GOOD COMMUNITY RELATIONS, INTEGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP
to build better integration and cohesion. In short, local initiatives have to be taken within a national framework and commitment. The Commission’s conclusions echo some, though not all, of the Common Basic Principles on Integration developed by the European Union. The Government’s reply to the Commission’s report (2008) also argued that cohesion can only be understood and built locally: central Government’s role is to set the national framework within which local authorities and their partners can deliver improvements to cohesion. It stated that citizenship is not ‘a legal status and a set of legal rights’ but a two-way process involving migrants too: it is also about what society and the state expect of citizens as individuals and about feeling a sense of belonging both to the UK and to the part of the country in which people live. The response set out further key principles to support the local delivery of cohesion: •
Mainstreaming cohesion into wider policy areas.
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A national framework for local support and guidance.
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The integration of new migrants and existing communities.
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Building positive relationships and encouraging activities that provide bridges between different groups.
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A stronger focus on what works in building integrated and cohesive communities at a local level.
One result of the Commission’s report, however, was that its doubts about single group funding (that is, grants to organisations offering services to or representing specific ethnic groups) were picked up and echoed by a range of agencies and statutory funders. For example, the Housing Corporation, which funds and regulates housing associations, issued guidance on cohesion which said that it would no longer invest to benefit a particular community group unless ‘an equality and business case’ was made for such investment, and made it clear that, even if the case was made for the specific needs of a group, the latter would still have to show how its policies and practices would promote integration and cohesion. Migrant organisations would thus have to meet more stringent conditions for funding. Some local authorities took a similar line. The result was the threatened closure of many organisations offering valuable services to new communities and migrants. One organisation so threatened, Southall Black Sisters, an organisation that has worked with many different communities of women over decades, and has been crucial in achieving changes in the law on domestic violence and marriage, decided to take a legal challenge when the London Borough of Ealing announced it was to remove the funding it previously received to work on domestic violence in the area.
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