A Partitioned England

A Partitioned England.

DAVID Cameron is right to be concerned that the policy of multiculturalism (live and let live) isn’t working. There are now in G.B. new wave immigrants with a different language, religion, culture, custom and dress, and identity and with their own Sharia Law. David Cameron seems to sense that such a set up is detrimental and if trouble is to be avoided the new wave immigrants will have to be integrated wholly into British society. Already a policy of the new wave immigrant population being apart is in operation in that Islamic laws have been officially adopted in Britain with Sharia courts given powers to rule in Muslim civil courts.

Without being parochial the scale of the immigration problem in G.B. can be paralleled in Ireland. A wave of immigrants came to Ireland in the plantation of Ulster with a different language, religion, culture, customs, dress and identity and with different laws to the Irish Brehon laws. These immigrants lived apart from the native Irish in defiance of all things Irish and were a law unto themselves. (The Normans came to Ireland but integrated with the Irish in marriage and became more Irish than the Irish so they weren’t a problem). Because of the refusal of the Planters to integrate Ireland became an unstable country and ended up partitioned. Just as multiculturalism is failing in G.B. so too the British/Irish biculturalism (live and let live) will fail in N. Ireland. Just as a single identity is needed in G.B. for stability so too a single identity is needed here for stability in Ireland but it must be an identity that is acceptable to all on the island. To find such an identity will require constitutional reform. If a single identity cannot be found in G.B. who knows at some time in the distant future England may end up partitioned.


Michael Gillespie