Today’s Daily Telegraph has an editorial endorsing the views of the late Ray Honeyford, the former Bradford head teacher whose racist statements were widely condemned in the 1980s.

According to the Telegraph, Honeyford merely “believed that multiculturalism was doing a disservice to children from immigrant backgrounds, who were denied the benefits of full integration with the society into which they would grow up”. The editorial denounces the “vilification of Mr Honeyford”, which supposedly “played into the hands of extremists seeking to foment discord, such as Abu Qatada”. It claims that the lesson to be drawn from the controversy is that “shutting down debate about cultural assimilation is short-sighted and dangerous”.

These arguments are no doubt familiar to Telegraph readers. Back in 2006 one of the paper’s columnists wrote an article that took a similar line on Honeyford and multiculturalism. In an attack on the then Labour home secretary the columnist wrote:

… here is how John Reid could prove that he was really tough. Here is the bravest thing he could possibly say. He should say that the real problem in our society, and the reason we have so many disaffected and alienated Muslim youths, is that for a generation he and people like him supported the disastrous multicultural agenda. The reason that 40 per cent of British Muslims would like some form of Sharia law in this country is that the Left has traditionally deprecated British institutions and even the teaching of English. A truly brave John Reid would now publicly grovel to Ray Honeyford, the Bradford head who called for teaching in English and who was vilified and persecuted by the Left.

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