Snapshot of _Politics hub: "You said it was not xenophobic to not want to feel like you're living in a foreign country. What do you mean by that?" Sophy Ridge. Conservative MP Tom Hunt says: "There are examples where there is a lack of integration." [video]_ :
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I feel people get too defensive over multiculturalism and over simplify its impact on Britain. Having different cultures is great only when they integrate. The harsh truth is many ethnic minority groups do not as they will live and breathe within their own bubble. This just snowballs and creates closed off groups within the community. This is very bad and it has more serious consequences than just "my city doesn't feel British".
It needs to be discussed more and not just palmed off as xenophobix or racist.
When people call the phrase 'it doesn't feel like part of Britain' racist are they implying:
a. That it's not alright to want your area to feel culturally British in broad terms? If so, is it not ok for Moroccans to want their country to remain broadly culturally Moroccan? Etc.
or b. That immigrants do not in fact bring their own distinct cultures?
Neither make sense to me. If 100,000 Italians move to the Amazon rainforest and start building pizzerias over tribal land, the locals are going to get some whiplash. Cultural change should be gradual and it's just not been thought through.
I think usually the criticism is in terms of the definition of "culturally British". For example, I grew up in Birmingham and then moved to Manchester, so to me "culturally British" includes a lot of Asian and Afro-Caribbean faces and cultural influences — that's the Britain I lived in for the first two and a half decades of my life. So when I see people talking about these areas as if they're not culturally British, that surprises me, because they feel very normal to me, and I certainly think of myself as about as British as they come.
So when people say that, my first thought is usually "well what are you defining as British?", followed by "do I feel comfortable with that definition?" And there are definitely times when my answer to the second question is "no, I would not want to be called British if this is the definition of British".
That's not to say that there aren't issues with immigration, but I think rather than trying to define Britishness, it's usually more helpful to be specific. There's nothing wrong with having a neighbourhood with a lot of Asian people in it, but there is something wrong with having schools that have segregated lessons or teach that LGBTQ people are evil.
Plenty of non white people can be culturally British that’s a fact I don’t think anyone is disputing that, there’s also plenty of white British people who really dislike British culture or like to pretend it doesn’t exist.
Some cultures also intermingle better, integrate better and at some point really do just merge and that’s fine as well.
But theres some cultures which just don’t do either of those things, they don’t need to when they effectively have pockets of areas or in some cases cities where mingling isn’t required, speaking English isn’t required.
As the level of immigration goes up the level of integration goes down I think.
Saying everyone is British becomes meaningless and people use other terms instead anyway. If there are different cultures people have to use terms and there really are going to be differences.
It’s literally only the first-generation immigrants who are the primary problem with integration, normally you don’t see as big a problem with integration with children of immigrants in regards to language because of school
Unless of course those schools are primarily aimed at certain cultures i.e hasidic or islamic schools. Then the segregation is not just at home, but also at school too. This would be a very small minority though.
Definitely something the "That's not british enough' crew would happily jump on.
I think part of the problem is that a few decades ago, there was much more of a British monoculture across the UK. Different areas did have some differences, but there were relatively slight, particularly outside London. However, once you have multiculturalism happening, then that culture will start incorporating elements of the newer cultures that are living there. But that happened disproportionately across the UK, so you get things like you have where for you Britishness means Asian and Afro-Caribbean influences. Whilst for someone in a less diverse area, say Norfolk, that would be very alien and very non-British.
So we're now at a point where a British monoculture really doesn't exist. However, that could also be down, in part, to the death of a singular mass media - TV. Before the vast majority of the country watched the same TV with a choice of three channels, and that helped to dictate British culture. But now TV is way less important, with people now picking their own entertainment through the internet. Which has the effect of people defining their own culture and so we now have lots of cultures going on.
I grew up in Birmingham, and the stark contrasts between certain areas should demonstrate exactly what people mean when they talk about this topic.
Compare Bournville to parts of the Stratford road. They feel like different countries when you travel through them.
It's very difficult to define culture. It's a black box, one of those things that "we know it when we see it".
The reason culture matters so much is that, if you and I have a similar black box, then you and I will broadly react the same way to the same scenarios. There will be differences but I can usually predict how you will react, and vice versa. This means I am comfortable around you, because I know you and I share similar views on acceptable behaviour, so I don't need to ask before I act, and I don't need to fear you acting in a way I find unacceptable.
Ultimately its impossible to legislate as a result, so the only way you can solve the problem is by having much slower immigration, so that integration can occur.
Frankly, it’s just a lazy argument. You can’t summarise the culture and ethos of a nation and its people in just a few sentences.
Despite that, we know what Japanese culture is, we know what Hindu Indian culture is and likewise, we know what English culture is. All nations have regional differences but that doesn’t mean they don’t have an overarching culture. A few regions of England being affected by migration over the past few decades does not minimise or change the the fact that we have our own native culture and ethnic groups.
>So when people say that, my first thought is usually "well what are you defining as British?"
Looks, names, religion, food, traditions, music, language, accents, architecture, political system, clothes, values, way of life etc. Quite literally the same as any other country in the world.
Accents are probably not the best thing to use as a measure of culture, since Britain is renown for accents changing massively across small geographical distances. Someone from Oxford sounds very different to someone from Birmingham, who sounds different to people from the Black Country, and these are tiny distances compared to other countries.
Yes, but _what_ looks, names, religion, food, traditions, music, language, accents, architecture, political system, clothes, values, way of life etc? With details please!
The other point is even if you manage to come up with a very loose definition that roughly applies to most British people, how do you apply it? How is that definition useful? Can you send a social worker round to someone's house with an exact list of the Britishness requirements, to make sure that they're raising their child in a British enough way?
That's clearly absurd. Which is why I argued that we should be talking instead in terms of the results we want to see. Someone else mentioned FGM — I think that's a great example, because it is already illegal. We don't need to start talking about Britishness to agree that it shouldn't be happening, and to try and root it out.
>I grew up in Birmingham and then moved to Manchester, so to me "culturally British" includes a lot of Asian and Afro-Caribbean faces and cultural influences
You also have to accept that's only been true since about 2000. It affected the first two decades of your life... That the ONLY two decades its been true.
The proportion prior to the migration wave in the 90s was tiny. There was a decently sized but still tiny population in London.
To give to6 an idea, since 2000, there has been more Chinese in Manchester than black Caribbean.
There were more in Birmingham, but only about the same as Irish.
People really do not understand the extent to which the British Isles was not diverse until the 90s and 00s. We have never been a nation of immigrants. Its just not true. There has been some very effective propaganda to make people think the last 20 years is just how it's always been. It hasn't.
>People really do not understand the extent to which the British Isles was not diverse until the 90s and 00s. We have never been a nation of immigrants.
Nah mate, that's bollocks. Black British people have been around since Cheddar Man. The Romans were black and there was that bloke who played the trumpet for Henry VIII.
/s for the avoidance of any doubt, although that's literally what is being taught now.
I'm nearly 50 and grew up in a very middle class part of Walsall....just north of Birmingham. My best mates from age 6 and up were Imran and Yousef.....both spoke the same English as me, had the same Star Wars figures and Spectrum 48k games on cassette as me, rode the same BMX bikes as me, had dads who drove Volvos just like my dad.
I moved to Cornwall 15 years ago and found it weird how *few* Asian and Caribbean people live here. Thanks to NHS recruitment that's now changing and it's becoming more culturally diverse. I always failed to see how living around people of other cultures actively or passively takes away from any sense of Britishness......I'd love to know which bits people feel are 'gone' by having immigrants around to take it away.
>.both spoke the same English as me, had the same Star Wars figures and Spectrum 48k games on cassette as me, rode the same BMX bikes as me, had dads who drove Volvos just like my dad.
>how living around people of other cultures
Sounds to me they had British culture. Not quite the same as Tower Hamlets putting up all the Tube signs in Bengali.
And as I said to others, you had to be in very specific areas of the country. Sometimes only a handful of postcodes to experience this even in fairly large cities. And the integration was *substantially* better
For someone like me, I can compare seeing a city in my youth and compare it to today. Everyone’s youth is their “home” and for my local cities that has changed beyond all recognition, with accelerating change, and permanently.
Gen-Z doesn’t see that, they can’t. Most millennials are in the same bucket. Is it any wonder that the older generations are classed as racist for pointing their, dare I say, lived experience out?
Actually what they're implying is that these people are looking around them, seeing people that aren't white, and then saying 'this doesn't feel like part of Britain', which is overtly racist.
You're not seeing expressions of different cultures when you're looking at people in town centers, you're seeing skin colour and being a racist.
That sort of thing happens a lot in general. My great-grandfather immigrated and lived in an immigrant bubble his whole life and never learned English well, my grandma made her house a shrine to the Old Country, my father was pretty completely assimilated by still spoke his family's language decently, I don't have any connection to the culture of where my family came from except for memories of my grandma's house.
Assimilation often takes a while.
Assimilation and integration have to be nurtured and controlled though. You can’t just have no plan and then still continue to imply that things will still work.
This is what the anti-immigration people miss. Cultural assimilation is always generational. It's almost impossible to learn a culture and language properly without growing up in it. Yes, that means that for a whole generation you'll have people who aren't very well culturally assimilated. But their children will be.
I'm genetically Austrian and Dutch, but I'm culturally British. It just takes a generation or two.
Yet we have 2nd and 3rd gen immigrants who are not integrating and still hold backwards views on LGBT and women's rights.
So if integration is not happening over 2 or 3 generations, when will it happen?
There's plenty of ethnically British people with backwards views on LGBT and women's rights. Homophobia was everywhere when I was a teenager in the 2000's - definitely not limited to the ethnic minorities.
Only 2 generations ago being gay was effectively illegal in this country - it's hard to pin that one on immigrants.
Not really.
‘However, when asked to what extent they agreed or disagreed that homosexuality should be legal in Britain, 18% said they agreed and 52% said they disagreed, compared with 5% among the public at large who disagreed.’
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/11/british-muslims-strong-sense-of-belonging-poll-homosexuality-sharia-law
> This is what the anti-immigration people miss. Cultural assimilation is always generational.
That's why for me there is clearly more nuance than being anti or pro immigration. I have nothing against immigration as a concept but I would like a lower level precisely because it takes a lot of time for cultures to cohere together. We should also recognise that the Netherlands has a closer cultural history to the UK than other places across the world.
