24 November 2006
Tolerance for diverse ethnic and religious traditions has long been part of Britain's multicultural society, writes Ann Rossiter. But community cohesion is being seriously undermined – and the causes are complex
A seismic shift is taking place in community relations within the UK. Britain has long been a strongly multicultural society, especially compared with many of its European neighbours. But times are rapidly changing. Our tradition of tolerant support for different ethnic and religious communities is increasingly being challenged and questioned. There are a number of reasons for this.
The first was the July 7 bombings in London last year, and the ensuing shock to the body politic. The realisation that there were British-born militant Muslims who had developed values so far from the norms of liberal democracy and mainstream Islam that they could inflict such carnage on themselves and their fellow citizens shook many earlier assumptions. In the wake of these bombings came the speech from Trevor Phillip, then chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, suggesting that our communities were drifting toward racial segregation, with some areas 'becoming fully fledged ghettoes'.
Recently Jack Straw's intervention into the debate – with his views on Muslim women wearing veils – shattered the centre-Left orthodoxy that had militated against questioning the right of ethnic minority communities to maintain their cultural traditions. This intervention has been followed by rulings requiring Muslim women not to wear the veil in the classroom or the courtroom. Jack Straw's thoughtful remarks were distorted in some sections of the press as anti-Muslim.
Meanwhile a jury has decided that British National Party leader Nick Griffin did not break existing law with his rabid anti-Islamic propaganda, leading to renewed divisions in the Cabinet about whether or not to try once again to introduce legislation to prevent the incitement of hatred on grounds of religion.
The importance of these debates was brought home by the fact that, as the Queen opened the new session of Parliament last week with a programme of proposed legislation focused on security, the Home Office informed the public that its assessment of the current terrorist threat was 'severe'. The head of MI5 reinforced this when she indicated that 30 terrorist plots were currently being monitored inside the UK, and that extremists were deliberately seeking to groom young Muslims as potential suicide bombers.
So this is a debate well worth having. But recognising the need for this is not the same as coming down on the side of an assimilationist approach to community relations. The notion of community cohesion has gained a lot of political currency, largely in response to the violent community disorders that occurred in Burnley, Bradford and Oldham a couple of years ago. Indeed, public sector bodies now have a duty to aspire to promote community cohesion in all their work.
The CRE has defined a cohesive community as one in which the diversity of people's different backgrounds and circumstances are appreciated and positively valued, but within which there is a common vision and sense of belonging for all communities. A cohesive community would grant similar life opportunities to people from different backgrounds and would ensure that strong and positive relationships are developed between these people in the workplace, in school and in their neighbourhoods.
Britain has long had a reputation for tolerance and diversity both of origin and of lifestyle. Indeed, since the arrival of the Huguenots in the seventeenth century, it has tended to be an outward-looking nation attracting waves of immigrants. And nothing better symbolises the beginning of Britain as a modern, multicultural society than the arrival of the Empire Windrush ship almost 60 years ago with 492 Jamaican passengers.
This tradition is inseparable from Britain's history as a trading nation, one that has long appreciated the benefits that open markets bring, both financially and as a contribution to the richness of life.
In modern Britain, this tradition is represented by our open borders with the other countries of the European Union and our liberal attitude to trade and to company ownership. In this we are far more radical than that supposed bastion of free trade, the United States. A strong thread of economic protectionism runs through American life that has found expression in the recent trade disputes with the EU over agricultural tariffs, and over the ownership of certain US seaports.
The EU is not blameless in this either. Several countries have taken a protectionist stance over proposed foreign takeovers, particularly in relation to strategic industries; a phenomenon that has been dubbed 'economic patriotism'.
In contrast, the UK has displayed much less resistance to the forces of globalisation and less fear of foreign ownership than other European countries. This might in part be due to the decade of economic prosperity that the UK has enjoyed, and because we are much clearer about the benefits that we accrue.
We also see the benefits of open labour markets in other areas. The rapid expansion in the public service workforce over the past five years would not have been possible without significant immigration, and most Britons recognise this. And there is widespread appreciation of the healthy impact on the UK economy of the drive and enterprise that many new immigrants have bought. This has found expression in broad tolerance for an ethnically diverse society.
This meant that when the EU opened its borders to ten new countries in 2004, Britain was one of only three member states to adopt an open door policy to economic immigrants from these countries. This brought huge benefits to the economy as a whole; filling gaps in the labour market and fuelling economic growth. Indeed, eastern European immigrants currently generate an estimated £2.54bn a year for the economy.
However, the past decade of economic openness has taken place against a backdrop of steady economic growth and relative stability in the UK and it is not inevitable that this situation will continue. If we were to experience an economic downturn, some of the harsher impacts of globalised markets might be felt in the UK.
