National Life: Shared Values and Public Policy Priorities — House of Lords, 2016-12-02
Topic: Civil Rights
Josephine Farrington (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I was unable to be present for the whole debate, but with the leave of the House, I would like to speak in the most reverend Primate’s debate today. I wish to ask: who are we, the British, our national group of people? I speak as someone who knows my background to be—and it is probably much wider—Huguenot, Norwegian, Welsh, Cornish and English. Those are the ones I know about, although I am sure there are many more I stood in the ward of Ribbleton in Preston, Lancashire, in 1977 with a National Front opponent. At the time, I was involved in the Council of Europe with a project for primary school children to look at why people lived in their own communities. The children in Ribbleton exchanged with children in Finland to look at why people lived there. One of the most insightful moments was when I pointed something out to a boy. Noble Lords can imagine there was a lot of anti-Muslim feeling around with the National Front. One boy looked at me and said, "How dare you come here and talk to us about looking after them, the immigrants". I said, "I know you well. I know your grandparents. You are from an immigrant family". At that time, Ribbleton had the highest percentage of any area in the country of Catholics, originally Irish immigrants coming over to work in the textile industry. He looked at me and said, "I’m not one of them". I said, "But you are, I know your grandparents. They are Irish and they came here". "Oh", he said and went quiet. Another boy said, "You’re a Paki". He said, "No I’m not. I’m no different from you. Your grandparents are Irish, too". I ask the most reverend Primate to look at the issue of who are we, the British nationals, because in many communities it is very different In my home city of Preston, I live near a mosque. I took a 14 year-old who had never been to a mosque before to the open day for a new mosque. Afterwards he said, "That is amazing. It is all so much like the church". I was delighted by his reaction. In my community, which has a mosque, an Anglican church and just down the road a Catholic church, because of the people who were originally migrants from Ireland, local public policy issues and priorities often centre around, "Who has got the right to park here?". It is not other subjects, but the shared space issues which are important when it comes to public policy I have intervened in this debate having listened to almost all of it with great interest, in particular to references to the sense of locality, the sense of being British and the sense of being who we are. I am aware that there are members of our local Muslim community in Preston who are working to tackle some of the issues just spoken of by the noble Baroness. The way we change things is by working together. There are people of good will in all groups in our society who wish to change things. I do not think that berating from the outside changes anyone. When we in your Lordships’ House are berated by the media, it does not change us; it makes us more determined to stand up for how important we are. Working with us would work much better.