Country life
Shameful behaviour
Leanda de Lisle
Country people turned their minority status into a source of strength rather than weakness under the last government. But let's face it, as the oppressed go we had a remarkable collection of prominent citizens in our ranks and no shortage of articulate advocates in parliament and press. Other minorities are not so fortunate, and the terrifying way in which race was used in the last election is now conveniently forgotten.
Remember John Townend, the Conservative MP who talked about the dangers of
the English becoming a mongrel race? It's difficult to know if the right-wing press or the left behaved worse over the story. The Telegraph played the role we have come to expect of it: that of a sixth-form debating society run by boys and cheered on by a few girlies. In this case the winning arguments concluded that the Conservative whip should not be withdrawn from Mr Townend, although that was the one thing that would have sent a clear message to the public — that the Conservative party is not a party for racists.
The left then took up Townend's baton, treating asylum and race as if it were one issue. If large numbers of asylum-seekers pose problems for this country then surely they pose them to all our citizens, black, brown or white, but the left preferred to treat all non-whites as foreigners. The message was that they should stick together because the Conservative party would send them all home if it could. This increased racial tension — and if anyone was hoping for a race war with which to enliven their front pages, they found just the place to start one in Oldham. First we heard about no-go areas for whites; then we heard about a second-world-war veteran beaten up in an Asian area.
I recall reading the old man's family saying the mugging wasn't a racial incident, but this was lost in the small print. Selective interviews polarised the situation and riots followed. Ten thousand people then voted for the fascist British National party. Meanwhile, how were our Conservative candidates outside Oldham getting on? A friend telephoned me from the campaign trail. I asked what kind of people would be voting for her. 'Racists and the homophobes,' she told me gloomily. She says she's hoping for a different class of supporter next time round.
Journalists were bored by this election, but it must have left many non-white Britons anxious and afraid. The spotlight, unfortunately, has not gone away and we are now going to have to listen to what our columnists have to say about the cricket match which ended with Pakistan supporters invading the pitch and kicking some poor official as he lay on the ground. I hope these ghastly thugs will be treated as if they were football hooligans, but I fear that instead we will see it becoming another race issue.
The right will talk in the coded language of the Politically Sound so memorably described by Matthew Parris in his 'Lexicon of Conservative Cant' (Spectator, 19 February 2000): 'R is for Race. "Enoch was right, of course." The sound take care never quite to specify what Enoch was right about. It is seldom PS to express overtly racist views.'
The left will spin some rubbish about the Asian male's need to express his antiestablishmentarianism by putting his boot into a prone man's spleen — or perhaps they'll say it's cultural and open another whole can of worms. According to the right, Britain can't be successfully multicultural — merely multiethnic. If that's true, the Countryside Alliance had better wind up right now. If it isn't, we can hope that black and brown Britons find public voices to match our own.
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