Introduction

It is difficult to find any reference to community cohesion in the statements of public policy or the work of urban theorists prior to the street disturbances that rocked a number of northern UK towns and cities in the summer of 2001. Yet, community cohesion quickly emerged as the favoured reference point of politicians and policymakers seeking to explain and articulate a response to the violence and disorder. A flurry of policy statements and guidance documents on community cohesion followed, ranging from advice about promoting community cohesion during the delivery of Area Based Initiatives (ABIs), to advice to schools about how to contribute to community cohesion. Local authorities were charged with taking the lead in promoting community cohesion and the agenda was mainstreamed into national policy through its integration with race equality issues (see Home Office, 2005). Community cohesion was born and raised to maturity as a policy concern in just a few short years. The significance of the agenda appears questionable, however. Centred on an ill-defined concept that can be interpreted and understood in very different ways, it is a policy agenda with no statutory framework to underpin its delivery and no dedicated funding stream. This chapter asserts, however, that the importance of the community cohesion agenda lies beyond such formal manifestations of policy and in the pioneering role that the agenda has played in the practical application of the new politics of community that is the focus of this book.

In the weeks and months that followed the disturbances in the summer of 2001 – and the subsequent events of 11 September 2001 in New York City – the empty concept that was community cohesion was imbued with meaning. The various reports into the disturbances commissioned or sanctioned by the government were published in December 2001. They presented a shared vision of the root causes and required response to the disturbances. This storyline focused on the perceived residential segregation of the South Asian population in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham – the towns and cities where the troubles had erupted in 2001 – and the limited interaction that resulted, which was undercutting shared values and allowing social disharmony and unrest to flourish. The settlement patterns of South Asian populations were problematised for allowing values and forms of behaviour that were at odds with the dominant social order to flourish.