What nobler vision can there be?
I’ve seen many people praising the Guardian’s editorial on the murder of Jo Cox, and rightly so.
Jo Cox, however, was not just any MP doing her duty. She was also an MP who was driven by an ideal. The former charity worker explained what that ideal was as eloquently as anyone could in her maiden speech last year. “Our communities have been deeply enhanced by immigration,” she insisted, “be it of Irish Catholics across the constituency or of Muslims from Gujarat in India or from Pakistan, principally from Kashmir. While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.”
What nobler vision can there be than that of a society where people can be comfortable in their difference? And what more fundamental tenet of decency is there than to put first and to cherish all that makes us human, as opposed to what divides one group from another? These are ideals that are often maligned when they are described as multiculturalism, but they are precious nonetheless. They are the ideals which led Ms Cox to campaign tirelessly for the brutalised and displaced people of Syria, and – the most painful thought – ideals for which she may now have died.
That is what makes it so hideously tragic – she was a generous person doing generous work.
We are in the midst of what risks becoming a plebiscite on immigration and immigrants. The tone is divisive and nasty. Nigel Farage on Thursday unveiled a poster of unprecedented repugnance. The backdrop was a long and thronging line of displaced people in flight. The message: “The EU has failed us all.” The headline: “Breaking point.” The time for imagining that the Europhobes can be engaged on the basis of facts – such as the reality that a refugee crisis that started in Syria and north Africa can hardly be blamed on the EU, or the inconvenient detail that obligations under the refugee convention do not depend on EU membership – has passed. One might have still hoped, however, that even merchants of post-truth politics might hold back from the sort of entirely post-moral politics that is involved in taking the great humanitarian crisis of our time, and then whipping up hostility to the victims as a means of chivvying voters into turning their backs on the world.
The idealism of Ms Cox was the very antithesis of such brutal cynicism. Honour her memory. Because the values and the commitment that she embodied are all that we have to keep barbarism at bay.
I fell very sorry for Ms Cox, her young children, her Husband, her family, her associates and her friends. Her murder is tragic and will continue to have repercussions for years to come. I’m sure she’ll be missed by many, many people, and that her death has left a hole in the lives of those around her.
However to portray her as an idealist is not really accurate. Her heart was in the right place, but her view of things far from accurate. I no longer believe in her vision at all.
She spoke of ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusiveness’ less than a week after the brutal murder of 50 gays in Orlando…as though such atrocities are but blips on the radar, one-off affairs that have nothing to do with immigration policies or rising sectarianism borne of that immigration.
“Our communities have been deeply enhanced by immigration,” she insisted, “be it of Irish Catholics across the constituency or of Muslims from Gujarat in India or from Pakistan, principally from Kashmir. While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.”
The above excerpt from The Guardian is utter nonsense. 21st century immigration has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IN COMMON with that of the 19th century. Assimilating Irishmen ( are their values all that different?) into British society at a time when mass communications and air travel didn’t exist was a piece of cake. Assimilating Pakistanis from South Asia, OTOH, is proving pretty much impossible. The difference in morals, ethics, gender relations, and so on and so forth can never be bridged. Numerous studies clearly demonstrate that second and third generation Pakistanis are far more wedded to their religious identity than were their parents and grandparents. It is impossible to assimilate newcomers in an age where immigrants have become mere protracted commuters, traveling back and forth, in mere hours, between their home country and their current place of residence, the UK. 21st century immigrants may live in England and other European countries, but they will not, cannot, and do not INHABIT them. Parallel societies, segregated communities and ethnic ghettos and entho/religious conflicts are anathema to diversity and humanism.
