David Goodhart - The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Post-War Immigration

THE BRITISH DREAM

Published in Great Britain in 2013 by Atlantic Books,
an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright David Goodhart, 2013

The moral right of David Goodhart to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

The author and publisher wish to thank the following for permission to reproduce copyright material:

The Path to Power by Margaret Thatcher. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1995 by Margaret Thatcher.

A Postcolonial People: South Asians in Britain edited by N. Ali, V. S. Kalra and S. Sayyid. Reprinted by permission of C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. N. Ali, V. S. Kalra, S. Sayyid and the Contributors, 2006.

Small Island by Andrea Levy. Reproduced by permission of Headline Publishers Limited. 2004 Andrea Levy.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN : 9781843548058
Ebook ISBN : 9780857899750
Paperback ISBN : 9781843548065

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Printed in Great Britain

To my parents, Philip and Valerie, and to my laptop thank you all for not conking out before I finished the book

Thanks to my family my wife Lucy and children Rosie, Maud, Arty and Stan and the team at Demos. Thanks also to Toby Mundy and James Nightingale at Atlantic and to Annie Lee for her meticulous copy-editing.

This book has been in gestation since I first started thinking about an essay for Prospect magazine about the tension between solidarity and diversity in rich, liberal societies almost ten years ago. In the course of working out my ideas on that and the many related subjects in this book, and in researching the book itself, I have been particularly influenced by and/or helped by a group of around thirty people. I give them special thanks below. There is also a wider group who have given me their time and thoughts on my travels around Britain in the past two years who I would like to thank, and a special thanks to those who were generous with their time despite knowing we had different views. Apologies to those I have left out, and to those who particularly care about titles; I thought it was simpler to have unadorned names.

Special thanks to:

Andrew Adonis; Mohammed Amin; Ralph Berry; Paul Boateng; Liam Byrne; Ted Cantle; Matt Cavanagh; Rob Colls; Geoff Dench; Bobby Duffy; David Edmonds; Ismail Einashe; Kishwer Falkner; Robert Ford; Maurice Glasman; Kat Hanna; Randall Hansen; Michael Ignatieff; Ted Jeory; Sunder Katwala; Eric Kaufmann; Phil Lewis; Michael Lind; Alex Linklater; John Lloyd; Jamiesha Majevadia; Kenan Malik; David Metcalf; David Miller; Munira Mirza; Maxine Moar; Tariq Modood; Herman Ouseley; Bhikhu Parekh; Trevor Phillips; Robert Rowthorn; Shamit Saggar; Paul Scheffer; Jean Seaton; Sin Simon; Madeleine Sumption; David Willetts; Max Wind-Cowie.

And thanks also to:

