From Burke to Burkha: Conservatism, Multiculturalism and the Big Society

# 2012 The Authorss. The Political Quarterly # 2012 The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd

Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

From Burke to Burkha: Conservatism,Multiculturalism and the Big Society

RICHARD KELLY and ROBERT CROWCROFT

In the literature produced about the Conservative party under DavidCameron, specifically his devotion to the ‘Big Society’, writers have notbeen slow to pinpoint the influence of Edmund Burke, whose Reflections onthe Revolution in France (1790) is widely seen as the foundation of Conservativephilosophy. Indeed, David Marquand has acclaimed Burke as the ‘PatronSaint of the Big Society’.1 However, to date little attempt has been made toargue that the Big Society—or ‘neo-Burkeism’—might also prompt a reap-praisal of the party’s attitude towards multiculturalism.In fairness, such a reappraisal would not have been encouraged by

Cameron’s explicit rejection of it in early 2011. This chapter, nevertheless,will seek to make two relatively novel arguments. First, from a ‘descriptive’angle, it will argue a strong, if latent, connection between the prescriptions ofEdmund Burke and the practicalities of multiculturalism. Second, from a‘normative’ angle, it will argue that the connection is one today’s Conserva-tives might usefully honour, especially if they are serious about bringing theBig Society to fruition. As a result, the chapter hopes to advance, albeit inrudimentary form, a new subdivision of political ideology: conservativemulticulturalism.

Multiculturalism and Conservatism: the traditionalproblem

Emerging in the 1970s and developing in the 1980s, multiculturalism is seenby some as not so much an ideology as a ‘political space’, where moreestablished doctrines can flourish. By definition, multiculturalism’s exponentsscorn the idea of a single homogenous culture, and instead extol a societypromoting a range of lifestyles, philosophies, religions, practices and codes.Likewise, they are reluctant to accept the superiority of one culture overanother, and underpin their argument with a fundamental belief that culturaldiversity enriches society.2

Although it has attracted some criticism from the liberal-left, multicultur-alism is generally seen as an extension of liberal-left thinking. Yet whiletextbooks routinely refer to the ‘liberal’ or ‘pluralist-socialist’ models ofmulticulturalism, there is a conspicuous absence of any ‘conservative’ ver-sion. Insofar as conservatism features at all, it is usually linked to the variouscritiques of multiculturalism, leaving readers with the clear impression thatconservatism and multiculturalism are mutually exclusive.

This is unsurprising given the Conservative party’s traditional and overtopposition to a multicultural Britain. Unlike their liberal-left opponents,Conservatives have been generally critical of moral relativism, drawntowards moral prescription, inclined to see multiculturalism as a threat tosocial cohesion (or ‘one nation’) and fearful it would erode their (allegedlyatavistic) perception of the British character.Such attitudes relate to the fact that, since the Second World War,

immigration and resulting cultural change have posed ongoing problemsfor Conservative politicians. During the 1960s, a number were flagrantlyhostile to any diversification of Britain’s ethno-cultural character—the mostnotable, of course, being Enoch Powell who effectively argued that multi-culturalism would lead to civil war. Powell’s views were scarcely eccentric inConservative circles; a study of Conservative conferences in the late 1960s and1970s showed that Powell’s views were enthusiastically endorsed by up tohalf of constituency party representatives.3

Though less incendiary, senior Conservative figures since the 1960s havestill conveyed disquiet about immigration and its cultural consequences.Margaret Thatcher observed in 1978 that Britons felt ‘swamped’ by ‘aliencultures’; Norman Tebbit spoke in 1988 of a ‘cricket test’ designed to showthat many black Britons owed principal allegiance to other nations (asdemonstrated by their support for the West Indies et al. at Test matches);and William Hague claimed in 2000 that many British voters felt like‘strangers in a foreign land’. Predictably, the aftermath of 9/11 did notspark any huge change in the party’s view. During the second Blairgovernment, Conservative leaders generally supported New Labour’s belatedenthusiasm for ‘British values’ and its equally belated contention thatimmigrants should be vigorously assimilated. In other words, as NewLabour retreated from multiculturalism, there was no sign that Conservativeswould fill the vacuum.

