Farrukh Dhondy | Suella\'s Dog-Whistle Bid: Targeting UK\'s Multiculturalism?

“Sufis celebrate the vine

Which yields the nectar to the cup

To them it’s a metaphor -- a sign

They plead with Saki to fill up

The chalice they believe is God’s

Divine unity with their soul

O Bachchoo, calculate the odds

Of Unity being in human control…”

From The Must Calendar, by Bachchoo

Suella Braverman, sometimes known as Cruella Cowardperson, has in the past weeks been making dog-whistle bids for the leadership after Hedgie Sunak loses next year’s election. Or even sooner perhaps if his divided party topples him. God help us -- she will be a contender for the Prime Minister’s position!

I call them “dog-whistle” bids because what she says makes no sense as political policy, but is calculated to appeal to Tory members who favour banning or deporting immigrants and are convinced black and brown people commit crimes, preventing which should be any government’s first priority.

In the last 10 days, before the Tory party conference in Manchester this week, Cruella addressed a right-wing cabal in Washington, saying among other things that “multiculturalism has failed in Britain”. On Monday at the Tory conference, she called the attempt by asylum-seekers coming to Britain a “hurricane”. She went on to criticise those of her colleagues and the media celebrities such as Elton John and Gary Lineker, the popular football commentator, who are sympathetic to asylum-seekers, saying that they are not the people whose jobs will be taken by the “hurricaners” nor will their children be “groomed” by these foreign “invading” (yes, she’s used that word) criminals.

Tweet, tweet, tweeeeeet… goes the dog-whistle. That last comment about grooming alludes to the fact that some criminal gangs, many of whose members were of Pakistani origin, have been jailed for sexually grooming young girls. Cruella implies that asylum-seekers to the country would do the same to the children of non-celebrity families. And she fervently believes that the dogs will answer the whistle.

So back to her nonsensical statement that “multiculturalism has failed”. The sentence means nothing. It’s like saying “Appletree-ism has failed” in Britain. Yes, just as there are sections of new communities from Asia, the West Indies and Africa, now a permanent part of Britain, there are Apple tree orchards too. Yes, Brexit, which Cruella ardently supports, stopped the entry of seasonal fruit-pickers from Europe who harvested apples in British orchards. Since Brexit a vast swathe of these orchards, deprived of pickers, just let the fruit rot. Verily I say unto you: “The failure of Applertree-ism?”

But is multiculturalism subject to a similar test? Gentle reader, I was for fourteen years a ommissioning Editor for Multicultural programmes on Britain’s national Channel 4 TV. This channel originated with a parliamentary remit which said it should do what other TV channels weren’t doing.

Its first boss, the genius CEO Jeremy Isaacs, created several departments to fulfil this remit. One of them was the “multicultural” department and as the second appointee to be its Commissioning Editor, I was entrusted with the task of defining what multiculturalism meant.

It was not, as they say, “rocket science”. It was pretty obvious. TV is one of the most persuasive, inclusive conversations of the nation. It could be called the sub-conscious of the national culture or even the reflection of it. There are now, since the 1950s, generations of the new communities of Britain. They brought with them apart from skin pigmentation, their religions, traditions, cuisine, preferences, festivities, history… I could go on with very many nouns from the dictionary. Call it their culture.

What then was a multicultural commissioning editor to do except bring this culture, through all the genres, forms and forums that TV afforded, into the national conversation? And to do this one had to recruit operatives -- directors, producers, camerapersons, etc from the new communities -- who would bring their intimacy with the “culture” of these communities into programme-making and so to the screen.

The viewing figures of the programmes they made, over the fourteen years I was there and beyond, may indicate that this multicultural endeavour was a resounding success. To use a very non-multicultural but British phrase, those figures say “ya, boo sucks” to Cruella and her blind, deaf and, frankly, nasty contention.

In that respect, I would modestly claim, gentle reader, that that particular “multicultural enterprise” was a success. That there are mosques and new evangelical Christian churches (and even a Zoroastrian centre, though not a fire temple) and thousands of thronged “Indian” restaurants; that we have, alas, politicians of ethnic origin at the top of the government; that the new communities while bringing all the nouns I listed above to the nation while they integrated into British institutions, traditions and ways of life, testifies to Britain being irreversibly “multicultural”. It exists. Saying it’s a “failure” is like saying a piece of music is “a failure”. You may say you don’t like it and use it as a dog-whistle but to judge it as a failure is just plain stupid.

No sensible person will deny that there should be humane and internationally negotiated policies on immigration. Neither should we deny that a handful of criminally inclined people were convicted of “grooming”. I have to admit that I am not very good at distinguishing one bird-call from another except crows and magpies -- but dog-whistles I can tell from a mile off. Bow-wow!