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Lord Morgan: My Lords, there are also other supporters including, I believe, the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury and Osama bin
Laden—make of that what one will. Arsenal Football Club is a team of almost entirely black players except the goalkeeper. But they play before white supporters, not because the club practises discrimination, but because black people simply cannot afford the tickets. In many ways we have a kind of tokenism as regards black participation in sport.On a somewhat more controversial note—I suspect that there might not be so many "hear, hears" on this point—I worry greatly about education. It seems to me vital that education should be a way of promoting multi-ethnic pluralism and getting our children to know each other. I went to a school in north London with very large numbers of Jewish boys. I had not met Jews before. I found it deeply enriching and the most educative part of my schooling. I worry very much about the divisiveness of schools, including faith schools, which were criticised on both sides of the House last week, not in the sense that they are run by religious communities, but in the sense that they tend to promote division, mono-culturalism and to divide children one from another. We have heard of alienation in terms of residence. I would be deeply worried if that were reinforced by alienation in terms of education. In my opinion we do not want to encourage this development more than we need.
Fundamentalism is a great problem in many ways. It seems to me as an historian that it is a more worrying problem in the world than communism ever was. After all, communism was a philosophy of inclusion. In my younger days I used to sing "The Internationale unites the human race". That was a very long time ago and noble Lords will be glad to know that I do not intend to sing now. It is deeply worrying if we promote institutions of divisiveness.
Like all other speakers, I am optimistic. I believe that things are improving and that being British means something; that our country is flexible and tolerant. We have not had a Le Pen or a Haider in this country to inflame race relations. Our view of citizenship is relaxed. We do not have a citizenship test and, with respect to a distinguished Member of this House, we do not have a cricket test and I hope we never will. Britishness means something to the Welsh, the Scots and, increasingly, to black British, Asians and Afro-Caribbeans.
My final point is this: what does Britishness mean to the English? After all, the English are 80 per cent of this island. It worries me deeply that the English, a tolerant, talented, wonderful people, have no particular articulation of themselves. England has been described, I believe, by Richard Rose as a state of mind or perhaps a geographical expression in the way that Metternich described Italy in the 19th century. England is difficult to define and difficult to govern in the sense that we have no regional system for England. Without articulating the English identity of 80 per cent of the people of this island, I believe that a stable, multi-cultural Britain will not yet have arrived.
Lord Hylton: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down may I invite him to visit one or two Roman
Catholic state schools and assess whether or not they have a strong concern with social justice and a global dimension.
Lord Morgan: My Lords, that is a very interesting. I do not object at all to the fact that they are Roman Catholic. My worry—intensified by what I know of Northern Ireland—is what a mono-cultural, mono-religious background can produce. That is increasing. I believe that the important thing is to bring children together at the youngest possible age to get them to know each other in terms of culture and religion and, in Wales, in terms of language.
6.47 p.m.
Lord Dahrendorf: My Lords, on seeing the list of speakers in this important debate, a friend of mine remarked, "Ah! You are going to insert into a string of distinguished speakers with some connection to the sub-Continent the view of the Continent". I believe that the Continent is making some contribution to multi-cultural Britain, indeed, even to the Arsenal Football Club, if I may say so, where the continental players are quite indispensable.
I am an immigrant. I came to this country and decided to settle here because it is a country of liberty. It is a kind of liberty which is rarely found anywhere else in the world. It is a tradition which has managed to resist the two great totalitarian temptations of the last century. It managed to resist them more effectively than almost any other country I can think of. It is a mixture of respect for others, of leaving space for individual initiative, of trust, and of being able to rely on certain bonds of tradition—breathing the air of freedom. Yes, diversity of cultures enriches a society.
The reason why I am speaking is my great respect for the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, and what he stands for, which he has explained so well again this afternoon. There are not any really homogeneous societies, but those which think they are tend to be narrow minded, intolerant within and quite often aggressive without. The experience of having to live together—and wanting to live together—with people from different cultures helps civilised behaviour. There are, however, two conditions. One is that all must have equal opportunities to take part in economic, social and political life. Citizenship must be real. Several of your Lordships have spoken about this, beginning with my noble friend Lord Greaves.
