Leon Hadjinikolaou is a cardiothoracic surgeon and a party member in Leicestershire.
In 2009 Adrian Hart hit the nail on the head. Observing Labour’s policy in schools, he realised that intensely enforced anti-racist policies could create divisions where none had existed. That was an interesting and sharp observation. But who has tried to enforce anti-racist policies and why? Is it possible that we, immigrants, have become the pawns in somebody else’s political and ideological game?
Let's start from the beginning. Population movements are not a new phenomenon. If Darwin's Out of Africa theory is correct, human immigration has been happening for at least 100,000 years. Throughout history there has been an abundance of well-recorded population movements, due to wars, political prosecutions, aggressive colonisation, slavery, and other unpleasant human attitudes.
One of the most remembered periods of massive immigration was the ‘Migration period’ between 300 and 700 AD. During that period Goths, Vandals, Bulgars, Alans, Suebi, Frisians, Franks and other Germanic and Slavic tribes invaded the Roman Empire. Even after 700 AD, Viking, Magyar, Moorish, Turkic and Mongol tribes continued invading Eastern Europe. Another well-known period of massive population movements was the ‘Age of Discovery’ between the 15th and 17th Centuries, during which Europeans colonised America, Africa, Australia and parts of Asia. Most of these population movements were associated with a degree of violence.
Purely peaceful immigrations, however, went unnoticed until the time the United States decided to put a ban on immigration in 1921. This ban followed the “great wave” of immigration to the States between 1900 and 1920. Let's have a look on some examples of peaceful immigration.
- Between 1880 and 1900 there was a significant movement of Jews from Eastern Europe to Ottoman Syria and the United States.
- Between 1840 and 1900, a large number of Germans emigrated to the United States. Today there are approximately 50,000,000 German-Americans.
- In 1820 a large number of Irish migrated to the United States for purely economic reasons, well before the Famine. A second wave of Irish immigration happened during the Great Irish Famine in 1845. Today more than 35,000,000 Americans trace their ancestry to Ireland.
As far as we can see, there was no big fuss about these waves of immigration.
To understand today’s issues about immigration, we need to consider certain ideological battles. In the 18th Century, we experienced the birth of a big ideological monster that was destined to influence humanity for centuries to come. It was socialism. Socialism was anti-establishment, anti-capitalist and anti-religious. The new religion of the socialists was the State, which they envisage as the big-brother, the absolute ruler, the supplier of goods, the protector from all things evil. The French Revolution epitomised some of the basic socialist ideas. The Establishment was confronted with the guillotine and the church was taught a lesson by becoming a subdued servant of the state.
Rapidly, socialism progressed to Marxism, which blatantly rejected the idea of national identity. It introduced the idea that working classes are identical around the world and their single, common, enemy are the rich capitalists. Therefore, there should be an international revolution of the workers, to abolish capitalism, religions and national borders and everybody would live happily in a huge, global, utopian society.
Things were going well for the socialists until they stepped on the landmine of ‘national identity’. The socialists’ rejection of national identity created an escalated reaction, which eventually led to ideologies as extreme as national-socialism and fascism. Interestingly, both national-socialism and fascism were as anti-capitalist and anti-religious as the socialists. They both worshipped the State as much as the socialists.
Their major difference lied with their approach to national identity. It seemed that for Europeans national identity was a far more important issue than the socialists originally thought. Not really knowing how to respond to this nationalistic reaction, socialists rejected the nationalists as agents of capitalism. Lucky for the socialists, the terrible things that happened during the Second World War made the word ‘nationalism’ synonymous to absolute evil. After 1945 anyone who dared to be proud of his/her nation was automatically labelled a fascist by the socialists.
In the long battle between socialists and their opponents, immigration and ethnic diversity was never high on the socialist agenda. This is because socialists believed in a ‘socialist assimilation’, where all people will recognise that the only real religion is the socialist State and, therefore, they will be reborn having abolished their national, cultural and religious characteristics. Also, socialists were convinced that the collapse of the Western capitalism was imminent. Therefore, there was no need to create policies for immigration and how to deal with different cultures and religions. With the triumph of socialism, there would not be national borders any more.
Unlucky for the socialists, in the 20th Century it became obvious that socialism did not triumph as fast as they hoped. Socialists had to start dealing with the diversity issue and they looked for policies. Eventually, they discovered multiculturalism. This policy advocates equitable status to distinct ethnic and religious groups without promoting any specific ethnic, religious or cultural community values as central.
But let us look deeper what exactly this means. Let us suppose that we have a country where 90% are of culture A and 10% of culture B. Any logical person would agree that the country deserves to be run according to culture A and special provisions should be made for the culture B to celebrate their culture to the extent that this is possible. Multiculturalists, however, advocate that the culture A must stop practising their culture in order not to make culture B feel uncomfortable. Consequently, the state must abolish any item of governance and any aspect of public life that is specifically related to culture A. In summary, culture A must abolish their liberties in order to allow culture B to enjoy their liberties to the maximum.
The socialists’ attack and undermining of national cultures is not unfamiliar. To understand the socialist attitude one needs to look at the French revolutionary socialists. They characteristically changed their calendar into a 10-day week with different months with different names, to show their dislike to the pre-revolutionary French culture. Similarly, the Soviet Union attempted to change the 7-day week to a 5-day week.
This is a concept of immense importance to understand what happened in UK with the Labour Government. Labour, who are in essence socialists, used multiculturalism to undermine the British national culture, since all things national are Conservative, bourgeois, capitalist and, in summary, evil. I am not the only one to realise this. In 2009, Andrew Neather, a former speechwriter for Tony Blair, wrote an article saying Labour had allowed immigration to rocket to turn Britain “truly multicultural” and “to rub the Conservatives’ noses in diversity”. This statement may surprise the average person who does not have an interest in political history. They do not, however, surprise, anyone who knows how socialists are thinking and acting. It is obvious who promotes multiculturalism and why.
What multicultural socialists fail to recognise is that forceful multiculturalism did actually exist in the ex-Communist countries and failed with a big bang. The most striking and fearful example is Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was a country with remarkable ethnic diversity. Unlike other Eastern European countries, Yugoslavia chose to be socialist. When the multi-ethnic Yugoslav partisans took over the country at the end of the Second World War, they banned nationalism from being publicly promoted and intensely enforced multiculturalism. Everybody knows that after 45 years of ‘socialist assimilation’ and ‘enforced multiculturalism’ the country broke down into states of clearly defined national groups, in a rather unpleasant way. I have not seen many socialists discussing why socialism failed to abolish national pride, culture and religion in Yugoslavia. Instead, they repeat the mantra that the American imperialism armed the anti-revolutionaries to undermine socialism.
Many fear that intensely enforced multiculturalism could lead to an unpleasant reaction to immigrants. The first signs are out there, with the BNP winning more votes. The anti-immigrant feeling is not expressed only in votes. Racist comments and jokes have become a part of day-to-day life everywhere, in the pub, in restaurants and at social events.
I am an immigrant and I naturally wish to teach my children the culture
from which I came. But by the same token, I wish to teach them that now they
live in a great country, with a distinct and proud culture - the British
culture. I wish them to respect and honour this leading culture and to do
their best to preserve it and to defend it. If this makes me a
Conservative, Conservative I am.