"We, the signatories to this manifesto, today call for a new approach to tackle discrimination and prejudice and forge a fresh approach to building a modern Britain. We are optimistic that people of different backgrounds and faiths can live together in our society. Thus we want to ensure that the national conversation is not dominated by our fears or polarised voices [...] We need an approach that discards the older politics of representation through government sanctioned gate-keepers. One that rejects prejudice from both majority and minority communities, especially religious intolerance, and finds a common cause in equality and social justice with all Britons."

 Sunny Hundal:

"In a broader context, we need to ask why we still need these self-appointed representatives. Who gave them prominence? Step forward the Labour government - though the Tories had signalled a move in this direction before Blair came to power. Even in 2006 the new generation of Britons are perceived as outsiders who need their interests represented differently. The government does not want to hear mixed messages. It wants to pretend minorities are homogeneous groups who think along the same lines. It works with those groups that tell them what they want to hear. This allows politicians to pass the burden of responsibility on to these representatives and treat minorities as outsiders. Have a problem with crime? Forget the police, get the "community leaders" on television to declare everything is under control. Have a problem with terrorism? Deny the intelligence chief's suggestion that foreign policy is exacerbating the problem and tell the community leaders to sort it out."

This system of self-appointed leaders can hurt those it should be protecting
The initial responses
The changing face of racism

Sundar Katwala:

"[H]ow far do we feel that we share a society? We would find out by assessing how far different individuals and communities report that they feel "integral" and have equal citizenship in our society, and tackle the barriers to this too [...] This subjective sense of belonging affects well-being directly. But it is also an important means to a broader end. This is why Britishness matters. Whether or not to take it seriously is controversial within the left. Yet it is the left which has most interest in maintaining a strong sense of a collective "us" - if we do not maintain the sense that we are all in this together then our broader social vision will fail. Instead, a politics of competitive grievance between different disadvantaged communities will derail social progress. A "no such thing as society" individualism on social issues from the left can do as much as Thatcherite economics to undermine this."

Inayat Bunglawala:

"It may be that as the editor of an "Asian" media website, Sunny feels perturbed that many so-called Asians in the UK are increasingly ditching their ethnic label and are happy to describe themselves as British Muslims or British Hindus or British Sikhs - that is, affirming their national identity and faith identity while acknowledging that their ethnic origin is becoming of less and less importance to them with each passing year. Now, this should surely be a cause for optimism."

 It's not personal, Sunny. It's strictly business

Yahya Birt:

"The manifesto is making general demands about how religious conservatives ought to conduct their politics – they shouldn’t ally themselves with progressives even on fundamental human rights issues or foreign policy, they shouldn’t claim to represent anyone but themselves (a common enough rhetorical device that the manifesto itself falls into), they shouldn’t promote or defend orthodox or ultra-orthodox religious practices through rights talk or legal appeals, and they should be rendered ineligible for public funding, notwithstanding the more complex picture on the ground [...] The point is not to end political engagement by religious conservatives, but to challenge their limited inclination to articulate the common good, and to enact practical campaigns to promote it. By and large, they have no worked-out vision of multiculturalism or Britain’s future. They don’t engage seriously in generic issues affecting all Britons. They don’t work to protect the rights of many other marginalised minorities and groups. To quote a friend and academic, they have to move from ‘identity politics’ to a form of ‘religious humanism’ that would allow them to mainstream their communities and to express their concerns in genuinely universal terms. It is not therefore not about ending their political engagement, but about seeking to challenge them to change the style and substance of their politics."

Mind the Generation Gap

Yakoub Islam:

"[W]hy not suggest MCB be reformed rather than abolish it? At the moment, people who see themselves primarily in terms of their Muslim identity only have a conduit to government via the MCB. It is, despite its many flaws, a responsive organisation. If it were abolished, the government would simply replace it with the Sufi Muslim Council, an organisation which would be the government’s lickspittle, as George Galloway might say. The signatories of the manifesto may believe that they are not represented by the MCB. Well, I’m not surprised. Signatory Ziauddin Sardar – whose writings on Muslim culture and postmodernism I admire immensely - is hardly restrained in the language he uses to talk about MCB! But he can represent himself. So can Sunny [Hundal]. Ordinary Muslims - especially given the level of educational underachievement within Muslim communities - may lack the skills and confidence to deal with political elites directly."

New Generation Manifesto: criticism Mark II
New Generation Drones

Munira Mirza:

"The most pernicious effect of this new racial thinking is how it fosters tribalism between ethnic and religious groups. They end up competing for resources on the basis that they are more excluded and vulnerable than others. Some Muslim lobby groups have argued that Christian groups already have public funding for their schools and services so they should too. In response, there are now Hindu and Sikh organisations demanding their own concessions lest they feel left out. The demand to wear the headscarf one day spurs the demand to wear the crucifix the next. There is a perverse incentive to assert one's victimisation by others, rather than build alliances. In this climate, no wonder everyone thinks that racism and discrimination is rife."