The other condition is a more delicate and complicated one, and I want to spend a minute or two on it. It is that all must accept certain fundamentals of the society in which they live. On this there is, perhaps, no full agreement. I have read with great interest the report by the commission chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, entitled The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain. I offer your Lordships a quotation from it, which is almost the sentence before the quotation that my noble friend Lord Greaves offered:
- "Britain is both a community of citizens and a community of communities, both a liberal and a multicultural society, and needs to reconcile their sometimes conflicting requirements."
Those principles include the freedoms given under the constitutional traditions of the country—freedoms that are evolving, but always under the rule of law. In my understanding, however, they also include an enlightened attitude to state and society. I use the word "enlightened" deliberately, because enlightenment is a part of British liberty. All free societies have pockets of fundamentalism, but the open advocacy of and insistence on pre-Enlightenment views seems to me to be unacceptable.
One of the great questions is: how exactly do we define these common fundamentals if one wishes to live in a country of enlightened liberty? I was quite impressed when the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, said in yesterday's debate:
- "Some in this country disapprove of the religious slaughter of animals but it does not follow that that practice, central to the life of Jews and Muslims, should be banned".—[Official Report, 19/3/02; col. 1331.]
The most difficult point is, perhaps, one that has to do with the law. I was greatly impressed by what the noble Lord, Lord Bhatia, said. The separation of faith and law is one of the essential features of an enlightened order. There are, therefore, real problems with Sharia law, Rabbinical law and Catholic fundamentalism. There are real problems whenever law is made part of faith and, therefore, non-negotiable and not part of civil society and its institutions. I would hope that it is recognised that we can live together in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society if we accept that the law is common to all and that it is made here in Parliament by the institutions designed to provide it.
I agree very much with another statement made in the Parekh report, which perhaps—at least, by implication—recognises this insistence on the commonness of the law:
- "Every society needs to be cohesive as well as respectful of diversity, and must find ways of nurturing diversity while fostering a common sense of belonging and a shared identity among its constituent members"—
6.55 p.m.
Lord Desai: My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf. Like me, he is a first-generation immigrant. However, although he is an immigrant, I am sure that he does not get asked the kind of questions that I get asked, such as "Where do
you come from? Do you go back there often?" Perhaps he does. I bet that the noble Lord, Lord Weidenfeld, does not get asked such questions. I do, however, and I have great difficulty with it.I also have great difficulty with the topic of this debate because from childhood onwards I tried to escape the identity of being Indian. I wanted to be part of the world, and to be myself. If someone points a gun at me in the middle of the night and asks, "What are you?", I will say that I am an economist. Indeed, until I came to your Lordships' House, I was never thought of as south Asian; I did not think of myself as south Asian. I am an economist, I am middle class, I live in a middle-class area, and I have a good middle-class job. Although I was obviously liberal and anti-racist, and in no way denying where I was born, I never thought of myself as belonging to an ethnic minority. When I came here, however, I was "outed". People started thinking of me as representing a community, but I do not. I am not here as a representative of any ethnic minority.
I hope that I can explain that I have great difficulty with the whole notion of multi-culturalism. As my noble friend Lord Parekh knows, I have expressed my reservations in a review that I wrote of his book on multi-culturalism. I want to argue that creating a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society is not necessarily the great thing that it is said to be. I am not saying that we should not be tolerant or that we should not recognise the value of different languages, cultures, practices and cuisines. I am saying that we ought to distinguish between the public space and the private space. One great difficulty created by many of the policies followed over the last 50 years is that we have confused that distinction.
