Shocked, shocked to find racial polarization going on!

To the amazement of the British political establishment, a new report on last summer's race riots in the United Kingdom has come to the conclusion that British society is polarized along racial lines. You have to guess that people who actually believed that mass, multiracial immigration into a historically white nation would not cause problems really are surprised at the report's findings. The riots that ripped apart several large towns with sizeable Asian minorities in northern Britain last June were what the New York Times, reporting on the new study, calls, "the worst outbreaks of racial conflict in Britain in 20 years," causing some $15 million in property damage and injuring more than 300 policemen. Once the riots were over, the eggheads went to work and came up with the aforesaid study, commissioned by the Home Secretary, who is a bit like our Secretary of the Interior. [Click here for the study in PDF format.]

The authors of the study, as the Times reports, [NYT, British Life Is Fractured Along Racial Lines, a Study Finds December 12, 2001 payarchive] say they "were dismayed and shocked by their findings." They were "particularly struck by the depth of polarization of our towns and cities, and the extent to which these physical divisions were compounded by so many other aspects of our daily lives."

Yes, well, shocking it all may be, but surprising is another matter. More than 30 years ago British politician Enoch Powell foresaw what he called, quoting the Roman poet Vergil, "rivers of blood" running in Britain as a result of the mass immigration that was just beginning. Powell effectively ruined his career [VDARE.COM comment: Peter Brimelow says it ain’t so!] with the speech, which was denounced and repudiated by both political parties. Last summer, his grim prophecy came true.

Let us hear no more of being "surprised" at what mass immigration has done to Britain.

And let us not be too surprised at what the future holds if mass immigration continues. Britain is now estimated to be some 7.1 percent nonwhite, and the nonwhite portion of the population is growing at a rate 15 times that of the white portion. In the 1990s, British whites increased by a mere one percent, as opposed to a 37 percent increase among African blacks, 30 percent among Bangladeshis and 13 percent among Pakistanis. Britain is estimated to become a majority nonwhite country by 2100--50 years after the United States, but not for want of effort.

The report apparently tries to spread the blame for the racial polarization. Some of it is dumped on "far-right and racist groups" that supposedly "exploited the differences and contributed to the violence." What that probably means is that some right-wing political groups like the British National Party have been warning against mass immigration for years and have recruited supporters because of it.

But the report also blames immigrants themselves. The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, said in commenting on the report that "immigrants had to shed traditions like forced marriages and genital mutilation if they wanted to live in Britain and that they needed to learn to speak English and adopt 'British norms,'" according to the Times. In other words, immigrants need to assimilate, which the report found they clearly aren't. The problem is that it's now too late for that.

"Mr. Blunkett has insulted us all," sputtered a column in The Independent by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, an Asian writer. (send her mail) "I feel no obligation to bring my daughter and son up to drink themselves to death in a pub for a laugh."

That's what "British norms" mean to her, you see.

The report also recommended an oath of allegiance to British laws. The response to that wasn't much more encouraging. One immigrant leader denounced the idea as "clearly divisive" and said "it goes against the fabric of a multicultural society."

And indeed so it does. You can't have it both ways, which is what the Home Secretary and his pals in the British--and for that matter the American--establishment haven't figured out yet.

You can't let millions of immigrants of different races, religions, cultures, and nationalities into a country with a fairly homogeneous identity for centuries and expect it to remain the same.

You can't allow the immigrants to gain political and cultural power and then expect them to become British.

Once they come, they will gain power, and once they gain power, they have no reason to assimilate.

It's like being a little bit pregnant.

Prophets like Enoch Powell, and not a few in parties like the British National Party, figured all this out long, long ago and won nothing but vilification and political ostracism for their pains. Now the Labor Party eggheads are "dismayed and shocked" by the horror their party, along with that of their rivals, has permitted to come into being.

What kind of party, and what kind of leaders, will it take to undo the damage the elites of Atlantic society have inflicted on their own people?

December 20, 2001