ONE

‘British values’ and community cohesion

The Trojan Horse affair has shaped subsequent debates on community cohesion and the counter-extremism agenda, but it was, in its turn, shaped by preceding events. These earlier events – urban disturbances, claims that communities are self-segregating, perceived threats of terrorism, and specific acts of terrorism themselves – have produced a variety of political interventions. These have included policies designed to mitigate what were understood to be problems of community cohesion, threatening the social fabric and security. The interventions helped to create the narratives that were drawn upon in interpretations of the Trojan Horse affair, just as the latter has been taken as evidence of the veracity of those concerns and as a motivation for further interventions.

The importance of promoting ‘British values’ is a recurrent theme, and is frequently reasserted as a new necessity, notwithstanding that policies reflecting this imperative have been in place for some considerable time. To some extent, this may appear to exemplify the claim of French social theorist Michel Foucault that modern neoliberalism ‘governs through failure’. That is, interventions produce unintended effects and problems – ‘failures’ – which in turn give rise to renewed exhortation and interventions.⁵¹ We will propose something a little different, arguing that policies and interventions – especially those associated with community cohesion and schooling – have actually been successful, but are, notwithstanding, represented as failing. This is particularly poignant with regard to the Trojan Horse affair. Park View school was an example of that success, yet it has come to represent failure and, in the process, its pupils (or, more precisely, those of its successor school, Rockwood Academy) have had their life chances severely diminished.

Securing the community

For our purposes, the emphasis on British values and community cohesion as an object of public policy can be traced to public debates after the summer 2001 urban unrest in Bradford, Oldham, Burnley and other northern towns. Of course, there had been similar disturbances in previous decades, as well as concerns over Irish republican terrorism, especially in Birmingham. Nonetheless, the unrest in 2001 gave rise to a wave of debate and subsequent policy interventions. There were two government reports, one interdepartmental, the other from the Home Office – the Denham Report and the Cantle Report, respectively – which focused on issues of ethnic difference and the ‘separate lives’ of ethnic minorities and local (similarly disadvantaged) white people.⁵² Middle class people, of course, also lived separate lives, but this was not a matter of concern. Spatial segregation and limited social relations among groups were seen to be the main issues, including ‘self-segregation’ by some ethnic minorities deriving from their supposed different cultural values. Among other recommendations, the Cantle Report called for an oath of national allegiance from immigrants and proposed that politicians, community leaders and the media should promote ‘a meaningful concept of citizenship’. The Denham Report, for its part, called for a debate about identity, shared values and citizenship.

These reports came shortly after the Runnymede Trust’s Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain and the publication of the Parekh Report in 2000.⁵³ The latter advocated a form of multiculturalism in which national identity was understood as inclusive of minorities and expressive of their right to co-determine the political community to which they belonged. The report elicited a strongly negative reaction from some sections of the media,⁵⁴ but it articulated the idea that multiculturalism was part of a shared conception of citizenship rather than the expression of multiple separate communities with different values. However, the idea that multiculturalism reinforces separatism has been a persistent criticism.

These warnings have sometimes come from unexpected sources. For example, Trevor Phillips, then chair of the Commission of Racial Equality and its successor organisation (in 2006) the Equality and Human Rights Commission, was among the first of major public figures to argue that multiculturalism had failed and that there was a need for an emphasis on ‘core British values’ to mitigate separation.⁵⁵ This is an argument he has repeated, as we will see, with increasing emphasis on perceived problems within Muslim communities.⁵⁶

The focus on Muslims as a ‘special problem’, of course, has been further reinforced by the threat of terrorism deriving from radical Islamism and especially the risk of ‘home grown’ terrorism ‘incubated’ within ‘separate’ communities. The urban unrest in 2001 as well as the threat of terrorism since the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005 and the killing of Private Rigby in London in May 2013 have all elicited crisis narratives on the claimed problem of self-segregation and failed integration as a result of what Prime Minister David Cameron called ‘state multiculturalism’.⁵⁷

As with later commentators, Phillips’ core argument was that multiculturalism is a form of identity politics, which, in embracing difference, had failed to address the systematic inequalities faced by ethnic minorities.⁵⁸ However, while he has continued to maintain that addressing inequalities is the solution, he has also suggested that Muslims may be an exception and that Muslim communities are ‘unlike others in Britain’ and ‘will not integrate in the same way’.⁵⁹

The idea that there is a failure to accept ‘British values’ among Muslims in Britain has increasingly drowned out explanations of ethnic community alienation that might arise from a failure to fulfil British values by securing equality of treatment within British institutions. Indeed, in this context, it is significant that the success of Park View Academy in turning around a failing school and producing results in the top 14% of all schools in England has been largely elided in accounts of the Trojan Horse affair.

