Wednesday, April 07, 2004

Multiculturalism, Trevor Phillips and Polly Toynbee

In February David Goodhart published an interesting essay suggesting that there may be a tension between diversity and solidarity. It appeared in Prospect magazine and the Guardian.

The essence of his argument was conveyed in a quotation from the Conservative shadow minister David Willetts.

"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 that 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 that 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 United States 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."

I hope this is overly pessimistic, but it is surely worth thinking seriously about the implications of multiculturalism.

Not it you believed Trevor Phillips back in February.

The Guardian printed a lot of reactions to Goodhart's article, and Phillips' was extraordinarily mean-spirited.

"Is this the wit and wisdom of Enoch Powell? Jottings from the BNP leader's weblog? Actually they are extracts from an article in the Observer, penned by the liberal intellectual David Goodhart, who I have always suspected is too brainy for his own good."

It is customary for anyone from outside the left-wing establishment who seeks to discuss race to be branded a racist. (If you believe in conspiracy theories, this serves to keep most well-meaning people in a state of permanent nervousness about the whole topic and so creates plenty of job opportunities for those who claim expertise in the area.) Even so, Phillips' charge that Goodhart is "too brainy for his own good" adds a thuggish note all his own.

But a few weeks is a long time in politics, and the Observer for 4 April reported:

In a newspaper interview the head of the Commission for Racial Equality said that "multiculturalism suggests separateness" and added that the UK should strive towards a more homogeneous culture with "common values ... the common currency of the English language, honouring the culture of these islands, like Shakespeare and Dickens".

I am all in favour of Shakespeare and Dickens - shouldn't Phillips be concerned that they will appeal to the "brainy"? - but this is an extraordinary about face.

I suspect the explanation lies in the fact that Phillips is a creature of the New Labour leadership, and that leadership is panicking about immigration and is afraid that multiculturalism plays badly with swing voters.

Polly Toynbee is very keen on the new Phillips in today's Guardian. In a nasty piece she appears to view immigrant communities which retain their own values as intrinsically threatening. "Phillips says it was an error to let alien communities stay in their silos." Alien? Silos?

Toynbee loves the most toe-curlingly embarrassing of Phillips ideas: "Phillips proposes a universal coming-of-age ceremony to give meaning to adult citizenship, along with the right to vote and eventually receipt of the matured baby bond."

So people will set aside the religion of their ancestors in order to have their adults lives given meaning by the cheesiest aspects of New Labour?

Even for Polly Toynbee, that is a pretty silly thing to believe.

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