The Bishop of Rochester’s article in The Sunday Telegraph last month has reignited the row over multiculturalism. The doctrine was unquestioned for nearly three decades. But the bombings of July 2005, when home-grown Muslim suicide attackers killed dozens of London commuters, led many to blame multiculturalism for causing deep divisions in Britain.
The attacks shone a light into Britain’s “separate” and “closed” communities, where many ethnic and religious groups led “parallel lives”, cut off from mainstream society and where values were increasingly in conflict with those of the host country. A consensus has emerged that the multiculturalism experiment was necessary, but that its time is over.