Too diverse
Is Britain
becoming too diverse to sustain the mutual obligations behind good society and
the welfare state?
Britain in
the 1950s was a country stratified by class and region. But in most of its
cities, suburbs, towns and villages there was a good chance of predicting the
attitudes, even the behaviour, of the people living in your immediate
neighbourhood.
In many
parts of Britain today that is no longer true. The country has long since
ceased to be Orwell's "family" (albeit with the wrong members in
charge).
To some
people this is a cause of regret and disorientation - a change which they
associate with the growing incivility of modern urban life. To others it is a
sign of the inevitable, and welcome, march of modernity. After three centuries
of homogenisation through industrialisation, urbanisation, nation-building and
war, the British have become freer and more varied. Fifty years of peace,
wealth and mobility have allowed a greater diversity in lifestyles and values.
To this "value diversity" has been added ethnic diversity through two
big waves of immigration: first the mainly commonwealth immigration from the
West Indies and Asia in the 1950s and 1960s, followed by asylum-driven migrants
from Europe, Africa and the greater middle east in the late 1990s.
The
diversity, individualism and mobility that characterise developed economies -
especially in the era of globalisation - mean that more of our lives is spent
among strangers. Ever since the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago,
humans have been used to dealing with people from beyond their own extended kin
groups. The difference now in a developed country like Britain is that we not
only live among stranger citizens but we must share with them. We share public
services and parts of our income in the welfare state, we share public spaces
in towns and cities where we are squashed together on buses, trains and tubes,
and we share in a democratic conversation - filtered by the media - about the
collective choices we wish to make. All such acts of sharing are more smoothly
and generously negotiated if we can take for granted a limited set of common
values and assumptions. But as Britain becomes more diverse that common culture
is being eroded.
And
therein lies one of the central dilemmas of political life in developed
societies: sharing and solidarity can conflict with diversity. This is an
especially acute dilemma for progressives who want plenty of both solidarity -
high social cohesion and generous welfare paid out of a progressive tax system
- and diversity - equal respect for a wide range of peoples, values and ways of
life. The tension between the two values is a reminder that serious politics is
about trade-offs. It also suggests that the left's recent love affair with
diversity may come at the expense of the values and even the people that it
once championed.
It was the
Conservative politician David Willetts who drew my attention to the
"progressive dilemma." Speaking at a roundtable on welfare reform
(Prospect, March 1998), he said: "The basis on which you can extract large
sums of money in tax and pay it out in benefits is that most people think the
recipients are people like themselves, facing difficulties which they
themselves could face. If values become more diverse, if lifestyles become more
differentiated, then it becomes more difficult to sustain the legitimacy of a
universal risk-pooling welfare state. People ask, 'Why should I pay for them
when they are doing things I wouldn't do?' This is America versus Sweden. You
can have a Swedish welfare state provided that you are a homogeneous society
with intensely shared values. In the US you have a very diverse,
individualistic society where people feel fewer obligations to fellow citizens.
Progressives want diversity but they thereby undermine part of the moral
consensus on which a large welfare state rests."
These
words alerted me to how the progressive dilemma lurks beneath many aspects of
current politics: national tax and redistribution policies; the asylum and
immigration debate; development aid budgets; EU integration and spending on the
poorer southern and east European states; and even the tensions between America
(built on political ideals and mass immigration) and Europe (based on nation
states with core ethnic-linguistic solidarities).
Thinking
about the conflict between solidarity and diversity is another way of asking a
question as old as human society itself: who is my brother? With whom do I
share mutual obligations? The traditional conservative Burkean view is that our
affinities ripple out from our families and localities, to the nation and not
very far beyond. That view is pitted against a liberal universalist one which
sees us in some sense equally obligated to all human beings from Bolton to
Burundi - an idea associated with the universalist aspects of Christianity and
Islam, with Kantian universalism and with left-wing internationalism. Science
is neutral in this dispute, or rather it stands on both sides of the argument.
Evolutionary psychology stresses both the universality of most human traits and
- through the notion of kin selection and reciprocal altruism - the instinct to
favour our own. Social psychologists also argue that the tendency to perceive
in-groups and out-groups, however ephemeral, is innate. In any case, Burkeans
claim to have common sense on their side. They argue that we feel more
comfortable with, and are readier to share with, and sacrifice for, those with
whom we have shared histories and similar values. To put it bluntly - most of
us prefer our own kind.
