So
Tony
Blair has chosen to be British society's guardian. He has
criticized multiculturalism as being a cover for immigrants who
refuse to integrate into the British way of life. Until recently
the dominant opinion amongst those in charge of the British state was
to make a virtue of necessity and pursue a policy of
“multiculturalism”. It didn’t work. In fact, it has encouraged
division, by getting people to identify with their “culture”
rather than with the British “nation”.
Anders
Breivik, who carried out the Norwegian slaughter berated what he
called in his manifesto “Marxist multiculturalism”.
Gary
Younge once pointed out in the Guardian: “Cultures are dynamic, and
emerge organically from communities. None exist in isolation or
remain static. So the presence of a range of cultures in Britain or
anywhere else is not novel, but the norm.” There’s nothing wrong
with that. A diversity of languages, festivals, music and food is
something to be welcomed and enjoyed.
The
other kind of multiculturalism which advocates policies for
encouraging and supporting cultural differences at the expense of
working class unity is something to be opposed as much as the
alternative policy pursued by some states of inculcating a single
“national identity”.
Workers
should be encouraged to think of themselves as members of a worldwide
class with a common interest, not as members of different “nations”
or different “ethnic” or “cultural” groups with their own
different, competing interests. We understand that working
class people of all cultures need to come together as equals to fight
for issues that unite them as a class. And that’s the only way
we’ll ever achieve a society where we can work together for things
that unite us all as human beings, regardless of skin colour,
religious beliefs, cultural or national origin, or individual
difference.
Socialists
see “multiculturalism” as divisive as it gets workers to identify
with some other group over and above their class.
Immigration
causes a problem since immigrants, having been brought up under some
other state, have not gone through the same process of brainwashing
and conditioning as have the “native” population. Those born and
brought up in Britain have been taught, through what’s been drummed
into their heads at school and through what they continuously hear on
the media, to regard themselves as British. In school they are taught
the history of the kings and queens, and of the wars in which the
British ruling class has been involved in over the centuries. The
media reinforce this by reporting news from an almost exclusively
British angle and encourage identification with “the nation” via
identification with “our” sports teams and performers.Who can
forget that once doyen of conservatism, Norman Tebbitt’s annoyance,
that 2nd and 3rd Generation immigrants refused to support the English
cricket team and continue to support that of their country of origin?
Hence
a change of policy is under way, a swing to “assimilationism”
which Blair's home secretary Blunkett began many years ago that
people seeking British nationality should be required not just to
have a knowledge of “the British way of life” but also to
publicly swear allegiance to the queen.
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