Election 2019 euphoria

In stark contrast to the 2017 general election result the political right are cock-a-hoop over Boris Johnson’s stunning electoral victory. With a single stroke the extremist Labour and Liberal Democrats have been left leaderless and in turmoil, the remoaner wreckers of Brexit have been shafted, the SNP have been left isolated and the alarmism of the Greens has been rejected.

The immediate priority of the Conservative government will be to negotiate a trade deal with the EU, and to complete all the remaining withdrawal arrangements by the end of 2020 that will deliver the final removal of EU control over British affairs. There will also need to be measures taken to ensure that any economic turbulence caused by Brexit is kept to a minimum.

Despite the scale of the victory support for the Tories is still fairly shallow, particularly in the traditional Labour constituencies which they have just captured. By the time of the next election the factors which helped them this time will no longer be relevant. Brexit will not be an issue, Corbyn will no longer be Labour leader and the Brexit Party will probably have faded away. It also appears that some of the individual Labour manifesto policies were quite popular.

We can be sure that there is likely to be more subversion from the leftist rent-a-mob rabble that have been protesting in Whitehall, as well as increased resort to the courts by generously funded anti-Tory opponents seeking to thwart and overturn government decisions. So the Conservatives will need to bolster their public support by addressing the under funding of public services, improve the effectiveness of the NHS, deliver on their promise of significant increases in nurses and police numbers, and end the era of austerity.

They should also start to address some of the longer term problems which have become endemic in British society. The difficulties in achieving home ownership have alienated whole swathes of young people, so more house building will need to be delivered. Uncontrolled immigration, in particular the chain migration of Muslims through arranged marriages, is destroying the nation’s cohesion and cultural identity, as well as putting pressure on public services and housing. Conservative policies on this issue are currently totally inadequate for dealing with the scale of the problem.

Slavish support for identity politics, political correctness, and unachievable equality of outcome targets should be ended, by repealing all equalities legislation other than for physical disabilities. Additionally, all so called ‘hate crimes’ need to be repealed to ensure freedom of speech is preserved. The divisive and alienating policy of multiculturalism should be more vigorously repudiated. The Climate Change Act is another meddling piece of legislation than needs to be repealed, and the impossible and unnecessary climate CO2 emission targets abolished, together with the termination of the futile and expensive carbon trading racket.

The madness of transgender activism has to be faced down, and legal recognition of same sex relationships ended, to be replaced by measures to encourage the stability of those marriages in which parents are responsible for the upbringing of children under school leaving age. HS2 should be scrapped and the savings used to improve the current rail network, reopen some closed lines and invest in an improved north of England east-west rail link.

A more rigorous education for brighter pupils is needed which can only be delivered by the reintroduction of grammar schools. University admissions should be halved allowing those who would most benefit from higher education to be fully funded as they are in Scotland. Pupils not intellectually equipped for university life should receive well funded support both for vocational education and for improvements to their numeracy and literacy.

In short, if the Conservatives are to retain the confidence of the British public, they should start to promote genuine conservative policies and stop pandering to their politically correct opponents who can never be appeased.

A brief history of climate alarmism

It is a strange paradox that the longer the global temperature remains flat, the greater the alarm becomes about rising temperatures in the future. This year the hysteria has been ratcheted up by the mob activities of Extinction Rebellion, the doomsday hectoring from the Swedish teen savant Greta, the indoctrinated school truant protestors, the latest alarmist projections from the IPCC, and the recent UN climate groupthink summit in New York. So it is time to analyse how and why so many people have succumbed to this collective madness.

At the end of the 19th century Svante Arrhenius from Sweden was the first scientist to link increased CO2 in the atmosphere with rising global temperature. But it would take the scientific community another eighty years before expressing any concern about increasing CO2 emissions. During the 1970s some of the more vocal were concerned that we may be heading towards a new ice age as described in this http://bit.ly/27RaoNr earlier blog. They had reached this conclusion as global temperature had been falling for three decades.

However, from the mid 1970s global temperature began a rising trend. During the 1980s a network of scientists concluded that this temperature change was caused by increasing CO2 emissions caused by the use of fossil fuels. They predicted that if fossil fuel use was not curbed then the resulting increase in CO2 emissions would lead to damaging environmental consequences.

As a result of this concern the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 under the auspices of the United Nations. Crucially, those placed in charge of the IPCC were totally committed to the theory of ‘human induced climate change’. Thus from its inception this supposedly impartial body has been packed with activists promoting the man made global warming agenda, and anyone questioning this belief has been ruthlessly excluded from its deliberations.

During the coming decades the IPCC would produce increasingly alarmist reports and projections about the future. Its scientific credentials were boosted by its establishment under the authority of the United Nations. Any dissenting scientists opposed to its conclusion were effectively marginalised and their criticisms, however valid, were dismissed as being contrary to the global scientific ‘consensus’.

It is often argued that because of this repeatedly exaggerated ‘consensus’, supposedly existing amongst scientists, that the ‘debate is now over’, and that the ‘overwhelming evidence’ supporting the ‘science’ of man made climate change promoted by the IPCC should now be accepted without demur. What this outlook overlooks is that there has never been a proper debate about climate change.

All that has occurred is that the IPCC climate alarmist agenda has been institutionalised at government level by the Kyoto Agreement, and the various climate summits held since then, which have mandated governments to sign up to increasingly restrictive and economically damaging measures to ‘combat’ a threat, the validity of which has never been debated in the global forums promoting the alarmism. Any critics of this approach are denounced as ‘deniers’, and no attempt is made to address their arguments or concerns. The reality is that there has been no change to our climate since the end of the ‘little ice age’ over 200 years ago. During the 20th century there were only minor fluctuations in global temperature. According to the respected UAH temperature research findings, for the past twenty years global temperatures have been flat except for a couple of short spikes due to the El Nino weather phenomenon, which is unconnected to the burning of fossil fuels.

During the past century there has been a significant increase in the trace gas CO2 but this has not led to any noticeable change in global temperature. The ideology of the climate change activists is based on nothing more than a belief in a dubious discredited theory which grossly exaggerates the threat from CO2, together with alarmist computer predictions and projections. So it is reasonable to assume that, as there has been very little change in temperature during the past century, despite the CO2 increase, the remaining part of the current century will be no different.

In short, the past evidence shows that there has been no correlation between increasing CO2 emissions and global temperature, and there is no reason why this situation should not continue into the future. Moreover, CO2 is not a pollutant as many climate change activists ludicrously claim, but is essential for the continued existence of all plant life.

As described above, majority scientific opinion performed a complete U-turn, in a relatively brief period between the late 1980s and the early 1990s, on the impact of CO2 emissions. But neither the science nor the evidence changed, only the politics. The climate alarmist cause was then hijacked by the politically correct class eager to proclaim their superior moral virtue, in contrast to ‘deniers’ supposedly eager to promote the vested interests of the oil companies and a rampant capitalist class intent on destroying the planet. The leadership of all the main political parties have uncritically bought into this outlook and treated the IPCC scientific opinion as being near infallible, aided and abetted by the BBC propaganda machine.

Yet in practice the views of scientists on this matter have turned out to be a highly adaptable, and susceptible to political pressure. This political agenda promotes the alarmist consequences of increased CO2 emissions, in defiance of the actual scientific evidence which has shown no significant global temperature change over the past century and more.

The theory underpinning their claims is that X amount of increased CO2 in the atmosphere will ‘inevitably’ lead to Y amount of increase in global temperature, variously estimated as between two to five degrees higher, by the end of this century. This is pure speculation, falsely but repeatedly presented as scientific fact. The climate alarmists then go on to claim that this increase in global temperature will have catastrophic consequences, hence their calls for the various public authorities to declare a climate emergency. However, no evidence has been provided for these unsubstantiated claims since they are all based on a theory which, on real evidence that is readily available, is seriously flawed.

The credible evidence for this comes with an analysis of the past behaviour of the climate. The alarmists state correctly that there has been a 0.8 degree increase in the global temperature since pre–industrial times, a period of over 200 years since the end of the ‘little ice age’. What they overlook is that the significant increase in CO2 emissions which has occurred during this period has, importantly, not been translated into anything like the temperature increases they are predicting for a much shorter period in the future.

Thus the evidence of the past suggests that by the end of the century the worst case outcome would be a global temperature increase of no higher than half a degree, but more likely to be less, with quite possibly no increase at all. This outcome is well within normal temperature fluctuations from the past, and even the higher estimate would be lower than the drop in global temperature that took place between 2016 and 2017, after the contraction of the last El Nino weather phenomenon.

