The debate over identity and Britishness has been raging in Britain over the last few years, and with particular urgency since last year's London bombings. These issues of identity extend to a common social challenge. Over the next generation in Britain we must re-learn how to live together successfully. The solution I advocate is not to pretend that everybody can feel the same affinity with all identities outside their own, but to build an "encounter culture" in which it becomes easier and more rewarding to interact with and respect others.
This is not just about government and public policy; it is personal, cultural, civic. The starting point is the recognition that it affects everybody. As a black MP representing one of the most ethnically diverse constituencies in the UK, people often assume that when I address these issues, I am talking primarily about race. But look beyond race, at the hundreds of thousands who have joined Countryside Alliance marches in recent years, for example, driven in part by the perception that the urban majority do not understand their culture and values. Or look at inter-generational conflict. We know that every generation laments the declining moral standards of the one that comes after it. But the intensity of public feeling aroused by anti-social behaviour, and the widely held perception that legal sanctions like Asbos are necessary, seems to represent an unusually sharp divide. Look forward a generation to the potential conflict of resources over pensions, social care, the costs of climate change and so on, and you may wonder which loyalties will be most influential in determining people's attitudes to the distribution of those resources.
One of the defining characteristics of contemporary British society is its social diversity. Identities—whether based on occupation, class, faith, or territory—that once perpetuated themselves by being passed automatically from one generation to the next have become more fragmented and conditional, and in some cases disappeared altogether. In a globalised, consumerist society, identity seems much less something we inherit and increasingly something we can choose, shape or discard. We go on six times more foreign holidays that we did in 1971. We travel seven miles further each week to visit friends than we did in the 1980s. We spend eight times longer online per week than we did in the late 1990s. This is the paradox Manuel Castells identified when he wrote about "the net and the self." On the one hand, we have an urge to affirm our own individuality and differentiate ourselves from some of the more suffocating aspects of our traditional identities. On the other, this is offset by a continuing human need to belong, to remain anchored in something collective.
If ties to party, class, faith and nation can no longer be relied upon to generate the foundations of a cohesive society, it is also not clear that the flexible, consumerist approach to identity is an adequate replacement. Gordon Brown has been quick to identify the challenge this presents for politicians. He has argued that a "thicker" conception of shared national citizenship is needed as a basis on which other, more particular identities can be overlaid. At the other end of the scale, David Blunkett in his time at the home office helped focus attention on the ingredients for community cohesion at the local level. Partly in response to the 2001 riots in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley, he articulated the need for a balance of responsibilities between government, which can nurture civic unity but cannot prescribe it, and individuals, who may respond to support and encouragement in participating actively as citizens.
Whether the focus is national or local, the challenge remains the same: how can we build a civic space in which people engage with people who look, sound and live differently from themselves, who are from different backgrounds, age brackets or areas, and with whom they share a common destiny as residents of the same street, users of the same service or voters for the same council? This uniquely valuable part of our civic fabric is what I would call our "encounter culture."
We already know a great deal about why our encounter culture is so valuable. The American sociologist Mark Granovetter captured it well when he spoke of "the strength of weak ties." Granovetter's argument was that the strong ties of close friends, family and neighbours are very important in helping us to cope with the stresses of everyday life—babysitting someone's kids at short notice, giving them a lift somewhere, running an errand for them. But strong ties by themselves aren't enough. When you are looking for a job, for example, you are not going to be helped if your friends all live nearby and are also unemployed, because the chances are they won't know any more about potential vacancies than you do. By contrast, an acquaintance who lives and works 50 miles away is likely to be much more helpful in spotting opportunities you wouldn't otherwise hear about.
Having the right mix of strong and weak ties is an essential component of people's quality of life, no matter where they lie on the income scale. Middle-class professionals in Kensington may seek comfort in gated communities filled with other middle-class professionals, but we know it does nothing to alleviate their fear of crime once they step outside those gates.
Granovetter's work has greatly influenced subsequent research on social capital—the social ties, bonds, values and loyalties that we hold in common and which help knit our society together. Robert Putnam, the American political scientist, drew a distinction between "bonding" and "bridging" social capital. Again, the point is not that one is better than the other, but that you need a balance. Research has shown, for example, that a critical factor in determining whether neighbourhoods can lift themselves out of poverty is whether they have the social networks to access resources from outside the neighbourhood, like information, investment or political leverage; they can pull themselves up by the bootstraps, but it's much easier if they can call on someone to give them a hand.