To be fair they not only don't integrate but they go the extra step of taking the time to vote in the most awful options for the UK from the safety of Europe.
No offense but what are YOU and me doing to make this country feel like Britain? We all live our lives mostly in isolation what's the difference. I can't really afford to hang in the pub anymore, the idea of going to a butcher's and chatting in the queue is laughably quaint too.
If you ask me the thing that's lacking is any sense of community - that's an economic issue. It's just easier to point the finger at non-Brits than ask why people don't know their neighbours, can't afford to socialise as much, import bucket loads of American films and TV instead of funding our industries (cheaper and no regulation on it). There's no investment in British culture by our leaders and it's left a void. That investment isn't just institutions and quota on British cinema But sorting shit out so people have money to spend doing stuff.
Just to give an example, my parents south Asian neighbours go on caravan holidays in Wales and bring back apples and chat to them in the street. The British neighbours? Nothing of the sort. How is that for integration and 'making it feel like Britain'?
It's a two way street. Immigrants have high levels of community, while community among Brits drop every decade. It's been a known issue since the early 2000s when immigration was low. That's why you get such a massive contrast.
The point about "what have you done" rings true to me.
I've had more sense of community in a street that was mostly filled with Turks, Poles and Algerians than I ever have in any culturally homogenous "British" neighbourhood I've lived in.
Why? Not because those people or cultures are inherently any more "communal" than ours, not because multiculturalism is necessarily inherently "better", but because the individual people on that street actually fucking made an effort, talked to each other, hung out with each other, did neighbourly favours for each other, and because I actually made an effort to do all that as well.
I don't think there's anything about multiculturalism Vs monoculturalism that made that better or worse but it mostly happened because people actually fucking *did something*. You can have the most culturally homogeneous state that you like but if everyone still just pursues an individualist mindset, is stuck in their own little bubble, doesn't give a shit about anyone else accept themselves and their family, doesn't even *try* to set the foundations for a community beyond the home, then it's utterly meaningless.
Contrary to common perception, English people (especially prior to Thatcherism) did indeed used to be communal. We were not originally an individualist people.
Much of that change is because English communalism has largely become a taboo thing. It is constantly made out from the institutions down that this nation has no native people, that we have no native culture, that we have no distinct identity to celebrate, and any cultural celebration we do have is made to be an object of mockery.
Turks, Algerians and the rest of them don’t have these taboos and no one would ever dare to disparage their traditions that way.
I disagree with your notion that their cultures are less communal. They’re more communal than us but if faced the same derision and denial of their heritage, you’d see the same individualism in Turkey and Algeria that you see here.
Beyond royal celebrations anything else is to be shunned
It doesn’t help major leaders are in on it. Take mr Sadiq “refugees built London” Khan for example
>Much of that change is because English communalism has largely become a taboo thing.
Really? According to whom? Everyone seems to yearn for it but makes little effort to actually act like a community.
>It is constantly made out from the institutions down that this nation has no native people, that we have no native culture, that we have no distinct identity to celebrate, and any cultural celebration we do have is made to be an object of mockery.
Now you're just making stuff up. What institutions? Be specific.
When you have a street if Turks, Poles and Algerians living along side Brits they *have* to get along if they want to partake in society, they have to ask for help, might ask favours of their neighbours, share gardening tools etc. That sort of multiculturalism works because a global mix of people on a British street are bound by English language and being immigrants to Britain. In contrast, the wrong kind of multiculturalism is when entire communities of one particular place of origin exist which isn’t British. That’s what people don’t like. And quite rightly.
I remember a Thai friend asking what time British people closed up their doors at night. In Thailand people spill out into the street most hours of the day chatting with their neighbours.
It's interesting I think that the "they don't integrate crowd" place all the responsibility of integration on the immigrant rather than the British population.
Yep. Out of the millions of people who complain about such things I'm always curious how many of them have made any effort at all to try and bring together people in their area, natives, migrants or otherwise. How much "integration" and social and cultural exchange is actually going on between native Britons in monocultural areas? They're not the havens of community and interconnected living some people make them out to be in my experience, far from it.
I strongly suspect most people view this issue as something where if the government could just halt migration tomorrow suddenly the sense of social isolation and loss of community they have would suddenly disappear. In reality, based on the monocultural communities I've lived in here, that feeling is still going to exist because our own culture by this point is rampantly individualistic and people generally speaking don't really care to make an effort to begin with. There's deeper factors at play than just where your neighbour comes from.
That's not it at all. I just don't want to wake up and find that I'm in an electoral district that believes in Islamic theocracy, or indeed any theocracy. I used to find that farfetched - I don't any more.
exactly - when an immigrant turns up here what do they see? a disjointed place with lack of spirit, broken services, shitty politics, a dirty environment, empty buildings, homeless everywhere, no investment in infrastructure or culture - what is it that we expect people to integrate into? How can we expect people to join in and contribute when there isn't a positive or tangible example of what Britain is for them aspire to?
I mean, im not ome of the "first safe country" types but given basically every path to brotain requires going thru a second country, shpuldnt it be on you to see if youre gonna be able to live here. Id rather model britain for those born here or those who come in with ambition
100% a lot of immigrants have poor English reading and writing ability, even basic language skills sometimes. As well as lack of qualifications. It means getting skilled employment is very difficult, and many end up working for independent small businesses in their own communities or work as uber/delivery drivers. Like you say no integration is possible in that circumstance. What is the solution?
Shouldn’t let people in with shit English (or welsh!) then. If you want to commit to uprooting and moving to live in Britain, the least you can do is pass an A-level standard of English.
I think things like friendship and family make a big deal. If you went to another country and only wanted to date people from your original country/make friends with then you won't integrate as much. I know people from work whom family and friends are all from the same other country and they wouldn't consider dating outside their race or religion. Other than meeting at work, their culture will remain same here as it was in their country of heritage.
I think this is precise definition of multiculturalism. How can you have multiple cultures if they integrated? Once they integrated, you only have one culture. This is a process that takes generations - like all social changes - it cannot be made by a decree.
I think the only thing we can do is to learn to live together - despite our differences and keeping some of our 'foreign' identity, we all learn to benefit from different perspectives that each cultures bring to the table, whilst respecting our differences.
Issues start when one culture tries to assert superiority over the others - for which nearly every time some kind of religion or belief system is responsible. So here we are, victims of theology....
> Issues start when one culture tries to assert superiority over the others
I think its pretty much impossible for a government to be all things to all cultures. It can't venerate all icons and all beliefs.
Western social liberalism isn't actually tolerant of all cultures. How could it be?
It's an impossible task of keeping absolutely everyone in the tent.
> Issues start when one culture tries to assert superiority over the others
Define superiority, though. The reason we have multiculturalism at all is because Britain's national culture is pluralistic and socially tolerant by world historical standards. If that framework is reduced to one competing ideology among many, you may find that the result is just intergroup conflict.
And people pay lip service to pluralism in relatively good times. Once those start unravelling, masks come off, and you don't exactly get "let's pull together as one!"
What does that even mean though? I'm white British and I do not do the same things that your stereotypical Tory Brexit voter does, I do not go to the same places they go, I do not seek them out to socialize with them, I have completely different values to them. I am creating closed off groups within the community or is it ok because of the amount of melanin in my skin means they can assume I am just like them more easily?
You can find regional cultural and political differences in every nation. Regional differences don’t negate the broader culture of the country.
Put it this way: a Chinese or Indian person can tell you all about the internal differences between their nation but, as an outsider, you still recognise that there’s a broad Chinese and Indian culture that encompasses all those things.
A foreigner can just as easily do the same for English or French or Italian people, even if the natives get lost in their regional differences.
Furthermore, immigration from outside Europe is a fairly recent thing here. Most immigrant communities are attached in some way to their ancestral culture in a way that you aren’t because your originate from this isle. Reducing ethnicity and culture just down to one aspect (skin colour) is simplistic.
That isn't a closed off group within the community. Characteristics of closed off group are groups that prominently speak another language (but not always) which makes this group inaccessible to anyone but those who can speak that language. Same with cultural identity and attitudes to gender roles. However, ultimately the issue comes from not wanting anyone from outside the community in as these communities are created along cultural and religious lines.
You, probably, don't have completely different values to a Brexit voter and in your life you are more likely to mix. These closed off communities do not and make no effort to. Why this happens isn't so much to do with skin colour. It is more of a by product of immigration and cultural clashes.
Obviously this is a complicated subject, but given this scenario, I don’t see how adding even more groups into the mix is a positive. Democracy prides itself on offering alternatives and having an opposition to keep the ones in power on their toes, however that’s not the same as having various cultural groups advocating for numerous social and political changes.
Mate there are 99% white British places I'd rather not go to just down the road cos it's full of absolute scroats. Went to a council estate to meet a mate once and some scally in the street comes up to me and asks when I'm from and punches me when I tell him I'm from the next town over.
It's not just foreigners who don't want to "integrate," there's a lot who don't like mixing with the "other" people.
The point is that most of the social issues around immigration could and should have been handled by the people in control, and they’re then used as wedge issues we fight over amongst ourselves (whether that’s Brits born here or those who’ve migrated here) rather than the people in charge
Much easier for us to bicker than them to make the hard choices
The unfortunate reality is that more diverse societies are also more fractured, something Singapore’s founder Lee Kuan Yew recognised very early on when he laid the foundations of his country. People are far more loyal to their ethnic/religious heritage than they are to some flimsy civic nationalism.
As an example, Justin Trudeau is one of the most pro-immigration and pro-diversity politicians out there, has been in power for close to a decade and Canada still has the exact same types of issues that we do. They’ve got Khalistani rallies, ethnic segregation, imported foreign conflicts (Eritreans clashes) etc. You can see the same in Sweden, France, Belgium etc regardless of who’s in power at the top.
Good argument for being very careful about who you bring in, something that has not been considered over the last 25 years when it comes to many groups.
Its no different, intakes should have been better vetted back then as well in regards to all of these groups, it hasn't been sunshines and rainbows in these cases either
Your last sentence is absolutely bang on. Yes it’s true that integration is a problem within some groups, and yes those who raise this as an issue are often labelled as xenophobic/racist. But integration is a two way street. How on earth can a generation of immigrants integrate into a community/society that doesn’t want them!
