The Disuniting of Britain
Something is clearly amiss in Britain.
The riots that erupted in Leicester, while the nation mourned the death of Elizabeth shows that something has gone terribly wrong in British society.
Clashes between young people from the Hindu and Muslim communities in Leicester serve as an uncomfortable reminder that under the surface of society, multiculturalism does not quite work. It is a feeble aspiration rather than a reality.
The contrast between the dignified proceedings surrounding the funeral of Queen Elizabeth and the disturbing events in Leicester, raises important questions about the state of British society. For me, the Leicester riots highlight identity politics' corrosive impact on British society.
The Disuniting of Britain & of America: Corrosive Impact Of Identity Politics
Last year upon reading Arthur Schlesinger's, The Disuniting of America – thirty years after its publication – I decided to explore the question of national unity in Britain.
Below is my initial reflection on The Disuniting of Britain.
In reading The Disuniting of America, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this book is prescient and out of time1. Schlesinger was sensitive to the divisive impact of the shift from the ideals of the melting pot to that of multiculturalism. However, like many others, he tended to underestimate the durable corrosive influence of identity politics. Schlesinger hoped that ‘history can give a sense of national identity’ and that the values of the past can provide the foundation for national unity. On an optimistic note, he stated, ‘I believe the campaign against the idea of common ideals and single society will fail’.
Were he alive today, he would be shocked by the intensity of cultural and identity-related polarisation in American society.
Schlesinger believed that the politics of identity lacked the potential to acquire deep roots in America and that its influence was likely to be confined to relatively small groups of activists. He wrote that most immigrants wish to be ‘fully-fledged Americans’, and he added that ‘what is even more fatal to identity politics and the cult of ethnicity is the simple fact that many, probably most, Americans are of mixed ancestry’. As subsequent experience indicates, very little has proved to be fatal to identity politics – on the contrary, its influence has constantly expanded not just in the United States but throughout the Anglo-American world.
Schlesinger was by no means the only individual who has constantly underestimated the power of identity politics. Since the 1970s, there has been a remarkable tendency to misjudge its influence on both sides of the Atlantic. Commentaries frequently portrayed identity politics in the past tense and prophesised its imminent demise. The authors of the first book to refer to identity politics in 1973 actually claimed that ‘identity politics swallowed itself’.2 Writing in 1995, Ross Posnock, a Professor of Literature, wrote that ‘after twenty-five years of identity politics’ a ‘renascent cosmopolitanism is currently gaining ground on the left; indeed, belief that the prestige of identity politics is fading in the academy is fast becoming the received wisdom’.3 ‘After Identity, Politics: The Return of Universalism’ is the title of an essay in New Literary History, in 2000.4 Eight years later, Linda Nicholson, in her history of identity, observed that ‘identity politics seems now to be largely dead, or at minimum, no longer able to command the kind of public attention that it did from the late 1960s through the late 1980s’5 In the United Kingdom, in the wake of The Brexit Referendum and the election of Donald Trump, British journalist Janet Daley rather prematurely declared that ‘Identity politics is Dead’.
The failure to grasp the ever-growing influence of identity politics is partly due to the inability of traditional political categories to make sense of this phenomenon. It was and continues to be identified as a species of radical left-wing politics. Yet, at the time of its inception, in the 1960s, observers understood that the success of identity politics was at the expense of the left and helped to accelerate its decline. In hindsight, it is evident that sections of the left gradually distanced themselves from their traditional commitment to the politics of class and embraced the politics of cultural identity as the medium for its survival. In Britain, the transformation of the Labour Party from a party that spoke the language of the working class to one that is far more comfortable voicing the concerns of identity is paradigmatic in this respect.
The growing influence of the politicisation of identity always had its most significant impact on the sphere of culture rather than on political institutions. One reason the conflict over values did not appear to excise the imagination of political analysts was that the 1960s cultural revolt struck the deepest in the pre-political sphere. At a time of East-West conflict, wars in South-East Asia, labour disputes in Europe and intense rivalries between soon-to-be-extinct left and right-wing parties, the disputes over values in the pre-political sphere were regarded as secondary to the big issues of the time. Although many commentators were concerned about the gradual spread of countercultural values in the pre-political sphere – particularly in relation to family life, parenting, sexuality, and gender – they appeared to be unaware of its significance. Possessors of the values linked to the ‘old identity’ proved singularly ineffective in responding to the challenge to their outlook.
