As we mark the sombre 60th anniversary of the opening of Hitler’s murder factories in Belsen and elsewhere, those prize asses at the Labour Party come up with an anti-Conservative poster portraying leader Michael Howard and shadow finance pokesman Oliver Letwin as flying pigs. Both men are Jews.
Now, I will be charitable to the Labour Party and assume that the creators of this piece of rubbish were so dumb as to fail to think through the significance of this poster and are not anti-semitic, which is an extremely serious charge to make. As I am a hardline defender of free speech, I would of course say Labour is entitled to engage in any manner of roughhouse advertising. I certainly do not think the party should be dragged before the courts. In fact I think Labour has scored a bit of own goal. Some Jewish voters may shun Labour at the national polls, widely expected later this year.
This poster may suggest something quite encouraging to the Conservatives. Maybe this government, which is not exactly shooting the lights out in the opinion polls, is rattled at the Tories’ willingness to talk regularly about cutting the State down to size and cutting taxes. The Tory plans are hopelessly cautious, in my view, but credit to them anyway for pointing out that the government’s spending binge has failed to deliver discernible results and that a major reorientation of policy is required.
Mind you, I still haven’t forgiven Mr Howard for his support for compulsory ID cards.
I’m clicking the link, but for some reason I keep coming up with http://www.microsoft.com!
I am using Mozilla and that may be bollocksing a few links up a bit, but having said that, perhaps the Labour party have a new patron?
I have fixed the link. Ta.
This is ludicrous. I cannot think of a single Jew of my acquaintance who would put any construction on this childish poster other than the vapid one intended.
This hue and cry is not natural to Britain and is bred from the toxic identity politics so beloved of “New” Labour. Ten years ago no one’s mind would immediately have jumped to Jew plus pigs = insult, for god’s sake! Only people looking for trouble and with a burning desire to demonstrate their venomous “caring” side would have chosen to comment on this inept poster. These are the same people who named Christmas Winterval and who took The Three Little Pigs off the shelves of a little library in a kindergarten. They make me sick.
Exactly.
Which reminds me: many years ago, when we were new in the US, my husband was in a business meeting somewhere in the Bible Belt. It went smoothly, and they were having a lively conversation, up to a point when my husband’s answer to some question along the lines “Is this ever likely to happen?” was “As we say it in Hebrew: when the Messiah comes”. We do say it in Hebrew, and it is our equivalent of saying “When pigs fly”. The response from his host was: “But what do you mean: the Messiah already came!”. Needless to say, he was not smiling.
Verity, I agree with your central point but I would have thought that a time like this the LP would have shown a bit more intelligence. Also, Labour has been assiduously mining identity politics for years so I take a certain grim pleasure in having the same thing thrown back at them. Like you I think it is silly to make too much of a dumb poster, but given the resurgence of Jew-baiting in Europe, a certain touchiness is understanderble. Rgds
Without sounding too paranoid, isnt it a bit odd that this story is crops up in the government ‘s broadcasting wing ? You’d almost think that Labor wants it to be known that it could be considered anti semitic, because hey, they dont care – while a large and growing section of their voters might find the accusation, well, encourages then to vote labor?
Without sounding too paranoid, isnt it a bit odd that this story is crops up in the government ‘s broadcasting wing ? You’d almost think that Labor wants it to be known that it could be considered anti semitic, because hey, they dont care – while a large and growing section of their voters might find the accusation, well, encourages then to vote labor?
Right-o, old boy.
Jonathan – “but given the resurgence of Jew-baiting in Europe, a certain touchiness is understanderble.”
With respect, Jonathan, the jumping up and down isn’t being done by Jews, who are far too sophisticated for such ya boo schoolyard antics. Which Jew is on record as having been offended by the poster – or even having made a connection? Is there one?
This bouhaha in a teacup is being engineered by the stirrers – who, I would contend, are, under the guise of speaking up for Jews (as though Jews weren’t among the most articulate people in Britain and well able to present their own case) the anti-Semitic ones. This is a sly anti-Semitic reaction because it is attempting to suggest that Jewish Brits aren’t like “normal” Brits and therefore haven’t been brought up with our ancient sayings. They are “different”.
