Barrie Davis: There Will Always be an England

So sang Vera Lynn and millions died making it happen. Today, however, it seems unlikely. Whereas the few who flew the Spitfires and Hurricanes shot down young German men in small planes over the channel, today the British watch young Muslim men packed in small boats land unchallenged on England’s beaches. 

What lesson, if any, is there in this for New Zealand?

David Farrar has recently said that the UK is one of the most tolerant countries there is. To support that he points out that many of the country’s leaders – including the Prime Minister, the Scottish and Welsh First Ministers and the Mayor of London – are men of colour, two of them Pakistani Muslims. The UK is so tolerant, in fact, that they are allowing so-called ‘grooming gangs’, comprising mostly Pakistani Muslim men, to rape thousands of their children over decades, for fear of being deemed intolerant. What relationship, if any, is there between the UK leadership and the grooming gangs?

Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was the founder of the rightist English Defence League (EDL), but left when he disagreed with the direction the EDL was taking. He is known for exposing grooming gangs and was jailed in 2018 for contempt of court after reporting on the Huddersfield grooming gang during their trial. Robinson was convicted and jailed the same day: the grooming gang trials were ongoing in 2020. Robinson says (here), “What has happened to me for having this opinion and speaking out as I do, it’s destroyed my life, it’s destroyed my wife’s life, it’s destroyed my mother’s life. I live with constant death threats … I have to wear a bullet proof vest. People want to murder me, massacre me …”

Following the October 2018 Huddersfield trial, Home Secretary Sir Sajid Javid (Pakistani Muslim) initiated an investigation into the ethnic origin of sexual grooming gangs in July 2018. Once the review was done and written up, The Independent reported, 22 February 2020, “Grooming gang review kept secret as Home Office claims releasing findings ‘not in public interest’.”

The problem of grooming gangs had been reported in “Revealed: conspiracy of silence on UK sex gangs” by Andrew Norfolk in The Times, 5 January 2011 (here) and 17 court prosecutions since 1997 were identified (here). Norfolk’s report says most of the victims were white vulnerable girls aged 11 to 16 and most of the convicted offenders were of Pakistani Muslim heritage: 56 people were found guilty of crimes including rape, child abduction, indecent assault and sex with a child; 3 were white, 53 were Asian of whom 50 were Muslim, and a majority were members of the British Pakistani community. Several police sources told The Times that those convicted represented only a small proportion of what one detective described as a “tidal wave” of offending. A detective said there was a fear among police and child protection workers of being branded racist. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Edwards said: “… everyone’s been too scared to address the ethnicity factor.”

When Brenton Tarrant killed 51 Muslims at Christchurch on the Ides of March 2019, he had “for Rotherham” written on his ammunition (here). Sammy Woodhouse spoke out to condemn the attack, saying that it was “not done in our name.” Woodhouse had been raped aged 15 by Arshid Hussain, aka ‘Mad Ash’, leader of the men convicted in the Rotherham child sexual exploitation (CSE) case. Woodhouse told her story to Andrew Norfolk (The Times, 23 August 2013, here) which in turn led to the Alexis Jay enquiry.

The seminal report by Professor Alexis Jay published in August 2014 says at least 1,400 British children were raped, trafficked and groomed by organized groups of Muslims in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013.

Also in 2013 the Mirror claimed that there were “child sex slave gangs in every city in Britain” (here), after seven Pakistani Muslim men were convicted of rape, child prostitution and trafficking of six girls aged between 11 and 15 in Oxford (here). I have read newspaper reports of cases in 32 cities and major trials in 16 cities.

The Alexis Jay report referenced two earlier reports dated 2003 and 2006 by Dr Angie Heal for South Yorkshire Police which identified the CSE in Rotherham. Heal provided police with the names of suspected offenders in 2003 but she said nothing was done with the information. She provided 6 monthly updates and her 2006 report claimed abuse was continuing across South Yorkshire, particularly in Sheffield and Rotherham. A Freedom of Information request for the Heal reports, 12 September 2014, was initially refused by Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council on advice from South Yorkshire Police, but they were eventually made public in 2015 (here).

