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Ever since three tube trains and a bus were blown up in London last year, various commentators within the British media have begun to repeat the notion that multi-culturalism has had its day. Political correctness is so ‘year before last‘ and racism is back in fashion. It seems that when a criminal act is perpetrated by people who happen to come from a certain ethnic background, we must always reignite old debates and engage in more philosophical acrobatics. Fortunately, when David Copeland initiated his nail-bombing campaign in London, killing three people and injuring 139 others, I was not forced to evaluate what it means to be a young white man in England these days.

“A year on from the London bombings,” reports BBC Online, “the debate is firmly fixed on whether or not mutual tolerance has been pursued at the expense of something more practically designed to create unity – and the government is under pressure to answer tough questions.”

Newspaper columns and radio packages have placed a lot of emphasis on the government Department for Communities and Local Government’s Commission on Integration and Cohesion this week. No, that’s too generous. They have placed a lot of emphasis on problems within “the Muslim community” this week as a result of this government piece of work. The terms of reference of this Commission seem to be of little interest to journalists, who prefer to focus their attention on the country’s only minority community. What must it be like to be a Sikh or Hindu in Britain today?

It’s our fault of course: while many try to conflate religious identity with ethnicity — including a few too many Muslims — our diversity is turning us into a convenient catch-all category. That last sentence at the end of the last paragraph: I was going to add other minority communities, like West Indians, Poles, the Chinese, the Irish, but I couldn’t because I know too many West Indian, Polish and Irish Muslims. The whole thing is getting pretty stupid.

Whenever I go to visit my friends in Hounslow, I realise that many Muslims and Sikhs are actually well integrated into their host community. It is just that adopting the ways and manners of working class English youth is not what the middle-class commentators have in mind. But let’s not get sucked in by this hogwash. The United Kingdom — as its name suggests — has long been made up of many nations and tribes. Yorkshire men are famous for their regional pride. My eight month stay in Stirling six years ago gave me a good taste of Scottish nationalism. London almost exists as a state within the state, the nation’s media often condemned for being Londoncentric. And please, please, please do not get someone from Cornwall started on their identity.

If you have not guessed by now, I’m tired of these false debates. I am a multi-culturalist, by which I mean, I — myself — am multi-cultural. I am a Yorkshireman living in Buckinghamshire; that’s quite a potent mix already. One of my grandparents is ethnically Irish, but more English than the English and I have an Indian uncle, a Trinidadian sister-in-law, a Portugese sister-in-law and an Armenian wife from Turkey. My paternal grandfather was a strict Methodist, while both of my parents are ordained Anglicans and I am a Muslim. My grandfather was of working class stock, working hard and making good; my parents and siblings would be classed as middle class; I was of middle class stock made bad, tumbling down the ladder again. Define me as you will. I’ll summarise as follows: an English Muslim, quarter Irish, full-blood Yorkshire Cheshamite and Turkish inishte by marriage. And I am well integrated into multiple cultures.

Define not for me what it means to be British, because your definition will be flawed from the outset. I was brought up in a middle class, church going family and my culture was completely different from that of my best friend at school. Our country is naturally tribal — whether the tribe is being working class or coming from Yorkshire, or being a member of the armed forces, or speaking with a funny accent, or belonging to a particular Christian denomination, or being Jewish, or Hindu, or Irish.

Multi-culturalism is not a policy. It is how we are and what we are. Did a massacre on our public transport system make multi-culturalism a thing of the past? No. Nor was that the case when a small band of Irish republicans blew up a pub in Ealing Broadway a couple of days before my marriage in 2001 — so that our Registry Office was decorated in blue and white police ribbons on the day. The sane in our society recognised that there was something wrong with putting signs in shop windows that read, “No Blacks, No Irish, No dogs,” thankfully many years ago. I hope the commentators remember this before they push their maddening agenda any further.

Last year three tube trains and a bus were blown up by a criminal gang. What does that say about multi-culturalism? Why should it say anything? Does it say something about State education? Does it say something about youth? Why associate the unassociated? If you have an agenda, construct your argument another way. The people who were slaughtered that day who you use to push your agenda were of many nations and tribes. Their photographs say it all.