‘Trying to pin down “Britishness”’, said Chelsea, a native Briton living in the south-west, ‘is like trying to grasp a will-o’-the-wisp.’ She is right. Britishness is an identity that many claim, but few fully understand. I found that just about everyone has a different view about what Britishness is. So what explains the confusion?
The unique history of British citizenship discussed in the previous chapter provides some insights. Traditional views about citizenship based on parentage or a particular territory were more applicable when the United Kingdom was born in 1707 than during the later British Empire.
The unifying connection since the eighteenth century was an allegiance to the British monarch, which lay at the heart of British citizenship as a political and legal identity from its earliest inception. Since then, the law has defined, redefined and redefined again who should be recognised as a citizen. Less than 100 years ago, individuals could become British without knowing English and without ever having been to Britain once in their lives. ‘Britishness’ was about more than being from Britain. Britain was even greater than we might normally think.
Now things have gone swiftly into reverse with booster rockets. But this history of expansion of who was recognised as British in a global empire is impossible to ignore. The time when citizens of British colonies and dominions could claim British citizenship is well within living memory. This may be history, but its legacy continues.
Britain’s imperial past is crucial when considering different ideas about what Britishness is. Public opinion is deeply divided. Should someone’s parentage or ethnicity matter for someone to be British? Does having a non-Christian belief count against someone being British? Is Britishness about accepting certain ‘British values’ and, if so, what might they be? Or is being British little different from other kinds of citizenship – is being a good British citizen just the same as being a good citizen of any other state?
Contemporary Britain is a diverse country of so many ethnicities, religious beliefs and ways of life that it can be challenging to locate the ‘it’ that brings us all together as ‘British’. Jonathan, a British citizen in his thirties from Scotland, said being British has changed so much over time that it is best understood as an ‘administrative’ category that marks out a formal relationship in law, but otherwise lies empty.
As a legal form of identity, British citizenship is little different from many other types of citizenship elsewhere. Each has its rules on who should be formally recognised as citizens and what someone must do in order to naturalise. The big issue, then, is what makes being British, well, British? Is Britishness different from other kinds of citizenship elsewhere?
But let us start by addressing what Britishness is not headfirst. Britishness has had a troubled relationship to race since its beginnings. As we have seen, British citizens were defined from the beginning by their allegiance to the monarchy. The importance of having a British father was that a British subject would beget British subjects. What mattered was not his ethnicity, but his allegiance. Things have changed with the emergence of British citizenship. Since 1983, British citizens can beget British citizens, whether through a British father or a British mother.
The situation has changed for migrants seeking to become naturalised British citizens, too. There are now formal requirements that demand non-citizens acquire a visa first and then live in the UK continually for at least five years in most cases. Anyone wanting to become British must satisfy additional obligations sufficient for obtaining ‘indefinite leave to remain’ to live and work permanently. If successful, they must wait at least one year and a day before applying to become a British citizen: permanent residency is needed before you can obtain citizenship. Curiously, permanent residency is also needed before you ‘create’ British citizens: these residents might not be sufficiently British to be a citizen, but they are British enough that their children are British from birth. Thus, what all British citizens have in common – whether they are born British or naturalised – is a direct connection to the United Kingdom under the Crown; not the colour of their skin nor religious background. God Save the Queen.
Britishness is a constructed identity. It was created by legal magic in 1707. Now, people were no longer only English, Scots or Welsh. Abracadabra! They now also became British. Like all European countries, Britain has been a place of migration for centuries, not least post-invasion by the Romans, the Normans, the Vikings and many others. Britishness is not a race and there was probably never a time that any part of today’s United Kingdom lacked migrants, however few their number. The simple facts are that Britishness has never been tied to any one ethnic view, and people from a variety of different heritages have been recognised as British since Britain began. This is not least true because people from different backgrounds can and do become British, too.
Britain’s history as a constructed identity bringing together England, Wales and Scotland (and, soon afterwards, Northern Ireland) does not prevent some from claiming that what should make us British is our blood connection to being English, Scots or Welsh. Such views harbour back to a particular view of a nation state where to be a nation’s citizen is to have some blood tie to some national group. England for the English or Scotland for the Scots. Or so it is said.
This is a minority perspective, but it is not too difficult to find someone who holds these views if you look. I heard from Richard, a native British pensioner from the Midlands. He told me:
The reality is that the term ‘British’ 300 years ago identified people who were white, Christian, spoke English and who, together with their guns and flags, brought civilisation to the colonies to form the British Empire. Sadly, this is no longer the case and the term is now so widely applied as to be meaningless and confusing.