A further review by Louise Casey, published 2015 (here), led to the mass resignation of the Rotherham council’s ruling Labour cabinet and the communities secretary ordered government-appointed commissioners to take over the running of the council. Andrew Norfolk makes a case for how journalism matters when he tells how the story unfolded (here). The Casey report further says, “As recent trials and serious case reviews on CSE elsewhere confirm, Rotherham is not alone in having significant failings in how this complex issue is dealt with; children have also been being badly let down by services elsewhere.” Casey also says, “that local government and the police should not fear seeking out and shining a light on sexual exploitation for fear they may be held to account for what they find.”

Sammy Woodhouse complained in 2017 (here) after Naz Shah, Pakistani Muslim Labour MP for Bradford West, Liked and retweeted a post which read “Those abused girls in Rotherham and elsewhere just need to shut their mouths. For the good of diversity.” A few weeks earlier Naz Shah labelled Labour MP Sarah Champion “irresponsible” after Champion wrote in The Sun: “Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls.” Naz Shah had been suspended from Labour in 2016 for three months after writing on Facebook, a ‘solution’ to the Middle East conflict is to ‘relocate Israel into the United States’.

Home Secretary Theresa May in 2014 blamed the failure of the authorities in Rotherham on “institutionalised political correctness” (here). The Police and the councils had known of the child sexual exploitation by Pakistani Muslim men for decades and in 2020 a Chief Inspector reportedly claimed it had been “going on” for 30 years, saying “With it being Asians, we can’t afford for this to be coming out.” (here)

So the grooming gangs continue to operate. In 2023 Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced (here) a new Grooming Gangs Taskforce led by the police and supported by the National Crime Agency (NCA).The NCA had dealt with the grooming gangs in Rotherham following the 2015 Louise Casey review.

Dame Sara Khan was appointed by the Prime Minister in March 2021 as the government’s Independent Adviser for Social Cohesion and Resilience. Khan commissioned research and published a Review “Threats to Social Cohesion and Democratic Resilience,” 25 March 2024, regarding the effect of Islam in Britain. Khan says in her Review Summary, “There is a growing and dangerous climate of threatening and intimidatory harassment leading to serious censorship – what I have termed freedom-restricting harassment”. She gives the following statistics for FRH from her research:

85% of the public believe FRH currently occurs in the UK

60% believe the problem is worse than five years ago

69% feel that people have to censor the way they live their professional or personal lives due to FRH.

27% say they have experienced FRH; of those:

20% have come off social media

17% increased security measures

15% changed jobs

13% moved house

The only reference Khan makes to grooming gangs, however, is a Case Study (p. 104) of a false accusation made on Facebook in 2020 by 22-year-old Eleanor Williams, saying that she had been groomed, trafficked and beaten since she was 12.

Khan wrote:

“Following Williams’s Facebook post, conspiracies were spread about grooming gangs on social media”.

“Tommy Robinson arrived in the town to ‘investigate’ the case and led a convoy of vehicles in ‘solidarity’ with the ‘victims of grooming’ and against the Police, drumming up local discontent.”

While Khan discounted accounts of CSE by grooming gangs as conspiracy theories, she nevertheless acknowledged that CSE was known to occur:

“While Eleanor Williams was found to have perverted the course of justice and was sentenced in March 2023 [to imprisonment], the existence of some form of sex trafficking in the area has been acknowledged, not least by the judge for Williams trial. At the time of Williams’ post, there were widespread concerns from locals that sexual exploitation and/or trafficking existed in the local area …”

One of the reasons given by councillors in the Alexis Jay report for not disclosing CSE in Rotherham was concern that the ethnic element could damage ‘community cohesion’ (pp. 93, 101). Khan, however, implied that conspiracy theories at the time of Williams’ Facebook post were at least a significant factor to the breakdown in social cohesion:

“When Eleanor Williams was found guilty, we asked the local council if they had used the opportunity to engage and challenge conspiracy theories, in an attempt to help repair the breakdown in cohesion. The council told us they did not and recognised it was a missed opportunity.”

