Before we proceed with the article we find in the same issue of Freedom Today of the York protest programme-the Anti-Maastrict Alliance which we attended 19 and 22nd March with many other demonstrators to voice our grave displeasure to such an intended Treaty.

Unique co-operation

All the British anti-federalist groups including the Freedom Association co-operated in the York ECOFIN events. Meetings were held to co-ordinate the activities of all the organisations taking part -as they do today under the ‘Battle for Britain’.

Lord Tebbit and( the late) Lord Shore

The main event organised by the umbrella group, the Anti-Maastrict Alliance met in the evening of Thursday 19 March 1998. Lord Tebbit, Lord Shore and other distinguished speakers, addressed the meeting at 7pm.

* * *

Returning to the subject of Multiculturalism, which has now at the eleventh hour, has been now disowned by many in the Labour camp (details on our web-site) we continue:

For too long we have had the touchy-feely platitudes of multiculturalists stuffed down our throats, so Lord Tebbit’s remarks at the last autumn’s Conservative Party Conference (1998) were a welcome dose of bitter lemon to counteract the saccharine.

Multiculturalism is a fraud. It is an extension of Marxism, based on the assumption that all cultures are more or less the same, and that no single culture can, or should, be held in greater esteem than another.

This relativistic proposition totally ignores the massive discrepancy in achievements and success among various cultures. Judgment of any kind is, of course, to be feared, since judgment separates the wheat from the chaff.

Senior position.

All cultures are not equal. There is a hierarchy of excellence, and western culture occupies the senior position. Currently it has no serious rivals. Whether the West will still occupy the senior position in a hundred years is another matter entirely.

If the collective frauds perpetrated in the name of equality are not arrested and reversed, then the chances are that the West, as a cultural and intellectual entity, will fall to pieces, or be torn to pieces by bitter internal divisions, or will succumb to external foes (written in 1998).

Those who hate the West and its stunning achievements, and American and British universities are full of such types (curiously they are sometimes referred to as ‘intellectuals’), naturally hope to see the whole Western cultural enterprise fall apart. They were bitterly disappointed about the outcome of the Cold War and their bitterness and self-loathing fuels their advocacy of multiculturalism. They know full well that multiculturalism is destructive of order and prosperity, which is why they back it.

Incentives to achievement.

Cultures can indeed be judged. Successful ones are open to new ideas. They respect historical fact and maintain accurate records. Property rights are recognised and secure. Financial services and products are developed. Finally, they provide powerful incentives to individual achievement.

In their early stages, economic and scientific progress is extremely vulnerable to the vices of envy and the prerogatives of rulers, tribal elders and shamans who feel threatened by innovation and discovery. It is the outcome of this clash between the collective and the individual, which determines whether cultures are able to exploit individual achievements, the basis of all scientific and intellectual progress.

Cultures which are driven by superstition, which are nepotistic, corrupt and do not punish failure will be no match for rivals which are energetic, entrepreneurial, and open to new ideas- and which respect and reward individual achievement.

When an individual of energy and some modicum of talent, who in India was born in the wrong caste, and is thus doomed to go nowhere, comes to Britain, he has chances for personal advancement way beyond what would be possible in India. Multiculturalists being at heart unrepentant Marxists, hate the idea of such an Individual’s success.

For once an Indian or black African succeeds on his own merit without the white mischief of affirmative action and equal opportunities, then there is one less person to whom appeals of collective self-pity and special pleading will be attractive. That individual is Free.

Multiculturalists hate individual achievement and success. They have a vested interest in failure. Toleration of individual dissent has been one of the hallmarks of the West (above all the Anglo/Saxon West) and the basis of its great prosperity and intellectual achievements.

But let us be clear about what we mean by toleration. Tolerating unusual views, which have been closely argued, subjected to independent verification and based on evidence is, however, not the same as validating behaviour such as homosexual life styles and the proliferation of anti-intellectual cults through the mechanism of their uncritical acceptance.

Deviant behaviour is, of course, nothing new, and may yet play a decisive role in our cultural fate. What is new is the way in which we are now expected to react to it. Again, we are called upon to abandon our moral and intellectual judgment in the name of thoroughly spurious notions of ‘Fairness,

The American experience with multiculturalism is no solution to Britain’s at present, altogether milder problems. Billions of tax dollars, some 30 years of equal opportunity and affirmative action policies have not produced ethnic and racial harmony. Far from it. The effects on American universities have been disastrous.

The peddling of grotesque lies and evasions about black achievements are routine, and a sense of simmering racial resentment is palpable on many American campuses. Outside of the university America remains sharply and bitterly divided along racial lines.

Two conclusions can be drawn from the failure of multiculturalism.

FIRST: Policies based on lies will not work. (This should be obvious to our ‘intellectuals’) The day of reckoning can be delayed, but not avoided indefinitely.

SECOND: Beyond a certain limit, ‘difference’ and ‘diversity’, particularly, if they encourage and perpetuate customs which are intellectually and economically inferior to the host culture itself. By then, it may be too late to stop the rot, at least by the standards and methods conventionally employed in liberal democracies.

Intellectual cowardice masquerading as tolerance thus creates a situation in which we all suffer. Multiculturalism does not to ‘fairness’ for some; it leads, ultimately to misery for all.

Lord Tebbit deserves our gratitude for speaking out against the dangers of multiculturalism, and many other ills, which assail us besides. Those in the Conservative Party who argue that he should just fade away miss the point. Leadership (as opposed to management) civic courage (as opposed to shutting up when you know something is wrong) and clarity and openness of thought (as opposed to political- correct speak and evasion) are timeless qualities.

Without them the Conservative Party is Finished.

The author: A former soldier, Dr frank Ellis is a lecturer in Russian at the University of Leeds. He has published articles on Soviet war literature and the Soviet media. His monograph on the Soviet Russian writer Vassily Grossman: The Genesis and the Evolution of a Russian Heritic, was published in 1994. He has recently completed a second book, From Glasnost to the Internet: Russia’s New Infosphere, which is published by Macmillan.

Freedom Today, February 1998.

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