Speaking in an interview with The Guardian, Mr Grieve suggested that in preparing ourselves for some new multicultural society we’ve ignored our heritage, particularly our Christian heritage, and have instead told people, ‘your cultural background isn’t really very important, or it’s flawed, or you shouldn’t be worrying about it’.
Concerned by the lack of discussion and debate over the issue of, as he calls it, ‘fundamentalist Islam’, Mr Grieve raised his concerns over the compartmentalising of people from different traditions while ignoring the identity of white Britons. Mr Grieve blames multiculturalism, which he believes has fundamentally failed to bring people closer together. He told The Guardian: “Our country has adapted because people have been tolerant, which has often required a lot of forbearance and acceptance of things they didn’t like. That is how Britain has evolved.” Such a cynical and publically expressed view is certainly a concern for vast swathes of the country, but at the same time it may perhaps appeal to the traditional voters of the Conservative Party.
The comment comes at a time when the Conservatives are expected to pounce on the vulnerability of the Labour Party. Instead the polls are beginning to suggest that Gordon Brown is narrowing the gap and catching the Conservative lead. Suggesting that our multicultural society is flawed is a risky step for a party trying to portray a squeaky-clean modern image and shake off an old stuffy one. An ICM poll for The Guardian put the Conservatives on 41%, Labour on 32% and the Lib Dems on 18%. Polls cannot always be trusted, but as the Conservatives complete a fairly progressive and radical conference it is interesting to see where the they lie.
Sayeeda Warsi vowed at the conference to ‘fix society’ and condemned a decade of ‘state-driven multiculturalism’ which has created cultural divisions at the expense of British values. Warsi claimed that multiculturalism had ‘sent out the message that we’re not sharing a society, we’re just cohabiting a space’, and that it has ‘led people to retreat into separate cultures rather than reach for a shared community’. If a Conservative government were voted in, both integration and neighbourliness would be at the heart of policy.
Mr Grieve also spoke of a vacuum created by multiculturalism, in which both the BNP and Hizb ut-Tahrir rise: “They are two very similar phenomena experiencing a form of cultural despair about themselves and their identities. It’s terribly easy to latch on to confrontational and aggressive variants of their cultural background as being the only way to reassure themselves that they can survive.”
Multiculturalism, believes Mr Grieve, is a concept designed to help people feel more comfortable in society. But according to Mr Grieve multiculturalism has failed, and has instead created a tradition of fundamental extremism. It is a concerning thought to think that a man who could quite possibly become our next Home Secretary believes that multiculturalism in our society is corrupting our British values, when in fact ever since the Vikings and Romans various cultures have shaped and formed our values.
We live in a multicultural world and multiculturalism is at the heart of our values and national identity. For this reason we should embrace, not condemn, multiculturalsm despite the challenges. David Cameron, when asked by the BBC about Mr Grieve’s comments said: “I think trying to integrate more, trying to bring people together more, trying to build a strong British identity for the future, I think that’s absolutely right.” Certainly a sensible ideal, but can we really trust a Conservative Party whose Shadow Home Secretary believes multiculturalism to have failed?