Compared to thousands of actual cases in Telford, Blackpool, Rotherham, Huddersfield and elsewhere over two decades, one false claim in 2020 is irrelevant to social cohesion and does not by itself demonstrate a prevalence of conspiracy theories.

Yet in Khan’s view, “Tommy Robinson was able to effectively exploit the appetite for information and provide a divisive and anti-establishment narrative.” But it was appropriate to supply information which had been suppressed by the authorities, and the establishment should indeed be condemned for covering up child sexual exploitation by grooming gangs.

It is child sexual exploitation of indigenous British girls by Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs, as pointed out by Robinson, which is the threat to social cohesion. Khan ignored the obvious truth that men of one race systematically raping the children of another race foments interracial discord which divides the community.

So, the Pakistani grooming gangs and the denial of their activities are still evident today, at least two decades after they were first reported. Moreover, that is only a poignant example of the present situation in Britain.

Following a recent demonstration in London regarding Gaza, there was a piece in The Telegraph, “Islamists are bullying Britain into submission,” 23 February 2024, in which MP Suella Braverman (Indian Buddhist) wrote in part (here, the emphasis is mine):

They started with the Jews; there were stern words of disapproval from the top but things only got worse. The Islamist cranks and Left-wing extremists then took control of the streets; the police looked meekly on. They harassed teachers through the courts; our human rights and equalities laws were used against us. They threatened to kill an MP; he decided, justifiably, to leave public life. A respected peer, Lord Austin spoke out against terrorism and Islamism; he was suspended from a job he loves. They have hijacked a by-election in a deprived town in northern England. We see their influence in our judiciary, our legal profession and our universities…

The truth is that the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-Semites are in charge now. They have bullied the Labour Party, they have bullied our institutions, and now they have bullied our country into submission.

But what is our response? Our leaders bury their heads in the sand, preferring the illusion of a “successful multicultural society”, terrified of being called “racist”. But the law has not changed, mass extremism parades itself proudly, campuses remain dangerous places for Jews, and Labour is still rotten to the core…

Our values and freedoms are under attack in all walks of life…

What is happening to our great country? That one which was respectful, welcoming, and where speaking your mind did not mean losing your job, or your life? Where different faiths and races co-existed peacefully? I remember that country, but it’s not the Britain I see now…

We cannot accept defeat. We need to find our courage. But we can only do that with honesty and determination. … It has been labelled “Islamophobic” and “racist” because, in the main, it is set up to tackle the most dangerous terrorist ideology facing our country: Islamism…

It’s not Islamophobic to challenge Islamist fanatics; it’s a civic duty.

Braverman could perhaps be writing about Maori tribalism in New Zealand in a decade or two from now. Note that these politicians who are trying to fix the Muslim problems are people of colour; perhaps the indigenous white people are too afraid to speak up. The one Braverman mentions, Lord Austin, was suspended as the chair of a housing association for describing Hamas as “Islamist rapists and murderers”. Braverman was herself recently sacked as Home Secretary by Rishi Sunak for, amongst other things, proposing to deport illegal migrant men who cross the channel in small boats.

Referring to Brenton Tarrant, a 4 June 2022 article in the Dominion, “If the Christchurch terrorist wasn’t white, would he still have been able to plot in secret?” further asked, “What if he’d been Muslim?” Given what has happened in Britain as described above, yes, I think it is possible a Muslim terrorist could plot in secret here, under the cloak of political correctness.

New Zealand Example

In the UK the authorities have made every attempt to sweep a grievous harm under the mat, and so it has been here also in New Zealand. In The Forgotten Wars: Why the Musket Wars matter today, Ron Crosby (2020) tells of the intertribal Musket Wars from 1806 until 1845 and somewhat beyond. Accounts vary, but it is generally accepted that at least 20,000 Maoris were killed out of a total population of 100,000.

