JPR media coverage archive
Chief's recipe to heal Britain

A new book by Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks in which he rejects multiculturalism and assimilation, saying they have damaged British society, has been given a mixed reception by human-rights activists and anti-racists.

Sir Jonathan believes that multiculturalism should be replaced with a form of social solidarity, backed by rituals such as a British Day.

“Multiculturalism has run its course and it is time to move on,” he says in his book, The Home We Build Together, published by Continuum.

It had been designed to make ethnic and religious minorities feel more at home. But there had been a price to pay, “and it grows year by year”. It led not to integration but to segregation: “It has allowed groups to live separately with no incentive to integrate, and every incentive not to.”

Multiculturalism had made societies “more abrasive, fractured and intolerant”. British politics, he said, had been poisoned by the rise of identity politics, as minorities and aggrieved groups jockeyed for rights.

The effect, he said, had been inexorably divisive. “A culture of victimhood sets group against group, each claiming that its pain, injury, oppression, humiliation is greater than that of others.”

Sir Jonathan continues his theme in today’s JC, in the first of a series of exclusive essays on “the challenges facing British Jews today”. He talks of a split between the universalists, who want to save the world, and the particularists, who want to save Judaism.

Dr Richard Stone, head of the Stone Ashdown Trust, which backs race-relations organisations, including the Jewish-Muslim Alif Aleph group, said he was “staggered” by the comments.

“My initial response is that he has been reading the words of journalists, who are known enemies of multiculturalism and who are trying to undermine the concept. In my view, multiculturalism is the only hope for the future of this country and we must promote it.”

However, there was a more cautious response from Dr Edie Friedman, director of the Jewish Council for Racial Equality, who, while warning of “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”, called for a “mature discussion”.

“We have to think hard about what kind of society we want.

If you get rid of multiculturalism you have to think about what will replace it. It is certainly a debate that the Jewish community should be involved in.”

Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, leader of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, said that while he agreed with the Chief Rabbi’s rejection of multiculturalism, the whole of British society had to change for communities to feel they were going forward.

Antony Lerman, director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, said the extracts he had read showed he had “misunderstood what multiculturalism is all about”.

“The JPR has made multiculturalism one of its main issues in the past year. We have held two seminars on it and we are holding a series of discussions with different faith groups here and in Europe,” said Mr Lerman.

“I think it would be a good idea to be in discussion with him. I will speak to my chairman and board but I would confidently say I would issue an invitation to the Chief Rabbi on this issue.”