by A. Millar
The media and political classes in Britain have been reluctant, to put it mildly, to speak honestly about the problems of mass immigration, Islamist extremism, Muslim ghettos and gangs, and other domestic difficulties.
When Britain's only Asian bishop, Nazir-Ali, warned in 2008 that Islamic extremists had turned parts of some British cities into "no-go zones" for non-Muslims, even the then Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague said he thought Nazir-Ali had "probably put it too strongly." Nick Clegg, head of the Liberal Democrats and now Deputy Prime Minister, called it "a gross caricature of reality." For many non-Muslims living in or around such areas, however, the no-go zones have proven nightmarish.
"In the post-9/11 world, [the northern British city of Bradford] looks like one of the fault lines in a supposed global confrontation between 'Islam' and 'the West'," Dr. Alan Carling observed in 2008. Carling had just finished compiling a report on the fragmentation of British cities especially into Muslim enclaves and non-Muslim areas. Since then, it has become increasingly difficult to disguise the fact that Bradford is not alone in having split into various enclaves.
As is becoming increasingly clear, Islamists across the country target women and homosexuals in campaigns of intimidation, forcing the former to wear the hijab, and threatening the latter. Recently, posters and stickers declaring areas "gay free zones" and "Allah is severe in punishment [against gays]" have been posted around Nottingham and London. The[n] there are child victims.
The Daily Mail reported recently that there have been seventeen prosecutions for the "grooming" of girls between the ages of 11 and 16 since 1997. Fourteen of these were heard in the last three years. Of the 56 men convicted, 53 were Asian (in most cases Pakistani, and 50 of which were Muslim), and three were White. Between them they have victimized "hundred" of girls, at least. Many of the victims were gang raped – often repeatedly – drugged and pimped. Sometimes the rapes were filmed on mobile phones and later shared with other men.
Last year Mohammed Shafiq, director of the Ramadhan Foundation, accused police authorities of being "overcautious because they are afraid of being branded racist." Echoing this sentiment, after a recent case, Mick Gradwell, a former detective superintendent, told The Daily Mail that the abuse had been allowed to continue for decades. "How many young girls have been abused and raped," he asked rhetorically, "because of the reluctance of the authorities to say exactly what is happening?"
The decline of Europe and the transformation of its cities, through especially Muslim immigration. Is the theme of Walter Laqueur's Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent. His words seem an understatement in the light of the recent revelations about the extent and history of sexual violence against girls, and the reluctance of police authorities to tackle the problem due to cultural sensitivity: Europe would not become a "shining example" or a "moral superpower."
"The age of delusions is over," he wrote, "[a]nyone who doubts this should take a guided tour through Neukolln or La Courneuve or the center of Bradford." Even if Europe's decline could not be reversed, Laqueur believed there was "no reason" for total collapse. "There is, however, a precondition," he said: "facing realities at long last, something that has been postponed in many parts of Europe to this day."
The era of denial appears at last to be drawing to a close – at least in Government. Last week, in a speech to Conservative Party members at Hampshire, Prime Minister David Cameron spoke of the transformation of neighborhoods through mass immigration, forced marriages, and the relationship between the welfare state and immigration.
The relationship is real, but, it should be said, not the only reason for the previous, New Labour Government's immigration policy.
As Andrew Neather, a former advisor to Prime Minister Tony Blair, recalled in 2009, New Labour wanted mass immigration. New Labour's members recognized that it would transform Britain, and perceived, correctly, that it would make the Britain-first, Euro-skeptical, Thatcherite conservatism a thing of the past. It would "make the UK truly multicultural," and New Labour would be able to "rub the Right's nose in diversity." During its years in Government, New Labour allowed somewhere between 2.2 million and three million immigrants to settle in the UK. The party perhaps did not recognize, or, more likely, did not care, that mass immigration adversely affects poorer areas, and poorer people – its traditional core constituency – long before it negatively impacts others.
As Bernard-Henri Levy observes in his Left in Dark Times, "the Left" has changed over the decades since 1968. Levy recalls that he and others wanted to believe that "the Left" stood "for average people," while "the cruel Right" was dedicated to a class politics that made "the poor poorer." Nicolas Sarkozy – a friend of Levy's – appealed to the author during his electoral campaign, pointing out how the two sides of the political divide in France had even reversed their positions in some cases, especially in regard to the "oppressed."
As in France, so in Britain.
