IN PARTS 1 and 2 of this series, I examined how ultra-left anti-racism was taking over in the 1980s, and how my 1986 book of essays with 14 contributors tried to give warnings. Here are a few more selected details of what three more contributors to that book revealed and criticised.
In her chapter, ‘Language, Race and Colour’, Dr Linda Hall exposed the ludicrous, yet sinister, indoctrination (especially from the BBC) that the English language is indelibly racist because it contains some ‘negative’ uses of the word ‘black’, such as ‘black ice’, ‘black spot’, ‘blackmail’, and so on. The implication was that all English-speaking white people are inescapably guilty of racism, because such racism is imbibed unconsciously as the language is learnt at an early impressionable age, and that such words are the inevitable product of a colonial and imperial past. In a scholarly examination of the etymology of the ‘offensive’ words, Dr Hall demonstrated that these uses were nothing to do with black people, any more than ‘negative’ uses of the word ‘white’ (‘whited sepulchre’, ‘white elephant’, etc.) had anything to do with white people. Yet even today, ‘unconscious bias training’ courses involve tasks in which participants are asked to respond quickly to a series of photos to be associated with the words, ‘black’ and ‘white’ or ‘good’ and ‘bad’ (see my article ‘The Problem With Unconscious Bias Training’, August 14, 2022).
As Orwell warned, ‘in the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it’. It is the same voice that warned ‘there will be no art, no literature, no science’. My introduction to the book pointed to the growing tendency to relieve library shelves of their ‘racist material’. Not only the innocuous works of Enid Blyton, but also great works of literature by Jane Austen and even Shakespeare were deemed suspect (and of course today Shakespeare is being ‘decolonised’ – despite the fact that his works with their universal themes are appreciated and valued by many different cultures and his works have been translated into over a hundred different languages). As for children’s books, the then chairwoman of the National Committee on Racism in Children’s Books ‘estimated’ that 95 per cent of children’s books in the UK contain racial bias (Asian Herald, November 12, 1984).
In his chapter, ‘Reading and discrimination’, A. C. Capey exposed a body known as The Children’s Rights Workshop in their crusade against Racist and Sexist Images in Children’s Books (a series of ‘Papers on Children’s Literature’) which brazenly stated that ‘we can no longer base critical assessment solely on literary merit. Content and values, explicit or implied deserve similar critical attention’. Presumably, that is why when I worked in a Hounslow Comprehensive, classic children’s books were giving way to mediocre and didactic books such as My Mate Shofiq by Jan Needle, deployed to tackle ‘prejudice’ against Pakistanis. As Mr Capey indicated, not only innocuous books were being targeted, such as Doctor Dolittle and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but even Huckleberry Finn was up for bowdlerisation (a book which the great literary critic F.R. Leavis described as ‘supremely the American classic […] and one of the great books of the world’).
In Part 2 of this series, I showed how the influential Swann Report (1985) helped to cement the neo-Marxist project of multiculturalism in which foreign minority cultures should be allowed to assert their separateness. The absurd idea that ‘all cultures are equal’ was contradicted by the idea that British culture is not ‘equal’, but rather a racist culture to be ‘transformed’. The ultra-left activists relied upon the unexamined premise of cultural/moral relativism. Yet before we saw the destructive effects of this, I was greatly amused some years ago by Tom Stoppard’s humorous satirical play Jumpers, in which the philosophy professor protagonist, George, uttered the line: ‘Certainly a tribe which believes it confers honour on its elders by eating them is going to be viewed askance by another which prefers to buy them a little bungalow somewhere’.
