The paper explores the origins and development of multiculturalism, with particular reference to the UK, and notes internationally that the concept has been renounced by various governments who now favour narrow integration agendas. The paper argues that race relations may have come full circle, returning to forms of assimilationism. The paper makes the case for interculturalism and critical multiculturalism, arguing that such approaches avoid the insularity of nativism and allow cultures and national identities to be inclusive and to adapt.
Key Words: Multiculturalism, Interculturalism, Assimilation, Neoliberalism, Nativism
Introduction
In 2015 Victor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, stated “Europe is facing questions which can no longer be answered within the framework of liberal multiculturalism. Can we shelter people, many of whom are unwilling to accept European culture, or who come here with the intent of destroying European culture?...And as far as I see it, Hungarian people are by nature politically incorrect – in other words, they have not yet lost their common sense”
(Orban, 2015).
On this occasion Orban is not out of harmony with other European leaders. In recent years mainstream conservative national leaders such as David Cameron and Angela Merkel have also joined in on the act of castigating multiculturalism. It should also be noted that criticism of multiculturalism is to be found across the political spectrum, the New Labour administration of Tony Blair was amongst the first in Europe to disparage multiculturalism and advocate an integration agenda, which stressed conformity to ‘British values’. Critics decried this new policy turn as race relations policy having come full circle and in effect represented a form of monoculturalism which was a return to assimilationism as had existed prior to the advent of multiculturalism (Bourne, 2006).
One of the chief catalysts for this change were the terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda in New York in 2001 and later across Europe most notably in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005. However, forces were at play in the political establishment, long before the terrorist attacks, which were steadily nurturing nativist tendencies. The causes for the rejection of multiculturalism will be discussed in more depth later in the paper but first it is important to define precisely what multiculturalism is, how it developed and whether it should be consigned to the ‘dustbin of history’. In this discussion reference is made in particular to developments in the UK but it is hoped that a number of points and lessons can be drawn from this case study which are of wider relevance to debates around identity and social solidarity across Europe.
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The Origins of Multiculturalism
In seeking to locate the origins of multiculturalism, a starting point could be the thoughts of the Greek philosopher Diogenes who in the fifth century BC declared: “I am a citizen of the world” (Tiziano, 2013). Cosmopolitanism, as such an outlook was coined, was revolutionary in the sense that it broke away from the perception that individuals should merely identify with a particular geographic space such as the city state and that instead there was a wider sense of fraternity which could transcend borders and ethnicity which was based on a sense of common humanity. Such sentiments were to be revived with the internationalism of the French and then Russian revolutions but on the whole the narrative of European history up to the post war period was one of nationalism and relative cultural insularity. In the aftermath of world war two, attempts to forge international collaborations and frameworks through initiatives like the Council of Europe, European Union and European Convention on Human Rights have sought to promote a moral direction aimed at averting future tyrannies and human rights violations. Within this ambit the need for tolerant race relations gained traction.
Until the 1960s assimilationism was generally the guiding force in migration and race relations policy. In the post war period the UK, suffering from a labour shortage, actively encouraged migration to the UK from what by then was left of its Empire or former colonies.
Migrants undertook often low skilled and paid employment. The onus for migrants was on cultural conformity, often enforced through steering social norms which were repelled and threatened by difference and ethnic diversity. In tandem with pressures to conform, racism and indeed poverty ghettoised migrant communities creating distinct cultural enclaves. The tensions stoked by racism and segregation inevitiably sparked conflict, a key moment were the London Notting Hill riots in 1958, where alienated white working class youth ran amok and clashed with the police and local afro-caribbean migrants in a deprived London neighbourhood.
The events of the Nottinghill riots and growing ethnic diversity prompted an assessment of how best to manage race relations in the UK, a landmark moment was the statement by Roy Jenkins in 1966 who was then Home Secretary "[Integration does not mean] the loss by immigrants of their own national characteristics and culture. I do not think we need in this country a ‘melting pot’... It would deprive us of most of the positive benefits of immigration that I believe to be very great indeed. I define integration, therefore, not as a flattening process of assimilation, but as an equal opportunity, accompanied by cultural diversity in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance." (Jenkins,1967).
