Hungary in centre of UK’s “Bigot-gate” scandal

This article's conclusions are a bit far-fetched by saying that Mrs. Gillian Duffy referred to the Hungarian immigrants especially, when asking about the 2 million Eastern European expats, out of which only 2,000 are from our beloved country. However, it might be right in that this was the "fatal blow" to the Labour Party's possible reelection this Thursday. For those who haven't heard about it, Gordon Brown left a campaign event with his microphone still on, and while in his car, he called an elderly pensioner a "bigoted woman" for asking about Eastern European immigrants. The whole story first caught my attention, because the word "bigoted" (vakbuzgó) means moustached in Spanish, so I merely thought he didn't like the lady's looks. :) (retrieved from the Budapest Report website)

Hungary, in the heart of Eastern Europe, is one of the ‘new Europe’ states that will be in the centre of the news in British media for quite some time, thanks to the recent blunder of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The “Bigot-gate” scandal broke when a BBC microphone caught the British PM making sarcastic remarks after his political campaign in Manchester on April 28, 2010.

Brown had finished sweet-talking an elderly citizen, but unaware of his live microphone still in operation, had minutes later called her “a bigoted woman” for daring to ask him about Britain’s brothers in the East. Unfortunate for Brown his negligence can cause the fatal blow to his incumbent Labour Party, which had planned to win the upcoming elections. The woman had complained about her fears about Eastern Europeans immigrants, including Hungarians. She demanded, “All those Eastern Europeans what are coming in, where are they flocking from?” Unconfirmed reports say that there are some 2 million immigrants in the UK of which at least 2,000 are Hungarian nationals.

The majority of Hungarians have decided to stay in their host nation for long term as the British Pound is still stronger than the Euro, much stronger than the Hungarian Forint (300:1) while the minimum wage in the UK (currently GBP 5.80/hour) is merely a dream in Hungary and working conditions at this level in the UK are more humane than in Hungary. Hungarian guest worker Rudolf Magyar told Budapest Report that he, his wife and two boys (6, 10) have settled down in the UK’s Cornwall County and don’t plan to return to Hungary.

“We both have full time jobs. We are paying our taxes and national insurance and our boys are attending school here and playing football for the local team. But the likes of Magyar and his other Eastern European peers are now the back-bone of the British economy, as many Britons prefer to go on job seekers allowance instead of laboring for minimum wages. Nevertheless Brown has drastically reduced his chances of improving his already tarnished short-tempered and arrogant reputation, political analysts said.

His affair with the 65-year-old discouraged lady from the industrial area of Rochdale, Manchester has almost caused a crash in international internet systems as so many viewers had logged on to see the recording on various hosting sites. Now Brown is apologising in every direction, but it seems his words are falling on deaf ears. The Labour Party is furious about his blunder as they are heavily dependant on working class people like thee lady from Manchester. Yet Brown has denied shooting his party in the leg. He argues, “If you make a mistake you apologise… I’m concentrating on bigger issues…”

But what can be a bigger issue than the entire world being hyped up about the stupidity of a prime Minister. Brown made a personal visit to his victim and apologised for having earlier ranted, “That was a disaster…she was just a sort of a bigoted woman,” about her. Political analysts said they believe Brown may not have made the trip, had he not been confronted for the BBC audio recording. The Manchester lady whose name is Gillian Duffy (pictured) is definitely more popular than Brown and has reportedly already hired a media consultant to sell her story to the media.

Muslims in Britain

I found this video when I was searching for some videos on the UK General Election 2010. I think it's worth watching. A little explanation: There is 'Sharia law' mentioned in the video. 'Sharia' refers to the "way" Muslims should live or the "path" they must follow.

United Kingdom Independence Party

About two weeks ago me and my "team" had to convince you about the UKIP's policy. :) Then I wasn't a hundred percent sure about it's exact aims, just had some vague guesses. Now I checked it up and thought it would interest you as well, as their aims and the topic is closely related to our compulsory reading for today. Hope you'll find it useful!

