The last few days have been full of the story of how, in Rotherham, a northern UK town in a historically strong Labour area, a couple have had their adopted children taken away because the couple are members of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). According to the social services department, membership of a party that, among other things, wants Britain to leave the EU and enforce certain immigration controls means that the couple are “racists”. Yes, do not adjust your computer.
While I am sure there might be UKIP members who are racists, just as there are bigots who join other parties, I suspect the vast majority are concerned about multi-culturalism not because of race but of concerns about culture. This distinction cannot be overstated or repeated often enough.
Furthermore, there is nothing from the reports I have read to suggest that the couple – they are not being named – are anything other than decent people who provide children with a stable and loving home background. So as a result of the cultural Marxism of the Rotherham social services department, children are to spend time in a foster home, away from a mum and a dad.
I am not a fan of conspiracy theories, but you have wonder whether the boss of social services is in fact a secret supporter of UKIP, given that in a by-election shortly to take place in the town, the issue is bound to drive up UKIP’s share of the vote.
When I talk of “cultural Marxism”, what I mean is that the people taking such decisions want to impose a totalitarian political and cultural order on this country. They hate families; indeed they fear families. As explained superbly by Ferdinand Mount many years ago, collectivists of different hues have resented families and done everything in their power to destroy this institution. Unless parents hold “correct” views on certain subjects, then it appears they cannot be allowed to care for children.
It is a tragedy that the happy family life of three youngsters has been damaged, but if any good comes out of this sorry affair, it is that when we talk about the “cultural Marxism” of parts of the public sector, this is not some smart-alec phrase or mad phobia. It is a real issue and I hope that Michael Gove, the Education Secretary who is one of the few impressive members of the coalition cabinet, takes a blowtorch to the social services department and the decision-makers there. (He was adopted himself, and therefore has very strong views on the benefits of adoption).
Ironically, the behaviour of this social services department is a gift to to the far right and those who want whip up racial hatreds. (Maybe that is also a sort of conspiracy theory. Discuss.)
We also need to start learning a few tactics from the left, such as picketing the establishments where these people work, naming and in some cases, shaming those who take such decisions and keeping their profile high in public view. A problem with those not on the hard left or far right is that we are “civilised”; but people such as this idiot in charge of Rotherham social services are not nice, at all. We have had a useful reminder of just how far they are prepared to go.
Guido Fawkes also writes of the war on the family, with reference to the sort of Fabian socialism of George Bernard Shaw (decent playright, terrible man).
Final thought: is this an isolated incident, or have there been other cases where the real or alleged political views of parents have barred them from raising children? I would be willing to bet that this has happened before, and may even happening as I write.
I joined UKIP yesterday. £30 and well worth it. I think their claim to be a libertarian party is a bit optimistic, but I take the robust Delingpolian position that I could have written their manifesto myself 🙂
I’m coming round to your position. I used to argue ‘We can’t use the Enemy’s Ring’. Now I think we should bring a gun to the knife-fight.
Britanistan is becoming a curious place. You have a man (Tommy R)in prison whose crime is being white and not a socialist leftard. He will not show the proper deference, fear and respect for Islam as is thought proper by the elite Eloi who run the nation and so he must be destroyed.
And now you are socially penalized for being of the wrong party. Any one proud of Britanistan anymore? Why?
The family is the smallest natural unit of group power. They form spontaneously, and fanatically loyal to one another, and will place all other authorities in a subordinate position to the family unit.
That’s why whenever a state lurches toward totalitarianism (as I would suggest Britain is currently doing), they always start trying to violate the sanctity of the family and the authority of parents. They view families as a challenge to the supremacy of their authority – as well they should.
Families are a challenge to the supremacy of the state. Where they are mistaken is the belief that this is a bad thing.
For example, most fathers (myself included) would swear blind that if anyone ever hurt their children then they would kill the parties involved. I’m sure the deterrent value of this goes a long way to explain why child victims of abuse or murder almost never come from cohesive families with loving fathers.
I tend to agree with the sentiments of the poster of this article and the comments so far. I’d say the only way to purge our nation of this marxist filth is to purge our nation of this marxist filth. I used to think that our border agencies and armed forces were there to protect us against outside malevolence, and our police force was there to defend the individual against the rather small number of malefactors within our society. What has happened; particularly over the past 50 or so years, despite Margaret Thatcher’s valiant attempts to restore common decency; is that our institutions have been infiltrated by the vilest of the vile and we in the main aren’t even aware it has happened. So, sooner or later if we value our national heritage, we will have to disinfest ourselves. And you can’t rid yourself of a parasite without killing it.
Opposition to multiculturalism is seen as synonymous to racism due to the mono-ethnic nature of most cultures, it is ironic that the very mono-ethnicity within that culture is precisely due to its inherent racism. The reason why multiculturalism fails is due to tolerance towards intolerance.
While not British, I will comment on this issue to the extent that it mirrors the recent issues surrounding the overtly marxist professor/historian who recently died, and was lauded in death, as he was rewarded in life with numerous honors, not in spite of his marxism, but because of it.
