THE BIG READ: The terrible truth is that the political class has balkanised Britain

The real issue is not whether a huge pro-Palestine march should take place on Armistice Day but that so many people living in Britain would wish to support such an event at such a time

Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash

WHAT do we want to see happen on Armistice Day? Naturally, most of us wish to see the two-minute silence at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month impeccably observed.

We especially yearn for that in the vicinity of the Cenotaph in Whitehall and in other important public spaces. Very many of us expect a lot more than that too. We strongly support the arguments of the likes of Nigel Farage and of the former Labour MP Ian Austin, that there should be no competing public demonstrations permitted throughout Remembrance weekend. This is because we see honouring the dead of two world wars and other conflicts since as a universal and socially unifying obligation.

And yet we know that many of our fellow residents of the UK, including many British citizens, disagree. They want there to be an enormous march for Palestine, up to a million strong, on Saturday November 11.  They wish to chant yet again about their desire for Palestine to be “free, from the river to the sea”, to call for Israel to cease military operations in Gaza and to ignore the fact that it was the October 7 pogrom by Hamas that necessitated the Israeli response.

Given that the defeat of the central powers in the Great War was a key moment in the unfolding of the tragic story of the southern Levant - leading to the end of centuries of Ottoman Empire rule and the setting up of an ill-fated British Mandate in Palestine by the League of Nations – it seems a forlorn hope that these angry demonstrators will wish to observe any kind of respectful silence.

As I write, it seems likely that the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, is seeking a middle way between these competing priorities. A pro-Palestine march appears likely to go ahead but the route will be from Hyde Park to Battersea, skirting central London and keeping well away from Whitehall.

One can see how such an outcome would appeal to Sir Mark. His job, as he sees it, is to patrol an increasingly fragmented public square, allowing different parts of the capital’s multi-cultural population fair access to vent their favoured causes. So if the march does indeed pass off without attempts to disrupt Armistice Day events, will that make Sir Mark’s strategy a success?

I can see why he might think so, but I am afraid not. Because that isn’t good enough for me or probably for you either. I simply don’t want there to be a pro-Palestine march this weekend in which radicals from Britain’s Islamic communities, supported by regiments of White Wokesters, deliver another show of strength that terrifies Jewish citizens and draws attention away from our remembrance traditions.

To be honest, I am dismayed to find myself sharing a society with lots of people who react to the biggest atrocity against Jews since the Holocaust by initially celebrating and then by seeking to weaponise ensuing suffering in the Gaza redoubt from which Hamas planned and launched its atrocity.

I wish that those taking that view who came to the UK from overseas had not been able to come to the UK in the first place. Without going full Colonel Bob Stewart about it, I must say I regret the ongoing surrender of British streets to mobs of people so intensely animated by their region-of-origin conflicts or the travails of their co-religionists all over the world. This is Britain and it would be very much better if such migrants had understood that it was better to focus on integrating into their new country than sustaining homeland grievances at fever pitch.

Yet in the last couple of years alone we have seen running battles in Islington between rival Eritrean factions, similar gang warfare in Leicester between Hindu and Muslim youths after a cricket match between India and Pakistan, rival Iranian groups fighting in central London and hundreds of Albanians in souped-up supercars gridlocking central London in a show of strength on their national day.

Back when I was reasonably influential in UKIP, roughly encompassing the years 2013 to 2018, I argued for the party to stress the importance of promoting integration as well as restraining immigration. In the party’s 2017 manifesto, we pledged: “We will test the social attitudes of migration applicants to foster community cohesion and protect core British values.”

Our idea was that, even within a points-based immigration system stressing employable skills, the attitudes of applicants should be as important as their aptitudes. I hardly need to remind you that UKIP fared poorly in that election as both major parties claimed to have adopted our Brexit position, rendering a vote for the “purple peril” apparently pointless.

But we have been proven correct. The agglomeration of non-integrated Islamic communities in particular in our big cities has led to scenes that many of us find