Who Creates Safe Communities?

Who Creates Safe Communities? • Government, Civil Society or Business? Alex Goldberg, Chief Executive, London Jewish Forum alex.goldberg@londonjewishforum.org.uk

Who am I? • Lawyer and Chief Executive of London Jewish Forum • Worked for the Government’s Commission for Racial Equality on the Safe Communities Initiative for 2 years • Seconded to Met Police • Advisor to Surrey Police and CRONEM (Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism) • Lobbied UN for recognition of group rights

Community Conflict • Many reasons for community conflict. • Two frequent examples that seem to arise resulting in extreme violence: • Extremist or organised racist groups come into area to stir tensions (sometimes after a one-off incident) • Mistrust and tensions between two distinct communities living side by side i.e. “parallel communities”

The Players • Government - includes police and schooling • NGOs • Business (and other private institutions)

Government • Control over forces of coercion • Duty to promote good race relations • Equalities and Human Rights Commission • Public Grants • Stephen Lawrence Inquiry • Department for Communities - post 7th July 2005 • Schools duty to promote cohesion

Civil Society and NGOs • UK has a large NGO sector - both faith-based and secular • Race equality NGOs largely funded by grants under the RRA (although this is changing); Religious cohesion funded by Government (no First Amendment) • Conflict and mediation specialists • Intercultural relations: From ‘Bagels and Bhajis’ to conflict prevention

Business • Business in the Community • Large CSR programmes • Financial districts of London adjacent to one of Western Europe’s poorest Boroughs - Tower Hamlets • Risk factor: how far can they go?

CRE’s 5 Principles • Equality – equal rights and opportunities for everyone in all areas of activity. • Respect – acceptance of the individual right to identify with, maintain and develop one’s particular cultural heritage, and to explore other cultures. • Security – a safe environment, free from racism, for all. • Unity – acceptance of belonging to a wider community, and of shared values and responsibilities, rooted in common citizenship and humanity. • Cooperation – interaction by individuals and groups to achieve common goals, resolve conflict, and create community cohesion.

Dealing with Conflict • Traditionally the method of dealing with conflict was to utilise legal powers to stop violence at source • Prevention has become more popular within Councils and police forces as a means to reducing levels of tension and the possibility of serious violence in the first place.

Fire-fighting – Stopping conflict as it happens • The Criminal Code gives Councils the power to prevent the stirring of racial tensions: • Incitement to Racial Hatred • Racially or religiously aggravated offences • ASBOs • Protection from Eviction Act; Malicious Communications; Telecommunications Act

Case Study 1: Behzti • Play showing violence in Gurdwara at Birmingham Rep • Sikh community ‘consulted’ • Protests at theatre • Police use dispersal method and violence ensues • Negotiations result in closure of play causing nation debate on freedom of speech

Where ‘fire-fighting’ does not work • Example 1: Race riot occurring in an area that is 99% White. Public authorities ignoring tensions when asylum seekers were placed on an estate. • Example 2: Gypsy and Traveller community not consulted on eviction causing rising tensions on all sides. • Example 3: Birmingham - Police admitting that they had a lack of intelligence and little communication with a large ethnic minority community located in a large central England city. It had claimed that it did not want to divert resources from ‘fire-fighting’ to community liaison.

Dispelling myths and prevention • Government can work to build partnerships in communities • Safe Neighbourhood policing taken seriously • Goldstein’s theories now applied in UK policing • Community engagement decreases problems

Case Study 2: Asylum seeker and refugees in Glasgow • Asylum-seeker and refugees were placed in an estate. Violence erupted against the new community. • One death and several other attacks. • The police and local authorities attempted to come up with a number of projects to calm tensions

Glasgow continued • Mobile Translation Unit: Police went onto the estate with a mobile translation unit in order to form relations with the new community. • From there they established some projects…

North Glasgow International Festival • Multicultural Festival: Public authorities decided to celebrate the new diversity of this neighbourhood involving the residents in creating an ‘International Festival’ on the estate

Business • Business has an interest in influencing the neighbourhood • Some industries want to improve relations with the local community as that is their client base or because it is a potential recruitment base or it feels that it wants to have a ethical brand e.g. the banks or because it has fundamentally changed the local environment and wants a good environment to expand.

Study 3: Leicester Mercury • Leicester will be UK’s first ethnic minority majority city • Leicester Mercury set up a multi-cultural advisory group to discuss issues of the day made up of local media, the police, local authorities, faith groups, head teachers, and community and youth groups • Gives space to ethnic and religious issues within the newspaper • The forum has become a place where people from different communities can discuss challenging issues

Study 4: Soccer cohesion • 5 Olympic Boroughs deprived • Parental choice results in schools having single ethnic groups • Sport and pop music a unifier • The West Ham project brings younger kids together - supported by Jewish and Muslim Communities • Supported by local club, Canary Wharf, community groups and the police

Soccer Cohesion 2 • Southampton used football as a way of bringing youth services, police, schools department, youth groups and 400 children together • This resulted in identifying the problem and making changes

Community Initiatives • Tensions often occur • In communities where there are good lines of communication conflict has been reduced quickly • And when they don’t they violence can be extreme or last for months, years and even decades...

Jewish-Muslim Forum • East London: Tensions in area with large Hasidic Jewish and Indian Muslim population following on from the Middle East conflict • Establish forum which has a mechanism for dealing with conflict • Group has evolved and is planning Muslim-Jewish housing projects together

United London Stands • Gaza Conflict: Record number of attacks on Jews in London • Starts from grassroots - 7 faiths, politicians and other communities support anti-race hate declaration • Police give input • Jewish-Muslim forum for London and conflict prevention launched in City Hall

Green Lanes Project • 4 Councils have set up a research project into social issues. • They utilised 10 associations to carry out the work. All were either Kurdish or Turkish. The association met to discuss their work through the project. • Better relations resulted in a large reduction in recorded tensions between the two communities over three years.

Contingency Planning • Preparing for the big one • Can you stop a single determined individual or set of individuals carrying out act of violence? • You can do scenario work and contingency planning to have a plan of action when the big incident happens

7th July 2005 • Creating a database of 1500 community organisations helped to circulate information and acted as an observatory for police and Government • Statements by faith leaders had been part of contingency plans months before to counter community tensions (see photo) • Whilst acts of violence did occur as a backlash to the bombings the work done beforehand nationally and locally did prevent violence and gave communities reassurance • Helplines provided support for isolated individuals • Far-right monitored

Conclusion • Respect • Interaction • Communication • Equality

Who Creates Safe Communities?