Scholars argue that policies of multiculturalism in different countries are in retreat or in question. Britain is often used as an example of this, and leading British politicians and commentators often criticise such a policy. Yet a long-held multiculturalist goal has been to make Britishness more inclusive and this is something leading politicians were until recently uncommitted to. We use interviews with politicians who have served in this government and the last, the measures they have introduced, their media contributions, speeches and policy documents, to show that they are now committed to this goal. At a time when a British policy of multiculturalism is said to be in retreat or in question we identify a multiculturalist advance and show that this raises a range of difficult questions about government approaches to 'Britishness'.

‘Policies of multiculturalism are often criticised for undermining national identities in one of three ways and in this article I suggest why this is questionable and then point to a more plausible relationship between the two. More specifically, I offer a hypothesis which is that policies of multiculturalism change national identities and I argue that this hypothesis is both theoretically plausible and empirically plausible in at least one instance. This argument is made in three stages and in the first of them I explain what I think policies of multiculturalism and national identities are. In the second stage I present my hypothesis and explain why it is theoretically plausible. In the third stage I use new evidence to suggest why my hypothesis is also empirically plausible in at least one instance. In the final stage I show why a sceptic who might doubt whether my hypothesis is plausible in other instances need not do so.’

Section 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states: ‘This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians’, and we know surprisingly little about why the Canadian Federal Government agreed to insert it in the Charter and how this occurred. In this article I will use new historical evidence to explain both these things and I proceed in three stages. Firstly, I explain why the Canadian Federal Government agreed to include what became Section 27 in the Canadian Charter. Secondly, I explain how it was actually included. I then conclude the article by explaining why the evidence in it not only explains why and how Section 27 was included in the Charter; it also increases the possibility that a largely unsubstantiated claim made by certain prominent scholars is true. The claim is that the Canadian Federal Government's policy of multiculturalism was used to shape the Canadian national identity.

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Geoffrey Brahm Levey plausibly describes how a group of scholars who he calls the ‘Bristol School of Multiculturalism’ (BSM) differ from scholars who are often called Liberal Multiculturalists (LMs). We expand Levey's analysis by showing what in the history of the BSM's thought made the liberalism and the multiculturalism of LMs unconvincing for BSM scholars. Hence, we show how certain thinkers influenced BSM scholars in ways that made them unwilling to offer liberal theories and how BSM scholars began their work with multiculturalist ideas that differ from the multiculturalist ideas of LMs.