'tis the night of Halloween...

...and strange and inhuman creatures are out and about.

Oh yes indeed. And none stranger than the beings that dwell deep in the offices of the left-wing think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). For the IPPR is about to publish a report on the subject of "Britishness" and race relations, which, from its content, one might suppose more suited for the first day of April than for any other day of the year. Calling for a "multicultural understanding of Britishness", the report graciously concedes that immigrants to the UK should learn to speak English

...if - but only if - the settled population is willing to open up national institutions and practices to newcomers and give a more inclusive cast to national narratives and symbols.

Note to those unfamiliar with leftyspeak: "settled population" means the native population of this country, while "open up national institutions and practices" means "give up national institutions and practices", and "give a more inclusive cast to national narratives and symbols" means "recast our culture into something unrecognisable, in order to please those immigrants who refuse to make any effort to integrate".

In order to "give a more inclusive cast" to Britain's unspeakably evil culture, the authors of the report propose a number of changes to our way of life, including:

"Birth ceremonies", at which state and parents agree to "work in partnership" to bring up children.

Now, I don't like to overuse cliches, but this really is like something out of Brave New World. Raising children is not a "partnership" between parents and the state, it is the right and - more importantly - the duty of parents to raise their children as they see fit, with the government only stepping in where the parents prove themselves incapable of doing this for themselves. Otherwise, the state has no business interfering in the manner in which people raise their offspring.

I also wonder whether these ceremonies will be compulsory? If so, what is going to happen if parents refuse to take part? Prison? Forfeiture of the children to the state? And if such ceremonies are not to be compulsory, how many cretins do they think they are going to persuade to take part?

Action to "ensure access" for ethnic minorities to "largely white" countryside.

It's true that the countryside is "largely white". A bit like the country as a whole really, only more so. It's a shame that the IPPR are so offended by the sight - or even the mere thought - of large numbers of white people. Still, the way some people go on, you'd think that the British countryside was some hotbed of Nazism, and that any black person who ventured into it would be lucky to escape without being lynched. This is, of course, rubbish. If black people want to go for a day's hill-walking, they need only jump in the car and drive, the same as the rest of us. If they want to buy a house in the country, then they only need to raise the necessary funds and it's theirs. The same as the rest of us. And as for the threat of "racism": well, I'd bet that it's a lot safer being a non-white person in the depths of rural England, than it is being white in some such centre of vibrant diversity as Brixton or Brick Lane. There is simply no need for any action along the lines proposed.

An overhaul of Britain's "imperial" honours system.

Why? Because Benjamin Zephaniah gets upset that we have the phrase "British Empire" in some of our honours?

The fact is, that the honours system reflects our history and our heritage. To seek to alter our honours system because it has become politically incorrect constitutes an assault upon the heritage that the system represents. It is an attempt a) to make the British people ashamed of their cultural heritage, and b) to, in the long-run, engender the belief that we have no cultural heritage at all.

Flying flags other than the Union Flag.

I assume they refer to the flags flown on public buildings. I don't know what other flags they mean, but I'd guess it's not the national flags of Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland to which they refer. Nor even, in this instance, the EU flag, although I don't suppose that the IPPR would be wholly averse to seeing that replacing the Union Flag at some point in the future. I assume, therefore, that the flags in question are those of the home countries of the UK's major (and most vocal) immigrant groups, such as Pakistan.
Clearly, this proposal should also be opposed. This is Britain, not any other country, and if the IPPR and the government really want to induce enhanced civic unity and loyalty to Britain then they should be aiming to strengthen our traditional symbols of nationhood (which, incidentally, also includes our honours system - see above), rather than undermining them. But, I'd guess that the real reason for encouraging the flying of foreign flags is that it will further promote the cultural deracination of the native British people, leaving them more willing to accept the destruction and replacement of their culture and way of life.

Other proposals include the removal of Bishops from the House of Lords (a further attempt to strip us of our cultural heritage) and making school religious studies classes "less sectarian" (personally, I wasn't aware that they were sectarian - I mean, it's not like they're teaching from the Chick Tracts, is it?). However, there is one proposal which seems to be getting rather more attention than all the others:

Christmas should be downgraded in favour of festivals from other religions to improve race relations...Labour's favourite think-tank says that because it would be hard to 'expunge' Christmas from the national calendar, 'even-handedness' means public organisations must start giving other religions equal footing.

Given the place in the national psyche that Christmas has acquired, this is, more than any other part of the proposals, an attempt to undermine and destroy our traditional culture, heritage, and sense of national identity. I'd particularly point out that, from the phrasing the IPPR have used, it appears that their preferred option would be to "expunge" Christmas altogether, but that, knowing this to be impossible, they have instead opted to seek its dilution, and the dilution of the Christian heritage which it represents.

And that, really, is the theme running through all of the proposals that the IPPR has come up with: dilution. Dilution of our culture, heritage, and identity. Our national flag, our history, and our national religion will all be belittled, while the flags, heritages, and religions of the immigrant groups in our society will be given enhanced status. The aim, I believe, is to create the impression that Britain has no history, that it has no religious or cultural heritage, that it was, in fact, an uninhabited and unclaimed land until about 1948, when all the ethnic groups now inhabiting it arrived together, all with an equal claim upon it (that it is, in fact, a paradigmatic "nation of immigrants"). Thus they hope to lay the foundations for the creation of some gloriously unprecedented multicultural utopia. They won't succeed in this, of course, but if they get their way in other matters then they will succeed in utterly annihilating our British way of life. Which they probably want even more than they want the multicultural utopia.

Update: I have now posted an abridged, and hopefully somewhat less repetitive, version of the above over at ATW.