Social Movement of Ethnic Minorities in the United Kingdom
Introduction
Social movements are one of the major vehicles for social change and as such have been the object of many studies since the beginning of the social sciences. But still, in spite of a long-standing recognition the importance of social movements, there is still a much heated debate on the question, what is a social movement?
A social movement may be defined as a continuing, collective attempt to restructure some basic segment of the social order through means other than institutionalized channels. Social movements are considered group actions. Social movements are made up of groups, organizations, or individuals that focus on specific social or political issues. As such, a social movement encompasses both organized and unorganized elements working toward a common objective. The common objective does not have to be very clearly defined or specific. It may be sufficiently diffuse as to encompass within the same social movement elements that differ sharply from one another (2000). The purpose mainly of social movement groups is to resist or undo a social change.
A social movement is also defined as "a sustained and self-conscious challenge to authorities or cultural codes by a field of actors -- organizations and advocacy networks -- some of which employ extra-institutional means of influence" ( 1996). Here, also, the idea of "challenge to authorities or cultural codes" means the mounting of conceptions of reality that are different from those then prevailing.
Social change lies at the heart of the definition of a social movement. Given the definitions above, a social movement comprises of sustained organizational efforts that have the purpose of changing the structure of society or the distribution of society's resources. The part that law plays in social movements is that law reformers view the law as a strategy or resource that can be used to initiates and chive the social change that is wanted or needed. Since the main purpose of social movements is social change, a reform on the law oftentimes is undertaken to provide a way of initiating the social change ( 2001).
In addition and in another sense, this definition is too narrow in focusing on only social change, that is, "societal manipulation." A great many movement enterprises focus instead on personal transformation and reject social change (societal manipulation) as superficial or futile. However, despite these two demurs, the "promote or resist social change" and "insurgent realities" definitions do overlap a good deal and lead to similar although not identical research programs (1996).
Given agreement on the common goal, there may be considerable disagreement over tactics in social movements, as well as over specific and secondary objectives. There may be many core associations within the same social movement. These organizations may range from those attempting to reform existing society to those attempting to restructure it completely; from those preferring the use of respectable pressure tactics to those willing to use violence. Unorganized, individual participants are likely to differ even more than organizations. Sometimes these differences will be so extreme that the various segments of a movement may expend more time and energy in fighting each other than in contending with the larger society ( 2000).
Social movements and political dynamics are different from other types of complex organizations, such as educational systems, and communities. The social movement theory has, so far, not been able to come up with a definition of social movement that satisfactorily identifies the time and social boundaries of a movement. In other words, social movement theory lacks a commonly accepted definition that delimits social movements in terms of time, membership, and geographical space (2000). However, for the purpose of this paper, social movement is a defined as a continuing, collective attempt to restructure some basic segment of the social order through means other than institutionalized channels. Social movement consists of actions by individuals or groups that are geared towards a social change.
Specifically, this paper on social movement will focus on ethnic minority groups in the United Kingdom. For so many years, ethnic minority groups have struggled for their place in societies. Ethnic minorities have been discriminated in some parts of the country. The discriminations affect education and work among many others. Many movements have surfaced to help change this situation, yet the problem still remains the same somehow in some parts of the country. Thus this issue merits some attention. The situation of ethnic minority groups in the United Kingdom will be the focus of this paper as well as the various movements that serve to initialize the change.
Body
The term “society” is defined as “the whole people who live together on the same land and who collaborate to obtain their basic needs; community” (1992). Society can be regarded as an interaction process between classes, an existence that is self-sufficient and continues itself, a socio-cultural event, a social and a theoretical system. According to(1985) it is a social community that lasts longer than human life, that has relative stability and that continues itself. The individuals that make a society are always in interaction among themselves. These actions, based on the interactions and conceptualised as “social relations”, are formed by social institutions like law, education, morality, politics and religion which determine the mentioned rules of the interaction. As it is seen, social structure occurs when social institutions organise the relations in the social system.
Social movements do not continue all throught the years. They start with their creation, after which the movement develops and grows. After that, the movement can go two ways - either they achieve successes or they get failures. Sooner or later, whether it has served its purpose or not, social movements dissolve and disappear all completely. They are more likely to resurface again in the time and place which is friendly to the social movements.
There are building blocks of social movements which are considered named associations and are called social movement organizations, or SMOs. They are the major building blocks of social movements, although SMOs as organizations are not always so fortunate (or unfortunate) to exist in the context of a surging social movement. Many are "loners" or "sports," who therefore do not partake in the benefits and liabilities of a surging movement context. However, because of their collective, continuing, and organized character focused on a moralistic and idealistic excluded reality, they are SMOs nonetheless. Continuing and finishing our list, the SMO is the eighth form of contending/excluded reality (1996).
