Sayeeda Warsi: After years of division, we must fight to build a country that feels like a community

I love Dewsbury. I would never want to have been born anywhere else. And, having spent almost my whole life in Yorkshire, I am proud to see myself as British Asian northerner. But back in 2005 not everyone saw me that way.

The fact is that being born in Dewsbury, coming from a local manufacturing family, having a legal practice on the high street, and being a local Rotarian was not enough to make me accepted by some people.

There was sexism and racism, in roughly equal degrees. I visited some streets knowing that Tories lived there, only to be told to get stuffed. And then when I visited some traditional Muslim communities, I was shunned because I was a woman. Too brown for some, too female for others – not surprisingly, I lost.

It was a bruising encounter. It would have been easy afterwards to

abandon politics. In a way, it was tempting. I'd picked up more scars in one campaign than some politicians do in a lifetime. But for me that election battle had become about something bigger than who became the next MP for Dewsbury. I believe it was a wake-up call for how divided our country had become.

Here we were at the start of the 21st century, and someone standing for a mainstream political party found themselves being abused on the

grounds of gender and race. Looking around more widely, I found the same thing. Extremism, hate preachers, racial tensions. Our national life had become closed and narrow. And then when you looked to Westminster to help solve these problems, our politics seemed paltry and timid.

So I stuck with politics. Not because I think I have all the answers, far from it, but because that election was a rallying cry. Michael Howard appointed me vice-chairman of the Conservative Party. Then, in 2007, David Cameron appointed me to the Shadow Cabinet and made me a working peer. And I'm so proud that today I have the north of England right at the heart of my name: as Baroness Warsi of Dewsbury in the County of West Yorkshire.

Several years later, there are more scars. Like David Cameron, I've been a victim of my fair share of egg-attacks. But there have also been victories. We have changed the debate about immigration. We have managed to moderate some of the excesses of state multiculturalism. We have brought a new focus on integration. And I'm so proud that I had the chance to take on the odious Nick Griffin on Question Time.

But there is so much more to do. If the Conservative Party wins this election, we will roll out a coherent, realistic, national integration strategy right from the word go. It will begin by doing three key things.

First, we will banish Labour's state multi-culturalism to history. Never again should we let the state treat people as separate on the base of their ethnicity. By respecting different cultures to the point of allowing them, encouraging them, even paying them, to live apart, state multi-culturalism has left parts of the country in a state of segregation. Instead, our focus should be on integration, bringing people in, not encouraging them to opt out. For example, that means making the English language a priority in all communities.

Second, we will bring immigration down. Over the last few years, the rates of immigration have been completely unsustainable. They have put unacceptable pressures on communities and public services.

Failing to address people's concerns about these issues has fuelled the rise of the BNP. So we need an annual limit on all non-EU immigration in order to bring immigration back down to the tens of thousands it was in the 1990s rather than the hundreds of thousands it has been over the last few years.

Third, we need to promote community interaction: people from different backgrounds sharing public services, neighbourhoods and social networks.

That's one of the reasons why we will introduce a National Citizen Service programme for 16-year-olds. We will also extend the Combined Cadet Forces scheme, which is a great way of teaching young people about discipline, respect, and loyalty. And we will encourage the celebration of St George's Day, just as we already celebrate the other home nation days.

Above all, by bringing a new focus on families, responsibility and welfare reform, we will work to build a country where we all play our part and we all do our bit. Those are the values I was taught when I was growing up here. I believe they are the values which can bring about a stronger and more united country.

I won't be standing for a seat on May 6, but in my own way I will be fighting for Dewsbury. Fighting to end 13 years of socially divisive politics. Fighting to end the politics of us and them. Fighting to build a country which feels like a community. That is the change that a Conservative government can bring to this country, and a key part of it will have been born and bred in Yorkshire.

Baroness Warsi of Dewsbury is the Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion and Social Action.