Dr Daniel Pitt is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Buckingham.
It is time for two old-fashioned principles to come back into fashion.
One is a common unifying culture for all, and the other is equality before the law.
To assist with this goal, we need to perform some diagnostics. The three problems that stand in our way of reintroducing these principles in our country is we are a country of two nations, with structural multiculturalism and the omnipresent concept of social justice, which in fact is not justice at all.
The flamboyant Benjamin Disraeli, in his most famous novel, Sybil, argued that England is not one nation but two. Indeed, “Or the Two Nations” was the subtitle of the novel. We are told that between these two nations, “there is no intercourse and no sympathy”, and they are “ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones,” they may be “inhabitants of different planets”. It is sad to say that there are parts of England today that are “not governed by the same laws”, and have different cultures, languages, and are “ordered by different manners”.
It was Stanley Baldwin who coined the term “one-nation,” when he argued that the Conservative Party’s priority must be to unite the two nations that Disraeli wrote about. This needs to be a core priority of the Conservative mission today. To unite these nations, we must advocate for one common unifying culture and not multiculturalism, and equality before the law and not special favours based on certain characteristics.
It is tempting to say the two nations in our country are urban vs. non-urban areas. But this is far too simplistic.
It is not London vs. non-London, nor the rich vs the poor. The two nations are separated by culture. We have a culture problem, and our culture needs renewal. Yes, it’s about culture and not about race or ethnicity.
Kenneth Minogue, the Conservative political theorist, defined multiculturalism as the “belief that all cultures are equal in value.” On the face of it, this seems like a rather nice, tolerant, and pleasing sentiment. When applied in practice, it unfortunately means our country has no right to preserve itself, whilst newcomers or minorities are entitled to protect whatever beliefs or practices, they bring with them. A generation ago, Minogue could say with certainty that:
“Virtually everybody in Britain believes, and rightly, that whatever the shallowness and injustices of European life, it is superior to that of most other cultures. This powerful conviction results not merely from the fact that it happens to be the way of life with which we are familiar.”
We certainly can’t say that today.
Unfortunately, in parts of our country, Minogue’s assumption does not hold true for far too many people.
Cicero, the great Roman statesman, argued that “the good of the people is the chief law.” Multiculturalism has not been for the good of the people in our country, nor has social justice. They have had a corrosive effect on our cultural identity, our national pride, and our understanding of justice. Structural multiculturalism has worn away trust within our community and has cut deeply into the roots of public order.
Rather than going to the heart of our problems, defenders of multiculturalism and social justice have sought to increase government intervention in our lives and have sought more bureaucracy to surmount communal antagonism. This has only made things worse.
The alternative to a common unifying culture is not the nice and tolerant pluralism that multiculturalists once imagined but ever more intrusive policing of relations between hostile communities. We cannot let this continue any longer.
Multiculturalism and social justice have harmed justice in the country, not enhanced it. Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, taught us in his Nicomachean Ethics that we “refrain from evil” because we fear punishment, but too many people in our country do not fear punishment from the law at all, and far too many of our law-abiding neighbours and friends certainly do fear the evil that criminals get up to.
A fundamental principle of the rule of law is that everyone is bound by it.
However, our left-liberal elite has rejected this principle in favour of social justice and structural multiculturalism, and therefore, they treat ethnic minorities differently. The Sentencing Council provided us with a real-life case stating explicitly that the courts should consider “protected characteristics” in their sentencing. This meant that ethnic minorities would receive a lesser sentence than a white man for the same crime. This, of course, strikes at the heart of the rule of law, and we should not stand for it.
This two-tier policing and justice system is further fraying our social fabric. A high-trust society requires a shared moral language that knits our social fabric together. It requires a common unifying culture. In parts of our country, we are proceeding towards a low-trust society, and multiculturalism is pulling apart our social fabric; and in such a society, justice cannot exist for much longer.
As Baldwin said over one hundred years ago in the Royal Albert Hall in front of a packed audience, our mission is “to make one nation of our own people at home”; we need to tackle those two nations, structural multiculturalism and the omnipresent idea of social justice, if achieved, “nothing else matters in the world.