New signatures
Thank to everyone who emailed in to endorse and support our agenda for a new approach to race and faith in Britain.
We have a new page with a full list of older and new signatories.
Keep your emails coming in!
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Media enquiries
To info@new-gen.org Sign the agenda Email signup@new-gen.org with your name and title to sign our manifesto |
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This is an excellent undertaking. It would be so good to have the media approach people who aren’t at the head of self-elected faith-based groups so as to widen and deepen the cultural conversation.
About time folks! A lucid, heartfelt and timely appeal to commonsense and hope, ideals and realtiy in todays UK. As a not so young, Gay Jew, with an Anglo-Asian Muslim partner, I can see the commonalities and yet differences that offer the prospect of real change for the better for all Brtians people being held back by fear and poor leadership.
As a tutor, I work in Manchester with young migrants and asylum seekers, who despite their often horrific experiences, sometimes beyond my imagination, want with all their might to get on, study and learn about this country and its cultures. The current climate of suspicion and fear means that I worry for their future. And mine. You offer a voice of hope here.
Your statement is sensible, balanced and timely. I support its egalitarian perspective, especially the effort to include the poor white working class also in the framing of a perspective for an egalitarian Britain. I must, however, make one criticism in a spirit of solidarity i.e. you have been parochial in mobilising the support for your initial statement from mainly the media commentators, the people in your own profession. Enormous amount of good work is taking place in British universities, schools, courts, trade unions and a whole range of NGOs- to name just a few. For a campaign to have credibility and effectiveness, it is absolutely necessary to be inclusive of a range of views and backgrounds from with in the minority as well as majority ethnic groups
I fully agree with your “Race and faith: a new agenda”. It is need of the time.
Dr Pritam Sing,
I think you make a valid point that ought to be addressed. When is this site going to open up a little?
Sunny, you do not represent muslims, your key arguments are flawed as was evident in your poor argumentation with Inayat on Radio 4 this morning. Whilst I may agree with some of your points regarding our government off-loading its own responsibility to community organisations, your witch hunt of the MCB and major Hindu and Sikh organisations is not helping your cause.
Thank you for taking on this much needed initiative. I hope we can change some hearts and minds.
I read your article about the self appointed leaders and agree that it is time to have an “honest” debate especially in the main stream media and not the gutter standards that we have become used to. I work in Radio and know how difficult it is to address “controversial” items.
It would be quite good if all the signatories to this manifesto started to be active in defending it’s position on CiF. You don’t win by signing a petition.
We at the National Secular Society thought we were crying into the dark when we advocated an end to identity by religion, but now we see that a growing light is flickering. What we need now is for those - namely, the Government - who encouraged the clerics and the priests to claim that they spoke for us all to tell them firmly to take their divisive traditions back to the churches and mosques and temples where they belong, and keep them out of politics.
Witch hunt! Ha! What thin skins! A critique of communlaist organisations becomes a ‘witch hunt’ as Nafeesa would like to believe. Oh the persecution complex! There is something truly comedic about this.
It was a relief to read a statement seeking to open up debate and exploration on ’sensitive’ issues which have become colonised by interests - government and ‘community’ - whose interventions keep them within channels which they feel they can control for their own end.
I really welcome this initiative. This manifesto will be a slap in the face of the so called “faith groups” who give themselves the right to speak in the name of God to impose their hatred-based agenda on society. I hope many people with sign it.
A common sense approach to an issue that by its very nature should not be allowed to be polarised, an issue that is oft misused by those with a vested interest in maintaining and encouraging a sectarian view point in order to maintain an undeserved authority.
First and foremost we are of one community all other differences should be secondary. We do not refer to ourselves as British Trainspotter or British-Vegetarian. All differences are superficial. To create artificial divides based on religion or ethnicity is to create divides that can only separate us rather than bring us closer together as individuals with far more in common than separates us.
I would like to build on your call to ‘engage and involve all of the talent in our population’ by recognising what I would call ‘untapped wisdoms.’ Different cultures have serious and valuable contributions to make to a country and economy that are themselves part of a flatter and more connected world. This includes teh accumulated wisdoms of differing religious traditions. ‘Never underestimate the power of local knowledge ‘ runs the successful HSBC ad campaign. In our society, that ‘local knowledge’ includes the depth and breadth of differing perspectives that different cultures will bring to any setting,whether work or societal. In other words, understanding and accepting differing cultures is far more than just ‘being careful’ not to say the wrong thing.
By taking differing views and beliefs seriously, we increase trust, self esteem and an acceptance that we are made up not just of different faiths, cultures and backgrounds, but of different wisdoms, each of which may have something positive to add to the ways in which our institutions and services are run. We may also find that just by taking a different perspective, everybody gets that little bit wiser. As an old Jewish saying goes,’ ‘Who is wise? Someone who learns from everybody.’
[…] The NGN manifesto can be found here. And you can sign it online here. […]
As an American, I can say that his manifesto can be applied to the United States as well. Legitimate concerns about unlawful immigration and the cost of public services are hijacked by those who believe the United States to be under some sort of invasion, or that new migrants somehow are not integrating into society as previous waves of immigrants. Every generation, reationaries claim particular groups (Irish, eastern Europeans, Chinese) are incompatable with America and American values and every generation this influx of immigrants makes the country stronger. However, it is also true that racism on the part of oppressed minorities must also be addressed (as brillianty potrayed in “Do the Right Thing” in regards to the Korean store owners and the largely black neighborhood). We all indeed have multiple identies, that can not be fully represented by a particular gatekeeper. I myself am half Indian, quarter Irish, quarter English. I have my own unique identiy that can not be represented by one group. This manifesto I believe is an earnest effort to address such concerns and move not just British, but all of society forward into a new era. I wholeheartedly endorse this document.
I logged on to your website after reading Ziauddin Sardar’s column in The New Statesman. I’m inspired by your manifesto & think it offers a clear direction to those of us working on anti-racism in Britain’s schools. It echoes what I’m hearing from intelligent and articulate teenagers from varied ethnic backgrounds.
I am very excited by the manifesto of The New Generation Network. It is long overdue and provides a real platform on which to build a modern and fair Britain where diversity of race and religion is recognised and celebrated. As stated in the preamble to the principles of the Manifesto, people from differing culural backgrounds must understand and accept each other and work together for the benefit of everyone. Multiculturalism should enhance the lives of all people from all the different cultures.
The introduction to the manifesto states that people of mixed-race are the fastest growing group and I believe that it is important that their unique racial origins are recognised and respected rather than their being pigeon-holed into an inappropriate racial category by self-appointed and unrepresentative race-relations professionals. Perhaps principle number 5 could be expanded to recognise the right of mixed-race people to be accepted as the product of their various racial origins rather than being gratuitously labelled on the superficial basis of their perceived physical appearance. The playing field should be levelled so that all people of mixed-race have the same degree of confidence as Tiger Woods had in defining his racial origins as Cablinasian rather than accepting labels put on them by others.
Congratulations to those who wrote the Manifesto.
John Rogers
Good luck to you guys, but I’m surprised that you haven’t bagged Amartya Sen’s signature yet. I’ve just been plugging his book Identity and Violence on my new blog and the fit with his ideas and the NGN is perfect. How about hassling him a little to get a Nobel-prize-winner and genuine force for peace & multi-seasonal goodwill onto your list?
Wishing you all the best with this venture. It is certainly important to have this flourishing in this world we live in. May this journey be fruitful for all of us involved and do get if touch if you should need any personal support from me.
Best
aSHANTI OMkar
www.OMkari.net