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ENGLAND’S MULTICULTURAL REVOLUTION The very first sight that greets a visitor upon arrival at London’s Heathrow Airport is the arresting advertisements of The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation ( HSBC). Lining the gangway upon which one takes his first steps into the country (as well as the many lobbies leading to Passport Control) is the attempt of this venerable old bank to promote cultural and moral relativism. A set of four posters place contrasting images next to one another and then label the posters “good” or “bad”; “vacation” or “hell”; “delicious” or “disgusting” and then repeat the image, but this time reversing the tag. Thus a man in a tiny, undersized tent on a beach is set against a scene of revelry at a disco; a piece of rich chocolate cake is contrasted with a piece of fruit; an Indian musician competes with a rock guitarist. And on and on it goes. After you have passed the first four images, a fifth poster posits a question which typically reads: “Isn’t it better when you can see something from another’s perspective?” The images are of course meant to be soothing - an acknowledgment that the visitor has just entered a country where differences between cultures, tastes, religious points of view and attitudes towards such abstract notions as success and character are swiftly being eroded. England, they intimate, is a cultural melting pot where the promotion of harmony between conflicting interests, competing communities and religious attitudes is a central societal value. It is true that these images appear not just at Heathrow but in airports around the world and are part of the Bank’s worldwide marketing campaign. But it is in England, I discovered, they have the greatest resonance. For in the United Kingdom moral and cultural relativism is being elevated into a high art and setting the country on a course toward national fragmentation. In southern England I met scores of British citizens, from all walks of life, who professed confusion about their identity and their role in the world. “Today, there is so much emphasis on being open to all cultures and all perspectives that being British and having British values seems to have been submerged.” said one woman, who is a prison corrective officer in the Lewes Gaol. “ We have lost a grip on what it means to be British,” said another couple. “No one dares sing the National Anthem at our kids’ school. To do so results invites derisive laughter.” In Stamford Hill, London where the ultra -orthodox Jewish population has swelled five-fold in twenty years, I spoke with women for whom multiculturalism’s great benefits comes with some depressing realizations: “ While my husband can walk down the street with his streimel (fur hat) and stockinged feet and not be harassed” one woman explained to me, “ I also know that wife beatings and general violence within the Muslim community around here often go un-policed because of cultural sensitivities.” The assault on British identity can also be seen in the way the workforce has been deployed, even in the countryside. Walking into a pub in the tiny village of Pycombe in West Sussex, I noticed that none of the bar tenders were speaking English. When I inquired about this, I discovered that the two waitresses were Czech and Polish respectively. The cook was Iranian and the owner Pakistani. One of the customers explained to me that over 700,000 Poles had been admitted into the U.K over the past ten years, many coming to Southern England, transforming the countryside. The same might be said for Somali refugees. Refugee status allows them to claim 1,500 pounds per individual upon arrival in Britain – quite a handsome sum for someone whose average annual income does not exceed $350. But a great scandal erupted when it was discovered that often the same refugees were taking their money and then returning to Somalia only to reapply for admission and start the whole process over again. Ambitious immigrants and refugees have made a mockery of Britain’s loose immigration policies but no one seems to have the political will to close up the glaring loopholes in immigration law for fear of appearing culturally insensitive. Cultural confusion is being clearly abetted by the media, for whom the demolition of British identity does not seem to be quite enough. There appears to be a crusade to completely pulverize it, with the mulch that remains being remolded into a new species of citizen. Along with countless allusions to racial discrimination against Muslims in the daily and local newspapers, there are also discrimination stories concerning ageism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Immigrant bias and the assaults on the working class. Reading these liberal papers one could easily come to the conclusion that if you are unfortunate enough to be born white, male, middle-class and British, then you live under the constant suspicion of being an anti-pluralist, sexist, racist, imperialist homophobe. An open society, the multicultural ethos preaches, is one where there should no differences before the law , government or media between peoples, religions or attitudes. Each has their equal share in the bounty of freedoms offered by a Western democracy and none is entitled to judge nor criticize another. But what does this mean for a country that suffered its worst homegrown terrorism attack three years ago and whose capital is still regarded as Terrorism Central by law enforcement agencies around the world? Government leaders are not providing much of an answer. Today in Britain debate is swirling around the issue of whether the Government can detain terrorism suspects for 42 days without charge, increasing by two weeks the current allowance. As I watched a television debate on the issue, I was quite astonished to note how no one, from either the Government, the opposition Conservative Party nor other commentators (one of whom was Jerry Springer) mentioned or successfully made the case for why such an extension would be necessary. I was surprised to hear the British Shadow Home Secretary, Dominic Greve, in fact state that the liberties and freedoms of a democracy should never be abandoned, surrendered nor interfered with - even in the face of national security risks. That attitude was later repeated to me by other Conservative leaders. Sadly, these statements seem to be motivated more by politics and multicultural sensitivities, than concern for individual liberties. And while Labor Prime Minister Gordon Brown may not be winning any popularity contests lately and a recent by-election handed an embarrassingly crushing defeat to a Labor candidate - the Conservative Party, with its insouciant and populist leader David Cameron, does not offer much of an alternative. So swept up are they in the multicultural revolution, that they risk a widespread media and bureaucratic backlash for challenging any aspect of it. . Nor is the judiciary able to summon much courage on the issue. In the wake of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowen Williams’ statement in February – that Sharia Law should be considered on an equal footing with British law in the settlement of financial and family disputes in the Muslim community - the justices have been largely silent on this threat to the Common Law. Until yesterday that is. The Lord Chief Justice of Britain’s High Court, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, speaking at a Muslim Center in East London, unleashed a firestorm when he strongly backed Williams and said: "There is no reason why principles of Sharia law, or any other religious code, should not be the basis for mediation or other forms of alternative dispute resolution."
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