Multiculturalism in the sense of the British Commonwealth.

When I was aspiring to represent UKIP as an MEP for the North East of England, Neil Herron, (of metric martyr renown) and I easily won a debate on getting Britain out of the European Community, against the combined efforts of a Labour Party MEP and a prospective Liberal Democrat MEP candidate.

I had been absent from the UK for some fourteen odd years (having gone "Galt" from England in 1989) and failed to realise the term 'multiculturalism' had been usurped to represent something completely different than what it evoked for me, best summarised by recalling the sense of kinship I felt with West Indian children once seen awaiting a school bus in spotless white shirts and grey shorts or gym slips to learn from a syllabus, I presumed, almost exactly as taught to myself in primary school in Devon some two decades before.

More recently, I guess, the South African 'Truth and Reconciliation Commission', adopted when that country was at last able to rejoin the Commonwealth, sums up the spirit of Multiculturalism in the earlier sense, perhaps best put as an acceptance of mutually understood standards of decency.

The concept which later became accepted in the UK, and which caused me considerable difficulties after my Newcastle University speech, which in its ideas of separate development somewhat mirrored the evil apartheid system,  I hope was what was buried in Munich this morning, (see my posting below), a site chosen by the PM, I presume, as being closest to the location of those individuals who now control Britain's destiny!