Ted Cantle and Chuka Umunna are wrong - Britain is not getting more segregated

For many people in Bradford the 7th July 2001 is a date that brings back dreadful memories. Forget about the declining textile industry, the struggles of our city centre and our poor education system for a second - the one event that most damaged our city's image and reputation happened on that day. A small section of the City's population, in one relatively small part of the city rioted, looted, wrecked the livelihoods of local businesses and turned Bradford into a byword for segregation and racial tension.

And it was a small part of the city - from Westgate and White Abbey Road up to Carlisle Road, along Oak Lane and a part of Manningham Lane. I could walk you round the sites of that violent day, show you where the pubs and car showrooms were burned out, point to the shop that before that day was one of Bradford's oldest Polish delis and show you the spot where burning cars scarred the surface of the roads. That walk would take - with stops to reflect on this damage - perhaps an hour. Yet ask someone from elsewhere about our city and, chances are, that something referring back to that day will come up - perhaps a reference to our large Asian community, to crime, or drugs, racism or segregation. Even today, as the recent anti-semitism row shows, we allow the vocal presence of a large minority community - Asian Muslims - to dominate the discourse about Bradford.

There were two major reports commissioned into the riots, their causes and their consequences - one from Sir Herman Ouseley (Community Pride, not Prejudice) and one from Ted Cantle (which had a wider remit by looking at events on the same day in Oldham and Burnley). Cantle coined the term 'parallel lives' to describe communities in these places and, since Bradford was the biggest and most high profile of these riot-torn places, his characterisation of our city as a place divided became the basis for how elsewhere viewed Bradford.

From Cantle's work came the idea of 'community cohesion', a sort of catch-all phrase to cover working to reduce 'tensions' alongside the old concept of 'community development' and ideas around race, faith and integration. The premise of 'cohesion' is that it is an antonym of 'segregation' - cohesive communities are where different cultures not just share a place but live together in a place. Some people chose to see this agenda as a rejection of multiculturalism, arguing that integration is essential to cohesion whereas others took Cantle's argument as a case for embedding that multicultural agenda further into schools, workplaces and the wider 'community'.

When Bradford Council's Executive first sat down to consider the response to the riots - in a terrible irony on the afternoon of 11th September 2001 - we knew that our decisions would be subject to central government scrutiny and intervention, not least because we were then a Conservative-led authority under a Labour government. The Council's leadership (or which I was then a member) was not happy with either the Ouseley report - commissioned before the riots - or Cantle's 'parallel lives' report. We felt, and still feel, that the description of Bradford was limited, failed to acknowledge the wider city and ignored reasons for riot that were not about segregation at all but more to do with drugs, crime and racist policing.

This is a long context for a response to Ted Cantle's comments yesterday in The Guardian that suggest somehow segregation today is worse than it was back in 2001:

Speaking to the Guardian 15 years after he called for action to reduce polarisation following violent riots across northern England, in Oldham, Bradford, Leeds and Burnley, Cantle said he was alarmed by the direction the country had headed since then.

“There is more mixing in some parts of our society. But there is also undoubtedly more segregation in residential areas, more segregation in schools and more segregation in workplaces,” he said. “That is driving more prejudice, intolerance, mistrust in communities.”

Superficially the evidence for Cantle's argument is strong and is set out in the article - a growing number of electoral wards with a non-white majority, schools with a majority minority intake and 'segregated' workplaces. I fear that this tells us only part of the story, problematises race and provides justification for the race or culture based special pleading that is such a driver of division. There is another, more positive story. Here from the Centre for the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE) at Manchester University:

Inner London has experienced a decrease in segregation for most ethnic groups, with an increase of 3% or less for the White British, Caribbean and African groups. The White British group saw their greatest increase in segregation in inner London, although this was very small at 3%. Outer London’s decreasing segregation is particularly notable for the Bangladeshi (-12%), Chinese (-11%) and Mixed (-8%) groups. Segregation has decreased in metropolitan districts for all ethnic groups except White British. The White British and Other White groups saw marginal increases in segregation in other large cities. For all other ethnic groups, segregation decreased in these urban districts, in particular for the African group, with a decrease of 20%. The picture is one of decreased residential segregation in urban areas. An important mechanism for this change is dispersal from major cities to suburban and rural areas, in particular by families.

