There are certain folk in here that are quick to jump to conclusions about what I'm saying and even who I am.
I've spent most of my working life in export, lived in Nigeria for a bit, travelled extensively mostly in the developing world, particularly the Middle East, just when my career was taking off I ditched it and worked for a fair trade charity based out of the old London county hall, then run by Ken Livingstone and I spent three years promoting goods in the UK imported from co-operatives in Africa, shoes and coffee from Nicaragua, rum from Cuba, even fruit and vegetables from North Africa, sorting out supply lines, payment all that sort of thing, often exporting back to the supplier stuff they need like packing machinery and so on.
It burnt me out.
I then went back into the private sector for fifteen years, then ditched that to do consultancy work for UK Trade and Investment and ended up working for Ken Livingstone again, this time mostly with the Bangladeshi community in East London and the West African community in West London, I got that gig because I was good at it and I wanted it.
Then I moved to Norfolk to get married and ended up doing much the same (yes even in Norfolk) I did this work coz in truth no one else wanted it, it was too "difficult" and meeting folk from different cultures I found exciting and often challenging.
The main challenges were that so many members of our ethnic minorities feel alienated from the mainstream, in this case mainstream business culture, so they often opted for the usual trades that certain ethnic minorities have made their own. Even when they do branch out certain cultural practices hold them back, my job was to challenge that.
But what was so depressing, particularly under the old GLC, was the patronisation of ethnic minorities, under the dogma of multiculturalism.
Under multiculturalism to urge alienated groups to look beyond their own community and bend to the mainstream culture, the mainstream business culture, is a bit tricky, particularly if your political stand point is that mainstream capitalism is shit, and there's no such thing as mainstream culture anyway, and if there is it's nothing more than a mechanism to keep the establishment in charge and the downtrodden in their place.
That was the big problem under Livingstone, he didn't know how stuff worked but he knew it was all part of the cycle of power and oppression. He set insane targets, 20% of London businesses were ethnic minority owned, so 20% of London's exports must come from ethnic minority businesses. But ethnic minority businesses tend to be in the local service industry, food, retail, import and so on, so they don't have much to export, even if they were so inclined, but that didn't matter, his target was met, on paper at least, but in reality of course it wasn't.
Under the banner of multiculturalism the old GLC pumped oodles of cash into all sorts of "black business groups" and "Asian business forums" , that were little more than a grifters paradise and delivered next to nothing. Everything we did to celebrate diversity emphasised difference at the expense of unity, coz Livingstone believed diversity is strength, except it isn't, unity is strength and that comes from unity of purpose, and if not that, consent will do, and in the last resort compliance. Coz the world is not as we would like it, but withdrawing into pockets of the familiar, all the time, and baking it into a dogma, isn't going to change it.
The lie at the centre of all this multiculturalism bullshit is there's no mainstream culture, but I'm afraid there is and if you want to better yourself and your community you've got to acknowledge that and get with the programme, and that is simply the truth of it. So folk can call me a fascist, a racist, a communist a nasty person and so on, knock yourself out. But we all have to bend to earn a crust and get by, regardless of race, colour and whatnot and telling folk otherwise doesn't do them any favours.
