Part 2: How to Heal Divisions in Our Society

Why is the history of modern Britain failing our children, and how is that space being exploited by extre()mists?

In Part 2 of this episode of Beyond GDP: The Social Progress Podcast, host Michael green welcomes back Anwar Akhtar, Director of Samosa Media, for a powerful conversation on education, "cultural capital," and the fight against radical narratives on both the left and the right.

Anwar breaks down two massive, yet widely ignored, historical milestones that he believes should be taught in every primary and secondary school. Anwar also tackles the pragmatics of the modern "culture fights," explaining why Samosa Media intentionally campaigns to "diversify" rather than "decolonize" the curriculum to build common dialogue instead of institutional gridlock. Finally, they look at the evolution of British policing and why history remains our strongest immunization against extrem()ism.

Don't miss out on Part One! 

Please follow and rate our show! 

Explore our work at https://www.socialprogress.org/

Interested in the Social Progress Index? Learn more. 

Help us advance social progress across the world! Your donation makes a huge difference to us. Donate now! 

Want the full story? Subscribe to our newsletter! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello and welcome to Beyond GDP, the social progress podcast, where we're talking to people from government, business, and civil society who are trying to create better communities and a better planet. In today's programme, we're going to be focusing on the issue of how do we heal divisions in our society? Social Progress Index data is clear that declining rights and growing intolerance are having a negative effect on social progress globally and fueling a rise in authoritarian populists who are really implementing programs that seem to be setting the world backwards. So, how do we actually build inclusive societies? How do we heal divisions? We know there's a lot of anger, we know there's a lot of division between people. How do we tackle that? How do we bring people together? Well, my guest today, Anwar Akhtar of the Somosa Media, knows all about that. He's an educator, he's an arts impresario, all focused working in Britain on bringing together black and minority ethnic communities, BME communities, and other communities around shared cultural and educational heritage. Anwar is really someone who knows the story on the front line, is someone who's really worth listening to.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