Eurosceptic views on EU

Kellner Sándor a.k.a Alexander Korda

Sorry for continuously returning to the entertainment section of the class, but I wanted to share this with you. Below you will find an excerpt about Alexander Korda (mentioned in the article about the history of the BAFTA) from Kati Marton's book titled The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World. It is pretty long, I know, but it's very interesting and informative. I hope you'll enjoy it.

"Soon, Korda’s banner would flutter above the Thames. It was in England that Korda saw his greatest opportunity to create an empire to rival the one that had recently rejected him. Again, as in 1908 when he grasped that films were the medium of the future, Korda saw a void that he could fill. England had no film moguls, no big movie stars, no studios. Like Hungary, it boasted a rich history ready to be mined, and – unlike Hungary – a language that was spoken on both sides of the Atlantic. Above all, it was Europe! He would take the lessons learned in Hollywood and transplant them to Britain. He knew the secret to independence. He would create a full-blown corporation and a studio of his own. He would show those crude studio pashas. And he would make his brothers his partners – though never equals – and thus reconstitute the scattered family. Korda had circled from Budapest to Vienna to Berlin to Hollywood to Paris. Approaching his fortieth year, he would make London his final stop.

The fact that Britain’s first ever international film hit was an all-Hungarian production – produced and directed by Alexander Korda, sets by Vincent Korda, and screenplay by Lajos Biro – did not diminish Britain’s pride at beating Hollywood at its own game. The Private Life of Henry VIII was such a huge hit in 1933 that, for the rest of his life, Alexander Korda, too, compete with himself. With this film, everything came together for Korda. Filmed in five weeks for a paltry £50,000 (according to Alex, at least), it grossed half a million pounds in its first world run. Well over half a century later, The Private Life of Henry VIII turns up on cable channels at odd hours – and, with Charles Laughton’s unforgettable, scenery-chewing performance as Henry, it remains an irresistible romp.

Henry VIII was suffused with Korda’s love of history with a human, ironic face. “It’s a boy!” the monarch whoops at his hunting party, like any clerk receiving the good news. “There’s no delicacy, nowadays,” Henry grumbles, tearing into the capon and famously tossing the bones over his shoulder. Korda transformed the monarch into a henpecked husband. “Don’t you shout at me,” Anne of Cleves warns Henry, “just because I’m your wife!” When Henry approaches the marriage bed of his least attractive wife mumbling, “The things I do for England,” audiences the world over roared, and still do. Alexander Korda was established as Britain’s leading director/producer.

“Everyone wanted to know Korda,” British director Michael Powell observed, “and Korda knew everybody.” Korda built his dream studio, a private Xanadu tucked away in the Buckinghamshire village of Denham. Financed by the Prudential Insurance Company, the London Film Studio sprawled over 165 acres, boasting seven sound stages, two film theaters, and eighteen cutting rooms. From an antique and art-filled office suitable for receiving prime ministers and maharajas, Korda presided over a staff of more than two thousand. Everything about Korda – from the magic of his name, the suit that seemed molded to his tall frame, his handmade shoes – radiated nonchalant wealth and position, and was as meticulously staged as any other Korda production.

For three years Korda reigned from the proud tower of his dreams. London’s greatest actors – Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Leslie Howard, Valerie Hobson, and Vivien Leigh – formed his personal repertory theater, while so many Hungarians found jobs at Denham that the river Colne on which it was located was referred to as the Danube.

Korda’s genius was with people. “An enormous personality,” director David Lean recalled. “Fifteen minutes with him was worth two days with anyone else. . . . He could take any subject and talk on it for twenty minutes.” Actor Ralph Richardson called him the most magnetic person he had ever met. “I would go see Alex with a problem,” Sir Ralph recalled, “with a furious speech about what I wanted and what I’d do if I didn’t get it. And all the time he’d be staring at my feet. When I finished, he’d say, ‘Where did you get those marvelous shoes? I’d give anything to have shoes like those.’ And I would retire defeated.” Though he had a fine, light touch as a director, Korda said directing was like going down into the mines, something to be gotten over as fast as possible. Laurence Olivier recalled a scene where he had “done the worst acting of my life,” only to hear Korda call out: “Okay, cut. Next shot!” Olivier protested. “Can’t I have another take?” Whereupon Korda coolly replied, “Larry, my dear boy, you know nothing about making pictures. Sometimes there must be bad acting. Next shot.”