Diversity is divisive

Gary Younge:

"[T]he very nature by which the manifesto came about undermines one of its central points. Sensing a space where they felt good ideas were lacking a group of intellectuals got together and crafted these ideas. Their contributions found space in the media; their presence sparked a conversation. They used the first person plural - "We" - and claimed to speak for an entire generation: "each one of us from the modern generation of Britons has multiple identities..." . They set out "a way forward for the country". Central to that path was that "community leaders should be debunked because noone should talk for anyone else. And in so doing they claimed to speak for everyone else."

So much for so little

Rehna Azim:

"As a signatory to New Generation Network and its ideals, I am currently in the process of updating the 2004 survey with a view to producing a report and implementing some of those suggestions with NGN's support [...] We aim to encourage more progressive voices to speak out; whether through simple methods such as contributing to the letters page of a newspaper as an individual, or by joining a wider network of those who reflect the views of educated, articulate British Muslims [...] There intend to regularly canvas the opinions of ordinary Britons on a range of topics and then invite the media to take note of these views when engaging in a debate about a Muslim issue, not just engage with those who shout the loudest." 

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown:

"I can't remember when unelected religious and community leaders, politicians and institutions decided the religious identity was primary and that the broad black political movement was dead as was any claim to multiple identities and complicated allegiances. But they did and it was without our consent. Once human rights and equality activists mobilised to stand up for all victims of racism and the internal oppressions within groups, particularly violence against women and children. Our compassion and action were not rationed, colour-coded or preserved for our own kind. When Joy Gardener, a young black mother, was killed by immigration officers in front of her young boy, we didn't see her as an Afro-Caribbean cause; when a Hindu wife was burnt to death because she didn't bring a big enough dowry we didn't consider that to be a little local difficulty to be sorted by the community."

Catherine Fieschi:

"Liberals need to recognise that frustrated and belittled individuals who feel marginalised by the mainstream do not make good, active, committed citizens. And, to take an all too banal example, recognising someone's right to sit out an exam because it falls on a religious holiday is not, as some argue, about bringing private values into the public sphere, but about protecting a private space for the expression of private beliefs."

Space exploration

Shamit Saggar:

"What is less certain is how resilient liberal attitudes and integrating towns will be. Future scenarios may include economic downturns and intensified threats of terror. These futures are also likely to include Pakistani and Bangladeshi schoolchildren, particularly boys, falling further behind. White and black Carribean working class boys' grades flatlining, at best, are now embedded. Those that are poorly connected to the workplace, who are human capital and asset poor, and who adopt oppositional cultures are the most likely to embrace grievance politics. Radical Islam provides a convenient flag. These Britons are also currently the least well-led in Britain [...] On life chances (jargon for opportunity, I guess), [the New Generation Network] again undersells and understates. Take racial discrimination. Firstly, past policies have tackled overt discrimination but have been ineffective in bearing down on covert kinds. The present complaints-based tribunal system waits for mess to occur before clearing it up. Even then it largely fails to deliver proper redress and serial offenders have no incentive to change."

A makeover is not enough

Soumaya Ghannoushi:

"Instead of confronting the structural inequalities that cripple vast sectors of our population, the [New Generation Network manifesto] chose to elope to the comforting world of lofty ideals. The truth substantiated by a string of reports and studies is that race and religion have become a determining factor of social stratification. The new underclass growing daily in the margins of London, or Birmingham, Paris, or Lyon is made up of religio-ethnic minorities and new migrants. These find themselves at the bottom of the social ladder the moment they step on the soil of these lands. The trouble with this manifesto is that it lacks any historical sense, or socio-political awareness. Its motto seems to be "Down with reality, long live theory". In it one finds no analysis of the conditions of the minorities, the circumstances of their emergence, or the socio-political structures within which they are made to operate."

Wishful thinking

Madeleine Bunting:

"The debate about the new New Generation Network has an air of unreality to it. As they fiddle over their manifesto, the fires burn [...] Why not concentrate on developing a common platform of social justice and anti-discrimination instead? Child poverty is part of it, so is educational underachievement and so is the shockingly disproportionate ethnic minority graduate unemployment. Even if you do well at school and get to university, you are three times more likely not to get a job on graduating than a white counterpart - that's a glass ceiling that Hundal and the New Generation Network should be campaigning on rather than some abstract notion of multiple identities."