Is Nigel Hastilow an idiot?

In a thoughtful post, Iain Dale is concerned about one possible consequence of forcing Nigel Hastilow to apologise or resign over his comments about Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech:

It may well inhibit them from saying anything at all which can be considered as deviating even slightly from the party line. If that is indeed the effect, it may well give CCHQ fewer sleepless nights, but it will mean we are developing a factory line of androgynous politicians.

I am concerned about politicians becoming identikit figures, but not so concerned that I share Iain's worry on this occasion.

Quoting Enoch Powell's speech is wrong and stupid. The Rivers of Blood speech was inflammatory and offensive, even at the time.

This is the key point - even at the time.

It can hardly have surprised Mr Hastilow that a Tory leader wanted an apology for saying Powell was right, given that after he made the speech Powell himself was forced to resign (and then left the party and urged people to vote Labour).

The question is not whether Hastilow is a racist but whether he is an idiot.

Comments

[Kate]

I disagree with his opinions, but he could have expressed them without the need to mention a clearly racist histroical figure. It is blantanly unnecessary to bring Enoch Powell into a modern discussion about immigration in the same way it is unnecessary to bring Hitler into a modern discussion about war. So why did he choose to do it? Well, this is the dangerously stupid bit. he seems to imply that he sympathises with more than he outwardly states he does, by mentioning such a famously unpleasnat man whilst expressing his thoughts.

[mick mcbride]

I dont think nigel Hastilow is an idiot at all he is only telling the out of touch parties the real truth about how the electorate are thinking. by the way i am not a tory voter

[Madasafish Stoke on trent]

Nice line in rhetorical questions:-)

[Cinnamon]

How about you refute him with facts and good reasoning, if you have any indeed, instead of labelling him an idiot, just because he tells the truth as to what the majority of people think in the UK?

Look at the comments everywhere in the papers -- 99% of people are supporting him -- are they idiots too in your eyes?

Don't insult people, it's not the way to hold or win a discussion.

[Chris Cook]

I would refer your readers to an analogous situation which was described by an excellent journalist:

http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2007/03/patrick_mercer_.html

[SC]

As someone who will remember the sacrifices made against facism this Sunday, I cannot help but feel that the situation in the UK is exacerbated by the fact that we cannot discuss what we really feel and express our genuine concerns without being branded racist. It needs discussing in the open. Otherwise, this is fertile ground for the BNP

[stan francis]

How many more candidates, mp's and councillor's are going to be sacked for speaking what's on the mind of all people, black, white, asian....TILL SENSE IS EVENTUALLY REGAINED?

[Jez W]

The way current social trends and racial tensions seem to be gathering pace, i think we'll see who the real idiots have been all along... in two or three decades maybe?

I won't- i'll have left with my family by that time.

So long suckers!

[PATRICK PEPPER]

Hastlow IS an idiot and IS a racist.

But what about dear squeaky-clean Caroline Spelman, face of New Modern Conservatism? She went on Sky and actually said "it's not what he (Hastilow) said that was wrong, it's the way he said it." Let's just repeat that. "It's not what he said that was wrong". Well, if she doesn't think that what he said was wrong, she must think it was right, Powell-apologia and all. No ifs, no buts, no qualifications; that is what she said.

For what it's worth, I don't think Caroline Spelman is a racist, even though she has actually just said on a national news channel that it's not wrong to say Powell's speech was right (although I wouldn't absolve every smarmy false face in the Nu-Look Mod Cons of that sin). What it reveals is the tangle one inevitably gets into when one sets up a position as inherently hypocrital as Cameron's, trying to appeal to the Guardian on the one hand whilst giving a desperate nod and a wink to the grass roots at the same time. On this occasion the nod and the wink was saying "it's not what he said that was wrong".

In other words, Spelman might not be a racist, but, to bring it back round to the question you originally posed about Hastilow, she and her leader most certainly are idiots.

[mark]

As the expression goes "THE TRUTH SUX" no matter how it is sugar coated for the goody two shoes out there.So the advice is wake up and smell the sewer plant before the walls break

[Victor - a very happy expat.]

Mr. Hastilow was under the wildly mistaken impression that the British public has grown up a little over the last 40 years. Obviously not so....

[IRJMilne]

Part of the problem is that immigration is the main issue on which Tories can win Black Country votes, so far as I can tell. Mr Hastilow was candidate for Enoch Powell's constituency.

Why is it all right for Brown to borrow a BNP slogan ("British jobs for British workers"), but wrong for a Tory to borrow a BNP slogan ("Enoch was right")?

[Jc]

I don't think he is a racist. He's just commenting into a 'not-go issue (immigration)'. It seems to me (an immigrant)that English people have lost the right to free and honest speech.

[cath glasgow]

Enoch Powell was right. He was logical about immigration - whats wrong with that? We've still got poverty in the uk - we're not rich enough to invite any others in. Look how hard it is to get into the USA or Australia now - even highly qualified professionals have to get a yearly visa from London for the USA and thats not automatic.

[cath glasgow]

Enoch Powell was right - he wasn't some hitler figure, he was just being logical about immigration. We're not rich enough to welcome any more people - charity begins at home and we still have plenty of poverty and urban deprivation at home.
Look how difficult it is now even for experienced professionals to move to USA or even Australia. Why should we be so welcoming when we can't even look after our own??

