FAIR organiser is a racist - praises apartheid
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Saturday March 04, 2006 22:07
by James Reilly
Wants return of “civilised white rule” to the African continent
Un-FAIR face of Love Ulster
One of the Love Ulster campaign organisers praises old South African system
Ciarán Barnes Daily Ireland March 4 2006
Jim Dixon:
“Under apartheid, the black man was better paid, they had better jobs, better everything.”
“I couldn’t care less if people call me
a racist. I couldn’t care less what they think. Apartheid meant the black man was better treated and respected."
One of the organisers of the Love Ulster campaign can be exposed today as a racist.
In an interview with Daily Ireland, Jim Dixon praised apartheid, called for an end to immigration into Ireland, and insisted on “other races having their own schools, hospitals and buses”.
In 2001, Mr Dixon stood as an independent unionist candidate in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone constituency, in an election that was eventually won by Sinn Féin’s Michelle Gildernew.
The Democratic Unionist Party withdrew from the poll to give Mr Dixon a better chance of victory. In the 1998 Stormont elections, Mr Dixon stood for Robert McCartney’s UK Unionist Party, narrowly missing out on winning an assembly seat.
Mr Dixon is chairman of the Ely victims’ group, which is based in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh. He was severely injured in the IRA’s 1987 Remembrance Day bombing in the market town.
Daily Ireland learned recently that Mr Dixon had been made honorary life president of the ultra-right-wing Northern Ireland Springbok Club.
The organisation wants to see the return of “civilised white rule” to the African continent.
Representatives of the Springbok Club distributed thousands of leaflets at the Love Ulster rally on west Belfast’s Shankill Road last October. Mr Dixon led the rally, which was supported by both the DUP and the Ulster Unionists.
Speaking to Daily Ireland yesterday about his role in the Springbok Club, Mr Dixon extolled the virtues of apartheid.
“Apartheid is what blacks want. It’s the same as in Northern Ireland. Catholics don’t want a united Ireland like blacks didn’t want a new South Africa. Both groups prefer to stay as they were,” he said.
“I’ll be travelling to South Africa in two weeks. I’ve travelled there extensively in the past. The black man wants segregated schools. The black man hates the white man. I can support apartheid without being a racist.
“I am not trying to do down the black man. He should have his own space to do his own things.”
Mr Dixon told Daily Ireland that black people had benefited under apartheid rule in South Africa.
“Under apartheid, the black man was better paid, they had better jobs, better everything. He was treated better than anywhere else in the world. Under apartheid, the white and black man got on well.
“Learn the history of South Africa. The black man didn’t live there. He doesn’t belong to South Africa. The country was originally inhabited by the Bushman. Blacks came to South Africa to find jobs.”
Mr Dixon also blasted immigration laws in Ireland and Britain.
“It’s wrong that blacks are coming to Northern Ireland,” he said.
“I couldn’t care less if people call me a racist. I couldn’t care less what they think. Apartheid meant the black man was better treated and respected.
“Immigration is a recipe for trouble. It shouldn’t happen anywhere. Each to their own. Other races should have their own schools, hospitals and buses.”
Mr Dixon’s racist views caused fury in his home county of Fermanagh. Local SDLP assembly member Tommy Gallagher said the public would be shocked.
“We have people of other races living in Fermanagh and they are made welcome by the vast majority of people,” said Mr Gallagher. “Some have been the victims of racism, and Mr Dixon’s remarks will only encourage those responsible for disgusting racial abuse. Under new legislation, Mr Dixon’s comments can viewed as inciting hate crime.”
Sinn Féin equality spokeswoman Caitríona Ruane also condemned Mr Dixon’s comments.
“They are outrageous, racist and completely unacceptable,” she said.
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EDITORIAL
Little tolerance in Love Ulster man
Daily Ireland March 4 2006
There has been a lot of deliberate misinformation about the nature and intent of Love Ulster, the group which announced yesterday that it intends to try again to march through Dublin. Last Saturday saw appalling acts of violence in the capital as the proposed march was called off following a riot in O’Connell Street.
We’re told by some that the group only wants to remind the people of the Irish Republic of the dreadful suffering inflicted on innocent Protestants by the IRA. Doubtless there are some people within the organisation who have a genuine desire to let the world know of what happened to their loved ones, but as our front page story today on Jim Dixon shows, the group has some very unsavoury people in senior positions.
It was bad enough that Willie Frazer refused to guarantee that a picture of loyalist mass murderer Robert McConnell – said to be responsible for the Dublin/Monagahan bombs – would not be carried at the march. It was bad enough to read of some of the utterings of Mr Frazer in the past, including his regard for Billy Wright and his belief that no loyalist paramilitary should ever have seen the inside of a prison. But the manic outpourings of Mr Dixon underscore the reality that the group contains some people with reactionary and extreme loyalist views.
