has multiculturalism failed? a critical analysis
TRANSCRIPT
Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
Has Multiculturalism in Britain Failed?
A Critical Analysis.
Ciaran Thapar
1st May 2013
Final Year Undergraduate
Word Count: 9931
This dissertation is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of BSc in Economics and Politics
School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies
University of Bristol
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
Attestation
This dissertation contains no plagiarism, has not been submitted in whole or
in part for the award of another degree, and is solely the work of Ciaran
Thapar.
Signed………………………………………..
Name…………………………………
Date…………………………
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
Abstract
This dissertation fundamentally responds to the widespread belief
that multiculturalism in Britain is ‘dead’ and has ‘failed’. This claim
has developed into a prominent narrative across the British media
and in contemporary political debate since the wake of the 2001
riots in northern English cities. Treating the riots as a turning point,
the development of the ‘narrative of failure’ over the last twelve
years will be mapped as it has gained salience from the
endorsement of scholars, politicians and journalists. In doing so,
the two main justifications that have been given to support the
belief that multiculturalism has failed will be highlighted.
The first justification will be identified as the claim that
multiculturalism has encouraged and exacerbated separatism
between communities, and the second as the claim that it has
fostered Islamic extremism in Britain. However, each will be
revealed to be invalid and will thus be nullified, respectively. Implicit
in both justifications is the misperception of the British model of
multiculturalism as ‘radical’, or, in other words, having not
encouraged the integration of ethnic minorities. This misperception
has been furthered by the emphasis of policies since 2001 upon
‘community cohesion’ and ‘Britishness’. But by analysing the
direction and policies of the New Labour government from 1997 to
2001, Britain’s multicultural model will be argued to have instead
been ‘moderate’, and thus cannot be claimed to have encouraged
or exacerbated separatism. Additionally, viewing the 2005 Islamic
extremist terrorist bombings in London as another turning point for
the narrative, it will be argued that the attack upon multiculturalism
has become interdependent with the perception that Muslims have
failed to integrate into British society. In seeing the rise of extremist
Islam as evidence for multiculturalism’s failure, the narrative has
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
overlooked the impact that British foreign and anti-terrorism policies
have had on the British-Muslim community.
By nullifying both justifications that the narrative relies upon,
it will be concluded that multiculturalism in Britain has not failed.
Instead, it has become a scapegoat, blamed in times of domestic
uncertainty and insecurity after events that have revealed conflict
between Muslims and British society. Despite the rhetorical
denunciation that multiculturalism has received, it remains a
realistic political project.
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
This dissertation is dedicated to my parents for ensuring that Britain’s culturally diverse society has always remained
central to my upbringing.
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
Contents
Abbreviations 7
Introduction 8Methodology and Structure 8
Chapter 1: Introducing the ‘narrative of failure’ 121.1 - Identifying the first justification 12
1.2 - Identifying the second justification 18
Chapter 2: Nullifying the first justification 212.1 - Literature review 21
2.2 – ‘Radical’ and ‘moderate’ models of multiculturalism 24
2.3 – 1997-2001: New Labour and multiculturalism 27
2.4 – 2001: The misinterpretation of the northern riots reports 31
2.5 – ‘Britishness’, ‘community cohesion’ and integration 34
2.6 – Multiculturalism has not encouraged or exacerbated separatism 36
Chapter 3: Nullifying the second justification 373.1 – Literature review 37
3.2 – British-Muslim identity before 2001 40
3.3 - British-Muslims and multiculturalism pre-7/7 42
3.4 – Why blaming multiculturalism for Islamic extremism is invalid 46
3.5 - Multiculturalism has not fostered Islamic extremism in Britain 50
Conclusion 51
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
Bibliography 53
Abbreviations
7/7 – The terrorist bombings in London on 7th July 2005
9/11 – The terrorist attacks in New York on the 11th
September 2001
CIC – Commission on Integration and Cohesion
CMEB – Commission for Multi-Ethnic Britain
CCRT – Community Cohesion Review Team
DCLG - Department for Communities and Local
Government
EHRC – Equality and Human Rights Commission
FAIR – Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism
MCB – Muslim Council of Britain
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
Introduction
In a speech delivered to the Munich Security Council in February 2011,
the Prime Minister, David Cameron, referred to the “doctrine of state
multiculturalism” as having encouraged “segregated communities”. In
particular, he focused upon the Muslim community’s involvement with these
ills. He simultaneously condemned terrorism and extremist Islam and outlined
the need to “defeat the ideas that warp so many young minds” (Cameron,
2011). The speech was widely received as the most authoritative
denunciation of Britain’s model of multiculturalism to date. It epitomised the
broad argument of many commentators since the turn of the millennium that
have endorsed the belief that multiculturalism in Britain has ‘failed’. This belief
has been most significantly endorsed since the riots that occurred in northern
English cities in the summer of 2001. Other major events such as the 9/11
terrorist attacks in New York that year and the 7/7 terrorist bombings in
London in 2005 have contributed to the feeling of national insecurity and
resentment towards certain communities in Britain – particularly Muslims –
that are seen to have lived separate lives from mainstream society under
Britain’s model of multiculturalism. From the beginning, this dissertation will
seek to invalidate what will be referred to as the ‘narrative of failure’ and its
claim that multiculturalism in Britain has ‘failed’ by identifying and nullifying the
two main justifications given to support it.
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
Methodology and Structure
The slant taken here is unique within the existing literature. Other
defenders of multiculturalism such as Tariq Modood, Bhikhu Parekh, Andrew
Pilkington and Ali Rattansi have responded to the attackers of multiculturalism
by dismissing aspects of the claim of its ‘failure’. But no extensive study exists
that is exclusively focused upon identifying the elements of, and then
rejecting, the claim of ‘failure’. In other words, this dissertation seeks to
provide the first holistic and direct rejection of the narrative by means of
nullifying the reasons for its invalid development and the justifications that
support it.
There will not be independent research conducted for this dissertation
because it is not necessary for the analysis of the ‘narrative of failure’. All
relevant speeches and articles that allow the narrative to be mapped in
chapter 1 are easily available. Furthermore, the agendas, policies and reports
of the government and research/policy organisations from 1997 onwards
studied in chapters 2 and 3 are well documented. The lack of independent
research will alleviate any potential ethical pressures from the consideration of
this dissertation. Additionally, the research will be controlled to an exclusively
British setting, without including a comparative analysis of another country.
Although considering the situations in France, Germany or The Netherlands –
which have been argued to have gone through a similar ‘retreat’ from
multiculturalism (Joppke, 2004) – may offer a means of viewing the alleged
‘failure’ of multiculturalism in a wider context: here, the nullification of both
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
justifications only requires the analysis of the British model and subsequent
criticisms of it.
All three chapters of this dissertation will be qualitative studies. Chapter
1 will identify the claim made by many commentators since 2001 that
multiculturalism in Britain has ‘failed’. The focus will be upon this time period
to most suitably reflect the development of the ‘narrative of failure’ from its
conception after the northern riots in 2001. By broadly analysing the
comments, articles, opinions and speeches of relevant commentators -
politicians, scholars, journalists and other critics - the two justifications given
to support the belief that multiculturalism has ‘failed’ will be identified,
respectively.
Chapter 2 will nullify the first of these justifications: the claim that
multiculturalism has encouraged and exacerbated separatism between
communities in Britain. The theoretical distinction between ‘radical’ and
‘moderate’ multiculturalism will be highlighted, before the New Labour
government’s multicultural agenda from 1997 to 2001 is mapped, including a
study of their policies and endorsement of the Runnymede trust’s Parekh
Report. This will identify the British model to have been ‘moderate’. After an
analysis of the reports released in response to the riots in 2001, the
subsequent justification given to support the claim of multiculturalism’s ‘failure’
and affiliated new calls for ‘Britishness’, ‘integration’ and ‘community cohesion’
will be revealed to have relied upon a misinterpretation of the British model as
‘radical’. The first justification will thus be rejected.
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
Chapter 3 will nullify the second of the justifications: the claim that
multiculturalism has fostered Islamic extremism in Britain. The development of
the ‘British-Muslim’ identity will be described since its conception in the late
1980s. There will then be an analysis of the rise of two interdependent sub-
narratives that begun in 2001: firstly, the attack upon multiculturalism for
having allegedly encouraged separate (predominantly Muslim) communities
after the northern riots; and secondly, the increased fear of Islam after the
9/11 terrorist attacks in New York. These sub-narratives will be presented to
have invalidly merged by the 7/7 attacks in 2005, and in light of this, the
second justification will be nullified for three reasons. Firstly, the said merger
and interdependency has led the narrative to again falsely assume the British
model of multiculturalism to be ‘radical’ when it is in fact ‘moderate’. Secondly,
the justification overlooks the fact that the 7/7 bombers were integrated,
British-born Muslims. And thirdly, by blaming multiculturalism, this justification
will be shown to have disregarded other major factors that have contributed to
the rise of extremist Islam.
