How citizens’ juries can help with community cohesion

This is a guest post by Tehmina Kazi of British Muslims for Secular Democracy.

What do you do when you are stuck in traffic because 15 protesters have descended on your peaceful little suburb, and the entire area is gridlocked with police vans carrying 800 officers? You grumble under your breath, as this is your hard-earned tax money going down the pan. This tiny group seem to be campaigning against the local mosque extension, and are carrying what appears to be "anti-Peperami" placards.

You crane your neck to get a closer look and they are actually pictures of women wearing headscarves, with fat red lines crossing them out. Strange that, because the mosque has been around for years and you can't recall hearing anything dodgy about them. In fact, doesn't their big cheese live just down the road from you? He always smiles at you - usually over a packet of Walkers' finest - when you bump into each other at the newsagents.'

To top it all off, about 300 protesters for the other side have sprung out of nowhere, waving banners and making lots of noise. You have a grudging admiration for them, but don't they know you have to pick the kids up from football practice?

This was the dilemma facing Harrow residents on Sunday, when "Stop the Islamification of Europe" returned to Harrow for their second anti-mosque demonstration in three months. My organisation, British Muslims for Secular Democracy, extended an open invitation to the leaders of this group, asking them to discuss their concerns regarding the British Muslim community.

This offer was flatly refused and SIOE decided to go ahead with their protest, costing the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds and riding roughshod over good community relations in the process.

Of course, freedom of assembly and association plays an important part in a democracy. However, when other means of airing grievances have been offered, they should not be dismissed out of hand. Groups like SIOE and Hizb ut-Tahrir have rubbed up the festering boil of powerlessness that exists in certain communities, who feel that their concerns are no longer being listened to by mainstream organisations and political parties.

Had there been more initiatives designed to make ordinary citizens feel that their views made a tangible difference to the policy-making process, you wonder whether extreme groups - of ANY ideological bent - would have been a mere speck on the political landscape. The sad reality is that 943,000 people voted for the BNP in the European Parliament elections in June 2009.

In Summer 2007, Gordon Brown hailed a "new politics," aiming to re-engage disillusioned citizens with the political system. Citizens' juries - bodies of 10 to 20 randomly-selected people who deliberate on policy problems from gun crime to MRSA, then vote between different options for change - were quickly set up.

There are manifest advantages to these: citizens get a broad overview of relevant opinions and evidence, and deliberate the finer points of the issue over time. Also, because these juries are non-partisan, they provide a welcome relief from the "in-your-face" lobbying done by some special interest groups at Westminster.

The health sector welcomed citizens' juries with open arms, asking questions like, "What are your main concerns for healthcare in the future?" and "What are the current barriers to accessing healthcare services?" However, the scheme was criticised by opposition MPs such as Liberal Democrat Norman Lamb, who said: "No-one really has any confidence in consultations nowadays because so often they amount to nothing more than a sham."

The best way to challenge this perception is for more "bottom-up" juries to take place, where participants decide the subject area based on their own experiences and grassroots knowledge.

The deliberation process must be transparent, including the evidence that these juries have taken into account. Crucially, once the jury gives its verdict, the public body in question must inform them of which of their recommendations have been implemented and whether these are sustainable. They must also state which recommendations were not implemented, and give reasons as to why not.

Citizens' juries should extend to less obvious policy areas as well. How do citizens' juries help to increase community cohesion and address the fear-mongering whipped up by different groups in society? The Institute for Policy and Practice delivered a project in 2004 called, "Using Democratic Spaces to Promote Social Justice in Northern Towns," which featured citizens' juries in Blackburn and Darwen, Lancashire, talking about drink and drug use among young people.

Blackburn has been the scene of several race riots in recent years, but this report concluded that there is a need for "sensitively-planned initiatives" which find areas of consensus between different stakeholders who, at first glance, would seem to have little in common. The researchers found that participants in these juries made "friends for life" even if their initial contact was nothing more than a quick "Hello" at the newsagent.

Any democracy-building initiative worth its salt must seek to foster this level of trust, and British Muslims for Secular Democracy would welcome the reinvigoration of citizens' juries along these lines.