Today, Dublin is a cosmopolitan and multi-racial society which is home to many thousands of people from ethnic backgrounds who supply the extra labour needed to power the country’s economic growth. Of the entry of black people into Ireland, Mr Dixon said yesterday: “It’s wrong that blacks are coming to Northern Ireland. I go along with what Enoch Powell said. I couldn’t care less if people call me a racist. I couldn’t care less what they think.” Of the disgusting apartheid regime in South Africa, Mr Dixon said: “Under apartheid the black man was better paid, they had better jobs, better everything. He was treated better than anywhere else in the world.”
If Love Ulster is serious about this second march it should require Mr Dixon to apologise for his outrageous remarks.
Will Frazer, friend of Billy Wright intends coming south with the Queen of England
Comments (5 of 5)
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I suppose acceptance of racist sectarian unionists is just part of the tolerant fabric of our multicultural pluralist, etc, society.
We need to know more about this side of unionism. We are sadly ignorant here in the South about our near neighbours, the unionists. This kind of politics would not get elbow room down here, but within unionism there seems to be toleration of a widely diverse species of intolerance. Why doesn’t our media report this more? I find it puzzling.
Did unionism ever embrace muli-culturalism and pluralist politics?
I remember a quote from the 1991 from then UUP member and North Belfast councillor Nelson McCausland..which said that there was enough trouble from the Catholic 'minority' in n.Ireland with out bringing in other minorities to cause trouble.
Pluralism : in political science, the view that decision-making in current liberal democracies is the outcome of competition among several interest groups in a political system characterised by free elections, representative institutions, and open access to the organs of power. This concept is opposed by corporatism and other approaches that view power as centralised in the state and its principal elites (the Establishment).
I am waiting for any section of unionism to embrace the ideas of pluralism, yet unionist politicians do seem to use the term 'plural society'. in televised or newpaper debates.
Unioinist political history can be described as anti-pluralism. Are the DUP and UUP advocating a policy change?
Very good article on this point in today's (Wed) Irish News by Brian Feeney - will post it here if I get it in soft copy form.
Essentially the unionist view of multiculturalism is the apartheid view. We must be tolerant of intolerance. In other words, Orangeism is an expression of Protestant culture and to oppose the Orange order is to oppose Protestant Culture. Neat. In effect opposing sectarianism is to be intolerant of the ‘feelings’ of others. Also, unionism sees this as part of the diversity of 'British' culture: there are Pakistani British, Indian British, Muslim British and so on – all unified in veneration of a sovereign “BEING PROTESTANT” (as the Orange Order puts it, capitalisation and all).
In this view the unionists are just another version of what it means to be British, and everyone in this context is tolerant of 'difference' (the irritating fact that Pakistanis, Indians, Nigerians, Kenyans, Tanzanians, etc, (like the Irish) fought for and won national self-determination in their own countries tends to be ignored).
There is another irritating fact. The name of the state, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, excludes the possibility of Irish people (north or south) being British. This too is ignored. This is not a principle with me, however. People can call themselves whatever they want as far as I am concerned.
In practice of course unionist political culture tends to be the least tolerant, with organised attacks on non-white people (as well as nationalists) from unionist paramilitaries and ridiculous opposition to the building of a Mosque from specifically unionist councillors. Unionist councils in the North tend to be the most sectarian. Where nationalists are in a majority, power sharing tends to be the norm. Where unionists are in the majority, majority sectarian rule tends to be the norm. Unionists usually counter this argument with the observation that nationalists can be racist, sectarian, etc, too. True, but not the point. Unionism tends to organise intolerance to the extent that nationalism, by and large, does not.
By way of (another Nelson McCausland) example: the real Nelson McCausland, when an Education (sic) Officer in the Orange Order opined that Roman Catholics are not Christians (he was serious) and, in his DUP local councillor guise, opposed Belfast City Council grant aiding a ‘Celtic Film Festival’ because “This is not a Celtic country”. It is little wonder that the running of the state of Northern Ireland had to be wrenched away from the pedantic grip such political neanderthals. Unfortunately, political progress must await the dawning of the light of political reason within unionism, which may occur soon after hell freezes over.
So, I would say that Jim Dixon’s views are not an aberration. They are part of a continuum of unionist ideas and attitudes.
There you have it, just a view.
Interesting subject. I may write more on this.
Where safe to do so Protestants express oppositon to Protestant = British
Extract from "Laws" of Orange Order - very 'multicultural'
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