JO Cox was most certainly well meaning, but with regards to foreigners, integration and possibilities of assimilation she was blind and naive. When poll after poll demonstrate that the majority of the the UK’s Muslims think homosexuality should be illegal, and when study after study in Germany, and elsewhere in Europe show that most Muslims prefer sharia to secular law, I, as a gay man, find precious little to celebrate. In fact, there’s a lot to fear, and that fear is rational, grounded and well founded and has nothing to do with “xenophobia”
Saw a cartoon the other day. Showed a man with a noose around his neck with the other end of it looped around the branch of a sapling. The man was holding a watering can and was labelled “Europe”. The sapling was labelled “Islam”.
Jo Cox was not murdered by a muslim immigrant.
As for you the kindest thing I can say is that you do not sound “very sorry” at all…
I’d love to see you act on the courage of your progressive convictions and elect domicile in any one of the hundreds of french neighborhoods deeply enhanced by immigration.
For those still in denial about the growing dangers of Islamism, Ms Cox’s tragic death ( she wasn’t murdered by a Muslim immigrant) becomes a case of saved-by-the-bell.
Whew!
She isn’t being mourned by some; she’s being used.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, enhanced security measures are being put in place for Gay Pride celebrations ranging from Istanbul to Toronto to LA
John,
The police have just announced that right-wing extremism is now a major line of inquiry in this case, with terrorism specialists involved.
The person who tried to step between the killer and Jo Cox, to protect her, and was slightly injured is a local Muslim man in his 70s.
Do keep up.
@John
L.A. Pride was last weekend. A man was arrested. He had a car full of weapons and explosives, and he was headed for the parade.
His name is James Wesley Howell. He isn’t Muslim. He’s from Indiana, USA.
Hmmm.
I’m strongly reminded of a tutor I had who, upon being confronted with a student starting with, “Studies show…” would glare over her glasses and ask, “Studies? Which studies? Is that the consensus derived from all relevant studies? If not, how have you selected the ones you are quoting? What was the methodology? How was the data processed?” At this most students would slink away to do their homework better.
Social attitude studies are notorious for being poorly performed, particularly in terms of selection of participants – often either self selected or a sample of convenience.
I’m not quoting studies and I can only speak from my own experience. That experience is studying, living and working in a minority white environment since I was 11 (I’m now 47). I live in Birmingham which has one of the country’s largest Asian populations. The area of Birmingham I live in is one of the enclaves consisting of over 70% Indian/Pakistani (the rest breaks down as 25% Afro-Caribbean and 5% “Other” including indigenous white). I worked at NHS hospitals where many of the staff and most of the patients were Asian or Afro-Caribbean. My neighbours – most of my street – are Asian. My children went to a majority Asian primary school. At my daughter’s senior school she was one of only two white teenagers in her class. No, she had no problems whatsoever.
Basically I’m as familiar with Asian people as anyone white can be – without, perhaps, marrying into an Asian family.
Are some disgustingly misogynistic? Yes, but so are some white people. Misogyny is misogyny whatever cultural lens you refract it through. I’ve known Asian women beaten by their husbands. I’ve known white women beaten by husbands or partners. We don’t call it an “honour” killing when a white woman gets killed because she has – or the man in her life thinks she has – had an affair but it isn’t any less misogynistic.
The third (and fourth) generation Asians I’ve known have, perhaps, generally been a bit more religious than the average white Brit but so, on the whole, are Afro-Caribbean families. Take my daughters good friends from school: an atheist Sikh studying to be a doctor, an atheist and an agnostic Hindu (stage school and History at University) and a mildly religious Sikh (no idea what she wants to do, currently repeating her second A Level year). Yes, I’ve known some zealots but by and large, for the most part, most of the people I’ve met aren’t particularly fervent. Synagogue or Gurdwara are as much a cultural touchstone as anything else.
Oh, and none of my daughters friends are homophobic, either, In fact one of them is a lesbian and another has a gay older brother. Yes, they’re both out. Their parent’s generation are more uneasy about it and the grandparents – yes, many of them are homophobic. Things are changing and the current generation is, in my experience, much more open to this kind of thing. And as a bi woman this is something that is important to me too.
