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Multi-cultural Britain

My Lords, we take pride in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick, on this debate. His powerful and wide-ranging arguments have given us much to think about. He has provided us with an opportunity to reflect on a movement and a group of individuals who literally changed the world. The protagonists—Wilberforce, Clarkson, Newton, Sharp, Equiano and, not least, the female figures of Heyrick and others— showed the powerful application of moral purpose. They did this to benefit people whom they did not know, with no thought of self-interest—indeed, only self-sacrifice was evident. The recognition of a common humanity mobilised an entire country over time against powerful vested interests. Among the many things that we can learn from their legacy, one thing stands out above others, and the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, touched on it—I am sorry that he is not in his place. I refer to the length of time that it took to eradicate the trade. Adam Hochschild reminds us in his powerful book, Bury the Chains, that: "““For fifty years, activists in England worked to end slavery in the British Empire. None of them gained a penny by doing so, and their eventual success meant a huge loss to the imperial economy””." The fact is that, even after 1833, many thousands of slaves continued to be transported between the major European powers and North and Latin America. The shadowy form of the trade continues today in some developing countries, and its cousin—bonded labour—still blights the lives of the very poorest in society in many parts of the world, despite its immorality, as the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, and the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, reminded us. Other more contemporary aspects of this debate raise vexed questions about both the characteristics of a multi-cultural Britain today and what we do about it in current policy. When the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, who has just returned to the Chamber, commented that the policy is attacked from right and left, I noted that he did not single out Liberals. I am sure that he was conscious of Isaiah Berlin’s conceptions of value pluralism as an important British contribution—via Riga, I admit, but nevertheless a British contribution—to the philosophy underpinning that tradition. We have heard much from the Government in the past few years about the characteristics of a multi-cultural Britain. We have had action and fine words galore from the Prime Minister, from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and, only a few days ago, from the Minister for Immigration. The thinking has evolved somewhat along the following lines, which I shall summarise briefly. Initially, the thinking from the Chancellor was that there is a problem with the union, in that the Scots want to be free of the English, so perhaps we need to sign everyone up to Britishness. Then from the Prime Minister we had the nuanced argument that there is a problem with Muslims in that they do not sign up to our values so we need more law—terrorism law. Then, only a few months ago, in March Ms Kelly said that she had got it wrong and that what we need is both stick and carrot—the battle for hearts and minds as well as the diminution of civil liberties through terrorism legislation. Now fromMs Kelly and Mr Byrne, in a Fabian pamphlet that has just come out, we are told that the Britishness solution is the real solution, although we shall raise the bar for newer migrants. This has all come at the same time as we are reassured that this Government are unequivocally committed to, and clear about, their vision for a diverse and pluralist country. All the rest of us have to do—the rest of us migrants above all—is to learn the talk and walk the walk and all will be well. There are some fairly fundamental flaws with these approaches. The first is the persistent tendency of the Government to conflate issues of diversity and integration with an entirely different set of issues to do with political Islamism and terrorism. The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, and the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, have alluded to that. Those are a different set of issues again from those of Islamic extremism—not all extremists are violent and not all jihadi terrorists are motivated by Islam. On the Government's own Benches, the noble Lord, Lord Desai, who appears rather more conversant with expert thinking on these matters, has argued in his book Rethinking Islamism that Islamist terrorism is a violent political ideology rather than an amalgam of issues to do with deprivation, socio-economic factors or a lack of understanding of British values. I say for the record that we believe that a serious public policy discussion arises from trends towards increasing diversity, and I will deal with them in a minute, but I want to stay with issues concerned with the most difficult and problematic area, that of the integration of British Muslims and the link that is drawn with terrorism. In the plethora of speeches that Ministers have given on a regular basis, one thread is becoming evident: the mixing together of the law-and-order agenda and the winning-hearts-and-minds agenda. While we on these Benches may have grave concerns about the detail of the law-and-order agenda, we support the Government in their duty to seek measures that will prevent and counter terrorism and terrorist-related acts. We believe that that is the appropriate concentration of the work on counterterrorism. However, the winning-hearts-and-minds agenda, while entirely worth while in terms of inculcating citizenship, is not the appropriate tool for counterterrorism. It runs the risk of selecting the wrong change-makers, as the sorry history of the Government’s relationship with the MCB shows; it runs the risk of involving the state in theological debates about religious precepts, which it is ill equipped to do. When it gets it wrong, it runs the risk of further alienating many different sections of its own citizens, who see its policies as selective and divisive. A second flaw in the Government's thinking is their belief that the construction of a British identity can replicate US-style integration. This argument is flawed for several reasons. For one, the US is historically a society built entirely on immigration, which the United Kingdom is not. American society is therefore a leveller in the sense that new migrants repeat a pattern of ““assimilation””—the favoured word there—in ways that are replicated in successive generations. There is therefore broad acceptance of those patterns: the migrant coming in, doing well and getting on. We do not have those examples passed down generationally to the extent that it becomes the story of all our backgrounds in this country, which is, at least racially, rather more homogeneous. A further and distinct difference relates to the welfare state. The contract of entry to the US is that you will be financially self-sufficient from the outset, irrespective of how hard that may be. In return, the US will accept you as legitimate from the outset, but only if you are prepared to work your socks off. Once you have done that, the US will give you the reward of citizenship: no pain, no gain. In the UK, the fact of the support system provided by the welfare state changes the terms of that implicit contract. If I am asked to make a value judgment as to which I consider better, I have no problem in coming down on the side of the welfare state every time. I point to that striking difference because it fundamentally alters the motivation of new migrants to sign up to the host country, a point made by David Goodhart in his pamphlet on identity for the think tank Demos. A third difference is the nature of immigration to the US versus the UK. The skills-based and quota-based system of the US attracts a different kind of migrant. The single most striking fact, when we look at Muslim communities in the US over the past year, is the difference in education, professional membership, and social and economic status of Muslims there versus here. It is no accident that they appear more integrated there, more segregated here. So the idea that we can import US-style loyalty to UK citizens is flawed and, if it were to succeed, would require a wholesale change to British and European identity and society—something that I do not advocate tampering with. On the future of pluralism and diversity in the UK, one trend is apparent, as the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, pointed out: diversity will continue to increase due to our own demographics. As long as we in Britain continue to have declining birth rates and increasing longevity, we will continue to need to import labour. While we have found the EU a ready pool, one of the results of increasing prosperity, particularly among women, is a declining birth rate. Our population is likely to become more racially and religiously diverse in the not-too-distant future, as our workers come from further away. We must confront this challenge in a calm, measured and evidence-based manner, because the consequences of not planning and managing it are too evident, as we have seen in the example of Slough—a point forcefully made by the chief executive of that borough in the media this week. A further and final point is the challenge of inculcating loyalty towards the majority in certain groups, such as Muslims, whose values and cultural and religious traditions can be different, although they are less different than is sometimes thought. We should not get overworked about the challenge for that particular group. Over time, there is a convergence of values between all groups in a society. Ultimately, school, the workplace and the community space all play their part in making us more homogeneous, despite our diversity. All of society changes, not just the newcomer. In the mean time, perhaps we should just concentrate on putting up with one another rather than aspiring to ““bowling in groups””, to extend Robert Putnam’s US analogy. In a recent Spectator article, John Gray stressed the value of tolerance in the first instance, rather than the exertion of more pressure on trying to have common moral values. Winning over hearts and minds cannot be dictated from on high, as the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, said. Perhaps we need less policy and greater trust in people themselves. Trust in people doing the right thing kept the abolitionist struggle going over those long years. We have much to recall from that legacy.