Two Britain's

A recent report has shown that we live in two Britain’s, one affluent and one poor.

 

A Common Sight In UK

 

Now there is nothing new about that observation, indeed show me any society and I will show you its poor underbelly, from the US through India, to Japan, there have always been those at the bottom of society and those at the top.

 

A white underclass of some numbers, has been around in the UK since at least the start of the industrial revolution, when people started leaving the land for the cities in large numbers. Even now, after 60 years of a welfare state, about 15% of the white population are state benefit supported, public housing estate living, badly educated and badly behaved. They form the pool for most of the criminal class, and can often be seen wandering shopping areas in hoodies, pushing a pram, or looking for something to steal. This is depressing, but probably no different from earlier times and many other western countries

However this report is the first to show that certain immigrant groups are remaining at the bottom of the economic ladder, despite being the second, or third generation after the original arrivals. In the recent past, it has been normal for the second or third generations of immigrants to move quickly up the social scales. In the UK for instance, the Jews, then Italians and Greeks, came in waves, and rose quickly through hard work to become integrated and successful.

The same experience can be seen to have occurred in the US or Australia etc, and this emboldened our politicians to experiment with a new form of immigration, one that introduced racial and religious elements to the immigration equation. Thus in the 1960’s and 1970’s they started up Caribbean, and then Asian immigration to the UK, and other Western countries.

It is these groups that have singularly failed to rise smoothly through the social and economic strata, and “make it”. One has to be careful when making sweeping statements about these groups, there are both individual success stories, and some groups who have been singularly successful. For instance the Hindus and Sikhs from the South Asian immigrants, have generally performed far better than Muslim Asians, with a particular emphasis upon the professions and IT.

The Chinese have apparently fared far better than the Vietnamese, and so on and so forth. The apparent two failures are those of African descent, and Muslims from South Asia or the Middle East. The reasons for this failure are not immediately apparent, because in both cases, the first wave of immigrants had jobs supplied. The Afro-Caribbean’s often went into the National Health Service and public transport sector, and the Muslims into textile factories in the north, and similar occupations in the south.

The 'normal' second generation rise just didn’t happen in these groups, and they are now often mired at the bottom, with recent groups such as the East Europeans passing them by in the space of a few years. So what has happened? Well in order to examine this question we have to split them into the two groups.

Firstly the Afro-Caribbean’s and Africans:
 

Here the problems are not obviously religious or language based, as they largely come from an English speaking, Christian back ground, and culturally they were not markedly different, indeed the first Afro-Caribbean’s in the UK had both strong religious beliefs, and a somewhat Victorian attitude to the need for education for their kids.

I have discussed some of the issues that affect the black community in a previous blog, so I won’t repeat the arguments again, but I consider that there has been an educational failure, that combined with the high incidence of single parents in the black community, has resulted in the collapse of that community. 

 

This evinces itself in the apparently endless round of gun and knife killings, and involvement in crime amongst the boys, and high incidence of single parenthood amongst the girls, with a universally low level of educational achievements amongst both sexes.

There is little evidence of entrepreneurial skills developing within the black community as a whole (by this I mean, black businesses, shops, restaurants, wholesalers etc), and a wholesale dependence upon state sector jobs. There is even supposed to be anecdotal evidence that, where a black person tries to set up a business such as a shop or restaurant, black customers often avoid these shops. This appears to actually discourage any spirit of advancement.

In fact, their wholesale disregard for education as a means of advancement, is highlighted by Black American comedians, and social commentators such as Bill Cosby. It’s quite often stated on the Internet that the black community don’t read (along with at least 20% of the white community as far as I can see), and that they are more concerned with image enhancers such as ‘pimping’ their cars or ‘jewellery bling’ to try and get on.

Tackling this issue is probably the key to black enhancement … It will need a radical approach though, because at the moment nothing seems to work. I would personally go for extreme measures such as

• All male black schools with (black) male teachers from age 11 to age 18. Certainly all male schools.
• Not allowing kids (black or white) to leave school until 18.
• Concentrating upon the 3 R’s as a minimum level of educational achievement for school leavers.
• Reintroducing corporal punishment in schools.
• Stronger policing (and fast track justice) in council estates to stop gangs developing.

