Allison Pearson

My eight-point plan to save the BBC

Iliked the Prime Minister’s speech on tackling the extremist threat and the failure of Muslim integration very much. So much, I could have written it myself. In fact, I have – week after week in this very column.

Those of us who are furious that a policy of cultural appeasement has been adopted towards people who wish to import attitudes and practices that are hostile to our country’s values have had a pretty lonely time of it, to be honest. Still, I keep going, because I know from your letters and emails how strongly Telegraph readers feel about a subject that is nothing less than a battle for the soul of the United Kingdom. For our right to be us.

To be told that we were racist if we dared to ask why we should tolerate something that was clearly intolerable. To be warned that we were “damaging community relations” if we pointed out that men of mainly Pakistani origin were getting away with raping and pimping thousands of (mainly) white girls. To be taken to task for hating the fact that women in 21st century Britain should cover their faces in the abominable burqa.

I could tell the wind was changing when I got an email from a producer on BBC One’s Question Time, asking me to appear on the panel. He’d heard me on Radio 4’s Any Questions from Bradford and he reckoned that now, you know, it, er, might be OK to start, um, saying some of these sort of things. Things no one was allowed to say on the BBC, because they had the drawback of being embarrassing and true. I thought back to an edition of

Question Time where every member of the panel said, in all seriousness, that the rapists of Rotherham and Rochdale were just paedophiles and most paedophiles were white men. I ask you, has any nation ever displayed such a capacity for self-delusion?

The creed of multiculturalism, which was getting its claws into our society when I did teacher training in the early Eighties, said that all cultures were equal. When one of those cultures cuts off the sexual parts of little girls or demonises gay people or Jews or teaches its young boys that white women are no better than a sweetie in the gutter, well, that is unfortunate, obviously, but the main thing, what matters above all else, is that we should respect diversity.

Like hell we should. As Trevor Phillips said in his devastating documentary Things We Can’t Say About Race That Are True, during the Blair years multiculturalism became a “racket”. White officials went on racial-awareness courses while selfstyled “community leaders” got public funds. Far from encouraging integration, it had become in the interest of community leaders to preserve the isolation of their ethnic groups. And, boy, did they succeed. Jihadi John, gruesome Beheader-inChief of Isil, attended a London secondary school where 70 per cent of the pupils were Muslim. Might such a closed existence, untouched by the boisterous give and take of British life, have nurtured a narrow and poisonous perspective? You’re not allowed to ask that, I’m afraid. It’s Islamophobic.

Over the past 35 years, multiculturalism has made sure that far too many British men and women are living in ghettoes where children will never come to know the country they were born in, let alone love it. On Monday afternoon, David Cameron rolled up his sleeves and started to put that right. His speech may have been too tactful and nuanced for some, but its tone of sweet reason cloaked a tough message. The PM, who is aware of how many terrorist attacks are foiled every month by our security services, had clearly weighed up the risks of further alienating Muslim opinion and decided to go for it.

He poured scorn on infantile conspiracy theories, which allow Muslims to blame everyone, except themselves, for their woes. Cunningly, he mentioned basic liberal values, “such as democracy, freedom and sexual equality”, and said that extremists are trying to undermine our shared values “and make Muslims feel like they don’t belong here”. What he actually meant was too many Muslims don’t share our shared values – particularly regarding sexual equality – and that has to change or they don’t belong here.

He was properly excoriating about the heinous practice of female genital mutilation and forced marriages, which have increased, and he decried “the passive tolerance of practices running totally contrary to our own values”. The failure of police, social services and councillors to tackle child sex abuse in places like Rotherham was “frankly unforgiveable”.

Hallelujah! To hear so many phrases from the Pearson hymn book on the Prime Minister’s lips was heaven. The PM said that all new faith schools would be obliged to have a proportion of children from other religions. I say he needs to make that apply to existing faith schools. Small children know how to love instinctively; it’s hatred they have to be taught.

For a vision of what integration might be, look no further than England cricketer Moeen Ali, who seems to have no struggle reconciling his Muslim beliefs with fierce patriotism and joyful camaraderie. Or

Gogglebox’s Siddiqui family from Derby. Extremely British, the Siddiquis give off no sense of them and us. Their affection for their country is clear, and viewers love them back.

It’s really that simple, and that hard.