How my neighbourhood was lost to the multiculture

It may look like a happy melting pot to commentators on the outside, but Peter Whittle feels alienated in an area carved up by immigrant groups

Much like everywhere else in the country, the local parade of 40-odd shops in my part of suburban southeast London long ago lost its traditional butcher, baker and fishmonger to the onward march of the big food boys. But one thing it never seemed to have much need for was a shop offering international money transfers. However, walking through this tatty but reliable street on my way to Woolwich Arsenal station recently, I noticed that among the fast food outlets, specialist barbers and newish halal butchers, there are now three such outlets. Three in just 40 shops? There must be an awful lot of demand.

It’s a very different place from what Rod Liddle dubbed in The Spectator last week London’s “golden crescent”. Just 10 miles north of Woolwich this arc of influence (not to mention affluence) stretches from Ealing in the west, through Notting Hill and Hampstead, to Islington in the east. It is home to the UK’s media, academic and political cognoscenti who decide how we should feel about multiculturalism but have a warped experience of how it works.

The official line in Liddle’s affluent crescent is that diversity is to be celebrated, which is an easy conclusion if — regardless of skin tone and birth country — your ethnically diverse neighbours are wealthy and likeminded. And whatever private misgivings individuals may have, the group-think which operates around those north London dinner tables assumes you’re on message.

Anthony Browne’s recent excellent pamphlet on political correctness, The Retreat of Reason, describes how, however frequent the feeble calls for “a full and frank discussion”, any real debate in Europe about multiculturalism and immigration has for years been effectively put beyond the pale — sometimes, as in the Netherlands, with disastrous results.

The effect of sidelining the more negative aspects of multiculturalism and dismissing them as loony racism, not to be uttered in polite society, is finally beginning to unravel. Like much of London, Woolwich — once home to a strong military presence — and its neighbour Plumstead, have seen an influx of immigrants and asylum-seekers in recent years, in particular thousands of Somalis. What was once a largely white working-class area with a well-integrated ethnic population (accepted without a second thought) has become thoroughly multiracial.

This part of southeast London has never been affluent. It’s what used to be called rough and ready; our idea of a big event was the opening of the UK’s first McDonald’s on the high street back in the early 1970s. But it had something that amounted to a collective identity.

Now, it appears to me fragmented, with different ethnic communities existing side-by-side, sometimes uneasily, sometimes violently and always with a sense of nothingness in the air.

It’s hard not to feel that the booming money transfer industry is just one element adding to an air of increasing transience. Sometimes now, in streets I’ve used since my Sixties boyhood, I’m struck by the sense that this place no longer provides my identifiable roots, that now I am simply one of many who happen to live here, with no greater claim to it sentimentally or historically than the next man.

Such anonymity might be what people are looking for when they choose to live in the teaming metropolitan centre, but in a suburb that has shaped much of your life it’s a hard feeling to negotiate.

But so what, you might ask. Isn’t this nostalgia of the most reactionary sort? It’s likely that if you live in middle-class north London your knee is already jerking fiercely. This is not the picture you want to present. It’s just a deplorable attack on multiculturalism, a bigoted refusal to join the universal acclaim for the all-smiling rainbow coalition that is the capital. Pure Powellism.

Well, no, actually. As the old saying goes, the definition of a racist is anybody who’s winning an argument with a liberal — one who is, after all, used to setting all the guidelines for what passes for national debate, is insulated from the effects of his opinions, and doesn’t much care for being challenged.

But despite increasing worries on both the left and right about the effects of mass immigration and multiculturalism, the golden elite who run the country still don’t hold much with the idea that there might be millions throughout the country who are tolerant in their approach to these issues and detest extremism, but who are deeply concerned about the way in which their neighbourhoods might be affected by such far-reaching social and cultural changes, over which they have next to no control.

Multiculturalism may seem like a great idea in Islington, but such peaceful coexistence is far from the norm in our northern cities, and in poorer parts of London the cracks in the multicultural varnish are becoming more noticeable.

Appalling murders such as that of the young solicitor Thomas ap Rhys Pryce make middle-class whites flinch inwardly from an unsayable fear, that the fracturing of social life in our cities doesn’t accord with the relentlessly upbeat official version.

