Roots
September 15, 2001 12:00 AM
By Stephen Williams in Bristol West End News
By Stephen Williams in Bristol West End News
You will all know that my main vocation is politics. But in the quiet lull of the post election period I have been indulging my subsidiary hobby, tracing my family tree. I grew up in South Wales and both my parents and all of my grandparents were born there. But the previous generations came from all over England & Wales, attracted by the coal and steel industries. One of my great grandfathers left Bristol in about 1905 to go down the mines. So when I visited the new Cynon Valley Museum I had to laugh when I saw a quote from the Rev'd Thomas Price in 1908, "When so many men from Bristol and other places migrated here, it meant a lower moral tone."
Rev'd Price was of course giving his sermon in Welsh and the big contemporary news in Wales last month was the perceived threat to the Welsh language of English people retiring to Wales. A hundred years apart these are just small examples of different cultures rubbing together producing friction, as well as harmony. Over the summer we have seen some rather more grisly examples of clashes of culture, in the race riots at Bradford and Oldham. I think we need to have an open but sensitive debate on how Britain is to develop as a multi-cultural society.
I guess there are two strands of thought. Some think the answer is assimilation. Minority groups should adopt and conform to the language, culture and traditions of the majority or host population. Such people would see Britain as a "melting pot", when all the ingredients are thrown in they end up looking just the same. The more liberal approach would be to celebrate diversity, rejecting conformity to a mono culture. The "pot" would then be more of a stew, with each ingredient flavouring the variety of life.
The BBC recently screened an Islam Week of programmes and I must admit I learned a lot from watching them. One programme highlighted the desire of British Muslims for Islamic schools. Such a call has also been made in Bristol. This will be a very tricky issue for our city councillors to tackle. Personally, as the city already has Church of England and Catholic schools, I think it would be hard to reject such a plea. Tony Blair wants to expand faith-based schools so there may be external pressure on the council.
But I can't help thinking that the proliferation of religious schools would have unfortunate consequences. Also in the news over the summer was the breaking down of the peace process in Northern Ireland. It is an amazing fact that communities in Belfast are segregated, corralled behind the so called peace wall. It even runs through the city centre park, so that the Catholics and Protestants each have their own half. Children throw stones at each other over the wall. Those children, of course, go to either catholic or protestant schools. What hope is there for reconciliation if the people of Ulster are segregated from infancy?
One of most enjoyable visits during the election campaign was to St Barnabas Primary school, Montpelier. The class I saw had children from every racial background. The examples of their work on the walls showed different cultures and languages. The children were also having a mock election and all of them seemed to enjoy their visit from a real politician - though I think that had more to do with the TV camera than my own performance!
What I learned from my school visit was that there is much to be hopeful about the future of our multi-cultural society. The horrors of Northern Ireland and other hot spots are more likely to be avoided if we celebrate together our diversity, rather than take the purist approach of growing up apart.
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