CONSERVATIVES ATTEMPT TO EMBRACE MULTI-ETHNIC BRITAIN
(29 March 2004)

Dominic Grieve MP, Shadow Attorney General and the Conservative Party Spokesman on Community Cohesion today gave speech on community cohesion entitled "Multi-ethnic and multi-faith Britain: a challenge for us all". The speech, which set out the Conservative Party's vision for the future of multicultural Britain was given at Kensington Town Hall. Excerpts from the speech are reproduced here.

"The legacy of Enoch Powell's gloomy prognosis on ethnic diversity has left a mark on perceptions of the Conservative Party's attitudes on race," started Mr Grieve in what could be the Tories first salvo in trying to win back Asian votes.

5 MINUTES TO DECIDE FATE OF URGANDAN ASIANS

"Moreover the Conservative historical tradition of social reform has been too often forgotten. This is unfair on both counts. This year is the 30th anniversary of the invitation given by Ted Heath, a Conservative Prime Minister, to the Ugandan Asians expelled by Idi Amin. As the moral and legal issues were so clear the cabinet took just 5 minutes to make the decision. It was a generous and humane impulse that has brought huge benefits to this country.

As a Party today we call for a considered approach to the challenges of a multiethnic and multi faith Britain. The broad brush of policy is often handled as if it were a mop. Although, I may use the word "ethnic minorities" in this speech I believe it is misleading because it creates a collective image that lumps together all communities no matter their stage of integration.

Caribbean families here since the 1950's are usually now well integrated. They may still face difficulties but these are different to those of the newly arrived. We need to identify exactly where problems exist and respond to them with precision. For ours, no matter what certain newspapers will have us believe, is not a society in disintegration. But there are warning signs that the cohesion of certain sections of our community is under strain. Seeking to understand why and responding with common sense drawn from experience is the Conservative way.

It is with this background and perspective that I approach the matter. That Britain is a multi ethnic and multi faith country is clearly beyond doubt and is reflected in the Census statistics. It is also changing and evolving rapidly. This country absorbed a large wave of immigration in the 50s and 60s. We are now admitting more people in one year than the entire level of pre-2nd World War Jewish immigration.

That rate of change is having a demographic impact and is now the principal, and may soon be the only, motor of population growth. Government figures suggest that our population will grow by 7.6 million by the year 2030 almost entirely through migration. It is the responsibility of politicians to anticipate what this will mean. Certainly the impact on the economy and labour force will be considerable. Ethnic minorities, not including new migrants, are set to account for more than half of the growth of the working age population in the next decade. Dependent as we will be on our work force to sustain national growth it is incumbent on us to make sure that we have a society that is harmonious and at peace with itself.

There can be no question that there are people who feel alienated from mainstream life in this country. If that were not the case there would not have been the riots in Brixton in the 80s or the more recent ones in the northern towns. Ten days ago I read with great sadness a newspaper report on the tragic death of a 15 year old, Kriss Donald in Scotland. In that report a fellow Glaswegian is quoted as saying

"There are whites here and there are Asians, but we don't normally mix at all. They have their end of the street and we have ours" (Sunday Telegraph 21/3/04)

CULTURAL DIVERSITY IS A FACT: MULTICULTURALISM A CHOICE

Politicians like talking about a multi cultural Britain, but whereas cultural diversity is a fact, multiculturalism is a choice. My constituency mailbag tells me that not all appreciate Britain's cultural diversity or see the prospects of multi culturalism as a benefit. These are not isolated views. The recent Voluntary Service Overseas report "So you think you are multi cultural?" provides a picture of attitude and experiences of multi culturalism across Britain that is at variance with the government's message that a multi cultural society has arrived.

• 77% polled by ICM took the view that different cultures co-exist but to not connect;
• 52% felt it was easy to live in a cultural ghetto isolated from people who seem different;
• 29% only considered that their contact with people from different cultures was through friendships;
• another 38% said their contact was circumstantial alone; and
• 37% admitted to having little or no contact.
• Only 13% said they wanted increased contact with other cultures.