Great Britain’s first movie mogul never did fully master the English language. Left to themselves, the Korda brothers spoke Hungarian and reverted to their childhood names, Lacikam, Vincikem, and Zolikam. Salami appeared from under the silver chafing dish in the Georgian dining room, and soon the three brothers were back in the Turkeve of their childhood, arguing – and ultimately yielding to the eldest’s implacable will.

In the 1930s, Korda decided it was time to end his nomadic, hotel-centered existence, and settled into a mansion on Avenue Road where he received the great figures of the day; the writers H. G. Wells and Graham Greene, Lawrence of Arabia, and Winston Churchill. One of Korda’s most appealing qualities was that his largesse matched his ambition. “Korda [was] one of the most generous men I ever met,” the legendary Josef von Sternberg recalled. Once when von Sternberg – director of The Blue Angel and Morocco – was hospitalized in London, instead of flowers Alex brought “an important large bronze [of a woman] by Aristide Maillol to my rooms with a charming note which said that he thought I could deal with women better than he could.”

It was more than Korda’s fabled powers of persuasion that kept the money flowing. British financiers got a kick out of premiers under the bright lights of Korda’s Hollywood-on-the-Thames. They were proud to be associated with The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Rise of Catherine the Great, and Rembrandt: finely crafted costume dramas, with Korda’s sardonic touch. Competing with Hollywood on the international market was, however, beyond even Korda’s reach. Fast-paced action films like Michael Curtiz’s The Charge of the Light Brigade and The Adventures of Robin Hood were world hits, from Burbank to Budapest, in a way that Korda’s British costume dramas were not.

But Korda’s personality was big. Five years after being fired by Fox, he returned to Hollywood in September 1935, and, flanked by the film world’s most iconic figures, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford, he became a full partner in United Artists. Still, his feelings for Hollywood never warmed.

Michael Curtiz’s stepson, John Meredyth Lucas, remembered a three-day train journey on the Super Chief from Los Angeles to Chicago with the two Hungarian directors. “Korda had been urging Mike to come to England with him, making him fabulous offers and expounding on the wonders of English life. Each evening we three would have dinner served in Mike’s drawing room. Korda would go on about the great opportunities and freedom for a director working in England … [and] denigrate the harsh commercialism of Hollywood, and the uncouth American audience.” But Curtiz was not buying. “ ‘I stay on my home’ [Curtiz] declared. ‘I am American. . . . The English is terrible phony.’ ” The two old Budapest rivals were puzzled by Lucas’s amusement. “It took me a while to explain the humor of two Hungarians patriotically refighting the American Revolution.”

Korda had good reason to prefer his Hollywood-on-the-Thames; after all, it preferred him, and treated him the way he most wanted. Returning to London from Hollywood in October 1935, Korda’s Rolls-Royce glided into the Savoy’s driveway. Alighting in his signature homburg, brandishing a tycoon-size cigar, the mogul beamed toward the blinding flash and pop of dozens of photographers. Variety carried this breathless account: “Largest gathering of newspapermen ever assembled for anything but a national event, crowded into a large ballroom to get the low-down from Alex Korda on his return from America.”

Since his earliest days as a Budapest film director, Korda had understood the unique power of a radiant, beautiful face on a large silver screen. In 1938, he proved his genius as a talent-spotter and star-maker when he presented a little-known British stage actress to David Selznick, who was conducting a widely publicized search for the actress who would play the central role in what promised to be the biggest film ever, Gone With the Wind. “The lucky Hungarian has fallen onto something,” Selznick wrote his business partner, Jock Whitney, after meeting Vivien Leigh, “and we’re going to make a fortune for him.” And so Scarlett O’Hara was chosen, and Korda was handsomely rewarded. But Korda’s London Film Company’s debt already exceeded $4 million. “The fact that we have lost a great deal of money through our association with K[orda] must be faced,” began and internal memo of the Prudential Insurance Company. “K’s engaging personality and charm of manner must be resisted,” the memo continued. “His financial sense is non-existent and his promises (even when sincere) worthless.” And so, in early 1939, Alexander Korda lost his dream palace, which became a part of Pinewood Studios. “All I have left,” Korda bitterly told a visitor, “are a few shares and some old films which are equally worthless.” But for the relentless and resilient Alexander Korda, “a few shares and some old films” were enough to start anew. In Hollywood, he had learned that defeat could be transformed into triumph. It was all a matter of marketing.

