SAREC’s stated purpose is

•    to promote the benefits of a culturally rich society and support the ethnic, racial, religious, linguistic and cultural diversity present within St Albans;
•    to work towards the elimination of racial discrimination; and
•    to promote equality of opportunity and good community relations between persons of different racial and cultural groups within the district of St Albans.

Similar bodies used to exist elsewhere in Hertfordshire, but now SAREC stands alone.  I think it has the potential to play an increasingly invaluable role, although it does need to recruit more young and female members and involve some of the other ethnic groups within the city and district who are not currently represented.

But last night’s council chamber audience included representatives from the Italian, Moroccan, Bangladeshi and Kashmiri communities as well of course as Anglo-Saxons and myself as an immigrant from Scotland.

I had been asked to speak on the topic “Is Multiculturalism Dead?”  Given yesterday’s furore about the producer of the Midsomer Murders series saying that he wanted to portray a “genuinely English” village without ethnic minorities, it was a timely topic.

I began by pointing out that respect for others and for human rights is in the DNA of St Albans.  Alban was executed for giving shelter to a Christian priest who was being hunted down by the state during one of the periodic persecutions of the third century AD.  He sought to slay a dragon of prejudice, and while the Roman town from which he came is nothing but dust and a few bricks, the new town which arose around his shrine is our flourishing city today.

Magna Carta was drafted in the city, the first written formulation of fundamental rights.  So we stand on the shoulders of giants.

I described my own experience in Berlin in 1972 of being the only westerner in a gang of Turkish lorry loaders.  My Turkish colleagues were very kind to me with a natural courtesy and hospitality though they could never understand why I was there when I came from a rich country.

It was very apparent that there were two classes of worker, native German and Turkish, indeed two classes of citizen with Turks not given full citizenship.  If there wasn’t enough protective gear, the Germans got it.  There were beer machines in the canteen dispensing bottled beer.  The Turks of course did not drink – at least not in public – but some of the Germans did and there were accidents.  Later I had my hand crushed quite badly because a German operative was too slow in stopping a particular crane manoeuvre.

One day there was a conference for the window manufacturing industry in the city and delegates came to visit the factory.  I and my Turkish colleagues were made to sit in the back of a low loader, hiding behind its canvass sides, so that we would not spoil the perfect picture of a German factory.

After six months I had no money, it was the longest I had ever been away, indeed the first time I had ever left the shores of Great Britain, so I decided it was time to come home.  And I still remember as if it were yesterday my wave of emotion as the boat train pulled into Victoria Station and there was a black policeman standing on the platform in his uniform with the the classic police helmet – that one image defined just how different Britain was from the middle Europe I had seen.

So I admit to starting with a bias towards the idea of multiculturalism.  Of course it’s a topic which has recently been addressed both by Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg – both drawing rather different conclusions, although both leaning heavily on the term “muscular liberalism.”

There are more definitions of multiculturalism than you can shake a stick at.  And those that like playing dogwhistle politics seem to come up with the definition that suits them, setting up a “straw man” and then knocking it down.

When I looked up my copy of the full Oxford English Dictionary (1989 edition), it defines multicultural(ism) as “of or pertaining to a society consisting of varied cultural groups.”  I was intrigued to see that the noun (as compared with the adjective multicultural) was coined relatively recently in Canada and related to the problems of accommodating both English-speaking and French-speaking cultures, which of course has been a huge challenge for that country.

Now it seems to have become code language for how we live with those from the growing Islamic communities, rarely other communities, and the word has become a bone to be chewed over, and often dangerously submerged into discussions about terrorism and security.

In his speech, David Cameron defined “the doctrine of state multiculturalism” as a strategy which has “encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream”.  Now it seems to me that whether that is an accurate reflection of the previous government’s policies, I challenge it as an exclusive definition of multiculturalism.

In fact definitions of multiculturalism refer to anything from people of different communities living alongside each other to ethnic or religious groups leading completely separate lives.  That is a pretty broad church of interpretations.

