Over the past year, crime in general has fallen in Hammersmith & Fulham, but race and religious hate crime has risen, with the Muslim population particularly affected. There are several reasons behind this discrepancy, writes Phil Cooper of Hammersmith and Fulham Refugee Forum (HFRF).
The black Muslim community is experiencing the highest levels of prejudice in the country, Professor Anthony Heath told a meeting at the House of Commons.
In light of antisemitism incidents in France, and new British polling on discrimination, Jemimah Steinfeld investigates the French Jewish community in the UK.
Riz Rehman's parents are from Pakistan and while he describes the country as close to his heart, he says England is ultimately home. "I see myself as British. You know I'm British English, my partner, she is white British and I think now things are a lot more integrated."
Sunder Katwala reflects on what we learnt from focus groups asking people in Leeds and Fareham how integration should work.
What then can we learn about the possibilities of sport, and other areas of common interest, to be a positive force for inclusion and integration? This was the central question at British Future’s Beyond Wembley: What can bring Bradford together? debate held on 26th February at the Carlisle Business Centre in Bradford.
Bradford City versus Swansea City is not the Wembley League Cup final that anybody expected at the start of the football season, with supporters of both clubs looking forward to their first major Wembley final. Days before British Future holds a debate in Bradford, Sunder Katwala asks residents of the city, including season ticket holders, an imam, and the curator of the club museum, what they think about the final and its impact on the city.
In Uniting Our Communities: Integration in 2013, Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP highlights many different ways to make the UK more assimilated, such as elevation of the English language and tolerance of all religions.
The bigger picture suggests the Monarchy ended 2012 more secure than ever. Even when things went wrong, as the Thames river pageant turned into a grey and cold test of endurance in the driving rain, it was the BBC which seemed to cop the flak. The Queen's surprise Olympic contribution to a James Bond stunt helped to seal Danny Boyle's great fusion of the traditional and the modern in the Olympic opening ceremony, writes Sunder Katwala.
It’s good news for those of you in a relationship with someone much wealthier than you, especially if you’re planning to announce it to the family this Christmas: 74% of those questioned in our recent polling would have absolutely no concerns about hearing this news from a family member. Perhaps this is unsurprising – however, our poll also shows that 68% would not be concerned about a family member being in a relationship with someone much poorer, writes Zoe Tyndall from BritainThinks.
Having declared himself a "One Nation" politician at his party conference last Autumn, Ed Miliband was bound to have to say in his speech today how he would promote integration, and common citizenship in a diverse society.
Jessica Ennis has been the face of Britain in 2012. She could stake a fair claim to be “the face of the census” too.
She had to travel past 20 foot posters of herself on the way to compete at her home Olympics, but responded with such a strong performance as to turn the final event of the Heptathlon, the 800 metres, into a double lap of honour. With gold assured, she provided one of the indelible images of our Olympic summer, making sure to sprint first to the line, arms outstretched, breaking through the imaginary finishing tape, arms outstretched, in true Chariots of Fire style.
As Ennis says in her biography, Unbelievable: ’I was unaware at that point that what people would call the greatest night in British athletics – some would even say British sport – was unfolding. I won at 9.04pm. Greg was a few laps into the 10,000 metres final. When he won in the most dramatic fashion, we had three gold medals in less than 45 minutes. Given that we had only won one Gold medal in Beijing, it was an incredible gold rush.’
It was Team GB’s finest hour, halfway through that Olympic fortnight. Britain’s best-selling tabloid, The Sun, was most vocal in suggesting no casting director could have picked a better trio:
‘It was 46 golden Olympic minutes when three young Britons showed the watching world just who we are. A ginger bloke from Milton Keynes, a mixed race beauty from Sheffield, an ethnic Somali given shelter on these shores from his war-ravaged homeland. This is what Britain looks like today … The long-term social ramifications of these Games remain to be seen. Yet the sight of these three Olympians wrapped in the Union Flag will surely do more to inspire than any political words.’
Mo Farah was central to this idea of a ‘new Britishness’. The idea that, in 2012, the flag still needed “reclaiming” from the far right was rather puzzling. “There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack” was a ‘seventies and ‘eighties street slogan of the NF, long ago decisively rejected by a broad majority. There had been no debate, nor novelty, about Linford Christie and Kris Akabusi’s claim to the flag at the Barcelona Games, twenty years earlier, following 1980s stars Daley Thompson and Tessa Sanderson. But Farah also represented three of the forms of otherness – being Somali-born, a Muslim and having a refugee-like trajectory – most often villified in the anxious decade after 9/11.
The coincidental timing of their Gold medals saw Ennis and Rutherford co-star in this modern British triptych. The Sun also celebrated how immigration that had made Jessica Ennis possible, ‘Immigrants like heptathlon queen Jessica Ennis’s dad Vinnie who arrived in this country from Jamaica at the age…
Jessica Ennis has been the face of Britain in 2012. She could stake a fair claim to be “the face of the census” too. She had to travel past 20 foot posters of herself on the way to compete at her home Olympics, but responded with such a strong performance as to turn the final eventI’m a white girl from an academic middle-class Russian family and he is a black French man, born in France to Senegalese immigrants. When I told my mother my boyfriend was black, the first thing she said was: “Will you be able to put up with what the world will think of it?” “It is a different world,” I replied. So far, I have been (almost) right, writes Liza Bel, a radio journalist who now lives in London with her boyfriend.
The 2011 Census results show that those of mixed ethnicity are among the fastest-growing groups in the population. But how will this change the way we think and talk about race in Britain? Bristol University's Professor Tariq Modood, Runnymede Trust's Omar Khan, and writer and broadcaster Kenan Malik offered their answers to this question.
Twenty years ago Time magazine put a composite photograph on its front cover. It was generated by an IBM 486 computer and fused together the phenotypical features of the world’s six main racial groups. The face that emerged was that of a woman with a striking, yet blended, appearance. The purpose was to sneak preview a mid-twentieth century future in which growing global migration and cross marriage would produce Global Woman, writes professor of political science at the University of Sussex Shamit Saggar.
How does class affect British identity? What do the Conservatives have to say about immigration now? And how can ethnic minorities feel like real citizens when their parliament and judiciary aren't representative? These were some of the questions put to the panel at British Future and Bright Blue event The New Patriotism: Beyond the Spirit of 2012.
University of Hull Professor Martin Goodman describes how Polish migrants have become integrated into the Hull community, and how the university is even home now to a Polish consulate.
Anthony Clavane's Does Your Rabbi Know You’re Here? is, as the book’s subtitle makes plain, “The story of English football’s forgotten tribe,” laying out the story of one particular immigrant community’s successful integration into British society, writes Matthew Rhodes.
The Dragons' Den format fringe on immigration and integration backed a practical as well as theoretical citizenship test, but rejected letting the market decide or introducing a faith-preference for persecuted Christians in the asylum process.
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20 Years On: Why anniversary of Stephen’s death is moment to consider modern Britain
20 years on, we can now see that Stephen Lawrence's death has come to play an important symbolic role, Sunder Katwala writes.
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Tags: Britain, British identity, integration, Stephen Lawrence