How can you diversify the curriculum in a way that works nationally and is inclusive? And so I did some research into this, and we ran into this thing about segregation in schools as well, which runs alongside diversity in the curriculum. And it's probably worth drilling into that for your um listeners. So we don't we ended up in a situation where schools were starting to look quite segregated in parts of Birmingham and Manchester and London, and it didn't it didn't seem to make sense because the neighbourhoods were very multicultural, the communities were very multicultural. So if you go around parts of you know central Manchester and parts of not you know where I live in South London now or parts of Tower Hamlets, why were the schools 90, 85, 90 percent BME, whilst the neighborhoods are multicultural and they're kind of being lauded as urban multicultural neighbourhoods where integration is working, the bars are multicultural, the restaurants are. I looked at all the issues and all the arguments about diversity in the curriculum, and then I I the sort of organizational structure, planning, delivery, producer, builder, you know, in me said what could work, what can we actually do if I was to recommend to number 10, how you change the curriculum? And I sort of kept zooming in on two stories that I thought were really important, and that should be taught in every school from Cornwall to Inverness, Land Zen to John Old Groves. And that one is just the story of the British Indian Army, which is quite extraordinary about the impact of what it's had on modern Britain, because you know I think the numbers were the British Army, as in you know, if you like the home regiments, you know, the Yorkshire, the Lancashire, the Corps, the British home forces were 2.3 million, and then the British Indian Army in World War I was 2.1 million, and then of course you've got the Australian regiments, New Zealand, um, the Caribbean, where there was a lot of RAF um technical support, and so obviously, you know, you know, if Britain didn't really stand alone because the empire was always there, though the Churchill metaphor is very valid in the context of the Battle of the Britain and you know that conflict there. So, you know, what but Britain didn't really stand alone, you know, because it always had the might of the empire behind it, and the debates about why 2. you know 1 million British Indians served, many of them served just to earn a living, you know, and many of them served because you know they had you know part certain communities, a bit like um how many Algerians served in the French Army, you know, certain communities had just um merged into you know a career of serving the British military as a safe, stable, secure income. And that was particularly true in the Punjab and Northwest Frontier regions. So, you know, we're not going into the anthropology of that and have some relatives that are part of that story. 2.3 sorry, I beg your pardon, 2.1 million, I think, British Indians serve. Now, if you look at the media, and this isn't conspiratorial at all, you know, this is just what's happened. The media narrative that we all grow up with, you know, you know, you watch Harnham and the Battle of Britain, the longest day, you know, all the great war movies that are on at Christmas, you know, it's very much about the European theatre, isn't it? Or, you know, the guns of Navarone, or you know, and that that theatre was predominantly the if you like the European forces, so that although there was a big Indian presence in D-Day around logistics, the British Indian Army um they fought in sort of Hong Kong and Singapore and Malaysia and Burma and the Levant and North Africa and you know the Italy campaign. But without that contribution, we all know that you know was a large part of what broke the access um forces. And that story is not in our school curriculum in any profound way, and I'm and I just thought that's just utterly bonkers, you know, how that's you know, given the importance of World War II to the British Island story anyway, in the last century, to then exclude the contribution of Muslim Sikh Hindu forces, and of course the fact that almost 40% of the British Indian Army is Muslim is a huge V-sign to Tommy Robinson and all the thugs at the EDL and some of the nonsense that's coming from reform. But it's also quite a V-sign to Islamic extremism that will point a message that we're not accepted and we don't belong here, we're not part of it when Regents Park Moss was built as a tribute or respect to the Muslim forces in World War II. And that's where we're thinking just getting young people to study this from all communities is really important. And um, because I know time's short, the other one we looked at, which I just thought was bonkers in terms of its impact, was um, and particularly because of the malignant legacy of Enoch Powell, which is being brought back again, and is now, you know, people are trying to sanitize it as Powell was right. I mean, that bugger was Minister of Labour, wasn't he, in uh that government, and he went to the Caribbean and include encouraged nurses in particular to come and work in the NHS, and the Migration Museum have done some wonderful stuff on this, and I looked at this in some detail. And there's a bonkers start, and I know you like stats, Mike, so you're gonna love this one. There's a bonkers stat that I think um three out of every um seven midwives in Britain in the 1960s were um were African, were Caribbean. Now, in turn, I mean that's up there with um in terms of nation building, that's up there with Brunel, isn't it? In terms of overseeing the birth of the nation's children, you know, it's up there with um Robert Stevenson, and um I just remember thinking that should be taught in schools because you know that contribution as role models, because often young BME children are taught to look at footballers and rappers and musicians as role models, and some of them are, some of them are, but there's no greater role model than you know the contribution that um African Caribbean communities, particularly um the nurses, made to the NHS. And that I thought every primary school, that's a story for every primary school, right? And we got a little bit of pushback because why didn't you do, you know, why didn't you talk about the Bengal famine or why didn't you talk about slavery? And I thought, well, probably not going to work in a primary school, right? You know, and and I think the point is that, you know, and conversations about empire and exploitation may follow, you know, but it's about bringing so I just think we the curriculum is failing to represent modern Britain in terms of diversity and inclusion and contributions from Britain's black and Asian communities. It's just failing, and that space is being exploited by extremists that for whatever reason, we know what the far-right racist extremist take is on Britain that you know, you know, we're all just Johnny Cumbe lately recent arrivals and we're all kind of welfare scroungers. Well, you know, my uncle set up a factory that employed thousands of people, you know, and you know, so many, and you try and imagine Britain's transport infrastructure without the contribution of um the African Caribbean community, and that was structural. You know, you know, the African Caribbeans were brought over to staff transport for London and buses in Birmingham and Bristol and Manchester, and Asians were brought over to work in the textile sector, which is why so many then went into textile and retail, and amusingly now many of them are on the Asian rich list, you know, being lauded by the right-wing media, the same right wing media that was hostile to them in the 60s and 70s, and then of course you've got the the Ugandan Asian story. So I think putting this in the curriculum is really important about teaching our island story. Um, we're failing, we're not doing anywhere near enough.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Yeah, I mean just I mean, generalizing that a little bit, I mean, it's that point about education is not just about grade scores. Education is around a civic process of building a society where people are informed about their the the history, the culture, etc. And I think that I mean I'm a great believer that history is a great immunization against extremism because extremism extremism can only thrive on very simple, unrealistic narratives. So there's a role that education's got to play in bringing us together and building us as a society. And also, then on top of that, I think arts as well, arts as a way that's a unifying force. And I think this is important because sometimes people see the challenging extremism thing as about directly just targeting the arguments of the extremists. I mean, we've talked in the past about the British counter-terrorism strategy, and this whole programme has been called PREVENT, that was all around challenging extremist narratives. Which I I mean I think the the problem of it was was it wasn't building a common dialogue. It was creating um uh a set of yeah a set of narratives that were seen as being wrong, and people who held them uh as being wrong, and then was trying to challenge them. Rather than saying, actually, let's look at this bigger picture and let's undermine the extremists by realizing that what they're saying is just rubbish. And I think that's for you know we take this from the British context, we take it to other divided societies. I think the re the lessons are still the same. You won't challenge the extremists just by saying you're wrong, you've got to build that big bigger civic and social infrastructure. That's the kind of core of it. Would that be a fair summary?

