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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Multiculturalism was buried this week, un-noticed
Most of the reaction and comment to the fallout from the Birmingham schools Trojan Horse affair has centred on the spat between Theresa May and Michael Gove (and their respective departments), on what ‘British values’ means, and on to what extent – if they can be defined – they should be promoted. That’s all fair enough but it misses the implicit step already taken:
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Salad-bowl-ism is where people from different cultures keep doing things the way they did in their original culture.
Melting-pot-ism is where people from different cultures bring their culture along with them, adopt a lot of parts of the existing culture where they live, but also add their culture to the overall mix, gradually changing it.
Borg-ism is where you start with a dominant host culture and the new arrivals adapt it, without particularly changing it. (Sorry if I'm being unfair to the Borg and they actually protected and valued the diversity of the life-forms they assimilated, but I'm going with this for now.)
Most people in Britain are salad-bowl-ist or long-term melting-pot-ist about food. Chinese restaurant in a small town? Lovely.
Most people in Britain are generally Borg-ist about fundamental political freedoms. Want to set up the Islamic Republic of BD3 where women don't get the vote? Tough, we don't care if you all agree that it's a good idea, we're sending in the army.
There's quite a lot of disagreement about education, with people supporting all three -isms. The disagreement goes across party lines - for example, there's a Blairite pro-religion strand that values religious authority in education and seems to be basically salad-bowl-ist when it comes to which religion you get. But the left also has a lot of liberal secularists, who are melting-pot-ist or even borg-ist but want to dial back the amount of very culturally contentious things that schools do in the first place - for example, if you don't have any religion in schools in the first place, you get rid of the problem about which one to indoctrinate the kids in.
Finally there's a disagreement about voluntary participation in things that don't actually infringe basic political freedoms, but symbolically push back against them, like burqa-wearing. People generally want to be salad-bowl-ist about what clothes you wear, but if they think the clothes represent the rejection of (say) the rights of women, they sometimes support intervention from The Borg.
And Multiculturalism is the biggest mass deception put on the British public by our so called political and cultural elite in the last 60 years.
http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/11277877.MP_s_son_guilty_of_attacking_photographer/
Personally, I think there's another aspect to Trojan Horse, and that is the implications it has for Conservative Education policy.
For example, how is Mr Gove going to check that the curriculum offered in schools is appropriate (ie does not approach things from a fundamentalist point of view)? How will he ensure that schools promote Christian values when 63% of secondary schools are Academies, and Academies do not have to follow the National Curriculum? Is it going to do it by inspection? But hang on a minute, wasn't he the one who, when he first came to office, suggested that school inspection should just focus on four things (Standards, Teaching, Leadership and Behaviour), and should stop checking up on lots of little details (like "community cohesion", which used to be a separate Ofsted judgment until they stopped doing it in 2011)?
And if we're talking about chickens coming home to roost, what about Mr Gove's decision not to include Religious Education as one of the EBacc subjects? As a result of that there has been a significant decrease in the number of pupils taking the subject at GCSE... Personally, I believe in the power of Education, and if we have good Religious Education in schools surely society will be more understanding as a result.
Then there's the question of who keeps an eye on whether schools are experiencing difficulties in these sorts of areas. A local Council might have done it in the past, but they've been stripped of the resources to do it, and anyway with so many Academies they don't really have the powers to do so anyway. The Education Funding Agency (a new quango that arose after the "bonfire of quangos") has sort-of taken over some of these responsibilities, but most people involved in the system recognise that there are now too many Academies for the EFA to do this sort of thing, which is why regionalised boards are being created to do the job. It could be argued that we rushed headlong into wholesale Academisation without ensuring there was sufficient capacity in the system to undertake all the checks and balances necessary.
Finally, what about Free Schools? Under the Free School programme, any group can apply to set up their own school. There's a Maharishi Free School in Skelmersdale that, I understand, includes daily mandatory transcendental meditation. I gather there was even an application to found a Free School from Satanists. Does the Trojan Horse affair undermine the idea that it's a 'good thing' for anyone with a particular view of the world to be able to set up their own school (even in areas where there is no need for the extra school places, and where spending several £m on a new school building may denude other schools of much-needed cash to improve their buildings)?