New social movements burst on the scene in the late 1960s and 1970s promoting post-materialist values and developing unconventional, oppositional tactics. Scope for individual expression and empowerment has been embodied in their informal and participatory workings. For some individuals, decentralized participatory organizations provided a microcosm of the political structures they ultimately desired for the broader society. Movement groups cannot easily put aside the ideological baggage with which they began their journey, particularly those groups whose identity is forged upon ecological values and grassroots democratic practices (2003).
Two cases from the United Kingdom do however partially contradict a thesis about the life cycle of social movements. Britain's Friends of the Earth (FoE) traditionally encourages its members to engage in political action, and has maintained a decentralized structure with a high degree of local autonomy. Its mission statement declares a commitment 'to increase public participation and democratic decision-making', a commitment reflected in the organization's consensual and non-hierarchical decision making processes.
An early disillusioning experience at the Windscale Inquiry in 1977 was followed by a push within the branch structure to reverse a tendency towards centralization, and until 1981 FoE's commitment to equality was reflected in a 'parity' pay structure amongst all its staff. However, organizational growth and greater access to government since the late 1980s posed a greater challenge. After 1987 there was renewed centralization. By the 1990s FoE had developed a much broader membership base which was less supportive of a protest culture and more disposed towards constructive engagement on environmental issues (1999).
As a mass organization FoE had by the mid-1990s lost touch with its membership and now 'is nearer something that can be termed a protest business than a new social movement organization'. FoE have 'moved from being the amateur, evangelical, fundamentalist ecocentric pressure group of the 1970s to a professional pragmatist organization which is run almost like any other modern company'. Thus in the end FoE confirmed Offe's prediction about institutionalization, despite having tried to resist and indeed move in the opposite direction along the way (2003).
Britain's Green Party presents a much clearer refutation of the thesis of the life cycle of social movements. The party attempted to restructure its organization and set strategic goals following its surprising performance in the 1989 European elections where it attracted 15 per cent of the vote. The Greens 2000 professionalization initiative was initially successful, although the reformist drive within the party lost momentum following the departure of and in the early 1990s.
In recent years activists within the party have reasserted participatory values and maintained internal decentralization, even though the party has now secured parliamentary representation in both the European and Scottish parliaments. To their critics, the triumph of fundamentalism is seen to hold back the party from greater electoral success. However, another way of reading this history is that the first-past-the-post voting system used in most British elections makes it impossible to win a seat anyway, thus denying the party the possibility of inclusion in the state, thus removing the main cause of professionalization (2003).
Outside the Green Party and to a lesser extent FoE, there began in the 1980s a transformation in the character of British environmental organizations and in particular their relationship to their membership. The British branch of Greenpeace is interesting in this respect because although it has resisted moderation, it led the way in professionalization. Until the mid-1980s, Greenpeace UK was 'little more than a small, anarchic group of individuals—with no formal membership structure—specialising in the provision of spectacular, symbolic David and Goliath images to TV and press, and making minimal attempt to engage in routine lobbying, participation in public inquiries, etc'. By the 1990s it was a slick organization capable of deploying technical expertise (for example, in promoting a CFC-free refrigerator) and raising funds—but still organizing radical actions such as the occupation in 1995 (2003).
Beyond time and membership growth, the enhanced opportunities for inclusion presented to movement groups in the traditionally exclusive states of Germany and the United Kingdom in particular in recent years has brought these issues into sharper focus. To engage successfully with the state, groups require very different qualities than the open expression of ideas and diverse, unpredictable forms of action found in new social movements. Groups engaging in consultations and negotiations with state actors need to carry their membership with them toward an agreed outcome, and having them engage in uncontrolled protest is a hindrance here. Because new social movements were averse to formal, hierarchical decision making structures, it was doubted that any leaders could claim the authority to commit their members to the outcome of their negotiations with government.
The situation described above mirrors the statement that all social movements face challenges in order to sustain themselves and advance their goals over the course of time. At the beginning, social movements oftentimes fail to capture much of the public's attention and thus do not have supporters for their cause. But even if this is the case at the start, over time the public becomes aware of such social movements. Following the cycle, even the most successful social movements and their organizations has the tendency to lose their popularity and support over time (2001).
Social movements need law reform to help achieve their goals of social change, but law reform itself needs a supportive social and political climate if it is to maintain its viability and effectiveness over time. The environmental movement has succeeded in providing this supportive climate. Just as the legal system helps sustain environmentalism during periods of public inattention, the system of environmental law is itself sustained by a broad social consensus in favor of environmental protection and by a latent environmentalism that stands ready to be activated by environmental groups (2001).
