My mother arrived in Britain in the 1970s. She was not supposed to be here.
She and thousands of others were expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin. They came with little more than a suitcase, seeking safety and a future. My family settled in Surrey, building lives amid the quiet suburbs, while navigating a society that often made them feel like permanent guests.
And yet, over time, belonging happened. My mother is now what we call a pillar of the community: a charity trustee, a civic volunteer, a judge for the local “Britain in Bloom.” That sense of belonging didn’t come from assimilation or abandoning culture. It came from integration and from civic relationships strong enough to bind people together across difference.
Integration is not a sentimental idea. It’s the foundation of a shared national life. When it frays, the consequences can be devastating, as the recent terror attack on a Manchester synagogue so tragically reminded us.
A Wake-Up Call for Britain
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood was right to say that we must “think long and hard” about integration in Britain today. The attack, on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, was not just a violent act – it was a rupture in our collective sense of belonging. It showed how fragile community relations have become and how much harder government must work to rebuild trust.
Mahmood’s words: “I recognise there is a problem here”, mark an important shift. They acknowledge what many have quietly felt for years: that integration has been allowed to drift, fragmented between departments and diluted by fear of causing offence. Her honesty matters, because integration without truth is just rhetoric.
When Integration Fails, the Whole Nation Suffers
The consequences of failure are not abstract. They are written in the reports of Dame Louise Casey, who has documented how the denial of uncomfortable truths, whether about grooming gangs, community tensions or extremism, has corroded trust in the state.
These are not just policy failures. They are moral ones. When government retreats from difficult conversations, it leaves space for extremists, on all sides, to define what belonging means.
Integration cannot be about pretending we are all the same. It must be about creating a shared civic space in which people of all backgrounds can flourish and where rights are inseparable from responsibilities.
As Mahmood put it, those of us who “have grown up with all the advantages of this society – all of the freedoms and all of the rights but also all of the responsibilities”, must ask hard questions. Why do some reject the very values that gave their families opportunity and safety? Why do some feel so alienated that violence seems a form of belonging?
Integration Requires Truth and Accountability
For too long, integration has been treated as a local issue: something for councils, charities and community groups to manage with modest grants and well-meaning programmes. But as both Mahmood and the Prime Minister have signalled, integration must now be a core function of national government.
That begins with honesty. It means facing up to the ways our public institutions have sometimes suppressed truth for fear of inflaming tensions. It means recognising that misogyny, antisemitism and religious or racial prejudice can exist within minority communities as well as outside them. And it means demanding accountability when public bodies look away.
Integration is not about food festivals and multicultural slogans. It is about shared norms respect for women, protection of children, the rule of law. These must be non-negotiable and government must have the moral confidence to say so.
From Multiculturalism to Mutual Obligation
Keir Starmer has been clear: “When people come to our country, they should also commit to integration – to learning our language.” That is not intolerance. It is fairness. A society built on mutual obligation cannot survive on rights alone.
Integration must be a two-way process. The state must create the conditions for belonging – decent housing, safe neighbourhoods, equal opportunity. But individuals and communities must also meet the responsibilities of citizenship: learning English, participating in civic life and rejecting ideologies that undermine the freedoms that define Britain.
This is not the death of multiculturalism but its renewal. For too long, we confused tolerance with indifference. The future lies in something more demanding: a civic multiculturalism rooted in shared purpose, shared rules and shared accountability.
A Government That Leads, Not Just Listens
If integration is to mean more than words, delivery must match moral urgency.
That means putting integration at the heart of national missions: from education and housing to health and security. It means data, not just dialogue: knowing where isolation and exclusion persist and acting before they harden into grievance or extremism.
The machinery of government must change too. Integration should not sit buried in a single department. It requires coordination from the centre – a Home Office that leads, not hides; a Cabinet Office that tracks delivery, not just strategy; and a Prime Minister who treats belonging as a test of national strength, not an afterthought of policy.
Belonging Is Built, Not Inherited
For families like mine, integration has never been abstract. It is lived every day, in workplaces, schools, mosques, churches, gurdwaras and synagogues; in small acts of connection and respect. But belonging cannot be left to luck or goodwill. It must be built – deliberately, consistently and with courage.
As Mahmood said, “It’s our job to think long and hard about why this is happening.” That means confronting the failures of the past and choosing honesty over comfort. It means recognising that true cohesion is not built on denial but on a shared moral contract that binds us all.
Britain’s strength lies not in our sameness but in our sense of common belonging – a belonging that must be earned, protected and renewed.
Because when we stop building belonging, something far darker takes its place.