I also think you need to look harder at 19th C history if you think the Catholic Irish were easily assimilated. Right up to the 1960s you’d still see signs saying, “No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs” in rented accommodation and even pubs. To people in the 19th C Catholics – especially Catholics with funny accents and different ways of doing things – were highly disturbing. Today we don”t think much of the doctrinal differences but 150 years ago that divide was as deep as if they were two different religions. It mattered. And then there’s the Ashkenazi Jews. 19th C folk liked them even less.
Steamshovelmama reminds me–it’s largely forgotten now, but in the US Catholic immigrants were feared and reviled for generations.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Catholicism_in_the_United_States
Indeed. And it was very similar in the UK – there is, historically, a deep divide between Catholicism and Protestantism. The two groups regarded each other with distrust and suspicion, in many cases socialised in different areas, didn’t intermarry, regarded the other group as “lesser”. add in an Irish accent, working class country manners and behaviours that were perceived as different and you have a group that really was not assimilated with any grace or ease.
You’re right, steamshovelmama.
It is evident from individual stories and from patterns of settlement ,though never admitted by the Johns of this world, that one of the major barriers to living in harmony and all making the necessary adjustments can be the hostility of the host community. It’s not universal but it has a major impact and the Irish immigrants of the nineteenth century are a good example.
One of my daughter’s great-grandfathers was an Ashkenazi Jew fleeing the pogroms. He arrived with no English and no idea what to expect, except that it would be better than being dead. In fact he was lucky, work took him into an area of London where the influence of an already mixed community was beneficial and that of the traditionalists was less. You cannot learn new customs if no-one invites you for a meal or is a colleague at work.
I live in Penge, John. Working class South East London and yes, an area enhanced by immigration. There are still significant remnants of the original Irish immigrant population here, with layers added later of West Indies migrants, Asian (Indian and Pakistani mostly, but in recent years people from further East. My local pizza parlour is run by an Afghan family), African, and recently eastern European migrants. Lots of Turks too.
All of those were told the same thing by arseholes like you (I have decided not to be kind any more after all): that they were too alien, too different, that “assimilating” them would be “pretty much impossible”. Well, guess what? People rub along. It’s not pretty and there are arguments. It’s working class argument, it’s pretty rough and it uses words that I am sure you would never dream of using yourself with your oh-so-heartfelt concern, but it works and then the next generation grow up together and the woman who I am sure was spouting racist shit just like yours 20 years ago about people from the Caribbeans can now be seen proudly taking her mixed race grandson to the park. Oh, I am sure that privately she will still say similar things about, say, Muslims (savages!) or Albanians (a bunch of thieves!) but so what? There is always the next generation.
Hey, it’s no utopia, there is a fair amount of crime (although most of the criminals I know are white). It’s working class as I said, and the working class had it pretty rough in recent years but few racially motivated ones that I know of (and I know a lot of people).
There is a lot of crime against pizza, that’s for sure. I usually prefer to walk down the road a little, the pizzeria there is run by another family and they know their stuff. But then they are Italian.
Also in my pub there is a fair number of ex soldiers, some local lads, a couple of Caribbean origin, one from Fiji even. They went to the Falklands, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan or Irak. They have some fucking awful stories to tell (but you probably wouldn’t want to stay around long enough to hear them) and, whatever their motivations and that of the people who sent them, they are no tourists, they have all given far more to their country that you ever will.
I am pretty sure the next generation will too.
That was just to say that Jo Cox was right. She was not right about everything (a bit too New Labour to my taste) but she was not some silly-billy idealist living in a bubble and abstracted from reality. She grew up in this area. She was killed outside of her surgery, FFS, where she met local people to help solve their problems. What more do you want?
If I lived in france, I would have no qualms doing so.
As for the political cartoon you mention, ‘Europe’ is interchangeable with any nation or region recieving immigrants / asylum seekers, and ‘Islam’ with any demograhic entering said region. It is a tired old joke recruited to demonise foreigners, of any demographic. It is straight out of the right wing playbook, you would be better off forgetting it.