Today’s protesting schoolchildren will not thank their elder groupthink climate alarmists for their deception when they reach more mature years and can better think for themselves on this matter. Nor will they likely appreciate living in a society in which they are subject to endless top down bureaucratic decrees that will place curbs on citizens’ rights such as travelling by air, owning cars and consuming meat and dairy products, as advocated by the Extinction Rebellion anti-capitalist agitators. Moreover, they are unlikely to be too pleased with having to fund expensive crackpot schemes to bury harmless CO2 underground which are being promoted, or to pay the additional trillion pounds estimated by the former Chancellor that will be needed to meet the government’s latest emission targets.

Finally, it should not really be necessary to state the obvious, since we can all observe with our own eyes that the climate in Britain today is no different to what it has been for the past two centuries. Moreover, there has been no change in the underlying global temperature this century so far, so for the reasons explained above, the declaration of a climate emergency by parliament and a number of local authorities is patently nonsensical, as it is in direct conflict with observable reality.

How the transgender delusion began

The transgender cause it not a recent phenomenon but has its roots in the mid 1970s, following the publicity surrounding some high profile ‘sex-change’ revelations involving prominent individuals. The medical correspondent of the Spectator, John Linklaker, in 1975 wrote trenchantly about the folly of uncritically accepting the validity and justification of the delusional claims underpinning this emerging agenda.

Linklater asserted that ‘the transvestite male is usually satisfied by wearing female clothing, whilst maintaining a clear inner concept of his own male identity’. He diagnosed a ‘continuous spectrum of varying degrees of deviation’ encompassing transvestism, from dressing in women’s clothes for amusement, to those for whom cross dressing ‘is necessary in order to achieve sexual satisfaction’.

He regarded such behaviour, although deviant, as being relatively harmless since no permanent physical damage is caused. However, this was not the case for those at the extreme end of the spectrum where the transvestite undergoes ‘surgical metamorphosis by having his external genitalia removed, becoming a eunuch and permanently adopting a female role’.

Linklater outlined how the sex of each individual is fixed irrevocably at the moment of conception, at the fusion of the first cell. So all females have XX chromosomes and all males have XY chromosomes. As every cell of the new individual’s body is derived from the first cell, it follows that the differences between the two sexes operate at a fundamental level. He concluded that all surgery and hormone treatment can achieve for the transvestite male is to ‘alter the superficial appearance’ of an individual, resulting in a deformed outcome that is no longer recognisably male, and which is a travesty of the female.

Linklater claimed that ‘transvestism is the product of a psychological hang-up’ which is not directly related to an individual’s ‘physical condition’. He dismissed the views of those who promoted the acceptance and validity of sex change operations ‘as an end product which is known full well to be a hoax’, that has been performed on ‘anatomically normal males suffering from a sad emotional fixation’.

Some of today’s activists agitating for the normalisation and acceptance of transgender identity would do well to face up to the reality that Linklater exposes, namely that an individual’s birth sex identity cannot be altered, and that those who declare otherwise are fostering a delusion. This becomes dangerous if it involves the physical mutilation or hormone treatment of vulnerable individuals who are mentally confused about which sex they belong to, and is still more pernicious when it ensnares young people who are reaching puberty.

The whip hand

Over fifty years ago, in his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, Enoch Powell quoted a constituent who claimed that in the future ‘the black man will have the whip hand over the white man’. For this remark Powell was both ridiculed and reviled. So it is worth examining whether there was any truth in this prophesy, or whether it was merely a paranoid reaction to fears over black immigration.

A recent BBC TV programme The Unwanted:The Secret Windrush Files presented by historian David Olusoga focussed on the impact of what has been termed ‘the hostile environment’ by the Home Office towards members of the Windrush generation. This policy threatened to deport people, mostly from the Caribbean, who arrived in the UK as children before 1973 without documentation, with the result that when challenged in recent years by immigration officials, they were unable to prove their right to remain in this country.

Unfortunately, the programme did not confine itself to examining this particular issue, but linked it to a denunciation of the political outlook of the early post war period, as expressed in internal government documents of the time. These revealed the fears of politicians and officials about the problems that Britain might face from large scale black immigration. After reading these official documents Olusoga concluded that the Windrush generation had been subject to what he termed ‘decades of official hostility towards black immigrants coming to Britain’. Olusoga condemned the attitudes of successive governments to black immigrants who came to Britain to work as ranging from ‘uncomfortable ambivalence to downright racism’. He concluded that Caribbean citizens were seen as a ‘black threat’ rather than as British citizens. So what did the official documents which aroused Olusoga’s ire so much actually say?

One top civil servant warned that ‘any scheme for the importation of coloured colonials for permanent settlement should not be embarked upon without the full understanding that this means that a coloured element will be brought in for permanent absorption into our own population’. He added ‘that the trade unions would be firmly opposed to such proposals and such measures would have to be introduced in the teeth of the most violent opposition from some trade unionists’.

Eleven Labour MPs wrote to prime minister Clement Attlee warning that ‘the country may become a reception centre for immigrants regardless of whether assimilation is possible or not. The British people fortunately enjoy a profound unity without uniformity in their way of life, and are blessed by the absence of a colour racial problem. An influx of coloured people domiciled here is likely to impair the harmony, strength and social life and to cause discord and unhappiness amongst all concerned. We venture to suggest that the British government should, by legislation if necessary, control immigration in the political, social, economic and fiscal interests of our people.’

Churchill was reported to have said that immigration was the most important issue facing the country and complained that he couldn’t get his ministers to take any notice. Concerns were expressed to him that ‘government had a respectable image to maintain that would be undermined if it put into law, on racist grounds, measures for excluding black people coming into the country’. Since it was not possible to publicly acknowledge to being racist, Ministers sought measures to stem the inflow of black immigration, without impeding white immigration and without appearing to discriminate on the basis of race. The Government’s eventual solution was to introduce legislation which allowed skilled workers, and those who had been offered a job to enter, but severely limit the number of unskilled immigrants who would be allowed in. This would facilitate the entry of mostly white skilled immigrants, but exclude the overwhelming number of black unskilled applicants, thus permitting a policy that was not ostensibly racially discriminatory, but would in practice have that outcome.

Olusoga is so steeped in the anti racist agenda of our times that he is incapable of understanding the fears which would have concerned British politicians in the early post war period. This was most articulately expressed by the Labour MPs who observed that the ‘British people fortunately enjoy a profound unity without uniformity in their way of life, and are blessed by the absence of a colour racial problem’. This is really the crux of the matter. What would Britain gain by allowing the large scale immigration of people of visibly different race and culture? The clear answer is that it would gain nothing but instead risk losing something precious, namely our homogeneous society, through the influx of vast numbers of people most of whom would be unlikely to ever be properly integrated into our society, or be accepted as one of themselves by the majority of the existing white population.

Olusoga in his arrogance derides and condemns these legitimate concerns while asserting the spurious belief that non white colonial citizens should automatically have been given the right to reside in Britain regardless of the deep concerns of the existing population. Thus he has been given a platform by the BBC to lecture the white population for their ‘political panic, bad faith and racial prejudice’ for voicing concerns which, in the wise observation of the Labour MPs, would ‘impair the harmony, strength and social life and cause discord and unhappiness amongst all concerned.’ As a consequence of hectoring TV programmes such as this, which play the race card in a selective and one-sided way, the black man has now clearly been handed the whip hand over the white man, just as Enoch Powell and his constituent foretold.

Louis Theroux – a study in hypocrisy

This blog has previously written http://bit.ly/2dybGYs about the hoax ITV Exposure programme from October 2012 that triggered the national furore over Jimmy Savile which led to the Metropolitan Police Operation Yewtree ‘investigation’. This in turn fuelled an explosion of historical sex abuse allegations, most notably involving ageing celebrities. The BBC responded to the ensuing public outcry by commissioning an investigation headed by Dame Janet Smith into the activities of Savile at the BBC. An analysis of Dame Janet’s findings is here, http://bit.ly/2mMrQza and the cultural assumptions underpinning them are given here http://bit.ly/2oaJIJe. Once again this blog is indebted to the intrepid bloggers Moor Larkin, Rabbitaway and the late Anna Raccoon, whose detailed research has uncovered the deception and duplicity of those promoting the Savile hoax.