SPEAKER_02 12:26

Yeah, I absolutely agree. I mean, there's three things that you triggered in that um analysis you just made there, and that that's the issues around prevent, cultural capital, and I think where the left are not doing great work either, and you know, I'm very much on the left, I think, culturally and politically in my background. So I think on on prevent prevent's just been a disaster because it got weaponized as part of the culture wars, and the moment the Daily Church Telegraph is for it, the Daily Mail is for it, and you know, the left have just got a responsibility to say, hang on, what's going on here? This doesn't sound right. And then, of course, when it they brought Palestine into it and Palestinian solidarity and Palestinian activism, I mean that was it, it was all over. It's just a shouting match now. You know, it's part of the culture wars, and so the best thing they could do with prevent is we genuinely need an education policy that is inclusive and has buy-in from all sides to challenge extremism, violent extremism, be it religious, be it white, be it whatever, it has to be challenged, and it has to be a recognition that some of that threat comes from within Muslim communities. I say that as someone that has spent his whole life you know defending the community I come from, but we have got issues with extremism within communities, so that but you know prevent has failed and it just needs to start again because it's just become a manifesto for the Henry Jackson Society, as the left will immediately oppose it, shouting match. So I just avoid conversations about prevent now because it's just a headache. Um, it was the the sociologist Pierre Boudot who started talking about cultural capital as quite an obscure kind of theory, and I think it was around the time of Gramsci and again and me, so it's like that period, but actually it's really important, and what it is is that education is so much more than what you get in just a school classroom. So if you're lucky like I was, and I went to great school, Burnage High School, brilliant six form, Loreto, you also get a really rounded arts education and cultural education. Education, the idea of cultural capital, is if it I'm kind of paraphrasing it here in my own analysis of it, but if you're exposed to barristers and lawyers and artists and scientists and travel as a young person, that has a profound impact on you. And a lot of working class people from diverse communities, particularly within um the Asian community, I think it's similar in the African Caribbean community. Talent would go into law or finance or medicine or engineering. Because if your parents didn't speak English, which my parents didn't, they suppose would do in Punjabi at home, you can work out the O levels and the A levels to do that and get there, which is why and in and they're they're called the silent professions because they're not the professions around media and arts and journalism, and but you know, most working class Muslims of my generation wouldn't wouldn't have had a clue how you would go and work at a Tate or Channel 4 News or the BBC or the World Service or the National Theatre or you know um go and be someone like Danny Boyle. Created a vacuum in culture, so there's a lack of cultural voices. So this idea of a lot of what we do is cultural capital. You know, we go into schools, and I think I was talking about that in the the story of um the British Indian Army, you know, that's a historical story, and yeah, but there's a cultural side to that as well, and diversity and you know the stories of who we are now, and I think similar with the African Caribbean communities, so I think finding stories of commonality, stories that bring us together, uh stories that aren't about division, is a really important part of nation building. And I think both the left, I mean the right obviously are gonna you know not hate it, but I think one of the problems in the left is we too often also end up um playing on the right kind of pitch around division. I mean, I've been quite bemused by this whole thing about global majority, you know, and the whole global majority. Because to me, I've always been very proud of being working class BME, you know, and you know, I I grew up influenced by the struggles of black communities against you know, police racism and the impact of Skarmon, and I was part of the story of the McPherson report because I was involved in politics and campaigning them. And their British black Asian achievements, you know, the South Ork campaigns against racism, you know, the story of Blair Peach, the anti-Nazi, all that makes me quite proud to be British, actually. The clash, you know, it's something that's very much it's a shared black, Asian, white British story. And I think the thing about global majority is the moment you start saying that it's just about race, it's not about culture, it's about 60%, you know, is it 6.3 billion out of 8 billion, you know, are in the global south and their inequalities. But essentially you're saying that's everybody that isn't white. So you're defining everything as racial, which I think you know, and I get the social injustice, I get the economic injustice of how the global south has been treated, particularly economically in the exploitation of empire, and there's arguments about that, but I'm