7/18/2009

UKIP playing the race card in Norwich North ?



You always start to wonder if a campaign is coming off the rails when the race card is played by a party.

With UKIP also illegally flyposting on handrails on public footpaths in Taverham, one has to wonder if the fact the UKIP are now putting out a leaflet that is more akin to something the BNP would put out, whether their support is really not as good as they hoped.

NOTE - Leaflet had to be partially reconstructed on my computer due to the shine on the image. The wording has not been changed.

24 comments:

Michael Walker said...

Hello

Great minds and all that...please see the Norfolk Hope not Hate website for a very similar reaction to the latest UKIP poster.

All the best

Michael Walker

Quiet_Man said...

Ah, so your in favour of unlimited immigration and the strain it puts on the countries resources?

Nich Starling said...

Why does everything have to be extremes ? Why always black and white ? Why no shades of grey ? Why no moderation ? Why no compromise ?

crewegwyn said...

Their iffy position on immigration issues is one of the main reasons I could never support UKIP (despite my anti-EU views) BUT a robust view on immgration does not automatically = racism.

An Activist President said...

Nich, you would know better than I, but does Norwich North have a big economic migrant community?

UKIP did something similar down here in rural West Sussex in the 2005 General Election. I remember a UKIP leaflet that seemed to blame every local problem on economic migrants, despite rural West Sussex having a tiny economic migrant community. It baffled me, and clearly backfired as the locals had no idea what they were on about.

Sarah said...

Screaming racist to shut down objections to immigration. How original.

Nich Starling said...

There are some poles in Norwich but no ghettos, they mix well, there kids do well at schOol And there is no real problems.

Nich Starling said...

I didn't scream "racist". I merely asked the question. Screaming back at someone who asks questions though is the sign of someone who does not like free speech very much. You see, we cn all play a silly game of semantics.

An Activist President said...

Cheers Nich. It just seems sensible to ask, just in case there could have been some (xenophobic) logic to the purpose of the leaflet.

I think it's fair to say, that when a political party produces a leaflet attacking migrant/marginalised communities in an area which has no great numbers of them, nor any real local scepticism towards them, that it is a cheap attempt at playing a 'race' card, so I think Nich is right to raise this as a tag line.

P.S. I post here normally as Luke, it's only come up as An Activist President because I've logged into a different account.

Brian E. said...

Why does anything that is said about restricting immigration automatically equal "racism"? Can't anyone understand that in the views of a large part of our population, this country is grossly overcrowded and that all permanent immigration should be severely restricted, irrespective of race.
It used to be said that "Patriotism is the last resort of a scoundrel". This should be superseded by "Accusations of Racism are the last resort of a discredited politician."

Unknown said...

Brian E,

We are not overpopulated, the simple case is that our society is not ran to any logic. We are the only species on this planet that wastes food, we throw food away, we have a mountain of food whilst many others starve. How is that logical?

Overpopulation is a myth, the real problem is the distribution of resources and the concentration of population.

I would seriously recommend for individuals to read anything by Murray Bookchin on the subject of population. Bookchin was a social ecologist whose watershed came in the 1980s when the biocentric wing of the radical environmental movement was welcoming AIDs and famine as a means to curtailing population, this attracted a fair few xenophobes into the environmental movement who hijacked the population question. Even Ed Abbey, author of 'The Monkey Wrench Gang' and hero of Earth First! was advising the US Government to give every Mexican who stepped into the southern United States a rifle and a round of ammunition and to send them back.

I think playing the race card is the last resort of desperate wannabes who would much rather step into a tabloid-savvy way of thinking and to exploit the horror stories of 'migrants take jobs, home and women', even though this myth has now been disproven, but not widely publicised because the Daily Mail sorts are on a fundamentalist Christian crusade to bash all Muslims, and any other foreigner, unless of course they're willing to die for our dear country, because throwing yourself in front of bullets has to be a qualification for British citizenship.

Yeah, I can go on for hours about this subject. I blame the dissertation (and yes, I am making a point).

Anonymous said...

"You always start to wonder if a campaign is coming off the rails when the race card is played by a party."

