Starkey and Multiculturalism

I am a fan and admirer of the historian David Starkey. He is a man with integrity who has lost and suffered much because of it. He is a clear example of the fact that, in an evil age, to be good or honest is to suffer.

Now aged 79, he would be in danger of losing his grasp on the situation, except that his tenacity forces him to stay up-to-date, to not assume too much, to approach new situations with humility and rigour so as to avoid making a complacent fool of himself. For this he must be admired and applauded; so many men, much younger than him, fail in this task.

Interviewed in mid August about the recent riots in England, he really does seem to grasp the enormity of what is going on, and the significance and causes of the rioting. This man is no fool. I would encourage everyone to listen to his thoughts.

Where he falls short is, perhaps typical for a conservative, in coming up with solutions and predicting the future.

Asked whether civil war is inevitable in Britain, Starkey answers “no, but what I do think we are going to see is sustained inter-ethnic conflict”, later clarifying that talk of civil war is ridiculous because a civil war requires weaponry. I think this analysis is good.

Later, he compares modern mass immigration with historical precedents, saying it is of an entirely different order, and concludes “this is a unique happening, and therefore it has unique consequences”. I agree. The problem is that Starkey doesn’t seem to realise the full implications. The change has been historically unique, yes, but more than that, it has been massive. A population has been drastically altered.

Britain was never ever a single-nation state… We were multi-ethnic from the very beginning… Being British has always been hyphenated.

This of course sounds ominously similar to “Britain was always a nation of immigrants”, but it is not that. It is an honest account of Britain’s pre-1948 history, when it was essentially a continual conference between a set of neighbouring (and very similar) peoples.

We’ve got to reintroduce that notion of a hyphenated identity, but one identity has got to be dominant.

Unfortunately it is much too late for that. The “hyphenated identity” is in fact a key part of the current multicultural malaise. It was introduced - British Pakistani, British Caribbean, British Indian, etc. - decades ago in order to circumvent the fact that these people were clearly not the same as us. The solution? Assert that they are indeed not the same as us, but that they are new types of British (but definitely British). It didn’t work - the same racial animosity brews no matter what terms are tried - and there is no reason why it would work with some new, different mentality behind it.

The problem is not the foreigners’ lack of integration, but the fact that they cannot (in the huge numbers present) be integrated, except by utterly destroying their ancestral identity. That is something which we haven’t the stomach for and they would never submit to. But, if somehow achieved, it would make the “hyphenated identity” pointless anyway. An identity is either relevant, in which case it is very relevant indeed, or it is not, in which case why call yourself a hyphenated Brit?

Starkey doesn’t seem to realise how potent and volatile a thing identity is. Like many conservatives, he seems to think we can reason with identity, negotiate with identity, divide and castrate identity, and it will not rebound on us viciously. It will.

one identity has got to be dominant. And that is a commitment to the institutions of a free responsible liberal parliamentary state, that was the essence of the old England.

First there is his (I think erroneous) conflating of “identity” with “values”. Not only is an identity much more than a set of values, I’m not even convinced that values are relevant to identity at all. But Starkey wants to believe this because, if true, it means identity is mouldable by simply persuading people to adopt certain values. It isn’t.

Second, there is the difficulty of persuading (or somehow forcing) very different and opposed peoples to commit to any particular institutions.

Third, there is the thorny issue that “a free responsible liberal parliamentary state” is what got us into this present disaster, and deliberately worsened it year after year. Even the institutions that Starkey wants to have faith in and sees as holding the keys to our salvation, have betrayed us and set up this catastrophe.

a commitment to the institutions of a free responsible liberal parliamentary state… That is immutable and unconditional… We’ve got to make sure that all immigrant groups do that. It’s got to be unconditional. We cannot have groups saying “we are different, we are going to remain isolated, we do not approve of you”.

The interviewer asks whether this is feasible given the sheer numbers of people involved now. This is, of course, the very problem. Starkey fumbles the ball here. Instead of arguing that it is feasible, he suggests one way to combat foreign identity: “stop them recruiting themselves from abroad” by abolishing citizenship by marriage. He uses the example of Germany, saying it doesn’t allow this - but that country has terrible problems with diversity, so clearly this is no solution. He also says to ban cousin marriage. But again, realistically, how could you do that without continually enraging a minority already known for using violence to get its way?

Talking again about how Britain was formed of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, he says:

we did that process of incorporation without revolution

Yes, but the elements involved were similar to each other, and willing to be incorporated (except for the Irish, of course, who responded with centuries of resistance). Now try the same with Congolese, Somalians, Pakistanis and Afghanis. The only way, ironically, seems to be globohomo: gently get everyone to discard their ancestral identities, or at least to stop caring about them, by enticing them into rank consumerism. But that necessarily means also destroying native British identities. At this point, one might think that the solution is worse than the problem.

