Tory London mayor candidate condemned over claim multiculturalism 'robs Britain of its community'
4 min read
The Conservative candidate to be the next London mayor has been criticised over a paper he wrote claiming multiculturalism risked turning Britain into a “crime-riddled cesspool”.
Shaun Bailey sparked anger after he said schools were “removing” Christianity at the expense of other religions, and that immigrants were being allowed “to bring their country’s cultural problems with them”.
The revelations come less than a week after the London Assembly member won the race to stand for the Tories against Sadiq Khan in the 2020 mayoral election.
In a 2005 pamphlet, titled No Man's Land and unearthed by The Guardian, Mr Bailey wrote: "You bring your children to school and they learn far more about Diwali than Christmas.
"I speak to the people who are from Brent and they’ve been having Muslim and Hindi [sic] days off.
"What it does is rob Britain of its community. Without our community we slip into a crime-riddled cesspool,”
"There are a lot of really good things about Britain as a place and British people as a body.
"But by removing the religion that British people generally take to, by removing the ethics that generally go with it, we’ve allowed people to come to Britain and bring their culture, their country and any problems they might have, with them."
The former youth worker, who went on to become an adviser to David Cameron, also claimed that black migrants found it easier to integrate because they shared a religion and often the same language.
Elsewhere Mr Bailey said that without the sense of community brought by shared Christian celebrations, the UK had a generation of people who would not fight for the country.
The comments drew comparison with Zac Goldsmith’s mayoral campaign of 2016, which was widely criticised as being divisive.
Labour MP for Hammersmith, Andy Slaughter, said: "It is increasingly clear that he holds views that are at best divisive and at worst Islamophobic.
“London went through this once before with Zac Goldsmith’s hideous campaign for mayor and quite frankly we deserve much better than this from the Conservative party.”
Shadow Cabinet members and London MPs Emily Thornberry and Dawn Butler also seized on Mr Bailey's claims.
A spokesman for Mr Bailey said: “As a descendant of the Windrush generation, and someone who has worked with diverse communities for over 20 years, Shaun knows full well the challenges faced by BAME communities.”
“Shaun has made it his life’s work to help those from migrant and disadvantaged communities, and to suggest otherwise is ludicrous.
In reference to a 2010 blog post from Emma Dent Coad, the Labour MP for Kensington since 2017, they added: "As someone who has received racist abuse from the Labour party, who let’s not forget branded the community worker a ‘token ghetto boy’, this is a little rich."
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