I am not afraid to say the West’s values are better

Before sidling off into history last month, the Commission for Racial Equality published a final report. Decades of multiculturalism, it revealed, had left Britain a fractured and unequal nation at risk of splitting up. The Commission’s chairman Trevor Phillips stated several years ago that multiculturalism had failed. His commission waited till its final hours to admit as much. It was impossible not to feel saddened by this confession.

Even as left-wing experiments go, multiculturalism was an especially costly failure. Principally it blighted the lives of immigrants who escaped their own countries only to be told not to integrate into ours. But its victims also included those who refused to remain silent before their era’s craze. For some, like the Bradford headteacher Ray Honeyford, speaking the truth ended their careers. Others — like the philosopher Roger Scruton — had to endure years of libel and innuendo. How different it could have been had the recent worthies all spoken out a little earlier, or kept silent a little less.

Just one of the lessons to be rescued from the multicultural wreck is how important it is to speak out even when all around you are shouting for quiet. Next week I am speaking at the Intelligence2 debate in London for the motion that ‘We should not be reluctant to assert the superiority of Western values’. It’s already been gathering the kind of interest which has a touch of the ‘How could you?’ about it.

Speaking alongside me is the great Islamic scholar, Ibn Warraq, one of the great heroes of our time. Personally endangered, yet unremittingly vocal, Ibn Warraq leads a trend. Like a growing number of people, he refuses to accept the pretence that all cultures are equal. Were Ibn Warraq to live in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, he would not be able to write.