The Dame Janet report was for the most part deeply flawed, as it was based on the false belief that, in her words, Savile was a ‘prolific sex offender’, a conclusion she quickly came to, based on nothing more that the fabricated claims made in the ITV Exposure programme. Consequently, her report can only be regarded as largely worthless in determining Savile’s guilt since, due to her ingrained bias, she made only the most cursory investigation into the allegations, as she bent over backwards in her eagerness to accept as true the allegations she was presented with. Despite these shortcomings her report did reveal some important information about five of the principle accusers in the Exposure programme involving Jimmy Savile at the BBC.

She rightly rejected the claims made by the former TV presenter Wilfred De’ath who repeated to her the tale he told in the Exposure programme. However, she had obtained BBC documents which cast doubt on De’ath’s claims. After re-interviewing him she concluded that his account ‘contained so many inaccuracies’ that no reliance can be placed upon it. The investigative blogger Moor Larkin had reached the same conclusion some years earlier.

In Dame Janet’s report the witness C30, a former Duncroft pupil, revealed similar claims against Savile that were made by the one time Duncroft pupil Fiona in Exposure, so it appears likely that they are both the same individual. Dame Janet concluded that ‘there are a number of elements of her evidence (C30) which are open to question and I do not feel able to make a decision about her claim of abuse, beyond saying that it might have happened and it might not.’ However, evidence has come to light that Fiona arrived at Duncroft only after the Clunk-Click series ended, and thus her testimony on Exposure (and to Dame Janet if she is C30) must be false.

In the Exposure programme another Duncroft pupil Charlotte claimed that Savile assaulted her in his camper van in the grounds of Duncroft School, during the recording of a radio show, which could only have been Savile’s Travels. As there is no reference in the Smith report to this allegation it must be concluded that it was another attempt by the Exposure producers to defame the memory of Savile. Charlotte would have known that there would be no point in repeating to Dame Janet her Exposure allegations, since her inquiry would have access to BBC records that would reveal that no radio programme had ever been broadcast from Duncroft School, thus confirming that the claims Charlotte made in the Exposure programme were a complete fabrication.

This brings us to the main subject of this blogpost, the final two individuals who made accusations against Savile about his behaviour at the BBC. They are Val and Angie, who formed a crucial part of the Exposure programme’s agenda of demonising Savile, as they both claimed that Savile’s behaviour had been abusive and insensitive. In her report Dame Janet related their claims in some depth. They are described as two of a group of teenage girls who formed what she termed the ‘London Team’, who regularly attended Top Of The Pops recordings. The accounts of Val and Angie are substantially the same as that given in the Exposure programme, although much additional detail has been provided.

For some considerable time after the Exposure broadcast the investigative bloggers Anna Raccoon, Moor Larkin and Rabbitaway were of the opinion that Val and Angie were in all probability an invention of the presenter Mark Williams-Thomas (MWT), since there was no explanation as to how the producers had managed to discover them over forty years after the events. The faces of Val and Angie were never shown, only back views after they had been provided with wigs. To add to the disguise their comments were voiced over. It is also difficult to accept that, after such a length of time, both women would coincidentally be so fearful to reveal their identities that they had to resort to wigs and a voiceover.

However, the BBC Smith report provided an explanation as to how they were contacted. There is a strong prima facie case that the presenter Mark Williams-Thomas would have received their details from Louis Theroux, who recorded a programme about Savile in 2000 titled When Louis Met Jimmy. Two women had written to Theroux to correct the impression in his programme that Savile did not have regular girlfriends, and they confirmed that neither of them experienced any abuse from Savile, making it clear that their relationships with him had been consensual, and that they had stayed on friendly terms with him for some time afterwards. So the evidence of abusive liaisons Val and Angie gave in the Exposure programme was at complete variance with what was being claimed by the two women in the unsolicited letter to Theroux in which they wished to put the record straight.

The reason for the wigs and voiceover now becomes obvious, since their families would have known that they enjoyed an amicable relationship with Savile and that they were now telling the very opposite of the true state of affairs. Unfortunately, the Dame Janet report fails to connect the testimony of Val and Angie to the inquiry with the two women who wrote to Theroux. The question that needs to be answered is whether the two women who wrote to Louis Theroux were the same two who were masquerading as Val and Angie in the Exposure programme.

In the Dame Janet report the testimony of Val and Angie is given in paragraphs 5.10 to 5.29, and that of the two women who wrote to Theroux is in paragraphs 6.62-6.69. The similarities between the two accounts are that there were two women involved, that their relationship with Savile lasted several years during the same time period between the late 1960s and early 1970s, that the two were part of a wider group of girls, and the most specific of all, that one of the women (Angie) had begun a sexual relationship with Savile when she was aged 15.

Mark Williams-Thomas has clamed that the research he made into obtaining the information revealed in the Exposure programme was conducted ‘like a criminal police investigation’. This is a laughable exaggeration since, as far as the main accusers are concerned, there were only three sources namely, (1) Meirion Jones the producer of the aborted BBC Newsnight investigation into Savile, (2) Wilfred De’Ath who made allegations about Savile in The Oldie magazine, and (3) the person who provided him with information about Val and Angie.

It is obvious that Williams-Thomas would have known of the existence of the When Louis Met Jimmy programme. Moreover, in the light of this knowledge he would have behaved in a seriously negligent manner if he had failed to contact Theroux to ascertain whether he possessed any information about Savile to back up the Duncroft allegations supplied by Meirion Jones. Given the nature of his investigation it is highly unlikely that Theroux would not have been eager to be as co-operative as possible to such a request. In the circumstances there is no reason to suppose that Theroux would not have willingly agreed to provide Williams-Thomas with a copy of the letter from the two women revealed in the Smith report.

Over the past few months this blog has made three attempts to contact Louis Theroux via Twitter, asking whether the ITV Exposure team had made any contact with him, and if so what his response was. Theroux has made no reply to these questions. Fortunately the Rabbitaway blog has shed some further light on this matter by publishing two Twitter comments from Jonathan King. The first states ‘A one word answer from Louis Theroux about the connection to MWT- Deny’. The second tweet confirms this ‘He essentially denies he ever gave M Williams-Thomas anything, but especially not the letter from the two girls’.

The view of this blog is that Theroux appears to have chosen to be in denial about his involvement in this matter. To be fair to him he had been placed in an invidious situation. Within a very short time following the Exposure broadcast the mainstream media, children’s charities, politicians, police and public opinion had all begun to engage in a frenzied denunciation of the ‘paedophile’ Savile. He became a national bogeyman, an incarnation of evil, a figure of hate to all right thinking people, especially for those with an agenda of highlighting male predatory sexual behaviour, who believed that in the past society had turned a blind eye to sexual abuse. Moor Larkin has coined the word ‘Savilisation’ to describe the national hysteria over paedophilia and ‘inappropriate’ sexual behaviour which the Exposure programme triggered.

Given the extremely hostile national mood towards Savile, Theroux would have been placed in a quandary. Should he publicly acknowledge that Val and Angie were now telling a completely distorted picture of Savile’s behaviour, or should he remain silent? He chose the latter course, since he would quickly have become aware that the demonisation and scapegoating of Savile was a cause which had the full support of his employer the BBC. He would also have noted that the ‘believe the victim’ agenda enjoyed widespread mainstream political acceptance. As the blogpost previous to this one observed, the BBC is packed with group-think employees whose reflex response is to parrot the correct PC line on any subject. Theroux would not want to isolate himself from this consensus and put at risk his influential and well paid TV presenter job.

The PC establishment network which supports this agenda appears to be engaged in a determined conspiracy to cover up and conceal the truth about Savile because revealing the falsehoods would undermine their cherished mantra of ‘believe the victim’ for which the Savile hoax has become the cornerstone. If the true facts became more widely known in the public domain, the whole house of cards promoting ‘believe the victim’ would come crashing down, resulting in untold damage to the credibility of the carefully crafted establishment PC narrative on this subject. It would also reveal their utter credulity in swallowing so uncritically the deceits in the Exposure hoax.

Louis Theroux presented a follow up programme about Savile in 2016. Its aim was described in these terms ‘in the light of the unmasking of Jimmy Savile as a predatory sex offender, Louis Theroux sets out to understand how a man at the centre of the British entertainment and charitable fundraising for decades was able to get away with a long litany of crimes. In this reflective film, Louis talks to some of Savile’s victims and to people who worked closely with him, and re-examines moments from the original film as well as footage that has never aired before on television’.

The first ‘victim’ of Savile presented was the former Duncroft pupil Kat Ward who would have been the star witness in the proposed BBC Newsnight programme about Savile before it was shelved. The blogger Anna Raccoon, herself a former Duncroft pupil, has pointed out the impossibility of Ward’s claims and condemned Theroux for his failure to ask any rigorous or probing questions to justify her allegations. Moor Larkin has examined the claims of the other two ‘victims’ shown in the programme and has exposed the improbability of their claims.