The critique of multiculturalism has increasingly turned on the assertion that, in the concern to address inequalities experienced by ethnic minorities, the white working class have been neglected. Trevor Phillips’ arguments have been used to suggest that in focusing on addressing educational disadvantages among ethnic minority pupils, the government has ignored under-attainment among white working class boys.⁶⁰ Alongside increased immigration, the financial crisis and the economic restructuring that has accompanied globalisation, multiculturalism, it is claimed, has led to the white working class being ‘left behind’. Notwithstanding the evidence that ethnic minorities in Britain have similarly been ‘left behind’ by the economic downturn, the backlash against multiculturalism, particularly in the context of the recent referendum on leaving the European Union, has given rise not to a retreat from, but an intensification of, identity politics – although one that often posits diversity and inclusivity as an existential threat, and which focuses on the need to re-assert ‘British values’, now provided with a ‘particularist’ construal.⁶¹

The ‘populism’ that is evident in the Brexit calls to ‘take back our country’ is a form of ‘nativism’ that denies the differentiation and pluralism that is the positive substance of multiculturalism. It expresses hostility not only to external powers that might limit the scope of national action, but also to those within the nation who are not seen as properly part of it. Those who are not part of the ‘we’ are racialised minorities, immigrants and what Enoch Powell once chillingly called, the ‘immigrant descended’.⁶² Significantly, in the wake of Brexit, the ‘legitimacy’ of racialised particularism and opposition to immigration has been argued forcefully by David Goodhart, most recently to claim that white ‘racial self-interest’ should not be seen as ‘racism’.⁶³

‘British values’

Much contemporary political debate has become preoccupied with ‘national identity’ as something that should bring people together and provide a sense of common purpose and social cohesion. Yet, as much scholarly literature on national identity observes, this is frequently achieved by defining others as not part of that identity. It is also clear that this concern with national identity is associated with anxieties, especially that others are a potential threat, or, at best, people with whom we are in competition.

This dynamic was evident in the UK in the debate over leaving the European Union and the referendum in June 2016. For those who sought to leave, the desire to ‘take back control’ had underlying it a ‘we’ who would take back control from ‘them’ in the exercise of ‘our’ sovereignty. Apparently, sovereignty was not something that could be shared and differentiated. It was not something that could also sometimes be exercised together with ‘them’ as part of an expanded ‘us’. That division between ‘them’ and ‘us’ was also offered as a division within the political community, between ‘elites’ and the ‘people’ (or ‘decent, respectable people’, ‘ordinary people’ – ‘people like us’). ‘They’, ‘elites’, promote shared sovereignty because it benefits them at the expense of ‘us’.

As we have also seen, ‘taking back control’ has been interpreted as meaning taking back control over borders, essentially of the movement of people not like ‘us’. How, then, are resident migrants to be counted within the political community and what is the status of post-migration ethnic minorities within it? Just as Muslims feel that they are the particular focus of public debates about Prevent, as we shall see in the next chapter, so ethnic minorities feel they are the particular focus of debates about immigration.⁶⁴

The discussion of ‘Britishness’ and national identity is fraught, not least because the United Kingdom is a political cluster of nations, with separate political institutions, also expressing devolved and differentiated sovereignties – as indicated by the separate Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies. The referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU was preceded by the Scottish referendum on continued membership in the United Kingdom in September 2014. This was also a referendum about the nature of sovereignty and the extent to which that was better articulated directly through Holyrood and Brussels, or mediated by Westminster with Scotland a part of Britain. It could hardly be argued that ‘Britishness’ did not include Scottish identity, and the problem for those arguing that Scotland should remain within the United Kingdom was how to present a positive version of British identity that couldn’t also be seen as integral to a Scottish identity legitimately expressed through separation. Scotland voted (more narrowly than had been expected) to remain in the United Kingdom, but (along with Northern Ireland) voted later to remain in the European Union. The fact that the wider United Kingdom voted to leave has created further problems to which the response – for example, by the Prime Minister, Theresa May – has been to argue that, in pursuing Brexit, there is a need to overcome divisions and ‘pull together’ as ‘a nation’.