Ishtiaq Ahmed; Mahmood Ahmed; Maqsood Ahmed; Omer Ahmed; Riaz Ahmed; Mohammed Ajeeb; Navid Akhtar; Parveen Akhtar; Stephen Alambritis; Paul Allen; Nuzhat Ali; Ruhana Ali; Rushanara Ali; Sundas Ali; Usman Ali; Rob Anderson; Andrew Anthony; Anjum Anwar; Sher Azam; Willy Bach; Gavin Bailey; Jeff Bailey; Shaun Bailey; Jas Bains; Toby Bakare; Muhammed Abdul Bari; Mike Barraclough; Ann Barratt; John Battye; Halima Begum; Harris Beider; John Benyon; Ashish Bhatt; Philip Blond; Gautam Bodiwala; Henry Bonsu; John Bonsu; Tony Breslin; Paul Broks; Simon Burgess; Phil Burton-Cartledge; Bill Bush; Vicki Butler; David Cannadine; Mark Carroll; John Carruthers; Raj Chada; Jayant Chavda; Jack Citrin; David Coleman; Linda Colley; Michael Collins; Christopher Cook; Graeme Cooke; Zaki Cooper; John Cornwell; Alan Craig; Paul Crosby; Jon Cruddas; Ren Cuperus; Martha Dalton; John Darwin; Rowenna Davis; Howard Dawber; Neli Demireva; John Denham; Meghnad Desai; Sukhjit Dhaliwal; Gabriella Elgenius; Geoffrey Evans; Frank Field; Catherine Fieschi; Daniel Finkelstein; Alun Francis; Mike Gapes; Len Gibbs; Ameetpal Gill; Neena Gill; David Goldblatt; Rosie Goodhart; Paul Goodman; Matthew Goodwin; Bana Gora; Roger Graef; Andrew Green; David Green; Damian Green; Montserrat Guibernau; Jeff Hanna; Zubaida Haque; Toby Harris; Michael Harvey; Miles Hewstone; Susan Higgins; Ellie Hill; Margaret Hodge; Geoff Holden; Kelvin Hopkins; Tristram Hunt; Shehla Husain; Dilwar Hussain; Naweed Hussain; Tanveer Hussain; Will Hutton; Helen Hylton; Khizar Iqbal; Stephen Jivraj; Lindsay Johns; Nick Johnson; Michael Keating; Michael Keith; Ozlan Keles; Peter Kellner; Madiha Khan; Omar Khan; Sadiq Khan; Wajid Khan; Shiria Khatun; Jytte Klausen; Jurgen Kronig; David Kynaston; David Lammy; James Laurence; Charles Leddy-Owen; Liz Legum; James Lewis; Patricia Lewis; Warwick Lightfoot; Joy Lo Dico; Logie Lohendran; Patrick Macfarlane; Nick Macpherson; Fiona Mactaggart; Khalid Mahmood; Sharaf Mahmood; Mohsin Malik; Zaiba Malik; Gautam Malkani; Sarfraz Manzoor; Sukhdev Marway; Ehsan Masood; Ed Mayne; Jean McCrindle; Elizabeth McCullough; Siobhain McDonagh; Pat McFadden; Lauren McLaren; Jasper McMahon; Emran Mian; Jaspal Singh Minas; Anshuman Mondal; Margaret Moore; David Muir; Douglas Murray; Maajid Nawaz; Stephen Nickell; Catrin Nye; Duncan OLeary; Fran OLeary; Paul Ormerod; Juliana Owusu; Anthony Painter; Charlie Parker; Hyacinth Parsons; Ceri Peach; Jonathan Portes; Bevan Powell; Anne Power; Jonathan Power; Lucinda Platt; James Purnell; Ayesha Qureshi; Yasmin Qureshi; Tariq Rafique; James Ramsey; Phil Riley; Matthew Rhodes; Ahmad Riaz; Chris Roberts; Ben Rogers; Steve Rumbelow; Mark Rusling; Jonathan Rutherford; Nick Ryan; Johnathan Sacks; John Salt; Neena Samota; Ziauddin Sardar; Stafford Scott; Tony Sewell; Shafique Shah; Ghayasuddin Siddiqui; Ramindar Singh; Swaran Singh; Zadie Smith; Will Somerville; John Spellar; Thees Spreckelsen; David Starkey; Marc Stears; Philippa Stockley; Gisela Stuart; Jack Straw; Phil Sumner; Yusuf Tai; David Taylor; Gowri Thamotharampillai; Paul Thomas; Stephen Timms; Adair Turner; Varun Uberoi; Mike Waite; Robin Wales; Mohammed Aslam Wassan; Albert Weale; Martin Whelton; David Wild; Alan Wolfe; Phil Woolas; Simon Woolley; Waseem Zaffar.

This book is, in part, about describing the patterns of life of large groups of people who are not part of the white British majority. Words and tone matter. As I am a fifty-six-year-old white, British man, I cannot, obviously, describe these patterns from personal experience. Instead, I have tried to write objectively but also directly, aiming to avoid the caveats and obfuscations that disfigure so much of the literature in this field.

It is inevitable that some people will take offence at my words or tone in certain places, but I have not set out to be provocative and I hope that critics will focus on the ideas and arguments behind the words and phrases. Many words in this field carry within them long-standing intellectual disputes for example, integration and segregation. The word segregation implies, to some people, a process actively managed and promoted by the majority. I mean it in a more neutral sense to signify separateness sometimes chosen, sometimes not.