The programme also interviewed several female colleagues who had worked closely with Savile over many years. None of them found anything untoward in his behaviour, confirming what others in a similar position had stated in the Dame Janet Smith report. In fact, neither the BBC, nor the NSPCC, NAPAC and Childline received any complaints about Savile during his lifetime. The only complaints against him reported when he was still alive were investigated by Surrey Police who found insufficient evidence to charge him. Most pertinently it should be noted that there appears to have been no complaints about Savile’s behaviour received by Louis Theroux following his When Louis Met JimmyTV programme.

Part of the 2016 programme about Savile focuses on Theroux’s contribution to the Dame Janet report. Theroux states ‘that amongst the many victims interviewed were the two women who had written me a letter in 2000 and who I had met for coffee. They had come forward amid the tsunami of revelations to say that their relations with Jimmy Savile had been abusive. That was the closest I had got to getting at the truth. At the time I met them they were still describing themselves as his friends, but I feel as though, had they been more able to speak out at that time, I could have done more to bring out the truth while he was alive. It was upsetting to realise that I had actually met two victims while Jimmy Savile was still alive. I wondered whether if I’d handled the encounter in a different way they might have felt able to say more, or whether they simply hadn’t been ready, intimidated by the perception of his power.’

Just about everything in this statement contradicts what is in the Theroux part of Dame Janet’s report (paragraphs 6.62-6.69). Let’s unpick his points one by one: ‘amongst the many victims interviewed were the two women who had written to me in 2000 and who I had met for coffee’. In fact Dame Janet made no claim to have interviewed the two women who wrote to Theroux, she only received a transcript of their letter, together with information that Theroux had met them both about a year later. Moreover, she never described them as victims. ‘They had come forward amid the tsunami of revelations to say that their relations with Jimmy Savile had been abusive’. This is not the case, the two women in this section of the report had merely written to Theroux back in 2000 to say the exact opposite. This is made clear in paragraph 6.66 of Dame Janet’s report which stated that ‘neither woman alluded to any abuse having taken place and that they made it clear that their relationships with Savile had been consensual’.

‘That was the closest I had got to getting at the truth. At the time I met them they were still describing themselves as his friends, but I feel as though, had they been more able to speak out at that time, I could have done more to bring out the truth while he was alive.’ The ‘truth’ that Theroux is talking about here is not what he was told by the two women who wrote to him, but instead what Val and Angie are claiming in the ‘London Team’ part of Dame Janet’s report (paragraphs 5.10-5.29).

‘It was upsetting to realise that I had actually met two victims while Jimmy Savile was still alive. I wondered whether if I’d handled the encounter in a different way they might have felt able to say more, or whether they simply hadn’t been ready, intimidated by the perception of his power.’ In this damning revelation Theroux is transferring the abuse claims of Val and Angie to the two women who wrote to him. He is doing this because he knows full well that Val and Angie are indeed the same two women who wrote to him. But as Val and Angie they are telling a completely different story to that contained in both their letter to Theroux and when they met him for coffee. It is worth mentioning that the repeated trope that people were ‘intimidated by the perception of his [Savile] power’ has been debunked innumerable times by Moor Larkin.

Given the above evidence it appears conclusive that Louis Theroux has behaved in the most hypocritical and deceitful manner imaginable. He had developed a friendly relationship with Savile, and met him on several occasions over the years after getting to know him during the making of the When Jimmy Met Louis programme. Yet when the balloon went up after the ITV Exposure programme he remained silent despite knowing that the testimony of Val and Angie was the opposite of what he had been told in their letter. Not content with this betrayal he then goes on to twist the knife into Savile’s reputation by presenting a new programme about him, promoting some patently false additional accusers, whilst deflecting attention from his own role in this deceit by piously asking whether ‘I could have done more to bring out the truth while he was alive.’

So why was Theroux so brazen, since he must have known that both the Dame Janet report and his 2016 broadcast about Savile would remain in the public domain, and could be checked against one another? Probably because, since nothing had appeared in the mainstream media to challenge the Exposure and Yewtree claims, he may well have thought that nobody was digging away to get at the truth. He may also have believed, with some justification, that any dissenters from the mainstream narrative would, in his own words, ‘be intimidated by the power’ of the PC establishment and their determination to prevent the truth from becoming more widely known. He was probably right about this since Theroux is living proof of the extent the BBC, ITV, the police, politicians, children’s charities, mainstream journalists and all their hangers-on are prepared to go to ensure that the truth about Savile remains concealed in order to reinforce their ‘believe the victim’ agenda, and to hide their collective credulity in so blindly accepting the Exposure deception in the first place.

BBC brainwashing Britain

This blog has previously commented on the undisguised political bias of the BBC that is vocal in its support of politically correct and leftist orthodoxies http://bit.ly/1t9YjmJ. A recent book, BBC Brainwashing Britain?, written by the blogger David Sedgewick, has examined in some detail the extent to which the BBC distorts the presentation of news to conform to its deeply entrenched ‘progressive’ political outlook. Given the mendacity with which the BBC can sometimes operate in pursuit of its political objectives, the question mark in the book’s title ought to be replaced by an exclamation mark.

The book contrasts the high ideals of the BBC to ‘be seen as by far the most trusted and impartial news provider in the UK’, with the reality according to Sedgewick in which the BBC practises the ‘very dark art of brainwashing – wilful, deceitful and incessant’. He makes repeated comparisons between the BBC distortion of the news to suit its own agenda with the methods employed by the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984.

Sedgewick believes that the BBC has succumbed completely to cultural Marxism, which can be summarised as the gradual process of destroying Western traditions, beliefs and culture whilst simultaneously suppressing diversity of opinion, in order to mould society into a collectivist utopia in which everyone publicly conforms to the dominant leftist political narrative. This is achieved by promoting subversive and irrational ideas under the guise of attaining social justice and greater equality. The process rarely involves reasoned argument, debate or discussion, but instead relies heavily on attacking and isolating opponents through abusive and pejorative name-calling.

The leftist ‘progressive’ group-think permeates all levels of the BBC, and employees quickly get to understand the difference between wrong-think and right-think. As one critic observed BBC staff are a ‘mass of conformists’ who adopt the BBC corporate model ‘by degrees varying from unreflecting acquiescence to the most full-blown commitment’. Anyone slow on the uptake will soon find themselves marginalised and ostracised. Another critic discovered that ‘what is most scary about the BBC is the almost complete absence of any kind of dissent.’ Sedgewick compares BBC employees to members of a cult where the ‘uncritical acceptance’ of its dogma is the ‘single most ubiquitous feature’ in which ‘even the slightest challenge to group-think will not be tolerated’.

So what constitutes BBC right-think? Some examples of the more deleterious notions currently in vogue include blind support for mass immigration from the third world regardless of the consequences; the belief that same sex attraction is always completely normal, intrinsically virtuous and thus worthy of celebration; that the feminist critique of the ‘patriarchal’ society, and the predatory nature of male heterosexuality, must always be upheld; that white society’s treatment of ethnic and religious minorities, in particular Muslims, is invariably motivated by unthinking base prejudice; that men who believe themselves to be women are merely making statements of fact which only the most bigoted would feel the need to question; and that the earth is on the brink of a climate emergency caused by fossil fuel emissions which only the most drastic action can avert. There are of course many more issues too numerous to mention which the BBC seeks to impose the self proclaimed rightness of its viewpoint on British society.

So how does the BBC carry out its brainwashing? It does so by repeatedly presenting as objective and impartial what in reality is an often distorted view of events. This is done by selectively presenting one side of an argument whilst ignoring or minimising any facts which might conflict with the propaganda message. The book gives a long list of topics which are subject to this process; with the aim of ensuring that right-think is always presented in a positive way, whereas wrong-think is invariably portrayed negatively. This process is repeated endlessly on a daily basis, with the ultimate result that the familiarity of the right-think message becomes subconsciously accepted as the only valid and legitimate opinion that any reasonable and fair minded person would ever want to hold.