One of my daughter’s great-grandfathers was an Ashkenazi Jew fleeing the pogroms. He arrived with no English and no idea what to expect,
So why do you champion the importation of huge numbers of neo-nazis? After Mohamed Merah shot up that Jewish school in Toulouse, many local Muslims praised his actions. You’re confused; Muslims aren’t the New Jews
“No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs” in rented accommodation and even pubs.
That is an urban myth. People used to *say* the exact same thing about Irishmen in Toronto and Irishmen in Montréal.
Why don’t you address the fact that UNLIKE the Irish many second and third generation Muslims are far more segregationist and radical than either their parents or grandparents.
The police have just announced that right-wing extremism is now a major line of inquiry in this case, with terrorism specialists involved.
Yeah, after events Orlando, Tommy Mair is Jesus in a rain hat, a real godsend of distraction.
I live in Penge, John. Working class South East London and yes, an area enhanced by immigration
Your virtue signaling is duly noted.
Yeah, after events Orlando, Tommy Mair is Jesus in a rain hat, a real godsend of distraction.
That should have read: Yeah, after events in Orlando, Tommy Mair is Jesus in a rain hat, a real godsend of distraction for both you AND the Islamists
John,
We can grow our own neo-nazis, as many as we need. There was one in court at Westminster this morning, next appearance at the Old Bailey on Monday. You see we have this strange habit of arresting people alive so that we can find out what the fuck is going on, instead of just providing fodder for endless rabid chat shows masquerading as news.
The “No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs” thing is not an urban myth. It was well documented at the time and the evidence still exists.
As for radicalisation of second and third generation Muslims, I gave you part of the explanation up above somewhere.
Here’s a proposition for you: A higher proportion of white USAians are racists, than of UK Muslims are Islamist thugs. Discuss.
To help you – https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2016/jun/12/orlando-shooting-reaction-us-gun-laws-islam-homophobia
No. No it isn’t. My parents and grandparents all remember that kind of thing. You can even see photos showing signs like this. Back in the 1960s the immigrants considered “different” and “impossible to assimilate” were the Afro-Caribbeans. In the 1964 general election, the local Tory candidate fought a campaign on the slogan (my apologies for the language), “If You Want a Nigger for a Neighbour, Vote Labour.” Interestingly, today those “impossible to assimilate” Afro-Caribbeans aren’t considered much of a problem, politically. We’ve moved on to Asians, specifically Muslims. Do remember that not all Asians are Muslim.
And, as I pointed out, it is most emphatically not my experience that the Asian population I live among is segregationalist nor radical. In the last twenty years I’ve known maybe one Pakistani Muslim who could be described as radical. He was deeply unpopular with many members of his community because it was felt he painted them all in a bad light.
For your information, and for what it’s worth (in my opinion, not much: see below), many more Muslims in France condemned the actions of Merah than tried to justify them. Of the latter more were drawn to conspiracy theories (that is: they couldn’t believe that this guy they knew could kill people in cold blood) than praise. Merah’s own brother wrote a book to try to convince people in his community that Mohamed was no hero. He was particularly critical of his parents if I recall correctly. (So much for your theories about the older generations…)
“Your virtue signaling is duly noted”
I didn’t even know what you could possibly mean by that and had to look it up. But, now that I have, it allowed me to formulate a theory, and I must say it doesn’t really reflect well on you.
You are the one who challenged me to go and “elect domicile in any one of the hundreds of French neighborhoods deeply enhanced by immigration”. So that was a crude trap, wasn’t it? Either I was living in a safe middle class area and being a hypocrite or I was living in a banlieue (that was the word you were looking for?) and it was “virtue signalling”.
You are just trying to score points, you are not interested in convincing anybody. And you are certainly not open to be convinced by any argument either.
You are just a troll.
But that’s not my theory.
