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 | | From: | dersu | | Subject: | "Ethnic camouflage for a fragmenting nation" | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 14:20:01 +1300 |
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 | http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles/archives/001011.html
Daily Mail,
21 January 2005
"Ethnic camouflage for a fragmenting nation"
The Government has announced that it may introduce citizenship ceremonies
for all 18 year-olds, in which they would take an oath of allegiance to the
Queen, listen to speeches and receive certificates to mark their
coming-of-age as British citizens.
This is part of an official drive to improve 'community cohesion' - which,
decoded, means that ministers are frightened rigid by growing tensions
between Britain's different ethnic groups and the prospect of national unity
breaking down.
As ever, though, they have taken a serious problem, failed to address it
properly and then attempted to cover up this failure by a prime example of
gesture politics.
Their concerns about 'community cohesion' were ignited by the race riots in
northern English towns such as Bradford and Oldham in 2001, when Muslims,
Hindus and white people fought each other on the streets.
A subsequent consensus held that the problem was caused by a serious lack of
integration by the Muslim community, which was in turn used by neo-Nazi
groups to whip up racial hatred.
This lack of integration was highlighted this week when David Bell, the
Chief Inspector of Schools, expressed concern that many Muslim schools were
not teaching their children how to live in a liberal, pluralist society.
But instead of tackling this difficult problem upfront, the government is
pretending it doesn't exist by producing a cosmetic citizenship ceremony
which all 18 year-olds will be expected to undergo.
Although this initiative has been devised specifically to deal with the
problem of certain minorities, ministers are too frightened to say so.
As a result, the rest of the population are to be employed as ethnic
camouflage.
But in doing so, the government is in effect calling into question the
patriotism and sense of national allegiance of people for whom loyalty to
this nation is axiomatic.
The ceremony is being dressed up as a rite of passage into adulthood,
marking the young person's right to vote and achievement of greater social
and economic independence.
This is both patronising and intrusive. And what would happen if the young
person did not attend such a ceremony? Would he or she be any less of a
British citizen as a result? The Home Office is thinking of making the
ceremony compulsory. Is there not something deeply offensive - even
sinister - about forcing everyone to take such a loyalty oath?
In any event, national loyalty cannot be manufactured by a ceremony.
Before a country can expect newcomers to subscribe to its values, it must
believe in them itself. Citizenship cannot exist without a firm and positive
sense of national identity, common values and purpose.
As it so often does, the government has confused form with substance.
It has looked at America, where people swear allegiance to the flag, and at
Australia, which has introduced 'affirmation ceremonies' for all citizens,
and concluded that public protestations of national loyalty create national
unity.
What it has failed to acknowledge is that America is a nation which
manifestly believes in itself, enthusiastically promulgates its own values
and believes that they are superior to those in the rest of the world.
It successfully integrated high numbers of immigrants because it created
institutions and policies to promote a very clear concept of American
identity.
There was a time when Britain similarly possessed national pride.
Unlike America, its sense of itself was formed by the fact that it was an
ancient nation with a rich and distinct history. Its people did not have to
swear loyalty to the flag, because the country had a strong identity for
which Britons had fought and died throughout the centuries.
As a result, immigrants to Britain wanted to assume the characteristics of
Britishness. It wasn't just that they admired its values such as fair play,
tolerance or leadership. There was also the excitement of becoming part of a
country that thought itself a great nation and took pride in what it made
and achieved. And so they eagerly assimilated Britishness from an education
system which understood that its mission was to transmit British culture.
Not any more. For decades now, our governing and intellectual classes have
been consumed by a sense of shame about this country. With the loss of
Empire came not only a collapse of national role but also an exaggerated
guilt about Britain's record of colonialism.
With large scale immigration, that guilt developed into a full-blown attack
on the nation itself. National identity was said to be an artificial
construct. The cultural values of the majority were deemed racist and
exclusive. Multiculturalism became the order of the day.
So schools stopped teaching children British political history, and taught
about slavery instead. They stopped teaching the classic texts of English
literature and looked for 'relevant' minority texts instead. They stopped
passing on the values of Christianity and taught instead a mish-mash of
garbled inanities.
British values were denigrated. Leadership was authoritarian. Stoicism was
unfeeling. And patriotism was just one stop away from fascism. Instead of
transmitting a unifying culture, education turned into an auction of
competing interests, babbling meaninglessly in citizenship classes about
multiculturalism, 'globalisation' and 'a shrinking planet' and encouraging
pupils to develop 'their own ground rules'.
Citizenship fundamentally rests upon an acceptance of the obligations to
one's country. But in the current climate in which duty has been junked in
favour of rights and entitlements, it has effectively been redefined into
claimantship.
Thus the citizenship test for all new immigrants to be introduced next year
will ask them not about the institutions of the country but what they know
about legal aid, employment law, maternity rights, the changing role of
women, consumer protection and Britain's relations with Brussels.
In the light of all this, the proposed 'coming-of-age' ceremony is no more
than empty tokenism.
It will do nothing to integrate those who believe that their faith tells
them to despise and even fight this country's values, and who may tell
themselves accordingly that any citizenship declaration required of them is
of little consequence.
And it will do nothing to provide a sense of national identification, pride
and attachment for young, white, disadvantaged people whose resulting
alienation drives them into the arms of neo-Nazi thugs posing as political
parties.
The great problem still remains of how a liberal democracy can assimilate
groups that may be unassimilable. As the Harvard professor Samuel Huntington
points out in his book about American identity 'Who are We?', even the
famous American 'melting-pot' is now cracking under the strain of new
immigrant groups whose cultures are simply too different from the nation's
foundation values.
And in Australia, citizenship ceremonies merely take the sting out of a
multicultural experiment which still continues even though it has failed.
Rather than reaffirming majority values, the Australian government still
believes that ethnic and cultural minorities should be given equal status
with the mainstream - but imagines that citizenship ceremonies will bind
them all into one patriotic whole.
But they won't. And we are making the same mistake. People don't fight and
die for a society without common bonds. Instead of being rooted in Britain's
distinct culture and history, citizenship is being reduced to abstract
principles which could apply anywhere.
The proposed new ceremony is yet another example of sticking-plaster being
applied to a lethal, multicultural wound that the government is continuing
to open."
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