Ngapuhi had been the first tribe to obtain muskets after Hongi Hika returned from England via Sydney in 1821 with a large quantity of firearms, powder and shot which were used to overrun much of the North Island. Major permanent migrations occurred, displacing or subjugating the original occupying iwi, even eliminating Ngati Ira in the Wellington area. The casualties from the Musket Wars were far higher than the later Maori Wars. As a result, large areas were depopulated and left vacant (e.g., Auckland), or sparsely populated, or only intermittently occupied. Settlers and Crown purchase agents took the opportunity to obtain land.

In his “Treaty of Waitangi: An Explanation,” Sir Apirana Ngata says of the decades prior to the Treaty, “This was a time when the Maori tribes were fighting fiercely among themselves”:

“The Treaty found us in the throes of cannibalism: that was murder, a crime punishable by death, be the murderer rich or poor. That was the British law which became law for the Maori under the provisions of the second part of the above [third] article ‘and imparts to them all the rights and privileges of British subjects’.” …

“This article represents the greatest benefit bestowed upon the Maori people by Her Majesty the Queen.”

Ngata is saying that by accepting British law the Maoris were agreeing to stop Maori customary practices of slavery, cannibalism and infanticide. But Ngata’s “Explanation” has been deemed racist in New Zealand. Copies have been removed from Hutt City Council community hubs because “The HCC deemed the publication racist and not in line with the organisation's values”. Apirana Ngata was once held among the greatest of Maori leaders, but is now condemned as racist.

The most egregious and the least discussed of the intertribal excesses was the Maori genocide of the Morioris by slavery and cannibalism. From 1835, when the Ngati Mutunga and Ngati Tama tribes fled to the Chatham Islands, to around 1860 when they left, the Moriori population declined from around 2,000 to about 200.

In his 2021 book on Treaty settlements, Christopher Finlayson, erstwhile Minister of Treaty Negotiations, devotes 12 pages to Parihaka, where none died, but says nothing of the genocide of the Morioris.

However, regarding the agreement to settle historical Treaty of Waitangi claims of Moriori, 16 August 2017, Finlayson said in a Press Release: “In 1835 two iwi originally from Taranaki migrated to Rēkohu/the Chatham Islands and enslaved Moriori. Following the annexation of the islands to New Zealand in 1842, the Crown failed to take appropriate action to end the enslavement, despite Moriori pleas for relief.” The agreement includes a total value of financial and commercial redress of $18 million and outlines cultural redress including the transfer of certain Crown lands to Moriori. Finlayson also agreed to a co-management regime with Ngati Mutunga over Te Whanga Lagoon which dominates the geography of the Chatham Islands.

Finlayson does not mention Ngati Mutunga in relation to the Moriori genocide, but he does however point in his book to, “the settlement legislation for Ngati Mutunga, one of the Taranaki iwi that suffered so much land loss following the Land Wars” (i.e., the Maori Wars). Yet Finlayson further fails to mention that Ngati Mutunga lost their original tribal land when they were driven out of North Taranaki by the Waikato and Ngati Maniapoto tribes during a series of intertribal wars beginning about 1807. Waikato chief Te Wherowhero subsequently sold the land to the Crown in 1842. (O’Malley, Great War, pp. 99-106)

Ngati Mutunga in turn joined with Ngati Toa and the smaller Ngati Tama tribe to invade the Wellington region. There they fought and defeated the Ngati Ira tribe, took over their land and extinguished their independent existence. However, Ngati Mutunga were threatened by Ngati Toa led by Te Rauparaha and Ngati Raukawa who had migrated to Wellington from Waikato, so Ngati Mutunga fled again, this time to the Chathams.

There, the pacifist Morioris were overrun and subjugated by Ngati Mutunga in 1835, the same year that the United Tribes signed the Declaration of Independence and five years before the Treaty of Waitangi. During that time, neither the Morioris nor the Maoris were subject to the Crown and so the Crown had no obligations to the Morioris.

