Mr Phillips' flawed analysis

The ever hectoring Trevor Phillips, Chairman of the Commission for Equalities and Human Rights has announced, in a manner which might otherwise suggest that he has discovered the meaning of life, the universe and everything, that knife crime in Britain is fuelled by immigrants, whom he prefers to refer to as “brutalised refugees” from war torn parts of Africa. Information which will not have come as a huge surprise to many of us.

Of course, being the inveterate racist he is, old Trev can't resist the temptation to heap the blame for what black people do onto the shoulders of white people, who he accuses of “failing to integrate with refugee children who had witnessed untold horrors in their early lives.”

However, if I may be so bold as to draw attention to a flaw Phillips' argument, it should be noted that a significant majority of those who are involved in knife crime are the children or grandchildren of immigrants. That is to say young people who have never set a Nike shod foot in Africa and who's closest encounter with “untold horrors” will have been via their iPod, some shared happy slapping on their mobile phones, or those they have, themselves, inflicted on some unlucky victim.

Could it not follow, therefore, that what we are seeing is less the result of trauma or lack of integration but rather a cultural phenomenon? Many of those causing havoc on our streets do originate from war torn parts of the dark continent, but what was it that made those parts war torn, and why are they being replicated here?

Recently a lot of the knife crime has involved members of the Somali community, who do indeed originate from one of the most violent countries on the planet. However, what is it that makes Somalia so violent and dangerous, is it the sand flies?, the camel spiders? Odd Indian Ocean breezes? or the Somalis themselves? If not. why is it that the children of Somali immigrants, most of whom have never seen a war zone, still behave as if they are in one?.

Brutality is nothing new to that region, during World War II, allied troops involved in the East Africa campaign feared most being captured by the Somalis, who were at the time fighting on the Italian side, for it was well known that death at their hands would be neither quick or kind.

Somalia aside, Phillips makes a particular reference to the Congo, where certainly the atrocities there have been particularly gruesome, however, gruesome atrocities are nothing new to the Congo, the horrors of the 1960 uprising are often compared to the Cambodian Killing fields under Pol Pot. It is said that few white females escaped the Congo uprising without being raped multiple times, be she grandmother, nun or toddler, and they were lucky when compared to the indigenous Congolese who belonged to the wrong tribes and whose victimisation continues to this day.

“Ah tribal conflict!!” Trev would no doubt splutter if confronted with such an argument “That was all the fault of Colonialism!” which, of course, is what he and the other multi-cultural fanatics shriek whenever confronted with the reality of inter-tribal violence, such as that seen in Rwanda, the DRC, Kenya and Uganda to name but a few. “That was all the white man's fault!”. NOT SO! Ethiopia was never a colony, there are no arbitrary colonial frontiers drawn across Ethiopia, however, like most of Africa, the country has been beset by tribal conflict for centuries, the most recent example being the attempted genocide of the Anuak tribe in 2004

It seems that not everything is the white man's fault, and that ethnic culture can involve more than spicy food and a sense of rhythm.

Trevor and his cronies are only too ready to tell us how we can benefit from exposure to different cultures, yet what they fail to mention is that other cultures have their downside, sometimes it comes waving a machete and that side too can be and frequently is) imported too.

A further source of street crime, and ongoing conflict with the African community comes from members of the West Indian community, specifically Jamaica. Most Jamaicans of African origin have never been near Africa, neither have their parents, grandparents and even great grandparents, yet Kingston, like the majority African American cities of Detroit and New Orleans in the USA, ranks amongst those world cities most beset with with crime, violence, rape and murder.

It seems culture may travel down the generations, good or bad.

However, Africa is not alone in importing the less welcome aspects to their culture, in many areas the violence and conflict we see, but which the media avoids reporting, comes from members of the Asian community. This also is nothing new, read the history of Asia and you will find that it is a violent one, the Afghans, for instance, did not discover their talent for torture pnly by practising on young Russian soldiers in the 1980's, their cruelty was infamous for centuries before that. Equally, inter-ethnic violence across the subcontinent started long before the Raj, let alone patrician, and wasn't our fault either.

Cultural violence is not the only unwelcome result of opening our doors to all-comers, foreigners can have other bad habits. Recent allegations of electoral fraud, in for instance, Birmingham, primarily involved members of the Asian community whose origins are in nations where such practices are endemic. Likewise, when considering London, where millions of pounds of taxpayers money vanished in odd deals involving black and Asian businesses, it is not unreasonable to remember where African and Asian countries languish in the International corruption league tables.

This is not a message of hate, although some will portray it as such. I do not wish harm on anyone. However, there are many huge problems in Africa, Asia and the rest of the third world, which need to be addressed at their source, not just spread around so that everyone shares the bad luck. A problem does not cease to be a problem by relocating it, that simply creates a whole new set of victims.

It would be ludicrous to suggest that, crime and violence, and some forms of corruption, did not exist in Britain before such high levels of third world immigration was imposed upon us, or that we may not have had a few cultural flaws ourselves. However, we are importing new ones, reintroducing cruelties which we long put behind us, and in many respects they are far worse than anything which existed here before. Moreover, should not the aim be to solve the problems we had, rather than introduce new and worse ones.

It is often said that one has to take the rough with the smooth, but the British people may one day realise how few smooth features there are to mass immigration, and quite how rough the rough bits can be, and that those rough bits are not our fault whatever the likes of Trevor Phillips may accuse us of.

I pray the British wake up soon because we have not yet seen the worst.