oct 3rd 2006 -

.When the website was first mentioned we thought what a great idea. It surprised us because it was in part run by the Department of Culture. Who could have blamed us for at least thinking that it was a step in the right direction that they were at least acknowledging that there are such things as ENGLISH (not British) cultural icons.

Our optimism wasn't to last and it wasn't long before the whole thing descended into yet another PC multi-cultural marketing exercise. And guess who was paying for it?

It tried to sell itself as a reflection of what English people regarded as their own cultural icons but this couldn't be further from the truth as it disregarded what people actually thought and instead reflected the pre-ordained view of their own, that England was some kind of multi-cultural paradise.

Firstly in the original list of English icons, chosen by a panel of experts, they had The Windrush. Not a good start! An icon it may be to some people - a black British icon, an Afro-Caribbean icon, but an English icon it is not.

The next list of icons to come out, which were supposedly determined by the public's nominations and voting included Brick Lane and The Notting Hill Carnival. When this second list came out the Department of Culture hailed it and announced that the Notting Hill Carnival and Brick Lane had been included as English icons because they are "one of the 21 most voted for icons suggested by the public since the website was set up in January" This is at best misleading and at worst an outright lie. Robert Henderson using the Freedom of Information Act managed to get the actual voting figures. The Notting Hill Carnival was chosen to go on the list of English icons despite 84.5% of the public voting AGAINST it being an English icon. Brick Lane was chosen despite only 20 people bothering to take part in the vote, 13 in favour and 7 voting against.

No matter what the public think, they think that they know best and they will decide on our behalf what is and what isn't an English icon. They'd already decided what they were going to put in. It was a forgone conclusion. The Notting Hill carnival was put in to include the Black population and the Brick Lane to include Asians.

We are being continually propagandised and it is all one way. It is only English culture that is multi-culturalised. It is only manifestations of Englishness that they see the need to change to make more inclusive. When do you ever here of elements of ethnic minority culture or ethnic minority events that are asked to change so they can include more English people? When our schools or local councils organise a multi-cultural event when is English culture ever represented.

The "propagander" is a way to condition English people into believing that we have no culture and all we have is a mish mash of everyone else's. They would have us believe that we have nothing to lose from this and everything to gain. The entire basis of multi-culturalism is founded on the principle of English people having their culture and way of life eaten away at in order to make way for others. They will always promote other cultures because they see it as adding to multi-culturalism while at the same time discouraging Englishness for the same reason. They fear a re-awakening of an English communal identity because people would then see that having other cultures promoted at our expense makes our own country less English. Why would we want that....TC