Big Brother's Not Been Watching Enough: The Hypocrisy Of British Tolerance (Part Four)

In the preceding three entries, I've discussed three examples of how British society and culture deal with beliefs and behaviour that are considered to be 'beyond the pale': instances of radical intolerance or hostility towards the 'tolerant society' that are by that token 'beyond tolerance' – intolerable to the tolerant society. These examples are those of 'racism', 'terrorism' and 'anti-social behaviour'. Britain responds to these phenomena in a manner that is reminiscent of psychological censorship and repression. In Freudian terms, the super-ego (the authorities) suppresses the irrational, violent thoughts and desires of the id (the racist / terrorist / anti-social individual) from the conscious mind or ego (from the public domain) and then keeps jealous watch to make sure that these 'undesirable' tendencies do not re-manifest themselves openly – resulting in them being acted out in another way that eludes the scrutiny and sphere of operation of the super-ego. Hence, the racist, terrorist and lout are placed under a regime of watch and control (Celebrity Big Brother, Control Orders and ASBOs); but their thoughts and they themselves nonetheless elude their detention, because Big Brother has merely suppressed and displaced the forces that drive its enemies, not dealt with them and resolved the conflict.

Notice that I referred to these three forms of antagonism towards tolerance in inverted commas. One of the means by which censorship of these phenomena takes place is that particular individuals are stigmatised and scapegoated as representatives of the tendencies that society wishes to repress. In psychological terms, society projects onto those individuals its stereotypical image of the racist, terrorist and yob. These stereotypes in turn partly represent the racism, destructive violence and anti-social attitudes of normal, tolerant members of society themselves. By then suppressing those individuals and confining them to a limited, private space, society believes that it is dealing with racism, terrorism and mindless thuggery themselves – in the same way, and for the same reason, that respectable and respected members of the tolerant society believe they have resolved these very tendencies in themselves: by locking them up in a private, mental space that does not, and must not, be articulated openly.

In other words, all of us individually, and society as a whole, bear an uncanny resemblance to the racist, terrorist and hoodlum. They are as it were extreme manifestations of our own petty intolerances. But because we cannot admit to being intolerant, violent and anti-social in whichever respects apply to each of us, we end up wanting to suppress those extreme examples rather than deal with the underlying issues, which would involve confronting the 'enemy within' ourselves. That's not to deny that racism, terrorism and anti-social behaviour are real problems in the external world, for which practical solutions need to be sought. On the contrary, no real solution to these issues can be found if we're not prepared to admit that we're also an integral part of the problem.

Putting this in more straightforward language: to what extent really is any kind of understanding of the reasons for antagonism between the different races, nationalities and religions currently crowded together in the UK advanced by merely stigmatising Jade Goody as a racist and reprimanding Channel Four for not censoring material that offended the veneer of British inter-racial, multi-cultural tolerance and harmony? Similarly, we do not know whether the terrorist suspects that escaped from their Control Order detention the other week were really terrorists or not: one of the purposes of Control Orders is to suppress any possibility of public scrutiny of these cases and of an open debate on the grievances of those who might be drawn to terrorist-type violence. Tony Blair said we were placing too much emphasis on the civil liberties of the suspect. But if they're only suspects – assumed to be innocent until proven guilty – surely, they should be accorded every civil liberty. But 'suspect' in Blair's book seems to imply that that they are, and indeed they are treated as, guilty without trial.

Mr Blair himself, of course, has been widely accused of being the equivalent of a terrorist: a war criminal and mass murderer because of the direct and indirect consequences of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Branding someone a terrorist or a war criminal is a way to distance and differentiate oneself from one's enemy: to refuse to see any parallel or linkage between your actions and those of your adversary. And so the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians are not to be compared with those of 2,000 tragic victims of 9/11. The former are a consequence of 'justifiable' resistance to terrorism and defence of Western strategic interests; while the latter are mere terrorism – not an example of an albeit extreme and, in some cases, desperate response to the injustices for which the West is blamed in Palestine and to Western efforts to place the Middle East firmly under its control. And yet millions of tolerant British citizens gave Mr Blair their approval for the Iraqi foray – apparently accounting the lives of Arab civilians that would be lost as of less importance than those of the Westerners supposedly threatened by Saddam's WMD; just as the so-called Islamist terrorists apparently account the lives of Western 'infidels' as of less importance than those of Muslims.

And is the anti-social individual really any more anti-social than the mass of citizens who pursue their private interests and preoccupations with little concern for those who get left behind? The 'ASBP' (anti-socially behaving person) is stigmatised, on one level, precisely because (s)he is the symbol of the asocial society we have built: one where there is no longer any real shared vision of the type of society and communities we wish to create and sustain, but where individuals invest their energies and aspirations into their own private realm – their homes, their assets, their careers and relationships. The ASBP is someone who is left behind in this rat race. Deprived of the means, opportunity or ability to strive after these personal goals – and without any social or community network to re-direct their energies – they are people confronted by social indifference and lack of personal purpose. So in a sense, it is inevitable that they take it out on a society that has turned its backs on them and attempt to wreck our nice, quiet, comfortable lives. In this way, the ASBP is perhaps more social than the rest of us: they are crying out for the help and attention of a society that doesn't want to know. Rather than opening out and engaging in the social realm that is falling apart around us, our response to ASBPs exemplifies our own social alienation that has given rise to the anti-social behaviour in the first place: the ASBP is merely suppressed, placed under the terms of an ASBO – made to become merely another private individual that will no longer demand that we reach out to them from beyond the parapets of our homes-as-castles, thereby acting in a social, collective manner that could change all of our lives and begin to re-make a broken society.

Those who we ostracise as beyond tolerance – the racist, terrorist and anti-social person – are, ultimately, symbols of the limits of our own tolerance: of the prejudiced bigot, the supporter of violence and the selfish individualist that we all are to some extent. Overcoming these problems will involve defeating them in ourselves: to love our enemies, indeed, as ourselves.

Big Brother's Not Been Watching Enough: The Hypocrisy Of British Tolerance (Part Three)

Britain is the most extensively watched society in the world, in terms of the number of CCTV surveillance cameras per head of population. Three weeks ago, a senior British policeman criticised the extent of CCTV usage, expressing concern that CCTV was spreading out from the cities into the villages and that Britain was in danger of becoming a Big Brother society.

In my February blog entry, I expressed the view that Big Brother – the Channel Four reality-TV show – was a symbol for British society as a whole, as a meritocracy defined in relation to increasingly amoral market forces. Is it also a symbol for Britain as a CCTV culture: one where recording and viewing of actions and events that have previously been beyond the public view is driven by fear of the hidden forces that threaten to undermine the superficial tolerance of the market society – fear of anti-social behaviour and intentions of every kind, from the random and aggressive vandalism of local yobs to the ruthless and systematic actions of the organised criminal or terrorist?

