1 According to the Act of Settlement, 1701.
2 The provisions to purchase property were enacted in the 1778 Catholic Relief Act and the franchise in the Catholic Emancipation Act, 1829.
3 See https://history.blog.gov.uk/2015/05/26/a-perfect-nuisance-the-history-of-women-in-the-civil-service/.
4 See Women on Boards: The Davies Annual Review 2015, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/415454/bis-15-134-women-on-boards-2015-report.pdf.
5 The number of offences against women, including domestic abuse, rape and sexual assaults, rose by almost 10 per cent to 117,568 in 2015–16. The scale of offences make up nearly 19 per cent of prosecutors’ workload – more than any other single tranche of crime, including terrorism and fraud. See: ‘Violent Crimes against Women in England and Wales Reach Record High’, Guardian 6 September 2016, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/sep/05/violent-crimes-against-women-in-england-and-wales-reach-record-high.
6 Britain and the Slave Trade, available at: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/slavery/pdf/britain-and-the-trade.pdf.
7 See http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/civil-rights-in-america/segregationists-us-troops/.
8 Cecil Roth, A History of the Jews in England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964).
9 ‘Daily Mail Headline from 1938 Draws Comparison with Current Reporting of Calais Migrant Crisis, available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/07/31/daily-mail-1938-jews_n_7909954.html.
10 Matt Cook, A Gay History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Men since the Middle Ages (London: Praeger, 2011).
11 Michael McManus, Tory Pride and Prejudice: The Conservative Party and Homosexual Law Reform (London: Biteback Publishing, 2011).
12 R. Rooney, ‘Male Homosexuality in Britain: The Hidden History’, paper delivered at Association of Journalism Education, Journalism the First Draft of History conference, London, May 2000, available at: https://www.scribd.com/document/26608050/Male-Homosexuality-in-Britain-the-Hidden-History.
13 The Festival of Light put pressure on churches to reinforce orthodox Christian theology on same-sex relationships. See: Andrew Atherstone and John Maiden (eds.), Evangelicalism and the Church of England in the Twentieth Century: Reform, Resistance and Renewal (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014), pp. 193–6.
14 ‘London Nail Bombs: The Two Weeks That Shattered the Capital’, Independent, 11 April 2009, accessible at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/london-nail-bombs-the-two-weeks-that-shattered-the-capital-1666069.html.
15 The Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations, 2003, and the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations, 2003, came into force on 1 and 2 December 2003 and outlawed direct and indirect discrimination in employment on grounds of sexual orientation and religion or belief.
16 The incitement to racial and religious hatred is one such restriction on free speech. The offences of inciting violence overseas and glorifying terrorism are encroachments on free speech under terrorism legislation; the removal of content from websites which is considered enabling to terrorism, IS content for example, is an infringement of free expression, and the statutory duty introduced in the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act, 2015, has been criticised for its ‘chilling effect’ on academia for its restriction on the exercise of free speech in education settings. Child protection relates to the laws which curtail the display of child pornography online and the Communications Act, 2003, and Malicious Communications Act are both used to prosecute material considered ‘grossly offensive’ that is circulated via a communications platform.
17 See Luke 6:31.
18 L. Byrne, Black Flag Down: Counter-extremism, Defeating ISIS and Winning the Battle of Ideas (London: Biteback Publishing, 2016), p. 131.
19 ‘Controversial “Squat” Toilets Scrapped’, Manchester Evening News, 7 August 2010, available at: http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/local-news/controversial-squat-toilets-scrapped-895893.
20 Speech by Tony Blair, 8 December 2006, reproduced in Runnymede’s Quarterly Bulletin, no. 348 (December 2006).
21 Jack Straw, ‘I Want to Unveil My Views on an Important Issue’, Lancashire Telegraph, 5 October 2006, available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1530718/I-want-to-unveil-my-views-on-an-important-issue.html.
22 A and Others v. Secretary of State for the Home Department (2004), UKHL 56.
23 Adam Tomkins, ‘Readings of A v. Secretary of State for the Home Department’, Public Law (2005), pp. 259–66.
24 Secretary of State for the Home Department v. MB [2006] EWHC 1000 (Admin), [2006] HRLR 878.
25 ‘The Duty to Integrate: Shared British Values’, speech by Tony Blair, 8 December 2006, available at: www.vigile.net/The-Duty-to-Integrate-Shared.
