Comment

We’re not drifting into segregation, we’re hurtling perilously towards it

A growing mood of sectarianism threatens to undo the many successes of multiracial Britain

After the 7/7 terror attacks, Trevor Phillips, then the head of the Commission for Racial Equality, issued a stark warning. “We are sleepwalking our way to segregation,” he declared. “We’ve emphasised what divides us over what unites us. We have allowed tolerance of diversity to harden into effective isolation of communities, in which some people think special separate values ought to apply.”

Sixteen years later, optimists will point to the minorities reaching the top of UK business and government. The Business Secretary is black, the Chancellor and Home Secretary have Indian heritage, the Foreign Secretary is the son of a Jewish refugee, and the recent London election saw a black Tory challenge a Muslim Labour mayor. Many minorities are thriving at school, building successful careers, and raising confident and happy families, secure in their identities.

And yet paradoxically, just as millions of citizens are showing the successes of multiracial Britain, its failures are becoming more apparent, too. The segregation identified by Phillips is growing worse, and fuelling a new sectarianism between minority groups. In many ways, our predicament is more visible and alarming than it was even in 2005.

In the past week, we have seen continuing race hate and incitement to violence on British streets. Pro-Palestinian protestors have, quite openly in front of cameras and police officers, demanded “Jewish blood”, and called for “Muslim armies” to march. A BBC journalist is under investigation after tweeting that “Hitler was right”. Salma Yaqoob, who was backed by some Labour figures to become the party’s candidate in the West Midlands mayoral election, called for an “intifada” in British cities.

Schools have reported huge spikes in anti-Semitic abuse of pupils. In Leicester, gangs of college students were filmed stamping on tables and chanting “Allahu akbar!” The intimidation of Jewish pupils and teachers grew so severe that the Education Secretary Gavin Williamson wrote to schools warning that while pupils are allowed to express political views, anti-Semitic language and threats must not be tolerated.

In response to the Williamson letter, Miqdaad Versi, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, complained that the Government was being “one-sided”. The letter, of course, was not about events in Israel, but the harassment of British Jews. In suggesting there might be two sides to racism, Versi revealed more than he intended about why the Government refuses to engage with the MCB.

And yet they and other organisations such as Mend, a controversial campaigning group accused of increasing hostility by the Board of Jewish Deputies, are treated by many MPs, local councils and other parts of the public sector as unproblematic and representative community bodies. But by engaging with them, the state is contributing to the sectarianism and hatred it should be doing its utmost to prevent.

Tahir Alam, the teacher banned for life after leading the Trojan Horse plot to take over state schools in Birmingham, was previously the MCB education committee chairman. Purpose of Life, the Muslim charity that named the Batley teacher who showed pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, has provided training workshops for the teaching union. Mend was even invited to provide evidence for the independent inquiry into discrimination within the Conservative Party.

Labour is now a full participant in the new sectarianism. Its response to the Israel/Hamas conflict was so one-sided that it was accused of stoking anti-Semitism. Many Labour MPs – and West Midlands mayoral candidate, Liam Byrne – have adopted aggressively anti-Indian positions regarding its stand-off with Pakistan over Kashmir. In Batley, former local MP and now West Yorkshire mayor, Tracy Brabin, failed to defend the teacher after he faced death threats. Her successor, the Labour candidate in the forthcoming by-election, has posed for photographs with pro-Palestine protestors wearing T-shirts showing Israel wiped from the map.

Do we really want to live in such a divided and sectarian society? Already, different ethnic groups lead separate lives. In the 2001 census, 25 per cent of non-white British minorities lived in “minority majority” communities. By 2011, the number was 41 per cent. By the time the next census is published, it might be higher still.

In schools, segregation is even more pronounced than in the broader population: 60 per cent of ethnic-minority children attend schools where minorities form the majority of pupils. Professor Eric Kaufmann finds that where white British children comprise more than 80 per cent of pupils, schools attract yet more white British children. But when the number falls below 70 per cent, schools start to lose white British children and gain more ethnic minority and foreign-born white pupils.

This is all a disaster for social cohesion. Studies across different societies show that increased diversity reduces trust between strangers; even between neighbours and residents of the same ethnicity. This is a challenge we can and simply must overcome, but we will fail as long as we accept separation and tolerate sectarianism. Robert Putnam, the liberal American academic, says “immigration and ethnic diversity challenge social solidarity and inhibit social capital”.

Yet instead of taking urgent steps to correct the problems identified by Trevor Phillips all those years ago, we risk deepening our crisis. Critical race theory and claims of structural racism threaten to formalise and institutionalise racial and religious divides. We are no longer invited to eliminate discrimination and overcome racial disparities. Instead we are told that integration is racism, unifying institutions and customs are oppressive, and discrimination – now apparently a good thing – should be allowed to right historic wrongs.

It took our worst terrorist attack and the death of 52 innocent people to prompt Phillips’s warning that we were sleepwalking to segregation. We should hope it does not take further violence to realise we are picking up speed. Despite our undoubted successes, we are hurtling dangerously towards a future of sectarianism and social unrest.

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