David Cameron criticized the multicultural model
David Cameron delivered his policy speech on current issues of British society on Saturday, February 5, at the Munich Security Conference. Most likely, this is just a coincidence, but the choice of location is nonetheless symbolic – before Britain, the only Western European country that dared to officially declare the failure of attempts to build a multicultural society was Germany.
The prime minister predictably identified terrorism as the main security threat, and specifically highlighted the problem of so-called "homegrown terrorists" – those born or raised in Britain. The root of terrorism, Cameron believes, should be sought in the ideology of "Islamist extremism," which is fostered by the policy of multiculturalism.
"Guided by the doctrine of multiculturalism," said David Cameron, "we encouraged representatives of different cultures to live separately, in isolation from each other and from common norms... Moreover, we allowed these isolated communities to exhibit behavior directly opposed to our values."
According to the prime minister, a liberal society should not be limited to allowing everyone to live as they please as long as they do not violate the country's laws. "A truly liberal society," as Cameron put it, believes in certain values (the standard list: equality, freedom, democracy) and must make its citizens understand that if they want to be part of society, they must share these values. "Europe needs to wake up and see what is happening in its countries," the British prime minister said. "Not only our lives are under threat, but our very way of life."
One may disagree with Cameron's choice of words (for example, "true liberalism" as presented by the prime minister resembles a totalitarian society), but his statements cannot be called bold or new. Rather the opposite, David Cameron merely shared a set of clichés with the audience. Moreover, it is quite obvious that in countries where the immigration problem is indeed relevant, the viewpoint "let them live, but let them leave their strange traditions where they came from" is very common and even considered relatively moderate.
However, in accordance with the unwritten rules of official rhetoric of European states in recent decades, such statements were considered unacceptable. And despite the fact that, apart from the above quotes, the leader of the British Conservatives was emphatically cautious (he called a dozen times for distinguishing Islam from radical Islamism, repeatedly reminded that terrorism cannot be associated with any one religious or ethnic group, promised to fight poverty and other widely recognized causes of terrorism), the public reaction was not long in coming.
Here we must mention the second coincidence important for our story. On the day the prime minister voiced his thoughts in Munich, the largest anti-immigrant protest in Britain took place in the city of Luton, 50 kilometers north of London. A crowd of three thousand representatives of radical movements marched through the streets of the city (where, recall, the Iraqi who carried out a terrorist attack in Stockholm in December 2010 had lived and studied for a long time), shouting anti-Islamic slogans.
Of course, the prime minister's unexpected speech greatly inspired the far right. Leaders of the English Defence League, which organized the Luton march, expressed that the prime minister had finally heeded the arguments of ordinary Britons and dared to stand up to the right people.
One couldn't have devised a worse coincidence. Under different circumstances, Cameron's speech could have sparked public debate and perhaps even led to some constructive changes. But after the British radicals rallied behind the prime minister, a wave of criticism rained down on the head of government. The discontent of Muslim communities was joined by reproaches from the opposition, the press quickly joined the opposition, and as a result, Cameron is accused of pandering to the far right and almost of fascism.
Meanwhile, the conclusion to be drawn from the British prime minister's speech should have been completely different. Cameron's Munich speech showed that another European country is ripe for trying to at least somehow comprehend the integration processes and attempt to influence them. Moreover, while in Berlin integration is understood mainly as the adaptation of refugees and immigrants from Turkey and the Middle East, London faces a fundamentally different problem.
Britain was a colonial empire for centuries, and at its peak, no less than a third of the world's population lived under British rule. With the collapse of the empire and the creation of the British Commonwealth of Nations, London made attempts in various ways to maintain ties with the former colonies. In 1948, for example, the British Nationality Act was passed, under which 800 million former subjects of the empire could live and work in the mother country without a visa.
The law has been amended and tightened many times since then, but from the 1950s, immigrants from various parts of the empire, from India to Jamaica, flooded into Britain. The second largest demographic group in London now is Indians (over three percent), and the third, excluding the Irish, is people from Bangladesh, followed by Jamaica, Nigeria, and Pakistan.
At some point, the influx of labor from the former colonies almost completely filled the market for unskilled labor in Britain. Simplified conditions for hiring were often created for people from the former colonies, and the state for many years zealously protected them from attempts at discrimination by employers.
As often happens in democratic countries, the fight against discrimination sometimes took bizarre forms. Many Britons indignantly noted that, while protecting newcomers from them, the authorities refused to properly respond to inappropriate behavior on the part of newcomers. Over time, this led to a predictable increase in social tension, the manageable struggle against which is, generally speaking, one of the primary tasks of the authorities.
Less than a year ago, a Briton who naively raised the issue of immigration would most likely have been called narrow-minded (as happened with Prime Minister Gordon Brown and voter Gillian Duffy). And the fact that David Cameron dared to talk directly about the integration of migrants means that the authorities realized that the situation could no longer be ignored.
Perhaps the prime minister's attempt was somewhat awkward, but it is nevertheless telling. The very fact that such a speech became possible indicates serious changes in the socio-political discourse. It seems that the pendulum has swung from rampant tolerance toward common sense. The main thing now is to accurately track its movement and not swing to the other extreme.
Konstantin BENYUMOV.
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