26 The number of racially or religiously aggravated offences recorded by the police forces in England and Wales in July 2016 was 41 per cent higher than in July 2015. See: H. Corcoran and K. Smith, Hate Crime, England and Wales, 2015/16: Statistical Bulletin 11/16 (London: Home Office, 2016).
27 ‘The Duty to Integrate: Shared British Values’.
28 ‘Radical Muslims Must Integrate, Says Blair’, Guardian, 9 December 2006, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/dec/09/religion.immigrationandpublicservices.
29 The Casey Review: A Review into Opportunity and Integration (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2016), available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/575973/The_Casey_Review_Report.pdf.
30 A. Aughey, Nationalism, Devolution and the Challenge to the United Kingdom State (London: Pluto Press, 2001), p. 90, quoted in Gerry Hassan (ed.), After Blair: Politics after the New Labour Decade (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2006), pp. 75–94.
31 Byrne, Black Flag Down, pp. 131–2.
32 Gordon Brown’s speech to Labour party conference, 2007, available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7010664.stm.
33 HC Deb, 6 November 2007, vol. 467, column 22, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm071106/debtext/711060004.htm#0711067000359.
34 A home stay with a British Muslim family was arranged to enable David Cameron to better understand British Muslims and neighbourhood renewal. Abdullah was at the time a ‘capacity builder’; he is now chief executive at the Balsall Heath Forum, one of the most successful social action projects in the UK.
35 See: ‘David Cameron: What I Learnt from My Stay with a Muslim Family’, Guardian, 13 May 2007, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/may/13/comment.communities.
36 Speech by David Cameron, ‘Bringing Down the Barriers to Integration’, 29 January 2007, available at: http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/files/bringing_down_the_barriers_to_cohesion.pdf.
37 I tried to prevent my party from going down the route of an out-and-out rejection of multiculturalism. The compromise I negotiated was one word, a word that I hoped would nuance the argument and prevent complete exposure of our naivety and lack of understanding. The deal was to insert the word ‘state’ before the word ‘multiculturalism’ in all of David Cameron’s pronouncements. I sought to draw a distinction between society adopting a live-and-let-live approach, even if on occasions that led to segregated and separate communities, and the state encouraging division by policies such as single group funding. I didn’t always succeed in ensuring that the fig leaf was used.
38 ‘How Uganda Was Seduced by Anti-gay Conservative Evangelicals’, Independent, 14 March 2014, available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/how-uganda-was-seduced-by-anti-gay-conservative-evangelicals-9193593.html.
39 ‘Donald Trump Sexism Tracker: Every Offensive Comment in One Place’, Daily Telegraph, 9 November 2016, available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/donald-trump-sexism-tracker-every-offensive-comment-in-one-place/.
40 Report of the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain (London: Runnymede Trust, 2000), p. 16.
41 Founder of Karma Nirvana.
42 Caste Discrimination and Harassment in Great Britain, Government Equalities Office, Research Findings No. 2010 / 8, available at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/85521/caste-discrimination-summary.pdf.
43 ‘ “Witchcraft” Abuse Cases on the Rise’, BBC News, 11 October 2015, available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34475424.
44 ‘ “Gay Cure” Christian Charity Funded 20 MPs’ Interns’, Guardian, 13 April 2012, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/13/gay-cure-christian-charity-mps-interns.
45 Responding to a question put by Fiona Bruce MP about a Christian Union being ‘banned from holding prayer and Bible study meetings’ because of the newly adopted Prevent Duty Guidance in July 2015, David Cameron responded to say such reaction was ‘clearly ludicrous’ and called upon universities to apply ‘common sense’ to avoid misusing the guidance. HC Debate, vol. 611, no. 9 (8 June 2016), p. 1189; also ‘Beth Din Safe with Us, Says Government’, Jewish Chronicle, 26 March 2015, available at: https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/beth-din-safe-with-us-says-government-1.65844.
46 See note 3 to chapter 1 above. ‘Trojan Horse’, after the mythological Greek story of deceit, duplicity and dishonesty to win a war or the strategic genius of warfare planning, was the heading given by Michael Gove to chapter 8 of his book Celsius 7/7, which he published in 2006, after the 7/7 bombings. The argument he makes is that the UK has been duped by, or acquiesced in, a movement where individuals and organizations have over time both converted large numbers of Muslims to believe in an ideologically perverted and politically inspired form of Islam and sought positions of influence. His arguments about which Muslims are ‘the problem’ range from the seriously dangerous to the loud-mouthed attention-seeking TV clown, from academics to theologians and from the out-of-his-depth community leader to the ordinary, everyday British Muslim. In Gove’s world few Muslims are part of the solution.