Richard is not alone in finding Britishness confusing. The political scientists Andrew Gamble and Tony Wright have said: ‘The British have long been distinguished by having no clear idea about who they are, where they are, or what they are. Most of them have routinely described England as Britain. Only business people talk about a place called the United Kingdom … It is all a terrible muddle.’
Richard’s positive view of colonialism will not be shared by all, but what is interesting about his comments is that he associates Britishness with what Britain created: namely, a global empire. Britain’s imperial creation may have extended widely, but for Richard it included land and not people. This means that not everyone born and bred in the same British Empire is British. Being British is not about being part of Britain’s empire, which might seem an odd view. But Richard is not ultimately interested in Britishness.
Richard views himself as ‘English’ rather than British, and this says a lot. His claim that to be British is to speak English, as things were in the UK three centuries ago, is a mistake no one from Wales would make: they would know Welsh was spoken at that time, too. Richard said he prefers ‘English’ to ‘British’ because only English is ‘a clear and unequivocal definition, which is “white and born in England”’. But that’s hardly true. Not every white person born in England will speak English. Not every English-speaking person born in England is white. Yet these mistaken representations live on in the minds of many.
England is more diverse than Richard considers. Speaking with England-born British citizens makes clear that many would think of themselves very differently – as a Londoner, Geordie, Scouse or Yorkshireman for example. Each has shares in a cultural narrative of England, but have their own traditions and words that are unique – my time in Newcastle has led me to appreciate that the Geordie dialect can look and even sound like a different language altogether. So the idea that being English trumps all other identities for British citizens born and bred in England does not reflect how many from England would see themselves.
To be clear, only a small minority would agree with Richard that citizenship should be tied to an ethnic background. But he’s not alone. A short survey I conducted on British citizenship saw some favourable to the idea that white Europeans should be able to gain additional points when applying for an entry visa. Most reject this view, but there is some support and it is important to understand why it should be rejected.
The British National Party (BNP) is a far-right political party formerly led by Nick Griffin. Richard is in no way a supporter of them, but the BNP does appear to share his concerns about Britain as a land for the ‘indigenous’ population. Their website runs an appeal for money. That is not unique for a political party, but their pitch is. It shows a young white girl with the Union Jack behind her and says: ‘Rebecca will be an ethnic minority in her British ancestral home when she grows up unless you take action today.’ A BNP leaflet carrying this same image adds: ‘She’ll be lost in an overcrowded melting pot.’ Their policy on immigration is ‘Britain’s full and it’s time to shut the door!’
The message is clear: being British is a white-only club. Paradoxically, this view of what it means to be British rejects much of what the nation has achieved during its imperial history – which such groups typically celebrate with pride. Defending a purely racial view of Britishness denies Britishness itself, which became a constructed identity of fellow members in a British Empire that covered much of the world far beyond Britain’s shores. It’s as if three centuries or more of history never happened and can be forgotten. But they did and they can’t. This view of Britain isn’t about closing borders, but closing minds – while turning back the cuckoo clock to never-never land.
The BNP website carries an image of the former Conservative MP Enoch Powell with the words ‘It’s never too late to save your country.’ Powell was already a controversial figure before he delivered his famous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech on 20 April 1968 – and soon became a more divisive figure whose words have left their mark on British politics ever since. Any mention of Powell today immediately conjures up his best-known remarks.
Addressing a Conservative Association meeting, he talked about a conversation he had had with a ‘quite ordinary working man’ in his constituency who wanted to leave the UK with his family. The reason for the move was allegedly because whites were becoming outnumbered, making his country not worth living in any more. The problem for Powell was ‘Commonwealth immigrants with their descendants’ who came to the UK as ‘full citizens’. The fact that this group would also include white individuals is conveniently overlooked. He remarked that the white British citizens were ‘made strangers in their own country’. Powell foresaw increasing civil disharmony leading to violence as the white population became less dominant. Britain, he said, would somehow become less British and so risk falling apart.
Most British citizens do not share these views about race. But some do and will agree that they feel like ‘strangers’, as Powell predicted. Britain has undoubtedly changed a lot over the past few decades, becoming a more culturally and ethnically diverse country. Rising immigration is a cause of this increased diversity of peoples and cultures – and so support from some British citizens for curbing or ending immigration is built on a concern about how being British – i.e. being white British – may have changed with it. The name ‘Welsh’ comes from the Germanic Walhaz meaning ‘foreigner’ or ‘stranger’, but the Welsh are strangers no more and Wales has been long integrated into the United Kingdom. Britain has changed over time and so too Britishness with it.