A similar brainwashing technique is also carried out during interviews. When interviewing a wrong-thinker, he (it will disproportionately be a he) will be aggressively confronted with a comment from a speech or social media to which, after extensive trawling, the BBC takes exception. The interviewee will then be placed on the defensive, having to respond to a hostile line of questioning, deliberately intended to blacken his reputation. In contrast when the BBC interview what they deem to be a right-thinker, it will be carried out in full-on ‘amigo’ mode in which the interviewer will adopt a supportive tone, fielding sympathetic questions thus allowing the interviewee to be portrayed as either a caring enlightened individual, or alternatively someone who has been the victim of an injustice, preferably at the hands of a wrong-thinker.

Brainwashing Britain goes on to provide many more examples of the techniques the BBC uses to promote its agenda and demonise its opponents. Because of its institutionalised bias UKIP has proposed scrapping the licence fee and replacing it with a subscription service and advertising. However, this will not solve the problem. The same bias and group-think is also shown by commercial broadcasting rivals. Worst still, most of their output can only be described as degenerate, vacuous or vapid garbage, much of it laced with a heavy dose of political correctness.

At least the BBC does provide an extensive platform for political debate, despite its unremitting bias, for which the more observant can make due allowance. It also produces a much greater amount of serious and high-minded programming about history, the arts, science, current affairs and period drama, albeit subject to contamination by BBC ideology. Abolishing the licence fee risks destroying what has traditionally made the BBC unique. The only answer is for the government to appoint senior managers with the priority task of restoring the BBC’s reputation for genuine impartiality, in which all well reasoned expressions of political opinion receive equal treatment.

Extinction Rebellion intimidation

For the past week the traffic in many parts of central London has been brought to a standstill by the activities of the group known as Extinction Rebellion. The pretext for their protest is fears over climate change, but the reality is that this concern is merely a front for a hard-line anarchist-Marxist agenda intent on destroying capitalism, similar to that of the Occupy movement. The mostly young activists taking part are easy prey to being manipulated because of their endless indoctrination by the educational establishment into the climate change hoax, together with the uncritical endorsement provided by the BBC, political parties, celebrity pundits and vocal leftist scientists.

The climate change hoax has previously been debunked by this blog post here http://bit.ly/1ZoyPMn . To repeat the facts, there has been absolutely no change to the climate since the end of the ‘Little Ice Age’ over 200 years ago. During the 20th century there were only minor fluctuations in global temperature, and since then temperatures have been flat except for a couple of short spikes due to the El Nino weather phenomenon. During this period there has been a significant increase in the trace gas CO2 but this has not led to any discernable change in global temperature. All the hysteria is based on a dubious discredited theory and alarmist predictions and projections. CO2 is not a pollutant as climate change activists ludicrously claim, but is essential for the continued existence of all plant life.

People have a right to protest, but what they do not have a right to do is to interfere with other people going about their daily business. The police response to the traffic disruption has been wholly inadequate. Over 700 protesters have been arrested but to date less than thirty have been charged. When he was London Mayor Boris Johnson purchased water cannon, but their use was later blocked by then Home Secretary Theresa May. As a result the police have had their hands tied; with the water cannon option open they could have soon ended these protests.

Extension Rebellion are not only intent on destroying capitalism but they also want to bring an end to our democratic system. In its place they are proposing a 100 strong citizens assembly, chosen randomly from the population at large. This is the theory but in practice we can be sure that this assembly, once established, would soon be packed with hand picked supporters of Extension Rebellion to rubber stamp their subversive agenda.

The protests we are now witnessing in London are the direct consequence of our political establishment uncritical acceptance of the climate change hoax over many decades. This credulity is being exploited by those intent on destroying our way of life. Politicians must now come to their senses and voice a clear repudiation of the climate change agitation, and recognise the deceit that lies behind it. Otherwise there will be nothing to prevent these kind of protests continuing indefinitely, until the malign objectives behind them have been achieved.

David Steel & Cyril Smith

The former Liberal Democrat leader David Steel has recently been suspended by the Scottish party, who are carrying out an investigation into comments he made about the former MP Cyril Smith during questioning at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA). This is a very disturbing development that ratchets up still further the paedophile hysteria, which according to reports has already resulted in vast amounts of stretched police time being taken up with investigating uncorroborated allegations of historic sexual abuse, often from many decades ago.

David Steel was questioned at the IICSA about allegations made against Cyril Smith in the magazine Private Eye which had originated in a local Rochdale newspaper article dating from 1979. The individuals making allegations were all apprentices aged 15-18 staying at a Rochdale hostel for which Smith was the secretary, during a period when he was also a Labour councillor. In these articles there were no allegations of sexual activity made against Smith, but had there been any this would have suggested Smith could be a homosexual, not a paedophile, given the age of those making the accusations.

The hostel closed in 1965 fourteen years before the 1979 media articles. The allegations were investigated by the local police in 1969 but there was insufficient evidence to bring charges. These allegations consisted of two instances of Smith beating youths on bare buttocks (this was a commonplace punishment at the time) and one of him touching a youth's testicles during an ‘intimate’ medical inspection, as part of a procedure which all adolescent males then underwent as part of an annual medical examination.

David Steel when party leader asked Cyril Smith about the 1979 media articles. Smith acknowledged there had been a police investigation into the allegations and that he had been cleared of any wrongdoing. No other allegations were made against Smith during the 20 years he was an MP, or until he died about 20 years later. The committee members of the Rochdale hostel confirmed to the local newspaper that to their knowledge no 'improper activities' had taken place there.

In giving evidence Steel was justified in claiming that the punishment beatings were no different to that taking place at public schools at this time. This was perfectly legal then and Smith would be acting ‘in loco parentis’ in his role as Secretary of the hostel with a duty of care to the youths in his charge. One was caught stealing and both were given a choice of alternative punishments. With regard to the ‘intimate’ medical examination, the Rochdale newspaper article made clear that Smith was present at these with the consent of the medical examiner. Given the public hostility to homosexuals at this period, it is inconceivable that any youth in his mid teens would agree to this kind of examination by Smith outside a medical. In the police investigation Smith denied all the allegations and he was cleared of all criminal wrongdoing.

During the IICSA questioning David Steel was repeatedly and aggressively asked why he had not taken further measures to either discipline or suspend Smith after having read the Private Eye article. His response was that the beatings were common practice at the time, that they took place when Smith was not a member of the party, and that in any case the police had investigated all the allegations against Smith and he was cleared of any wrongdoing. In these circumstances David Steel was quite right to conclude that there was no justification in him taking any further action against Smith, since the matter had already been investigated and no crime was found to have been committed by Cyril Smith.

This blog has absolutely no time for the policies of the Liberal Democrats, but the Scottish party's suspension of their former leader appears to be both absurd and malevolent given the quite reasonable responses David Steel gave to the IICSA.

The Prescriptive Society

One of the more enduring myths today is that of the legacy of the permissive society which suddenly arrived in late 1960s Britain. It is widely believed that since the cultural upheaval of that time, we have all been living in a golden age of greater enlightenment in which individual liberty and freedom has flourished, freed from the stultifying conformist straitjacket of the preceding reactionary and repressive conservative society of the 1950s. This is an outlook that has been vigorously promoted since then by the Left to camouflage the true controlling nature of their ostensibly ‘progressive’ agenda. The first person to puncture this myth was the now almost forgotten writer Tibor Szamuely, in an article for the Spectator magazine from August 1970.

Szamuely argued that the ‘myth of the permissive society is no more than a confidence trick’, one in which people suddenly became aware that they were now allowed to ‘indulge in hitherto prohibited activities’. He noted that the reality was rather different, since what happened was ‘that certain activities are now prescribed for all, whilst others are prohibited’, and branded this trend as the ‘prescriptive society’, warning that ‘if we don’t watch out it may soon become a proscriptive one’.

He correctly identified that this new found permissiveness applied ‘almost exclusively to one area’ namely that of sex. His words have a rather quaint nostalgic ring to them these days when he declared ‘we are constantly exhorted to enjoy as much sex as possible’ which ‘we are told is good for us’. This was written just before vocal feminism would start to intrude into public consciousness. So in this climate, before the women’s libbers started to take control, there was no talk then amongst the permissive apostles of sexual freedom about the horrors of ‘sexual abuse’ or ‘inappropriate touching’, which in more recent times has caused so much anguish for ‘progressive’ thinkers.

Szamuely challenged the claim of ‘progressives’ that society cannot ‘legislate for individual moral standards’, by pointing out their double standard which had resulted in ‘a greater degree of overt and covert censorship than in the past 150 years’. He identified the principle field of this censorship to be that of race, declaring that ‘the people who impose it are, almost invariably, the proponents of untrammelled sexual permissiveness’. Moreover, he exposed their additional degree of hypocrisy by observing that ‘naturally racial distinctions are disallowed, even between consenting adults, only if they offend coloured people – insulting whites is respectable, even desirable’.

