U.K. Dissolving?

by A. Millar
March 19, 2009 at 6:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/411/if-politicians-are-taking-notice

If politicians are taking notice of concerns over immigration, they continue to ignore the philosophy that underlies it, and are content to allow it to quietly dissolve British society. That ideology, cooked up by the country’s politicians and left wing intellectuals, meant that immigrants were to be encouraged not to integrate - which led to the creation of ethnic and Muslim ghettos. It meant that British culture, British law, etc., was - as Cameron’s example shows - to be equated with White British, and thus to be denigrated as non-inclusive or “racist.”

Hence citizens have been threatened with arrest for flying the English flag, deemed a “racist” emblem. And those demanding ‘one law for all’ and equal rights for Muslim women have been denigrated as “racists.”

Values are no longer the bedrock of the nation, holding its citizens together, but relative, depending on which group is being addressed. Moral uprightness, pride in the nation and its traditions, and civic responsibility - which naturally follows from such pride - have all fallen under suspicion.

But as Britain has relinquished its values, so has it racialized politics and culture, radicalizing the “center” of politics. As Heidi Safia Mirza, from the Institute of Education said last year in regard to education, but which applies to almost every aspect of “modern” Britain: “We have moved from biological notions of innate differences in the 19th century to religious, national and cultural notions of innate differences in the 21st century.”

If the country is not to dissolve into anarchy at some point down the road, then citizenry must trump ethnicity. Pride in the nation, democracy, equality under the law, civic responsibility, and freedom of speech are essential to the health and future of any nation, and should all be insisted upon by the British people.

Faced with a worsening economy, wildcat strikes, and, more ominously, with the police fearing a “summer of rage,” a few in the Labour Party have begun to wake up. None, apparently more than Communities Secretary Hazel Blears who acknowledged a few months ago that immigration was out of control, and who recently inveighed against those that have “pandered” to ethnic minorities. Nevertheless, a startling number of British politicians seem unable to grasp the seriousness of the situation, and the damage that the political ideology of “multicultiuralism” has done to the country.

David Cameron, leader of the opposition “Conservative” Party, took the opportunity to flash his multicultural credentials at the end of January when strikes suddenly broke out across the nation, accompanied by demands for Prime Minister Gordon Brown make good on his promise of “British jobs for British workers.” There was no hint of “British” secretly meaning “White British.” Nevertheless, Cameron seized the moment when it was first uttered in 2007 to accuse Brown of “borrowing” from the National Front and BNP, adding “Where was his moral compass when he was doing that?” Stupidly, he took the strikes as another opportunity to flog the same dead horse, rather than to express concern for the welfare of the British citizenry at this difficult time.

Yet, recently, when Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell spoke at the Labour Party's Black Asian and Minority Ethnic annual general meeting in Leicester, announcing a drive to protect ethnic minorities in the economic downturn, the Conservatives then responded by saying that the government should be colorblind in dealing with the economy. In other words, the government should be worrying about how the economy is adversely affecting British citizens in regards to employment.

The British are of course deeply concerned about both the state of the economy and immigration. According to a just-released FT/Harris survey, 78 percent of British citizens believe that unemployed migrants should be asked to leave. I think we can safely assume that that 78 percent includes people of every ethnic background. For, according to a YouGov poll carried out at the request of Channel 4 last year, 58% of settled British migrants themselves said that there was an immigration “crisis.”

To put that crisis in perspective of world trends, the percentage of the global population who are international migrants was around three percent in 2005, but - according to Migration Watch UK - migrants accounted for eleven percent in Britain in 2008.

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