This is a guest post by CSC Research Intern Tom Bumstead:
The Metropolitan Police Sikh
Association (MPSA) has recently made the transition from being merely incoherent viz a viz social
cohesion into being actively insulting to that principle.
In the last few days Sikh's have been given
the right to request that a Sikh officer investigate their case. Palbinder
Singh, chairman of the MPSA, yesterday defended this move declaring that, 'I
don't believe a white officer is ever going to be fully conversant with a
Sikh.' This horrific statement shows, once again, the terminus of well meaning
policies of multiculturalism. You start off trying to empower vulnerable
members of society and you end up with a senior member of the police force
spouting this type of nonsense on our time and with our money.
This is not a 'political correctness gone
mad' rant - the MPSA has done some valuable work in implementing one of the
recommendations made by the CSC report Crimes
of the Community through its pioneering of a website that allows women to
make complaints of honour-based violence safely and anonymously. Neither is
Singh the only villain of the piece. An article in the Express that picks up on
this story chooses to lead with 'Muslims could get own Police' despite the fact
that this idea has never been suggested- the only justification for this
horror-show byline is the precedent set by the Sikh's. The reasons for the
title chosen rather than, say, 'Jews to get own Police' or 'Hindus to get own
Police' are better left to the imagination.
Singh probably doesn't deserve the
demonization he will receive amongst certain sections of the blogging classes,
nor the defense he will receive from others, he merely articulates a pervasive
rot that has set in to our public discourse. Its treatment can only come when
we cease to speak of 'communities' and cease to treat them as a political
entity. We should remember that a truly liberal society has only one political
building block- the individual- who has neither gender nor colour nor creed.
NOTE: The British Sikh Police Association is in no way connected to the Metropolitan Police Sikh Association.
