Britain’s genius is its ability to integrate newcomers

The Economist, January 7, 2017

The new year finds Britain tense. Brexit looms: Theresa May will soon start the two-year countdown. There is still the tangle of divisions that contributed to last June’s referendum vote. Cultural grievances concerning rapid inflows of foreigners, and of existing immigrants perceived to have integrated poorly, remain unresolved. Racist slogans have appeared on walls and hate crimes are up. Debates rage over Louise Casey’s review into integration, published last month. Commissioned by David Cameron, the civil servant’s report paints a grim picture of a land cleft by segregation, where citizens live parallel lives. It recommends that schools teach British values and that immigrants take an oath of loyalty. Much of the opposition agrees, Stephen Kinnock urging his fellow Labour MPs to “move away from multiculturalism and towards assimilation”. On January 5^th a new Parliamentary group on integration advocated a middle way between the two approaches. Expect more in this vein as the year unfolds.

Much of it will be warranted. Segregation scars parts of Britain, some immigrant groups remain poorly integrated and minorities within them are hostile to liberal values. But the gloom lacks a sense of the bigger picture.

Accompany Bagehot to Ely, a cathedral city sprouting from the prairies of eastern England, where thousands of central and eastern Europeans have moved to pick vegetables for low wages, and where many have settled. Your columnist visited on December 23^rd to witness the segregation. What better litmus test than Christmas, with its many national variations?

Sure enough, the local Poles’ traditions were widely evident. In a shop named “White & Red”, green-grey carp glistened in ice boxes; shelves groaned with dumplings and bottles of bison-grass vodka; piles of sachets variously containing hay and communion wafers teetered by the till. Gosia Bates and Joanna Bialas, two locals, explained that each ingredient features in the Polish Christmas Eve meal. The steady traffic of local Poles in the shop spoke to the strength of this foreign culture.

Below the surface, however, something else is happening. Britons also shop at “White & Red”, lured by the garlicky sausage and crusty bread. And Poles are picking up British habits like eating turkey and watching the queen’s Christmas speech. Those who, like Mrs Bates, have British partners are leading the fusion: her Christmas tree is decorated towards the start of the month (the British way) but will stay up well into January (the Polish way); her son receives half of his presents on December 24^th (the Polish way) and half on the 25^th (the British way). She serves turkey on Christmas Day, as is typical in Britain, but also leaves a chair empty – a Polish tradition respecting strangers.

Without oaths, integration classes or other forms of state do-goodery, central European cultures in Britain are thus melding with local ones. Children are leading the way. Right after the Brexit vote teachers in Ely had to soothe not just upset Polish pupils but also British ones who fretted about losing their pals. Ask the Polish ones which football teams they support, and they often name two: one Polish and one British. Some have become so British that they now struggle in their native tongue, getting As in maths but Ds in Polish written exams. This even extends to the liturgy. Mariusz Urbanowski, a local Polish priest, says he mixes the two languages in his services, to cater for different generations of Anglo-Poles.

Such is the Britain forgotten by the gloomsters. Fully 82% of its citizens socialise at least monthly with people from different ethnic or religious backgrounds; from 2003 to 2016 the proportion calling their vicinity “cohesive” rose from 80% to 89%; over half of first-generation migrants have friends of a different ethnicity; numbers of inter-ethnic marriages and households are rising; educational and employment gaps are shrinking. The proportion of British-Pakistani households using English as their main language rose from 15% to 45% in the 13 years to 2010.

The story of British life in 2017 is that new immigrants are enriching and combining with this mongrel culture as loyally as their predecessors once did. In pubs and churches, gyms and schools, Britishness is being made and remade not by political diktat but by an organic process of mixing and mingling. Britain contains few French-style banlieues or American-style ghettos. London’s mayor is a liberal Muslim. Sikhs in turbans protect Buckingham Palace. Tikka masala and fish and chips are the country’s national dishes. Polish dishes will surely join them soon. In a troubled age, let this diverse country take more pride in all that.