These views on citizenship and race might explain a split in public opinion. People who are white British citizens since birth are more likely to identify themselves as English, Scottish or Welsh first and British second. I asked people up and down the country a simple question: what does it mean to be British for you? In fact, most white British citizens I have spoken to would describe themselves regionally – as from London, Manchester, Scottish Highlands, north Wales, Cornwall and others. Part of the reason for not saying they are English, Welsh or other identities is because they think this will be obvious from their accents when they speak.
The opposite is true for everybody else: most British-born citizens from black and ethnic minority (BME) communities identify more strongly as British. This is also true for most people who become British through naturalisation, like me. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions, and identities can change over time. But this research seems to suggest that Britishness is perceived as being more inclusive and open to differences, whereas other identities are less open to diversity.
This may sound abstract, but it is not for many people – including me. This is no philosophical thought experiment. It’s real life. I have many ties to England. After a few years in Dublin, I have lived continually in England since 2001. I am a native English speaker. My wife is English. I am a direct descendant of an English blacksmith from Nantwich in Cheshire – and I have the English surname of Brooks (originally ‘Brooke’; changed shortly after my first ancestors to America settled in New Haven colony around 1680).
My family also includes relations from Scotland, and I would count myself one of the eight in every ten naturalised citizens that identifies as British and not English. Partly, this is because my UK passport identifies me as a ‘British’ citizen and not English; this is true for all British citizens. But probably the main reason is that I can justifiably claim to be British, and other British citizens are more accepting of that self-identification than if I claimed to be English or, worse, a Geordie, based on my several years living and working in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Part of who we are is shaped by how others see us. Identities are not forged in isolation. I cannot choose to become an Australian or a South African by snapping my fingers and wishing it were so. I might never be considered English. I lack the right accent. Mine is a product of someone on the move for many years – a foundation of Connecticut Yankee blended with bits of New Jersey, Arizona, Dublin, Yorkshire, some London and north-east infusions. Few guess that I am originally from New Haven, but they can usually hear a clear American accent whenever I speak. And this plainly marks me out as different, as a migrant.
A Durham University colleague put it to me this way: ‘Even though you might have lived in Britain longer than they’ve been alive, many of your students will always see you as American and not British – how strange that is.’ Being British for more years than others might not make me British enough for some.
My situation might be strange to some people, but others face a far more worrying problem. It is not uncommon for BME individuals to tell me they regularly face questions about what their ‘true’ heritage is. One woman who has an Indian mother told me that ‘people often seem disappointed when I say I’m British’. Her experience is not unique.
Another woman named Pooja, who was also born British, said: ‘Being a “citizen” doesn’t really capture the sense of belonging people desire. I think the notion of being a citizen can often pave the way for nationalist sentiment, which I completely detest.’ From the conversations I have had with BME citizens and people like me who became British through naturalising, ‘being British’ is seen as much more inclusive and is preferred to claiming other national identities like being English or Irish.
Whenever concerns are expressed about the swift changes in Britain relating to immigration, they are usually expressed in terms of culture rather than race. These concerns focus on a worry that British culture is under threat and requires preservation and protection. This was captured well by Rebecca, a model living in London who was born British to a Sri Lankan mother. She explained that being British is ‘about how you see yourself’. Rebecca agreed that for many people there was ‘a difference between being “British” and being a “British citizen”’. We might all be equally British citizens, but some are viewed as more British than others – especially anyone from a background not thought to ‘respect’ British culture.
My interviews with British citizens made clear a moral panic about one thing in particular: Islamic culture. There are some people concerned that immigration has allowed too many Muslims to come to Britain and now the country is at risk of becoming dominated by them. Such fears are misplaced – Muslims are only about 5 per cent of the total UK population today.
But these worries remain nonetheless. Joining ISIL or becoming a member of the Taliban were seen as actions that would justify stripping someone of their British citizenship. This is hardly surprising given recent terrorist events perpetrated by these organisations. Yet, membership of groups like the Real IRA was mentioned by no one. What Samuel Huntington once called ‘the clash of civilisations’ between East and West speaks to what some people feel about Islam and the West.
The broadcast journalist Anila Athar recounted speaking with an elderly woman named Tasnim Bibi who had made Britain her home nearly forty years ago. Tasnim laid bare what Anila coined ‘the quintessential Muslim dilemma’, saying:
We are a community that thinks we are the best, because our religion is the best of all. Everyone else is second to us therefore it’s futile to expect us to adopt British values as we see them as inferior to our values by virtue of [our] being the followers of the best book given to humankind. Why would we leave our superior values to take on something that is inferior?
