Blair blames spate of murders on black culture
Tony Blair yesterday claimed the spate of knife and gun murders in London was not being caused by poverty, but a distinctive black culture. His remarks angered community leaders, who accused him of ignorance and failing to provide support for black-led efforts to tackle the problem.
One accused him of misunderstanding the advice he had been given on the issue at a Downing Street summit.
Black community leaders reacted after Mr Blair said the recent violence should not be treated as part of a general crime wave, but as specific to black youth. He said people had to drop their political correctness and recognise that the violence would not be stopped “by pretending it is not young black kids doing it”.
Oliver Letwin is in Labour’s sights as they martial all the indignant outrage they can muster and bluster…the BBC giving them every chance to pillory Letwin as a racist.
Right from the off the BBC deliberately misled people as to what Letwin actually said. Justin Webb on the Today programme(07:09) stated that Letwin ‘believed that black Britons had bad moral attitudes’….implying Letwin thought all black Britons had bad moral problems. The BBC news and various programmes that followed up on this ‘important’ story about a small memo from 1985 all took the same narrative and chose not to tell us what Letwin actually said in full….which is…
“The root of social malaise is not poor housing, or youth ‘alienation’, or the lack of a middle class. Lower-class, unemployed white people lived for years in appalling slums without a breakdown of public order on anything like the present scale; in the midst of the depression, people in Brixton went out, leaving their grocery money in a bag at the front door, and expecting to see groceries there when they got back.
“Riots, criminality and social disintegration are caused solely by individual characters and attitudes. So long as bad moral attitudes remain, all efforts to improve the inner cities will founder.”
Did Letwin casually assert that the whole Black community was predisposed to be criminals due to their inherent bad moral attitudes? No he didn’t. You don’t have to read that at all carefully to see exactly what he meant….I’m sure the many English graduates with gainful employment at the BBC can explain what ‘individual’ means…..seems some just don’t want to know what Letwin actually said….nor were they at all bothered about mentioning PC Keith Blakelock, beaten and stabbed 40 times, almost beheaded by Black rioters as they shouted ‘kill the pig’, nor did the BBC bother to mention Labour man Bernie Grant saying the police got ‘a bloody good hiding’. Curious how unbalanced the BBC can be, dodging the inconvenient ‘context’ that might distract from their own narrative.
All Letwin said was that certain individuals who commit these crimes or who riot do so because they, individually, have bad moral attitudes…he did not make a broad, sweeping statement condemning the whole Black community.
When Lammy, Watson, Umunna and Phillips and all the rest assert he was wrong are they saying that the criminals and rioters were morally right to be acting in that way? It does look that way.
The BBC quoted Trevor Phillips all day telling us he thought Letwin’s words were outrageous and racist and that basically all white people thought like that back in 1985. Trouble is Phillips, whilst saying that the comments were outrageous, [no, they weren’t…see above] actually went on to say he wasn’t interested in dragging over something from 30 years ago when Letwin, whom he knew well, didn’t have such an attitude now. Justin Webb ignored that and demanded to know if Phillips thought Letwin should resign…clearly not understanding a word Phillips had said, or blatantly ignoring it in the hunt for a Tory scalp.
And anyway….this is a Labour attack….desperate as they are to fling mud at the Tories after being nailed as Terrorist sympathisers. Shame the BBC didn’t spend half as much time on the allegations against Labour as they do with Letwin.
Let’s look back at some Labour history on race and culture….Jack Straw in 2007…
Gang crime ‘due to absent dads’
The “continuing problem” of gang violence is due to the absence of fathers in black communities, Justice Secretary Jack Straw says.
He said young black men needed their fathers as role models, otherwise their development suffered.
He was responding to US civil rights activist Jesse Jackson who said inner city violence was an economic problem.
“Gang violence is rooted in the economics of desperation,” said Rev Jackson, adding that some people were “profiting” from providing guns to deprived areas.
But Mr Straw, speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, said the problem was not due to economics.
“One of the striking things is the difference between the attitude and the success in life of black girls from exactly the same backgrounds compared to black boys.”
Black girls perform around the average at Key Stage 4, aged 16, compared to the overall population, he said.
‘Lads need dads’
“Black boys go backwards when they get to secondary school.
“It’s a cultural problem. It’s the absence of fathers who are actively involved in parenting.
So Straw is making the very same claims that Labour are now trying to claim Letwin was making…..crime was due to cultural factors in the Black community….oh and look who else was talking the same talk….
And last March Commission for Racial Equality chairman Trevor Phillips implied some absent fathers were partially to blame for the under-achievement of black boys at school.
