Banned wagon
A weekly survey of the things our rulers want to prohibit
AS demonstrated by the emasculated Rio carnival that was the Millennium Dome's opening ceremony, multicultur- alism is one of the government's favourite battle-cries. But just how deep does its commitment to other cultures go? About as deep, it turns out, as an aborigine's battledress. While New Labour is comfortable encouraging eth- nic dancing, there is only one culture that it will tolerate when it comes to real issues, and that is human-rights culture.
The Home Office minister Mike O'Brien has launched an action plan against arranged marriages — or `forced marriages' as the government likes to call them. The tradition of par- ents choosing their children's marital partners — long-established among families from the Indian subcontinent who have subsequently settled in Britain — has now been declared a `fundamental breach of human rights'. Though it stops short of proposing an outright ban on arranged marriages, a Home Office report suggests helpfully that sex within such a marriage hence- forth be considered to be rape.
The plan has already come up against strong opposition from the more conser- vative-minded elements of Asian society, who see arranged marriages as instru- mental in the stability of their family life, and who look with horror upon the dys- functional white families whom they live alongside. As a result, the government is studious in using the term 'forced mar- riages' — an example of 'force' being a Leeds couple saying that they would fund their daughter's university educa- tion only if she agreed to their choice of husband upon graduation.
Judged through Western eyes, those parents might seem to be rotters (though their actions are little different from some corporations who sponsor students' education). But are we really confident that free choice is a better way of ensuring lasting marriages? For every arranged marriage that ends in tears in this country, there are several marriages of free choice that end in vio- lence, murder or the casual casting aside of a spouse in, say, an airport departure lounge. Ross Clark
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