Weekly Worker 413 Thursday December 20 2001
Multiculturalism
Fighting for assimilation
Last week the ‘community cohesion review’ team, led by the former Nottingham city council chief executive, Ted Cantle, published its investigation into the so-called ‘race riots’ which erupted last summer in Burnley, Oldham and Bradford.
This 79-page document, which was published simultaneously with two separate reports into the disturbances in Burnley and Oldham, makes 67 recommendations and in many ways could be viewed as an inchoate semi-critique of the dominant bourgeois, liberal ideology of multiculturalism - though never straying, of course, outside the safe parameters of bourgeois anti-racism. Indeed, this report ultimately aims to strengthen the official ideology, by highlighting some of the more obvious failures in its implementation.
So, in relatively frank language, the Cantle report of December 11 slams the police, central government, local media, “inept councillors” and “inward-looking Asian communities”. Its overall conclusion is that separate places of worship, employment, housing and schooling means many communities “operate on the basis of parallel lives”. In other words, multiculturalism is not working. The report calls for a “national debate” on the whole concept of citizenship and what it means to be British in 2001.
No tiptoeing this time around sensitive subjects - that appears to be the central ethos of the Cantle report. More or less the same approach adopted recently by David Blunkett - who stirred up controversy with his comments lamenting the (supposed) inability of sections of the British-Asian community, particularly women, to speak English. Blunkett also condemned the practice of forced marriages and female circumcision (ie, female genital mutilation), demanding a national debate on ‘race’.
Official society, it seems, is looking in the mirror and is not particularly happy with what it sees - hence the increasing tensions and strains amongst its supporters and ideologues. So Lady Uddin, a Labour peer who is one of the 10-strong Cantle review team, attacked Blunkett for his concentration on the need for British-Asians to speak better English, saying: “His remarks sanction extremist rightwing groups to blame the riots on women who were not learning English or going into forced marriages.” In a similar vein, the general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, Bill Morris, compared Blunkett’s comment to the views of far right politicians in Austria and Germany, stating: “The BNP has taken comfort from Blunkett’s remarks” - while The Socialist condemned “Blunkett’s “crass, racist comments about Britain’s ethnic minorities”, which aim “to blame the people forced to live in Britain’s poorest areas for the problems this causes” (December 14).
True, emotive hyperbole aside, it is absurd to believe that the riots were somehow caused poor English language skills. Yes, some of Blunkett’s remarks were ignorant. But it is to seriously misunderstand the nature of bourgeois ideology to think - as Socialist Worker does - that his comments “oozed a saloon bar racist ‘us and them’ attitude” (December 22). More like saloon bar anti-racism if anything.
Vikram Dodd in The Guardian of was also far from happy with Blunkett - perhaps concerned that the hard won consensus based around liberal anti-racism/multiculturalism was beginning to break down, if not come under threat … from the enemy within, as opposed to the enemy outside (ie, the British National Party). Hence Dodd writes: “The Macpherson report into the Stephen Lawrence case identifies the need for a radical change across the whole of society to root out racism. That process of reform and of changing hearts and minds has been consistently undermined - deliberately and by stealth. While the Macpherson report was a wake-up call to white Britain to tackle its racism, Mr Blunkett’s contribution has, two-and-a-half years later, brought the wheel round full circle. Now for him the victimised are the problem” (December 12).
It cannot be denied, however, that some aspects of the Cantle report touch upon the truth. Thus, it rightly attacks “area-based initiatives”, in which councillors too often “give sweetheart deals with self-appointed and often unrepresentative community figures” - ie, the ‘community centre syndrome’. First you start with the Bengali centre. Then you get the north Bengali centre - so that means of course that there has to be a south Bengali one, and so on. In the name of promoting multiculturalism, pluralism, diversity, etc you see the institutionalisation of ‘racial’ difference. Apartheid revisited.
That is why Socialist Worker is way off the mark when it claims that “the result” of multiculturalism has been “overwhelmingly positive” (December 22).
In general, according to the report, central government policy - going back decades - of pumping money into inner-city revival projects has only helped to exacerbate the problem. The system of area-based regeneration grants too often actually reinforced the separation of communities.
Not unwisely, the report worries about educational segregrationalism - one result of which is the growth of “monocultural schools” and schools which still “run a Eurocentric curriculum and offer pervasive christian worship”. Instead, all schools should be promoting and fostering an understanding of other cultures, beliefs, etc. From this we can see that it would be mistaken to describe the Cantle report as anti-multiculturalist … rather uneasy with its current direction.
Understandably, the report expresses anxiety about the role of faith schools, mooting the idea that at least 25% of their pupils should be taken from “outside the local dominant ethnic group of community”. This clearly sits uneasily with the Blairite line of recent years, which has been to push faith schools in the name of ‘promoting excellence’, with Estelle Morris, the schools minister, arguing that it is wrong to deny parents of non-christian religions the opportunity to send their children to a faith school in the state system (though - paradoxically - she also said faith schools should “promote inclusiveness”. Talk about having your cake and eating it).
In the state sector, there are now 6,384 primary schools and 589 secondary schools which are denominational: 4,716 Anglican; 2110 catholic; 27 Methodist; 32 jewish; four muslim; two sikh, one Greek Orthodox and one Seventh Day Adventist. The muslim, sikh, Greek Orthodox, Seventh Day Adventist and five of the jewish schools have joined the state sector since 1997. Only four of them are new schools - the rest have joined from the independent sector.
