
authors were concerned of virtually all media and political comment,
what they said was the equivalent of heresy or treason. It was a duty
not merely to deplore what they said, but to denounce it in the
strongest terms that came to mind. Any faintness of utterance, it seems
to have been felt, might leave one open to suspicions of agreement
oneself with what had been said.


Marxist Theory Is Marxist Practice

At this point, I must beg the indulgence of my readers. In my last
article for Free Life Commentary, I wrote at some length to show the
usefulness of neo-Marxist sociology in analysing the nature of any
social order ruled by Marxists or by those influenced by Marxism. Here,
I will continue the theme, using this present case as an example of how
the analysis can be made to work.

According to Marx himself, the political and cultural shape of any
society is determined by ownership of the means of production. There is
the economic base, and piled on top of this is the superstructure of all
else. Let the base be changed, and the superstructure will be changed as
surely and automatically as the appearance of a forest is changed by the
varying distance of our planet from the sun. I know there are inherent
ambiguities in his theory and many possibly varying interpretations of
it. But this summary is accurate enough for our current purposes. As
here summarised, there is a rough grandeur to his claim. It is, however,
false. We have now been waiting over 150 years for the inner
contradictions of liberalism to reveal themselves, and so bring on the
next stage of human development. There has been no immiserisation of the
proletariat, and no general overproduction crises.

Aside from dropping the whole system as a failure, two responses to this
problem emerged in the early 20th century. The first was to look around
for some half-convincing rescue hypothesis - see Lenin, for example, on
how exploiting the colonies had replaced exploiting the workers at home.
The second was to keep the messianic fervour of the original ideology
while dropping its economic determinism. The three most important
projectors of this change were Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), Louis
Althusser (1918-91), and Michel Foucault (1926-84).

According to their reformulation of Marxism, a ruling class keeps
control not by owning the means of production, but by setting the
cultural agenda of the country. It formulates a "dominant" or
"hegemonic" ideology, to legitimise its position, and imposes this on
the rest of society through the "ideological state apparatus" - that is,
through the political and legal administration, through the schools and
churches, and through the underlying assumptions of popular culture.
There is some reliance on the use or threat of force to silence
criticism - the "repressive state apparatus" - but the main instrument
of control is the systematic manufacture of consent. At times, this
hegemonic ideology can amount to a "discourse", this being a set of ways
of thinking and talking about issues that makes it at least hard for
some things to be discussed at all.

Though much ingenuity has gone into proving the opposite, it is hard to
see what value even a reformulated Marxism has for analysing the
politics and culture of a liberal society. In this country, between
about the end of the 17th and towards the end of the 20th centuries,
there were ruling classes, and there were what can be called dominant
ideologies. But the rulers legitimised their position by reference to
standards which were not imposed by them, but had largely emerged
spontaneously throughout society as a whole. The function of the
ideological state apparatus was not to enforce values on the governed,
but to reflect and thereby reinforce values that were already taken for
granted. I remember once seeing a print of the Queen and Prince Consort
sat with their family round a Christmas tree. This was not a creation of
values, still less an imposition of them. It was instead a royal
identification with ideas of family stability that were already accepted
- ideas that were accepted even by those who, for whatever reason, chose
not to take them up, and that had not been noticeably accepted in
several earlier reigns.

There were strong disagreements - over religion and land ownership and
the extent of the franchise, and the extent of state intervention in the
economy, among much else - but the underlying values of society were
generally shared and did not need to be imposed. The neo-Marxist
analysis only becomes useful for providing a terminology to discuss what
happens when a ruling class turns oppressive. Such is the present case.


The Ideology of the New Ruling Class

We have in this country a new ruling class. It is no longer the Monarchy
and the network of land-owning and mercantile interests that clustered
around it, or anything identifiable as the old - alleged - working class
movement that competed with them. Instead, we are ruled by a coalition
of politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers, academics, media people, and
businessmen who look to an enlarged state as the source of their income
or status. When it came to power is hard to say with precision. It had
taken over the ideological state apparatus long before the 1997 general
election that gave it formal political office; and that election result
more intensified than redirected the course of events. Undoubtedly,
though, it is now supreme.

