 Last night myself and several members of our London branch went along to a meeting at a South London University about honour killing and we heard a talk from a woman who had well a rather harrowing tale to tell. Now she herself had been forced into marriage and upon which she moved into her in-laws house as is quite common in some cultures and also living in the house was a another wife who also had been forced into marriage at the age of 16. The two married couples were living in this house with this dominating overbearing family matriarch who ordered them all around and told them all how to live their lives. The 16-year-old who had been the girl who had been forced into marriage at 16 so in other words the lady who was speaking last night her sister-in-law had begun to upset the family and had become quote too westernised. What they meant by too westernised is that she got a job and started making friends. I know horror of all horrors. She filed for a divorce eventually because not only was she forced into marriage but as so often it was a violent marriage and her husband beat her. So in the end she filed for divorce and the family didn't like this very much so a meeting was held where it was discussed what to do with this awful awful woman and the decision was taken as it often is to kill her. So a trip to India was planned that we're going to take her back to India and kill her there. Now the lady who spoke last night was obviously aware of all of this and went to the police and told them. The general gist of it is that the police didn't believe this and didn't understand this and nothing was done and the girl was killed. They murdered her in India. So the lady speaking last night went on to write a book about it and found a charity for victims of honour violence. She is truly heroic. She lived in this house by the way for seven years knowing they had murdered her sister-in-law. She had to live with this and of course they threatened to murder her as well if she said anything, if she did anything. She was living under this constant threat of death and after seven years they invited her on a trip to India. That was when she got out of the house for good. Now it's hard any human being with a soul will feel sorry deeply, deeply sorry for the women stuck in this situation and deeply, deeply sorry for this woman and indeed the admiration I had for her is extraordinary. It takes immense, immense courage to stand up and do what she did. But throughout, we also heard by the way from a detective on the case now retired and throughout the evening you have this and it's always the case with this stuff. You have this contradiction, constant contradiction throughout and that contradiction is it's the culture, it's not the culture. We can't blame the culture but it's the culture but it's not the culture. You mustn't blame culture. You have to respect people's culture. Then we go from oh it's a tiny minority within the culture to this is widespread within the culture and everyone gets together and everyone covers for each other but it's only a tiny minority so it's a complete mishmash of nonsense but there is a massive elephant trampling its way through this room and people know that elephant is there they can see the elephant but they're too afraid to say so. So they go back to the narrative which is a confused narrative of its culture it isn't culture it's a minority it's widespread so everyone ignores the contradictions everyone ignores the elephant in the room and we all go back to the narrative the narrative that we don't actually know what the hell is going on that's the narrative but there is a common thread through all of this and this also people can see and they won't point it out but I will. Throughout both of the talks the blame was placed firmly at the feet of the police. Now I'm not here to defend the police. Police blunders we all know about them they happen over and over and over again. You know recently I read a book about the Yorkshire Ripper. This guy should have been stopped ten times over but blunder after blunder after blunder by the police complete incompetence by the police at the early stages of this of this Yorkshire Ripper horror meant that he wasn't caught even though he should have been he wasn't caught and he went on for years to kill again and again and again. So it's not about I'm not saying that some of these criticisms of the police are not justified I'm sure that they are the police get things wrong but the criticism of the police was based firmly about and around they didn't understand the culture well no they don't understand the culture and there's a reason for that I'm pretty glad they don't understand the culture but the reason is that it's not their culture it's not British culture. British families don't sit around and plot the murder of their daughter because she got a job and made friends and because they so don't understand this culture they don't believe in many cases they just don't believe it and this was the case last night the lady said the police just didn't believe me but there's a reason for that too it's because it's so mind-blowing to us that we just can't relate to it and the host of the meeting said this at the end that we're hearing about something that most of us in this room cannot and will never be able to relate to and that's the truth of the matter we can't relate to it we can't understand it and there's something else you know social services were blamed for leaving children the children of these women in a household which was suspected of murder and again I'm not going to defend social services I know how inept they can be but what you know what wasn't being blamed all this time the culture we have these alien cultures coming here with practices that we cannot fathom and then when the police don't understand we blame the police when social services don't understand we blame social services when are we going to start looking at these cultures what is in these cultures that allows them to think that they can murder their own daughters for getting a job or having friends let's start pointing the finger or at least a spotlight of some kind on the cultures themselves but we don't we we we flap around we don't understand it is it's not the culture it is the culture come on let's have some truth about this let's look at these cultures what is in them that allows them to think they can do this it's the culture that has to change not everything is the fault of British society shocking as that may be it's not our fault at the end the ex-police officer said that the the woman by the way the the matriarch of this family and one of the sons were jailed for life at life being 15 years they were jailed for life and the police officer said at the end of it this woman still believes that she did the right thing in killing that girl she still believes it she fervently absolutely holds that it is her right to kill family members if they dare to act with any kind of independence and crucially if they dare to adapt or integrate into British society now why aren't we asking this question if she fervently believes that that question must be why why does she believe it what is it about that culture that has to change because it is that culture that has to change this is not our fault and what's more is that even though we know that these cultures are bringing horrors to our society that we don't even contemplate or understand even though we know this we've had decades of experience of this now why are the borders still open for more why are we inviting the world's problems into Great Britain you know I would I'm gonna go out on a limb and make a guess that in some parts of this country not just the bulk but most police resources go into policing crimes that have been imported from cultures that we have nothing in common with how many resources are we expected to put into policing the world's cultural crimes why why is this our burden to bear and why even though we know this is going to happen are we still inviting these cultures into our country we shouldn't be we should take the warning from the last several decades we should take the warning from honor killings we should take the warning from this outright rejection of many communities to our culture to our society understand that even generations on people are still being killed for trying to integrate into our culture this is a hatred yes it's a hatred of us a complete rejection of us and then when we fail to understand that or deal with it guess whose fault it is ours so let's be clear once and for all when honor killing happens in this country it is not our fault it is the fault of the disgusting cultural practices we have and insist on for some reason continuing to import honor killing is not Britain's fault