Furthermore, the iron-clad politically correct view that all racial conflict results from white prejudice visited on other ethnicities is belied by the tensions that can exist between various non-white groups. Indeed Woolwich was host a couple of years back to the black commentator Darcus Howe, who came here to film a Channel 4 documentary and found suspicion, abuse and sometimes outright violence between West Indians and Somalis.

Depressed, Howe — hardly a man of the hard right — went on to find similar problems between Pakistani and West Indian youths in Walsall, outside Birmingham.

The truth is, if you celebrate difference enough, eventually nobody will feel the same about anything. London, for example, is home now to more than 150 different languages — a fact evidenced on my regular crowded train journey home.

While for some this might flatter a sense of cosmopolitanism, is it not possible that for others, in an everyday context, it can lead to an unconscious alienation? You can no longer make assumptions about your neighbours, and with that goes any sense of anything but the most basic of shared practical experience. You will also be less certain about the reactions of others — and, at an extreme level, maybe much less likely to intervene if you see somebody being stabbed on top of a bus for protesting at the antisocial behaviour of another, as happened in London last year.

We may congratulate ourselves endlessly on the creation of a melting pot, but we should be careful that it’s not achieved by the estrangement of many.

I am a huge Anglophile and have made 3 trips of a week or more to London in the last few years.

Intentionally avoiding the touristy locales I attempt to blend in whenever and wherever possible and do a bit of amateur anthropology.

The problem with multiculturalism is that it isn't. As with many -isms grown in the joint hothouse of civil service and universities, multi-culti is meant to assuage white liberal guilt and eaglerly exploited by any and all who see a free meal or house on offer. Cell phones may not be common in the Third World but you can be the dole message gets out to the folks back home loud and clear.

Wembley Stadium (assuming it ever gets finished) is the one of the UK's sporting crown jewels. Yet a trip to the area would have a man convinced he was closer to Casablanca than to Cricklewood. Burqas and veils are the order of the day.

A walk from Seven Sisters towards Tottenham Hotspur's home ground looks like a very English high street but the language, the merchandise in the shops and the culture is strictly west coast Africa (Ghana, Ivory Coast, etc.).

As always, the well-intentioned high-mindedness of the English middle and upper classes (especially New Labour) has simply resulted in a huge influx akin to a gold rush. Unfortunately for all parties, there is no gold to be found, simply unsustainable government welfare expenditures, a seemingly permanent loss of native English culture and a voting populace who can't seem to connect the dots between their tax burden, the rising crime rates and the establishment of virtual no-go zones in every major city.

Indeed Woolwich was host a couple of years back to the black commentator Darcus Howe, who came here to film a Channel 4 documentary and found suspicion, abuse and sometimes outright violence between West Indians and Somalis.
Depressed, Howe — hardly a man of the hard right — went on to find similar problems between Pakistani and West Indian youths in Walsall, outside Birmingham.

That is (or perhaps was) one of the greatest assets of America - By consensus, you were forced to shed your old identity and leave your hatreds and racial attitudes in the Old Country. You were now an AMERICAN by God!

A guy I worked with was an Armenian who was raised in Iran. He joined the USAF and because he spoke Farsi they placed as liason with all the foreign officers.

One night at the officers club there was a group of Greek officers playing pool. They were almost finished when some Turks came in and stood waiting for them to finish the game. Of a sudden, the Greeks became poor shots and it was evident to everyone they were just breaking the Turks horns by making them wait.

Finally my buddy went over to them and said, "Hey look, I'm Armenian and have no love for the Turks, but you're in America now and we don't do that kind of stuff." The Greeks left.

Shift now to a charming 1950s movie called "Anything Can Happen". It's a story of a Georgian (USSR) immigrant becoming an American. At a dinner scene he is asked to make a toast. He stands up and says, "I look around this table and see Turk sitting with Armenian. If that can happen here, then Anything Can Happen." Yeah, it's Hollywood, but that was the attitude in the Old Days - "We don't care who or what you were back home, show us what you can do here."

