Society
Urban life - Darcus Howe knows what's not a crisis
Published 05 June 2006
A handful of street riots and four suicide bombers do not make a social crisis
David Goodhart, the editor of Prospect, confesses to having had the uncomfortable experience "of sounding more nationalistic than Michael Portillo" as they debated on a radio programme.
I am more than a little discomforted by Goodhart's "progressive nationalism". The 20th century was ablaze with progressive nationalism, from India to the Gold Coast, from the Caribbean to South Africa. Millions stormed the stage of history in the name of independence. All this came in the wake of the most brutal nationalism masquerading under the name of National Socialism. Forty million people perished in the cause.
There is not a sliver of similarity between Goodhart's progressive nationalism and the independence struggles.
Running through his argument is a demand that immigrants be whipped into shape by the authoritarian caste which governs us. Social cohesion, he believes, can be achieved only under nationalist imposition.
Goodhart is suffering from an overdose of alarm. A handful of street riots and four suicide bombers do not make a social crisis. These are clarion calls for racial equality, however generous a section of the white middle classes thinks it has been to blacks and Asians. He should be aware by now that multiculturalism is a fact and not an aspiration.
Communities which appear separate today will cohere tomorrow, some quickly, others by painfully slow gradualism. We have experienced both processes over the past 50 years, but nationalism by declaration and integration by command are not on.
While the flag of St George is flying everywhere in support of England's World Cup dreams, my last daughter, Zoe Marie, aged 20, planted the flag of Trinidad and Tobago outside my front door, declaring her support for the tiny island state against England in Nuremberg.
She was born in Brixton and visited Tobago just once, when she was eight. So there.
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