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Kavanagh et al: British Politics 5e

Jack Straw, Muslim Women and the Veil

A particular preoccupation of the British media and the political class throughout October 2006 proved to be the controversy triggered by the opinions of Jack Straw, the Leader of the House of Commons, in respect of Muslim women wearing veils. Writing in his column in his local newspaper, the Lancashire Evening Telegraph, Straw reported how he requests that veiled Muslim women attending his constituency surgeries uncover their faces. For Straw, the veil operates as a barrier to interpersonal communication but beyond this he wrote that "wearing the full veil was bound to make better, positive relations between the two communities more difficult" and that the veil represents "a visible statement of separation and of difference."

Straw's comments received the support of a number of his colleagues in the Labour Party, including the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, Harriet Harman, Hilary Armstrong and Phil Woolas. In contrast organisations and individuals including the Islamic Society of Britain, George Galloway, Ken Livingstone, John McDonnell and John Denham regarded his comments with concern. Trevor Phillips, chair of the Commission for Racial Equality raised the alarm that Straw's comments could trigger violence akin to that seen in Oldham, Bradford and Burnley in 2001.

The controversy was further extended when Aishah Azmi, a teaching assistant was sacked from her post after refusing to remove her veil in front of adult men. Further fuel was added by the intervention of a number of newspapers. For example, the Daily Express launched a campaign to 'ban' the wearing of veils.

The debate generated has been significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, there were suspicions that Straw's comments were a cynical and opportunistic attempt to win political capital in advance of the Labour Party's Deputy Leadership contest. This would not be unusual. Many scholars of the politics of 'race' and ethnicity in Britain highlight the political gain that politicians have sought to generate through exploiting such issues. Likewise, the considerable volume of Islamophobic press commentary the veil issue generated will not have surprised many analysts of the representation of minority groups in the media.

Secondly, the controversy generated by Straw's remarks indirectly raised the issue of the political representation of minorities. With just four Muslim MPs in the House of Commons the capacity of non-Muslim MPs such as Jack Straw to adequately represent a constituency with a significant Muslim population (19.4% in the case of Straw's constituency of Blackburn) was a significant and pertinent subtext in the debate.

Thirdly, the controversy represented the latest in a series of issues which have posed the fundamental question about whether ethnic and religious minorities should be able to preserve their own norms, behaviour and culture in a multi-cultural British society or whether these need to be modified in the service of integration and community cohesion. In recent years, particularly since 2001, Labour politicians have retreated from the faith in multi-culturalism which sustained previous Labour governments. Indeed, the contrast is stark in Straw's own case. The vision which he outlined to the 1999 Labour Conference was "one that makes no apologies for people's differences, but instead celebrates the rich diversity of multi-racial Britain". This, on the evidence of his comments in 2006, seems to be a perspective which he has now heavily revised.

Critical Thinking Questions

1) Identify the principal criticisms of Jack Straw's position on Muslim women wearing the veil. To what extent do you agree with Jack Straw or his critics?

2) What do you understand by the term 'multi-culturalism'?

3) To what extent do you think that Britain is a 'multi-cultural' nation and to what extent do you think multi-culturalism is a principal worth defending in Britain at the beginning of the 21st century?