Barnardo’s spokesman Errol John said the Babyfather Initiative acknowledged there were problems to be tackled.
“Some black men aren’t playing as full a role in their children’s lives as they should be.
“That’s an issue we don’t shy away from when talking to communities, along with the political stuff that needs addressing,” he said.
Mr Phillips said a lack of self-esteem and positive role models for black boys also compounded the problem, as well as an attitude that being clever is not cool.
“If the only way to break through the wall of attitude that surrounds black boys is to teach them separately in some classes, then we should be ready for that,” he said.
Phillips laid into multi-culturalism and the cultures that produce criminals and terrorists…..
Because I had made it my business to spend part of each week in a community outside London, I already knew some groups were becoming so isolated that values and ideas which most people would find alien were tolerated and even encouraged.
And I saw a looming danger that these communities were steadily shrinking in on themselves, trapping young people behind walls of tradition and deference to elders.
Of course none of this was secret. But anyone who pointed the finger could expect to be denounced for not respecting diversity.
Our desperation to avoid offence is itself beginning to stand in the way of progress. And all too often the losers are minority Britons.
If African Caribbeans are statistically more likely to commit some kinds of crime than other people, as indeed they are — we are especially proficient at murdering other African Caribbeans, for example — it might make some sense to understand why, so we can stop it happening.
Even the Guardian’s Michael White backed Phillips whilst others tried to silence him for saying we were sleepwalking into segregation….
Trevor Phillips says the unsayable about race and multiculturalism
Petty crime patterns, high exam performance and levels of affluence are usually taboo if they threaten to carry a racial dimension: stereotyping is the usual complaint and, of course, it has some merit. Only some. Even a word of out place – think Benedict Cumberbatch’s well-meant remarks about the shortage of “coloured” actors – can raise a media mini-storm, though colour is again being used in the US to embrace all sorts of non-white ethnic groups.
Seems to me that there is a huge amount of hypocrisy around Letwin’s comments and not a little political opportunism. The BBC has indulged itself and gone on the attack instead of doing its job and sifted out the sanctimony, hubris and moral grandstanding as well as the far more dangerous attempt to stir up race conflict…something the BBC itself specialises in. Phillips has let himself down and made some cheap comments playing to the baying mob attacking Letwin whilst admitting Letwin doesn’t actually have an attitude like that, and Phillips says he knows him well.
Letwin is foolish in many ways, but to make such a big story out of a 1985 memo, and to invite Dianne Abbot to emote about it at great length, shows yet again the leftist bias which a feature of the BBC.
Diane “West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children” Abbott? That Diane Abbott?
Is that the same Diane Abbott as the one who didn’t want blond, blue eyed, Finnish nurses coming to work in London because they wouldn’t understand the needs of the black community?
Surely not.
‘Seems to me that there is a huge amount of hypocrisy around Letwin’s comments and not a little political opportunism.’
Of course there is, it’s the so-called BBC. I find it best to imagine W1A as a very badly-run secondary school full of immature, childish, lying, sneering, inept, ignorant, back-stabbing teenagers who completely refuse to operate in the real world, safe in the knowledge that their nasty little club is completely unaccountable and that their snouts will remain firmly in the license payers’ trough ad infinitum.
Utter drivel such as the Letwin thing proves my point. A total waste of time. And we pay for it.
Thank you so much for making a coherent response to this mud-flinging. Unfortunately, by the time its spurious basis has been revealed, the damage has been done. It is a shame that Mr Letwin succumbed so very quickly – it just makes it that much more difficult to bring the media to any kind of account for their deliberately destructive rampage.
BTW, it puzzles me that they were on to this story virtually simultaneously with the release of these papers – I guess the media were given prior access in order to allow them to create a storied view of the documents pre-emptively. Another instance of lobby briefing, in effect – but this implies the active collusion, either of the government itself, or its civil servants. Just how does this work?
Stuart: “Another instance of lobby briefing, in effect – but this implies the active collusion, either of the government itself, or its civil servants. Just how does this work?”
I think they (journalists) do get advance warning of what is to be revealed. It is, after all, a time of year when the media is otherwise occupied in enjoying much hospitality and partying. 😉 In the same way at other times of the year, politicians’ speeches, especially those of Ministers, are trailed – sometimes extensively – in advance.
However, as I read your post, it suddenly struck me that perhaps Letwin is being used, with or without his agreement. Give ‘the memo’ some advance publicity, it creates a media flurry and distracts from other new or other continuing bad news, such as the floods and the failure of national strategic planning & defences in the wake of TWO OR THREE major flood events in the last ten years. Add the lacklustre Cameron performance in the north, the Environment Agency PR disaster, and you can see why the ‘Lightweight Letwin’ might suddenly be welcomed as top story.