The conclusion will acknowledge the two-pronged nullification of the
‘narrative of failure’ conducted in this dissertation to deduce that
multiculturalism in Britain has not failed. It will be suggested that instead
multiculturalism has been a scapegoat, blamed in times of domestic
uncertainty and insecurity after events that have largely revealed concerning
conflict between Muslims and British society. It will also agree that the future
of multiculturalism is rhetorically weak, as it has become embedded as a
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
failure in the public narrative, but is nonetheless a reality that persists in its
‘moderate’ form.
Chapter 1: Introducing the ‘narrative of
failure’ and its two justifications
There has been a dominant narrative claiming British multiculturalism’s
‘failure’ that has grown since the beginning of the twenty first century.
Throughout this dissertation, this narrative will be referred to as the ‘narrative
of failure’ (Rattansi, 2012). Its mounting negativity is most significant in the
reactionary comments of politicians, scholars and journalists after the riots in
northern England in 2001 and extremist Islamic terrorist attacks committed in
London in 2005. Additionally, this trend is reflected in the fall in public support
for multiculturalism1. This chapter will view these two events, and the
reactionary comments of politicians, scholars and journalists to be the most
significant aspects of the narrative’s development. In doing so the full extent
to which commentators have claimed multiculturalism has failed, and their two
justifications for this claim, will be identified.
1.1 – Identifying the first justification
1 An Ipsos MORI poll found there to be a ‘common recognition that Britain is multicultural’ in 2002 (just after the riots), with 78% agreeing that it is important to respect the rights of minority groups (MORI, 2003). However, a poll in 2009 revealed ‘a clear weakening in support for multiculturalism’ (MORI, 2009: 1), with 38% of people inclined to see it as something which threatens the British way of life – for the first time more than the 30% that viewed it positively (MORI, 2009: 3).
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
The first justification is the claim that British multiculturalism has
encouraged and exacerbated separatism between communities (Alagiah,
2006; Cameron 2007, 2008 and 2011; Goodhart, 2004; Malik 2001;
O’Donnell, 2007; Phillips 2005; Sacks, 2007). A recent study by Taylor-Gooby
and Waite, involving interviews with members of the House of Commons,
policy-reporters, researchers and senior academics, reveals all participants to
‘express concerns about the segregative effects of current multiculturalist
practice’ (Taylor-Gooby and Waite, 2013: 3; 10). This concern has been a
dominant part of the ‘narrative of failure’ since the riots in 2001.
Widely considered as a vital ‘turning point’ for the narrative (Modood,
2005: 62), the riots that occurred in northern cities in the summer of 2001 -
Oldham in May, Bradford in June and Leeds in July – ‘were to prove fateful
and, some might argue, fatal’ (Rattansi, 2011: 68) for multiculturalism in
Britain2. Neighbourhoods and schools in the most affected areas had become
at least perceived to be ‘all-White or all-Asian’ (Rattansi, 2011: 70). There was
an unavoidable common theme between all three sets of riots: the clear
existence of racial tension between the diverse communities3. The economic
2 The riots were shortly followed by the 9/11 attacks in New York, which had boldly symbolised a new, 21st century-era of increased fears for national security and religious separatism/extremism.3 The census in 2001 in Oldham reviewed 20 ‘wards’, with 15 of them being more than three quarters White and the remaining 5 considered ‘very mixed’ – the most mixed ward being Werneth, with 58% of its population being Black and Asian (CSSR, 2001).
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
deprivation4, high levels of local institutional racism5 and the mounting conflict
between Muslim and White young men ‘venting their frustrations on each
other…as well as the police’ came together to produce the social unrest
(Pilkington, 2008).
After the riots the newly elected Home Secretary, David Blunkett, set
up a Home Office committee to analyse and respond to what had happened.
From this, a review team investigated the riots and came up with actions that
could ‘develop confident, active communities and social cohesion’ in response
(Denham, 2001: 1). Similar, more localised reports were written, too. In the
Ousely Report on Bradford, what caused the riots was immediately diagnosed
as ‘community fragmentation’ – placing much of the responsibility on the
alleged ‘self-segregation’ of Muslims in the area (Cantle, 2001; Modood 2005,
2007; Ousely 2001). All of the reports expressed the same surprise and
concern at the ‘depth of the polarisation in our towns and cities’ (CCRT, 2001:
9).
The widespread damage and cost of the riots, as well as the
uncertainty about what they symbolised, produced a surge of comment and
debate across the country regarding the status of British multiculturalism. The
Home Secretary, in a speech reflecting upon the findings of the reports,
reiterated the consensual opinion that the riots occurred because of ‘fractured’
4 All of the wards (districts) affected were among the 20% most deprived in the country, and some areas of Oldham and Burnley among the poorest 1% (Rattansi, 2011: 70).5 A Commission for Racial Equality report in the 1990s condemned Oldham council’s housing policies as racist. There were also a significant number of National Front/British National Party members who lived in the affected areas (Rattansi, 2011: 70).
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
communities (Blunkett, 2001). He further made clear that he saw the
disturbances as reflective of the failure of past governments to control
immigration and integration (Pilkington, 2008). Indeed, after 2001 a broadly
dominant line of argument began to grow: that the multiculturalist settlement
had not worked for modern Britain (Kundnani, 2002). As the debate
progressed, for the first time even the ‘pluralistic centre-left’, that had
traditionally defended multicultural diversity, began offering a criticism of
multiculturalism (Modood, 2005: 63). Kenan Malik wrote an article for the
government-funded Commission for Racial Equality that attacked
multiculturalism, arguing that it had ‘helped to segregate communities far
more effectively than racism’ (Malik, 2001). Trevor Phillips, chair of the EHRC,
claimed that multiculturalism has encouraged ‘separateness’ across Britain
(Baldwin and Rozenberg, 2004). He labeled it ‘out of date’ (2004) and went on
to say:
My quarrel is not with those who like diversity. It is with those who want to
make a fetish of our historical differences to the point where multiculturalism,
as it is practiced, becomes ridiculous, or worse still, a dangerous form of
benign neglect and exclusion6.
A host of newspaper articles have since been lined with a similar
attitude. For example, David Goodhart7 argued in a controversial essay
published in Prospect that the diversity inspired by multiculturalism has gone
6 Connections, 2004/05 (magazine article)7 Traditionally, left-of-centre commentators have been supportive and defensive of multiculturalism. Thus David Goodhart’s (along with others such as Kenan Malik) criticism of the state of diversity and difference in Britain was particularly symbolic of the widespread adoption of the ‘narrative of failure’.
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
so far in Britain that it has forced ‘sharing and solidarity’ to conflict (2004). He
has remained loyal to this view, having released a book in April 2013 that
retains his core anti-multiculturalist argument8. The Archbishop of York, Dr
John Sentamu, was reported in The Sunday Times to have announced that
multiculturalism has ‘betrayed the English’ (Gledhill, 2004), and just before
becoming Prime Minister, Gordon Brown wrote in The Daily Telegraph that
‘what was wrong with multiculturalism was not the recognition of diversity but
that it over-emphasized separateness at the cost of unity’ (Brown, 2007).
Other news reports since 2001 have featured the same attack upon
multiculturalism, especially after the terrorist attacks in 20059.
With the 9/11 attacks in New York having shocked the Western world
in 2001, the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005 was another major event that
contributed to the prominence of the debate regarding multiculturalism in
Britain, now factoring in the fears regarding religious extremism. The reactions
to the attacks produced a new wave of critics slaying multiculturalism, largely
because of claims that it had ‘aided an extremist Islamic discourse’ (Kepel,
2005). It thus continued to secure the already prominent view that
multiculturalism had encouraged and exacerbated segregation across the
country. Conservative MP David Davis agreed with Trevor Phillips, adding
8 The British Dream by David Goodhart was published 1st April 2013 and stands by the (widely criticised) fundamental argument expressed in his essay from 2004 that British society has been dismantled by mass immigration because of the tendency for human beings to be suspicious of outsiders.9 The exact same claims have been continually repeated over the last twelve years. For example, Ed West (Daily Telegraph), a decade after the riots, wrote that the multiculturalist system clearly ‘[drives] segregation’ (2011). Like David Goodhart, West has endorsed this opinion recently in his book, The Diversity Illusion (1st April 2013), in which he fiercely argues that multiculturalism and immigration have had negative overall effects on British society.
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
that the government had promoted ‘distinctive identities’ over ‘common values
of nationhood’ (Jones, 2005). The attacks caused widespread discomfort
about Islam in Britain, and created an awareness of the ‘voluntary
segregation’ that some Muslim communities were allegedly endorsing (Porter,
2005). An increasing awareness socio-racial segregation across the country
had led to the conclusion that multiculturalism was to blame, and thus had
‘failed’.
