An honorable knighthood for a leftist thug

(Note: This thread has expanded into a consideration of the role of the Irish as the electoral base of the Labor Party.)

Howard Sutherland writes:

In a move that can only be a calculated insult to Britons—among whom he is widely despised—failed Prime Minister Gordon Brown has just wangled a knighthood for that long-standing friend of Great Britain and man of probity: Ted Kennedy!

The award, which Brown announced while addressing a joint session of the U.S. Congress, is supposed to be for the Chappaquiddick Submariner’s “services to the British-American relationship and to Northern Ireland.” Showing that not everyone in the Dead Island is dead yet, many MPs (mostly Tories) are venting their outrage, and the Daily Mail’s own poll registers 88% disapproval of Brown’s gesture. In truth, Brown was probably looking for a way to regain the spotlight after his visit with America’s Obamassiah was downplayed by the White House.

Teddy Kennedy has always been among the noisiest and most notorious IRA supporters in America, and a relentless critic of Great Britain—he is Exhibit A that Irish resentment of the English does not fade when the Irish leave the old sod. To give such a man a British knighthood (even leaving aside his low character) is to spit in the eye of all patriotic Englishmen, Scotsmen and Welshmen and shows utter disdain for Northern Irishmen who are loyal to the Crown. But, Brown, I’m sure has nothing but contempt for such people. No doubt he would rather visit Lord Ahmed in prison than consort with any of them.

LA replies:

If you thought of Dead Leftism, with everything those words imply, incarnate as a human being, you would have Brown. He’s so grotesque in so many ways I don’t like thinking about him.

But as for the honorary knighthood for Kennedy, how could that be worse than the knighthood Blair conferred in 2005 (symbolically just before the July 2005 terrorist attack) to Iqbal Sacranie, then the head of the British Muslim Council and an open enemy of Britain and of liberty, who among other things had backed a law that he himself said would make it a crime to criticize Islam? See this and this. The state of Great Britain is a grotesque monster, devoted to its own perversion and destruction, and led by zombies. Brown strikes me as, quite literally, a zombie. But people don’t see it. They don’t like his policies. But they don’t see that he’s a zombie.

VFR is the “Sixth Sense” website. I see dead people.

March 5

Karen writes from England:

Howard missed the point that Gordon Brown (like most of the Labour MPs) is maintained in power by the Irish immigrant vote in Britain. The actions of the Labour party have thus been to pander to this immigrant community by selling out to the IRA in Northern Ireland, attempting to revoke the Act of Settlement and now knighting an IRA supporter. Entirely predictable. The Labour party is largely an Irish immigrant party which harbours an intense hatred and hostility to Britain.

LA replies:

Karen, you’re the only person who brings out these insights. It’s remarkable to think that the leftward, self-hating course of Britain since the 1960s has been to a significant degree driven by immigration, not the immigration of Third-Worlders, but of white people from the British Isles.

I wonder if this angle on modern British politics has ever been discussed in any articles or books. I know that other British readers strongly object to Karen’s thesis or feel it’s overblown. But everyone knows that many Irish have an animus against Britain, and, given the large Irish immigration over the last century, that has to have had a large effect within Britain.

LA writes:

Below is another comment from Karen. I take no position on Karen’s view on the influence of the Irish in the development of British leftism and British self-alienation, because I have never seen it discussed elsewhere and don’t know enough to have an opinion on it. Perhaps her view is wildly excessive and prejudicial against the Irish, perhaps there is an important measure of truth in it, but in the absence of knowledge that Karen’s ideas are false, I find them sufficiently interesting that they merit being posted. However, her comparison of the Irish to Muslims is overwrought and weakens her case.

Karen replies:

This is the tragedy of Britain. The leftist agenda has some ethnic Brits in its ranks but their supporters are largely Irish Catholic immigrants. This fifth column has dragged Britain into the costly and lengthy civil war in Northern Ireland, destroyed the businesses and livelihoods of many British people in Northern Ireland and massively expanded the welfare state. The Irish were the most dangerous immigrants because they were more organised than the blacks and Asians and less noticeably distinct. However this was all predicted 100 years ago when some writers were warning people of the dangers which the Irish posed to Britain, socially, culturally and economically. People were writing about the Irish as you are writing about Muslims today and the warnings went largely unheeded by the political class. I will look out some of these articles if I have time. Their warnings have come true, as yours will too.

“White people from the British Isles.” The Irish may look like the British but they have more in common with southern Europeans temperamentally. They are less intelligent, energetic and creative than the Italians and probably even worse at managing their own social and economic development. Italy at least is industrialized. The Italians are more adaptable and easily assimilated into Britain and the USA than are the Irish (and less politically troublesome).

Karen writes:

Here is a good article written by historian Andrew Roberts about Ted Kennedy’s knighthood. It is clear that he is being rewarded for his support of the IRA and Irish republicanism. This is a political move to shore up Labour’s Irish vote.

Howard Sutherland writes:

I confess I did not think about what Karen points out in the thread about Gordon Brown’s giving a knighthood to the execrable Ted Kennedy. Shame on me. I’m well aware of it, having lived in England and worked with Irish lawyers (mostly harpyish women) in London. Karen is exactly right.

