Both Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and Labour’s national leader Ed Miliband have criticized the decision and affirmed that UKIP is not a racist party. However, both leaders’ sudden sympathy for UKIP and their criticism of overbearing officialdom ring rather hollow. Despite their differences on many policies, both men embody a strain of condescending, progressive, and “modern” thinking that would suggest they have more sympathy with the position of Rotherham council than they’re letting on.
Miliband is the quintessential modern leftist, and came to prominence in the Labour government that under Tony Blair was largely responsible for inflicting mass immigration, multiculturalist dogma, and political correctness on Britain. But with Labour losing white working-class voters to UKIP — and in the north of England in particular — he’s been forced to adopt a very different and thoroughly unconvincing tune, suggesting that his party made mistakes on immigration in the past.
Cameron is in an even more awkward position. In 2006, shortly after becoming Conservative leader and keen to move his party to the center and to rid it of the “nasty” label it had been stuck with by its political opponents and sections of the media, he notoriously described UKIP members as “fruitcakes, loonies, and closet racists.”
But the Conservatives too have lost supporters to the party, and UKIP’s share of the vote in the 2010 general election is thought to have cost the party as many as 21 seats and thus an overall majority in the House of Commons. With the Tories now trailing Labour in the polls, many Conservative MPs have been urging Cameron to move to the right on both immigration and Europe, and the idea of an electoral pact between the parties is being floated.
Amid the political fallout from the Rotherham case, it’s important not to lose sight of who the real victims are: three vulnerable children, desperately in need of love and stability, who have been wrenched from parents who were providing both.
While the council’s decision to remove the children is a chilling assault on freedom of thought and political belief, it’s also dreadful policy in practical terms. Britain is facing an adoption crisis. In 2010, just over 3,000 children were adopted, out of more than 65,000 in the care system, with the rest shunted between foster parents or languishing in children’s homes. The head of a leading children’s charity has warned that under the draconian rules imposed by social services departments, most parents wouldn’t be allowed to adopt their own children.
The government has proposed legislation that would prevent social workers from taking ethnic and cultural factors into account when placing children for fostering or adoption. But controversies such as the one unfolding in Rotherham can only discourage prospective parents from coming forward.
Oh, yes they DO use race as a cudgel against people in the UK! Labour sees how well it’s worked for the democrats in the US and use it against the Tory’s all the time. And UKIP is the new conservative party since the Tory’s have proven to be labour-lite – kinda like our GOP party. That’s why they are garnering so much support in recent years.
What’s really creepy about this story is the council learned of the couple’s political leanings from an “anonymous tip.”
Lastly, the UK is doing the same thing to white couples that the US did to white couples in the 80′s – refusing to adopt out children of mixed or differing race for “cultural” concerns.
An “anonymous tip.” In the workplace, that kind of destructive tattling seems to be happening frequently here too. Very sinister, as you and Mike McNally describe. Its interesting how many HR departments promote confidential snitch lines, in which one employee can tattle on another, sometimes without repercussions when the snitch turns out to be a liar. I was falsely accused on the job by a couple of harpies, whose identity I was able to discover, because I didn’t approve of their poor work ethic, yet I was the one who got suspended fom work, and they suffered no penalty.
Life gets more Orwellian every day.
Yes, life does get more Orwellian every day. For that reason I have been studying Orwell’s major workds and the appropriation of his work by social democrats (the UK Labour Party). Here is the index to my various blogs on creeping Orwellian nightmares: http://clarespark.com/2012/11/17/index-to-orwell-blogs/.
Clair’s own words -
“I have been reading right-wing publications for many years now, and sense that many of its constituents do not possess a rational assessment of any authority whatsoever. It seems that some don’t want to be pushed around, even if the pushing is for their own good and that of their children. This is infantile conduct.”
You seem to be very confused Clair. On one hand you are concerned about the Orwellian direction of your government and it’s Big Brother knows best dictates and on the other hand you rail against people taking a stand against the very same intrusion on their lives.