On March 20, 1939, Korda announced the creation of Alexander Korda Film Productions. One would never have known from his press release that Korda’s dream of running his own world-class studio had crumbled. “The films of the new company will be presented by London Film Productions [Korda’s former studio] and distributed throughout the world by United Artists, of which Mr. Korda is one of the owner members.” One more time, he had returned from the dead. Later that year, Alex fulfilled another fantasy. In a simple ceremony in Antibes, he married the actress Merle Oberon, one of the world’s most glamorous women. Groomed for stardom by her new husband, in some ways she was as much a Korda creation as London Films. His wedding present to Merle was a necklace once worn by Marie Antoinette.

Korda was a man who was radioactive with ideas – some brilliant. One of his most inspired resulted in the most powerful (and enduring) anti-Hitler film of the period, Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. “Alexander Korda,” Chaplin recalled in his memoirs, “in 1937 had suggested I should do a Hitler story based on mistaken identity, Hitler having the same moustache as the tramp: I could play both characters, he said. I did not think too much about the idea then.” But Chaplin eventually changed his mind. The Great Dictator, with its unforgettable satire of Hitler, was released in 1940 to packed movie houses. By that time, however, it was seen less a satire than a chilling, if belated, wake-up call, especially to Americans who were still out of the war. Like all the Hungarians who had found refuge in the West, Korda himself needed no wake-up call. He knew if the Nazis crossed the English Channel, he would be on the Gestapo’s list. “I think another war will kill me,” the forty-six-year-old producer-director lamented. “The Holocaust,” Michael Korda noted, “was no more than he expected to happen.”

On Sunday morning, September 3, 1939, the shrill wail of the war’s first air raid warning pierced through London’s early morning sky, bringing the nightmare home to Alexander Korda. “We had all gathered in one of the big concrete coal bunkers [at Denham Studios],” director Michael Powell remembered, “to listen to [Neville Chamberlain’s] broadcast [admitting the failure of his policy of appeasement and announcing a state of war between Great Britain and Germany]. . . . Alex and his brothers were there, and Merle, who was holding Alex’s hand and crying. Alex was smoking one of his Coronas, as usual, and he took a deep breath and sent a perfect smoke ring into the air.” For Korda, like Curtiz, the war against the Nazis was personal – and it presented an opportunity.

Winston Churchill returned to office, as first lord of the admiralty in 1939, before becoming prime minister in May 1940. He was the man of the hour, and Korda called on him. The two shared a deep love of history, especially British history, a flair of showmanship, and a taste for cigars and brandy. Now they had a common enemy. The Hungarian offered Churchill all the resources at his command in waging a propaganda war against Hitler. Afterward, “Alex summoned a meeting of all his principal contract people,” Michael Powell recalled. “He explained his personal agreement with Churchill and how it affected us all. Britain was preparing for war. Denham was already a classified area. Now came our orders. When war was declared, filming on The Thief of Baghdad would stop. The next day everybody at Denham would start working on a feature propaganda film which Alex had promised Churchill would be ready in one month. . . . All he asked of us was that we would go with heart, mind and soul into making his new picture, and work with whomever we were assigned to.”

The Lion Has Wings was Korda’s first engagement in his personal war against the Nazis. His wartime sacrifice entailed returning to “bloody California.” Ten years after his spectacular Hollywood flameout, Korda was back as Winston Churchill’s personal emissary in the campaign to bring America into the war. It was Churchill who suggested the story of Lord Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar as a subject for a Korda film. But it was Korda who persuaded Laurence Olivier, the world’s most admired actor, and Vivien Leigh, fresh from her blazing success as Scarlett O’Hara, to play Nelson and his mistress, Emma Hamilton.

