Jonathan Freedland (Guardian Utd): The identity vacuum

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated Wednesday August 3

The identity vacuum
Britain should follow the US approach to citizenship, which emphasises not only diversity but the ties that bind
By Jonathan Freedland

This has been the summer of fear, the season in which our worst nightmares have come true. Take those devoted to bringing racial harmony to this country. Every argument they spent years beating back has suddenly gained new life.

It was long a racist trope that Muslims, even those born here, could not be trusted, that they represented a potentially lethal fifth column. On July 7 that viewpoint was handed lurid "proof": four British-born Muslims ready to kill as many British civilians as they could.

The racists had long argued that immigrants were a menace. As if to vindicate every scaremongering anti-refugee headline of the last 10 years, along came the suspected cell behind the July 21 strikes. It included at least two men who, as children, had fled Africa and found safe haven in Britain. British tabloids had once had to make up "Asylum seekers ate my donkey"; now they write "The asylum seekers who want us dead" - and this time it seems to be true.

This setback for the cause of racial harmony is not abstract. Just listen to the phone-ins, as people admit they are scanning carriages and buses looking for dark, Muslim faces. Suspicion and racial tension that many Britons hoped they had banished 25 years ago are back.

Read more.

It would be interesting to see some thoughts on this.

[Nay]

1. IMHO, religious extremists of any religion are a fifth column even

if they stay in their own native countries, if they decide that their native country isn't "godly" enough for them. I think that's the simplest explanation. I don't think that the Muslims who blew up London came there as 2- and 3-year-olds intending to do harm to their adopted country. I think they would have led nice British lives, raised British kids, etc., if they hadn't gotten all enamored of fanatical Islam. It could even be argued that they wouldn't have done the deed if the Iraq war hadn't been waged. It's not only ME Muslims getting radicalized.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

2. An interesting article

This paragraph sums up my concerns:

"In other words, we let the Britishness part of the equation lapse. We were frightened of it, fearing that it reeked of compulsion or white-only exclusivity. But Britishness, like Americanness, need not be like that. It should, by its nature, be open to all. And yet it does entail some common glue: rule of law and tolerance, for a start."

There have been discussions in the past about developing 'Britishness' amongst the UK population and its new immigrants. The problem was that conservatives sought to define 'Britishness' as a vision of Victorian England set in a picturesque village in the Home Counties. This seemed natural to Tories but remote to urban English, northern English, the Welsh, Scots and Northern Irish. It was only natural that this idea of "Britishness" would seem alien to new Britons too.

An idea of Britishness set around democracy, civil liberties, pluralistic culture, freedom of religion and civil rights would be very successful at promoting a shared identity between the different ethnicities and social groups. However there would be one group who would be the first to reject this. It would be those very conservatives who revel in the old ideal of Britishness. They still haven't let go of Britain's imperial past when everybody else has.

[sweetheart]

3. british "prospect" magazine

has a brilliant interview with a militant islamic extremist cleric in
this month's issue. And in the interview, he explains why. He says
that immigrants owe Britain a debt of security, for providing refuge
for them given strife abroad (pakistan, egypt, etc.).

But he says, that second generation persons, are not so moved by this
obligation, and that they find british culture hollow, that they are
driven by prejudice and racism to find solace in old-school fundametalist
islam, where sharia and a global caliphate are the only acceptable
results as they see it.

And he has a point, that those persons seeking religious truth will not
find it in britainnia/americana popular culture... nor will they find
it in the proxy corporatism. They will find it from the very ancient
process of self discovery and awakening to the truth of life, and the
secularization of britain has left the country to be blindsided, as the
power of religion is no less, even if few believe.

Would that the country had more extremist meditation teachers who
believed in meditating naked, or eating only vegetables... but in
repressing popular neo-religion, they've reawakened the old sins of
the ignorant.

[Briar]

4. democracy, civil liberties, pluralistic culture, freedom of religion...

These are fine things, and I proclaim my loyalty to them without qualification. None of them is exclusively British, however. They are the hallmarks of countries from Iceland to New Zealand. They are specifically under attack in many countries at the moment as well - often in the name of patriotic defence of the nation from outside attack.

Perhaps we should be encouraging understanding of and loyalty to these principles, rather than to a single flag and national anthem. Then authoritarian administrations would find it more difficult to erode them in times of crisis (often brought on by their failure to respect the rights of people in other countries), and violent extremists would find it far harder to find recruits as well.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. There was a period where 'Britishness' wasn't something we were proud of

at least in any outward sense - and that still lingers. Whether we can blame the National Front/BNP and football hooligans, or whether they took advantage of the neglect of British symbols by others, I'm not sure. This has changed a bit in the past few years - the St. George's flags for the England football team are an obvious example (which also help stop the notion that Britain is exactly the same as England). It's possible that getting the 2012 Olympics will help this.

