Learning by Mistakes
After the last great war Great Britain was forced to hand back its empire. It's too easy to label groups. To be British is not the same as being English. To have the power to decide to hand back an empire was not given to many English people, just to a few misguided political leaders. The English peasant is one of the most controlled people in the world. For centuries we have done just what our masters told us to do.That situation has not improved lately. One million British peasants marched through the streets of London, not wanting our country to invade Iraq. Our measly-minded ministers decided to go against the will of the people, largely without providing a logical explanation.
After Empire decayed we had Commonwealth. Following the war, when honest decent British men, women and children had been killed, the country was short of people. Partly in appeasement, mainly through economic greed, our masters decided to give some Commonwealth citizens the right to British citizenship. I'm British became the cry from around the world.
Today we have a multi-racial society. No real problem with that except when we find that third generation immigrants still cannot speak English, and have little or no involvement with the indigenous population. Now one London Borough can boast that 166 different languages are spoken. Sadly not all of those people have yet acquired any pride in being British.
When asked where allegiances lie, they are rarely to be found tied to these isles. The old country, wherever that may be, still holds hearts. And now 12% of UK pensions are paid to people living abroad, as those immigrants return to their home lands to die.
All this is a high price to pay for a few extra poorly-paid immigrant workers. Now the sons of those immigrants, brought up in this country, educated, housed, fed and watered in the British way are prepared to kill themselves, and many others, for a cause.
What is that cause? Hatred of our way of life is supposedly the cause for which they are prepared to murder.
If life is so dreadful here, why do they stay? Why not go to another place where they can live the life they want to lead? By what divine right do they gain support for their determination to influence our way of life? They came to our country of their own free will and by and large the citizenry has accepted this influx with good grace. The poor English person attempting to settle in many of the home lands of these immigrants finds it much more difficult to be accepted.
Who is to blame?
Bigotry is corrosive and can only be beaten by smothering those affected by love and compassion.
posted by Suffolk Notes @ 10:10 am
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