The
category "own kind" or in-group will set alarm bells ringing in the
minds of many readers. So it is worth stressing what preferring our own kind
does not mean, even for a Burkean. It does not mean that we are necessarily
hostile to other kinds or cannot empathise with outsiders. (There are those who
do dislike other kinds but in Britain they seem to be quite a small minority.)
In complex societies, most of us belong simultaneously to many in-groups -
family, profession, class, hobby, locality, nation - and an ability to move
with ease between groups is a sign of maturity. An in-group is not, except in
the case of families, a natural or biological category and the people who are
deemed to belong to it can change quickly, as we saw so disastrously in Bosnia.
Certainly, those we include in our in-group could be a pretty diverse crowd,
especially in a city like London.
Moreover,
modern liberal societies cannot be based on a simple assertion of group
identity - the very idea of the rule of law, of equal legal treatment for
everyone regardless of religion, wealth, gender or ethnicity, conflicts with
it. On the other hand, if you deny the assumption that humans are social,
group-based primates with constraints, however imprecise, on their willingness
to share, you find yourself having to defend some implausible positions: for
example that we should spend as much on development aid as on the NHS, or that
Britain should have no immigration controls at all. The implicit "calculus
of affinity" in media reporting of disasters is easily mocked - two dead
Britons will get the same space as 200 Spaniards or 2,000 Somalis. Yet everyday
we make similar calculations in the distribution of our own resources. Even a
well-off, liberal-minded Briton who already donates to charities will spend,
say, £200 on a child's birthday party, knowing that such money could, in the
right hands, save the life of a child in the third world. The extent of our
obligation to those to whom we are not connected through either kinship or
citizenship is in part a purely private, charitable decision. But it also has
policy implications, and not just in the field of development aid. For example,
significant NHS resources are spent each year on foreign visitors, especially
in London. Many of us might agree in theory that the needs of desperate
outsiders are often greater than our own. But we would object if our own parent
or child received inferior treatment because of resources consumed by
non-citizens.
Is it
possible to reconcile these observations about human preferences with our
increasingly open, fluid and value-diverse societies? At one level, yes. Our
liberal democracies still work fairly well; indeed it is one of the
achievements of modernity that people have learned to tolerate and share with
people very unlike themselves. (Until the 20th century, today's welfare state
would have been considered contrary to human nature.) On the other hand, the
logic of solidarity, with its tendency to draw boundaries, and the logic of
diversity, with its tendency to cross them, do at times pull apart. Thanks to
the erosion of collective norms and identities, in particular of class and
nation, and the recent surge of immigration into Europe, this may be such a time.
The modern
idea of citizenship goes some way to accommodating the tension between
solidarity and diversity. Citizenship is not an ethnic, blood and soil concept
but a more abstract political idea - implying equal legal, political and social
rights (and duties) for people inhabiting a given national space. But
citizenship is not just an abstract idea about rights and duties; for most of
us it is something we do not choose but are born into - it arises out of a
shared history, shared experiences, and, often, shared suffering; as the
American writer Alan Wolfe puts it: "Behind every citizen lies a
graveyard."
Both
aspects of citizenship imply a notion of mutual obligation. Critics have argued
that this idea of national community is anachronistic - swept away by
globalisation, individualism and migration - but it still has political
resonance. When politicians talk about the "British people" they
refer not just to a set of individuals with specific rights and duties but to a
group of people with a special commitment to one another. Membership in such a
community implies acceptance of moral rules, however fuzzy, which underpin the
laws and welfare systems of the state.
In the
rhetoric of the modern liberal state, the glue of ethnicity ("people who
look and talk like us") has been replaced with the glue of values
("people who think and behave like us"). But British values grow, in
part, out of a specific history and even geography. Too rapid a change in the
make-up of a community not only changes the present, it also, potentially,
changes our link with the past. As Bob Rowthorn wrote (Prospect, February
2003), we may lose a sense of responsibility for our own history - the good
things and shameful things in it - if too many citizens no longer identify with
it.