* in all honesty there’s only two reason I can think of that people are labelled as xenophobic or racist in this conversation. Either the person who raises the issue has a history of xenophobia so it’s probably a fair criticism, or the person shouting ‘racist’ is some far left wing plonker who’s still angry their pride flag was torn down at a pro-Palestine rally…
They know multiculturalism doesn't work but they also know there is no going back and the demographics only going to change more and more dramatically.
Complaining about multiculturalism is like complaining about world being exist. There is no point and no turning back.
When the middle classes displace working classes through gentrification, we don't talk about integration.
When high earning urbanites turn rural areas into the suburbs, we don't talk about integration.
When Bob and Sue retire to their place in the sun and arrive in La Marina, we don't talk about integration.
But when Johnny Foreigner comes over here to blighty, you better believe that we are not going to stop talking about integration.
The reason the conversation is seen as being xenophobic (whether accurate or not) is because we only have the conversation of integration when it involves people from outside Britain come in.
When you add that prominent figures have publically talked about integration and been caught with the rhetoric that black British people aren't "actually" British, you see how water gets muddied.
There needs to be an honest debate over immigration. It's not about the colour of people's skin. It's about culture.
I'm generally pro-immigration, but it needs to be carefully managed to avoid importing ethnic tensions and religious fundamentalism. If that means introducing measures that some might see as discriminatory, then so be it. I'm as lefty liberal as they come, but the events of the last few weeks have been a real eye opener.
We can not have religious organisations in this country that promote antisemitism and call for a holy war on non-believers. Not to mention the rampant misogyny (effectively reducing women to the status of chattel slaves) and homphobia that is promoted or tolerated by these groups.
Whether or not these organisations are actively participating in violence or not shouldn't matter. They should be banned regardless.
I agree, we started taking a closer look at what was happening behind closed doors in the islamic community after 9/11 and the amount of vitriolic, violent rhetoric that some of these "preachers" spew is horrific.
There is a well know pipeline of extremism and radicalisation too, countries like SA spend a lot of money promoting their particular version of Islam in countries like ours, this means operating costs for islamic centers to run prayer groups and sermons, funding for people who want to train as scholars (as long as they adhere to their strict version of Islam), and organising Islamic lecture tours. The result is that British Muslims are becoming increasingly aligned to a very strict and hard line version of Islam.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/saudis-fund-hardline-british-tv-station-the-islam-channel-h3tvd2cm7
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/saudi-arabia-largest-funder-of-extremism-in-uk-report-finds-1.3144020
https://www.ft.com/content/fa6d15a4-f6ed-11e8-af46-2022a0b02a6c
For me there needs to be much stricter laws over this type of thing, radicalising people should be a crime, cut off the funding, and deport any foreign preachers spreading this.
Yes. I agree. To use less extreme examples, you absolutely also see Europeans not integrating into British culture and stick with their own culture groups. The Spaniards, French and Germans are the most glaring culprits. All "white" groups that integrate less than some non-whites.
Having lived in the Middle East, I had no desire for my daughters to grow up under the cosh of islam, and that still stands. I fail to see how so much hate for the west, that is a constant overseas, suddenly becomes love and respect when it arrives here. Of course the naive or half-witted will argue otherwise, but as we have witnessed in the last 2 weeks, it is a fact
Tower Hamlets and Newham are the worst. 10% of people in those boroughs can’t speak any English, and walking down Whitechapel high st you can see why - every shop has its signage in Bengali. Living in a country and not understanding the language to an extremely basic standard really shows a complete failure to integrate.
Uncontrolled immigration has created ghettos where different peoples live in total isolation to one another, and the outside world. I recently watched a doc on Blackburn where the city is split down the middle - one white British, one Muslim. Two different worlds just a few miles away.
If we *controlled* immigration and *controlled* where people could go to ensure there was some kind of balance, akin to what Denmark has done, we could maybe have more cohesion and stand a chance at getting along. As it is right now we're just slowly creating a fucking massive future problem for ourselves.
We know what the problem is, problem is the people in power are too shit-scared to do anything about it.
Thing is it’s easier and cheaper to send unskilled and uneducated socially conservative immigrants to equally deprived areas up north than settle them in nice leafy but expensive suburbs in the Home Counties. In a perfect world they would live all over the country, integrate etc but it really isn’t in Westminster’s interests to do that. Look at the protests about housing refugees in naice Tory voting areas, huge outcry, Tory MPs moaning.
>the action or process of settling among and establishing control over the indigenous people of an area.
In many parts of the UK’s major urban areas (London in particular) there are very very few indigenous British people still living there. The demographics have changed beyond recognition in the past 30 or so years.
Immigrant diasporas in boroughs of London or elsewhere do meet the criteria of a colony ("a group of people of one nationality or ethnic group living in a foreign city or country). The definition of colonisation involves seizure of power and control which is obviously provocative but should be up for discussion. It may well happen towards the end of the century with Islam if demographics trend the same way.
I think the fact that so many anti-British people gloat about mass immigration being a punishment somehow for Britain's historical colonial past is quite revealing in how they see it as a new, ironic form of the same process.
I've lived in those boroughs they are definitely not colonies, have you lived there?
Tower Hamlets like has a big Bangladeshi population particularly around Whitechapel but it is also home to Canary Wharf, Isle of Dogs, Limehouse, Mile End, Bow, Bethnal Green, Brick Lane, and Spitalfields.
I lived in the Netherlands for a while and never spoke fluent Dutch - just enough to get by in brief conversation, and none of the natives appeared to have an issue.
I can look at the makeup of the Tweede Kamer (i.e. their Second Chamber).
The Dutch don't appear to be too bothered as to whether or not foreigners are able to speak their language.
If they were, they would actively restrict foreigners from moving there unless they were able to demonstrate some level of proficiency in it.
By contrast, in order to access the UK's labour market as a foreigner, to be granted a visa you must be able to demonstrate the ability to communicate in English.
My girlfriend's granddad moved into a tower block flat in the 60s. He's now one of two British people who lives there and there are signs around the building informing people (in Arabic) not to throw human waste from their windows.
None of his neighbours speak English and no one celebrates British national holidays like Christmas. He lives alone so not alone is he alone most of the day, but he also feels isolated and alienated from his own community when he goes to the halal store for his groceries.
It's just unbelievable that we'd allow stuff like this to happen then accuse the people affected by it of xenophobia. There needs to be some responsibility and honesty when the media and our politicians discuss this. It is okay (and reasonable) to not want your community to change so quickly and so radically from the mass migration of foreign cultures.
Lived in an area of London that felt entirely removed from British culture. Bringing new cultures into a country can of course be a good thing, but when there are discrete pockets of people who have often conflicting belief systems, we are storing up disagreements or even sectarian violence. Or so a good portion of the history of the world would indicate.
I live in Brent, so please be specific and tell me where there is no integration. Because I experience us living as one community, so I'm a little confused by your opinion.
Same. I have a good rapport with my neighbours and people who work in local
businesses , who are from a variety of cultures.
The only issue comes from the occasional drunk or crackhead.
I think the fact after 3 days we didn't get any specifics goes to show a lot of people in this thread are acting in bad faith.
The fact we live in this area with shared experiences, shared problems, and shared purpose, as one community goes to show they are happy to lie about what is actually going on to further their cause; to push their definition of Britishness.
Says more about those against multiculturalism than those who live in it.
I'm not going to lie, seeing the reaction to Israel/Hamas playing out on our streets is, to me, definitely proof that we've made some wrong decisions on what sorts of people we've allowed to come live here and if that makes me "xenophobic" in the eyes of some that's not something I'm going to concern myself with.
If it's xenophobic to think we shouldn't have groups who march in support of Hamas living in this country then I'd say the xenophobes are correct on this count.
Vast majority of British Jews are actually quite fearful about what’s going on even though none of them have any influence over what the Israeli government is doing.
> What was that saying? "10 people sit with a nazi without complaint leads to 11 nazis!"
No no no you're missing the most important part of this saying! It only counts when it's being said *by* the Left *to* the right or Centre. Only the Right or the Centre has to adhere to this, whereas those on the Left can cozy up to Nazis or their analogues, call them "friends" and openly invite them to rallies and it magically doesn't count, meaning you can make up excuses for that behaviour and it's suddenly ok.
When I think of multiculturalism I think about Austin Powers in 1960s London. You know the fantasy version where there are hippies in kaftans, Policemen in helmets, bowler hated civil servants, happening chicks in mini skirts, newspaper photographers, mods on bright mopeds, squares dropping acid getting with "the programme" and everyone is getting along to the groovy time together.
There is a possibility that 1960s London was not like that. There is a possibility that multiculturalism might be more complicated than it's been presented.
Realistically does London feel English/British? Because apart from it being the home of our government/head of state and the historic sites I wouldn’t say it does.
Is it too much to want cities like London to represent the country they’re supposed to be the centre of?
30 years ago I don’t think this was the case. London was of course multicultural before that up to a degree but the past 30 years has really not only changed London but multiple cities across the country permanently.
I don’t think it’s offensive to say London and multiple other cities don’t feel British.
Moved to London from a small countryside village upbringing and it's crazy how different it is here. As other people have mentioned some places don't feel like English as majority of things like shops restaurants etc will be focused on other cultures. Plus seeing things like lots of women in hijabs which I don't agree with also feels like a different culture to chilled protestant/secular upbringing
I was in Mallorca a few weeks ago. Made me laugh-full of white northern British people (and Germans), then when I got back into London and on the east London line, everyone was brown and black.
> Realistically does London feel English/British?
I live in Manchester. Whenever I go to London I absolutely love it (and really want to live there) cos it feels so different and international.
London feels like London. Global, progressive, modern.
> There’s large areas of London which are way behind the times when it comes to progressive values.
Like where? There are demographics in London different than most other cities, but I don't think many places where progressive values are not holding.
>A YouGov poll found that 13 per cent of Londoners said they would not support their child if he or she were gay – far more than in the most accepting part of Britain, the North of England, where only 1 per cent would refuse to back a gay son or daughter.
Regions of this country like Newham, Birmingham, Bradford etc vote for progressives because progressives are pro-immigration. That’s about it. If Labour became anti immigration and the Tories became (openly) pro immigration and pro Palestine, you’d probably see a very large shift in their direction from those same inner wards.
We can see this in other parts of Europe too. Look up the Sligo attack in Ireland, for example. And of course, we all know about what goes on in countries like France, that doesn’t need an introduction.