Centre-Right politician David Cameron’s position as leader of the
Conservative Party and now Prime Minister has brought his comments about
multiculturalism to the forefront of the debate. Prior to being elected, in 2008
Cameron fiercely attacked multiculturalism as a state policy at a debate held
by the EHRC. He held it responsible for those born and raised in Britain that
“still feel completely divorced and alienated” from the mainstream. He claimed
that it aids those who oppose liberal values, and encourages “different
cultures within Britain to live separate lives” from others. He announced that
multiculturalism “is a wrong-headed doctrine that has had disastrous results”
and “deliberately weakened” British identity (Cameron, 2008). Three years
later, as Prime Minister in 2011, he delivered a speech that has been received
as authoritative denunciation of multiculturalism10. The speech revitalised the
very same debate that had begun with the riots a decade beforehand. An
understanding of multiculturalism as a policy that excessively celebrates
‘difference’ has evidently led many commentators over the years to talk of it
as divisive and thus productive of segregation (Modood, 2011). The broad
10 It was particularly controversial in light of Cameron’s aim since becoming party leader to modernize the image of the Conservative party.
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
engagement of critics claiming multiculturalism’s failure has cemented this
opinion as the dominant direction of the narrative. The belief that the model
has lead to separatism, a Britain of ‘monocultures’ living alongside one
another (Cantle, 2012), is the first justification of the ‘narrative of failure’.
1.2 – Identifying the second justification
The second justification of the narrative is the belief that
multiculturalism has failed because it has fostered extremist Islam in Britain.
Since well before the turn of the millennium there has been an undeniable
public awkwardness about British-Muslim identity and its compatibility with
contemporary British society (Parekh, 2008). The riots in 2001, the 7/7
bombings in 200511 and the framing of subsequent anti-terrorism policies
involved in combating the fears about a segregated, extremist sect of Islam
have contributed towards the ‘narrative of failure’ and its attack upon British
multiculturalism. The reports and the policies that were introduced in the years
following the riots not only aimed to build ‘community cohesion’ and resolve
the fragmentation demonstrated, but consistently referred to the ‘self
segregation’ of Muslims. For example, after the riots the government was
secretly warned of nine ‘hotspots’ of ‘decaying communities with large Muslim
populations’ where future disturbances were thought to be likely (Travis,
2006). The idea of multiculturalism was believed to be ‘creaking under the
11 Worth also noting are the failed attempted bombings that followed on the 21st July that year and the attacks on Glasgow international airport on 30th June 2007 (all perpetrated by Islamic extremists).
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
weight of the culturally unreasonable or theologically alien demands’ of Islam
(Meer and Modood, 2009: 476).
The attackers in London on 7th July 2005 were preaching extremist,
militant Islam12. On the day of the bombings Jack Straw, the Labour Foreign
Secretary, responded by noting the attacks had “all the hallmarks of Al-
Qaeda” (BBC, 2005). The ‘critical, sometimes savage, discourse’ claiming
multiculturalism’s death and/or failure reached a new peak in the wake of the
bombings (Modood, 2007: 11), and now ‘British public opinion largely agreed
on one thing: multiculturalism was dead and militant Islam had killed it off’
(Singh, 2005: 157). In the same way as the riots in 2001, the attacks
enhanced the relevance of the debate. Critics who had similarly argued that it
was to blame for the separatism between communities in Britain now began
holding multiculturalism responsible for the extremism demonstrated by the
bombings. The media were quick in response to the event. Mark Steyn wrote
in the Daily Telegraph that ‘the real suicide bomb is multiculturalism’ (2005).
William Pfaff argued in The Observer that the Britain-born bombers were the
result of ‘half a century [of] misguided and catastrophic’ policy’ that has
produced ‘a technologically educated but culturally and morally unassimilated
immigrant intelligentsia’ (2005). As the narrative had strengthened,
‘multiculturalism, segregation, violence and terrorism were being linked in the
12 Mohammad Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Germaine Lindsay and Hasib Mir Hussain collectively killed 52 people and injured hundreds of others in suicide bombings on 7th July 2005 (BBC, 2006b)
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
public imagination’ as the influence of the media’s reactionary blaming of
multiculturalism took its toll (Rattansi, 2011: 76).
Political commentators have since also contributed to the evolving
discourse as it has gained revitalised momentum in its condemnation of
multiculturalism. Michael Gove, in his book ‘Celsius 7/7’, argued that
multiculturalism has incubated the presence of Islamic extremism in Britain
and is therefore to blame for the bombings (Gove, 2006). Trevor Phillips gave
a speech in the wake of the attacks condemning multiculturalism again for
concentrating “far too much on the ‘multi’ and not enough on common culture”
and stated that Britain ‘[has] allowed tolerance of diversity to harden into
effective isolation of communities” (Phillips, 2005). Kenan Malik, a decade
after his response to the 2001 riots, developed his stance to argue that
multiculturalism had helped ‘clear a space’ for militant Islam (Malik, 2011).
This second justification of those arguing the failure of multiculturalism
was, again, epitomised by David Cameron’s 2011 speech in which he implied
that the terrorism committed by extremist young Muslim men in 2005 was
down to a “question of identity”. From the first few sentences he raised the
importance of stressing, “terrorism is not linked exclusively to any one religion
or ethnic group”13. He then almost exclusively referred to Islam and the perils
of extreme versions of the religion, particularly in relation to the problems with
British multiculturalism. He tied his argument that state multiculturalism has
encouraged “different cultures to live separate lives” with suggesting the need
13 Perhaps to rhetorically sterilize the content of the rest of the speech, ‘more than playing to the gallery’ (Klug, 2011: 3).
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
to “provide a vision of society” that will make British-Muslims in particular feel
they want to belong to (Cameron, 2011). It is fitting that David Cameron, as
the current, Prime Minister referred to and combined both of the arguments
that have been used to justify the claim that multiculturalism has failed.
Chapter 2: Nullifying the first justification
Having identified the ‘narrative of failure’ and the two main justifications
that have been used to support it, this chapter will respond to the first of these
justifications. It will be revealed that the claim that multiculturalism has failed
because it has encouraged and exacerbated separatism between
communities in Britain has relied upon an invalid misinterpretation of the
British model. Because of this, the claim will be nullified. The arguments of
defenders of multiculturalism that feature in existing relevant literature will be
aggregated in order to do this.
2.1 - Literature Review
A ‘substantial empirical literature’ challenges the master narrative of
failure (Taylor-Gooby and Waite, 2013: 4). The arguments of Tariq Modood14
are prominent within this literature. Modood has centrally argued that
multiculturalism has not been ‘about separatism, fragmentation, anti-14 Tariq Modood is a Professor of Sociology, Politics and Public Policy at Bristol University (1997-). He is the founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship. He is one of the leading authorities on ethnic minorities in Britain.
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
integration or anti-British nationality’ (Modood, 2005: 63). He argues that the
claims of it having encouraged separatism between communities, coupled
with the belief that there has been a ‘retreat from’ (Joppke, 2004: 253) or
‘death of’ (Kundnani, 2002) it are false, and sees the belief that
multiculturalism is ‘only about encouraging minority difference’ as invalidly
criticising an untrue, essentialist model not pursued in Britain. (Modood, 2011:
2). Indeed, he refers to other prominent commentators in order to validate
what he deems to be an accurate version of contemporary multiculturalism:
The multiculturalism in the writings of key theorists such as, Charles Taylor,
Will Kymlicka, Bhikhu Parekh and Anne Phillips and in the relevant documents,
laws and policies of Canada, Australia and Britain is aimed at integration. The
difference between the pro- and anti-multiculturalists lies not in the goal of
integration but, firstly, in the normative understanding of integration.15
Andrew Pilkington16 has directly responded to the narrative’s attack
upon multiculturalism, agreeing with Modood that it is a form of integration
and ‘an attractive and worthwhile political project’ (Pilkington, 2008; Modood,
2007). Pilkington maps the changing nature of racial discourse from what he
calls the ‘radical hour’ of New Labour’s first term in office (1997-2001) that
involved a particular focus upon anti-racism and identifying institutional
racism. He notes that the media reaction to the Runnymede trust-
commissioned Parekh Report (2000) and the riots in northern cities in 2001
steered the focus of the racial discourse towards a nationalist one ‘centered
15 Modood, 2012: 4116 Andrew Pilkington is a Professor of Sociology at Northampton University.
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
on community cohesion and integration’ that has persisted since. He argues
that this change in focus has led to the attack upon a misperceived,
nonexistent ‘radical’ version of multiculturalism. By distinguishing between
‘moderate’ and ‘radical’ multiculturalism he concludes, in line with other
critics17, that no country in the West – especially Britain – has adopted a
‘radical’ model. Indeed like Modood, by identifying this perception as false, he
dismisses the idea that multiculturalism can seriously be seen as causing
segregation (2008).
