Last week’s net migration figures were shocking. 745,000 more people came to the UK than left in 2022, 672,000 during the year to June 2023. The numbers are astronomical. Where will they be housed? I thought we were in the midst of an acute housing shortage? Where will their children go to school? And where, when the need arises, will they receive medical treatment – according to the British Medical Association, we have a record high waiting list of 7.77 million?
It is a concern compounded by the fact that these numbers are not aberrational but indicative of a trend – a trend that, if left unchecked, will require 18 new cities the size of Birmingham during the next 25 years. According to Migration Watch UK, if current trends continue, the UK’s population will reach 85 million by 2046.
The figures also give the examination of Suella Braverman’s recent claims greater urgency. Back in September, the then Home Secretary contended that multiculturalism had failed, leading to divided communities, and posing an existential threat to the British nation state. Although greeted with confected outrage by the usual left-wing activists, it echoed what was previously articulated by that embodiment of sensible moderation, David Cameron, back in 2011. He lamented multicultural Britain’s myopic conception of ‘segregated communities’.
But is Ms. Braverman’s claim accurate? Has multiculturalism failed? If it has, with mass, uncontrolled immigration set to continue, we need to urgently change direction, surely, otherwise we may encourage more of the civil unrest and inter-communal enmity we’ve witnessed on our streets over the last few weeks. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
Before evaluating the efficacy of multiculturalism, however, it is first important to acknowledge what it is and, just as importantly, what it isn’t. When Ms. Braverman railed against its failings, she was not talking about an organic phenomenon that naturally grows and evolves in all multi-ethnic societies, alongside the creativity and cross-cultural fertilization such a process brings.
She was arguing against a particular and deliberate government policy – adopted by New Labour and enthusiastically supported by government agencies and public-sector employees responsible for its implementation – to integrate newcomers after Tony Blair opened Britain’s borders post-1997.
Born of rationalism rather than empiricism, it is unsurprising that Conservatives like Ms. Braverman oppose it. It was an untested experiment hypothesizing that the best way to integrate an increasingly diverse population was not through assimilation, or emphasizing individual rights, but through the promotion of separate ‘ethnocultural’ group identities and the ‘positive inclusion’ of these hitherto marginalized groups within wider civic society.
This meant, inter alia, introducing Muslim and other faith schools on the same basis as Christian and Jewish ones, and government departments and agencies seeking advice from self-appointed ‘community leaders’.
These different identity groups were not expected to adjust to the social and cultural mores of the host country. Their ethno-religious peculiarities were to be guarded, preserved, even celebrated, as the post-modern relativist creed that predominates forbids the moral judgment of different lifestyles and cultures.
In practice, like many other left-wing follies, the policy has evidently failed, as Ms. Braverman said. For example, despite having no legal status, between 30 and 85 Sharia councils are still active in England and Wales, many unfairly discriminating against Muslim women. Britain has also turned a blind eye to Pakistani rape-gangs in Rochdale, Rotherham and Telford, the authorities determined to respect what Rishi Sunak termed ‘cultural sensitivities’. Despite laws against Female Genital Mutilation dating back to 1985, there has only been one successful prosecution in the UK, and that was in 2019. Imams have been preaching hate in British mosques for decades, completely unimpeded by the authorities, and forced marriage is regrettably common within some of our segregated communities.
By treating each identity group as a separate, self-contained entity with its own prescribed values and behaviours, instead of citizens with shared rights and obligations to the wider national community, state-sponsored multiculturalism has encouraged these appalling injustices to flourish and metastasize.
It also inevitably leads to preferential treatment and, for the group or groups not receiving it, resentment. Just look at the pro-Palestinian marches that have plagued our cities over the last seven weeks. The police treat the marchers with kid-gloves, despite their genocidal demands for jihad and the annihilation of Israel. Yet faced with a relatively small band of white-British football hooligans – not calling for the murder of Jews, I might add – they do everything but fix bayonets.
Such egregious subversions of our historic commitment to ‘equality before the law’ have led to the vociferous clamor among competing identity groups for preferential treatment. This is incredibly destructive.
With mass immigration compounding the policy’s divisive impact, we must change direction and robustly reassert our shared British identity. We must unashamedly extol our commitment to liberal democracy, free speech, the scientific method, tolerance and the rule of law, encouraging a respect for – and loyalty to – the institutions and individuals responsible for the existence and conservation of these shared values.
Moreover, our education system should foster a profound understanding of the awe-inspiring historical narrative responsible for their cultivation. We must give our newcomers a story to unite behind. And what a wonderful story it is.
This means rejecting the current fashion for traducing our history and embracing a more nuanced, honest and uplifting interpretation. We are one of the most advanced and prosperous societies on earth. We should celebrate that fact, and endeavour to conserve its defining characteristics and monumental achievements. Immigrants come here to reap the benefits of these achievements, after all.
They must therefore respect, accept and live by Britain’s most cherished and hard fought for cultural values. That is non-negotiable.
Suella Braverman was rightly criticizing the state policy of multiculturalism. That certainly has failed. During a period of rapid and disorienting demographic change, it has sown division and fomented resentment. With immigration set to continue on the current scale, it must be confined to the dustbin of history.
Joe Baron is a teacher and a writer, published in The Spectator, The Sun, the TES, Breitbart, Conservative Home, The Conservative Woman and The Daily Telegraph. His blog can be found here.
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I’m afraid however “what has been done cannot be undone”
Culture is by definition MONO. It belongs to a specific group of people. Multi-culti in reality means NO common culture. And with no common culture, what else can a country do but fall apart?