I repeat, they make me absolutely sick. And I’m not Jewish.
If this is the best the Tories can come up with, they have even less chance at the next election than I thought.
Ah, but that’s the beauty of Labour, you don’t have to have any religion, idealogy or thought capabilty to be one of their supporters or politicians, just an infallible belief that 86% of the British population will support whatever you say or do (if MORI say it’s true then it ‘must’ be).
The Labour Party – putting ‘National’ back into Socialism every day.
Ken – I’m not following you. It’s not “the Tories”. The Tory candidate Tory Finchley and Golders Green, clearly an idiot whether Jewish or not, is the only person that I can see who objected to this inane poster. No politician I have ever known has had such tender sensibilities. Certainly not Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin.
Stephen Pollard, who is Jewish, commented on this in his blog today, and he is equally baffled by this manufactured outrage.
Since,both Jews and Muslims find pigs unclean perhaps it would be better to dump the posters,after all isn’t this a multicultural society?
Also worth maybe noting that Labour’s entire advertising campaign, since the removal of Meddlesome from UK politics, consists of the Conservative Party’s 1979 advert (the famous ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ one) amended to ‘Labour Is Working’.
Anyone care to venture the outcome if it was the BNP that ran the ad ??
The Tories have complained about things like this before – comparisons of Letwin with Fagin (although I don’t actually know what the source of that was, either).
Has anyone on this blog ever met a Jew who thinks pork is unclean? Seriously. Many don’t eat it because of some ancient folk memory – at superstition level these days – but lots of Jews eat ham or bacon sandwiches. I seem to remember lots of bacon frying in those all-nite transport cafes in London that cab drivers patronise, and at least half of London cabbies are Jewish. This whole thing is ridiculous. Every British’s Jew’s mind would have taken a short-cut to the meaning of the poster “… and pigs might fly” without thinking about it.
Sadly, I think the number of people jumping up and down about this poorly-excuted triviality is a tribute to the success of New Labe’s divisive politics.
Ken: I have written to Tory HQ before to inform them I am not best pleased with the comparison either – and please don’t spell my surname wrong in future! 😉
Verity, you need to get out more. There’s a good-sized traditional Jewish community in and around London (I don’t remember exactly where, I’ve only been in Britain for about a week). And the main problem, in theory, would not be that a pig is not Kosher, but that Jews were often compared to pigs in the not-so-recent past.
Mastiff – do not have the temerity to tell me what I “need”. Even if you’d been in Britain longer than a week – 20 years, say – your post would be ridiculous. You’re talking about some other country, not Britain.
To parachute into a country and start mouthing off to the natives is outrageous. Maybe you need to get out more, away from the internet, and observe the country you’re in. You impertinent moron.
Wow, my quoting sucks.
Wow….Mastiff, that was a spectacular own-goal.
Much better.
Mastiff,
Just what sort of politician, (your blog does say that is your vocation!), are you? you walk in and start to sass our Great Panjandrum, — the ‘Highest of the high and mighty!’, — ‘She who must be obeyed!’ — ‘She who is beloved by all’, — and you expect to leave unscathed?
On your knees you cur, and grovel, begging forgiveness, and all that other guff, and hope that she — who is always so gracious, – will, on this occasion, show you mercy and forgive your grievous indiscretion…:-)
I’m thinking this whole fuss does reflect 2 things. Firstly, the storied Labour publicity machine isn’t running so smooth anymore. Whether the fuss is sensible or not, this was a forseeable goof-up. Second, the poster seems to me, even if read with its original intent, to be a bit desperate. The implied insult is of the level one might expect from a ten-year-old mucking about with Photoshop.
Verity, although I totally agree with you main point, I wish you’d refrain from calling people names, even when you feel they deserve them. Just saying:-) Oh, and to your question: I am Jewish, and I occasionally eat pork. No big deal.
Mastiff: your comment is totally beside the point, because the idiots (oops…) who made that poster clearly were not thinking about the fact that the people they portrayed in it are Jewish. Furthermore, their being Jewish is totally irrelevant to the reason why they are being ridiculed in that poster, the real reason being their politics. They could just as well have been Hindu or Christian.
