You were wrong then and you are wrong now. I am writing this from Leicester, where about 50% of the population are non-white. Shared city space (shops, council facilities) are “multi-cultural” in that they are used by all; but many housing areas are culturally exclusive. There are streets of privately owned houses that are 90% Muslim or 90% Hindu; my street is 90% white. Aggregate figures for a city population do not tell a story.

If trolling is disagreeing I can see why you don’t like it . You point about data filtering through is of course codswallop the data is all wrong that’s the problem as the government has admitted on several occasions. As far as buggering off is concerned well , as I say , that is exactly the same thing as me saying if you don’t like our country bugger off .You will not be missed and as you very well know , that is a stone cold fact , although not an opinion I necessarily share

If you don

I never understood the idea of multi-culturalism because I always thought of culture as something you partook of and not something you could own. In the same way I only saw the way ‘multi-culturalism’ was used as a redefinition of an ancient reality which needed to be reinvented to give the newest set of migrants the false sense of ownership of the institutions which make up the fabric of our state required of them by the politicians who wanted to put and keep them in their place.

The biggest failure Labour made with regard to immigration was to try to say anything at all was new. I remember hearing Robin Cook speak on the subject to this effect – he talked about how our diversity is what unifies us. So in agreement I don’t think it helps anyone to start trying to identify smaller and smaller subsections of disadvantaged groups which allows a sense of identification with victimised minorities to develop.

Why risk creating further upset by developing any false narrative with an artificial and damaging struggle for discrimination when liberated individuals are best placed to define themselves through personal fulfilment of our potential?

I think it is perfectly fair to point out how the left fails to grasp the problems they’ve created as a consequence of their actions in just the same way as the right is guilty of callous self-interest – there is a remarkable symmetry between the two sides of this political spectrum on this issue.

So what to do on ‘Britishness’? Do nothing. Let it stay an academic matter; let the linguists, archaeologists and geneticists research the hows, whys and wherefores.

Instead the focus of political efforts should just concentrate on educating about our democratic values and bureaucratic procedures – because if we know how our institutions work and how we can influence them then the colour of flag, skin or accent is irrelevant.

But left-wingers must not be afraid to recognise that the truly overwhelming levels of immigration which have taken place since the early 90s have been by far the greatest source of upset for the white working classes and have been unpopular with the more settled ethnic minorities as well.

Well, this is a partly an economic issue and partly a social issue.

The economic problem is that government data does not filter through fast enough, so local councils cannot resopnd quickly enough to changing local populations. The distribution of local funding for public services is based on outdated stats.

The second is the cultural/communication issue. Here, I don’t think the govt is paying enough attention, simply because from an electoral perspective they think those votes are in the bag. Oh and they have no idea what to do on Britishness….

You cannot have a society divided into different ethnic groups unless there are different ethnic groups present to divide it into.

Such effects can perhaps be mitigated or exaggerated by government policy, but they must be there.

Redpesto [12]

This is exactly the sort of response that increases frustration in the white community.

Hmm…this could go on all night, I suppose: I point towards how the attempts to integrate have sometimes been rejected; you take it as being a problem to do with the ‘tude of Afro-Caribbean kids; I dispute that part of the argument; you claim that it ‘increases frustration in the white community’. At the risk of derailing the thread, I’d better be clear: racism is part of the argument and the history here (and continues to haunt ideas of ‘Britishness’). That said, the shared class connections between whites, blacks and Asians is something New Labour haven’t bothered with in years.

Goodbye ( he said awkwardly )

Oh my you’re a strange little man.

Soviet? Oh, pluuueeeazze. You clearly don’t know my politics. Let me ask… do you have a lot of magnets in your house?

But this isn’t, and never has, been a problem with immigration. It’s about the handling of immigration. The benefits to the country outside of London in immigration have been vastly positive, and even in London there’s little to say negatively.

Infrastructure not being enough, “white” people being forced out of jobs, alienation, lack of community cohesion…this isn’t because immigrants came in it’s because society clearly hasn’t been managed or resourced to deal with change, and my god is the world changing at a frantic pace since 50 or so years ago.

It’s easy to point fingers are immigration being the problem, the cause..it’s not, it’s just a factor in a wider issue.

Incidenatlly your comments policy is a disgrace and clearlty designed to suppress views you do not like . On a blog you body forth your attitudes, and this is what we must suspect you would do to the country. Quite disgraceful

Yawn. Faux-outrage from a Tory, who’da thunk it?

You really have this blogging thing all wrong, don’t you?

Our comment policy is OUR comment policy. Full stop. If you don’t like it, then you know what to do.

This is not necessarily a problem – I have lived in highly diverse areas and have not missed that “traditional” cohesion because I have family elsewhere and alternative ways of socialising. But white working class communities that perhaps base their cohesion on geography and physical locations where communal activities take place, would be apt to suffer from this breakdown associated with increased diversity. The left really ought to acknowledge this impact before working out what to do. It is not all about narratives, and just as the state isn’t very good at economic planning, I wouldn’t endorse the “cultural planning” of a new Britishness either. It would be better to integrate immigrants into what is already a culture that is almost uniquely tolerant of newcomers compared to other nations.

Mass immigration has been to do with the dirty politics of the left.