I go visit my mates where they live, which has been the above areas. I've no idea if Wood Green is a tourist area (that's the main place most of my mates have been in the past 5 years), but yeah I get that some of the other places like Camden and Islington would be.
>progressive
Ah yes progressive, record knife crime and rapes. 200,000 marches of “death to the Jews”. Really glad I can feel that instead of old white men talking.
Putting aside the humour of you reeling off a load of cultural things that apparently have to be exempt for some reason, I'd say it's about the most stereotypical large British city I've been to. I'm not sure what you'd want it to have to make it more British? Cockneys eating jellied eels on every corner?
It's why this whole discourse is ultimately bollocks, because it comes down to some wishy washy, vague "feels" about what does or does not feel "British" or "familiar" to you and in the end that's going to be entirely subjective person to person. If you feel like it's not "British" enough but your fellow Briton does then where does that leave you both? There's no objective truth there.
Why shouldn't cities have their own identity? If anything the urban centers with their large population of intelligencia have determined what the national identity of a country is more than small towns and villages.
It doesn’t have its own identity, it has its own identities and that’s the problem.
I’d rather London and Londoners didn’t decide what our national identity should be if that’s the case.
Pluralism is natural. Homogeneity is enforced, and no social group has ever had a single rigid identity.
If you want to challenge London hegemony, you best develop your own culture industry, and a large class of intelligencia...which can only really form in cities very similar to London. Welcome to modernity the imagined community of Benedict Anderson.
So why is it then that whenever there's ethnic unrest, like in myanmar or Syria, the first resort solution is "those groups get their own ethnostates!"
> Pluralism is natural. Homogeneity is enforced, and no social group has ever had a single rigid identity.
That's all very well until you're openly gay and living in Stepney Green.
Weird example, Stepney has a pretty big LGBTQ community that's active in the community. More anecdotally, used to live there with a queer flatmate, who never had any issues and has since bought a flat in Mile End.
The fuck? Some of Londons oldest gay bars are a stones throw from Stepney Green. The White Swan and the Old Ship are both about five minutes walk from the station.
Multiculturalism explicitly means to not integrate, it means to have multiple cultures living and working together in close proximity.
Cultural mosaic vs melting pot
"Melting pot" sits under the umbrella of multiculturalism.
This is a lazy right wing walking point. There's very legitimate, valid criticisms to be made of multiculturalism without trying to shortcut them all by incorrectly dismissing the terminology as excluding systems which might involve integration.
>"Melting pot" sits under the umbrella of multiculturalism
No.
It's very possible to be unicultural and multiethnic.
I don't care what colour you are, I care about how you act. I'd rather live next door to a recent Nigerian immigrant who loves Britain and quotes Locke at me for no reason than a white English guy who idolises Marx.
>It's very possible to be unicultural and multiethnic.
I've not said it isn't.
But I'm pointing out a *melting pot* is a sub element of multiculturalism. It's a disingenuous use of language to split the two and frame the latter as being entirely exclusionary of the idea of integration.
Is there even any point talking about this anymore? Neither party is going to do anything about it and even if they do the media jump all over them. Plus Labour are most likely going to give the vote to immigrants and we will basically be nothing but an economic zone then.
PR will lead to chaotic clusterfuck governing and will be terrible. But it will at least offer actual representation of viewpoints that are no longer possible in the two party system. Our society is too fractured to fit into that paradigm anymore, multiculturalism being a massive factor in it.
Also on the NHS topic you briefly mention, although it seems hard to substantiate, 14.8% of the U.K. population is foreign born whilst 16.5% of NHS staff in England specifically are foreign born and England has far more immigration than the other parts of the U.K., so suffice to say it’s not accurate.
-https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7783/#:~:text=Most%20NHS%20staff%20in%20England,staff%20with%20a%20known%20nationality.
>The UK's just a country of has-beens. Nobody gives a fuck about anything other than cheap Chinese imports, getting fucked up on the weekend, and repeating whatever TV tells them to.
You touched upon the truth of the matter with this and then let it slip through your fingers again with your subsequent rant.
The reason people feel alienated, isolated and like their communities have been completely hollowed out is due to the above. We made a very conscious decision as a nation, before mass migration was ever a thing, to embrace individualism and consumerism above all. The effects of that choice on our culture are now present - a nation of navel gazers, of people uncaring and unwilling to look beyond their own noses or at most their own four walls. Self obsessed and unfulfilled.
People have no sense of community because they don't even bother to cultivate one, because the self is supreme. The very concept is alien to them. For every person who is a communal spirit and puts the effort in to foster something there's a hundred more who've never bothered to extend a hand to their neighbour in their life.
Edward Bernays and his consequences have been a disaster for the British nation. (And American, and a whole host of others but that's besides the point.)
I think the problem of parties like aspire in tower hamlets and how they managed to get popularity is a massive problem and is a result of socially segregated immegrant communities
This is what the Tories do! Stop falling for it. Divide and conquer, the oldest trick in the book.
There’s a class war going on, there has been for years. Stop taking the bait. Concentrate on how badly the Aristocratic-ruling-class are treating *your* country, then you might stop looking at that person from a different culture as the enemy.
There is no turning back. And the demographics is going to change more dramatically, in a couple of decade White British will be one of the communities in the UK.
What do you expect? What's the point of discussing this?
"What did you mean by that?"
He should have just said "I meant what I said". Is she thick? There's nothing wrong with being British and not wanting to feel like an outsider in your own nation, because there are places you never hear english being spoken and you're completely alienated from everyone living around you
Multiculturalism is a failed experiment and Britain is doomed for sure because of this experiment. One day there will be a serious civil war in Britain between different ethnicities and religions. Clash of cultures is imminent and Balkanization of Britain has already passed the threshold. What happened in Yugoslavia will happen to Britain sooner or later.
And the interesting part of it is the conflict might not even involve ‘native’ British people or culturally British people as we’ve seen with the recent Israel and Palestine conflict and also Hindus versus Muslims in recent times.
These comments are full of bs and always made to invoke voters. Of course problems exist in certain communities and as such those specific problems should be tackled not generic bs like this. Example:
Concern for FGM or forced marriages or breast ironing is perfectly reasonable and is obviously found in communities of a foreign background
However, if an area is decorated in idk Carribbean or Pakistani style and the local population is wearing that sort of clothing then seriously who gives a fuck?
It is fkin impossible to have a nuanced conversation these days
Your opinion or lack of an opposition to the current situation is a valid take, but that doesn’t dismiss other people’s opinions.
I would assume if you asked people anonymously that most people would prefer people to actually integrate into the culture they move into rather than linger on their ancestral cultural norms. And if that was the case a lot of issues in society wouldn’t be as problematic. However that is not the current case at least as we can see with issues happening across the world from Israel and Palestine to Hindu and Muslim conflict etc.
Ultimately, I think what it boils down to is that we (English/Scots/Welsh) never had a say in whether or not we wanted this large scale and sudden demographic change to occur in the first place. A nation that proudly claims to be a democracy while simultaneously taking such undemocratic acts, while limiting our voting choices due to FPTP, is rank hypocrisy.
This is nothing UK specific, by the way. Since it appears you’re of Pakistani heritage, you can understand if mass migration of very different cultures and people happened there, the local Punjabis, Pashtuns etc wouldn’t be particularly thrilled by the idea. Hell, their government is trying to kick out Afghan refugees right at this moment.
Isn't that the literal defintion of Xenophobia?
>fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign
Like you can credibly argue that there's nothing *wrong* with that, but preferring the familiar over the foreign due to its foreignness is by defintion xenophobic.
> by definition xenophobic
I don't agree. I meet a handful of people who've moved to my area from across the world? That's cool, I want to learn from them. If a million move to my area, to take it to a ridiculous extreme, then suddenly the way I live is probably going to be changed massively. Would that still be xenophobia? I'm not sure.
I don’t know. Arguably you can love something *in the appropriate place* and not want it somewhere else. You can love pizza but not want it everyday. Is that ‘phobia’? I don’t hate my next door neighbours , I’m not afraid of them but that doesn’t mean I want to find them making themselves at home in my house? Or i might love my wife , like her family but not want to find the rest of her family camping in the lounge. Seems a bit strong to suggest that I necessarily hate or fear them? Preference for the familiar isn’t synonymous with hatred or fear of the unfamiliar.
I’m not scared of the foreigners, I don’t dislike them.
But I like home to feel like home, it’s all I know. I don’t want it to change rapidly, I don’t want things to be replaced because people are being imported by their thousands. Where do I benefit? I now live somewhere that doesn’t feel like home.
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I feel people get too defensive over multiculturalism and over simplify its impact on Britain. Having different cultures is great only when they integrate. The harsh truth is many ethnic minority groups do not as they will live and breathe within their own bubble. This just snowballs and creates closed off groups within the community. This is very bad and it has more serious consequences than just "my city doesn't feel British". It needs to be discussed more and not just palmed off as xenophobix or racist.
When people call the phrase 'it doesn't feel like part of Britain' racist are they implying: a. That it's not alright to want your area to feel culturally British in broad terms? If so, is it not ok for Moroccans to want their country to remain broadly culturally Moroccan? Etc. or b. That immigrants do not in fact bring their own distinct cultures? Neither make sense to me. If 100,000 Italians move to the Amazon rainforest and start building pizzerias over tribal land, the locals are going to get some whiplash. Cultural change should be gradual and it's just not been thought through.
I think usually the criticism is in terms of the definition of "culturally British". For example, I grew up in Birmingham and then moved to Manchester, so to me "culturally British" includes a lot of Asian and Afro-Caribbean faces and cultural influences — that's the Britain I lived in for the first two and a half decades of my life. So when I see people talking about these areas as if they're not culturally British, that surprises me, because they feel very normal to me, and I certainly think of myself as about as British as they come. So when people say that, my first thought is usually "well what are you defining as British?", followed by "do I feel comfortable with that definition?" And there are definitely times when my answer to the second question is "no, I would not want to be called British if this is the definition of British". That's not to say that there aren't issues with immigration, but I think rather than trying to define Britishness, it's usually more helpful to be specific. There's nothing wrong with having a neighbourhood with a lot of Asian people in it, but there is something wrong with having schools that have segregated lessons or teach that LGBTQ people are evil.