“…but that Jews were often compared to pigs in the not-so-recent past.” True, but are they the only ones? What about an expression “A chauvinist pig”? I know a guy who once got a neck tie for a gift, that had little pigs and “CP” all over it. It was made in England, BTW.
Buenos Dios Verity,
Mastiff: your comment is totally beside the point, because the idiots (oops…) who made that poster clearly were not thinking about the fact that the people they portrayed in it are Jewish. Furthermore, their being Jewish is totally irrelevant to the reason why they are being ridiculed in that poster, the real reason being their politics. They could just as well have been Hindu or Christian.
Soundly put, old girl.
As someone said above, this makes me wonder whether the Labour spin machine has lost its touch. I wonder if this would have happened with Mandleson at the helm.
Verity, I am glad that the likes of Stephen Pollard have dismissed this whole business. I just think that in the current environment it behoves folk to exercise a bit of tact and care, which is not the same as pandering to some sort of PC agenda.
There seems to be a bit of a brouhaha over at Guido’s(Link) about another (unreleased) poster, this time portraying Michael Howard as Fagin. All the posters look borderline to me but if you take into account the Mike O’Brien speech as well as the posters themselves, there does seem to be a bit of theme developing here.
I cannot remember now: was Fagin Jewish?
Read “day” on this drawing. Read the “tory backed inquiry into public spending savings”. Sorry for this long and imperfect post.
The problem, Verity and others, it not Jewish self-appreciation, but what the Jews (and the non-believers) are to Muslim eyes. I can’t remember (documents in which) any Jew being called pig in French during the war, because pork makes lovely dishes. This is why pigs were pampered during the war and synonym with pleasure. “Pig”, (“cochon” rather than “porc”) are still used to scold a child or a colleague, sometimes as a joke, often synonym with buddy or kinky (movie). Nowadays, “pig” (always “porc”) has become a frequent Muslim insult on French sites and in the street preferably against the Jews but also the Americans or any Frenchman refusing to look down or to apologise. The recent anti-Semitism in Europe is Muslim and left-wing.
I agree with Jonathan as for the consequences of this poster, but it proves bad association of ideas and wrong intentions.
Just when the “tory backed inquiry into public spending savings”, that is against Muslim interests. Muslim representants are always asking for more public expenses, to submit the upper middle class. In France, they never acknowledge any deficit and always bring new ideas of “improvements” for everyone or claim special treatments in favour of their community. ANY event is an opportunity to hire more civil servants, or to start implementing affirmative action (life-employment jobs after a Muslim-only or “suburban” competitive exams) and serve a special (in fact the only) menu in more public places (ten years already!). It’s sickening to see so many French people give in and give social charges (100% of our net salary) and taxes for these under development programs. To me it seems that our duty in France, is to remember on this day that expenses, debts and under armament led us to concessions to foreign countries, Munich, invasion and then deportations and massive extortions.
This poster is not innocent but it might be diffused by useful idiots. In France, leftist and Muslim associations demonstrate and campaign together.
Please listen carefully to your media. Now, thanks to Internet, I know decisions are taken against a large majority or in a large ignorance finely worked, even on simple issues. On many subjects, France is often the last country in Europe to consider a common sense reform, but it still doesn’t mean we make them. It’s frightening.
Some French internet sites cite Churchill – in French of course -, in vain.
