The terrorist attack on a train in England over the weekend has resulted in the arrests of two men, both British citizens of Caribbean heritage. Depending on your political affiliations, you will likely consider one part of that sentence more important than the other. Our friends on the left will – fairly it must be said – note that the two people the authorities believe are responsible for the attack are products of the British state, its culture, and its education system. Some of our friends on the right will – also fairly – speculate that the two men may well have felt that their Caribbean heritage was more important to them than their British heritage when they decided to – allegedly – start stabbing people en masse on a train.
What is abundantly clear, whichever side of that particular debate about identity you come down on, is that this is yet another example of British (and, it must be said, broader western) policy around immigration and integration ultimately bearing poisonous fruit. We can say with some certainty that had the two suspects’ families not ultimately been admitted to the United Kingdom, the passengers on that train would not have had to face a knife attack allegedly carried out by their descendants.
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