I’m not sure you can say “There is no state-led segregation policy today” (Editorial, 18 September). Cultural differences have many dimensions, but government inaction and absence of positive policy is a negative force which undermines cohesion. John Harris’s adjacent piece on the left-behind makes the point. Conservative governments seem most willing to ignore or tolerate the real consequences on how we live together.
Margaret Thatcher chose to target what was seen by Conservatives as a belligerent underclass, with Britain’s manufacturing sector exposed to market forces without regard to the consequences for workers or their communities. Remember the wet versus dry arguments in the Tory cabinet? Then look what happened to mining communities such as Ashington or Woodhorn. Since 2010 there have been government arguments that there are too many people on benefits, too many disabled people, too many unemployed, with huge cuts to welfare and local authority budgets.
Add in a housing crisis, combine this with an unfair distribution of government funding towards the shires and away from the industrial centres with the biggest problems – even Arts Council England funding for culture is shown not to be distributed equably – and you increase the negative impacts undermining cohesion. Unsurprisingly, affected communities voted in the referendum against the obvious interests of the Cameron/Osborne-led government, which was hurting them most through austerity.
Even now we have the European Research Group and Patrick Minford wanting, post-Brexit, to unleash more deregulated market forces on societies and communities not ready for any economic battering, and without the wherewithal in their local authorities to sustain services and facilities for quality of life, education, culture and the opportunities for cohesion. Yes, Britain needs to foster egalitarian and representative cultures. But look who is not fostering this.
Roger Tomlinson
Cambridge
• Commenting on the opinion poll finding that four out of 10 adults believe that multiculturalism has undermined British culture, your editorial rejects “arbitrary” (for which read “any”) numerical caps on immigration, and informs us that instead politicians “ought to be preaching the need to learn how to get along with strangers”.
Centre-left politicians across Europe have done so for decades, and the outcome in most of those countries has been the electoral collapse of the centre-left. This is simply a refusal to listen, like Hillary Clinton’s arrogant denunciation of much of the American electorate as “deplorables”.
Christopher Clayton
Chester
• Your editorial on multicultural Britain states that “There is no state-led segregation policy today”. Is not permitting and funding faith schools a form of segregation?
Sue Leyland
Hunmanby, North Yorkshire
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