Of course, the idea that ‘Britishness’ signifies a ‘nation’ in the conventional sense is problematic for other reasons. The UK was previously an empire and its population ‘British subjects’.⁶⁵ As an empire, it was a multicultural political community, albeit organised through relations of domination and subordination rather than equality. However, British rule was predicated on movement of populations across empire. As Gurminder K. Bhambra has argued,⁶⁶ in the post-war period Britain came to define subjects as citizens and limit citizenship in various Acts of Parliament, but, in so doing, it turned some who previously had claims within the wider political community into migrants and restricted their freedoms (for example, their rights of entry, as well as the rights of entry of family members, such as non-British spouses).⁶⁷

How should we make sense of all this? On the one hand, there is some notion of ‘Britishness’ that resides in ‘traditions’, common ‘histories’ and common ways of life, albeit that these may also be differentiated by regions – for example, the different nations of the UK, but also of the different regions of those nations. Others also have their different national identities, which are, in turn, internally differentiated. However, in the case of the UK, some of those others were made ‘British’ as a consequence of Britain’s long history of empire. That empire was a diverse one, differentiated by other traditions and practices, including those of different religions. The multiculturalism of empire, then, is an integral part of ‘Britishness’.

On the other hand, in current political debates, emphasis on ‘British values’ are also designed to specify principles of democracy, the rule of law and religious tolerance. These are only contingently ‘British’, in the sense that they are of relatively recent origin and, therefore, ‘Britishness’ – historically – also includes their repudiation as well as affirmation. For example, when the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, proposed a revision of the history curriculum in schools, as a version of ‘our Island story’, he was roundly criticised, not just for eliding the violence of empire, but also struggles for democracy associated with class domination and women’s rights.⁶⁸ But they are contingently British in another sense, namely that they are affirmed by other political communities as also being their values and the governing principles of their institutions. As Christian Joppke has argued, there is nothing particularly ‘national’ about these liberal civic values.⁶⁹

It seems that there are two kinds of ‘Britishness’ that are being utilised. We suggest that the first kind resides in different forms of particularism embodying the practices of daily interaction and common life; it is these, and a respect for their diversity, that are properly represented by the term ‘multiculturalism’, whether fostered by institutional policies or expressed in more bottom-up practices of ‘everyday multiculturalism’ that arise in areas characterised by cultural diversity.⁷⁰ Recognition of the practices of others and their rights of expression as integral to ‘Britishness’ has been a slow development, however. For example, at different points in the debate over religious education in schools, especially from the 1970s to the 1990s, there have been arguments against ‘multi-faith’ education as being a form of ‘relativism’ and that Christianity is an essential part of ‘Britishness’ that should be recognised and affirmed by everyone, at least as a matter of national heritage.⁷¹ This was a view that was resurrected by David Cameron in his speech to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the completion of the King James Bible in 2011, when he declared: “we are a Christian country. And we should not be afraid to say so”.⁷²

A second kind of ‘Britishness’ – the ‘British values’ of democracy, the rule of law and religious tolerance most explicitly promoted by government as ‘fundamental’ – represents a set of transcending principles which facilitate cooperation across particularities. This was indeed the version of Britishness that was espoused by the Parekh Report. It is because these values are shared that sovereignty can also be differentiated and shared, whether across the different assemblies of the UK, or in cooperative agreements across nations (for example, as in the EU).