It is not virtue signalling, you see. It’s where I live. Because it’s cheap and I can afford it. And you, you are a dreadful snob who cannot understand that there are working class people who read books, speak foreign languages and can express themselves in writing. Working class is not a triage station, a waiting room for those who are going to go onto “better things”. And in the same way, immigrants are not just British (or French) people in waiting. We are not just supposed to tolerate them until they learn to drop their aitches and cook fish and chips. Because what the fuck would be the point. They are people with their own histories and traditions. Some of those they will need to leave behind (and that would be much easier if we didn’t park them in ghettos) but others enrich us, enhance us, whether you like it or not. Our societies are not so fucking great that we have nothing to learn. Americans killed each other in great numbers way before Orlando and will carry on for a long time coming, there were very few Muslims in Vichy France and British MPs (especially female MPs) are routinely threatened. But yeah, let’s blame the Muslims, that way we won’t have to look too critically at ourselves. Until the next time.
But as I said above, there is no much point to repeating all this. No much point in trying to convince you. All your interventions here are typical of a little mind who is afraid both of anything slightly different from himself and of letting go of his reassuring prejudices. And who doesn’t even have the decency to let go of his hobby horse for a couple of days and shut the fuck up in a place where people are trying to pay their respects.
Thank you steamshovelmama, Holms and Arnaud.
In a rational world, surely,we could persuade John to shut up and let those of us with the relevant experience speak. Oh, and that paranoia only makes you ill.
This. And this applies to me and my family and our circumstances too.
And I’d be quite happy to move to a banlieue too. After all, I pretty much live in the English equivalent.
This goes for me too. Thanks, Arnaud.
–From an immigrant neighborhood Across the Pond.
John is, ironically enough, inspiring some great comments here. Thank you Steamshovelmama & Arnaud & Maureen & Lady M.
Late to this party.
Thank you for saying that Arnaud. My parents were both born to very working class parents. On both sides of the family we have solid backgrounds as miners, farm labourers and manual workers. My Grandparents did not value eduction, but both my grandfathers were skilled tradesmen (a plumber and a cabinet maker), which was quite a step up from digging holes in the ground. Here’s the thing. My grandparents did not approve of ‘education’, but they all read extensively. On my fathers side they were also very much into classical music, opera and theatre. It was through theatre my parents met. My parents did value formal education and went off and got themselves good ones, despite a lack of family support. For various reasons my mother had to raise us alone in what could best be described as poverty (being a relative thing – we didn’t have to forage dumpsters for food). She fiercely passed on her love of learning to us. “Working class” is used as a dog whistle for a grab bag of derogatory connotations. Yet, the nastiest arseholes I’ve ever met were not working class…
John, I don’t know you, except by your writing. From your writing you come across as a snobby, narrow minded, xenophobic, racist, ill-informed ass. If you’re comfortable with that description keep it up. If that makes you squirm, maybe you need to do some serious thinking.
Re the ‘urban myth’ of ‘no Irish need apply’ (not the same as ‘no Irish, no dogs’ but interesting nevertheless, if you missed it the first time around):
http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/High-school-student-disproves-professors-theory-that-No-Irish-Need-Apply-signs-never-existed.html
So, not even an urban legend in the states then. And while I can’t link to pictures, I’ve certainly seen journalistic photographs (other than the one “of uncertain provenance” that gets discussed as though it’s the only example).
The thing to note here is that the Irish American people, who have apparently been told their cultural history is wrong, have been shown to be correct. I’d like to give the UK Afro-Caribbean community the respect of believing that the elders saw what they say they saw (we’re only looking at people in their 70s and 80s). My (white) parents and grandparents are by no means the most politically correct people in the world but they also report seeing this kind of sign (the wording may not be exact – in fact how could it be? Each sign was written by a different individual).
In other words there is enough primary evidence, from a variety of sources for me to be as sure as I can be that this kind of sign was seen in the UK, in Birmingham in the 1960s.