Conservative and neoliberal critics of the cultural values transmitted through identity politics deceived themselves into believing they had matters under control during the Reagan-Thatcher years. Yet it was precisely during this era when right-wing governments were in power that adversary culture gained ascendancy. The right may have won the economic war, but it suffered a serious setback on the terrain of culture. In the eighties and early nineties, proponents of identity politics acquired an unprecedented influence in higher education, schools, institutions of culture, the media and sections of the public sector.
One crucial point overlooked by Schlesinger and his counterparts in Britain in their analysis of the rise of identity politics was the defeatist attitude of these nations' historical elites towards rising to the challenge posed by the 1960s counter-culture. Consequently, neither the American nor the British political class could provide a persuasive account of a way of life that could help society forge a sense of unity. In the case of Britain, the erosion of its national identity became strikingly evident in the post-Cold War era. One study of British public diplomacy concluded that it is far more difficult to convince citizens to back the official line on the war on terror than during the Cold War.6 This loss of Cold War certainty was coupled with the awareness that society’s capacity to integrate its citizens had become seriously compromised. So, a study published in 2008 about the security threat facing Britain reported that ‘we are in a confused and vulnerable condition’. It indicated that one reason for this insecurity was because ‘we lack the certainty of the old rigid geometry’ of the Cold War7. Confronted by what it perceived as the ‘loss of confidence’ and the absence of an overarching moral purpose in British society, the authors could not but mourn the loss of the Cold War. This study pointed to the absence of social cohesion and agreement about fundamental values.8 The report concluded that the UK ‘presents itself as a target, as a fragmenting, post-Christian society, increasingly divided about interpretations of its history, about its national aims, its values and its political identity’.
Above all, it is the loss of confidence of the British Establishment in its historical legacy, traditions and values that have created the cultural terrain on which identity politics could flourish.
The reluctance of successive British Governments to recognise and address this problem has ensured that the rapid rise of the cultural politics of identity faced very few significant obstacles. And as in the United States, identity politics gained official recognition and institutional support.
The Loss of British identity
As in the case of the United States, so too in Britain, the precondition for the ascendancy of identity politics was the gradual unravelling of the nation’s identity. Britain’s political and cultural establishment has proved unable and unwilling to uphold its nation’s historical legacy and values. By the turn of the 21st century, it became increasingly defensive about its role in the world.
During the past three decades, the British political class has sought to evade answering the question of what it means to be British. Some have attempted to displace this problem by finding solace in the European Union. Others have looked to multiculturalism to avoid this question. Not surprisingly, flag waving had gone out of fashion, and the main institutions of British culture tended to exhibit a sense of defensive embarrassment about any display of patriotism. The arrogant imperial attitudes of the past had given way to a new sensibility of shame towards enthusiastic displays of Britishness and those who took pride in their nation. Individuals whose identity is expressed through patriotic pride in their nation were not only marginalised as relics of the past but also condemned as racists and xenophobes.
An incident involving Labour MP for Islington South, Emily Thornberry, in November 2014 captures the contempt that significant sections of the British political class hold towards people’s display of patriotic pride. She sarcastically tweeted a photo of a house with St George flags and a white van parked outside during an election campaign. She resigned from the shadow cabinet and apologised in response to the widespread anger and hostility provoked by her snobbish behaviour. Her party leader Ed Miliband tried to smooth things over and stated, ‘people should fly the England flag with pride’. However, it was evident to all that Miliband’s statement constituted a form of damage limitation during a hard-fought election campaign
Thornberry’s attitude toward people who fly the flag reflects the mood that prevails within the institutions of power in Britain. Indeed, institutional encouragement of cynicism toward Britishness has become integral to a cultural package that decries such values as duty, loyalty, and attachment to one’s community. This sentiment has flourished in higher education, schools and cultural institutions like the BBC since the 1970s. Sneering at the Union Jack has become de rigueur for members of the British Cultural Elites. An example of this trend occurred recently during an interview on BBC breakfast television. During an interview, two BBC breakfast presenters, Charlie Stayt and Naga Munchetty, took it upon themselves to make fun of Local Government Secretary Robert Jenrick for displaying the flag in his office.