There were variations. The young were more open to contact than the old, the professional groups and ethnic minority members themselves far more open than white people in the semi skilled and unskilled sectors.

CTM IS NOT BEST EXAMPLE OF MULTICULTURALISM

Robin Cook famously argued that multi culturalism has arrived from the fact that Chicken Tikka Masala has become our national dish. I am afraid that having spent some of my time as a barrister representing a certain type of white client committing what was known to the Bar as the crime of "8 pints, a tandoori and an affray" I am not persuaded that this is the best evidence of the success of multi culturalism.

The VSO survey, reflective of the Cantle Report on the segregated life of northern cities and the divisions we are hearing about in Glasgow, should give us pause for thought. Moreover a recent Guardian poll of the Muslim population highlighted for me the extent to which sections of their community enjoyed little contact or opportunity to interact more than at a superficial level with others outside their faith group. The country may be making progress towards reconciling diversity with cohesion but too many live in ghettos, either physical or emotional. Too many see only the differences dividing them from others and feel resentful victims of the process of change. Too many don't have the opportunity or the motivation to test these assumptions of difference through contact.

IMMIGRANTS COME TO "MAKE SOMETHING OF THEMSELVES"

As a Conservative my approach to diversity starts with one thought. I simply ask myself the question - "Why have so many different peoples in the last half century been willing to undergo the upheaval of leaving their home and environment to make the journey to a foreign land and establish themselves here?" The answer has not really changed for several hundreds of years. It is the same test that made my Jewish forebears come to this country. They seek the benefit of the rule of law that exists here, freedom of conscience and expression, protection from arbitrary dispossession and from capricious and tyrannical government. They seek a society where the rewards of thrift and enterprise are open to all. To quote a recent immigrant they come to "make something of ourselves."

ANCIENT INSTITUTIONS

But unlike emigration to the New World where the vastness of the land mass allows for the possibility of separate communities, immigration to Britain has always required an acceptance of immersion into a centralised and homogenous country with ancient institutions and a long political history.

All the evidence suggests to me that immigrants don't mind these features of our country. On the contrary, they are the things that make us different from other possible destinations and have had the effect of defining our national identity in a way that is reliant on its political culture far more than on other forms of cultural expression.

IMAGE & IDENTITY

I believe it has the same attraction for those who currently knock at our door as it did for my Scottish forebears who signed up to the Union. In contrast, my other country, France, has always had great difficulty defining itself by its political institutions. Rather, it has sought to do so on the basis of certain shared secular values. The result of this has manifested itself in complete inflexibility in coping with the outward signs of religious belief. I am saddened at the French decision to seek to ban the hijab, the turban and other signs of personal religious belief in schools. I think this policy is gravely mistaken. But if there is fortunately little prospect of it happening here, it is precisely because being British does not require such outward conformity as confirmation of national identity.

We must however understand that high levels of diversity can cause stresses within communities . The Home Secretary says: "for my part I am convinced that instability through high mobility and therefore turnover of population is a central factor in contributing to the decline in social capital".

I agree. We might have done better in respect of community cohesion in the last 40 years if there had been less of an attempt to persuade people that their response to the process of change through migration and greater diversity was in some way unnatural and deviant and had we given greater recognition to their problems and this decline of social capital. The fact that after years of proximity, some ethnic and faith groups are still living apart and unable to interact together for the common good is a serious failure. It is also a warning as the government rather blithely embarks on a new policy of encouraging mass immigration.

"I don't like the Pakis. They get all the best houses and all the best treatments and they're not even white or Scottish. I want them out of here and when the British National Party come up here I'll be ready to fight to protect my community"

This is not the remark of someone confident in his own identity and prospects.

DIVERSITY AGENDA HIJACKED

I believe that the more secure a person is in their personal identity, the more likely he is to accept the individuality of others. It is also perfectly possible, as I have discovered in myself, to have multiple identities and to be able to move from one to the other with ease.