Is this a
problem? Surely Britain in 2004 has become too diverse and complex to give
expression to a common culture in the present, let alone the past. Diversity in
this context is usually code for ethnic difference. But that is only one part
of the diversity story, albeit the easiest to quantify and most emotionally
charged. The progressive dilemma is also revealed in the value and generational
rifts that emerged with such force in the 1960s. At the Prospect roundtable
mentioned above, Patricia Hewitt, now trade secretary, recalled an example of
generational conflict from her Leicester constituency. She was canvassing on a
council estate when an elderly white couple saw her Labour rosette and one of
them said, "We're not voting Labour - you hand taxpayers' money to our
daughter." She apparently lived on a nearby estate, with three children
all by different fathers, and her parents had cut her off. (Evidence that even
close genetic ties do not always produce solidarity.)
Greater
diversity can produce real conflicts of values and interests, but it also
generates unjustified fears. Exposure to a wider spread of lifestyles, plus
more mobility and better education, has helped to combat some of those fears -
a trend reinforced by popular culture and the expansion of higher education
(graduates are notably more tolerant than non-graduates). There is less overt
homophobia, sexism or racism (and much more racial intermarriage) in Britain
than 30 years ago and racial discrimination is the most politically sensitive form
of unfairness. But 31 per cent of people still admit to being racially
prejudiced. Researchers such as Isaac Marks at London's Institute of Psychiatry
warn that it is not possible to neatly divide the population between a small
group of xenophobes and the rest. Feelings of suspicion and hostility towards
outsiders are latent in most of us.
The
visibility of ethnic difference means that it often overshadows other forms of
diversity. Changes in the ethnic composition of a city or neighbourhood can
come to stand for the wider changes of modern life. Some expressions of racism,
especially by old people, can be read as declarations of dismay at the passing
of old ways of life (though this makes it no less unpleasant to be on the
receiving end). The different appearance of many immigrants is an outward
reminder that they are, at least initially, strangers. If welfare states demand
that we pay into a common fund on which we can all draw at times of need, it is
important that we feel that most people have made the same effort to be
self-supporting and will not take advantage. We need to be reassured that
strangers, especially those from other countries, have the same idea of
reciprocity as we do. Absorbing outsiders into a community worthy of the name
takes time.
Negotiating
the tension between solidarity and diversity is at the heart of politics. But
both left and right have, for different reasons, downplayed the issue. The left
is reluctant to acknowledge a conflict between values it cherishes; it is ready
to stress the erosion of community from "bad" forms of diversity such
as market individualism but not from "good" forms of diversity such
as sexual freedom and immigration. And the right, in Britain at least, has
sidestepped the conflict, partly because it is less interested in solidarity
than the left, but also because it is still trying to prove that it is
comfortable with diversity.
But is
there any hard evidence that the progressive dilemma actually exists in the
real world of political and social choices? In most EU states the percentage of
GDP taken in tax is still at historically high levels, despite the increase in
diversity of all kinds. Yet it is also true that Scandinavian countries with
the biggest welfare states have been the most socially and ethnically
homogeneous states in the west. By the same token the welfare state has always
been weaker in the individualistic, ethnically divided US compared with more
homogeneous Europe. And the three bursts of welfarist legislation that the US
did see - Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Harry Truman's Fair Deal and Lyndon
Johnson's Great Society - came during the long pause in mass immigration
between the first world war and 1968. (They were also, clearly, a response to
the depression and two world wars.)
In their
2001 Harvard Institute of Economic Research paper "Why Doesn't the US Have
a European-style Welfare State?" Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser and Bruce
Sacerdote argue that the answer is that too many people at the bottom of the
pile in the US are black or Hispanic. Across the US as a whole, 70 per cent of
the population are non-Hispanic whites - but of those in poverty only 46 per
cent are non-Hispanic whites. So a disproportionate amount of tax income spent
on welfare is going to minorities. The paper also finds that US states that are
more ethnically fragmented than average spend less on social services. The
authors conclude that Americans think of the poor as members of a different
group, whereas Europeans still think of the poor as members of the same group.
Robert Putnam, the analyst of social capital, has also found a link between
high ethnic mix and low trust in the US. There is some British evidence
supporting this link too. Researchers at Mori found that the average level of
satisfaction with local authorities declines steeply as the extent of ethnic
fragmentation increases. Even allowing for the fact that areas of high ethnic
mix tend to be poorer, Mori found that ethnic fractionalisation still had a
substantial negative impact on attitudes to local government.
