Thus the Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy, commented that Mr Blunkett’s remarks could have a perverse result – “given the delicate race relations situation we have” Phooey It’s good to talk. The question of how to remove racial prejudice from our society is not a subject that can be advanced by the exchange of bland, blame-free sentiments. We have also been told that only the political parties of the far right, the BNP and the National Front, would gain from a debate They will publish election literature quoting Mr Blunkett. In other words, we are asked to accept that these fringe groups have acquired the power to frighten us out of discussing a central issue in vigorous terms. No way.I pause, though, in front of the Home Secretary’s use of the word “home”. He said that those who come into “our home, for that is what it is” should accept our norms. The nation as a family, the family in its home, our island home, the homeland, all these words and phrases are unexceptionable as they stand, and comforting, too.

Yet this vocabulary can also suggest not the welcoming fire in the hearth but some one else’s place where immigrants are guests whose bags must always be half-packed, ready to leave. To have referred to “those who come to make their homes among us” would have been better. Or am I now slipping back into political correctness and leaving strenuous argument behind?Certain issues raised by Mr Blunkett have been shown to be marginal. Given that forced marriages and female genital mutilation are illegal here, what else is there to say? As for the need “for immigrants to obtain sufficient grasp of the English language for their own well-being and that of their children and grandchildren”, the Home Secretary is referring to what is a limited problem. It mainly affects Asian women who have recently arrived to marry into British families Some husbands are not keen for them to learn English.

But lack of English was not among the factors sparking the riots in northern cities. Second- and third-generation Asian Britons are as fluent as anybody. Why would anyone living here not want to learn the most useful language in the world?The most interesting issue raised by the Home Secretary concerned national identity It has prompted heartfelt and intelligent reactions. Mr Blunkett said that we needed to strengthen our own culture The Irish, Welsh and Scots celebrate their own identity. The English and the English regions need to celebrate their roots and their identity. And by doing so, and this was his crucial point, “be more confident in embracing and welcoming others” Notice the reference to Englishness rather than Britishness Devolution has wrecked the notion of Britishness.

Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish don’t any longer readily call themselves British.Yet, confusion worse confounded, the English don’t think about their nationality very much at all They do not pine for an English assembly. They say to themselves that the Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish can have as many assemblies as they like; they have all they need in the Houses of Parliament, badly working though they may be It is not that the English lack confidence in their skins Quite the opposite. They are absurdly, unreasonably, overbearingly confident in their identity. That is why they won’t accept identity cards.And let it be accepted that assimilation into the majority tribe is difficult. In a letter to the editor published last Wednesday, Selina Chen put the matter precisely: “those who have worked so hard to integrate socially and economically, to learn English and to moderate the social mores and the manners that the majority population find difficult, seldom get any recognition for their efforts and still suffer a degree of rebuff and exclusion.”Two pathways out of these difficulties are becoming apparent One is the example of London. A substantial proportion of the capital comprises immigrant communities. And while London can show plenty of examples of racial disharmony and has its share of racially motivated violence, it is nonetheless one of the most successfully cosmopolitan cities on earth.