A student at a secondary school in the town of Ammanford in South Wales went on a stabbing rampage yesterday, wounding three people before being restrained. When I first read the news, I wondered if cultural enrichment might be a factor. Seneca III had similar thoughts, and sends this report (which was written yesterday).

It is Almost Certain that Cultural Enrichment has Reared its Head Again

by Seneca III

A Welsh Language School located in Ammanford, South Wales, was locked down resultant from an incident earlier this morning. The school has 1,800 pupils aged from eleven to eighteen drawn from its local hinterland and also from the city of Swansea, a multicultural hell hole to its SSW. The school is situated north of Ammanford town centre, which is located a few miles north-east of the western terminus of the M4 motorway.

Police and emergency services reports were sparse on facts earlier, which is fair enough as criminal investigations were still underway at the time, but they have since announced that two teachers and a girl were stabbed and that a teenage girl is under arrest.

Headlined “Ammanford school ‘stabbing’: Person is arrested and three people including ‘teacher’ injured after ‘knife attack involving two girls’ as classrooms remain in ‘lockdown’, the Daily Mail^[1] reports inside that “Dyfed-Powys Police and two air ambulances were called to the scene. One air ambulance is said to have now left the field and is reportedly flying towards the University Hospital in Cardiff. The second remains on site.” followed by a succession of talking heads, predominantly political ones, waffling on despite their being no better informed than the rest of us as the police were playing this one very close to the chest, which in itself might have indicated that they felt at that time that the age, ethnicity or origin of the perpetrators and/or their victims was a matter of some sensitivity in modern-day Britain.

Demographically ^[2], Ammanford is as follows:

Male/Female = 57.2%/48.8%.

Ethnic Groups = White 5247; Asian 101; Black 18; Arab 7; Mixed 50; Other ethnics 21.

Religions = Christian 2425; Muslim 25; Hindu 22; Sikh 10; Buddhist 17; Jewish 4; Others 25; No religion 2610.

However, Swansea is a very different kettle of fish. It is a city at the mouth of the river Tawe with a working Maritime Quarter just around the corner from another notorious occupied territory, the Port City of Bristol, and therein lies an enigmatic clue to the conundrum facing the authorities in Carmarthenshire.

The 2021 Census recorded that 91.4% of Swansea’s usually resident population were white (around 218,100 people). The proportion of people with non-white ethnicity in Swansea has increased from 6.0% in 2011 (around 14,300 people) to 8.6% in 2021 (20,400). The largest non-white ethnic group in Swansea in 2021 was ‘Indian’ (around 2,900 people or 1.2%) with ‘Other Asian’, ‘Caribbean’ and ‘Bangladeshi’ also above 2,000.

67.0% of Swansea residents (159,900 people) expressed a ‘Welsh only’ or ‘Welsh and British only’ national identity (Wales 63.3%). This is slightly lower than the equivalent proportions in 2011 (Swansea 69.3%; Wales 64.6%).

95.2% of people aged 3 and over in Swansea have English or Welsh as their main language, with just over 11,000 not having English or Welsh as their main language. The largest other languages in Swansea are Polish (1,863 or 0.8%), Arabic (1,109 / 0.5%), Bengali (with Sylheti and Chatgaya) (803) and Romanian (773).

41.3 per cent of Swansea residents (around 98,500) stated Christian as their religion in 2021, an almost 14 percentage-point drop since 2011. Almost half (47.3%; 112,700) of the Swansea population stated they had no religion in 2021, up from around 81,000 (34.0%) in 2011. The largest minority religion in Swansea is Muslim (around 7,700 or 3.2%).

I leave you, dear reader, to come to your own conclusions, because it is doubtful that we will ever be told the full story “In the interests of community relations.” As usual.

— Seneca III, Middle England, on this twenty-fourth day of April in the year of our Lord 2024.

Notes:

For links to previous essays by Seneca III, see the Seneca III Archives.