In his contributing chapter to my book, Roger Scruton wrote a powerful exposé of the dangerous nonsense involved (‘The Myth of Cultural Relativism’). He wrote this before our country had become so fragmented. In identifying some aspects of British culture, he wrote: ‘There is a common language, a dominant religion, a settled pattern of social expectations, a shared network of entertainment and sport, a common morality and a common law […]. Polygamy, for example, is forbidden by English law, as is suttee. The caste system is legally ineffective and any attempt to act upon it is tortious, if not criminal. Divorce is permitted, and is also a matter for the civil courts. There is freedom of religion, of speech, of opinion. In these and other respects our law exercises a powerful homogenising force. […] If it were the case that one group lived by caste system, promoted polygamy, suttee and the stoning to death of adulterers, then it might seriously be suggested that there are vast differences among British citizens. Perhaps a true “multi-culturalist” would seek to undo the laws which prevent that way of life so that another “valid alternative” might flourish.’ (P.128)
In his opposition to those activists who were pushing for ethnic minority children to be taught in their mother tongue, and to belong to different cultures from that of Britain, Roger argued that such children would be destined for a life of social and cultural isolation, cut off from the larger world and hostile to its politics and laws, and that unless people acquire the habits of ‘belonging’ to British culture, they cannot live peacefully together.
Since my book is out of print, and many readers now have no access to his powerful essay, I will quote the following substantial passage about ‘cultural relativism’ (the dogma that no culture can be criticised except from a point of view internal to itself):
A culture is a pattern of social unity and can be judged as such. It can be praised or condemned on account of the society that it engenders, and the actual unity which it founds. A culture which holds people in a state of fear, or which brutally extirpates the natural inclinations of those who share in it, is surely inferior to one that permits peaceful and open dialogue. Nobody would argue that Nazi culture, for example, or communist culture, are really unjudgeable from any point of view except the one they themselves define. […] The very enterprise of social existence is answerable to absolutes of right and wrong. The moral law is universally valid and universally binding […] anybody who fails to receive it as such is without morality. A culture that forbids or distorts the truths of morality is objectively undesirable. […] One of the most important functions of a culture is to rehearse and support the dictates of morality – to embody them in laws, legends, ceremonies and manners, and so to make them inviolable. Morality therefore provides us with the Archimedean point from which cultures may be weighed, and unless morality too is ‘relative’ – a view which no-one really believes in his actual dealings with his fellows – cultural relativism is false. (pp 132-134)
He concludes his essay with a substantial defence of British culture, which he argues is ‘open’, ‘growing’ and, far from being rigidly ‘ethnocentric’, outward looking. Moreover, the ‘high’ culture of our civilisation is one that should be promoted. ‘To understand the “high” culture of Britain is to understand its links with the high cultures of France, Holland, Germany and Spain; with the dead cultures of Greece, Rome and Egypt; with the cultures of Arabia and Persia, and even with those of China or Japan. […] This indeed is one of the major justifications that could be offered for what has been called a “liberal” education, but which might just as well be called an education in the high culture of our civilisation.’ (P. 134)
Well, my contributors and I tried to give warnings, but they were unheeded, not only by politicians, but by many ordinary citizens, and look where we are now. The Britain we once knew has almost gone, and various forms of Wokeism have seeped into the very floorboards. The Establishment, either through pusillanimity or moral corruption, has prostrated itself before the graven image of multiculturalism. ‘Positive discrimination’ against white indigenous Brits grows by the day. We have imported overwhelmingly large numbers of immigrants whose culture is incompatible with, or even hostile to, British culture, and there have been attempted cover-ups about the scale of vicious crimes against indigenous Brits, especially women and children. Some who have spoken out against this have been demonised and prosecuted, and in some cases jailed.
In Part 1 of this series, I described how I came to be involved with Roger Scruton’s think tank. Those regular meetings consisted of serious discussion, but afterwards, over a meal and copious wine, we shared informal chat about many things, and there was some humour and laughter (noticeably absent with the far left). On one occasion, Roger, expressing frustration with the naïveté of many citizens, said with his characteristic dry wit, ‘People don’t know what is coming. Perhaps those of us in the know should invade a small island somewhere, overpower the inhabitants and set up our own culture there.’
