Interview with Ted Cantle and the Shadow Home Secretary, Oliver Letwin

NB: this transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script. Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy.

Please credit the BBC'S "Politics Show" Sunday 15 June 2003

"We are working on community cohesion across all communities"

Jeremy Vine: I am joined now by the author of the report referred to by Julia in her film, Ted Cantle and by the Shadow Home Secretary, Oliver Letwin. Mr Cantle, first of all, I know you made 67 recommendations we picked up two areas, housing and schooling, but they do seem to be going in reverse don't they.

Ted Cantle: Well I'm impatient for change like everyone else, but I'm not sure they're going in reverse. In those particular areas there are a lot of long term difficulties. We did make it clear when the report was produced that it was about long term change, there were no quick fixes unless we were going to start bussing children from one school to another in the American style, which would have been counter-productive, then there were no quick fixes we could have.

We have to actually work gradually and carefully to build up the confidence of communities, get them working together, and to get some inter-change between them. We said right from the start that that will take time, and I don't really think that it's helpful to have anything in the form of quick fixes. An awful lot of work has been done on housing, schooling, regeneration, the work between faith leaders and so on, it's going to take time for that to have an impact.

Jeremy Vine: But there was a telling point wasn't there in the film where the Headmaster said, you can't engineer these things easily, it's about parental choice. Is that the right position.

Ted Cantle: Er, no, I don't think that is the right position. We have an education practitioner group actually which is chaired by another head teacher, and they've been very pro-active in suggesting ways in which you can break down mono-cultural schools. Their advice and guidance will be issued, and it will demonstrate, as some schools already are, that things can change.

Even in Oldham, I believe they've had five pairs of schools twinning between each other to build up the confidence, to develop joint teaching programmes, extra curricula activities and so on, but it does take time. I think there is also a particular problem in the areas which you featured in your film, which frankly have been rather stirred up by BMP and others, which, and have made the job a lot more difficult.

Jeremy Vine: Okay. Oliver Letwin, do you think it's a question of it taking more time or is the whole thing being gone about in the wrong way.

"The planned initiatives and bureaucratic efforts will not solve this"

Oliver Letwin: I think it is bound to take time; I agree with Ted Cantle about that. I don't think that there is sudden initiatives that are going to solve this problem. I think what one of the people interviewed in the film is saying is also right, that this is essentially a problem of a large number of people of various different kinds, from various different backgrounds, all of whom feel aggrieved about the circumstances they're living under and actually trying to get for example, those estates back in to an orderly condition, make them look nice, but also keep them properly policed for example, and give people back the confidence that all of us as politicians and the whole establishment isn't just letting them down, is an enormously important part of allowing them to start talking to one another with respect and good sense.

Jeremy Vine: When Mr Cantle came out with his recommendations in April, you ridiculed them, you said they were too bureaucratic and you said the BNP must been quaking in their jack boots. What did you mean by that.

Oliver Letwin: What I meant was that I don't think that a series of initiatives and bureaucratic efforts of whatever goodwill, will ever solve this. As I say, I think what was being said there is right. If you are living in an oppressed area, and you feel it's a depressed area, if you're fearful of crime the whole time, if you have the sense that the authorities have let you down, you are prey to the extremists.

And the agenda of the extremists of course is not to solve those problems but exacerbate them sufficiently, so that they can mobilise bits of the population against one another. And the cure to that, isn't I think some special set of measures, it's actually trying to improve the lives of people of all of those communities, within Oldham, or Burnley or where ever it may be.

Jeremy Vine: Mr Cantle, do you see a distinction between those two things.

Ted Cantle: Well I, I certainly think we don't want another set of special initiatives. Everybody we spoke to said they want the changes in the mainstream, and that's what we've tried to achieve by working through the established institutions and trying to make sure that changes are long term, are mainstream and not just part of another initiative.

But this isn't just about government, not even just about local government. It also embraces the voluntary sector and the political parties. For example we did put in a number of recommendations for the political parties themselves to adopt, I'm not aware of those changes having taken place yet; so this isn't something which is just about government and the institutions as such, it's about a large number of changes.

Jeremy Vine: The riots happened before 9/11 and of course 9/11 changed things and our reporter referred there to a document that she's become aware of which suggests the government is starting to move their focus away from social cohesion towards engagement with Muslim communities specifically. Does that to start to de-stabilise everything you're working for.

Ted Cantle: Erm, I'm not sure really what's meant by that because certainly I've not seen any such documents. We are working on community cohesion across all communities: the white community, the black community, the different sections of the Asia community.

We're not particularly focused on the Muslim community but we are concerned about any very disaffected group within our society and obviously, er we have to target measures towards them. But I don't think this is about just tackling the Muslim community. As you said, this all started long before 9/11, it was about established communities that had been in Britain for fifty years.

Jeremy Vine: Yeah, but there is a strong case Mr Letwin now, to try to engage directly with British Muslims is there not, after 9/11.

Oliver Letwin: I'm not quite sure what engaging directly with a group of people means on the ground and I don't think actually British Muslims are a special case. I come back to the point that the big issue here is that there are a lot of people living in places of the kind we're describing, in circumstances where you or I would feel aggrieved. And until that changes, and that means them changing themselves and being helped to change themselves and not having a load of bureaucrats come in and try to change from on top, nothing will really improve.

The real beacons of hope, which I'm going to speaking about actually on Wednesday, are places like Haringey, where the Haringey Peace Alliance, organised by a group black evangelical churches, other church leaders, the police, are bringing together actual local people, and the people who are trying to police those streets and trying to create if you like a culture in which people rescue that community.

They create a miracle there, and unless that kind of thing can happen, unless we create a sustainable change in the way in which people live, we're not going to solve these problems.

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