Labour’s “Social Cohesion Action Plan” Will Only Make Things Worse

Last week, Labour unveiled ‘Protecting What Matters’, the Government’s new “action plan” to “strengthen social cohesion” and “tackle division”. Conspicuous by omission, however, in the announcement by Communities Secretary Steve Reed was any mention of Islamism, says Toby in his Spectator column this week. Here’s an excerpt.

The impression given by the Minister was that “those who try to divide us” and “subvert our shared values” are not the Muslim students mourning the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader or people like Mothin Ali, the Deputy Leader of the Green party, who tweeted on the day Hamas slaughtered 1,200 Jews: “White supremacist European settler colonialism must end!” Instead, it is politicians like Nigel Farage and Katie Lam who draw attention to the small boats and the grooming gangs.

Just in case you’re in any doubt that Labour sees Right-wing politicians as the ‘extremists’ and not those chanting ‘globalise the Intifada’ in our city centres every Saturday, Reed announced that the Government will be adopting an official definition of “anti-Muslim hostility” and appointing a “special representative” to enforce it.

But not to worry. The new definition is “non-statutory”, so it won’t impinge on freedom of expression. Forgive me if I don’t find that very reassuring. The All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims produced a definition of “Islamophobia” in 2018 that was non-statutory, but it still had a chilling effect on free speech. It was taken up by Labour-controlled local authorities in places like Oldham and Bradford and almost certainly inhibited people from drawing attention to the rape gangs operating in those areas for fear they would be branded ‘Islamophobes’. Indeed, Andrew Norfolk, the late Times journalist who fearlessly covered the scandal, was accused of “anti-Muslim reporting” in 2019.

The false premise underpinning this ‘action plan’ is that stifling criticism of Muslims will promote social cohesion. Members of all faiths are already protected by the prohibition on stirring up religious hatred in the Public Order Act, as well as the anti-discrimination clauses in the Equality Act and the religious ‘aggravator’ in the statutory hate crime framework.

Providing members of just one faith with additional protections will hardly reduce community tensions. How does Reed think the official adoption of an “anti-Muslim hostility” definition will go down with Hindus in Leicester or Sikhs in Wolverhampton? I imagine they’ll start clamouring for “special representatives” of their own. Is that really how the Government believes you promote a “shared sense of values, pride and belonging”, to quote from the press release? By arming different communities with ‘tsars’ and giving them extra-judicial powers to police their neighbours for the slightest signs of ‘hostility’? That’s the Kashmiri approach to social cohesion.

Worth reading in full.