The British values objected to are usually related to sex, such as the acceptance of same-sex marriages, pre-marital sex and cohabiting couples.
Anila concluded that ‘multiculturalism as a policy of diversity management has failed’ – and it’s easy to see why. The Muslim dilemma, for Anila, is that Britain is a place that so many, like Tasnim, want to make their home and yet they see themselves in conflict with its values, creating an ever-present tension. For many people, there is a choice: either keep the values you have already or reject them in favour of others.
But no such choice need be made. There are two confusions. The first is thinking that a specific set of values is incompatible with other values. There is no contradiction in accepting the right of others to make choices that you would not choose for yourself. British values like democracy, respect for the rule of law, and individual liberty are not inconsistent with the values of any major religion. They can serve as what the Harvard philosopher John Rawls called ‘an overlapping consensus’ that helps connect us to each other.
The second confusion concerns multiculturalism. Critics seem to think support for multiculturalism is an endorsement of ‘anything goes’. But multiculturalism is not anarchism. It is a respect for cultural differences that matter to the individuals that have them. Respect for diversity is not a rejection of our sharing in a community. If we appreciate that Britishness is not a monoculture set in stone but a set of values that can be endorsed by citizens from a wide variety of cultural, philosophical and religious backgrounds, then we can see that multiculturalism is not the problem it is often made out to be.
While these concerns about ethnicity and religion were raised by some of the people I met, the overall picture is more complicated. The overwhelming majority of people I spoke with did not think race or religious beliefs essential or even important for becoming British. A much deeper issue, which I suspect is at the root of these concerns, is not about how people look or worship, but about how people feel socially and politically alienated from one another.
In 1979, then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said: ‘We are a British nation with British characteristics. Every country can take some small minorities and in many ways they add to the richness and variety of this country. The moment the minority threatens to become a big one, people get frightened.’ And it need not take much to get some people worried. We hear much about the importance of so-called ‘stakeholders’ these days, but the plain truth is that many people don’t feel like they have much of a stake in society. They feel powerless and voiceless.
Globalisation and its disorienting effects on how we work and communicate have no doubt brought benefits, but these benefits have not been felt by all, especially those struggling at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. Some feel greater disconnection from society as they fall behind financially, and begin to suffer all the problems this can bring. Migrants become an easy scapegoat, especially when there is a squeeze on living standards and people look for someone or something to blame. They are accused of taking what is not theirs to have, like public housing and benefits paid for by British taxpayers.
One person told me: ‘The news I read, and I read many news sources, gives me the opinion that Britain just lets anyone move in, get on the dole and receive free housing without having a job or permission to come.’ I have little doubt he believes this. And he has some reason to. After all, such headlines are not difficult to find. Never mind the compelling evidence that migrant workers offer more of an economic boom than bust or that anyone in the UK illegally is unable to receive any benefits. But to reject this view for its false reasoning would be to miss a crucial point. The arguments might not hold up, but they do not invalidate a sincerely held sense of alienation that affects what people think about modern Britain and Britishness.
Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech made him a controversial and divisive figure, and led to him being sacked from the Tory shadow Cabinet by Edward Heath. But this speech is important because it also identifies this sense of feeling alienated, losing out and falling behind that resonates with some today:
They found their wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to obtain school places, their homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition, their plans and prospects for the future defeated … they began to hear, as time went by, more and more voices which told them that they were now the unwanted.
In an age when we are interconnected in so many new ways made possible by technology, we remain increasingly apart from one another, as we rely much less on face-to-face interaction. Powell’s words will resonate fifty years later with those who feel alienated today, whose alienation is only accentuated by austerity policies that have left some public services struggling to cope. When people don’t see themselves as having a stake in how society functions, solidarity breaks down – and anti-immigration sentiment starts to grow.
This raises an important issue about diversity and solidarity that the former universities minister David Willetts calls the ‘progressive dilemma’. The political left welcomes greater diversity, but it also supports welfare programmes of social democracy. The dilemma is that more of one can lead to less of the other. Willetts claims social welfare programmes can only survive in their current form in a culturally homogenous society – and this is threatened by rising immigration, which increases diversity. The problem of high immigration is that it can undermine the solidarity required to support social democracy: citizens need to see themselves as all in it together, but this sense of togetherness takes time and effort to work.