If you have spare-time : method : In France, I hear and I see Muslim anti-Semitism (so called anti-sionism) now almost freely expressed in the media encouraging journalists to speak “bravely” against Israel and the US (and the UK when they help the US). We are a few to think that these provocations are part of an offensive. They weight emotionally on us like Trojan horses : “if we can keep evoking the nightmarish shoal, discreetly (islamophobia = shoah) or not (awful comments about French Jewish respected people by notorious coloured or Muslim comics, if we can be that bad and always worse, then we are almost in charge.” In France until recently, mentioning the Jewish appearance of a name, Jewish marriage etc. was carefully avoided in the media and among well-mannered people, to the point that we didn’t know who, what. The Muslims have imported their hatred, and it’s the only point on which I feel better informed. Some speakers and left wing politicians play that game with Muslim interlocutors because they represent 5 (soon 7) millions of votes (half of them are under 18), “I say a word, you say the full sentence, if it raises too many complaints, we’ll “explain” that is, we’ll be more visible in the media, and always as victims of racism”. On this anniversary, some public station journalists concluded the news report with an appeal against anti-Semitism and islamophobia, as usual. Each word is a step they take to the power. You haven’t mentioned the word “day” on this drawing, this day prepared for a long time. Prepared by both sides : last Monday, for the first time in my life, I saw a fresh Jewish star drawn on a Parisian wall, (elegant, visible and well chosen without any business sign to help, 40 years of quiet laic activity, one year with a few young Muslims in).
Although racial and religious statistics are illegal, France officially has a Muslim rate twice as important as the English one. French demography doesn’t help. The obstetrician managing the public maternity hospital on the island of La Cité in Paris (Hôtel Dieu) has said on television that 40% of his (over 32.000) parturients are Muslim. A few economists are still allowed to write that an estimated third of the French newborn children are Muslims.
Alisa – I don’t care what you “wish”, as you don’t own this blog. But I agree with the rest of your post.
Della, I don’t mouth off about Mexico. I haven’t got nearly the depth of knowledge about how the country works to be competent to make even mild comments.
Julian Morrison and Jonathan both made an interesting point: the fabled Labour publicity machine is coughing and clanking. Something’s gone gloriously wrong. Even the execution of the poster, as I mentioned way above and someone else also mentioned, is school-kiddish. It looks like the work of a couple of young kids, not professional pr practitioners.
Mastiff, now that you’ve been in Britain for eight full days and are a seasoned old hand, you may wish to add to your knowledge of our country so you don’t go home and look too silly to your constituents: In Britain, we do not categorise our Jews as being a “Jewish community”. We categorise them as “British”, as we do ourselves. And that is how they think of themselves, too. Please don’t get us muddled up with certain countries in Europe.
One thing that hasn’t come up is the extent to which it is also move teh debate onto territory where the conservatives have an advantage.
I mean the tories have had difficulty getting the message that they’re tax cutters across to voters and now here are labor helping them with publicity!
These posters are pretty clever if the double meaning is intentional and I think it probably is. The idea was never to offend Jews – what is the point of that?
Labour knows it has lost a lot of Muslim support and taken with Mike O’Brien’s comments we can be pretty sure that they are fully aware of the political potential of pointing out that Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin are Jews. They also know they can’t say it in so many words because they would be condemned as racist. These posters are mainly going up in target seats of which many coincidentally have a large Muslim population. They also know that if the Tories don’t complain about the posters they have got away with it and if the Tories do complain they are helping to spread the message Labour wants spread but dare not say out loud. There’s no cheaper way of getting your message across than by getting your opponents to do it for you. By making the posters comical, Labour have plausible deniability and if the story about the Fagin poster is true it shows Labour’s team were thinking along those lines.
Wolfie, I was interested in your post. You say, “Labour knows it has lost a lot of Muslim support”? Given that this government has done everything the various Muslim councils and other lobbying groups have directed them to do, I find this statement surprising. Are you sure that they have? On what grounds?
Verity: yes, I imagined that you do not care. The thing is, I don’t care whether you do or not, as you don’t own this blog either. As for the rest of your comment, I find the phrase “our Jews” rather interesting. I wonder if any of “your” Jews could show up here and tell us what they think about all of this in first person.
Wolfie: you make sense, and I may be beginnig to see this in a different light. One should never underestimate one’s opponent. Verity says: ” It looks like the work of a couple of young kids, not professional practitioners.” I wonder if it was actually meant to look this way. But it could be just my Jewish paranoia kicking in:-)
Alisa – The blog of Sunday Times columnist Stephen Pollard is (Link)
The blog of Daily Mail columnist, BBC personality, occasional writer for The Jerusalem Post and author, Melanie Phillips, is (Link)
Considering the timing it is extremely bad taste and idiotic. Anyone who does not see that really needs to read more about what is being saying about Jews in the Arab press (and for a historical perspective Nazi propoganda). Depicting Howard and Letwin (gee why those two I wonder?) as pigs plays right into the hands of a certain type of anti-semitic mentality that is currently prevalent in the Muslim world.