I don't wonder if the campaign is coming off the rails because of the UKIP poster. Maybe playing the race card, as you put it, works. Why does it work? The English people have been consistently ignored, attacked, and abused for the last several decades. Nobody asked them if they wanted mass
immigration. Nobody asked them if they wanted to join "Europe". Nobody asked them if they wanted their country dismantled. Nobody asked them if they wanted a parliament and executive. If
treat people badly for long enough they will believe that there is no point in being decent. Maybe that is why, "extremist parties" (useful idiot speak; not mine)
have now become overwhelmingly popular.
Anyway, how is it playing the race card? I must've missed something. I didn't think all immigrants to England were from one race. Anyway, according to the p.c. brigade there are no races.
Conversely, I think it is the pc mob who are attempting to smear the UKIP by labelling the party as so-called racists.

An Activist President said...

Anonymous, there is no such thing as race. We have ethnicity, but no such thing as race exists, its a biological myth. People have certainly been subjected to ethnic abuse, which we incorrectly call racism. The truth is, and as someone who has an anthropologist for a partner I can assure you, we are more likely to have genetic similarities with people from other "races" than from our own. However, racism still exists. All new research from anthropolgists, geneticists and biologists suggest a race myth exists, and needs to be confronted, this is part of a broader battle against racist presumptions in all cultures and from all ethnicities.

When political parties start to use any language that targets 'aliens' and makes cultural differences the subject of a campaign, then we are right to call into question 'racial' thinking behind that campaign.

For the record, the British people were asked continually if they wanted all the things you set out. We did have a few elections over the years, and Labour won pretty convincingly in most of them. So do think something through before you start playing the 'ignorant masses' card as well.

Cheers, Anonymous.

Sarah said...

I didn't scream "racist". I merely asked the question. Screaming back at someone who asks questions though is the sign of someone who does not like free speech very much. You see, we cn all play a silly game of semantics.

Yeah right. Going on about the 'race card'. Comparing UKIP to the BNP. You were 'just asking a question'.It's a rhetorical question that's basically there to back up your accusations rather than lead into any kind of debate. It's the same to object to immigration especially in such large quantities as we've seen over the last few years and you're a racist chant that people like you have used to silence debate and ignore people's opinions for years. Trying to pretend it's something else and those who aren't prepared to be told to 'shut up or I'll call you names' are the ones who don't like free speech is laughable but fairly typical of so called 'liberals'.


Perhaps you could tell us what your party intends to do about immigration or what you personally would like them to do? Aside from ignore the views of the majority of the population on a subject they consider important and encourage ever more of it while trying to silence any opposing view obviously.

Anonymous said...

Good debate - we would welcome posters on the Norfolk Hope not Hate blog where we are also having a debate on UKIP's possible racism.

http://hnhnorfolk.blogspot.com/

We have had to just introduce poster control on the site because the vice chair of Young UKIP has started to post intemperate abuse as his well thought out contribution to the debate.

Cheers

Michael Walker
Norfolk Hope not Hate

Sarah said...

For the record, the British people were asked continually if they wanted all the things you set out. We did have a few elections over the years, and Labour won pretty convincingly in most of them. So do think something through before you start playing the 'ignorant masses' card as well.

Spare us the Labour was elected, therefore people were asked what they wanted spiel. Unless you're prepared to never claim Labour or anyone else in power at the time aren't doing what the British people want when its something you object to.

Anonymous said...

A Lib Dem writes:

What UKIP should have explained in their leaflet is the following:

"Being in the EU means that anybody from the other 26 EU countries can come and live and work here.

It's called unlimited immigration.

Vote UKIP to STOP unlimited immigration by leaving the EU."

Or words to that effect.

I don't believe UKIP are racists they simply believe that we should leave the EU and immigration will be controlled as it is from non-EU countries.

Such an explanation would not have cost a lot in terms of space on the leaflet and I do understand why people jump up and down.

An Activist President said...

Sarah,

I'm sorry, but that is the record of the 2005 General Election. Since then, voters have now had their say over the direction of the country, and Labour, and it's current policies, are not popular with the electorate. It would appear, according to the opinion polls, that the Tories are the popular party, not UKIP, not BNP, not Greens, and not Lib Dems.