Finally,
Sweden and Denmark may provide a social laboratory for the solidarity/diversity
trade-off in the coming years. Starting from similar positions as homogeneous
countries with high levels of redistribution, they have taken rather different
approaches to immigration over the past few years. Although both countries
place great stress on integrating outsiders, Sweden has adopted a moderately
multicultural outlook. It has also adapted its economy somewhat, reducing job
protection for older native males in order to create more low-wage jobs for
immigrants in the public sector. About 12 per cent of Swedes are now
foreign-born and it is expected that by 2015 about 25 per cent of under-18s
will be either foreign-born or the children of the foreign-born. This is a
radical change and Sweden is adapting to it rather well (the first clips of
mourning Swedes after Anna Lindh's murder were of crying immigrants expressing
their sorrow in perfect Swedish). But not all Swedes are happy about it.
Denmark
has a more restrictive and "nativist" approach to immigration. Only 6
per cent of the population is foreign-born and native Danes enjoy superior
welfare benefits to incomers. If the solidarity/diversity trade-off is a real
one and current trends continue, then one would expect in, say, 20 years' time
that Sweden will have a less redistributive welfare state than Denmark; or
rather that Denmark will have a more developed two-tier welfare state with
higher benefits for insiders, while Sweden will have a universal but less
generous system.
What are
the main objections, at least from the left, to this argument about solidarity
and diversity? Multiculturalists stress Britain's multiple diversities, of
class and region, which preceded recent waves of immigration. They also argue
that all humans share similar needs and a common interest in ensuring they are
met with minimum conflict; this, they say, can now be done through human rights
laws. And hostility to diversity, they conclude, is usually a form of "false
consciousness."
Critics of
the dilemma also say, rightly, that the moral norms underpinning a community
need not be hard for outsiders to comply with: broad common standards of right
and wrong, some agreement on the nature of marriage and the family, respect for
law, and some consensus about the role of religion in public life. Moreover,
they add, there are places such as Canada (even Australia) which are happily
combining European-style welfare with an officially multicultural politics.
London, too, has US levels of ethnic diversity but is the most left-wing part
of Britain.
In the
autumn 2003 issue of the US magazine Dissent, two academics, Keith Banting and
Will Kymlicka, show that there is no link between the adoption of multiculturalist
policies in countries like Canada, Sweden and Britain, and the erosion of the
welfare state.
But many of the policies they describe are
either too technical (allowing dual citizenship) or too anodyne (existence of a
government body to consult minorities) to stimulate serious tax resistance.
They also assume too swift a reaction to growing diversity - these are forces
that take effect over decades, if not generations.
Similarly,
two British academics, Bhikhu Parekh and Ali Rattansi, have offered a critique
of the solidarity vs diversity thesis (partly in response to Prospect articles)
which also assumes an implausibly rapid connection between social cause and
effect. They argue that because the expansion of Britain's welfare state in the
late 1940s coincided with the first big wave of non-white immigration into
Britain, ethnic diversity cannot be a drag on social solidarity. But the
post-1945 welfare state was the result of at least 100 years of experience and
agitation. The arrival of a small number of immigrants in the 1940s and 1950s
was unlikely to have much bearing on that history. Parekh, Kymlicka and others
also argue that labour movement strength, not ethnic homogeneity, is the best
indicator of the size of a welfare state. But labour movements themselves are
stronger where there are no significant religious or ethnic divisions. In any
case, we are not concerned here with the formation of welfare states so much as
with their continued flourishing today.
A further
point made by the multiculturalists is more telling. They argue that a single
national story is not a sound base for a common culture because it has always
been contested by class, region and religion. In Britain, the left traces
democracy back to the peasants' revolt, the right back to Magna Carta, and so
on. But while that is true, it is also the case that these different stories
refer to a shared history. This does not imply a single narrative or national
identity any more than a husband and wife will describe their married life
together in the same way. Nor does it mean that the stress on the binding force
of a shared history (or historical institutions like parliament) condemns
immigrants to a second-class citizenship. Newcomers can and should adopt the
history of their new country as well as, over time, contributing to it - moving
from immigrant "them" to citizen "us." Helpfully, Britain's
story includes, through empire, the story of many of our immigrant groups -
empire soldiers, for example, fought in many of the wars that created modern
Britain.