Lord Sacks, Chief Rabbi, wrote in the Times that multiculturalism was intended to create a more tolerant society, one in which everyone, regardless of colour, creed or culture, felt at home. I think we would all agree with that.  But then he warned against any underlying message that “there is no need to integrate”.  His distinction was between tolerance and multiculturalism and he seems to warn against a multiculturalism which dissolves national identity, shared values and collective identity, “making it impossible for groups to integrate because there is nothing to integrate into”.

It seems to me that he again is setting up a distorted image of multiculturalism so he can take a pop at it.

I prefer the thoughts of Indian-born Professor (now Lord) Bhikhu Parekh, who is himself a glittering example of multicultural success in Britain.  In his definition, far from “putting people into ethnic boxes” multiculturalism is a “fusion in which a culture borrows bits of others and creatively transforms both itself and them”.

Anyone who goes for a chicken tikka massala after a night in the pub listening to reggae music would say Amen to that.

And if not multiculturalism, what?  Hands up who wants monoculturalism?

Do we really all want to wear the same clothes, eat the same food, listen to the same music, read the same newspaper, believe the same ideas, and vote for the same politicians?  I don’t think so.

We have a German exchange student visiting us at this very moment and this last weekend we took her and two of her German friends together with their English partners down to Camden Lock in London.  We then rode with them on the top deck of a bus down to Chinatown.  The young German visitors were blown away.  It was a demonstration of an open, confident society, one whose ethnic and cultural diversity is a strength in a globalizing world.

But we have to work at it all the time.  That is why I applauded SAREC and the early inter-faith discussions here in St Albans in my remarks.  As Nick Clegg, speaking as Deputy Prime Minister, said in his recent speech in Luton, open, liberal societies are not self-creating, or self-maintaining.  They need to be renewed and re-established, generation after generation.  He observed that the price of liberty is not just eternal vigilance, it’s also eternal labour – working to maintain respect and tolerance and understanding.

And that means us as individuals, not just waiting for the council or government or SAREC to do it.  The rallying call for the French Revolution was Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.  Politics is too often about the tussle between the competing demands of liberty and equality.  We don’t hear enough about fraternity, about looking out for our neighbour, whoever he or she may be.

Recently my wife’s church unexpectedly lost its priest.  As an interim measure, we gained a wonderful Ghanaian priest called Father Augustine.  He had come over from Ghana on sabbatical to study in the seminary and was suddenly parachuted by himself into a Hertfordshire village church.  We used to invite him round for supper, my children absolutely adored him.  Towards the end of his stay, I asked him what had most surprised him about Britain.  He answered two things: snow, and the fact that people do not greet one another on the street.

I was very struck by that latter observation and the truths it contains.  We have a lot to learn from the teachings of Islam and the Prophet’s injunction that we should know and look out for our neighbours up to forty houses on each side.  Sometimes as a game I ask friends if they can name the people in just the three houses on each side of them.  It is so rare that they can.

So we need to work harder to know and understand one another.  We don’t want conformity to crush liberty – but in liberal societies, we each need to defend the freedoms of others in exchange for freedom for ourselves.

It’s a two-way street that is about welcoming diversity but resisting division.

I finished with the poem “They Came” by Martin Niemoller:

First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out- because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists and I did not speak out – because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me – and by then there was no one left to speak out for me.

We need to speak out for Britain as a multicultural society and St Albans as a multicultural community.

There are so many different grounds why this proposal is wholly unsuitable for the site -

• “coalescence” of currently separate communities destroying any remaining sense of a rural setting for the south of our city and district
• massively increased lorry traffic on a highway infrastructure which is already close to breaking point
• much of the workforce operating the site having to be imported daily from miles away adding to unnecessary traffic congestion
• a whole mass of unanswered questions about the impact on commuter rail services which are vital to the economy of St Albans and the surrounding villages, and
• the terrible impact on the quality of life of those living near the site.

