Public Life: Values

Baroness Mobarik Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Mobarik (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, for initiating this debate. I grew up in a Muslim household, an immigrant child of immigrant parents who held certain values stemming from their religion and culture. I received my formal education in a typical Scottish Presbyterian state school where I was instructed in certain values to live my life. There was no conflict between the two. The values were the same—hard work, patience, loyalty, compassion for those less fortunate, charity, public service, respect for other religions, aspiration to succeed and, most importantly, abiding by the law of the land where one lives. If the values of both cultures I inherited are so much the same, I ask myself, “Where did it all go wrong?”. Why are there such divisions—or perceived divisions—in our society, especially concerning members of my religious and ethnic community?

We must first understand what we mean by communities and what we mean by culture. When we speak of ethnic communities we must remember that these are not homogenous entities; they are diverse, just as diverse as the indigenous society at large. They are a microcosm of the countries from which they originate. Diversity is part of humanity; it is, indeed, the shared values which make sense to any civilised society, bind us together and provide social cohesion.

For a long time, diversity or multiculturalism were celebrated and encouraged on this island. Indeed, I believe that we were, for a while, quite comfortable as a society. Our nation worked hard to bring about equality through race relations and equality legislation. Ethnic communities of many hues enriched the lives of this nation: the food that we eat, the colours and clothes that we wear and the music that we listen to have changed beyond recognition from the days when I came to live here as a little child. It is deeply disappointing to think that multiculturalism was simply a failed experiment. The celebration of multiple religions, ethnicities and cultures is now understood to have done little in the way of social cohesion.

I argue that it is not multiculturalism per se which was at fault but the way that we went about promoting it. For too long, people were encouraged actively to withdraw into silos and given funding for separate organisations. We cannot encourage people to live separate lives and then expect them to be full and active members of mainstream society. Diversity is one thing, division is another. Along with the celebration of diversity must come a single narrative of nationhood, where people feel that they belong.

We all have a huge task in front of us to tackle the root causes at the heart of this disaffection, to remind people, particularly the young, of our shared values and to foster acceptance that there will always be some differences but that the core values are the same. What binds us as British citizens is far greater than that which divides us. The point I make to the Minister is that in our efforts to promote the shared values that underpin British public life, we should bear one thing in mind—that just because we got multiculturalism wrong, we must not be reactive, go to the other extreme and impose assimilation. That would merely be intolerance, something we can ill afford in what can often seem an increasingly fractured society.