People from ethnic minorities, and other people as well, find themselves trapped by certain labels which inhibit their mobility out of where they are starting from. This leads to the perpetuation of poverty in certain groups. After all, when we talk about ethnic minorities we are now talking about third and fourth generation people. There are persistent imbalances between the educational achievement of Pakistani and Bangladeshi people, compared with other minorities. We labelled people, from the best possible motives, and insisted that their passport to certain public goods depended upon their producing that identity—housing, schools, their ability to find employment. It was done in order to help people. But once we have done that, we do not allow them to escape that labelling and become ordinary citizens.
Some noble Lords present may remember Lord Pitt. He was a distinguished Member of your Lordships' House. There is a story that, as he was going about his business in Hampstead High Street, a little boy was heard to say to his mother, "Mother, mother, there is a black man", and his mother said, "Hush child, that is not a black man. That is a doctor". I wish we could all become like that. I wish I did not have to carry my religion and my ethnicity on my lapel. That is not to
say I want to deny those matters. I am not schizophrenic. But we labelled people with the best of intentions.Originally people came from other countries to sustain industries which should have been shut down—the cotton and textile industries in the North of England—in any proper market conditions. But those people were brought in because they could be paid less than white people. Of course, since those industries were doomed to fail, those people were trapped in those regions and those regions are where they are trapped still. All the things they can get by way of public goods depend upon their identity and where they are located.
We have this horrendously depressed area across the Pennines. Both the economics and the politics are depressed. It is no good saying, "We are going to be multi-cultural", because the way to make Bradford better is to take a lot of Bradford people out of Bradford—just taking Bradford as an example.
The problem is that we are not following an egalitarian strategy; we are following a multi-cultural strategy. There is a difference. We do not see people in the way that my noble friend Lord Morgan described. It is true that we only formally recognise the civic nature of those groups, but none of their entitlements arose out of their colour. Although labelling arose out of a sense of helpfulness, it turned out to be a great immobilising strategy. And we must get out of that.
People do not appreciate how good a model the United States is for assimilation. Except in terms of Afro-Americans, it successfully integrated many people. The reason why they recently allowed Indians to head top US corporations is that they do not label people. Even for Afro-American blacks, their progress has been tremendous. We have not made that progress and we ought to ask why not.
7.3 p.m
The Lord Bishop of Chester: My Lords, I was grateful to read, in preparation for this debate, the report, The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, produced under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Parekh. In particular, like the noble Lord, Lord Morgan, I was struck by the way in which the report reveals that Britain has been always an evolving "community of communities". Perhaps that is changing more rapidly now than at some times in the past, but multi-ethnicity and multi-culturalism are not entirely new phenomena for our country to face. Perhaps it is a wider and better appreciation of that would draw the sting of the very proper and eloquent complaint of the noble Lord, Lord Desai.
Among the many recommendations of the report, it requested a new commission on religion in public life to attend especially to legal and constitutional questions. Perhaps a new commission will be needed in due course. There is little doubt that we are in a period of quite rapid evolutionary change in the relation of faith communities to our society, and also at a more fundamental constitutional level.
I should like this evening to contribute a few comments from the perspective of the Church of England and its historic establishment. The "establishment" of the Church of England refers to a complex, multi-faceted and rather unique set of relationships between Church and state and Church and nation which go back well over 1,000 years into Saxon times. It is not, as is sometimes imagined, a phenomenon with roots in the 16th century; it goes back much further. And Anglicans have always traced their spiritual lineage to those earlier times.
The particular form and evolution of the English establishment has taken its place among other relationships between Church and state in these islands, and also on a wider European canvas. The very notion of Europe itself is in one sense a Christian concept. Europe denotes that area of the Asian land mass where the Christian civilisation took root. Prior to the 18th century the area which is now normally labelled "Europe" would usually have been called, "Christendom". So Europe is more a religious than a geographical concept.
Many of the distinguishing features of European civilisation have inevitably been deeply shaped by the Christian faith—the freedom and uniqueness of the individual with his or her rights; the characteristic moral emphases of our culture; even science itself, perhaps the most potent force in our society. Modern science was born in Christian Europe in the 16th century. Historians of science have often pointed out that it was Christian notions of creation coming to the fore in that century which were a necessary prerequisite for the scientific enterprise to emerge.