In fact faith schools constitute another form of selection - their ‘success’ is mainly down to the fact that they take on fewer children with ‘special needs’. There is certainly a class bias. Figures show 17.6% of all primary school age children are entitled to free school meals; but only 16.1% in catholic schools, 11.5% in Anglican schools, 5.6% in Sikh schools and 4% in jewish schools.
However, all these things said, the overall thrust of the Cantle report is deeply reactionary (which is why it is rather unfortunate that Burnley SA has issued a statement welcoming it - see right). Indeed, its proposed ‘cures’ are in the main worse than the disease. Take its recommendation that all faith schools should have at least a 25% intake of pupils from outside the ‘dominant’ ethnic-religious groups. That is, the Cantle report is calling for quotas. Any such system would be a bureaucratic nightmare - make no mistake. Would this mean that a school deep in the heart of middle England or the home counties would have to bus in, for example, British-Asian or Scottish kids in order to fulfil the quota? It surely does not take much imagination to envisage how this would actively create tensions and divisions, not alleviate them. So-called ‘racial’ identity would become supreme - for the anti-racist state bureaucrats and the children themselves.
More objectionable is the report’s intended crusade to impart a new feeling of national belonging - we all need to learn to love queen and country. The report states that “a meaningful concept of ‘citizenship’ needs establishing and championing” - which is to be “based on a few common principles that are shared and observed by all sections of the community”. Suggestions for “common elements of nationhood” include respect for the law, support for women’s rights, respect for religious differences, etc.
Worst of all, in the opinion of the report, “immigrants should adopt norms of British life and speak better English”. This logic leads directly to its prime recommendation - that a ‘loyalty test’ is required. This should take the form of a clear “statement of allegiance” (or a US-style “oath of allegiance”) to the UK state. In order to get your British passport, you will have to demonstrate “a clear primary loyalty to this nation”.
What exactly are British “norms” and values? The answer is obvious: the authors of the Cantle report want us to sign up to (and look up to) the ‘values’ and ideology of official-establishment Britain - with its boundless myths and inventions. There is no room for our proletarian, progressive Britain - held together by the bond of class commonality. For Cantle, and others, it seems that the British-Asians in Oldham, Burnley, Bradford and elsewhere are not yet regarded as ‘properly’ British - not quite up to scratch, but with a nod - or kick - in the right direction, then maybe …
What rot. If anything, the summer riots - or insurrection - by the British-Asian youth was an explosive reaffirmation of ‘Britishness’ against the combined forces of the National Front, British National Party, the Oldham Chronicle, Daily Telegraph, etc - which treat them as ‘outsiders’. The British-Asian youth in these towns and cities, with their broad and distinctive accents, sound, and are, as British as Yorkshire pudding, and deeply resent being told that they are not. Quite right.
Cantle, Blunkett and co want forced assimilation from above. We communists, by contrast, want voluntary assimilation from below - with the eventually merging of all the peoples and nationalities of the world.
Eddie Ford
Burnley SA statement
Report welcomed
Burnley Socialist Alliance welcomes the Burnley Task Force report [published separately, but forming part of the Cantle report as a whole - EF] of December 11, and agrees that poverty, poor housing and social deprivation were major contributory factors to the unrest in the town last summer. The report is also right to condemn the far-right BNP for spreading racist ideas; the report says that some of the white population has been influenced by such ideas.
While there are useful recommendations that might give a kick-start to people and organisations that were complacent or complicit in racism, it is clear that fundamental problems in Burnley have yet to be seriously tackled. We stand by our submission to the task force, which is included as an appendix in the report.
As long as Burnley as a whole is starved of investment, with areas of unfit housing, job losses, poor health, poverty and despair, there will continue to be a serious risk of the BNP preying on that despair, with their politics of hatred. Burnley Socialist Alliance will continue to stand up clearly for putting people before profit, being clearly anti-racist and for campaigning for a better deal for everyone who is suffering from New Labour’s callous disregard for the needs of ordinary people.
The Socialist Alliance is concerned that the problems are getting worse. The loss of 450 jobs at Michelin and of 300 jobs at Rolls have come after the riots, and will have a direct effect on the lives of hundreds of families in the area.
Tess McMahon, SA candidate in the recent Burnley borough council by-elections, said: “Trying to encourage white and Asian people to mix more is of course very praiseworthy, but can’t achieve much when the very fabric of people’s lives is disintegrating. The Labour government should act now to support manufacturing jobs in the area. It should also provide the money our MP says is needed to sort out the town’s housing crisis.”
The Socialist Alliance is also very critical of David Blunkett’s recent comments about race, and it accuses him of playing into the racists’ hands. They agree with Shahid Malik, of Burnley, and a Labour NEC member, who said: “There are many fascists and racists who will perversely draw comfort from David Blunkett’s comments.”
They take issue with Blunkett’s point about English learning. Pauline Farrell, another SA candidate in the local elections, said: “Everyone wants to learn English - it’s just not true to suggest there’s thousands of people resistant to the idea. So it’s down to the government to make sure the colleges can provide all the courses needed.”
But in any case, the disturbances weren’t about whether people could speak English or not; the young people on the streets back in June, both white and Asian, could all speak English. That’s not what the riots were about. And when Stephen Lawrence was murdered by racists, they weren’t interested in how good his English was, only in the fact that he was black.