Willetts may be a former Tory MP, but this is not a view confined only to Conservatives or to those on the political right. David Goodhart, the director of Demos and former founding editor of Prospect magazine, agrees. He quotes a letter to Clement Attlee sent by a group of Labour MPs in 1948: ‘An influx of coloured people domiciled here is likely to impair the harmony, strength and cohesion of our public and social life and to cause discord and unhappiness among all concerned.’ Goodhart goes on to defend the view that Britain ‘has had too much … too quickly’ of immigration. The problem is that relatively big changes in demographics can break down the collective sense of everyone being committed to a shared project worth investing in. The more people become strangers to each other, the less committed they may become to supporting such a project and the more they may come to reject the social democracy they built together.
The views of Willetts and Goodhart are supported by controversial research that high levels of ethnic diversity are associated with low social capital. Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam claims that as a society becomes increasingly diverse, community members ‘tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbours’ as they ‘hunker down’. Or, in the words of Goodhart: ‘To put it bluntly – most of us prefer our own kind.’
Not all studies reach the same conclusions, so there is disagreement to be found. Some, like Jonathan Portes, the former chief economist at the Cabinet Office, claimed Goodhart was engaged in ‘an exercise of scapegoating’ that should be rejected. Others, like James Laurence at the University of Manchester, looked at the evidence from a different angle. He conducted a study in the UK to see if we really did ‘hunker down’ in the face of growing diversity. Laurence found that people who lived in more diverse communities did exhibit lower trust in their neighbours and have fewer close friends. So community diversity does seem to undermine social capital in a given locality. But Laurence’s point is that this effect is often offset by social networks elsewhere. Local social capital might be lower than expected, but residents often travelled to maintain strong links with others outside their neighbourhood. They don’t hunker down – they hunker away. And so increased diversity may not undermine social democracy after all.
Even if diversity need not undermine social democracy, a community requires some connection to bring its members together. Goodhart places his faith in the promise of our shared citizenship, saying: ‘Citizenship is not just an abstract idea.’ British citizenship may be a legal status, but it is also meant to capture something of importance: our common bond of Britishness. The issue is uncovering precisely what this is, and how it can serve as a basis for keeping us connected.
Former Home Secretary David Blunkett has said that ‘strengthening our identity is one way of reinforcing people’s confidence and sense of citizenship and well-being’. Our identity as citizens has value for people. An informal survey I ran found 80 per cent agreed or strongly agreed with the statement ‘citizenship is important’. The question then is how it should be cultivated. What is it about British citizenship that can form a shared bond among citizens in a multicultural society?
One observation I picked up frequently is that many British citizens don’t think much about themselves as being British. Judith, who lives in the south-west, said that being a British citizen is ‘something you don’t think about unless you have to’. Another respondent I spoke to said: ‘To be honest, I don’t give any thought to how being British affects the decisions I make or the way I feel about things – it’s simply what I am.’
Sarah, a graduate student from London, told me she only feels British ‘when travelling abroad’. It is only when plunged into a different country that she becomes conscious of herself as a British citizen. This can be triggered by simple, everyday things like different senses of humour, how people naturally stand on an escalator, or whether she is acknowledged on entering a shop.
Many UK citizens only feel British when they see certain differences. To be British is to be distinctive, and to do things differently from the Americans or the Chinese; it is to follow a specifically British winding path to our shared future. Or, stated differently, to be British is do British things in a British way.
There are many things that could be picked out as distinctively British. Afternoon tea, bulldogs, Mini Coopers, James Bond movies and laughing at Monty Python’s Flying Circus fit the bill. There are distinctive foods, from Cornish pasties and haggis to Marmite and Yorkshire puddings – preferably washed down with a pint of bitter in a Victorian-era pub.
And then there is the queue. Before moving to the UK, I didn’t know what a queue was. The very first time I saw a sign saying ‘Queue Here’ at a sandwich shop, I made sure I stood somewhere else, away from the sign. I didn’t know what a queue was and I only wanted a coffee. But I learned fast – and so do other migrants. Queuing was literally not a part of my vocabulary until coming to live in Britain. It is now.
A vice-chancellor at another British university remarked to me his amazement at how queueing works. He had come to the UK from South Africa and his big mistake was to get on a bus as it collected everyone from his stop without letting others on first who had waited for it longer. He soon realised that while no one spoke to each other as they waited for the bus, everyone knew their place in the queue – who was before them and definitely who came after – and this unstated order was enforced through icy stares if anyone dared break with it. We could have benefited from the Channel 4 programme Very British Problems and its advice: ‘If you’re not in the queue, don’t stand near the queue.’ We know what to look for now.
