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Community Relations

I begin by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, not only for raising the subject, but for speaking about it with such eloquence and force. I should like, first, to say something about the rather more boring academic part of this—the patterns of segregation—and, secondly, to say something about where we should be getting in encouraging a common sense of belonging. As the noble Baroness rightly said, there are parts of our country where there is considerable segregation leading, in many cases to parallel lives with limited contact among the people involved. Patterns of social contact and patterns of friendship are also severely limited. There are also intra-ethnic minority tensions, as we saw in the case of Birmingham. That is one side of the picture. The other side is a little more encouraging. Dr Ludi Simpson of the University of Manchester, for example, in response to the remark of Mr Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the CRE, that we are somnambulating into segregated lives, has shown that that is not right overall. As he argues, the number of mixed neighbourhoods, for example, has increased from 864 in 1991 to 1,070 in 2001 and is likely to rise to 1,300 in 2011. In some cases where segregation exists—Leicester, for example, or parts of London—it is either voluntary or a largely middle-class phenomenon. Therefore, although people may live separately, their lives are not separate because they tend to interact at workplaces, social situations and in various clubs to which they may belong. It may also be useful to bear in mind that in this country, we have the highest rate or incidence of inter-ethnic marriage in Europe or the United States. Of Asian men, 19 per cent have white partners and 8 per cent of Asian women; 40 per cent of Afro-Caribbean men and 30 per cent of Afro-Caribbean women have white partners; 20 per cent of Chinese women have white partners. It is also striking that mixed-race children rather surprisingly constitute the third largest minority group in Britain, after Indians and Pakistanis. When we talk about segregation, we ought to think not only of the economic and social terrain, we should also think about the civic and political level. I heard the following figures this morning at an important conference. They really pleased and surprised me. If we consider the voluntary work that the various groups do, the highest rate of voluntary work is among mixed-race people; the second highest is among Afro-Caribbeans; the third highest is among whites; and the fourth is Asians. If we consider political integration in terms of electoral registration and participation, the figures are again quite high. All that tends to show that no ethnic minority is a permanent preserve of a particular political party and that, although people may live separately in certain areas, they continue to interact as fellow citizens in the political and civic realm. Although the figures are more ambiguous in their interpretation, I was also heartened by the BBC multi-culturalism poll produced on 10 August, one month after the horrible events of 7 July. The data were collected only two days earlier on 8 and 9 August. They show a country that is relatively at ease with itself in both minority and majority communities, but also not entirely sure where it is going. The following two sets of figures will indicate what I have in mind. When people were asked, ““Do you think that multi-culturalism has made Britain a better place to live?”” 62 per cent of white Britons said yes; 32 per cent said no. They were asked a second question: ““Given the threat of terrorism, do you think that our society should be more concerned with the rights of minorities or with national security?”” In response, 58 per cent said that we should be more concerned with the rights of minorities, because that is ultimately what we stand for and 30 per cent said no, we should be less concerned with them. I now consider the same poll as it relates to Muslims. They were asked similar questions. They were asked, ““Do you think that it is vital that immigrants who come here should learn English?””; 90 per cent said yes. They were asked: ““Do you think that they should adapt some of the values of British society, especially in relation to gender equality?””; 95 per cent said that it was vital that they should accept the rights of women as equal citizens. When asked, ““What about accepting loyalty to the institutions of our society?””, 91 per cent said that all immigrants must accept the authority of British institutions. There was some unease about other values, such as free speech and the trade-off between free speech and freedom of religion, where the figures were not as high or as exciting. However, if you were to ask that question to philosophers such as me, you would not get a very different answer, because I am not sure that the American doctrine of fetishising free speech is the best way to organise a sensible society. That is a rather mixed picture, but one with much promise and good sense. If we want to build good relations, we should cultivate and foster a common sense of belonging among our people. I emphasise that phrase: common sense of belonging, because it is quite different from talking about Britishness—a term that I find offensive and philosophically incoherent. I want to explain why. I want a society at ease with itself whose members feel that they belong to each other, form part of a single community and know that they can count on each other to look after and stand up for them in times of need. That is what ultimately matters. Does that require that we share exactly the same values or exactly the same ethno-cultural characteristics? That is where the idea of Britishness becomes deeply problematic. I have observed and spoken in many countries in recent years about