Sharia/Andrew Marr/Yvette Cooper/The Gods of the Copybook Headings

The stories that caught my eye today are nicely representative of the dog days of this Thatcho-Socialist government. The Mail’s front page tells us that Britain has 85 sharia courts. This is the sort of story (along with stories about teen crime, drug abuse, immigration and cultural Marxism in the civil service) that the orthodox Left, be they Obs readers or Spartists, always depose by saying that the Mail has “made them up” or “exaggerated” them.
The story’s source is a report into British sharia courts by the think tank Civitas. The Muslim Council of Britain, a dubious organisation at the best of times, declares the report to be “scaremongering”. This is likely to prove a sort of integrity affidavit in reverse. I haven’t read the booklet yet but I’m willing to bet the information inside is far from fabricated or distorted. Yes, the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal is recognised under the same act as Jewish Beth Din courts, but Dr David Green, director of Civitas, says:

‘The reality is that for many Muslims, sharia courts are in practice part of an institutionalized atmosphere of intimidation, backed by the ultimate sanction of a death threat.’

It is clear to me this situation has come about and gained power due to the endemic cultural and moral relativism within the liberal elite*.
I am aware I make this point again and again, but since our rulers have no intention of easing up their agenda, I am afraid those of us who disagree must not cease pointing it out. Our rulers in government and across the major institutions have a great belief that their obstinate casuistry can prevail via a never-ending campaign of attritional pressure on the public; simply wearing everyone down and repeating and streamlining an official version of language, language designed to alter thought, and therefore reality.
Though it is admirably and cheerfully honest about the smugness and hypocrisy of the middle-class Left, Andrew Marr’s Observer column from Sunday, 28th February, 1999, is a great example of the totalitarian attitudes that have driven the “social democrats” of the last 20 years:

What then can be done? (Apart, of course, from widespread and vigorous miscegenation, which is the best answer, but perhaps tricky to arrange as public policy.) First, we need to raise still more taxes …And the final answer, frankly, is the vigorous use of state power to coerce and repress. It may be my Presbyterian background, but I firmly believe that repression can be a great, civilising instrument for good. Stamp hard on certain 'natural' beliefs for long enough and you can almost kill them off. The police are first in line to be burdened further, but a new Race Relations Act will impose the will of the state on millions of other lives too.

Hmmm. Here we are, ten years later, with the BNP in Brussels and Marr’s beloved Labour violently hated by large parts of its purported constituency. Imagine if Marr’s proposal – final solution, so to speak – of effectively breeding the white working class of Britain out of existence was applied to other ethnic groups? There would be some little outrage, wouldn’t there?
But, even though it is obvious that relativism, pluralism and multiculturalism of the Labour project have been divisive and destructive, the agenda doesn’t change. They keep on with it. Witness today’s story about the Department for Work and Pensions busily engaged in sending to thousands of fake job applications to businesses to find out if they’re racist. This was a wheeze from Yvette Cooper’s (Mrs Edward Balls) Ethnic Minority and Employment Task Force within the Department of Work and Pensions. This story, more almost than the expenses racket, made my jaw drop. Possibly because I have extensive dealings with that ministry and have been shocked at its incompetence. Like so many departments under Labour, they cease to perform the basic function they are charged with and instead begin to carry out new and exotic functions borne from the abstractions of Oxbridge-educated Islingtonistas. Government by smart asses with gold-plated pensions and soft, pudgy hands.
It appears Gordon Brown has finally realised that the indigenous working class, white, black or brown, got the worse deal under Labour. So today he launches his ‘houses for British people’, a textbook piece of Labour moonshine, created by robbing Peter to pay Paul, i.e. nicking money out of the Transport budget and hoping The Sun will big the scheme up for them.
The proposal, like 99 per cent of government schemes designed to buy off public opprobrium, will quietly disappear into the deep freeze of civil service wrangling and bureaucracy in due course.
The other story I noticed, which shows up the sheer incompetence of the Brown/Blair double act, is the Army chiefs memo to the Iraq inquiry, saying that once the war had begun, funds for the Army were not released by Brown’s Treasury, which meant necessary tools to prosecute Mr Blair’s war were not available. The adverse affects of this have been seen in our newspapers many times. Blair has also been criticised in the memo by army chiefs. I wonder how they speak of him in the regimental messes? Which brings me, in a way, to Kipling’s great poem The Gods of the Copybook Headings, which speaks for itself:


As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place;
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four—
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.


As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man—
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:—
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will bum,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!



*I try not to overuse the phrase liberal elite, as it seems to break Orwell’s commonsense rules laid down in Politics and the English Language, but since there is a centre left ruling class of politicians and other bureaucrats, from the government through the civil service to the BBC, you have to use the expression.