The Hindu : International : `Shed multiculturalism'

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Sunday, Apr 04, 2004

International

International

`Shed multiculturalism'

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON: Goodbye multiculturalism, welcome to a culturally integrated Britain. This is the new line from Britain's Commission for Racial Equality, which ironically, was created to promote multiculturalism. Its chairman, Trevor Phillips, himself of Guyanese origin, has admitted that the idea does not work any more and the time has come to give it a decent burial. This, he says, should be replaced by a greater assertion of common British `values' overriding racial and cultural differences. "The word (multiculturalism) is not helpful. It means the wrong things. We are in a different world from the Seventies. What we should be talking about is how we reach an integrated society, one in which people are equal under the law, where there are some common values-democracy rather than violence, the common currency of the English language, honouring the culture of these islands, like Shakespeare and Dickens,'' he said. Mr. Phillips' remarks in an interview to The Times came amid a raging controversy over the perceived failure of immigrant communities, especially the Muslims, to embrace `Britishness' to a point where they cease to see themselves as culturally separate. Mr. Phillips, who has been accused by his own community of being too close to the white establishment, denied that he was against preserving cultural diversity but said that the stress should be on integrating the society around a "core of Britishness''. "We must assert that there is a core of Britshness,'' he said arguing that multiculturalism should not mean encouraging separateness. His remarks were endorsed by the controversial right-wing Tory figure, Norman Tebbit, who outraged the immigrants in the eighties by proposing a cricket `loyalty' test for them. They were to be judged loyal only if they cheered the England cricket team against cricketers from their native countries.

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