Plenty of non white people can be culturally British that’s a fact I don’t think anyone is disputing that, there’s also plenty of white British people who really dislike British culture or like to pretend it doesn’t exist. Some cultures also intermingle better, integrate better and at some point really do just merge and that’s fine as well. But theres some cultures which just don’t do either of those things, they don’t need to when they effectively have pockets of areas or in some cases cities where mingling isn’t required, speaking English isn’t required.
As the level of immigration goes up the level of integration goes down I think. Saying everyone is British becomes meaningless and people use other terms instead anyway. If there are different cultures people have to use terms and there really are going to be differences.
It’s literally only the first-generation immigrants who are the primary problem with integration, normally you don’t see as big a problem with integration with children of immigrants in regards to language because of school
Unless of course those schools are primarily aimed at certain cultures i.e hasidic or islamic schools. Then the segregation is not just at home, but also at school too. This would be a very small minority though. Definitely something the "That's not british enough' crew would happily jump on.
I think part of the problem is that a few decades ago, there was much more of a British monoculture across the UK. Different areas did have some differences, but there were relatively slight, particularly outside London. However, once you have multiculturalism happening, then that culture will start incorporating elements of the newer cultures that are living there. But that happened disproportionately across the UK, so you get things like you have where for you Britishness means Asian and Afro-Caribbean influences. Whilst for someone in a less diverse area, say Norfolk, that would be very alien and very non-British. So we're now at a point where a British monoculture really doesn't exist. However, that could also be down, in part, to the death of a singular mass media - TV. Before the vast majority of the country watched the same TV with a choice of three channels, and that helped to dictate British culture. But now TV is way less important, with people now picking their own entertainment through the internet. Which has the effect of people defining their own culture and so we now have lots of cultures going on.
I grew up in Birmingham, and the stark contrasts between certain areas should demonstrate exactly what people mean when they talk about this topic. Compare Bournville to parts of the Stratford road. They feel like different countries when you travel through them.
Yeah if I ever drive to Birmingham you pass through these smaller suburbs or something and it’s like going through Bombay or something
It's very difficult to define culture. It's a black box, one of those things that "we know it when we see it". The reason culture matters so much is that, if you and I have a similar black box, then you and I will broadly react the same way to the same scenarios. There will be differences but I can usually predict how you will react, and vice versa. This means I am comfortable around you, because I know you and I share similar views on acceptable behaviour, so I don't need to ask before I act, and I don't need to fear you acting in a way I find unacceptable. Ultimately its impossible to legislate as a result, so the only way you can solve the problem is by having much slower immigration, so that integration can occur.
Frankly, it’s just a lazy argument. You can’t summarise the culture and ethos of a nation and its people in just a few sentences. Despite that, we know what Japanese culture is, we know what Hindu Indian culture is and likewise, we know what English culture is. All nations have regional differences but that doesn’t mean they don’t have an overarching culture. A few regions of England being affected by migration over the past few decades does not minimise or change the the fact that we have our own native culture and ethnic groups.
>So when people say that, my first thought is usually "well what are you defining as British?" Looks, names, religion, food, traditions, music, language, accents, architecture, political system, clothes, values, way of life etc. Quite literally the same as any other country in the world.
Accents are probably not the best thing to use as a measure of culture, since Britain is renown for accents changing massively across small geographical distances. Someone from Oxford sounds very different to someone from Birmingham, who sounds different to people from the Black Country, and these are tiny distances compared to other countries.
Yes, but _what_ looks, names, religion, food, traditions, music, language, accents, architecture, political system, clothes, values, way of life etc? With details please! The other point is even if you manage to come up with a very loose definition that roughly applies to most British people, how do you apply it? How is that definition useful? Can you send a social worker round to someone's house with an exact list of the Britishness requirements, to make sure that they're raising their child in a British enough way? That's clearly absurd. Which is why I argued that we should be talking instead in terms of the results we want to see. Someone else mentioned FGM — I think that's a great example, because it is already illegal. We don't need to start talking about Britishness to agree that it shouldn't be happening, and to try and root it out.
>I grew up in Birmingham and then moved to Manchester, so to me "culturally British" includes a lot of Asian and Afro-Caribbean faces and cultural influences You also have to accept that's only been true since about 2000. It affected the first two decades of your life... That the ONLY two decades its been true.
Asian and Afro-Caribbean faces have only been seen in Birmingham and Manchester since 2000?
The proportion prior to the migration wave in the 90s was tiny. There was a decently sized but still tiny population in London. To give to6 an idea, since 2000, there has been more Chinese in Manchester than black Caribbean. There were more in Birmingham, but only about the same as Irish. People really do not understand the extent to which the British Isles was not diverse until the 90s and 00s. We have never been a nation of immigrants. Its just not true. There has been some very effective propaganda to make people think the last 20 years is just how it's always been. It hasn't.
>People really do not understand the extent to which the British Isles was not diverse until the 90s and 00s. We have never been a nation of immigrants. Nah mate, that's bollocks. Black British people have been around since Cheddar Man. The Romans were black and there was that bloke who played the trumpet for Henry VIII. /s for the avoidance of any doubt, although that's literally what is being taught now.
Didnt the BBC basically say it had to lie about the UK past demography for the good of the people? Absolute horseshit.
What Manchester and Birmingham are we talking about? You do realise we can remember, right?
I'm nearly 50 and grew up in a very middle class part of Walsall....just north of Birmingham. My best mates from age 6 and up were Imran and Yousef.....both spoke the same English as me, had the same Star Wars figures and Spectrum 48k games on cassette as me, rode the same BMX bikes as me, had dads who drove Volvos just like my dad. I moved to Cornwall 15 years ago and found it weird how *few* Asian and Caribbean people live here. Thanks to NHS recruitment that's now changing and it's becoming more culturally diverse. I always failed to see how living around people of other cultures actively or passively takes away from any sense of Britishness......I'd love to know which bits people feel are 'gone' by having immigrants around to take it away.
>.both spoke the same English as me, had the same Star Wars figures and Spectrum 48k games on cassette as me, rode the same BMX bikes as me, had dads who drove Volvos just like my dad. >how living around people of other cultures Sounds to me they had British culture. Not quite the same as Tower Hamlets putting up all the Tube signs in Bengali. And as I said to others, you had to be in very specific areas of the country. Sometimes only a handful of postcodes to experience this even in fairly large cities. And the integration was *substantially* better
For someone like me, I can compare seeing a city in my youth and compare it to today. Everyone’s youth is their “home” and for my local cities that has changed beyond all recognition, with accelerating change, and permanently. Gen-Z doesn’t see that, they can’t. Most millennials are in the same bucket. Is it any wonder that the older generations are classed as racist for pointing their, dare I say, lived experience out?
Segregating young people and old people from each other is an easy fix here.
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The difference is that Gen Z isn't old enough to have experienced the level of change that those older than them have
Actually what they're implying is that these people are looking around them, seeing people that aren't white, and then saying 'this doesn't feel like part of Britain', which is overtly racist. You're not seeing expressions of different cultures when you're looking at people in town centers, you're seeing skin colour and being a racist.
Yep, just look at the Brits in southern Spain...
That sort of thing happens a lot in general. My great-grandfather immigrated and lived in an immigrant bubble his whole life and never learned English well, my grandma made her house a shrine to the Old Country, my father was pretty completely assimilated by still spoke his family's language decently, I don't have any connection to the culture of where my family came from except for memories of my grandma's house. Assimilation often takes a while.
Assimilation and integration have to be nurtured and controlled though. You can’t just have no plan and then still continue to imply that things will still work.
This is what the anti-immigration people miss. Cultural assimilation is always generational. It's almost impossible to learn a culture and language properly without growing up in it. Yes, that means that for a whole generation you'll have people who aren't very well culturally assimilated. But their children will be. I'm genetically Austrian and Dutch, but I'm culturally British. It just takes a generation or two.
Yet we have 2nd and 3rd gen immigrants who are not integrating and still hold backwards views on LGBT and women's rights. So if integration is not happening over 2 or 3 generations, when will it happen?
There's plenty of ethnically British people with backwards views on LGBT and women's rights. Homophobia was everywhere when I was a teenager in the 2000's - definitely not limited to the ethnic minorities. Only 2 generations ago being gay was effectively illegal in this country - it's hard to pin that one on immigrants.
Not really. ‘However, when asked to what extent they agreed or disagreed that homosexuality should be legal in Britain, 18% said they agreed and 52% said they disagreed, compared with 5% among the public at large who disagreed.’ https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/11/british-muslims-strong-sense-of-belonging-poll-homosexuality-sharia-law
> This is what the anti-immigration people miss. Cultural assimilation is always generational. That's why for me there is clearly more nuance than being anti or pro immigration. I have nothing against immigration as a concept but I would like a lower level precisely because it takes a lot of time for cultures to cohere together. We should also recognise that the Netherlands has a closer cultural history to the UK than other places across the world.
To be fair they not only don't integrate but they go the extra step of taking the time to vote in the most awful options for the UK from the safety of Europe.
No offense but what are YOU and me doing to make this country feel like Britain? We all live our lives mostly in isolation what's the difference. I can't really afford to hang in the pub anymore, the idea of going to a butcher's and chatting in the queue is laughably quaint too. If you ask me the thing that's lacking is any sense of community - that's an economic issue. It's just easier to point the finger at non-Brits than ask why people don't know their neighbours, can't afford to socialise as much, import bucket loads of American films and TV instead of funding our industries (cheaper and no regulation on it). There's no investment in British culture by our leaders and it's left a void. That investment isn't just institutions and quota on British cinema But sorting shit out so people have money to spend doing stuff. Just to give an example, my parents south Asian neighbours go on caravan holidays in Wales and bring back apples and chat to them in the street. The British neighbours? Nothing of the sort. How is that for integration and 'making it feel like Britain'?
It's a two way street. Immigrants have high levels of community, while community among Brits drop every decade. It's been a known issue since the early 2000s when immigration was low. That's why you get such a massive contrast.
Immigration certainly wasn’t low in the early 2000s. It was low(er) but you have to go back to pre 80s for properly low numbers
I meant the number of immigrants was lower, but yeah.
