| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
3.56 pm
Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, I very much want to follow along the lines of what the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has said. When I was a boy, I would have assumed that interfaith dialogue was about trying to get Protestants and Catholics to talk to each other. I had no concept of someone being a Jew and I had certainly not thought about anyone being a Muslim. I grew up assuming that it was very difficult to be a Catholic and a loyal British citizen. The discovery that Catholics thought Campion was a hero rather than a traitor was something of a shock to me when I first went into the choir school of Westminster Cathedral at the age of 11.
We need some rather longer perspective in this debate. I want to start by urging that we think about our own histories and the difficulties that we have had. That puts into context the situation we now have with the British Muslim community and helps us to understand how that community will come to terms with being in Britain.
Some years ago, I read a copy of the Huddersfield Examiner on the 100th anniversary of the incorporation of Huddersfield as a borough. It had a very useful and long article on one of the biggest problems Huddersfield faced in the late 19th century. It was about how Huddersfield was to come to terms with its new immigrant community, which was foreign, hated British values, had foreign priests, even had smelly cooking and wanted to keep its own separate identity. It was referring of course to the Irish Catholics.
We have overcome that, although when I was fighting a constituency in Manchester in 1974, I recall a long evening discussion with the assembled Catholic clergy of Moss Side—Irishmen to a man—who had a rather ambiguous attitude towards terrorist activities against the British state. During the evening, they argued not only that separate education for Catholics was a must, to stop them from being contaminated by too much mixing with Protestants, but one or two of them also argued that we should have separate universities as well.
We have come some distance from that, but we need to remind ourselves that it is not just interfaith but intrafaith as well. While I was preparing for this debate, the Library usefully provided me with an article by Rabbi Jonathan Romain in the Times two years ago. He talked about the problems of coming to terms with interfaith dialogues and the discovery that you also need to have a dialogue between the reform community in Judaism and the orthodox community in the liberal community. He said that perhaps we also needed a “Council of Jews and Jews”. Not that long ago, Christianity was a little like that.
Two summers ago, I read the history of the Maynooth seminary in the context of the debate about how we train imams in Britain. The Liberal Government, after the Irish rebellion of 1801, decided that it would be worth putting money into training Catholic priests within the United Kingdom. The Tories objected, and went on objecting to funds being provided for this foreign religion for 20 or 30 years afterwards. It was
1 May 2008 : Column 395
The noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, talked about social values and citizenship issues, particularly in the north of England where we have the second and third generations of a new wave of immigrants facing huge contradictions in the values of tradition and modernity and between their perception of British values and their own self-worth and identity. I have found it quite shocking on a number of occasions that there are people living in Britain whose children were born here but who still insist that they intensely dislike Britain. It is not so much the British state that they dislike but what they sense to be British values. That is a huge set of issues that is much more concerned with citizenship, social attitudes and attitudes towards women than faith, and we have to deal with it. My experience, when I found myself speaking to large groups of British Muslims in Yorkshire and Lancashire in 2003 and 2004 in the wake of my party’s attitude to the Iraq war, was this. I tried to talk about liberal values to groups where all the men would sit in one area of the hall and if any women were there at all, they were seated somewhere else entirely. That was an interesting experience, but I am not sure that those audiences were always entirely sympathetic towards my ideas of a liberal society.
We should recall the experience of the surge of Jewish refugees and asylum seekers from Tsarist Russia a century ago, because there were similar problems. We had a second generation of immigrants who felt that there were real contradictions between their values and those of British society. Many of them were poor and some were quite alienated; a few turned to radical causes such as anarchism, revolutionary ideas and communism. Indeed, some time ago I discovered that the Sidney Street siege of that period involved a mainly Jewish group of revolutionaries against the British state.
Our values and the values of more traditional communities are things that we need to negotiate. After all, our values have been changing. Only some 20 years ago, when talking to the vicar of my local church about the role of women in the Church of England, did I discover the sheer depth of male prejudice that still existed. Not long afterwards he left that church because he recognised that he disagreed with much of the congregation, and moved to the Diocese of London. The Church of England has moved some way from that position. Indeed, I was trying to think of the last occasion on which I went to a service conducted by a male priest—I think it is now some months. Moreover, I was happy to meet several members of the campaign for women bishops earlier this morning. The Church of England is still on a journey towards accepting that women play an equal part; the Roman Catholic Church has a much longer journey ahead of it.
Nevertheless, I agree strongly with the point made by the right reverend Prelate about the problem of the vacuum of values in our society. Young Muslim women whom I sometimes meet when campaigning politically in Yorkshire have reacted against what they
1 May 2008 : Column 396
I hope that we all agree that we are in favour of a liberal and tolerant approach to faith, to politics and to society, that we are all opposed to fundamentalism in any religion as well as in politics, and that we have to examine our own conscience and our own institutional religions as we come to terms with the beliefs and prejudices of others.
