(19/10/20)

In the fourth of a series of short posts on immigration, our branch member Ian Cooper muses about the impact of multiculturalism. The views of the author are his and not necessarily representative of the branch.

So far, this blog series has looked at some of the problems of immigration, of it not being properly discussed, of the disunity underlying ‘diversity’ and of immigration’s accompanying inequality and unfairness.

This blog highlights the problems of multiculturalism. In the initial stages of immigration there was no mention of multiculturalism. It was assumed that immigrants would become black or brown British but as the numbers grew so did the call for multiculturalism. People forget that immigrants generally prefer to live with their own kind, with people who practise their own distinct way of life and in districts which exhibit their own culture. The result is multiculturalism. Little assimilation happens, as it did in the case of the French Huguenots.

It’s interesting how in the USA people used to talk about their country being a melting pot but now tend to talk rather more ruefully about a salad bowl. This is because cultural distinctives are realised to be a lot more definite and enduring.

So, let’s look at the cultures being imported into the UK, via our ‘open door’ immigration (current). Hinduism is the matrix of the caste system and not very progressive. Islam presents its own well-publicised issues. But terrorism and honour killings aside, there are the forced marriages of the adolescent – usually to enable further immigration – and some Muslims practise the horrors of female genital mutilation. Women’s rights are barely recognised. Then in some Muslim education, hate-thought is taught, for example the destruction of Israel and the death of homosexuals. Islam is a theocracy and Sharia law is practised in the UK – we are just in denial.

Another problem with multiculturalism is that since culture is seen as crucial to each person’s identity, every culture - regardless of merit - must be seen to be equal and therefore everyone and every culture must have an equal place at the table. This has been a convenient way to reduce the influence of Christianity. I have to say some in the church have been supinely complicit in this. But it is a fact that our ideas of human rights, the development of modern science and our ideas of social justice – to name some – derive from Christianity.

You can see this in Cambridge from where I write. At Trinity College there is a statue of Francis Bacon the father of the experimental method and modern science who insisted that you read the book of God’s Word, the bible, but also the book of God’s Works, nature. And at St John’s next door, the slave trade abolitionists Wilberforce and Clarkson, who were students there, are commemorated.

If you want academic support for the Christian influence on our culture, try the historian Tom Holland’s Dominion, or from Oxford, Larry Siedentop’s Inventing the Individual: The Origin of Western Liberalism. At the moment the ignorant woke are only too keen to trash British and Western culture, the very things that protects them as well as us.

Despite all these problems and some serious criticism at the highest level, multiculturalism remains deeply embedded in the UK, not least in the schools and media, and it continues to contribute to the disunity of ‘diversity’ discussed in blog 2 on immigration.

Read Part 5 - The Lack of Democratic Consent