“Propaganda,” Korda told Olivier, “can be a bitter medicine. It needs sugar coating – and That Hamilton Woman is a very thick sugar coating indeed.” There was nothing sugary, however, in the message beneath the frosting. In the opening scene, Captain Hardy, Nelson’s deputy, attacks those countries that are “neutral against England and so scared of Bonaparte they daren’t lift a finger for the people brave enough to fight him.” When Laurence Olivier, as Nelson, addresses the admiralty, he is speaking Churchill’s words, via Alexander Korda. Nelson is not referring, of course, to Bonaparte when he says: “Napoleon can never be master of the world until he has smashed us up – and believe me gentlemen, he means to be master of the world. You cannot make peace with dictators. You have to destroy them. Wipe them out! Gentlemen, I implore you – speak to the Prime Minister before it is too late. Do not ratify this peace!” When That Hamilton Woman came out, America was still neutral; its message was clear. A Senate committee sent a subpoena to Korda instructing him to testify on December 12, 1941, on whether he was “inciting the American public to war.” Five days before he was scheduled to appear, Pearl Harbor was attacked. The testimony was canceled.

That Hamilton Woman was brilliant propaganda. It was also vintage Korda, a lavish peek behind a historic event, suitably improved from the literal truth. The film was a labor of love for Korda, who produced, directed, and financed it – in five weeks. Vincent Korda’s astonishing eighteenth-century armada for the re-creation of the Battle of Trafalgar was so lifelike that Vivien Leigh became seasick during the filming. “The Nelson film is nearly over,” Leigh wrote on November 40, 1941. “We had rushed through it because apparently after Thursday there is no more money! – Alex’s usual predicament.” Perhaps because Europe’s fate was a personal matter for him, That Hamilton Woman has more genuine emotional content – and less ironic detachment – than other Korda films. Alex said making it made him feel twenty years younger. Churchill wept when he saw it.

On September 23, 1942, in top hat and cutaways, the man born Sandor Kellner in Turkeve, Hungary, with a radiant Merle Oberon on his arm, strode up the driveway of Buckingham Palace. A short while later he emerged Sir Alexander Korda, Knight of the Realm. For a Hungarian, a Jew, a refugee, and a member of the movie industry, this was an astonishing honor, beyond even the wildest dreams of Sandor Kellner during the long nights on the Great Plain. David Selznick, Korda’s Hollywood rival, grasped the knighthood’s significance: “The stature it has given the whole business,” Selznick wrote, “and the dignity it has given to the profession of producing, is doubly significant first because it comes in the midst of war, second because it comes from Winston Churchill. . . . Everyone in the business should fell deeply indebted to Korda because his efforts, which have been conducted quietly and without fanfare or publicity have won this honor which should be accepted as an honor to us all."

But Korda’s moment of grace did not satisfy him for long. From Hollywood, he had written Lajos Biro that, like Gulliver, he was condemned to eternal restlessness. Early in 1945, Korda, age fifty-two, suffered his first heart attack – in a very public place, collapsing during dinner at Romanoff’s restaurant, in full view of many Hollywood luminaries. In June of the same year, his marriage to Merle Oberon ended in divorce. He recovered, but there was a new sadness in the man. The actress Joan Fontaine (sister of Olivia de Havilland) remembered dining with Korda sometime after his collapse. “Over and excellent glass of Château Lafite [Alex] warned me. ‘No matter what, Joan, aim for the impossible. If you accomplish all your ambitions, there is nothing left.’ Puzzled, I asked the silver-haired producer what he meant. Holding his glass up to the light, he sighed. ‘I was a poor boy in Hungary when I conceived my dream. . . . I wanted to belong to the most important nation, to become rich, respected, marry the most beautiful woman, be world famous. . . . I’ve done all those things. I became a British subject, I founded my own film company, I owned a yacht, Winston Churchill is my close friend, I married Merle, I was knighted. . . . Now. . . . now I’ve no more dreams left.’ ”

Korda had used himself up. By the 1940s, he was a prematurely old man who could not change his habits. Pale and haggard, Korda no longer quite filled his beautiful suits. An intellectual who dreamed of reading the Greek classics in the original, who quoted Boswell and Baudelaire, Korda’s addiction to power run just as deep. Control was security for a man who had experienced a lifetime of insecurity. When he acquired the ultimate rich man’s toy, his yacht, Elsewhere, he used it not so much for escape, but as a tool of power. Winston Churchill and Graham Greene were his preferred sailing companions, but there was almost always the less congenial presence of a David Selznick or a Sam Goldwyn on board. On one thing they all agreed: there was no one else quite like Korda. Graham Greene described Korda in Loser Takes All: “There was something grand about him, with his mane of white hair, his musician’s head. Where other men collected pictures to escape death duties, he collected for pleasure. For a month at a time he would disappear in his yacht with a cargo of writers and actresses and oddments – a hypnotist, a man who had invented a new rose, or discovered something about the endocrine glands.”