4.05 pm
Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, I add my thanks to those of all other noble Lords to the noble Lord, Lord Hameed, for introducing the debate today. He has brought together a community of diverse people who are, in a way, representative entirely of the problem we are discussing, if Members of the House can be called representative of anything. It is a remarkable achievement. Not only that, it parallels in many ways the problems—except that we lack the really extreme views of some people—that we see and are discussing both within the global community, which goes together to make the global society, and within our national community, where British society is, if you like, the sum of a series of little communities. In that sense, therefore, this is a special day.
However, I want particularly to talk about another aspect. If we are not careful, it would be easy to concentrate on the ills of society and the things that have been done by society in general. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, referred to state brutality, but we could talk equally about religious brutality. Over the centuries, many things have been done in the name of religion; Christianity in the Middle Ages was not a religion of which to be proud. The only thing I would say, but not in exculpation, is that if one considers society in that way, you can find even greater evil done by people without religion. I am thinking, in particular, of Alexander—one of the heroes we like to worship from antiquity but who killed enormous numbers of people—Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan and, bringing things a little closer to home, Stalin and Mao. They make the ills perpetrated by religion, if it was religion, look quite small.
I do not really think that the ills of religion had much to do with religion at all—a point made strongly by the noble Lord, Lord Hameed, in his introduction. In my view, the ills that have been perpetrated generally have been perpetrated in the name of politics, which has all too often been used to corrupt religion. Speaking
1 May 2008 : Column 397
In preparing for the debate I felt that I was climbing a severe precipice, with few handholds and few cracks to guide me up it. I am immensely grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate for making the slope somewhat easier. However, I still feel I am probably only about a quarter of the way up.
I come back to the parallels that we all face. On the international level, about which I am singularly unqualified to answer, we can see the same freakish extreme members of society as we have within our own, and we can see the bulk of international communities doing their best to make modern society work. We may not agree with everything those communities do, but that is what they are trying to achieve. That parallels where we are today. At the other end, as I have said, we see the differences in our own communities. We all know people who take views that we disapprove of and who we disagree with fundamentally, but we have to make the system work.
This is a delicate matter for the Minister who has to wind up. I see that he appears to have metamorphosed from the noble Baroness who is on my Order Paper—and, I suspect, on everyone else’s. I hope that nothing untoward has happened to her to keep her away. It is not up to me to advise the Government or tell them how to do their business, but this is a particularly delicate matter. If we are to make progress, the discussion has to be local and community-based. The problem for Governments will always be how to intervene to bring that about when government, by definition, is national and tends to be top-down.
The best illustration of that is something that is going on at present. The Government are looking to put together a course to train young people to do just the work that we all think should be done: to work in the community, bring people together and develop the local community so that it works and goes forward together. The problem for the Government in devising that course is how they ensure that they are not producing a one-size-fits-all solution. If the Minister is able to give us some assurance on that, that will be enormously helpful. Government money is a wonderful catalyst, but it has to be only a catalyst, and not dictate what happens. Once we start down the road of the Government setting the parameters of how society is to go forward, we are in deadly danger, and we should not do it.
I want to finish back on a religious note. I have a house in the south of France, and a wonderful sculpture appeared there last year. It is a flat granite slab with, incised on it, the word “co-exist”—with the “C” formed from the Muslim crescent, the “X” as the star of David and the “T” as the cross of Christianity. It is a remarkable unity.
1 May 2008 : Column 398
4.14 pm
Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, it is with some humility and trepidation that I respond to this debate on behalf of the Government. As the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, said, this is a delicate matter. I agree with him on that 100 per cent.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hameed, for initiating this wonderful debate. I have learnt a great deal from listening to noble Lords. Nearly all the major faiths in our country have had a voice here today, as well as humanists. I welcome that, because this debate is very important. Much has been brought to it. I said that I reply for the Government with some trepidation because, although I have a faith—a primitive Methodist faith in origin—I live in a city where, in the last census, more citizens identified themselves as Jedis than as Christians. I thought that that was part of Brighton and Hove’s sense of humour. One has to treat it that way or one gets lost.
This is a tremendously important and prescient debate. Britain is a society with traditions, as the noble Lord, Lord Hameed, said, of great religious tolerance. In modern times, this has allowed Christians to be members of different denominations without conflict. But we must recognise that Britain is now a multi-faith society.
During the last century, we have welcomed immigrants who have brought a significant part of our economic success and contributed positively to all aspects of public life. As the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, said, Britain has for many become a land of opportunity—it certainly was for him. Immigration has led to a wider range of faiths being practised, which in turn has meant that different weights and importance are attached to faith as part of people’s identity and values.
Some thought that the advance of science and technology would lead to the decline of religion. The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, referred to the values of the Enlightenment, which I suppose one could have seen as having the potential to lead to the decline of religion and faith. But that has not happened. For some people, religion is more important now than ever—they want to express it publicly and they want it to inform political debate, which it certainly does.