I would
add a further qualification to the progressive dilemma. Attitudes to welfare
have, for many people, become more instrumental: I pay so much in, the state
gives me this in return. As we grow richer the ties that used to bind workers
together in a risk-pooling welfare state (first locally, later nationally) have
loosened - "generosity" is more abstract and compulsory, a matter of
enlightened self-interest rather than mutual obligation. Moreover, welfare is
less redistributive than most people imagine - most of the tax paid out by
citizens comes back to them in one form or another so the amount of the average
person's income going to someone they might consider undeserving is small.
This, however, does little to allay anxieties based on perceptions rather than
fiscal truths. And poor whites, who have relatively little, are more likely to
resent even small transfers compared with those on higher incomes.
Despite
these qualifications it still seems to me that those who value solidarity
should take care that it is not eroded by a refusal to acknowledge the
constraints upon it. The politician who has recently laid most stress on those
constraints, especially in relation to immigration, is the home secretary,
David Blunkett. He has spoken about the need for more integration of some
immigrant communities - especially Muslim ones - while continuing to welcome
high levels of net immigration into Britain of over 150,000 a year.
Supporters
of large-scale immigration now focus on the quantifiable economic benefits,
appealing to the self-interest rather than the idealism of the host population.
While it is true that some immigration is beneficial - neither the NHS nor the
building industry could survive without it - many of the claimed benefits of
mass immigration are challenged by economists such as Adair Turner and Richard
Layard. It is clear, for example, that immigration is no long-term solution to
an ageing population for the simple reason that immigrants grow old too.
Keeping the current age structure constant over the next 50 years, and assuming
today's birth rate, would require 60m immigrants. Managing an ageing society
requires a package of later retirement, rising productivity and limited
immigration. Large-scale immigration of unskilled workers does allow native
workers to bypass the dirtiest and least rewarding jobs but it also increases
inequality, does little for per capita growth, and skews benefits in the host
population to employers and the better-off.
But
large-scale immigration, especially if it happens rapidly, is not just about
economics; it is about those less tangible things to do with identity and
mutual obligation - which have been eroded from other directions too. It can
also create real - as opposed to just imagined - conflicts of interest. One
example is the immigration-related struggles over public housing in many of
Britain's big cities in the 1970s and 1980s. In places like London's east end
the right to a decent council house had always been regarded as part of the
inheritance of the respectable working class. When immigrants began to arrive
in the 1960s they did not have the contacts to get on the housing list and so
often ended up in low quality private housing. Many people saw the injustice of
this and decided to change the rules: henceforth the criterion of universal
need came to supplant good contacts. So if a Bangladeshi couple with children
were in poor accommodation they would qualify for a certain number of housing
points, allowing them to jump ahead of young local white couples who had been
on the list for years. This was, of course, unpopular with many whites. Similar
clashes between group based notions of justice and universally applied human
rights are unavoidable in welfare states with increasingly diverse people.
The
"thickest" solidarities are now often found among ethnic minority
groups themselves in response to real or perceived discrimination. This can be
another source of resentment for poor whites who look on enviously from their
own fragmented neighbourhoods as minorities recreate some of the mutual support
and sense of community that was once a feature of British working-class life.
Paradoxically, it may be this erosion of feelings of mutuality among the white
majority in Britain that has made it easier to absorb minorities. The degree of
antagonism between groups is proportional to the degree of co-operation within
groups. Relative to the other big European nations, the British sense of
national culture and solidarity has arguably been rather weak - diluted by
class, empire, the four different nations within the state, the north-south
divide, and even the long shadow of American culture. That weakness of national
solidarity, exemplified by the "stand-offishness" of suburban England,
may have created a bulwark against extreme nationalism. We are more tolerant
than, say, France because we don't care enough about each other to resent the
arrival of the other.
When
solidarity and diversity pull against each other, which side should public policy
favour? Diversity can increasingly look after itself - the underlying drift of
social and economic development favours it. Solidarity, on the other hand,
thrives at times of adversity, hence its high point just after the second world
war and its steady decline ever since as affluence, mobility, value diversity
and (in some areas) immigration have loosened the ties of a common culture.
