Assimilate - Resistance is Futile

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.