Community leaders and Britain's colonial past

Sunny at Pickled Politics reckons that Ruth Kelly's support for the British Muslim Forum is a sign that the government is preparing to dump the MCB.  While this might be a good move in some respects, he argues, it also shows that the government's attitude to minority communities is similar to that of the British Raj.  He's right.  Since the 1950s, British governments have tried to deal with ethnic minorities using the same formula they applied to running the British empire. It has proved to be a dismal failure.

Each country's response to mass immigration reflects its history. Britain's peculiar brand of multiculturalism is a legacy of the Empire. During the colonial period, the British controlled a fifth of the world with a relatively small army.  They were able to do this because they co-opted local rulers and made them junior partners.  African tribal chiefs and Indian princes were offered a deal.  They were expected to acknowledge British supremacy, to support British rule in the event of any insurrection, to pay a nominal tax or tribute, to give trading rights and mining concessions to British merchants and, most importantly, to keep their own followers in order. In return, they were given lucrative trade monopolies and supplied with weapons to help them maintain their power. Their control over local affairs was publicly acknowledged by the British administration and sometimes the local rulers were awarded British honours and titles.

From the British perspective, the system worked well. Only 20,000 British troops and administrators were needed to rule over 300 million Indians while African rulers helped the British to extend their rule from the coast and into the continent's interior. These policies became the British establishment's template for dealing with potentially unruly colonial subjects. 

Although most of the Empire's administrators are dead, this template was passed down to their successors in the civil service.  Consequently, whenever the British government is faced with trouble in Africa or the Middle-East, its instinctive reaction is to look for allies. In the British occupied areas of Iraq and Afghanistan, the army has attempted to co-opt local leaders to help keep the peace. Last summer Nick Cohen raged about the Foreign Office's attempts to develop an alliance with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.  It may sound crazy but, to the FO, the Muslim Brotherhood is growing in power and is not part of Al-Qaeda, which makes it an ideal partner.  By doing a deal with one lot of Islamists, you set up a counterweight to the other lot.  Nick Cohen was angry but he shouldn't have been surprised. That's the way the British have always done things.   

So, when the children of those colonial subjects came to settle in Britain, it was only natural for the British establishment to manage the situation in the same way. As racial tensions developed, the government sought out its latter day maharajahs in the form of so-called community leaders.  During the inner city disturbances of the 1970s and 80s, these community leaders saw their power enhanced as the authorities sought to negotiate with the rioters.  With the protests against Rushdie's Satanic Verses in 1989, Muslim leaders found themselves in a similar position.

Just as the maharajahs were, the community leaders are offered a deal. In return for controlling the more violent elements and helping to keep order, they are co-opted into the outer fringes of the establishment. Membership of local committees, involvement in state funded projects and consultation on local issues help to build up the local leaders' prestige.  Political parties, especially the Labour party, often sign up the community leaders as local council candidates, drawing them and, hopefully, their communities into the party fold.

For the Muslim Council of Britain, this political patronage was especially important.  Although it was not officially formed until 1997, its roots go back to the time of the Rushdie troubles. The formation of the MCB was enthusiastically encouraged by the Home Office under Michael Howard, during the mid 1990s. Once again, the British establishment, when faced with rioting brown people, resorted to its tried and tested solution - create an organisation to channel the discontent. That way, you know who you are dealing with and you can exert some control over the unruly mob.

Arab journalists Saleh Bechir and Hazem Saghieh claim that the whole idea of the "Muslim Community" is a European invention.  This may be a slight overstatement but the term was not common in the UK before the Rushdie affair.  The British government may not have invented the idea of a British Muslim community but it certainly colluded in its creation.

