I think immigration is a good thing, I like diversity, I like

Comment on Reasons to Vote British National Party by Alun.

I think immigration is a good thing, I like diversity, I like living in a multicultural environment, I like the fact my children get to go to schools with children from other cultures. I don’t think being “white” should give me more privileges. I know that immigrants don’t get preferential treatment when it comes to housing or jobs (the BNP’s big lies).

I know that the reason that the UK is a wealthy country is because we stole a great deal of that wealth from the countries we invaded when we had an empire. I know that much of that wealth is derived from things like the trans-Atlantic slave trade. I’m not “proud” of our history or heritage because I know that much of it consists of invading other countries and murdering or enslaving the indigenous population (to use a work beloved of BNP extremists).

So the BNP certainly isn’t listening to people like me. I don’t understand why I’m supposed to be “patriotic”, the UK is not composed of a single ethnic group, it’s a lie to say that “white British” people have a single defined identity. “White British” people is a heterogeneous group that includes many ethnicities, including Welsh, Scots, English and Irish, but also Manx. Even English people are not exactly homogeneous, many Cornish people do not consider themselves English.

I think that wrapping yourself in the flag of patriotism is to be blind to the fact that the state is a political institution and not a cultural identity. The UK is an artificial political organisation, it’s current incarnation is less than 100 years old (when it became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, was it 1922?), it’s not an immutable or historically ancient entity. We are not one people, but many people, and the more heterogeneity we have the better as far as I’m concerned. I hate the idea that the BNP wants to kill off our regional and cultural identities and turn us all into unthinking clones.

Long live diversity I say !!