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!

Cameron to declare death of Multiculturalism in Munich.

My last posting to this blog, made a few hours ago, only last evening, concluded with the following sentence:

"Many signs are in the wind, our leaders will ignore them to the great peril of all!"

What more significant sign of present realities can there be but that Britain's Prime Minister, David Cameron, should choose the capital city of Bavaria, to pronounce that Britain's greatest ever social experiment, known under the once respectable term of Multiculturalism, is to be abandoned as a result of being a complete disaster, to my mind  in almost every respect. Read the BBC report from here, from which I quote the following before it can be buried removed:

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A genuinely liberal country "believes in certain values and actively promotes them," Mr Cameron will say.
"Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Democracy. The rule of law. Equal rights, regardless of race, sex or sexuality.
"It says to its citizens: This is what defines us as a society. To belong here is to believe these things.
"Each of us in our own countries must be unambiguous and hard-nosed about this defence of our liberty."
He will say that under the "doctrine of state multiculturalism", different cultures have been encouraged to live separate lives.
"We have failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong. We have even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run counter to our values."
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I will post on my own personal sense of what multiculturalism should mean later today. Meantime I would ask my own blog readers to consider what they make of the decision to make such a major domestic political statement in such a place?