Further evidence of the value of encounter culture comes from social psychology. Fifty years since it was first expounded by Gordon Allport, the so-called "contact hypothesis" has shown that under the right conditions, increasing the level of contact between different groups is enough to generate more favourable relationships between them. According to Miles Hewstone, it can promote more positive, or at least less negative, perceptions. It can nuance perceptions, making people less likely to make sweeping generalisations. And it can also promote forgiveness for past deeds, a critical issue, not least as we approach the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the British empire in 2007.
Is this any of government's business? To some commentators, any suggestion that government should concern itself with the social networks people form smacks of social engineering. And while politics is a contest about the ends to which public power should be directed, some antagonism between different social groups—between the miners and the middle classes in the 1980s, for instance—is inevitable.
I would argue that democratic governance must ensure social conflict is peaceful, and that some of its costs are reduced. As was the case with comprehensive schools, or indeed the legislation banning race discrimination in housing and workplaces in the 1960s and 1970s, where there are barriers to greater social interaction and understanding amongst people of different backgrounds, and where those barriers stand in the way of a fairer, more equal and more cohesive society, we should be prepared to look at all the ways to break them down.
So how might we begin to invest more systematically in encounter culture, building on Britain's existing success stories? First, while the notion of "water-cooler" moments may be clichéd, it captures something important about the way that random encounters are sometimes the most powerful ways to generate new linkages. The public realm is replete with places in which civilised encounters between strangers can and do take place. Some spring easily to mind: public parks, for example, or libraries. But what about some of the more unusual ones: A&E waiting rooms, at the school gate, in the GP's surgery, at antenatal classes. The next big challenge for our public services, and something the more innovative among them already do well, is not just to develop a more responsive relationship between the individual user and provider but to nurture stronger connections between groups of users—whether they are parents, library users or victims of the same mental health condition.
Second, we need to focus on youth, broadening the attachments that young people can form through exposure to a more diverse range of experiences and encounters. This is partly about education, but there are also many opportunities beyond the school gates.
For example, we should seize the emerging cross-party consensus to create a national service scheme for young people, building a new institution to provide fulfilling, customised experiences for every young person. I think the principles that should underpin such an institution are reasonably clear. It should be national, with an emphasis placed on giving people a taste of people and places very different from their own. It should be a service, to inculcate the habits of active citizenship, and encourage people to recognise the contribution of citizens of other backgrounds in making Britain a better place. As far as possible, the emphasis should be on encouraging young people themselves to design their own experiences, with projects of a sufficient duration to be meaningful. There is already a vast amount of experience in the youth sector we can draw upon here. In an age when creativity and problem-solving are highly prized skills, the last thing we want to do is pressure young people into undertaking worthy but mundane activities from which they will learn little.
A powerful mechanism for harnessing upward mobility for young people from poorer economic backgrounds might be for top firms to tend toward the selection of national service graduates in their recruitment process. Subject to affordability, we should be prepared to examine some form of compulsion, offset by rewards or rebates on education and training, to send the clear signal that this is about taking the duties of British citizenship more seriously. Finally, to promote flexibility, young people should be entitled to opt to fulfil their obligation at any point between the ages of 16 and 24, with different kinds of projects available depending on age and experience.
We need to recognise the vast swathes of potential encounter culture that exists within the arts, sport and culture. From The Archers to Goodness Gracious Me, the BBC, for example, is a tremendously powerful vehicle for reflecting and articulating the diverse communities that make up modern Britain. But perhaps more interesting for the future is the emerging capacity for local, community-based media, and for so-called "citizens' media, in which people act as both creators and consumers of media content, underpinned by digital media. Through ICan and community programming, there is a real opportunity to make local digital media a focus for generating the same shared understanding at the local level that the BBC has been so effective at creating at the national level.
Sport is another important part of encounter culture, with social classes A or B twice as likely to participate than D or E. We must use the Olympics as a focal point for developing a sports infrastructure that promotes participation amongst the widest and most diverse group of people possible. There's merit to the idea of combining widespread civic participation and fun sporting activities through the Street Olympics that IPPR and Demos have put forward. Their proposal is to encourage streets, parks, pubs, neighbourhoods and community organisations to host their own version of the games as a way to promote neighbourliness and community spirit.
Government cannot legislate or direct the formation of attachments and attitudes, but their formation is not an entirely random or predetermined process. Over the next generation, the challenge of enabling collective action beyond the direct scope of the state will be crucial to whether we learn to live together successfully. When David Hume wrote about "the conversable world," he warned that it would not happen by accident, and that left to their own devices people might remain in their ivory towers. There are no quick fixes, but I am confident that the British can find slow-burning methods which increase people's propensity not just to cope with difference, but to understand how it can enrich their lives. You can't legislate for encounter culture, but you can help to nurture it.