Ah, “HR” (Human Resources)… otherwise known as the Commisar in another system.
People like Thacker are such tiny little pinheads, Here you have the foster parents exhibiting selfless love for ripped off vulnerable children and a shriveled up soul dead shrew unable or unwilling to recognize that because of her tin god, Marxism and political correctness. What a pathetic, wretched excuse for a human being.
Mary Poppins of the Nanny State rips off the mask to reveal nurse Rached.
Should have used that one in the Olympic Games Opening Ceremonies.
wait until they decide that parents who try and transmit religious values are unsuitable. They’ve already decided that the government can determine who is a Jew when they forced the jewish schools to take in a non Jewish student. They can certainly decide they don’t want any Jews who might take their religon seriously and take the children on any pretext. Remember that kid in Italy I think his name was Montero. Past is prologue.
Except, of course, for Muslim foster families.
The Limeys have slowly and steadily transformed into the dumbest people on Earth. The things that are now “taking them by surprise” were forecast long ago and they laughed it all off. “Don’t worry! That can’t happen here!”
…And America is only a little ways behind them, headed in the same damned direction.
I’m a ‘Limey’ and would have agreed up until Obama’s win.
The USA has embraced Soviet Communism, while Russia has repudiated it.
“The Limeys have slowly and steadily transformed into the dumbest people on Earth”
We figured that out way back when they were called “redcoats”, and havent paid any of their ideas much mind since.
Pulling their bacon from the fire TWICE in the 20th century just re-enforced that for the next two generations….
maybe we need another reminder today?
After having elected Obama twice, we are in no position to criticize.
He pointed out that we are headed in the same direction.
This is where you inevitably and invariably end up when you let Marxists run rampant through your society and it’s institutions.
UKIP is xenophobic and anti-immigration. I do not see how that makes them “conservative”.
They are neither. They simply want to put a check on the unbridled immigration tsunami that has beeen flooding the UK for the past 40 years.
They are Anti-Colonization.
Right, they are Anti-Colonialists. Opposed to colonization of the UK. That equates to nativism and xenophobia in Leftwing lexicon when applied to peoples of White race and European ethnicity and Christian religious backrounds
No UKIP is patriotic, seeks to keep the UK out of the EUSSR, and to protect, preserve, and promote the unique culture of the indigenous English, as well as the economic well being of the nation.
As always, follow the money. If there’s a swelling list of children in foster homes who have to be overseen by a bloated bureaucratic system, then it pays more money to the very people who make the decisions about whether to permanently place said children. No surprise that “draconian” adoption rules have been proposed. It’s not about the innocents, it’s about maintaining the bureaucratic welfare system and providing jobs for social workers. And then they justify it with actions like this, patting themselves on the back for protecting children from “bad people” and “bad influences.”
“Common Purpose” has a lot to do with what’s going on in Britain – both Cameron and Miliband are so-called “graduates” of this insidious organisation – a sinister, Left-wing organisation with corrupt, stifling tentacles which have spread into every public institution in the Country, including 10, Downing Street.
Common Purpose, Common Core
The New World Order
Progressive Socialism marches on in the UK, Europe, America and South America. It is also on the march in the British Commonwealth and is ensconced in Russia and Asia. Will there be any freedom-loving countries left in the world? Are we close to Huxley’s “Brave New World” or Orwell’s “1984″ and “Animal Farm”?
Alongside this army of enslavers, marches the Islamic Caliphate movement, another enslaving entity but more draconian.
The UN is the Master Entity behind both these movements. The average man is just a pawn on their chessboard and will end up grovelling in the dust of serfdom!
I think it is better to wait for the investigation into this case. From personal information ,there is a lot more to this incident,there is information that is confidential.
There has been over the years high profile case after case over social workers not removing children in ‘at risk’ groups who ended up being tortured and murdered.
Social workers are working in an extremely defensive manner to the point that they are damned if do remove and damned if they don’t.
