THE PAREKH REPORT [12]

‘4.12 The essential problem with the nationalist or assimilationist model ... is that it is based on a false premise of what Britain is and has been. Britain is not and never has been a homogenous and unified whole - it contains many conflicting traditions and is differentiated by gender, class, region and religion as well as by culture, ethnicity and race. Assimilation is a fantasy, for there is no single culture into which all people can be incorporated. In any case, it seldom leads to complete acceptance, for the demand for assimilation springs from intolerance of difference, and for the intolerant even one difference is one too many. Furthermore, assimilation cannot be justified morally. It attempts to suppress difference and condemns to second-class citizenship, in fact if not in law, everyone who does not accept majority norms. A fundamental practical problem is that assimilation cannot be pursued in an age of increasing globalisation. For no government, least of all the government of a state such as the United Kingdom, can insulate its citizens from cultural, religious and intellectual influences emanating from outside the state’s physical borders.

4.13 ... The first challenge to traditional liberal theory is that the political culture and the public realm are not, and cannot be, neutral. Their values and practices can therefore discriminate against certain members of the community, marginalising them or failing to recognise them. This was seen in the Satanic Verses affair and in the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, for example. The public realm must be open to revision in the interests of those it is in danger of disregarding ...

4.14 A second defect of the liberal model is that its attempt to combine a monocultural public realm with a multicultural private realm is likely to undermine the latter. For if only one culture is publicly recognised and institutionalised, other cultures will be seen as marginal, peripheral, even deviant and inferior. For example, the days of rest supported by British and European law and custom are those that coincide with traditional Christian holidays rather than with the holidays of any other faith. This makes participation in public life convenient for people from Christian traditions but inconvenient for those of other religions, and it implies second-class for all traditions other than Christian ... Furthermore, the separation of public and private realms means that there is little or no intercultural debate, and therefore mutual learning, either in public or in private.

4.15 A third defect concerns the state’s right, and indeed duty, to intervene in the private sphere to protect and promote human rights standards, based on equal respect and dignity ... For example, the state has a duty to regulate how children and older people are treated. It exercises this duty with substantially more legitimacy if it gives public recognition to cultural diversity, and if it is seen to be sensitive to the ways in which universal human rights are realised in different specific settings.

4.29 Like any other society, Britain needs common values to hold it together and give it a sense of cohesion. At the same time it must acknowledge that its citizens belong to a variety of moral traditions and subscribe to and live by a range of values. Therefore, common values cannot simply be the values of one community, even if it is the numerical “majority”, but must emerge from democratic dialogue and be based on reasons that individuals belonging to different moral and cultural traditions can agree on. They should not be so defined that they rule out legitimate moral differences or impose a particular rule of life on all. Nor should they be seen as fixed and settled forever, as new insights and experiences are likely to call for their reconsideration.

4.36 Britain needs to be, certainly, “One Nation” - but understood as a community of communities and a community of citizens, not a place of oppressive uniformity based on a single substantive culture. Cohesion in such a community derives from widespread commitment to certain core values, both between communities and within them: equality and fairness; dialogue and consultation; toleration, compromise and accommodation; recognition of and respect for diversity; and - by no means least - determination to confront and eliminate racism and xenophobia.’

It is worth requoting an extract of paragraph 4.12:

‘Britain is not and never has been a homogenous and unified whole ... Assimilation is a fantasy, for there is no single culture into which all people can be incorporated ... Furthermore, assimilation cannot be justified morally.’

This is the true face of political correctness. It is the true face of Labour policy. It is a communist face.

Is it any wonder that we are now having to deal with Islamist terrorism?

The idea that the terrorist bombings in London last year were simply the result of a few mad mullahs who inflamed innocent Muslims is pathetic and wrong. It is the result, primarily, of Labour policy and of the snobby political correctness of the British ruling class in general. It is the result of race war politics.

Patriotism is the basis of national unity. That we are all in it together, have shared interests, a shared history and have pride in our history and our country. Political correctness seeks to foster hatred and division.

Anyone who believes that ‘assimilation cannot be justified morally’ is unfit to exercise any form of government power, especially if he is involved in race relations in any way. Labour has gone out of its way to promote the authors of the Parekh Report. That is because such peoples’ views are Labour views.

The report invents and then caricatures several models for dealing with minority cultures. The nationalist model is described thus:

‘The state promotes a single national culture and expects all to assimilate to it. People who do not or cannot assimilate are second-class citizens.’

The liberal model is described thus:

‘There is a single political culture in the public sphere but substantial diversity in the private lives of individuals and communities.’

The pluralist model is described thus:

‘There is both unity and diversity in public life; communities and identities overlap and are interdependent, and develop common features.’

The report itself prefers the creation of a ‘synthesis of the liberal and pluralist models - Britain as both a community of individuals and a community of communities’. The liberal bit is a fig-leaf of unity for their pluralist model, coupled with the idea that the state should promote all cultures equally rather than being a national culture.