The study by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) found that 87.8% of social tenants were UK born, only 1.8% of social tenants were immigrants who had moved to the UK in the past five years. The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), who carried out the report, found no evidence of queue-jumping or abuse of the system by immigrants, but found that the myth was widespread, and promoted by right-wing elements in the press. Channel Four News, whom commissioned a survey on the BNP voting demographic found that BNP voters were most likely to read the Daily Mail or the Sun, and the two national newspapers, who carried more stories than any other on economic migrants (mostly in negative language) was the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph- two newspapers that are staunchly anti-Labour and anti-liberal opinion.

So before you go on about 'liberal conspiracies', I reckon you should start waking up to the xenophobic conspiracy which is very much real and founded. If you want a good read, read Al Franken's 'Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right', a very witty, a very well researched book, assessing the right-wing bias in the American press. I think it has similar relevance to here.

Sarah said...

I'm sorry, but that is the record of the 2005 General Election. Since then, voters have now had their say over the direction of the country, and Labour, and it's current policies, are not popular with the electorate. It would appear, according to the opinion polls, that the Tories are the popular party, not UKIP, not BNP, not Greens, and not Lib Dem

If there's a point here I'm missing it. Labour won the last general election, now people don't like their policies, which according to you is irrelevant because they won the election so they must have done and???????

For the rest of the post. To summarise. Some left wingers say 'the right' is evil and people who disagree with the left wing view of things and how the left thinks stuff should be done are brain washed idiots. Totally unbiased obviously.

Having seen the pro-immigration brigade on blogs scream blue murder over the House of Lord's report suggesting immigration didn't offer much in the way of economic benefit. "We need a proper debate. More research etc" ie it doesn't agree with our policy of more more more so we're going to shout it down and ignore it, I'm unimpressed by being lectured on bias by members of it. After years of seeing racist being used to silence debate on immigration and massive increases in immigration taking place. The suggestion that the debate has been hijacked by the woooo Daily Mail is one I consider laughable. It's the pro-immigration movement that have controlled the debate for years, shown by the fact their policies have been put into practice with the immigration increases. Unless increases in immigration are Daily Mail policy these days? You've had your chance in spades to claim how great immigration is. You've had the opportunity to show it in practice with the increases in immigration. And yet still people don't buy it. Maybe there are other reasons than the Daily Mail for that? Like who knows maybe it isn't all that fab.

Unknown said...

Sarah,

The current debate from the anti-immigration lobby has deep racist overtones to it, no one has seriously argued anything on the basis of brain-drain, global economic inequalities, and intrusive foreign policy as being causes of immigration. I am interested in seeing a sound, liberal, non-racial debate take place on immigration, but the anti-immigration lobby is unwilling to engage in a debate on the subject that drops racial concepts and culture from it. Instead, the anti-immigration lobby uses immigration as an attack on multi-culturalism and clumps both together, which to me suggests a broader racially motivated attack on marginalised peoples. Until the anti-immigration lobby develops an argument that does not stoop to attacks on multi-culturalism and xenophobic sentiment, then myself, and every other liberal minded individual, will continue to argue against the myths and falsehoods that lobby spouts.

If the anti-immigration lobby would only look to the Dutch Socialist Party and the argument they have developed on immigration (coming from the left), then it may help their case overwhelmingly. For the record, I have no issue with immigration, I am neither a civic nor ethnic nationalist, I neither believe in a stand alone British culture that is being eroded, and neither do I believe the British people are always right by the ammount of papers they buy and the political parties they always vote for. Tyranny of the masses does exist, and sometimes it can be a pretty brutal force.

My apologies to Nich and everyone else who may believe we have gone off topic somewhat.

None of the above said...

No one on this thread has mentioned anyone's nationality or beliefs in the context of immigration - except you Luke.

I'm happy with the immigration policy we currently have in the U.K. and wouldn't be remotely perturbed were it to be relaxed. I'd love to see all the hate-mongering idiots kicked out though - whether they're jew-hating muslims or gay-hating whites etc.

An Activist President said...

None of the above,

In fact they have alluded to nationality. Sarah has made reference that the 'British people' did not ask for immigration, the EU or anything by that matter. I was simply responding to this general clumping together of 'British people', of which I am offiically one.

My apologies if I was not clear in my analysis.

Luke

Stan J said...

I don't think it was racist at all. Just poorly worded perhaps, as someone else mentioned. Maybe they assume everyone understands their stance on the EU and that's where they went wrong (in some people's eyes).

Airborne said...

UKIP only exist to take votes from the BNP.

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