Nordwave Great Britain

Labour has let down white working-class people who have suffered from the impact of largescale immigration, a Cabinet minister admitted yesterday.

Communities Secretary John Denham said councils and government bodies had been ‘blind’ to the needs of this section of society.

The backtracking came in the face of the growing threat to Labour’s core vote from the far-right British National Party.

Yesterday Mr Denham said in a speech to union members at the TUC that efforts to tackle inequality ‘must include poorer white working- class communities, as well as disadvantaged minority ethnic communities.

Mr Denham said areas with high immigration levels felt a sense of ‘insecurity and unfairness’ because of the impact of new arrivals on jobs and public services.

Unless councils act, these could lead to tensions and resentment, he said.

He said: ‘Many local agencies have a clear and good commitment to tackling racism and race inequality and are right to do so. But on its own this is not enough.

‘We can only challenge racism and race inequality effectively as part of a strategy that tackles all forms of inequality and disadvantage.

‘This must include poorer white working class communities, as well as disadvantaged minority ethnic communities.

‘Agencies which have been blind to these issues, or thought their only remit was to address minority issues, must re-assess the way they work.’

His comments are the latest attempt by ministers to address fears over immigration in Labour heartlands, and confront the threat from the British National Party.

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People lived in the Torne River Valley on the border with Sweden and Finland some 11,000 years ago, an important new archaeological find has shown.

The settlement, found near Pajala in the far north of Sweden, are the oldest known find in the county of Norrbotten, according to the archaeologist Olof Östlund.

The find was uncovered when archaeologists were searching for ancient remains in the area around Kaunisvaar near Pajala where a new mine is set to open, according to a report in local newspaper Norrländska Socialdemokraten.

“Now the pages in the National Encyclopaedia regarding inland ice can be torn out and burned,” Östlund told the newspaper.

The archaeologists located the settlements in the beginning of September and they have now been dated with the help of radiocarbon dating.

“I had been expecting old dates. But when I saw that the first numbers were very high I felt immediately that this was bingo. When the second number was five figures – I felt faint,” Östlund explained to news agency TT.

He was surprised that the find was so old and compared it to another settlement located nearby in Kangofors five years ago. That settlement had been used 10,000 years ago.

The survey was conducted on commission from a company prospecting for mines in the vicinity of Pajala and will shed light on the first inhabitants of Norrbotten.

“So this is important. Especially as in archaological circles, in southern Sweden, the accepted theory is that there was no ancient age up here in northern Sweden it is thus important to raise the issue.” Source>>>

Reporting from Paris – The decision by Swiss voters to ban minarets on Muslim houses of worship resonated across neighboring France on Monday, stoking an already emotional debate on whether burkas should be banned in public and coloring a government-sponsored debate over what it means to be French.

Commentators and officials in France and across Europe took sides Monday on the surprise Swiss decision, passed in a referendum the previous day. French lawmakers who support banning the burka, the all-covering garment worn by some Muslim women, defended themselves against accusations that the move would fuel a growing phobia against Islam in Europe.

French Socialist Party spokesman Benoit Hamon said the Swiss decision in effect blamed Muslims for “all of Western society’s ills,” and compared it to the three-month-long public debates on French identity spearheaded by conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy.

“I regret that the president is surrendering himself to this type of stigmatization of foreigners and immigrants by associating national identity and immigration,” Hamon said on RTL French radio.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-france-muslims1-2009dec01,0,965955.story

Rajinder Singh, an anti-Islam activist in his late seventies who blames Muslims for the death of his father during the Partition of India in 1947, has been sympathetic towards Britain’s far-right party for much of the past decade even though he currently remains barred from becoming a member because of the colour of his skin.

But last weekend the BNP’s leadership took their first steps towards dropping its membership ban on non-whites after the Human Rights Commission threatened the party with legal action. The move will be put to a vote of members soon.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bnp-signs-its-first-nonwhite-member-1824108.html