Culture Wars

From India Narrative, Photo credit IANS

Here are questions that I am exploring.

In the summer there were a number of incidents in Leicester leading to violence and fear.  This resulted in an enquires about how future happenings might be prevented.  To me the more serious tensions might be between minority communities and white majority communities.  Ah you say, the white community in Leicester is the minority now.  Well it's not.  Leicester city and county merge into one another, so if you talk about 'Greater Leicester', then the white population remains a significant majority.  So how might inter cultural harm be stoked in Leicester?

In the Summer the media presented us with the  'Where are you from?  No where are you really from?' debacle.  This was a situation that could only really have significance because it came from the palace.

What might be the points of friction in Leicester?  My reason for thinking about this is my belief that what happening in Europe 90 years ago with the rise of fascism could equally happen again with the same devastating consequences. Hungary and Italy have governments that are openly hard right.  France is flirting with the hard right.  The UK has strong right wing sentiment in much of the national discourse.  

It was the Blair government who introduced the concept of 'Free School'.   Leicester had just gone through a painful process of closing so called failing schools (mainly the schools in poorer areas of the city) to rationalise resources.  Then Free Schools came along, and every religious group wanted their own state school.  Communities of children became more segregated.  So now we have (the pre-existing Catholic schools, a C of E secondary school, a Hari Krishna school, a Muslim secondary school, a Hindu secondary school, a Sikh secondary school, with lots of primary feeder schools too.

Each of these schools has specifically cultural aspects to their curriculum.  The Hari Krishna School starts the day with meditation.  The Muslim School has an adapted curriculum to avoid the complexity of teaching art and music within the broad Muslim community.  The Catholic School begins the day in prayer, and all the children attend regular Masses.  The Schools all have different uniforms. 

So far all schools stick to the same term dates, but they have the freedom to play with annual leave.

At the moment there is choice across Leicester.  Children are not forced to attend particular schools.  I welcome the idea of creating academic excellence within all cultures where the culture can be a majority culture, where  'western' values in education (which are shared across the world) are able to flourish.  The challenge might come if I was expected to send my child to a school were the day was started in meditation, or the curriculum did not have music, and my 'culture' appeared to be subservient.  Some minorities have lived with this for years, so there is a sense that now the shoe is on the other foot.  JWs have had exemptions for RE for decades, and minorities sort of accept that it will never go their way.

But in Leicester amongst thinking people, there is not the sense that imposing my values on your children is an acceptable thing.  I think there would need to be a great deal of bitterness and hurt stoked up and maintained for some time for this to become a prospect.  

It appears that the summer aggression and violence was a blow-up of tension, stoked by key figures inside and outside Leicester.  The roots do not seem to be deep.  

What else should we be mindful of?  Where might resentments grow?