The ideology this ruling class has taken up to produce internal unity
and to justify itself before the ruled has nothing to do with the
national past or the currently perceived interests of the majority. It
is incidentally about regulating everything that moves in the interests
of health and safety, and sometimes banning them, and incidentally about
preventing alleged dangers to the environment, and incidentally about
making us all into the subjects of a centralised European state. But
these are only incidentals. They are not the core ideology. Though it
has not entirely broken with the past, and though it may appeal to
tradition as convenience requires, the new ruling class defines its
basis of legitimacy lies in the proclaimed right and ability to bring
about a transformation of the country into something entirely new. The
old ethnic and cultural homogeneity are seen as evils. In their place,
we are to have "a rich diversity of communities". Some of these are to
be sexual, some religious. But the real passion is for ethnic diversity.

To take one instance of this, in 1998, the Government set up a
Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain. Its purpose was

to analyse the current state of multi-ethnic Britain and propose ways of
countering racial discrimination and disadvantage and making Britain a
confident and vibrant multicultural society at ease with its rich
diversity.

Chaired by Bhikhu Parekh, an academic placed in the House of Lords by
Tony Blair, the Commission was a sub-division of the Runnymede Trust, a
formally private body "devoted to promoting racial justice in Britain".
Its Report can be seen as a digested expression of the transformation
intended for this country. Among the recommendations were a formal
declaration by the State that Britain was now a "multicultural society",
and a commitment that

"deep-rooted antagonisms to racial and cultural differences [should be]
defeated in practice, as well as symbolically written out of the
national story."

There was also some discussion of giving the country a new name:

"[The Name Britain] has systematic, largely unspoken, racial
connotations.... Englishness and therefore by extension, Britishness, is
racially coded."

No new name was suggested, though it was emphasised that the country
from now on should be regarded not as a community, but as a "community
of communities".


"Multiculturalism" and "Anti-Racism" As Hegemonic Discourse and
Legitimation Ideology

The ruling class has yet to take full notice of Dr Parekh's
recommendations. However, its behaviour and language all proceed from
the same assumptions. See the endless official fussing over criminal
conviction rates and examination passes, the emphasis on "diversity",
the careful blending of races and sexes and appearances in all official
photographic opportunities, the changed emblems and mission statements
of governmental agencies. In the neo-Marxist terminology, the ruling
class and its ideological state apparatus are imposing a new hegemonic
ideology of multiculturalism.

The great apparent problem with this new ideology is its impossibility.
It is a false ideology. It is easily possible for small alien minorities
to be accepted into a country. Orthodox Jews are a good example. They
live in the nation, but do not regard themselves as of it. What makes
them acceptable is that they do not make nuisances of themselves and can
never by their nature be other than a small minority. Even hardened
anti-semites have little objection to the Orthodox, being more concerned
about the alleged doings of the assimilated. It is also possible for
large numbers of aliens to be accepted into a nation so long as they
assimilate and embrace its culture as their own. The United States in
the century to about 1970 is a good case here. During this time,
settlers of British ancestry went from being the majority to a large
minority, but the American nation they had created continued to exist
and to prosper by just about every reasonable standard. But a large and
rapid immigration in which the burden of adjustment is thrown not on the
newcomers but on the natives - in which, indeed, the newcomers are
positively discouraged from assimilating - that is an obvious cause of
resentment and even disorder.

There cannot be one society made up of widely different communities each
of which loves and respects all the others. There cannot be a society in
which the ethnic composition of every group - from university vice
chancellors to hairdressers, from lunatic asylum inmates to fashion
models - exactly parallels that of the census returns. Instead, there
will be a retreat into ethnic nationalism among all groups.

In this context, the words of that police officer quoted above - "A dog
born in a barn is still a dog. A Paki born in Britain is still a fucking
Paki" - take on a grim significance. The words show a hardening of
spiritual boundaries more typical of Eastern Europe or the Balkans or
Africa than of the Britain we have known for many centuries - a nation
of which membership has been more defined by allegiance to the Crown and
adherence to certain norms than by race or colour. Given such attitudes,
most of our constitutional arrangements must tend to become unworkable.
What is the point of democracy - national or local - or trial by jury,
or any public service, when decisions are made not on their merits but
on differential group voting power?


Dual Consciousness and the Coming Crisis of Multiculturalism

The ideological state apparatus can be set to work on proclaiming the
joys of diversity. But the result is at best what Gramsci calls a "dual
consciousness" - a situation in which values are imposed but only
partially accepted. Multiculturalism is a discourse, so far as many now
cannot find neutral terms to oppose it: see more of the words quoted
above - "I'm a racist bastard" - where the immorality of an opinion is
conceded even as it is expressed; but the discourse cannot secure plain
consent.

