Shap Journal 2001/2002

Living Community

Multi-Ethnic Britain – a Community 
of Communities and Citizens

Robin Richardson

The phrase 'community of communities' is
sometimes used of faith communities in
Britain. The Institute for Jewish Policy
Research, for example, has suggested that this
is how the Jewish community should be seen, for British
Jewry has always consisted of fairly separate groupings,
distinguished   geographically,   religiously,   socio-
economically,  ideologically,  historically and by
personality. In 2000 the Commission on the Future of
Multi-Ethnic Britain, chaired by Bhikhu Parekh, adopted
the phrase in order to describe how Britain as a whole
should be pictured.

Britain has never been, the Commission stressed, a
single large society with no internal differences or
tensions. On the contrary, there have always been major
differences of class, gender, region, politics and religion.
When the Windrush docked in London in 1948 - the
symbolic birthday of 'multi-ethnic Britain' - the people
it brought did not create a diverse society, but joined
one. Similarly migrations from the South Asian sub-
continent in the 1950s and 1960s were to a society
which was already diverse in a wide range of ways. The
mental picture of a 94/6 society - the notion that 94 per
cent of Britain consists of one large 'majority', and that
six per cent consists of 'minorities - is profoundly
misleading. Since it is misleading it is also harmful.

The full phrase used was 'community of communities
and citizens', in order to stress that everyone is an
individual with their own rights as well as embedded in
a community. The Commission stressed also that
communities overlap with each other, that they are
interdependent, and are continually developing and
influencing each other. All people in Britain belong to
more than one community, and accordingly may
experience conflicting loyalties within their own hearts
and minds.

The term 'community' usually refers to something
rather amorphous. Nevertheless it can have legal
significance, as for example in Northern Ireland. The
Oxford English Dictionary defines it as 'a body of people
having a religion, a profession, etc, in common ... a
fellowship of interests ... a body of nations unified by
common interests'. This definition reflects the fact that
in everyday usage terms such as the following are all
fairly familiar: 'the local community', 'a valued member
of the community', 'a faith community', 'the disabled
community', 'a mining community', 'the scientific
community', 'the gay and lesbian community', 'the two
communities in Northern Ireland'.

It would be consistent with the dictionary definition to
envisage Britain as a community whose three principal
constituent parts are England, Scotland and Wales, and
also to envisage each of these constituent parts as itself
community. Further, it is helpful to picture each
separate region, city, town or borough as a community
of communities. It is particularly in cities and boroughs,
incidentally, that majority/minority discourse is
misleading and unhelpful. This was vividly illustrated in
a statement made to the Bradford Commission in 1996:

I could view myself as a member of the following
communities, depending on the context and in no
particular order: Black, Asian, Azad Kashmiri,
Mirpuri, Jat, Marilail, Kungriwalay, Pakistani,
English, British, Yorkshireman, Bradfordian, from
Bradford Moor ... I could use the term 'community' in
any of these contexts and it would have meaning. Any
attempt to define me only as one of these would be
meaningless.

A community, it may be said. has seven key features.
Not all the features are evoked every time the term is
used. But most are.

First, a community gives its members a sense of
belonging, and therefore of their identity and dignity.
Here in my community I am among my own people, I
am at home, I know them and understand them, and
they know and understand me. We speak the same
language (including the same body language!), smile or
laugh at the same jokes, know the same stories and
music, have shared memories. I am recognised and
respected, I feel that I am a somebody, not a nonentity.

Second, the members of a community take an interest in
each other and have a sense of responsibility towards
each other. They are prepared to pay taxes or
subscriptions for the common good, or to help less
fortunate members, and to donate their time to
maintaining the community, whether formally or
informally. I feel that I will be looked after if I fall on bad
times, and that - for example - my children or my elderly
and sick parents will be looked after if they get lost.

Third, the members of a community are grateful to it, in
so far as it does indeed give them a sense of belonging,
identity and dignity. My gratitude may take the form of
great affection and love, even self-sacrifice, but may also
be expressed through criticism and questioning.
Sometimes gratitude is expressed more by caring
criticism than by blind devotion.

Fourth, communities are not marked by cosiness alone.
There are often arguments, quarrels, and profound
disagreements. Jockeyings for power and prestige,
internal politics, alliances, betrayals. Expulsion or
secession are frequently options. But essentially quarrels
within a community are family quarrels. I have a
commitment to staying. I cherish the community, and
am prepared to compromise in order that the
community itself may be maintained.

Fifth, feelings of gratitude and criticism towards one's
community tie in with awareness of one's own personal
qualities. As 1 consider my own strengths and
weaknesses 1 am aware that many were taught by or
copied from my community. For my strengths I am
grateful to the community that nourished them. With
regard to my weaknesses, however - prejudices such as
racism and sexism, narrow-mindedness, parochialism,
selfishness - I am critical of my community as well as
myself.