In the middle of the interview with Jenrick, Stayt sarcastically stated,
‘I think your flag is not up to standard size, government interview measurements. I think it’s just a little bit small, but that’s your department really.’
In the background, Munchetty could be seen laughing into her hand. Evidently, she thought that a government minister standing in front of the flag was such a ridiculous sight that it was ok to sneer at his gauche behaviour. In response to outrage expressed by viewers about the BBC ridiculing the nation’s flag, the two presenters were forced to apologise. But no one was left in doubt that a significant section of Britain’s cultural establishment regarded the flag with a sense of amused contempt.
The British Broadcasting Corporation’s estrangement from British culture and symbols of the nation’s identity is often expressed through a narrative that regards any expression of old-fashioned patriotism as a marker for xenophobia. This narrative has become integral to elite politics to the point that many of the values that give meaning to ordinary people’s lives are dismissed with contempt by what is often described as the metropolitan elite. One incident that highlighted this state of affairs occurred in April 2010. During the election campaign, the then Labour leader Gordon Brown was overheard describing a member of the voting public, 65-year-old Gillian Duffy, as a ‘bigoted woman’. This elderly Labour Party supporter had challenged him over the economy and immigration. As far as Brown was concerned, anyone who mentioned the word ‘immigration’ had crossed the line. That, without a moment’s hesitation, Brown dismissed the concerns of an elderly lady in such a coarse manner illustrated the casual manner with which insults like bigoted and racist were hurled at working-class people.
Occasionally, the sense of frustration at the derision directed against a particular British custom leads to a backlash. The outcry provoked by the BBC’s announcement that Rule Britannia would not be sung at the Proms exemplifies such a reaction. However, a backlash, by definition, can rarely match the force to which it reacts. It is entirely reactive and defensive.
In an age of identity politics where most identities tend to be affirmed, Britishness is the one identity that faces constant condemnation.
There is more than a hint of triumphalism amongst opponents of Britishness when they declare that this nation faces a crisis of identity. One fervent opponent of Britishness, the Guardian columnist Afua Hirsch has written an entire book devoted to de-legitimating Britain’s identity. What all these critics of the attempt to celebrate British identity hold in common is the view that people should avoid taking pride in their culture and their past because there is little to be proud of.
In 1941, George Orwell remarked that:
‘England is perhaps the only great country where intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings’.
Were he alive today, even Orwell would be surprised by the expansion of such sentiments from intellectuals to even sections of the British Establishment.
One reason critics of Britishness hold the upper hand is that even those members of the Establishment who claim to uphold British identity struggle to provide a convincing argument for it. Since the turn of the 21st century, a succession of British governments has been preoccupied with how to promote national values and define what they are.
This question haunted New Labour prime minister Tony Blair. Forced to recognise that Britain was not winning the battle of ideas against radical Islamists, in 2006, he called for the promotion of national values. He answered the question of ‘Why are we not yet succeeding in the values battle?’ by arguing that ‘We are not being bold enough, consistent enough, thorough enough, in fighting for the values we believe in’. Yet it was far from evident whether the ‘values we believe in’ outlined by Blair carried any real conviction or meaning.
Typically, Blair avoided drawing on the legacy of Britain’s past. Instead, his values turned out to be a list of fashionable global causes. Support for development in Africa, peace in the Middle East, fair migration, dealing with climate change, and creating international institutions ‘fit for task’ – were all put forward as examples of British values.
