Confront hard truths to improve integration

In Telford, as with the Trojan Horse plot, we are slow to react for fear of being called racist

Sajid Javid told a story yesterday about how he used to miss school regularly to visit the doctor with his mother. This was not because he was ill, but because, more than a decade after coming to Britain from Pakistan, his mother could not speak English and needed her son to translate for her.

As a Muslim, and the son of migrant parents, the Communities Secretary lacks the embarrassment of many politicians in asking people from minority communities to integrate, and wanting to build an inclusive yet distinctly British identity. He knows, too, that integrating is not only about individual will; it also requires support. It is unsurprising, therefore, that Javid’s new integration strategy provides a sensible balance between helping people to help themselves, and demanding more active citizenship.

The strategy is unflinching in its description of a country that, despite many successes, remains too segregated. It reports that 770,000 adults in England cannot speak English and that 60 per cent of minority ethnic children attend schools where they form a majority. And Britain’s concentrated minority communities are growing in number: in 2011, 429 council wards were majority nonwhite, compared to 199 in 2001.

According to Dame Louise Casey, upon whose report the strategy is based, segregation is more prevalent among Muslims and people of Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnicity. Birmingham, Blackburn, Bradford and Burnley all have wards with Muslim populations of between 70 and 85 per cent. Half of British Pakistanis marry in Pakistan, often to a cousin or a member of their extended family. A study at Bradford Royal Infirmary found 80 per cent of babies of Pakistani ethnicity had at least one parent born outside Britain.

This matters because communities that are cut off from one another cannot know one another. And when that happens, society is weaker. Trust can give way to fear, and solidarity to suspicion. Intolerance and hatred can grow. And beliefs that should not be acceptable in a liberal country like ours can too often be tolerated.

So the measures in yesterday’s strategy – which include plans to get more people speaking English, support people from under-employed groups into work and empower women in minority communities – are important.

This is no more than a start, however. For the Government’s integration strategy to work, so too must its counter-extremism strategy. Because extremists do not want us to live together peaceably and they reject the liberal, pluralistic values of our country.

The Trojan Horse plot in Birmingham is a good example. Ofsted’s investigation found an “organised campaign” to target secular, state schools to “alter their character and ethos” based on a “narrow faith-based ideology”. The main ringleader, Tahir Alam, is now banned from involvement in all schools in England. Yet the campaigning organisation Mend (Muslim Engagement and Development), still holds events telling local parents that Trojan Horse was a Government conspiracy to “stigmatise” the Muslim community. The events have been attended by Kevin Courtney from the National Union of Teachers. And yet senior politicians, including Jeremy Corbyn, Vince Cable and Baroness Warsi continue to support Mend on other issues.

The Government says similar “unacceptable practices” have been discovered in schools elsewhere. Extremists have also tried to use supplementary schools – which are often religious in character – to influence young people, and they operate successfully within colleges, universities, charities and prisons. More must be done to stop them.

The problem, however, is not limited to ideological extremists. Some extremism is cultural and no less pernicious for it. Thousands of cases of “honour violence” are recorded every year, forced marriage and polygamy are illegal yet prevalent, and 170,000 women here live with the consequences of female genital mutilation.

But it is not just within minority communities that we find the victims of this kind of behaviour. We have learnt this week more details of how a gang of mainly Muslim men from Telford systematically raped white, working-class girls over many years.

After similar cases, in Bristol, Oxford, Rochdale and Rotherham, we know that sex abusers are not disproportionately likely to be from any one racial or religious group. But when these crimes are committed by gangs there is evidence they are more likely to be perpetrated by Pakistaniheritage men targeting vulnerable, white, working-class girls.

In each of these cases, the authorities have been slow to react because of concerns about being seen to be racist. This has to stop. To prevail against extremism and build a more integrated, cohesive society, we have to confront difficult issues. In Mr Javid, we may well have a minister brave enough to do so.