Hmmm.
As you say there’s a flock of chickens coming home. If I am not mistaken, and there are better informed people than me on this list on history, the original purpose of the Victorian Newcastle Reforms was to ensure both that there were sufficient schools for all children, and that there was a common basic standard. To this end Local Boards were set up. For some reason which I really cannot comprehend the Government has decided to scrap this system and return to the hotch-potch of ad hoc arrangements which the Victorians decided were not providing adequate education for the next generation
For example, how is Mr Gove going to check that the curriculum offered in schools is appropriate (ie does not approach things from a fundamentalist point of view)? How will he ensure that schools promote British values when 63% of secondary schools are Academies, and Academies do not have to follow the National Curriculum? Is it going to do it by inspection? But hang on a minute, wasn't he the one who, when he first came to office, suggested that school inspection should just focus on four things (Standards, Teaching, Leadership and Behaviour), and should stop checking up on lots of little details (like "community cohesion", which used to be a separate Ofsted judgment until they stopped doing it in 2011)?
If you undermine that then you end up with a corrupt politcal elite - cf. tax and expenses being "erroneously" shredded - and an inbred bunch of scions exploiting the system (cf Bootle). Religious freedom is important, but so is tolerance and banter: Only equity and openness in law can guarantee that (and none of the "social equality" bull-kack)!
The root problem is a community that is opposed to multiculturalism itself, not recognizing the validity of other cultures. Multiculturalism can only work with cultures that mutually respect each other. I live in a city with significant Hindu, Sikh, Bhuddist, Jain, East European and African Pentecostal communities, but in terms of integration and respect for other cultures these are far ahead of most Muslim communities.
It is not true of all Muslim communities, and particularly the professional and middle classes are much more integrated and assimilated. There is however a rejectionist element within the Muslim community that is actively hostile to the other cultures within the city, and also the western education that underpins integration. Boko Haram means "western education is forbidden" precisely because Islamists recognize the threat to their hegemony from secular education, particularly of girls.
The Trojan horse was a device to enter foreign forces, and this cannot be ignored in the discussion. The historical suspicion of Catholics in England was not just religious, there was a suspicion of divided loyalties with adherents having allegiance to foreign popes controlled by the French or Spanish. Ditto suspicion of Communists was not only political, but because of allegience to the Soviet Union. Those threats are now historical and redundant, but the threat from foreign Islamist Caliphate beliefs still exists, so those with overseas loyalties that override local loyalties remain rightly under suspicion.
My own view is that the real issue here, the real problem is Islam. Islam has been on display alot lately with Sudanese death sentences for apostasy, Pakistani 'honour' killings for marrying someone other than the parental choice, ISIS beheadings, fundamentalist Trojan Horse school activities - and all the rest. As a country we're getting better at calling a spade a spade and being a little less ridiculously PC about matters cultural. Inevitably Islam is going to be more openly dissed.
Are we becoming a little more confident of the inherent decency of our own cultural tradition? A little less afraid to voice disrespect where disrespect is so thoroughly deserved? I hope so.
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2014/06/the-word-extremism-does-not-mean-anything.html
"The word ’extremism’ does not mean anything. I confess, abjectly, to having used it in the past. But for some years now I have been trying very hard not to do so.
To the extent that it can be said to have any meaning at all, it is ‘opinion not fashionable, not approved of by mainstream at time under discussion’.
Anyone who has been paying attention to the status of various opinions, about morality and politics, over the past 40 years, will easily be able to see that opinions which were ‘extremist’ half a century ago are now in many cases mainstream and almost obligatory, and vice versa. The issue of whether they are correct or not, or just or not, cannot be decided by how modish or unfashionable they happen to be.
