CONSTRUCTIVE conversations: that’s what Sunder Katwala, and the institution he founded over a decade ago, British Future, is all about. The independent think-tank has earned itself a voice in the debates around immigration, identity and race, with its focus on engaging the public constructively in issues which can be polarising and divisive. “One of the challenges of this moment is that there are a lot of identity debates happening, all at once. So it can be quite frenetic,” Katwala told GG2 Power List. “What I am trying to do as person, what we are trying to do as an organisation is: have the constructive conversations that the fast-changing society needs to build more confidence in the future that we are going to have.” The biggest highlight of 2023 for Katwala has been the publication of his book, How to be a Patriot: Why love of country can end our very British culture war, in which he asks how we define patriotism in a diverse society, and offers a new perspective on understanding our collective identity. “I was trying to pull together both my per sonal experience and story of this country, but also the challenges that we face as a country. I have got confidence, optimism about the future of Britain, because it’s changed for the better in my lifetime,” he said. “If you think about growing up in the playgrounds of 1980sand 1990s, we have seen enormous change across the generations, for the better, on inclusion, on race, on discrimination. Yet, at the moment, we have the fractious debates about identity, and the so called culture war. What I was particularly trying to do in the book was, together with the questions of identity, immigration, integration and race, to ask how we could perhaps have more people with a confidence in reaching the common ground agenda that we need.” Katwala is mindful that younger generation of ethnic minorities might have different expectations on these issues, when compared to the first British born generation like himself, who inherited a lot from the challenges and struggles of the postwar migrants and people who came in the 1950s to 1970s period. “The things that I’m saying are progress, there isn’t overt racism in the football match or there is some diversity in our public life, the next generation has taken that for granted and want faster change for progress,” he noted, while adding that for the majority group, who have been adjusting for this change, these could still feel fast. “What we need is stronger relationships, not just within groups, but across all of the groups in our society. The people who’ve got confidence about change in our society tend to be the people who have a lot of a lot of meaningful contact with people who are different from them across faiths, across ethnicities, at school, at university, in the workplace.” In that way, his optimism is quite grounded, and he points out that the polarised media debates about identity don’t really reflect the lived reality. “But there are real challenges as well, that we need to talk openly about and find constructive solutions to,” he added. Katwala thinks British Future’s work last year to bring together a wider group of organisations to mark the 75th anniversary of the arrival of the Windrush has been an important one in this respect. “We had a major impact by bringing 500 organisations together and not just in communities, but making sure that national institutions from the Palace to the Royal Albert Hall to the Football Association also mark that, I think this is something we can build on,” he said. “Because I think people of all backgrounds want to see the full history of Britain, why we are the diverse society we are today taught properly in every classroom… A lot of people were saying that history was a kind of cultural issue. And I think one of the things we did in the Windrush 75th anniversary was, if you could tell all of the stories, if you have con versations across the generations about the story of immigration and change, it can be real ly constructive experience.” Born in Doncaster as a twin to an Irish mother and an Indian father – both arrived here to work for the NHS – Katwala calls him self, in his book, ‘a child of the NHS’, whose 75th birthday was also marked last year. “It’s not a coincidence that 75th birthday of the NHS and 75th anniversary of the Windrush are exactly the same time or fortnight apart, because the NHS absolutely depended on the Commonwealth contribution, to create some thing that cherish and share,” he noted. “One of the reasons why I say that we can be confident about a diverse Britain is if you look at the things that make most British people proud, like the NHS or the armed forces, you find the story of diversity right at their centre.” Now, Katwala wants to start a conversation about where we are going in the next 25 years, one of his ambitions for the centenary of mod ern, multi-ethnic Britain in 2048 will be a net zero on discrimination. “We have got a net zero ambition on climate change. I think we should have a net zero ambition on discrimination. If we set that as a goal, we’d need the government after the next general elections, for the next five or 10 years , to work out what are the foundations for that, what do you measure, how do you how do you track your progress,” he said. “If you could show that fairness for every body, breaking down the barriers to opportunity, whether it’s race, gender, social class, and that we can go together, we will get out of this idea that it’s a sort of zero sum game.” Katwala graduated from the University of Oxford in 1992, studying politics, philosophy and economics and began his career in publishing. He helped to establish a new think tank called the Foreign Policy Centre before moving into journalism, working for The Ob server. He served as the general secretary of the Fabian Society from 2003 to 2011. He founded British Future in 2012.
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