One might say that CCTV is a prime example of the privatisation of the public domain: not just because the operation of CCTV systems is contracted out to private companies, but because it corresponds to a view of the world that is one of the citizen obsessed by watching what is happening 'out there' in the public space that threatens to overrun the security and control of his / her private realm and create a world of chaos and violence. In this way, CCTV is a way of reclaiming for the private individual a public space that has increasingly come to be seen as alienating and hostile. But at the same time, CCTV confirms and perpetuates that alienation from the public sphere, in that responsibility for making our cities, roads and countryside a secure environment in which the citizen can go about his / her private business is transferred away from individual citizens and 'outsourced' to anonymous 'providers' that are not part of the community they are watching.

Indeed, the extent of CCTV deployment in Britain could be taken as an indicator of the degree to which 'old-fashioned' communities have broken down. In a real community, streets, towns and villages belong to the people who live there, and they in turn have a sense of belonging to their environment and to each other. This is what provides real security: people watch out for each other and care for their environment; and there is not so much of a divide between that external social and physical environment, and the 'private' realm: the one flows into the other. CCTV marks the increasing retreat of individuals into private existences separated from the social and physical environment: into their homes, careers, and ever more atomised nuclear families. The external world beyond these bastions is correspondingly not only perceived as an ever greater threat to assets that are all the more vulnerable the more value is invested in them; but it actually becomes a greater threat. This is because 'the outside' is a space that the individual has absolved him- / herself of responsibility for shaping into a human and caring environment, so effectively handing it over to persons who may not have the individual's or the community's best interests at heart. In this sense, perhaps the encroachment of CCTV into the rural environment demonstrates that communities have increasingly broken down there, too, as well as in the cities.

Despite all of this, surveys show that people generally feel more secure in going about places where CCTV has been installed than where it hasn't. 'Classic' CCTV is more effective at reducing casual crime (such as muggings, car crime and violence against the person) than systematic crime, such as drug or paedophile rings, and terrorism. But even classic CCTV has its limits. Offenders can learn where the blind spots of existing cameras are; and while CCTV has a relative deterrent effect, it cannot really prevent the determined thug or thief from carrying out his / her intentions. In other words, it is no substitute for individuals or, rather, communities taking charge of their own security, and being prepared to keep watch over the places where the camera can't penetrate and to intervene when a criminal act is taking place – and the more people are involved in intervening, the less is the risk of being hurt in doing so. But the absence of such a genuine community-wide response to petty criminality and anti-social behaviour generates the demand for more and more cameras to be deployed to cover those blind spots. And as for the petty criminal or anti-social individual themselves, we simply want them taken out of the public domain, whether through detention in prisons or their equivalent, or through so-called Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs), which – like anti-terrorist Control Orders – simply involve confining the offenders away from our embattled private lives into their own private spaces and homes. In either case, the problem of their intolerable behaviour is not resolved but merely displaced, to re-emerge elsewhere and on a subsequent occasion.

In other words, CCTV, as a response to behaviour that is beyond what a tolerant society can tolerate, illustrates the same ambiguities and inadequacies as Channel Four's Big Brother and Control Orders: while it appears to be a means to place radically intolerant / intolerable individuals under watch and control, it is actually a means of suppressing and censoring such intolerance rather than really dealing with it. The urge to watch such anti-social individuals is driven by a wish not to see them in a public domain that belongs to the tolerant, private individual who keeps themself to themself. The racist, terrorist or thug can continue to be a racist, terrorist or thug in a confined, private space away from our own. But this exile of the racist, terrorist or anti-social individual from our private world and consciousness means that ultimately (s)he will be free to operate in the public realm from which we have retreated.

Big Brother's Not Been Watching Enough: The Hypocrisy Of British Tolerance (Part Two)

Big Brother has also failed in its duty of watchfulness in another respect, it was revealed last week. It appears that three persons who were confined to their homes under the terms of so-called 'control orders' have escaped. Control orders are a set of judicially sanctioned restrictions to certain individuals' liberties (effectively a form of house arrest). This measure is aimed at terrorist suspects, where there may not be enough hard and fast evidence to stand up in a court of law, but where the security forces are sufficiently concerned about individuals' activities to wish to impose forcible constraints upon them.

As a result of the escapes that were publicised last week, the Home Secretary (interior minister) John Reid stated that the UK might have to opt out of some of the clauses of European human rights legislation that limited the scope of control orders. He promised tougher anti-terrorist measures would be introduced before parliament by the end of June, when he and his boss Tony Blair step down. Tony Blair himself pitched into the fray yesterday (Sunday 27 May) by arguing in favour of a new police power to stop and interrogate suspects on the street. The prime minister stated, “We have chosen as a society to put the civil liberties of the suspect, even if a foreign national, first. I happen to believe this is misguided and wrong”. Well, that all depends on what qualifies you as a suspect, I suppose. And are the civil liberties of 'foreigners' any less important than those of UK subjects?

The control order regime, and the fact that it was sufficiently lax to allow these three suspects to escape, is another illustration of the British approach to dealing with radical intolerance, discussed in my last entry in connection with the Shilpa Shetty episode in Celebrity Big Brother. Control orders bear all the hallmarks of a process of suppressing and censoring people and ideas that are 'beyond tolerance', rather than dealing with them in a more publicly accountable way, or even in a more ruthless, systematic fashion that would definitely put them out of circulation. In this sense, control orders already do represent Britain's equivalent to Guantanamo Bay, a direction in which the Northern Ireland minister Peter Hain yesterday warned that the new proposed anti-terrorist measures were taking Britain.

Indeed, what more striking expression of the ambiguity of British 'zero tolerance' towards the radically intolerant could there be than control orders? Individuals are not locked up in a judicial limbo, like Guantanamo (which, to give him his 'credit', Tony Blair has argued that they should be); instead, they are 'politely' removed from the public domain and confined to the private realm of their homes. It is as if the intolerance exemplified by supposed terrorists – like the intolerance to which every citizen is prone to some extent – can be tolerated so long as it is confined to the privacy of the home and the individual's thoughts. And like any form of censorship – political or psychological – the setting up of control orders represents a means not just to suppress the individuals and ideas that are intolerable but also to censor the very mechanisms by which those persons and thoughts are suppressed: the process takes place in a sort of judicial no-man's land, outside of the normal operation of justice, where the facts of the case, the names of the individuals involved, and the values driving the activities of the 'suspects' are removed from the public domain.