Perhaps the commonly recognised distinguishing characteristics of our country—our reputation for justice, fair play and so forth—which the report of the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, acknowledged and to which several Members of this House referred this evening, partly emerged because of the long and distinguished emphases upon the spiritual basis of monarchy and Parliament alike—warm beer and ladies cycling to evensong indeed, even if we do now have to add chicken tikka masala, whatever that is.
I should like to say a further word at this point about the monarchy itself. It is a subject which the report of the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, largely ignored. But it is relevant to how we attempt to hold together an increasingly pluralist and multi-ethnic "community of communities".
Why has the British monarchy survived and flourished while so many of its continental counterparts have died and diminished? Clearly we have been blessed with some fine individual monarchs. But the particular way in which the spiritual and sacred character of the monarchy has been nurtured and expressed has enabled our monarchy to relinquish political power without losing its fundamental raison d'être.
The transcendent rooting of the monarchy, vividly expressed at the coronation itself, has been vital to its grace and dignity. That feature of our constitutional monarchy has been mediated through a particular
relationship with the Church of England. Cut that relationship and perhaps the Royal Family would be much more vulnerable to being seen as just another rich and privileged family (if I may use that phrase). Most of our citizens will continue to prefer our constitutional monarchy, with its sacred and spiritual basis, to the alternative symbols of flags, national anthems and myths of national destiny, which tend to fill the vacuum elsewhere, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, described.But if the establishment of the Church of England is to survive, it will need to evolve; to take account of the new dimensions of multi-ethnicity and multi-culturalism in our midst. The precise character of the next coronation, I imagine, will need to be significantly different from the last. The Sovereign, I believe, can appropriately be described as a "defender of faith", as well as a "defender of the faith". I do not believe the two are in fundamental contradiction. Indeed, the Sovereign needs to be a defender equally of those who are agnostic or atheists. Authentic Christianity seeks to coerce no one against their God-given freedom and respects the dignity and rights of all.
However, just as one cannot really be religious without a religion, I do not think that we can recognise a spiritual basis to life in the structures of our society without mediating that through a particular faith community. That will bring new obligations and opportunities to that faith community. There is scope here, I believe, for the Church of England to be much more generous to the other faith communities in our midst, in relation, for example, to our buildings, but in many other ways as well. We have been slow out of the blocks in this matter and we are still lagging behind where we need to be.
We need to learn from the experience of other parts of the world. It has always struck me as significant that the mother house of Mother Theresa's Sisters of Charity in Calcutta is set in the precincts of a Hindu temple—or so I am told.
A more generous hospitality to other faith communities in various ways need not compromise our integrity at all, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bradford explained. Indeed, properly understood, it is part of that very integrity. At this point, I believe that the report of the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, was absolutely right to say that better relationships between faith communities is a crucial part of the strategy to combat racism. I do not believe that the mainstream churches in this country—and let me speak here specifically of the Church of England—have yet fully grasped that challenge.
Some will say that it would be better to disestablish the Church of England and build a new order of society on secular and multi-faith foundations. Perhaps, but I doubt whether that is what our people, including most members of the minority faith communities, want. The Chief Rabbi articulated that very well in his Reith Lectures a few years ago.
From the perspective of the different faith communities, it was secular materialism which largely made the running in the second part of the
20th century and has left us a social, moral and artistic legacy which hardly seems to inspire. Statistics of suicide, especially among the young, mental illness, family breakdown, and crime, reinforce the point. The challenge in the 21st century is to establish more clearly, on a renewed basis, the sacred dignity of life and of our obligations to each other in society. I believe that the new communities will richly contribute to that process.
I remain unpersuaded that disestablishment of the Church of England is the best way to facilitate this, but neither do I underestimate the challenge of changes of attitude which are still required in many quarters, and which the distinguished contributions to this debate so far have very clearly identified.
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