Multiculturalism and the Extreme Right Challenge in Contemporary Britain

Abstract

Riots in several localities in Northern England in 2001 (Oldham, Burnley and Bradford) involving South Asian youth of Muslim origin represented a defining moment in the history of British multiculturalism. The previous year, the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain had published a major report (the so-called Parekh report) which offered a vision of Britain as an outward-looking community at ease with multicultural diversity.¹ In the wake of the riots, however, British multiculturalism stood accused of fostering ethnic conflict. Through a process of neighbourhood self-segregation, multicultural practice in Britain had supposedly encouraged ethnic minorities, and South Asian Muslims in particular, to lead ‘parallel lives’. According to Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) Chair, Trevor Phillips, multicultural Britain had been ‘sleepwalking into segregation’ (Phillips, 2005). Significantly, at the local level, amongst deprived white neighbourhoods, the failure to engage the white working class in the multicultural project fed a toxic narrative. This narrative portrayed whites as the victims, losing out to Muslim communities who were supposedly the beneficiaries of preferential treatment. Resentment from ‘white-have-nots’ — dubbed ‘white backlash’ by sociologist Roger Hewitt (2005), which was targeted above all at South Asian Muslims — was further exacerbated by post-9/11 and 7/7 evaluations of Muslims as either apologists for terror or potential terrorists.