But I wanted to highlight in particular the loss of the long-distance view from the south of St Albans Abbey. There are good grounds for saying this was the very cradle of Christianity in Britain. It is the only British cathedral built on the site of a martyrdom – Britain’s first Christian martyr. I have always believed that St Alban would be an ideal patron saint for Britain.

St Albans Abbey may not be the greatest piece of ecclesiastical architecture in Britain – but miraculously given its proximity to London it still sails above a recognisably medieval town with a skyline punctuated by Abbey Tower, clock tower and St Peters Church. Tens of thousands of rail travellers see this view every day – and religious or not, their spirits must be uplifted by the sight.

Suddenly that view is to be expunged and and the view from the railway line will be of great slab-sided warehousing. St Albans Civic Society has commissioned a brilliant poster designed by Roger Harlow which makes the point more powerfully than any words can.

What happened in Roman Verulamium nearly two thousand years ago was an act of huge significance for the history of our nation. The great church standing on a hill has been a beacon for pilgrims and travellers for a thousand years. To expunge this view is no less than cultural vandalism showing total contempt for the history of our island.

It must be prevented.The full text of my letter to the Director of Planning follows:

Director of Planning
St Albans District Council
St Peter’s Street
St Albans
AL1 3JE

Dear Sir

Re: Proposed Rail Freight Terminal, Park Street

Planning Ref: 5/2009/0708

I am writing to express my whole-hearted objection to the proposed Helioslough development.

Quite simply the proposed freight terminal remains a wholly inappropriate use for the proposed location:

• It completely destroys the careful separation of St Albans, Park Street and London Colney
• The impact on the local road network will not be addressed by the proposed fairly minor remedial works.
• It does not address any employment need local to St Albans.
• There remain many unanswered questions about the rail access – not least the impact on current heavily used commuter services which are vital to the economies of the communities between Luton and outer London; and whether the Elstree Tunnel will ever be brought up to full W10 railway gauge to allow it to accommodate full size European container trains or if that will always be an “aspiration”. .
• There can only be damage to the quality of life of the large residential population living adjacent and near to the site.

The argument was made by the previous Inspector and endorsed by then Secretary of State that a so-called “strategic” railfreight terminal had an economic importance that outweighed most normal planning and Green Belt objections provided there was clear evidence that no alternative Green Belt or non Green Belt site existed. I have inspected at least one alternative site at Sundon north of Luton which has been identified by ProLogis and it has clear advantages over the Park Street site.

But I wish to highlight the implications of the potential catastrophic impact on the iconic distant view of St Albans from the south and in particular from the Midland Mainline as illustrated in the specially commissioned St Albans Civic Society poster. Nearly 2,000 years ago the first British Christian martyr was put to death on a hill outside Roman Verulamium. A shrine was built to St Alban and his body was laid to rest there. A settlement grew and became St Albans. The Abbey church grew and became the premier monastery and place of pilgrimage in England before becoming Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire’s cathedral church. Miraculously the cathedral still stands on its hill unobscured as a beacon for all faiths in a city which arguably has the highest church attendance of any place in Britain. And now it is to be hidden by a giant shed, an outcome as catastrophic to the genius loci of Britain as tower blocks cramming in on St Paul’s or the Tower of London..

This is a proposed development of almost unimaginable scale on a site where the Green Belt is already under significant stress. The increase in traffic will cause chaos to the whole south of St Albans district. The claimed employment, environmental and ecological benefits of the proposed scheme are largely a mirage.

As was stated in the previous public inquiry, the Helioslough scheme has a floor area much greater than Terminal 5 at Heathrow and a volume that could comfortably accommodate all of the residential properties within Park Street, Bricket Wood, Chiswell Green, London Colney and Colney Heath. With the damage to the greenfield context of one of the most significant religious sites in Britain, it is wholly inappropriate and should therefore be rejected by the District Council and any subsequent appeal fought with the utmost vigour.

Yours sincerely

Sandy Walkington