Thanks for the links. I hope you and they are right.
Thank you Andrew and Alisa. The arab press… and what about their German best-seller ? This poster is meant to be “bad taste and idiotic” or “kiddish” to harass better. I couldn’t open the first article but I like the one by Melanie Phillips about Israel. But there misses the argument that whatever happens in the world, many Muslims born in Europe hate the “Jews” and use this word all day long has a synonym for “traitor” or “broken”. Even when they have a comfortable situation, they neurotically “search for them” to make them responsible for everything instead of improving themselves. Their jealousy is scaring. They’ve brought deadly and expensive irrationality in Europe and have prevented a country like France to side with the USA. I wonder how low these people can take us.
Alisa – Your instincts may have been right. Here is a not so sanguine William Rees-Mogg in The Times: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1052-1463793,00.html
Uh …(Link)
And in spite of Nulabour’s obviously anti-semitic stance, many, so-called progressive folk of Jewish persuasion will still vote and support them. Which would seem to prove that dogma supercedes religion even among those with strict relgious beliefs.
Damn. I wonder if Wolfie is a Jew living in Europe. Having lived outside Europe for many years, my instincts are not as quick as his seem to be.
Alisa, Wolfie is not actually Jewish. He is just concerned (as I am) about the disturbing trend towards anti-semitism (either deliberate or via ignorance) pervading the thinking in some quarters here in the UK.
EY: Well Jews have voted mostly Republican for a very long time despite the fact that some Democrats have been anything but friendly to either Israel or Jews in general. To be fair the Jewish vote is gradually going down for the Democrats.
Alisa and others, Stephen Pollard addresses this again by rerunning his piece in Sunday’s Independent in his blog today. His opinion of the poster in question is unchanged, as is mine, but he tackles some of the surrounding issues and these are indeed sinister. To remind, it’s (Link). I still think the ‘pigs may fly’ poster had no hidden meaning and that it was just a standard political jibe. Both Howard and Letwin are big players in British national politics and are robust enough to brush off political insults. Indeed, Mr Howard, is adept at delivering a more telling blow in response. But as Pollard points out in today’s blog, some other aspects of this campaign are not so easy to explain away. I commend it to you.
Andrew, you probably meant “Jews have voted mostly Democratic for a very long time”, right?
Alisa – See my post directly above yours for today’s Stephen Pollard. Also, I’ve just been to Melanie’s site and, unsurprisingly, she also returns to Labour’s political poster and surrounding accusations. Like Pollard, she views the fuss about the poster as ludicrous, but also like Pollard, she examines some of the surrounding issues on this campaign and draws similar conclusions to his. Well worth a read. (Link)
Thanks for the links: I am glad I read them.
Yep Alisa.
I read Rees-Mogg’s piece in the Times today and it is pretty damning. He sees a rather nasty trend at work. So do I.
Yes, he is quite convincing. However, Pollard and Phillips, (and Verity) do have a point that the “pigs” poster should be given the benefit of a doubt. Not so the “Figin” poster, though, and other instances they describe. Not a pretty picture, to say the least.
BTW, Johnathan, sorry for the multiple track-back pings…
In answer to Verity’s question about how I know Labour know they have lost a lot of support from Muslims – there were a couple of by-elections recently in Birmingham and Leicester where there were big swings away from Labour and the war in Iraq played a big part in that. The main beneficiaries were the Liberal Democrats and the switch voters were mainly concerned with that issue. It may be fading as an issue now and as Verity pointed out, Labour is doing everything it can to win support back from Muslim voters. It might well work.
