Londonistan Read online

  From the late 1960s onwards, however, Britain started to take in many more immigrants, first from Afro-Caribbean countries and then in much larger numbers from Asia and Africa. These waves brought in people from very different cultural and religious backgrounds, particularly those from the Asian subcontinent who, unlike the Christian Afro-Caribbeans, were Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and other cultures foreign to the Judeo-Christian Western heritage.

  Many of these newcomers, like earlier immigrants, very much wanted to identify with a nation whose own culture, values and history they admired and within which their separate ethnic identities could flourish under the umbrella of a shared sense of national identity. But they found that Britain was no longer willing to assimilate them to a national identity because it no longer had any belief in it, and certainly did not admire it—or even necessarily know any longer what it was.

  This collapse of national self-confidence arose from a combination of things: postwar exhaustion, the collapse of the British Empire and therefore of national purpose, postcolonial flagellatory guilt of the kind that white liberals have made their specialty, and the Suez debacle in 1956, which brutally revealed to the humiliated British their own powerlessness in the world. This left the British establishment particularly vulnerable to the revolutionary ideology of the left, which took deepest hold during the 1960s and 1970s in the Western world, at the core of which lay a hatred of the mores of Western society. As a consequence, the British elite decided not only that the British nation was an embarrassment but also that the very idea of the nation was a damaging anachronism responsible for all the ills of the world, from racism through colonialism to war.

  Britain in particular, and the nation in general, therefore had to be unraveled and a new world order constructed from principles untainted by the exclusive particulars of national culture. Thus Britain became enmeshed in the European Union, subscribed to the doctrine of universalism expressed through human rights law, and placed its faith in transnational institutions such as the United Nations, the International Criminal Court or the European Court of Justice as the major sources of legitimacy. Only the universal and the nation-busting could be innocent of prejudice. Only by being dismantled could the nation become legitimate again.

  The expression of British majority values therefore became synonymous with racism. Multiculturalism and antiracism were now the weapons with which minorities were equipped to beat the majority. Not all minorities, mind you—Jews were not considered to be a minority because of the prevalent Marxist analysis that racism necessarily involved power, and since Jews were seen to be powerful, they were part of the majority and so could never be victims. Anyone from the third world, however, was suitably powerless and therefore their values had to trump those of the majority. And anyone who resisted this was pronounced guilty of racism or xenophobia. This was the new “tolerant” society.

  In 2000, a widely remarked report by the multiethnic campaign group the Runnymede Trust5 said that there should not be “a fixed conception of national identity and culture,” declared that “Britishness has systematic, largely unspoken, racial connotations,” and suggested that the nation was an artificial construct. It recommended that government should declare Britain to be a multicultural society, that candidates for senior police ranks should undergo training on racial equality and cultural diversity issues, that contracts and franchises should be awarded only after the production of plans to increase black and Asian staff at all levels, and so on.6

  All this has duly come about. Multiculturalism has become the driving force of British life, ruthlessly policed by a state-financed army of local and national bureaucrats enforcing a doctrine of state-mandated virtue to promote racial, ethnic and cultural difference and stamp out majority values. Institutions have been instructed to teach themselves that they are intrinsically racist and to reprogram their minds in nonjudgmentalism. Government departments, local councils, the police and other bodies now give preferential treatment to ethnic minority candidates and projects and discriminate against white Western applicants.

  The BBC has its own Asian network providing news and features inside the UK in Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi and Gujarati. There are now more than 140 housing associations in England catering to ethnic minorities; one of them, the Aashyana in Bristol, provides special apartments for Muslims with the toilets facing away from Mecca. The Lake District National Authority wanted to drop its guided walks organized by volunteer rangers because the participants were “too white and middle-class.” Almost 10 percent of bodies subsidized by the Arts Council describe themselves as black or ethnic minority organizations. “British culture is not a single entity; we should rightly speak of British cultures,” the Arts Council said.7

  The ever-multiplying examples of British society trying to denude itself of its identity range from the invidious to the idiotic. Novelty pig calendars and toys were banned from a council office in case they offended Muslim staff.8 Ice creams were withdrawn from the Burger King chain after complaints from Muslims that a whorl design on the lid looked like the word “Allah.”9 Various councils banned the concept of Christmas, on the grounds that it was “too Christian” and therefore “offensive” to peoples of other faiths, replacing it with references to winter festivals.10 Some London education authorities tried to prevent ethnic minority children from watching the Queen Mother’s funeral on television, with the argument that it would not mean anything to them.11 A performance of Christopher Marlowe’s sixteenth-century play Tamburlaine the Great at London’s Barbican was censored for fear of upsetting Muslims; the scenes where Tamburlaine burns the Koran and criticizes the Prophet Mohammed were cut out.12 These decisions were taken even though many provoked protests from Muslims and other minorities at their absurdity and inappropriateness.

