Accept UK values

There can be no doubt that, despite an argument that freedom of choice is a very important thing, the requirements of society sometimes outweigh it.

The example cited by Otto Inglis (Letters, 14 December) is very much to the point. Although the Conservative Party, for example, are keen on religious education – eg Church of England schools – one of the ways in which a single society may be formed is by children learning together, playing together and becoming one group, rather than lots of separate “communities”.

If children perceive themselves to be separate from the host community, they will identify themselves as “us” and the community at large as “them”.

That does not encourage integration.

Nowadays there is too much emphasis on the “rights” of immigrant communities to retain their own ways of doing things, as if they had not opted to immigrate into another society.

If we have almost three million people of the Muslim faith who live in ghettos and who are educated separately, being taught values that our belief system does not accept as normal, it is only a matter of time before there will be a clash of civilisations, as Enoch Powell predicted.

It is absolutely essential that all immigrants accept our values, assimilate into our society, be educated with us and marry into our society and not the other way round.

That is how the successful assimilation of different groups works. It is also our right.

ANDREW H N GRAY Craiglea Drive, Edinburgh