How are we going to integrate immigrants into British society, so that they participate fully in it,

sharing and respecting its values? That question is even more pertinent today than it was in
1984, when Ray Honeyford, who died last week, first raised it publicly.
Immigration from non-EU countries has increased enormously in the last 30 years. It has been
running at more than 100,000 a year for a decade. But by no means all of the new arrivals, many
of whom come from what are categorised as ethnic minorities, have found it easy to adopt British
values.
Labour ministers, as they dismantled almost all immigration controls, imagined that there would
be no problem about integration. They thought the only issue would be racism from the local
population. That was a mistake. Some of the arriving groups have deep commitments to religious
views that place women in a subordinate position, and which lead them to think that practices
such as homosexuality are an abomination that should be severely punished.
Values that most of us would think of as essential elements of being British tolerance,
recognising the importance of equality before the law, or even the primacy of democratic
elections as the way of deciding who should govern have not been accepted by a significant
minority of immigrants. Some even wish to cut themselves off from liberal and tolerant Britain
completely. They hope to perpetuate their own religious values by having their own education
system.

Does it matter? The doctrine of multiculturalism says it does not. In the 1980s, multiculturalisms
high noon, Bradford city council adopted a policy that declared that every section of the
multicultural, multiracial city had an equal right to maintain its own identity, culture, language,
religion and customs. That was precisely what alarmed Ray Honeyford. He saw it as creating a
divided Britain, where different communities did not interact with each other and all sense of a
common identity was lost, replaced by a Babel of languages and conflicting cultures.
Almost every serious politician now recognises that Honeyford was correct to maintain both that
multiculturalism is a recipe for the segregation of communities and that it would work against the
development of a single set of basic values that could bind members of British society together.
But while multiculturalism may have been abandoned as government policy, its legacy is
everywhere.

Its principal effect has been to harden dividing lines between ethnic groups. This is not just a
matter of whites living in different areas from non-whites, but also of (for example) Pakistanis
living in one neighbourhood, Bangladeshis in another, Sikhs in a third, and so on.
The highest levels of segregation recorded anywhere in the UK are those between Indians and
Pakistanis in towns in the north of England. Those towns also exhibit a markedly higher degree of
segregation between blacks and Asians than between whites and blacks. This suggests that the
explanation for the division is not white racism, but rather the lack of a common culture that would
allow different groups to share anything significant. The isolation of communities helps to
perpetuate beliefs and practices that are opposed to British values.
But ministers, judges, and officials are reluctant to insist that the first condition of British
citizenship for any immigrant should be to adopt British values such as speaking English,
accepting all citizens equal rights, and recognising that the only procedure for deciding on
legitimate political authority is free elections to Parliament.
As we dither on this, multiculturalism continues its divisive work. And it will soon be too late to do
anything about it: Britain will have permanently fractured into factions united by nothing except
mutual incomprehension and antipathy.