Another well-known British practice concerns the pub. As the cognoscenti will be well aware, individuals in a group would never buy only a drink for themselves. Instead, drinks are purchased in what is called ‘a round’, where one person gets drinks for everyone, taking it turns as the evening progresses, in successive rounds. It does not always work out perfectly – some rounds can cost more than others as people choose different drinks and whoever starts the rounds may find himself paying for a round more than others. But if anyone were to refuse or complain, it would be a – pardon my French – faux pas of a tall order. And definitely not ‘on’.
Understanding Britishness in terms of what makes us different from non-British cultures does not work. The clearer we get on what these differences might be, the more we find that they are not only dividing lines between the British and non-British, but that they may actually divide British citizens too. Haggis may be seen as a British food, but its identity is with Scotland – to call it a national dish would not be accepted by other parts of the United Kingdom. Another example is the Welsh language. It is virtually unspoken outside of the UK, with the exception of Patagonia, and it is not a unifying characteristic of everyone who is British, as only a small minority would speak it. The conclusion is simple: identifying what makes Britain different does not pick out what all British citizens share in common.
So is Britishness nothing more than a loose umbrella of cultural characteristics from its member nations? In her book Watching the English, Kate Fox finds that Britishness seems to be ‘a rather meaningless term’, often used synonymously with Englishness. Britain is ‘a purely political construct, composed of several nations with their own distinctive cultures’ and so lacking in real content.
Fox argues that if we are looking for the glue that binds us together, we should abandon trying to locate any particular set of British values and instead focus on English values and those of the other home nations. A Times newspaper readers’ poll conducted in 2007 lends some support for this view. The poll asked readers what should be a new motto for Britain – and what they got was the winning entry ‘No motto, please, we’re British.’ The anti-motto motto. How very British indeed.
To paraphrase Shakespeare (badly), to articulate or not to articulate our Britishness – that is the question. Some say it is about being white and speaking English, but this fails to include everyone who is British and the many who speak Scots, Welsh or other languages. Others claim it is what makes the British different from other cultures. But this is unconvincing too because often these differences between the British and non-British are also differences between the English and the Welsh and so on. Yet there is still something unsatisfactory about saying that there’s nothing there to articulate and that Britishness is about as full as an empty glass. The literary critic David Gervais said: ‘Not only do the English resist articulating their “Englishness”, they feel truer to themselves by not articulating it.’ Maybe it’s as ethereal as a will-o’-the-wisp after all.
But there is another view. An important report was published in 2000 by the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain. The commission was chaired by Lord Parekh, an Indian-born scholar who is one of the most respected political theorists in Britain today. The Parekh Report, as it was known, rejected the view that Britain was ‘a’ single community. Instead, it insisted that Britain is a ‘community of communities’ where Britishness should be defined not by what makes a nation or region different, but by what they share in common.
Parekh made his name promoting multiculturalism. In his more recent work, he argues that the state cannot be ‘morally and culturally neutral’, as it must make choices from within a sea of difference. It is crucial that bridges are built on common interests and mutual trust centred on a shared political structure – ‘and not the widely shared personal characteristics of its individual members’ that divide them, such as a majority ethnicity or religion.
If this shared political culture is not affirmed, the community’s national identity will prioritise some groups of citizens over others. This would make it difficult, if not impossible, for all citizens to identify with it. A Britishness for some is not a Britishness for all British citizens. Something important would be missing. Parekh correctly recognises – as perhaps only someone who is acutely aware of the first-hand experience of becoming British can – that once someone becomes a citizen they are not to be given a second-class status.
Yet this is the risk we take in claiming that Britishness is captured by personal characteristics: it will leave those citizens that do not fit this mould feeling second class and second best. This is not a recipe for a healthy democracy of equal citizens. Britishness must be something everyone British can relate to.
Integration is important, but too often it is viewed as a one-way street as minorities become absorbed into a homogenous majority. Parekh argues this is incorrect. Integration is not only about one group coming to identify with others, as if the hard graft is only to be done by new members. Existing group members should play their part too. Integration requires an openness to acceptance and shared belonging. We should be aware that cultural identities are never fixed, and change over time.
As Parekh says in his report, ‘Britishness is an idea in transition.’ We are neither at its beginning nor at its end. What it means to be British is not set in stone. So we should avoid any conception that is inflexible and fails to include everyone who is British. Our community is an achievement and every citizen should be able to identify with it.
Multiculturalism is no longer in favour. In 2011, David Cameron claimed that it had ‘failed’. Britain needed to redouble its efforts at integration, but through a commitment to ‘British values’. These values are the new black and back in fashion. But they’re also very much retro, having been aired before.