Ali Rattansi18 has added an extension to these arguments. He notes
that debates about multiculturalism have been plagued by a tendency to see it
in a dated, ‘culturally essentialist’ form; that is, ‘with simplistic versions of
ethnic minority cultures...having a small number of unchanging characteristics
and as being tightly bound entities’ (Rattansi, 2011: 27). In line with Pilkington
he acknowledges the significance of the narrative’s call for ‘community
cohesion’ after 2001, and identifies it as an insecure reaction to the ‘polarised’
and ‘fractured’ communities found in the investigative reports that followed the
northern riots (Rattansi, 2012). Furthermore, Rattansi views the narrative’s
redirection towards ‘new integrationism’ in Britain after this time as the result
of a false criticism of multiculturalism. After a close reading of the said reports
he concludes categorically that ‘multiculturalism is not blamed for the creation
of segregation and fractured communities’ (Rattansi, 2011: 74).
17 For example, Will Kymlicka argues that ‘multicultural integration’ remains a live option for Western democracies. (Kymlicka, 2012: 1)18 Ali Rattansi is a visiting Professor in Sociology at City University, London. He is an expert on multiculturalism, identity and racism in Britain.
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
2.2 – ‘Radical and ‘moderate’ models of
multiculturalism
There has been a significant misconception of Britain’s model of
multiculturalism that has materialized in the public narrative since the riots in
2001. This misconception is a result of the heterogeneity surrounding
multiculturalism and how it is understood. Steven Vertovec summarises this,
acknowledging that,
Multiculturalism is associated with many – sometimes divergent, sometimes
overlapping -- discourses, institutional frameworks and policies invoking the
term in rather different ways…it may refer to a demographic description, a
broad political ideology, a set of specific public policies, a goal of institutional
restructuring, a mode of resourcing cultural expression, a general moral
challenge, [and] a set of new political struggles.19
The complicated, multi-faceted and subjective elements of
multiculturalism make the attainment of a universally accepted definition for it
very difficult. Indeed, as Meer and Noorani put it, ‘[multiculturalism]
encapsulates a vast corpus of contested meanings’ (2006: 197). However, all
interviewees in Taylor-Gooby and Waite’s recent paper agreed that the core
understanding of multiculturalism is a “respect for diversity” (2013). Further
than this, a distinction can be highlighted. Bhikhu Parekh defended the
CMEB’s account of British multiculturalism put forward in ‘The future of multi-
19 Vertovec, 2001: 3.
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
ethnic Britain (The Parekh Report)’ (2000) by criticising writers that have
attacked multiculturalism, noting that they tend to ‘homogenize it’s different
forms, equate it with one particular strand of it, and end up misunderstanding
those who do not fit [their] simplistic version of it’ (Parekh, 2006: 349). It is
precisely this tendency that has been the driving force behind the narrative’s
false interpretation of, and attack upon, multiculturalism in Britain since the
turn of the millennium.
By claiming that British multiculturalism has failed because of its
encouragement of separatism, the narrative has fundamentally misconceived
the British model to be what Andrew Pilkington refers to as ‘radical’
multiculturalism. This perception understands the model to deem it
‘unnecessary for policies that acknowledge different identities to be
accompanied by others that seek to inculcate an overarching national identity’
(Pilkington, 2011: 6). In other words, the ‘radical’ model stresses the
recognition of difference as its primary motivation, and disregards the
significant integration of minorities into a common identity. Tariq Modood –
along with other theorists including Parekh, Will Kymlicka and Rattansi –
identifies ‘essentialism’ to be a fundamental component of this misconception.
He articulates that within the perception of the narrative, ‘the positing of
immigrant cultures, which need to be respected, defended, publicly supported
and so on, is said to appeal to the view that cultures are discrete, frozen in
time, impervious to external influences, homogeneous and without internal
dissent’ (Modood, 1998: 378). Supporting this, Will Kymlicka criticises the
tendency of the narrative to perceive British multiculturalism as a dated ‘3S’
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
model - ‘saris, samosas and steel drums’ (Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, 2000). He
considers this as an oversimplified ‘caricature’ of multiculturalism and an
example of this essentialism that anti-multiculturalists have prematurely relied
upon to justify their claims (Kymlicka, 2012: 5).
As already highlighted, the ‘master narrative’ has been accelerated by
major events such as the riots in 2001 and the terrorist bombings in 2005. Its
discourse has been secured as the dominant side of the debate through the
increased attention it has received from different influential figures: politicians
(Brown and Cameron), policy-people (Phillips), commentators (Goodhart and
Malik) and a huge number of journalists. Those that have denounced
multiculturalism as a ‘failure’ have often simultaneously characterised its
existence in Britain as being outdated or in ‘retreat’ (Abbas, 2005; Appleyard,
2006; Joppke 2004; Singh, 2005). This widespread belief, upheld by the
conviction of these commentators and governed by a broad essentialist
stance, has rendered the term “multiculturalism” ‘heavily freighted with
associations of groupism and segregation’ (Taylor-Gooby and Waite, 2013:
11). The narrative has invalidly perceived Britain’s model of multiculturalism
as ‘radical’, and in turn held it responsible for the segregation and separatism
that has been identified across the country.
The model of multiculturalism that has been pursued in Britain is what
Pilkington distinguishes as ‘moderate’ multiculturalism. He describes this
model in contrast to the ‘radical’ model as seeing
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policies that recognize and accommodate minority identities (for example being
Muslim) as working in tandem with policies that promote a national identity that
embraces these distinct identities (such as being British)20
With ‘moderate’ multiculturalism there is no emphasis upon separatism
between ethnic and cultural communities. As Meer, Modood and Parekh, as
well as political philosopher Charles Taylor21 have put it – in line with most
other defenders of multiculturalism - the concerns of ‘dialogue and
communication’ and the ‘[challenging of] people to evaluate the strengths and
weaknesses of their own cultures’ is central the theoretical framework of
British multiculturalism (Meer and Modood, 2012; Modood, 2008; Parekh,
2006; Taylor 1992). This ‘moderate’ multiculturalism is the model that was
distinctly endorsed by the Labour government that came to office in 1997.
2.3 – 1997-2001: New Labour and multiculturalism
Tony Blair and his Labour government came into office in 1997 after
nearly two decades of being in opposition. The Conservative government
under Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990) and John Major (1990-1997) had been
limitedly supportive of the increasing multiculturalist agenda that had started
20 Pilkington, 2011: 6.21 In his 1992 essay ‘The politics of recognition’, which is widely considered to be a founding account of multiculturalism, Charles Taylor stressed the notion that modern identities are not just formed based on positions within society (or within a ‘social hierarchy’) but are formed with an intrinsic dependence upon dialogue with others. That is, he argued that cultures are fluid and develop by overlapping, fusing with and learning from one another. This is an early acknowledgement that both essentialism and separatism are incompatible with the late 20th century direction of multiculturalism.
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in the late 1950s and 1960s22. Many consider the survival of multiculturalism
that continued to flourish throughout the skeptical Conservative years23 to be
because of local authorities and schools that had established discussion,
acceptance and cooperation in answer to the cultural diversity that
communities increasingly faced. In 1997, the newly elected Prime Minister,
Tony Blair, immediately emphasized the plural and dynamic character of
modern Britain by using the slogan ‘Cool Britannia’ and talking about his
rebranding of the nation (Modood, 2005: 1). The New Labour project lay
within the capacity of Britain’s consensual multiculturalism, and it was soon
celebrated ‘as one aspect of a young and vibrant country, a hub of ideas,
goods, services, people and cultures’ (Schnapper, 2011: 78).
The most significant element that New Labour’s election brought to
British multiculturalism was the renewed concern with equality and anti-
racism: the ‘radical hour’ (Pilkington, 2008) or ‘multicultural moment’ (Meer
and Modood, 2009: 477). Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, set up the
MacPherson inquiry in 1997 investigating the death of Stephen Lawrence24.
The report in 1999 identified ‘institutional racism’ in the Metropolitan Police,
defining it as ‘the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate
and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic
22 This is when the first significant actions were taken to accommodate the immigrants that were entering the country. For example, the Race Relations Acts, introduced in 1965, 1968 and 1976 by the Labour government, took ethnic minorities into account with policies such as the establishment of specially designed training and services for different racial groups.23 The Conservative government was not as embracing of the multiculturalist agenda as Labour governments have been because of fears that it was undermining the traditional British identity (Rattansi, 2011).24 Stephen Lawrence was a Black youth murdered in a racially motivated attack in 1993.
