Vron Ware (London, author 'Who Cares About Britishness?'): Scarcely a day goes by now without a headline and opinion columns either asking or telling us what it means to be British. Pouring old wine into new bottles to make sure it tastes the same, government ministers repeatedly insist on promoting British identity as the latest measure to target those who wish to settle in the UK. Obviously, whole communities who are already British will feel that their right to belong is also under attack.
When Ruth Kelly and Liam Byrne talk about their plans set out in a Fabian pamphlet to "incentivise integration" they confuse the legal process of acquiring citizenship with a panoply of authoritarian-sounding measures to make people behave, or even think, in a way that they deem properly British. The new liturgy may be, “we are more the same than we are different". Behind these supposedly welcoming words is a coercive definition of citizenship. Their proposal to initiate a 'Britain day' deliberately connects immigration and anti-social behaviour, conflates civility with citizenship, belonging with behaviour and diversity with danger.
David Cameron promptly promised that the Tories too will promote a stronger British identity in the interests of making the country safe. Although he lards his latest speech with phrases like "cultural sensitivity", "social responsibility" and even "power to the people", he makes it clear that social cohesion is linked to national security. Despite his brief residence with the Rehmans in Birmingham, he is still keen to identify a monolithic Islam and a generation of Muslim youth as the main threats. His appeals to "community leaders" indicates he that however much he claims to listen he is hard of hearing. References to the "host community" hark back to the old Powellite debates of the 1970s. Cameron’s solution is that all citizens should actively feel British by tapping into an emotional, instinctive yet clearly articulated stream of national consciousness. This is a recipe that looks inward, repudiating rather than engaging with growing forms of transnational identification, often created by loyalties of diaspora.
Our Fabian leaders want us to have a special holiday to express our patriotism, pointing to Australia Day as a model. This is an event that has evolved throughout the former colony’s tortuous history. In its modern guise it incorporates the Movement for Reconciliation and presents opportunities to deal with unspeakable episodes in the country’s past. In which case perhaps Britain should pay more attention to its own Commonwealth Day (Empire Day as it was known until 1958) on May 24th, and pick up the threads of what Britishness used to mean when it was still officially an imperial power. At least this would provide an opportunity to deal more honestly with Britain's own colonial past, and to move beyond the poles of unquestioning pride and grudging shame that paralyse much of the 'debate' at the moment.
