socialmedian: Why Johnson felt the need to say sorry

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Why Johnson felt the need to say sorry | Michael White

Source: guardian.co.uk Politics

Nov 04, 2009

Summary

Mainstream voters routinely tell researchers that they are both angry and mistrustful of Labour over the surge in immigration levels since 1997. Hardliners see the record as a deliberate attempt to impose a multicultural society on a nation that hadn't asked for one. Enter stage left, Alan Johnson, trying to lower tempers in his speech on Monday.

Angry talk was hardly new 41 years ago when Enoch Powell predicted those "rivers of blood" in a speech with inflammatory language that even Nick Griffin might hesitate to use today. What has given it fresh salience is Griffin's appearance on Question Time and a hastily written newspaper article it prompted. In it Andrew Neather, a young civil service speechwriter turned Fleet Street journalist, set out to celebrate multicultural Britain and upbraided Labour ministers for lacking the nerve to do the same. In the process he claimed to have seen "an early draft" of a long-forgotten No 10 analysis paper that saw inward migration as a means to "rub the right's nose in diversity".

That was enough for conspiracy theorists and

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