What we have here is a very different picture from that presented by Cantle and others - rather than seeing the colour of people living in a place as a mark of division, we see the same process of dispersal from immigrant communities we saw for previous generations of immigrants. People from Indian, Bengali and Pakistani heritage, as more of them succeed in life, molve away from the dense urban places of their arrival (or, for many, birth) in the same way that the children of poor East End Jews moved outwards to Golders Green, Hendon and Mill Hill. These Jewish families did not lose their faith or culture but their otherness was diminished by the things they shared with their new neighbours. There is no reason to suppose that the same dispersal for Hindu or Muslim, Asian and Black communities will not result in greater rather than less cohesion.

The reason for those statistics and for the frightening agenda apparent from Chuka Umunna is that the past couple of decades have seen the most concentrated influx of immigrants to the UK in our history. Whatever we think about this fact - The Guardian reports 1.2 million into London alone (although these are defined as not "white-British" so could be white European I guess) - if we define the lack of cohesion by simply counting how many black people there are in a given place then we fall into company with racists. Moreover, we define people by the box they tick on an ethnic monitoring form (a pox on these things) rather than on what they actually think, do or say.

The South Asian population of Bingley Rural - the ward I represent - was 482 in 2011 (it has likely risen a little since then - so maybe 600) and was 164 in 2001. In a small way this illustrates this dispersal. This is around 3% of the population, yet we elected a resident of Pakistani heritage as a councillor this May. If I were to be blunt, I doubt this would have been possible in 2001. Of course there is racism, I met people who said they wouldn't vote for Naveed because of his race and faith but overwhelmingly people seemed to see beyond that fact to the person underneath.

The Guardian article - indeed much of what I read in the press about the affect or impact of immigration - fails to touch on the truth about integration. Just as people don't judge me as a Roman Catholic or my wife as Jewish (although we've some problems with this), we are beginning to stop judging people by their skin colour. We've a way to go with Islam - we still make assumptions about a woman in a headscarf, for example - but even there the extent of our experience and witness of what most Muslims are like is beginning to change how we view that faith.

The way in which Ted Cantle frames his argument - focusing on numbers and concentration rather than actual evidence of segregation - doesn't reflect the reality of immigration, integration and dispersal. There's nothing new about recent arrivals clustering together - this takes advantage of family links, community and faith institutions, and provides the necessary social capital to support the new community in a foreign environment. But every example of a new community has seen that concentration diminish as they become established. This isn't to say that there won't be continuing concentrations - Indians in Harrow, Jews in Alwoodley, Pakistanis in Heaton - but these places are no longer inward-looking ghettos but just places where a lot of the residents happen to be Jews, Hindus or Muslims.

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Quote of the day: on race and crime

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Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention. Our prisons are full of black and brown men and women who are serving inappropriately long and harsh sentences for non-violent mistakes in their youth.

This is about the USA and comes from a superb article about the militarisation of the police. Don't think for a second this doesn't apply over here.

And the article? It's written by Rand Paul, a Republican Senator. Which rather kicks out at our stereotypes.

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On being English...

I stopped being British - except in the formal sense of Britain being my country - the day someone decided that a twee little song written by Roy Williamson in the 1960s was the Scottish 'anthem'. It's not that I have anything against 'Flower of Scotland' as a song but that the sentiment it displays to me as an Englishman is "not welcome here".

We've been here a long time us English - the basis of the laws, language and culture came here with the Saxons. In my county of Kent we still remember this, marking the place of the Saxon - English - cathedral beneath the grander Norman cathedral in Rochester. And despite the best efforts of subsequent know-alls, the essence of English common-sense remains. The idea that law is enforced, adjudicated and administered by our peers not those who claim superiority still clings on - the magistrate, the jury and the common law remain at the heart of our legal system. The place is ours not theirs - although sometimes they forget.

There still seems a reluctance among our betters - judges, civil servants, broadcasters, writers - to accept the idea of England. To allow us to claim it as our heritage and birthright. And their weapon of anti-English choice is racism. We must not lay claim to Englishness since it excludes the children of immigrants - as if Englishness was ever a thing of blood. Such people suggest that, since half of London's population is now non-white (whatever that may actually mean), it is no longer an English city.

But when I meet a fellow Englishman, I do not ask for a genealogy - for proof of his Englishness. All I ask is that he is from here - and that being "from here" matters to him. I don't care whether he was born in a Punjabi village or a Turkish slum, I care only that he cares about England. And that he will make his contribution to our history.

