Counterterrorism: Communities

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chairman of the charity Near Neighbours. There is no doubt that we are living in worrying and distressing times, and I thank my noble friend Lady Mobarik for facilitating this debate today.

It is, of course, important that where necessary there is a military response to violent extremism and that we build robust security and intelligence services. But we also need to do the work of building relationships between communities in neighbourhoods. Integration is the best antidote to radicalisation, with all communities and individuals having a sense of being able to invest in building British society.

Previous policies, such as multiculturalism, have created a climate of separation. We now need actively to build relationships across communities with different views of living together well. There is a significant consensus on integration that is contrary to the commonly held view that suggests that there is great opposition to it. This consensus on integration is held across the country, so we need to see integration as an important policy objective. In Sunder Katwala’s research, The Integration Consensus: British Future 2014, 83% fully agreed and only 3% disagreed with the following statement:

“To belong to our shared society, everyone must speak our language, obey our laws and pay their taxes—so that everyone who plays by the rules counts as equally British, and should be able to reach their potential”.

The Church of England’s Near Neighbours programme, supported by the Department for Communities and Local Government, has been building links across communities for the past five years. The Near Neighbours programme has reached more than 1.3 million people, encouraging the individuals taking part to work together on social action projects in their community. Such community projects create trust between individuals. When individuals in communities trust each other, it becomes possible to tackle extreme voices. It strengthens the capacity of local people and communities to respond to their own needs, building up social cohesion using relational methods. This approach builds relationships and attracts and uses co-option to bring about change.

I would like to share just a few brief examples of Near Neighbours projects with your Lordships. Rabbi Tanya and Sajid together teamed up a synagogue and a Muslim charity to feed the homeless in Nottingham; a Muslim and a Jew are prospering in peace as they work to make their community stronger.

In east London, the programme has brought together a rabbi and a group of young Muslim men to talk about Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. In Bradford, the synagogue was about to close as the roof needed repairs. The congregation did not have the money to pay for the work. The members of the mosque and the synagogue met through a Near Neighbours project. Now, the local mosque has funded the repairing of the synagogue roof, which I think must be one of the most unusual combinations to imagine—but it has happened, much to our delight. There are many other projects, involving Christians, Hindus and people of other faiths and none, but there is not time to mention them all.

Community approaches such as Near Neighbours tackle the root of the problem of extremism. They are about changing hearts and minds. They therefore create a sustainable way forward and need to be part of the response to the Paris attacks. It is separation that makes hate possible, because people do not have a real human interaction with others who are different, and it is hate that makes violence possible: it allows people to dehumanise others. We have to tackle the violence through security measures, but we need also to tackle the hate and separation. It is much better when it is tackled through good community relations, where myths can be challenged and human encounter can do its work, helping people to recognise that they may have differences but that they have a great deal in common, not least sharing a common humanity.