The BBC was forced to remove an educational cartoon aimed at children which claimed that Britain had always been “multicultural” and “there was no such thing as a pure Brit” after the tax-payer funded broadcaster accepted it breached its own impartiality rules.
The cartoon produced by BBC Education and aimed as a classroom aid to children aged 14 to 16 appeared to mock patriots — “flag wavers” — and implied that Britons who had any concerns about uncontrolled immigration were wrong and racist.
Part of the public broadcaster’s Don’t Hate the Debate series, the cartoon, which had since been removed from the BBC’s online accounts — though has been reuploaded by independent YouTubers since — starts with a voiceover saying: “Think immigration’s a recent thing? Think again.
“Because you see, you’ve got the Celts, the Romans, the Anglo Saxons and the Vikings, the Normans, the Flemish, the Irish, black Britons, and Jewish people.
“Yup, we were multicultural long before curry and carnival. It’s in our DNA,” claimed the narrator, as cartoons of multi-ethnic figures danced across the screen.
To insult patriots, the voiceover then declares: “There’s no such thing as a pure Brit, despite what some flag wavers would have you believe.”
Outlining the fictionalised stages of migration from the past two thousand years, bringing up post-Second World War migration from the colonies, open borders with the continent after the UK joined the European Union, and mass movements of people claiming asylum, the voice added that “some come here to flee war or poverty — others for a different music scene”.
To further indoctrinate youngsters into equating questioning open borders with racism, the video ends on: “Even so, you can’t open a paper without someone giving it large [being abusive] about immigration” with cartoons of angry-looking people carrying signs that read, “there’s not enough housing for everybody”, “they’re taking all our JOBS!!!!!”, and “Did you hear the council is going to ban Christmas?”
British immigration think tank Migration Watch UK complained to the BBC that the piece of propaganda, released in May, breached the broadcaster’s impartiality guidelines.
Chairman of Migration Watch Lord Green of Deddington wrote to Sir David Clementi, Chairman of the BBC, pointing out that “the video failed to provide an objective analysis of the immigration debate and therefore did not meet the BBC’s own impartiality guidelines” and broke down the factual and historical inaccuracies of the piece.
The head of BBC Education responded on July 5th, the think tank revealed, and according to the Daily Mail, a BBC spokesman said on Thursday: “Don’t Hate the Debate is a series of films designed to help teachers enable classroom debates about topical issues.
“Each film includes a real debate between four young people, all giving views on a topic.
“While we believe the film did convey the broad elements of the immigration debate, we accept further efforts could have been made to involve contributors with a more diverse range of opinions, so we removed the video.”
When the ‘educational’ piece was released in May, former UKIP leader Nigel Farage criticised it as “subjective claptrap” as well as “misleading, dishonest, irresponsible, and exposes any pretence that the BBC is impartial on this most pressing subject”.
The BBC is funded by a compulsory television tax — which if unpaid can result in a prison sentence — and claims to be impartial, though has been accused by critics for its left-wing and anti-Brexit bias.