‘British values’ hit the political agenda in 2001. The 9/11 terrorist attacks in that year had a profound effect on much of the world, and Britain’s citizenship rules were changed in the aftermath. But the roots of the British values debate lay not in trying to combat the influence of Al-Qaeda, but in trying to address rioting that took place in northern cities like Bradford, Burnley and Oldham. ‘Parallel communities’ were found divided along racial lines, with relatively little interaction between them. As then immigration minister and MP for Oldham East Phil Woolas told me, this division, combined with fast-rising migration from Eastern Europe, ‘created a toxic impression’ of a country under siege. They certainly did – and both happened during my first months in the UK as a student.
The consequences of this ‘toxic’ mix were profound. Born from them was a greater – and more active – interest from government in promoting integration. The only genuine surprise is that it took so long, but it developed quickly. Key to this strategy were changes to the requirements for British citizenship. Attention soon turned to considering which approach to follow. The idea at the time was that there was merit in migrants becoming citizens because – as citizens – they should see their voices heard. But it was also recognised that existing requirements should be reformed to modernise how British citizenship was granted.
Shortly after 9/11, the Denham Report – named for its chair, John Denham MP – highlighted the idea of Britishness as a set of shared principles; a notion heavily influenced by Parekh’s commission. Similarly, Denham stressed the challenges of locating commonalities inclusive of all current British citizens in light of their great diversity of cultural and regional backgrounds.
The Parekh and Denham reports also set the scene for the only major review of citizenship to date. This was the Life in the United Kingdom Advisory Group, launched by then Home Secretary David Blunkett and led by his former university tutor Sir Bernard Crick. The group was set the task of advising Tony Blair’s government on the form and content of Parliament’s newly approved citizenship test and citizenship ceremonies. Crick’s group led a national conversation – that we have not had since – about what Britishness meant to people.
Crick’s group concluded in 2003 that Britishness was best understood as a shared set of principles and experiences of everyday British life held by British citizens. Being British is about being able to function in British society. This is explicit in a White Paper published by Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government in 2005 setting out a five-year plan on managing immigration and asylum. The government confirmed it would ‘strongly encourage’ all permanent residents to become British citizens. But there was no interest in creating ‘a monoculture’ because ‘British nationality has never been associated with membership of a particular ethnic group. For centuries we have been a multi-ethnic nation. This diversity is a source of pride.’
Charles Clarke, who was Home Secretary at that time, told me in 2015 that this White Paper is ‘key’ because its five-year plan has been effectively rolled out and largely only tweaked by later governments, which he thought ‘spoke volumes’ for how much comparative progress was achieved – and one part of this progress is the view that Britishness is not an ethnicity, but a set of values in a multi-ethnic society. The government swiftly published a new citizenship test – which we will look at in the next chapter – that prioritised knowledge about British institutions and everyday life rather than British history and culture. First launched in 2005, the British citizenship test remains a requirement for applications for citizenship.
Thus, Britishness consisted in having certain values. But which values or principles make someone British? To even ask the question can make people hesitant, such is the association of Britishness with some form of prejudice. There is a feeling that when we talk about ‘British’ people there is a particular caricature in mind, such as someone white. Rachel, a British citizen who lived in Zambia before moving to Cambridgeshire, told me she was very concerned that ‘Britishness’ conveys some sense of snobbery, making unfounded assumptions about its superiority. Rachel agrees that ‘citizenship means something’, but not Britishness. Britishness is an emperor without clothes: ‘There are no distinctive British values.’
She’s not alone. BBC reporter Mark Easton has said that defining Britishness was ‘like painting wind’. It may appear that in order to cover every British citizen, Britishness must be so open and indistinct that it is nothing at all. Yet it is something – when we speak about British values there seems widespread agreement that they exist, but not what they are.
The key to unlocking this puzzle is offered by Bhikhu Parekh. He found that ‘our’ shared norms of citizenship are also norms for others too. So, to be a good British citizen is to be a good citizen. What is ‘British’ about them is how these norms are realised. For example, democracy and fairness are British values that exist in other countries as well. But a part of what makes these British values ours is the distinctive ways they are realised. Not every democracy adopts the Westminster model of Parliament and there are different ways of ensuring fairness – not only a single procedure is acceptable. It’s not the values that make being British different, but how they are realised.
That British values are global values is a view that many in the public share. A British citizen from the east of England thought it important that new citizens accept British values, but realised that they are ‘similar to the values of other countries, too’. This made these values no less important.
We can find some further guidance when looking to the Department of Education’s current view that schools promote ‘fundamental British values’. These are listed as democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs. These values are to be promoted in the classroom in part by ‘challenging’ anyone in school expressing ‘opinions or behaviours’ contrary to British values.