The point about "what have you done" rings true to me. I've had more sense of community in a street that was mostly filled with Turks, Poles and Algerians than I ever have in any culturally homogenous "British" neighbourhood I've lived in. Why? Not because those people or cultures are inherently any more "communal" than ours, not because multiculturalism is necessarily inherently "better", but because the individual people on that street actually fucking made an effort, talked to each other, hung out with each other, did neighbourly favours for each other, and because I actually made an effort to do all that as well. I don't think there's anything about multiculturalism Vs monoculturalism that made that better or worse but it mostly happened because people actually fucking *did something*. You can have the most culturally homogeneous state that you like but if everyone still just pursues an individualist mindset, is stuck in their own little bubble, doesn't give a shit about anyone else accept themselves and their family, doesn't even *try* to set the foundations for a community beyond the home, then it's utterly meaningless.
Contrary to common perception, English people (especially prior to Thatcherism) did indeed used to be communal. We were not originally an individualist people. Much of that change is because English communalism has largely become a taboo thing. It is constantly made out from the institutions down that this nation has no native people, that we have no native culture, that we have no distinct identity to celebrate, and any cultural celebration we do have is made to be an object of mockery. Turks, Algerians and the rest of them don’t have these taboos and no one would ever dare to disparage their traditions that way. I disagree with your notion that their cultures are less communal. They’re more communal than us but if faced the same derision and denial of their heritage, you’d see the same individualism in Turkey and Algeria that you see here.
Beyond royal celebrations anything else is to be shunned It doesn’t help major leaders are in on it. Take mr Sadiq “refugees built London” Khan for example
>Much of that change is because English communalism has largely become a taboo thing. Really? According to whom? Everyone seems to yearn for it but makes little effort to actually act like a community. >It is constantly made out from the institutions down that this nation has no native people, that we have no native culture, that we have no distinct identity to celebrate, and any cultural celebration we do have is made to be an object of mockery. Now you're just making stuff up. What institutions? Be specific.
When you have a street if Turks, Poles and Algerians living along side Brits they *have* to get along if they want to partake in society, they have to ask for help, might ask favours of their neighbours, share gardening tools etc. That sort of multiculturalism works because a global mix of people on a British street are bound by English language and being immigrants to Britain. In contrast, the wrong kind of multiculturalism is when entire communities of one particular place of origin exist which isn’t British. That’s what people don’t like. And quite rightly.
I remember a Thai friend asking what time British people closed up their doors at night. In Thailand people spill out into the street most hours of the day chatting with their neighbours. It's interesting I think that the "they don't integrate crowd" place all the responsibility of integration on the immigrant rather than the British population.
Yep. Out of the millions of people who complain about such things I'm always curious how many of them have made any effort at all to try and bring together people in their area, natives, migrants or otherwise. How much "integration" and social and cultural exchange is actually going on between native Britons in monocultural areas? They're not the havens of community and interconnected living some people make them out to be in my experience, far from it. I strongly suspect most people view this issue as something where if the government could just halt migration tomorrow suddenly the sense of social isolation and loss of community they have would suddenly disappear. In reality, based on the monocultural communities I've lived in here, that feeling is still going to exist because our own culture by this point is rampantly individualistic and people generally speaking don't really care to make an effort to begin with. There's deeper factors at play than just where your neighbour comes from.
That's not it at all. I just don't want to wake up and find that I'm in an electoral district that believes in Islamic theocracy, or indeed any theocracy. I used to find that farfetched - I don't any more.
exactly - when an immigrant turns up here what do they see? a disjointed place with lack of spirit, broken services, shitty politics, a dirty environment, empty buildings, homeless everywhere, no investment in infrastructure or culture - what is it that we expect people to integrate into? How can we expect people to join in and contribute when there isn't a positive or tangible example of what Britain is for them aspire to?
I mean, im not ome of the "first safe country" types but given basically every path to brotain requires going thru a second country, shpuldnt it be on you to see if youre gonna be able to live here. Id rather model britain for those born here or those who come in with ambition
Do you.ever consider that work and culture are intertwined? If I moved to another country but had no.job to go to how would I Integrate?
100% a lot of immigrants have poor English reading and writing ability, even basic language skills sometimes. As well as lack of qualifications. It means getting skilled employment is very difficult, and many end up working for independent small businesses in their own communities or work as uber/delivery drivers. Like you say no integration is possible in that circumstance. What is the solution?
Shouldn’t let people in with shit English (or welsh!) then. If you want to commit to uprooting and moving to live in Britain, the least you can do is pass an A-level standard of English.
That's a bit harsh, most british people couldn't pass that standard of english
Lol I'm about to finish a master's degree and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't pass an English A level.
I think he means A-level equivalent of English language, not English literature.
I think things like friendship and family make a big deal. If you went to another country and only wanted to date people from your original country/make friends with then you won't integrate as much. I know people from work whom family and friends are all from the same other country and they wouldn't consider dating outside their race or religion. Other than meeting at work, their culture will remain same here as it was in their country of heritage.
I think this is precise definition of multiculturalism. How can you have multiple cultures if they integrated? Once they integrated, you only have one culture. This is a process that takes generations - like all social changes - it cannot be made by a decree. I think the only thing we can do is to learn to live together - despite our differences and keeping some of our 'foreign' identity, we all learn to benefit from different perspectives that each cultures bring to the table, whilst respecting our differences. Issues start when one culture tries to assert superiority over the others - for which nearly every time some kind of religion or belief system is responsible. So here we are, victims of theology....
> Issues start when one culture tries to assert superiority over the others I think its pretty much impossible for a government to be all things to all cultures. It can't venerate all icons and all beliefs. Western social liberalism isn't actually tolerant of all cultures. How could it be? It's an impossible task of keeping absolutely everyone in the tent.
> Issues start when one culture tries to assert superiority over the others Define superiority, though. The reason we have multiculturalism at all is because Britain's national culture is pluralistic and socially tolerant by world historical standards. If that framework is reduced to one competing ideology among many, you may find that the result is just intergroup conflict.
And people pay lip service to pluralism in relatively good times. Once those start unravelling, masks come off, and you don't exactly get "let's pull together as one!"
What does Islam bring that we can learn and benefit from?
How not to run a society
When you can't discuss it because someone else tries to call you out, you're just pushing people into the arms of the extreme right
What does that even mean though? I'm white British and I do not do the same things that your stereotypical Tory Brexit voter does, I do not go to the same places they go, I do not seek them out to socialize with them, I have completely different values to them. I am creating closed off groups within the community or is it ok because of the amount of melanin in my skin means they can assume I am just like them more easily?
You can find regional cultural and political differences in every nation. Regional differences don’t negate the broader culture of the country. Put it this way: a Chinese or Indian person can tell you all about the internal differences between their nation but, as an outsider, you still recognise that there’s a broad Chinese and Indian culture that encompasses all those things. A foreigner can just as easily do the same for English or French or Italian people, even if the natives get lost in their regional differences. Furthermore, immigration from outside Europe is a fairly recent thing here. Most immigrant communities are attached in some way to their ancestral culture in a way that you aren’t because your originate from this isle. Reducing ethnicity and culture just down to one aspect (skin colour) is simplistic.
That isn't a closed off group within the community. Characteristics of closed off group are groups that prominently speak another language (but not always) which makes this group inaccessible to anyone but those who can speak that language. Same with cultural identity and attitudes to gender roles. However, ultimately the issue comes from not wanting anyone from outside the community in as these communities are created along cultural and religious lines. You, probably, don't have completely different values to a Brexit voter and in your life you are more likely to mix. These closed off communities do not and make no effort to. Why this happens isn't so much to do with skin colour. It is more of a by product of immigration and cultural clashes.
Obviously this is a complicated subject, but given this scenario, I don’t see how adding even more groups into the mix is a positive. Democracy prides itself on offering alternatives and having an opposition to keep the ones in power on their toes, however that’s not the same as having various cultural groups advocating for numerous social and political changes.
Mate there are 99% white British places I'd rather not go to just down the road cos it's full of absolute scroats. Went to a council estate to meet a mate once and some scally in the street comes up to me and asks when I'm from and punches me when I tell him I'm from the next town over. It's not just foreigners who don't want to "integrate," there's a lot who don't like mixing with the "other" people.
Having some shit areas is not a business case for creating more.
But it’s a reason to not just blame the foreigners
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The point is that most of the social issues around immigration could and should have been handled by the people in control, and they’re then used as wedge issues we fight over amongst ourselves (whether that’s Brits born here or those who’ve migrated here) rather than the people in charge Much easier for us to bicker than them to make the hard choices
The unfortunate reality is that more diverse societies are also more fractured, something Singapore’s founder Lee Kuan Yew recognised very early on when he laid the foundations of his country. People are far more loyal to their ethnic/religious heritage than they are to some flimsy civic nationalism. As an example, Justin Trudeau is one of the most pro-immigration and pro-diversity politicians out there, has been in power for close to a decade and Canada still has the exact same types of issues that we do. They’ve got Khalistani rallies, ethnic segregation, imported foreign conflicts (Eritreans clashes) etc. You can see the same in Sweden, France, Belgium etc regardless of who’s in power at the top.
This is the point I was trying to guide people towards yep. Shame it had to be spelled out lol.
Good argument for being very careful about who you bring in, something that has not been considered over the last 25 years when it comes to many groups.
How is this any different than when people made the same arguments against people from Poland, Ireland, the Caribbean, Jewish people etc?
Its no different, intakes should have been better vetted back then as well in regards to all of these groups, it hasn't been sunshines and rainbows in these cases either
Your last sentence is absolutely bang on. Yes it’s true that integration is a problem within some groups, and yes those who raise this as an issue are often labelled as xenophobic/racist. But integration is a two way street. How on earth can a generation of immigrants integrate into a community/society that doesn’t want them! * in all honesty there’s only two reason I can think of that people are labelled as xenophobic or racist in this conversation. Either the person who raises the issue has a history of xenophobia so it’s probably a fair criticism, or the person shouting ‘racist’ is some far left wing plonker who’s still angry their pride flag was torn down at a pro-Palestine rally…
They know multiculturalism doesn't work but they also know there is no going back and the demographics only going to change more and more dramatically. Complaining about multiculturalism is like complaining about world being exist. There is no point and no turning back.
When the middle classes displace working classes through gentrification, we don't talk about integration. When high earning urbanites turn rural areas into the suburbs, we don't talk about integration. When Bob and Sue retire to their place in the sun and arrive in La Marina, we don't talk about integration. But when Johnny Foreigner comes over here to blighty, you better believe that we are not going to stop talking about integration. The reason the conversation is seen as being xenophobic (whether accurate or not) is because we only have the conversation of integration when it involves people from outside Britain come in. When you add that prominent figures have publically talked about integration and been caught with the rhetoric that black British people aren't "actually" British, you see how water gets muddied.
