“It cannot be right, that people can grow up and go to school and hardly ever come into meaningful contact with people from other backgrounds and faiths.” David Cameron, July 2015.
Can mixed communities and a shared society in the UK become recognised as a desirable objective, supported by a strategy and policy framework?
We hear a lot about 'choice' in education in the UK today. But what if some of our choices undermine the fabric of our modern democracies?
In fact, the removal of the ‘duty to promote community cohesion’ in schools from the UK's Ofsted inspection regime sent a very clear signal.
Despite the strong support for ‘free speech ‘from politicians in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo murders not a single proposal has come forward. The only response has been to re-double security.
‘Prevent’ is the part of the UK government’s counter-terrorism strategy designed to respond to the ideological challenges of terrorism and extremism. Are its priorities self-defeating? There are promising alternatives.
Britain needs to get serious about tackling right wing extremism - and as it does so, there are lessons to learn from Wales.
While states attempt to assert their relevance in a global age through both multiculturalism and top-down nationalism, new models of identity and strategies of participation need to be developed to deal with the co-existing phenomena of national experience and cosmopolitanism.
