The Politics of Ethnic Diversity in the British Isles

R. Garbaye, P. Schnapper, R. Garbaye, P. Schnapper

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781349468874, 9781137351531
• eBook ISBN: 9781137351548
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores continuity and change in British multiculturalism. It offers an original perspective on British multiculturalism and also presents an exploration of the politics of ethnic diversity in all the national contexts of the British Isles as well as the United Kingdom.

1

Multiculturalism and Britishness: Provocations, Hostilities and Advances

Tariq Modood

This volume is a retrospective consideration of the British scene in relation to the issues of minority–majority relations, integration and British identity. I would like to think about ‘then-and-now’ with reference to a major national report, an aspect of which, ‘rethinking the national story’, shall be the main focus of this chapter. I would like to start, however, with a brief personal retrospective on this theme, to highlight how things have changed around me and some of my work and contribution. I started thinking seriously about racial equality in 1987. In that year, having hung on for a number of years in the hope of an academic career in political philosophy, I accepted the reality that such jobs were not available and started an administrative post as an equal opportunities officer in a London borough.¹ While trying to formulate a suitable policy for the borough’s workforce, I especially felt the challenge of the politics of ‘Black Sections’ that were raging in the Labour Party, especially in London (Shukra 1998). Over the next few years I began to write short pieces in my spare time, trying to give expression to an alternative understanding of ethnic diversity in Britain to that of Black Sections, which saw things in terms of a black–white antagonistic dualism (Modood 1988, 1994). Much has changed in relation to Britishness since those essays were published as a collection, Not Easy Being British: Colour, Culture and Citizenship (Modood 1992).

From ‘Not Easy’ to ‘Still Not Easy Being British’

From my point of view the most important change is that the suggestion, as made in that book, that the issue of racial equality led inevitably to the bigger questions and ‘isms’ of multiculturalism, national identity and rethinking secularism is now commonplace. Very few made these connexions in the late 1980s and early 1990s when those essays were written. There is, indeed, a very early statement that racial equality and ethnic minority integration meant rethinking what it means to be British. In the early 1970s Bhikhu Parekh had argued that ‘pluralistic integration within the framework of a generally accepted conception of the good life should be the ideal governing Britain’s relations with her immigrant population’ (Parekh 1974, p. 230). While he saw racism in its various manifestations as a significant obstacle to this integration, the aspect in which he was ahead of his time is his going on to say:

In the ultimate analysis pluralistic integration entails that the Briton’s perception of his identity should be revised . . . Only when it is acknowledged as a matter of course that a Briton is not by definition white but could be black, brown or yellow, that he might speak Swahili, Mandarin or Hindustani as his first and English as his second language, and that his ‘kith and kin’ might be found in Bombay, Barbados and Ibadan as well as in Salisbury and Wellington, can the non-white minority feel as authentically British as the native, and can be so accepted by the latter.

(Parekh 1974, pp. 230–231)

A decade later a very similar sentiment was expressed by the Swann Report (1985), Parekh being a member of the commission that produced the report. This was a lengthy report on ethnic minority educational attainment in British schools and advocated multicultural education. Its first chapter, however, briefly considered the topic of integration in general and advocated multiculturalism or ‘the pluralist ideal’ as the most favourable model. It argued:

we are not looking for the assimilation of the minority communities within an unchanged dominant way of life, we are perhaps looking for the ‘assimilation’ of all groups within a redefined concept of what it means to live in British society today. We are not seeking to fit ethnic minorities into a mould which was originally cast for a society, relatively homogeneous in language, religion and culture, nor to break this mould completely and replace it with one which is in all senses ‘foreign’ to our established way of life. We are instead looking to recast the mould into a form which retains the fundamental principles of the original but within a broader pluralist conspectus – diversity within unity.

(Swann 1985, p. 8)

In a lecture at the British Film Institute in 1987, Stuart Hall spoke of ‘new ethnicities’, new ways of being black, a critical aspect of which was to give expression to British blackness, to black people making a claim of being British, not despite being black but as blacks who challenged their exclusion and so were contesting what it means to be British rather than trying to fit into received definitions (Hall 1988). In the same year, Paul Gilroy published There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack, which challenged conceptions of black identity and British identity as mutually exclusive.

Most racial-egalitarians, however, thought that ‘multiculturalism’ was not sufficiently challenging of racism; indeed, it did not cut very deeply into society, as it was merely about ‘saris, samosas and steelbands’. The idea that multiculturalism threatened social unity, let alone being subversive of Western civilisation, however common it is now, was undreamt of at that time. Moreover, most of those who thought of themselves as political multiculturalists, and did not think multiculturalism was primarily about black music, exotic dress and spicy food, saw British national identity as the possession not of the British people but of right-wing ideologues and extreme nationalists. Their main reaction to any talk of Britishness was to denounce it as reactionary and racist and/or to argue that, as no one could define what they meant by ‘British’ in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, the concept should not be used, as it referred to a fiction, to something that did not exist. In this most of the multiculturalists and the antiracists were united, as, indeed, they were in that secularism was intrinsic to anti-racism and multiculturalism.

