Among the crimes of Suella Braverman, the now former Home Secretary, was a speech she gave in Washington at the end of September. Multiculturalism had failed, she told her audience, ‘We are living with the consequence of that failure today’. ‘Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration, and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism have proven a toxic combination for Europe over the last few decades… if people are not able to settle in our countries, and start to think of themselves as British, American, French, or German, then something is going badly wrong.’
Her speech was predictably panned by the left – Amnesty International accused her of ‘cynicism and xenophobia’ – but also by her allies. Rishi Sunak rejected her assertion that multiculturalism had failed. ‘Something that is incredible about our country, is that it is a fantastic multi-ethnic democracy,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘We have done an incredible job of integrating people into society.’
Two weeks later Sunak was talking about a ‘disgusting’ rise in anti-Semitism on British streets. He promised he would not ‘tolerate people inciting hatred or violence or racist activity’ but in the month since neither he nor his police service have shown any great urgency to confront this ugly bigotry.
Incidentally, Braverman’s view that multiculturalism has failed in the West is not new. In 2010 Angela Merkel said that it had ‘utterly failed’, a speech that was reported matter-of-factly by the BBC. ‘Her basic message is that integration has not worked,’ commented the Corporation, ‘and immigrants have to accept that, in particular, they need to learn the language.’
There was one reference in Braverman’s Washington speech that was factually incorrect and that was her inclusion of France as an example of malfunctioning multiculturalism. France rejects the multiculturalism of Britain and America. Universalism is the guiding principle of the Republic, as it once was in the USA, what they celebrated as the ‘melting pot’, whereby all ethnicities were welcome provided they assimilated into the host culture.
The reason France has borne the brunt of the Islamists’ wrath in the last decade is because of its laïcité (secularism). The useful idiots of the left deride France as ‘Islamophobic’ but as studies show, Muslims in France are better integrated than other European nations.
There has been a rise in anti-Semitism in France but much of the hatred comes from the far-left – which has a long history of persecuting Jews – and also those born outside France. There have been several pro-Palestine rallies in France but the numbers are minuscule compared to the UK. On Saturday left-wing unions and political parties organised a series of authorised demos across the country but the attendance was poor: 7,000 in Paris, the same number in Lyon and barely 1,000 in Toulouse. The organisers claim there were tens of thousands but the images don’t lie.
Nor has there been a mass protest by schoolchildren, as there was in the UK last Friday, when thousands of pupils across the country took part in a coordinated ‘School Strike for Palestine’ rally. There were protests outside two Parisian schools on Thursday, but they drew only a few dozen, most of whom were what the French call ‘Bobos’ – Bourgeois Bohemians, dripping with privilege.
There are no ‘Bobos’ in my wife’s classroom. She teaches teenagers in a school in Seine-Saint-Denis, the most impoverished and ethnically diverse region in France. Ninety-seven per cent of her pupils are Muslim. None of them have an interest in marching for Palestine.
Another difference between French schools and British schools is that in the former there is only one language spoken in classrooms. When I told my wife of Britain’s boast that over 300 languages are spoken in its schools, she assumed I was joking. No joke. Back in 2010, the year the Tories came to power, there were warnings about the growing number of pupils for whom English was a second language; one in six, reported the Daily Mail. But progressive types were proud of the fact that half a million kids struggled to speak English, a figure that had doubled in a decade,
In 2014 a BBC reporter visited a school in Brent, North-West London, and described the ‘extraordinary mix of vibrant London life’ in a playground where 42 languages were spoken. ‘It’s vital there’s no differentiation between any languages or any culture,’ explained Martine Clark, the school’s executive head teacher. ‘We do that by celebrating the diversity of the culture in the school.’
The result of this dangerously naive belief that there should be no differentiation between British culture and other cultures is now being witnessed on British streets. How many primary school pupils of 13 years ago are now strutting through London, Manchester and Glasgow, draped in a Palestine flag, shouting anti-Semitic slogans?
The veteran French political commentator, Franz-Olivier Giesbert, said in an interview at the weekend: ‘Look at Britain, there is multiculturalism: huge crowds shouting “death to Jews”. We are not remotely in that situation, and it’s because of the Republic…and that’s why it’s better to be in France with its laïcité than in Britain.’
Nine months after the Tories’ victory in the 2010 general election, Prime Minister David Cameron made a speech in which he criticised ‘state multiculturalism’. It had not worked, he said, and had led only to a rise in Islamic extremism. What Britain needed, declared Cameron, was ‘a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism’. The PM’s speech was criticised by many on the left. One Labour MP accused him of ‘writing propaganda material for the EDL [English Defence League]’. That MP’s name was Sadiq Khan, who is now in charge of a London overwhelmed with anti-Semitic hate.
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