Cameron’s u-turn

David Cameron’s emergence as Conservative leader in 2005, however, wasthought to mark a possible break with the party’s previous approach. Hissupport for greater inclusiveness and tolerance, linked to a strategy of‘detoxifying’ Conservatism, raised questions about whether Conservativeswere now more equivocal about multiculturalism.As opposition leader, Cameron fuelled this idea by often lauding the

contribution of black and minority ethnic (BME) voters to national life.Sometimes, this involved praising their absorption into mainstream Britishsociety, thus confirming Conservative distaste for multiculturalism. Butsometimes, as well, Cameron saluted the new ingredients that BME citizenshad brought to British society. The ‘A-list’ of fast-tracked Conservativecandidates, backed by Cameron after 2006, also deliberately featured asignificant number of BME politicians, of whom 43 were selected as

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# 2012 The Authors. The Political Quarterly # 2012 The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd110

parliamentary candidates by 2010. It is worth recalling that 11 of these wereduly elected to Parliament—the highest number of BME Tory MPs so far—while Sayeeda Warsi later became Co-Chair of the Conservative party and thefirst female Muslim to sit in Cabinet.By the time of the 2010 general election, some BME spokesmen assumed a

symmetry between Cameron’s zeal for racial tolerance and his ‘big idea’ of aBig Society—an idea pointing to the decentralisation of decision making, thediversification of civic engagement and a more pluralist approach to publicpolicy. For some BME spokesmen, this appeared the logical prelude to anacceptance of multiculturalism. As a group of Muslim activists told BBCRadio Manchester in April 2010, they were ‘prepared to welcome Cameron’sBig Society’ on the grounds it might ‘firm up our culture’, ‘validate ourdifferent-ness’ and ‘underwrite the sort of communities we already live in’.Yet, within a year of entering Downing Street, Cameron seemed eager to

de-couple multiculturalism from his Big Society. In February 2011, whiledelivering a speech in Munich, he explicitly attacked multiculturalism, linkedit to terrorism and the suppression of civil liberties, demanded ‘muscularliberalism’ from politicians and public alike, and stated ‘that everyone cominghere must be ready to embrace certain core values’. Cameron was generallyapplauded by Conservative commentators. For them, the Prime Minister hadsimply come to his senses, and was voicing the sort of views expected ofanyone with normal conservative instincts.

Beyond Disraeli, back to Burke

Yet the relationship between Conservatism and multiculturalism is poten-tially quite complicated, due mainly to the roots of Conservative philosophy.It is often assumed, of course, that traditional Conservatism involves avisceral British nationalism and a passionate stress on shared nationalidentity. Yet this analysis implies that Conservatism dates only from the1860s and 1870s, the period when Benjamin Disraeli linked the Conservativeparty to imperialism and an enfolding sense of British-ness.Of course, there can be no doubt that Disraeli’s initiative was inspired, and

played no small part in the Conservative dominance of the next century. But,as indicated at the start of this chapter, Conservative philosophy has a mucholder pedigree—hence the routine claim that Edmund Burke (1729–1797) was‘the father of conservatism’.4 What is yet to be considered, however, iswhether the father of English conservatism might also be the midwife ofBritish multiculturalism.

Burke: no reactionary

When exalting Burke, modern Conservatives often forget that he was neithera nationalist nor a Little Englander. As a Whig MP, he was not even

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consistently conservative. He expressed support for Adam Smith’s The Wealthof Nations (whose iconoclastic capitalism shocked insular aristocrats). Hesupported the American colonists against the imperial persecution ofGeorge III’s ministers. He demanded the impeachment of Warren Hastings,Governor General of Bengal, for alleged extortion and injustice against thepeople of Hindustan. And he championed Irish Catholics in their battle withrapacious, Crown-friendly landlords. These causes suggest that, prior to hiscritique of the French Revolution, Burke was anything but an implacablereactionary. Instead, his politics seemed to be a fascinating blend of fourthemes: empiricism, organicism, evolutionary change and (to borrow amodern Conservative term) localism.In terms of empiricism, Burke argued that society must be looked at as it is:

objectively and factually, not in accordance with abstract theories, andmindful of what he termed ‘the crooked timber of humanity’. In terms oforganicism, he argued that communities tended to change naturally and in away that defied the contrivances of statesmen. In terms of evolutionary change,Burke argued that, though inevitable (‘a state without the means of change iswithout its means of conservation’), rapid revolutionary change was at oddswith the subtleties and mysteries of an organic society. And, in respect oflocalism, Burke argued that the statesman should generally allow localdiscretion and local governance while respecting local differences and localcustoms—even when (as in the case of Burke and Hindustan) they were notthe customs and preferences of the statesman himself. It was this latter insightthat produced Burke’s most enduring metaphor: the ‘little platoons’.

