The Balkanisation of Britain’s Cities

The enthusiasm of those preaching the merits of multiculturalism in Britain knows no bounds. The impression sometimes gained is that ‘one more push’ will do it in reaching the multiethnic paradise just around the corner, if only we all make a little more effort. Every announcement from charities, government departments, public bodies, and even commercial companies, such as supermarkets and banks, now feature the slogans of ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’; together with a strongly expressed desire that the composition of their staff should ‘reflect the community we serve’. We are so nearly there! It all puts one in mind of the colourful images of the afterlife which are to be seen in publications by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. We see a happy land where Indians and Chinese people cheerfully rub shoulders with Caribbeans and Africans, while Arabs and Jews sit down together to share a meal and, presumably, the lion also lays down with the lamb. The future, it seems, is both multi-ethnic and also very bright and cheerful. This alluring mirage, though, seems very far from being attained — at least for now — and it is on the streets of London and other large British cities where the actual, veracious results of the multicultural project may most clearly be seen.

Despite the hopes of the idealists, London has not been a successful experiment in multiculturalism. Indeed, the introduction of a wide mix of ethnicities, nationalities, and religions into the capital has led not to greater tolerance and understanding but rather to the division of the city into a network of ethnic enclaves and petty chiefdoms more in keeping with the medieval period than a twenty-first-century society. Consider an incident in the East London district of Whitechapel in October 2021, for instance. Located in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, Whitechapel is a predominantly Muslim area, containing many Bengalis and Pakistanis. From time to time, notices appear on lampposts, warning that this is a Sharia area; one where alcohol and gambling are forbidden. Groups of vigilantes keep an eye out for trouble from outsiders, that is to say, non-Muslims and members of other communities. Meanwhile, and further south of the river, there are districts containing many people of African and Caribbean heritage and sometimes excursions are made across the Thames by enterprising young bandits who feel that there might be easier and safer pickings in Asian parts of the city than among their own kind.

On the evening of Sunday 19th October, a clash between a small group of black men and Muslim vigilantes in Whitechapel led to summary justice of a kind seldom before seen in Britain. The Qur’anic punishment of amputating the hand of a thief was executed at the curbside. Another of the raiders was stabbed. This then is the true face of London’s multicultural society: rather than the vibrant mixing of cultures and a shared experience of each other’s traditions, the city has been informally divided between the newcomers into self-contained zones. In boroughs such as Redbridge, those from the Indian subcontinent tend to settle. Even here, separate communities are the rule. In the east of the borough, Seven Kings is the acknowledged territory of Sikhs, while the streets around the centre of Ilford are occupied more by Hindus. As one moves to the west of the borough, more Muslims are to be found. In the same way, although boroughs like Hackney and Haringey have many districts which appear to be chiefly black, these too are split along tribal lines — a condition contributing distinctly to the so-called ‘postcode wars’. Those living in the E8 postal district will launch drive-by shootings against the inhabitants of N17 or E9. Sometimes, the division is even more refined in that those living on one housing estate will find themselves in a state of bitter enmity with the inhabitants of another group of flats living just a few hundred yards away. Such situations, not just confined to the sprawl of London, led to an act of savagery carried out in Birmingham in January 2021.

On the 21st of January, 2021, a 15-year-old boy called Keon Lincoln was set upon by a group of other teenagers while he walked along the street near his home in the Birmingham district of Handsworth. He was stabbed eight times before a 14-year-old shot him twice in the stomach, causing his death. Lincoln had the ill fortune to live in a street associated with the ‘AR gang’, or ‘Armed Response Crew’, and those who attacked him were connected with the ‘GMG’, or ‘Get Money Gang’. This was the only reason that he had been murdered, for living in a street where a rival gang held sway. It was a typical example of a postcode war and all of the participants, both perpetrators and victim, were of African and Caribbean origin.

The expression Balkanisation was coined in the nineteenth century to describe the fragmentation of the Balkans, as the rule of the Ottoman Empire declined, into a collection of little statelets and small nations, divided up by those speaking different languages, following different religions, or even using different alphabets. In the Balkans, some use the Roman alphabet, while others write in the Cyrillic script. There are Catholics, Muslims, and members of the Orthodox Church: Albanians, Croats, and Serbs. With the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918 and the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes — later the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia —, it might have been thought that if ever there were a perfect recipe for a multicultural society, Yugoslavia was it. It was this separation of identities between the region’s constituent states, however, that led to the barbarity of the wars fought across the territory of the former state of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and those with any knowledge of history were able to see how the wind was likely to blow once the iron grip of Marshal Tito upon Yugoslavia was relaxed when he died in 1989.

Such trends are littered throughout history. When India became independent in 1947, it might have been thought that with the withdrawal of colonial forces, Hindus and Muslims would all live together in amity, rather than massacring each other and driving neighbours from their homes on a scale that produced millions of refugees. Upon the establishment of the state of Israel a year later in what was Palestine, it might have happened that Arabs and Jews would forge a multicultural community founded upon mutual trust and respect. Alas, that was not quite how matters resolved themselves. In the same way, the island of Cyprus looks as though it could have been a perfect example of multiculturalism. Greek Christians and Turkish Muslims should be able to rub along together well enough, surely? Well, the communal riots and massacres, followed by the Turkish invasion and division of the island into two hostile territories separated by barbed wire and minefields, tell another story. And who could ever have thought that following the independence of Nigeria in 1960 the Muslim Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba would fall upon each other with murderous intent in a bitter and genocidal civil war?

Whenever Muslims and Christians, Africans and Indians, or Jews and Gentiles live in the same city, they have a tendency to form separate communities which can sometimes be seen as ghettoes or ethnic enclaves. Whether this should or should not be the case, or if this is a natural and healthy process, is not at issue: the simple fact is that this is what happens. The notion that Britain might prove an exception to this tendency is strange and incomprehensible. Why on earth would things have turned out any differently in this country than they did in South Asia, Africa or the Middle East? Did people perhaps think that the great British sense of fair play would cause the case to be altered?

The situation in some British cities may not inaptly be compared to that which existed in rural areas of England at the time of the Second Crusade in the middle of the twelfth century. At that time, few ordinary people had travelled far from their homes and many had grown up never having seen a city. It is said that when a contingent from the countryside between Hereford and Worcester arrived at Gloucester, one yokel was so amazed at the sight of a city that he flew to attack the first people his troop encountered — he was under the impression that they had arrived at Jerusalem, and mistook the citizens of Gloucester for Saracens. A similarly parochial outlook now exists among young people in cities such as London and Birmingham; so restricted is their outlook that they regard those living a few streets away as mortal enemies, their horizons and loyalties bounded by areas of a couple of square miles at most.

‘Multiculturalism’ was devised by white, Western people, who did not realise that many minorities despise each other with as much unreasoning vigour as some white people feel towards black people or those from South Asia. Africans express contempt for Caribbeans, regarding them as a mongrel people. For their own part, an awful lot of Caribbeans regard Africans as being backward and unsophisticated. Ghanaian Ashantis do not care for Nigerians, and among Nigerians themselves, there are sharp divisions between Igbo and Yoruba, with memories of the Biafran War still causing ill-feeling. Muslims do not mix with Hindus, and Sikhs prefer to keep themselves to themselves. The central concept of multiculturalism, that all these historic divisions will somehow be immediately healed if the various parties can only be persuaded to amicably live and work side by side with well-meaning and progressive white citizens, is a fantasy. However desirable such a state of affairs might be, it is unlikely to come to fruition in our lifetimes or, very likely, during the lives of our children’s children either.

Simon Webb is the author of many books on social and military history. He also runs the History Debunked YouTube channel.