In my own lifetime I’ve seen my country and in particular London, the city where I live, change in ways that would not have been thought possible forty years ago and whilst some of that change has been for the better much of it is responsible for having redefined British culture and values into something that is alien to me now. I feel as though my own country has been stolen from me.
Whilst the causes of the change are complex and hard to define a big factor has undoubtedly been the swamping of one culture by influences from so many others. Because of the way in which I was brought up I am experiencing a mild sense of guilt even as I write these words and I’m fully aware that I must tread carefully to avoid being automatically dismissed as a racist by my readers.
When I was about ten years old my mother explained to me with pride that Britain was a free country and that the British people gave a home to so many people from all over the world who were oppressed in their own countries. In those days we called these people “refugees”, never realising that before long it would become a dirty word. I remember collecting milk bottle tops enthusiastically for one of the Blue Peter appeals to help Chinese boat people and thought of Britain as a safe haven; an island jewel of sanity in a messed-up world.
We are now living in a looking-glass world. One where the flood-gates have been opened for economic migrants who could perfectly well carve out a safe lives for themselves in their own countries without fear of persecution if they wanted to and one where genuine refugees are sent back to their own countries to face prison and certain death. A government prediction that Eastern Europeans numbering in the many hundreds of thousands would return home after a short stint of harvesting has turned out to be wrong. It now transpires that the numbers were wildly deflated in the first place and that most of these people now want to stay in Britain. It also looks as if a very large proportion of them are fit, young and rapidly procreating. We have school classrooms full with kids that do not speak English and a large proportion of many PCT budgets is now spent on translating services needed to facilitate communications between doctors and their patients at GPs’ surgeries.
The influx of people from India and Pakistan is constant and many are given homes and full British citizenship after only a few years simply on the basis that they know someone who knows someone who lives in Britain whilst at the same time Gurkhas who fought for Britain in the Falkland War and who have in many instances served with the British army for over twenty years are now being deported.
Melanie Phillips has touched upon some of these home truths in her latest article entitled “Britain’s Broken Heart“. It is well worth the read but although her usual plain-speech analysis is both entertaining and enlightening I feel that her naive conclusion that Cameron and the Tory Party might be able to save Britain if they put their minds to it is surprising for a woman of her calibre. I just don’t have that sort of faith.
Call me a cynic but I see all Britain’s political parties as much of a sameness. All seem to see increased control as a mechanism with which to instigate change and I’m afraid I just don’t believe this. I see the database state mentality as a large part of the problem rather than any part of a possible solution.
I have nothing against a move towards a more pluralist and essentially a coffee-coloured world. All men are created equal and all peoples have certain inalienable rights. This truth is intelligently described in the American Constitution as “self-evident”. Any other view is pure foolishness. However, the sum of a people is more than the colour of its members’ skin. A group of people is defined by its culture and values and if these are lost or changed beyond recognition then that group of people changes.
Britain’s multicultural experiment has gone very askew and it is not hard to predict her future now. In twenty years time we will be a broken nation with pockets or “tribes” of people who share little in common with their neighbours. The recent suggestion by the Archbishop of Canterbury that parts of Sharia law might be comfortably incorporated into British law is frightening and that the subject can be seriously debated is disturbing.
True British values have traditionally come about as a result of a naturally progressive historical development. It has taken hundreds of years for this to happen and the point reached by a process of gradual movement from a partitive chaos towards an organised unity is now under threat. To throw away all that now by committing Cultural suicide is not only madness, it is no way to pay homage to all those who, throughout the centuries, have argued, fought and won the freedoms that we now enjoy.