Although Finlayson says the Crown failed to end the genocide of the Morioris after annexation of the Chathams in 1842, he in turn fails to mention that from 1845 to 1872, the 18,000 Crown troops in the North Island together with the Maori Queenite tribes were committed to fighting against Maori Kiingite tribes, in what was known as the Maori Wars.

The Maoris were traditionally at war on a seasonal basis to allow for kumara growing and the intertribal Musket Wars were traditional seasonal warfare with muskets. The Maori Wars were the Musket Wars with the British drawn into the fray, and they have been criticized ever since for eventually dominating it. They did so because of their superior military ability acquired during the Napoleonic Wars and their superior weaponry, namely artillery and Enfield rifles, compared to the Maoris’ old muskets. Nevertheless, the intertribal conflict remained as individual Maori tribes chose sides according to their own tribal imperatives and changed sides according to developments of intertribal relationships. (O’Malley, New Zealand Wars, 9, 18)

The Maoris agreed by the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 to “give absolutely to the Queen of England for ever the government all of their land” (Kawharu back translation). Nevertheless, in the 1840s, there was the Northern War as well as skirmishes around Wellington and Wanganui in all of which Maoris fought on both sides. Moreover, in 1858 the Maoris installed Te Wherowhero, who took the name Potatau, as the first Maori King. Some tribes aligned themselves with the British Crown and some with the Maori King. (King, History, Ch 15.)

According to Sir Apirana Ngata, a celebrated lawyer, the Maoris agreed to British law by the Treaty of 1840. So after 1840 the Ngati Mutunga were legally responsible for their crimes, including the murders comprising the Moriori genocide. If the Ngati Mutunga are a legal entity that can receive a Treaty settlement, they are also an entity that can pay the redress to the Morioris. Instead, however, the Minister of Treaty Negotiations agreed to a co-management regime with Ngati Mutunga over Te Whanga Lagoon.

It all just seems a bit unhinged to me. I suppose there is legalese largesse to support Finlayson’s settlements, which I am going to address by ignoring it. If there is a payment to be made to the Morioris, it should be paid by Ngati Mutunga and Ngati Tama, and there should be no co-management by Ngati Mutunga.

The Maori genocide of the Morioris is the New Zealand equivalent of the Holocaust. By the settlements process, the Minister of Treaty Settlements has ignored the responsibility of the Ngati Mutunga and Ngati Tama tribes for the genocide of the Morioris. It is like ignoring the gassing of the Jews and instead giving Poland to Germany. Like the Muslim grooming gangs in the UK, the Maori genocide of the Morioris in New Zealand has been swept under the mat by the authorities.

New Zealand Situation

In general, there are some fairly obvious similarities as well as differences between the UK and NZ scenarios. In both cases the authorities have lied to the people; lying by omission being the usual mode. It’s not just what they tell us, but what they leave out that misleads us. In the UK the authorities have suppressed the negative effects of immigration, with Muslim grooming gangs being an outstandingly bad example. In New Zealand the history of Maori customary practices of slavery, cannibalism and infanticide has been suppressed, with the Maori genocide of the Morioris as an egregious example.

There are numerous other examples in New Zealand of the institutions and the media covering up or misrepresenting Maori issues, such as the predominance of Maori child abuse which goes unstated in the press and the pro-Maori indoctrination of children in schools. There is also bias toward Maoris in legislation following the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 and the subsequent bias towards Maoris by the Courts (e.g., here). Just as the authorities covering up Muslims raping White children reduces social cohesion in the UK, so the authorities surreptitiously favouring Maoris, as evidenced by the He Puapua report, is fomenting discord in New Zealand.

