Flying a ‘White Lives Matter’ banner in the sky over a football stadium and etching ‘White Lives Matter’ into a Bedford hillside seem like extreme responses to the Black Lives Matter protests in Britain. These acts were apparently intended to indicate that white people's lives matter too, yet no one disputes this fact. The movement is not called ‘Only Black Lives Matter’ and prominent ethnic minority organisations in Britain show why we must reduce the suffering of white working-class people too.
There are also less extreme and more universal responses such as ‘all lives matter’. But again, few would deny that all lives matter. Indeed, the idea that all lives matter is implicitly endorsed in the following idea: black lives matter too, so we must reduce their systematic discrimination and disadvantage. This is seemingly the idea that those who rally behind Black Lives Matter in Britain endorse, and it accepts not rejects that all lives matter.
But such extreme and implausible responses in Britain also seem like immediate responses. In time, they will be replaced by more considered ones just as occurred after other divisive episodes such as the Rushdie Affair. As this happens, we will have to discuss a topic that has rarely featured in the Black Lives Matter discussion in Britain: namely, the various ways in which we conceptualise Britain. This topic is important for at least three reasons.
