Immigration and Racism

In October 2000, at the start of a new millennium, the publication of the Parekh Report, The Future of Multi‐Ethnic Britain, prompted a controversy that focused on the past rather than the future. The report, by a commission set up by the Runnymede Trust in 1997 and named after its chair, Bhikhu Parekh, covered a wide range of issues and institutions – the police, the wider criminal justice system, education, arts, media and sport, health and welfare, employment, immigration and asylum, politics and representation, religion and belief. Most media stories and debates on the report, however, focused on its discussion of British history and identity. The report asked: ‘How are the histories of England, Scotland and Wales understood by their people? What do the separate countries stand for, and what does Britain stand for?’ It suggested that these were questions about ‘how a genuinely multicultural Britain urgently needs to reimagine itself’, involving ‘rethinking the national story and national identity’. Much of the press strongly censured this view – the Daily Telegraph suggesting that the report attempted to ‘destroy a thousand years of British history’.