In essence a template was established which accorded minorities the space and freedom to practice and celebrate their ethnic identity but at the same time minorities were expected to adhere to the central tenets of British life by participating in and supporting British institutions and laws. Running parallel with this were new laws which outlawed discrimination and which achieved a form of political consensus being embraced by Conservative as well as Labour politicians. Thus alongside forms of statism legal rights frameworks were now considered by left and right to have a role in forming a fairer society (Farrar, 2012). The shift in the political landscape and mood is evidenced by two contrasting acts within the Conservative Party. No action was taken by the Conservative Party when one
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of its candidates in the 1964 general election gained election to Parliament for a constituency with a growing ethnic minority after using the slogan ‘If you want a nigger neighbour, vote Labour’ (Jeffries, 2014). However, four years later the leadership of the Conservative Party was repulsed by the prominent Conservative politician Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood”
rhetoric in which he warned that diversity would lead to clashes and conflict. Powell called for the repatriation of migrants. The Conservative Party’s sacking of Powell as an opposition spokesperson drew within the Conservative Party a new line as to what was acceptable behaviour regarding race (Lloyd, 2002).
The UK, being one of the first countries in the post war period to embrace inward migration but also being one of the first to be confronted with community tensions, was amongst one of the first to seek to develop a more harmonious approach to race relations which encompassed multiculturalism. Elsewhere in Europe similar events were enacted in countries with growing migrant populations, in part such policy directions mirrored wider commitments to more liberal notions of justice and equality which were then prevalent.
The Development and Decline of Multiculturalism
From the mid1970s a global economic recession led to the ascendency of what became known as the ‘Washington Consensus’ a brand of neoliberalism which advocated a laissez faire approach to economic and social policy. In the UK this was exemplified in the premiership of Margaret Thatcher which shattered the liberal consensus forged in the 1960s. A memorable and controversial intervention on race was evident in Thatcher’s comments on migration
“People are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture” (Thatcher, 1978). However, Thatcher avoided the confrontationalism of Enoch Powell (see above) and instead settled for a more pronounced vision of Britishness based on nativism, being a policy of favoring native inhabitants as opposed to immigrants and exalting traditional conceptions of national identity and thus resisting forms of acculturation (cultural adaptation). It was such sentiments which eventually fuelled forms of UK eurosceptism but which also incorporated cultural racism as typical of the New Right which stressed the dangers of outsiders deviating from British values and traditions and or the divisiveness of affirmative measures (Bourne, 2013).
Running parellel with the rise of the New Right in the 1980s was the emergence of what was termed in the UK as municipal socialism, where progressive local authorities sought to challenge racial discrimination and move beyond liberal multiculturalism and through ’anti racism’ tackle institutional racism, in effect seeking to erradicate oppressive practices and norms from societal institutions. Criticism of anti-racist strategies argued that there was a failure to question the basic structures of the British economy and society and anti-racism could be essentialised and even racist (Gillborn, 1995).
The New Right in tandem with the tabloid press were also highly critical of anti-racism painting it as leftwing lunacy but also a privileging of minority cultures, a stance which in fact influenced the integrationism of conservatism in more recent times, a point which will be returned to later in the discussion. Although not a champion of multiculturalism Thatcher did not directly challenge or seek to obliterate multiculturalism, at least in its liberal form. In 1985 the Swann report was published which included the central claim that Britain was a
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multiracial and multicultural society and all pupils must be enabled to understand what this means. Hence, during this time the rather neutered and reified ‘samosas, sarees and steel bands’ version of multiculturalism, was largely played out and confined to the classroom (Richardson, 2000) to the detriment of a more critical form of multiculturalism recognising the institutional and economic as well as cultural factors which contribute to racism (Nylund, 2006).
A benign, limited and liberal form of multiculturalism was largely accepted by the political mainstream until the terrorist attacks of al-Qaeda, from that date policy makers have increasingly disparaged multiculturalism and zealously advocated narrow interpretations of integration. Another development has been the emergence of the radical right across Europe.
Mudde (2010) notes that rather than being an isolated phenomenon the radical right has its origins and roots within the mainstream. Hence, there is a process of interaction and mirroring in centre and radical right politics with both increasingly distancing themselves from social policy based on multiculturalism and or social justice orientated values. Instead forms of paternalism, responsibilisation and monoculturalism have been promoted.
Prevailing philosophies on diversity have come full circle with a reduction in respect of
‘difference’ and a return to explicit assimilation policies under the rubric of an ‘integration agenda’. In the UK a new consensus has been formed between conservatism and labourism with both distancing themselves from multiculturalism and emphasising integration. Critics of this new consensus claim that the nativism of the New Right has triumphed (Bourne, 2013).
