In many ways Steve Moxon’s book The Great Immigration Scandal is the funniest book thrown up out of the political process since Major Major, the Autobiography of an Older Brother, by Terry Major-Ball. Both are the result of minor characters in the political drama, momentarily spot lit by events, deciding to cling on to the lime light as long as they can. The result in Terry Major-Ball’s case was a charmingly Pooter-ish tale of courtships at Woolworth’s and the garden gnome business, with the slight frisson of wondering whether he got the joke, or was it himself. Steven Moxon’s, the Home Office whistleblower, is more like reality TV at its best: it would be impossible to script what comes out of his mouth.
‘My Quaker ancestors were imprisoned for their beliefs in 1650, so battling the establishment must run deep within me. John Mokeson and his kin fought against what they saw as the false God of empty worship championed by the state, while today I fight against the false God of universal equality, in His present incarnation as “Managed Migration”.’
Obviously he is not a racist, because he says so – many times. But he returns again and again in his book to the theme of ethnicity. He is highly exercised about the removal of the Black and White Minstrel Show from our TV screen some 25 years ago. Far from being racist, that show (which had an all-white cast wearing black face paint) was positively complimentary to ethnic minorities:
‘The dozen white male singers masquerading as black and their shows were obviously an acknowledgment of, and deference to, the power of the black voice.’
Of course it was. And this is the best thing about this book. It saves you the cost of an evening in the pub. Elderly and wheezing canards are here dolled up and presented as serious arguments. Defences of the Black and White Minstrel Show, defence of Ron Atkinson, attacks on alternative comedy, post-structuralism and (how could it be otherwise?) the assertion that Bernard Manning is not a racist. I was grateful to him. I read this while having a month off booze, and hence the pub. Just reading Moxon conjured up the filthy red carpet, the sticky counter, the smoky air and the swivel-eyed patron on the next stool, sharing his opinions. Mmm.
Whatever Moxon tries to talk about he ends up on the subject of ethnicity. Watching him try to push his narrative in another direction, one is overcome by pity. It is so obvious he will come back to his same old theme. Like a rogue supermarket trolley, he veers off course, with awful inevitability. Here he discusses the news:
‘I had gone first with Channel 4 because of the C4 evening news: it was the best on TV. I thought; albeit that apparently nobody is allowed to present it who is not either female or of an ethnic minority unless they are called Jon Snow.’
In fact, there’s a possible parlour game here that could even reach the shops in time for Christmas. Read out the first half of a Moxon sentence, say on plumbing, jam, computers, anything. Then everyone has to guess how he segues into a discussion of ethnicity.
He is keen to be accepted as a respected social commentator. This means that he goes to great lengths to salt his narrative with qualifications, quotations and details. Take this description of his immigration office as a satanic mill:
‘Instead of releasing great plumes of polluting smoke and foul effluent into the river, our impact on the environment was (in respect of a large proportion of the caseload, but obviously not all of it) to further divide cities, with the new influx of people tending to live in whole areas of inner cities.’
You can’t imply that immigration is in someway equivalent to industrial pollution and then try and temper the blow by putting a qualification in brackets. Rationality and proportion is not a stylistic tic. You can’t squirt it into a finished sentence. It takes a somewhat greater commitment. Brackets and commas permeate Moxon’s work:
‘These people did not see me as a weirdo with a “towel-head” phobia – and please note the inverted commas indicating my distancing from the colloquilism.’
Duly noted. Not only is Moxon at pains to be seen as a reasonable man, he tries to extend his credentials as an intellectual.
‘David Goodhart’s article, ‘Too Diverse’, in the influential Prospect magazine, looked at the ‘progressive dilemma’ of diversity versus solidarity (another catch-all term used in the sense of politically-salient within- or between-groups tendency to agreement) that underlies many areas of policy.’
I will give a prize to anyone who can explain the meaning of the words in brackets. It’s up there with the Rosetta Stone. Moxon also dauntlessly tackles the field of history:
‘One reason that fascism became a bete noir is its association with racism, but this is a red herring. Quite obviously anti-semitism was a feature of the Third Reich (though Hitler clearly denounced it in his younger days)…’
(Need I point out the brackets?) We learn that Mosley was not an anti-semite. In fact, Hitler, Mussolini and the others were left-wing. Leave aside the facts for a moment. There is an odd twistedness to this argument. Moxon wants to prove that the hated figures of the 20th century are not right-wingers. That is because he is trying to damn the left in favour of the right. But he also can’t resist trying to salvage the reputation of fascist leaders by calling them not racist, or only incidentally racist. He is being led blind around his own argument by his preoccupations. He doesn’t know whether to damn the fascists or praise them. Incidentally, Moxon’s own stated politics are ‘tribally Lib-Dem.
It will not come as a surprise to you that Moxon is not a founding member of the fan club for political correctness. He discusses the terminology at some length.
‘Paki is widely used for the obvious reason that it is short for Pakistani, in the same way that Aussie is short for Australian… Paki is therefore sometimes used to mean ‘brown’ – which is itself not used, fortunately, given its obvious connotation.’
The only problem with his four page discussion about what to call people is that he misses the most obvious point: ask people what they want to be called and then call them by it. I can’t resist one final quotation from the same discussion:
‘Even in retrospect the golliwog could be seen, in the context of the time, as innocuous if not enlightened, with white children taking their little black friend to bed with them.’
Hopefully by reading over all those quotes, you will now grasp the essential fact that makes Moxon a man for our times. It is his plaintive whining tone. He is not at fault, he is trying to be reasonable. It is the world that is discriminating against him as a member of the majority. He is being unjustly used. In this way he presents himself as that unlikely addition to the 20th and 21st century chamber of horrors: the clerk, with all the fear and anger of the little man. Moxon is at his most touching and eloquent when describing the minutiae of his office life: the swipe card, the bureaucracy, the colleagues he doesn’t get on with, his low salary.
Unfortunately, though, he fails to extend his own self-pity to others. When he goes to parliament he meets Michael Howard. He wonders if Howard’s facial expression betrays ‘disdain for an ordinary chap like me’. However, in the next sentence he describes leaving parliament like this: ‘Tracey, with another sidekick, ushered me out on to College Green’. We know Tracey works in Michael Howard’s office. Does that make her a sidekick? This ordinary chap seems to think so. It is ironic that a man so full of self-pity and wounded pride should have so little respect for others.
I have quoted at length from his book so you can enjoy the joke without having to buy it. It is only fair. As a tax-payer you’ve already paid for it. This was written while on paid suspension from the Home Office.
But Moxon’s book is not only funny. It also shows how myths can grow-up around the idea of the whistle-blower, the idea of David against Goliath. A sequence of hard-faced, influential men in the media and the Conservative party manipulate Moxon to their own ends and then drop him when it turns out that he had posted remarks online suggesting it would one day be necessary to nuke the Middle East. This is not the story of Mr Smith goes to Washington. This is Mr Smith being used by one set of powerful men against another. And finally, this book also demonstrates the pernicious effect of the new breed of immigration Jeremiahs: Antony Browne, David Coleman, Andrew Green. They provide a feeling of intellectual foundation to Moxon as he pursues his prejudices. It is they and the lazy, sensation-seeking journalists and producers who should be ashamed.