Labour’s low rent Enoch Powell

In 1964 Conservative candidate Peter Griffiths had the campaign slogan ‘If You Want A Ni**er For A Neighbour, Vote Labour.” In 2010 Liam Byrne, Labour MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Chief Secretary to the Treasury brought it up to date. His version can be paraphrased as “if you want a scrounging illegal immigrant for…

Liam

May 10, 2010

1–2 minutes

In 1964 Conservative candidate Peter Griffiths had the campaign slogan ‘If You Want A Ni**er For A Neighbour, Vote Labour.”

In 2010 Liam Byrne, Labour MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Chief Secretary to the Treasury brought it up to Liam Byrne MP by linksUK. date. His version can be paraphrased as “if you want a scrounging illegal immigrant for a neighbour vote Liberal Democrat”.

The images show one of his campaign leaflets and “vile” does not even begin to describe it.

Entitled “Immigration Update” you would be hard pushed to distinguish it from something the BNP pushed through your letter box. Among his policy wheezes Byrne proposes:

A £5000 fine if a sponsor doesn’t make sure their family member goes home.
Compulsory ID cards for all foreign nationals.
“Hitting dodgy businesses hard if they undercut British wages and employ illegal workers”.
Denying access to benefits – especially housing – (his emphasis) to people who don’t speak English.
Raising the price of visas to deter overseas visitors.

When Nick Griffin says that the BNP has shaped the discussion of the other parties on immigration he’s only telling half the story. People like Byrne are thieving their rhetoric, their approach and legitimising their poison. Don’t take my word for it. Have a look at the leaflet.

7 responses to “Labour’s low rent Enoch Powell”

ID

May 11, 2010 at 8:37 am

Indeed. All the more reason why it was correct to withhold support from scum like these. It actually chimes in with Harriet Harman’s press conference with Alan Johnson, where they lambasted the Tories for softness on crime and immigration in opposing the virtually indefinite retention of DNA profiles of those picked up by the police but not charged and/or acquitted. Which happens to massively and disproportionately affect ethnic minorities. When she tried to defend this at a meeting of ‘Operation Black Vote’ during the election campaign, she was shouted down.

Those who advocated votes to openly racist New Labour MP’s were not upholding the class independence of the working class, but touting for open reactionaries.

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Nick

May 11, 2010 at 3:31 pm

I thought our Labour candidate was bad when she shipped a last-minute flyer warning me that the Lib Dems were proposing an amnesty for illegal immigrants. In fact that was a sad blow, because prior to that – on the day before the election – she’d shown no unpleasant tendencies. I was still weighing her excellent backbench work against my distaste for many Labour initiatives, and trying to work out how best to vote. But after that, problem solved, it was Lib Dem for me. And then of course the Tory got in.

But yeah, this toad is considerably worse, congratulations.

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TLC

May 11, 2010 at 6:17 pm

“it was Lib Dem for me. And then of course the Tory got in.”

Sounds just like the rest of the country!!

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andy newman

May 12, 2010 at 12:42 am

I thought our Labour candidate was bad when she shipped a last-minute flyer warning me that the Lib Dems were proposing an amnesty for illegal immigrants

That was a nationally produced leaflet, blame the mandelson team for it, not your local MP.

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andy newman

May 12, 2010 at 12:44 am

“after that, problem solved, it was Lib Dem for me”

So you voted for the party that had selected absolutley zero BME candidates in winneable seats, and where they were fighting a black Tory candidate in Chippenham played the old “vote for the LOCAL candidate” wheeze.

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andy newman

May 12, 2010 at 12:47 am

Liam Bryne is of course a quite vile racist, and this type of campaigning is not only vile, but it doesn’t even bloody work.

What it reveals is not only racism, but also contempt for working class voters, who are assumed to be swayed by such Alf garmett bigotry.

It does seem that Birmingham Labour Party has more than its deserved quota of utter shits in it.

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Byrne(t) Out « Spirit Leveller

May 31, 2010 at 11:32 am

[…] Byrne might be right to assert that ”frustrat[ions] with welfare reform and immigration” were a frequent reoccurrence in ‘doorstep conversations’ during the election campaign, but to suggest that these concerns are anything other than shorthand for New Labour’s failure to create jobs, housing and a variety of other key services at anything like the required rate, is intellectual dishonesty on a grand scale. However, when you’ve spent a career protecting the interests of those forces that benefit from our unjustifiable economic infrastructure and are insufficient equiped to oppose them, it’s much easier to ‘get tough’ of the folk devils of immigrants and the unemployed; a practice that Mr Byrne has excelled in. […]

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