Under New Labour and in the wake of 9/11 an integration agenda was actively promoted as notably demonstrated by David Blunkett’s initiative of American style citizenship ceremonies being introduced in the UK. Trevor Philips then chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission joined this vanguard by warning about the dangers of ethnic enclaves and that Britain was “sleepwalking towards segregation”, a claim which race campaigner Lee Jasper noted seemed to discount the role of racism and inequality in causing segregation and instead present it as a form of cultural distancing and choice (Weedon, 2011). So it was, as noted above, that UK Prime Minister Cameron followed this trend of renouncing multiculturalism and stressing the need for integration and was in fact joined by other conservatives in Europe such as the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and more recently the Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban.
The acclaimed Parekh report (Richardson, 2000) was stark in its warning of the dangers of narrow integrationism which was viewed as “a one-way process in which minorities are to be absorbed into the non-existent homogeneous cultural structure of the 'majority'.” As Modood and Uberoi (2012) have noted emerging from the debate around integration there has been reference to and promotion of Britishness in which minorities are invited to embrace British identity. However, there is ambiguity as to what Britishness actually represents. The Prime Minister Gordon Brown sought in the final phase of his premierships to interpret Britishness as entailing a commitment to fair play as espoused by the National Health Service, equality and inclusivity towards minorities (Bryant, 2010), a conception which failed to capture the public imagination, perhaps not surprisingly given the immediate public anxiety which emerged in the wake of the global financial crisis in 2008.
Through a lens of securitisation, a public feeling increasingly insecure in an age of global turmoil and dislocation have associated risk and danger to a range of outsider groups including immigrants and ethnic minority communities. In such times there is the danger that those ethnic and cultural groups invited to embrace Britishness might in fact recoil from a
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version based on insular and nativist notions of national identity. This is a conception which New Right/Thatcherite Conservatives have often been susceptible to. In such nativistic discourses migrant and ethnic minorities have often been used by politicians, the media and establishment as a marker of difference. Hence, moral panics and scapegoating against perceived outsider groups has bolstered mainstream identity and narrow perceptions of national identity.
Interculturalism
Powell and Size (2004:1) refer to the philosophical and political science theory of interculturalism, as one which “recognises that in a society of mixed ethnicities, cultures act in multiple directions. Host or majority cultures are influenced by immigrant or minority cultures and vice versa”. Liberal multiculturalism tends to preserve a cultural heritage, while interculturalism, a form of critical multiculturalism, acknowledges and enables cultures to have currency, to be exchanged, to circulate, to be modified and evolve.
It should be noted that interculturalism is the avowed policy of the European Union and for such a policy to be realised necessitates open and inclusive forms of governance where minorities are afforded say and influence in decision making but where dialogue leads to change and adaptation not only in minority but also majoritarian culture. But how is such dialogue and change to be arbitrated? Should it be premised on traditional notions of national identity? I would argue that forms of nativism cannot be an effective arbitrator and tool of guidance in intracultural dialogue in particular with reference to cohesion as traditional conceptions of identity exclude and polarise and thus undermine community cohesion. In addition notions of cultural rigidity fails to accept that identity is an evolving and adaptive process which changes with time, absorbing and retaining what works whilst simultaneously jettisoning what has become antiquated and moribund to life in the twenty first century.
Interculturalism/critical multiculturalism are better suited to promote deliberation and forms of cosmopolitanism and social solidarity at the national and transnational level, bolstering and strengthening the international organisations and conventions created in the post war period to protect and maintain human rights (see above).
The compass for debates and interactions between majoritarian and minority cultures should not be outmoded conceptions of national identity but rather more universal and cosmopolitan values as espoused by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) which champions tolerance and equality. The ECHR challenges not only discriminatory actions by government but also oppressive practices within majority and minority cultures bolstered by traditional notions of identity which can lead to gender inequality and other forms of exploitative behaviour. Thus where minorities contravene such values, a process of review and revision is warranted.
Chomsky described the neoliberal processes of deregulation and desire to enhance competitiveness in a globalised economy through wage and employment rights reduction as a
“race to the bottom”. This article has sought to argue that this downward spiral is not just evident in the economic sphere but is being played out in social, cultural and legal spheres with greater support and adoption of nativist and laissez-faire policy agendas. It is in the context of neoliberalism and monoculturalism which seeks scapegoats for the contradictions and frailties of the present economic order that we should assess contemporary debates and critique of multiculturalism (Ryder et al, 2014).
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Author Biography
Andrew Ryder is a campaigner and Associate Professor at the Corvinus University Budapest and Fellow with the Third Sector Research Centre, University of Birmingham
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Philip Saxon
Corvinus University, Budapest philip.saxon@uni-corvinus.hu