Belonging in One Nation By Jon Yates

The first One Nation politician was a of course a Tory. Writing in 1845, Benjamin Disraeli described two nations where there should be one. [The Queen] rules over two nations [the rich and the poor]; between whom there is no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each others habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were inhabitants of different planets. [Disraeli] Disraelis writing though of a different political hue makes one point clear. That if one area is home turf for a One Nation party, it is integration. For what is integration if not the vital task of making One Nation out of many? But what should a modern day One Nation' integration policy look like? What is clear is that whether were looking at ethnicity, class or age, the UK has an integration problem. And it is a problem that impacts some of our most critical policy challenges: Social mobility: Relationships and networks are key to social mobility. However, half of our poorest children are educated together in just 20% of our schools. Unemployment: 80% of jobs are never advertised but passed through word of mouth. However half of unemployed Brits spend most of their time with others who are out of work. Social Care: Loneliness makes the elderly more likely to suffer mental and physical illness. However, 5 million senior citizens are so disconnected from society that they describe the television as their main companion. Security: Having a friend of different faiths makes you less susceptible to extremism. However only 12% of non-Muslims have a Muslim friend. This lack of integration is not just serious it is also obvious when we start looking. We can see it when we visit our schools, we can see it when we walk round our neighbourhoods, we can see it when we look at our friends. For too
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long our bar for successful integration has been too low. As long as there are no riots or violence we have assumed its all ok. As long as everyone speaks some English. As long as we can queue up together. This is not integration, it is tolerance. And it is a tolerance that has accepted the unacceptable. It has accepted one of the most segregated school systems in the rich world. A system so segregated that my three year old daughter will prepare for life in a diverse country by spending seven hours a day, five days a week for 11 years in a building full of people broadly her age, her ethnicity and her parents' income bracket. It has accepted a care system that corals the elderly together or isolates them at home. And it has accepted a housing policy that locates rich and poor households in separate enclaves. It is time to admit that our present approach to integration has failed. In fact, it has failed many of the young people my charity has worked with. It failed Ahara - an Asian girl from Birmingham - who at 16 had "never had a white friend". It failed Dami who never considered university as he did not have a friend who had applied. It failed Louise who crossed roads to avoid groups of black youngsters as she thought they were all in gangs. And it has also failed our country. For a segregated country is a low trust country. And we have become a low trust country; British citizens under 55 have lower trust of their neighbours than any people in Europe; levels of trust have fallen by 50% in just half a century. This should seriously worry us for it is high-trust countries that flourish in the global race. Individuals are happier meaning lower mental health expenditure, communities are more cohesive and less fearful of crime meaning lower policing costs and economies grow faster with a more interconnected labour market. Any successful One Nation integration policy must be judged against this backdrop. It must focus on delivering ways to rebuild lost trust. This will need a fresh approach one that puts building connections between all ages, incomes and ethnicities at the centre. This will mean challenging four influential misconceptions of integration policy. Misconception 1: Integration policy is really about immigration policy. For many, the answer to our integration challenge is solved by
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immigration policy. If only we could close the borders, the problem will go away. Even for those who support reduced immigration, this is a dead-end. Reducing immigration will not make this country homogenous. With a third of under-fives non-white, we are a multiracial country. We need an integration policy that accepts this, not wishes it away. Misconception 2: Integration policy is really about security policy. For others, integration policy is about targeting extremists. This misunderstands the fact that low trust and lack of interconnection is a problem for the mainstream. Lack of connections impacts social mobility, unemployment and social care things that impact all of us. We need an integration policy that is as much about Brighton and Wigan as Burnley and Woolwich. Misconception 3: Integration policy is really about race relations policy. For still others, integration is solely about building better race relations. This ignores that the disconnections in our society are as much about generational and income divisions as ethnic ones. We need an approach that is also about the rich and poor divided by our education system, the isolation of the elderly by our social care system and the separation of rich and poor households by our housing benefit system. Misconception 4: Integration policy is not really a matter for policy at all. Too many times I have heard politicians and commentators lament that you cannot force people to mix and therefore we must do nothing. This is the deepest misconception of all. You cannot force people to stop smoking, but you can decide whether to let them know that it causes cancer. You cannot force people to take exercise, but you can decide whether to offer PE in schools. You cannot force people to read to their children, but you can give them free books when their children are born. And yet too many of us have accepted a policy of shrugging and doing next to nothing when it comes to integrating our population. This looks particular cavalier when we recognise that our society is becoming more diverse by age, income and ethnicity. By 2050, we will be the
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most ethnically diverse country in the rich world, 50% of our population will be either under 18 or over 60 and the distance between the rich and poor on present trends will be even further apart. So let us focus on the contours of an effective One Nation integration policy. We know it must focus on the mainstream of society, not just the extremes and we know it must seek to raise trust levels. To successfully do this, we must make it easy for people to come into contact with others from all walks of life. The second-half of the 20th Century saw the slow decline of many of the institutions where this took place: church attendance, trade union membership and political party association all declined. It also saw the slow segregation especially between rich and poor - of our public services. A true One Nation integration project must therefore have two main thrusts. Firstly, it must seek to desegregate our public services with a particular focus on education which is uniquely social. Our schools, apprenticeship programmes and universities must be places where young people from all walks of life gather. This means finding ways to incentivise all schools to reach their entire community. The right to operate as a free school or academy might come with a requirement to reserve a set number of places for those on free school meals. Or an Ofsted rating or provision of charitable status might require schools to show they are reaching all sections of a community. For universities, the right to charge higher fees might be tied more closely to receiving applications from all sections of society. For apprentices, providers might be required to do much more to ensure that they are seen as an option for all young people not just the least academic. Secondly, it must seek to support and encourage the social entrepreneurs who will build the new 21st Century institutions. Lottery funding should be set aside to support the initial start-up of creative and scalable ways of connecting people. Institutions like The Big Lunch which now brings together many tens of thousands each year were born in exactly this way. Support must also be prioritised for young fast-growing institutions including the National Citizen Service. Through it, charities like my own have connected thousands of people across income, ethnicity and generational lines. It is through the National Citizen Service that Ahara made a white friend, Dami decided to apply to
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university and Louise overcame her fear. It is fast becoming a natural part of life for many of our young citizens and a true One Nation party must support its growth. For too long integration policy has been left in the shade, eclipsed by discussions of immigration, race relations and security. This lack of interest has allowed our increasingly diverse country by age, income and ethnicity - to become many detached nations rather than one. A One Nation party has the opportunity to put integration at the heart of its approach and find a new path for bringing UK citizens together again.

Jon Yates is the Strategy and Development Director of The Challenge Network, www.the-challenge.org. He is writing in a personal capacity. Political notes are published by One Nation Register. They are a monthly contribution to the debates shaping Labours political renewal. The articles published do not represent Labours policy positions. To contact political notes, email onenationregister@gmail.com