So , as you study the fuss about supposedly extremist-dominated schools in Birmingham and elsewhere, please bear that in mind.
The facts about these schools are disputed and hard to pin down. The original ‘Trojan Horse’ letter on which the whole row is founded does seem, by general agreement, to have been a hoax.....
"Now, one of the things I really like about Muslims is that they are not having any of that. They value their faith, they believe in it, and they see it is one of their main duties in life to pass it on, undiluted, to their sons and daughters.
And, since we allow Christians to have state schools, and since we have freedom of conscience, how exactly are we to deny them the freedom to do so, now that there are so many Muslim parents and children living in our country?
I simply cannot see how, without conscious, gross and blatant injustice, this could be done.
Now, the neo-conservatives who get into the most frenzied state of mind about alleged ‘extremism’ in schools are also keen supporters of the ‘open border’ and ‘free movement of labour’ policies which have led to the establishment in this and many other European countries of large and thriving Muslim communities....
"What also makes me pause before condemning too vigorously is that many of the Islamic opinions about or drunkenness and general sexual abandon, about which we purse our lips in horror, are more or less exactly what the average Anglican parson, Methodist minister or Roman Catholic priest would have felt (and said openly) in this country before 1914, and in some cases a good deal more recently than that.
Women in Europe and the Americas, who since the 1920s have dressed in ways that would have profoundly shocked all previous generations are amazingly unaware (as they trip merrily around the Muslim world) of how viscerally shocking their appearance and behaviour is to both men and women....."
Quoting Peter Hitchens again:
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2014/06/the-word-extremism-does-not-mean-anything.html
"English law’s quite simple, or was, and ought to be again. You’re punished for what you do, not for what you might do, or for what you think about doing, or even for what you talk about. I think that’s reasonable, because the gap between idle chatter and action is a very large one, and if people talk openly then we will have much more warning that things are brewing than if they don’t. You can’t prevent all terror, by any amount of laws, however stringent. I suspect that if you do want to detect its gestation, then freedom of speech and a willingness to tolerate ‘extremist’ political groups will make it easier to do so.
Incitement to violence is a crime, as it ought to be. But on the bogeyman pretext of terrorism, terrorism which is far more effective than it otherwise would be because both politicians and journalists so readily react and over-react to it, we have begun to whittle away such sensible rules.
The Blair creature, back in 2006, insisted on shoving a provision against ‘glorifying’ terrorism (which sounds like something out of the old USSR penal code) in to his Terrorism Act, though wise heads in the House of Lords, seeing the possible difficulties of such a law in a free country, had thrown it out by a large majority."
This is going to take all sides in politics to admit fundamental mistakes. And it is a subject in which all sides need to work together. Blame-apportionment, name-calling and all the rest of the usual rituals of the FPTP system will solve nothing. Labour tolerated and at times encouraged multiculturalism because it was politically expedient to do so; the Tories ignored it because it did not affect people who voted for them. That has to change and, as David suggests, we have reached a point where it could change. It would be unforgivable if it didn't. I lean to the left, but I have never had a problem with seeing western democratic values as being inherently superior to medieval theocratic ones. I suspect that I am far from alone. That clearly puts us on the same side as the vast majority of those people who lean to the right. So let's do something about it. Don't leave the debate and the definitions and the dividing lines to be decided by those on the extremes.
We will come to a point where we simply not accept that in this country. So we see legislation about mutilation, forced marriages and now schooling.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
No tennis tips today. Was slightly tempted by Nishikori against Federer (about 3) but not enough to bet on it. Nothing else stood out.
First of all despite being a booer I am not anti immigration nor am I a racist or anti islamic. However what I would say is that in my home town it is certainly noticeable that the group that integrates least tends to be the muslim community
Most of them however are good people and the vast majority are slowly becoming more western. The problem however lies in the fact that there are a rump who refuse point blank to integrate or indeed see people in this country as anything other than Kuffur.
Those who have never lived in the high density muslim area's do not really appreciate the size of the problem. People talk in the news about extremists being a small minority. Well those who I think of as extremists I would say make up around 10 to 15% .