Beyond nationalism: the little platoons

It is often forgotten that, despite its stress on egalite and fraternite, the FrenchRevolution was also the birthplace of nationalism and the nation-state.Critically, the Revolution’s preferred unit of organisation was neither therooted kingdoms of the ancien regime nor the diverse communities of theformer American colonies, but the ‘French nation’, acting centrally in thename of a supposedly homogenous ‘French people’. So although leftists todayoften sneer at nationalism, it was the progeny of what many see as the originalleftist revolution. And, in a further irony, one of its most famous opponentswas the supposed father of conservatism.For Burke, the new French nation-state augured a monolithic, top-down,

repressive society—not so different to the stifling imperialism he haddenounced in Ireland, India and America. Burke’s retort was a defence ofthe society he perceived in England; one comprising a multitude of small,diverse and organic communities based on families, local communities andlocal networks. Each would have its own peculiar hierarchies, attitudes andrules; and each would impose restraint, responsibility and status upon theindividuals within them.



Burke described these variable communities as the ‘little platoons’, claim-ing that ‘to be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon to whichwe belong in society, is the first principle, the germ as it were, of publicaffections’.5 He further argued that these ‘platoons’ were the vital guardiansof individual liberty, without which nothing would stand between vulnerableindividuals and a tyrannical sovereign. Events in the new French Republic—particularly the ‘Terror’ and its symbolic guillotine—gave a swift vindicationof Burke‘s thesis.

Multiculturalism and Conservatism: towards a newanalysis

Before considering whether Conservatives would champion the idea of amulticultural society, it is worth clarifying how Conservatives could withoutappearing to commit ideological apostasy. With this in mind, we shall re-examine Burke’s four key principles in direct relation to the debate aboutmulticulturalism.A useful starting point would be to claim that Britain’s multicultural society

is one that has emerged organically, rather than being engineered bymisguided social scientists and politicians. At local government level, therehave certainly been examples of positive discrimination favouring minoritycultures (Ken Livingstone’s Greater London Council, in the early 1980s, beingthe most brazen). But at the national level, and in the bulk of local authorities,the theme of public policy for almost half a century has been one of liberalintegration: in other words, blending immigrants into the ‘mainstream’ liberalculture while offering them protection against racial discrimination.As Roy Hattersley remarked, while a Home Office minister in the mid-

1960s: ‘Integration without limitation (of immigration) is impossible. Limita-tion without integration is indefensible.’6 These sentiments have since giventraction to the Race Relations Acts of 1965, 1968, 1976 and 2000, and thevarious watchdog bodies (such as the Commission for Racial Equality) set upto enforce the Acts and generally promote a multiracial—but not multi-cultural—society.As a result, Conservatives would be entitled to contest that the liberal-

integration project was a huge, anti-organic exercise that took no account ofthe profoundly distinctive cultures shaping many postwar immigrants:cultures that could not be easily reconciled with the postwar zeitgeist ofhumanism and moral permissiveness. Equally, Conservatives could nowargue that the experiment has inevitably failed. Today, there are distinctiveand enlarged ethno-cultural communities in numerous urban areas, blatantlydefying the ‘muscular liberalism’ of the Race Relations laws, vindicating theBurkean belief that human communities cannot be regimented (apart fromthrough tyranny) and proving that human communities are organic entitieswith dynamics irrelevant to politicians’ wishes.



In support of this conclusion, a YouGov poll in 2005 found that, forty yearsafter the first Race Relations Act, over 40 per cent of British-born Muslimsfavoured the introduction of some Sharia law into their communities, while afurther 42 per cent of British-born Asians professed ‘no principal loyalty tothe United Kingdom’.7 The intercommunity riots of 2001 in Burnley, Oldhamand Bradford, the Islamist attacks on London in 2005, plus the numerousthwarted attacks since, offered further evidence that liberal-integration hadbeen at best naıve and at worst dangerously simplistic.This leads to the second connection between Burke’s philosophy and

multiculturalism: that whereas an integrated, multiracial society was aliberal-utopian vision, the exponentially diverse, multicultural society wenow have is an empirical fact. As O’Hara wrote in a generally sympatheticstudy of modern Conservatism: ‘Britain is a multicultural place. No gettinground that, and silly to try.’8 That, in turn, leads to a question that touchesupon the raison d’etre of Burke’s Reflections: how might altered circumstancesbe accommodated without the need for violent, revolutionary upheaval?As Kirk’s study of Burke observed, ‘conservatism is never more admirable

