THE SPECTATOR
BURNING HATRED
When is mass murder news? Three British children and their pregnant mother were burnt to death over the weekend after an arson attack at North East London. Had they been the family of a working miner, they might even have knocked Live Aid off the front pages; even had they been Sheffield solicitors, like the unfortunate Laitner family, their frightful sufferings might have been thought important; but they were Asians. The Daily Telegraph covered the story thoroughly and well, as did the Guardian. The Times had five paragraphs on an inside page (and 15 on the front page about trivial sporting links with South Africa). The Mirror, the Sun and the Star did not mention the story at all. The Mail and the Express both sug- gested that a different Asian had been the intended victim, but said little else. If such a lack of interest was the worst thing that the Asian community had to complain about, then racism would not be worth serious consideration. But the complaint in Newham is not merely that the British Press only thinks murder interesting if the victims have greyish pink skins, but that Mass murder, and attempted mass murder cannot, it seems, be stopped. The attack in which Mrs Kassan and her children were killed was the third on that house. Two weeks ago, 15 British Asians, two pregnant women among them, escaped from another arson attack in the borough. There were 57 racial assaults in Newham last year; 27 more have been reported to the police in the first six months of this year. Such lawlessness should not be tolerated. Other considerations seem unimportant beside the fact of murder; yet they exist. The police in Newham are making im- aginative efforts to gain the confidence of the Asians in the district. Groups of sixth-formers are being taken out on police patrols, so that they can see that something is being done. This is the right sort of propaganda of the deed — though insuffi- cient. What is needed is that the murderers be caught and jailed for as long as possible. But where is the propaganda of the world? Consider the outrage expended by the chief constable of Wiltshire on the hapless `Peace Convoy'. Don't the murderers of the Kassans deserve the same? This is given fresh urgency by the efforts of the Left to use allegations of racism to discre- dit the whole idea of law and order. The argument goes that if the police are incap- able of protecting Asian British citizens against white thugs, then the Asians must defend themselves. That way anarchy — or at least Ulster — lies. Much of what passes for anti-racism is simply a hatred of 'capit- alist' civilisation. A particularly chilling example of this is provided by a 'history' textbook for schools called The Roots of Racism, which has been reprinted four times since 1982. This version of British history starts in 1381, when 'the peasants of England marched on London', and goes steadily downhill from then. Europeans generally, and the British particularly, are presented solely as plundering barbarians. All the cultures into which they come into contact are more highly developed in every way but militarily. The British, we learn, never do anything but from the vilest commercial motives — even the slave trade was abolished only because wage labour was more profitable; and it is these racist monsters, the book teaches, who run the police, the courts, the media, all on the assumption that blacks are inferior and to be exploited. This sort of poison can only be nullified if the law can be enforced so that it ensures the safety and the rights of every British citizen.
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