In other words, control orders are a very British compromise between wanting / needing to act in a radically intolerant way towards those suspected of threatening the very tolerance upon which our liberal society rests, without having to admit that one is behaving in an intolerant manner. Because of this, control orders do preserve some elements of 'liberty' for those subjected to them: the liberties of private association, conscience and speech. We don't in fact seek to exercise mind control like the Orwellian Big Brother or, arguably, like the mental torturers of Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib. The specific control order that applied to the three escapees must also have allowed them sufficient freedom to meet or communicate with each other to co-ordinate their flight. There is perhaps even an element of British fair play involved: we allow them a bit of slack, on the basis that our gut instinct is that what we're doing to them strictly isn't fair, and on the assumption that they might have the decency to play fair in their turn and not attempt to abscond – and then we get all indignant when they have the temerity to do a runner anyway!

There's an interesting parallel between the control-order evaders and the lack of editorial oversight on which the Shilpa Shetty furore has now been blamed. When what is involved is censorship of something intolerable rather than acknowledging it and attempting to deal with it openly (whether through honest discussion or due legal process), then what happens is that rather than watching the object of suspicion, it is all too easy to take one's eye off the ball: to stop looking at the real issue and the real danger. And then that real threat, which has escaped your attention because you thought you'd placed it under control and then stopped looking at, can elude you and come back to haunt you.

The evasion of the three control-order detainees represents the danger that their actions and ideas could once again impinge upon, invade, the public domain. But in a more profound sense, their evasion presents the threat of an invasion of our privacy. Our confinement of those suspects to 'their own' private space was a means to keep them away from ours. Our British society is a private society, where the individual jealously guards their right to freely pursue their own personal and professional goals (both ever more exclusively defined in the terms of the market society, or 'private enterprise') untrammelled by the claims that religious or ideological absolutism might wish to impose upon them. The 'terrorist' or the 'racist' extremist is a threat to this tolerance based on mutual respect and pursuit of each other's private goals. They must therefore be suppressed, and their intolerance (as is ours) must be relegated to its own private space: the control-order detainees' prison-from-prison that is their home, or the prison of the Big Brother House. If they should get out – even more importantly, if their intolerable ideas should get out and gain hold – then, like the 'racist' outbursts in Celebrity Big Brother, this would indeed be an unbearable invasion of privacy.

Big Brother's Not Been Watching Enough: The Hypocrisy Of British Tolerance (Part One)

Channel Four got rapped on the knuckles this week. An Ofcom report on last January's Celebrity Big Brother criticised it for broadcasting some incidents of abusive behaviour towards the Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty without setting them in context or providing any opportunity for the inappropriate conduct and remarks to be challenged or reprimanded. The consequence was that around 45,000 viewers telephoned in to complain, many of whom regarded the actions of the offensive housemates as tantamount to racist bullying.

This was not in fact racist behaviour, as I've argued in some previous blog entries on the subject. Indeed, the Ofcom report makes no judgement as to whether the actions in question were racist; nor does Channel Four – in the formal apology that it has been obliged to make by Ofcom – accept that it was racist.

The issue that I am mainly interested in here is not a debate on what constitutes racism, or whether racism still has deep roots in British society. Rather, the whole episode casts a fascinating and somewhat dark light on what might lie behind the much-vaunted British value and national characteristic of tolerance; and on how we react to those who attack and threaten the socio-economic system we have built up around it. The question it raises is, how do we – as a nation – tolerate those who are intolerant: those who question the whole liberal basis of our tolerance and who may even seek to overthrow it altogether?

The British solution is not to seek to take on and eradicate intolerant movements and their representatives through direct political action, repressive measures or draconian laws. Such an approach would itself violate the principles of tolerance for the freedoms of others, even – within reason – those who portray themselves as the enemies of our own freedoms. The British method is to suppress and mute intolerance: to censor it and remove from the public domain into the private realm. In this way, we act towards the intolerance of others as we do to our own: we wall it up in the privacy of our thoughts, hearts and homes, and do not allow it to voice and manifest itself in our interactions with others – at least, if we want to be thought reasonable and respectable.

In the case of Big Brother, a group of private individuals are indeed locked away into a sort of home. But here, the reverse process seems to be at work: the people concerned are confined in the Big Brother House in order to be exposed in the public domain, not hidden from it. However, precisely because of the intense public scrutiny to which the housemates are subjected, along with the dictatorial rules that are imposed on them, the participants are placed in a situation where they do in fact have to suppress and hide away their intolerant reactions to one another, along with their self-seeking stratagems and tactics to take advantage of one another and enhance their chances of winning the game. Often, of course, within the intimacy of the 'Diary Room', the contestants will 'open up' and express their irritation or prejudices towards one or other of their co-residents, thereby covering up an attempt to damage the chances of their rivals under the guise of an all too understandable private exasperation at someone they cannot stand – a feeling that they must suppress within the 'public' domain of their interactions with other contestants inside the house.

The whole 'premise' of the Big Brother House is that it blurs the distinctions between the public and private realms in this way. In the case of Celebrity Big Brother, the model of confinement within a private space being designed to at once suppress and expose in the public domain individuals' private thoughts and feelings is complicated still further. In this case, the contestants are already well known to the public. Their sojourn in the BB House therefore appeals to the audience's curiosity to peer through celebrities' public personae and catch a glimpse of their private selves (and even their 'private parts', let's be honest). By contrast, the appeal for the participants themselves is almost the opposite: that the show offers them some further 'exposure', puts them in front of the public eye and offers them a chance to present an attractive public persona, thereby potentially revitalising or relaunching a flagging career.

In this sense, the Shilpa Shetty episode clearly delivered on Celebrity Big Brother's dual selling point: exposing normally suppressed intolerant and aggressive attitudes to the public view; and providing an avenue for a fading Bollywood star to launch her career as a Western movie actress and celebrity. However, the programme has now been adjudged guilty of being too honest and realistic: too much 'reality TV', in fact, and not enough mindless entertainment. Indeed, you could say that the show failed to be sufficiently Big-Brother with regard to the naked hostility that was shown towards Shilpa, expressed and justified – in the eyes of those responsible – in the terms of cultural prejudice and stereotype.