Indian writer Amyarta Sen agrees.  In this interview with Kenan Malik he attacked this very British form of multiculturalism:

Sen is particularly critical of the ways in which communitarian notions of identity have found their way into social policy, especially through the ideas of multiculturalism, and in so doing have diminished the scope for individual freedom. 'I am not opposed to multiculturalism', he says. 'But I am opposed to the way it has been interpreted. There are two basically distinct approaches to multiculturalism. One concentrates on the promotion of diversity as a value in itself. The other focuses on the freedom of reasoning and decision-making, and celebrates cultural diversity to the extent that it is freely chosen. The way that British authorities have interpreted multiculturalism has very much undermined individual freedom. A British Muslim is not asked to act within the civil society or the political arena but as a Muslim. His British identity has to be mediated by his community.'

What policymakers have created in Britain, Sen suggests, is not multiculturalism but 'plural monoculturalism', a system in which people are constantly herded into different identity pens. 'Take the case of the Bangladeshis', says Sen. 'Bangladesh's separation from Pakistan was not based on their religion but on their language, their literature and their secular politics. At the time of independence Bangladeshis who came here had a very strong sense of Bengali identity. But all that disappeared, because the official government classification ignored language, culture and secular politics, and insisted on viewing all Bangladeshis as Muslims. Suddenly they had lost all identity other than being Islamic. And suddenly Bangladeshis stopped being Bangladeshis and were merged with all other Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia.'

'We have a system in which Muslim organisations are in charge of all Muslims, Hindu organisations in charge of all Hindus, Jewish organisations in charge of all Jews and so on'. This parcelling out of the nation can only weaken civil society.

Similar policies may have helped Britain to run a polyglot empire but they are not much use in a modern democracy.  Muslims, for example, are geographically dispersed and speak many different languages.  There are hundreds of diverse Muslim communities in the UK. To try and deal with them all through one organisation is absurd.

Yet the assumption that there is a single Muslim community still underpins much of the government's rhetoric.  For example, the Muslim community has been urged to do more to combat extremism and terrorism in its own ranks. This is ridiculous.  An Iranian cafe owner in Kensington has no more influence over a group of second-generation Pakistani youths, hell bent on blowing up the tube, than I have.

And that is a critical flaw in the whole model. Under the British Empire, tribal leaders and maharajahs were expected to keep their followers under control. Iqbal Sacranie may have had the full maharajah treatment, going from organising anti-Rushdie protests to sitting with government ministers in ten years, but he couldn't stop the bombing of the London tube. Sir Iqbal got his knighthood but didn't keep his side of the bargain. Although he may not have known it, he was only invited into the corridors of power on the assumption that he could channel Muslim aggression into the political process. Now that the MCB has both failed to stop the extremists and appears to be colluding with some of them, the government is looking around for new allies in the form of the British Muslim Forum.  Of course, this won't work either.  The days when the authorities could do deals with leaders who could control their violent followers are long gone. 

The other major problem with this approach is that, as Sen says, this parcelling out of identities encourages people to see themselves as members of religious or cultural groups and weakens civil society. If one group is seen to be getting more attention and preferential treatment, other groups will start to make similar demands. Here is Sunny again:

During the past decade, a group of self-appointed representatives has sprung up, including the Hindu Council UK and Hindu Forum of Britain; the Network of Sikh Organisations, the Sikh Federation and Sikh Human Rights Group; and the Muslim Council of Britain and Muslim Association of Britain, all claiming to speak on behalf of all Hindu, Sikh and Muslim citizens.

Of these, the MCB is the oldest, having been set up in 1997. In contrast, most Sikh and Hindu organisations have sprung up in the past two or three years, jealous of the attention showered on the MCB.

And if you are not a member of an oppressed minority, you can always become one.  Christian organisations are now getting in on the act too. In a BBC poll last week, 25% of Christians said that they felt discriminated against at work.  Well they would, wouldn't they?  In a plural monoculturalist society you need to be part of an oppressed group to get your voice heard.  If Iqbal Sacranie can get a knighthood for leading Britain's Muslims, perhaps Stephen Green could get one for being the voice of oppressed Christians.

Potentially, these policies could lead to a system of Ottoman-style millets in which group rights become more important than individual rights. Again, this was a tried and tested system for running a multi-ethnic empire but it goes against all the assumptions on which liberal democracies are built.