not sure you should put that on Britain's iron story about race, and you know, I think it's really dangerous if you start saying that you know I'm part of a global majority that's got more in common with someone that is a working class kid in Venezuela than someone a white person I've grown up with in Manchester. That's not the case. So I know so I think there is a danger of division around some of the language, and the other one, which we call back to education and integration, you know, we and you know, we had a bit we had a bit of a ruck in some of the media about this. Uh, a couple of my colleagues were you know have very strong and fairly absolutely rightly. But we start, I said we we use the phrase diversify the curriculum, um, rather than um uh you know more robust language about decolonize the curriculum. Because if I mean and I'll be quite honest here of my own experiences now, and I think it's quite useful for you to hear actual experiences of people that are delivering work on the ground. If you say decolonize the curriculum to many head of a large six form or a large FE college or the VC at a university, um there's really strong valid arguments about decolonize the curriculum in where power lies, who tells the stories, who owns the space. And I've been part of that work with Rich Mix and Dara, right? So I've got a lot of sympathy with that argument. But to your to a VC or a head teacher, it's gonna be arguments about Churchill, arguments about remembrance, you're gonna upset the Royal British Legion, and I'm probably gonna have the Daily Mail and GB News here in a couple of weeks looking for a story, and headache, so they're not gonna engage, yeah, or it becomes part of the culture wars. Whereas actually, if you say diversify the curriculum, you're bringing something, you're adding, you're bringing the stories of the British Indian Army and the magnificent contribution of the Windrush generation, and how that's changed our city so much for the better, and you know how you know it's just unimaginable Britain, modern Britain, without the contributions of BME communities, right? I mean, they're as essential a part of our island story, you know, as the People's March for Jobs and the Geordie narrative and that great contribution from Northeast communities. You know, that it's not one's better or the other, or one's more, you know, it's just they're both really important, beautiful parts of our island story. And I think the danger with um, so I think the I mean I'm not gonna say danger because I think it's valid arguments, but I mean another example I use is I've done I've done so much work around policing and equality over the years. Um, anyone that says there hasn't been a transformational improvement in relations between Britain's Asian communities and the police is living in Cloud Cuckoo Land, right? I remember the hatred of my generation towards the police because of South Fall and an association that they were there to protect the skinner, to protect the BMP and the attacks on Asian communities and the violence. Um, I've got nieces and nephews that serve in the police now, you know, and they just there's been I mean there's still lots of issues and concerns about over policing of the black community, and though I think again the Macpherson report has been hugely impactful in actually improving things, right? And the police of today, I mean just look at policing in France and look at PC in Britain and can compare and contrast. So I think there's been huge positives that have been achieved as well that we should celebrate. And sometimes the left don't do that because we're so busy with the injustices of today.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

Well, I think that's a great note to finish on. I think the the positive there is the progress, and it's it's hard work. And I know that you know you get attacked from all sides for trying to build this stuff, but you know, it's you know, the telling those stories that about pull us together rather than divide us is so important. I think we'd hope we're going to be able to talk about a bit about Pakistan as well. We'll have to come back and we'll talk about that at a time. But Ambar, thank you so much. Really enriching, fantastic uh to have you on. Uh, and thank you very much.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

My pleasure, Michael. All the best. Take care. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

If you want to learn more about going beyond GDP, Social Progress Imperative has the tools to help you. Our flagship, Global Social Progress Index, covers 170 countries with data going back to 2011. Through 57 different indicators, the Global Social Progress Index gives you a rigorous and comprehensive assessment of how countries are performing on real quality of life. For information on all of these tools, go to our website at socialprogress.org. If you want to learn more about going beyond GDP, Social Progress Imperative has the tools to help you. Our flagship, Global Social Progress Index, covers 170 countries with data going back to 2011. Through 57 different indicators, the Global Social Progress Index gives you a rigorous and comprehensive assessment of how countries are performing on real quality of life. For information on all of these tools, go to our website at socialprogress.org.