Background on Tom Ap Rhys Pryce

Solicitor, 31, stabbed to death by muggers yards from home
By John Steele Crime Correspondent
(Filed: 14/01/2006)

A solicitor was stabbed to death during a street robbery yards from his home, it has emerged, as police hunted two muggers who continued to attack him after he gave them what they demanded.

Tom Ap Rhys Pryce, 31, who worked for Linklaters, a leading corporate law firm, was repeatedly stabbed on his head, torso and hands as he tried to defend himself.

A police officer guards the scene of the attack

Yesterday detectives described the attack as "vicious, ferocious and gratuitous". The murder took place close to the flat in north-west London that Mr Pryce shared with his fiancée, Adele Eastman, 31, a solicitor specialising in employment law with Farrer & Co, the Queen's solicitors.

Pages from the internet about wedding arrangements were found scattered yards from Mr Pryce's body. The couple planned to marry in September.

Mr Pryce was attacked at about 11.44pm on Thursday shortly after he telephoned Miss Eastman to say that he was on his way home. When he failed to turn up and she heard a noise outside she went out and found police at the scene. It is understood that by then Mr Pryce's body had been taken away by an ambulance crew.

Mr Pryce had been attending a social function with colleagues in the City and was walking home along Bathurst Gardens, in Kensal Green, when two young black men approached him. Police are trying to establish whether they followed him from Kensal Green Tube station and were seen on CCTV.

Mr Pryce is thought to have dropped the internet papers and his gloves at the point where he was first challenged by the robbers, who were in their late teens or early twenties. One wore a hooded top and witnesses said that both were about 5ft 6in tall with loose clothing.

Detectives believe that the attackers continued their attack after Mr Pryce had handed over "personal property". Mr Pryce, who attended Marlborough College and is believed to be a Cambridge graduate, was taken to Central Middlesex Hospital, where he was confirmed dead shortly after midnight.

Miss Eastman was being comforted by her family. The victim's parents, who live in Weybridge, Surrey, were being supported by family liaison police officers.

John Turnbull, the head of litigation at Linklaters, said: "We are all shocked by this dreadful news. Tom was a good friend and colleague and we will miss him very much. We are offering all the help we can to his fiancée and the rest of his family."

Tom Ap Rhys Pryce
Farrer & Co said that staff were "devastated for Miss Eastman and Tom's family". Miss Eastman graduated in Italian from University College London and joined the firm five years ago.

Det Supt Julian Worker, who is leading the murder investigation, said: "This was a particularly vicious and gratuitous attack and Mr Pryce tried to defend himself.

"It is quite possible that one or both robbers sustained injuries and I appeal to anyone who may have treated such injuries or anyone who knows of someone having sustained injuries to come forward."

The attackers fled in the direction of Clifford Gardens, towards the Kensal Rise area. Forensic officers were still combing the scene last night but had not found the murder weapon or weapons.

Bathurst Gardens is a quiet, up and coming street of two-storey terrace houses with a church at one end and a library at the other. Many of its residents are young professionals living in flats.

However, like so many districts of London, it is close to areas of high street crime.

The robbery rate in the Kensal Green ward rose in the last year and is above the average for the Metropolitan Police area. In the 12 months to November 2004, the rate of robberies per 1,000 population was 6.7. It rose to 10 per 1,000 in the 12 months to last November. Offences of violence in the area are nearly twice the London average.

Neighbours of Mr Pryce were left deeply shocked. Amanda Taylor, 30, a prison officer, said she heard raised voices but was too frightened to look out.

"I heard quite a lot of shouting, both men and women's voices," she said. "My TV was on quite loud, so their voices must have been even louder. There have been two murders on this street in the last year and there was a stabbing a few months ago. It is horrible and very scary. When I get home at night I just shut my door and do not go out again."

Dan Farmer, 31, said: "I was jogging home from the pub at about 11.30pm. It could have been me. I am 31 as well and had just texted my girlfriend at a similar time to him to say I was on my way home."

Gerry Dobson, a neighbour of Mr Pryce's parents - Estella, a piano teacher, and John, both 63 - said that Mr Pryce had visited them in Princes Road, Weybridge, at Christmas.

"To have some idiot take that away from you, not just you but a whole family, friends and community - well it is dreadful," he said.

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