The other 85% are perfectly good. The problem is however it is the 10 to 15% who are the ones who seem to be regularly getting into power in the community, on the mosque councils, the "community leaders" etc. The 85% however seem to do nothing about it. A typical example of this sort of thing was an incident a couple of years ago to an ex girlfriend. She went round the corner shop to buy a pint of milk. While there she was harangued by a couple of guys and called whore and slut because she was wearing a t shirt. She came back in tears. The other people in the shop stood by and did nothing but look embarassed, these by standers were people who knew us, our neighbours who we exchanged pleasantries in the street. A few of them apologised for the behaviour of the two men when they bumped into her later however it would have been better if they had stood up and be counted at the time.
Until the moderates in the muslim community are willing to stand against such people not much is going to change and despite many here being second and third generation there remains this stubborn core of holdouts being passed down through the generations.
In case anyone is thinking the above story is unusual by the way things like this occurred once or twice a month ranging from insults to be spat at, this is an experience that seems to be common amongst women who live near any of the muslim enclaves in the town.
I think edmundintokyo hits the nail on the head in his post with regards to multi-culturalism or at least his three perceptions of it. I often think the term multi-culturalism has been used often simply as a device to avoid debating these issues because they are hard. Debating issues though shouldn't be avoided, the harder they are the more they should be talked about. British values though are not eternal and immutable, and so we shouldn't go down the route of attempting to carve them on tablets of stone. We need the option of adding new values as time progresses, and adapting ourselves. Our history points to our flexibility and adaptability in this regard.
Seeking to preserve in aspic a fantasy vision of a Britain that never existed is not the way to go hear, neither is what many perceive as the balkanisation of multi-culturalism where different values for different communities are accepted. How we proceed I'm not sure, is anyone, but this could be a landmark debate in the early part of this century.
Quite. I used to live on the edge of Bradford, was a councillor there for four years and a governor at a school with a 95%+ muslim intake for thirteen. My experience is the same. I didn't want to include it in the leader because the danger of quoting individual incidents is that you become bogged down in the specifics, and it would have unbalanced the piece to have provided anything like reasonable context. It was difficult enough to write as it was.
However, the point you make is right and to take a twist on Reagan's eleventh commandment, there seems to be a widespread belief that "thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow muslim", so while people might disagree, the societal norm is that you keep your head down and get on with it.
I'm not suggesting a uniform of t-shirts and jeans, but if schoolteachers could refrain from describing white women as white prostitutes that would be marvellous.
Mr. Herdson, Mr. Pagan, I agree. I've read (some time ago) that some Muslims feel disagreeing with/criticising other Muslims is not... good. Not quite sure if they view it as forbidden explicitly.
Unfortunately too often it appears to the young generation of muslims that if you want to be listened to and have a voice then you have to be one of the 10% and so the cycle perpuates.
How we break it I have no idea and frankly without sufficient insight into the inner workings of the muslim community I think outsiders trying to fix it is likely to make things worse rather than better. What I believe we can do however is create a culture where they feel they have our support. That entails us not pussyfooting around and saying "while that isn't how we think things should be done we think your way is equally valid". Where the culture of any incoming people clashes with our culture to an extent where we think if any other group did that they would be lambasted for it then we should put our foot down and make the feelings absolutely clear. This at least would give moderates a reason to speak out.
Here have a hint
People saying immigrants coming in should integrate are not the same people as those emigrating and not integrating in foreign climes. Most of those arguing that immigrants should integrate with the host would say the same about our countrymen emigrating.
For those of us who come from the traditional white Christian community, hearing about Trojan and then seeing ISIS beheading people in Iraq who disagree with them, reinforces every prejudice held within our wider community about some aspects of the muslim community.
On another level, last month we heard the police and electoral authorities raising concerns about election fraud in more than a dozen council areas, all of which have disproportionately large Asian communities. This also strikes at any campaign to spread multi-culturalism.