Korda was determined to revive his prewar stature as Britain’s preeminent film mogul. An incorrigible gambler, he bought back London Films from the Prudential Insurance Company. From King George VI’s former residence overlooking Hyde Park, at No. 145 Piccadilly, Korda breathed new life into the company he had founded – and driven into the ground. Michael Korda remembered his uncle playing host to No. 145’s former residents, Their Majesties King and Queen Elizabeth. “Alex was so polished, so gracious,” Korda recalled, “as if he had been raised in a palace himself. He made their majesties feel perfectly at ease.”

What a role: a country boy – a Hungarian Jew – convincingly playing the British lord. He was most in his element, however, with other Hungarians. Not only his brothers, but dozens of other Hungarians were on his payroll, performing mysterious services. “The hangers-on would be asked to handle transfers of money all over the world,” Michael Korda remembered. “Everywhere I went people would say, ‘Ah yes, I knew your uncle,’ in mysterious ways which left much unexplained.” With the breakup of his marriage to Merle Oberon, Korda gave up on domesticity, and resumed his old custom of hotel-living, this time in a suite at Claridge’s in London. From there he attempted to revive his empire. Powell remembered how Korda gathered the best of London around him. “We were asked to dinner not once but often to the fabulous penthouse apartment at the top op Claridge’s where Alex lived and entertained. There were always interesting people at those parties,” Powell wrote. “As for myself, I loved Alex the way I loved the film business. I loved him for his glamour, his good taste, his shrewdness, for the audacity and sheer fun that he got out of manipulating men and millions.”

Few of Korda’s guests could see past the glamour of his life into a certain sadness and emptiness. Paul Tabori, a Hungarian-born author working on a Korda biography, received a call from Alex’s secretary. “I’d take my pajamas [to the interview] if I were you.” Indeed, at around 3:00 A.M., Alex suggested Tabori spend the night, “so we can talk some more in the morning.” Tabori sensed that Korda was lonely. Speaking the language of his youth was consolation."

Britishness and/vs/as multiculturalism

I have chosen two articles for you to look into for next week, one is on multiculturalism in Britain and how the notion of being "British" has (or has not) changed in the last few years, with more and more migrants settling in the country and now second and third generation British people being born of Caribbean, Middle Eastern and African origin. The city most acutely concerned with migration is of course London, that in the past decades has truly become a "showcase" of cultures, with people from all around the world living together.

The second article is about the end of a massive wave of migration from Central Europe to Britain, which started with the "Big Bang enlargement" of the European Union in 2004. As this latter topic bears great relevance to us in Hungary - probably you also have relatives or friends who went abroad to work for some time, or maybe you yourself have done it - I think it is worth discussing the reasons and the consequences of these movements.

Please read them through, they are not easy at the first glance, studded with culture-related and political vocabulary, but that is exactly what we are going to go through in class. Concentrate especially on the following points:

No. 1

• Why has multiculturalism become a derogatory term in the last few years?
• In what ways does the co-habitation of different ethnic groups lead to confrontations?
• Do you agree that multiculturalism can contribute to a “deliberate weakening of [the] collective identity” of a society?
• What do different political parties and political bodies say on the matter?
• What do you think of the three reasons the article summons in protection of multiculturalism in Britain?
• And about the chances of “promoting a new, inclusive Britishness”?

Bagehot

In praise of multiculturalism

Almost everyone now agrees that it has failed. Has it really?

