"The Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain was set up by Runnymede in January 1998.
The commission's remit was to analyse the current state of multi-ethnic Britain and propose ways of countering racial discrimination and disadvantage, making Britain a confident and vibrant multicultural society at ease with its rich diversity.
The commission, chaired by Lord Bhikhu Parekh, was made up of 23 distinguished individuals drawn from many community backgrounds and different walks of life, and with a long record of active academic and practical engagement with race-related issues in Britain and elsewhere. They each brought to their task different views and sensibilities and, after a good deal of discussion, reached a consensus. The report is the product of their two years' deliberation." (From Runnymede Trust website).
THIS POST IS A COMMENT FROM 1988 IN RESPONSE TO THE 'PAREKH' REPORT. ORIGINALLY, THE RUNNYMEDE TRUST AGREED TO PUBLISH THIS ALONG WITH OTHER COMMENTS ON THE REPORT-BUT IN THE EVENT ONLY POSTED COMMENTS SUPPORTIVE OF IT.
The Parekh
Report makes 138 recommendations and is the first attempt to address Britain’s
future as a whole and proactively, rather than in response to a crisis or act
of injustice. The media reaction has centred on two sections of the report and
the comments of several members of the Commission. However, this response could
and should have been foreseen. It is only a surprise to the Commission members
because they come from such a narrow background. It is necessary for somebody
outside of this group to explain why attention has been diverted from the
valuable 98% or more of the report to the headline-grabbing 2% or less.
Is all the
fuss about the Parekh Report simply about one phrase: that Britishness has
racial connotations? Of course not. The report’s tone is set by the posing of
the futures facing Britain in terms of stark opposites (from section-‘The
Turning Point’).
Static or Dynamic
Intolerant or Cosmopolitan
Fearful or Generous
Insular or Internationalist
Authoritarian or Democratic
Introspective or Outward-looking
Punitive or Inclusive
Myopic or Far-sighted
Unsurprisingly,
“it is the second term in each of these pairings which evokes the kind of
Britain proposed in this report.” Nobody would wish to be static, fearful, and
the rest of this collection of straw men. The implication is that if you do not
accept all the conclusions of the report, you must be one of those wicked
people who reject a multicultural Britain altogether. The report asks “Does
Britishness have a future?.....Some [the
report’s authors?] believe that devolution, globalisation, and the new
cultural diversity have undermined it irretrievably.” Never mind that we were
told that devolution would strengthen the UK. No mention that Britain has the 5th
largest economy in the world and that globalisation challenges us to be more
competitive and therefore even more in charge of our own destiny than ever
before. Also, why should this new cultural diversity, which began more than 40
years ago, be some kind of threat? We have been teaching that Britain is the
product of successive infusions of immigrants, their cultures, and the
influences of the wider world for some time.
The report
takes Britain as being England, Scotland, and Wales-whatever happened to
Northern Ireland? It makes the distinctly odd remark that the nation state is
the UK (true) but that there is no similar adjective to Nordic in unifying
power. Most of us think that British is enough. Moreover, Norway and Sweden are
independent countries. In its response to media reaction the Commission muddies
the waters further. It insists that what the report says is not that the
description of the UK’s inhabitants as British “will never do on its own,” but
that “the term ‘British’ will never do as a description of all the inhabitants
of the British Isles, i.e. including Ireland. The statement is self-evidently
true.” What is self- evidently true is that British
Isles is a geographic, not a political term. But British and British Isles
are not confused even in a Key Stage 3 Geography class. Britain is a political term. “The United Kingdom of Great Britain
& Northern Ireland”-that is what it says in our passports. We are Scots and
British, English and British, Northern Irish and British, and Welsh and
British. We are all British together. Britain, Great Britain, and United
Kingdom have always been confusing-and in a typically British way, nobody has
minded very much! Britain and Britishness are perennially loose words.
They do not exclude anyone.
The report
argues that 1) the UK is not, and never has been a single nation (then why do
we elect a Westminster parliament in a single nationwide General Election?) and
2) that “Britain should not be pictured as consisting of one large homogenous
majority plus various small minorities.” Quite right. But the report suggests
that the non-existent (white) majority is made up of minorities with the
implication that this somehow undermines the idea of a united British nation,
not that Britishness encompasses everyone. People describe themselves as
North-eastern and British, as they always have done, and therefore this
supposedly means that Britishness is outdated because of course this is somehow
a product of devolution, globalisation and Britain’s membership of the EU.
