Britain bloodies
the Socialist snou

COR, WOT a laugh. There I was in the U.K., taking a
lock at the election and being persuaded by media pundits
and polls that John Major didn’t stand a chance.

Then J wake up here in West
Van on Friday morning after fly-
ing home to discover it was the
socialists who didn’t stand a
chance.

Instead of allowing myself to be
brainwashed by polls — which in
the 1987 British election were dead
on — I should have taken more
notice of the slogan trailed in the
sky when Neil Kinnock was cam-
paigning in Liverpool.

It read: ‘‘Get stuffed, boyo!’’

It was that kind of fight. Far
more exciting than anything we’ve
seen here recently.

Towards the end, when it look-
ed as if nice Mr. Major was being
too nice for his own good, he ig-
nored his advisers and took to the
streets in the old way. Complete
with soapbox.

I mean that literally, He dragg-
ed the thing out of his campaign
bus and harangued the crowds
with never a care about the IRA,
which last year came close to
murdering him in Whitehall. He
must have given his security men
diarrhea.

As it was, he had to wipe a few
left-wing eggs off his face. But his
acceptability to ordinary folk was
one of the things that helped to
turn the tide.

A dozen major factors con-
tributed to the result, of course,
including the prospect of higher
taxes and inflation, the socialists
having plugged the free lunch bit
to the maximum.

In full-page ads they promised
to spend a billion more pounds on
the national health service and
another billion to ‘‘rebuild the
economy” — just as if they could
fix things by spending money the
country doesn’t have, like Ottawa.

They were soft on European
Union and adored the prospect of
socialist measures being enacted
through Brussels ——- at a time
when most people in Britain are
already appalled at what is going
on.

To quote an extreme example:
there are European objections to
the use of the term ‘‘native
English oak,’’ that being thought
to be insultingly patriotic.

And just down the road from
where we were staying a small
bridge was being rebuilt because it
didn’t meet European standards.

Across the country, hundreds of
other small bridges are being
rebuilt. At enormous cost.

As one chap toid me: “I was in
favor of the Common Market, but
1 thought it was a trade deal. I

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Doug
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didn’t expect to be told how to
shave in the morning.”’

In a cowardly grasping for
votes, the socialists also promised
a Meech Lake deal for Scotland.
Scottish independence, sort of
thing, within the British union.

Major said it would mean the
breakup of the country, and it oc-
curred to me that we should get
him to give a lesson or two to our
man,

Always in the background lurk-
ed the spectre of the unions going
hog-wild again as they did until
Maggie Thatcher stopped them. In
the '70s it was strike after ruinous
strike.

Another thing. The British are
fed up with immigration. There,
as here, the world has been
dumped on them whether they like
it or not, ard the politicians go in
fear of the “*R*’ word.

Still, in the last Parliament the
Tories had proposed via the
Asylum Bil] to control the influx
of bogus refugess.

The egregious Roy Hatterslzy,

who would have been deputy
prime minister if Labor had won,
opposed the Bill, he having a large
Pakistani constituency.

And when the election began,
Major waffled. With an eye on
the immigrant vote, which is 5%
of the total, he said he didn’t
want race to be an issue.

Sir Nicholas Fairburn, an MP
and former Scottish solicitor gen-
eral, ignored that injunction. If
Labor got in, he said, Britain
“‘would be swamped by im-
migrants of every color and on
every excuse.”’

True. But Major distanced
himself from the maverick. And
Willie Whitelaw, deputy premier
under Thatcher, cancelled a cam-
paign trip in which he was to have
spoken in Fairburn’s support.

With just two days to go before
the election and with the parties
neck and neck in the polls, the
Tories did a flip-flop.

Home Secretary Kenneth Baker
said that unless there were strict
immigration controls, race riots
could erupt, just as they have in
Europe. And Major backed him
up.

That was what pushed the
Tories over the top. But they
didn’t get anywhere in
Cheltenham. There, Tory head-
quarters had parachuted a black
in, trying to prove that they too
loved everyone.

In that traditional Tory seat,
the ebony gent went down the
dsain.

The third party, the Liberal
Democrats, are led by a sane-
looking lunatic called Paddy
Ashdown, whose response to the
immigration argument was that
Britain should {et in 4.5 million
Hong Kong Chinese. Goodbye,
Paddy!

The socialists got a bloody nose
in Britain. What a pity they didn't
get one in B.C.

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Wednesday, Aprii 15, 1992 - North Shore News - ©

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