It is a Labour/New Labour political trick: manage the news agenda to suit yourself. Create diversions or dilutions. Fill up broadcast time with a story so that other stuff is relegated in importance or left out altogether.
Cameron does appear at times to be ‘the heir to Blair & Brown’. Maybe this is another example?
Now that Letwin has apologised for hurting some people’s feelings, maybe the perpetrators of the 1985 riots could apologise and while they are at it, maybe an apology to Keith Blakelock’s family for hacking him to death would not go amiss.
How abouth that, Ms Abbott?
A juxtaposition the multiculti bBBC failed to notice, obviously.
He had his head chopped off, didn’t he? Takes on a deeper significance when looked back on thirty years later…
“Black Culture”
No such thing.
Everywhere these organisms live they are at the bottom of the pile, economically, educationally and aesthetically (including musically).
Everywhere these organisms live they are at the top of the pile criminologically, rapealogically, and murderologically.
Everywhere these organisms live they are at the top of the pile in squalorority and chiponshouldersmaximusness.
USA inner cities and the continent of Africa as prime examples of the success of their organic activity.
Because that is what you do if you are black, you fail, compared to other races.
While you were reading the above two people were murdered and four women were raped in South Africa, that paradigm of dark success.
Not that any of the above truths will stop the BBC perpetually promoting a non-existent black superiority over white people.
That’s an unpleasant comment, BBC delenda est and untrue in many respects.
For example, though rap is admittedly crap, black musicians have made outstanding contributions to jazz and gospel.
Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed
Jason L Riley
‘Why is it that so many efforts by liberals to lift the black underclass not only fail, but often harm the intended beneficiaries? In Please Stop Helping Us, Jason L. Riley examines how well-intentioned welfare programs are in fact holding black Americans back. Minimum-wage laws may lift earnings for people who are already employed, but they price a disproportionate number of blacks out of the labor force. Affirmative action in higher education is intended to address past discrimination, but the result is fewer black college graduates than would otherwise exist. And so it goes with everything from soft-on-crime laws, which make black neighborhoods more dangerous, to policies that limit school choice out of a mistaken belief that charter schools and voucher programs harm the traditional public schools that most low-income students attend. In theory these efforts are intended to help the poor–and poor minorities in particular. In practice they become massive barriers to moving forward. Please Stop Helping Us lays bare these counterproductive results. People of goodwill want to see more black socioeconomic advancement, but in too many instances the current methods and approaches aren’t working. Acknowledging this is an important first step.’
Good comment. There’s an excellent Intelligence Squared US debate on this very subject:
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/1406-the-equal-protection-clause-forbids-racial-preferences-in-state-university-admissions
(Click on video audio at top left of the page)
I don’t like Letwin much, but as Trevor Philip’s said such a memo back then would not have raised an eyebrow. Demands for an apology about this and countless other things are pure left-wing revisionism; Letwin should not have appeased them.
Apparently, according to the BBC and the rest of the media, Moslem criminality and social failure has nothing to do with Islam and black criminality has nothing to do with blacks. To the contrary, we are informed by the political class that it’s all the fault of whitey. Such a diagnosis of the cause of this criminality and failure together with a refusal to air, let alone consider, a contrary explanation will have two effects. First the criminality and failure will worsen and, second, those found “guilty” (by the media and the biens pensants) and, at the same time, prevented from establishing their innocence or even suggesting other probable causation will turn away from the usual peaceful channels of protest, open public debate and discussion. It won’t be pretty.
If only the Tories had a Tebbit or would ensure that punchy brainy types like Paterson or Gove would deal with the media at times like these.
This is an utter lefty confection, and they have truly lost the plot in terms of even getting a story again at the BBC.
Wrong end of the telescope every time , 24 hour perpetual agitprop guilt-wringing horseshit.
Any world event?…seek out RT or AlJaz…or the better Sky types, the occasionally independent Landale, Tully or Kendall, Gracie.
It`s as bad as that-not one of the current crop of BBC media clowns learned a damn thing from Iran 1979.
When “moderate Islam” hooks up with “secular lefties”-well, I`ll not tell them if you won`t.
Witness the crap over Lynton Crosby-no worse than rewarding Spencer Livermore,,,,Harriet Harman, Damon Albarn or f***in Ed Davey is it?
How come a Livermore got a gong, but the BBC said zip?…at least Crosby saved us from Labour in 2015-and thank the lord for that( No, not Lord Sewel or Levy…both Labour need I add?)
