- John Denham is half right
Beneath the guarded rhetoric is an important message from John Denham which, surprisingly, agrees with Nothing British’s sceptical view of the government’s race-centric approach to solving Britain’s social mobility problems.
Denham says that we cannot assume that race is a reason for people to be disadvantaged. That white working class kids under-perform the achievements of, say, the sort of Chinese and Indian kids who are targeted by government action. That government efforts to support particular racial groups has led to the sort of resentment that helps the BNP. And that we need a radically new approach.
Quite right. It is encouraging that some in the Government recognise the obvious unfairness of its race-centric policies is contributing to the sort of anger and frustration in white working class areas that drives reasonable people into the arms of the BNP. If this marks a turning point in the Government’s strategy, it is to be welcomed.
However, we’re more hesitant about Denham’s supposed solution and the publication of a tedious glossy DCLG strategy report which combines talk about redoubling efforts to secure “equality for all” with a long list of projects aimed at targeted racial and religious groups. He seems to suggest turning the white working class into another marginalised group: whilst we fear that encouraging feelings of victimisation amongst the white working class is another way of playing into Griffin’s narrative.
No. We should be dismantling the infrastructure of multi-cultural social policy and rejecting an approach that defines a person’s needs by their religion or the colour of their skin.
We should be trying to bring society together, not splinter it apart. Politicians should not seek to address disadvantage by relying on an approach that defines people by race or religion, thereby creating a form of government-sanctioned segregation. Instead, Government should fund projects on the basis of needs. This would reduce the sense of entitlement amongst targeted groups and it would remove the resentment amongst groups left off the list.
The correct approach is to support that great British value, aspiration.