Szamuely then went on to catalogue the various forms of censorship employed by ‘progressives’. He denounced the Race Relations Acts as ‘naked political censorship’, and warned of ‘other kinds of censorship that are stealthier and more dangerous’ such as the attempt to ‘desperately stamp out any attempt at the scientific study of race and racial characteristics’. In this respect he claimed not to be a geneticist, but just wanted to see the pursuit of ‘scientific correctness’ rather than what he termed ‘ideological worth’. Other forms of ‘withholding unapproved views from the public’ resulted in a situation were ‘getting these into print these days is no easy matter’. However, when ‘blasphemous’ works did manage to get published ‘by someone bold enough to challenge the ultimate progressive taboo’, reviewers can still ‘prevent them from being read’. He cited as an example books which made the ‘impious suggestion that Africa is anything less than perfect, or colonialism anything other than satanic’, were usually ignored by reviewers and ‘thus consigned to oblivion’.

He identified that ‘the most frightening aspect of the clampdown on anti-consensus views is the absence of any conspiracy behind it’, regretting that there was no ‘sinister secret agitprop’ plot, but instead a ‘progressive’ establishment ‘that has conditioned itself to react instinctively to any possible challenge’.

Szamuely asked why should ‘sexual licence be encouraged’ whilst ‘anything that can be construes as racism is suppressed’. The answer ‘progressives’ gave was that racism, unlike pornography, provoked hatred, violence and civil discord. In response Szamuely then asked why this did not also apply to class hatred, citing the several million victims of Soviet and Chinese communism. He denounced the double standard whereby the works of Marx, Lenin, Mao & Guevara are widely admired by ‘progressive’ thinkers, without them being in anyway troubled that these Marxists writers can provoke hatred and violence.

He concluded the article by questioning ‘the whole issue of permissiveness’, noting that ‘progressives have abolished the censorship of pornography’ claiming that ‘the printed word has no evil effect on the reader’, but take a completely opposite view towards publications dealing with the issue of race, because they judge that in this case ‘the printed word can have the most profound evil influence on the reader’. He proclaimed that ‘the absurdity and dishonesty of this position is self evident’ concluding that ‘progressives’ get way with this double standard because it is the essence ‘which forms the basis of our present prescriptive society’.

Regrettably, Tibor Szamuely had only a couple more years to live so he was spared the kind of society he so presciently predicted. ‘Progressives’ would soon abandon their support for pornography, after militant feminists condemned it as inciting hatred and violence towards women. In time sexual permissiveness (for heterosexuals) would also come under attack for giving licence to the predatory male. The sin of racism would be joined by sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia and transphobia, and there would be a whole raft of legislation, supported by all the major political parties, to enable the state to meddle in citizens’ personal affairs in order to appease those driving a bogus egalitarianism or selective victimhood, confined, of course, to the usual protected categories of individuals.

So we have now ended up with the proscriptive society (now known as the politically correct society) that Szamuely warned against, due to the failure to challenge the zealous ‘progressive’ agenda to control speech, beliefs, opinion and behaviour, at a time when it first manifested itself under the brief libertarian cover of the permissive society.

The 1970s climate dog that did not bark

Environmental issues in our society only became a mainstream concern in the early 1970s. In the decades after the war the main objective of Western governments was to deliver economic growth and expand world trade with relatively little regard to the environmental consequences. However, many people came to realise that this outlook was having a seriously detrimental impact on our planet, which if not addressed might well lead to irreversible damage. As a result a global environmental movement arose which resulted in the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held at Stockholm in June 1972, attended by delegates from virtually every country in the world, apart from the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries.

The Stockholm Conference produced an action plan with over 100 recommendations aimed at addressing the main environmental issues that were identified at that time. The main concerns were pollution of the land, sea and air, the impact of human development on wildlife, biodiversity and ecosystems, the need to conserve finite natural resources and the population explosion. With the exception of the last of these, governments, at least in the West, have introduced a series of measures to address these problems, although many consider more still needs to be done. On the question of overpopulation, this was a matter of much concern at the time. However, even among environmental activists, relatively little interest in this issue now appears to be shown, probably due to the then predictions of mass starvation having failed to materialise. However, they were right about the numbers.

One subject which received scant attention at the Stockholm conference was the impact of human activity on the climate and weather. The only recommendation that had any relevance to this subject came under the heading ‘the environmental effects of energy use and production’, which required the monitoring of emissions, including carbon dioxide. However, the main concern appears to have been to assess the effect of genuinely polluting gases such as sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide on air quality, with the possible impact of emissions on weather and climate a much lower priority.

As a result of the burgeoning environmental movement, the monthly magazine The Ecologist commenced publication at the beginning of the 1970s. It makes interesting reading today since, during its first decade, very little mention was made about the possible impact of burning fossil fuels on the global climate. However, in the very first issue from February 1970 there was an acknowledgment that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had increased noticeably during the 20th century. It had been known since the end of the 19th century that carbon dioxide possessed greenhouse gas properties. So there was some puzzlement as to why global temperatures had been on a cooling trend since the early 1940s. The article acknowledged that there were a number of factors which could lead to changes in global temperature, of which an increase in carbon dioxide was one. It recommended that more research should be carried out but, in a note of realism absent today, concluded that little could be done to counter the increase in carbon dioxide emissions, because of the huge dependency of the world economy on fossil fuels, and the lack of any viable alternatives.

The next reference to climate came in an article from the January 1974 issue. It noted that between the years 1920 to 1940 there had been an increase in global temperature. This resulted in a 10% decrease in Arctic ice, receding glaciers, new land opening up for cultivation, an increase by two to three weeks of the growing season, and in these ‘increasingly genial conditions’, the spread of wild flora, birds and fish to new regions. The article then went on to observe that since 1940 a distinct cooling trend had emerged and that from 1960 ‘the cooling was particularly sharp’. This had the effect of reversing the earlier changes with glaciers now expanding, together with a retreat of wild life and the area of cultivation. This cooling trend was attributed to ‘the many new types of pollution put into the atmosphere by industrial processes, bomb tests, high flying aircraft, rockets and so on’. The article also introduced another factor that may have had an impact namely ‘a general decline in strength of the solar beam since 1945’. The article concluded that ‘there is probably no need for undue alarm about this because similar changes appear to have occurred many times before’ and that ‘what we are witnessing may be a recurring fluctuation of the solar output’. The alarm feared in this case was about the continuing impact of the cooling trend, as this would have meant that the ‘genial conditions’ resulting from a warming trend, might not occur again soon.

The final article on climate came in the July 1976 issue, which again was concerned about global cooling. It warned that ‘there is now a growing consensus amongst climatologists that the world pattern of climate has been changing’. Particular concern was voiced about the recent cooling trend since ‘when the high latitudes cool, the monsoons tend to fail’. This was considered to be especially important because ‘the high latitudes have been cooling in the last three decades, and the hungry half of the world is concentrated in the monsoon lands’. Moreover ‘cool periods of earth history are periods of greater than normal climatic instability’. The article backed up these claims by citing the adverse impact of earlier periods since 1900 BC when the climate had cooled. In contrast, during the warming trend of the early part of the 20th century when ‘the average temperature in the higher altitudes started to rise, the Indian monsoons became more reliable’.

The article continued ‘the amelioration of the climate ended in about 1945’ with the result that ‘the growing season in England has diminished by two weeks’ and ‘the frequency of droughts in northwest India has started to increase, the monsoon has gradually retreated towards the equator, culminating in seven years of famine’. There was also an adverse impact on other areas such as in ‘the Canadian Arctic which has had severe ice conditions compared with the past few decades’ adding that ‘the snow and ice cover of the Northern hemisphere increased by 13% and has remained at this increased level’. As a consequence of this cooling ‘we know that the world food grain reserves will prove inadequate if more years like the last few recur soon’. The article concluded that ‘this climatic change poses a threat to the people of the world that indicates major crop failures’.

It can be safely concluded that the issue of global warming leading to climate change was not an issued that much troubled the environmental movement in the 1970s. The 1979 manifesto of the Green Party (then called the Ecology Party) made no mention of the subject, nor did the manifestos of the major political parties where the main environmental concerns were pollution control, the need for greater recycling, the conservation of natural habitats and the need to conserve finite energy stocks. With regard to the climate the main concern, as the above articles show, was the adverse impact that might result from a cooling climate, and further evidence of this is given in this earlier post http://bit.ly/27RaoNr on fears about a possible new ice age.

