-Caveat Lector-
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4074849,
00.html
British tag is 'coded racism'
Special report: race issues in the UK
Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Guardian
Wednesday October 11, 2000
The term "British" has racial connotations and will no longer serve
as a description of the UK's multicultural society, says a report by
an influential think-tank launched today.
Its conclusion that the UK should be formally recognised as a
multicultural society whose history needs to be "revised, rethought
or jettisoned" yesterday attracted fierce criticism from Conservative
MPs who said it was an affront to the "native British" who needed
to stand up for themselves. But Labour ministers have promised to
study its findings in detail and are likely to give it a warm welcome.
The Runnymede Trust-sponsored Commission into the Future of
Multi-ethnic Britain whose report is to be launched by the home
secretary, Jack Straw, also suggests it is time to review the
privileged position of the Anglican church in public life and to take
measures to boost the number of black and Asian faces in
parliament.
But it is a short section on "the future of Britishness" in the 400-
page report which has sparked most controversy. The report of the
commission, chaired by Lord Parekh, Labour peer and political
scientist, says devolution, the Good Friday agreement and
globalisation have undermined the notion of Britishness.
It rejects "Englishness" as alternative: "To be English, as the term
is in practice used, is to be white. Britishness is not ideal, but at
least it appears acceptable, particularly when suitably qualified -
Black British, Indian British, British Muslim and so on.
"However, there is one major and so far insuperable barrier.
Britishness, as much as Englishness, has systematic largely
unspoken, racial con notations. Whiteness nowhere features as an
explicit condition of being British, but it is widely understood that
Englishness, and therefore by extension Britishness is racially
coded.
"There ain't no black in the union jack," it has been said, quotes
the report, which says there is an assumption that whiteness and
Britishness go together like roast beef and yorkshire pudding.
The failure to include in the national curriculum a rewritten history
of Britain as an imperial force involving dominance in Ireland, Africa,
the Caribbean and Asia, is proving to be an unmitigated disaster,
the report claims. It argues that racial and cultural differences have
been symbolically "written out of the national story". The wide-
ranging report also calls for the establishment of a human rights
commission, for action on discriminatory police stop and search
policies and for the scrapping of the voucher system for asylum
seekers.
It says it is also time to review the connections between church
and state. Such a review would have to look at how other religions
are discriminated against in "customs related to civic religion, for
example daily prayers at Westminster and various religious
ceremonies, including memorial events, in local government; the
law of blasphemy; and the coronation oath".
Gerald Howarth, the Tory MP for Aldershot and a member of the
Commons home affairs select committee, claimed the report
represented social engineering on a massive scale. "It is an
extraordinary affront to the 94% of the population which is not from
ethnic minorities. The native British must stand up for themselves."
Lord Tebbit, the former Tory party chairman, claimed the greatest
conflicts in the world were the product of multicultural societies
such as Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka and the former Soviet Union.
"Since no one is being held hostage in this kingdom and those who
arrived recently have come to get away from their own countries
and enjoy the benefits of this country, the best way forward is
integration rather than separation into cultural ghettoes."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2000
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