47 ‘Governors of New Academies and Free Schools Told to Abide by “British Values” ’, Guardian, 19 June 2014, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jun/19/governors-academies-free-schools-british-values-michael-gove; Pupils Left Puzzled by the Term ‘British Values’, British Educational Research Association, 14 September 2016.
48 NUT annual conference, 25–9 March 2016, Final Agenda, p. 87.
49 https://www.bera.ac.uk/bera-in-the-news/press-release-pupils-left-puzzled-by-the-term-british-values.
50 Open Society Justice Initiative, Eroding Trust: The UK’s Prevent Counter-Extremism Strategy in Health and Education (New York: OSF, 2016), p. 28, available at: https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/eroding-trust-20161017_0.pdf.
51 ‘C4 Survey and Documentary Reveals What British Muslims Really Think’, Channel 4, 11 April 2016, available at: http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/c4-survey-and-documentary-reveals-what-british-muslims-really-think.
52 Unsettled Belonging: A Survey of Britain’s Muslim Communities (London: Policy Exchange, 2016), available at: https://policyexchange.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/PEXJ5037_Muslim_Communities_FINAL.pdf.
53 Trevor Phillips used as evidence an ICM poll which found that 52 per cent of British Muslims polled thought homosexuality should be illegal. In 1960s Britain so did most Anglo-Saxon Brits, and as recently as 1999, 49 per cent of Brits thought homosexual relationships were ‘always or mostly wrong’; 70 per cent of Anglicans and Catholics thought so in the early 1990s. (See: Ben Clements, Attitudes towards Gay Rights, British Religion in Numbers (2012), available at: http://www.brin.ac.uk/figures/attitudes-towards-gay-rights/; and Ben Clements and C. D. Field, ‘The Polls – Trends: Public Opinion toward Homosexuality and Gay Rights in Great Britain’, Public Opinion Quarterly, vol. 78, no. 2 (2014), pp. 523–47.) More recently, the lead organizations against same-sex marriage were Christian, and anti-gay-marriage leaflets in Tory-held seats during the 2015 General Election were from an umbrella organisation of Christian groups and activists.
Professor Linda Woodhead, who oversaw the ESRC/AHRC’s Religion and Society five-year research programme, conducted a poll for the Westminster Faith Debates, which were policy debates designed to invite public discussion around some of the research outputs generated from the programme, on same-sex marriage and the attitudes among faith communities in the UK. The poll found that attitudes towards homosexuality and same-sex marriage were transforming within faith communities and that some faith groups had shifted more in their moral perceptions than others. Baptists and Muslims were the two groups most opposed to same-sex marriage with 50 per cent and 59 per cent respectively answering ‘Should not’ to the question ‘Do you think same-sex marriage should be allowed?’ To the question ‘Do you think same-sex marriage is right or wrong?’, 55 per cent of Baptists and 64 per cent of Muslims said ‘Wrong’, the highest among all faith groups and greater than the average across all faith groups (34 per cent). Interestingly, in the Religion and Society poll, which was conducted by YouGov in 2013, 13 per cent of Muslims said ‘Don’t know’ to the question ‘Do you think same-sex marriage is right or wrong?’ but in a YouGov poll conducted in January 2016, 34 per cent of Muslims answered ‘Unsure’ to the question, ‘Do you think same-sex marriage is right or wrong?’. In the same 2016 poll, a higher proportion of Evangelical Christians (63 per cent) than Muslims (52 per cent) answered ‘Wrong’ to the same question.
The ICM poll referred to by Phillips also found that 39 per cent of British Muslims polled thought a woman should always obey her husband. In 1950s Britain so did most Anglo-Saxon Brits; in 1970s Britain so did some in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Most British Muslims have been on their British Muslim journey for fewer than fifty years; Christians have been on their British journey for a millennium and a half; the Foreign Office has been around since 1782.
And then Phillips provided the ‘shocker’: the poll found that 4 per cent of British Muslims have ‘sympathy for people that take part in suicide bombing to fight injustice’. In other words 96 per cent of British Muslims don’t have this sympathy, a figure which bears comparison with a study from 2011, which found that 4 per cent of the general British public said ‘suicide bombings’ against a UK target were ‘justified’. (See: A. Cousins, ‘Muslim Opinion and the Myth of “Tacit Support for Terrorism” ’, Counterfire, 20 March 2015, available at: http://www.counterfire.org/articles/analysis/17732-muslim-opinion-and-the-myth-of-tacit-support-for-terrorism.)