Meanwhile there has been too much emphasis on political correctness and censure of British and particularly English cultural values and expressions. Hot Cross Buns are banned in an East London school, so as not to offend Muslim pupils when no Muslim has complained, a local authority in the Midlands denies use of the municipal theatre to a group to perform Mummers plays with blacked-up faces - a mediaeval theatrical tradition in England devoid of any racist context.

Halal and Kosher methods of slaughter are properly respected by the state because to interfere with them would touch upon issues of conscience but the same state is quite happy to contemplate criminalising hunters with hounds for using a natural and traditional method of pest control which also brings about the development and maintenance of broadly based community links in rural areas. One LEA even ordered that its pupils should not have time off to watch the Queen Mother's funeral as it would not be relevant to them in schools where a majority of children were from the minority ethnic groups.

A lot of this has been the highjack of the diversity agenda by those with a radical social agenda who have seized upon this opportunity to try to change the entire culture of our society. They have achieved nothing except to damage our links with past generations that have shaped us, an understanding of which is essential for the emotional and spiritual comfort of people of all cultures and races.

CONSERVATIVE PERSPECTIVE ON COMMUNITY COHESION

I would like to bring to that discussion, therefore, a distinctive Conservative perspective. We believe that communities flourish best when they are open and as free as possible from state interference. We believe in the basic good of people and that those free to express themselves in word and worship, to better themselves and look after their families, will bring positive benefits to the communities they live in.

The more the state restricts or dictates, the more it stifles this instinct to the point that it is abandoned and the state then has to intervene, so that a vicious circle of dependency develops. Baroness Thatcher was famously criticized for her comment that "there is no such thing as society". No one bothers to read on to what she said next, that "there are individual men and women, and there are families". She was right. Society is the voluntary association of individuals and families coming together for their common good. It can only grow organically. It cannot be created by the state with the wave of a magic wand.

Society in Britain is best summed up for me as a way of life built on traditions, customs, history and a stable political philosophy that has had centuries to mature.

I do believe, however, that there are some key things that the state can do which will strengthen community cohesion. I make no apology here for concentrating on some basics.

1. We need to support the framework in which families and communities can flourish so that people can freely and safely go about building on their opportunities.

2. Therefore it is vital that we should constantly maintain the rule of law that underpins our freedoms. Although at times it may be administratively inconvenient, an independent system of justice free of political interference must be promoted at all times.

3. We should not be tempted into an acceptance that mere technical adherence to the Human Rights Act and the European Convention is sufficient. Our own traditional and national approach to justice, tailored as it is to individual cases and tested by time, should be celebrated, protected and enhanced and only where necessary, reformed. It is a unique inheritance that can be shared not only by all citizens but also by everyone on our soil irrespective of faith or ethnic background. Our political culture is re-enacted every day as hundreds of citizens of this country serve on juries.

4. All the signs are today that one of the basic problems preventing people co-operating together for the common good is the breakdown of neighbourly society. We, therefore, need to make every effort to rescue it. This is why solutions must involve a high degree of local involvement.

5. Crime and the fear of crime is a major component of reducing neighbourly initiatives within a community. Where there is a large amount of crime, there are high levels of social alienation and physical isolation between different individuals and families. It was with this in mind that we have developed as a Party policies designed to address these issues.

A decision to expand the police force by 40,000 officers in England and Wales over 8 years is not just for the purpose of catching criminals but of actually creating a climate in which crime reduces through community policing. That is why we have advocated that the delivery of policing should not only be broken down into smaller units but that a much greater degree of local scrutiny should be exercised over the way the police are delivering their services generally, whilst of course respecting entirely the need for complete police operational independence.

6. It is for the same reasons that we have been supportive of the Government's Sure Start programme, even if we ourselves believe it could be better targeted at those children most in need of help and support.

