There has been much talk about the apparent failure of
multiculturalism, but little talk about the successes.
In Newport, where I have lived for 30 years, multiculturalism
has long been a way of life, but that’s not to say it can’t be improved.
The media punishes us with scaremongering ideas of hoards of
immigrants crossing the channel. Government is worse. It continually announces
immigration figures as if they are a bad thing, yet government doesn’t have a
firm idea of what the figures are. What we do know is that per head of
population, Germany has twice as many immigrants, and welcomes them.
We also know that the UK is not a poor country. However, the
distribution of wealth distorts the picture. In the UK wealth is concentrated into
the hands of the very rich few. Conversely poverty among the rest is
increasing. Immigrants are the traditional scapegoat for all our ills, and
right now they are being wrongly blamed for this increasing poverty.
It is government policy which is creating inequality, not
immigration. Migration is natural. In fact without the natural urge to move
around, the first humans may not have left the East African rift valley 200,000
years ago.
The migration of culture is a slightly different matter. Its
success depends on mutual understanding, and without this understanding
tolerance is difficult. Yet we like to think we are a tolerant people.
When another state joins the EU, the resultant influx of
people from another culture is inevitable. It is how we deal with it which
counts. Fear of ‘the other’ manifests itself in several ways, but all too often
the flames of fear are fanned by government and media alike. ‘They are taking
our jobs.’ ‘They are using our healthcare’.
The blatant omission here is ‘Who are they?’
That is precisely where multiculturalism is being forced to
fail. People living in the UK have a
right to know more about the people coming to join us. We need to know about
their values, their religions, their ethnicity and education. We need to know
their history and their politics. In short we need to understand our
differences and our similarities. All this could be provided simply and cheaply
through TV programmes and news items, newspaper articles and websites. Multiculturalism
works. It always has.
We do not have a failure of multiculturalism. We have a
failure of government.