[Andy]

As usual, most of the posters are missing the point of Daniel's original comment, which didn't really have anything to do with immigration or racism - it was just that he should have known that the language he was using, and the reference to Powell, would cause offence. Of course you may judge that causing offence is necessary to advance your cause, but in that case you can hardly get upset when people are offended.
Or put another way, there is actually a difference between saying

"uncontrolled immigration is a problem and lots of people are concerned about it"
and
"foreigners out" (substitute racist insult of your choice)

[mike]

so now, according you, most of us in this country are idiots
"Quoting Enoch Powell's speech is wrong and stupid. The Rivers of Blood speech was inflammatory and offensive, even at the time."
But true none the less.

[GO]

I always thought, prehaps misguided, that the MPs primary role was to represent the views of thier constuants first part second. Whilst I feel this was a rather daft referal to a antogonistic past it does beg the question that if this is the view of his constiuants, then he has a duty to represent those views, over and above the views of the party.
Freedom of speach has negative as well as positive outcomes. By sacking him I am concearned that this might well be a slippery path to a place where points of view are centerally controlled and only the "party line" is allowed. mm sounds abit like Burma, Pakistan and N Korea to me.
I feel that prehaps his actual point was totally lost in a stupid refrence to a imflamitory figure, but and its a big butt we need to have a reasoned debate about immigration without being accused of being a rasit. We need a level of immigration but we should use a system which benifits the country and allows in those who contribute. We also need to look very closely with regard to the education of the current resident population so that upskilling is seen as a higher priority to importing talent.

[Marcus Cotswell]

It would have been perfectly OK for Hastilow to repeat Powell's assertion that immigration has changed the country irrevocably - but he didn't need to cite Powell to do so.

It would even have been perfectly OK for Hastilow to say (as he does, if you take the time to read the article) that many people are saying that they think "Enoch Powell was right" - the implication being that he was right about everything he said (not just the self-evident fact immigration has changed the country irrevocably). That's simply reporting others' remarks.

The mistake is to allow the two things to become conflated so that by repeating Powell's assertion about the country changing, Hastilow implied that he also agreed about verything else, grinning piccaninnies, rivers of blood, whip hand and everything else.

And as a journalist himself he ought to have known what he was doing and how this would get reported.

So he is guilty of catastrophic misjudgement at the very least.

[Kris]

He was right though wasn't he? If you don't call the Lodnon bombings rivers of blood then I don't know what you do. Racism is a a nasty disease but you can't brand everything as racism. The UK population on the whole realises this and those that shout "racist" are either ignorant or need to grow up. Immigration is what this country needs but we should filter out the terrorists and the layabouts that just want to live off the social. Why do we have to tolerate the situation as it is now?

[Joe Bramley]

why the BNP are now the only Legal party in the UK!

"UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights of Indigenous Peoples
As adopted by the General Assembly on 13th September 2007.

The Declaration establishes a universal framework of minimum standards for the survival, dignity, well-being and rights of the world's indigenous peoples. The Declaration addresses both individual and collective rights; cultural rights and identity; rights to education, health, employment, language, and others. It outlaws discrimination against indigenous peoples and promotes their full and effective participation in all matters that concern them. It also ensures their right to remain distinct and to pursue their own priorities in economic, social and cultural development.

Includes :

Article 7.2 "Indigenous peoples have the collective right to live in freedom, peace and security as distinct peoples"

Article 8.1 "Indigenous peoples and individuals have the right not to be subjected to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture."

Article 8.2 "States shall provide effective mechanisms for prevention of, and redress for:
(a) Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities;
(b) Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources;
(d) Any form of forced assimilation or integration;

Further as the following shows the Liberal notion of the British population as successive waves of immigrants is simply a BIG LIE

"The genetic evidence shows that three quarters of our ancestors came to this corner of Europe as hunter-gatherers, between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago, after the melting of the ice caps but before the land broke away from the mainland and divided into islands."

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7817

[peter]

Hastilow is probably an honest politician. And he is right.

[Osei K.]

"Idiot" is not the word I would have used. What politicain speaks about immigration in the context of rivers of blood? Whose blood? The immigrants? The natives? Will the natives be doing the blood-letting? Pure xenophobia... undisguised racism - that is what it is!!!

Nigel Hastilow, like the 99% of people who agree with him, naively ignore that immigration is a purely economic phenomenom.

If we were to reclaim the labour force by going back to work skilled and with a stronger work ethic, there will be no need for immigrants. Who will replace the droves of British natives who intend (but get round) to leave this country?

We can deny it all we want, but we need immigrants.

[John W]

It is interesting that men of conviction are being called idiots for telling the truth. This should tell us as much about those who call them an idiot as it does about the men of conviction.
I would suggest that if all politians had the guts to tell the truth as they see it we would not be in the current mess. So we really have to ask who are the idiots here?

[Simon Stephenson]

Rod Liddle makes some good points about this in

http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/335031/nigel-hastilows-real-crime-was-to-dare-to-mention-enoch-powell-at-all.thtml#comments