than when it accepts changes that it disapproves, with good grace, for thesake of a general conciliation’.9 And although Conservatives might resent thelegacy of immigration—and its consequence of a multicultural Britain—thepragmatic, empirical politics bequeathed by Burke implies that they shouldaccept it, and then build policies that reflect it. As Paul Kelly suggestselsewhere in this collection, this would have probably been the conclusionof Michael Oakeshott—perhaps the greatest conservative philosopher of thelast century—whose analysis often portended that advanced by Parekh andother theorists of multiculturalism.If Conservatives do wish to ‘move on’ in the way Oakeshott might have

prescribed, they would be helped by a further connection between multi-culturalism and Edmund Burke—viz, localism. Given that multiculturalisminvolves accepting and promoting a range of localised customs, codes andvalues, it could also be depicted as the modern manifestation of Burke’s ‘littleplatoons’ and an ally of Cameron’s Big Society. Nonetheless, this particulareffect of localism and this particular version of the Big Society pose stern andunavoidable challenges for Cameron’s vision of the Conservative party.

Little platoons not liberal platoons

Although the Big Society was a flagship theme for Cameron in opposition, amore important one has been liberalisation—a political journey designed tomake the party acceptable to centrist voters who previously found Conserva-tism repellent. In the course of that journey, Cameron apologised for theThatcher government’s Section 28 (forbidding the ‘promotion’ of homosexu-ality in schools), took a more ‘sociological’ approach to delinquency (hencethe tabloid phrase ‘hug a hoodie’), burnished environmental concerns (‘voteblue, go green’) and, at the 2011 Conservative conference, supported same-sex



marriage. It is unclear if such measures endear Cameron to BME commu-nities; in respect of many British Asians, there are reasons to think the reverse.Cameron has not been slow to praise Burke’s little platoons or see their

relevance to the Big Society. But neither has he acknowledged any likelytension between his support for liberalism and his concurrent support forlocalism. This tension was compounded in early 2011 by Cameron’s bracingdenunciation of multiculturalism, implying that BME ‘little platoons’ wereoften extremist, reactionary and a menace to public order. Put simply,Cameron suggested that certain little platoons could not be relied on to beliberal platoons. Cameron thus became just the latest liberal to treat non-liberals illiberally.Cameron would be wise to remember, though, that the Conservative party

has never existed simply as a home for surrogate liberalism; nor has itsdurability been attributable simply to echoing the policies of liberal-leftparties. He might also remember that the Conservative party, dating assuch from the early nineteenth century, has a DNA fusing two distinctivepolitical traditions from the eighteenth century. On the one hand, there is the‘Whig-liberal’ tradition, stressing individualism, capitalism and liberty. Onthe other, there is the ‘Tory’ tradition—pessimistic and sceptical, and thusstressing tradition, authority, religious morality, established institutions andlocalised paternalism.With this in mind, Cameron might have recognised that many of the BME

communities he threatened to alienate with his Munich address exhibit many‘Tory’ attributes. Furthermore, recent economic history suggests that Britain ismoving in a direction where ‘Tory’ as opposed to ‘liberal’ values havecurrency—and where the Tory values enshrined in many BME communitiescould be valuable to a Conservative leader seeking public support.

Red Tory: multicultural Tory?

The economic ruptures since 2008, and the corresponding crisis of globalcapitalism, have been widely depicted as an indictment of free-market, neo-liberal thinking. Indeed, the resulting pessimism and fear, and the apocalypticwarnings stemming from numerous economists by 2011, are at odds withliberalism generally. In such a climate, the quest for individual ambition andindividual fulfilment—two quintessential liberal goals—normally give way toa yearning for communal support and communal solidarity. Put into Con-servative language, the Whig perspective tends to get eclipsed by the Toryperspective.Progressives might argue that today’s crises are an indictment of conserva-

tive politics per se, while exonerating the leftist belief in a strong anddemocratically centralised state. But if central state intervention is alsodiscredited, as even some on the left admit (vide ‘Blue Labour’), then localisedvoluntary arrangements, of the sort associated with Toryism and EdmundBurke (a maverick Whig) become germane. These arrangements might also



