Anyone opposed to this shameful collusion with the hardline anti-immigration right should write to the Labour Party figures in question, or to their constituency parties, and make their feelings clear.
The right-wing pundit Douglas Murray recently wrote:
“To study the results of the latest census is to stare at one unalterable conclusion: mass immigration has altered our country completely. It has become a radically different place, and London has become a foreign country. In 23 of London’s 33 boroughs ‘white Britons’ are now in a minority…
“We long ago reached the point where the only thing white Britons can do is to remain silent about the change in their country. Ignored for a generation, they are expected to get on, silently but happily, with abolishing themselves, accepting the knocks and respecting the loss of their country. ‘Get over it. It’s nothing new. You’re terrible. You’re nothing’.
For what it is worth, it seems to me that the vindictiveness with which the concerns of white British people, and the white working and middle class in particular, have been met by politicians and pundits alike is a phenomenon in need of serious and swift attention.”
Such words, one might expect, should place their author beyond the pale of respectable political opinion, in the sole company of UKIP and the rest of the fringe anti-immigration right.
Instead, he is at the heart of a political outfit that is itself at the heart of Westminster politics. Murray is associate director of the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), a ‘think-tank’ that, despite being extremely right-wing and predominantly Tory in its loyalties, nevertheless enjoys a following among all three principal British parliamentary parties.
The HJS’s ‘Advisory Council‘ includes not only 28 Tory MPs, but also two Liberal Democrat and eleven Labour MPs. The Labour MPS are:
Margaret Beckett MP, former secretary of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs
Hazel Blears MP, former secretary of state for communities and local government
Ben Bradshaw MP, former secretary of state for culture, media and sport
Chris Bryant MP, former parliamentary under secretary of state, foreign and commonwealth office
Dai Havard MP
Khalid Mahmood MP
Meg Munn MP, former parliamentary under secretary of state, foreign and commonwealth office
Jim Murphy MP, shadow secretary of state for defence
John Spellar MP, shadow minister for foreign and commonwealth office
Gisela Stuart MP
Derek Twigg MP, former parliamentary under secretary of state for the ministry of defence
Indeed, Labour’s shadow secretary for defence, Jim Murphy, in February of this year, gave a major speech on policy at an event organised by the HJS.
Murray did not write his article in a purely personal capacity; it appeared in the magazine Standpoint with an attached biography giving his HJS affiliation.
Murray’s views are scarcely uncharacteristic of the organisation’s. His boss, HJS executive director, Alan Mendoza, expressed similar views at a speech given around the same time (March 2013) at the conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Mendoza attacked the EU for what he considered to be its hostility to Israel, in the following terms (as reported by the Washington Jewish Week‘s Suzanne Pollak):
“Immigration is also a reason for rising anti-Israel feelings [in Europe]. In 1998, 3.2 percent of Spain was foreign-born. In 2007, that percent had jumped to 13.4 percent, Mendoza said. In cities such as London, Paris and Copenhagen, 10 percent of residents are Muslim.”
“The European Muslim population has doubled in the past 30 years and is predicted to double again by 2040.
“For all the benefits that immigration has brought, it has been difficult for European countries to absorb immigrants into their society given their failure to integrate newcomers. Regardless of their political views, Muslims in Europe will likely speak out against Israel whenever any Middle Eastern news breaks, just as they will against India in the Kashmir dispute. Their voices are heard well above the average Europeans, who tend not to speak out Mendoza said, adding that the Muslim immigrants do this with full knowledge that they would not be allowed to speak out like that in many Middle Eastern countries.’
In other words, the HJS’s leaders claim that London has become a “foreign country” because “white Britons” are in a minority in 23 of its 33 boroughs; that “white Britons” have “lost their country” and are in the process of “abolishing themselves” because of the increase in the size of the non-white and immigrant population; that the increasing European Muslim population is to blame for Europe’s “anti-Israel feelings”; and that the voices of Muslims “are heard well above the average Europeans”.
Yet instead of the HJS being ostracised by respectable political opinion, senior members of the shadow cabinet and Labour parliamentary party are endorsing and participating in it.
Anyone opposed to this shameful collusion with the hardline anti-immigration right should write to the Labour Party figures in question, or to their constituency parties, and make their feelings clear.
Marko Attila Hoare is a former senior member of the Henry Jackson Society (Greater Europe co-director, then European neighbourhood section director, 2005-2012)
74 Responses to “Labour’s shameful links with the anti-immigration right”
Jon Cloke
As another one of the white middle-class males to whom this blog seems to belong, the very idea of being used politically as one of those ‘white britons’ for whom the HJS, the BNP and the EDL claim to speak makes me sick to my stomach. I live in Leicester (a thriving hub of multiculturalism) with a Sikh partner, and every day I go into town down the Evington Road past the mosque, the African and Asian eateries, the Somali community centre and the yarmulke-wearing attendees to the synagogue in Highfields and I thank God I live here. I would swap every single UKIP voter, EDL member and HJS ‘luminary’ for a thousand migrants, of whatever faith, colour or nationality, until there was nobody left to vote petty bourgeois racist nationalism into power anywhere in the UK ever again…. For a member of the Labour Party to work with an outfit like the HJS, in the same way that New Labour kept banging on about being ‘tough on migration’ when Straw and Blunkett were in the Home Office, means that they are disgusting, self-manipulating apparatchiki with the political principles of slime-mould. But then I expect we already knew that about Stephen Twigg at least, didn’t we?
cbinTH
“Strikingly similar”, my arse!
Phil Andrews
See http://tiny.cc/rw0gux and http://tiny.cc/5x0gux for a local perspective on Labour and its ambivalent attitude to UKIP. Whilst this is only about Labour in one tiny corner in London, it is worth noting that no action was ever taken against the ward party or the individuals involved, and indeed the chief architect of this “deal” was rewarded with promotion to the council’s Cabinet immediately following her election victory. Nobody in her ward party has publicly spoken out against this arrangement to this day, although a few members are known to have had their private reservations about it at the time.
Phil Andrews
PS Have only just noticed how old this thread is (!) but hopefully there is still some interest in this subject.