Culture: the common enemy

By Richard North - December 15, 2022

Not even a month ago, I was writing belatedly about Awaab Ishak, the child who died of a respiratory disease, complicated by damp conditions in the Rochdale tower block flat where he lived, where his parents, of Sudanese extraction, had allowed toxic black mould to flourish.

One of the significant issues to emerge from this case was the determination of Awaab’s father and mother to assert that they had been treated poorly “because we are not from the country and are less aware of how the systems in the UK work”.

My response at the time – from direct experience – was that social housing managers notoriously treat most of their tenants badly, suggesting therefore that there was nothing special about the treatment of the Ishak family. Then, tangentially, I referred to the conditions of military married quarters, which have been a long-running stain on the record of the MoD, which cannot even seem to house its personnel and their families properly.

The issue of poor standards arose in respect of barracks back in 2018 when troops were complaining that the conditions in which they had been forced to live were worse than they had experienced in frontline accommodation in Afghanistan.

More recently, the issue of married quarters standards emerged in October last year, when the Mail headlined a story on “Britain’s heroes forced to live in squalor”, telling of how young Army families were given houses riddled with mould and urine and given advice on dealing with legionnaires disease, asbestos and damp.

This was on the back of a National Audit Office report on the disastrous property sales initiated by the Major administration in 1996, estimated to have cost the taxpayer some £4.2 billion.

By 2021, it was being reported that there were £1.5billion worth of urgent repairs the MoD needed to finish within their “substandard accommodation”, with a third of the 80,000 servicemen and women living in MoD subsidised accommodation reported as living in “poorer grade” conditions.

Now, we’re back again with the BBC currently reporting the complaints of “dozens of military personnel and their families”, who say they’re having to live in damp, mould-infested housing without heating.

It does make you wonder how there can be any confidence in the military effectively to fight battles when it can’t even seem to look after the accommodation needs of its own personnel, but then the conduct of the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan weren’t anything to write home about. One could argue that this is all part of the continuum of incompetence that plagues the MoD as an organisation.

But the one thing about which we can be reasonably confident is that this particular area of dereliction is not about race. The MoD and its agents treat everyone like shit (except when it comes to their own bonuses), adopting a policy of equal misery, irrespective of race, colour or creed.

It seems to me, therefore, to exploit any racial aspects of such issues is neither helpful nor productive, not least because it can engender resentment in those parts of the community who are not able play the “race card” in struggles to achieve relief from their miseries.

Much the same applies to what, in some quarters, seems to be an exaggerated concern for immigrants, inviting invidious comparisons with the treatment of the dinghy people – given free board and lodging on arrival while our own homeless go begging.

But, as the news of the fourth death of the boys who fell through the ice in Solihull is reported, by coincidence we are being regaled by reports of the death of four dinghy people after their inflatable craft started sinking in the early hours of this morning.

Although less dramatic than the November 2021 incident, if only because of the timely intervention of a fishing boat which plucked 31 people from the freezing waters.

From any rational stance, the decision of these people to trust themselves to a frail dinghy, making a passage in the dark on one of the coldest nights in the year (some of them clad only in jeans and teeshirts) might strike one as foolhardy. That some of the illegal migrants had also brought children with them is just plain irresponsible, in any language.

Within hours of the incident, though, human rights groups were blaming the government’s “hostile” refugee policies for the deaths. In a statement recorded by the Guardian, the charity Refugee Action said the deaths were “predictable and avoidable”, and “caused by hostile government policies”.

Chief executive Tim Naor Hilton said: “This is heartbreaking and our thoughts go out to the loved ones of people who have died and to refugees everywhere for whom this will be re-traumatising”. Let’s be clear, he added. “today’s tragedy and those on previous days are predictable and inevitable, and caused by hostile government policies – such as those announced yesterday by the prime minister – which are designed to keep people out, and not keep people safe”.

Clearly, I must move in the wrong circles. Of the many people with whom I discussed this issue yesterday, all of them expressed the view that these migrants – who paid £5,000 each to criminal gangs for their passages – must take some responsibility for exposing themselves to extreme danger, as well as putting at risk those forced to rescue them.

The Guardian, of course, can’t help itself, publishing in today’s edition an editorial enunciating the paper’s view on the deaths: “desperate people deserve better”, it says.

Some might think that desperate British taxpayers, struggling to pay energy bills to stave off the freeze, might also deserve better than to be saddled with the £2.5 billion budgeted to deal with these migrants.

However, in a cruel irony, since the expenditure is drawn from the foreign aid budget, these illegal queue-jumpers are actually sucking money out of the system which might otherwise be used to relieve the suffering of those genuinely in need.

One way or another, the divisive nature of the response does not seem calculated to evoke sympathy from the bulk of the British people who have had their patience and tolerance sorely tried, not least by the unrestrained advocacy of tax-funded NGOs.

Much the same might be said of the recent heroine of the equality industry, the self-styled Ngozi Fulani who ambushed Susan Hussey at a recent Buckingham Palace bash.

Now, from extensive research published on Twitter, it seems that Fulani’s “Sistah Space” charity is a very dubious enterprise indeed, inviting media attention as details start to emerge.

But what should not go unremarked is the name that the former Marlene Headley has chosen for herself, to proclaim her African heritage. The issue here is that Marlene’s chosen forename is Nigerian in origin, stemming from the southern Igbo tribal group. On the other hand, Fulani – also of Nigerian origin – is a tribal name, the Fulani tribe found primarily in the northern region of Nigeria.

Significantly, the tribe has merged with the Hausa to form the Hausa Fulani people who in 1966 were responsible for the Igbo massacres which led to the secession of the eastern Nigerian region and the declaration of the Republic of Biafra, which ultimately led to the Nigeria-Biafra war.

For an African to combine the Igbo forename with the Fulani surname, therefore, is according to what an old Africa hand told me, akin to a Jew calling themselves Moshe Hitler. No wonder Susan Hussey was so confused and asked Marlene where she was really from.

There is certainly enough in this race grifter’s background to ensure that she has done her “sistahs” no favours at all, but she perhaps also serves to illustrate that partisan advocacy – or unwarranted solidarity – on the perceived injustices to one or other minority group often does more harm than good. When it comes down to it, we are all part of one great majority, dumped upon by our masters who are the common enemy.