Nigel Farage, community leader

Following the transformation of Britain into an avowedly multicultural country, the British state has adopted the framework famously proposed by the Parekh Report of treating the country as a “community of communities”. Under this framework, British citizens are not simply treated as individuals, but as members belonging to one or more communities, said to be bound by common interests and concerns with whichever community they belong to. These “communities” are treated as institutions in their own right, and an individual may even be treated differently under the law by virtue of belonging to a given community, such as the recently topical exemption made for members of the Sikh community to allow them to carry bladed articles in public.

Examples of this institutionalising of community leaders abound, and have sometimes proved controversial

Given the institutionalisation of these communities, the state then needed intermediaries with which to liaise to gauge the sentiment of the community and have its interests made known. This came in the form of “community leaders” — members of a given community who claimed authority over the community they took it upon themselves to represent, usually as a result of their role as a religious or local charity figure. These are people who are trusted to accurately understand their community’s sentiment when relaying it to state authorities, and also to hold enough respect amongst their community that their words will have sway. This is most important at times of disorder or intercommunal strife, when these community leaders are tasked with ordering the more troublesome elements of their community to stand down. 

Examples of this institutionalising of community leaders abound, and have sometimes proved controversial, such as when the football game between Aston Villa and Israeli team Maccabi Tel Aviv caused uproar amongst the local Muslim population. In preparation for the game, West Midlands Police, in the words of their Chief Constable Craig Guilford, “undertook extensive community engagement prior to the fixture” with “Muslim community leaders and mosque representatives”, with the police force ultimately deciding to block Maccabi fans from attending, as the community had agitated for. 

It is worth clarifying that not only religious groups are considered “communities” in this institutionalised way; racial minority groups are similarly institutionalised in this way, and their community leaders will often be secular, gaining their title through their work with local organisations like charities or youth clubs, or through their political activism. Naturally, the more overtly political nature of these community leaders means their role as a spokesperson for the entirety of the community they claim to represent is more contentious, and many might outright reject their anointed community leader’s claim to represent their interests. What matters as far as the state is concerned, however, is not so much that a given community leader fully represents the entirety of the heterogeneous views of their community, but that they have enough authority in their community for their words to garner respect and be followed, especially by those most prone to committing disorder in the name of their community. This is most important in times of intercommunal tension, especially after a provocative act by the state, which then loses legitimacy in the eyes of the community and relies upon community leaders to be the conduit through which that trust is rebuilt and calm restored.

But ever since the transformation of Britain into a “community of communities”, there has been one such “community” that has been conspicuously absent in having its own set of community leaders to represent its interests and calm its members: the English. Unlike religious and racial minority communities, as well as the Scottish and Welsh with their devolved assemblies and nationalist parties, the English were never represented by a community leader of their own. This was understandable when the interpretation of Britain as a community of communities first emerged, since at that point the country was what the Parekh Report called a 95/5 society: around 95 percent “white British” and 5 percent ethnic minority. Under such demographic conditions, it could be assumed that the majority of the population had their interests represented by default, and that as the state-forming group, institutionalised discrimination against them would not be an issue as it was to minority communities.

But that demographic balance has shifted rapidly in the last quarter century, with the 95 becoming less than 75, and white British births making up marginally more than half of all births last year, indicating a near future in which no single community forms a majority of the population. Coupled with this decline in demographic share has been a concerted political effort in recent decades, accelerated since 2020, to advance the interests of all other communities in the BAME umbrella in the form of so-called positive discrimination, which has seen members of the English community excluded from work and educational opportunities on ethnic grounds.

This double standard no longer seems sustainable now that an ethnic self-consciousness has grown amongst the English, showing itself in the flagging operations that spread in recent years, as well as the mainstreaming of debate around the existence of the English as a distinct ethnic group — or community — with their own identity and interests. This process has been gradual and highly contested, exploding into mainstream discourse last year after Rishi Sunak’s Englishness was denied on account of his being “a brown Hindu”. Since then, the existence of the English as a coherent ethnic group has become less controversial, now stated as obvious by senior members of Britain’s biggest right-of-centre parties. With this recognition has come a growing set of grievances amongst the English of their mistreatment by the state, embodied by the claim of Britain having become a “two-tier” society, and a desire to have these community grievances addressed much like other communities might expect theirs to be.

It therefore ought to come as no surprise that a figure would arise to fill the position of community leader for the English, just as every other community has their own. The events of the last week, in which the trial concluded and police bodycam footage was released of the harrowing murder of Henry Nowak, have led to the English getting their own community representative in Nigel Farage. The Reform UK leader made explicit on whose behalf he was speaking when he decried “positive discrimination of ethnic minorities over those of white people whose families have lived in Britain for many centuries”. Mirroring language typically used by leaders of other communities to complain of institutional injustice, Farage declared that “we are living in a two-tier culture in this country where the rights and privileges of white people matter less than those of ethnic minorities.”

In sum, Farage reacted to a racially charged death of a member of his community the way any community leader would be expected to: raising awareness of the injustice, advocating for the rights of his community, and calling on the state to eliminate bias against his community and rebuild trust between it and the police. His language was strong, especially in urging people to react with “pure cold rage”, but no more incendiary than has been used by activists and politicians of all stripes in the wake of comparable injustices.

What made it clear that Farage is now treated as a community leader of sorts rather than merely a politician was the reaction by Parliament and much of the media to his statements throughout the week, especially the implication that the disorder that broke out against police in Southampton was Farage’s responsibility. There is no evidence that those who took part in the unrest were Reform members or supporters, and yet Farage was repeatedly called upon to condemn what happened, with the implicit suggestion that Farage had the requisite authority among those engaged in the unrest that his words held enough sway for the disorder to stop if he so commanded. In essence, he was being treated as a community leader, called upon to fulfil the other duty of community leaders, that of being used as an authoritative intermediary between the community and the state with the power to get the most troublesome members of the community into line.

Farage’s emergence as a de facto community leader for the English should come as no surprise

The suggestion that a figure as polarising as Farage represents their community would no doubt cause some English people to recoil, but universal community acceptance is no prerequisite to being treated as a community leader. For example, members of the Jewish community often openly clash and disavow their leaders, but the mantle of community leader remains nonetheless, just as prominent black community leaders are not undermined when politicians from their own community like Kemi Badenoch dismiss some of their demands as a “scam”. What matters is that they are seen to coherently represent their community’s interests and have the authority to stop their members from engaging in intercommunal disorder, a role that the past week has shown Farage to fill.  

Farage’s emergence as a de facto community leader for the English should come as no surprise though, being the predictable conclusion of Britain’s multicultural framework that treats individuals as best represented by leaders of the community they are a member of. Though there has been a lag in the adoption of this form of representation for the English compared to all other communities, the logic of the system coupled with their demographic diminishment always dictated that the English would adopt a self-conscious community logic of their own and find English community leaders to represent them. It is a role Farage seems happy to adopt, and so far his demands of race-blind equality under the law and an end to institutional discrimination against his community are of little threat to Britain’s communal multicultural framework.

Whether that remains the case will depend on how the state responds to the English’s entry to this game. If it extends the same recognition to the English it affords every other community, then Farage’s role may prove stabilising; deny it, and the grievances he articulates will only find a less accommodating voice.