Schools from across the country plan activities around having students reflect on their own identities and beliefs, becoming more sensitive to stereotypes and the diversity in Britain. The goals are to improve their self-knowledge as well as their self-esteem as students grasp not only their differences but their commonalities, and take responsibility for their behaviour.
While the list of British values above is by no means complete, all of these would likely make any such comprehensive list. Democracy is about a respect for the public’s right to choose their representatives and speak out on political issues. Our Parliament is the mother of all parliaments and the heart of modern democracies worldwide. The rule of law is a hugely important value that says none of us is above the law. Individual liberty concerns our right to live autonomously and to respect the autonomy of others, which comes with mutual respect and tolerance. Values like democracy or the rule of law are not unique to Britain – similar values can be found in the United States or Australia. But they are realised in different ways that help make our values British. Democratic politics is very different in Britain than in America. So too is the way tolerance is practiced. These values matter intrinsically.
But they are also vague. Daniel Finkelstein, a Times columnist and Tory peer who advises David Cameron, said recently that British values amount to being ‘willing to accept the same basic laws, a common attachment to Western democracy and a shared responsibility for the nation’s security’. These values may be universal and realised in different ways in different states. The values are nonetheless abstract, and making the important emotional connection to most people – to win over hearts and not only minds – is not obvious.
Bernard Crick has argued that Britishness ‘refers to a narrow if strong and important political and legal culture: the Union itself, the rule of law, the Crown and Parliament, perhaps the practice of a common political citizenship’. These are institutional connections we all share. Crick cites a speech by Gordon Brown about Britishness:
The values and qualities I describe are of course to be found in many other cultures and countries. But when taken together, and as they shape the institutions of our country, these values and qualities – being creative, adaptable and outward looking, our belief in liberty, duty and fair play – add up to a distinctive Britishness that has been manifest throughout our history, and shaped it.
But even if these comments help us think about what any British values might be, it remains unclear how we should make our list.
Perhaps the most striking thing about these British values is how they were decided. There was no public debate or consultation. No army of social scientists trekked across the country to speak to people near and far. No, probably a small group of special advisors sat in their London offices and scribbled down what they had brainstormed on their smartboard.
It does not help that current and former government ministers rarely discuss these issues beyond making press releases. I contacted James Brokenshire, the current immigration minister, to discuss these issues. He did not reply, but the Direct Communications Unit in the Home Office did – making clear his refusal to meet with me. I was asked to send any questions to the national policy team inbox.
I then reached out to former immigration minister Damian Green, who served in this role within the coalition government. His office sent me a polite reply that he ‘no longer gives detailed interviews on immigration’. When so few are willing to speak and only communicate when forced to, it does nothing to improve confidence in how the government makes crucial decisions concerning becoming British.
The irony of the government’s approach to British values is simple. These values are seen as fundamental and in the public interest to protect. Yet the public is somehow not worth consulting about something so important. British values exist in our society and they are something to be celebrated, even cherished. But they do not live by some decree from Whitehall. It is only by understanding what they mean to the public that they can be transformed into something meaningful.
Professor Martin Ruhs, a former Migration Advisory Committee member, told me his personal view that, whatever else citizenship is, ‘it should mean something’ and ‘not be purely theoretical’. Having British values is about recognising them and internalising them. Elaine, a Scot living in Brussels, said that, for her, being British was about accepting ‘unwritten values’ such as ‘a certain openness of mind to others and cultures’.
This view was shared by Don Flynn, the director of the Migrants’ Rights Network in London. He said that becoming British was not about memorising some catechism, but about ‘a way of thinking’ and ‘an instinctive grasp – this is the point that you become British’. One respondent told me citizenship should be for ‘someone happy to espouse British values like tolerance and humour over the advantages of a British passport’. Julian, a Welsh son of an Italian father, said being British requires some kind of an emotional ‘buy-in’ – it is more than obeying the law; it is an acceptance of common values. Yet, we may still wonder what it is that we are to buy into. Abstract values drawn up by a civil servant or special advisor in a London boardroom? Or is there more to it than meets the eye?
Britishness consists in a knowledge of British life lived through interacting with others in the community. Britishness is also composed of values and principles like democracy, personal freedom and tolerance that should be somehow inculcated. But this only raises more questions. If this is all that Britishness is about, how do we know someone has it? If we only have vague principles, how could any test be designed to verify if people have them? This raises the specific issue of testing Britishness through the use of the British citizenship test. And it is as difficult as it sounds.