The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Integrating Cohesiveness, Cohering Integrativity

The Sectarian of State for Community Control, Ruth Kelly, has called for an "honest debate" on multiculturalism. In Oldspeak, presumably, this means that multiculturalism is next on the list for deregulation, privatisation and ultimate abolition.

It is essential, Kelly informed her doubtless rapt audience at the launch of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion, to bind Britain's various ethnic and religious groupings ever closer in the wake of last year's suicide bombings. "We have moved from a period of uniform consensus on the value of multiculturalism, to one where we can encourage that debate by questioning whether it is encouraging separateness," she said. Apparently Kelly's idea of a uniform consensus does not include the Daily Mail or that considerable portion of Britain's news industry which is owned by Rupert Murdoch. This might be more reassuring were it not for the fact that Kelly's employer, the Vicar of Downing Street, is himself part owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Kelly noted that, faith schools and the Home Secretary's whims possibly aside, there could be no "special treatment" for minority communities as this would cause resentment and exacerbate divisions. As befits New Labour democracy, there are "non-negotiable" rules which all must accept, and the "responsible majority" must marginalise those who seek to cause "conflict and tension" between communities. She noted that, perhaps as a result of special treatment for minorities, white Britons are "detached from the benefits" of the increase in wondrousness which nine years of Blairism have wrought upon society, and therefore "they begin to believe the stories about ethnic minorities getting special treatment, and to develop a resentment, a sense of grievance". Once again, it seems doubtful whether tabloids shrieking migrants jobs muslims terror migrants jobs muslims terror migrants etc. were uppermost in Kelly's mind.

The reference to last year's bombings, as though our present racial and religious tensions had burst forth from nowhere on 7 July 2005, makes the purpose of this sermon clear enough. "In our attempt to avoid imposing a single British identity and culture," pondered Kelly, "have we ended up with some communities living in isolation from each other, with no common bonds between them?" Communities of ordinary decent hard-working family Britons, and communities which listen to Bad Imams, perhaps. Once again, we are being informed that the British government's foreign policy has nothing to do with terrorist attacks. If Tony has erred, it is in being too tolerant, too soft on immigration and other causes of crime, too little inclined to do exactly what the Mail and Murdoch say he ought to do. Bombings do not beget bombings; the very idea is absurd - but multiculturalism, now, that's quite another matter.

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