Just these four simple measures would so alter the school and non school background for many black (and also white kids), that there would be a marked improvement in their expectations, and their chances of meeting those expectations through work.

On the second group, Muslims:

 
The reasons why they have low performance problems are more complex. Originally they started coming over to the UK as invited workers for the textile trade in the north of England in the late 1960’s and 1970’s and could speak some English. They were given British passports, but with the expectation that they would just “go home” when the work dried up, but they didn’t, they brought their families over, and via “arranged marriages” have continued to do so ever since. 

 

When the work closed down many were apparently happy to live off state benefits for the rest of eternity, quite sensibly, because this was better than what they would get when back home. This was so unexpected, that within a few years the UK government had stopped the automatic right to British passports for all ex colonies, but the damage had been done.

Now as I have said, there were other Asian groups who came over to the UK at about the same time, notably the Hindus, Sikhs and Tamils, but they have not exhibited any of the same social problems that the Muslims from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh have.

The reason therefore for the failure of this last group is that of religion and background. Pakistan and Bangladesh are chronically poor, and the workers employed by UK firms were from rural uneducated regions of this poor country. They had no incentive to "go home", no incentive to find new work after the textile trade closed, because of state benefits, and no educational back ground to pass on to their children. 

 

The only 'education' they had previously had any contact with, was the teaching of Islam in Madrassas.

Islam stopped being a religion of scholars and learning some time ago, and now relies on rote learning of the Quran in place of enquiring education. “Everything that can be learnt, is available in the Quran and the Hadiths”, is the normal response, and therefore there is no need to learn anything new or question interpretations of the Quran carried out centuries ago.

The religion is propagated by Iman’s who can quote from the Quran that they learnt by heart, but who have no scholarly understanding of context or interpretation, but who call themselves 'scholars'. In order to illustrate this I quote from the article linked above by Professor Ziauddin Sardar; 

 

“After the September 11 event, for example, a number of Taliban supporters, including a few in Britain, justified their actions by quoting the following verse: ‘We will put terror into the hearts of the unbelievers. They serve other gods for whom no sanction has been revealed. Hell shall be their home’ (3: 149). Yet, the apparent meaning attributed to this verse could not be further from the true spirit of the Quran.

In this particular verse, the Quran is addressing Prophet Muhammad himself. It was revealed during the battle of Uhud, when the small and ill equipped army of the Prophet, faced a much larger and well-equipped enemy. He was concerned about the outcome of the battle. The Quran reassures him and promises the enemy will be terrified with the Prophet’s unprofessional army. Seen in its context, it is not a general instruction to all Muslims; but a commentary on what was happening at that time.”

Anyone who has this mindset, or is led by people with this mindset, is not going to integrate, nor indeed make any effort to question why they came to the UK. Many Indians consider Muslims to be “uneducated” because of this attitude, and tellingly the Pakistanis often refer to the Bangladeshi’s in a similar light. So maybe it’s not surprising that Muslims generally, and Bangladeshi’s particularly, have made no progress.

Indeed so large has the failure of this immigrant group to integrate been, that we are now in a de-facto war with many of the second and third generations of this group. So what would I do about this group?

• I would stop arranged marriages between the UK and Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, as this constant influx from the homeland means there is no “British Islam” developing. There are enough Muslims (and Hindus & Sikhs etc) here, and in Canada, the US and other western countries, for partners to be found, and who would have western outlooks.
• I would expel all Iman's who can’t read and speak English.
• I would insist that all future Iman's are educated in the UK.

Hopefully this would result in the development of a more tolerant end educated western brand of Islam, which would be forward looking, and reform minded with an emphasis on integration and education as the way to advance in society. 

 

Finally, we could probably adopt some of these actions to try and tackle the white underclass who the "Welfare State" seems to have made into a permanent sub-culture in the UK. I am fairly sure that Bevan and the other authors of this system, were not expecting that free education, medicine, and cradle to grave financial support, would end up with what we have got now.

 

Our politicians on the other hand will probably just sit on their hands, or throw tax payers money to try and bribe the under achievers into "doing better" ...... such is democracy 21st century PC style. 

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