It can be seen that 1970s environmental concerns targeted specific, real and identifiable problems such as pollution, the need to conserve natural resources and the protection of wild life, all matters where it is possible to measure the results of remedial action, and monitor whether progress is being made. As recorded above, climatologists from that time were also aware that a global cooling trend could have adverse consequences. But the consensus was that although there may be slight fluctuations in global temperature, sometimes lasting several decades, there was no need to fear any major change in the global climate. There was also an acknowledgement that as there were so many climate variables, there would be little point in making long term predictions about the climate of the future.

As we all now know, since the late 1980s, this pragmatic approach has been abandoned. The scientific world has become dogmatically obsessed with the belief that an increase in carbon dioxide from the use of fossil fuels will lead to catastrophic climate change. This is all based on alarmist projections and exaggerated claims about the impact of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In practice during the past thirty years there have been only slight fluctuations in global temperature as was outlined in the 1974 Ecologist article. So attributing events, such as droughts, floods, heat-waves, polar vortexes, coral bleaching, the acidification of the oceans, etc, as all being due to climate change, is duplicitous nonsense since there has been no material change to the global climate to give rise to any of them. Instead, what there has been is a political hijacking of this issue by leftist agitators that has now become a religion substitute for the credulous which, alas, includes politicians of all parties, and Britain’s state broadcaster the BBC. When the true nature of the deception eventually becomes apparent they will all start to look increasingly ridiculous, and the credibility and reputation of scientific objectivity will take a long time to recover.

The second Race Relations Act

Britain’s second Race Relations Act was introduced by Harold Wilson’s Labour government in 1968. It sought to make it unlawful to refuse housing, employment or public services based on a person’s colour, race or ethnic origins, granting powers to officials to investigate, and if necessary prosecute, individuals deemed to be in breach of the legislation. It also created the now superseded Community Relations Commission, tasked with the objective of creating ‘harmonious community relations’. The effect of this act would be to extend the reach of the authorities into the private conduct of citizens, and made criminal, matters that had previously been confined to civil disputes.

This new race relations bill was introduced into the Commons by the Home Secretary James Callaghan. He considered the issue of race relations to be of great social significance ‘for our country and our children’, a subject which is ‘heavily charged with emotion’ and which could ‘fan the flames of suspicion and resentment or fear’. He sought to lead the country away from ‘a prospect of strife and enmity’ towards a society in which ‘we shall all live in freedom and peace’ regardless of race or colour. He thought it would be a denial of our own history if the freedoms we have won over time were not extended to ‘other groups who have come to live here as full citizens’. He added ‘the legislation which I am proposing does not seek to put any group in a privileged position’.

In fact, until the Labour government came to power, all British citizens enjoyed equal rights within the law. Instead this new act gave powers to the state to intervene on behalf of one party to a civil dispute. In practice this meant that the complaint of a ‘coloured’ person would carry greater weight than the judgement, opinion or decision of a white person. In other words black complainants would be placed in a ‘privileged position’. As a result white people would now have to prove, to the satisfaction of the authorities, that any decision they made relating to employment or housing, which affected a black person, was not motivated by racial prejudice or discrimination. As Enoch Powell observed in his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech this was a 'law which cannot, and is not intended to, operate to protect the white population, or redress their grievances, but rather is to be enacted to give the stranger, the disgruntled and the agent-provocateur the power to pillory them for their private actions.’

The Home Secretary continued ‘there is evidence that coloured people suffer from grave disadvantages on matters like housing and jobs’. However, he provided no evidence that this was caused by the behaviour of the wider British public. In any case, it should be remembered that black people came to Britain out of their own choice to seek work, and that white society broadly expected them to be prepared to do the most menial jobs. This was the justification made by the government and large employers to warrant the influx of ‘coloured’ workers on such a vast scale, carried out with disregard to the concerns of many white people. In practice this was a false argument as all that happened was to suppress the wages of white workers dependent on unskilled work, as the pool of labour available for this kind of employment expanded through immigration. The Home Secretary ended his speech by asking whether the Conservative opposition ‘believe that it is right to legislate to make discrimination unlawful?’

The shadow Home Secretary Quintin Hogg responded on behalf of the Conservative opposition. He considered that it would be inappropriate for political parties to ‘exploit or to gain political advantage from the deep feelings which are held about this topic’. He acknowledged that ‘this country is not self-evidently under-populated at the moment and thus strict control of immigration must continue to be imposed’. However, in practice both Labour and Conservative governments would for decades preside over a hugely lax ‘control’ of immigration. Mr Hogg went on to advise that ‘we should forget the colour of their skins and treat them as equals’ warning that ‘all the evils and sicknesses of a divided society are such as will bring a curse upon us if we do not take this, the only road to safety’. At least there is an acknowledgement here that uncontrolled immigration of people of widely different cultures can lead to social problems.

Mr Hogg explained the difference between criminal and civil law. The first ‘carries a penalty and is enforced in practice by a public body’, whilst the second ‘gives a remedy but not a penalty and is enforced in practice by a privately wronged individual’. He warned against adopting any procedure that would ‘give rise to an individual right to damages in such a way as to exasperate relations. In the field of race relations, this may be of importance’. From his experience at the Bar he knew ‘what a terrible weapon of oppression damages can be and how it can embitter both the complainant and the defendant for the rest of their lives’. He finished by proposing an amendment, ‘condemning racial discrimination and the need for steps designed to improve the situation’ but concluding that the Bill would ‘not in its practical application contribute to the achievement of racial harmony’.

A Labour MP idealistically dismissed the view, expressed in some newspaper articles, that ‘there is a natural incompatibility between peoples of different races and colours. We on these benches utterly reject that notion’. He added that ‘there is no problem of a clash of race or colour so long as there is equality of status and what used to be called parity of esteem’. The MP considered it to be ‘of the utmost importance that we pass the Bill now, because we are reaching a stage when children who were born here are now leaving school and coming on to the labour market. They are not discriminated against at school. There is no sense of race or colour among school children. But these young people may encounter discrimination when they apply for jobs’. The issue which he failed to address was how it could be ascertained whether the reason a black applicant for a job was unsuccessful was because he faced ‘discrimination’ or because, in the judgement of an employer, for a variety of possible reasons, he was unsuitable to fill the post. In other words, any official investigating a complaint would need to engage in a form of mind reading in order to reach a decision.

A Conservative MP in opposing the proposal asked whether the supposed need ‘to act against racial discrimination is so strong a cause as to justify methods which, in my view, would not be contemplated for a moment outside this sphere’. He was concerned that ‘inquisitorial powers to investigate complaints or allegations of racial discrimination, not publicly but privately, will then determine whether legal processes can be brought against someone whom it is decreed has offended’. He added that such new powers ‘takes us some way beyond where the law stands now’, by suggesting that ‘the British people cannot be trusted to act properly and that now they must be coerced. We are passing a vote of no confidence on our own people, and I cannot accept that’. Unfortunately the views of ‘our own people’ counted for little when confronted with the liberal obsession over the concerns of ethnic minorities. The MP concluded ‘I do not believe that one can achieve justice for a minority by inflicting injustice on the majority, no matter how good and how noble the cause’.

Another Conservative MP asked the question ‘whether legislation can play a part in the amelioration of race relations’ and whether it is right for it to be so used. He believed that the proposals ‘would make very deep and damaging encroachments into the proper sphere of personal decision’, adding that ‘the trouble is that everyone thinks that his own particular concern is of unique importance that justifies this kind of interference with personal freedom’. This observation gets to the nub of the main issue raised by this kind of legislation namely, whether it is right that the state, in pursuit of its own collectivist egalitarian agenda, should be empowered to interfere with, and overrule the liberty of, citizens pursuing their own personal and private decisions with one another. The MP concluded that the aim of the Bill was not to grant full political and legal rights to citizens, since they already had these. Instead its purpose was ‘concerned solely and exclusively with the intention to achieve social equality’.

A Liberal MP disagreed with the utopian view that ‘there is nothing wrong with humanity, that people are nice, and will always behave in the right way provided we give them the right environment’. He considered that this was not necessarily true since we all have weaknesses and ‘certain innate tendencies which are less attractive than others. We are easily frightened, our security is easily threatened, and thus the whole problem of racial discrimination arises’. He concluded that ‘in this crucial field of human activity Parliament should give a lead and set a good example’. However, in response, it must be questioned whether it is really necessary to set up a state bureaucracy to police the behaviour of citizens ‘innate tendencies’ on this matter.

