THIS a story: about creating tolerance and a multi-racial, multi-cultural society in an old country. England as you all know is the oldest surviving polity which has never suffered defeat by foreign hands since 1066 (the Norman Conquest) and which has never had a revolution except for the brief Deriod of Cromwell's Protecto rate For many, Great Britain is synonymous with England, and teh UK is just another name for it. It was a arrogant triumphalist confident nation that rules the world and more ruled the other nationalities on the islands. It was also an intolerant state. Only Protestants counted since Henry the VIIIth's renunciation of Rome. Not just Jews but Catholics were also discriminated against in matter of jobs and titles and security of property and admission to unversitities. Add to that the influx of fimmigrants from the Carbbean and South Asia and Africa in the 1950s and the tension on the old polity were enorumous. It lost in Suez and the end of the Imperial era was sounded. There was a lost of angst.
There was a, lot,of intolerance shown to begin with. Enoch Powell lit the match on a dry tinder box of racism, all the time pretending to be a statesman. Even Mrs Thatcher wobbled for awhile before she becme prime Minister and talked of felling swamped. But over the last two decades there has been a fightback and, painfully though surely, a new society is being credit. Torerance is hard work; it cannot be taken for granted even in a country where everyone swears that they are tolerant as the next man ro woman.
Consider how far the country has come. The other day two British soliders died in Kosovo, the first two casualties of the war. But one of them was a Gurkha while the other was