05 January 2017

Declumping Immigrant Communities

The Casey report.

by John Watson

Rice, perfectly cooked so that each grain is light and separate, is one of the great delicacies of the eastern cuisine. Badly cooked, so that the grains stick together in lumps, it becomes difficult to digest. The Casey review into “opportunity and integration” published in December makes a similar point in relation to immigrant communities. Groups of immigrants, arriving in the UK, tend to stick together. There is nothing new or surprising in that, but with the increase in migration in recent years (a doubling from 300,000 per annum prior to 1997 to more than 600,000 per annum in 2015) “clumping” has become much more of a threat to the social fabric of the country than was previously the case. To borrow some vivid examples:

each of Blackpool, Birmingham, Burnley and Bradford has wards where the Muslim population is over 70%; and

in January 2015 there were 511 schools with more than 50% of pupils from Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic backgrounds.

Concentrations of this sort are doubly unfair. The indigenous community feels threatened and sees its way of life being challenged by values to which it does not subscribe, making its members easy targets for extremists of the left or right. The immigrants themselves are isolated from the main community and will be deprived of opportunities to participate fully in British life, while the resultant limitations on mobility, poverty and frustration create a breeding ground for subversion.

All the more important, then, to ensure that the integration of immigrant groups into the community is accelerated and that their initial segregation (although doubtless inevitable for a time) is as short as possible. To do this we need to break down the “blockers” which prevent integration, and the Casey report focuses on a number of these.

Probably the most important is language. Fluent and easy communication is an essential element in integration. It also makes regressive attitudes, including discrimination against women, less easy to maintain because the victims become far less isolated and more independent. It is an essential element in the improvement of employment opportunities, not least because it encourages cross-cultural mixing. Yet, according to the report, more was spent on promoting Cornish than promoting English in the years 2011/2012 and 2012/2013.

Then there is the failure to promote British values and history, knowledge of how society works and the rights which it confers. This is the very knowledge needed by those trying to escape from domineering local communities into the mainstream. Yet divisive and harmful cultural and religious practices have often been accepted by authorities afraid of being branded racist or Islamophobic.

In education there is the suspicion that the right to home education is being abused to lock children out of the host culture. No doubt the non-faith secondary school at which pupils believe the majority of the population of Britain are Asian was exceptional – or possibly the survey was rigged as a jape by the pupils themselves – but it makes you wonder what goes on in the unregistered and illegal faith schools about which OFSTED is said to be concerned. Education shapes the next generation, and if we wish integration to move ahead at a sensible rate we really cannot afford to lose them.

Although the report makes recommendations in these areas there is a much broader theme. It talks of the failure of politicians to deal with segregation because of the risk of being regarded as racist or losing the support of minorities. It speaks of their not having the courage to set values and standards, to stand up and be more robust. However, as the eye slides over these sentiments and we reflects on the venality of politicians as a class, it is important to remember that the real blame lies with us. Occasionally politicians provide real leadership but in practice much of their skill lies in an ability to encapsulate the public mood. In an era of political correctness, particularly in relation to matters of race, they probably had little option but to follow the lazy but common approach of talking up the positives of immigration without addressing and dealing with its negatives. Still, the mood has changed now, and the practical realities of how best to absorb immigrant communities has become a topic too important to be dodged. To that extent Dame Louise and her fellow writers of the report are lucky because they have dropped it into the debate at the right point and their work may influence the argument onto rational, honest, decent and sensible lines.

Dame Louise Casey has had a distinguished (if sometimes contentious) career. With a background in charities – she was deputy director of Shelter – she has been appointed by governments of different complexion to head up a number of agencies and reports, a multiple czar in the modern political idiom. No doubt some of the points her report makes are debatable, but the central theme of concern, and her suggestion that the extent to which Muslim men marry brides from outside the UK makes integration more difficult, certainly ring true.

Most will welcome the report as a useful contribution to the discussion but some will not, mainly because not everyone in Britain wants an integrated community. Extremist parties of the left and right feed on division, and many of those who purport to represent minority communities do the same. There is a world of difference between those whose leadership of immigrant communities is designed to bring them into the mainstream and enable their members to participate fully in British life and those who have an interest in keeping them separate. It is not always easy to tell which is which and the reaction of the various “leaders” to the Casey report may give a clue to which camp they actually occupy.

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