It is a pernicious inversion of values that people who actively promote a cause which has accounted for untold millions of deaths, and immeasurable suffering, every where it has been put into practice, are given a sort of plenary indulgence for all responsibility for its deadliness, and instead are praised for its claimed, but always unrealized, positive effects.
It is one of the most powerful gauges of social rationality, whether on a national or global scale—are collectivists held accountable for the results of their ideologies, regardless of false left/right dichotomies?
The answer is clearly no.
When the time comes that the answer is yes, then we can safely believe that the human race is operating on rational principles, and not the twisted values of some ideologically driven irrationality, whether secular or religious.
I doubt that I will live to see that day, but I never give up hope that such a dawn will occur, and human beings can live on this earth in peace and liberty.
I’m not surprised, especially as I can remember a story from a few years back about a couple who were refused authorisation to adopt because they had “too many books”. This article adds further weight to the suspicion that fostering and adoption is considered by councils to be better left to folk who don’t think independently. It’s probably more Maoism than Marxism, I think – although I don’t see (yet) Government moves afoot to discourage people from having children by the more typical biological mechanism.
Picketing can be a useful tactic, however the reason it tends to be pretty much exclusively employed by the loonier end of the left, is that folk of other political persuasions tend to be too busy with other pursuits, such as earning a living. Of course, if any financially secure retired folk (a section of the population themselves decreasing in number) were to volunteer…
The only other stories I’ve seen about children being removed from their parents on the grounds of the parents’ political beliefs, is where the parents are neo-Nazis; there’s one case in the US which appears to have evidence backing it, and various currently-unsubstantiated stories from Germany.
J.P. is correct – this is “cultural Marxism”, straight out of the Frankfurt School.
However, P.C. doctrine (cultural Marxism – the Frankfurt School) is supposed to be applied with cunning.
This is cultural Marxism – but applied by “Ug-the-Thug”.
Malevolent certainly – but also STUPID.
I am not sure that the fiends of the Frankfurt School and the Columbia School of Social Research (and so on) ever considered that the possiblity that their cunning doctrines would be applied by cretins.
Johnathan Pearce: …a couple have had their adopted children taken away … as a result of the cultural Marxism of the Rotherham social services department, children are to spend time in a foster home, away from a mum and a dad.
The parents were foster parents, not adoptive parents; they were providing a foster home for these children. I doubt if Social Services could remove children who had been formally adopted on such thin grounds.
It’s obviously correct to say that UKIP supporters are not concerned about race: if they were, they would vote BNP, wouldn’t they?
It is less obvious that they are concerned about culture. They might well be, but they might also be concerned about centralization of power, in two ways:
transferring power from London to Brussels, obviously;
but also transferring power from the British people to London — because that’s what multiculturalism is all about: giving power to the ruling class to protect the English-speaking people (because few continentals would fall for this propaganda) from their own supposedly irrational intolerance.
The fact that so many English-speaking people fall for this propaganda, makes me skeptical about the proposition that they have much of a culture worth defending.
Just a small quibble. Can’t help noticing the word ‘bigot’ turned up in the above post.
Bigot = a person who has strong, unreasonable beliefs and who thinks that anyone who does not have the same beliefs is wrong.
Trouble being, of course, that so many of the users of the word (see fourth comment below almost any Comment Is Free article) could so easily be described by the word itself.* So it’s effectively become meaningless. Surely there’s an alternative?
*See Brown, Gordon as in “That bigoted woman..”
That’s an SQOTD, if I’m any judge.
Needless to say, I am horrified by the story. Sadly I am not surprised – having been required to deal with (and, on occasion, fire) directors of Social Services in the UK, little surprises me when it comes to their excesses.
Any word on whether someone has jumped in and started the process required to fix this travesty?
See, here’s the part of all of this new culture that scares me at times:
A few years ago, you would hear similar horror stories, about social workers or teachers or police run amok and enforcing their own hateful philosophies while backed by the steely power of the state.
And upon exposure, basic social rationality would ensure that the situation would be addressed and remedied, usually by the people who probably should have noticed and corrected it in the first place.
But now, that path never seems to be as certain and predictable.
Now, at least in my country, (the U.S.A.), it seems that there’s much less backing down in shame when someone is caught violating norms and expectations, and so the violators’ natural monitors now become apologetic and dismayed when a violator simply says “what are you gonna do about it?”
A number of arguably illegal and unconstitutional acts have been performed in my country recently which remain in place due to the lack of any effort to root them out, which is unsurprising when you consider that the central power now resides in those who are saying “what are you gonna do about it?”
So, is someone trying to get these kids back together with those foster parents? Is there enough faith left in the system such that people will expend effort in order to invoke that system for its proper purposes?
Or have you, too, reached the point where we can all talk to each other about each day’s new outrages but without any serious expectation that we can actually address them?
Compare and contrast with their response to organised abuse by gangs of Pakistani males.
Also, the moment you picket their offices you will be branded as “far right” by the mainstream media and the “anti-fascists” will be throwing bricks at you while the police look on.
Bloke in Spain:
Just because a word is sprayed around by CiF commenters should not mean that it does not have a genuine meaning, any more than the sad fact that in the US, the word “liberal” has sometimes come to mean the exact opposite.