A Conservative MP who had recently been elected maintained that ‘while Governments can lead, they cannot in the end compel against the general will, unless they finally revert to totalitarian methods’. He observed that constituents who had raised the issue of immigration ‘recognise the objectives behind the Bill as humanitarian’, but believe that ‘it is misconceived and may well have an effect opposite to what is intended’. He concluded that ‘we cannot legislate to make people better humans in their hearts, but we can educate and lead them, and show them by good example. This is necessarily a slower process, but it is more effective in the end’. He did not know it but this Bill was only the start of a continuing government agenda on race aiming to compel people to become ‘better humans’, not by education and example, but by compulsion. However, another Tory MP took a different view declaring ‘we cannot alter human prejudice and make people tolerant by law. Nevertheless legislation can make a contribution. It can influence the way in which people behave although not the way in which they think and feel. It can certainly stop obvious acts of prejudice and it can remove the excuses’.

Reginald Maudling, Conservative deputy leader, wound up the debate for the opposition, claiming that his party was ‘just as opposed in principle to racial discrimination as the Government, and furthermore was not opposed to legislation on this subject. However, we are against this particular legislation since we believe that it will not, in practice, contribute to the achievement of racial harmony’. He added that ‘there are many frailties in the human mind and spirit which are morally wrong but cannot be made into crimes. Certain things which happen as a result of these infirmities can and should be dealt with by law, but there is a definite limit in practice where one can go in this direction’. He concluded that ‘the Bill will create more resentment than it will deal with and, in the long run, therefore, will not aid the cause we all have at heart but may, in fact, impede it’ since ‘it definitely encroaches on individual freedom and individual liberty, and will be unworkable in practice.’

David Ennals, the Home Office under secretary closed the debate. He believed that ‘there is evidence of a degree of racial discrimination and that the law can, within limitations, play a part’. He added that ‘we have to deal with the social problems involved in immigration’, fearing that ‘we may have a flashpoint in this country if we do not extend the field of legislation’. He disingenuously opined that the legislation ‘will apply to the whole population, and should one of white pigmentation believe himself to have been the victim of discrimination his right to lodge a complaint will be no less than that of a coloured citizen’. In practice, as he would have known, this eventuality scarcely ever happened. The minister concluded that ‘we cannot change men's hearts by law but we can outlaw the actions that can flow from prejudice. I believe that the very passing of law can influence the course of events and the course of thoughts in people's minds’.

Like the first Race Relations Act three years earlier, this Bill was supported by Labour and Liberal MPs and opposed by Conservative members. It became just one part of an incremental legislative creep in which the politically correct class increasingly sought to meddle and interfere in the private behaviour and relationships of ordinary citizens.

Miss World 1970

During the 1960s and early 1970s the TV programme which regularly came close to attracting the largest audience each year was the Miss World beauty contest. In 1970 more than 22 million tuned in, almost topping the TV audience ratings for that year. Television producers today can only dream about viewing figures as high as this, which are now only approached for World Cup football matches in which England are playing.

Although attracting huge audiences the contest was never taken very seriously by viewers, the main interest was finding out how Miss United Kingdom would fare. The most repeated put down was ‘you see more attractive women walking down the street than those appearing in the contest’. Most contestants were in the 18-23 age range with slim, yet curvaceous, figures, with ideally a pretty face. The audience was split fairly evenly between men and women, and was considered acceptable family viewing, with virtually nobody voicing any criticism of the idea of such contests. The highlight was the one piece swimsuit parade after which the winners would be announced in reverse order from the remaining contestants who reached the final round, with the crowning of the new Miss World coming as the finale.

The golden age for beauty contest was between the early 1950s through to the late 1970s, after which interest gradually began to wane amongst the British public. Until the 1970 event there were very few objections raised to the contest. If there had been any they would have come largely from the Christian moralistic right. The following comments are representative of this viewpoint ‘the contestants are revealing their flesh in an immodest provocative way’, ‘these women are wearing the suits to show off their nearly naked bodies to a watching audience. Displaying one’s body is the sole purpose of the swimwear’ and ‘I do struggle to reconcile such competitions that blatantly promote immodesty’.

During the late 1960s such views would have been dismissed as prudish and puritanical by liberal progressives, pursuing an agenda of sexual liberation. Even Mary Whitehouse, arch critic of TV permissiveness, never raised any objections, although earlier generations of religious moralists would have condemned the contests as sinful for encouraging lust. This outlook, from a time when organised religion held more dominance in society, explains why beauty contests only became popular in the more liberated post war years. Given the increased level of permissiveness that had taken hold by the end of the 1960s, nobody was expecting an attack on them to come from the left of the political spectrum. So the protests from feminists at the Miss World 1970 contest came as a big surprise to many.

During the late 1960s the women’s liberation movement began to gain ground in the United States, and in early 1970 it had arrived in Britain with protests demanding equal pay and employment opportunities, contraception and abortion on demand, and 24 hour child care. These concerns were not taken too seriously by the male dominated media which tended to dismiss and ridicule the protestors as ‘bra burning women’s libbers’ holding what were then considered extreme feminist views. Due to their often unappealing appearance they were seen by wider society as an aberration seeking to challenge traditional notions of femininity and beauty. However, they would have one major advantage in their favour, as their cause was quickly taken up by the highly vocal and increasingly influential leftist agitprop movement.

So this was the background to the 1970 Miss World final held at the Royal Albert Hall in London. In the middle of the comedy routine performed by Bob Hope he came under attack from a barrage of exploding bags of flour, rotten vegetables and stink bombs, which had been smuggled into the event by about 50 feminist activists. The police were called and the protesters were removed from the building. The viewing public watched in amazement as this normally heavily staged managed event quickly descended into chaos.

Bob Hope’s comment on the protest that ‘anybody who interrupts something as beautiful as this must be on some kind of dope’ probably summed up the feelings of the vast majority of viewers. The message from the protesters was rather different exclaiming that ‘we’re not beautiful, we’re not ugly, we’re angry’ and ‘ban this disgraceful cattle market’. In response the Daily Mail denounced the protesters as ‘yelling harpies’ and asked ‘what was degrading about accepting the beauty of the human body’. The Times argued that the protesters exalted ‘an essentially functionless feminism’ targeting an event ‘traditionally regarded as quite harmless by most people’. This was a view shared by the majority of Fleet Street and most of the British public, both women and men. This hostile response to the demonstrators was also in tune with the progressive spirit of the time, which sought greater permissiveness and sexual freedom, not puritanical repression.

It should be stressed that the Miss World protest had nothing to do with the wider feminist agenda seeking greater equality in the work place and the demand for an end to other forms of discrimination. Instead it was an attempt to suppress the legitimate entertainment of millions of ordinary people, and to enforce the women’s libbers antagonism to ‘the portrayal of women, and their objectification, and sexualisation, in society’. As justification the feminists declared ‘beauty contests normalise the judging of women as objects.’

Thus a new concept entered the political discourse the ‘objectification’ of women, defined as treating them as a mere object of sexual desire, or as a commodity without regard to their personality or dignity. However, this argument is a travesty of the true position; male sexual attraction is never based on the bogus concept of ‘objectification’, but rather an appreciation of feminine beauty, a perfectly natural biological response which should never be stigmatised in this pejorative manner.

So the denunciation of female ‘objectification’ was not motivated by demands for greater equality for women, but was instead an attack on male heterosexuality. It was a reversion, in a modern guise, to the Victorian social purity movement which had sought to tame and control the base sexual urges of the rampant male, but this time under the banner of politics rather than religion. Although the new feminist movement allied itself with the then radical left there is no doubt that the puritanical motivation was based on much the same phobias as the earlier Victorian moralistic Christian campaigners.

The BBC continued to broadcast the Miss World contest throughout the 1970s and for a time it still retained large audiences. But the attacks by feminists continued, supported by the activist left. Instead of ignoring this unrepresentative special pleading the organisers resorted to appeasement, substituting evening gowns for swimsuits and introducing interviews to focus more on the contestants’ personality and interests. But to no avail, these changes alienated the viewing public that was primarily only interested in the beauty parade, and the ratings began to fall. By the end of the 1980s Miss World was no longer shown on mainstream British TV. So fifty feminist fanatics had managed to create a climate in which gradually the entertainment of 22 million viewers of a harmless and wholesome event could be destroyed without any regard to their interests or wishes. Needless to say the BBC, which at the time unequivocally condemned the disruption of a flagship programme, now celebrates this protest as a milestone in women’s ‘liberation’.