A failure of multiculturalism

PLURALISM has been a topic of great interest for a long time — but it just got more interesting. Look at the last few months: the birth of the "English Defence League" (and its offshoot, the "Scottish Defence League"), a far-right white nationalist group in the UK.

With its emergence, obviously, its opponents are more concerned than ever to produce a response that can protect and defend pluralism in the UK — around the Western world, both now and recently, similar situations can be seen, with their corresponding reactions.

All of these reactions are quite understandable, and many of the intentions behind them could be considered very laudable. But sometimes they can go off track, or be unfulfilled — and it is important to get these things right.

It would be silly to mistake the English Defence League as a radical, fringe, crazed grouping of people, who had no relationship whatsoever to wider British society. Unfortunately, one can easily see that as the rhetoric in the mainstream has become more and more tolerant of frightful intolerance, it became more acceptable for a group like the English Defence League to form itself.

This is not to say that British society as a whole, or the British right-wing as a whole, is responsible for the EDL. The point is that the EDL might never have been born if the discourse in the UK had not come to this point of blurring the lines between what was acceptable and what was not in terms of race relations discourse.

The emergence itself of the EDL (and this can be extrapolated to many other European countries who have seen the rise of the far-right again) is not something we can understand by just looking at 2009. The roots of this are far older — and perhaps a key event was the failed victory of the multiculturalist movement in the 1990s. Yes, I did write "failed victory" of the multiculturalist movement. Its something we need to understand as we respond to, and hopefully overcome, the next phase of the far-right in Europe. (And I did write "movement", as opposed to "ideology" — but going into that will be another article — please watch this space.)

We have to remember where this began. As European countries began to experience wide-scale immigration in the 1950s onwards, the faces of their societies changed forever.

Decades later, it became clear that the immigrants, their children and increasingly their grandchildren were going nowhere, unlike what Europe (and the first generation of most immigrants) had thought. They were there to stay — and Europe had to figure out what to do.

But to begin with, Europe did not want to admit how much had to change. People tend to remember this period with less sympathy than it is due — yes, huge swathes of Europeans did not wake up suddenly and welcome all the changes that they had endured in such a short time. And quite frankly, no one should have expected them to — what society has reacted to such change in such a short time with exemplary behaviour?

Actually, we can't compare it to any other time — the modern world of the 20th century saw more widespread population change than any time in human history. Yet, unlike other historical periods, Europe in the second half of the 20th century, probably due to the incredible failures it displayed in protecting its own citizens in the first half, did response positively.

Multiculturalism was that response — and in the 1990s, it seemed to have won the battle. Multiculturalists across the world spoke of how notions of national identity in the 20th century that had been so narrow, were finally opened up due to multiculturalism. From that point on, it seemed that pluralism and respect for diversity would be the default — and narrower versions of what it meant to be European/British/French/German/etc. would have to prove their worth in light of the multiculturalist movement.

Obviously, the far right (and certain portions of the right) did not take this lying down — but their time had passed. The left was regaining ground across Europe, and the centre also had a great deal of sympathy for the claims of minority groups, with some right-wing sectors of the political spectrum (particularly as minority groups slowly moved up the economic ladder), expressing support.

Huge majorities of European populations accepted that what might have constituted European identity 50 years previously would not be sufficient any longer. Multiculturalism had scored a great victory. The biggest problem was a failure of multiculturalism — not "the" failure, which is what the far-right would have us believe. But "a" failure — which was, in the wake of destroying a narrow version of national identity, multiculturalists did not provide a replacement that gained sufficient ground across Europe. At the time, fortunately, European societies didn't need that replacement.

Then, 9/11 happened. The far-right had a new target. Race became less noticeable — but religion became moreso. Looking back on the material of groups like the British National Party in the last 10 years, race was given less emphasis — and religion was increasingly the fault line: in particular, Islam. With 7/7 and the Madrid bombings, that was sealed.

Years later, history has shown that partly due to the absence of a sustainable notion of national identity, the far-right has managed to deliver some of their ideas far beyond their small constituency. It's not just a few radical nuts that believe that Islam and the West are on a cultural collision course on the streets of European cities; significant portions of all sectors of the political spectrum are sympathetic to that idea.

In that sense, the far-right has achieved a victory. They could incite a much more significant one: a redesigning of national identity that would put Muslims, Asians, Turks, Arabs, blacks, and many other groups outside the definition of "British"/"French"/"German"/etc. Such a definition would be wrong, but it would be attractive, due to its simplicity. They have a chance to do precisely that — the fears of many in Europe about Muslim Europeans will surely be an asset in that regard. But it's not a foregone conclusion — because the truths of multiculturalism still remain. They deserve to be defended.

Dr HA Hellyer is the author of "Muslims of Europe: the 'Other' Europeans" (Edinburgh University Press), is Fellow of the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick and Director of The Visionary Consultants Group (VCG Ltd) UK, Egypt & Malaysia.

The Brunei Times