Back in 2006, the then UK chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, announced plans for a British Day to ‘focus on things that bring us together’. However, spelling out what binds British society together proved far too challenging a task, and the Labour government quietly dropped the idea in October 2008. The Labour government’s quiet retreat on this issue represented an acknowledgement that national traditions that might inspire the public cannot be invented in committee meetings or through consultations with ‘stakeholders’. If society itself is unsure of what it stands for, it’s not surprising that schools lack the ability to talk about the soul of Britain.
Confusion about what binds a community together assumed a caricatured form in 2008 when the Labour government’s plan to publish a national songbook for primary-school children was quietly dropped. The government had wanted to publish a collection of 30 songs that every 11-year-old should know, but the idea was rejected as too divisive. Gareth Malone, a leading figure in Sing Up, the organisation charged with realising the songbook project, said experts could not agree on which songs to include. He described the songbook debate as a ‘hot potato, culturally’, adding ‘you have to be realistic’ and you ‘can’t be too culturally imperialist about it’. In the end, officials chose to evade the controversy that publishing a common British songbook would have stirred up and opted instead to establish a ‘song bank’ of 600 songs.
If British society is too embarrassed to publish a national songbook, how can it expect its people to sing from the same sheet?
The loss of a national purpose
The unravelling of E Pluribus Unum in the United States, which Schlesinger so well described, occurred in Britain at an increasingly accelerated rate. One reason British identity unravelled so rapidly is because the field of battle on which cultural conflict is fought out has been abandoned by its traditional elites.
Take the recent decision of Edinburgh University to distance itself from its most important intellectual legacy – The Scottish Enlightenment.
The university has decided to rename its David Hume Tower because students have claimed that this 18th-century philosopher’s comments on race cause distress. In its letter to students, the University authorities wrote that ‘it is important that campuses, curricula and communities reflect both the University’s contemporary and historical diversity and engage with its institutional legacy across the world’. Evidently, the one institutional legacy the Administration is prepared to discard is what gave this university an international reputation. Without the contribution of the Scottish Enlightenment, it would still be just another provincial institution of learning. And it was David Hume, more than anyone else, who personified the Scottish Enlightenment.
The repudiation of Hume is more than just a blow against his reputation. It represents an important symbolic victory for the identity politics-driven crusade against the intellectual legacy of human civilisation in general and of the Enlightenment in particular.
Virtually every great philosopher who contributed to the development of the ideal of tolerance, freedom and other liberal ideals has become the targets of a crusade to decolonise British culture and force contemporary society to detach itself from its cultural and intellectual legacy. From this standpoint, John Locke, whose philosophy contributed to the development of the idea of tolerance, is simply a 17th-century racist. Adam Smith, another towering figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, is also a racist. According to a 21st-century critic of an 18th-century thinker, Smith’s sin was to distinguish between ‘savage’ and ‘civilised’ nations.
Curators in cultural institutions and museums promote a script that attributes negative connotations to anything related to Britain’s past. In this vein, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London posted signs outside an exhibition on the history of British humour, stating ‘this display confronts uncomfortable truths about the past’. This phrase suggests that the exhibition is not about displaying old objects but confronting them as if they were in the here and now.
Contempt for Britain’s past and national identity stands in sharp contrast to the celebration of diversity and various fashionable identities.
Amongst the younger generations, it has become fashionable to preface a statement with the words, ‘I identify as……’. That individuals feel obliged to broadcast their identity and to wear it on their sleeves is symptomatic of its symbolic significance. During the Covid pandemic, the rainbow flag, also known as the symbol of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) movement, was embraced by people throughout Britain to express solidarity with others. It indicated that identity politics had come of age and become institutionalised to the point that it serves as a point of reference for millions of people.
Despite its influence, the rainbow flag, like other symbols of identity politics, cannot serve as a focus for unity for the British people. Identity politics rejects Britishness and is inherently divisive as different groups compete with one another for influence. Sooner rather than later, those concerned about society's future need to face the problems posed by a disunited nation estranged from its identity. Identity politics will not go away anytime soon. Its authority needs to be contested on the battlefield of culture.
