Social Cohesion Challenges, Needs and Political ... - Club of Madrid

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The Shared Societies ProjectBackground Papers:Responding to Social Cohesion Challengescivil law will not violate. But subject to satisfying those general principles, we shall allow the Muslimcommunity in, let’s say, matters of adoption of children or distribution of property or divorce to beguided by a Muslim court - in other words the idea of multiple jurisdiction.The fourth important thing one has to recognize is that a plural community of this kind must makesure that no community, no individual, is subjected to discrimination. Because ultimately a statederives legitimacy from the fact that all citizens believe that it is neutral, that it will be impartial. Ifcitizens begin to feel that the institutions of state cannot be trusted, then that state looses itslegitimacy. And if it looses its legitimacy it has no power to maintain law and order. This is, forexample, what tended to happen in almost all European countries that I have known and it also hashappened in many of the developing countries, where you could not trust the police to be neutral -the police would always side in cases of quarrel with the majority community from which they aregenerally drawn. Now, if you cannot trust the institutions of the state, the civil service and the policeto be neutral and impartial, then the citizens are going to want to take the law into their own hands.And therefore, in any divided society it is absolutely vital that there should be a firmly implementedanti-discriminatory policy. And in some cases you have situations where minorities are not fullyrepresented in the institutions of the state, for all kinds of reasons, and therefore some form ofpositive discrimination or affirmative action becomes necessary. I cannot think of manycommunities which have not sooner or later been forced to introduce some form of positivediscrimination in order to ensure social harmony and bring in those communities that have been leftbehind. This is a common policy in India, a common policy in many other countries and even herein Britain. The new Equality Bill says that in certain cases, in relation to certain communities youmight have positive discrimination; because that is the only way you can rectify historical inheritedinequalities and create an equal playing field for these communities.And I just want to make two quick points and then I should stop. The other important thing to bear inmind is, again an increasing problem here and in many divided societies, that you generally havecommunities leading parallel lives, lives which do not cross or interact. They might be residentiallyconcentrated so that a whole community goes to its own schools, own restaurants, own shoppingareas and has no other meaningful contact with other members of that society. This is what I meanor what we mean in this country by ‘parallel lives’ - that people live next to each but that there issome kind of invisible border or boundary which is never crossed; and your children go to the sameschool without ever meeting somebody from another community. If that happens, at one level thismay have to be lived with because you cannot force people to assimilate. But at another level youare storing up a problem because if you don’t have friendship across ethnic boundaries, if you don’thave meaningful contact then you are vulnerable to all kinds of stereotypes about the othercommunities. And those stereotypes in times of crisis can be extremely dangerous, whether it isRwanda or other places, or Bosnia, where, even when interaction had taken place over large areaspeople lived separate lives and therefore were vulnerable to political manipulations. And as far aspossible any social and economic policy has to be so designed that communities interact withoutbeing forced, because sometimes when communities withdraw, they withdraw because they areafraid of being rejected, they are feeling insecure for all other kinds if reasons. But we need to makesure that our policies, housing policy, our economic policy, employment policy, urban-regenerationpolicy have to be such that no community is left behind and that different communities haveoccasions, frequent occasions, to interact with each other and build a common understanding ofeach other.And I think finally, in all communities history often weighs very heavily, whether it was South Africa,whether it was India or whether it was here in Britain. We do not begin our present and plan ourfuture in a vacuum. We begin with people having inherited certain historical memories. So thathowever good your policies are, there is always a danger that the past weighs on you. Youremember what other communities have done to you at certain points in history. Sometimes in the7
The Shared Societies ProjectBackground Papers:Responding to Social Cohesion ChallengesBalkans the memory goes back three, four or five hundred years. Now the question is, and I havenot yet found an answer, although a lot of interesting work has been done, how do you break, howdo you release the burden of history? People are creatures of memory; they are not just creaturesof interest. And if your relations with others are mediated by memory, and if memory is constantlystanding in your way, how do you break its burden? It is striking that almost everywhere the mostfashionable language in the last 10-15 years is that of apology. Clinton apologized for the wayAmericans treated the blacks; the British Prime Minister is asked to apologize for the British Empire,Australians are apologizing for the way they treated the indigenous communities. And you askyourself why this trend has emerged? I think politicians realize that in order to bring communitiestogether they run up against the burden of history, how to exorcise people’s minds so that they areable to trust each other. Now apology is seen as one possible answer but I don’t think it takes usvery far. If for example the British Prime Minister or the French President apologized to the excolonies,what good does it do to anybody? I think we need to find deeper ways. I have looked atfour or five gestures of reconciliation, which really achieved what they wanted to achieve. Germanshave behaved well in terms of apologizing for what the Nazis have done, generously funding Israel,rewarding people who have been in concentration camps, their survivors and others. But all this,while meaningful, did not quite add up to an emotional trigger. When Willy Brandt visited Auschwitz,unprompted he fell on his knees and there was a tear coming from his eye; a spontaneous gesturewhich worked miracles and had a profound effect. Now this is one way to take the sting out of apainful past. There are many others such as helping those we have harmed in the past by financialcompensation and favourable terms of trade, but I am not here to talk about them. When we talkabout concrete projects I do not want you to understand concrete merely in a concrete sense of oneparticular policy. ‘Concrete’ must include also these emotional triggers, ways of emotional release,and how to make the past bearable. Thank you very much.8
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