15 years after the publication of the groundbreaking Parekh Report, Runnymede's director Dr Omar Khan reflects on how far we've come and how far we've yet to go

Tomorrow (10th October) marks exactly fifteen years since the publication of the report on the Commission on the Future of Multi-ethnic Britain (often called the ‘Parekh Report’ after the Chair Lord Bhikhu Parekh).

The Runnymede Trust established this commission to provide a wide-ranging survey of the evidence on race and ethnicity at the start of the 21st century. In its 400+ pages the report made around 130 recommendations on how to respond to persistent racial inequalities and the place of ethnic minorities in modern Britain.

Dr Omar KhanSome 30 years before this, in 1969, the landmark ‘Colour and Citizenship’ report was published by Runnymede’s Founder Jim Rose, and the Parekh Report sought to provide a similarly comprehensive and wide-ranging overview.

In reflecting on the report, it’s hard not to focus on the media response rather than the actual content of the report. When the then Home Secretary Jack Straw spoke to launch the report he was influenced by front page headlines wrongly claiming that the report said that British was a ‘racist’ term.

The report said no such thing. But once the Daily Telegraph ran with this headline others soon followed, and the report, its Commissioners, and Runnymede were engaged in a media circus that resulted in violent threats and office closures. Meanwhile the report’s overall content was ignored.

Perhaps unsurprising that the press would focus on complex and relatively controversial passages about ‘Britishness’, even if that discussion was framed in the context of devolution and globalisation as much as in terms of race.

In the medium to longer-term the government and others took up the more specific recommendations of the report, with around two-thirds implemented within three years of publication.

However there was little mention of the more challenging discussion on British identity. One interpretation, or perhaps key lesson of the report, might then be that it focused too much on the ‘Vision’ (part 1 of the report) and not enough on the Issues and Institutions’ (part 2) or the ‘Strategies for Change’ (part 3).

In other words, if the report had focused more narrowly on the evidence and ‘what works’ to reduce racial inequalities it would have been far less controversial, and so more effective with policymakers and indeed with the wider public.

The interpretation of these issues arguably drove most public policy on race and ethnicity during the Labour government, and for much of the Coalition too: namely that high-level discussions on race equality or on Britishness were a distraction to designing and delivering effective equality, integration or extremism policy.

Yet a major reason why race still struggles to be addressed by policy is precisely because the ‘vision’ is lacking (or perhaps too narrow) and the version promoted in the Multi-Ethnic Britain report deserves further consideration in thinking through what is needed in reducing ethnic inequalities today.

Furthermore, evidence by itself cannot change public opinion people or motivate people to act, so it is a good time to reflect on what kind of vision the Parekh report suggested, and how we might learn from its relatively negative reception.

Not all criticisms of the report were merely media-driven. There was genuine disagreement about some of the ideas or principles the report was seen to defend. The most notable was the phrase ‘a community of communities’.

Critics took this to mean a radical version of multiculturalism that not only failed to recognise the importance and value of a shared sense of identity, but also implied that communities could regulate themselves and so deny liberties (such as the right to exit) to their members.

While there are reasonable disagreements about the precise role that community can or should play in political life, the more extreme versions of this criticism missed three key arguments in the report.

First, that the ‘communities of communities’ idea was always wedded to a ‘community of citizens’ approach in which the rights, liberties and equality of all people was fundamentally upheld and respected by the British state.

Second, that the state itself was to promote a human rights culture. Far from allowing all sorts of cultural practices to go unchallenged the report explicitly affirmed that human rights, as articulated in international treaties, provided the minimal ground rules that all citizens needed to sign up to – and that the state needed to defend.

And third, the report fully recognised the need for a sense of common belonging. As the authors wrote:

‘The fundamental need, both practical and theoretical, is to treat people both equally and with due respect for difference; to treasure the rights and freedoms of individuals; and to cherish belonging, cohesion and solidarity.’

If the ‘community of citizens’ and ‘community of communities’ phrasing was too abstract, imprecise or controversial, the challenge it seeks to address remains: how to ensure all citizens are treated as equals in a more unequal, but also more diverse society.

The report’s authors were right that the answer must directly confront what sort of country we want to be, or the ‘vision’ for Britain in the 21st century.

Bits of this ‘vision’ are now indeed inclusive, as exemplified in the 2012 London Olympics ceremonies. But it is not only English Defence League who question whether recent arrivals (and their descendants) should have an equal say in articulating that vision, or who want no part in belonging to a more ‘multicultural’ Britain.

Some European leaders are now questioning whether democratic and liberal values or ethno-religious identity bind us are asking this question in a cruder way. It is a question that we haven’t unequivocally and positively answered in Britain either.

Do those with ancestral ties to the time of Shakespeare, or those with larger bank accounts, have a greater voice in deciding these questions; or should all of us now living here have a say in our future values and purpose?

Are there different notions of Britishness (or indeed Scottishness and Englishness), and if so should they all have an equal say? How do we understand the history of empire? What is the relationship between ‘British’ and human rights? And should government better address racial inequalities directly today?

Whatever our view of the answers provided in the Commission on Multi-ethnic Britain’s final report, many are still not fully comfortable asking these questions fifteen years later.

Until we do so we won’t have the necessary vision or narrative to understand our past, tackle racial inequalities in the here and now, or to prepare all of our children for an increasingly diverse and interconnected world.