Tag: Tariq Modood

The politics of identity, which can segue into the politics of victimhood, has now established itself strongly on the left and among liberals of all stripes. A recent book, The Tribe (2018), by Ben Cobley, argues that “a discrete strain of politics… assign(s) favour to one group (including women and non-white-skinned people) and disfavour to another (notably the white-skinned and male)”. A spectrum running from far left to liberal conservatism, it has developed “shared assumptions, shared language and a shared value system”. Wars over these attitudes mainly take place among members of the political and cultural establishments, who are themselves generally white. Tariq Modood, professor of sociology at Bristol University, a British Pakistani and one with both academic and state honours, believes the left’s obeisance to an unreflective anti-racism is “confused”. In a talk he gave to a workshop on “Labour and England” in September, he said that “the self-effacement of being British among the centre-left made it difficult for people like me to say I was British and was proud to be British, that we were British together…ethnic minorities are now more affirming of a British identity than the white English”. On a panel earlier this year he has argued that “we need to put right what’s gone wrong in immigration: people have lost trust in the system…People don’t blame the immigrants - they blame the politicians. I think we should change the system of free movement.” The shame which leftists and liberals often express – the writer Paul Mason wrote in 2015 that “I do not want to be English” – and the left-liberal contempt for what they claim is a continued attachment to imperial glory by whites, are themes picked up and developed by Iranian born Ali Ansari, now head of the Institute for Iranian Studies at St Andrews University. Deprecating British self deprecation, Ansari told me that “the empire is accused of being a racist project – in fact, imperialists who knew and worked in the empire were often very inclusive – cosmopolitanism came to be part of imperialism… Someone said – the ‘trouble with the British is that not only were they the greatest imperialists, but they are also the greatest anti-imperialists’.” Ansari and Modood are scholars, Katwala a journalist turned think tank leader. Munira Mirza was born to working-class Pakistani immigrants in Oldham: a former researcher for the Centre-right Policy Exchange institute, she later worked as London Mayor Boris Johnson’s advisor on culture.