In the postwar period, British elites launched a great multicultural experiment, then strove to prove that this system was compatible with Britain’s cherished liberal tradition. This gave birth to modern British exceptionalism: the faith that Britain’s blend of liberalism and multiculturalism uniquely solves the problems of building a multiethnic nation. Unlike Canada’s, Britain’s multiculturalism never had to reckon with a separatist movement. No far-right, anti-immigration party akin to France’s Front National swept into Westminster. And while Britain passed US-style anti-discrimination laws, it avoided the racially charged political debates of American politics. British elites worked hard to achieve this, and successfully marginalized anti-immigration politicians such as Enoch Powell. For years, British elites prided themselves on having removed the sensitive issue of race from partisan politics.
In the past few years, though, elites have acknowledged that this multicultural-liberal synthesis is on the defensive. Multiculturalism and liberalism are only compatible as long as minority groups are committed to liberal values, and within Britain, major minority groups quite clearly aren’t. This is why politicians now regularly argue for a more muscular civic nationalism. Concerns about the failures of integration abound. Homegrown Islamic terrorism is a problem. Politicians want to be seen as addressing these issues, reassuring voters they still live in a liberal nation.
“Multiculturalism, not liberalism, governs Britain.”
But the renewed attention to the grooming gangs scandal—which has at last forced the legacy media to grapple with its enormity—shows up all those paeans to civic liberal nationalism as empty chatter. Multiculturalism, not liberalism, governs Britain. For decades, networks of men, mostly from Pakistani Muslim backgrounds, have sexually abused white British girls across the United Kingdom. The scale of the abuse scandal is staggering: according to one government report, 2,409 children were confirmed as victims of sexual exploitation by gangs during a 14-month period from August 2010 to October 2011. The number of total victims remains unknown. The 2022 Independent Enquiry into Child Sexual Abuse concluded that “the sexual exploitation of children by groups of associated abusers continues to be widespread, to a greater extent than official statistics indicate.”
The scandal proves something that the standard debate around multiculturalism never acknowledged. Because multiculturalism made the promotion of minority races and cultures a key goal, it required double standards in public morality, institutions, and law, and thereby undermined equal treatment. Multiculturalism therefore changed the British state and British society in ways that the myth of British exceptionalism sought to mask. Counter to the claims of this myth, multiculturalism and liberalism proved incompatible.