Not With a Bang, But a Whimper

There’s a curious and perhaps poignant story today in the (London) Telegraph, showcased by Arts & Letters (link here). It showcases an old (well—72) former schoolmaster, squeezed out 22 years ago from a headmastership in Bradford—“his crime” (as the Telegraph acidly brands it) “daring to criticize multiculturalism.” The Telegraph details:

Mr Honeyford thought that schools such as his own, the Drummond Middle School, where 95 per cent of the children were of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin, were a disaster both for their pupils and for society as a whole. He was a passionate believer in the redemptive power of education, and its ability to integrate people of different backgrounds and weld them into a common society. He then became notorious for, among other things, his insistence that Muslim girls should be educated to the same standard as everyone else.

All very well, but why bring it up now? Because, as the Telegraph declares, he was “finally vindicated” last week –“the same liberal establishment that had professed outrage at his views quietly accepted that he was, after all, right.”

Translated: Ruth Kelly, the Communities Secretary made a speech, publicly questioning the multiculturalist that, for so long, have acted almost as a test of virtue among ‘right-thinking people:

In our attempt to avoid imposing a single British identity and culture, have we ended up with some communities living in isolation of each other, with no common bonds between them?

There are so many cross-currents here it s hard to get a grip on all of them. The Telly is surely right that the ground is shifting in Britain on relationships with immigrant/ethnic communities (although wouldn’t it be better to say “the former liberal establishment?”)

Anyway, it pretty much unravels from there: the Telly suggests that’s all smoke and mirrors, a flim-flam—but then suggests that we’re all getting culturally integrated anyway. And as if to confuse matters completely, the Telly goes so far as to say that the problem wasn’t the message at all, only the “tone.”

So the point is—uh, I forget exactly. But the interesting part is: this is the Telly. We Anglophiles tend to think of it (remember it) as the last bastion of empire, Union Jack, John Bull, four feathers, Englishmen never will be slaves yadda yadda. Now we have one old guy with early stage Parkinson’s, listening to the cricket and watching his wife work in the garden (the story says he is “understandably bitter,” but none of the quotations support that view). From the byline, we gather the Telly put five reporters on the story. This is the best they can do?