See also: Press Release, ‘Do Christians Really Oppose Gay Marriage?’, Westminster Faith Debates, 18 April 2013, available at: http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/events/programme_events/show/press_release_do_christians_really_oppose_gay_marriage; ‘The Majority of Young C of E, Anglican and Episcopal Christians Agree with Same-Sex Marriage’, indy100 by the Independent, January 2016, available at: https://www.indy100.com/article/the-majority-of-young-c-of-e-anglican-and-episcopal-christians-agree-with-samesex-marriage--ZkKps1IV6e.
54 Gallup Coexist Index 2009: A Global Study of Interfaith Relations; M. Wind-Cowie, A Place for Pride (London: Demos, 2011); Census 2011, which shows that more Muslims identify with a ‘British-only’ national identity than Christians. See Who Feels British? The Relationship between Ethnicity, Religion and National Identity in England, briefing by the Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity, June 2013, accessible at: http://www.ethnicity.ac.uk/medialibrary/briefingsupdated/who-feels-british.pdf.
55 Lord Ashcroft Polls, ‘How the United Kingdom Voted on Thursday … and Why’, 24 June 2016.
56 Other polls show that British Muslims have a greater faith in institutions such as parliament, the police and the criminal justice system than white Brits, and a vast majority – nearly 80 per cent – are pro-integration and more likely to want to live in ethnically mixed communities. See: Gallup Coexist Index 2009: A Global Study of Interfaith Relations.
57 ‘People of No Religion Outnumber Christians in England and Wales – Study’, Guardian, 23 May 2016, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/23/no-religion-outnumber-christians-england-wales-study.
58 Melanie Phillips, ‘Yes, Gays Have Often Been the Victims of Prejudice. But They now Risk Becoming the New McCarthyites’, Daily Mail, 24 January 2011, available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1349951/Gayness-mandatory-schools-Gay-victims-prejudice-new-McCarthyites.html.
59 Christian schools have complained about OFSTED’s interpretation of British values and how they could conflict with Christian teachings on marriage, homosexuality and other aspects of the Christian faith (http://www.christian.org.uk/news/mp-faith-schools-are-being-damaged-by-british-values/). The Jewish Board of Deputies has argued that, although it ‘believes that there is no contradiction between Jewish values and British values, it does think Ofsted may be overstepping the mark in its interpretation of the guidelines’ (http://www.christian.org.uk/news/new-govt-standards-are-curb-on-freedom-jewish-critic/). Jewish faith schools have raised concerns about girls being questioned about homosexuality and relationships (‘Faith Schools’ Battle Over British Values’, Jewish Chronicle, 23 October 2014, available at: http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/analysis/124579/faith-schools-battle-over-british-values). As Daniel Blackman, an author writing on theology and ethics puts it: ‘Yes, the government should tackle violent extremism – no one wants to live in a world where religiously-motivated suicide bombings, mass executions, slavery, and appalling cruelty towards minorities are part of daily life. But this must not be used to impose Mr Cameron’s idiosyncratic interpretation of British values on the rest of us’ (D. Blackman, ‘ “British Values” Prevent More Than Terrorism’, MercatorNet, 16 March 2016, available at: https://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the-uk-government-is-preventing-more-than-terrorism/17767). The Christian Institute argued for the guidelines on respect for ‘other beliefs’ to be changed to ‘other people’ and claimed that inspectors had told a Christian independent school that it should invite an imam to take assembly to promote interfaith goodwill, to which they objected. (‘Faith Schools’ Battle Over British Values’). And my colleague Sir Edward Leigh MP blasted ‘British values’ as a ‘classic bureaucratic response’ that is ‘damaging Christian schools’. (‘ “Faith Schools ‘Damaged by British Values Curriculum”, Says MP’, Daily Telegraph, 12 March 2015, available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11465380/Faith-schools-damaged-by-British-values-curriculum-says-MP.html.)
60 Tariq Modood, ‘Multiculturalism Can Foster a New Kind of Englishness’, The Conversation, 10 June 2016, accessible at: https://theconversation.com/multiculturalism-can-foster-a-new-kind-of-englishness-60759.
61 B. Parekh, ‘Being British’, in A. Gamble and T. Wright, Britishness: Perspectives on the British Question (John Wiley & Sons, 2009), p. 37.