The inevitable result is a sharper use of the repressive state
apparatus. We cannot be made to love and respect each other. But we can
be made to act as if we did. Therefore we have a frequently absurd but
always searching inquisition into matters regarded until just recently
as private. There are laws to censor speech and publication, laws to
regulate hiring and promotion policies, and to regulate the selection of
tenants and membership of private bodies, and increasingly stiff
criminal penalties for breach of these laws. Every few days, the media
gives space to some official expression of rapture at the benefits we
have gained from multiculturalism. Its most notable fruit, however, has
been the creation of a police state.

In a sense, though, the falsehood of the ideology is not so much a
disadvantage as a great benefit to the ruling class. Because it is
false, it can only be accepted on faith; and faith can give rise to more
passionate attachments than any sober acceptance of the truth. And with
passionate attachment goes passionate rejection of the opposite. In the
word "racism", the ruling class has acquired a term of venomous abuse
that can silence most criticism. That the word has no fixed meaning
makes it all the better as a weapon of ideological control. It can mean
a dislike of people because of their race or colour. It can mean a
belief in differences between people of different races. It can mean a
propensity to violence. It can mean no more than a preference for one's
own people and values - even a belief that one has a "people". As
"institutional racism", it can exist in the structures and assumptions
of corporate bodies without the intent or knowledge of those employed
within. Or it can arise when every effort is being made to avoid it. It
can mean a mental disorder or a sin. It can mean any of these things or
all of them. Whatever it means in any particular context, it soils and
discredits all who are labelled with it, placing them outside any claim
to respect or tolerance or fair dealing. Modern English contains no
greater instance of the power of words to terrify and subdue.

As for the police state laws, these are welcomed. At the very least, the
various inquisitions set up provide jobs and status that would not
otherwise exist. They are also enjoyed for their own sake. Governments
by their nature like to oppress, and the degree of their oppression is
limited only by the prospect of resistance and their own beliefs about
what is seemly. As an article of faith, multiculturalism obliterates
regard for old conventions. Just look at the self-proclaimed "civil
libertarians" of the past behave now they are in positions of authority.
In the 1970s, they could be trusted to demand every refinement of due
process when some picketer was in the dock, or someone accused of
revealing official secrets. Now they have incorporated "racial
aggravation" clauses into the law which in effect make opinions into
crimes. They are calling for the abolition of the double jeopardy rule
because it prevents their vendetta against the alleged killers of
Stephen Lawrence. Multiculturalism also undercuts the old grounds of
peaceful opposition to misgovernment. Arguments from ancestral right can
be delegitimised by a mere raising of eyebrows and a polite question
about whose ancestors are being invoked. Everyone knows the next
response will be an accusation of "racism". Therefore, the argument is
dropped more often than not, while those who dared raise it must go
about protesting their belief in the official ideology.

Nor is the destruction of accountability unwelcome. Democracy has always
been something of a fraud in this country - and perhaps with good
reason. But rulers were vaguely answerable to the ruled, and could,
given the right provocation, be removed. Multiculturalism turns us from
a nation to which ultimately the rulers had to defer into a gathering of
mutually hostile groups - all with different ambitions and complaints,
all capable of being turned against each other in the manner that
imperial ruling classes throughout history have used to nullify
opposition. In the words of Margaret Thatcher,

"Thus the utopia of multiculturalism involves a bureaucratic class
presiding over a nation divided into a variety of ethnic nationalities.
That, of course, looks awfully like the old Soviet Union."


Thought Crime and the Police State

And so we find ourselves living in a country where conformity to the
dominant ideology is imposed by threats of force accompanied by an
increasingly hysterical propaganda. It is as if the ruling class were
waving a stick and turning up the volume on a television set - so it can
stop others from talking about something else and give them no choice
but to watch the programme. And it is still not enough. Dissent has been
driven out of the establishment media and out of respectable politics,
but it continues to flourish in private and on the Internet. We live in
a country where almost no one would describe himself openly as a
"racist", but where the British National Party seems to stand on the
edge of an electoral breakthrough.

That explains the chorus of outrage when those police officers were
exposed: there could be no public expressions of sympathy for them -
indeed, the knowledge that there was much private agreement with at
least the sentiments expressed, if not with their manner of expression,
required the public denunciations to be all the more unsparing. It also
explains the demand for still greater supervision of speech and action.
As in some gentle parody of Stalin's Russia, it is accepted as necessary
for conformity of speech and action to be so generally compelled that
even the slightest expression of dissent stands out like a black swan
among white.