Wolfie – Du-uh! I can’t believe I’d forgotten the backlash occasioned by the war in Iraq! Of course, you’re absolutely correct. This is why, you’re right, Labour is now taking its orders direct from various Muslim special interest outfits. I suspect Toneboy has managed to claw back a lot of votes from the Lib Dems because the Muslims know the Lib Dems are losers and they want to go with the power, in order to demand further changes to British law.
I can’t help but have the impression that this wasn’t the best time for Chris Smith to announce that he’s been on AIDS treatment for 17 years …
Chris Smith could have announced that anytime. I wonder if they had something they were trying to sweep off the front pages.
“rattled at the Tories’ willingness to talk regularly about cutting the State down to size and cutting taxes”
Tories cutting the State down to size? Now that really would be a case of flying pigs.
Julius
Wolfie – True. He had 17 years to announce it. Why now?
Oh, wait a minute! It was because of St Nelson’s s-u-u-un that he decided to speak up. Either that or he was being blackmailed.
But the timing is indeed interesting.
Verity writes:
“Wolfie – True. He had 17 years to announce it. Why now?”
As ye sow….
It really has come to this, hasn’t it? Bliar has spun so hard and for so long that no one now believes anything either he or his cohorts do can possibly be without an ulterior motive.
In passing, I hear the Marquess of Salisbury recently described Bliar as “a hypocritical Jesus freak”.
So who says the aristocracy is out of touch?
Surprised nobody has considered the idea that the Tories are being identified with pigs because pigs are unlean to Muslims as well as to Jews.
There’s also the literal-minded idea that the poster merely dramatises the “pigs might fly” likelihood of a Tory government in an effort to dispirit potential switch voters and discourage them from making the effort.
Students of UK advertising history will remember a campaign for an industrial table wine from the 70s with the tagline “It’s as likely as a duff bottle of Hirondelle”, variously illustrated with pictures of flying pigs, women bishops, usw.
Chris Smith could have announced that anytime. I wonder if they had something they were trying to sweep off the front pages.
They did. And it worked. Remember Charles Clarke and the little matter of Executive Control Orders? This was the first chance for the Sundays to tackle that little bombshell, the Home Office having leaked to some of them last weekend as misdirection that it was considering [ab]using the Mental Health Act to keep those foreign suspects it has detained without charge behind bars indefinitely.
G Cooper relates that the Marquess of Salisbury recently described Bliar as “a hypocritical Jesus freak”. I think, from Toneboy’s point of view, the Marq was off the mark. “Jesus is a T Blair freak” would better describe the self-obessed Toxic Tone’s take on the cosmos.
Guy Herbert – Surprised nobody has considered the idea that the Tories are being identified with pigs because pigs are unlean to Muslims as well as to Jews. Yes! SNAP!
Guy: good point, although it still does not exclude the possibility that the Tories in the poster being Jewish was also taken into account. Islamists often call the Jews “pigs” these days. At best I remain agnostic about that poster.
Having finally seen the ‘Fagin’ poster (in today’s Telegraph) I’m now convinced the Bliarites knew damn well what they were doing and that the anti-semitism is no figment of ‘outraged of Hampstead’s’ imagination.
As for its withdrawal, they must be delighted. It has had far more publicity than if it had simply been stuck on billboards – and it has cost them next to nothing to achieve.
What a shabby, hypocritical bunch of shits Nu Labour are.
GCooper, well said. I was not immediately aware of the Fagin poster and I feel that my original argument has been backed up. Labour knew what they were doing.
Julius, yes, it is probably optimistic of me to imagine the Tories could deliver smaller government, but we can all dream. At least the Tories are trying to dictate the terms of the debate. The trouble is that they have left it woefully late in the day.
As Labour has removed the offending posters from their webpage some people have been in the dark as to their nature. Well, Labour didn’t remove them from their site.
Mr. Howard as Fagin.
Mssrs. Howard and Letwin as porcavian politicians.
Ooops… the Fagin link was malformed. Let’s hope this works better.
Anyone not familiar with the relevant anti-semitic stereotypes just google ‘Judensau’ – for the Nazi one and check out http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sr&ID=SR01102 for the Islamic one.
Regardless of intent, looks like Labour will be trading every Jewish vote for 6 Muslim votes.