Save Our Sense above paints it very well…Strange Hill, as run by Sir Lenworth Henry, PE Department headed by Sir James Savile.
Mr Letwin is a very clever and civilised man, but ought to have known that apologising for some bit of crap after thirty years would NEVER satisfy the perpetual opposition of the BBC and liberal leftards of Labour and the grievance industry.
He raps what he has long sown, a Keith Joseph for these blank times.
Now had he apologised for screwing us all over for Fat Fagin Batmanghedghli?…THEN I`d know he`s learned things after over thirty years as a decent and cultured Tory in office.
But his touching faith in the BBC and the Left is just the disastrous capitulation that only makes the rest of us more unwilling to mention-oh, I don`t know…Bob Mellish, Tom Driberg and John Prescott.
As I say , we need Tories who hate the Left as much as we do-and if they don`t use this once in a generation chance to dump the BBC, then we`ll yet see Adebolajo get an apology and Savile be seen as a pioneer.
When Islam meets Labour…both hate America, Jews…and both want to screw all members of your family until you immur them or send them to Komosol camps….
This a very good video piece by Jared Taylor from his site http://www.aren.com; he is exceptional, though don’t expect to see / hear him on Al Beebus anytime never – unless it’s a hatchet job.
https://youtu.be/JbSHbhJPuxI
You’d have thought the BBC and the rest of the Globalist media,would have been a little more circumspect about launching into full frontal attack on Letwin, given that he is a fellow minority ethnic!
http://www.jewishnews.co.uk/oliver-letwin-removes-judaism-wiki-reference/
“…and chose not to tell us what Letwin actually said in full….which is…”
Very good Alan, except you’re not quoting what Letwin said “in full”; you’re lying.
To pick up where you left off:
“Riots, criminality and social disintegration are caused solely by individual characters and attitudes. So long as bad moral attitudes remain, all efforts to improve the inner cities will founder…David Young’s new [Black] entrepreneurs will set up in the disco and drug trade; Kenneth Baker’s refurbished council blocks will decay through vandalism combined with neglect; and people will graduate from temporary training or employment programmes into unemployment or crime“
So yes, it’s quite clear he’s talking about the moral attitudes of the whole “Black community”.
zero, dear heart
“Kenneth Baker’s refurbished council blocks will decay through vandalism combined with neglect; and people will graduate from temporary training or employment programmes into unemployment or crime“
Do you know Tottenham – where a Police Constable had just been decapitated ? As in a copper having his head chopped off by a mob ?
And what part of the quote above has not been proved by events ?
Zero – please grow up . Ignorance may be bliss to you, but it gives you no credence round here, sunshine
Growth, or indeed positive movement of any kind is simply not an option for agent 273 from the Borg box.
It’s tempting, but quickly passes, to feel a small measure of sympathy for someone either on the graveyard shift or whose first thought stumbling in the door on New Year’s Day is to rather gracelessly raise the off topic of adherence to truth, when again missing if inadvertently raising the performance of a £4Bpa supposedly impartial news monopoly in this regard.
Nil by foot in mouth.
Very BBC.
So is there a “black community” or isn’t there? and if there is, what are the shared moral values that seperate the “black community” from other communities?
If Letwin had described “a subculture within the black community that has bad moral attitudes” would he still have been a “racist”?
In 1985 a section of the “black community” had rioted and hacked a policeman to death, a section of the black community are now publicly funded as “community activists” for organisations such as Tottenham Rights who appear to push a race hustling agenda that excuses criminality and gangsterism within the “black community” and feeds resentment against the police and justice system.
O.K. so they don’t all run discos or deal drugs, but was Letwin actually incorrect in the point he was trying to make? that tax payer money for employment funding would be used for purposes other than entrepreneurism as that word is usually understood…..ie innovative business activity leading to productivity and the generation of profit and tax revenues. Whatever “community activism” is, it isn’t “entrepreneurism”.
Trying to hang a bloke out to dry because of something said in the 1980s is a bit rich isn’t it?
Remember, this was a time when, after the hacking to death of a policeman in the Broadwater Farm riot, the labour council leader, Bernie Grant (now deceased) was quoted as saying “The youths around here believe the police were to blame for what happened on Sunday and what they got was a bloody good hiding”, was he representing the “black communities” collective moral view? he was certainly later elected as an MP and was not alone in his views as I recall. He is now described as being one of 100 “Great Black Britons”.
Let us look forward to some BBC scrutiny of the moral attitudes of the “black community” and the Labour Party of the 1980s. Rattling skeletons in the wardrobe? You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.