This is the wider significance of the undercover filming of those police
officers. It is worth asking why only white officers were filmed, when
black and brown officers might not in private be oozing love and respect
for their white colleagues. It is also worth asking in what context the
words were uttered, and to what extent the reporter had made of himself
an agent of provocation. And it can be asked whether the opinions
expressed could be shown to have had any effect on actions. But, while
it would be useful to have some on the record, the answers are obvious.
Witch hunts need witches. When none can be found in public, they must be
searched out in private. When none can be found at all, they must be
invented.

However obtained, such dissent from the multicultural ideology can be
used to justify its more intrusive imposition. Therefore, these words
from the Home Secretary:

"What's been revealed is horrendous. The issue is... what we can do to
ensure police services across the country adopt the new training
programmes on diversity to root out racists before they can get through
the training programme."

In other words, he promised to make it impossible for dissidents to be
employed as police officers. His theme was immediately taken up by the
Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police:

"[h]is force intends to plant informers in its classrooms to root out
racist recruits. It will also allow community representatives to sit on
recruitment panels to prevent racist applicants entering the force. At
the Met's training school in Hendon, which trains 3,500 new officers a
year, one recruit in a class will be secretly selected to inform on
colleagues. Their identities will remain secret for the rest of their
careers and they will act as intelligence gatherers. If racism is
discovered by undercover officers, it may be used to provide evidence
for a criminal prosecution for incitement to racial hatred."

Police officers are already bad enough. But the known presence among
them of informers - and perhaps also agents of provocation - can only
tend to remove them still further from the rest of the population. They
will become a sort of Janissaries, quite separate in outlook and perhaps
in nationality from those they are employed to coerce into obedience.

Nor will these undercover means of gathering information be confined to
the police. Once they are established as normal, they will be used
against other targets. One of the recommendations of the Report into the
death of Stephen Lawrence was

"[t]hat consideration should be given to amendment of the law to allow
prosecution of offences involving racist language or behaviour, and of
offences involving the possession of offensive weapons, where such
conduct can be proved to have taken place otherwise than in a public
place."

This was rejected as unworkable. However, the use of undercover filming
to gather evidence makes it workable. The informers and agents of
provocation will spread into every area of private life. New friends or
partners taken to dinner parties will constrain discussion even when no
one intends to discuss the forbidden issues. We shall have to start
learning the rules of private conduct that East European have been
forgetting since 1989. Life will become grimmer and more oppressive.

How will all this end? Not, we can be sure, in Dr Parekh's "confident
and vibrant multicultural society at ease with its rich diversity". I
see one of two outcomes. The first is that the ruling class will keep
control until it has finished remodelling the population. According to
the 2001 returns - and these probably understate the truth - the
non-white population of England rose by 40 per cent in the 1990s.

According to an anonymous demographer cited three years ago in The
Observer,

Whites will be an ethnic minority in Britain by the end of the century.
Analysis of official figures indicate that, at current fertility rates
and levels of immigration, there will be more non-whites than whites by
2100.

With a small and credible adjustment to the extrapolated trends,
minority status could be reached as soon as 2040. Long before either
date, though, national life would have been wholly transformed. For this
would not be accompanied by an assimilation in which white Englishmen
were joined by black and brown Englishmen, and the nation went on much
as before. Ethnic change would bring with it cultural displacement.
Whole areas of the country would become alien; and within them, the
physical appearances, place names, festivals, rituals and general
customs of the past would be effaced - in much the same way as happened
when, from the 5th century, the northern barbarians displaced the
Romanised Celts who had inhabited this country before them. Then, the
ruling class could be safe. It would be presiding over an empire, not a
nation, and would be safe from effective challenge.

The second outcome is that the English - or British - will turn nasty
while still the majority. I do not think this would be an original
nastiness. The French would probably turn first, or the Israelis. But
there may come a time when the harsh ethnic nationalism of that police
officer becomes the consensus. Then there will be a spiritual casting
out of "strangers" from the nation, followed by ethnic cleansing of the
strangers, and severe legal and social disabilities for those allowed to
remain. And among these strangers will be many who are now unambiguously
accepted as of the nation and who regard themselves as of the nation. It
is worth recalling that, until the National Socialists redrew the
spiritual boundaries of the nation, many Jews were German nationalists.
I suppose I should add here that I do not want our own spiritual
boundaries redrawn, nor will I lift a finger to help redraw them. But I
can easily see their being redrawn if present trends are allowed to
continue.