It was these views that I was challenging 25 years ago. At the time I was in a very small minority, especially among racial-egalitarians. The essays of that book were written in my private time while I was working as an Equal Opportunities Officer at the London Borough of Hillingdon and then at the head office of the Commission for Racial Equality. I was frequently told that the issues I was raising were unnecessary, confused and divisive – above all, that they had nothing to do with racial equality. The rest of my career has more or less been spent in proving this charge mistaken, as illustrated, for example, in the sequel to the earlier collection of essays, Still Not Easy Being British (2010). I may not have got as many people to agree with all my substantive views as I would have liked, but few now think that Britain can hope to be a society in which ethnic minorities are not stigmatised and treated unfavourably without a large-scale discussion of multiculturalism, national identity and secularism.

In the late 1980s it was still not uncontroversial (especially among racial-egalitarians) to say that most ethnic minority people actually wanted to be British, indeed, that many wanted to be British more than some white people did, and that this particularly applied to Asian Muslims. It is good to see over the years that this too has been vindicated and the proposition is no longer as controversial as it used to be (e.g., Heath and Roberts 2008), though in the case of some Muslims some misunderstandings persist.

The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain

Having started with a brief ‘then-and-now’ in relation to my entry into the policy, political and intellectual field of racial equality, I would like to take a ‘then-and-now’ look at the report of the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain (CMEB 2000),² chaired by Lord Professor Bhikhu Parekh. I was the academic advisor to the Commission and an active part of the collective authorship of ‘the Parekh Report’.³ I want to look not at the report as a whole, but at just three pages of it – these being the three pages that led to a very negative, even hysterical reception in the newspapers over a number of days, when the report – or, more precisely, this reaction – was a major news item, leading to the government, especially the Home Secretary (Jack Straw) and the Prime Minister (Tony Blair), distancing themselves from the report. This intense press reception, meriting headlines and editorials for several days, was on Britishness and has been said to mark ‘the beginning of the UK’s current multicultural crisis’ (McLaughlin and Neal 2007). It is an important case study in public contestation, how social research can be distorted by the media and how researchers can lose control of the presentation of their views, but that’s not quite my focus here. I want to revisit the text in detail and, in a self-critical spirit, try to identify what exactly it was about the report that allowed the press to play havoc with it. I am extremely proud of my participation in the CMEB and of the report we produced, but, nevertheless, I do feel it is necessary to scrutinise it carefully for what messages it could be taken to be sending out.

The Commission on Multi-Ethnic Britain had a number of unusual features for a national commission. It was created by an independent race relations think-tank, The Runnymede Trust, and, while it was launched by the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, it was wholly independent of the government and included no members of the judiciary or representatives of the government, or indeed any organisation. Of its 25 members (not all of whom served the full term), over a third were non-white and nearly a third were academics (CMEB 2000, pp. 366–371).⁴ Besides its distinguished chair, it included prominent public intellectuals and race equality professionals such as Professor Stuart Hall; the journalist and writer, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown; the Chair of the London Assembly (and later of the Commission for Racial Equality, and, after that, Equalities and Human Rights Commission) and broadcaster, Trevor Phillips; Sir (later Lord) Herman Ouseley, the Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality at the time; and Andrew Marr, Chief Political Editor at BBC Television at the time. As a result of this mix, some of the report had an academic character, such as Part I, ‘A Vision for Britain’, which began with ‘Rethinking the National Story’ and included several sociological chapters and a political theory chapter entitled ‘Cohesion, Equality and Difference’. These chapters attempted, as the report did as a whole, to be accessible to the general as well as the public policy reader, and wore their academic apparel lightly – nevertheless, they offered an intellectual framework for thinking about minority–majority relations in Britain, and, so, for the more concrete analyses of the rest of the report. It may be the case, however, that the Commission did not have the personnel composition and balance that people are accustomed to and that it had a more theoretical and academic orientation than journalists and politicians would expect.

Looking through my folder of press-cuttings from the time of the launch of the CMEB report in 2000, I am reminded of some very angry headlines:

A National Outrage!; The Gang Of 23 Who Are Trying To Do Down Britain (Sunday Mercury, 15 October 2000, George Tyndale);

Racism Slur On The Word ‘British’ (Daily Mail (London), 11 October 2000, Steve Doughty); British is racist, says peer trying to rewrite our history (Daily Mail (London), 10 October 2000, Jonathan Irwin; David Hughes);

Curse of the British-Bashers (The Sun, October 11).

These damning headlines were accompanied by scathing attacks on members of the Commission, individually as well as collectively,⁵ and were soon joined by articles and editorials, including in The Guardian, a natural ally, arguing that Britain was more tolerant and inclusive than most countries, including those of continental Europe and the USA. There were also several articles about how proud most ethnic minority individuals were to be British, especially sporting heroes who represented the country in international competitions like the Olympics, and also articles by ethnic minority individuals on how proud they were to be British (a good, short overview is Richardson 2000).⁶

The Home Secretary, it was reported under the headline ‘ “Proud to be British” Straw raps race report’:

was appalled when he read part of the document suggesting that the term British had racial connotations and was no longer appropriate in a multicultural society. He ripped up a speech prepared for the launch of the document yesterday and instead delivered a strong attack on the part which he believed lacked intellectual rigour.

