'I am British, I think of this as my nation, and I actually think it is quite a privilege.'

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is looking for new ways to talk about who we are. Andy Jackson found out more.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown recently received an EMMA for best print journalism for her columns in The Independent. Her latest book After Mulitculturalism, looks at identity in a globalised future.

At Greenbelt, she questioned the stereotypes of multiculturalism, saying that traditional debates do not fit Britain today. She wondered whether there should be new ways of talking about who we are, and what that might mean in an "interdependent world".

How do you now describe yourself?

I think of myself, now, after many, many years, as British, as a British person who no longer needs to be good, or grateful or have to explain. This is my nation, but it needs to change. But I also think of myself as black, and I'm Asian because that's where my family background is, and I'm a practising Muslin, but a wine-drinking one.

You say that you're now British. How much of a struggle has it been?

I was watching Kelly Holmes [double Olympic gold medallist] hug the Union Jack and I thought 'how nice', that this mixed race Briton could do this so naturally. I still couldn't do that because I would feel uncomfortable. It's been a very long fight, and it still is. But I am British, I think of this as my nation, and I actually think it is quite a privilege. I'm a Londoner, I love London, my husband is English and my daughter is half-English, there is no choice but to embrace 'Britishness' and I feel good about that but it's not an easy identity.

Many of my friends went to Canada at the same time as when I came here and they felt Canadian a long time ago. It's not been a struggle for them, because not many people will say to them that they've not got the right to be Canadian.

Why do people say that you have no right to be British?

I think primarily because of the colour of the skin, but the idea that this nation belongs to a certain group of people and we may not lay claim to it and we're here of sufferance, will continue, I think, maybe for a couple more generations.

Would you think that working class people would say the same?

I think that working class white Britons have had a very hard life and have been exploited and excluded and I would not underestimate their struggles. Perhaps what changed when black people came after the Second World War, although black people have lived in the UK since the 1600s, was that working class people thought that was the way it was, a bit like the caste system in India.

That life was God-given and class was something you could do nothing about. What changed their minds was that black people came and said 'no, we have rights, we demand equality' and questioned the establishment. So people started to wonder why they should be stuck into a class they were born into.

But class prejudices have got worse under Mr Blair, the gap between the rich and the poor has actually widened. Working class people will say to me as often as middle class people that this isn't their country, so I tend not to romanticise working class attitudes too much.

My daughter came home crying the other day - she's 11 and she looks like me - because someone said to her 'Go away Paki, what are you doing in this shop.' So, no, it doesn't go away, but it has got better. But people are still angry with successful black and Asian people because we're no longer grateful. Nobody asks Australians who are living here to be grateful, nobody says to Germaine Greer 'why are you here?' Why should I have to listen to that?

What was life in Britain like when you came here to live?

I came here is 1972, and the racism of that period was unbelievable. When people arrived here from Uganda, for example, after being thrown out by Idi Amin, there were demonstrations at Stanstead Airport, people standing with placards saying 'Fuck off, we don't want you here'. The area where I chose to live had local newspaper adverts saying 'We don't want any Ugandan Asians - we're full up.' Taxi drivers wouldn't take my money, I was spat at by mothers with pushchairs and grannies, not just skinheads.

Enoch Powell had such an evil influence on society then. But now it's phenomenally better. There have been many changes. Just look at the television now. The number of mixed race families is a very fast-growing group so there are a lot of good stories. And with change there are newer problems - there is not just white racism, there is so much internal tension which never existed before, between blacks and between groups of Asians.

Are you worried about the rise of inter-ethic racism over the last ten to 15 years?

There is a huge jump and we have an obligation to do something about it. When Damilola Taylor was killed, nobody wanted to talk about it. When Stephen Lawrence was killed, everyone wanted to talk about it in the black nation community because it was easier to deal with Stephen's murder than Damilola's. It's something we need to address and what I've written this week addresses how even I've failed.

Someone wrote to me once and said 'you write so much about Stephen Lawrence, but Ross Parker was a white boy killed by a gang of Muslims, this is what they did to him - how come you never write about it?' He was right. What is easier is that we're in the public spaces, we are more powerful than we've ever been, and our children are ambitious. 27% of our NHS doctors are of Asian background. That's phenomenal progress.

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