In July 2015 the then Prime Minister and Home Secretary asked civil servant, Dame Louise Casey, to review community integration and cohesion in the light of concerns that certain groups were outside of existing policies. The report was published in December 2016, entitled ‘The Casey Review: a review into opportunity and integration’. So far, so good. Even sounds positive and progressive. But is it?
Casey highlights ‘discrimination and disadvantage isolating communities from modern British society’. But she also focuses on what she perceives as high levels of social and economic isolation due to cultural and religious practices in communities that were “holding some of our citizens back but run contrary to British values and sometimes our laws”. (I’ll come back to that term ‘British values’ again.).