Sixth, boundaries round a community can be quite hard
and fast. making it difficult to join or leave voluntarily.
But often they are fluid, unfixed. It is in any case entirely
possible for someone to be a member - a significant
member - of several different communities at the same
time; indeed, this is usual. I have, and nearly all people
have, a range of belongings, identities and loyalties, and
sometimes these are out of tune with each other, or are
in blatant conflict. It is not unusual, particularly in the
modern world, for some of my loyalties to be
transnational - I have feelings of kinship and shared
interests with people in at least two different countries.
This is particularly the case, of course, with faith-based
communities.

Seventh, a community is held together by symbols and
ceremonies which mean the same to all its members. All
the following can have symbolic, not just functional,
power, and can help bind a community together
symbolically: food; buildings and monuments; rites of
passage relating to birth, adolescence, marriage and
death; clothes (including of course uniforms and
insignia); religious worship; music - particularly,
perhaps, singing; various courtesies, customs, manners
and rules of procedure: and ritualised conflict in sport
and games of all kinds. I belong through symbols.

In the seven senses outlined above, every school aspires
to be a community. Also, and even more importantly,
every school is a community of communities and
citizens. In a school as in wider society the fundamental
need is to treat people equally and to treat them with due
respect for difference; to treasure the rights and
freedoms of individuals and to cherish belonging,
cohesion and solidarity. Neither equality nor respect for
difference is a sufficient value on its own. They must be
held together, mutually challenging and supportive.
Similarly, neither personal liberty nor social cohesion is
sufficient on its own. They too must be held together.
qualifying and challenging each other, yet also mutually
informing and enriching.

This all sounds, perhaps, rather abstract. But surely
every headteacher and every classroom teacher
recognises the dilemmas and tensions. Every day in a
school, indeed every hour and every minute, you are
wrestling with how to see each child as a unique
individual, who is different from all others; and how to
see children as nevertheless 'all the same', all with an
equal claim on your attention and care; and how to hold
the school and the classroom together as a coherent
whole. It is this restless wrestling which makes being a
headteacher or teacher so complex, so exciting, so
absolutely and fundamentally important for society as a
whole, and so personally fulfilling for yourself.

We thought - with naïve optimism, as it turned out -
that our picture of Britain as a community of
communities and citizens, as distinct from a 94/6
society, would be broadly welcomed. In point of fact our
proposal was trivialised and derided by the media, and
widely derided. It was said that we wished to ditch the
word 'Britain' as the name of the state, and replace it
with the term 'community of communities'. The BBC1
Kilroy Programme, for example, alleged that we wished
to re-write Henry V's speech at Harfleur: 'Once more
unto the breach, dear friends, once more. or close the
wall with our community of communities dead'. The
Evening Standard ran a cartoon in which two Roman
soldiers looked out from a ship to the white cliffs of
Dover. Apparently they're not Britons,' the one was
saying. 'They're just a multi-ethnic community of
communities.'

Cheerful but sneering and unreflecting criticisms such
as these are a reminder that the field of race equality
and cultural diversity is contested. It can happen, as the
Commission discovered, that journalists act with
cavalier disregard for accuracy, honesty and civility.
(Members of the Commission were described as 'worthy
idiots' in a headline in the Times, 'middle-class twits' in
the Star, 'crack-brained' in the Telegraph, 'left-wing
wafflers' in the Evening Standard, and 'a second-rate,
unrepresentative clique' and 'disconnected, whining
liberals' in the Mail.)

One clear implication for schools is that there needs to
be focused attention in the curriculum from time to time
on how the media distort important facts. Another is the
need to concentrate on what The Future of Multi-Ethnic
Britain named, quoting the American political
philosopher Amy Gutmann, as 'willingness and ability
to articulate our disagreements, to defend them before
people with whom we disagree, to discern the difference
between respectable and disrespectable disagreement,
and to be open to changing our own minds when faced
with well-reasoned criticism'. The report also quoted
from James Macmillan's lecture at the Edinburgh
Festival in which he outlined his dream of 'a genuinely
pluralistic democracy where differences are not just
recognised and respected but celebrated, nurtured and
absorbed for the greater good.'

The creation of such a democracy. Macmillan continued
- and his words are challenging for every headteacher
and teacher as well as for every journalist and politician
- requires people 'to forgive and receive absolution for
the sins and prejudices of the past on all sides, to
experience the healing embrace of reconciliation, and to
say to one another, again with respect and gratitude but
also with compassion and even love, "I may not agree
with you, but the free expression of your ideas allows me
to see how things may not be as clear-cut as I had
previously thought. I had not thought about it like that
before".'

The report of the Commission on the Future of Multi-
Ethnic Britain was published by Profile Books in autumn
2000. There is substantial information about it at
www.runnymedetrust.org/meb. Robin Richardson acted
as consultant to the Commission and was editor of the
report.