However, Britain is also a society in which many do not regard themselves as practising a faith, in which ethical values may be drawn from a declaration of human rights rather than a holy book or be informed by the pursuit of individual happiness. The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, reminded us of the importance of that.
Government and, to some extent, faith communities are now finding ways to respond to these changes, challenges and choices. Dialogue between faiths and communities has emerged as an intrinsic tool to help our communities and wider civil society work through these responses.
Last year saw the publication of an important report by the independent Commission on Integration and Cohesion, Our Shared Future, to which I think the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, made reference. In it, the commission
1 May 2008 : Column 399
The commission asserted that the way in which relations between people of different faiths and beliefs develop in the coming years will be very important to integration and cohesion, and saw interfaith activity as having an important role to play in strengthening these relationships. It also highlighted the importance of interfaith activity and suggested that this could go further to include dialogue between people of faith and no faith.
Evidence provided by faith communities to the Commission on Integration and Cohesion revealed a broad range of work under way, including projects to improve community relations; conflict resolution and mediation; teaching family and parenting skills; health work; improving language skills; and providing support networks.
But we have also seen in other contexts a growing interest in and recognition of the role that interfaith activity and action can play in building stronger and healthier communities. For example, the local government White Paper suggests that every local authority should have an interfaith forum—many noble Lords have referred to such fora during today’s debate. It was suggested also that they should be tied closely into local strategic partnerships. Our own Prime Minister has stated that he wants stronger interfaith dialogue where people find the common ground that exists between religions and communities in the United Kingdom, and the creation of local interfaith councils in every community. I was touched and impressed by the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, who pleaded for places of academic study to play their part in this. That, too, is an important part of those shared partnerships tying in to community work.
As a result of the growing interest in interfaith work, and specifically in response to the report of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion, the Government will publish in July an interfaith strategy. I shall outline what we are aiming to achieve in developing such a strategy. The Government’s vision for Britain is one of strong, confident communities in which people of all backgrounds get on well and work together. Many people of different faiths and beliefs live side by side. The opportunity lies before us to work together to build a society rooted in the values that we all treasure, but this society can be built only on a sure foundation of mutual respect, openness and trust. This means finding ways to live our lives of faith with integrity, and allowing others to do so, too.
We all want a Britain which acknowledges, values and celebrates the contributions made by all our citizens, where people of different faiths and beliefs, and those with none, but shared values, live and work together in an atmosphere of mutual understanding. That is why building cohesion is a priority for my department. Britain has a proud tradition of tolerance and understanding, but we should never take that for
1 May 2008 : Column 400
Interfaith activity is key to promoting this meaningful interaction. We have supported interfaith work for a number of years with the aim of increasing understanding between different faith groups, building cohesive communities and breaking down barriers. There has already been a marked increase in the number of local interfaith groups, with some 256 interfaith and multifaith local bodies, an increase of 173 or so since 2000 and 42 since 2005. We have also invested a total of nearly £14 million between August 2006 and March this year through the Faith Communities Capacity Building Fund. I heard very much the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, that we must make sure that we spend that money well. It certainly should not be diverted towards what she colourfully described as the nutters and fruitcakes who sometimes attempt to inhabit that world.
The investment supported faith communities to make a real difference to improving community cohesion through bringing different faith groups together and creating trust and mutual understanding, both with each other and with the wider community. Bids which supported local interfaith councils, tackled faith hate crime and reduced intercommunity tensions were given priority. This afternoon we heard from a number of contributors about the value and importance of bringing people together through specific community projects. I was much taken by the cricketing example from Leicester, not just because I like cricket very much but because it was a brilliant thing for Imams and reverends to play cricket in that wonderful sporting space. I was impressed, too, by the examples that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, gave of work in Wales, where there is obviously a unique approach to those issues being adopted and followed. We can all learn from that—and I am sure that our strategy will continue to be informed by that approach.
Over the past 20 years the Inter Faith Network has supported the development of local interfaith groups and remains a key partner of Government in the developing work of that interaction between faith communities. The network also helps regional and local bodies to foster co-operation, increase trust, mutual understanding and respect, defuse inter-community tensions where they exist and contribute to community cohesion. The Government intend to continue providing the network with sufficient funding to support its important contribution in this area. We are very fortunate in the UK to have a national organisation such as this. I am told that it is unique in Europe, and I doubt that I am the first person to state that if the Inter Faith Network did not exist, we would need to invent it.
There is also an ever-increasing focus on faith communities as a result of the increasing recognition that a multifaith approach can deliver a broad range of social actions and help to build cohesion in our local communities. The good relations that exist between different faiths very much underpin this work. Again, I congratulate those noble Lords who have participated
1 May 2008 : Column 401
| Next Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |