26 October 2017
The Christian Anchor
The Race Disparity Audit underlines its importance.
By John Watson
It is the word “worthy”, I suppose. It should be so inspiring, redolent as it is with themes of good intentions and stout endeavour. But it isn’t, is it? Describe the cooking at a restaurant as “worthy” and most of us will immediately cancel our reservation. Give us a “worthy” book for Christmas and it will go to the charity shop without being opened.
It is because the government’s initiative in carrying out a Race Disparity Audit sounded a bit on the worthy side that the results of that audit have been lying on my desk in the basket labelled “urgent reading”. Not all the results it happens. The information collected by the “auditors” is collated onto a website and the paper in my basket is only a summary. A worthy summary, of course: 54 pages long and easily accessible by a click on an internet link. Just the right length if you are suffering from insomnia or need something to go under one of the legs of the kitchen table.
Still, I’m being a little unfair. The summary is not intended as a work of literature but as a collection of statistical information useful to people who carry out research. For example, at page 15 there is a table showing the “Percentage of people in each ethnic group with poor proficiency in English by sex” as revealed by the 2011 census. Jolly interesting if you are studying the subject and, no doubt, of use in formulating education policy, but lacking the dramatic intensity of the latest instalment of Game of Thrones. Still, some of the information on social capital (chapter 3) is very interesting indeed.
Let us take the increase in ethnic diversity in the ten years running up to the 2011 census. In 2001 87.4% of respondents from England and Wales identified themselves as White British. By 2011 that had decreased to 80.5%. That means that, over the ten-year period, the proportion of White British has dropped by about 8% and, if you project that forward on the basis that the decline remains constant, the figure will be below 75% at the next census and below 50% at the census of 2041.
It is not quite as simple as that, however, because rates of immigration vary and some communities, such as Poles, who are not a strictly White British, may come to regard themselves as White British over time. If you add the Other White category to the White British, the 2011 proportion jumps to just over 85% as against 94% in 2001. Still, that is still quite a significant drop and if repeated over the years would make a big change to our ethnic mix.
Of itself that is neither a bad thing nor a good thing. Many of those who call themselves White British have ancestors who arrived from abroad. I do myself. So does the Queen. There is a long history of arrival and assimilation as immigrants add their own fabric to the weave of what it is to be British and use their talents to enrich the national mix. Still, on these figures, we do need to think what it is that the ethnic minorities have been invited to join and how they are encouraged to do so.
One of the most encouraging statements in the report is that despite the variation between ethnic groups and their ability to speak English, a substantial majority of all ethnic groups felt “they belonged to Britain”. Yes, that sounds very good, but what exactly does it mean? Clearly it isn’t just a statement of geography nor, in a largely secular society, is it likely to be a statement of religion. Presumably then those who gave this answer regard themselves as part of the same community as the native population and accept the basic philosophies on which that community is based.
Britain is a tolerant country and the rules which govern its society are based on a Christian heritage. That doesn’t mean that everyone is a Christian or needs to be a Christian to fit in. It does mean, however, that they need to accept the Christian philosophy around which British society revolves. In the case of immigrants that means giving up those elements of their culture which are inconsistent with the British way of life – an obvious example being attitudes to women which in Muslim countries are quite different from ours.
If, then, we are to encourage the process of assimilation so necessary to successful immigration policy, we need to promote and teach British values to those who have moved here. In some cases that shouldn’t be difficult. People who came to Britain because they liked its values would hardly wish to exclude them. But it can be no surprise if others, who came here in pursuit of a higher living standard or as refugees, try to create their old communities on British soil.
That has to be resisted. The invitation to come here is an invitation to join our community not to create ghettos operating outside it. And consistently with the terms of that invitation we need to influence ethnic minorities in favour of our own culture, breaking down the things which keep them separate. In particular we need to make sure that their educational system mixes their children with ours. There is every distinction, then, between allowing the Church of England to run schools and allowing other religions to do so. The first reinforces our culture. The second, if it is to be allowed at all, needs to be monitored very very carefully.
But it is broader than that. If we wish to keep our social attitudes rooted we need to stress their links with the religion on which they are based. That is why the Queen should remain head of the Church of England. That is why bishops should remain in the House of Lords. That is why, if the Church of England cannot afford to maintain its churches, local communities should help it to do so.
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