Jun 14th 2007 | From The Economist print edition

Steve O'Brian

SWEAR WORDS, like everything else, are subject to fashion. Since the London bombings of 2005, a new obscenity has entered the lexicon, alongside the anatomical and the blasphemous: multiculturalism. Once it connoted curry and the Notting Hill carnival; these days, when applied to British politicians or their policies, “multiculturalist” is almost as derogatory a term as “socialist” or “neocon”. Even more than they agree about most other things, the main political parties are united in their conviction that multiculturalism is a perniciously naive idea whose time has gone, or ought never to have come at all.

Last week, for example, David Cameron, the Tory leader, warned an unenraptured audience of Islamic leaders about the dangers of “cultural separatism” in Muslim communities. “The creed of multiculturalism,” he alleged—meaning, roughly, a combination of indulgence and subsidy for minorities and their institutions—had contributed to a “deliberate weakening of our collective identity”. Two Labour ministers, meanwhile, suggested the creation of an annual holiday to help cultivate a renewed sense of Britishness. A commission set up by the government last year, to advise on segregation and extremism, recommended this week that less money be spent on providing civic information in Urdu, Arabic and so on, and more on unmulticultural English lessons. The need to rethink Britishness for a post-multicultural age is a regular theme for Gordon Brown, the (Scottish) prime-minister-not-much-longer-in-waiting.

The shock of hearing a suicide-bomber's video testament delivered in a Yorkshire accent—hitherto more associated with cricket commentary than terrorism—spelled the end for multiculturalism. But even before the bombings the word was becoming a slur. Rioting by Asian youths across northern England in the summer of 2001 forced curry-house multiculturalists to confront the reality that government nonchalance had helped to engender. As well as the burned cars, they saw fossilised social mores and the angry alienation of second- and third-generation Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrants, some of whom profess more allegiance to the global umma than to Britain.

All that is real, tragic and terrifying, and becomes more so with every blood-curdling terrorist plot that British police uncover. All the same, poor, deplored multiculturalism has been much less bad than its many detractors now claim.

There are three reasons why the legions of anti-multiculturalists are wrong. First, left to their own devices many immigrants to Britain have prospered. Indians and some other minorities do better than whites in schools. There are many types of British Muslims, and some of them are moving up and out. The 2005 bombers, it now seems, were shaped and motivated as much by strife within Muslim communities—fanatical Islamism serving as a perverse form of intergenerational rebellion—as by schisms between Muslims and wider British society. Nor have immigration and multiculturalism led to so very much restlessness among the natives. The nasty, if clownish, British National Party has occasionally picked up the odd council seat, but it is a piffling force compared with far-right outfits elsewhere in Europe.

Second, multiculturalism's detractors tend to concentrate on the easy targets. It is plainly true, for example, that Britain should anathemise egregious practices such as forced marriage or “honour killing”. That government commission and others are right to emphasise English lessons, especially for women, since an inability to speak it harms their children's prospects as well as their own. The commission is right again to imply that too much funding has historically and divisively been offered to community groups that cater to only one ethnicity or religion. (The commission also advocated better cultural preparation for new arrivals, for example to help them understand the British philosophy of queuing and thus avoid ruckuses at bus-stops and post offices.) But less tends to be said about what, in the end, are the most important determinants of segregation, namely housing and education. “Multicultural” policies—letting people, by and large, live and educate their children where they like—may have inadvertently created neighbourhoods and schools in which almost every face is the same colour. But as well as being illiberal, most of the alternatives would probably create more trouble and anger than they prevent.

Americans in glass houses

Finally—and for all the disparaging talk about Londonistan, capital of Eurabia—other countries, including those where the disparagement of multiculturalism is sharpest, have less to teach Britain about integration than is often assumed. That is partly because they have failures too, and partly because their circumstances are too different to be meaningfully compared. Mr Cameron talked admiringly about the American solidarity embodied in the pledge of allegiance and Mount Rushmore. Yet in Chicago and elsewhere, black Americans are more ghettoised than any minority is anywhere in Britain (they also intermarry less than blacks in Britain). Slavery, of course, makes black Americans a special case—but so are any number of British Muslims. Many are refugees; others are from families who migrated to the old imperial motherland from backward parts of Pakistan and Bangladesh, to work in British factories that subsequently closed. Many of their American counterparts may indeed stick the Stars and Stripes on their front lawn as devoutly as do other hyphenated Americans; but, apart from their faith, they may not have much in common with the Muslims of Burnley or Oldham.

