- The Guardian,
- Thursday March 29 2001
Surely only a pedant would point out that Mr Hague had a far stiffer penalty at his disposal: he could instantly have denied Mr Townend the Conservative whip, forcing him to spend his remaining weeks in the Commons as a partyless loner. Still, never mind. We should probably overlook that - just as Mr Hague wisely turned a blind eye to the MP's admission that his first draft referred to "coloured immigration". Dirt like that is probably best swept under the carpet. Same goes for Mr Townend's wistful observation that Enoch Powell's predictions of race war were right all along and that, if they knew then what they know now, the British people would have wanted Powell as their prime minister. Sound move, Mr Hague: best to ignore it.
After all, those who point to the Tory leader's recent signature on a Commission for Racial Equality pledge, committing all the party leaders to racism-free politics, are being unfair. For they are surely thinking of the previous Mr Hague - the man of 1997 who went to the Notting Hill Carnival and told his first party conference as leader that he believed in "patriotism without bigotry" and wanted "more black people, more Asians" in his party. How unfair to hold today's Mr Hague to account for the actions of that quite different chap. The 2001 model speaks of "bogus asylum seekers" and warns of Britain being a "foreign land". No sense in blaming this Mr Hague for failing to punish Mr Townend: after all, he helped create the climate in which racist language can flourish.