  Since the London bombings, there has been some anxious discussion about the possible ill-effects of the multicultural obsession. The chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips, attacked the way in which it had divided the country and harmed social cohesion. He warned that the country was “sleepwalking towards segregation” along lines of ethnicity and religion, and warned that parts of some cities would soon be “black holes into which no one goes without fear.”13

  Phillips’s main concerns were about separate development. But while this is indeed a troubling consequence, there is an even more significant point. Multiculturalism is said to promote equal treatment for all cultures. But this is not true. There is one culture that it does not treat equally at all, and that is the indigenous British culture. What purports to be an agenda of equality actually promotes the radical deconstruction of majority culture, the idea of the nation itself and the values of Western democracy—in particular, its understanding of morality and truth. Separatism is not the worst of it. This is a cultural scorched-earth policy: year zero for the secular, universal world order, in a Britain whose consequent moral, cultural and spiritual vacuum is rightly scorned as decadence by radical Islamists who are seizing the opportunity to fill it.

  Nowhere has this attack on the nation been more pronounced, and with more devastating consequences, than in the schools. The British education system simply ceased transmitting either the values or the story of the nation to successive generations, delivering instead the message that truth was an illusion and that the nation and its values were whatever anyone wanted them to be. The country’s history and English teachers, the custodians of the core of national identity, decided that Britain’s national story and culture were racist and colonialist and should therefore be traded in for a new, multicultural model.

  One teacher argued that transmitting a sense of national identity through education was “the new fundamentalism” associated automatically with the “superiority of the British Empire.” Teaching British history was to promote “notions of national supremacy which equate the achievements of western society with the achievements of humanity in general.”14 An education lecturer approvingly quoted writers who question
ed whether there could be any shared values at all.15 Two other education lecturers decided that “Englishness” not only was monolithic, anachronistic and pernicious, but it funneled teachers into such imperialistic programs as teaching children to read rather than promoting socially desirable antiracist initiatives.16 A head teacher wrote: “The common culture of pre-1940 England, based on the canon of English literature, the Whig interpretation of history and the liturgy of the Church of England, has died. . . . Life and language have outgrown the confines of English belief, history and ethnicity.”17

  The consequence of such cultural obsequies was that neither indigenous nor minority British children were taught the history, culture or even the language of their country. The landmark achievements of Western civilization were barely touched upon. Non-Western societies were portrayed as heroic and good. Western societies were portrayed as oppressive and brutal. Pupils were left radically disconnected from both the past and the future. Indigenous children were left in ignorance of anything in their heritage that they could connect with or take pride in. Minority children were effectively confined to the culture of the ghetto. Disenfranchised through ignorance, they were left unattached to the society they inhabited and unequipped to take their place in it as equal citizens.

  Anyone who tried to uphold the transmission of British identity was denounced as a racist, vilified and had his job placed in jeopardy.

  In the early 1980s, Ray Honeyford, a Bradford headmaster at a school where languages such as Urdu, Gujurati and Hindi predominated over English, protested Bradford council’s policy of educating ethnic minority children according to their own culture, predicting that the move would create divisions between white and Asian communities. Concerned that “we were getting nine-year-olds who had never sat in the same class as a white child,” Honeyford wanted to teach English as a first language and teach the history, culture and customs of this country, so that children of all cultures and creeds could identify with and participate in the society of which they were part. He was accused of racial prejudice and hounded out of education, retiring early to save his family from further harassment. He wrote later that he was told he had been forced out because his attitudes were “racist” and his insistence on integrating Asian children was “dangerous and damaging.”18

  At a deeper level still, the underlying message in the classroom was that there was no historical truth at all, and whatever had happened in the past was merely a matter of opinion. Objectivity was bunk and so truth went out the window—and with it went the ability to weed out lies. The education system had been turned from the repository of disinterested knowledge to a vehicle for “antiracist” and other propaganda. Instead of being taught how to think, children were now told what to think. The result was that, over a generation, Britain became less and less able to think at all.

  At the heart of this unpicking of national identity lies a repudiation of Christianity, the founding faith of the nation and the fundamental source of its values, including its sturdy individualism and profound love of liberty. The majority of Britons still profess to be Christian. Protestantism is the established faith through the Church of England, British institutions are suffused with it and British public life is punctuated and defined by Christian language, symbols and traditions.

  Yet Britain’s Christian identity is fast becoming notional. Few go to church; even fewer send their children to Sunday school. For the secular elite, Britain is now a “post-Christian” society; and insofar as this is not yet the case, this elite is determined to make it so. Under the rubric of multiculturalism and promoting “diversity,” local authorities and government bodies are systematically bullying Christianity out of existence. Christian voluntary groups fall afoul of such bodies on the grounds that to be Christian suggests these groups are not committed to “diversity.” So they are treated with suspicion even where they have a proven track record of success.

