Last year I argued on Centre Right that the repeated assertions by Liberal-Left public figures that Islam has nothing at all to do with violence, would in the light of continued terrorist outrages ultimately lead disillusioned voters to believe the twisted half truths of racist political parties. Last week’s election results now raise a very real question as to whether we are now reaching the point of it becoming too late to prevent the rise of this sort of racism in Britain.
It is simply no use Labour ministers blaming stay at home Labour voters for the election of two MEPs from a racist party. Two leading academic researchers have recently said that a sophisticated strategy is now needed to win back voters who both agree with the policies of the racist party concerned and have lost all faith in what the mainstream parties have to offer.
Part of that strategy needs to be a recognition that a significant part of the blame lies with Labour's deeply flawed policy agenda of actively promoting 'diversity' in society coupled with the popular perception that certain groups are more favoured by the government than others. In a free society we rightly tolerate diversity, however, active promotion of it by the government is something quite different altogether. So, here are three reasons why government should NOT promote diversity:
1. It undermines community cohesion. As if to illustrate the point, only last week, a government minister told parliament that Muslim "communities and other groups have the option to use religious councils or any other system of alternative dispute resolution". Whilst the minister's statement certainly promotes 'diversity', it also significantly undermines community cohesion, not to mention leaving Muslim women under pressure to accept a legal system (sharia)that gives them significantly lesser legal rights than men. Equally, the giving of government funding to Islamic groups such as the MCB, may well promote 'diversity', but it is effectively treating Muslims as a separate community, rather than primarily as individual citizens. The government simply does not seem able to get its collective head around the fact that you simply cannot create community cohesion by promoting diversity! The latter creates a more fragmented society. Community cohesion is its exact opposite. It is about people focusing together on what they have in common, around a set of shared values - and that includes equality for all under one system of law.
2. Some lifestyle choices produce better results for society than others. Marriage is a classic example. In a free society people are free to chose the relationships they enter into, but having married parents unquestionably produces better results for children than other family structures. Only 8% of married parents split up by the time their first child is 5 years old, compared to 25% of those who married after the birth of their child and 52% of those who simply live together. Shocking figures when you consider that a 1998 report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which looked at more than 200 UK research studies of the effects of family break up. This found that children whose parents have split up are at significantly greater risk of: having behavioural problems, leaving school with few or no qualifications, becoming sexually active at a younger age, suffering depression, and turning to drugs, smoking and heavy drinking. This is both a social and an economic cost that the rest of society quite literally pays the price for. Equally, I would argue that there are aspects of shariathat simply do not produce good results for society and these include aspects of Islamic family law that Islamist groups have been pressing the government to make enforceable in the UK.
3. The damage done by the present Labour government's promotion of diversity is made more toxic still by the politically correct way this policy is often implemented. Groups perceived to have been the victims of past 'oppression' are given a special protected status that seeks to prohibit any criticism of their ideology. Ever wondered why the government only talks about Islamophobia (fear or hatred of the ideology) rather than Musimophobia (fear or hatred of the people)? The government sponsored promotion of diversity also gives special consideration to the funding of groups given this privileged status by political correctness. Ever wondered why the present government provides subsidies for training courses in Islamic theology, but not for those in Christian or Jewish or any other sort of theology? Admittedly there is also an element of appeasement here in the face of threats of violence. Moreover, regardless of whether the actual details of this are widely known or not, it is undeniable that it all lends credence to a strong perception, particularly among many white working class young people that some groups get a better deal from the government than they do. That is the breeding ground of the vote for white racist candidates that we have just seen. It didn't just happen because Labour voters stayed at home.It happened more fundamentally because the active promotion of 'diversity' by the present Labour government created the perception that some groups were being treated differently from others.
Until this perverse promotion of diversity is not only replaced by a government policy of promoting equality for all, but is actually widely seen to be treating everyone as equal, we will face the national shame of the likes of Nick Griffin being elected to public office. As with other aspects of Britain's broken society, it will take the medium if not the long term to repair the damage that these Labour policies have already done to our society. But the cost of neglecting to do so could well be a very significant rise of racial and religious tension in Britain. No responsible government can allow that to happen.
