Column
A BRITISH EXPERIENCE
He chose a Security Conference in Munich to make his denouncement. David Cameron’s attack on “state multiculturalism”, in February this year, was billed as “the Prime Minister’s first speech on radicalisation and the causes of terrorism”. It was to be a clarion call for Europe “to wake up to what is happening in our own countries”. Cameron began with a familiar litany of right-wing accusations against multiculturalism. This “doctrine”, he thundered, “encouraged different cultures to live separate lives”. It produces behaviours that “run completely counter to our values” and allows Islamic militant to promote “extreme ideologies” and radicalise young Muslims. In short, multiculturalism is a disastrous policy and a basic threat to our security. What he had to say about multiculturalism, Cameron told his audience of arms dealers and neoconservative policy wonks, is “drawn from the British experience”. Yet, what he had to say bears little resemblance to my own “British experience”. When I was growing up in Hackney during the 1960s the state policy was “assimilation”. I was required to wipe out my cultural identity and assimilate in some sort of ill-defined “British culture”. Assimilation gave way, during the 1970s and early 1980s, to integration policies, which were designed to 168
transform immigrant groups into indistinguishable “members” of the dominant culture. Racism and race riots were the norm. Multiculturalism came chronologically after the failure of such hegemonic exercises. It opened up spaces for people like me to go where we had never been before – in the media, professions, the arts and the corridors of power. The vibrant cultural diversity of Britain today, and our thriving arts and cultural industry that is envy of the world, are all a product of multiculturalism. It is hardly surprising that the British experience of someone like me, a child of “immigrants” to Britain, who regularly suffered from racist attacks, is radically different from someone like Cameron, a pukka Briton who comes from a highly privileged background. We are bound to have different takes on multiculturalism. While multiculturalism had done a great deal for me, it has perhaps done little for the Prime Minister. However, this is no reason to wrap it in the rhetoric of radicalisation and terrorism. Cameron’s take on multiculturalism is disingenuous and requires a closer look. A number of unsubstantiated assertions and half-truths are strung together to give the appearance of a rational argument. Worse: by focusing solely on Muslims, Cameron has flamed the fires of Islamophobia.
Cameron’s first assertion is that multiculturalism has led to the segregation of Muslim communities. Even if we suppose there may be some truth to that claim, why should only “Muslim segregation” be a problem? Look around Britain, contemplate her history, and you would notice that such spatial segregation is not peculiar to Muslims. There are minority communities long resident in Britain that lead segregated lives. Take the Chinese – a Chinese takeaway probably exists on every high street in Britain. Yet, the Chinese community exists in anonymity maintaining its language and culture, including special classes for its children. We are also quite happy to encourage the emergence of Chinatowns, with their distinctive remaking of the urban landscape, right in the heart of our major cities. So segregation and its visible markers are not necessarily a problem in this case. Nor is it a problem for Jews. Stoke Newington, not too far from where I grew up in Hackney, has had an isolated, segregated Hasidic Jewish community for decades – and they have lived perfectly wonderful lives without any problem. Now I live on the fringes of the Finchley, Golders Green area that has been marked off as an “eruv” to accommodate and ease the Sabbath requirements of the large Orthodox Jewish community. And until a few years