Being ‘different’ is something that many of us wrapped in brown or black skin were very aware of in the 1970s and 1980s. ‘P*** bashing’, being called a ‘w**’ and even being the subject of physical assaults in school playgrounds was run-of-the-mill stuff back then. Thankfully – in the main – that is a thing of the past now.
So, it felt rather squeamish for me and my wife Rupi to be telling our teenage boys to be careful; to avoid unnecessary eye contact if approached by a group of white men; and to only travel in busy carriages on the tube, in recent days.
Quite how this chapter in the lives of many families like ours has crept up on us needs further analysis. Events in Southport were so tragic, that we can understand the sense of anger that follows the horror of child murders. But Britain in 2024 isn’t the Britain of the late 1970s and 80s. So why the violence in our streets?
Our sense of ‘togetherness’ as a nation is under scrutiny, and may not be as strong as we think. There’s a brittleness to it.
‘Tensions have bubbled under the surface and are being exploited’
As a six-year-old in 1977, I could clearly hear the ‘Southall riot’ from our bedroom window on the night the Hambrough Tavern pub was burned down by the National Front. A skinhead band called the Four Skins (you couldn’t make it up) had come to play there, at our pub. A place where black and brown people had felt safe having a pint.
It was a racially charged era; but this feels different. Britain has changed, but real tensions have bubbled under the surface and are now being exploited, by political opportunists and by those who have learnt to move from plain sight at public rallies to the shadows shaped by social media.
I sense that our sense of ‘togetherness’ or community cohesion has been eroded over recent years. At our best, we celebrate our ‘differentness’ in Britain. But we must also celebrate what brings us ‘together’.
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‘Our differentness makes us a country we can all be proud of’
I was given a sharp lesson in just this at one of my earliest outings as the Minister for Community Cohesion in 2008. I had arrived in a northern town to face a stoney-faced crowd in a town hall to talk about the funding we were going to make available to support community cohesion after the accession of the A8 countries to the European Union.
A lady in the front row, with arms folded, wanted to challenge me and said: “I’ve read about you. They say you fail Norman Tebbit’s cricket test. You prefer India, what gives you the right to be in Her Majesty’s government?”
Fair point. I politely pointed out that my parents came here from Punjab, hence my allegiance to India in cricket. My life is a series of contradictions. I was born in the West London hospital my mother came here to clean, I supported Gloucester at rugby – the place I was proud to represent in Parliament and perhaps her biggest concern should be that I supported Liverpool at football. Put all that together and I suggested it was probably the reason I was the Minister for Community Cohesion in the first place. She smiled, and the audience softened.
My real point was this: it’s our differentness combined with everybody in Britain being given a fair crack of the whip that makes us the country that we are and a country we can all be proud of.
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‘We need to consider how we can learn to celebrate the things that bring us together’
But it’s in the latter where our country is really falling down. We can blame the Tories for cuts in public services, a breakdown in society and an obsession for promoting wars on woke, which has all been very unhelpful. But that won’t help us.
Even in the last Labour government, we did not make the progress we would have liked in some areas. But at least we identified some of the key problems and we were vocalizing them, including the need to focus more on the under-attainment of white working-class boys in our schools, who were being left behind.
We commissioned a report on integration and cohesion that I would recommend to anyone working on community cohesion. It’s called ‘Our Shared Future’ by the excellent Darra Singh. We agreed to implement all 57 of his recommendations. Unfortunately, like all good Labour governments before it, we ran out of time and what came after us did not help.
Post Southport, ministers need breathing space to consider how in Britain in 2024 we can learn to celebrate our differences and the things that bring us together.
There needs to be an acceptance that some groups in society are being left behind and plans put in place to enhance their life chances. Those are the bricks and mortar of community cohesion.
Hopefully, it will lead to less uncomfortable conversations with our kids about how to stay safe when they leave home too, whatever their creed or colour.
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