US CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER JESSE JACKSON HONOURED WITH DEGREE AT DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY

From today's Leicester Mercury:

US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson honoured with degree at De Montfort University 

Civil rights campaigner the Rev Jesse Jackson received an honorary degree yesterday. 

He was a key speaker at De Montfort University's conference on terrorism and radicalism, organised by the Parliamentary Home Affairs Select Committee, chaired by Leicester East MP Keith Vaz.  

Mr Jackson said other cities could look to Leicester for tips on multicultural and racial harmony. 

He said: "This is a multicultural city and it shows that when people work alongside each other, together as a team, things can work.  

"Here is Leicester there are many races and many faces from many places."
Mr Jackson marched with Martin Luther King Jr in Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s and, in 1979, visited South Africa, where he spoke out against apartheid.  

He also won praise for negotiating the release of American soldiers and civilians held around the world and, in the 1980s, became a leading national spokesman for African Americans and twice stood for the Democrats nomination for president.  

When asked what Leicester could do to further fight terrorism, he said: "We must be radical but radical in a loving and caring and peaceful way, fighting together to change our world.  

"We must think about the way we interpret the word 'radical' and remember that Jesus was a radical – but in this peaceful sense I talk about.  

"We must all fight to coexist in peace."  

Mr Jackson spoke at the conference about the lessons to be learned from the US experience of tackling radicalisation and said that we must address the disparity in wealth between the rich and poor in order to achieve peace.  

Other speakers at the conference included Ian Paisley Jr MP, who discussed his experiences in Northern Ireland, as well as Home Office security minister James Brokenshire and Dr Dipu Moni, the foreign minister of Bangladesh.  

At the conference, Mr Vaz announced he would today ask parliament to honour Mr Jackson by nominating him for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Nobel chairman warns Europe's leaders over 'inflaming far-right sentiment'

From today's edition of The Observer:

Nobel chairman warns Europe's leaders over 'inflaming far-right sentiment'

Thorbjørn Jagland says Europe's leaders are 'playing with fire' if they use right-wing rhetoric when discussing multiculturalism

By Mark Townsend, Home Affairs Editor

Europe's leaders, including David Cameron, have been warned to adopt a more "cautious" approach when discussing multiculturalism. The Norwegian chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize committee has told them they risk inflaming far-right and anti-Muslim sentiment.

Thorbjørn Jagland, a former prime minister of his country, said leaders such as the British premier would be "playing with fire" if they continued to use rhetoric that could be exploited by extremists.

Four months ago in Munich, Cameron declared that state multiculturalism had failed in Britain, a view immediately praised by Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, as "a further huge leap for our ideas into the political mainstream". Marine Le Pen, vice-president of the far-right National Front party in France, also endorsed Cameron's view of multiculturalism, claiming that it corroborated her own party's line.

Jagland's comments come in the wake of the Oslo bomb and the massacre on Utøya Island that left 77 people dead. The killer, Anders Behring Breivik, said he was inspired by the right-wing English Defence League. Breivik sent his manifesto, published online hours before the attacks, to about 250 British members of the BNP, the EDL and the Stop Islamisation of Europe group.

Jagland, who is also secretary general of the Council of Europe, told the Observer: "We have to be very careful how we are discussing these issues, what words are used.

"Political leaders have got to defend the fact that society has become more diverse. We have to defend the reality, otherwise we are going to get into a mess. I think political leaders have to send a clear message to embrace it and benefit from it.

"We should be very cautious now, we should not play with fire. Therefore I think the words we are using are very important because it can lead to much more."

Jagland has also urged leading politicians to change their terminology. He said the word "diversity" was better than multiculturalism because the latter had become defined in different ways by different groups. "We also need to stop using 'Islamic terrorism', which indicates that terrorism is about Islam. We should be saying that terrorism is terrorism and not linked to religion," said Jagland.

Over the years before his attacks, Breivik developed an ultra-radical stance that initially incorporated the forced repatriation of Muslims from Europe, but ultimately targeted Norway's centre-left government, which had encouraged multiculturalism. During his court appearance on terrorism charges, the 32-year-old said he had acted to prevent the "Muslim takeover" of Europe.

[...]

During Cameron's Munich speech, which combined a passage on terrorism with one on integration, the prime minister talked extensively about "Islamist extremism" as being the source of terrorism.

Breivik saw David Miliband, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair as worthy of assassination because, according to his 1,500-page manifesto, they had a "friendly attitude" to immigrants.

Jagland says he has sympathy with Cameron's attempt to robustly promote a shared set of British values as an alternative to multiculturalism, if not with his delivery. "We are not searching for a society where we have only different cultures. We also need to have something that holds us together, to respect common values," he said.

Jagland, who last year gave the Nobel peace prize to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who was represented by an empty chair at the ceremony in Oslo, added that the immigration debate also needed to be less negative.

WIKILEAKS ON LEICESTER

There's so much stuff pouring out of WikiLeaks that it's not surprising Leicester is mentioned. Sooner or later, it seems like just about everywhere, everything (and everyone?) will be.

I get into the office late, after a day of meetings out, to find a phone message left by Neil Tweedie, from The Daily Telegraph. He asks if we would contact him urgently. I do, just after 1600. Neil tells me that he's been hoping to get someone from Leicester to comment on a document released by Wikileaks, in which a US State Department official reported on a visit to Leicester, giving her impression about the city's Muslim population.

Since leaving his message, Neil has spoken with someone at the Federation of Muslim Organisations, But I can't let the opportunity pass without saying that I'll get him some comment which they can publish in our Chair's name. And here it is, as sent to Neil within the next couple of hours:

"In Leicester, we're used to being the focus of attention for visitors, observers and commentators from all over the world. Hardly a week goes by without some individual or group contacting us (or some other agency working for community cohesion in the city) with an eye to seeing what's going on here - and this has included journalists from the US. We'd never claim to be perfect, or to have solved the issues that come with being a diverse city, but people here are genuinely trying to make things work out for the good of all. The thing that makes this matter newsworthy, of course, is its connection with WikiLeaks. But helping the different communities within the city of Leicester live and work side by side is an ongoing activity from which we can never really take a break, or say that it's been achieved once and for all."

Cllr Manjula Sood, Chair of Leicester Council of Faiths, was the first Asian woman Lord Mayor in Britain. She was featured on the front page of The Daily Telegraph in March 2009, when Leicester hosted a homecoming parade for British Service personnel returning from active service in Afghanistan and Iraq. Our parade was free of the kind of protests that marred similar events in some other British cities at the time.

Neil tells me that the story will be published in tomorrow (Sat 5 Feb). In the event, it doesn't appear - lots of space is devoted to the Prime Minister's declaration of his "war on multiculturalism", so I'm not surprised if some other issues have to move aside to make space for this.

The latest development in the Wikileaks story is that it has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

For a more skeptical view of cultural diversity in "One Leicester", read Ed West, writing on the Telegraph blog.