In the fevered imagination of those obsessed with implementing ever greater ‘diversity’, there is seemingly no object or aspect of life they won’t seek to change at all costs. Thus it’s no surprise to hear that the latest target of opprobrium is the British countryside itself.
It epitomises the blundering ignorance of the global, Anywhere class who have been in charge for too long
Following a Defra report in 2019 that revealed that some saw the countryside as ‘being for white people and middle-class people’, officials have spent the last few years working on changing that – by making the great outdoors more welcoming to ethnic minorities. National Landscapes, a charity mostly funded by Defra, has been busy overseeing the diversity drive. New proposals at local level include producing fresh marketing material featuring people from ethnic minorities written in ‘community languages’, and the suggestion that dogs should be kept under tighter control because some groups dislike them. The management of Surrey Hills has already concurred that ‘some demographics are under-represented in our countryside’, while Suffolk and Essex Coast Heaths has expressed concerns about ‘the composition of visitors’.
Never mind the hideous management-speak that proliferates among our rural custodians, who seem to perceive the countryside a mere amenity or theme park. Never mind also the technocratic verbiage and all its crude utilitarian intent. What’s more guaranteed to revolt many is the customary and predictable asymmetrical multiculturalism on display, an ideology which remains entrenched in the class who run Britain. This is the inconsistent belief that all cultures are equal and valid – except, it seems, that which pertains to the historically indigenous people of this country, whose culture is held in lesser regard and whose people are expected to make undue concessions and forever apologise for who they are.
One concern of Defra is that rural facilities ‘cater to white English culture’. According to its research, ‘Protected landscapes were closely associated with “traditional” pubs, which have limited food options and cater to people who have drinking cultures. Accordingly, Muslims from the Pakistani and Bangladeshi group said this contributed to a feeling of being unwelcome.’ Those doubting, snide inverted commas reveal much about the aloof mindset of our civil servants. And it’s not as if those who run pubs haven’t enough on their plate right now, proprietors of drinking holes which for centuries have been at the heart of genuine, organic and indeed traditional communities.
At a time in which so many in Britain are already alarmed about the rapidly changing demographic composition of their country – a transformation that began with Tony Blair’s decision to open the doors to Eastern Europe immigrants in 2004, and accelerated with the ‘Boris wave’ earlier this decade – such an initiative is hardly likely to calm the nerves of a people increasingly looking for salvation in Reform UK.
Its leader, Nigel Farage, became the most consequential politician of the age by focusing on a class who many blame for destroying the fabric of this country: the out-of-touch, liberal metropolitan elite – he repeats these cliches deliberately and to good effect – who have little affection for or attachment to this land. Nothing could cement this perception more than this latest diversity drive.
It embodies a form of technocratic authoritarianism that has been central to the ruling classes ever since globalisation arrived in earnest after the end of the Cold War, one which announced itself here with the election of a New Labour government and creed in 1997. Intrinsic to Tony Blair’s neophilia and heavily diluted Christianity was his belief that the state should be reorganised and that it should facilitate tolerance and good behaviour because it was ‘the right thing to do’.
The encouragement and enforcement of multiculturalism was one key ingredient in this regard. This ideology in its statist incarnation has no truck with the previously accepted understanding that different ethnic groups should be free to concentrate and assemble in different parts of cities and the countryside, as has been the natural tendency of different peoples since time immemorial. This new initiative reflects the notion that this country everywhere should ‘represent’ the precise ethnic make-up of Britain as a whole.
It epitomises the blundering ignorance of the global, Anywhere class who have been in charge for too long, a self-seeking, preening elite who appear to care for their esteem and reputation far more than their country or its people. They always make matters worse as a result. Nothing is more likely to aggravate racism than proposals which so wantonly insult and demean the left-behind of this country.
It reflects, once more, the imposition of a corrosive, high-status ideology. It is as much to do with enforcing uniformity as encouraging diversity. And ironically, and tragically, its chief consequence will be yet more division and more rancour.
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