Social cohesion blues

The report of the Casey review has recently been published, commissioned by the government to 'investigate integration and opportunity in isolated and deprived communities'. This is bureaucratic speak asking why, in many inner city areas of Britain, there is less social cohesion than there used to be. The report makes some interesting points but fails to get to grips with the problems it was tasked with investigating, or how the problems identified were allowed to develop in the first place.

A significant part of the report deals with the Muslim population, and for a government report some of findings are quite hard hitting. For example, references are made to 'regressive' cultural practices which have a particularly detrimental impact on Muslim women. It discovered that in one northern town all but one of Asian councillors had married a wife from Pakistan, and that 80% of babies born in Bradford of Pakistani ethnicity had at least one parent born outside the UK. Thus the report highlights the phenomenon of the creation of a first generation in every generation with second, third and subsequent generations being joined by foreign born partners, with children in each new generation growing up with a foreign born parent.

To be fair, the British politically correct establishment has never tolerated the more barbarous practices that sometimes occur within this community, such as honour killings, female genital mutilation and forced marriages. With the rise in feminism criticism of these practices has rightly become more vocal. But in the final analysis they only impact on Muslim communities themselves, and then mostly on women. If they were all abandoned it would likely make only a marginal difference in improving social cohesion with the white majority. This is because the social life of most Muslims revolves around their local mosque, whereas for most whites their socializing takes place through secular institutions and venues that, when fuelled by alcohol and with the unchaperoned mixing of the sexes, would be at variance with traditional Islamic values.

Nonetheless the report has served some purpose in identifying arranged marriages, involving spouses from the Indian sub continent, as a crucial factor in increasing the ethnic population in British towns and cities, and thus leading to a gradual breakdown in social cohesion because of the ever growing numbers. Arranged marriages have never been part of British culture and there can be no justification for allowing the opened ended importation of foreign born spouses into this country through this practice, leading as it does to long term societal damage. In many cases it is likely to be difficult distinguishing between forced and arranged marriages, many of which appear to take place between close relatives such as cousins, creating problems of inbreeding.

If the government was serious about addressing the cause of breakdown in social cohesion they would immediately prohibit the practice of arranged marriages of British citizens with foreign born spouses. Arranged marriages would not need to be prohibited, but they would need to be controlled by either confining them to between British citizens, or the couple would have to leave Britain permanently, and renounce all claims to British citizenship for themselves and any children.