Successful multiculturalism takes work. Just ask the UK, once the riots stop

There are two things to be said of the UK riots right off the bat. The first is that the violent racism on display is inexcusable. No matter what efforts we make to understand the situation, that fact stands. The second is they expose a deep contradiction in the UK, which is at once a paragon of successful immigration and an abject failure of social integration.

Until recently, Britain had a prime minister of Indian and African descent. At the same time, in some parts of the UK, there are people who speak little or no English who feel they have no franchise in the nation. Among them are some who are antagonistic towards liberal Western values. They live next to umpteenth-generation English people who have seen their townscapes changed and whose anger at economic loss to globalisation and modernisation is exacerbated by the presence of people who – to their eyes and minds – seem to represent the reason for that loss.

The history of the world is one not just of continental drift, but of the movements of people across those continents, countries and islands. Western societies have accepted that they have something others want to be part of, and recognised that those others bring attributes that also enrich their western societies. It sounds peaceful. Until it’s not.

One measure of just how much Western societies have embraced immigration is that, these days, we are mostly horrified when the immigrants are attacked. That’s why we are rightly appalled at the recent attack on a mosque in Britain, in which anti-immigrant protesters tried to set the place of worship and the people within it on fire.

It’s why the UK police have been sent in to protect the ever-increasing numbers of asylum-seekers coming into the UK who are being temporarily housed in overflowing hotels while their claims are processed. We may not yet know who each individual new arrival will turn out to be, but we know who we are, and that is a society which does not condone vigilantism.

In Australia, we have a proud history of putting effort into successful cohabitation, including by setting high standards to call our country home. In 2022, the Albanese government commissioned a Multiculturalism Framework Review to continue that work. Its recommendations can be assessed against the options presented by the UK, one in which people driven by ignorance and ancient hatreds war in the streets. Another in which a British-accented person of visibly migrant descent can ascend to top office and fail spectacularly on nothing but his merits, or lack thereof.

It should be obvious which path Australia would want to go down. Which must be why the Australian government chose to try to bury the Review without much acknowledgment. Of the 29 recommendations made in the report, the idea of offering the citizenship test in languages other than English makes it into the top 10 the Review panel consider high priority.

It’s the kind of well-intentioned but awful idea that has shaped the troublesome path of the UK: in fact, it was only as recently as 2010 that the UK finally brought in a minimum language proficiency requirement for would-be residents. The practical result is that people who can’t speak the main language of the land cluster together and remain foreign – essentially – in all but geographical terms. Women from cultures which give them fewer rights are effectively trapped in the family, prevented by their lack of language skills from accessing the rights they should now be able to take for granted. Work, certainly legal work which connects migrants to the broader community, is inaccessible to those who can’t communicate well enough to perform a role.

Such communities can become dependent on welfare, which, rightly or wrongly, is resented by the equally welfare-dependent native-born residents of the low socio-economic areas they move into. Where there is competition over resources, hatred can ensue, as former Labour MP Margaret Hodge observed of her east London electorate.

On the other hand, there are many migrants like the Sunaks, who become fully a part of their new home without repudiating their heritage. Rishi Sunak identifies as a practising Hindu, a fact that wasn’t in conflict with his full participation in British liberal democracy.

That doesn’t fit within the worldview of the Multiculturalism Framework Review, which wants more institutions and more money devoted to nurturing separatism. The document itself has sunk almost without a trace, as the government seems to have wanted it to, but it is important not to let it go down unchallenged. A review produced by government commission will linger as a “source of truth”, the kind of document which other documents quote as an authority. Over time its thinking will seep into other papers, perhaps even into policy.

The UK is demonstrating that successful multiculturalism takes work. It is a constant choice, which requires us to understand that liberalism isn’t the natural state of humanity, but a culture itself, which natives and newcomers all have to opt into.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director at campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.

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