But it's a fine line between a sense of community with the rest of the country, patriotism, and nationalism. Being an ex-colonial power doesn't help; it's all very well going on about the rule of law and tolerance being British traits, but that hasn't always been the case.

But it's not just we liberals who have problems with Britishness. There was a Spectator article a couple of weeks ago, "The left's war on Britishness". It's not available to non-subscribers in the net now, but it was reprinted here, retitled "A great nation, trapped in self-loathing". Interestingly, the original started "The terrorist attacks of 7 July, as the ludicrous BBC refuses to call them, ...", but the reprint left out that sideswipe at the BBC (though later criticism of it stays in). Now, that is someone from the right, attacking a great British institution for being tolerant. So who's patriotic in this case?

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. The Guardian is collecting pieces on "What is Britain?" together

here. Also today there's a piece on British humour - it doesn't conclude too much, but there's a bit of food for thought in it.

And, to tie up dark humour and the BBC, from today's Private Eye: Greg Dyke's number plate is "M16 WMD".

[Taxloss]

7. There's a lot of interesting writing about this.

Nik Cohn's "Yes We Have No" is good, but feels strangely dated now. Jeremy Paxman's "The English" is, of course, specifically about England but offers a good compendium of our shared beliefs and delusions. It's lightweight though.

I personally feel that the writing of Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd is getting closer to a modern and workable defintion of Britishness - inclusive, dark, warts-and-all, undeluded. The "weird little island" school.

[fedsron2us]

8. I know this country has an identity crisis

since my brother, who has a dark complexion, was recently accused of being an 'Iraqi' at the Guildford festival. In fact, he can trace his ancestors back to the Wiltshire village of Market Lavington and the Irish settlement of Cappamore over several hundred years. Given the my families universal loathing for Blair's illegal war we all regard the Iraqi jibe as a bit of a complement. Personally, I think blaming Muslim immigrants for a lack of loyalty is a bit rich when it comes from a politicians and media spokesmen who have been selling this country out for decades. Alienation amongst the population is hardly surprising when people such as Thatcher promote the idea that there is 'no such thing as society just individuals'. It is this nonsense which has so assiduously been promoted by that well known 'Briton' Rupert Murdoch through his press that undermined the post war social contract in the UK and has reduced the cohesiveness of our society. The process has been further accelerated by the globalist gibberish that so many of our leading corporations have adopted as their leitmotif and core ideology. When your employer and many members of your government clearly care a great deal more about international capital markets than your country it is hard not to be cynical. For example, the mass immigration that has taken place into the UK since 1945 is not part of any left wing conspiracy but has been encouraged by those who wished to undermine the bargaining power of the British worker. Now that modern technology allows many of these jobs to be outsourced overseas, the descendants of the people who came to settle in places such as Oldham, Bradford etc are suddenly regarded as surplus to requirements. Since their labour is not needed and their culture is regarded as alien it is no surprise that they have been pushed to the margins and feel that they have no place in the UK's future. I personally think that the alienation in the UK runs a lot deeper and further than just the Muslim community. They just happen to be the group that has the connections to organisations and an ideology that can express their discontent through extreme political violence. However, it would be naive to think that this sort of action might not spill over to other areas in society. On past form the ruling elites are certain to try and contain all these forces by passing restrictive legislation. Unfortunately, our current political and economic system is part of the problem and no one in a position of authority shows any signs of challenging the status quo that has existed since the 1980's. I think we are in for a very bumpy ride over the next 5-10 years.

[lockdown]

13. Thatcher

There's a lot to what you're saying I think if I understand you right. Any evaluation of who we are and where we're going needs to take Thatcher's legacy into account. The shifts that era saw haven't been redressed or healed under New Labour, far from it. For all the talk of regeneration and opportunity a lot of communities wounded under Thatcherism are still dislocated and left behind. Social alienation is rife beyond any ethnic community, I agree, and unsurprisingly it feeds racist scapegoating and extreme reaction in all directions. Such problems run a lot deeper than any particular community not being good integrated citizens, and the moral bankruptcy of a society surrendered to corporate interest is at the heart of much of it.