This has been a lengthy preamble, but it has been necessary to unpick the meaning of ‘British values’ and the way in which their invocation can act as a shifting signifier in public debate. On the analysis presented, it is a ‘category error’ to place multiculturalism in conflict with values of democracy, the rule of law and tolerance of religious diversity. However, it is one that politicians and journalists have frequently made. For example, David Cameron’s speech at Munich in 2011 argued that:

we have allowed the weakening of our collective identity. Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream. We’ve failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong. We’ve even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values.⁷³

Similar elisions were evident in the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown’s attempt to initiate a debate on British identity in February 2007. Significantly, this took place at the Commonwealth Club (a venue redolent of the multiculturalism of the former empire). He began with setting out a range of areas where such a debate mattered:

whether all the different countries of the union – Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland – all want to stay together, part of the union; how we better integrate our ethnic communities and respond to migration; how we respond to Muslim fundamentalism; what is our role in Europe and the European constitution. And whether facing global challenges we need a stronger sense of national purpose.⁷⁴

Paradoxically, given that his concern was to argue for the need for a debate on Britishness, he also cited opinion poll findings that, over the last few years, those who identified with being British had risen from 46% to 65% and that more people in Britain felt patriotic than in almost any other country. It is unlikely, though, that this rise reflected the affirmation of general values, but was rather about affirming an exclusive ‘particularistic’ Britishness through those values, against other particularistic identities which were imputed to deny them. After all, that was the context in which general values were being articulated as a solution.

As the Chancellor warmed to his theme, he elaborated how common values of tolerance, liberty and fair play arose from the need to live together in a multinational state. Yet, as we have suggested, these are the values embedded in common democratic institutions which are the proper object of ‘internationalism’, rather than ‘patriotism’. If there is a British history of their invention then that, too, has its darker side. The invocation of the abolition of the slave trade as a ‘British’ contribution neglects the fact that the trade itself was also ‘British’. The changing status of ‘subjects’ of empire, to ‘subjects’ of Commonwealth, and from citizens to migrants, as well as the different treatment of the white ‘Dominions’ are also part of the national tradition and divide as well as unite. It is one thing to invoke values of democracy, the rule of law and religious tolerance and expect them to be shared, but it is quite another to expect a common understanding of their history and their relation to the British state. Inequalities in the present are likely to be understood in relation to inequalities in the past.

The political philosopher Danielle Allen has written powerfully of the dangerous aspects of the idea of popular sovereignty – intolerance of difference – that is frequently represented as a democratic ideal.⁷⁵ For example, incorporated in the US Declaration of Independence, and reproduced daily in US schools, is the ‘pledge of allegiance’ to ‘one Nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all’. The idea of ‘one Nation indivisible’, she argues, implicitly passes all voices into one. What would happen, Allen asks, were we to propose instead an allegiance to the ‘whole Nation indivisible’? The whole Nation would be understood as a Nation of parts – that is, as differentiated – where an obligation towards indivisibility would be an obligation towards difference and its recognition. A commitment to the whole nation would require an obligation toward multicultural equality. It is precisely that commitment that now appears fragile, in part as a consequence of proposing that the particular traditions of some members of the political community entails them being hostile to general ‘British values’.

Muslims and ‘British values’

In a context where a ‘particularism’ of practices and a ‘generality’ of values are presented as in tension (although we argue they need not be), Muslims have come to be regarded as irreconcilably different from other citizens in some particular respects, especially with regard to religion and its practices. These differences are visible in the architecture of towns – the presence of mosques and specialist food and other businesses – and is embodied on the streets – in the language spoken amongst each other, differences in clothing, or in gendered practices of covering. But these differences need not be understood as oppositional. What is at stake here is well represented in the comment by former chair of the Conservative Party, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, that:

my faith is about who I am and not about who you are. It’s a rule-book for me, not a forced lecture series for you. Its strength is a source of peace for me not ammunition with which to fight you. It’s a ruler I have chosen to measure myself against, not a stick with which to beat you. It allows me to question myself, not to judge you. And recognizing myself, being sure of who I am, being comfortable in my identity, does not mean having to downgrade, erase or reject who you are.⁷⁶

Notwithstanding, it is clear that, for some, the visibility of difference represents an ‘alien presence’ and even an affront, and an indication that those who are different do not ‘belong’. Such a view was put forward by Nigel Farage at a UKIP (UK Independence Party) conference in February 2014.⁷⁷ It was also bound up in Enoch Powell’s opposition to non-white ‘Commonwealth immigration’ in the 1960s and 1970s. Significantly, Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, delivered in Birmingham in April 1968, challenged the ‘steady progress towards a multi-cultural society’. However, this nativist particularism is, ostensibly, not what governments, whether, Labour, Conservative-led coalition, or the Conservative government, have meant by ‘Britishness’ – at least in the values they have promoted in public policy declarations, even if criticisms of multiculturalism have risked that interpretation.

