ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the place of religion in relation to post-immigration diversity in Britain and British national identity as reflected in three national commission reports stretching over thirty years. Michael Swann marks the early wave of British multiculturalism and includes some of the key ideas of racial disadvantage, discrimination and racism but explicitly tends towards a conceptualisation of the non-white minorities in terms of ethnic pluralism rather than racial dualism, despite the latter being the dominant perspective of 1980s. The Commission on Multi-Ethnic Britain (CMEB) had a number of unusual features for a national commission. It was created by an independent race relations think-tank, The Runnymede Trust, while it was launched by the Home Secretary, it was wholly independent of the government and included no members of the judiciary or representatives of the government. The CMEB broke new ground in a number of ways in relation to discourses and understanding of post-immigration minorities and how they should be accommodated in Britain.
