Hilary Benn MP

The Muslim community's  enormous contribution to life in Britain
April 4th, 2007

Speech to the Muslim News Awards for Excellence, Grosvenor House Hotel, London.

Good evening ladies and gentleman, As-salaamu Alaikum.

Can I begin by thanking you very much indeed for inviting me to join you for this celebration this evening. This is a chance to acknowledge and to say thank you to individuals who are making a real contribution to our society. It’s an opportunity for us to lay on one side for this evening at least the cynicism and criticism that passes, in my view, to much for public life in Britain today. I have no time for cynicism – criticism, scepticism, doubt, questioning, we live in a democracy we should embrace those. But cynicism in the end will destroy us.

The reason I was particularly delighted to accept your invitation is that this is a chance for all of you, and for others who are watching, to hear about the Muslim community’s enormous contribution to life in Britain and to the world. It’s a chance to show that the people shortlisted, and I congratulate every single one of you on the honour that the Muslim News has bestowed upon you, represent the best of your community and of Islam, rather than the names we hear and read about in our newspapers far too much. Tonight is a chance to tell a different story to the one we read about. It is a chance to hear a story of shared values, a story of common humanity, a story of a shared hope for a better future.

As you know of course, like all the great faiths, Islam urges it’s followers to create a more just society and to help the less well off. The Qur’an says,

“Worship none but Allah; treat with kindness your parents and kindred, and orphans and those in need; speak fair to the people; be steadfast in prayer; and practise regular charity”.

It is the reason why British Muslims give the equivalent of £90 each month to good causes. It’s why we have a big development programme in Britain. It’s why the Government is proud to have increased our assistance to the rest of the world.

I tell you very frankly, in this century we face a very simple choice. We can move one of two ways in the course of the 21st century. Either we can be open to each other as a world. We can embrace multilateralism, by which I mean human beings working together to deal with the problems of the world. We can shift the process to which we have given the word globalisation. What is globalisation? It is the product of human activity throughout the centuries.

From the very first human beings who said to themselves, ‘I wonder what’s on the other side of the hill’? They climbed to the top of the hill and they looked down the other side and they found there were other human beings. They traded with them and sometimes they fought with them and they lived alongside them. Some of them fell in love and in very short order that is in potted form the history of human existence. That is one choice.

The other choice is to close in on ourselves. To become isolationist, to become protectionist, to fall prey to narrow nationalism. I know which kind of world I want to live in. The truth about the human condition at the beginning of the 21st century is that we live on a very small and fragile planet, becoming more fragile with each passing moment. There are more than 6 billion of us now, by the middle of this century there will be more than 9 billion.

We know we are more interdependent as human beings now than we have ever been at any other point in human history. If anyone is inclined to say, and I’ve met people on my travels around Britain, I’m very sorry about the condition of humankind at the beginning of the 21st century. By this I mean there were 5,000 children in the developing world, some of whom live in the Muslim world, who died today because the didn’t have any of what’s in the bottles on our tables – clean water to drink. They drink contaminated water and they get diarrhoeal diseases. They become dehydrated and lose the fight for life.

We can’t say we didn’t know. We see it on our television screens, we read about it in our newspapers. The instruments of globalisation – trade, travel, technology, television, mean that we are aware that today in the developing world there were 80 million children who weren’t where they should be. Where should children of primary school age on be a weekday morning? They should be in a classroom, with a desk and a teacher. Apart from the love and care of those who bring us into this world what is the single most important start we can have in life? It is the chance to go to school. It opens a window on the world. It gives us knowledge, understanding, self confidence and aspiration. It finds the talent, the ability that is within every single member of the human family and brings it out so it can shine.

We know these things so people who say well I’m sorry about all of that but I wish the rest of the world would go away and I’m going home, I’m going to shut the door and close the curtains. I’d simply say we cannot take that attitude with us as we carry on with this journey down the course of the 21st century. I think we have no choice at all but to accept our responsibility one to another. I believe we are our brother’s and sister’s keeper. Because of that interdependence, because of what happens in far off countries, as people once described them, increasingly impacts on those of us who live here. Why is it when I do my surgeries in my constituency in Leeds some of the people who come to see me have had to flee the land of their birth because war and violence has forced them to do so? I mean the people who fled Iraq when Saddam was in power, the people who fled Afghanistan when the Taliban were in power, the people who have fled from the Congo, from Cameroon and from Zimbabwe.