The original Big Brother – the Orwellian one, in the novel 1984 – did not merely seek to watch over the private actions and intimate thoughts of citizens; but, where these were ideologically intolerable, the state sought to transform those thoughts from within by inventing a new form of language – Double Speak – that represented a sort of knowing lie that the individual came to believe because the old honest language came gradually to be forgotten. In the case of Celebrity Big Brother, the show failed to make the outbursts of Jade Goody and others 'acceptable' by presenting them within an editorial context that allowed a politically correct spin to be placed on them and appropriate sanctions on the offending individuals to be imposed. In other words, the programme merely exposed the private prejudices and intolerant reactions of its contestants but did not – unlike its Orwellian predecessor – seek to transform them by making the transgressors publicly confess to their 'crimes' and commit themselves to not 're-offending' in the same way.

Celebrity Big Brother got its brief wrong: its purpose is not merely to expose the ugly face of hidden intolerance but, in fact, to participate in society's attempt to suppress it, in part by narrativising a process whereby individuals come to recognise their faults, reform their ways and reconcile their differences. The object of Big Brother's systematic surveillance, in fact, is precisely not to watch intolerance but to censor it from the public domain. The editorial failings of the programme boiled down to the fact that viewers were indeed forced to watch a spectacle of intolerance. Big Brother may well have been watching the housemates, but it wasn't vigilant: it didn't see what was going wrong early enough in order to prevent it from escalating almost to the status of a crime.

And now, in order to prevent a recurrence, the ordinary, non-Celebrity version of the programme that is once again starting up will itself be watched over. The author of the Ofcom report stated: “I . . . welcome the measures that they have taken to ensure proper and rigorous oversight. We will be watching very closely to ensure that these have the desired effect”. The Commission for Racial Equality also said it would be “keeping a close eye” on the new series of Big Brother: “We will be monitoring it carefully to ensure that such disgraceful behaviour is not repeated”, a spokesman said. And so we now have the 'spectacle' of the watchdogs of the media and of political correctness watching over Big Brother in order to ensure that as Big Brother watches the show's contestants, it keeps a watchful eye over what it is acceptable or not for its viewers to watch. More a case of 'Big Brother, you're being watched' than 'Big Brother is watching you'.

But the one thing we won't be watching, if the regulators get their way, is any all too realistic scenes of unacceptable intolerance.

Big Brother Is Watching You: Why Jade Goody’s Demonisation Was Timely

Big Brother Is Watching You: Why Jade Goody’s Demonisation Was Timely

Let’s accept for the moment that the row about the supposed racist bullying on Celebrity Big Brother has been blown out of all proportion to the actual offence (see blog of 21 January). I’m not saying it wasn’t offensive, as clearly, many thousands of viewers genuinely were offended. But it certainly wasn’t racist. Jade Goody’s words and actions expressed racial prejudices and stereotypes, that’s clear. But that doesn’t equate to racism. Jade didn’t say and do what she did because Shilpa Shetty is ethnically and nationally Indian but because she felt she was being looked down on by someone who thought they were socially superior, and because she was jealous. Bitching rather than bullying.

The terms ‘racism’ and ‘racist’ have become cheapened. Anyone who dares to say or even think anything that implies a prejudiced or negatively stereotypical view of another race or culture can now be labelled a racist; whereas, in fact, such views are an inevitable part of human nature and ignorance, and are often no different from the stereotypes different European nations have always nurtured about each other: French frog’s leg eaters, German sauerkraut munchers, etc. No one would seriously call these ridiculous clichés racist. Or would they? One thing’s for sure, people had better be on their guard from now on and mind their language, because the PC thought police have been alerted: Big Brother is watching us!

The fact that so many worthies – politicians, religious leaders, cultural commentators – have joined in the chorus of condemnation leads one to wonder what particular nerve this incident has touched. Jade has been made a scapegoat: not by the angry lynch mob seizing on a hapless bystander in order to seek vengeance for a violent rape or child abuse; nor by a racist political party blaming the Jew or the Asian for all its countries ills. No, this act of scapegoating has been endorsed by some of the highest moral authorities in the land. So it must be serving a particularly acute purpose for British culture at the present time.

Jade has been made a scapegoat because the BB antics have shown up the claim that Britain is an inherently tolerant nation to be a lie. The reality, as revealed by reality TV, is that we’re all a bit racist like Jade and her co-contestants: carrying within our heads any number of more or less unconscious prejudices about people of other races and cultures, which we perhaps sometimes voice in private or even rehearse in the silent realm of our unspoken thoughts; but never in public, never on TV before an audience of millions. That is clearly unacceptable. It’s unacceptable because it’s broken a taboo that’s become more powerful even than the former sexual taboos. We can now say the F-word as freely as we like; but say or do anything that has a hint of racism about it, and we deserve no place in the Big Brother house.

The important point is that the idea of tolerance has recently become a central plank in the project to define essential British values and virtues around which the integration of different cultures and religions can be achieved. Shilpa Shetty – a sophisticated, Westernised, successful career woman – stands as a symbol for this integration. One could say that she both symbolises the increasing integration of modern India into the global economy and culture, and serves as a model for a similar integration that many would like to see taking place between the West and the Muslim world. In this sense, Ms Shetty is the antithesis of the traditionalist Muslim woman who wears a veil out of deference to her husband and obedience to her faith. Just imagine the furore and international crisis that would have been sparked off if they’d put a devout, veil-wearing Muslim woman into the Big Brother house instead of Shilpa Shetty, and if she’d been the victim of racial abuse and bullying!

That wouldn’t have been racism, though, would it? That would have been, in fact, a rather uncomfortable combination of cultural and religious prejudice, and what many would perceive to be justifiable criticism and suspicion. That perception would be held by many of the people who now condone the scapegoating of Jade Goody for alleged racism. Far better to have an all-too similar example of prejudiced attitudes and behaviour that can be simplistically characterised and vilified as purely racist. Then there can be no confusion between racism and Western hostility towards traditionalist Islam; they can be kept in safe, distinct categories. One is bigoted hatred towards people ‘because of the colour of their skin’; the other is justifiable reluctance to tolerate traditional practices that appear to entrench potentially destructive cultural divisions. One is irreconcilable intolerance of difference; the other is intolerance of irreconcilable difference. However, both embody fear of, and prejudice towards, the Other.

So turning Jade into a hateful caricature of a racist has come at an opportune moment: it allows a clear distinction to be made in the eyes of the British public between unreasonable racism and reasonable criticism of Islam. And, at the same time, the ritualistic collective washing of our hands from the stain of racism allows us to demonstrate to the Muslim community that we are not racist like Jade, nor crudely Islamophobic; but that actually, we believe in fairness, unity and equality between different races and cultures: that – unlike Jade – we do really tolerate difference and wish only to bring about a society in which all people and cultures can be treated with equal respect.

