Margaret Hodge's criticism of the Proms has been widely slated. But there's another aspect of her speech that's even odder. She asked:
How do we reconcile commitment to common nationhood whilst celebrating difference and diversity?
This strikes me as weird. I no more feel a commitment to my nation than a fish feels committed to being wet. And celebrating diversity makes as much sense as celebrating language or opposable thumbs.
So, why is Hodge making an issue of something I take for granted. Here are some (non-exhaustive) possibilities:
1. We see immigration differently. As a Leicester lad, immigration for me happened back in the early 70s. The problems raised by immigration are like kipper ties or Mark III Cortinas - quaint historic curiosities. By contrast, although Hodge is an immigration herself, she sees migration as a new thing:
[Barking has] moved in the 14 years since I’ve been the MP, from a place where I had never met so many great grandmothers who lived within 10 minutes’ walk of their great grandchildren to an area where typically in one primary school, the cohort of children from BME communities rose from 26% to 40% in just one year.
To Hodge, then, the disequilibrium effects of immigration loom large, whereas to me the longer-term benefits are more obvious.
2. Hodge's illiberal instincts stop here seeing the obvious - that a common nationhood and diversity can be achieved simply by liberty and the rule of law; had she paid more attention to the last night of the proms, she'd have heard something about the "mother of the free."
Diversity and nationhood are problems because the government is making them so.
3. These same illiberal instincts mean she doesn't have the instinctive love of diversity that liberals do. There's something puzzling about New Labour calling on us to celebrate diversity whilst at the same time wishing to turn us all into a more homogenous type: slim, ambitious, prudent, and sober. When Hodge says "celebrate diversity" it's a message to herself, rather like Basil Fawlty's "don't mention the war" - with the same effect.
4. "Diversity" is an issue for people like Hodge because they have the choice of escaping it or not*. As Andrew Anthony said:
The liberal arts community, for all its eloquence in anti-racism, is far more inclined to retreat to private schools and affluent enclaves, the better to maintain a homogenous culture while pronouncing on the benefits of diversity.
Others, of course, lack this choice, so just have to live with diversity.
So, am I missing something here? Is there a dog whistle I'm not hearing? Or - to change the metaphor clunkily - an elephant in the room I'm not seeing?
* OK, I too live in homogenous areas - Belsize Park and Oakham - but this isn't because I'm trying to escape "diversity".
On Hodge's Stalinist tendencies, am I alone among those able to remember Radio Tirana and her own activities in Islington in the 1970s in calling her 'Hoxha'?
Posted by: Paul M | March 07, 2008 at 04:12 PM