I don’t quite see the point of flying Union flags in Tower Hamlets, or complaining about it when the council takes them down. This squalid little fiefdom run by the deeply corrupt Lutfur Rahman is not part of the UK: it is a suburb of Sylhet, with all that such a location might entail. This would include the mayor himself, who once rigged the votes and used imams to intimidate voters.
Of course it is true that London is headed the same way as Tower Hamlets and will get there depressingly soon, an upheaval aided by the self-flagellating liberals who still choose to live in the capital and whose yearning for self-annihilation is close to absolute. The temptation is to write off our first city, and maybe others, too, come to that.
Tower Hamlets is certainly by no conceivable stretch of the imagination particularly ‘British’. It is, rather, a fly-blown satrapy where many of the locals at best are ignorant of our culture and at worst despise and loathe it. A significant minority of the population can barely speak English (6 per cent) and half of the population are foreign born. Now, if you believe in multiculturalism you will have no problem with that, I suppose – and would probably advance the argument that people from the same ethnic groups tend to band together, although that understanding of human nature would not, of course, extend to white British people. When they express a preference for living among their ‘own kind’, they are told that they are racist scumbags and had better get with the project, sharpish.
I wonder if it has occurred to any members of our government to ask why this whole Operation Raise the Colours business has taken off and why quite so many people seem to be taking part in it. My suspicion is that while Sir Keir Starmer feigns an affection for the flag of our country and will even wave one about when the England team are playing football, especially if it is the chicks, he almost certainly thinks that people with too fond an affection for the Union Jack and the cross of St George are right-wing racists and entirely deplorable. Filed away in the back of his mind is the notion that it’s probably just those football hoolies again, the ones who rioted last summer. What he is missing, then, is the importance of the current protests – the weight of numbers behind them, the fact that it is not just yer usual suspects, the depth of anger it conceals and the problems which thus lie in store in the future. The UK is quite quickly tipping towards serious civil disorder: in many parts of the country, whitey has had more than enough. A clever government would work out why this might be and do something about it. Unfortunately, we do not have one.
I wonder if it has occurred to the government to ask why Operation Raise the Colours has taken off
Brits have never hitherto been disposed towards waving the flag about. It has always been my contention that any country where there are too many national flags on view is feeling very insecure about itself and is headed for trouble. This is broadly the position of the UK right now, perhaps for the first time. And it is not terribly difficult to see how we have been brought to this point. Yes, much of it is down to the sheer weight of numbers of immigrants coming into the country.
But it is not just the weight of numbers. It is also partly the manner in which many of these incomers have behaved which grates a little. The way in which towns and cities have been overwhelmed, changing entirely the nature of once familiar neighbourhoods. The stoic refusal of many to embrace the culture of the country in which they have made their homes and in many cases the espousal of aggressive and hostile views rooted in an implacable creed which always takes precedence.
But even this is not the main reason the tension has been simmering both last year and this. More than anything it is a blind fury at the way in which our elected representatives have allowed this to happen – and even welcomed it. And more even than this, the way in which the British seem at every turn to be having their noses rubbed in it.
The Australian sociologist Karen Stenner, in her book The Authoritarian Dynamic, analysed what it was that made people cease displaying a peaceable nature when faced with large-scale immigration and become inflamed and angry (authoritarian, in her words). She found it was precisely this – when they have their noses rubbed in it. When they perceive that everything is tilted against them. When the entire established order insists that ‘diversity’ is bloody marvellous and we can’t have enough of it and that Britain’s history is steeped in wickedness. That nothing whatsoever beneficial came of colonialism. That black people and other minorities should be hugely over-represented in our films, dramas and adverts on the television and that the rest of us should suck it up without question. That white people are inherently, unavoidably racist and that we should be at the back of the queue for any job we might fancy.
That if we start to question a possible connection between the religion of Islam and a certain predilection towards deranged homicidal violence we will be guilty of Islamophobia and prosecuted. That if we tweet our anger we will be prosecuted. You can get away with this stuff for just so long – and then even the mildest-mannered will start waving a flag saying, in effect: we’re still here, just.
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