Except that – in the person of Shilpa Shetty – it’s not difference that’s being embraced but a vision of assimilation. Even more than East-West integration, Ms Shetty symbolises the arrival of India as a power in the West: the aspiration of modern India and ethnic Indians to compete on level terms – or even on superior terms – with Western nations on the global stage. Jade, on the other hand, tapped into an undercurrent of resentment about the growing economic and cultural success and influence enjoyed by India and ethnic Indians, in this country and globally. India is asserting itself proudly and rapidly becoming an invaluable cog in the Western economy, which is increasingly dependent on the services and skills provided by Indian firms at a fraction of what they would cost using Western staff. What was especially insulting towards Indians in some of Jade’s remarks was that they exemplified a stereotypical image of India as backward and dirt-poor: an attitude inherited from the era of Empire, when India was indeed in a highly inferior and dependent position in relation to the West; the age of the Indian take-away not that of the Indian take-over.

So it’s not really Indian cultural differences that are being defended in the BB case against the ‘racist’ that wants to keep ‘subordinate’ races in their place. Rather, it’s the right of Indians and India to be more like us – more like us, in some ways, than we even are ourselves. So much so that the posh-speaking Shilpa exemplified almost a complete role reversal: she was the classy, well-mannered ‘princess’ speaking perfect grammatical English; while Jade felt relegated to the category of the retrograde, ill-mannered underclass speaking crude and ungrammatical English. English, in other words, like what it’s spoke in England today; not as in our imperial past, which is how it is learnt in India. Jade’s was the response of the former colonial nation that fears that its former slaves will become its masters: irrational and unjustifiable this may be, but there is not a total absence of anything in reality to make those fears seem believable to some. But for the liberal intelligentsia, Shilpa symbolises a righting of historical wrongs: the right to equal access to the benefits of Western civilisation that were denied to Indians under the Empire. The right, that is, to be an equal partner in our continuing imperialism: the ethical imperialism that seeks the global triumph and vindication of 'our values' – those 'Christo-liberal' values of economic, social and personal freedom, equality and unification to which only the ‘extremist’ (rabid racist or fundamentalist Muslim) could possibly object.

Only those, in other words, who are pariahs because they beg to differ.

Big Brother, Little Britain: Have We Suddenly Become an Intolerant Society?

Big Brother, Little Britain: Have We Suddenly Become an Intolerant Society?

What a lot of cant has been written and spoken about the Big Brother ‘racism’ row this week! For a start, it is not at all self-evident that the behaviour and remarks about the Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty made by celebrity contestants Jade Goody and others do qualify as racism. Prejudiced and insulting they may be; but racism is an extremely strong term. One can have racial prejudices without being racist. Racism implies having a hatred towards an individual or ethnic group simply because of their race or religion. I don’t think Jade Goody’s antagonism was motivated – at least not primarily – by race hate. Channel 4 was right to state that they were unsure whether the hostility shown towards Shetty Shilpa wasn’t more to do with cultural and class differences. And I believed Jade herself when she disowned any racial motivation in what she’d done. Of course, there can be unconscious fear and dislike of other races; but I don’t think any human being alive is totally immune from that.

The reality of whether or not Jade and her co-contestants have acted in a racist way has become less important than the need to banish any appearance of racism from our TV screens. For once, reality TV has done its job and exposed racism for what it mostly is: petty, bound up with silly cultural stereotypes, and just part of the language and coping mechanisms through which people of different classes and backgrounds vent the frustrations of having to live together. But it’s not race hate, in this instance at least.

The irony of it is that it’s some of the champions of Britain’s supposed intrinsic tolerance that have been most up in arms condemning the behaviour of the contestants as symptomatic of – in Archbishop John Sentamu’s words – “an ugly underbelly in society only too ready to point the finger at the foreigner, or those who might not fit in”. Well, I’m sorry; it’s condemnation of Jade in these terms that shows Britain up as an intolerant society just as much as her actual words and actions. Those remarks are classist and prejudiced in their turn: based more on a stereotypical image of ill-educated, working-class racism than the reality of what went on. I think the biblical injunction applies: do not condemn the splinter in your brother’s eye until you remove the plank from your own.

Jade has become if anything more of a scapegoat than the scapegoat she supposedly made Shilpa into. As with any scapegoating, it’s been necessary to distort and exaggerate the supposed evil Jade represents; and then cast it onto an acceptable object for our derision: an ignorant, ‘undeserving’ celebrity from a ‘white-trash’ background. In this way, she can be fully separated out from the mainstream of tolerant, educated, middle-class Britain to which people of all races – such as Shilpa Shetty or John Sentamu – have the right to aspire.

There’s a word for this: inverted racism. But let’s not confuse it with race hate. Let’s just call it verbalising class and cultural prejudice. A necessary outlet, indeed, to ensure we can all still get on together.

Is Tolerance Enough? Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Five)

Is Tolerance Enough? Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Five)

In my blog of 14 December, I examined the question of whether Britain was a tolerant nation, in relation to some of the philosophical and judicial implications of the term. This was in response to recent attempts – by Tony Blair and senior Anglican churchmen among others – to place tolerance at the heart of the new ‘Britology’: the set of core, shared British values that are being advocated as the basis for greater cultural integration and social cohesion in the UK.

In that previous entry, I argued that Britain was not really a tolerant nation in the full sense of the word; but that tolerance on a whole range of cultural and social issues was limited by a moral framework inherited from Christianity (which I am now calling Christo-liberalism, or ‘evangeliberalism’). In particular, this fusion between liberalism and the Christian tradition endows the criticisms of, and potential legal restrictions on, the Muslim veil with a tremendous degree of ambiguity: the veil as a symbol of an intolerant (anti-liberal) culture at odds with ‘our’ tolerance; or the veil as the symbol of radical Islam that provokes fear in us as Christians, and unites us in wishing to exclude that Islam from our culture and even from our land.

Tolerance also refers to personal and, by extension, national characteristics, and these are what I wish to focus on today. As discussed in the entry of 14 December, referring to somebody as a tolerant person can carry a number of implications, some more negative than others. It can imply being over-indulgent towards other people’s foibles; being too passive and timid in accepting anti-social behaviour. Conversely, a tolerant person can mean someone who is possessed of the positive philosophical quality of tolerance: who has strong liberal principles making them a stout defender of the rights of people both to live their lives as they wish and not to infringe the same liberty in others.