The Labour Party was founded at the beginning of the 20th century to advance the interests of Britain's working class. The revamped, modernized, party – "New Labour" – however, clearly regarded work as the curse of the racist class, to modify a phrase by Oscar Wilde. Under New Labour, the working class was deemed to be "cruel," racist, reactionary, lazy, and fundamentally at odds with the party's agenda. As Lord Maurice Glasman – a friend of Ed Miliband – said a few days ago
Working class men can't really speak at Labour Party meetings about what causes them grief, concerns about their family, concerns about immigration, love of country, without being falsely stereotyped as sexist, racist, nationalist.
"So, in many ways," Lord Glasman has also acknowledged, "you had a terrible situation where a Labour government was hostile to the English working class."
Glasman also says that New Labour used "immigration as a de facto wages policy" -- to keep wages low.
Likewise, after the 2010 election, the new (Conservative-Liberal Democrats) coalition Government announced that it would engage in dialogue with industry prior to deciding on a final immigration cap -- despite the fact that, during their electoral campaign, the Conservatives promised the general public that it would very significantly reduce immigration levels.
In his recent Hampshire speech, however, David Cameron promised to cut immigration to tens of thousands – reduced from the current influx of several hundreds of thousands – each year. Perhaps of even greater importance, Cameron also drew attention to, and appeared to lend moral support to, those most disenfranchised by the previous New Labour Government: the Working class and Muslim women and girls.
New Labour and its supporters never seemed to tire of invoking particularly "women's rights" and the rights of Muslims – and yet being both a Muslim and a woman seemed to cancel out the rights allotted to each. When New Labour talked of the "Muslim community" or "Muslim communities" it seemed to mean Muslim men. Even if some police forces believe that they "have a legal duty to promote community cohesion and tackle unlawful discrimination," they have been notoriously slow at prosecuting honor violence. As Poorna Shetty pointed out in the Guardian in 2009, Tulay Goren, a schoolgirl of Turkish origin, was "failed by a system that tiptoes around cultural sensitivity."
Tulay had been murdered by her father. Like Banaz Mahmod -- a 20-year-old woman of Kurdish origin, murdered by her father and uncle for leaving an arranged and unhappy marriage and finding a new boyfriend -- Tulay had "contacted the police but nothing was done." Banaz's boyfriend, Rhamat Sulemani, had even filmed her lying in hospital, after a previous attempt on her life, but the police appear to have wanted to "respect" Kurdish cultural sensitivities.
Importantly, addressing the problem of forced marriage among Britain's Muslim communities, Cameron spoke of it affecting "British girls" rather than "Asian girls," "Muslim girls," "the Muslim communities," "British Muslims," and so on. This is not, it would seem, more of the sort of evasion that saw Islamist terrorism re-branded as "anti-Islamic activity." Rather, Cameron is saying that in the eyes of the Government these girls are British first, and that, as such, they will be protected and accorded the rights due to them as British citizens. They are a living part of British liberal democracy:
For a start, there are forced marriages taking place in our country and overseas as a means of gaining entry to the UK. This is the practice where some young British girls are bullied and threatened into marrying someone they don't want to.
I've got no time for those who say this is a culturally relative issue – it is wrong, full stop, and we have got to stamp it out.
Those addressing the issue of Islamization, Sharia law, ans similar issues, are sometimes criticized for contrasting Islam to liberal democracy, thereby lending credence to the "clash of civilizations" narrative. The concern has some merit, but the decade-long history of introducing very illiberal legislation and arguments aimed simply to prevent criticism of Islam has made it inevitable that the religion would be seen by many as antithetical to liberal democracy. Cameron, to his credit, has managed to sidestep this trap, by recognizing that his role is as the Prime Minister of a liberal democracy, not as an amateur theologian making pronouncements about "the religion of peace." He has grasped that the issue is one of truthfulness and fairness, as much as it is about specific grievances – legitimate in many cases – of various segments of British society. Addressing the concerns of the working class, Cameron remarked,
When there have been significant numbers of new people arriving in neighborhoods, perhaps not able to speak the same language as those living there, on occasions not really wanting or even willing to integrate, that has created a kind of discomfort and disjointedness in some neighborhoods.
This has been the experience for many people in our country and I believe it is untruthful and unfair not to speak about it and address it.
The naysayers are already expressing their "concern." Liberal Democrats' Member of Parliament and the Government's Business Secretary, Vince Cable, has described Cameron's comments as "very unwise." He is patently incorrect. Cable's inability to face the real issues that have reigned supreme since at least 1997, and the disastrous results, are clear for anyone to see. Britain has fragmented, and the legitimate grievances of the working classes are in danger of being exploited by demagogues, violent or non-violent. As Dr. Carling observed in 2008, "A political vacuum exists where the public debate should be in Bradford about the realization of a shared future. We have more to gain by opening out the debates on these issues than by closing them down." As goes Bradford, so goes the UK.
A. Millar
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