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RESEARCH PRODUCT

‘Community Cohesion’ and English Disruptions of the Multicultural Peace: The Northern Riots, White ‘Backlash’ and the ‘Evocation of a Faith Sector’

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This chapter takes as its starting point controversies surrounding the concept and policy ‘agenda’ associated with community cohesion, a concept first voiced in the official reports into the riots in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford in May–July 2001. The most influential of these, the ‘Cantle Report’, deliberately framed itself in opposition to the analysis of reports into previous urban disturbances (e.g. Scarman 1981) with their emphasis on ‘systems, process and institutions’, and hence by implication their link to much academic discourse in the social policy field; choosing instead to focus on the interpersonal, on communication between individuals and groups, and on ‘values’, in line with the New Labour government’s (1997–2010) emphasis on personal responsibility and what might be called the ‘re-moralisation’ of society.