allow a recalibrated Conservative party, drawing upon its Tory as opposed toWhig elements, to engage more effectively in the politics of austerity whilereconciling itself to new forms of communal action.Such notions were touched upon in 2010 by Phillip Blond, who advanced

the case for ‘Red Toryism’. In his book, Blond argued that both big business(inspired by neoliberalism) and big government (inspired by social demo-cracy) were responsible for the erosion of community, and thus called forconservatives, as well as leftists, to indict the social and cultural effects ofglobalisation.10 Within a year of publication, Blond’s diagnosis of socialbreakdown seemed compelling; the riots of 2011 were widely portrayed asa grotesque example of amoral individualism, spawned by a liberal societythat was materially comfortable but morally bereft. But the riots also high-lighted something Blond did not consider—namely the possibility of asynthesis between conservatism and multiculturalism.In the wake of the 2011 riots, Cameron spoke of how certain sections of

society were ‘sick’. Yet this diagnosis scarcely applied to the BME commu-nities he had effectively condemned six months earlier. Indeed, many of thesecommunities—like the Kurdish community in Haringey, the Sikh communityin Southall, the Bengali and Somali communities in Whitechapel—wereamong those that appeared to stand up most effectively to mob violence,while still respecting the rule of law and the status of the police.In the days that followed, those same communities were duly exalted in

many Conservative-supporting newspapers. On account of their determina-tion to protect property and small business, and to shield families andcommunities, these communities were duly hailed as the unlikely tribunesof conservative values—a development made more poignant by the death of aBritish Muslim, who had confronted rioters, in a Pakistani district ofBirmingham. As Cristine Odone noted in the Daily Telegraph on 10 August:

Across the country, ethnic minorities have emerged as the heroes of the week’s riots. . . they have shown themselves to be not just as law-abiding as the Anglo-Saxons butmore inspiring. In the tight-knit societies peopled by Kurds, Sikhs, Poles and others, astrong sense of community survives which makes state assistance almost redundant. . . and it is mutual obligation, not government incentives, that motivates theirmembers. Marriage is the model they live by and aspire to; divorce is almost nil; singlemotherhood ditto; extended families living together are routine. . . . Strong immigrantfamilies support their children and also provide them with a moral compass. Can thenatives measure up?

Such comments suggested that, in the space of a few nights, the perception ofBME communities had been transformed from terrorist enclaves to bastions ofToryism. In the process, a new political climate seemed to emerge: one inwhich England’s conservatives and England’s immigrants seemed to havecommon cause. The resulting question for Conservatives was whether theyshould build on this unexpected rapprochement.By the autumn of 2011, there were signs that some, at least, were doing so.

Working with the Church of England’s ‘Near Neighbours’ programme, co-



Party Chair Baroness Warsi argued that, unlike New Labour, the modernConservative party should indeed ‘do God’ and encourage religious charitiesto deliver welfare services, via (for example) faith-based schools, hospices andrehabilitation programmes. A month later, Phillip Blond argued that, for theBig Society to succeed, it would need the backbone of ‘Christian values’—‘mutuality, subsidiary, solidarity, reciprocity and mediation’—thus suggest-ing that some of Britain’s Afro-Caribbean communities were exemplars of anew, ‘civic conservatism’.11

Baroness Warsi, however, went further. Arguing that any religious dimen-sion to the Big Society should be multifaith rather than exclusively Christian,she claimed that such an approach would spawn greater tolerance, exploit theenergy of faith-based BME communities, and thus nurture the philanthropiclocalism sought by the modern Conservative party. The notion that ethno-cultural diversity should not just be recognised but promoted is nothing new:it has long been at the heart of multiculturalism. What was significant wasthat it was now being endorsed at the highest level of the Conservative party.During 2011, there were other emerging overlaps between applied multi-

culturalism and modern Conservatism. For example, as part of their wish toencourage diversity, multiculturalists usually defend positive discriminationand affirmative action—schemes traditionally dismissed by Conservatives as‘politically correct’. Yet, during 2011, Warsi’s approach to events in Pakistanwas less than predictable. She had discussions with Paul Bhatti, brother of theassassinated Christian politician Shabaz Bhatti and now ‘minorities adviser’to Pakistan’s prime minister, praised Bhatti’s creation of a new Ministry ofHarmony (devoted to the ‘celebration’ of non-Muslim religions), applaudedthe Pakistani Senate’s allocation of seats for religious minority repre-sentatives, and voiced the classic multiculturalist mantra: ‘unity throughdiversity’.All this suggests that the modern Conservative party’s approach to multi-

culturalism is not as unequivocally negative as Cameron’s Munich speechindicated. In short, the Conservative approach to multiculturalism evolvedquite significantly during the course of 2011—with the August riots proving alikely catalyst.

