It’s something of a long standing notion, that the US is amongst the most outwardly patriotic countries in the world. Flags are everywhere. One doesn’t get ham and cheese, but ‘All-American ham and cheese’(assembled by child labour in China no less). Yet several hours lest several days in New York City and one sees just how meaningless all of these symbolic gestures are. What I’m about to say is specifically about New York and specifically about London–not about the US nor about the UK, per se. But what is crucial is that as go the major cities so eventually go the entire nation-states.
New York has always been one of the most socially diverse cities, not just in North America, but in the world. London by contrast has at least since the Civil War, always been a city more open than insular, but in comparison to places like Antwerp, Amsterdam and ironically what would grow from New Amsterdam–the numbers of those settling, were per capita, never anything of particular note. In the 20th century and most prominently after the Second World War this all changed. Since then, London has like New York become a hub not just for commerce and political dignitaries but also for settlement. Initially however, things were rather different than in New York. Speaking with the older people of New York, listening to older tour guides speaking about places of prominence, it strikes me as rather apparent that in spite of early cultureal clashes there developed a rather unbreakable consensus that New York was a permanent pastiche of cultures–cultures in permanent tension–a tension that somehow resolved itself not through perpetual sectarian violence nor placid assimilation–but through a kind of middle way; one where the old cultural dogmas, stigmas and rituals remained, but never the less a consensus that manifested itself through the casting of insults and not stones. Mind you, I’ve heard more insults in the past few days than in my entire life.
Yet for someone greatly unfamiliar with the demographic terrain of the city, it still strikes me as a city so rife with personal and cultural tension, that it could explode at any time. The anger is palpable, the distinctness of ethnic groups is blatantly stark. By contrast the first generations to come to the UK after the Second World War on the whole, strove to be British–as British as possible. It wasn’t always easy, but this was the aim–made slightly more attainable because of a shared Imperial/Commonwealth heritage. Subsequent generations however, have grown up willing to accept the open door that the UK has modernly offered–but at the same time rejecting if not spurning outright, any distinct British identity. And this is where a crucial problem comes into the fore.
New York, it seems was built in spite of assimilation. There’s really nothing to assimilate into so far as I can see. It’s all a mad, perpetually boiling caldron of dis-similar ingredients. The only unifying features other than mutual anger and hostility, is the quintessentially American adherence to national symbols–the American flag and other oaths and mantras of state. Yet if patriotism be the refuge of the scoundrel–and make no mistake that’s what it is(and not I am certainly not a patriot, but rather a loyal subject), it is also a perpetual banner of obfuscation. Whilst most people, including the men selling drugs and prostitutes often have nationalistic symbols on their clothes, it really doesn’t mean much. I can’t in a city such as New York, see how there is any genuine cultural unity. This is not just my view but the view shared by many in so-called ‘middle-America’ who see New York patriotism for what it is– ‘a grand parade of lifeless packaging’, to quote Peter Gabriel from Genesis’s The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway.
London is both privileged and at a disadvantage when contrasted with New York . Because the UK’s symbols of state are the charge of the Sovereign and her Privy Councillors, military and clergy, they are not seen as popular symbols of the demos the way they are in the US. In the UK, being British hasn’t got anything to do with a flag or song and instead has got everything to do with a shared way of life, a shared ethos, a shared literary and linguistic history, right down to a shared sense of humour and what had traditionally been a higher valuing of education than any other country in the world. Architecture, ale, roasts, even dress sense are all parts of the culture, however silly this at first may seem. These things are indeed only missed when taken away, hence their importance is revealed not in the best of times but the worst.
Yet not necessarily because of immigration, but the very different phenomenon of multi-culturalism, this now stands to be lost. Multi-culturalism is something I find utterly dubious in any culture, but perhaps no more so than in respect of the UK; a place whose cultural virtues like Constitution are un-written and therefore the nation-state relies on the demos to carry on these traditions from generation to generation. The UK has no easy wave of a flag to hide behind. The cultural degradation and disintegration is lain bear for all to see. Without a united culture there is no Britain and there indeed won’t ‘always be an England’ if the culture is first subsumed and then eradicated.
New York’s madness is indeed a symptom of the multi-culturism that has been an indelible part of the city since Her earliest days. It is the modern by-product of past sectarian tensions–tensions which never vanished; they simply changed forms. Yet London is not a city used to sectarian tensions. Class tensions; of course–but sectarian tensions are rather different as culture is far more deeply engrained in the individual than is economic and social class. This is something Marx foolishly disregarded in The Communist Manifesto but something Disraeli in his Young England literature understood implicitly.
When Wilson and Jenkins introduced the concept of multi-culturalism to Britain, which essentially meant at first, London, Manchester and the industrialised Midlands, they were supinely saying that it is right for British culture to be eroded by alien cultures. This is something rather unconnected to ethnicity. This is so because from experience in big cities, anyone ought to know that if one acts British they are treated British–this legal but also social and cultural equality is quite a bit different than what was the reality in South Africa and the US, where regardless of cultural infusion, people were systematically disenfranchised due to ethnic discrepancies.
But as Powell noted in Britain this had never been the case. Whilst still a member of the Conservative Party he said of Jenkins’s Racial Discrimination Bill(the catalyst for The Rivers of Blood Speech, something that is often lost on even many prominent historians), the following: Nothing is more misleading than comparison between the Commonwealth immigrant in Britain and the American Negro. The Negro population of the United States, which was already in existence before the United States became a nation, started literally as slaves and were later given the franchise and other rights of citizenship, to the exercise of which they have only gradually and still incompletely come. The Commonwealth immigrant came to Britain as a full citizen, to a country which knew no discrimination between one citizen and another, and he entered instantly into the possession of the rights of every citizen, from the vote to free treatment under the National Health Service“.
One came to Britain and was treated equally British as a function of law and as we all know as a function of society as well. But as Powell realised, the multi-cultural consensus stands to put this admirable paradigm into jeopardy. In fact, it already has done so in many parts of the country. People were subtly encouraged not to be British and as a result they had nothing, because not in London nor anywhere in the UK, is it possible to remain both culturally isolated yet civically integrated the way it ironically is in New York–though not without great anxiety abounding at all times, so it seems.
The lesson then is this: New York is a city whose social dynamic is something straight out of Apocalypse Now. The notions of being polite, of fair play and of restraint, are nowhere to be seen. If the sectarianism that has been the result of the multi-cultural policies employed by every Government since Wilson’s continue London could become like New York only worse. The reason the danger is more magnified is that whilst New York was formed in this rugged spirit of cultural clashes and eventual resolutions, London was not, not She wasn‘t. London was formed and for centuries has sustained itself on a common, very demure, straight yet subtly compassionate cultural ethos. This is augmented by the fact there is no flag to wave. Whilst the stars and stripes are a rather crude way of telling them man you’ve spat on, “You’re all right jack”, no such veil exists in British culture. Put simply–London must remain London, Britain must remain Britain or there will be nothing left but chaos, psychological and economic discontent and ultimately much blood shed as was seen on the 7th of July in the year 2005– a day of terrorist attacks which unlike the 11 September attacks were conducted by British Subjects–Subjects whose culture was as far from that of Britain as one could imagine.
If one wants to ‘do like at home’, one’s home is New York. If one wants to be quiet, civilised and restrained, welcome to London–your home that tolerates you…now would you please be so kind as to tolerate it? That is the question….