All major commentators accept that integration needs to be seen within the wider context of equality and anti-racism policies. That integration, seen as a policy in isolation, is “a one-way street – not a subtle policy of cultural negotiation” with likely unintended consequences of reinforcing anti-democratic values and beliefs.
The gap between rich and poor and where you live is just as likely to determine your life chances and is as important as the debate about the racial divide in our cities. Leaders – in local and central government as well as the community – grappling with the issue of community cohesion not only need the skills to manage the complexity of ‘regenerating communities’ but also to ensure that those initiatives embrace cross-cultural exchange and dialogue rather than separate communities.
The race riots in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford in 2001 saw some of the worst disturbances in England for twenty years. More recently the Lozells area in Birmingham experienced similar problems. Following the earlier disturbances, the Home Office set up a ministerial group on Public Order and Community Cohesion to consider how best to promote “better community cohesion, based on shared values and a celebration of diversity.” At the same time a Community Cohesion Review Team, chaired by Ted Cantle, was formed which visited a number of cities and boroughs with significant minority ethnic populations to seek local views and solutions. The reports which followed found a “retreat behind ethnic lines.” Cantle was shocked by the “depth of polarisation of our towns and cities” finding communities whose lives “often do not seem to touch at any point, let alone overlap and promote meaningful exchange.” Similar views were expressed by Lord Herman Ouseley following the Bradford enquiry. Rather than relationships between communities improving as a result of local initiatives he found “communities – fragmenting along racial, cultural and faith lines,’’ attitudes hardening and intolerance towards differences growing.
Cantle and Ouseley found that the social, educational and employment institutions within communities were not integrated but split along race and ethnic lines giving rise to the view “that many communities operate on the basis of a series of parallel lives” with little exchange and dialogue between the different populations. A surprising finding was that many of the national and local programmes intended to tackle the needs of disadvantaged and disenfranchised groups “often seemed to institutionalise the problems.” Also, that area based regeneration initiatives, although well intentioned, often “reinforced the separation of communities” and that “cross-cultural contact and the promotion of community cohesion, was not valued as an end in itself.”
The reviews produced a wide range of proposals designed to support community citizenship which would gain acceptance across the spectrum of different community groups. Since then, and drawing heavily on the Cantle and Ouseley reports, the government produced in 2005, a strategy for strengthening race equality and community cohesion in the UK. The overt premise and rationale for the strategy was to improve life chances for all but at the same time recognise the particular problems faced by black and minority ethnic communities in achieving their aspirations. The strategy, drawing on well documented research as well as local views, highlighted the disadvantages experienced by minority groups in the areas of education, health, criminal justice, housing and the labour market. In developing solutions to support greater community cohesion, the private sector, central and local government all had significant parts to play.
Soon after the riots, local government issued initial guidance on good practice initiatives to support better community relations in neighbourhoods. Drawing on critical research, the guidance identified a pivotal role for local government in shaping the community cohesion agenda. For example, that effective private/public partnerships can do much to underpin better community relations by bridging the employment gap – reducing the differentials between minority ethnic groups and their white counterparts in relation to unemployment, earnings and promotion. Also, that by creating more affordable and flexible childcare provision, better mapping of both regional and local skills needs to ensure a properly trained workforce and local government strategically considering its own role as a major employer and purchaser of services, much can be done to address the issue of employment inequality.
Increasingly it became clear local authorities did have a key role to play in providing more focused and determined local leadership to support safer, stronger and more sustainable communities. Apart from the legislation requiring local authorities to address the issue of building more cohesive communities, the Audit Commission, as part of their corporate assessment of councils, began the process of measuring the effectiveness of local authorities to help build and then support sustainable communities. The government’s Race Equality in Public Services made the point that communities are not necessarily homogeneous entities: that within minority communities some do better than others and that some minority ethnic communities do better than the majority population. For example, most young entrepreneurs starting businesses in London are from ethnic minorities even though they account for less than a third of the capital’s population. Generally though, the research points to people from black and minority ethnic communities doing less well than their white counterparts across the range of ‘institutional life.’
