September 29, 2008 Planet Equality and the eclipse of nation Daily Mail, 29 September 2008 On the eve of the Tory Party conference, the shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve issued a blunt warning. In the name of multiculturalism, he said, Britain had done something terrible to itself. It had downplayed British cultural identity, leaving long-standing inhabitants fearful and new immigrants alienated, creating a vacuum ripe for exploitation by extremists. His warning could not be more timely or appropriate. Multiculturalism and its allied doctrines of human rights and anti-discrimination are acting as a kind of corrosive acid eating away at our institutions, values and national identity. What’s more, they are also actively preventing us from defending our own country. Just look what happened when the Army said it wanted to put a 15 per cent cap on the number of recruits it takes from overseas. The decision was taken because it believes that any more foreign soldiers would dilute the British Army’s cultural identity. No less troubling, there is also the risk that foreign soldiers in British ranks might be banned by their own governments from taking part in certain conflicts, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan. So much, you might have thought, is obvious. But not to the Equality Commission, which says the move would fall foul of the Race Relations Act by treating foreigners less favourably than British citizens. Really, you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. It surely doesn’t need to be said that to defend Britain, the armed forces must reflect and share the culture and values of British society — which means their members have to remain predominantly British. This is not a matter of treating foreigners less favourably — simply that a country has to be defended by those who are, overwhelmingly, part of it and thus loyal to it. It is because they identify with their country that they are prepared to lay down their lives for it. For sure, there have always been foreign nationals who perform exemplary duty in our armed forces and have made the ultimate sacrifice on our behalf. But if there is no longer a critical mass of soldiers whose first loyalty is to Britain because they are not British, then that sense of a common struggle must dissipate. This obvious truth cuts no ice, however, with those ideologues who believe we should no longer identify with a nation because we are part of it, but must owe our allegiance instead to some nebulous, utopian fantasy supra-nation to which all cultures and creeds around the world apparently belong. The head of the Equality Commission, Trevor Phillips, objects to the Army’s proposal on the grounds that it ‘raises large issues of principle’. You bet it does: the largest is the principle of citizenship itself, at the very heart of which lies the duty to fight for one’s country. It is that principle which the Equality Commission now wishes to destroy. On Planet Equality, it seems it is racist to have an Army consisting of Britons committed to defending their own country. That’s because multiculturalism holds that no one culture can lay claim to be the custodian of this nation’s values. Mass immigration is regarded, instead, as the means to transform this green and pleasant land into the nursery slope of the brotherhood of man. As a result, the country is increasingly resembling some kind of mass transit camp, in which fewer and fewer inhabitants have any permanent attachment or identification with Britain. That’s why almost two-thirds of all applicants wanting to join the Army in London are now foreign nationals — hence the Army’s concern. This attempt to change the very nature of our country is now also affecting the most fundamental of our institutions. The Government is considering proposals to amend the 307-year-old Act of Settlement because it breaches human rights and sex discrimination law by not allowing a Catholic on the throne and by giving male heirs priority over older sisters. But Catholics aren’t barred because of some nasty prejudice. The monarch is defender of the Protestant faith. Britain is a Protestant country. Protestantism infuses its institutions, culture and history. It is inseparable from British identity. Allowing Catholics onto the throne is tantamount to tearing up that identity. As for the priority for male heirs, this derives not from sexism but the need to protect the royal dynasty and prevent inheritance disputes which would harm the Crown. But then the real aim of all this is to destroy the monarchy — the embodiment of the nation — and snuff out Britain’s Christian heritage which Dominic Grieve rightly says must not be ‘magicked out of the script’ if Britain is to be defended against the attack by radical Islamism. Multiculturalism is actually undermining that defence in an even more immediate andalarming way. The Metropolitan Police is currently all but paralysed by the sustained onslaught from ethnic minority officers who are suing it for discrimination. Many of these cases, backed by the Black Police Association within the Met, are clearly deeply mischievous and unfounded. But what on earth justifies a ‘Black Police Association’ in the first place — or indeed any of the Met’s other ‘minority rights’ police associations? The fact is that ever since the police were accused of ‘ institutional racism’ after the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence, they have been paralysed by the fear of being labelled racist — a terror which has indeed driven the whole of government to genuflect disastrously to multiculturalism and minority rights. This has even affected those in the counter-terrorism world, who are so petrified of being accused of racism that they are reluctant to use the phrase ‘Islamist terrorism’; and under instruction to boost the number of ethnic minorities in their ranks have furthermore turned a blind eye to extremist views. So the multicultural rights agenda, which is progressively destroying the effectiveness of our armed forces, police and security service, means Britain cannot be defended. No surprise there — because it is all about destroying the historic identity of this country. Of course, any civilised society should be mindful of the need to be tolerant towards people from different cultures and to ensure that they don’t suffer on account of those differences. But multiculturalism and the rights agenda have fashioned these decent instincts into a weapon of war against majority values and the very identity of our nation. Far from promoting harmony, this simply destroys the most powerful thing that binds us together — our national identity. In place of a common project to support and defend the nation, it sets the strong against the weak and tears society apart. This Labour Government which talks so much cant about Britishness has, in fact, hollowed it out with quite catastrophic consequences. Among the public, the rage and grief over this transformation of their country and the destruction of all they have held dear is exceeded only by their despair that no politician will have the courage to stem the tide of cultural collapse. The Tory leadership is well aware of this mood, but is nervous. It is putting a toe in the water — hence the Grieve interview — but fine words don’t necessarily translate into brave deeds on such toxic issues as immigration, the EU, human rights and multiculturalism. But if Conservatism is all about defending what is good and valuable against those who would destroy it, what more important treasure to be defended can there be than the integrity and historic identity of this nation? If David Cameron seizes this opportunity, he may create the defining moment when he turns from Opposition leader into Prime Minister-in-waiting. |
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