The panel comprised of some of Britain’s most well-known campaigners and commentators.

It was chaired by Dr Tahir Abbas, chair of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Culture at the university of Birmingham. Arun Kundnani is deputy editor of Race & Class and works at the Institute of Race Relations. Karen Chauhan is the chief executive of the 1990 Trust and an outspoken critic of the community cohesion agenda. Darcus Howe has been a distinguished broadcaster and journalist for the past 35 years, presenting documentaries on channel 4 and writing a column for New Statesman. Alveena Malik is the Head of Community and Integration Policy at the Commission for Racial Equality.

Darcus Howe

After introductions by the chair, Darcus Howe was the first to offer his remarks. He was scathing about the notion that Britain was sleepwalking into segregation, stating that the “the one set of people who are not sleepwalking to segregation are black and Asian people.” He argued that there was “no sense in which we are not aware of the role of religion in society, of the role of women in society”, or of inequality in general.

He said that when multiculturalism was talked about in political terms it referred to the imposition by state power to divide one people from another on the basis of race or ethnicity’ and he likened it to apartheid in South Africa. He described it as a “political intervention”, not an idea.

Darcus went on to question the logic of the integration agenda, questioning what immigrants were supposed to integrate into. He said the “only thing to integrate into is celebrity culture!”

He drew his brief comments to a close by stating that right now “we are living through a fluid time in our society”, a time when the political shape of our nation was coming into being, and that cohesion could not be engineered.

Alveena Malik

The next speaker was Alveena Malik, who set out to justify why the Commission for Racial Equality had supported the integration agenda. She said that Trevor Phillips had taken the lead in consolidating the CRE’s position since his appointment as chair three years ago.

Alveena was critical about the ability of multicultural policy to “really address the inequalities in our society”, saying that it is not equipped to deal with the key challenges of contemporary Britain.

Referring to the events of 9/11 and 7/7 she said we have seen “British citizens take private action because they have been alienated, disaffected and perhaps not able to express themselves in different ways - only through violent means”.

She argued that culture “instead of race” had been a “prominent factor” in the formation of the integration agenda and spoke about the importance of acknowledging the impact of Eastern European immigration on British society.

Most controversially, she justified CRE support for the integration agenda because of the worrying trend for parents to “send their children to faith schools and to go and live with people who are similar to them”, since “that this is happening across the country and needs to be challenged”.

She was unequivocal that integration does not equate to assimilation. She stated that the CRE took integration to mean “there is diversity within unity”, so that although we have differences (such as over religious faith) “we want to see common trends, common shared values that people can sign up to, and work together and navigate through this particularly challenging time for Britain”.

She said that ultimately, we needed to get to grips with “what identity means”, and “what Britishness means”.

Karen Chauhan

Alveena was followed by Karen Chauhan, who unsurprisingly took issue with much of what Alveena had said.

She said that “multiculturalism has been hijacked by a rightwing agenda that panders to a European model of assimilation and monoculturalism…Britain should be proud of its multiculturalism and that assimilation had gone as far it can possibly go”.

Karem accused the government of “responding with a knee-jerk dismissal of multiculturalism” because of “terrorism and the responses to British foreign policy”. The upshot is that “our communities are being blamed for what is wrong as the government, media and some academics are acting on an agenda based on the politics of fear”.

She turned the debate around by insisting that it is “those who question multiculturalism who need to know how to integrate and who need to know how to live in a multicultural society”.

Karen said the integration agenda could be debunked by looking “at the fantastic examples we have of the contributions of black and Asian communities”. She cited Britain’s most popular food, fashion and music as examples of how fusions arising from multiculturalism had been a great success.

Likewise, she argued that Britain’s proudest sporting moments were attributable to its minorities. She also reminded the audience that our Olympic bid was carried on “the ticket of diversity in London”. She moved on to note the massive role of Black and Asian business in London’s economy, with combined revenues of 4.5 m bringing in 70,000 jobs.

In conclusion she slated integration as a “rude agenda, in the year when we coming up to the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery, it is offensive to say to us that integration hasn’t working and multiculturalism isn’t working.”

Returning to her earlier point, she cited CRE figures that found “95% of white Britons do not have a Black or Asian friend and 1 in 4 would not want to live near them”, while “if that is reversed 60% of Muslims have non-Muslim friends”. She said such realities begged the question of “who needs to integrate and who is it that need to cohere?