Hastilow’s constituents resist Tory ruling, stand by him

As of last week, Tory parliamentary candidate Nigel Hastilow refused to accept Tory party chairman Caroline Spelman’s demands that he apologize for his statement that “Enoch was right” about immigration and that he agree to submit all his future articles in advance to the Tory party for their ok. As a result of his refusal he had to resign from his candidacy. I praised Hastilow for standing on principle and not doing a Lawrence Summers or a James Watson. Now there’s a further heartening development. According to the Daily Mail, the Conservative Association in Hastilow’s constituency of Halesowen and Rowley Regis refuse to accept his resignation and are demanding “crisis talks” with the Conservative Party Board, the party’s decision-making body.

Officials [of the Tory party] have been lobbying the local association in a desperate bid to limit the bad publicity, asking them to move on and choose another candidate.

But local members remain furious at the way Hastilow was treated by the party HQ and refused to accept his resignation, saying his views on immigration have widespread support.

Whoo-ee! We don’t know what will happen next, but, for the moment, let us imagine that the equivalent of these events had happened in the case of Larry Summers:

Summers is furiously attacked by left-wingers and feminists on the Harvard faculty for saying in a speech that it’s a reasonable possibility, deserving of consideration, that the reason there are far fewer female scientists than male scientists is that women are naturally less capable than men at the highest reaches of math and science. Summers, instead of apologizing for what he said and offering $50 million for a new diversity program (which is Summers did in reality), insists that his statement was perfectly reasonable. The Harvard Board of Governors thereupon tells Summers that he must either retract his statement or step down as president of Harvard. Summers refuses to retract his statement, and resigns. At that moment, a large contingent of the Harvard faculty announce that they refuse to accept Summer’s resignation and demand a conference with the Board of Governors. They say that they are furious at the way Summers has been treated and that his views on sex differences in science and math abilities have widespread support.

A dream? But something very like it is happening at this moment in the Halesowen and Rowley Regis constituency. The rule of left-liberalism can be resisted.

(Previous postings on Hastilow are here, here, and here.)

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 13, 2007 12:17 PM | Send