Racial pride is fine. Racial hatred is wicked

Of all the manifold stupidities of current political debate, the mantra that ‘racism’ is a mortal sin of which any respectable person should be thoroughly ashamed is probably the most absurd.

Every human being belongs to one or more races. There is no such thing as a ‘raceless’ person. There is no such thing as a hundred per cent. racially pure person, whatever the ignorant claims of racial supremacists. We are all, to a greater or lesser degree, mongrels – many of us, including myself, proudly so. And we are all – or should be – proud of the races to which we belong and with which we identify. Sometimes this can be a mistaken pride, because every race has an associated cultural tradition which is far from perfect, and blots on its historical record of which it should not be proud. But the natural instinct of every human being and group is to stick up for its own, right or wrong.

There need be nothing bad about this. Where it becomes socially toxic is when people use race as a weapon against others. This is woefully common, and occurs not only as direct aggression but as manipulative social engineering. If the recent assertion by a former speechwriter for Tony Blair and other Labour ministers is true, the huge increases in the numbers of migrants coming into the United Kingdom over the last decade were partly due to a politically motivated attempt by ministers to radically change the country and to "rub the Right's nose in diversity" – a euphemism for irrevocably changing the country’s population mix in ways which were bound to cause friction between the existing inhabitants and newcomers from different backgrounds, cultures and religions.

For such a drastic step to be taken by a government not only without previous public debate, but whilst deliberately avoiding one, is cynically arrogant in the extreme and, in the eyes of many, a piece of treachery unparalleled in our history. This alone, unless disproved, shows Labour to be unfit as a governing party.

The attempt to avoid serious debate of this issue, and to damp it down as much as possible, has been an ongoing ploy of the ‘Politically Correct’ multiculti brigade throughout the past decade. This has not been a one-party issue; all of the mainstream parties have been anxious not to listen to the concerns of those who dislike the speed and scale of immigration – or, if they have grudgingly listened, have smugly asserted that the critics are quite wrong and that immigration is wholly beneficial, so if you don’t like it you must lump it. And then they are stupid enough to be at first dismissive, then growingly surprised, and now alarmed, at the rise in support for the British National Party.

Whatever else one may think of the BNP – and I for one don’t think much of it – forcing this concern into the open is at least one service – possibly the only one – it has performed for our politics. Now it is up to the mainstream parties to get off their backsides and ensure that the BNP does not garner the fruits of the disgruntlement their own culpable neglect has spawned.

If they are to do this, there will be have to be a much tougher, more principled and realistic, approach to legitimate concerns felt by those whose historic home towns have been in some cases unrecognisably transformed during the past few years. There must be a firmer stance against those who, having been welcomed into our country, express open hatred of our traditions of free speech, fair play, tolerance of different lifestyles, and pluralistic social mix. There can be no room for British ghettoes, self-imposed or otherwise.

It is not wrong to require adherence to basic British values from all British citizens, including newly arrived and first-generation ones. People who choose to live here have to recognise that there are civilised standards they must adhere to. Religious and cultural diversity are to be welcomed; imported religious exclusiveness and cultural apartheid are not. No-one should be expected to abandon their own beliefs or cultural ways as long as these do not conflict with fairness, justice, and the rights of the individual which have been struggled for and painfully achieved here down the centuries.

But evil customs such as ‘honour killings’, female genital mutilation, and the social subordination of women must be tackled head on in Churchillian “up with this we will not put” mode and ruthlessly stamped out, whether they are adhered to as cultural or religious or both. People who believe they have a mandate from their god or their tribal customs to beat their wives and murder their daughters irrespective of the law of the land are not wanted here – let them go and do these vile things somewhere else. No British government, of whatever political complexion, is fit for purpose which fails to make this crystal clear not only by words but also through decisive action.

Those who preach that all traditions and cultures are equal but different and should he patronisingly tolerated in our midst, even though in some respects primitive by our standards, are wrong and deluded. They seek to atone for the alleged sins of past white colonialism by turning a blind eye to things which no decent modern society should tolerate. This is pseudo-liberalism gone mad and colonialism standing on its head. Some traditions do enshrine values which are superior to others; and where these values conflict there can be no compromise. To think otherwise is to collude with primitive bigotry and cruelty, sometimes amounting to barbarism, by speciously painting culprits as victims. Those who do so resemble W.S. Gilbert’s “idiot who, in enthusiastic tone, praises every century but this and every country but his own”. These featherbrained folk have ruled the roost (fast, thanks to them, becoming a dungheap) for too long. Surely it cannot be much longer before their time is up and their shallow ideas are thoroughly discredited and rejected by the electorate.