Introduction

Abstract

In his speech on Islamic extremism of 5 February 2011 in Munich, David Cameron rejected ‘the doctrine of state multiculturalism’ for having ‘encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream’. On the contrary, he explained, a ‘genuinely liberal country believes in certain values and actively promotes them’. A year later, Cameron’s Home Secretary Theresa May proposed the introduction of a history test for applicants to British citizenship. Instead of focusing on human rights and practical knowledge of life in the UK, as had been the case until then, the naturalisation process was now to include a test of the applicant’s suitability to adapt to a national identity defined in historical terms. In the same year, the Department for Communities and Local Government issued a paper entitled ‘Creating the Conditions for Integration’, which put forward five ‘key factors’ contributing to integration: tackling extremism and intolerance, social mobility, participation, responsibility and ‘common ground’. All of this signals the coalition’s insistence on turning away from older British approaches to the management of ethnic diversity, which, until the turn of the millennium, were broadly characterised as multiculturalist because they gave recognition to the need to accommodate racial, ethnic, cultural and religious differences.