There is a third possible outcome. This is that present trends will not
be allowed to continue, that the multicultural discourse will be
overthrown before it is too late, that freedom of speech and action will
be restored, and that private and public arrangements will be made to
encourage assimilation of all British citizens to the cultural values of
the majority. This will not bring us to Dr Parekh's land of harmonious
diversity. But it is the only basis on which people of widely different
appearances are ever likely to live at peace with each other.

Sadly, I need only close my eyes to see the lips of my readers curling
at these words. It may already be too late.


A Brief Reading List for the Interested

Althusser, Louis, For Marx, Allen Lane, London, 1969
Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human
Sciences, Tavistock, London, 1974
Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison,
Tavistock, London, 1979
Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, New Left Books,
London, 1971
Meek, Nigel, Modern Left Multiculturalism: A Libertarian Conservative
Analysis, Political Notes No.175, The Libertarian Alliance, London, 2001
Parekh, Bhikhu, The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, Profile Books,
London, 2000


Notes

1.  Jaya Narain and Adam Powell, "Five racist policemen quit force in
disgrace", The Daily Mail, London, 23rd October 2003.

2.  Ibid. One police officer claims it took him over a week to recover
from the shock of watching the programme. See Bryn Lewis, "Police racism
is a challenge to the ethnic minorities", letter published in The
Independent, London, 30th October 2003.

3.  Report of the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain,
published in 2000 by the Runnymede Trust - Introduction available at
www.runnymedetrust.org/projects/meb/reportIntroduction.html

4.  Ibid.

5.  Ibid.

6.  See, for example, this from 1998:

 "A couple of weeks ago, the Commission for Racial Equality recognized
what black actors have known for a long time; namely the 'unjustifiable
under-representation of ethnic minorities in theatre, opera, cinema,
television drama, etc.' The Commission announced that it will press for
legislation to close a loophole in the Race Relations Act which allows
directors to use 'authenticity' as an excuse for all-white casting. A
black Nelson Mandela or a white Winston Churchill will be acceptable;
but an all-white production of Hamlet will be in contravention of the
act. In this, Britain is merely catching up with the USA, which has had
a quota system long enough to ensure that black faces are now run of the
mill across the media."
 (Lesley Downer, "Theatre: Wanted: a brand new caste", The Independent,
London, 2nd September 1998)

7.  On this point, see The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry: Report of an
Inquiry by Sir William MacPherson of Cluny, HMSO, London, 1999, CM
4262-I&II:

 "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." (6.34)

8.  The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry:

"Such failures can occur simply because police officers may mistakenly
believe that it is legitimate to be "colour blind" in both individual
and team response to the management and investigation of racist crimes,
and in their relationship generally with people from minority ethnic
communities. Such an approach is flawed. 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." (6.18)

9.  See this from America:

"Dr. Alvin Poussaint, a Harvard Medical School professor and perhaps the
nation's most prominent African-American psychiatrist... urged the
American Psychiatric Association [in 1999] to 'designate extreme racism
as a mental health problem' by including it in its Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.....

"Poussaint gets support from Dr. Walter Shervington, president of the
National Medical Association, an organization of more than 20,000 black
physicians. When he took over leadership of the NMA last year,
Shervington, a New Orleans psychiatrist, called for a discussion of
adding racism to the APA's list of mental disorders.

"'When (racism) becomes so severe in its expression, should it not come
to the attention of a psychiatrist or someone working in the mental
health field in relationship to identifying what some of the core
struggles are around it?' Shervington asks....

"Sabina Widner, a clinical psychologist who teaches at Augusta State
University, is blunt about the human rights implications of classifying
racism as a mental illness.

"'When I hear these types of things, I think about Russia,' she says,
'where people who are dissidents, people who don't hold majority views,
are subjected to psychiatric treatment.'"
(Extracted from John Head, "Can racists be called mentally ill? Debate
strikes a nerve", The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Atlanta, 23rd
January 2000)

10.  See:

"The [Roman Catholic] church has come close to acknowledging the
problem. Earlier this year, guidelines for parishes to review their
practices described institutional racism as 'a form of structural sin
and primarily a sin of omission'.
(Stephen Bates, "Racism in Catholic Church 'driving minorities away'",
The Guardian, London, 16th October 2000)