The vogue for promoting a new, inclusive Britishness is well-intentioned, but probably doomed. National identities cannot be confected—and besides, the British already have one. Privacy and freedom are two of its nicer components, and multiculturalism, for all its failings, has been a fine expression of it.

No. 2

• What has triggered the Polish immigration to Britain? What made it possible?
• What jobs and positions have immigrants been taking at the first place?
• How do you think the massive immigration affected the British society and what was the general opinion on it?

From The Times
Tide turns as Poles end great migration
Alexi Mostrous and Christine Seib
February 16, 2008

Polish builder Aric Jenac, 33, building at a home in London (Susannah Ireland / The Times)

A wave of immigration that helped to fuel Britain’s early 21st century boom is over, as the Polish plumber and thousands like him go home. The Times has established that, for the first time since they began arriving en masse four years ago, more UK-based Poles are returning to their homeland than are entering Britain. Statistics show that only 38,680 Poles signed up to the Government’s register of migrant workers in the third quarter of 2007, a slump of 18 per cent from the previous year. Polish officials say that Poles leaving the country outnumber thoses coming in.

Hard statistics on the number of Poles leaving Britain do not exist. There are no embarkation controls on EU members so they are are not counted out. But Polish officials, British employment agencies and the Polish media all believe that the tide of immigration has turned. Since Poland joined the EU in 2004, 274,065 Poles have signed up for work permits. They make up 66 per cent of all applications from Eastern European countries. But a combination of tightening economic conditions in this country, a comparatively weak pound and an unprecendented surge in the Polish economy has made it unattractive for Poles to remain. “At the end of last year we saw the tipping point,” Krzysztof Trepczynski, Minister for Economic Development at the Polish Embassy in London, said. “It’s a real change. There are now definitely more Poles going back to Poland.

Jan Mokrzycki, president of the Federation of Poles in Great Britain, said: “The first thing that’s been hit is the builders. There’s no doubt about it. Many aren’t prepared to wait for the construction boom that’s going to happen for the Olympics in 2012. “Also, the Polish economy is experiencing an upturn. The zloty is at a high and although we’re experiencing inflation here and in Poland, it’s not as noticable in Poland because the currency is strong.” Half of the estimated one million British-based Poles are expected to return home, said the Centre for International Relations, a Warsaw-based think-tank.

Chris Zietkowski, 34, a Polish painter and decorator, told The Times that he wanted to return home this year. “Two years ago I could make five times the amount of money here than I could in Poland,” he said. “Now the wages are about the same and the living costs in the UK are much higher. There is a lot of work in Poland, probably more than in the UK. It’s a good time to go back.” Mr Zietkowski added that many of his friends were also thinking about returning. “The feeling is: why be away from your family and your home-land for no reason?”

The tide of immigration prompted supermarkets to introduce ranges of Polish products as they sought to tap into the substantial spending power of the new arrivals. Polish newspapers and radio stations sprang up. Libraries started stocking Polish books. The young immigrants, most of whom were aged between 18 and 25, quickly infiltrated the building and plumbing industries, drawing praise for their work ethic and low prices. Last year’s downturn in the British building industry has prompted many to return home.

Kasia Popyla, 23, is a student physio-therapist who has just returned to Poland. “I used to make £800 per month,” she said. “Since the summer I’ve watched the zloty value of my savings, which are in pounds, fall lower and lower. “At the end of the day we are Polish, we left in our early 20s and are coming back to get married and watch our kids grow up in Poland.”

Cost of living

743,000 Eastern Europeans applied to register for British jobs between 2004 and 2007

468,000 Poles successfully applied, 66 per cent of the applications

1 million Poles estimated to have migrated to Britain

£1 equals 7.23 Polish zloty (2004)

£1 equals 4.83 Polish zloty (2008)

8% of Poles left the country in the past three years, fleeing 16 per cent unemployment

£800 Polish monthly average wage (2003)

£1,967 English monthly average wage (2003)

Source: Home Office and Poland’s statistic office