Reply to: Multi Culturalism

This is the face of Britain that makes me so proud. From The Telegraph

'My job is to preserve the past to inform the future'
By Charles Clover

While white people on the Left usually admit to some unease about Britain's imperial history and one of its most disgraceful episodes, the slave trade, David Lammy, the new Culture Minister, is a man at ease with the past.

Still only 32, and with phrases like "meteoric rise" and "the black Blair" banded about when his name is mentioned in the press, you can see how he earned his reputation for adroitness when he is asked what the first black English person to be culture minister thinks of his heritage.


David Lammy: ‘I am proud of my parents' background in Guyana’
He says: "I am at ease personally with a country which has a most fascinating heritage to offer up to the world."

It is a history which, he says, stretches back to Stonehenge and, as he was reminded last week when he visited Liverpool to see the preparations for the European Capital of Culture 2008, includes slavery.

And he's at ease with that?

"Find me a country which does not have an uneasy past, find me a country that hasn't got contradictions and points in its history that a generation now might look back on and say, I don't know if we would have done it that way. You'd be on another planet," replies Mr Lammy.

"So here we are. We co-exist. We have got a considerable amount right and in the end it is not for me to judge but it is my role to preserve the past to inform the future."

No contrast could be greater between the equable Mr Lammy and his predecessor as Tottenham's MP, the Left-wing firebrand Bernie Grant, a Guyanese immigrant and shop steward, who died of a heart attack in 2000, paving the way for Mr Lammy to become, at 27, the youngest MP since the war.

Mr Lammy is known for his rhetorical skills - his maiden speech, about the power of politics to transform people's lives, is talked of as one of the very best - and these emerge when he defines his identity as a black English person.

"I am proud of my parents' background in Guyana, their coming to this country, my aunts and uncles building the NHS, working on the London Underground and other things.

"Believe me Guyanese people are very, very proud of their relationship with Britain. Things like cricket!

"I am as proud of my background as a cathedral chorister."

The young David Lammy's talent was singing, not school work, so he and his mother Rose applied to choir schools all over the country.

He won a scholarship to King's, a state boarding school in Peterborough.

Singing solos in the cathedral, he says, is what gave him the nerve to stand up at the dispatch box in the Commons. But the two institutions that shaped him were the Labour Party and the Anglican Church.

George Carey, when archbishop of Canterbury, asked him to sit on the archbishop's council.

So it is perhaps no surprise that he says one of the first things he wants to do as heritage minister is start a dialogue with the Church about whether more could be done for some of the 20,000 historic buildings it owns.

As a young, English, black person, his sense of heritage, is broad, Christian and inclusive, not least of global black male role models, such as Nelson Mandela, Mohammed Ali and Sydney Poitier.

When he married Nicola Green, also 32, earlier this year in St Margaret's, Westminster, he had the London gospel choir alongside the Westminster choir singing Bach and Parry.

Mr Lammy is still fond of music, soul not rap, though he says his tastes are broad and Beethoven touches the soul as much for him as Alicia Keys or Marvin Gaye.

He is, he says, as comfortable at the Hay festival as at Notting Hill, in the East Anglian fens or on Brick Lane.

"Across the piece, this is our culture. All of it. People are free to choose the bits that speak to them. In the end it is all about discovery."

So how does he deal with the view that Labour detests history and the accusation that it has run down the heritage budget year on year, while it has boosted the arts and sport?

"Yeah, well, look," he says. "I think it is important to prioritise heritage in my portfolio."

He points to the £3 billion spent on doing up historic buildings under the heritage lottery fund since 1995.

He dismisses suggestions that Labour intends to meddle further with the structures of English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund.

He looks forward to a Bill next year which will add transparency to the process of protecting historic buildings and give property owners leave to appeal against listings.

So far, so very Blairite. So what does he make of the fact that in the north of England so many historic terraces are about to be torn down - and their inhabitants, some of them elderly people who have paid off their mortgages years ago, compulsorily evicted - in the name of renewing the housing market, 20,000 of them in the European Capital of Culture for 2008?

Choosing his words carefully, he says: "Where you can restore historic buildings, Victorian terrace housing, where you can renew them, bring them alive again, I think it is important to do that.