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background’ (MacPherson, 1999). It encouraged the government to take
greater account for diversity and racism in the police and schools. Clarifying
the endorsement of the report to the House of Commons on 24 th February
199925, Jack Straw announced reforms of the police force to better reflect
diversity in Britain, and an amendment to the 1976 Race Relations Act to
grant greater powers to the Commission for Racial Equality26 (CRE). The
official recognition by the government that institutional racism existed in
Britain was a ‘radical development’ (Pilkington, 2008) and symbolised the
direction of New Labour’s aim of integrating ethnic minorities whilst
maintaining strong, cooperative national unity (Schnapper, 2011: 79). This
balance fundamentally demonstrated the practice of a ‘moderate’
multiculturalism.
The Labour government endorsed the report published in 2000 by the
CMEB, a commission set up by the Runnymede Trust, called ‘The future of
multi-ethnic Britain (The Parekh Report)’, chaired by Bhikhu Parekh. However,
it was received with an outburst of media hysteria. The report was an
extensive study that most importantly defined Britain as “both a community of
citizens and a community of communities”, and aimed to achieve “a collective
life in which the spirit of civic goodwill, shared identity and common sense of
belonging goes hand in hand with love of diversity” (CMEB, 2000: ix). Despite
this, it was fervently attacked for its suggestion that the concept of
‘Britishness’ had ‘systemic, largely unspoken, racial connotations’ (Travis,
2000). The many headlines responding to the report over the days of its
25 H. of C. Parl. Deb., Vol. 326, col. 392, 24 February 1999.26 This later became the Commission for Equality and Human Rights.
29
Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
release included: ‘”British” is a racist word, says report’, ‘What an insult to
history and our intelligence’, ‘They are doing their best to destroy Britain’s
history’ and ‘It’s stupid to brand True Brits as racist’. Evidently, the
overwhelming media reception tended to view the report in a highly negative
way (Pilkington, 2008). The Conservative opposition, led by William Hague,
aligned itself with this critical movement (Schnapper, 2011: 82). The main
criticisms were based on a selective reading of the report, paying almost
exclusive attention to its desire to rethink the national story. To many the
report represented a divisive anti-Britishness and, fuelled by anxiety and
perhaps resentment towards the focus of anti-racism since 1997, it signaled
the ‘first signs of a backlash’ towards multiculturalism (Pilkington, 2008).
The Parekh report has since been widely regarded as the most
comprehensive modern overview of race and multiculturalism in Britain
(Modood, 2007; Taylor-Gooby and Waite, 2013; Vertovec, 2001). A closer
reading of the report shows it to predominantly support ‘forging a meta-
membership of Britishness under which diversity could be sustained’,
containing over 140 policy recommendations (Meer and Modood, 2009: 477),
including an emphasis on the mitigation of discrimination. Although it
acknowledged a controversial linkage of ‘Britishness’ to racialism, the broad
direction of the report was an endorsement of multiculturalism as a form of
integration in line with a strong national identity. Indeed, Parekh himself
pointed out in the report that the integration of minorities in Britain had already
been mostly successful even if discrimination remained (CMEB, 2000). Jack
Straw clarified New Labour’s support for most of the conclusions but said “he
30
Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
firmly [believed] that there is a future for Britain and a future for Britishness”
(Straw, 2000).
In its first term in office, New Labour valued anti-racism and what Nam-
Kook Kim describes as ‘deliberative multiculturalism’, emphasizing ‘rational
dialogue with mutual respect in a tolerant multi-nation tradition’ (Kim, 2011:
127). The government was developing Britain’s ‘moderate’ multiculturalism
that was able to embrace diversity within a framework of British nationalism
(Farrar 2012; Pitcher, 2009). Official support for the Parekh report, along with
the introduction of acts and policies that stressed good race relations and
integration, rather than separatism, demonstrated this. The defensive media
and public rejection of the Parekh report in 2000, however, signaled the
changing perception of this model. The riots that occurred in the following
year secured the conception of a new narrative that would falsely view a
‘radical’ multiculturalism to have encouraged separatism between different
communities in Britain (Pilkington, 2008).
2.4 – 2001: the misinterpretation of the northern riots
reports
The reports27 commissioned by the government in response to the riots
that occurred in Oldham, Bradford and Leeds in the summer of 2001 were
‘crucial in setting the stage for a sustained critique of multiculturalism’
27 The Cantle, Ouseley, Ritchie and Denham reports were the main publications in immediate response to the riots, all released just after the summer of 2001.
31
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(Rattansi, 2011: 69). They were quick to commonly identify social
fragmentation and separatism between communities – including the ‘self-
segregation’ of Muslims – as the main reason behind the unrest (Schnapper
2011: 86). In his report, Lord Ouseley depicted Bradford as a city where the
population lived in fear (Ouseley, 62001: 6). The Cantle report, Community
Cohesion, reinforced this, identifying ‘parallel lives’ led by Whites and Asians,
noting that ‘there has been little attempt to develop clear values which focus
on what it means to be a citizen of modern multi-racial Britain’ (Cantle, 2001:
9).
It is clear from the beginning of the reports that ‘the problem’ with the
areas under study had already been identified before the investigations had
begun. Ouseley points out in the foreword to his report that his ‘Race Review’
team had been given the brief to discover why ‘community fragmentation
along social, cultural, ethnic and religious lines’ was occurring in Bradford
(Ouseley, 2001: 5). The government, media and public ‘digested, interpreted,
and re-worked the findings and recommendations of the reports into an
assault on multiculturalism’ (Rattansi, 2011: 69). Inequality was no longer a
critical concern: the central issue of the debate was that of cultural integration
(Pilkington, 2008). In response to the separatism of communities
demonstrated by the riots, Britain’s ‘moderate’ multiculturalism that had been
distinctly promoted by New Labour was marginalized along with its emphasis
upon anti-racism.
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
Interestingly, after a close reading of the reports, Ali Rattansi concludes
categorically that ‘none of [them] blame multiculturalism for the events or the
underlying social factors’ demonstrated (2011: 74). He notes that
multiculturalism is hardly mentioned directly in the reports on Oldham and
Burnley. Going further, he suggests that all the reports imply the need for
more multiculturalism – especially in education, local authority practices and
employment (Rattansi, 2011: 73). Ouseley’s Race Review team on Bradford
criticised the pre-1997 government for sidelining multiculturalist measures in
schools, highlighting the limited teaching of ‘different cultures and faiths
among our diverse multi-cultural communities’ (Ouseley, 2001). Additionally,
the Oldham panel was ‘shocked’ by the racism it found amongst Whites
against Asians, and found the discrimination in housing allocation by the
council and selective anti-Asian local media reporting significantly damaging
(Ritchie, 2001). Essentially, the reports implied that the multicultural policies
and measures that already existed in local communities needed rethinking
and extending as solutions to the problems found – but not, as the dominant
narrative would suggest, that they had caused the problems. The conclusions
of the reports justifiably identified social fragmentation and separatism in the
northern cities affected. But by suggesting that the alleged divisiveness of
multicultural policies was responsible for the riots, the reaction of the
government, media and commentators over the following years was
contradictory to the findings of the reports. The celebration of multiculturalism
that was such a strong feature of Labour’s first term diminished after 2001 and
was soon overtaken by the dominant view of the ‘narrative of failure’ that it
was ‘dead’ and had failed Britain’s communities.
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
2.5 - ‘Britishness’, ‘community cohesion’ and
integration
The same critical narrative that was spawned by the invalid blaming of
multiculturalism for the riots in 2001 has developed into a common rhetoric
that presents British multiculturalism as a dead and failed project.
Announcements of politicians, subsequent changes in policy and the
arguments of prominent commentators all now point instead towards
integration, ‘community cohesion’ and ‘Britishness’ in what has been called
the ‘civic turn’ (Modood, 2012a; Mouritsen 2008). This redirection of the
narrative began with the Labour government’s second term in office and
continues to be supported by the Coalition government28. Evidence of this
demonstrates the longevity of the narrative’s misperception of the British
multicultural model as ‘radical’ rather than its true ‘moderate’ form.
There has been a continued concern after 2001 that a lacking
commonality of ‘Britishness’ exists between citizens from the diverse range of
ethnic backgrounds in Britain. Immediately after the riot reports the Home
Secretary, David Blunkett, announced plans for citizenship and English
classes for immigrants. A White paper was released in early 2002 entitled
Secure Borders, Safe Haven: Integration with Diversity in Modern Britain that
proposed a national debate on civic identity, followed by the Nationality,
28 Most prominently demonstrated by David Cameron in his speech in February 2011.
34
Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
Immigration and Asylum Bill that enforced stricter requirements for immigrants
(Schnapper, 2011: 90). In the same year an advisory group29 was set up to
formulate citizenship ceremonies and contribute further to defining a new,
united ‘Britishness’. Over the last decade the widespread view that British
society needs a stronger national identity has persisted. Gordon Brown
demonstrated this in two speeches (2004 and 2006) in which he extensively
described the need to re-imagine Britishness30 (Pilkington, 2008).
