Multi-Lingual Britain Cannot Last
Should England Speak English?
Confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech
Genesis 11:7
Podcaster Andrew Gold was met with a curious rejoinder on Iain Dale’s LBC radio show this week. Gold, a former BBC Presenter and mainstream media apostate, was describing the “unrecognisable” change of certain areas in England. Specifically, like in his neighbourhood of Bristol, where “there is nobody speaking English”.
“So what? Why do you care?” his host snapped back. I began to wonder whether Gold was about to be accused of racism. But he is absolutely right to be concerned.
Given the strange riposte to his perfectly commonplace observation, I thought it worth explaining why exactly a multi-lingual Britain is a problem. No, it is not evidence of our country having become a wonderful cosmopolitan utopia, as the Westminster luvvies might have you believe. On the contrary it might be our country’s undoing.
Nearly 1 million registered inhabitants in Britain speak little to no English. Of those 137,876 cannot speak it at all. Combined, this accounts for 10 percent of migrants aged over sixteen, according to UK Statistics Authority using figures from the 2021 Census. This does not include numbers from the 1.2 million illegal immigrants living in Britain, nor those from communities less likely to participate in the census who are themselves less likely to speak English.
So what? Well for a start, it’s expensive. Translators for the NHS are costing the British taxpayer as much as £100m a year. For the police, nearly £20m a year. Interpreters for non-English-speaking benefit claimants cost taxpayers £27m a year. And translators for the Ministry of Justice are costing us well over £20m a year. Estimates range from £150m to £200m total annual taxpayer spend just on translators and interpreters. Working people of Britain are making a great effort to host these newcomers, whether they realise it or not.
But the consequences run much deeper still. Today, enclaves are widespread. Some migrants have been here over a decade and still cannot understand even a word of the language. Journalist Ben Leo exposed such cases on Mornington Street in Leicester, home to the fewest number of English speakers in the country.
The failure of newcomers to learn English is a testament of failed integration efforts. Worse still, it exacerbates Britain’s failed multiculturalism experiment. An experiment which in July 2024 alone, the first month of Keir Starmer’s government, saw riots break out in several ghettoes across the country. In Whitechapel’s Bengali community, Harehills’ Romani and muslim communities and Rochdale’s muslim community. And of course riots lead by indigenous Brits up and down the country.
If you haven’t been aware of Britain’s increasing community tensions, you’ve had your head in a hedgerow. Nevertheless, political elites continue imposing their multiculturalism ideology, despite all its violent outcomes.
The London Underground now has bilingual tube stations, Punjabi in Southall and Bengali in Whitechapel. Cost aside, such decisions only incentivise non-English speakers to continue in their mother tongue. Why waste time learning the language of their new home?
But the significance of a common language goes back to our nation’s founding.
As historian Bijan Omrani argues in his new book ‘God Is An Englishman’, (and as we discuss together on The Winston Marshall Show), King Alfred The Great unified the tribes and ethnicities of England by doing four things. He gave our forebears a common religion, Christianity, a common legal system, codified in his Dōmbōc, and a common heritage by translating and propagating key historical texts. But most important of all, King Alfred made English our common language.
In his Ecclesiastical History, Venerable Bede reported that 8th Century Britain “has the five languages of the English, British, Scots, Picts, and Latins”. Five languages reflecting the multi-ethnic makeup of the islands. Alfred recognised a common language was necessary to unite these peoples. A common language would be a prerequisite for his other unifying policies to work.
In 2025, England seems to have given up on all four of Alfred’s unifying policies. With at least 85 Sharia Courts across the country we no longer have a common legal system. We have become a multi-faith society, with Christianity now a minority faith. As for our common history, well what could better signify its disintegration than the vandalising of the Cenotaph and statue of Sir Winston Churchill.
On Iain Dale’s Show, Andrew Gold had a good answer to why non-English speakers are a problem. “What about when you see the English in Spain… not adapting to the Spanish culture. The Spanish want them out”. Many middle-class Brits cringe at the thought of our compatriots’ behaviour abroad. Gold laid bare that double standard.
All of this is not to say that newcomers won’t or shouldn’t influence the English language. In this article alone the English I have used has been fused over millennia with words from French, latin, Greek and no doubt other languages I’m not even aware of.
Britain’s newcomers have indeed begun to shape the English language. “Allah Akbar” entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2012. This phrase, originally Arabic, literally means “God is Great”. (Although Londoners know it means something quite different when yelled on the tube).
How exactly are immigrants to learn our history, common law, and heritage if they don’t learn our language? What hope do they have of integrating with their new neighbours if they can’t even talk to them? Britain today is multi-cultural, multi-faith and multi-racial. But if it becomes multi-lingual, there may be nothing left we have in common.
WM
This is just plain common sense. A commodity which has been sacrificed on the altar of the failed multicultural experiment that is Britain today.
Winston, Absolutely agree.
Our country so our rules.
His comments reminded me of Sajid David's "So what " tweet answering concerns about high levels of ethnicity in our major cities.
You're in our country you need to speak English, if nothing else it's Health & Safety.
Dale has form he was particularly nasty to Natasha Hausdorff, the brilliantly forensic Jewish barrister (As was Piers Morgan on his non-show but he's not human !).
Keep it up with the great material, you rock !