The situation has come about because White people have been conditioned to believe that criticism or dislike of persons of colour is ‘racist’, irrespective of the particular facts. In the UK, the indigenous British have become so conditioned that they have allowed their children to be raped and brutalized for fear of being called ‘racist’ should they complain. Whereas White people who complain are vilified, those who criticize appeasement are mostly people of colour. In New Zealand the part-Maori politicians who criticize include David Seymour, Winston Peters and Shane Jones. Those politicians who are constrained are White people, including John Key and Jacinda Ardern. So what of the present Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his National Party coalition?

ACT leader David Seymour said his party would end co-governance and ‘division by race’. The coalition agreement between the National Party, ACT and New Zealand First includes an agreement to introduce a Treaty Principles Bill proposing a referendum on the Treaty of Waitangi’s principles (here). However, Mr Luxon has declined to support the Bill past the first reading, presumably because he knows what the result would be. The affair has become something of a farce.

Furthermore, the Coalition has ignored that the courts are determining the law regarding New Zealand’s coast. The Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 by the Labour Party and Winston Peters legislated Crown ownership of the coast. That was replaced by John Key’s National Government with the Marine and Coastal Area Act (MACA) 2011. The change was implemented by the Attorney-General Christopher Finlayson who said he believed that no more than 10 percent of New Zealand’s coastline would be controlled by Maori. However, poor drafting of the Bill and a radical application of tikanga by the judiciary has opened up the entire coast for a flood of tribal claims (here). As it was the National Party that created this problem you would think they would feel obliged to fix it. Or was it intentional. We were misled if not lied to, again.

A central tenet of a constitutional democracy is that “the vote of every voter has equal value” (Palmer, 2022, 12). But that is not the case when we have exclusive Maori seats in our parliament and councils. That is because Maori electorates have fewer voters than general seats (here) and much the same applies to Maori wards on councils (Ian Anderson, here), so a Maori vote has greater value. Academic lawyer Philip Joseph claims “The separate seats inflate Maori parliamentary representation … they are anachronistic, they institutionalise Maori separatism, they represent a form of reverse discrimination and they threaten to manipulate MMP electoral outcomes through ‘overhang’.” (here, p. 22, 21) We cannot claim to have a true democracy in New Zealand until the Maori seats are abolished. It has been National Party policy to abolish them, but for no good reason John Key deferred the policy until the Treaty of Waitangi settlements process is complete. We are now almost at that point and so the National Party led Coalition should make abolishing the Maori seats a priority now.

On the other hand, PM Luxon is legislating to introduce referendums for Maori local body seats. However, that may not come into effect until 2028, by which time we will have had another election. It may never happen.

Come 2026, I expect we will find ourselves largely empty handed. I suspect that National politicians have figured that unless Labour see the light and have a radical review, we will have nowhere else to go at the next election. National will get voted in again on further placatory contrivances so that by the following election in 2029, Aotearoa will be irrevocably a Maori ethno-state. And the delicious irony of it all is that we the people set it up by voting for MMP and allowing minor radical elements – such as the Mana Party and the Maori Party – to enter and influence New Zealand politics.

The difference between the UK and NZ is that the situation in Britain is further developed than in New Zealand. There is no longer an England: The original nation of the English speaking peoples has gone, as claimed by Suella Braverman. The UK has been overrun by legal and illegal Muslim migrants and now lacks social cohesion and democratic resilience, as identified in Khan’s report.

Instead, New Zealand is geographically isolated and can control immigration. However, we have a social divide between non-Maori and part-Maori, which has been incorporated in our legislation and elaborated by the courts. That divide is in turn weakening our democracy. Mr Luxon recognized that after the election when he said (here): “We're making sure that we're strengthening democracy. We're making sure that we're making this a more united country.” But until then we are continuing to develop the division. That is, we are heading in the direction of the UK, not by occupation but by design.

We would be wise to do what is necessary to avoid the UK scenario.

And the question remains: Is it the United Nations that is driving this social upheaval?

Dr Barrie Davis is a retired telecommunications engineer, holds a PhD in the psychology of Christian beliefs, and can often be found gnashing his teeth reading The Post outside Floyd’s cafe at Island Bay.