Community cohesion - the new doctrine
In 1997, PM Tony Blair had
declared that “we can build a nation which respects
diversity
and provides social cohesion”.
Diversity’
in society is the condition of being diverse or varied.
PM Blair and Home Secretary Straw
between them have used the words ‘cultural diversity’, ‘multi-racial
society’ and ‘multi-cultural society’. So we take these terms to be
interchangeable.
‘Social
cohesion’,
a term loved by politicians, suggests that there is a basic or minimal set of
shared values (principles or attributes) that hold society together.
In the
resulting harmonious social
environment,
different groups have opportunities to fulfill their aspirations and co-exist
amicably despite differences of class, race and ethnicity.
'Solidarity'
is also used
for social cohesion (for example, by Prospect
editor David Goodhart).
In the northern towns, discrimination in housing
had led to segregation in schools. And the mechanism of parental choice, introduced at the end of the 1980s, meant that, in schools with catchment areas that ought to have produced mixed intakes, white parents chose to send their children to majority-white schools a little further away. In all schools,
instead of providing genuine education about other people, their histories and their struggles,
one was fed on hackneyed formulae of steel bands, samosas
and saris. The result was mounting Muslim frustration and alienation.
In the summer of
2001, Asian youths took to the streets of Oldham, Leeds, Burnley, Bradford and
Stoke to defend their communities from racist violence.
Britain woke up to the fact that a generation had grown up living
'parallel lives'. The history of industrial decline and institutional racism was
forgotten and, instead Muslims were blamed for refusing to mix.
A local MP,
Phil Woolas said: “The Muslim community has not integrated at a pace
acceptable to the white population.” Ann Cryer, MP for
Keighley, thought that integration of Pakistanis was hampered by marriages
arranged in the Indian sub-continent. Her answer: “I
think we start to look at the immigration laws.”
The government response appeared in the Cantle Report
(Dec 2001). Instead of addressing institutional racism, it
introduced a new concept, community cohesion. Society had to cohere
through shared values. It proposed a national debate on British citizenship and
all citizens were required to declare their allegiance to the Queen. (David Blunkett was Home Minister at the time.)
GYounge
commented (Guardian 08Sept03)
Blunkett blamed not the
perpetrators but the victims.
He lectured:
"We have norms of acceptability, and those who come into our home
- for that is what it is - should accept those norms just as we would have to do
if we went elsewhere."
Blunkett may know
what our "norms" are, but many of the rest of us are still trying to work them
out.
Most of those who took to the streets knew no
other home than Britain but Blunkett ignored this . And if "elsewhere" meant the
Indian subcontinent, Ireland, the Caribbean, Africa or other colonies, then
Britain certainly didn't abide by indigenous norms. It forced foreign rule on
the people, segregated themselves from the natives, indoctrinated them with
English values and brought in missionaries to Christianise them.
Jonathan Burnett (researcher at Leeds
University) commented in Race & Class, Jan 2004
'Community cohesion'
is a notion, drawn in part from the work of Etzioni on
communitarianism. It is flawed because it discriminates against
Asian communities and in effect manifests institutional racism.
Notions of 'community' are linked, via concepts of race, with notions of
criminality. Community cohesion strategies effectively require those targeted
to subscribe to a particular and reactionary national identity.
Soon after
the race disturbances (June/July) came the Sept 9 (2001) attacks. The US
declared 'War on
Terror' and created a culture of fear and suspicion among the people. A drastic change in official thinking
and legislation took over the EU:
multiculturism as policy was dropped in favour of integration
for Muslims. The British Right has come to
see cultural diversity as a threat to national cohesion.
With the 2001 riots and 9/11 attacks, diversity also came to be viewed as a threat to security.
Since 2001, a cacophony of voices has singled out
Muslims as prime targets for 'integration': it is their cultural difference which needs limits placed on it; it is
they who must subsume their cultural heritage within 'Britishness'; it is they
who must declare their allegiance to (ill-defined) British values. Muslims are
accused of being inherently at odds with modern values, into which they need to
be forcibly integrated. (The same theme runs through the 'war on terror' as
conceived by Blair and Bush.) But the EU is not for 'integration', but for
assimilation.
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Racism turned on its head
The concept of institutional racism has been dropped and
replaced by the new language of integration, community cohesion and managed
diversity.
It was the Macpherson Report (1999) that had highlighted the racism
institutionalised in Britain. But from the summer of 2001, when Blunkett became Home Secretary, he rarely attended
meetings of the steering group set up to monitor the implementation of the
Macpherson Report, even though he was its chair. In the wake of the race
disturbances, the focus was shifted from tackling institutional racism (a major
grievance of the Muslims) to their
responsibility to absorb British values.
Racism
was no longer a state-sanctioned mechanism to discriminate against and exclude
certain groups, leading to their ghetto-isation. Racism was reduced to
personal bigotry to be overcome at the individual level. The system was not to
blame for social and racial problems. It is the non-white victims who should
be
blamed for not integrating and so making themselves strangers to whites, some of
whom could then turn hostile. The question how one can integrate in a racist society
was not answered.
Gary
Younge
(Guardian 08 Sept 04) wrote:
"It is the abundance of racism that
prevents integration; not the lack of integration that encourages racism. This
has been the problem all along. When racism rears its head, Blunkett blames not
the perpetrators but the victims..."