  The Christian outreach group Faith Works provides some examples. Highfields Happy Hens in Derbyshire, a free-range poultry farm, has been transformed into a vocational training center for young offenders and pupils excluded from school. Run with a clear Christian ethos, its program has one of the smallest reoffending rates of any young offenders’ program in the county. Yet discussions with local and central government about replicating it stalled because the councils wanted to do so without the Christian ethos—which was responsible for its success.

  Romford YMCA in Essex looks after hundreds of needy young people. But its major funder, the Housing Corporation, objected to the fact that only Christians were board members. As a result, it deemed the YMCA incapable of “diversity”—even though it was open to people of all faiths and none. Then there is Barnabas House in Kings Lynn, Norfolk, which houses homeless young men. Norfolk City Council objected that the inclusion of the word “Christian” in its constitution might deter non-Christians from participating. Under pressure, Barnabas House agreed to alter the requirement for board members to be Christians; instead, they need only be “in sympathy with the Christian ethos of the organization.” The council still balked at this, insisting that the word “Christian” be removed altogether, although it later accepted the proposed formula.19

  In other words, “diversity” is a fig leaf. These voluntary groups all practice diversity in that they cater to all faiths. What is clearly not part of “diversity,” however, is to put the Christian faith into practice. The “diversity” agenda is thus a cover for an attack on Christianity, on the illogical premise that it is divisive and exclusive whereas minority faiths are not. At the same time, antireligion is being positively encouraged. Prison inmates are now allowed to practice paganism in their cells, including prayer, chanting and the reading of “religious” texts and rituals. In addition to a hoodless robe, prisoners can keep a flexible twig as a wand, a chalice and rune stones. This followed a decision to give a Royal Navy sailor the right to carry out Satanic rituals and worship the devil aboard the frigate HMS Cumberland.20

  So as Christianity is eased out, all faiths and unfaith are being encouraged to fill the gap. But in Britain, unlike America, Protestantism is established as the state religion. It thus has ostensibly the most powerful protector possible in that the monarch bears the solemn title “Defender of the Faith.” So is it being thus defended against the all-out assault mounted by multiculturalism? The Queen takes this role, like her Christian faith itself, very seriously. At the Anglican Synod that took place four months after the London bombings, she pointedly referred to the unique way Christianity spoke to people’s needs through the Gospel.21 This drew a sneering response from an elder of the Labour party and former cabinet minister, Lord Hattersley, who wrote that the established church was an “absurd anachronism” that had “no place in a multicultural society” because it was “Islam that is building new mosques and Sikhs who are converting Methodist chapels into temples.”22

  Al-Qaeda, of course, does not see the established church as an anachronism at all. On the contrary, since—unlike Lord Hattersley—it treats religion with the utmost seriousness, it understands very well the crucial significance of Christianity in the life of the British nation. Dethrone Christianity, and the job of subjugating the West is halfway done. That’s why al-Qaeda has specifically targeted the “crusader” Queen for assassination. But it might as well save itself the bother, because the heir to the throne, Charles Prince of Wales, will apparently do the job of dethroning Christianity for it.

  Prince Charles has floated the idea that when he becomes King he will no longer be Defender of the Faith but “defender of faith.” This subtle but vitally important distinction revealed that he no longer believes that Britain is or should be a Christian country. His remark implied that he believes it is instead a “multicultural” society. This renunciation of the bedrock religious settlement of the British nation amounts to a repudiation of national identity by its future monarch—who has thus implicitly allied himself with those who seek to destroy it.

 
Moreover, and even more remarkable considering that his nation is under assault by radical Islamism both from within and from without, Prince Charles has spoken many times in support of Islam as a solution to the problems of the spiritual poverty of the West, which he thinks Christianity cannot resolve. He has expressed his displeasure at the way he thinks Islam has been traduced by the criticism of Islamic extremism and terrorism. Indeed, according to some reports, when he and his new wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, visited the United States in November 2005, he intended to lobby President Bush about the merits of Islam because he thought the president had been too intolerant of the religion.23

  For the Prince of Wales, Islam is a religion of peace, and so extremism and violence are foreign to its nature. In a major address in 1993 given in Oxford, where he is patron of the Centre for Islamic Studies, he said:Our judgment of Islam has been grossly distorted by taking the extremes to the norm. . . . For example, people in this country frequently argue that the Sharia law of the Islamic world is cruel, barbaric and unjust. Our newspapers, above all, love to peddle those unthinking prejudices. The truth is, of course, different and always more complex. My own understanding is that extremes, like the cutting off of hands, are rarely practised. The guiding principle and spirit of Islamic law, taken straight from the Koran, should be those of equity and compassion.24

  Startlingly, he went on to suggest that the Islamic world had just as much respect for women’s rights and maybe more than did Europe, “since Islamic countries like Turkey, Egypt and Syria gave women the vote as early as Europe did its women—and much earlier than in Switzerland!” with equal pay and a “full working role.” 25