Cameron's 'British values' are a 'tasteless soup' says academic

DAVID CAMERON'S call for Britain to become 'far more muscular' in promoting British values was criticised by sociologist Dr Daniel Nilsson DeHanas.

Dr DeHanas said that David Cameron's list of British values – which included tolerance and respecting the rule of law – risked becoming a universal 'tasteless soup of everything good in the world'.

Speaking on Thursday at the Christian-Muslim Forum’s ‘Multiculturalism: Problem or Solution’ debate in London's East End, Dr DeHanas said: ‘The difficulty is British values are either a tasteless soup of everything good in the world, universal values, or they’re an excuse to force people to assimilate into a culturally-specific view of what the world should be.’

Britishness

Dr DeHanas argued that Britishness should instead be an ‘inclusive identity’ based on citizenship so that people of every background can ‘fit into Britishness’.

The sociologist suggested politicians should focus on making Britishness a ‘multicultural identity’. He also encouraged ‘healthy, hyphenated identities’ (British-Muslim, Black-British), describing them as ‘dynamic’.

The University of Kent based scholar said Britain had never adopted a set of policies toward multiculturalism and so the Prime Minister’s suggestion in 2011 that state multiculturalism had failed was inaccurate as ‘there was no target to hit’.

‘There’s never been a centralised view of being multicultural. The highest point was after the Stephen Lawrence murder. There was a report written by Lord Parekh – The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain – that was a quasi-official document that celebrated multiculturalism and talked about what it could be. 

‘That was 2000 and then in 2001 we had 9/11 and that whole conversation broke down.

‘So we could have had a more fully formed set of multiculturalism policies, but those never actually came about.’

Dr DeHanas warned that ‘not listening to white people at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum’ was hurting Britain’s multicultural efforts.

‘Many times concerns about cultural practices are really concerns about economic disparities. If those were corrected and there was greater equality there would be far fewer problems.’

Dr DeHanas fought back against fears that immigrants do not adopt a sense of Britishness as he said many widely held beliefs about assimilation were in fact ‘myths’. 

‘Some people are concerned that immigrants in general, but Muslims in particular, do not identify as British but actually survey after survey has shown the very opposite. Minorities within British society are the highest identifiers as British.’

The researcher also explained that while much of the media describes Tower Hamlets as having a growing Muslim population, the proportion of Bangladeshi Muslims decreased between 2001 and 2011.

The Muslim Council of Britain has expressed ‘deep concern’ at the ‘tone and tenor over the debate on British values’ and called for a ‘real debate that does not regard us as conditional Britons’.

Marginalised

The news comes in the same week that Lambeth Council published a study that says multicultural timetables in schools may have led to white working class children feeling 'marginalised'.

According to the report, white British pupils from deprived homes often cannot see their lives reflected in a curriculum that promotes Black History Month and cultural days that raise awareness of countries such as Portugal, Poland and Jamaica.

One head teacher told researchers: 'The curriculum that has been on offer has not been meeting the needs of white British pupils. There has been much emphasis in recent years on elements of black history and a celebration of cultural days such as ‘Portuguese day’. There has been nothing for the British culture.

'This might have led to a sense of them losing their identity.'

The debate surrounding British Values and multiculturalism was triggered by the Trojan Horse scandal which revealed the consolidation of strict Islam in Birmingham schools.