that sense of national identity and common belonging. I can say with some confidence, as an academic, that the term Britishness is peculiar to us. I have not heard the term Frenchness, Indianness or Americanness. How we got that term, I am not entirely sure. The difficulty with that concept is as follows. It implies that what binds us together is a set of shared characteristics that each of us carries in our heads or our bodies. To belong to a country is a relationship; it is not a set of empirical characteristics. If I were to ask someone of what Britishness consisted, either they would talk in terms of certain values, such as kindness, tolerance, and so on, to which the immediate answer is, ““Are you suggesting that those values are peculiar to us and that the French, Germans and others do not have them?”” If values are moral values, by definition, they are universal and cannot be specific to a particular country. Norms, decency and other things may be peculiar, but values may not. The other thing that may be peculiar is certain ethno-cultural or psychological characteristics: a stiff upper lip; a love of tea; a love of animals or gardens; and so on. But I do not think that anyone wants to suggest that we cannot belong together unless we all love animals and have the same characteristics. When one talks about values and psychological characteristics, there is a danger that you can stuff the concept of Britishness with whatever happens to suit you ideologically. Therefore, the definition becomes a lever, an instrument, with which to mould a people in a particular image. So, rather than talk about Britishness, we should be talking about how we can foster a common sense of belonging among our people, such that we know ourselves as members of a single community. Peter Kellner of you.gov this morning used an interesting phrase that I liked. He asked whether we will think of national identity as a furnished apartment—here it is, if you want to come to occupy it, these are the terms? Or will we think of it as a shared freehold that we are all collectively involved in shaping? I should like to think of being British and all British national identity as a shared freehold that we are all involved in shaping in a direction in which we can see a reflection of ourselves and that we can collectively own. What are the conditions under which such a common belonging can be fostered? I should have thought that they included such basic things as equal respect, absence of discrimination, broadly equal life chances and equal confidence that our major institutions are impartial and look after us all. In other words, if we talk of Britishness, we talk of moulding people in a certain way; if we talk of common belonging, we immediately think of policies and institutions that we need to develop. We should be concentrating on policies and institutions that we need. When we do that, we begin to see that discrimination, although it has declined, remains fairly high; that there is still considerable resentment of ethnic minorities in certain circles; and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, pointed out, that the economic life chances of some groups of people are unequal. Let us consider unemployment figures. For white Britons, there is 5 per cent unemployment, compared to 12 per cent among Pakistanis and 16 per cent among Bangladeshis. If we consider the percentage of people whose income falls below half the national average, it is 28 per cent among white Britons but 60 per cent among Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Even when both parents work, the percentage of people who depend on means-tested support, it is 8 per cent among white Britons but 40 per cent among Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. I could have given similar sets of figures about education or other areas of life. I conclude by saying that, by and large, our pluralistic model of integration has worked reasonably well. We still have some way to go, but we are headed in the right direction. In that context, it may be useful to contrast that with the republican model of integration in France. There is nothing wrong with that model. That is another way in which a society can move and different societies have different cultures and traditions, but what we see in France is striking. The riots that took place had nothing to do with material deprivation or poverty, because the benefit provisions in France are just as good as ours and, in many respects, better than in the United States. Despite that, the riots took place. The question is why. The answer is threefold. First, lots of those involved felt excluded from the French society—they felt, ““We belong to this society but this society marginalises us by confining us to certain estates and practises heavy discrimination””. For example, a French-sounding person making 100 applications would expect to be interviewed 75 times. Someone with an Arabic-sounding name would expect to be interviewed only 14 out of 100 times. The other problem in France is police harassment. People are constantly picked up and resent it. The third thing that was important was a feeling that they were being constantly culturally attacked. The hijab was banned, Arabic languages were not allowed in school, and so on. In short, when a community feels thoroughly excluded, marginalised and left out—money is thrown at it so that it does not starve, but no society, no group of people, lives by bread alone—that is when things begin to go wrong. I hope that we have at least guarded against some of those dangers, but unless we continue to push in the same direction with greater vigour we may stir up trouble—not exactly of the kind that we saw in France, but a society that has so far done so well should not relax, just in case our pluralistic model of integration runs into difficulty in more or less the same way as the republican model.