For myself, popular concepts of Britishness typically mean little to me, in fact they usually repel me. I love and loathe different aspects of the place, but the heritage and culture I love aren't the things normally portrayed. Like so much else though, much of that has been bastardised and destroyed in the name of maximised profit.

Late night ramble... here's to tramping the dirt down.

[T_i_B]

9. Well how do you define "Britishness"?

I'm not too sure anyone can define it definitively. And perhaps that's a good thing as to be able to define Britishness precisely can lead to an ideological state and a tendency to go after people for being "un-British".

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. Another article about 'Britishness'

It was, of course, George Orwell who famously pointed out the prevarications of British intellectuals over patriotism. In his essays he ridiculed their embarrassed avoidance of nationalism while he revelled in England's invincible suburbs, its old maids, its pillar boxes and pigeon-fanciers. Fifty years on, the left's hesitations about national identity remain, not least because left-wingers have an instinctive reluctance towards aligning themselves with the Great Britain camp. For few right-thinking people today are comfortable with the sub-G K Chesterton guff of Simon Heffer or Peter Hitchens: that staid conception of a Britain rooted in mirages of nuclear families, hallowed authority, stultifying tradition and the cultural flotsam of empire. In effect, we have been put off patriotism by the conservative codification of it. Yet with Islamo-fascism claiming lives in London, Madrid, Amsterdam and elsewhere, it is increasingly unsustainable to maintain this refusal to engage with the virtues of nationhood.

Part of the problem for the left has been the curious nature of the British state. We are a monarchy not a republic, so while French and American liberals are happy to sign up to Liberty, Equality and Fraternity and celebrate the ideals of the founding fathers, British progressives have been slightly less enthusiastic about swearing fealty to the heirs and successors of the House of Windsor. But there is another story of Britishness beyond the conservative trinity of royalty, church and army which we need desperately to defend from the bastardised theology of the terrorists.

Gordon Brown has long argued that Britishness is about values rather than institutions, and he is right, up to a point. Those values, moreover, are intrinsically hateful to the medieval mindset of al-Qaeda. Like other western and non-western nations, we have a history of promoting the type of gender, racial and sexual equality reviled by misogynistic mujahids. From the Married Women's Property Act 1882 to the Race Relations Act 1976, Britain has progressively advanced the cause of personal equality - something apparently forgotten by Ken Livingstone, who happily promotes Gay Pride marches, but at the same time invites sexist, homophobic (and inevitably anti-Semitic) clerics to lecture London on interfaith harmony.

Britain can also boast a superb record of political liberalism and intellectual inquiry, giving us a public sphere open to ideas, religions and philosophy from across the world. Again, this is something which infuriates the fundamentalist mindset and which British authorities have been far too willing to compromise. When the history of Islamic terrorism in this country is written, the dreadful failure of nerve by the political establishment during the Rushdie affair will surely feature pro-minently. How did Britain - home to the iconoclasm of Milton, Marx and the Sex Pistols - allow book-burning and fatwas to be decreed openly, in the streets of south Yorkshire?

http://www.newstatesman.com/People/200508010005

An interesting article, but I would point out to Hunt, on the last point quoted, that book burning, while a nasty activity, is an act of expression, not something you can disallow in a free society. Whether fatwas should be allowed depends entirely on their content - if there was an incitement to violence, then it should have been prosecuted. But I don't remember anyone getting away with that in Britain.

[Briar]

11. It isn't just islamists who object to "British" values

"Gordon Brown has long argued that Britishness is about values rather than institutions, and he is right, up to a point. Those values, moreover, are intrinsically hateful to the medieval mindset of al-Qaeda. Like other western and non-western nations, we have a history of promoting the type of gender, racial and sexual equality reviled by misogynistic mujahids."

Fundamentalist christians in the US and UK do as well, and as far as human rights are concerned, the massed ranks of the Tory Party, the Murdoch media and large sections of the Bliar government are also lined up in common loathing of the European Human Rights Act and those among us whom it protects.

The mean swipe at Livingstone is a give away, of course. Hunt's problems with freedom of speech obviously also extend to allowing those he disagrees with to have a chance to put their views openly.

[Chartist]

12. his upholding of the unelightening French remarks on the foxhunting issue

kind of undermine his denunciations of the likes of Hitchens and Heffer for me, because they play right into the reactionary, upper class, arcadian fantasy that the Conservative party likes to imagine as "Britishness", which is exactly what we need to get away from. Foxhunting didn't shape the culture of Britain outside these boundlessly egotistically circles any more than bear-baiting, and is in many ways the ultimate symbol of what so many people find nauseating about what is misleadingly but slickly packaged as British tradition.