"The Pope, clad in purple as a sign of penitence, said sorry on behalf
of his flock for all past wrongdoings, from treatment of the Jews to
forced conversions, the Crusades and Inquisition, and more contemporary
sins such as discrimination against women and racism."
(Frances Kennedy, "Pope confesses 2,000 years of Church sins", The
Independent, London, 13th March 2000)

"The Archbishop of Canterbury yesterday apologised for wars, racism and
other sins committed in the name of Christianity."
(Laura Clark, "Christian leaders say sorry for wars", The Daily Mail,
London, 30th December 1999)

11.  In conversation, Dr Chris R. Tame says this about racism:

Anti-racism is a useful ideological tool since the contemporary concept
of racism is a portmanteau one, that combines a large - and apparently
ceaselessly growing - number of quite distinct ideas. "Racism" is used
to describe or mean, amongst other things:

• the scientific view that important aspects of human intelligence
and/or emotional disposition vary according to racial group and are
transmitted genetically;
• the attribution to anyone holding such views that their belief is
held on the basis of prejudice or blind hatred;
• that believing that there are average/general differences in
IQ/emotional disposition between racial groups means that one hates
other races, or seeks to deny them equal rights or just treatment;
• the denial of just, fair and meritocratic treatment to individuals
on the basis of their race, ignoring their individual character, IQ or
achievement;
• the practice of violence against, or denial of individual rights to,
individuals of different races.

As soon as we look critically at the varied meanings associated with the
word "racism" it is clear that one is dealing with what Ayn Rand calls
an "anti-concept", a word designed to actually confuse distinct meanings
and ideas, and to smuggle all sorts of unjustified assumptions into
political discourse.

12.  The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, Chapter 49, Recommendation 38:

"That consideration should be given to the Court of Appeal being given
power to permit prosecution after acquittal where fresh and viable
evidence is presented."

13.  For an interesting case of bold heresy, followed by immediate
recantation, see:

"A village bonfire society has been accused of racism and divided a
community after burning an effigy of gypsies during a Guy Fawkes
celebration night.

"The Firle Bonfire Society in East Sussex put to the torch a caravan
with images of children at the windows just days after gypsies were
evicted from fields near the village.

"The caravan was paraded through the streets as part of a procession
before it was set alight. It had the registration number P1 KEY painted
on the side. 'Pikey' is a term of abuse for gypsies.

"According to local people who saw the parade, the organisers encouraged
bystanders to shout 'burn it, burn it'.

"The society was last night facing calls for those responsible to be
prosecuted for incitement to racial hatred -an offence that can lead to
a jail term of up to seven years.

"Richard Gravett, chairman of the Firle Bonfire Society, defended its
actions yesterday, claiming that they were not racist. 'There was no
racist slant towards any of the travelling community. If anything, it's
actually completely the other way,' he said.

"'It was done to try to make people realise that these people obviously,
as we all do, need somewhere to live.'
(Thair Shaikh, "Villagers burn an effigy of gypsies", The Times, London,
30th October 2003)

14.  Margaret Thatcher, "Resisting the utopian impulse", American
Outlook, Spring 1999; quoted in "Culture, et cetera", The Washington
Times, Washington DC, 22nd June 1999.

15.  Jaya Narain and Adam Powell, "Five racist policemen quit force in
disgrace", The Daily Mail, London, 23rd October 2003.

16.  A friend to whom I showed the draft of this article took exception
to my use of the word "dissident" to describe racists. My answer is that
these are the real dissidents in this country. What other ideology or
set of opinions or prejudices make someone dangerous to know? What else
can get him the sack from his job, and prevent him from booking rooms to
hold meetings?

17.  Helen Carter, "Informers will be planted at training colleges", The
Guardian, London, 23rd October 2003.

18.  The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, Chapter 49, Recommendation 39.

19.  Paul Brown, "Minorities up 40%, census reveals", The Guardian,
London, 4th September 2003. The official figures are:

                England by Ethnic Group (000s)
                1981            1991            2001
White           44,682          44,848          44,925
Black           707             917             1,286
Asian           1,031           1,487           2,102
Orientals       414             626             825

20.  Anthony Browne, "UK whites will be minority by 2100", The Observer,
London, 3rd September 2000. The demographer "wished to remain anonymous
for fear of accusations of racism".
-- 
Sean Gabb sean@nojunkcandidlist.demon.co.uk (remove "nojunk")
http://www.seangabb.co.uk               http://www.candidlist.demon.co.uk
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http://www.libertarian.co.uk/freelife/
"Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign"
                (J.S. Mill, On Liberty, 1859)