The explicit focus of government concern has been that there is a failure on the part of Muslims to identify with values of democracy, the rule of law and religious tolerance. As we have seen, the main reasons for this failure have been attributed to the segregation and isolation of Muslim communities, and thus a failure to engage with such values, especially where ‘British values’ may contradict what are perceived to be local cultural traditions (for example, of arranged marriages and other perceived patriarchal practices). ‘Multiculturalism’ has been seen to be part of the problem, in so far as it has meant that local authorities and politicians have been unwilling to promote more general values for fear of being seen as ‘racist’. This is a theme that is used to explain ‘inaction’ on the part of the authorities with regard to the early indications of a Trojan Horse ‘plot’. But is it correct?

As the public policy debate has taken this turn, so it has been subject to scrutiny in academic research seeking to test the underlying framing in terms of segregation and disassociation from general British values. For example, Ludi Simpson of the ESRC-funded Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity at the University of Manchester has demonstrated that segregation declined over the period from 2001 to 2011.⁷⁸ Richard Gale records similar findings when looking at religious segregation, rather than ethnic segregation in Birmingham.⁷⁹ The widely reported idea that England is increasingly segregated, or that it is ‘sleep-walking’ to segregation, as Trevor Phillips put it, is false.⁸⁰

Saffron Karlsen and James Nazroo, for their part, have used the Citizenship Survey to address attitudes to Britishness among different ethnic and faith communities. This showed that 90% of Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Christians felt part of Britain. In particular, Muslims were more likely than Caribbean Christians to report a strong British identification and (along with Hindus and Sikhs) to recognise potential compatibility between this and other aspects of identity. As they put it, ‘many Muslims, and those with other minority ethnicities and religions, do not see a contradiction between being British and maintaining a separate cultural or religious identity’,⁸¹ and they cite similar findings from other studies which have also identified a positive association between Muslim affiliation and positive national identities. Nor are the outcomes affected by the intensity of religious commitments. There is a positive correlation between British identification and higher religiosity.⁸² These associations have remained strong across the period since 2001.

In other words, the public discourse on ‘British values’, and the urgency with which it is expressed, does not seem to be a response to increased segregation, or declining identification with Britishness, or with any secure basis in other kinds of evidence. Rather, each public intervention appears to be based on a ‘snapshot’ of current levels of population concentration independently of the trends that are associated with those concentrations. These concerns came to the fore again with Dame Louise Casey’s report on opportunity and integration, mentioned in the introduction to this book.⁸³ This was followed by another report on segregation and schooling, presented by Ted Cantle on behalf of one of the bodies involved in the research, in which it was asserted that, while neighbourhoods were becoming less segregated, schools were becoming more segregated than their neighbourhoods.⁸⁴ This was again argued to be a consequence of ‘self-segregation’, but the report takes no account of the different age structure of ethnic minority populations compared with the white British population, which means that the former are likely to have a higher proportion of children in school. We will see in Chapter Four that the same issue arises when considering religious belief and secularism and their distribution in the population.

The conclusion of the academic research is that it is precisely multiculturalism that facilitates identification with being British on the part of citizens outside the dominant cultural and religious traditions.⁸⁵ This is because ethnic and religious minorities associate ‘Britishness’ with a commitment to a plurality that recognises their different traditions.⁸⁶ Indeed, Yasmin Hussain and Paul Bagguley suggest that where disaffection among Muslim young people exists, it is not because of the attractions of radical Islam, but because of disappointment in the realisation of their rights as British citizens, especially in the context of unequal opportunities and material disadvantage.⁸⁷ In this respect, Trevor Phillips’ argument that the key issue is inequality is correct, but he is mistaken to suggest that multiculturalism is a problematic form of identity politics that distracts from this. Inequalities have widened over the last decades and the impact of the politics of austerity in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis (if not the longer-term trend of de-industrialisation since the 1980s which has affected traditional working class communities) has hit ethnic minorities particularly hard. Gemma Catney and Albert Sabater, for example, show persistent inequalities in labour market participation and occupational concentration for ethnic minorities nationally, with Birmingham among the top five local authorities for unemployment for several ethnic groups – Indian, Pakistani, Chinese and African.⁸⁸