"But equally nobody is suggesting you restore all those houses. I have to hear MPs who tap me on the shoulder and talk about housing which may be historic but is depopulated and no one wants to live in it.

''The balance must be struck and we must get it right."

Are the houses that will be built really any better than those homes that will be pulled down?

The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, the Government's cosy advisory group that now reports to Mr Lammy, is silent on the matter.

"I am very keen to look into that," he says.

In doing so, one suspects, the new minister will have to choose between loyalty to his political masters and speaking up for the rights of the disadvantaged as he has on the streets of Tottenham.

We will find out how at ease he feels about that in a few months time.

Living as I do in a Muslim area (while myself being Catholic and significant other is Buddhist - hows that for religous diversity).

Both local shops are run by Muslims and are open approx 8am and close between 11pm and midnight. Frankly they have a strong work ethic.Try getting someone white to work those kind of hours. Or for that matter a lot of blacks.

The Mugabe Contract

Bob Geldof. Give ME yer @#%$ money. Ill hire some mercenaries to take out Mugabe and a few others that will have a far more beneficial impact on a self-destructive continent than any of your efforts.

I know just the project leader for this contract.

www.myitg.com/e_person_mhoare.htm

Not to mention the fact that some people of asian extraction have practised marrying their cousins over many generations...

Good method of building up those interesting recessive genes.

Chinese and Indians did best

SG makes a good point. Many Chinese and Indian families (by no means all -my Chinese neighbours are complete feckwits) in the UK retain a strong sense of the family and put emphasis on educational success (pushing for their children to become doctors, etc.). In contrast, many blacks come from single parent families and there is a bias against education.

>> generally ethnic minorities perform worst at school

Not quite true, Blaster. Splitting the ethnic minorities down, I seem to recall, showed that the Chinese and Indians did best, followed by Whites, Black Africans and then Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and AfroCaribbeans at the bottom.

What's interesting about this is the difference between Indians and other groups from the sub continent (who are Muslim) as well as the difference between Blacks of African and Carribean descent.

Suggests a strong cultural component is involved, with Islam and Rapper bling culture leading towards lower educational performance.

...interesting point WageSlave. I think it was the Economist that pointed out that generally ethnic minorities perform worst at school. However when you look closely at the low income group, within that whites perform significantly worse than other groups, pointing to a need to give poor whites special education, hence the mistake of focusing resources on ethnic minorities. Maybe whites have achieved more, because they have bigger "weapons", but are inherently thicker.

I'm not surprised that the majority of violent crime in this country is committed by black males. I suspect the same is true in America for blacks and Hispanics. However, without wishing to come across all bleedin' heart liberal, we do need to ask why this is true. Is it a racial gene or is due to social status?
For example, in late Victorian society, a lot of crime was the work of the Irish and Jews. At the time these groups formed the 'underclass' of society; a position now occupied by blacks. This problem isn't helped in today's society by certain cultural trends; gangsta rap, etc.

Ive met some rather lovely drunken bums from Oz.

They are usually about 18-20 years old, and work in my local in skimpy tops that show off their nice tanned boobies, partying hard when off duty and generally behaving like frisky kittens.

They seem to like older English guys too, which is nice.

Too right there are ethnic differences, take programming for example, if we get a CV from down under we throw it straight in the bin, because lets face it drunken bums from Oz can´t program.

Funny thing is, look at the FBI's most wanted list and you have 4 hispanics one Arab (Osama) and rest are white (one even being pretty obviously jewish)

Kind of toss's any theorys out the window does it not?

hmmm

Lets not beat around the bush here.

If there was no black / afro africans / caribbeans or whatever they are in this country crime would be reduced by 50%.

Re: que?

When did the lunatics take over this forum...? We are doomed...doomed I say!!!

Re: que?

Oh! I thought it was typo for shoot.

Re: que?

Bob Geldof. Give ME yer @#%$ money. Ill hire some mercenaries to take out Mugabe and a few others that will have a far more beneficial impact on a self-destructive continent than any of your efforts. And you dont even have to have Elton John ruining his begonias by flying to the concerts by helicopter from his stately home.

SPOT ON!!!!

If some one organises a private invasion of Zimbabwe to sort that scumbag out, I will be at the frontt of the queue with my donation.

Hold the music and go heavy on the firearms.

Bring on the merceneries.