Accommodating Muslims and Hindus “robs Britain of its community” and risks turning the country into a “crime-riddled cesspool” as a result, the Conservative candidate for London mayor declared in a thinktank pamphlet he wrote a decade ago.
Shaun Bailey voiced concerns about the marking of Muslim and Hindu festivals, claimed children were being taught more about Diwali than Christmas, and argued Britain “removing the religion that British people generally take to” had allowed immigrants to bring their countries’ cultural problems with them.
In his “no man’s land” pamphlet (pdf) for the Centre for Policy Studies about the problems faced by young people in inner-city areas, Bailey also appeared to confuse Hindi speakers with the Hindu religion.
“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 days off. What it does is rob Britain of its community. Without our community, we slip into a crime-riddled cesspool,” he wrote in 2005.
“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.”
A few paragraphs later, Bailey argued it was easier for the black community to integrate into British society because there were shared Christian values. “Within the black community, it is not such a bad thing, because we’ve shared a religion and in many cases a language. It’s…