From problem to opportunity: a Conservative leitmotiv

In this chapter, we have suggested that that there could be a much strongeralliance between the Conservative party and Britain’s ethnic minorities and afresh Conservative approach to multiculturalism. We have also suggestedthat such an approach would chime with the Burkean aspect of conservativephilosophy, the Tory aspect of Conservative archaeology and the Big Societyaspect of Conservatism today.The main obstacle to such an outcome remains the party’s association with

moderate British nationalism (not for nothing do various studies of the partyhave titles like We, The Nation). With reference to conservatism’s founder,



Edmund Burke, we have therefore made a particular effort to show thatConservatives are not inevitably wedded to nostalgic forms of nationalism orabstract concepts of British-ness, and that they might rework their patriotisminto something more localised. But that still leaves the crucial and complexquestion for all advocates of multiculturalism, Conservative or otherwise:how can radical, cultural pluralism avoid the ‘balkanisation’ of the state andthe fragmentation of Britain’s wider society?Here again, a glance at Conservative history might help those who

advocate a Conservative version of multiculturalism. For this history showsa party that has adapted to widely varying social and economic conditions;one that has had an infinitely flexible view about who is ‘one of us’; and onecapable of audacious reinvention. In fact, one of the recurrent themes ofConservative party history is its tendency to see certain groups/concepts asinitially beyond the pale, but eventually to absorb those groups/concepts intoboth its own pantheon and the political mainstream.Having initially been the party of the established Church and opposed to

Catholic emancipation, it was a Conservative government that abolished theTest and Corporation Acts in 1828–29, thus admitting non-Anglicans intoofficial political life (a move which, in the context of the early nineteenthcentury, was itself ‘multicultural’). Having initially feared universal adultsuffrage and the attenuation of property as a criterion for voting, it was alargely Conservative coalition that abolished the property qualification in1918 (with the party going on to be the most popular party among workingclass voters in the interwar era). Having initially opposed female suffrage, itwas a Conservative government that gave women equal voting rights in 1928(with the party going on to be the most popular one among women voters formost of the twentieth century). So having under-performed with BME votersfor so long, despite BME and Conservative values being far from inimical, thetime may be right for another example of daring Conservative reinvention—one that could well lead to another surprising extension of Conservativesupport.

Conclusion: no end of a lesson

The Conservative party’s durability, as a force for promoting both itself andan uneven yet cohesive society, owes much to its historic pragmatism andversatility. This side of Conservatism has already been exploited with somesuccess by David Cameron. But the party’s protean nature may now have tobe exploited further and much more boldly if Britain’s ‘broken society’ is to bemended, the values of BME voters accommodated, and the party’s role in acosmopolitan society secured.As his biographer noted, Edmund Burke ‘taught English statesmen how to

meet change with courage and dexterity and how to soften its conse-quences’.12 In respect of multiculturalism, it remains to be seen whetherBurke’s lessons can be learnt by today’s Conservative leaders.



Notes

1 D. Marquand, ‘Patron saint of the Big Society’, Prospect, no. 175, 2010.2 See, for example, W. Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, Oxford, Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1995; B. Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism, London, PalgraveMacmillan, 2005.

3 R. Kelly, ‘The party conference’, in A. Seldon and S. Ball, eds, Conservative Century,Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994.

4 R. Kirk, The Conservative Mind: from Burke to Eliot, Washington, DC, Regnery, 1983,p. 20.

5 P. Buck, ed., How Conservatives Think, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1975, pp. 48–52.6 Z. Layton-Henry, The Politics of Immigration, Oxford, Blackwell 1992, pp. 49–50.7 Quoted in Sunday Telegraph, 31 July 2005.8 K. O’Hara, After Blair: David Cameron and the Conservative Tradition, London, IconBooks, 2007 pp. 243–50.

9 Kirk, The Conservative Mind, p. 47.10 P. Blond: Red Tory: How Left and Right have Broken Britain and How We can Fix It,

London, Faber & Faber, 2010.11 Daily Telegraph, 25 November 2011.12 Kirk, The Conservative Mind, p. 46.



From Burke to Burkha: Conservatism, Multiculturalism and the Big Society

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