Clearly, the government sees local authorities as a key instrument in creating more equal communities, using their strategic influence to better shape the institutions that impact upon people’s lives. More participative and consultative local strategic partnerships are the order of the day allowing agencies to better represent their constituents through more involved and better decision making by pooling their knowledge, resources, aspirations and achieving greater political consensus about the direction of travel. Meanwhile Local Area Agreements, according to Anna Bawden writing in Public, “are supposed to improve service delivery, efficiency, partnership working and local authorities’ leadership capacity and relations between central and local government.” It still to early to say how effective these new arrangements will be in achieving better outcomes for local areas. Initial teething problems in sorting out the governance arrangements between central and local government about requested freedoms, different reporting accountabilities, a continued lack of ‘joined-upness’ at central government and a reluctance to mainstream core budgets pose some risks.
Alongside these developments stands the spectre of local government reorganisation with its emphasis on ‘neighbourhoodism’ and more involved local democracy. Critics point out that “localism without power is just a word. Power without money is empty.” The real challenge will be whether a cautious highly centralised central government will be prepared to loosen the purse-strings as well as political power. Efforts towards sustainable community cohesion will depend on adventurous political judgments in addressing these issues and the extent to which hard-to-reach, alienated and disenfranchised groups believe it is then worthwhile to get involved.
Many commentators believe that now is the time to move on this front. Assumptions that neighbourhoodism is of little interest to local communities is said to be unfounded. Mulgan, director of the Young Foundation, strongly suggests “that people are willing to get involved if they are able, if they can see a direct link between their involvement and results on the ground.” He goes on to cite international examples of innovation and local empowerment when power is aligned with devolved resource responsibility. A London chief executive, while supporting the notion of neighbourhoodism makes the valid point that greater engagement and decision making at patch level can sometimes reinforce racial divides and that handing power to neighbourhoods can result in cliques excluding others. Neighbourhoodism therefore needs to be developed within an explicit framework of equity and justice that challenges discrimination and prejudice; that has clear criteria about resource allocation and clear expectations about representative ‘local’ decision-making structures.
One of the major findings to emerge from the race riot reviews was the ghettoisation of a number of major English cities with significant minority ethnic populations. Building bridges between minority ethnic groups living parallel lives and between ethnic communities and the white majority population is a critical issue in any debate about community cohesion. The response from the CRE to government’s Commission for Integration and Cohesion is to celebrate diversity, acknowledge that difference does not have to mean division and that democratic processes need to ensure citizen participation in decisions that count. Continuing in their evidence to the Commission the CRE identifies integration as the most inclusive term to define this agenda – a society “where everyone signs up to single set of core values held in common and legally defined.” Integration in this sense is not an assimilationist process but one where identities are respected and where a balance is struck between ‘anything goes’ multiculturalism which can often reinforce prejudice and extremism.
Recent respected research from the East End of London reinforces both the Cantle and Sir Trevor Phillips’ (Chair of the CRE) views that “anti- racists must learn to debate the realities of modern Britain in terms that modern Britain can understand.” In this case, that well-intentioned welfare policies based on area need served only to disrupt and alienate white working class families living in multi-cultural communities and that understanding the histories and stories of these people is a critical ingredient in cementing better community relations. Regeneration programmes can play a vital part in fostering better community relations. Cantle, and recent government guidance, make the point that regeneration initiatives need to be thematic in design. They need to be based on an assessment of community dynamics and they need to reduce the level of ‘community’ competition for resources. They also identify the importance of achieving cross-agency consensus about priorities and the need for better trained and more skilled practitioners working on regeneration projects – people who understand the ‘politics’ of local communities and not just technicians.
The debate on community cohesion is set to run. Mike Marqusee makes the point that, increasingly, many of us have ‘’multiple identities, some overlapping, some contradictory, and that --- the multiculturalism v integrationism debate does not reflect the way people actually live.’’ He makes the point that people are not ‘’classified into discrete cultural compartments,’’ that ‘’conflicts of interest’’ cut across all cultural groups and that the integrationist stance itself is ‘’deeply rooted in its own form of the politics of identity.’’ ---suggesting a position of ‘’cultural relativism’’ may be a way forward.
At Veredus we believe our work with central and local government agencies equips us well to join the discussion on community cohesion – working with agencies to explore the issues and finding the talent to manage the agenda.
Dennis Simpson