That history isn't one of kings and prime ministers, nobles and castles, bishops and judges but one of people - farmers, millers, brewers, travellers, singers, writers. Of craftsmen and creators. It is a story of the men who built the cathedral not the bishop who commanded it built. It isn't that we know the names of these Englishmen. It's true their names are in the graveyards, we can read the generations there, but it matters more that their work carved England - the stories, the songs, the myths. And that these Englishmen still carve that story - not in words or paintings but in all our lives, in the culture that envelops us and cares for us.

And those who think being English is about race do all us English people an injustice - whether it's some ghastly snob of a Guardian writer or some badly tattooed thug from the EDL. And not just today's generation but a hundred generations whose love of this place made it so wonderful. Those people who laid out the fields, built the roads, dredged the rivers, constructed the harbours - who shaped our place and who still shape that place today. And who remember - for whatever reason, the people who helped, not in an off-hand way but prominently and significantly:

Maybe, most of the time, we walk past this remembering - not giving it heed or attention. But sometimes, either because we're asked or because we've taken that moment to stand and stare, we notice. A little chink of our ordinary past shows itself. And we smile, perhaps get a tear or breathe deeply in our remembering. But we are shown again what it is to be English - why the place matters.

And - as Cloke says to George in "An Habitation Enforced" - it all takes time and care:

"All I say is that you can put up larch and make a temp'ry job of it; and by the time the young master's married it'll have to be done again. Now, I've brought down a couple of as sweet six-by-eight oak timbers as we've ever drawed. You put 'em in an' it's off your mind or good an' all. T'other way--I don't say it ain't right, I'm only just sayin' what I think--but t'other way, he'll no sooner be married than we'll lave it all to do again. You've no call to regard my words, but you can't get out of that."

I suppose that being English is a state of mind, a feeling that the place fits like an old coat. One where you know its history - how the green stain got there, where you caught the sleeve on the thorn bush, how you lost your purse in the lining. And when you put it on, it just feels right. You don't need twenty generations in the village to feel like this -oh, it helps - just English mud on your boots and a moment to look around you.

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Do we believe in redemption...

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...political redemption that is of course. Let me explain.

Bradford had two councillors who were elected as BNP - as it happens they are husband and wife and represent Queensbury ward. Almost a year ago, they announced their resignation from that party and their intention to sit as independent councillors. At that time they also said that the politics of race and religion did not serve Bradford well.

As a 'mea culpa' it was a start.

Over this weekend, these Councillors sent an e-mail out to all the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat members of council following the success of Respect candidates in the local elections. Here is a chunks of that e-mail:

"Please forgive Lynda and I if you consider this e-mail inappropriate.

As most of you will know Lynda and I were at the count on Thursday/Friday supporting our friend Conservative Cllr Michael Walls.

What we witnessed at the count made our blood run cold, the politics of division has again reared it's ugly head in Bradford..."

They were, of course, referring to the manner in which Respect had campaigned - so it went on:

"Lynda and I have to agree with Ian Greenwood's televised comment re Respect that he considered that Respect made promised they would not be able to keep.

Lynda spoke to our wonderful Lord Mayor Naveeda Ikram at a recent opening ceremony that Naveeda performed in Queensbury.

Naveeda explained to Lynda how worried she and Ian Greenwood were that Respect had brought religion into their election manifesto.

Respect targeted heavily populated Asian/Muslim areas of the City and in doing so has split the local Asian communities."

 Now I appreciate the slight irony of former BNP councillors speaking of the "politics of division" but Paul's e-mail seemed genuine - he expressed real concern at how hard-working councillors like Ian Greenwood could be swept aside by this sort of campaign (a reminder, I guess, that the BNP did this too - the current Conservative Group leader, Glen Miller lost his seat to them in 2004).

My question however, isn't whether you agree with the analysis these councillors present but whether it opens the door to the 'political mainstream' for politicians previously wholly beyond the pale.

Do we believe in redemption?

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Double standards?

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The racist tram lady was in court today:

A woman accused of launching a vile racist rant on a tram is to spend Christmas behind bars after she was remanded in custody for her own safety.

