Focus on Great Britain London Office October 2010 Separate and Unequal: How integration can deliver the good society! Britain is separate because it is unequal, and it is unequal because it is sepa­rate. The gap between rich and poor, having exploded during the 1980s, is still growing, despite measures to address poverty in the 13 years of Labour Gov­ernment. At the same time, we face growing fragmentation in our communities. Nick Johnson * Britain is separate and unequal. It is separate because it is unequal, and it is unequal because it is separate. Britain, as well as being a society with declining social mobility and an increased gap between rich and poor, is a country where social segre­gation is increasing. We are still living with the Thatcher legacy, which not only profoundly ac­celerated inequality and social division, but also created an ethos that there is„no such thing as society‟. Collective institutions such as trade unions and political parties are steadily losing members. Our society has become far less in­tegrated. The ties that bind people together have eroded, to be replaced by the idea of every individual for themselves. We need a new vision to inform policy develop­ment, particular in a period where Labour is in * Nick Johnson is an independent policy and re­search consultant, working on equality, cohesion and integration issues across the public and volun­tary sectors. opposition. That vision must go beyond simply equality and cover the type of society in which we live – our relationships with each other as well as our own individual opportunities. A good society requires that we worry more than just about individual equality indicators: it also de­mands we look at the health of our social fabric. Integration can provide that vision. Because the left in politics is primarily motivated by the value of equality and fairness, issues of integration and identity are often viewed as be­ing a distraction from what really matters: if so­cial problems are addressed, issues of identity will look after themselves. But there is an impor­tant political problem here. It will not be possible to build the broad coalitions needed to address social inequalities if issues of identity are dis­missed as second order. Indeed, integration relies upon the one to drive the other and states quite simply that life chances will not be equal Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung London Office 66 Great Russell Street London WC1B 3BN Phone:+44(0)20 7025 0990 Fax:+44(0)20 7242 9973 e-mail: info@feslondon.net website: www.feslondon.org.uk