Thirty years ago, as editor of the Salisbury Review, I began to receive short articles from a Bradford headmaster, relating the dilemmas faced by those attempting to provide an English education to the children of Asian immigrants.
Ray Honeyford’s case was simple. Children born and raised in Britain must be integrated into British society. Schools and teachers therefore had a duty, not merely to impart the English language and the English curriculum, but to ensure that children understood and adhered to the basic principles of the surrounding society, including racial and religious tolerance, sexual equality and the habit of settling conflicts by compromise and not by force.
Honeyford complained of the damage done by the multicultural ‘experts’, whose sole aim seemed to be ghettoisation.
.... Inevitably Muslims will find things that repel them in the mores of modern Britain. Unlike the rest of us, however, they have an alternative identity. I share their revulsion towards the Big Brother culture.
But I know that I am British, and that this defines my primary loyalty and the ground of my submission to our law. Muslims have the possibility to define themselves against their country, rather than as part of it. [The Spectator] Read more