Nigel has said there will be no “election pact” with the Conservatives until Cameron apologises for his comments about racism & UKIP. It will be interesting to see if Cameron has the smarts to do it.
The true victims in this are the children and head should roll for this sort of ignorant idiocy.
Rotherham is a safe Labour seat – there is no way that the Conservative party or the Liberal Democratic party is going to take the seat.
All Conservatives and Liberals (worth the name) should vote UKIP in the byelection – to make a protest against this despotic action by the council thugs.
Johnathan,
You wrote: “We also need to start learning a few tactics from the left, such as picketing the establishments where these people work, naming and in some cases, shaming those who take such decisions and keeping their profile high in public view.”
Absolutely spot-on.
We on the Right tend to play the ball. When debating man-made climate change, for instance, those on the Right will point to things like the Medieval Warm Period, or question whether computer models really can predict the Earth’s climate a century hence. The Left, meanwhile, tends to play the man, branding those who question climate change shills for the oil companies, or calling them deniers – an outrageous attempt to lump them in with those who deny the Holocaust.
So it’s definitely time for the Right to start playing the man – or woman – starting with Joyce Thacker, who is directly responsible for this outrage.
Reports will be written. Lessons will be Learned. The Data will be Carefully Sifted. Recommendations will be Made.
Meanwhile, the foster children involved will be vomited back into the system, to take their chances. And the foster parents involved will never, ever foster another child as long as they live, and they will never, ever be able to change that, no matter what they do or how hard they try.
They seem like good people, so they will probably assume that the system is actually designed for success and fairness and they will get a fair shake if they continue to work within it. They will learn, to their cost, that nothing is further from the truth, and the system is in fact a hard-Left socio-political organization that does a bit of child-protective work on the side.
If it comes to a question of the best interests of a child vs the best interests of the organization, the organization will always come first, and it will close ranks and fiercely resist any attack or criticism from outside, no matter how mild and no matter what the source.
I predict that, as soon as Parliament is given control over the media, one of the first measures that will be sought is control over the public reporting of the actions of the Social Services, and this control will be extended to all forms of information dissemination, including social media and the Internet. It will all be couched in terms of protecting children and the vulnerable, and the net effect will be that the Social Services will be able to operate with no public scrutiny whatever – in fact, public scrutiny will be made a crime. It will make the old Official Secrets Act look like a stroll in the park. At least under the OSA, you could always find some laughable restriction to make fun of – cf Rumpole and the Official Secret, and others in like vein – but this will be deadly serious, and any attempt to cast light on the secret world of Social Services will be met with a swift and overwhelming response.
It’s a Marxist organization, almost-entirely populated with dedicated Marxists – it’s what they do. A person would be a fool to expect otherwise. They’re scorpions – it’s what they do.
llater,
llamas
A person I know attended a social worker’s meeting in a town not a million miles from Rotherham and listened, appalled, to a local social worker saying a child — who was loved and cared for — should be taken from a family because ‘the parents go to church’ and in this person’s opinion it would be better to get the child away from that ‘malign influence.’
This is what the public don’t know about the decisions made on behind closed doors. Lefty social workers feel they can play with people’s lives on the basis of their own flawed world view, their preferred doctrine or simply out of bitterness.
It isn’t just politics that counts for these wretched people.
— Nigel Farage, in the Telegraph. Could be a SQotD.
(Editor: indeed Malcolm)
“… the sad fact that in the US, the word “liberal” has sometimes come to mean the exact opposite.”
Sometimes?
F. A. Hayek once remarked that two things always stood in the way of the utopian collectivist dream — private property and the nuclear family. Therefore both had to be destroyed.
On the racism / culturalism thing. Bear in mind that it’s the social services department calling them “racist”, not the Daily Telegraph. Telegraph readers imagine that racism has got something to do with race. This is an error. When lefties are not using accusations of “racism” as a mere political tactic (any opponent can be accused of racism for any reason, as that mud always sticks) they use the term in a couple of different ways. One is the postmodernist “prejudice with power” thing – which boils down to racism being part of the oppressive structure of society, with powerful white / straight / men oppressing powerless brown / gay / women. Hence the impossibility of black racism. Black racism is like carnivorous vegetarianism, a contradiction in terms.
But the non postmodernist, mainstream lefty, ie BBC standard, meaning does not distinguish between race (aka genes) and culture. Discrimination on either ground is racism. Although this seems, indeed is, nutty, you can see how even a reasonable person could come to believe it. If you look at all the film reviews which say that although The Searchers is a good film, praise for John Wayne’s portrayal of the “racist” Ethan Edwards leaves a nasty taste, blah blah blah, it’s quite easy to agree that Ethan Edwards is a racist. He hates Indians. But when you scratch the surface, actually he’s not racist in the Daily Telegraph sense. He treats his quarter breed companion exactly like his other white searchers. He regards white captives of Indians, who have become culturally Indian, as “not white any more.” And his hatred of Indians is not based on mere prejudice, but clearly comes from experience. Edwards is a “culturalist”. But his blanket hatred of Indians is still unattractive.