Cross-party body seeks to tackle divisions in wake of 2024 summer riots
An independent commission aimed at tackling community divisions across Britain in the wake of last summer's riots will hold its first meeting on Wednesday.
The cross-party body, led by former Tory community secretary Sir Sajid Javid and Labour MP Jon Cruddas, says it will seek to examine what Sir Keir Starmer last year called the 'cracks in our foundation'.
The commission will develop a series of evidence-based recommendations for measures to build more social cohesion across the four nations.
Former Green Party leader Caroline Lucas, ex-Tory mayor of the West Midlands Sir Andy Street, and former counter-extremism tsar Dame Sara Khan are among its members.
Sir Sajid, who served in the Cabinets of David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson, said successive administrations had treated social cohesion as a 'second-tier' issue.
He said governments had responded 'only when tensions spill over and too often ignoring the root causes.'
'This commission has been established to do what governments alone cannot: take a long view, propose radical policy changes and — crucially — help forge a cross-society consensus about how we want to live together now and in the future,' Sir Sajid said.
Former veteran Labour MP for Dagenham and Rainham Mr Cruddas said the commission would seek to respond to one of 'the most pressing and persistently neglected issues' facing Britain.
He said: 'This won't be a top-down exercise. Over the next year, we'll be listening directly to people across the UK – drawing on their experiences to help shape practical, long-term answers to the forces pulling us apart.'
The commission is being facilitated by the Together Coalition founded by Brendan Cox, the husband of the Labour MP Jo Cox who was murdered by a far-right extremist.
It was established in the aftermath of a wave of violent disorder that swept across parts of the UK last summer following the Southport stabbings.
False information spread on social media about the identity of the attacker, later found to be 18-year-old Axel Rudakubana, was widely seen as playing a role in fuelling the unrest.
The disturbances, which saw mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers targeted, were denounced at the time as 'far-right thuggery' by Prime Minister Sir Keir.
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