After the riots last summer on Newsnight he blamed ‘black culture’ for the trouble and claimed that parts of Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech had been right.
Accusations: Historian David Starkey, left, was accused of being a racist and a bigot by journalist Laurie Penny at a debate on Britishness
Historian David Starkey provoked a race row yesterday after claiming the Rochdale child exploitation ring who groomed white girls for sex had values ‘that were ‘entrenched in foothills of the Punjab’.
During a public debate he said the gang, who were jailed last month for targeting vulnerable teenage girls, needed to be ‘inculcated in the British ways of doing things.’
But he was branded a ‘racist’ and a ‘bigot’ by journalist Laurie Penny, who attended the panel event at Wellington College in Berkshire.
Miss Penny, 25, who writes for the New Statesman, later joined him on a panel discussing Britishness and accused Mr Starkey of ‘playing xenophobia and national prejudice for laughs.’
As she spoke, the audience shouted ‘keep going, keep going’ as she moved on to speaking about about his tax status.
Once she had sat down, the historian walked over to her, jabbed his finger in the columnist’s face and declared ‘I will not be lectured to by a jumped-up public school girl like you.’
[…]
