British values and identity among young British Muslims in Tower Hamlets: understandings and connections
| Pages | 239-256 |
| Date | 18 December 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JCS-01-2017-0001 |
| Published date | 18 December 2017 |
| Author | Finlay Green |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Vulnerable groups,Children's services,Sociology,Sociology of the family,Children/youth,Parents,Education,Early childhood education,Home culture,Social/physical development |
British values and identity among young
British Muslims in Tower Hamlets:
understandings and connections
Finlay Green
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to provide a platform for young British Muslims in Tower Hamlets to
share their perspectives on British values and identity, in light of the increased pressure schools are facing to
actively promote “British values”.
Design/methodology/approach –Three focus groups were convened of 16-18 year olds, two all-male
(one with five and one with six participants) and one all-female (five participants). Discussions were audio
recorded with the data subjected to a form of thematic analysis that divided the raw data into three different
categories: individual, group and group interaction data.
Findings –All but one ofthe participants defined themselvesas British, largelydue to a strong connection with
British values.A minority felt thisunderstanding was reflected back to them by society. However, the majority
felt that, as ethnically Bengali and as Muslims, the opposite was the case. By judging the strength of an
individual’sBritishness against the strengthof their adherence to Britishvalues the government’sBritish values
agenda is only serving to reinforce the isolation of those that feel excluded.
Originality/value –While the identities of young people, British people, and Muslims have been widely
explored, there is little research that looks at the intersection of all three.
Keywords Multiculturalism, Identity, Islam, British values, Civic nationalism, Tower Hamlets
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Since Autumn 2014, British schools have been required by law to actively promote
“British values”. These include: a belief in freedom, tolerance of others, accepting personal
and social responsibility and respecting and upholding the rule of law (Cameron, 2014).
The Department for Education introduced this initiative in response to Birmingham’s“Trojan
horse”affair, in which Ofsted (the Government’s regulatory body for services that provide care
and education for young people) found evidence of an “organised campaign”by a selection of
governors to run several schools in accordance with an Islamist agenda (Clarke, 2014).
The political context
While the Trojan Horseaffair was the trigger, the roots of this measurecan be found in successive
British Governments’shift away from multiculturalism and towards civic nationalism in their
approach to Britain’s cultural and ethnic diversity (Kenny and Lobo, 2014). The driving factors
behind this shift include the 2001 race riots in Northern England and the 7/7 terrorist attacks on
London. Politicians ( Blunkett, 2002), political commentators (Steyn, 2005) and sections of the
public (Verkuyten, 2007) argued that the emphasis intrinsic to multiculturalism on promoting and
celebrating cultural difference had created a societywhere different cultures live in isolation of one
another. Consequently, communities had been allowed to hold values that fundamentally
contradicted “our”values –British values. While the Cantle Report (Home Office, 2001) on the
Received 17 January 2017
Revised 26 April 2017
Accepted 13 June 2017
As the author worked at the same
institution as the Journal Editor at
the time of submission, one of the
Associate Editors oversaw the
entire review process and made all
decisions concerning the paper.
Finlay Green is based at
Social Research Unit,
Totnes, UK.
DOI 10.1108/JCS-01-2017-0001 VOL. 12 NO. 4 2017, pp. 239-256, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1746-6660
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Government’s inquiry into the 2001 race riots argued that this cultural separation had sparked the
unrest, this separation in values was used to explain the fact that the 7/7 bombers were able to
carry out the atrocities in the country in which they were born and raised ( McGhee, 2008).
In response, the policy approach has shifted to “civic nationalism”(Ignatieff, 1996, p. 219). Under
this model, an individual’s degree of “Britishness”is determined by his/her adherence to certain
civic values. The intent is to combat the moral relativism of multiculturalism with a “muscular
liberalism”that says to citizens: “to belong here is to believe in these values”. It is this common
belief that “defines us as a society”(Cameron, 2011).
The “British”in British values
The definition of values adopted here is: “beliefs about how life should be lived, what men and
women should be and do”(Berlin, 1988, p. 3). British values, then, are beliefs concerning how life
should be lived that are specific to a British identity. If we define identity as “a person’s
understanding of who they are”(Taylor, 1994, p. 25), then British identity is concerned with who
the British are and how they are defined.
On first inspection, the Government’s conceptualisation of Brit ish values appears an
uncontroversial list of general, liberal democratic principles. Yet the other identity groups of
which people consider themselves members intersect to create unique understandings of British
identity and their relationships with it (Anthias and Yuval-Davis, 1992). One such identity is cultural
and ethnic background (Parekh, 2000). While white English people tend to see their English and
British identities as indistinguishable, many ethnic minorities differentiate between “the English”
and “the British”, the former being completely inaccessible and the latter more open, an
exclusionary experience shared with Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh Britons (Maylor, 2010).
Others, meanwhile, identify British identity as a predominantly white English domain (ETHNOS,
2005, pp. 21-22). Britishness, then, is a multilayered concept, more accessible to some than
others depending on the individual’s cultural and ethnic background.
British values and young people
Identity development in young people is unique and unpredictable (MacDonald, 2005).
The process varies considerably within a single country, based partly on the structure and
relationship between different identity groups. The way we evaluate ourselves and our identity
groups in relation to others is instrumental in shaping our understanding of who and what we are
(Tajfel, 1981). How this evaluation happens is a product of an individual’s own identity profile and
the understandings they develop through their experience of interacting with different groups.
For example, while an increased proportion of minority “out”groups in a community can cause
majority “in”groups to feel threatened, so triggering animosity to new arrivals, if positive
intergroup contact ensues –that is, if there is actual contact rather than simply the opportunity for
contact –attitudes towards minority groups can significantly improve (Hewstone and Schmid,
2014; Berry et al., 1987).
This conceptualisation of identity development as a complex and individual-specific process has
important implications for formal education policy, which has been placed at the forefront of the
British values agenda. The same concerns that surround its promotion on a national level also
apply to the Government requirement that schools actively promote British values. Britain’s youth
holds wildly divergent views of what British identity is and their place within it (Maylor, 2010).
More so than their parents, they often possess cosmopolitan, complex and multiple identities
(Frosh et al., 2002). In their study of secondary school students in Leicester, Osler and Starkey
(2003) encountered a range of national, religious and regional identities, each combined in
different ways and with varying degrees of closeness to or tension with British identity.
Britain vs Islam?
It was not just multiculturalism that was put on trial after the 2001 riots, 9/11 and 7/7; Islam,
too, was problematised ( Jerome and Clemitshaw, 2009). The Cantle Report blamed the
“self-segregation”of Britain’s Muslim communities in particular. They were held responsible for
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