If it’s just based on their political views then of course that is wrong, but the interpretation of this by American posters to rubbish the U.K is premature.
MAGS, I think your historical perspective is a wee bit short-sighted. As one who UK born and bred I can assure the readers that cases like this are far from unique. In the 1980s the case of Barbara Rennix caused outrage when social workers quietly had her child adopted without warning – the first sign she had was when letters, cards, and presents started getting returned. Then came the notorious Cleveland controversy, when children were diagnosed as being sexually abused using the now-discredited technique of “reflex anal dilation”(or is it dilatation?), often waking the kids up in the night and questioning them in a way that would guarantee the child admitting to having been abused. That caused an uproar. After that came Rochdale, and so-called “ritual Satanic abuse”, which turned out to have originated in the mind of a disturbed boy who had been watching horror movies. Next came Orkney, same thing, and just as discredited. In their wake came another one in Ayrshire, where one mother actually fled to Eire to make sure her baby would not be taken from her at birth(a common tactic).
There is good reason to believe that such underhand methods are used on a wider scale than is thought. There is also good reason to believe that children “taken into care” are actually more vulnerable to abuse than they would be out in the real world; one girl of 11 raped by a “care”(?) worker, and her brother escaping using skills he had learned in the Scouts. He had done it twice before to get back to their birth parents, only this time the police decided not to drag him back. The council’s reaction was to take action against the parents for “approaching” him! Oh, and while I’m on this, while(in theory) they were allowed to communicate with their parents, any strongly expressed longing to see them or affection for them would see the letter binned.
Such is the Orwellian tyranny that resulted from an understandable revulsion to the murder of eight-year-old Maria Colwell. As is too often the case(cf. the Dunblane shootings and the outcry for civilian pistol owners to be disarmed) all that was needed was for the existing procedures to be followed.
UKIPers are akin to US Tea Partiers, and thusly demonized as racists and xenophobes by the Left which cannot abide Classically Liberal Christian reactionaries, whose societies they wish to fundamentally transform.
As an American unfamiliar with the UKIP, I’ll only offer that alleged racism is perhaps the most common kneejerk response here now when the Left is confronted by opposition to statism. At first I thought, surely thoughtful Americans must realize my fellow Tea Party supporters and I are concerned about the size, the reach and, consequently, the enormous cost of government—until I realized that we were targeting the heart of the Left’s beliefs. I’ve since learned that, when the flak is heaviest, you’re over the target.
Leftist fabrications; the latest reports indicate the kids are white, from Poland.
It’s not too big of a step from this sort of thing to being visited by child protective services after the government’s facial recognition technology detects that you were among the attendees at a Tea Party rally.
Or maybe Christians who homeschool their children could be denied such right because after all the child might turn out to be gay, and being raised by “homophobes” would be bad for them.
Or they could take the back door to eliminating the second amendment by using some health agency to declare that guns in the home are “dangerous” to children and from there moving to “protect” the children in such homes.
If you don’t think stuff like the above can happen here, then look at the case of Barry Cooper. He is a former DEA agent turned drug activist who often speaks out against government authority and is very unpopular in the local law enforcement structure. One of his children was taken away by child protective services because according to them he was teaching the child to “fear authority”. Apparently their idea of ameliorating that fear was to send armed men in the middle of the night to drag him away from his parents. Cooper eventually got the child back, but they continue to be harassed by child protective services to this day as far as I know, without there ever having been any evidence of abuse.
Your piece has touched a nerve, Mr. McNally.
A fellow American neighbor, who was unable to have children of her own for physical reasons, wanted to adopt. As a single woman she consistently lost out to couples until, through sheer persistence on her part, she eventually achieved her goal.
She described to me the match parties, as they were called, during which children in foster care would be introduced to prospective adoptive parents. Children would be clinging to her clothing, begging to go home with her. It was heartbreaking for my friend, realizing that she couldn’t take all of these needy foster children. Why anyone would reject a loving family for such children baffles me and, frankly, enfuriates me.