I think I have commented before at VFR about the reflexive Leftism of today’s Irishmen (and especially women—Mary Robinson, anyone?) and their exaggerated feelings—especially among those who live in London—of moral superiority over the English, as well as about how Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow are largely Irish cities, due to immigration of a century and more ago. Later there was also a steady trickle of illegal immigration from the Irish Republic to the United Kingdom throughout the 20th century, as there is to this day in the United States. But the European Union “solved” that problem by mandating open borders within the EU. For example, the Fab Four, products of Liverpool in the 1960s, probably don’t have a drop of English blood among them, and the members of Oasis, products of Manchester in the 1990s, probably don’t either. I wouldn’t know about Oasis, as I do my best to ignore them. And, of course, since British monarchs and Oliver Cromwell over the years did such a thorough job of eliminating Catholicism among the English and Scots, the Roman Catholic hierarchies in Britain are now overwhelmingly Irish, and probably not coincidentally liberal to the point of being in almost open revolt against the current Pope. Los Angeles’s Cardinal Mahony would not register as particularly liberal on the “English” bishops’ ideological scale.

At the turn of the 20th century, British shipyards were flourishing and many Irishmen came to work in them. As what is now the Irish Republic was then part of the United Kingdom, there was no stopping them, although by and large the English and Scots weren’t overly thrilled to have them—expect for shipyard owners, who were happy to have the cheap white coolies. (Except for the white part, is any of this starting to sound familiar?) Another shipbuilding center was Belfast, and many of the Catholic Northern Irishmen whom Ted Kennedy so champions were themselves immigrants from the southern counties to Ulster, analogous to their countrymen who went to England and Scotland.

These Irish imports were doubly alien in Great Britain, ethnically and religiously distinct from the natives, and Karen is quite right to point out how important their votes have been to the Labour Party, which used to be very closely linked to the Roman Catholic Church as well. Labour’s pro-abortion dogmatism has sundered that alliance somewhat, but has had no effect on voting patterns.

When you look at the two parties, the similarities between the Labour Party and the Chappaquiddick Submariner’s Democrats (except for the Democrats’ abandoned tradition of Southern white populism) are quite close. Both are Socialist parties committed to an all-controlling central government, so both legislate to create lots of welfare clients who will be reliable votes for them. Both built a power base among white immigrants in the early 20th century; more recently, both have relentlessly and successfully advocated mass immigration of non-whites at the expense of the natives; both are the parties of ethnic minorities (Labour scores far higher among the Scots, Welsh and—of course—Irish than among the English, and gets the votes of almost all non-whites); both have largely Jewish brain trusts and donor bases and, despite their Socialism, are heavily supported by the City of London and Wall Street, respectively; and each is the party of both the lawyers and the cultural “elite.” Last but not least, both have benefited enormously from having opposition parties that, with rare exceptions, have studiously avoided opposing their leftward march in any way that matters, and more often than not have been fellow-travellers.

As a footnote, since the late 19th century, in Scotland tensions between Protestant Scotsmen and Unionist Ulstermen, on the one hand, and Catholic Irishmen, on the other, have led to great rivalries on the football pitch (soccer field, that is). Glasgow has two major football clubs, Rangers and Celtic, who dominate Scottish football and have a fierce rivalry. In Edinburgh, there are two majors as well, Hearts of Midlothian and Hibernian. In Edinburgh, the Protestant v. Catholic and Scottish v. Irish aspects have largely faded. Not so in bigger, more industrial Glasgow. You may remember that in 1981 a young IRA terrorist, Bobby Sands, starved himself to death in Maze Prison. For years afterwards, Rangers fans would chant the following to Celtic supporters at football matches, to the tune of “She’ll be Coming ‘Round the Mountain”:

Do you want a chicken dinner, Bobby Sands?
Do you want a chicken dinner, Bobby Sands?
Do you want a chicken dinner, you filthy Fenian f——er,
Do you want a chicken dinner, Bobby Sands?

Charming, no doubt, and another example of the civility that results from multiculturalism—even among people as closely related as the Scots and the Irish! Of course, once Ted Kennedy, Gordon Brown and their ilk have succeeded in replacing such retrograde races as the Scottish and Irish with more peace-loving peoples—like Pakistani and Afghan Moslems, say, or MS-13 mestizos—no doubt all these frictions will vanish. HRS

LA replies:

I think we’ve discussed this before, but the Beatles don’t seem Irish at all. They don’t fit any of the Irish physical types. To me they seem completely English.

Ron K. writes:

You wrote, “I think we’ve discussed this before, but the Beatles don’t seem Irish at all. They don’t fit any of the Irish physical types. To me they seem completely English.”

I’ve looked into this, as music ethnology, of the “incorrect” kind, is an avocation.

Ringo is the only Beatle who is “completely English.”

John’s father was Irish and his mother English and Welsh.

George was either 1/2 or 3/4 English, the rest Irish. Paul is the opposite.

I think in every case, their Irish forebears were in Liverpool, or somewhere in Britain, by 1900.

Lennon was like Obama (and many others) in taking after his absent father’s people rather than his beloved mother’s. Also, among the eight Beatle wives, the only Irish blood I’ve found is in Ringo’s second, Barbara Bach, whose mother was an Irish New Yorker. (That doesn’t rule out other Irish mothers, though.) This is in stark contrast to the great American Jewish songwriters, many of whom had a predilection for Irish Catholic girls, e.g., Berlin, Loesser, Dubin.

Actually, a lot of “English” rock is Irish in origin. Sometimes this is benign—eg, Peter Noone, Freddy Garrity, Raymond “Gilbert” O’Sullivan. But then there’s Johnny Rotten. And Boy George. (He comes from a line of Irish boxers, and could have been one himself, at 6’ plus.)

But don’t forget the Greeks. George Michael (as in “Sunday in the park with … “!) and Yusuf Islam, aka Cat Stevens, aka Steven Georgiou. Or Amy Winehouse, who aims to be the Jewish Janis Joplin, right down to the OD.

LA replies:

“Ringo is the only Beatle who is ‘completely English.’”

Yes, he’s got that big English shnozzola. I discussed last year how large, protruding noses are very common among the English, and make for a certain “fit” between the English and the Jews.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 05, 2009 12:33 AM | Send