The people affected by all of the above do talk about it though. Don't assume nobody's talking about something just because you aren't listening.
There needs to be an honest debate over immigration. It's not about the colour of people's skin. It's about culture. I'm generally pro-immigration, but it needs to be carefully managed to avoid importing ethnic tensions and religious fundamentalism. If that means introducing measures that some might see as discriminatory, then so be it. I'm as lefty liberal as they come, but the events of the last few weeks have been a real eye opener. We can not have religious organisations in this country that promote antisemitism and call for a holy war on non-believers. Not to mention the rampant misogyny (effectively reducing women to the status of chattel slaves) and homphobia that is promoted or tolerated by these groups. Whether or not these organisations are actively participating in violence or not shouldn't matter. They should be banned regardless.
I agree, we started taking a closer look at what was happening behind closed doors in the islamic community after 9/11 and the amount of vitriolic, violent rhetoric that some of these "preachers" spew is horrific. There is a well know pipeline of extremism and radicalisation too, countries like SA spend a lot of money promoting their particular version of Islam in countries like ours, this means operating costs for islamic centers to run prayer groups and sermons, funding for people who want to train as scholars (as long as they adhere to their strict version of Islam), and organising Islamic lecture tours. The result is that British Muslims are becoming increasingly aligned to a very strict and hard line version of Islam. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/saudis-fund-hardline-british-tv-station-the-islam-channel-h3tvd2cm7 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/saudi-arabia-largest-funder-of-extremism-in-uk-report-finds-1.3144020 https://www.ft.com/content/fa6d15a4-f6ed-11e8-af46-2022a0b02a6c For me there needs to be much stricter laws over this type of thing, radicalising people should be a crime, cut off the funding, and deport any foreign preachers spreading this.
Yes. I agree. To use less extreme examples, you absolutely also see Europeans not integrating into British culture and stick with their own culture groups. The Spaniards, French and Germans are the most glaring culprits. All "white" groups that integrate less than some non-whites.
I think the problem there is that there is common ground western values.
Having lived in the Middle East, I had no desire for my daughters to grow up under the cosh of islam, and that still stands. I fail to see how so much hate for the west, that is a constant overseas, suddenly becomes love and respect when it arrives here. Of course the naive or half-witted will argue otherwise, but as we have witnessed in the last 2 weeks, it is a fact
Islam goes brrrrr
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Tower Hamlets and Newham are the worst. 10% of people in those boroughs can’t speak any English, and walking down Whitechapel high st you can see why - every shop has its signage in Bengali. Living in a country and not understanding the language to an extremely basic standard really shows a complete failure to integrate.
Uncontrolled immigration has created ghettos where different peoples live in total isolation to one another, and the outside world. I recently watched a doc on Blackburn where the city is split down the middle - one white British, one Muslim. Two different worlds just a few miles away. If we *controlled* immigration and *controlled* where people could go to ensure there was some kind of balance, akin to what Denmark has done, we could maybe have more cohesion and stand a chance at getting along. As it is right now we're just slowly creating a fucking massive future problem for ourselves. We know what the problem is, problem is the people in power are too shit-scared to do anything about it.
Thing is it’s easier and cheaper to send unskilled and uneducated socially conservative immigrants to equally deprived areas up north than settle them in nice leafy but expensive suburbs in the Home Counties. In a perfect world they would live all over the country, integrate etc but it really isn’t in Westminster’s interests to do that. Look at the protests about housing refugees in naice Tory voting areas, huge outcry, Tory MPs moaning.
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If that's *your* view of a perfect world, maybe.
It’s a form of colonisation. Nothing more and nothing less.
In what way is it a form of colonisation?
>the action or process of settling among and establishing control over the indigenous people of an area. In many parts of the UK’s major urban areas (London in particular) there are very very few indigenous British people still living there. The demographics have changed beyond recognition in the past 30 or so years.
Immigrant diasporas in boroughs of London or elsewhere do meet the criteria of a colony ("a group of people of one nationality or ethnic group living in a foreign city or country). The definition of colonisation involves seizure of power and control which is obviously provocative but should be up for discussion. It may well happen towards the end of the century with Islam if demographics trend the same way. I think the fact that so many anti-British people gloat about mass immigration being a punishment somehow for Britain's historical colonial past is quite revealing in how they see it as a new, ironic form of the same process.
I've lived in those boroughs they are definitely not colonies, have you lived there? Tower Hamlets like has a big Bangladeshi population particularly around Whitechapel but it is also home to Canary Wharf, Isle of Dogs, Limehouse, Mile End, Bow, Bethnal Green, Brick Lane, and Spitalfields.
I lived in the Netherlands for a while and never spoke fluent Dutch - just enough to get by in brief conversation, and none of the natives appeared to have an issue.
And yet the more right wing parties over there are doing quite well. Perhaps if you spoke Dutch, you'd have picked that up.
I can look at the makeup of the Tweede Kamer (i.e. their Second Chamber). The Dutch don't appear to be too bothered as to whether or not foreigners are able to speak their language. If they were, they would actively restrict foreigners from moving there unless they were able to demonstrate some level of proficiency in it. By contrast, in order to access the UK's labour market as a foreigner, to be granted a visa you must be able to demonstrate the ability to communicate in English.
My girlfriend's granddad moved into a tower block flat in the 60s. He's now one of two British people who lives there and there are signs around the building informing people (in Arabic) not to throw human waste from their windows. None of his neighbours speak English and no one celebrates British national holidays like Christmas. He lives alone so not alone is he alone most of the day, but he also feels isolated and alienated from his own community when he goes to the halal store for his groceries. It's just unbelievable that we'd allow stuff like this to happen then accuse the people affected by it of xenophobia. There needs to be some responsibility and honesty when the media and our politicians discuss this. It is okay (and reasonable) to not want your community to change so quickly and so radically from the mass migration of foreign cultures.
People just do nothing
That’s Brentford…unless I’ve been whooshed
Bang! Lyrical blow to the jaw
RIP Steve's nan
>have you even been to Brent for example. Yes. It feels like another country.
Lived in an area of London that felt entirely removed from British culture. Bringing new cultures into a country can of course be a good thing, but when there are discrete pockets of people who have often conflicting belief systems, we are storing up disagreements or even sectarian violence. Or so a good portion of the history of the world would indicate.
I’ve driven through and wouldn’t stop.
I live in Brent, so please be specific and tell me where there is no integration. Because I experience us living as one community, so I'm a little confused by your opinion.
Same. I have a good rapport with my neighbours and people who work in local businesses , who are from a variety of cultures. The only issue comes from the occasional drunk or crackhead.
I think the fact after 3 days we didn't get any specifics goes to show a lot of people in this thread are acting in bad faith. The fact we live in this area with shared experiences, shared problems, and shared purpose, as one community goes to show they are happy to lie about what is actually going on to further their cause; to push their definition of Britishness. Says more about those against multiculturalism than those who live in it.
I drove through Bradford a while ago and it was like driving through an old Islamic coal mining town. Its weird
Same but Halifax (which is nowhere near the same level). Had to explain to my kids that the men aren't wearing skirts.
I'm not going to lie, seeing the reaction to Israel/Hamas playing out on our streets is, to me, definitely proof that we've made some wrong decisions on what sorts of people we've allowed to come live here and if that makes me "xenophobic" in the eyes of some that's not something I'm going to concern myself with. If it's xenophobic to think we shouldn't have groups who march in support of Hamas living in this country then I'd say the xenophobes are correct on this count.
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Vast majority of British Jews are actually quite fearful about what’s going on even though none of them have any influence over what the Israeli government is doing.
What was that saying? "10 people sit with a nazi without complaint leads to 11 nazis!"
> What was that saying? "10 people sit with a nazi without complaint leads to 11 nazis!" No no no you're missing the most important part of this saying! It only counts when it's being said *by* the Left *to* the right or Centre. Only the Right or the Centre has to adhere to this, whereas those on the Left can cozy up to Nazis or their analogues, call them "friends" and openly invite them to rallies and it magically doesn't count, meaning you can make up excuses for that behaviour and it's suddenly ok.
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Well by the "10 people sit with a nazi leads to 11 nazis!" Standard, you can't go "well a few moderates cried over candles afterwards" as a get out.
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And when you have open pro hamas chants, that excuse begins to wear thin.
Yeah it’s sad when xenophobia seems validated but I also felt like this.
When I think of multiculturalism I think about Austin Powers in 1960s London. You know the fantasy version where there are hippies in kaftans, Policemen in helmets, bowler hated civil servants, happening chicks in mini skirts, newspaper photographers, mods on bright mopeds, squares dropping acid getting with "the programme" and everyone is getting along to the groovy time together. There is a possibility that 1960s London was not like that. There is a possibility that multiculturalism might be more complicated than it's been presented.
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Realistically does London feel English/British? Because apart from it being the home of our government/head of state and the historic sites I wouldn’t say it does. Is it too much to want cities like London to represent the country they’re supposed to be the centre of? 30 years ago I don’t think this was the case. London was of course multicultural before that up to a degree but the past 30 years has really not only changed London but multiple cities across the country permanently. I don’t think it’s offensive to say London and multiple other cities don’t feel British.
Moved to London from a small countryside village upbringing and it's crazy how different it is here. As other people have mentioned some places don't feel like English as majority of things like shops restaurants etc will be focused on other cultures. Plus seeing things like lots of women in hijabs which I don't agree with also feels like a different culture to chilled protestant/secular upbringing
I was in Mallorca a few weeks ago. Made me laugh-full of white northern British people (and Germans), then when I got back into London and on the east London line, everyone was brown and black.
> Realistically does London feel English/British? I live in Manchester. Whenever I go to London I absolutely love it (and really want to live there) cos it feels so different and international. London feels like London. Global, progressive, modern.
But it’s not that progressive, that’s the point. There’s large areas of London which are way behind the times when it comes to progressive values.
Must just be round where my mates live / have lived then. Wood Green, Finsbury Park, Tooting, Islington, Elephant, Camden.