‘Unlike the Runnymede Trust I firmly believe that there is a future for Britain and a future for Britishness’, Mr Straw declared. ‘I am proud to be British and of what I believe to be the best of British values’.

(The Times, 12 October, Richard Ford)

Yet the previous day, an article had been published in The Guardian by the chair of the CMEB, in which he argued:

The report recognises that, while cherishing cultural diversity, Britain must remain a cohesive society with a shared national culture. That culture is based on shared values, including such procedural values as tolerance, mutual respect, dialogue and peaceful resolution of differences, as well as such basic ethical norms as respect for human dignity, equal worth of all and equal life chances.

The common national culture includes shared symbols and a shared view of national identity, and these are best evolved through a democratic dialogue between our various communities. The report sees Britain both as a national community with a clear sense of collective purpose and direction and also made up of different communities interacting with each other within a shared moral framework.

(Parekh 2000b)⁷

The main points of this angry reaction can be summarised as that the CMEB:

• were saying ‘British’ was racist

• were saying the days of a country called ‘Britain’ were over

• wanted to rename Britain as ‘community of communities’.

Consequently, the CMEB were insulting British/white people and seemed unaware that many ethnic minorities were proud to be British and that Britain was becoming a multicultural society. The CMEB was unpatriotic, out of touch with ethnic minorities and offensive to the minorities and majority alike.

So, what exactly had we said? The whole row was focused on three pages – out of a nearly 400-page report – the final section of Chapter 3, entitled ‘The future of Britishness’. I shall look at these three pages quite closely, but it’s important to precede that by noting that these three pages were the culmination of Chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 2 argued that there has never been a single, undifferentiated conception of Britishness: the Scots, Welsh and English have overlapping but also contested notions of what Britain is, and this is further differentiated through the different regions of the country, the class structure and the perspectives of the Irish. Moreover, conceptions and self-images of the country are never static and have mutated across its history. This change has been particularly dramatic in the second half of the 20th century and will continue to be so in the 21st century as a result not just of ethnic diversity but also of devolution, European integration, globalisation and a number of other factors. We can orient ourselves more in these uncharted waters if we embrace change and diversity and recognise that ‘Britain is not and has never been the unified, conflict-free land of popular imagination. There is no single white majority’ (CMEB 2000, 2.24). Chapter 3, entitled ‘Identities in Transition’, is devoted to the post-migration minorities and also emphasises change and diversity, mixing and hybridity, and, while the varied character of the principal groups is highlighted, a commonality is that none of the minorities is or aspires to be ghetto-like, separate from the mainstream. After giving some attention to specific groups, including Irish communities and Jewish communities, we reach what is meant to be the concluding section of Chapters 2 and 3 taken together.

Paragraph 3.22 states: ‘The prospect of all communities finding a better, more just and humane way of living together has improved in the recent past.’ This is a positive start, but it is also recognised that ‘Britain continues to be disfigured by racism’ (para. 3.23), which is fair and, of course, important to say. We then go on to ask: ‘Is it possible to reimagine Britain as a nation – or post-nation – in a multicultural way?’ (3.23, italics added). In retrospect, one can see that the question we are raising is weakened because it is made ambivalent through the introduction of the parenthesis, which suggests the CMEB were unclear whether they were talking about a nation or a post-nation. This was our central question, and yet there is ambivalence about how it should be posed. Chapter 2 would prepare the reader for the ambivalence – if it was read, and it is clear from the press coverage that it was not – nevertheless, the CMEB cannot decide whether the term ‘nation’ refers only to a monistic nationalism or – in the manner of ‘new ethnicities’ (rather than ‘post-ethnicities’) – whether there can be ‘new Britishness’ (as opposed to ‘post-Britishness’). It may be that it exhibits an intellectual openness not to close off either of these perspectives, as each is illuminating. But this openness is at the price of risking not being, or not seeming ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1. Multiculturalism and Britishness: Provocations, Hostilities and Advances
• 2. The Securitisation of British Multiculturalism
• 3. Prevention of Terrorism in Britain: Fighting Violent or Non-violent Extremism? The Influence of the Quilliam Foundation
• 4. The Death of Muslim Immigrants in Britain and France
• 5. The Muslim Arbitration Tribunal and ‘Forced Marriage’
• 6. Scotland’s Devolved Institutions and Immigration: A Challengingly Welcoming Attitude
• 7. Multicultural Challenges to Modern Wales
• 8. English Nationalism and Britishness: Class and the ‘Sub-state’ National Identities
• 9. Racism and Sectarianism in Northern Ireland
• 10. Searching for a New Citizenship in the Republic of Ireland, 1990s–2000s: Equality or Diversity?
• Index