We are sleepwalking into an increasingly segregated country – it’s time to ignore ‘racism’ fears and act to stop Britain falling apart
The time for talking is over, the Government must start taking meaningful action now
IT has been more than a year since I published my report on opportunity and integration, in which I warned the Government we were sleepwalking into an increasingly segregated country.
I was then the Integration Tsar and what my study — commissioned by David Cameron and Theresa May — discovered was a country drifting apart.
It found communities were becoming increasingly insular, and opportunities for some in the poorest and most isolated areas were virtually non-existent.
I told how attempts to tackle integration had been feeble — nothing more than “saris, samosas and steel drums for the already well-intentioned”.
And I urged our leaders to do something about it. We need big, bold ideas, I said. And then . . . silence. Into the long grass it went.
So it is welcome news the Government is finally taking this seriously, and will today publish its Integrated Communities Strategy green paper — partly in response to my review of 2016.
There are big issues at stake.
Equality for women, how we manage immigration, how to get people from different backgrounds to get along better and how we prevent both far-Right and Islamist extremism.
But it’s also crucially important that this strategy now moves beyond words on a page and debates in Westminster. The time for talking is over.
The Government must start to take meaningful action in our communities — especially in places such as Bradford, Birmingham and Blackburn that my report identified as often being highly segregated and very poor.
Will they do that? Let’s see. The mood music from Communities Secretary Sajid Javid is very encouraging. So what do I want to see?
My five tests for today’s strategy are:
1. Everyone must learn English
It must be bold and ambitious on the English language. Everyone of school and working age needs to be able to talk to each other in a common tongue. We should set a target that says by “x” date we want everybody in the country to be able to speak a common language.
I’m all for people being bilingual but in my 2016 report I told how in one recent year more Government cash was spent on promoting Cornish than English. That needs to change.
We must target the most isolated communities where some speak little or no English. We need to make sure the people there, especially women, are not shut away from education or jobs, or worse still at risk of oppression in their own homes by men.
2. No prejudice against less well-off kids
It must tackle disadvantage across all our communities, whether that is black working-class lads in London or white working-class girls in Redcar.
We must remove the barriers of prejudice that often stop them getting a good education and decent jobs.
It would also help if we set ourselves the goal of making sure that as kids grow up they all mix meaningfully with people different from them — whether that’s a difference in race, age, religion or social class.
That can only help them have a better understanding of our brilliantly diverse country. And this shouldn’t just be done through well-meaning events where only the already well-intentioned turn up, but in powerful ways such as taking part in sport or volunteering.
3. Crack down on illegal education
It must take immediate tough action on unregulated home education and unregistered and illegal schools.Parents should have to opt out of education for their children, not opt in.
We need to know where kids are and what is happening to them — in the home, schools and in any setting where we must be able to protect them. Safeguarding them from abusers is important, whether that is paedophiles or extremists.
More than 350 sites suspected of being unregistered schools — including in pubs and on industrial estates — have reportedly been investigated in England by Ofsted. But the education watchdog does not have enough powers to do anything.
4. Don't avoid issues for fear of 'racism'
It must not shy away from tackling difficult issues because of a well-meaning but politically correct fear of being labelled a racist.
We need to crack down on all forms of hatred, abuse and extremism — be that racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, sexism or homophobia — and we must call out regressive religious and cultural practices.
We must talk about Sharia law. It is a core British value that you are free to live how you choose as long as you respect our democracy and rule of law. But tiptoeing around issues or turning a blind eye to abuse gets us nowhere.
Look at what happened in Rotherham when the police and council did not want to take action on child sexual exploitation because the abusers were mostly of Pakistani heritage. It only made things worse for the local Muslim community.
5. Back ideas with serious funding
It must be backed by a serious amount of money to make a real difference.
A lot of this is about attitudes and leadership. But money matters too. The Government needs to find some cash to start the action we need. This green paper cannot be a missed opportunity. The UK should be aiming to be a world leader on integration.
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Whether you are for or against immigration (and I’m for it), the country needs to have confidence that it is being properly managed and its impacts on communities are not ignored.
Creating an integration strategy is a good place to start.
Dame Louise Casey was the Government’s Integration Tsar.