Who coined
the phrase ‘ethnic minorities’ in the first place? AS an EMAG teacher I carry
out ethnic monitoring of our pupils. I use terms such as ethnic minority and
African-Caribbean to which the report now objects because the word minority
suggests ‘marginal’ and it should be African-Caribbean British or ‘Black
Londoner’ etc. These are official terms endorsed in the past by councils,
government, CRE and, dare one say it, the Runneymede Trust. Given that police
officers at the McPherson Inquiry were denounced for using inappropriate and
old-fashioned terms such as coloured and Negro, it is disturbing that teachers
could find themselves in the same boat through no fault of their own just
because the terminology has been changed. Over the years we have seen demands
for Black Sections, the Labour Party’s belief that only it can represent
non-White voters, and separatist policies pursued by left-wing councils. Are we
surprised if the word ‘minority’ has been over-emphasised?
In Dr.
Parekh’s Guardian article there is another rather odd phrase: “Thanks to the
devolution of power to Scotland and our membership of the EU, there is an
increasing tendency in certain circles to define British identity in an
exclusive manner that alienates a large number of people and fails to foster a
common sense of belonging.” Both Dr. Parekh and the report seem to have a
different operating language from the rest of us at times. However, I take this
to mean that opposing integration with continental Europe is to be equated with
‘Englishness’ and Englishness = Essex Man and football hooligans (yes, Lady
Gavron did really suggest this, as did Gary Younge and Hugo Young in Guardian
articles quoted as supportive on the Commission’s website). The report also complains
that many customary images of Britain are English-centred. Since the people of
England (not just English people) constitute 83% of the population of the UK,
this is hardly surprising. In fact, in pre-Common Market (sorry, EU) days,
there were probably more non-England images. The creation of a ‘Golden
Triangle’ and the concentration of EU grants in the London-Slough corridor have
made London and the South-east even more of a focal point.
The
Commission alleges that the media reacted to only one phrase: “Britishness
….has….racial connotations” and unleashed a torrent of misquotation and abuse.
It retreats to a dictionary defence-“Consider the difference between a racist
group and a racial group.” The image of Denise Lewis wrapped in the Union flag
has been much quoted by all sides of the argument. People must justly see
themselves fairly represented in all aspects of our national life. Why then did
the Commission not say that we should live up to our ideals as British people,
and not question the idea of Britishness itself? Because slavery, the Empire,
and English hooliganism are supposedly what constitute a large a large part of
the ‘Britishness’ to which the Commission objects. “Britain is a community of
communities” is a bland phrase with which almost anyone can agree. But sally Tomlinson’s
sentence continues: “a multicultural post-nation still refighting the Second
World War “ and not having come to terms with the end of empire. These are standard liberal/left themes and
not taken seriously outside of this narrow viewpoint.
Why should a
multicultural Britain be a post-nation? Why is the Second World War so
important? Because it is a time when Britain stood, supported by its empire,
against an evil threat to our independence. Why is contribution of 3 million
Indian Army soldiers (70% of the army in Burma and who fought at Dunkirk, North
Africa and Italy) and tens of thousands of West Indians (per head of population
an even larger group) who volunteered to fight on our side largely forgotten?
Yes, for racist reasons, but also because the imperial past, and often the past
itself, are an embarrassment to the liberal/left and to this government. The
Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol was refused government or Lottery
help because it was not sufficiently ‘modern,’-not “part of our project” in the
words of a government minister. And above all, because its existence reminds us
of a historic connection and a world outside the EU.
In a small
way I hope that I am contributing to an attempt to airbrush back this vital
contribution into the consciousness of our country. The Memorial Gates Project,
the patron of which is Baroness Shreela Flather, will build a memorial to all
the Asian, African and African-Caribbean servicemen and women whose sacrifice
has not been sufficiently acknowledged. I am a member of the steering committee
and a writer on the Educational Project. We are producing teaching materials, a
CD ROM and a website for History and the new Citizenship education which will
go to every Primary and Secondary school in Britain.*
The problem
is not that the Telegraph confused ‘racial’ with ‘racist,’ but that the report
did not stick to the parameters of Dr. Parekh’s introductory theme: “People
must be treated equally, but also with also with due regard to real differences
of experience, background and perception.” This is spot on and should be the
basis of a consensus. The main difficulty is that every member of the
Commission, with two exceptions, is either a card carrying member of the Labour
Party or of the liberal/left academic tendency. The days when such a group
could establish a consensus on racial equality for the whole nation are long
gone. It is a pity that the Commission’s website could not have posted the
Independent editorial of October 12th which ended: “The report calls
for a recognition that we are a multicultural nation. Most of us, especially
the young, have known this for some time. We are also aware that we are a
‘community of communities’ as the report puts it. Above all, though, we are a
British community-diverse, multicultural and multi-faith, and proud of it. The
evolution of Britain continues.”
*unfortunately lack of funds meant the
education pack has to be charged for