Britain has developed a healthy national culture that embraces difference without losing a sense of national identity. You wouldn't know this from reading some of the scare stories about immigration and asylum seekers in our national media. But however negative and distorting the stories might be, newspapers rarely depart too far from the views or interests of their readership.
There are certain areas of social and economic policy in which tensions can already be observed – particularly in the area of labour markets, welfare and immigration. There are concerns about the impact of significant immigration on the bottom end of the labour market, for semi-skilled and unskilled employment. Some working class communities and employment sectors are increasingly complaining that competition from immigrants from the EU accession countries is depressing wages.
This adds impetus to the wider debate about the impact on community cohesion of immigration from inside and outside the EU. This is finding its expression in concern about the UK's commitment to multiculturalism, the integration of new communities and a perceived lack of common values.
Recent research from the CRE indicates that not only is residential isolation increasing for many minority groups but 'soft' segregation is also intensifying, as different groups increasingly inhabit separate worlds – for 95% of white Britons, all or most of their friends are white (compared with 94% in 2004) and the proportion of ethnic minority Britons who have mainly or exclusively ethnic minority friends is now 37% (compared with 31% in 2004).
Another factor driving these tensions is that while it is true that the benefits of an open society accrue to us all collectively, the penalties often occur individually or at the level of local communities. Immigration from the new EU accession states has brought about a general increase in economic prosperity. But for individuals who find themselves facing increased competition for jobs or trade, the downside is felt personally.
Against a background of these tensions, the government is rightly seeking to maintain support for a liberal trade policy and a relatively open attitude to immigration into the UK. However, in doing so, it is hampered by an immigration policy that does not enjoy public confidence. This is a serious handicap. Unless the public believes that ministers are able to act on decisions about who enters and leaves the country, these tensions are likely to get worse.
This should be a serious concern for those of us who are interested in maintaining both our liberal attitude to immigration in the UK and our liberal attitudes to markets – the one is clearly dependent on the other.
There are two fundamental problems with current immigration policy in the UK. The first is a system and administrative problem. We have a set of rules that are easily breached: we do not have effective control of our borders in terms of who enters the country; there is no clear mechanism for keeping track of people who are here; and there is no effective way of removing people from the country who are here illegally. The result is that the UK population has very little faith in the government's ability to manage immigration.
It is very difficult for the government to make a convincing case for maintaining an open policy on immigration when it cannot accurately define or manage its limits.
The government is beginning to get a grip on these problems, increasing the enforcement budget so that it is harder to beat the system, and taking steps to create a more professional, self-sufficient immigration enforcement capability. This has included giving immigration officers increased powers to carry out operations in arrest teams, independently of the police.
The government's recent decision to place restrictions on workers coming from Romania and Bulgaria when they join the EU was both correct in its own terms (a necessary delay) and politically the right thing to do. Achieving demonstrably effective border controls should be a concern for people who are interested in maintaining our relatively liberal attitude to immigration into the UK.
The second problem with the UK immigration system relates to fairness. Liberal policymakers have traditionally been bad at understanding what the public understand by the term 'fairness'.
Social democrats have traditionally seen this as being the equal treatment of everyone irrespective of any distinctions – whether based on social status, class, ethnicity or religion. And this understanding has informed their approach to immigration policy.
However, this does not accord with the common understanding of fairness, which is deeply held and widely shared and which, if tapped into, can help support the extension of rights and benefits to newcomers to the UK.
There is clear evidence that people will be strongly supportive of systems that provide the basics to those most in need, irrespective of differences in class or ethnicity. They are also essentially co-operative and sharing when it comes to others who show that they are similarly disposed. They do not extend the same support, however, to those who flout those rules of co-operation and mutual support.
This is clearly different from unconditional altruism. But immigration and welfare systems that recognise these core drivers of human nature are likely to prove to be longer lasting, not least because of more broad public support.
It would be a serious mistake to think that because people do not support broad and unconditional immigration into the UK, they are selfish or prejudiced against new immigrants. They are generous, but that generosity is conditional – and does not necessarily imply unconditional access to the UK's support structures and benefits system.
This is very important for the development of immigration policy. It suggests that there is potentially strong support for the state to meet the basic needs of those who abide by the rules, including the rules of entry into the UK.
It might not extend to unconditional access to UK public services and to our welfare system except and until people have attempted to find work and to take an active role in society.
Only when both policymakers and the public are able to agree on what is fair and what is not will we be able to move forward on the issues of immigration and community cohesion – and only then will we begin to see the tensions that are currently straining communities across the country give way to mutual respect and co-operation.
Ann Rossiter is the director of the Social Market Foundation
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