It cannot be stressed enough, that the report advocates that Britain should cease to exist as a nation in order to create its ‘community of communities’. Britain is described as a ‘multicultural post-nation’ and the report asserts that ‘national allegiance is now played out’ [this has already been dealt with in the earlier entries on the Parekh Report - eg see the English Rights Campaign entry dated the 9 March 2006].

The brief reference to the Satanic Verses speaks volumes and is used to attack ‘traditional liberal theory’. The support for the views of those who wished to ban Salman Rushdie’s book, and kill Salman Rushdie himself, is extremist and unacceptable. At the time, the condemnation of those who advocated the murder of Salman Rushdie was unequivocal. Today, it is those who advocate the murder of some cartoonists who are portrayed as the victims, whereas the cartoonists are condemned.

The report rejects the concept of a national culture, and consequently the concept of nationhood at all. It even balks at the Christian background of national holidays. It is totally intolerant of English national culture.

The report’s third attack on its liberal model is that the state has a ‘right, and indeed duty, to intervene in the private sphere to protect and promote human rights standards, based on equal respect and dignity.’ Human rights as defined by the politically correct, that is. In a free society, which the Parakh commissioners obviously do not believe in, the state’s interference in peoples’ private lives should always be kept to a minimum.

The report uses so-called human rights as a means of by-passing both freedom and democracy. It openly condemns the values of the ‘majority’ and instead believes that the majority [ie the English] must be treated as being no different to even the smallest minority. Such a view is completely incompatible with democracy and a free society. It is incompatible with English nationhood. It is a communist view and the true nature of political correctness.

Such Anglophobia has recently caused a small brouhaha in Newcastle where a senior Liberal Democrat councillor wrote:

‘There is no need for an English parliament because there is no England.

Scotland, Wales and Ireland are fairly homogeneous nations, each with its own clearly defined character and culture. That is why devolution (or independence) has been quite successful in all three. In England, the picture is far more complex. There are millions of Scots, Welsh and Irish living in England. The overwhelming majority of non-white migrants also live in England, along with many hundreds of thousands of other Europeans and people from other parts of the world. England is the genuine mongrel nation, and I welcome that. This fact however, makes identity far more complex and difficult than in the other British nations.

For example, I regard myself first and foremost as a Northumbrian, then as British, and finally as European. Here in the north-east we only began to be part of the nation after 1603. Before that, the independent kingdoms of England and Scotland played havoc with the area, and used it (and abused us) for their own dynastic ends. I have no loyalty to England. For me, the British state has meaning and relevance precisely because it has little connection with a brutal past based on ignorance and exploitation.

The answer to the West Lothian question is the creation of a fully federal United Kingdom, based on Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the regions of England. There would still be disparities of size, but these would be far less than a separate English parliament would create. The failure of the referendum in the North-east in 2004 doesn't invalidate the concept. Devolution is working in Scotland and Wales; and independence has given most of Ireland a new lease of life. We just need to expand that successful formula to the rest of the United Kingdom.’

The mongrel who wrote that openly sets out his snobby contempt for the English and that he sees immigration as a means of undermining English nationhood and democracy. Regionalisation is advocated as a means of breaking up England and preventing the creation of an English parliament. The sentiment is pure Anglophobia.

Political correctness has infected all the main political parties and not just Labour. The British ruling class as a whole is fully committed to this creed.

The snobby disdain for democracy was also voiced by Cherie Blair last year in her rejection of ‘majoritarian politics’ [see the English Rights Campaign entry dated the 8 August 2005].

When the Parekh Report calls for a ‘determination to confront and eliminate racism and xenophobia’, it is really calling for the destruction of the English ‘substantive culture’. Once again, this is the communist view and is the true nature of political correctness.

Traditionally, England has depended upon democracy and the freedom of the individual as its defining political culture. That has been steadily eroded by the onslaught of socialism in general, but more specifically by political correctness, which sees the attitudes and activities of ordinary people as an obstacle to the re-ordering of society along politically correct and multiculturalist lines. To the politically correct, the existence of an English national culture is racist per se. The politically correct seek to destroy the national culture by subverting democracy and freedom by citing human rights and multiculturalism. To that end, they favour mass immigration.

Democracy and freedom of the individual need to be reasserted. The various models invented by the Parekh Report should be ignored. With democracy and freedom of the individual, an individual is allowed his minority culture irrespective of government opinion. The national culture is the English culture, as it should be. This is, after all, England. The English are the majority - although Labour’s aggressive policy of mass immigration is intended to end that and reduce the English into being a racial minority in their own country.

Those who advocate race war politics and reject the assimilation of immigrants into the host community as immoral, are treating the ordinary people as toys. They have no place in government, or the various government quangos. These extremists must be unceremoniously routed out. The quangos in which they inhabit must be closed down.

52 people were killed on 7/7 terrorist bombings last year and many more injured, some seriously.

The fight between English nationalism and political correctness, is the fight between good and evil. It is as clear-cut as that.