Category Archives: malaya

THE IMPERIALISTIC ROOTS OF MULTI-CULTURALISM

Back in the Day!

THE IMPERIALISTIC ROOTS OF MULTI-CULTURALISM
It is an ironic fact that multi-culturalism as a device for managing disparate and disjointed populations is not entirely a post-war, Left-Liberal concept. 

My own family have some roots in British Malaya when what is now Malaysia and Singapore were part of the British Empire and I was born there in the British Military Hospital Kinrara, Kuala Lumpur.

Before the war British Malaya was politically run by British colonial officials on an imperialist multi-culturalist basis just like many other “colonies” throughout the Empire.

In colonial Malaya there were various ethnicities. There were the native Indians who lived quite primitive lives in the jungle and who either animist or Christian. There was also a dominant population of Malays who were originally Indonesian colonists and pirates, who are predominantly Muslim and whose leaders were the various “Sultans”. Then there were the Chinese who, during the 19th and 20th centuries, given all the various misfortunes of China, came as settlers. They were very hard-working, upwardly mobile, vying to be professionals or business people (legitimate or triad) and settlers to clear and farm the jungle lands.

Then there were also the British ourselves who brought over, from India, the Tamils to work, in particular, in the tea plantations and we also brought over Sikhs to act especially as police and security guards.

All these communities were kept in a degree of antagonism and separately, allowing British officials to deal with “community leaders”. The Communities were encouraged in multi-culturalist ideas of “community cohesion” and of maintaining their own separate ways as part of an imperialist agenda to divide and rule; which is of course an imperialist doctrine which goes at least as far back as ancient Rome (“divide et impera”).

British officials found this multiculturalist arrangement very convenient, as all the various groups were concerned about the encroachments of the others. This enabled British administrators to seem interested in maintaining the other concerns of each of the groups, whilst ensuring that the general population couldn’t combine to demand independence.

I think it likely that this situation would have continued quite possibly up until today if it hadn’t been for the Japanese invasion and the subsequent attempts by Chinese communists under Mao Tse Tung to destabilise the post-war arrangements.

I think it may well prove to be the case once all the files are opened that we will see that the more recent doctrines of multi-culturalism originated partly through Whitehall officials dusting off these old Colonial Office policies and re-badging them! Wouldn’t that be an irony? 

We make this Point in our manifesto:-

3.16 England and Multi-Culturalism

3.16.1 It is a fact that during the past forty years people of many different cultures have come to live in England. Our country is in that sense a multi-cultural society. However, multi-Culturalism is an ideology which suggests that a mix of many cultures in one society is desirable and that it is the duty of government to actively encourage cultural diversity within the state. Further, it suggests that all cultures should be treated as equal. A logical extension of this is that all languages, histories and law codes should be treated equally. This is clearly impossible in a unified country. All ethnic groups should be free to promote their own culture and identity but the public culture of England should be that of the indigenous English. This position is consistent with the rights of indigenous nations everywhere.