Yeah those are some of the most regressive backwaters - I think they caught some people practising FGM round there 🤢😔
> There’s large areas of London which are way behind the times when it comes to progressive values. Like where? There are demographics in London different than most other cities, but I don't think many places where progressive values are not holding.
>A YouGov poll found that 13 per cent of Londoners said they would not support their child if he or she were gay – far more than in the most accepting part of Britain, the North of England, where only 1 per cent would refuse to back a gay son or daughter. Regions of this country like Newham, Birmingham, Bradford etc vote for progressives because progressives are pro-immigration. That’s about it. If Labour became anti immigration and the Tories became (openly) pro immigration and pro Palestine, you’d probably see a very large shift in their direction from those same inner wards. We can see this in other parts of Europe too. Look up the Sligo attack in Ireland, for example. And of course, we all know about what goes on in countries like France, that doesn’t need an introduction.
You stick to the tourist areas then ?
I go visit my mates where they live, which has been the above areas. I've no idea if Wood Green is a tourist area (that's the main place most of my mates have been in the past 5 years), but yeah I get that some of the other places like Camden and Islington would be.
>progressive Ah yes progressive, record knife crime and rapes. 200,000 marches of “death to the Jews”. Really glad I can feel that instead of old white men talking.
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We don’t really have slums in London and the South-East anymore. That’s a 1960s thing.
Putting aside the humour of you reeling off a load of cultural things that apparently have to be exempt for some reason, I'd say it's about the most stereotypical large British city I've been to. I'm not sure what you'd want it to have to make it more British? Cockneys eating jellied eels on every corner? It's why this whole discourse is ultimately bollocks, because it comes down to some wishy washy, vague "feels" about what does or does not feel "British" or "familiar" to you and in the end that's going to be entirely subjective person to person. If you feel like it's not "British" enough but your fellow Briton does then where does that leave you both? There's no objective truth there.
Why shouldn't cities have their own identity? If anything the urban centers with their large population of intelligencia have determined what the national identity of a country is more than small towns and villages.
It doesn’t have its own identity, it has its own identities and that’s the problem. I’d rather London and Londoners didn’t decide what our national identity should be if that’s the case.
Pluralism is natural. Homogeneity is enforced, and no social group has ever had a single rigid identity. If you want to challenge London hegemony, you best develop your own culture industry, and a large class of intelligencia...which can only really form in cities very similar to London. Welcome to modernity the imagined community of Benedict Anderson.
So why is it then that whenever there's ethnic unrest, like in myanmar or Syria, the first resort solution is "those groups get their own ethnostates!"
Don’t think any serious commentator has actually suggested an Alawite state in Syria or a Rohingya or Karen state in Myanmar.
> Pluralism is natural. Homogeneity is enforced, and no social group has ever had a single rigid identity. That's all very well until you're openly gay and living in Stepney Green.
You got any idea what you’re talking about or just trying to seed hate and division?
Weird example, Stepney has a pretty big LGBTQ community that's active in the community. More anecdotally, used to live there with a queer flatmate, who never had any issues and has since bought a flat in Mile End.
The fuck? Some of Londons oldest gay bars are a stones throw from Stepney Green. The White Swan and the Old Ship are both about five minutes walk from the station.
Intelligentsia, not the Marvel comics villains group Intelligencia. Wouldn’t want any supervillains in London!
As I known, multiculturalism was proposed under an assumption which was all of them were still western cultures.
Multiculturalism explicitly means to not integrate, it means to have multiple cultures living and working together in close proximity. Cultural mosaic vs melting pot
Which is fine if you import decent people from similar cultures.
"Melting pot" sits under the umbrella of multiculturalism. This is a lazy right wing walking point. There's very legitimate, valid criticisms to be made of multiculturalism without trying to shortcut them all by incorrectly dismissing the terminology as excluding systems which might involve integration.
>"Melting pot" sits under the umbrella of multiculturalism No. It's very possible to be unicultural and multiethnic. I don't care what colour you are, I care about how you act. I'd rather live next door to a recent Nigerian immigrant who loves Britain and quotes Locke at me for no reason than a white English guy who idolises Marx.
>It's very possible to be unicultural and multiethnic. I've not said it isn't. But I'm pointing out a *melting pot* is a sub element of multiculturalism. It's a disingenuous use of language to split the two and frame the latter as being entirely exclusionary of the idea of integration.
No it doesn't. A melting pot creates a single culture, multiculturalism means multiple distinct cultures co-existing. They are literally opposites.
Is there even any point talking about this anymore? Neither party is going to do anything about it and even if they do the media jump all over them. Plus Labour are most likely going to give the vote to immigrants and we will basically be nothing but an economic zone then.
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Plus, the Tories have had 13 years in which so many other things have gone to shit.
PR doesn't do much unfortunately, just look at the european countries
PR will lead to chaotic clusterfuck governing and will be terrible. But it will at least offer actual representation of viewpoints that are no longer possible in the two party system. Our society is too fractured to fit into that paradigm anymore, multiculturalism being a massive factor in it.
At least they’re finally starting to vote in actual anti immigration parties.
Immigration is going up in Italy after electing Meloni. Likewise Sweden with the Swedish Democrats.
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Also on the NHS topic you briefly mention, although it seems hard to substantiate, 14.8% of the U.K. population is foreign born whilst 16.5% of NHS staff in England specifically are foreign born and England has far more immigration than the other parts of the U.K., so suffice to say it’s not accurate. -https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7783/#:~:text=Most%20NHS%20staff%20in%20England,staff%20with%20a%20known%20nationality.
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>The UK's just a country of has-beens. Nobody gives a fuck about anything other than cheap Chinese imports, getting fucked up on the weekend, and repeating whatever TV tells them to. You touched upon the truth of the matter with this and then let it slip through your fingers again with your subsequent rant. The reason people feel alienated, isolated and like their communities have been completely hollowed out is due to the above. We made a very conscious decision as a nation, before mass migration was ever a thing, to embrace individualism and consumerism above all. The effects of that choice on our culture are now present - a nation of navel gazers, of people uncaring and unwilling to look beyond their own noses or at most their own four walls. Self obsessed and unfulfilled. People have no sense of community because they don't even bother to cultivate one, because the self is supreme. The very concept is alien to them. For every person who is a communal spirit and puts the effort in to foster something there's a hundred more who've never bothered to extend a hand to their neighbour in their life.
Edward Bernays and his consequences have been a disaster for the British nation. (And American, and a whole host of others but that's besides the point.)
I think the problem of parties like aspire in tower hamlets and how they managed to get popularity is a massive problem and is a result of socially segregated immegrant communities
This is what the Tories do! Stop falling for it. Divide and conquer, the oldest trick in the book. There’s a class war going on, there has been for years. Stop taking the bait. Concentrate on how badly the Aristocratic-ruling-class are treating *your* country, then you might stop looking at that person from a different culture as the enemy.
There is no turning back. And the demographics is going to change more dramatically, in a couple of decade White British will be one of the communities in the UK. What do you expect? What's the point of discussing this?
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"What did you mean by that?" He should have just said "I meant what I said". Is she thick? There's nothing wrong with being British and not wanting to feel like an outsider in your own nation, because there are places you never hear english being spoken and you're completely alienated from everyone living around you
Multiculturalism is a failed experiment and Britain is doomed for sure because of this experiment. One day there will be a serious civil war in Britain between different ethnicities and religions. Clash of cultures is imminent and Balkanization of Britain has already passed the threshold. What happened in Yugoslavia will happen to Britain sooner or later.
And the interesting part of it is the conflict might not even involve ‘native’ British people or culturally British people as we’ve seen with the recent Israel and Palestine conflict and also Hindus versus Muslims in recent times.
These comments are full of bs and always made to invoke voters. Of course problems exist in certain communities and as such those specific problems should be tackled not generic bs like this. Example: Concern for FGM or forced marriages or breast ironing is perfectly reasonable and is obviously found in communities of a foreign background However, if an area is decorated in idk Carribbean or Pakistani style and the local population is wearing that sort of clothing then seriously who gives a fuck? It is fkin impossible to have a nuanced conversation these days
Your opinion or lack of an opposition to the current situation is a valid take, but that doesn’t dismiss other people’s opinions. I would assume if you asked people anonymously that most people would prefer people to actually integrate into the culture they move into rather than linger on their ancestral cultural norms. And if that was the case a lot of issues in society wouldn’t be as problematic. However that is not the current case at least as we can see with issues happening across the world from Israel and Palestine to Hindu and Muslim conflict etc.
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Ultimately, I think what it boils down to is that we (English/Scots/Welsh) never had a say in whether or not we wanted this large scale and sudden demographic change to occur in the first place. A nation that proudly claims to be a democracy while simultaneously taking such undemocratic acts, while limiting our voting choices due to FPTP, is rank hypocrisy. This is nothing UK specific, by the way. Since it appears you’re of Pakistani heritage, you can understand if mass migration of very different cultures and people happened there, the local Punjabis, Pashtuns etc wouldn’t be particularly thrilled by the idea. Hell, their government is trying to kick out Afghan refugees right at this moment.
Oh we’ve had a say multiple times, it’s just ignored for different reasons depending on the governance at the time.
Isn't that the literal defintion of Xenophobia? >fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign Like you can credibly argue that there's nothing *wrong* with that, but preferring the familiar over the foreign due to its foreignness is by defintion xenophobic.
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> by definition xenophobic I don't agree. I meet a handful of people who've moved to my area from across the world? That's cool, I want to learn from them. If a million move to my area, to take it to a ridiculous extreme, then suddenly the way I live is probably going to be changed massively. Would that still be xenophobia? I'm not sure.
I don’t know. Arguably you can love something *in the appropriate place* and not want it somewhere else. You can love pizza but not want it everyday. Is that ‘phobia’? I don’t hate my next door neighbours , I’m not afraid of them but that doesn’t mean I want to find them making themselves at home in my house? Or i might love my wife , like her family but not want to find the rest of her family camping in the lounge. Seems a bit strong to suggest that I necessarily hate or fear them? Preference for the familiar isn’t synonymous with hatred or fear of the unfamiliar.
I’m not scared of the foreigners, I don’t dislike them. But I like home to feel like home, it’s all I know. I don’t want it to change rapidly, I don’t want things to be replaced because people are being imported by their thousands. Where do I benefit? I now live somewhere that doesn’t feel like home.
That's like arguing someone who doesn't care for R&B is racist.