OUR LADY OF FATIMA
CATHOLIC CHURCH
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OUR LADY OF FATIMA CATHOLIC CHURCH |
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Poor Europe !
November 11, 2005
Armistice Day - a day that brought an uneasy peace to Europe in 1918 and again a continent at war with itself for different reasons.
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The
continued reports of violence on the streets of Paris and elsewhere have
been the constant source for speculation as to the reasons for the
spreading crisis. The conservative author / TV panelist / would be politician
Pat Buchanan has used the "M" word (Moslem) to describe the
nightly clashes between police and rioters throughout France. By this is
meant that the violence in Europe is to be seen as a religious struggle.
Yesterday a message (purported to be from Bishop Richard Williamson of the
SSPX) began to be circulated through the Angelqueen web-site. He also has
now weighed in on the subject in a similar vein as well.
While I agree that ultimately the world crisis can be reduced to a religious problem: the struggle between goodness and the mystery of iniquity, I do not necessarily agree that the current turmoil in France should be reduced to a clash between Islam and decadent Christianity. Let me explain. Back in the early 1980s in Britain, there were a series of riots that broke out across England: Toxteth (Liverpool), Brixton (London), Birmingham and Manchester were involved as well. In every case the violence was led by the children of West Indian immigrants who had entered the country in the 1960s to take up menial employment posts which white English men and women did not want. |
On April 20 of 1968, Enoch Powell, one of Britain's leading politicians, gave a spirited talk outlining the eventual problems he foresaw in what would later be called his "Rivers of Blood" speech. He said in part as follows:
In 15 or 20 years, on present trends, there will be in this country three and a half million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants. That is not my figure. That is the official figure given to parliament by the spokesman of the Registrar General's Office. There is no comparable official figure for the year 2000, but it must be in the region of five to seven million, approximately one-tenth of the whole population, and approaching that of Greater London. Of course, it will not be evenly distributed from Margate to Aberystwyth and from Penzance to Aberdeen. Whole areas, towns and parts of towns across England will be occupied by sections of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population.
As time goes on, the proportion of this total who are immigrant descendants, those born in England, who arrived here by exactly the same route as the rest of us, will rapidly increase. Already by 1985 the native-born would constitute the majority. It is this fact which creates the extreme urgency of action now, of just that kind of action which is hardest for politicians to take, action where the difficulties lie in the present but the evils to be prevented or minimised lie several parliaments ahead. (...) As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood."
| Powell, who had
been widely seen as a possible future Conservative Party leader and hence
Prime Minister was sacked and sent into exile for this speech. What he
outlined was, of course, what later transpired. Unchecked immigration from
former British dependencies and territories led to a build up of large
foreign ethnic communities. Since these communities were economically
challenged, they had the lowest paid jobs and lived in the poorest neighborhoods.
These neighborhoods were vacated by white families whose own prosperity in
the post-war economic boom had enabled them to move to upscale communities.
The consequent urban decay and limited employment prospects for the
children of the first generation immigrants inevitably led to the wave of
riots which the government of Mrs Margaret Thatcher had to deal with in
the early 1980s.
France, like Britain, is a former colonial power, and in the same way allowed untrammeled access to her lands for foreign born immigrants from her erstwhile territories in the same time period for exactly the same reasons and with exactly the same foreseeable consequences. The only difference between the West Indians and the Algerians and Moroccans in France is their nominal Faith adherence. In the case of England the West Indians were / are not Moslems (by and large) whereas in the case of France, their immigrants are. |
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In all reality I think the issue of religion is merely accidental. The real issue is one of opulence versus poverty. The white French (nominally Catholic) have the money and the jobs, the immigrants (nominally Moslem) do not. I say "nominally Moslem" because there is no evidence to suggest that a French Moslem is more a practitioner of his/her religion than a French Caucasian.
The temptation to suggest that the problems in France and elsewhere are ultimately linked to an Islamic subconscious desire to right the wrongs of the crusades is too great. I think the reality is much simpler - economics, a crisis of societal integration and the simple inability to put bread on the table - nothing more ! There is of course the teenage element of a bit of sport to be had lobbing a fire-bomb at the police and seeing if you can get away with it all.
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