The Commission an engaged network of participative, critical thinkers working in the spirit of intel

1
The Habermasian public sphere and the FMEB
Commission

• The Commission an engaged network of
  participative, critical thinkers working in the
  spirit of intellectual and moral responsibility
  (FMEB Report,2000 xviii) raising questions and
  offering alternatives.
• The leaky boundary between the Commission and the
  New Labour government.
• The publication and dissemination of the Report
  in a populist, mass mediated public sphere.
• The Commission as a representation of a
  counterpublic through its multicultural and
  intellectual public face and its offer of a
  critical counter-narrative of nation.

2

• intellectuals in different guises play a crucial
  role in initiating dialogue and engaging the
  curiosity and passion of the public. Today that
  engagement is conspicuously feeble (Furedi,
  200424).
• If the public domain is today in trouble, it is
  because the kind of intellectual work which
  public intellectuals have performed in the past
  is less common than it once was and increasingly
  under threat (Gamble, 2004 41).

3

• In politics who says is just as important as
  what he says. Andrew Marr, Tom Nairn and others
  had written books with titles such as The Day
  Britain Died and The Break-up of Britain. They
  could get away with things we could not. Black
  and Asian intellectuals are subject to more
  stringent tests and are expected to stay within
  certain limits. Although the majority of our
  Commissioners were white and of impeccable
  liberal credentials, the fact that there were so
  many high-profile black and Asian intellectuals
  gave the impression that the Commission and its
  report had a distinctly minority orientation.
  This imposed intangible and subtle limits on what
  the report should and should not say limits
  which it could transgress, as indeed it did, only
  at its own peril (Parekh, 2001 9)

4

• The report was the result of a determined
  intellectual effort on the part of the Commission
  to think afresh about the question of racial
  discrimination and disadvantage. The
  Commissioners had several long discussions among
  themselves and also with some of the finest minds
  of the country in the various national seminars
  organised by it It was concerned not just to
  make practical recommendations but also to
  explore large theoretical issues (Parekh, 2001
  6. Emphasis added).

5

• Shift an understanding of issues to do with
  Britain and race from a dualistic to a
  pluralistic perspective. From a black/white to a
  more plural perspective and then a more plural
  understanding of both British society and of the
  racism within it. I was expecting something that,
  if you like, would embody this hinge, this shift
  in thinking and would do it without a fire
  fighting agenda, because the other important
  reports that had shaped what we call race
  relations, or what we used to call race
  relations in Britain have always been a response
  to a specific problemso we had no one trigger.
  We werent reporting on a riot or police
  brutality or anything like that and it meant we
  could take a longer time, we could have a wide
  frame, bigger horizons, direction and I think
  thats what we did (Commissioner. Interview, 8th
  July, 2003. Emphasis added).

6

• SN Was it the Report envisaged in the way
  that it turned out?
• Commissioner Yes we had a lot of long
  discussions at the beginning. Some of the policy
  areas kind of declared themselves you have to
  have something on education, you have to have
  something on policing, you have to have something
  on welfare, you have to say something about
  legislation. So it wasnt a mystery what the main
  headings in that second section were. But the
  real question, about which there was some tension
  in the Commission, was how that sat with the
  ambition to produce a thinking document and how
  that should enter the flow of the whole
  thingtherefore how should the report be shaped?
  Should it be one thing? Should it have a special
  theory section? (Commissioner. Interview, 27th
  November 2002. Emphasis added).

7

• The dangerousness and volatility of race and
  nation discourses in the public sphere.
• The difficulties and risks of intellectually
  entering the public sphere, heavily mediated by a
  powerful populist press.
• The question of an increased risk as to who is
  able to author critiques and challenges to
  consensual narratives of nation.