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976   8 April 2004  

Letter from Australia: 7 April 2004  Mike Davis works in the immigration sector in Australia, and opts not to reveal contact details.

Dear Roger

Beverley Hughes

The good lady in question did not deserve her fate.  I watch all this stuff from Australia where I am a migration agent.  We have the same idiocy here...  I think that the UK is a major source of our Immigration Department's numerous nonsenses.  

The problem is straight forward...  If civil servants could run an economy successfully, the Soviet Union would still be in action.  If access to UK Social Services is the worry, surely to Heaven a way can be devised to restrict it to UK citizens. The best way is to 'bite the bullet' and have photo ID for all persons in the UK.  

Britain is not given to totalitarianism - if it didn't succumb in the 1930's, it never will.   Whinging leftie twaddle about civil liberties is all a red herring (… and I write as a 55-year-old lifetime Labor Party voter).   Britain needs the economic oomph provided by open society manpower policies, so trade that off with ID cards to protect the Social Services funds.  

Instead of pandering to the society, the Government must din it into the heads of the young that work is the name of the game. Make skills acquisition cheap and widely available throughout the 'sceptred isle' - and get sensible.  Do not, repeat, do not give any unemployment payments to anyone who has not gained a recognised skill.  Tell the little yobs in school (…and bloody well mean it..!) that they will not get a bean if they drop out, or if they do not get further marketable skills.  There are perhaps 5% of youngsters who pose intractable problems – they should be dealt with separately from the remaining 95%.  By up-skilling the UK work-force, the attraction of unfilled jobs will not waft as far as Romania et al. 

This is not Tebbitism. The key to this is the availability, physically and financially, of skills learning...  And that is best done by private companies. The benefits of open society manpower policies are best absorbed when the locals are fully employed.  

Don't consult the civil servants on any matter to do with the running of the economy.  Soviet civil servants had the back up of the KGB and they still couldn't turn a trick.  

Love your page  

Mike Davis

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977  Easter Monday 12 April 2004  

Why Trevor is wrong

“Why Trevor is right” is the title of an article by Polly Toynbee, in Wednesday’s Guardian.  With it, she seems to endorse the announcement by Trevor Phillips (Commission for Racial Equality, Chair) of the mischievous thesis (from David Goodhart) about “multiculturalism”.

Phillips seems to have fallen for the malign Blunkett doctrine of monoculturalism, disapproving of Afghans and Welsh parents speaking their own languages to their children - even at home.  Goodhart declared in Prospect that multiculturalism was dead, and that UK society should now proceed to inculcate social cohesion by promoting the emergence of a “British” cultural identity.  The accident-prone John Denham followed, favouring the promotion by Government of a new and artificial form of "Britishness".  Blunkett inaugurated UK naturalisation rituals, and Trevor Phillips want to extend them to every 21-year-old.  And, not surprisingly, Lord “Polecat” Tebbit is applauding from the sidelines.

Trevor Phillips is an ambitious young politician, and deserves to succeed.  And I am saddened that he has made this error of judgment, at such a critical time - his predecessor Sir Herman Ouseley is also critical, although for different reasons.  Polly Toynbee is wiser than he is: I suspect that she does not really embrace this nasty thesis, and was merely fell for an eye-catching strap-line.  The internal evidence of her article suggests that she is not really talking about a “new British identity” at all, but the acknowledgment of a number of liberal, egalitarian, individual norms.
  • For me, when it comes to politics, every form of “culturalism” is misconceived.

Concepts of “culture” are too tenuous, too insubstantial to play any part in the serious business of politics, indeed of Constitutions.  They may constitute significant aspects of human individuality, as may support for a particular football club, or political party, of pop-group.  But that is all.  And mono-culturalism is no antidote to multiculturalism – they are as bad as each other. 

As you read this, can you – putting hand on heart – describe your own “culture”?   And – 

  • (a) if you had to answer a question about your national identity, requiring a single-word answer, what would you say?  And –  

  • (b) what would that word say about your suitability for permanent residence in the UK? 

I suspect that the answer would be (a) “Mishmash, really” and (b) “Nothing”.

The “State” – that is to say, the convenient amalgam that describes all our governmental and public institutions – should relate to individual citizens, in all their distinctiveness and sovereignty.  That relationship should not be mediated through any intervening category - group, pigeon-hole, "culture".  Every citizen stands alone, before the institutions of state.  It is the individual that commands respect, not any cultural category or group.  That is, after all, the distinctive liberal perception.   

The obligations and benefits of citizenship should adhere directly to the individual, not to any attendant features of that individual, however important those may be in other social contexts – language, gender, religion, political allegiance, disability, or ethnic or tribal or family origin.  The State must respond to the individual person (the Quakers would say, to “that of God in every man”) – each person's distinctive individuality, disregarding all these peripheral attributes. 

I therefore reject both multiculturalism and Blunkettian monoculturalism, as espoused by Goodhart and Phillips (not sure about Toynbee…).  The public institutions of our society must be designed to be culture-blind – to accord equality of respect and consideration to all – citizen and visitor alike, regardless of culture.  That is why I am a Liberal Socialist, no other kind...

  • I recognise of course that many people find solace and support in their “culture” – as they do in hunting-down old school-friends, family-trees, local history, ethnic friendship networks and clubs, searching for their roots, supporting their favourite football club, and the membership of a myriad societies, open and secret.  That is all part of the richness of the human experience. 

But when it comes to politics and Constitutions,
all swords, guns and cultures should be left at the door.

What do you think?  Drop me a line

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