Who gets hurt?

For the first time ever, an article here at this is my england has moved somebody to write a whole piece of his own in response.

The article in question was a recent exploration of the sorry little tale of Emma West, a Croydon woman who recently gained instant notoriety following an angry outburst on a busy tram, directed variously at immigrants and non-white Londoners. With the incident captured on video and uploaded to YouTube, she was rapidly identified and arrested for a racially aggravated public order offence. When the attention of this is my england was last turned to the case, bail had been denied and it seemed that Ms. West was going to spent the Christmas holidays in jail. Happily for her, bail has now been granted.

Home for Christmas... but why?

It remains the position of this blog that it is quite right for a civilised society to legislate against the aggressive harassment of members of the public and quite right to mete out a level of punishment commensurate with deterring such behaviour. It will never been argued here, however, that such offences (unless accompanied by any act of real violence, suggesting that the offender poses a serious danger to the public) should be picked out for especially harsh treatment. Given that it seems most non-violent first-time offenders would not expect to be denied bail, it will not be asserted here that Ms. West deserved to be separated unnecessarily from her family simply on the basis of the content of her remarks. That seems excessive for the offence of which she is accused. Magistrates, however, justified the fact that she was set to be held in custody over the holiday period by citing the apparent danger posed to Ms. West by idiots sending her death threats via Twitter and Facebook.

So why has she been allowed to go home now? Anyone maintaining an optimistic view of the fairness, efficiency and clarity of our criminal justice system would presumably make the assumption that the alleged threat to Ms. West's safety was, in good faith, initially deemed serious but has now been confidently judged to have abated to a negligible level. Another optimist's interpretation might be that the danger still exists for Emma West but that arrangements have been made to guard against her coming to harm. 

Anyone much less confident about the smooth and just workings of our courts, however, might arrive at one of a number of quite different possible conclusions. One of these might be to suppose that the magistrates initially overreacted to the idle chatter of online trolls and have now come to their senses after a period of reflection. In this interpretation, the magistrates concerned look a little foolish at worst - this version of events possibly implies a degree of incompetence but nothing of a sinister nature would be entailed.

But interpretations implying something worse than incompetence have been offered. 

The person who wrote a whole article in response to the musings of this is my england on this case, for example, would seem to favour none of the above suggested explanations for the volte-face regarding Ms. West's suitability for bail. Closing out that article, CanSpeccy (Canadian Spectator) poses a rhetorical question when remarking on Emma West's release from jail: "The judiciary beginning to sense a swell of public anger?" This question captures the idea of magistrates yielding to public pressure when deciding to send Emma West home until her committal hearing on 3rd January. It is the view of this blog that it would be quite wrong for that to happen.

Who is speaking up for Emma West? Nobody...

Who, then, has been arguing that Ms. West should not have been held in custody? Readers of the this is my england piece will be aware that among those articulating such views have been some of the spokespeople of the far right – from the teenage self-described 'racialist' vlogger  Sean Allan to the editorial teams of the BNP Ideas and British Resistance websites. On the latter, Paul Golding of the 'patriotic political movement' Britain First has since written to applaud the decision to grant bail to Ms. West. On 2nd December, Golding's movement organised a poorly-attended demonstration outside the prison where she was being held ,and another was planned for 17th December. 

Golding appears to concede that it "may well be coincidental that" Emma West was released "on the verge of another Britain First demonstration" but nevertheless describes her return home as a "victory" for "all those who joined in the campaign to have [her] released from prison". 

It is the fervent hope of this my england that Ms. West's release is no such thing. Would we really welcome the idea that our courts should make their decisions about criminal cases in response to small-scale pressure groups and their campaigns? 

One interesting feature about this particular campaign is that it is built around a person from whom nothing has been heard by the public since the notorious YouTube clip went viral. 'Patriots' and 'nationalists' have variously commended Emma West's 'bravery', speculated about how she might have been provoked and presumed to know what she was thinking when ranting on that tram journey. 

These then, are the characters purporting to speak up for Ms. West. They are doing so, as far as anyone can tell, without her knowledge, much less her consent. Some of the thoughts and motives they attribute to her may be an accurate reflection of her mindset. But alternative guesses about what's on Ms. West's mind could be made. Perhaps she is not very committed to any of the things she said on the Croydon tram. In light of what has happened since, perhaps she regrets every word and would truthfully and willingly retract her remarks if given the chance. Or perhaps she will always remain somewhat attached to the views she articulated when shouting on the tram but now prioritises a swift and minimally damaging end to the legal proceedings in which she is now involved. In that scenario, she could be agreeing with advice from a lawyer urging her to appear contrite. In that scenario, her lawyer could be advising her that her case will be harmed rather than helped by campaigns mounted supposedly on her behalf by the political parties and fringe groups of the far right. These are guesses, of course – much as the assorted activists of the BNP, Britain First et. al.  can only offer guesses about what is going on in Emma West's head.