It's time we dumped all these government-appointed community leaders and stopped creating artificial communities for them to lead.  The British Empire disappeared fifty years ago. Maharajahs have no place in twenty-first century Britain.

Comments

[G. Tingey]

Move number one:

Hang every priest you can find .....

THEN you might stand a chance?

[Umbongo]

It's a very interesting and plausible argument. Let me extend it a bit further. The template worked under the Empire for, at least, one other reason: that if the local rulers didn't play ball, not only were they replaced but they and the people they ruled knew that sufficient force could (and would) be brought to bear to enforce the will of the British. Certainly, domestically, that will has now disappeared. Our rulers may be interested in dealing with the disparate "communities" of the UK but, unless the "community" is indigenous, white, English and nominally Christian, there is absolutely no stomach for conflict of any sort.

If these opinion polls reflect anything like reality, then a colonial-type adminstration would have done something: the desirability of the continuation on imperial territory of such a potentially disruptive minority would have been the subject of a serious review. Forget about imperial politics, giving local "community leaders" (or anybody else) forewarning of police action to enforce the ordinary criminal law would not be on the agenda. On the contrary, a show of force in pursuit of preventing serious crime would be part of the process of ruling: it would show those considering opposition that the rulers meant business: it would show the law-abiding that the rulers were willing to uphold the law without fear or favour.

Unfortunately, the domestic lesson learned from the law enforcement and communitarian policies of the last 40 years (at least here in the imperial territory of London) is that sensible citizens should look to the mafia of community "leadership" for a semblance of protection rather than directly to the "service" led by the bien pensant and complaisant members of ACPO.

[Sunny]

You couldn't have hit that nail on the head any better I have to say. A stellar piece of writing that pretty much sums up all I wanted to say on the issue.
Will be linking this.

[Laban Tall]

Hi Steve - off topic but the link fell off when I moved to shiny new Blogger templates. God knows what else has gone missing.

It'll return - honest.

[Shade]

Not sure I agree with all but the last paragraph. Heres why:

How does this stack up against identity politics? CAIR has as much power as the MCB in being the voice of a 'community' - the latter evolved from american civil rights movements not Empire templates. If the success of the likes of the MCB is down to a British Empire template then how does that extend to our american cousins who have the same problem, coined the term 'communities' and from whom we picked up political correctness into the 'bargain'.

What about the role of the media in the above - the MCB became more powerful because of their profile. Their success and downfall has been and will be largely dependent on this. Again identity politics has created the need for a media go to. Another example of this is rights groups who use the exact same template.

Lastly - where religions are political yet there is no one leader or body of leaders to speak for a religious group. The government is treating all religions as the same. so are secularists. And yes it is absurd but then politicians and rights groups tend to talk FOR me but arent truly all representative. So where a religion is used as a political means to an end you have the same problem with representation.

Regards a co-opt for local leaders to help keep the peace in Afghanistan - i agree we use the same template to win hearts and minds and it has to be said quite successfully. Not so sure its working in NI.

[G. Tingey]

But all religions ARE the same ...

They are all blackmail.

What do you think the MCB and those even further into islamic fascism are doing, except blackmailing us, and the "government"

[sonia]

the plural monoculturalism term makes sense to me. I agree that the 'maharajahs' have no 'place' but the aspect which you seem to leave out is the social legitimacy these 'maharajas' seem to have. Yes i agree there is a problem with Government/s playing into the hands of such 'community dynamics' but it would be simplistic to imagine that those dynamics aren't there. I'm not suggesting that you are saying they aren't there ---but that needs to be taken into account. Also there are problems with 'representation' in general - regardless of race or religion - i.e. problems with representation apply to 'non-brown' people.

[Steve]

Sonia, how much legitimacy do these community leaders have?

As you say, isn't the answer to improve representation for everyone, regardless of colour, rather than to seek the mediation of unelected representatives?

Plural monoculturalism could slide into a latter-day tribalism, which could potentially undermine democracy and the rule of law. It's a dangerous road.

[KB Player]

I don't know if what you say is true but it sounds horribly convincing - order at all costs and by whatever means.