Read more
Jabez
Lam
– Chinese campaigner
(Observer 11Apr04)
The pre-condition for multiculturalism is a society
free of racism. The experience of the grassroots Chinese community in Britain is
one of being discriminated against, racially abused, harassed and attacked,
while the authorities turn a blind eye to our suffering.
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown,
Independent
24 Oct 05
We talk incessantly about multiculturism, integration, segregation, identity –
but not race,
even though it colours everyone of the others. The evil of white racism still
stalks our land. Last week, Dr John Sentamu,
the first black Archbishop of the Church of England, received hate mail –
calling him nigger, telling him to return to where he came from.
This man of God was also posted human excrement and he said he prayed for those
who did this.
The racism is getting worse than any of us anticipated.
Most white
people are either bored or irritated when the subject of racism comes up. I have
seen little contrition, little admission of white guilt.
Sir
Herman Ouseley
(CRE chair 1993-2000)
had an article in the Guardian,
April 10, 2004 headed
"Forget
this phoney debate, we need to confront racism"
Instead of engaging in meaningless debates about "multiculturalism", we must
remove barriers to participation, reduce social exclusion and challenge racism
through dynamic political leadership. The more urgent need is to keep
challenging racism, Islamophobia and xenophobia.
UK post 9/11 - new thinking, new measures
The Anti-terrorism Crime & Security Act
(2001) introduced internment without trial for foreign nationals. Several were
detained at Belmarsh and Woodhill prisons without trial for over two years. The
detainees have been charged with no crime.
The Special Security has been expanded to two and half times its size.
EU post 9/11 - new thinking, new measures
Europe formerly supremely confident that only
they could intervene and punish the Others now find that the Others, mainly
Muslims, are ready to strike back in western territory. Read about
Euro concerns.
The EU brought a whole raft of unrelated issues under the rubric of the war
against terror - including anti-globalisation protests, animal rights activism.
The EU Common Position and Framework Decision passed in Dec 2001broadened
the definition of terrorism to include any action designed to 'seriously damage
a country or international organisation'. New crimes of association with
terrorism were created, including struggles for self-determination.
Public policy reports about racial minorities
(emanating from government departments or state-friendly think tanks and
journals) are awash with terms like multiculturism,
social/community cohesion,
integration, diversity, solidarity,
ethnicity, shared values,
British values, citizenship.
But there is a glaring omission - 'institutional
racism'. In the words of Sivanandan, Director of Race Relations (Oct
2005), it refers to "the racism woven, over centuries of colonialism and
slavery, into the structures of society and into the instruments and
institutions of government, local and central." It includes the racism in
state institutions like the police, courts, prisons, immigration, councils.
The term embarrasses the government profoundly and
it rarely appears in government reports. It was Macpherson's landmark report
(Feb 1999) that highlighted institutionalised racism as the key problem that
needed to be addressed to secure justice and equality of minorities. Alas,
this proposal had hardly become policy before it was virtually killed off by
the tabloids and the rightwing elites.
Instead the more neutral term 'community cohesion' was introduced by
Ted Cantle in his report (Dec 1991). Cantle went on
to become Professor of a new body - the Institute of Community Cohesion
and wrote a book called Community Cohesion: a new framework for race &
diversity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
It was reviewed by researcher Jon Burnett of Leeds
University in Race & Class, vol 48, Apr 2007. According to Cantle,
the major cause of the disorders was the lack of meaningful interaction
between the communities, leading to segregation and 'parallel lives'. The
answer was to increase interaction, integration, shared values. His first
report came out two months after the Sept 11 attacks. So not surprisingly, he
was influenced by the 'clash of civilisations' theory put forward in the US
and Europe after the 9/11 attacks. Islam was again cast as the demon.
In Cantle's view, multiculturism had to go.
Limits must be set on the level of cultural diversity that should be tolerated
in a multi-ethnic society. But As expected, there was no recipe for dealing
with state racism that was among the root causes of the race disturbances of
2001.
Cantle argues that a set of core values needs to be defined to maintain
'cohesive communities'. In practical terms this would require citizens to
swear oaths of allegiance to queen and country.
The socialist notion of 'collective action' was
ditched such as marches & protests against the erosion of human and civil
rights, war making etc. Community cohesion is subtly linked to the neo-liberal
agenda within the Labour Party but no proposals were offered for dealing with
gross inequalities spawned by the system. The cohesion agenda relies not only
on loyalty and swearing allegiance but also on participating in community
service programmes. White communities too must be prepared to change,
especially their 'feral' youth. In short, the poor, the dispossessed and the
extremists are all targeted for redemption.
On 08 May 2007, the Independent reported that
all-white schools would be legally obliged to twin with multi-ethnic schools
as part of a new government drive to promote better community relations.
All schools will be required to promote "community cohesion" between racial
and religious groups. Under guidance published by the Department for Education
and Skills today, schools would be legally obliged from September 2007 "to
eliminate unlawful racial discrimination and to promote equality of
opportunity and good relations between different groups".
References
1.
Arun Kundnani,
Cant on cohesion,
IRR,
24 August 2006
2. Arun Kundnani, The politics of
anti-Muslim racism, Race & Class, vol 48, April 2007