Introduction

Abstract

When, on Saturday 22 October 2005, violence erupted between the black and Asian communities of the Lozells district of Birmingham, it appeared to confirm the views of a number of French commentators about the manner in which minorities in Britain were managed, or, more precisely, not managed with regard to their integration into the national community. Although some uncertainty hovered over the direct cause of the dispute that sparked off the riot that night, it was generally acknowledged that tension had been simmering between the two communities for some time, perhaps even years. Viewed from across the Channel, the familiar response was to view this event as another example of the possible consequences of the British predilection for enfermement rather than an unequivocal policy of integration, the downside of a supposedly flexible policy of allowing communities to construct a separate social identity that expresses the distinctness of their culture, but that in reality ‘encloses’ or isolates them. This French response appeared to be justified by the intervention of Lord Ouseley, a former head of the Commission for acial Equality, when he accused the CRE under its new leadership of having spent too much time focusing on the ‘soft’ cultural issues such as the terminology of the race debate, rather than the harder issues lying at the root of the grievances of residents in places like Lozells.