7. In our Green Paper "60 Million Citizens" we set out our ideas for working with and helping the voluntary sector. We want to encourage people to donate their time and energy to voluntary activities and we want to see voluntary organisations free to do the work they are set up to do. This means having the right legal structures, having incentives to encourage greater giving both in time and money, letting faith organisations compete more fairly and giving the voluntary sector a dedicated voice in Whitehall. The Green Paper suggests that a new Office of Civil Society with its own Cabinet minister be established. Above all we want to see voluntary activity freed from unnecessary and stifling bureaucracy.

SUSTAINABLE IMMIGRATION

As a Conservative, I am in favour of sustainable immigration because I believe it can be of immense benefit to our country. Where would we be without the contribution people from the new commonwealth have given to the NHS? Where would we be without the innovators, entrepreneurs and businessmen that have joined our society from overseas?

The Government suggests that immigrants to Britain are contributing £30 billion to GDP and the figure seems entirely plausible. Would we have the variety that we enjoy in our food industry without the French, Italian, Indian, Chinese, Caribbean and Middle Eastern food? London's status as a great world city, that makes it so attractive to investment and as a place to live would be impossible without them.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

The right to freedom of expression should allow people to comment on the religious practices that they do not like in others in strong but lawful terms. This may inevitably result in the wider community shunning or disliking the adherents to the faith concerned but in my view this cannot be made the basis for a criminal offence without improper restriction of that freedom. The law as it stands already provides that incitement to commit an existing offence against another can be punished as severely as the substantive offence. Any court can and should treat a motive of religious hatred as an aggravating feature of an offence. I do accept, however, that this is an area of great difficulty and worthy of further debate.

PROTECTION FOR ALL FAITHS

There may well be good arguments for extending to all faiths the protection that currently only exists for the Church of England and other Christian churches from the disruption of their religious services and worship in the Ecclesiastical Courts Jurisdiction Act and at common law. But these laws are archaic and would need to be rewritten and adequate penalties provided.

I was shocked recently to learn of the disruption that was caused in the Ealing Hindu Temple in West London by Christian fundamentalists who came in and threw down one of the statues. The fact that the sentence passed on the perpetrators was very lenient reflected the magistrate's difficulty in comprehending the enormity of what had taken place. Such a law would help deal with this problem.

As I said earlier, ethnic minorities, not including new migrants are set to account for a substantial part of the growth in the working age population in the next decade. We have to make sure that all members of the ethnic minorities take their rightful place in the work force not just because social inclusion is right but for the sake of the economic well being of the country. For this we need to be able to call on the widest possible talent pool.

EDUCATION IS THE CRUCIABLE OF CULTURAL TOLERANCE

Education is the crucible of cultural toleration. The education system is therefore of fundamental importance. Conservatives are happy with a pluralist approach to the provision of education that maximises choice. We support faith based schools if that is what parents want and if the school can meet the necessary standards. We want to widen the choice of these. Obviously this places a responsibility on those running them to ensure they are not turned into an excuse for lack of contact with those of other faiths and background. But contact can be achieved by simple measures such as school twinning.

The subject of ethnic minorities and education is one which demands its own separate speech. Tonight all I can do is flag up areas of interest for our education team. We are conscious of the different attainment rates for individual groupings. It serves no useful purpose to lump groups together under the collective term ethnic minorities when we know for example that on the whole the Chinese and Indians are performing better at school than the white population.

We need to look at why Black Caribbean boys and those with Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds are not doing so well. We will need to understand the additional pressures that such children might face in practical and attitudinal terms; and we will need to consider what information and support teachers and governors need to cope effectively with increasing diversity of needs and talents. Our response will need to be carefully tuned to the groups with the greatest needs.

We also need to allow individuals and groups to determine their own identities free of bureaucratic classifications. We have supported the Sikh community in its desire for separate ethnic monitoring because it reflects their collective identity which has been recognised by law as being an ethnic grouping but not by the CRE or Government, even though the CRE is quite happy to monitor much smaller groups. This is again illustrative of the bureaucratic yearning for categorisation that bears often so little relevance to the reality of peoples lives.