And the race relations industry was having its say:

What, I wonder does the response, to the YouTube clip show? Is it just prurient interest? Is it shock or is there a degree of acceptance of the validity of her comments if not actions? Twitter comments in the days after suggest all of the above and more!

Racism is still a blight on the face of Britain. Sweeping it under the carpet, failing to resource counter measures will not create cohesion but will only serve to sow discord in all our communities. As soon as we realise that racism lies everywhere then we start to tackle discrimination where someone is judged by ethnicity or nationality, by colour or by creed. That day cannot be achieved by putting our heads in the sand.

At the same time that race relations industry made no mention of a far worse case of racism – this time accompanied by violent assault:

A gang of Muslim girls who repeatedly kicked a young woman in the head walked free from court after a judge heard they were 'not used to being drunk' because of their religion.

The group screamed 'kill the white slag' while kicks raining in on 22-year-old Rhea Page as she lay motionless on the ground, the court heard.

The attackers - three sisters and their cousin - were told by a judge that normally they would have been sent to jail.

However, he handed the girls - all Somalian Muslims - suspended sentences after hearing that they were not used to alcohol because their religion does not allow it.

There is no doubt at all that this was racially aggravated – possibly racially motivated – assault unless “kill the white slag” has taken on a different meaning recently. Yet not a word from the “Equalities & Human Rights Commission”, no endless condemnation from the regular horde of left wing commentators on diversity matters.

But then, officially it wasn’t racially aggravated:

The women, who are all Somalian Muslims, were not charged with racial aggravation.

One wonders, had this been say four white skinheads wrapped in union jacks beating up a black youth while crying “kill the black bastard”, would the CPS have charged them with mere assault? I doubt it, those white skinheads would have got the full set of racial crimes laid on them (and quite rightly).

So why not these Somali women?

And why are the Runnymede Trust, the Equalities & Human Rights Commission and the usual collection of righteous MPs, columnists and "charities" more interested in that stupid woman on the tram (who hurt nothing other than feelings) than this violent racial assault?

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In which I wish the Joseph Rowntree Foundation would take its prejudices elsewhere than Bradford

Although the Joseph Rowntree Foundation does some good research it is sadly blind to the reality of its ‘poverty-mongering’ in Bradford. Over the past few years, JRF has run a “Bradford programme”:

Working in partnership with others to make a positive difference to the people in the city, and improve our understanding of issues in a diverse community.

All very worthy and so typical of JRF’s approach but I worry that, by beginning with a prejudice about the city and by immersing itself in the places and people that reinforce that prejudice, the charity do the City a disfavour.

So what is that prejudice JRF open with? It comes in three parts:

1.       Caricaturing Bradford as a place dominated by and fractured by issues of race and cohesion. JRF’s assumption is that they are “challenging existing stereotypes” when, in truth, they reinforce the stereotype of a racially-divided city

2.       Defining the city in terms of its victim status – its poverty, its crime and its struggle. This is the mindset that transformed a confident city into what we have today, the view that others – governments, business, ‘leadership’ – are responsible for the problem and that its resolution lies not in enterprise but in “getting our fair share of resources”

3.       Ignoring, absolutely and complete, the city’s suburbs and the villages that surround the urban core. JRF do not venture in their work to explore the lives of ordinary people in Queensbury, in Sandy Lane, in Baildon or in Apperley Bridge. Indeed, at times these people seem to be view as suspicious bystanders rather than contributors to the wealth and success of Bradford

None of this is to say that JRF’s work is ill-meant but it is to observe that, despite the years working in Bradford, the charity has clung limpet-like to its initial prejudice regardless of the evidence that it is a false description of the City. Evidence of higher rates of business creation, increased levels of self-employment and rising community aspirations are pushed aside as they do not fit with the predetermined view of Bradford as a victim, as a place of poverty.

JRF also remains wedded to qualitative research placing greater emphasis on the remarks of residents than on the gathering of data. Nowhere within this multi-million pound set of studies can I find robust, quantitative research conducted to look at Bradford’s problems. Rather than seeking to measure and assess – as good researchers should – JRF can only see to ‘participate’ and ‘engage’.

Such research methods – embedded deeply into the place studied – are not without their value if what we’re about is understanding culture, values and behaviours. But if, as JRF proclaim, they are seeking to guide the City towards better policy-making then we are navigating by asking random people for directions rather than using a map.

