Interview with Professor Webber

Professor Richard Webber

Richard Webber is Visiting Professor at UCL and a consultant for the market research firm Experian. He developed the MOSAIC system for classifying neighbourhoods and populations.

He was interviewed for Panorama, about the situation in Blackburn, by Vivian White.

Professor Webber
What I think is very interesting about Blackburn, is that it's not just that there are a large number of immigrants, but they are, almost all of them, from a Muslim religion and compared with London, for example, they're much more tightly concentrated in a limited number of streets.

They're much more segregated.

But the people who came to Blackburn, very often came from the countryside where they couldn't speak English and when they came to Britain, in order to get a job, they needed to go to some place where there were factories, where they could work effectively without necessarily having to learn the language.

I think with a large group, such as the Muslims, they can take over such large areas of towns, and become such a majority presence in those towns, that people can actually quite satisfactorily live their whole lives without necessarily having to speak English.

But the lack of language, I think, does require them to live in very segregated areas.

Vivian White
There's a difference in skin colour, there's a language difference, and on top of that, there's a religion and culture difference?

Professor Webber
Yes, and I think it's interesting, if you think of the term "racism", race distinguishes people from their appearance. It doesn't distinguish them in terms of religion or in terms of their language, and it seems to me that when we get physical segregation of communities based on religion and language, rather than just race, we can't really say that racism is at the bottom of that segregation.

Vivian White
So although people in the so-called "white flight" areas are often nervous of discussing these subjects, because they're afraid of being called "racist" in your opinion, the phenomenon of "white flight" is about something much more than race?

Professor Webber
Yes, definitely. I mean, racism, I suppose we can say - although the clearest example of that is in the US with the black population, where the black population speak English and they go to church.

Here we have a much more complicated problem of integration, because we have neither religion in common, nor language, and as well, physically, there's a population that looks very different and distinctive.

Vivian White
That sounds like a much more difficult issue to "solve".

Professor Webber
Well, I think there are two rather separate issues. I mean, one of which is whether people get on with each other, and the second one is whether they live parallel lives - and I think many communities can live parallel lives without necessarily having friction with the host community.

So, I think the fact that there maybe a parallel population operating quite independently of the host population isn't necessarily, in itself a problem.

Vivian White
If you lived in a street in Blackburn, in an area which is now becoming significantly Muslim Asian, and wasn't before, what does your database suggest you might find is changing for you on the ground?

Professor Webber
Well, I think you can look at a hierarchy of places that people go to, where they encounter friends, neighbours, and so forth.

The most immediate, obviously, is the shop, and as the ethnicity of an area changes, clearly the nature of the owner of the shop will change, the merchandise in it, the customers of the shop will become very different. Pubs, probably are the other feature of the town that have the most localised clientele.

You can look at primary schools perhaps, as well, and doctors' surgeries. So, the places that people go to, where they encounter others will change very much, if the attitudes of that community to shops, to the health service, to schools, to alcohol, if those are very different from that of the host community - which I think in the case of Muslims - all of those institutions would be used in a very different way, and all of them then have to adapt to a very different clientele, from what they've been used to.

Vivian White
On top of that, they may - well, some of them may - dress in a rather different way, and we've been struck by this. They may use their houses in a different way, because they're more familial, they may simply organise their lives for a different way.

Professor Webber
Exactly, and I think the other thing that you cannot underestimate is the anxiety that the minority communities have about relationships of their teenagers, the sort of moral precepts that they wish to apply to them, their social behaviours they expect of them, and that, itself, I think, can cause very considerable divisions and divisiveness with the host community.

Vivian White
You might have expected that over time that, as it were, the children of the Asian Muslim group would become more and more similar to those of the majority community, but if the majority community is insisting on very strict rules of behaviour?

Professor Webber
No, exactly, my impression is that at primary school and up to puberty, then the children are in a much better position to integrate, but as children get older, then I think it paradoxically, their lives and social worlds become more segregated than they were than when they were younger.

They don't become less segregated as they get older.

Vivian White
Does the degree of separation and segregation that we see in Blackburn and places like it - does it matter?

Professor Webber
Well, I think there are three ways in which things may or may not matter that really depends upon your political priorities. I mean, at the beginning in our concerns with integration, I think our anxieties were mostly about physical insurrections, riots, damage to property, and so forth.

We've seem Brixton riots and Toxteth riots. So that may be one concern that we might collectively have about not allowing segregation to get too entrenched.

From a second point of view, one can look at it from an economic point of view. One can say, are there abilities, talents, entrepreneurial skills, and are people from minorities frustrated from achieving their own potential and contributing to the economy. I suspect this isn't actually a big problem in Blackburn, but it is, I think, an important consideration to bear in mind.

The third issue why it may matter, is simply out of people's feeling of happiness and wellbeing, and if we find people are perennially worried about certain issues that they feel unable to talk to people about, then their unhappiness and concern must be, at the end of the day, something of importance in social policy and to the government.

Vivian White
So, that matters. That sense of people having things on their mind that disturb them, that they feel they can't talk about, although they're very important to them. That matters.

Professor Webber
Yes, and one would hope that our political classes would consider that people's, private thoughts and feelings were actually important, as well as safety and property matters and riots, and so forth. And I think that the most dangerous thing is when people's thoughts and concerns have become of a sort that they feel that they are not allowed to express, they're not allowed to discuss, first of all, with authorities, but then increasingly, with their neighbours and their friends as well.

So if you drive these anxieties and concerns underground by emphasising rules of political correctness, then I think you do huge damage in the long-term to people, and often you can be quite oblivious of the damage that you have done.

Vivian White
And is that the risk now?

Professor Webber
I think it is the risk, yes.

Panorama: White Fright will be broadcast on Monday, 7 May 2007 at 2030 BST on BBC One.

Or watch online on the Panorama website

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