There is a widespread view that the Asian communities in England have not tried terribly hard to integrate into the general community, a problem we thankfully have never had in Scotland.
For all our politicians and the leaders of the mainstream Asian communities the report card definitely says "Could have done better".
Up here in the Highlands we have several communities largely made up of English people who have sold up and moved north. Around Helmsdale in Sutherland we have a fairly large group of people who all hailed from Yorkshire. Every one I spoke to when they moved her cited the same problem, feeling like foreigners in their own community back in places like Bradford. Their children coming home from school talking Urdu etc etc.
I fear that if the troubles in the Middle East and Afghanistan/Pakistan don't sort themselves out, the resistance to multi-culturalism in Western countries like Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands will continue to grow and if mainstream politicians don't show leadership, we will see the BNP types grow in influence once more.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2656977/Britons-heading-Iraq-join-ISIS-militants-HUNDREDS-amid-fears-bring-terror-UK.html?utm_content=buffer1acd5&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
I wonder how many will get beheading practice?
However, there's another contradiction within the British Values set which is where those who seek to avoid discussion usually attack: how do you reconcile freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association with the imposition of a values set? To what extent can we be tolerant of intolerance, for example?
The simple answer is to draw the line at unacceptable actions - to not make windows into men's hearts, to quote a phrase I nearly included in the leader. It's not as simple as that though (as it wasn't for Elizabeth I). Those actions rarely happen in isolation (they can - Breivik is an example), but are much more likely when there is a reinforcing mechanism within the community the perpetrators come from that they believe accepts and understands the end they've acted towards, even if they disagree with the methods.
And what it comes back to is recognising what is legitimate authority. Too many times, I've heard criticism from muslims of actions taken by Islamic terrorists based on what the Koran teaches. In one sense, that's fine - it's taking them on on their own territory - but in another it's not: it's accepting the interpretation of religious teachings as the basis for decision; not what the secular state has agreed on. It is making the fundamental legitimate authority external to the state and, consequently, implying that the state itself may not necessarily be legitimate or at least may not be acting legitimately. And that is something that shouldn't be tolerated, though I have no logical basis for that assertion other than my values system requires it.
At that time it was being asked why did Roman Catholics need their own Grammar Schools , what indoctrination was being done at Holy Joe's as St Joseph's was generally called that was potentially a Papish threat to the majority of the C of E population .
Time has moved on and The Roman Catholic "threat" has been replaced by a "Muslim" threat . Is the latter as real as the former one proved to be ?
We have made the problem worse by institutionally not standing up to the hotheads and condescendingly excusing their behaviour due to their "culture". i.e. appeasing the hotheads for a quiet life because it is easier and less politically risky than sorting out the problem, and so betraying the majority of their community. It dosent seem to occur to the PC that many such people came here to get away from such hot headed views and behaviour and were attracted to British culture.
PC is basically institutionalised appeasment and cowardice.
As a governor, consistently worked to hold back and counter the kind of attitudes I've mentioned, to support the staff in an integrationist ethos, to promote secular policy, and to appoint staff who have the strength and attitudes to carry them out.
And with that, I'm afraid I have to go for the day. Have fun, all.
The freedom-of-movement - a.k.a - globalisation is not the problem: The insular nature of multi-cultism is. The sooner that the Left/Jocks stop the culture of "Sub-Continent politics" - a.k.a. 'Buying-Votes' - the better for the welfare and security of Her Majesty's Kingdom [of England]!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/hillary-clinton/10898021/The-human-face-of-Hillary-Clinton-could-be-her-biggest-challenge.html
However, if you like the odd tipple or two, visit the former French enclave of Mahe which is "geographically" in Kerala state in southern India. Every other shop seems to sells booze!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahé,_India
I fear it will be a vague mish-mash, and Ofsted will be asking questions along the lines of the *awe and wonder* fad a while back.
But she is someone very keen on becoming British; having lived in a much less free society herself.
Do we have enough tanks?
