ZEALOTS IN OUR MIDST - PART I
Fanaticism, fertiliser,
bombs and why we tolerant Britons should blame our leaders, NOT ourselves,
for
this immigration mess.
In
the Daily Mail on Saturday, April 3rd, 2004 the Saturday Essay by Tom Stacey
said it all for all of us who knew there was something badly wrong in our
country and we wanted questions answered and this Mr Stacy’s article has done.
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We indigenous British scarcely deserve the threat to our
lives presented by a half a ton of chemically treated fertiliser and the
accompanying plot to explode in our midst.
And we especially do not deserve it at the hands of second or third
generation British immigrants.
Yet in the wake of the week’s arrests, and the discovery of
just such a plot, the nation has indulged in a spate of collective soul-searching. Are we in any way to blame for the hatred
that has welled up in the hearts of a few disaffected Muslim youths?
Must the West change itself to purge the threat of terror,
rather than seek to isolate and destroy the Muslim fanatics? Such is the
thinking among many of the liberal elite.
So it seems not only timely but essential that, in the midst
of the self-flagellating angst, we should remind ourselves of Britain’s long
and honourable tradition of toleration towards those from foreign lands, and
thus contrast it with the bloodlust and carnage with which a tiny minority now
wish to repay us.
Britons do not have themselves to blame. But they could
fairly blame their elected leaders who have helped lead them into this mess.
For the utter horlicks of our immigration policy, which has
justly ended the political career of Ms Beverley Hughes, has suddenly and
unexpectedly welded the issue of national sovereignty to that of national
security.
Labour’s refusal to address, openly and honestly, the
immigration crisis that is overwhelming us is a grave disservice to the people
of this country, minorities no less than the majority.
And now the consequence of that failure is upon us all,
ruled and rulers, in the form of terror cells and fertiliser bombs.
For the better part of half a century I have watched this
problem developing. At the start of the
sixties, as the immigrants flowed in, I was contesting a Parliamentary seat in
West London. I saw their numbers grow, a mere 2 or 3 per cent increase in four
years, yet even so becoming the biggest lump in the electors’ throats.
It was never aired publicly. Even then, one couldn’t ‘play
the race card’.
But after the vote, I wrote a piece about it in the Sunday
Times, headed The Ghettoes of Britain, highlighting the way these immigrants
were not integrating, but instead gathering in isolated communities, wary of –
and removed from- the nation around them.
Of course, I cared for all my prospective
constituents. I knew all the countries the immigrants came from. I had two
Jamaicans, three West Africans, and two Indians working as volunteers at my
Tory HQ> but still I feared the multi-cultural dream was in danger of being
shattered.
Two years earlier I had been sent by my paper to report on
‘Smethwick’s Little Asia’ in the Midlands, where Victorian churches with
windows aglow with tales from the bible were becoming mosques, and the
muezzin’s call broke over the heads of the remnant whites. It wasn’t hatred
that divided the communities, but dismay- mutual incomprehension.
Where would it carry us, I wondered. Nobody stopped to ask,
let alone answer.
Every society on God’s earth will hunch up in alarm if
newcomers descend in such numbers as to threaten their sense of who they truly
are and where they truly belong.
But the admirably British sense of individual freedoms,
permissive of difference, usually has us making the best of the varied talents
and styles of our minorities.
We have celebrated diversity, dancing our Highland reels in
Purley, eating our Indian chicken tikka masala or the Chinese noodles from
Berwick to Brighton. Look how our
sporting stars of African or Caribbean provenance become national heroes- It is
OUR Sol
Campbell, OUR Emil
Heskey, OUR Linford
Christie.
What comic relief OUR Lenny Henry brings us! How much poorer we would be
without the sounds of OUR Shirley Bassey.
I can even persuade myself that several hundred thousand
pounds of Treasury Funds spent every year to protect Salman Rushdie from the
Ayatollahs is justifiable in the cause of a British writer having his own showy
way with words.
This national identity of our island people, let’s face it
(with pride) was fairly diverse from the days of its first formation under King
Alfred in the 9th century. Then, after 1066- the last significant
armed invasion- the nation took in the Normans. We had no choice. They had won.
It took a matter of generations, of course, for their true assimilation,
but the ‘British’ people. Always changing shape, was glad of the new mix soon
enough.
End of Part 1
Click Here to read Part II
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