Agenda 32 (Spring 2008).
An Optimistic future for a Diverse City?
Bharat Mehta, City Parochial Foundation
I would like to start by thanking ROTA for inviting me to write this article for its 10th Anniversary publication. ROTA has made a significant impact on the policy front, in matters relating to race in particular, for which it is to be congratulated.
City Parochial Foundation, a grant-making trust established in 1891 to benefit the poor of London is one ROTA’s many supporters and funders. This article is written as a personal contribution so the views expressed are my own, and whilst I am grateful to my CPF colleagues and for their comments and advice, this article should not be attributed to CPF. Having said as much, I am, of course, influenced to a significant extent by the applications CPF receives from voluntary and charitable organisations. I am similarly influenced by my own experiences: I am a migrant to Britain, an Asian born in Africa who moved to Britain as a teenager.
May 1997 saw the election of a new Labour Government. This was followed by an unprecedented period for a labour government to be in office. Tony Blair remained in post for most of that period with Gordon Brown as the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Gordon Brown succeeded Tony Blair as Prime Minister in 2007. 1997 and the period thereafter ushered in, amongst other reforms...