Both of these implications are at work in the recent advocacy of tolerance: we Brits are tolerant in a liberal sense but perhaps have tended to be somewhat too indulgent towards other cultures, which may need to change. In addition, both aspects are presented as being fused within the British character, whereby British people are viewed as ‘naturally’ tolerant towards people of different ethnicities and cultures in a broad sense that also includes Western sub-cultures. This tolerance comprises an acceptance of other people in their difference, and a genuine willingness to accord them the right to live and express their culture in Britain. But it also involves qualities of reserve, detachment and fear of difference, whereby different people may be allowed to live in Britain but not really embraced as British: welcomed into British people’s land but not their hearts. These are understandable reactions, and British people are far from unique in being reserved towards in-comers and nervous about the changes to the receiving nation’s traditions and way of life that successive waves of immigration may bring.

Tolerance in the sense just described is predicated on separation and a hierarchy of values, both of which imply a form of rejection of difference at an emotional level. One can be tolerant only towards people whose values and behaviour are different to one’s own. So, on the one hand, tolerance is acceptance of others, but only as other: ‘we will accept you but only so long as your culture remains distinct and does not impinge on, or seek to change, our own’. On the other hand, when our ability to assimilate different cultures and value systems is viewed as founded on tolerance, this involves subordinating them to our pre-existing values: ‘if your traditions and behaviour fundamentally transgress our principles, they are not welcome here; you must modify your culture to fit in with the overall principle of tolerance’. When tolerance is also taken as a personal and emotional characteristic of British people, this enables qualified tolerance of difference to be supported by an appeal to ‘reasonableness’, fairness and moderation: ‘we’re tolerant people but don’t push us too far as we won’t tolerate extreme and intolerant behaviour from you’.

The two faces of tolerance – separation and hierarchy – described above could serve as basic descriptions of different forms of multiculturalism. The established British multicultural model that is increasingly being questioned and dismissed involves the former approach: enabling the different cultures within Britain to continue to express themselves and prosper side by side, which ultimately involves them remaining separate. As part of this approach, traditional British culture (discuss) has been deliberately under-emphasised. But this does not really equate to greater acceptance of diversity, precisely because it perpetuates separation and difference: ‘keep your culture and express it openly in the public domain, and we’ll keep ours to ourselves’.

The new Britology is built on the hierarchical method: ‘your culture can be integrated with ours but only if you tolerate others as we tolerate you; radical deviation from our values will not be tolerated’. But again, this implies really that the different cultures remain different: both united and separated by mutual tolerance.

The cultural integration that the hierarchical method of tolerance aims to foster is one that is effective only at the level of publicly articulated, politically correct values. We can all do lip service to having shared values; but at a visceral, emotional level, this tolerance is built on ambivalence: a fair-minded willingness to give others a chance to make a life for themselves alongside a fear of change and a rejection of diversity.

The new tolerance is a ‘many-into-one’ model for cultural integration: the multiplicity of in-coming cultures merges into our pre-existing set of values that ultimately remains unchanged because those values are timeless. The now much-despised multiculturalism is a ‘one-in-many’ model: the idea that a new British culture could be fashioned from a multiplicity of cultures, with the traditional British culture assuming no hierarchical precedence. But again, this ultimately involves cultural separation. What is needed is a ‘many-as-one’ model: the creation of a new culture based on a genuine coming together of and dialogue between cultures and traditions, in which all must be prepared to embrace change or remain rooted in separation. The traditional British culture must of course continue to occupy a central role; but cultural integration will not be real and will remain only an abstract ideal unless that culture, too, is willing to learn from and be changed by the cultures of those whom it wishes to call British.

The many and the one cannot remain many nor be united in the one. They must evolve into the new.

Season's Greetings

Season’s Greetings

Or should that be ‘happy Christmas’? This year, there seems to have been an increase in the politically correct tendency to replace explicit references to Christmas with alternative expressions that are non-specific to any religion. ‘Season’s Greetings’ is the favourite term of this sort. The trend has been particularly in evidence in the world of commerce, with stores keen to encourage all customers – not only those who would consider themselves to be personally or culturally Christian – to participate in the seasonal orgy of debt-fuelled consumerism.

There have been numerous complaints, too, about schools not doing anything special to mark Christmas, such as carol singing; using the non-specific circumlocutions to refer to it; and not adequately teaching children about the Christmas story.

This is ironic, as there has been a strong backlash this year against inclusive multiculturalism, of which this could be interpreted as an example: not wanting to cause offence to persons of other faiths or none by forcing them to participate, directly or indirectly, in a Christian celebration.

But is this inclusive or exclusionist? Isn’t it more inclusive to let Muslim children and those of other faiths participate in the joyful Christian traditions of the festive season and the celebration of the nativity, of which even many more established British ethnic communities (Christian or not) no longer believe in the literal truth? So long as this is done in a non-proselytising way (and, let’s face it, not even many Christian schools could justify the epithet of proselytising), it is almost discriminatory to deny that cultural experience to non-Christian children living in this country.

Similarly, when Christmas is de-christianised for the sake of commerce (with the magic face of present buying – Father Christmas – conveniently emphasised almost to the exclusion of the actual Christmas story), is this not in fact also denying the opportunity for people of other cultural and religious backgrounds to share in the specifically Christian features of the feast? We wish each other a bibulous Merry Christmas and enjoy our family Christmas traditions; but effectively turn our backs on our non-drinking Muslim neighbours by wishing them only Season’s Greetings. The inclusive thing to do would be to invite them into our homes to take part in the Christmas feast, and so learn more about the things that are different about each other, but still more importantly about the values we hold in common.

Muslims believe that Christ was a prophet (the last great prophet before Mohammed) and believe in his virgin birth from his holy mother Mary. How many of ‘us’ Christians believe even that much?

So happy Christmas to all my readers (whoever you are out there), and a more inclusive and genuinely tolerant New Year to everyone!

The Madness Of Tony Blair: Fighting For Tolerance and Moderation In Iraq

The Madness Of Tony Blair: Fighting For Tolerance and Moderation In Iraq

Tony Blair visited Iraq yesterday on the third stage in his Middle East tour that is supposedly aiming to promote peace initiatives throughout the region. On two occasions – a press briefing with the Iraqi prime minister Nouri Maliki and a speech to UK troups – he reiterated his government’s policy that British forces would remain in Iraq, in whatever role was required by the Iraqi government, until the job was done. By implication, this means until the survival of Iraqi democracy is assured. As Mr Blair put it to the soldiers, “All over the world, the same struggle is going on, and if we don't stand up and fight for the people of tolerance and moderation who want to live together, whatever their fate, then the people of hatred and sectarianism will triumph”.