The bombings in 2005 drastically added to the belief that certain ethnic
and religious groups – Muslims in particular – were not part of a cohesive
national identity. Defining Britishness and pushing for ‘community cohesion’
continued to be stressed in the rhetoric and policies of the government. A
fierce attack upon multiculturalism across the media31, and in parliament took
place and as a result a ‘toughening of the public discourse about integration’
took place (Schnapper, 2011: 104). This new ‘integrationism’ was epitomised
by the launch of the CIC in August 2006. Announcing this launch the
Secretary of State for Communities, Ruth Kelly, made clear to migrants ‘their
responsibility to integrate and contribute to the local community’ (Kelly, 2006).
The same hard-line tone was utilized by Tony Blair in his ‘Our Nation’s Future’
speech in December that year. Furthermore, a CIC report in June 2007
emphasized ‘local-level integration’, recommending policies that gave priority
to groups making links between communities rather than separate groups
(CIC, 2007). Implicit in the report’s proposals was the view that had secured 29 Chaired by the political theorist Sir Bernard Crick.30 Brown stated in 2006: "We have to be clearer now about how diverse cultures which inevitably contain differences can find the essential common purpose also without which no society can flourish." (BBC, 2006a)31 Featured in sections 1.1 and 1.2, pp. 11-19.
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
itself in the debate regarding Britain’s multicultural model: that multiculturalism
and integration are in opposition (Pilkington, 2008). The belief in this
opposition certainly demonstrated an untrue ‘radical’ understanding of
multiculturalism.
This contradictory misperception of those that denounce
multiculturalism whilst endorsing integration falsely sees the British model as
‘radical’, and this has continued with the Coalition government. In a speech in
2009, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi spoke for the Conservative party in clarifying
this. She deemed multiculturalism to be “forcing Britain’s diverse communities
to still define themselves as different” and stated that “state multiculturalism is
not integration, is not unifying and is not the British way” (Warsi, 2009). David
Cameron’s speech in February 2011 reiterated this. Additionally, on 21st
February 2012 the Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, officially marked the
‘death’ of multiculturalism before launching the coalition policy statement:
‘Creating the Conditions for Integration’ (DCLG, 2012). Whether this particular
recurring rhetoric announcing the end or failure of multiculturalism matches
the reality of the Coalition government’s policies has been disputed (see
Conclusion, p. 52).
2.6 – Multiculturalism has not encouraged or
exacerbated separatism
36
Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
Pro-multiculturalists have consistently supported both re-imagining
Britishness and the integration of minorities as credible steps towards a civil,
cohesive society (Pilkington, 2008; Modood, 2005 and 2012a; Parekh, 2006).
Furthermore, both of these considerations were practiced before 2001 under
New Labour’s deliberative, ‘moderate’ multiculturalism. But the increasing
endorsement of these steps in the rhetoric and policies of both the New
Labour and Coalition governments as alternatives to multiculturalism
demonstrates the ‘narrative of failure’ to have assumed a dichotomy between
‘civic integration’ and ‘multiculturalism’ (Meer and Modood, 2009: 477).
Because ‘moderate’ multiculturalism does not entertain this dichotomy – in
fact, it actively rejects it – the criticism of the narrative is invalid as it has
falsely understood British multiculturalism to be ‘radical’. Indeed, increased
segregation and separatism between communities has been demonstrated
since the turn of the millennium32. But by holding the British model of
multiculturalism responsible for this, the ‘narrative of failure’ is falsely
attacking a ‘straw man’ (Pilkington, 2011: 6).
Chapter 3: Nullifying the second
justification
32 In their report ‘Sleepwalking to Segregation? Challenging myths about race and migration’, Ludi Simpson and Nissa Finney find that segregation and separatism between communities in Britain has decreased since the early 1990s. More specifically, they dismiss there to have been any self-segregation or encouraged isolation of the minority communities in the areas affected by the northern riots in 2001. Instead, they note that the White populations are far more likely to isolate themselves than South Asians or Muslims in particular. Indeed, this paper has contributed to the debate by suggesting that even the claim that minority segregation/separatism exists is a ‘myth’, let alone that it has been encouraged by multiculturalism (Finney and Simpson, 2009).
37
Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
This chapter will respond to the second justification of the ‘narrative of
failure’ identified in chapter 1. The claim that multiculturalism has failed
because it has fostered Islamic extremism in Britain will be revealed as
invalid. This is because it not only relies upon an invalid misinterpretation of
the ‘moderate’ British model, but also overlooks other factors that have
undoubtedly contributed to the rise of Islamic separatism and extremism
across Britain, particularly since the turn of the millennium. Again, the
arguments featured in existing literature will be collated and endorsed in order
to conduct this second nullification.
3.1 - Literature Review
The dominant argument of the critics defending multiculturalism against
this second justification is that the attack upon multiculturalism in Britain is
invalid as it has merely become an attack upon the faltering identity of
allegedly non-integrating British-Muslims, and the militant sect of Islam that
seems to have stemmed from this. Shane Brighton states the consensual
view that the ‘new direction’ of the multicultural narrative has come to focus
upon the Muslim community (2007: 11). Chris Allen33 maps the development
of Islamophobia since before the turn of the millennium, noting that prominent
opponents of multiculturalism who have contributed to the ‘narrative of failure’
33 Chris Allen is a lecturer in Social Policy and Politics and Birmingham University.
38
Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
relied upon ‘the climate of fear and anxiety’ after 7/7 in a ‘post-Rushdie 34,
post-9/11’ context to ‘try and legitimise their agenda’. He contends that:
Whilst multiculturalism, such critics argue on the surface at least, elevates
difference and therefore enhances segregation, what underpins and clearly
informs those arguments and provides legitimisation is the insistence and
inference upon the ‘problems’ – perceived or otherwise – of Britain’s Muslims35.
He concludes that multiculturalism cannot be considered as a failure
because it has merely become the medium through which ‘a covert attack’ is
being delivered on the ‘presence, role and responsibilities of Muslims…and
the perceived problems that these – rather than multiculturalism – are
presenting’ (Allen, 2007: 22). Indeed, this conclusion supports his broader
view that Islamophobia has become caught up in separate debates that
render it more dangerously implicit than ever before (Allen, 2007).
Nasar Meer, Tariq Modood and Bhikhu Parekh (2008) support this,
highlighting that ‘the relationship between Muslims and multiculturalism in
Britain has become increasingly interdependent’, particularly after the riots in
2001 (Meer and Modood, 2009: 486). Extending Allen’s argument, Modood
has deemed this as an unfair ‘simplistic linkage’ (2008: 17), maintaining that
‘contrary to the multiculturalism blamers…[Islamic extremism] is nothing to do
with the promotion of multiculturalism’ but is, at least in part, a result of the
34 The ‘Rushdie affair’ is the term used in the literature to refer to the violent backlash of Muslims in Britain in 1989 against Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses. It is considered as one of the first most significant moments of collective British-Muslim political agency.35 Allen, 2007: 13
39
Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
British government’s divisive foreign policies (2007: 139). Indeed, blaming
multiculturalism overlooks other potential factors that have caused the
apparent incompatibility of a British-Muslim identity with the ideals of British
society. For example, after closely studying the British government’s anti-
terrorism policy, Derek Mcghee36 makes an ardent case:
It is fact that anti-terrorism laws and the Islamophobic flavour of media and
political discourses since 9/11 have impacted negatively upon Muslim
communities in Britain…and amplified their sense of insecurity37.
He contends that the suspicious surveillance of Muslims by the
government and the ‘us/them’ binary that the ‘war on terror’ relies upon is
antagonizing and thus ‘radicalizing’ those that are intended to be moderated
(Mcghee, 2008: 144). Among other reasons, this has exacerbated the
insecurity and disunity in Britain, particularly in Muslim communities. The
relationship between this insecurity and the subsequent attack on
multiculturalism has been an insidious driving force that has its roots in the
evolution of British-Muslim identity.
3.2 – British-Muslim identity before 2001
In the late 1980s the first most significant example of specifically
Muslim political activism in Britain was demonstrated after the release of
36 Derek Mcghee is Deputy Head of Social Sciences at Southampton University and has published numerous books focusing on citizenship, human rights and security.37 Mcghee, 2008: 146
40
Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel, The Satanic Verses (1989). This
marked the beginning of a process in which external and internal motivations
have established the prominence of a British-Muslim identity (Werbner, 2000).
Previously homogenized in the public racial discourse as ‘Asian’, the political
agency demonstrated by Muslims during the ‘Rushdie Affair” meant that the
community has since been regarded in Britain to belong to a ‘Muslim’ master
identity. Respondents of the ‘Muslim elite’ in Britain interviewed by Ahmad
and Evergeti agreed that the British-Muslim identity has since gained cultural
and political salience in response to national and international events: the Gulf
wars, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Western political interference in
Muslim countries and the atrocities of 9/11 and 7/7 (Ahmad and Evergeti,
2010: 1702).