There is one example of our interdependence – events in other countries affecting those of us who live here. If you think you can keep the world out of your living room by shutting the door and closing the curtains the truth is you can’t. We are in this together, we are one world and we are going to work together to deal with the problems of poverty and injustice that scar our planet. Or we will perish separately. That is the truth.

Britain’s aid programme and the work we are doing in countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, is an expression of the Government’s commitment to that common humanity. It is an expression of our desire to help other people to transform their own lives.

But it is not about us doing it for them. It’s not about a former colonial power coming and knocking on the door and saying we’ve come to develop you. That’s not what development is. It’s not what development is in my constituency in the inner city parts of Leeds where people have come from Pakistan and Bangladesh to make Britain their home. They have made an enormous contribution to our society. I say that to you as the son of an immigrant.

When people on the doorstep say, Mr Benn I don’t like all these immigrants in this country. I look them in the eye and say my mother was an immigrant. She was, she was an American. She came across the Atlantic and spent the remaining 50 years of her life here in Britain making a contribution to society in her own way. She was a passionate advocate of comprehensive education. We should be proud and we should celebrate the contribution that people from all parts of the world have made, are making and will continue to make to our society by making Britain their home and contributing to the nation that we have become and the nation that we want to build for the future.

If people say they accept our interdependence, I accept my responsibility but can we do anything about it. Is it possible to overcome poverty, injustice and inequality? The truth is, well of course it’s possible. Why has average life expectancy in the developing world increased by 18 years since the mid-1960’s, why is it that when Barbara Castle did my job about half the people in the developing world could read and write, now it’s three quarters. How did we get rid of smallpox from the face of the earth 30 years ago this year? Why are we this close to eradicating polio from our planet? Because we put our minds to it.

And it’s the story of development in our country. If anyone doubts our capacity to change things pause for a moment, go back 200 years in time. A time of enormous change in this country because what’s in the bottle on our tables was combined with fire to create a technology that transformed the world. It gave rise to the industrial revolution. People moved from the rural areas to the towns and cities in exactly the same way as in the developing world now. People are moving from rural areas to towns and cities. First in Asia then in Africa. In the next 50 years do you know where most people will be living? In urban areas. We are now witnessing the development of urbanisation in the developing world. We also went through the process of bringing clean water, sanitation, education, better working conditions, a higher living standard and a chance to express a view about what kind of society it is you want to live in. People in the developing world just like you and me with exactly the same potential and aspirations want the chance to do it for themselves.

If you accept, like me, that no country can prosper or develop if every child doesn’t have the right to open that window on the world by going to school, we should celebrate the fact that girls in Afghanistan once again have that right. We should be proud of the fact that as a country we are supporting the elected government in Afghanistan to ensure that girls continue to have the right of an education. I think frankly it’s a universal human right.

This is in my view the greatest challenge that we face in the world alongside the fight against climate change, which in the end will undo all of us if we don’t tackle it. Climate change, that too is an expression of our interdependence. We can’t say well we’ll look after the British CO2 emissions, we’ll tell them to stop at the White Cliffs of Dover. We’ll deal with ours and you deal with yours. Climate change is the ultimate expression of our interdependence as human beings. We are in this together and we have to find a solution together.

The last thing I wanted to say to you in thanking you for inviting me here this evening is this – we talk a great deal about what Bill Clinton famously describes as the interesting differences between us. The fact that some of us have a different colour skin to others, that we wear different clothes, that we profess a different faith, we speak a different language. But they are differences that make for a wonderful world. But what is much, much, much more interesting than those differences is our common humanity.

When you get to know human beings and you get to talk to them and you get to understand them, what do we learn? What we know in our hearts already – that inside we are the same. We have the same potential, the same purpose, the same desire to build a better world and pass on something that is better than what we inherited to our children and grandchildren.

As we come to terms with this interdependent world and with the growing diversity of British society, the person’s words in my view we should remember more than anybody else’s are the words of Martin Luther King. He said, ‘I long for a world where we are judged not by the colour of our skin but by the content of our character’. I’m sure it’s true for you, I know it’s true for me. We would wish to be judged by the content of our character. The kind of people we are, the contribution we are making, the things we hope for in trying to build a better world. What we gather here tonight to do is to celebrate and applaud the character of all of you who have been shortlisted for these awards.

I want to thank you for the contribution your character is making to all walks of life and all kinds of work in all parts of our country. I wish you all the very best as you carry on making that contribution. If we are to defeat cynicism then the people we should prize more than anybody else are those who are doing something, big or small, to build a better world so that when our time is done we can look back and say well that’s what we did – we passed on something better to those who come after us.