Public policy should therefore tend to favour solidarity in four broad areas.
Immigration
and asylum About 9 per cent of British residents are now from ethnic
minorities, rising to almost one third in London. On current trends about one
fifth of the population will come from an ethnic minority by 2050, albeit many
of them fourth or fifth generation. Thanks to the race riots in northern
English towns in 2001, the fear of radical Islam after 9/11, and anxieties
about the rise in asylum-led immigration from the mid-1990s (exacerbated by the
popular press), immigration has shot up the list of voter concerns, and
according to Mori 56 per cent of people (including 90 per cent of poor whites
and even a large minority of immigrants) now believe there are too many
immigrants in Britain. This is thanks partly to the overburdened asylum system,
which forces refugees on to welfare and prevents them from working legally for
at least two years - a system calculated to provoke maximum hostility from
ordinary Britons with their acute sensitivity to free riding (see latest
Mori/Prospect poll on page 16). As soon as the system is under control and
undeserving applicants are swiftly removed or redirected to legitimate
migration channels, the ban on working should be reduced to six months or
abolished. A properly managed asylum system will sharply reduce the heat in the
whole race and immigration debate.
Immigrants
come in all shapes and sizes. From the American banker or Indian software
engineer to the Somali asylum seeker - from the most desirable to the most
burdensome, at least in the short term. Immigrants who plan to stay should be
encouraged to become Britons as far as that is compatible with holding on to
some core aspects of their own culture. In return for learning the language,
getting a job and paying taxes, and abiding by the laws and norms of the host
society, immigrants must be given a stake in the system and incentives to
become good citizens. (While it is desirable to increase minority participation
at the higher end of the labour market, the use of quotas and affirmative
action seems to have been counter-productive in the US.) Immigrants from the
same place are bound to want to congregate together but policy should try to
prevent that consolidating into segregation across all the main areas of life:
residence, school, workplace, church. In any case, the laissez-faire approach of
the postwar period in which ethnic minority citizens were not encouraged to
join the common culture (although many did) should be buried. Citizenship
ceremonies, language lessons and the mentoring of new citizens should help to
create a British version of the old US melting pot. This third way on identity
can be distinguished from the coercive assimilationism of the nationalist
right, which rejects any element of foreign culture, and from multiculturalism,
which rejects a common culture.
Is there a
"tipping point" somewhere between Britain's 9 per cent ethnic
minority population and America's 30 per cent, which creates a wholly different
US-style society - with sharp ethnic divisions, a weak welfare state and low
political participation? No one knows, but it is a plausible assumption. And
for that tipping point to be avoided and for feelings of solidarity towards
incomers not to be overstretched it is important to reassure the majority that
the system of entering the country and becoming a citizen is under control and
that there is an honest debate about the scale, speed and kind of immigration.
It is one thing to welcome smart, aspiring Indians or east Asians. But it is
not clear to many people why it is such a good idea to welcome people from poor
parts of the developing world with little experience of urbanisation,
secularism or western values.
Welfare
policy A generous welfare state is not compatible with open
borders and possibly not even with US-style mass immigration. Europe is not
America. One of the reasons for the fragmentation and individualism of American
life is that it is a vast country. In Europe, with its much higher population
density and planning controls, the rules have to be different. We are condemned
to share - the rich cannot ignore the poor, the indigenous cannot ignore the
immigrant - but that does not mean people are always happy to share. A
universal, human rights-based approach to welfare ignores the fact that the
rights claimed by one group do not automatically generate the obligation to
accept them, or pay for them, on the part of another group - as we saw with the
elderly couple in Leicester. If we want high tax and redistribution, especially
with the extra welfare demands of an ageing population, then in a world of
stranger citizens taxpayers need reassurance that their money is being spent on
people for whose circumstances they would have some sympathy. For that reason,
welfare should become more overtly conditional. The rules must be transparent
and blind to ethnicity, religion, sexuality and so on, but not blind to
behaviour. People who consistently break the rules of civilised behaviour
should not receive unconditional benefits.
