White Fright: Divided Britain

[vetuste_ennemi]

...shown on BBC's Panorama last night. I was expecting to see a thread about it and am a little surprised not to find one. The Panorama team returns to Blackburn ten years after showing a program investigating social integration in the town and asks the question "What's changed?".

Did you watch it? What did you think?

[dannyk13]

No I am not really.Little Germany consists of commercial buildings with the exception of a Social Services building.

[jourdain2]

When I grew-up in Bradford, I was always told that the name 'Little Germany' was a reference to all the businesses established there, not a residential area at all. Eastbrook Hall, if I remember rightly, had a theatre and concert-hall in it. It has obviously been bought to convert tohousing. My Dad, born 1903 and living inBradford, used to say that the reason we had such great sausages was as a result of the influx of Germans. I can't remember when he said it was that they came, but I think it was something to do with WW1 - or possibly the disaster of Weimar. Definitely not a residential area for Germans though.

[mushroom25]

//Why is the question titled 'white fright'? //

erm, it just reflects the title of the original 2007 BBC documentary. maybe you need to ask the BBC; "why was that 2007 edition of Panorama entitled White Fright?"

[douglas9401]

Remarkable that whatever the group, they all end up with a quarter.

[Zacs-Master]

Who should I contact Mush?

[Zacs-Master]

There's a little Italy in Leeds too.


Although it is a restaurant.

[Bazile]

//Remarkable that whatever the group, they all end up with a quarter.//

Well you can't have a Chinese 'two thirds' - can you .
Just doesn't sound right

[douglas9401]

Not unless it's a quip from Tora. :-)

[Jackdaw33]

Chinatown in Newcastle too.

[Khandro]

A significant fact about Little; Italy, Germany, or China, is that none of them have ambitions to replace the indigenous population, by either stealth, breeding or violence.

[vetuste_ennemi]

Personally I don't care if Bangladeshis, Germans, or Chinese want to integrate or not. What I do care about is the nasty cultural baggage an immigrant population may bring with it and perpetuate. Not being a very caring person I'm not concerned about the harm primitive cultures might cause their unfortunate adherents, it's the harm that the cultural baggage might cause the rest of us. For instance, if Britain's "Little Germanys" included a high proportion of Nazi sympathisers holding meetings and rallies perpetuating Jew hatred we ought[i to be worried, and we [i]would] be worried, wouldn't we?

Now, in the case of our rapidly expanding Muslim "communities" we have just such unpleasant cultural baggage. The harm done to their own is well-known: "honour" based violence, forced marriages, FGM are examples. And the harm done to the broader community? Well, the most notorious example were/are the universal Muslim "grooming" (i.e. rape) gangs. These operated in Jack Straw's Blackburn just as much as in Rochdale and Bradford. In fact it was Mr. Straw who gave us the term "easy meat", wasn't it? (Not that this was even alluded to in the Panorama film, far less suggested as a possible contributor to "community tension".)

[naomi24]

Whistling in the wind, v-e, but in today's climate, politically correct blinkers are de rigueur. German, Italian, Chinese, Pakistani, Afghanistani, Somalian ..... they're all the same... aren't they?

[tonyav]

Bazile Chinese quarter - in Birmingham

Has been all of my living memory, Bazile.