Yahya Birt and Harry’s Place are interested in the frailty of cultural and race relations in Britain. They both wrote articles mentioning a group being developed to repair and reintegrate stability in cultural relations as it is no longer an isolated issue. That group being the New Generation Network:
“The New Generation Network, a collective of progressive public commentators, intellectuals and policy wonks, was launched this week and they have published a new manifesto on race and faith, thirty years on from Britain’s 1976 Race Relations Act.
Their intent is a good one. The multicultural consensus around race and faith is fraying badly, and a new coalition undoubtedly needs to be built, somewhere in the middle ground between the Euston Manifesto group and, let’s say for the sake of example, Melanie Phillips. One wants to exclude religion entirely from public life; the other wants to reassert a Judeo-Christian basis for British national identity to the exclusion of those deemed truculent, even dangerous, parvenus. The manifesto seeks to appeal, according to one signatory, not to the ‘silent majority’ just among ethnic minority or non-Christian faith groups, but to the country at large.” (Y. Birt, Musings on the Britannic Crescent)
I’ve written a couple of responses to this manifesto whihc frankly were not very good. As a specialist in social policy who has a good grasp of these issues as they pertain to British Muslims, Yahya Birt has – once again – said most of what needs to be said, framed in a positive way.
Wasalaam