Britain is moving towards segregation, adding urgency to the need to drive forward the process of integration, the CRE announced today. Speaking at Manchester Town Hall this evening, Trevor Phillips, CRE Chair said "Post 7/7, the race relations industry has provided a vital post-emergency service which will have to be continued in the medium to long-term to address the increasing segregation of our communities."

"The fact is that we are a society which, almost without noticing it, is becoming more divided by race and religion. We are becoming more unequal by ethnicity."

"If we allow this to continue, we could end up in 2048, a hundred years on from the Windrush, living in a Britain of passively co-existing ethnic and religious communities, eyeing each other uneasily over the fences of our differences.

This is not only or even principally about Muslims. But the aftermath of 7/7 forces us to assess where we are. And here is where I think we are: we are sleepwalking our way to segregation. We are becoming strangers to each other, and we are leaving communities to be marooned outside the mainstream."

Drawing on the recent example of New Orleans, Mr Phillips warned against complacency in the face of divisions and highlighted recent research by leading academics that gives a picture of 'hard' and 'soft' segregation in the UK:

- Increasingly, we live with our own kind. Residential isolation is increasing for many minority groups, especially South Asians: the number of people of Pakistani heritage in what are technically called "ghetto" communities trebled during 1991 - 2001.

- New research from Bristol University shows that far from becoming sites of integration, children are slightly more segregated at school than in their neighbourhoods; and that means that neither children nor parents are mixing.

- Alongside this spatial segregation, there is also a trend towards 'soft' segregation, as different groups increasingly inhabit separate social and cultural worlds.

- New CRE research on people's friendship groups showed that for 95% of white Britons most or all of their friends are white. The proportion of ethnic minority Britons who have mainly or exclusively ethnic minority friends is 37%. These figures show an increase from 94% and 31% respectively in the same study conducted last year.

- The trend is a cause for concern - younger Britons appear to be integrating less well than their parents.

Mr Phillips warned of the dangers of leaving this segregation unaddressed "When the hurricane hits - and it could be recession rather than a natural disaster, for example - those communities are set up for destruction. Even if there is no calamity, these marooned communities will steadily drift away from the rest of us, evolving their own lifestyles, playing by their own rules and increasingly regarding the codes that the rest of us take for granted as outdated behaviour that no longer applies to them."

INTEGRATION AGENDA

Mr Phillips emphasised the importance of building an integrated society. He said, "The fragmentation of our society by race and ethnicity is a catastrophe for all of us. We all have a part to play. Integration has to be a two-way street, in which the settled communities accept that new people will bring change with them and newcomers realise that they too will have to change if we are to move closer to an integrated society."

"We already know a lot about what an integrated society looks like. It has three essential features:

• Equality: everyone is treated equally, has a right to fair outcomes, and no one should expect privileges because of what they are.
• Participation: all groups in society should expect to share in how we make decisions, but also expect to carry the responsibilities of making the society work.
• Interaction: no-one should be trapped within their own community, and in the truly integrated society, who people work with, or the friendships they make, should not be constrained by race or ethnicity."

"There is no doubt that Britain is facing a clear demand to make the process of integration real, active and urgent."

Mr Phillips also spoke of the critical need to encourage integration in education, both in schools and universities. He asked: "Should we be considering using the funding system to encourage schools to attract a diverse range of children? Should we, the CRE, as part of our monitoring of local race equality schemes require them to show us that their catchment areas are being drawn in a way that encourages integration, rather than cutting them off from others who do not share their race? Ultimately, should we have a national understanding of what kind of mix is desirable and what undesirable?

These are difficult questions, which will no doubt provoke cries of "social engineering". So be it. I would rather bear that albatross than allow our children to continue marching into educational ghettoes."

In order for people of different races and religions to mix, the CRE has already invested over £2 million in funding for sporting initiatives that help bring together Britain's diverse communities and has proposed the creation of Summer Camps for school leavers of all backgrounds.

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