No one then, is really speaking up for Emma West. All we have is a collection of opportunists, seeing a chance to promote their causes in the plight of an unfortunate woman with a history of mental illness and a court case on her hands. 

Among those purporting to know what Emma West believes or understands is that man CanSpeccy. On some points, it seems at first that this is my england and the Canadian blogger and are not far apart. "Sure," he writes, "legal immigrants are not to blame if they accept an invitation to immigrate." He also concedes that immigration "may be largely driven by corporate interests that demand a cheap and mobile work force" and that "the economic prospects of lower class Britons like Ms. West are hurt by the mass immigration of energetic people willing to take whatever work is available, thereby making jobs for barely competent Brits scarce, and keeping wages low."

The two blogs part company, however, when CanSpeccy expresses the belief that "Ms. West, however muddled her expression, understands that the real issue is more fundamental than economics" and that "mass immigration is quite simply destroying the British race."

In pretending to be able to read the mind of a woman he has never met, CanSpeccy joins the ranks of those using this apparently vulnerable person to make a point that he can only guess she would support if asked. All that can really be said of CanSpeccy's appropriation of Ms. West as useful tool when making an argument is that in his case there is a smaller chance of doing harm to her prospects in court than might be the case with the assorted UK far right groups hijacking her plight for their own ends.  It is also striking that the Canadian writer, while purporting to speak up for working class people, betrays what might be his true feelings for them by using the altogether more judgemental term lower class. 

What exactly is being 'destroyed'?

Of course, the most significant difference of opinion between this blog and CanSpeccy's is not around a preference or otherwise for the patronising use of a stranger's unknown thoughts to make a point. That's just a difference of style and standards. No, the bigger difference is around this notion of the "British race" being "destroyed". 

In both the comments section of this blog and in his own article, CanSpeccy notes that "precisely what the term 'British race' means would need lengthy exposition." Perhaps we should be guided towards this lengthy exposition. Those of us who are supposedly under threat might like to know on what basis we have been identified as part of a group that is both discrete and endangered. 

By way of dealing with this "briefly", CanSpeccy argues that "the British have existed as a relatively isolated population since the glaciers retreated after the last ice age, ten thousand years ago." Relatively isolated, that is, apart from the arrivals of the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, the Norse and the Normans. CanSpeccy, though, believes the "genetic evidence" that "indicates that the great majority of the British population that existed prior to the post 1950 mass immigration, i.e., the indigenous people of Britain, was descended from [the] first Celtic settlers." While it is true that some studies do support this view, others suggest that a far higher percentage of the modern English (perhaps even the majority of them) have Anglo-Saxon ancestors. Perhaps CanSpeccy is unaware of studies that do not support his position. Or perhaps he chooses to ignore them. A third possibility, of course, is that as well as writing his blog, CanSpeccy is a world-renowned scholar of genetics and, as such, is especially well-placed to discriminate between more and less robust studies of the English population’s DNA. Perhaps he will write in to outline his credentials. 

For this is my england, it is of little interest if more people on this island are descended from Celts alone than from a wider range of European ancestors. It's difficult to see how knowing either way would make much difference to anyone's daily life in the modern world. 

CanSpeccy, meanwhile, speaks in terms of the "the British... being subjected to non-violent replacement through mass immigration" and uses the term "genocide" to cover this phenomenon. 

Actually, the figures he cites are pretty convincing. It is indeed clear that if the current patterns of reproduction  continue (i.e. foreign-born mothers and non-white Britons having a higher fertility rate than white UK-born mothers) then over time the ethnic makeup of the country will change significantly. 

But so what? What would be so bad about a population with a higher proportion of brown or black skins? Whether or not the DNA of the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans is present in a majority or just a large minority of Brits with deep roots on this island, it is indisputably the case that the arrival of both groups brought about major changes in governance and language. Both sets of arrivals doubtless seemed alien and unwelcome to some at the time. But our English language and our collective culture are both formed from the blend of these influences. Very significant change to how we live and who we are is not without precedent.

So why does further significant change have to a bad thing? Could it not be to the advantage of a country wanting to grow its economy? Let's revisit a passage from this is my england's last Emma West article:

"Ambition, a propensity to work hard and the drive to improve one's material circumstances are values to which we are all meant to aspire in a capitalist economy. In the majority of cases, immigrants are simply people who embody these values and who, by accident of birth, have started their lives in countries where conditions conspire against the full realisation of the ambitions that any pro-capitalist thinker would encourage in us all."

So is our culture likely to be worsened or improved by adding the influence of people with the gumption to get off their arses and seek a better life through hard work, thrift and initiative? Perhaps the truth lies somewhere between the two. Perhaps Britain's culture will simply become different in some ways. Neither worse nor better. Just different. It's hard to see how CanSpeccy and his fellow travellers can be so sure, particularly when being so vague about the supposed ill-effects that they predict.