The Orwellian nightmare is with us. Rotherham’s UKIP witch-hunt is the shape of things to come
Daily Mail -
George Orwell got it wrong. He should not have called his futuristic novel 1984 – it should have been 2012.
Just take a look at Wikipedia’s entry for the book that introduced the notion of thoughtcrime into everyday parlance.
“Nineteen Eighty-Four is a novel by George Orwell published in 1949. It is a dystopian and satirical novel set in Oceania, where society is tyrannized by The Party and its totalitarian ideology.
“The Oceanian province of Airstrip One is a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public mind control, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (Ingsoc) under the control of a privileged Inner Party elite that persecutes all individualism and independent thinking as thoughtcrimes.
“Their tyranny is headed by Big Brother, the quasi-divine Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality, but who may not even exist. Big Brother and the Party justify their rule in the name of a supposed greater good.
“The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party who works for the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue), which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. His job is to re-write past newspaper articles so that the historical record always supports the current party line…
“Many of its terms and concepts, such as Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, and memory hole, have entered everyday use since its publication in 1949. Moreover, Nineteen Eighty-Four popularised the adjective Orwellian, which describes official deception, secret surveillance, and manipulation of the past by a totalitarian or authoritarian state.”
It couldn’t happen here? In many respects it has already.
The latest uproar centres on the positively Orwellian decision by Rotherham Council to take away three children from a foster couple for their political beliefs. The unnamed couple, who have an exemplary record as foster parents, have committed the heresy of being members of UKIP – a party that rejects the liberal consensus that dominates the thinking of the ruling elite in the three main political parties.
Joyce Thacker, the hatchet-faced commissar in charge of the Council’s ‘services’ to children and young people, has said that the three children removed, who are from EU migrant backgrounds, had been taken away to protect their ‘cultural and ethnic needs’ from UKIP’s ‘opposition to multiculturalism’.
But although Rotherham’s decision has outraged many decent people, it is not alone. Earlier this month, Adrian Smith, a manager at Trafford Housing Trust, won a High Court case against his employers after they demoted him and docked his pay for opposing gay marriage.
Smith’s ‘thoughtcrime’ was to write on his private Facebook page that gay marriage was ‘an equality too far’. Although he won his case, Trafford has refused to reinstate him and his career, at the age of 55, is effectively over.
Today’s Daily Mail contains a further example of the official culture of intolerance that has gripped our public sector. Alex and Dominic Bemrose give a graphic account of the inquisition they faced from social workers when they applied to adopt a child. Every aspect of their lives was picked over, including their finances and their moral, religious and personal beliefs.
Effectively, they were being tested by their local authority on their degree of political correctness – their attitudes towards racism, homophobia and private education. The message is clear. Unless you subscribe fully to official equality and diversity policies and conduct your lives in like the most precious of Guardian columnists, you can forget about getting a pass grade.
Read More: dailymail.co.uk
2012-11-30 05:15:50
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