Hiranthi Jayaweera and Tufyal Choudhury’s research also shows that there is an interest in greater participation in civic and political life on the part of ethnic minorities. However, this is seen to be more difficult as opportunities for local involvement are displaced by stronger central direction and by removing local services from the public sector. This has been especially pronounced following the 40% cuts to local authority budgets since the election in 2010 of the Conservative–Liberal Democratic government, and its Conservative successor in 2015. This has also been associated in Birmingham with longstanding problems in governance, especially its children’s social care services, which had been subject to interventions by the Department for Health and other government agencies since 2002.⁸⁹

Significantly, just as politicians like Gordon Brown argued that a multinational state like Britain is sustained by people recognising separate and complementary loyalties, a similar pattern is evident for ethnic minorities whose attachments are transnational – that is, lying within and outside Britain. Integration is unaffected by continued orientation to country of origin. As Jayaweera and Choudhury put it:

those with the most transnational attachment and involvement were also most likely to be employed, financially stable, have voted in the general election and to meet more people of different ethnicity and religion and in more places (although least likely to participate in mixed organisations). This evidence shows that continuing transnational attachment does not need to be a barrier to economic and social integration in the UK and thus that initiatives to promote belonging in Britain do not need to challenge a complementary sense of belonging to the country of birth.⁹⁰

Put simply, from the everyday experiences of many ethnic and religious minorities, the issue of integration appears to be less their unwillingness to integrate, and more a failure by others to include. This is compounded when political discourse seems to stress the incompatibility of their traditions and values with ‘Britishness’ as the reason for their failure to integrate. This is evident from Jayaweera and Choudhury’s interviews with local policy makers and practitioners in three locations – Newham in London, Bradford and Birmingham: ‘Many interviewees argued that efforts on improving cohesion issues at the local level can be undermined by national policy and political rhetoric, and by media discourse, particularly around issues of asylum and terrorism.’⁹¹ In Birmingham, the fallout within the local community from the Trojan Horse affair on these issues has been considerable.

Conclusion

Ethnic and religious minorities have a particularly strong commitment to the shared values that we have characterised as ‘general’, precisely because they perceive themselves to be vulnerable in terms of the everyday particularities that differentiate them from other fellow citizens, a differentiation evident in the language of policy and academic discussion that describes them as ‘minorities’. Yet the promotion of ‘British values’ elides the distinction between general values and particular traditions and ‘ways of life’ and, in turn, seems to favour those of the white population over non-white others. As we have seen, Enoch Powell coined an ugly turn of phrase to mark the difference when he referred in a speech to the ‘immigrant descended’, and we have also seen the emergence of an argument that white racial self-interest is not racism. The risk is that inclusion has now become assimilation, where, to paraphrase the poet Daljit Nagra, you can become ‘one of us’, so long as you ‘pass your voice into ours’.⁹²

Christian Karner and David Parker (citing Sennett) put the problem of assimilation (as distinct from integration) well, when they write that ‘the pressure towards discovering a unified collective identity risks destroying the essence of urban civility “which is that people can act together without the compulsion to be the same”’.⁹³ It is the ability to act together, while being different, that British Muslims and other ethnic and religious minorities regard as at the heart of ‘British values’ and a tolerance of plurality. This is a generous and expanded idea of Britishness, and, we will argue, Park View school was part of that vision, albeit that it came to be (mis)represented as Islamic particularism.

In the next chapter, we will look at how the idea of community cohesion comes to butt up against the Prevent agenda and the way in which the latter places British Muslims under increasing suspicion. It is this conjunction which helped create the conditions for the Trojan Horse affair to be seen as a threat to ‘British values’.