Over the 1990s the Muslim identity was thus emerging. The Muslim
Parliament of Britain was set up in 1992 by known radical, Kalim Siddiqui, and
this was a challenge to both the authority of the British state and the
deteriorating belief that British-Muslims were fully adapting to the values of
British society. In the same year as the establishment of the MCB, in early
1997 the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia38 was set up, and
a corresponding Runnymede report was published in November called
Islamophobia: A challenge for us all, launched by Jack Straw39. The report
was the first comprehensive investigation into anti-Islamic hostility in Britain,
and included a range of recommendations for tackling the problem as it
becam e ‘more explicit’ (Runnymede Trust, 1997). Allen notes that the report 38 Under the chairmanship of Professor Gordon Conway of Imperial College London.39 The concern of the report epitomised the New Labour government’s focus upon anti-racism (see section 2.3, pp. 26-30)
41
Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
brought the word ‘Islamophobia’ into the ‘everyday common parlance and
discourses of both the public and political spaces’ where it has strongly
remained since (2007: 2). Additionally, the Forum Against Islamophobia and
Racism (FAIR) pressure group began lobbying in 2001. These developments
symbolised both the recognition of an anti-Islamic feeling in Britain as well as
a widespread doubt concerning the compatibility of Islam/Muslim identity with
British values.
3.3 – British-Muslims and multiculturalism pre-7/7
Between the northern riots in 2001 and the 7/7 bombings in 2005, a
focus on ‘the degree of loyalty of Muslim communities to Britain’ increasingly
featured as a core element of the developing narrative criticizing the state of
multiculturalism and ‘Britishness’ (Schnapper, 2011: 92). Against a backdrop
of Western panic and insecurity following the terrorist attacks committed by
Islamic extremists in New York on the 11th September 2001, and the ensuing
war in Afghanistan, the reports investigating the riots in Britain were released.
Although they identified ‘polarised communities’ of both White and Asian
ethnicity, the recurring specific reference to the ‘self-segregation’ of Muslim
communities suggested that the most significant cause-for-concern about the
separatism demonstrated by the riots was the apparent refusal of mainly
Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims to integrate (Cantle, 2001; Ouseley,
2001).
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Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
Furthermore, anti-terror laws were established by Parliament in the
weeks following 9/11 in order to crack down on terrorist activity. For the first
time, radical Muslim organisations were openly under surveillance and
targeted by intelligence agencies (Meer and Modood, 2009: 487). A general
public resentment towards Muslims ensued40. Government activity had to
respond to both the concern of domestic separatism from the riots as well as
the new potential threat of terrorism. The two contexts were simultaneously
demonstrating a significant preoccupation with Muslims in Britain. In an
attempt to console the defensive Muslim community, Tony Blair addressed
them in parliament saying, “Neither you nor Islam is responsible for this; on
the contrary, we know you share our shock at this terrorism, and we ask you
as friends to make common cause with us in defeating this barbarism”41.
Ironically, using the words ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘you’, this seemed to be addressing a
rhetorical ‘other’ rather than a cohesive community and shared ‘Britishness’
that New Labour was promoting. Indeed, it added to the perception of British-
Muslim identity as separate and non-integrated after the northern riots, and
potentially dangerous after 9/11.
This concerned perception of the sub-narrative grew and became
intertwined with the perception that multiculturalism had ‘failed’. The title of a
controversial article written by Norman Lamont42 in 2002, ‘Down with
multiculturalism, book-burning and fatwas’ in The Daily Telegraph explicitly
linked the founding event of the British-Muslim identity (the Rushdie affair)
40 Several mosques and individual Muslims across Britain were attacked in the weeks following 9/11 (Wintour and Carter, 2001).41 H. of C. Parl. Deb., 14 September 2001, Vol. 372, col. 604.42 Former Chancellor of the Exchequer
43
Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
with the modern concern over Islamic extremism and multiculturalism. Slaying
the British model for its reduction of ‘Britishness’, his negative focus was
placed upon the apparent refusal of certain communities to adhere to ‘our’
values and laws in Britain (Lamont, 2002). Meanwhile, Tony Blair had led
Britain into the Iraq War. This had a contradictory impact on British-Muslim
identity:
On the one hand, Muslims were included in the large non-parliamentary
opposition to the war, and therefore espoused a mainstream cause. On the
other hand, alienation from the government’s foreign policy led to a possibly
dangerous rift between many British Muslims and the society in which they
lived.43
The majority of the British population opposed the war44. But the
unanimous anger of Muslims in particular was clear, and the tension between
them and the government heightened (Schnapper, 2011: 94). After terrorist
attacks targeting British interests in Istanbul in November 2003, Dennis
Macshane, the Europe Minister, announced an ultimatum to British-Muslim
community leaders:
It is the British way – based on political dialogue and non-violent protests – or it
is the way of the terrorists, against which the whole democratic world is
uniting.45
43 Schnapper, 2011: 93.44 An Ipsos MORI poll found over 65% of the British public to be against sending troops into Iraq without proof of them hiding weapons of mass destruction (MORI, 2003).45 Quoted in Jones, G. (2003) article in The Daily Telegraph, ‘Muslims round on ‘British way’ minister’.
44
Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
This presented a simplistic binary labeling of Muslims as either
integrated pro-British or extremist anti-British. It is widely argued that this
essentialist dichotomy has persisted in the Western media’s portrayal of
British-Muslims since (Mcghee, 2008; Sundas, 2008).
After the 2001 riots, the belief that Muslim communities were not
integrating into British society implied that the alleged separatism encouraged
by a perceived ‘radical’ multiculturalism was to blame. The increasing
awareness and fear of extremist Islamic terrorism had grown with and
become attached to this belief after 9/11. The pre-7/7 tension in Britain had
thus been built upon two closely intertwined sub-narratives. The first of these
was the consensual belief that multiculturalism had failed because of the non-
integration and separatism of Muslims. The second was the post-9/11
‘explanatory purchase of Muslim cultural dysfuntionality’ as the reason for the
rise of extremism and, by extension, terrorism46 (Meer and Modood, 2009:
487). The 7/7 bombings in 2005 provided mutual legitimization for both of
these sub-narratives, and converted the general perception in Britain from
considering Muslims as a ’culturally threatening but manageable presence’ to
developing a ‘morbid fear of them’ (Parekh, 2008: 11).
3.4 – Why blaming multiculturalism for extremist Islam
is invalid
46 This was heightened by the terrorist attacks in Madrid in March 2004 that killed 191 people (BBC, 2004).
45
Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
Meer and Modood conclude that the net outcome of these two
intertwined sub-narratives after the 7/7 attacks has been ‘a coupling of
diversity and anti-terrorism agendas that has implicated contemporary British
multiculturalism as the culprit of Britain’s security woes’ (2009: 487). This
coupling has resulted in the ‘narrative of failure’ as a reaction of the public
discourse to try and combat the legitimization of fear and insecurity that has
stood since the bombings47 (Fekete, 2011; Modood, 2007). This ‘savage
discourse’ in the media from July 2005 onwards immediately condemned
multiculturalism to have failed (see section 1.2, p. 17), for example, Gilles
Kepel wrote that the multicultural consensus had been ‘smashed to
smithereens’ by the bombings (2005). There was a particularly widespread
confusion over why the attacks were committed by British-born Muslims
(Race, 2008: 2). The alleged ‘failure’ of multiculturalism, based on the newly
constructed claim that it had fostered Islamic extremism, quickly provided an
answer to this confusion. This claim has persisted in the narrative since,
demonstrated by David Cameron in his 2008 and 2011 speeches. However, it
is invalid for three main reasons.
Firstly, by holding multiculturalism responsible for an extremist Islamic
ideology, the second justification of the ‘narrative of failure’ has relied upon
the invalid first justification nullified in chapter 2 of this dissertation.
Journalists, commentators and politicians continued to note the bombings as
47 This was worsened by the abortive bombings on 21st July 2005, the alleged conspiracy in August 2006 to blow up 10 places (all in London) and the attempted bombing of August 2007 in Glasgow (Pilkington, 2008).
46
Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
evidence that Britain was both ‘sleepwalking to segregation’ (Phillips, 2005)
as well as that multiculturalism had ‘fanned the flames of Islamic extremism’
(Malik, 2005). The interdependency between these two sub-narratives that
have grown simultaneously since the events of 2001 has caused the
‘narrative of failure’ to thus make its second justification from an extension of
the invalid first one. This extension is that multiculturalism has fostered
extremist Islam because it has encouraged/exacerbated Muslim communities
to live separately from others. Of course, the claim that British multiculturalism
has encouraged or exacerbated communities assumes a misinterpretation of
the British model as ‘radical’. This was dismissed in chapter 2 where British
multiculturalism was modeled as ‘moderate’. Because of the reliance upon
this extension from the invalid first claim, the second justification that this
chapter is concerned with is a fallacy.