And just so you don’t think I’m making all this up, let me show you the evidence of the first caricature of Bradford – the pathology of racial politics – from a JRF funded project, JUST West Yorkshire: (this is from a e-mail bulletin – the website is very out-of-date)

As the disorder spreads to other London boroughs, residents of Bradford, Oldham and Burnley are probably reliving the divisive legacy of the Northern disturbances which strained community relationships and created a breach between the police and Asian communities who metaphorically sold their shares in the police as public confidence dipped.  If we are to draw any lessons from Bradford’s 2001 Disturbances then it must be that an effective policy response will not be found through recourse to simplistic rhetoric – whether it be about parallel and segregated communities in 2001 or about the increasing gun and knife ‘criminality’ among African-Caribbean youth in 2011 - but by sustained engagement with multiple and complex social problems.

This comes from the latest of this organisation’s left-wing diatribes and, in a sort of Trotskyite conclusion these folk say:

The rioters in Tottenham have just sent out their own message from the 'social market index' trading in public trust and confidence: between them, swingeing public sector cuts and Big Society tokenism have all meant the government has already defaulted on its obligations to the people of Britain. The big question is whether the government will be able to hear this message over the chatter between Wall Street and the City and – even if it does – whether it is capable of abandoning its ideological fixation with zombie neo-liberalism and, instead, invest in fostering the bonds of community. If it fails to do so then the hot money must surely be on the further growth of the already massive deficit in social harmony - and the consequent emergence of the Big Bad Society.

I suppose JRF will claim distance from this nonsense but for my part I want them to take responsibility for the prejudice they spawn. Maybe, Julia Unwin is happy to support those who would excuse away riot, violence and looting as some form of legitimate protest, but I would rather she took JRF’s cash and spent it elsewhere than Bradford.

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Black men, black culture and the economics of crime

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The Sunday Telegraph today reports on the – unsurprising in many ways – revelation that:

“The Official figures, which examine the ethnicity of those accused of violent offences in London, suggest the majority of men held responsible for gun crimes, robberies and street crimes are black.”

On the back of these figures a debate arises as to the reasons for this situation. And sadly beneath the careful words there is a worrying tendency to promote the view that the situation exists because they are black. That somehow there is something in the nature of black men that leads them to crime and especially violent crime.

Mostly this racism is shifted one notch away from allegations of genetic inclination to criminality towards a “cultural” explanation. This argues that, somewhere in the prevailing mores of Britain’s Afro-Caribbean community is a dark truth of a violent culture. Such critics point to the popularity of music with violent lyrics, to the supposed importing of US gang culture – with its bling, drugs and guns – and to the criminal culture of Kingston, Jamaica’s capital.

Others – including black observers like Shaun Bailey direct our attention to welfare and to the fact that a frightening proportion of London’s black community exists on benefits. Here’s Shaun:

“Our children grow up trapped in the benefit system. They see benefit dependency as a ‘lifestyle’: the best one available other than becoming a criminal.”

There’s a point to this except that, in and of itself, benefit dependency does not make criminals – it is as likely to provide a cover for criminality as it is to be its cause. And it is in this fact – in the reality of economics that I think the ‘explanation’ lies. Black kids get involved in violent crime because it is – on the face of it – the rational thing to do. I know this sounds bonkers but allow me to elaborate.

There's a hint in the second half of the quote from Shaun Bailey – becoming a criminal seems to many kids (and not just black ones) a pretty rational option. They grow up surrounded by crime – from fiddling benefits and shoplifting to burglary and bag snatching – and most of those involved are not obviously economic failures (at least in the limited perspective of the kids looking on).

The crime industry on our estates – and elsewhere in our inner cities – is become the dominant private business. It has clear hierarchies, provides (fairly harsh) discipline and control, allows for low level entry and competes aggressively for business. And the leadership of the business promotes machismo as a key attribute because the willingness to conduct acts of violence is crucial to the continuing success of the business. And such violence – the guns, the knives and the testosterone-fuelled strutting – becomes attractive because it is directly associated with the most successful in business.

You will find no real difference if you turn to look at the criminality of white young men from the peripheral estates surround Northern cities or for that matter the same behaviour among Pakistani immigrants to those same cities. The precise nature of the business varies (although drugs are always involved somewhere) with some preferring burglary to mugging but the reality is that, across Britain, there’s a group – a socio-economic group not a racial or cultural group – for whom crime pays.

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