We could get the same ones to drive round the block and pretend?
My word, that's rather an absolute statement.
He has also confused Newtonian mechanics with statistical mechanics.
That's a bit like saying Beethoven wrote Bach's great violin chaconne.
As ever, this was predicted 46 years ago, in clear terms. But the do gooders chose to cry "racist" rather than listen to what was actually said... now we pay for their cowardice
"We are on the verge here of a change. Hitherto it has been force of circumstance and of background which has rendered the very idea of integration inaccessible to the greater part of the immigrant population - that they never conceived or intended such a thing, and that their numbers and physical concentration meant the pressures towards integration which normally bear upon any small minority did not operate.
Now we are seeing the growth of positive forces acting against integration, of vested interests in the preservation and sharpening of racial and religious differences, with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population. The cloud no bigger than a man's hand, that can so rapidly overcast the sky, has been visible recently in Wolverhampton and has shown signs of spreading quickly. "
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3643823/Enoch-Powells-Rivers-of-Blood-speech.html
I would suggest he is less scientifically illiterate than the government's own chief science officer who constantly peddles the global warming myth.
The satellite record now shows there has been no global warming for nearly 18 years.
Satellites do however show an increase in sea levels during those years.
Would you like to posit a theory why this should be?
Well, we're about a seventh of the way through the century, and so far he's looking as stupid as a Miliband holding a newspaper. (Or a piece of fruit).
But I thought we were talking multi-ethnic in any case.
20 official languages would imply multiple ethnicities would it not? You've got the Indo-European languages like Hindi and Bengali, and Dravidian tongues like Tamil.
Regarding religion, only around 80% are Hindu, implying around 20% minority faiths (including Islam).
atherine Peacock, head of pollsters ComRes, has carried out focus groups where pictures of Mr Miliband are superimposed on 10 Downing Street. “The general reaction is, ‘that leaves me apprehensive, or even a little scared’ or ‘he doesn’t inspire confidence’,” she says. A common reaction is “they picked the wrong brother”, four years since Mr Miliband beat elder brother David to the post.
Mr Miliband scores highly on only a few measures, such as being “in touch” with voters’ concerns
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3a98788a-efc8-11e3-9b4c-00144feabdc0.html#axzz34biN8GSz
Here is one theory,
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jun/13/pause-global-warming-data-sea-level-rises
Though I suppose it might be caused by excess breeding of enormo haddock?
A lorry load of fish from Grimsby lightly battered to her Majesty's cry of
O tempura, O Morris
could be an OBE in it for him.
Here is one theory,
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jun/13/pause-global-warming-data-sea-level-rises
Though I suppose it might be caused by excess breeding of enormo haddock?
While India has its own strains it is a triumph of democracy in a part of the world where democracies are few and far between.
Its correct I think to say that multiculturalism is dead and good riddance - it was foisted on us by social engineering lefties AMS I think used by people in immigrant communities to excuse their undemocratic control, a point made in the post below your own. Multiculturalism has excused and or hidden practice's which should have been condemned, such as grooming of young girls.
People are entitled to honour their own culture but it must be wrong to live in some enclave. Assimilation into the local community should be expected but the local community must realise that immigrants are, despite their different culture, just people themselves and fundamentally we are all the same, not least we are flawed. Your point about our nation not being set in aspic is a good one a very good one and if this attitude were promoted more - ie the opposite of multiculturalism - then maybe we could all integrate better.
When you are living through something its not always easy to recognise what is going on, unlike when you look back in history and see the trends.
I think our integration at home has been interrupted by failures in places as far away as Pakistan, and the irrational actions of fundamentalists. We cannot afford to ignore what is going on in the rest of the world. Its the effects of and the failure of multiculturalism which is encouraging deluded British Muslims into going abroad.
Well bloody hooray.
Ed won't be PM because voters can't imagine him being PM because other voters can't imagine him being PM.
Here's barely hitting 35% now and if you're a believer in swing back then he's going to struggle to get that 35%.