IN THE AFTERMATH of last summer's riots that swept across Britain, Sunder Katwala found himself at the centre of perhaps the most urgent conversation the country needed to have.
As director of British Future, the think tank he founded in 2012, Katwala has spent years advocating for “constructive conversations” on identity, immigration and race. Now, his voice resonates with renewed urgency as the nation grapples with its most serious social cohesion challenge in decades.
“There's been a vacuum on communities policy for too long and this summer we saw what that can lead to,” Katwala observed in September 2024, days after publishing 'After the Riots', a paper that laid out a comprehensive 12-point plan to rebuild community cohesion, in the wake of Southport riots.
His warning was prescient: “Trying to move on from the violent disorder without addressing its causes... could risk recurring episodes of the kind of disturbances we have seen.”
In a political landscape where identity issues often generate more heat than light, Katwala has emerged as a rare figure capable of speaking across divides. Born in Doncaster to an Irish mother and Indian father – both NHS workers – his personal story embodies the multicultural Britain he champions.
And, this background gives him a unique vantage point from which to assess Britain's social fabric, particularly evident in his September report urging then-new prime minister Keir Starmer to deliver a 'state of the nation' address on community cohesion.
At a November summit that brought together experts and grassroots practitioners to discuss the summer's disorder, Katwala's approach stood out: pragmatic, forward-looking, and focused on solutions rather than recriminations.
“Next year will be a really important test for how a national strategy takes shape,” he said, closing that conference with characteristic optimism.
This past year has demonstrated Katwala's remarkable ability to balance unflinching analysis of sensitive issues while maintaining a constructive tone. When British Future's research revealed in September that public perceptions of immigration were wildly distorted – with people believing asylum seekers represented more than five times their actual proportion of immigrants – Katwala navigated the findings without inflaming tensions.
“Most people massively overestimate how much of the UK's immigration is for asylum, and these skewed perceptions give us an unbalanced debate about the immigration we actually have,” he noted, adding that the government would need “a workable approach that combines compassion with control.”
His appointment to chair Newham's Commission on Inclusion and Belonging in January 2025 marks a significant recognition of his thought leadership.
“Newham is the most diverse and fastest-changing borough in the capital city,” Katwala noted on accepting the role. “That places Newham at the heart of one of the central challenges of our times: how we respect our differences, handle change fairly and bring people together in a changing and increasingly diverse society.”
What makes Katwala's approach distinctive is his emphasis on creating meaningful connections across community lines. As he told GG2 Power List last year: “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 meaningful contact with people who are different from them across faiths, across ethnicities, at school, at university, in the workplace.”
This philosophy underpinned one of his most successful initiatives of the past year – using shared history to create common ground. Building on British Future's work marking the 75th anniversary of Windrush, Katwala championed efforts to highlight the contribution of Black, Asian and Muslim soldiers in the World Wars as a counter-narrative to division.
“The story of Khudadad Khan and others like him should be on the school curriculum,” he urged in October, referring to the first Muslim soldier to receive the Victoria Cross, whose 110th anniversary British Future marked. “Commemorating all those who served, from all backgrounds, could make Remembrance Sunday a moment that brings people together across communities.”
Similarly, his coordination of pioneering Black footballers to celebrate England during the Euros, and as communities prepared to mark Windrush Day, highlighted sport's unifying potential – something he hopes to build on as Britain prepares to host Euro 2028.
Perhaps Katwala's most fulfilling moment of the past year would be the July's general election, which saw a record number of 90 ethnic minority MPs elected to the parliament, bringing the diversity of the House of Commons closer than ever to reflecting the electorate.
“In the space of 40 years, we have gone from zero to nearly one in seven MPs being from an ethnic minority background,” he said, while adding a note of caution: “Better representation doesn't guarantee better policies on inclusion. Our race debates can often feel as polarised as ever. But a stronger share of voice matters.”
Looking ahead, Katwala is already thinking about the next 25 years. One of his ambitions is to achieve a “Net Zero on discrimination” along with the UK’s Net Zero climate goals.
“I think we should have a Net Zero ambition on discrimination... If you could show that fairness for everybody, 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,” he has said.
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 onto journalism, working for The Observer. He served as the general secretary of the Fabian Society from 2003 to 2011.
Married to his wife Stacy since 2001, Katwala is a proud father of four children –Zarina, 18, Jay, 17, Sonny, 16, and Indira, 13. Giving a nod to his heritage, his children’s names all have some relation to India. Their middle names are all Irish.
