Mr Honeyford's lesson - Telegraph As his obituary in this newspaper yesterday reminded us, Ray Honeyford was nothing if not outspoken. In 1984, he was forced from his job as a school headmaster in Bradford for challenging the multiculturalist orthodoxies that had taken a grip on the education system, and on much of public life. He accused the race relations lobby of fostering "a whole set of questionable beliefs and attitudes about education and race which have much more to do with professional opportunism than the educational progress of ethnic minority children." Mr Honeyford 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. His bitterness over the treatment he endured was not mitigated by the fact that multiculturalism was later disavowed by many of those who once championed it most assiduously. The bombings on the London transport system in July 2005 led to a recantation by the last government, many of whose members had been among Mr Honeyford's most vociferous detractors. Today, it is a commonplace for politicians on the Left to acknowledge that separation of ethnic groups was a mistake, leading to communities in our cities living parallel lives and hardly ever meeting, let alone integrating. The lesson here is that shutting down debate about cultural assimilation is short-sighted and dangerous. The vilification of Mr Honeyford played into the hands of extremists seeking to foment discord, such as Abu Qatada. Public debate in this country became fixated on ethnic and religious identity rather than the civic values of personal freedom, parliamentary democracy and the rule of law that make a nation. Mr Honeyford saw the truth of that nearly 30 years ago.