He also advises that we encourage civic participation. Again, this is stuff that has been tried for decades, with ever more money ploughed into it. If it hasn’t worked so far, it isn’t going to work now.

But the thing I really wanted to pick up on is when Starkey recommends looking back into our history for a way to solve this, for a way that is in accord with Britain’s past. I think the phrase he uses is “a way suggested by our history”.

The conservative - even the burnt-out and betrayed conservative like Starkey - is in love with the idea of Britain as a country which never resorted to authoritarianism, and which sorted out its problems without bloody revolution. This is a version of Britain which is less tenable by the day. It is a version of Britain that can no longer be enacted given the current realities. It is a notion that needs to be let go of.

I think Starkey’s problem is two-fold. First, he is a conservative, and conservatives hate anything radical. Second, he is a historian, and naturally historians like to think that history, and their hard-won grasp of it, can be our guide in the present. And, in the normal run of things, they would be correct; of course a nation’s history will be relevant to its present and future. But when the nation itself has been drastically altered, comparisons fall away, becoming obsolete or absurd. What Sikh has deep love for English Common Law? What Muslim values our tradition of free speech? I am sure there are some, but the majority? Or even close to the majority? And how deep is their attachment to these things? Can it withstand the threat of being ostracised by their ethnic fellows?

As for “a way suggested by our history”… When one considers the demographics of many British towns today - ethnic groups that were not even present eighty years ago yet now predominate, and a legacy White majority that is now dwindling with only official primacy (and even that being demonised and undermined every day)… considering that present reality, of what relevance is the Jacobite Rebellion, or Cromwell’s New Model Army, or the Restoration or the Reformation or the Industrial Revolution? Of what relevance is it that Elizabeth I said she did not desire to “make windows into men’s souls”? What relevance, Chamberlain seeking “peace in our time”? What relevance, Orwell so endearingly describing England as “an eternal animal”? On the cold streets of Rotherham, these things of old can be of little assurance, and little relevance.

The historian is a storyteller, and the storyteller’s greatest technique is surprise, so the historian wants to surprise us by showing that, against all odds, in actual fact, the obscure workings of 16th Century English ecclesiastical law actually are relevant to today’s problems in multicultural England!

But the brutal truth is, they’re not.

I won’t claim that none of our history is relevant. But I will claim that there is a steep decline in relevance from 1997 backwards. Anything prior to 1948, you’re scraping the barrel in terms of correspondence with today. While countless legal precedents exist from before 1948, they are now subject to a policy and decision-making apparatus that is quite happy to do whatever it likes. While cultural artefacts exist from before 1948, they are now subject to a cultural apparatus that relentlessly distorts them for its own ends. And while people - British people - exist in great numbers who descend wholly from the British people before 1948, they are being herded towards subjugation.

The irrelevance of Britain’s history is due, not entirely but largely, to demographic change. This is such a potent thing that very little can survive it. Its effect on a situation is revolutionary. Whatever fragments of the previous order remain, they are now recontextualised and rootless, vulnerable to all sorts of distortion both present and retrospective. The new order will require and demand a certain history that suits its goals, so everything will be repurposed. In short, severe demographic change means that everything - everything - is up for grabs.

The history that Starkey values, the history of which he is a custodian, is also my history, and probably also yours, but it is not Abdul’s, or Mohammed’s, or Mr Patel’s, or Tyrone’s. It means absolutely nothing to them but that they are, indeed, newcomers to this land with only a threadbare claim to it. Our history reminds them of that. At best they are amused by it, at worst they are outraged by it; often the jovial former is a cover for the ugly latter.

But as for invoking our history as a guide, we are sandwiched between a burgeoning underclass of foreign newcomers on one side, and a globalist overclass of bureaucrats and sociopaths on the other. Neither sees our history as reliable, venerable, admirable, or even valuable in itself. Its value to them is as a cudgel to beat us with, as a tool with which to antagonise the newcomers against us, or occasionally as a trick to pull the wool over our eyes - “Magna Carta means you must celebrate FGM!”

Meantime, the presence of the newcomers obstructs our history from being relevant. Their nature gets in the way, their own history gets in the way, their genes get in the way, their religions get in the way, their overwhelming need to secure their hold on this land gets in the way. Every manner in which they differ from us gets in the way. Diversity is weakness, yes, but more than that, their difference from us means that our history is not their history, only an affront to their presence here.

Moreover, they also know that our history was, in the modern parlance, racist. People like them were not welcome in 1520s Britain, or 1890s Britain. Even 1950s Britain didn’t want them. Deep down, they know that 1990s Britain didn’t want them either - and that most of us in the 2020s wish, when we are being honest with ourselves, that they had never come here.

But all of this misses the one glaring way in which Britain’s history will certainly be relevant to future events. Our nation will be saved by us recognising our historical identity, and that has little to do with values and everything to do with genetics. And there Starkey, for all his worth as a historian, steps away from the discourse.