The
"localisation" of more tax and redistribution would make it possible
to see how and on whom our taxes are spent. More controversially, there is also
a case - as Meghnad Desai has argued - for introducing a two-tier welfare
system. Purely economic migrants or certain kinds of refugees could be allowed
temporary residence, the right to work (but not to vote) and be given access to
only limited parts of the welfare state, while permanent migrants who make the
effort to become citizens would get full access to welfare. A two-tier welfare
state might reduce pressure on the asylum system and also help to deracialise
citizenship - white middle-class bankers and Asian shopkeepers would have full
British citizenship, while white Slovenian temporary workers would not. Such a
two-tier system is emerging in Denmark. Indeed, it already applies to some
extent in Britain: migrants on work permits and spouses during the two-year
probationary period cannot get most benefits. If we want to combine social
solidarity with relatively high immigration, there is also a strong case for ID
cards both on logistical grounds and as a badge of citizenship that transcends
narrower group and ethnic loyalties.
Culture
Good societies need places like London and New York as well as the more
homogeneous, stable, small and medium-size towns of middle Britain or the
American midwest. But the emphasis, in culture and the media, should be on
maintaining a single national conversation at a time when the viewing and
listening public is becoming more fragmented. In Britain, that means strong
support for the "social glue" role of the BBC. (The glue once
provided by religion no longer works, and in any case cannot include immigrants
of different faiths.) The teaching of multi-ethnic citizenship in schools is a
welcome step. But too many children leave school with no sense of the broad
sweep of their national history. The teaching of British history, and in
particular the history of the empire and of subsequent immigration into
Britain, should be a central part of the school curriculum. At the same time,
immigrants should be encouraged to become part of the British "we,"
even while bringing their own very different perspective on its formation.
Politics
and Language Multiculturalists argue that the binding
power of the liberal nation state has been eroded from within by value
diversity and from without by the arrival of immigrant communities with other
loyalties. But the nation state remains irreplaceable as the site for
democratic participation and it is hard to imagine how else one can organise
welfare states and redistribution except through national tax and public
spending. Moreover, since the arrival of immigrant groups from non-liberal or
illiberal cultures it has become clear that to remain liberal the state may
have to prescribe a clearer hierarchy of values. The US has tried to resolve the
tension between liberalism and pluralism by developing a powerful national
myth. Even if this were desirable in Britain, it is probably not possible to
emulate. Indeed, the idea of fostering a common culture, in any strong sense,
may no longer be possible either. One only has to try listing what the elements
of a common culture might be to realise how hard it would be to legislate for.
That does not mean that the idea must be abandoned; rather, it should inform
public policy as an underlying assumption rather than a set of policies.
Immigration and welfare policies, for example, should be designed to reduce the
fear of free riding, and the symbolic aspects of citizenship should be
reinforced; they matter more in a society when tacit understandings and solidarities
can no longer be taken for granted. Why not, for example, a British national
holiday or a state of the union address?
Lifestyle
diversity and high immigration bring cultural and economic dynamism but can
erode feelings of mutual obligation, reducing willingness to pay tax and even
encouraging a retreat from the public domain. In the decades ahead European
politics itself may start to shift on this axis, with left and right being
eclipsed by value-based culture wars and movements for and against diversity.
Social democratic parties risk being torn apart in such circumstances, partly
on class lines: recent British Social Attitudes reports have made clear the
middle class and the working class increasingly converge on issues of tax and
economic management, but diverge on diversity issues.
The anxieties triggered by the asylum seeker inflow
into Britain now seem to be fading. But they are not just a media invention; a
sharp economic downturn or a big inflow of east European workers after EU
enlargement might easily call them up again. The progressive centre needs to
think more clearly about these issues to avoid being engulfed by them. And to
that end it must try to develop a new language in which to address the
anxieties, one that transcends the thin and abstract language of universal
rights on the one hand and the defensive, nativist language of group identity
on the other. Too often the language of liberal universalism that dominates
public debate ignores the real affinities of place and people. These affinities
are not obstacles to be overcome on the road to the good society; they are one
of its foundation stones.
People
will always favour their own families and communities; it is the task of a
realistic liberalism to strive for a definition of community that is wide
enough to include people from many different backgrounds, without being so wide
as to become meaningless.
The next issue of Prospect will
include some short responses to "Too diverse?" from Bernard Crick,
John Denham MP, Meghnad Desai, Amitai Etzioni, Nathan Glazer, Will Kymlicka,
Anand Menon, Anshuman Mondal, Sarah Spencer, David Willetts and others.