Mr Blair seems to see this struggle in terms reminiscent of the Second World War: “Our country and countries like it are having to rediscover what it means to fight for what we believe in”. I don’t think that most people in the UK would share the prime minister’s vision of the purpose and nature of the fight in which British forces are embroiled in Iraq. What struck one as particularly surreal and incongruous about Mr Blair’s pronouncements was the emphasis placed on defending tolerance and moderation, which he has only recently made the cornerstone of his vision of British values and the need to defend them against Islamic extremism within the UK (see my blog of 9 December). This established a curious associative link in Blair’s statements between the battle against the Iraqi insurgency and the efforts to oppose extremist strands within Islam in the UK – a link which the UK government has persistently denied in its attempt to refute claims that British involvement in Iraq has exacerbated Islamic radicalisation in this country – as both enemies are essentially one and the same, united in their antagonism towards tolerance and moderation: “This is real conflict, real battle, and it is a different kind of enemy – not fighting a state, but fighting a set of ideas and ideologies, a group of extremists who share the same perspectives”.

But it is not at all clear to anyone who follows developments in Iraq that there is any tolerant, moderate, democratic position left to defend there. During Mr Blair’s visit, a group of insurgents kidnapped around 30 staff and visitors at the Iraqi Red Crescent office in Baghdad. It would be easy to point to this incident as proof that the security and humanitarian situation in Iraq has completely broken down and that Western forces should get out and leave the Iraqis to work out their own destiny. Indeed, humanitarian crises and violent attacks against aid workers are regularly exploited by the media to make political points like this. Probably, the people responsible for carrying out the kidnap were aware of this, and it was precisely their aim to time their action to coincide with Mr Blair’s visit for maximum impact. So in a sense, describing this incident as an example of the break-down of order and of efforts to really help the Iraqi people merely encourages the men of violence.

But what this kidnapping puts me in mind of is some of the media attention-grabbing tactics of Saddam Hussein when he was in charge of the country, such as the kidnap of Western civilians whom he used as human shields during the Gulf War in 1990/1. Similarly, the mindless violence directed on a daily basis against civilians by the Iraqi insurgency – while also in part a tactic to gnaw away at the Western conscience and keep up the pressure for military withdrawal – is reminiscent of the mass-murderous assaults against his political and ‘sectarian’ enemies that Saddam Hussein is known to have authorised. What makes the present situation arguably worse than Saddam Hussein’s rule is that now it is both sides of the major sectarian divide in Iraq (Shi’a and Sunni) that are perpetrating the same sort of anti-civilian violence against each other. And indeed, the situation has splintered still further, leading to violence between different insurgent groups on the ‘same’ side of the sectarian divide, and to Sunnis and Shi’as murdering civilians of their own and the other side, sometimes indiscriminately.

The democratic politicians are not above all these terrible divisions as some sort of beacon of tolerance and moderation, as Mr Blair referred to them. It is well known to Iraq watchers that many (perhaps most) democratically elected members of parliament in Iraq have ties with leaders of the insurgency on their respective sectarian sides. In a way, this is totally inevitable, as it is the insurgents who are the real power brokers in the land, and it is they who effectively delivered the vote for the democratic representatives of the different sectarian parties in the Iraqi elections. In other words, the relationship between the insurgency and the democratic parties in Iraq is rather like the one that existed between the Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland: the parties represent the ‘political wing’ of the insurgents and terrorists, providing PR to Western and Islamic media for their sectarian positions and creating another channel for the fight for political supremacy over their enemies.

It was of course the ‘pro-democracy’ violence of the invasion of Iraq by US and UK forces that unleashed the hatred between the different sectarian communities in Iraq that had been kept suppressed by Saddam Hussein’s autocratic regime; and it was perhaps inevitable that once a cycle of violence between Shi’as and Sunnis got underway, both sides would resort to the homicidal methods that were previously practised only by the Sunni faction, from which the dictator drew his support. But are the insurgents on both sides – whom Mr Blair simplistically lumps into a single category of extremist / terrorist – really united in a common cause against democracy? Or is it the case that the British and Americans are viewed, or at least presented, by the insurgents as defenders of elements within the Shi’a and Kurdish majority (who by that token are the beneficiaries of democracy) who, together with the Sunnis, are engaged in a ruthless, violent civil war for control of the country? British and US support for democracy, in this context, appears like ever less influential but nonetheless destructive support for one side in a civil war over the other: a symbol of Sunni humiliation and a constant pretext for further violence.

The initial violence in the Iraqi crisis – the US-led and British-backed invasion – could even be viewed as providing the template, and certainly the excuse, for the sectarian violence that followed. This is because it was basically a grab for power that used the aim of bringing about democracy as its pretext and as a means to the end. A strong democracy in Iraq, so the strategic thinking must have gone, would shore up US / Western influence and power in the region: acting as a bulwark to defend Saudi Arabia in its own struggle against an Al-Qaeda-backed insurgency; a means to counteract growing Iranian regional agitation; and securing the vital access to the region’s oil reserves.

But what kind of democracy, tolerance and moderation is the UK defending in Saudi Arabia? Clearly one that is so strategically essential that Tony Blair himself had to intervene last week to halt a UK police anti-fraud investigation into allegations of bribery by the arms manufacturer BAE Systems involved in securing a multi-billion-pound deal with the Saudis? And similarly, is UK and US support for the ‘moderate’ Fatah movement in Palestine against the ‘extremist’ (albeit democratically elected) Hamas really contributing to peace and security in the Middle East as those two factions slide into civil war-like conflict in Gaza?

Strong support for one side over another in the bitterly divided Middle East (albeit if the side you back is nominally the democratically elected power, which it only occasionally is) is not a recipe for tolerance and moderation UK-style. Only engaging all the parties and affected countries in negotiation and dialogue – however difficult this is, however long it takes, and however many strategic advantages to one’s own country may have to be compromised – can provide a way forward. This is of course what was recommended by the Iraq Study Group in their report released a couple of weeks ago, which Blair and Bush – shall we say concertedly? – appear to be ignoring. But the way to achieve peace in the Middle East is certainly not standing up and fighting for a tolerance and moderation that has long been lost precisely because of all the fighting.

United In Tolerance: Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Four)

United In Tolerance: Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Four)

The Bishop of Liverpool was on Radio Four’s ‘Thought For the Day’ slot this morning. He described how a group of which he is a member, consisting of four Christians, four Jews and four Muslims, discussed Pope Benedict’s recent controversial statement that had been taken as implying that Islam was a violent religion. They ended up agreeing a set of five values that for them defined Britishness. They were:

· Respect for the law

· Liberty

· Language (i.e. English, not the only ‘indigenous’ British language be it noted)

· Landscape

· Monarchy

It seems that many people have their own lists of essential British values and virtues. The Bishop went on to explain that, in his view, these values – in Britain at least – had a Christian foundation, but that he had not wanted to emphasise this point at the meeting of the group. However, he would express this opinion at their next meeting, which had agreed the topic for discussion as that of tolerance. Pregnant pause as the slot came to an end; unspoken allusion to Tony Blair’s contribution on that theme last week (see my last blog, dated 9 December).

