“Too Diverse?” by David Goodhart, in Prospect (Feb. 2004), 2 Bloomsbury Pl., London WC1A 2QA, England.

After three centuries of striving to forge a common identity among the various groups in the United Kingdom, the British in the past half-century have become more diverse, not only ethnically but in their values and lifestyles. For progressives especially, that poses a dilemma: Multicultural diversity can reach a point where it endangers the communal solidarity that sustains the welfare state, the foundation of the progressive vision.

Goodhart, the editor of Prospect, sees this “progressive dilemma” lurking beneath many of Britain’s current debates, from tax and redistribution policies to European Union integration. Among the country’s progressive intellectuals and politicians, the underlying dilemma itself is increasingly the subject of debate.

Two British academics, Bhikhu Parekh and Ali Rattansi, have argued that ethnic diversity is no hindrance to social solidarity, noting that the expansion of the British welfare state in the late 1940s occurred even as the first big wave of nonwhite immigration from the West Indies and Asia began. Yes, says Goodhart, but the welfare state was formed after a century of experience and agitation, and the immigrants were few at first.

“Scandinavian countries with the biggest welfare states have been the most socially and ethnically homogeneous states in the West,” Goodhart points out. “By the same token the welfare state has always been weaker in the individualistic, ethnically divided U.S.” Today, about nine percent of British residents belong to ethnic minority groups. As that percentage approaches America’s 30 percent (which it already has, more or less, in London), there is a probable “tipping point” at which Britain would become “a wholly different U.S.-style society—with sharp ethnic divisions, a weak welfare state, and low political participation.” So “it is important to reassure the majority that the system of entering the country and becoming a citizen is under control.”

Replacing ethnic kinship with the more abstract concept of citizenship as the basis of national identity goes some way toward reconciling solidarity and diversity, but citizenship still requires common commitments, Goodhart says. Immigrants can hold on to “some core aspects of their own culture,” but as in the American melting pot, being a good citizen means “learning the language, getting a job and paying taxes, and abiding by the laws and norms of the host society.” Welfare benefits should be denied to “people who consistently break the rules of civilized behavior.”

When diversity and solidarity come into conflict, Goodhart concludes, public policy should favor solidarity. Diversity is now so strongly reinforced by social and economic forces that it can take care of itself.