CONSERVATIVES MUST REFLECT MULTIRACIAL BRITAIN

We recognise that we have to be a Party that reflects the people who are British today. This is not only right for the health of the Party but it is also right for the health of democracy in our country.

40% of first time voters failed to vote in 2001. Further investigations have revealed that the reason why so many young people and people with an ethnic descent did not vote is disinterest in a political system for which they feel no affinity and which they consider does not understand them. When one remembers that 80% of black and minority ethnic people are under 25 the full implication of this perception becomes apparent.

If our democratic system is to work to its full potential all the people of this country have to be able to believe that it works for them. To achieve this, a precondition is that we should have greater diversity on our Parliamentary benches and in our Party as a whole.

However, we are a Party that does not believe that positive discrimination or quotas are ever the answer. We want a system that will command confidence and inspire trust. We want candidates who are good, not tokens of our aspirations. The reforms that we introduced in 2002 radically over hauled our selection procedures. The aim was to level the playing field in respect of seeking to enter Parliament as Conservative MPs so that all applicants were assessed on their abilities for the job irrespective of their background.

Expert advice was sought to create new methods of assessment managed by trained assessors, in itself a long needed innovation. They were trained to look for skills and to be aware of their prejudices whether those are simply against those who wear white socks. It was the first fully professionalized assessment system to be used by any political party in this country. By it we continue to demonstrate our belief that women and black and minority ethnic people have the same capacity to be members of Parliament as those who have come from more traditional recruiting grounds.

TRAINING TO BE A POLITICIAN

Although an important step forward had been taken it was not enough. A more fundamental task was to stimulate an understanding of Conservatism so that people from non-Tory backgrounds but with Conservative views had the confidence to come forward. So we have set in place an out reach programme.

We promised support on skills development - particularly important for those who might need reassurance on public speaking or Party know how. For those who would benefit from it, mentoring by MPs has been established. The importance of networking and getting to know the realities of politics was recognised so people were introduced to the Westminster village through events and receptions. We are also doing this at Association level- something I have been able to apply in my own constituency.

In these ways the Party hopes it is going some way to satisfying what Shamit Saggar has singled out as one of the great obstacles for ethnic candidates - that is "the deficiency in the area of providing political education, training and mentoring".

Attention has also been paid to the selection process itself so that constituencies are provided with greater advice and help in establishing proper selection techniques. The results are heartening. The Conservative Party now has two PPC s who have an ethnic minority background in Conservative held seats and a further 3 in key target seats. 5 of the 10 PPCs who have so far been chosen as candidates are Muslims, with Sayeeda Uuarsi being the first Muslim woman to be selected.

VOTE NOW, WE'LL MAKE GOOD LATER

I am confident that after the next election, we will be joined in Parliament by black and minority ethnic colleagues. But just as importantly we will have growing participation in associations, which will make future selection whether as MP's, MEP's or councillors for black and minority ethnic candidates much easier.

One of the positive results of the after effects of the 9/11 tragedy is that it has stimulated our minority communities to take an invigorated interest in national politics. This is particularly so for Muslims but I have noticed this with every minority group with which I have had contact. Some such as Indians and Sikhs have felt the backlash of fear and prejudice all too keenly. All have become conscious that in a world where fear and violence is so prevalent the dialogue that underpins democracy is essential.

Politics has thus taken on a new meaning and importance and it requires representation and action. Therefore it is vital that we ensure that their voices in all their diversity are represented in our political system. We need their assistance in our work in Parliament and in local government. We need their active participation in the myriad local groups and committees (and not just the overtly party political ones) that together make democracy and our society work.

Our multitude of cultures and faiths can be harmonised and contribute to the whole but there must be a shared sense that the whole is worth it. The Conservative Party, with its strong sense of attachment to the rights, obligations and freedom derived from the continuity of our evolutionary history and the framework of laws and conventions that make up our constitution, can and will play a part in achieving that goal, working to do so with all people of good will.

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