The floods deluging our shores are there to provide cheap manageable Labour for big business friends of labour and as a short term fix for inflation avoiding expensive training and infra structure (, hence practically all new jobs have been taken by immigrants). The plans to build 13 so called green towns were primarily in Conservative regions and of the 3,000,000 new homes 2.000,000 would have been inhabited by immigrants not yet here .( This is according to Nicholas Soames and Frank Field )
What we see is an attempt at a sort of settlement designed to alter the demographic of the South particularly towards those likely to be amenable to an internationalist tax and spend car park for all comers . The immigrants co-opt Liberals idea of the individual as separate from his identity for attacking the country and then fall back on communitarian ideas of identify when describing their own beloved victim status .Incidentally this is also why the idea that the atomised Humanism from which multiculturalism derives cannot be other than a graft . It is merely the public expression of immediate need for most just as Marxism was the public expression of justifiable class aggression its implications are utterly alien to its beneficiaries .

Multiculturalism in practice is a catch phrase believed by no—one . The very same Liberals who cant on about it judiciously remove their children form the London schools which , in many boroughs, have majorities of non English speaking students (as a first language). When it comes to choices about their own lives …now let me see, .Polly Toynbee , public schools , Dianne Abbot , the same , Emily Thornberry brilliantly discovered a ruse to get hers into a Potters Bar Grammar , from Islington ,..and I could go on.
This country has no wish to be dictated to by conceited poseurs the demand for an end to mass immigration is overwhelming and then I suggest everyone shuts up for bit while the country return to the peaceful idyll it once was by a process of mono-culturalisation .This will be a great boon for the children of immigrants of course as the British dominant culture, provides opportunity freedom , a sense of belonging women’s rights , etc. All things the coffee table book selling chancers already avail themselves of . Naturally.

Incidenatlly your comments policy is a disgrace and clearlty designed to suppress views you do not like . On a blog you body forth your attitudes, and this is what we must suspect you would do to the country. Quite disgraceful

Mass immigration has been to do with the dirty politics of the left.

The floods deluging our shores are there to provide cheap manageable Labour for big business friends of labour and as a short term fix for inflation avoiding expensive training and infra structure (, hence practically all new jobs have been taken by immigrants). The plans to build 13 so called green towns were primarily in Conservative regions and of the 3,000,000 new homes 2.000,000 would have been inhabited by immigrants not yet here .( This is according to Nicholas Soames and Frank Field )
What we see is an attempt at a sort of settlement designed to alter the demographic of the South particularly towards those likely to be amenable to an internationalist tax and spend car park for all comers . The immigrants co-opt Liberals idea of the individual as separate from his identity for attacking the country and then fall back on communitarian ideas of identify when describing their own beloved victim status .Incidentally this is also why the idea that the atomised Humanism from which multiculturalism derives cannot be other than a graft . It is merely the public expression of immediate need for most just as Marxism was the public expression of justifiable class aggression its implications are utterly alien to its beneficiaries .

Multiculturalism in practice is a catch phrase believed by no—one . The very same Liberals who cant on about it judiciously remove their children form the London schools which , in many boroughs, have majorities of non English speaking students (as a first language). When it comes to choices about their own lives …now let me see, .Polly Toynbee , public schools , Dianne Abbot , the same , Emily Thornberry brilliantly discovered a ruse to get hers into a Potters Bar Grammar , from Islington ,..and I could go on.
This country has no wish to be dictated to by conceited poseurs the demand for an end to mass immigration is overwhelming and then I suggest everyone shuts up for bit while the country return to the peaceful idyll it once was by a process of mono-culturalisation .This will be a great boon for the children of immigrants of course as the British dominant culture, provides opportunity freedom , a sense of belonging women’s rights , etc. All things the coffee table book selling chancers already avail themselves of . Naturally.

Looking at the range if things you are not allowed to say I

Who says the problem is with the heads of Afro-Caribbean kids? I think you missed the point that part of my response.

This is exactly the sort of response that increases frustration in the white community.

Who says the problem is with the heads of Afro-Caribbean kids? I think you missed the point that part of my response.

My father, for instance, is 52 yrs old and has been a life-long socialist and labour voter, He has spent 30 yrs in the NHS doing several difficult and rather under-paid jobs because he believed in the institution. However, in the space of a few years he has transformed into an embittered and reactionary racist. He may seem a bit of an extreme example but many of his friends and neighbours exhibit similar views so I think this is rather the tip of the iceburg. Every time we are in the car, driving and he sees an arab muslim or a somali walking along the street, he makes the most venomous and hateful comments (not at them of course but with us). I don’t think you can put this down to a mid-life crisis or the influence of right-wing tabloids. (not least becuase he never reads the right-wing tabloids and used to read the guardian until a few years back) This a man who used to teach me that racism was one of the worst of evils. It is deeply sad but very unsurprising, the rate at which our local area has changed is alienating and traumatising for anyone but the most patient saint. It has been just too much of an influx in too short a space of time. I think immigration has been Labour’s greatest failure but the time has come to admit our mistakes and radically reduce levels so that all commuities can adjust, settle and integrate properly. This would come as a relief to millions of good people, white, black, asian and muslim who are frightened and exasperated at the the friendlessness and social decapitalisation which comes with such violent a rate of change.

You should come to Karma Nirvana and see what conversations you would find there.

I can assure you they would be more enlightening.

[8] I take the point – the psychological persistence of slavery inside (some) Afro-Caribbean heads is a social fact and represents a special case. As successive black MPs for Tottenham have discovered, the disengagement of many of their youth – to which I allude in my article – is pretty much absolute. I don’t have any easy answers (if I did I’d be on the conference circuit).