Is tolerance a – perhaps the – core British value that unites us all around common principles allowing us to express our differences within a framework of mutual respect? Tolerance is actually quite an ambiguous value. For a start, it can refer either to a personal characteristic (‘x is a tolerant man’), or to a quality or virtue, in a philosophical and ethical sense. As a personal characteristic, tolerance can have more than one resonance: being (over-)indulgent towards others; being prepared to put up with the annoying behaviour of others; having a high anger threshold; or being possessed of the ‘virtue’ of tolerance in the ethical sense just alluded to.

As an ethical and philosophical value, tolerance demarcates the boundaries of liberty: it refers to a high-minded, libertarian affirmation of the freedom and the right of individuals and groups to carry on their lives in the manner of their choosing, regardless of whether those lifestyles seem distasteful or even morally wrong – up to the point at which those behaviours become intolerable. They are intolerable, precisely, if they infringe the liberty either of the individuals concerned, or of others; or, in a more general sense, if they undermine the basic principles – of which liberty and tolerance are cornerstones – that create a framework under law enabling us to live together harmoniously.

Is Britain a tolerant nation in this latter sense? I think it is not, nor do I think the new-found champions of tolerance really want it to be. There is always, and arguably always should be, a moral basis to the law that limits the tolerance of society to a greater extent than is implied by the description of the libertarian limits of tolerance above. For instance, the idea of legalising the use of many currently illegal drugs is generally rejected, but not because free drug use in itself violates the principle of tolerance (allowing people to choose to harm themselves if they want to). On the contrary, the liberalisation of drug use is dismissed at least in part because taking drugs of these types is thought to be morally wrong, both in terms of the damage the user can do to themselves, and because of its potential to harm the wider ‘social fabric’. And this is despite the potential benefit that controlled legalisation could have in terms of decriminalising the supply of drugs. The same type of argument applies in the case of prostitution, which has recently come to the forefront of British public attention as a result of a series of murders of prostitutes in the town of Ipswich. Legalising the soliciting of acts of prostitution, so the argument goes, would make prostitutes’ working lives safer and the risk of sexual infection smaller. But such a change is rejected because of the moral condemnation of prostitution and the fear that legalisation would encourage its spread, thereby undermining marriage, family and social cohesion as a whole.

So Britain is not really a tolerant society in the full sense of the word, which would effectively be synonymous with radical liberalism. British tolerance is circumscribed by ethically defined limits. And those limits are Christian-derived – inherited from our Christian tradition – even if they would not necessarily be accepted as properly or entirely Christian according to either evangelical or Catholic orthodoxies. In this context, one cannot help wondering to what extent this Christian element within our tolerance plays a part in the thinking about appropriate responses towards, indeed legislation about, Muslim women wearing the full veil – niqab – or the burka (the body-length gown that incorporates the niqab). Is the view that it might be right to ban women from wearing the niqab in certain or even all public places derived from liberal principles concerning the limits of tolerance, or from inherited Christian responses?

From a liberal perspective, one could advance a view that it would be a good thing to ban the niqab in public on the assumption that some – possibly many – women are forced to wear it against their will. (There was an implication of this in Tony Blair’s speech last week; see my blog of 9 December.) This violates their liberty, and therefore, it should be stopped. (What happens in the home is another matter; but equally, it would be interesting to see what measures, if any, the potential legislators might propose to defend women whose husbands or families try to coerce them into wearing the niqab in private.) In reality, most of the media testimonies from recent adopters of the veil that have been printed or broadcast since the start of the public debate about it in October of this year emphasise the fact that they have freely chosen to wear it as an expression of their commitment to Islam and its moral teachings as they interpret them.

An additional argument from tolerance in favour of banning the veil in public would be one that relied on the more general basis for regarding a particular type of behaviour as intolerable, i.e. that it undermines the common principles or values that provide the framework for people of different cultures and faith backgrounds to live together in a way that does not infringe their legitimate rights and freedoms. In fact, the way this argument has tended to be put forward recently is not that wearing the niqab, as an expression of ‘radical’ Islam (definition please?), undermines those common principles and the established rule of law they support; but that it somehow intrinsically subverts the social cohesion and cultural integration that is the ideal end result of the application of those principles. In other words, the advocates of restricting the veil start from the supposedly visible effect of impaired cohesion (embodied in the veil) in order to infer the existence of a set of alternative principles and values (those of militant Islam) that is opposed to British values of tolerance. But no one in the public debate, to my knowledge, has set out a credible critique of the way Islamic teachings do (or do not) really conflict with and undermine those values. Now that really would be interesting!

In other words, we seem here to have a classic case of prejudice. We assume that a group of people who are different from us have beliefs and practices that undermine the whole basis of our society simply because they look different, talk differently (indeed, refuse to communicate with us; cf. veil debate), and adhere to a religion we find – in some ways, understandably – threatening and terrifying. But this is surely the point: we have an inherited, Christian-derived prejudice against Islam, which recent history appears to have confirmed and has certainly reignited. And it is that, more than any intrinsic opposition that Islamic values might pose to our own, that determines that beyond a certain point of moderation, public manifestations of Islam are no longer tolerable.

The ‘good intention’ of these British-value formalisers (let’s call them the ‘Briticists’) is to promote the adoption – in social practice and in law – of a value system that is a unique (?) British combination of liberal-tolerant and Christian-derived principles: one which sufficiently abstracts ‘core’ Christian moral and social teachings from any particular formal dogmatic expression of them in order to re-present them as universal, rational-ethical principles to which members of any religion can in principle assent because those core principles are also fundamental to their own religions. Except – so the thinking goes – in the case of ‘radical’ Islam. But here’s the whole heart of the matter: is fundamental Islam the one exception to the rule; the one religion whose core values are irreconcilable with the values that are common to Christianity, liberalism and all the other religions of tolerant Britain? Or is thinking along these lines just a prejudice – Christian in origin – that justifies a refusal to engage in dialogue with Islam; and then perhaps to discover a whole tolerant, humane tradition within that faith that is not so different from our own – and from which our own in many senses actually derives?

But so much for tolerance as a philosophical and ethical principle. In the next instalment of this blog (failing some news event that stirs me into a tangential diatribe), I will examine the question of whether or not Britain is temperamentally a tolerant nation and what that might in fact mean.