Another reason why an extension from the first justification is invalid is
because the narrative overlooks the fact that the attackers were actually
integrated, British-born Muslims (Race, 2008: 3). The official Home Office
report describing the bombers records that:
There is little in their backgrounds which mark them out as particularly
vulnerable to radicalization…Khan, Tanweer and Hussain were apparently well
integrated into British society48.
Although the attacks did demonstrate the prominence of extremist
Islam in Britain, the terrorists’ lives do not provide evidence that British-
48 Home Office, 2006: 31.
47
Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
Muslims – even these violent extremists – were necessarily failing to
integrate. On the contrary, the fact that educated49, apparently quite normal
British citizens were motivated to indulge in such mass violence suggests that
the reasons behind the terrorist attacks are much more complex than simply
whether domestic multicultural policies have failed to integrate Muslim
communities or not50 (Modood, 2007: 150). Seeing 7/7 and the lives of the
bombers as proof that multiculturalism has failed to integrate Muslims is thus,
again, invalid.
Finally, the claim is invalid because blaming multiculturalism’s ‘failure’
for the rise of extremist Islam overlooks several other undeniable realities that
contributed to the motivations of the terrorism committed in 2005. Modood
sees the main contributor to be the foreign policy of the British government,
particularly in Muslim countries (2007: 139). The Home Office report after 7/7
considered the leader of the attackers, Mohammad Sidique Khan’s, video
statement first aired on the Arabic television channel, Al Jazeera, on 1
September 2005 to be the best indication for why the group committed the
attacks (2006: 19). In this statement Khan announced:
“Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities
against my people all over the world. And your support of them makes you 49 The Home Office report identified all of the bombers to be educated to college or university levels. Khan, the leader, was a teacher and youth worker who had impressed teachers and parents who had worked with him (Hasan, 2011). They were all British born (Home Office, 2006).50 A recent 2012 study by Essex University, over ten years on from the initial claims of non-integration after the riots, revealed that the perception of non-Muslims that Muslims struggle with their British identity is inaccurate. It found that 83% of Muslims are proud to be British, compared to 79% of the general public, and that 86.4% of Muslims feel they belong in Britain, slightly more than the 85.9% of Christians (Moosavi, 2012)
48
Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
directly responsible…until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and
torture of my people we will not stop this fight.”51
Here, Khan is quite boldly revealing the attacks to be out of sheer
resentment towards the British government for its foreign policy agenda in
Muslim countries. Convincing recognition of this was then shown in a 2006
open letter to Tony Blair signed by three Muslim MPs, three peers and 38
organisations including the MCB. The Prime Minister was warned that the
government’s foreign policy in Iraq and Israel52 offers ‘ammunition to
extremists’, and that the anti-terrorism agenda was too focused on domestic
policy (i.e. increased surveillance on Muslim organisations) rather than
realizing how policies abroad have aggravated Muslim communities in Britain
(Woodward and Bates, 2006). Adding to the divisive nature of this reality,
Derek Mcghee argues that the preoccupation with domestic anti-terrorism
after 9/11, combined with the ‘virtual, multinational and invisible nature of the
Al-Qaeda network’ has resulted in all Muslims becoming suspects where they
are classified as either ‘extremist’ or ‘moderate’ (2008:46-48). A political
culture now exists in Britain – which he stresses has mainly grown in the
years following 7/7 - that constructs ‘all Muslims as potential
extremists/enemies unless proven differently…[and] renders their right to
remain in Britain conditional’ (Mcghee, 2008: 49). Both the foreign and
domestic anti-terrorism policies of the British government have undoubtedly
impacted upon the attitudes and sense of ‘Britishness’ of Muslims in Britain,
51 M. S. Khan quoted in the Home Office report, 2006: 19.52 When Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006, Tony Blair refused to call for a ceasefire. The war was fought for a month and was estimated to have cost the lives of 1191 Lebanese citizens and 159 Israelis (Phillips, 2010).
49
Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
and yet are completely separate from the policies of multiculturalism. As
Hasan puts it, ‘terrorism is a political problem, not a cultural problem’ (2011). It
is therefore invalid to blame multiculturalism for the rise of extremist Islam
when there are other undeniable factors that have fostered the capacity for
Islamic extremism and thus terrorism (Meer and Modood, 2009; Modood,
2007; Parekh, 2008).
3.5 – Multiculturalism has not fostered Islamic
extremism in Britain
Since mid-2001, when 9/11 and the northern riots occurred, two
narratives have grown and become ‘interdependent’ in Britain (Meer and
Modood, 2009). The 7/7 attacks in 2005 committed by Islamic terrorists, who
were perceived by many to be separatist, non-integrated products of
multiculturalism, legitimized the common belief that the British multicultural
model had failed. Firstly, however, this belief invalidly perceives Britain’s
model of multiculturalism as ‘radical’ when, as modeled in chapter 2, it is
‘moderate’ and has thus not encouraged or exacerbated the separatism of
Muslim communities. Secondly, by holding multiculturalism responsible for the
7/7 bombings for having encouraged separate Muslim communities, it is
overlooked that the attackers themselves were in fact British-born Muslims,
and were officially recognized to have integrated into British society. Finally,
blaming multiculturalism’s ‘failure’ for the prominence of Islamic extremism
disregards other major factors (namely foreign policy and domestic anti-
50
Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
terrorism policy) that have contributed to its presence in contemporary British
society. These three reasons invalidate the claim that multiculturalism has
fostered Islamic extremism, and thus nullify the second justification of the
‘narrative of failure’.
Conclusion
This dissertation has identified and invalidated the ‘narrative of failure’
that has developed since 2001. Chapter 1 identified the first justification that
has supported the narrative as the belief that multiculturalism has encouraged
and exacerbated separatism between communities in Britain. It identified the
second justification as the belief that multiculturalism has fostered extremist
Islam. In the two subsequent chapters, by nullifying these two justifications, it
is evident that multiculturalism has not failed. The revealed existence of an
invalid attack upon multiculturalism that has grown and persisted since 2001
suggests that there are other reasons for the consensual belief of the
narrative. The premature blaming of multiculturalism for the ills that were
demonstrated by both the northern riots in 2001 and the 7/7 London bombings
in 2005, and the increasing focus of the British media, government and public
perception on not just extremist Islam but Muslims generally, reveal the attack
upon multiculturalism to be the response of a society seeking answers.
Essentially, multiculturalism has become a scapegoat, blamed in an
atmosphere of cumulating concern after shocking domestic events. The claim
51
Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
that multiculturalism has failed has rendered it as what Liz Fekete53 calls a
‘whipping boy’ to ‘explain away’ economic and social crises (2011). Revealed
by the narrative’s constant referral to British-Muslims and national identity, the
attack upon multiculturalism has simultaneously become a ‘coded’ attack
upon the perceived reluctance of Muslims to integrate into British society
(Parekh, 2008). Additionally, the attack has been motivated by the fear of a
rising extremist Muslim identity that, having secretly leant itself to the terrorist
activity of Al-Qaeda in 2005, evidently hovers ‘just under the surface’ in Britain
(Race, 2008: 3).
David Cameron’s announcement of the failure of multiculturalism in
2011 and developments in ideas about British identity and integration since
imply that this ‘narrative of failure’ is now firmly embedded in the public
imagination and multicultural debate. It will undoubtedly continue to be
suggested in the coming years that the multiculturalism project has been
abandoned in favor of a stronger ‘Britishness’, ‘community cohesion’ and
integration. However, the findings of this dissertation suggest that despite this
rhetorical denunciation that acts as a symbolic dismissal of some of the ills of
contemporary British society, the reality is that ‘moderate’ multiculturalism has
continued to be consistently pursued54. The reality for British multiculturalism
in 2013 is that instead of a ‘wholesale ‘retreat’…it has, and continues to be,
subject to a productive critique that is resulting in something best
53 Dr Liz Fekete is the Executive Director of the Institute of Race Relations.54 Pauline Schnapper argues that ‘’he policies…implemented locally as part of the multiculturalist ethos, such as policies towards religion in schools or rights for specific communities such as the Sikhs, were not reversed’. The main features of local multiculturalism have remained in place, whether in schools, hospitals or other public services. (2011: 108).
52
Ciaran Thapar Has Multiculturalism Failed? A Critical Analysis.
characterised as a ‘civic rebalancing’’ (Meer and Modood, 2009: 2). In other
words, British multiculturalism has not failed, but continues to persist as a
reality55. It has been rethought and reformed, but not abandoned.
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