It was similarly observed that participatory structures worked against the ability to work with governments, because 'movements value openness and immediate participation, which at the same time seriously restrict their effectiveness and efficiency in reaching policy-oriented goals'. We will demonstrate that movement-derived groups have in fact adapted to emerging opportunities for inclusion, and consider the challenges this has presented to both these groups and the broader movement (1999).
Ethnic Minorities Situations in Britain
Almost everyone is aware of the existence of ethnic and regional cleavages based on the national constituent elements of the United Kingdom. Britain today is a multicultural society with sizeable minority groups who have origins in the Indian sub-continent, Africa, and the Caribbean ( 1999). Latest figures show that minorities make up around 7 per cent of the UK population and the majority of them reside in the South East (particularly Greater London) the Midlands and the North West (1999).
Scottish and Welsh nationalism have tended to cut broadly across class lines and to be concerned with national rather than class consciousness. A new ethnicity recently entered British politics, as the formation of the anti immigrant National Front indicates. Such groups have declined in size in the past few years, but they are still active in many places. In 1997 an estimated three million people of New Commonwealth and Pakistani origin lived in Great Britain, constituting almost 5 percent of the population.
Race and ethnicity are increasingly important issues for voting in Britain. The minority population of Britain is approaching 3 million (out of approximately 59 million). This population is also relatively young, so it will be of increasing importance as a voting group. The evidence is that Labour does very well among minority voters, especially in the industrial cities where they tend to be concentrated. There is a growing number of Labour politicians from ethnic minority groups, with several being elected to Parliament. Once again, the demographic trends appear to favor Labour ( 1998).
These ethnic minorities now dominate many older industrial towns, and in some inner-city schools English is taught as a second language. As these groups are also multiplying more rapidly than white Britons, the specter of nonwhite domination and the loss of jobs by whites are powerful weapons for some political groups. Pressure by the minorities for representation has already begun to affect the local and national political systems (1998). The tensions created by the growing ethnic diversity are not as great as in France or Germany, but they are present nonetheless, and racial tensions are becoming of increasing concern to the police and civil libertarians alike.
Another ethnic minority worth mentioning in this paper are the Muslims in Britain. Muslims comprise Britain's largest ethnic minority groups. In the most recent figures available their numbers were estimated as 1.5 million. The National Census in 2001 is likely to show an increase in these figures. However, it is significant to note from the figures available that a relatively high proportion of the 1.5 million Muslims comprised children of compulsory school age (approx. 33% as against 16% in the general population) and almost 60% were under 25 years of age, compared with 32% nationally ( 1993).
The Muslim population in Britain, therefore, appears to be comprised of a disproportionately large number of young people who fall within the statutory provision of careers companies. If this trend continues there is likely to be an increasing need for careers companies to provide a service which addresses their particular careers guidance needs (2004).
In recent times the impact of British Muslim resistance to publication of 'The Satanic Verses', and the events of September 11th 2001 have resulted in growing 'Islamophobia' and increasing alienation from a shared identity with mainstream society. Moreover, the focus upon this single issue has served to divert attention away from debates within Islam itself concerning the position of women and stereotypical representations within the 'Western world' (2004).
Because of their religious/cultural location within British society, Muslim women may find themselves excluded from 'mainstream' opportunities, due to a lack of understanding about their unique, and sometimes complex situations (). They run the risk of falling into a group that experiences difficulty in making a successful transition from compulsory education into the world of further education, training or employment.
Muslim women have to work twice as hard to succeed as they are likely to face hostility at college, discrimination in the labour market, and may experience a cultural-religious struggle within their own communities. Young Muslim women could be viewed as doubly marginalised within education, as they face gender issues (along with women from other ethnic minority groups) which may not be addressed (Benn & Jawad, 2004).
Conclusion
Social movements are the vehicles of social change. Social change is the change in the structure of the society and consequently the change in the social structure. Social change covers social relations and social institutions too, as they create the social structure. The need for social changes could stem from unrest and discontent of people from certain aspects in the society. In the United Kingdom, there is the plight of the ethnic minorities groups. Almost everyone is aware that there are many parts of societies worldwide wherein ethnic minority groups have been discriminated and at a disadvantage. The review of literature has suggested that there is no successful integration of the ethnic minorities into the British society. Perhaps, if social movements continue to pursuer the goal of integration of ethnic minority groups and allowing them to play a part in important institutions in the United Kingdom, then there might be a successful integration of their group into the British society.
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