Loss of a way of life
The former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was sensitive to the need to project a clear set of values to succeed in the battle of ideas. ‘When it comes to our essential values, the belief in democracy, the rule of law, tolerance, equal treatment for all, respect for this country and its shared heritage — then that is where we come together, it is what gives us what we hold in common; it is what gives right to call ourselves British’ said Blair in December 2006.He added that ‘no distinctive culture or religion supersedes our duty to be part of an integrated United Kingdom’. That he had to write a statement to remind British citizens of their duty to be loyal to the nation suggests that what he called ‘our essential value’ lacked the moral depth to genuinely move and inspire.
In the 21st century, Britain is not only an island without a story but also a place that discourages debate about what kind of stories should be told. ‘The deep guarantee of real strength is our knowledge of who we are’, argue the authors of a study, Risk, Threat and Security. Very true. But when today, the very meaning of what it means to be British has become a subject of cultural contestation, that understanding is far from evident – a point that this study recognises. The authors rightly argue that the strength of any society is based on its belief in shared values and its sense of purpose. They note that ‘the confidence and loyalty of the people are the wellspring from which flows the power with which all threats to defence and security are ultimately met’. They argue that, in Britain, people have become estranged from the nation’s institutions and that what binds them together is far too flimsy to constitute a ‘dynamic community’. Of course, fears about a ‘loss of confidence’ in British society have been raised many times over the past century. So, one key question that the authors implicitly raise is: what’s new today?
One obvious, significant development is that in the post 9/11 world, the ‘loss of confidence’ and the absence of an overarching moral purpose in British society has intensified the sense of threat to Britain’s security. According to Prins and Salisbury, the UK ‘presents itself as a target, as a fragmenting, post-Christian society, increasingly divided about interpretations of its history, about its national aims, its values and its political identity’. They contend that ‘the country’s lack of self-confidence is in stark contrast to the implacability of its Islamist enemy, within and without.’ This acknowledgement of cultural insecurities in the face of the so-called War on Terror serves as testimony to the absence of clarity about what values if any bind people together. Although such concerns have as their focus national security, cultural conflicts also directly express themselves through anxieties about individual identity and the troubles of everyday life.
The unravelling of the normative foundation for public life has created a condition where values become a source of conflict instead of serving as an instrument for achieving unity. In the absence of a web of meaning based on shared norms, the kind of disunity that haunted Schlesinger thirty years ago has become a reality.
It begins in schools
In his chapter ‘The Battle for the Schools’, Schlesinger decried the influence that identity entrepreneurs have succeeded in exercising over the children’s curriculum. It is evident that once young people are socialised into the cultural politics of identity, society is likely to fragment and will find it difficult to establish a focus for unity. This problem is widespread throughout the British education system, where the multicultural curriculum runs parallel to an anti-national one.
In contrast to the United States, where there are frequent attempts to uphold and assert the American Way of Life, Britain tends to avoid public expressions of national pride. For example, a report authored by Michael Hand and Jo Pearce of the London-based Institute of Education argued that ‘patriotism should not be taught in school.’ Based on a survey of 300 teachers, the report concluded that patriotism should only be taught as a ‘controversial issue’. Hand and Pearce claimed that Britain, with its ‘morally ambiguous’ history, should no longer be made into an object of school pupils’ affection’.9 Their study is not simply a critique of British national identity but also of loyalty to the tradition it embraces. They rhetorically asked, ‘are countries really appropriate objects of love?’ and called for implicit cultural hostility towards ‘national histories’, which are all apparently ‘morally ambiguous’. Their advice is that ‘loving things can be bad for us’, especially when the ‘things we love are morally corrupt’. They communicated that we should morally condemn any attempt to construct a British ‘way of life’.
Three-quarters of the teachers surveyed by Hand and Pearce apparently agreed with the outlook of a patriotic-free education. They said they felt obligated to alert their pupils to the hazards of patriotic feelings. Although the authors subsequently complained about the ‘press hysteria’ evoked by their research, they evidently believed that their sentiment resonated with the times. They boasted that ‘there are signs that the wave of patriotic rhetoric has now begun to break on the shores of public indifference’. After listing several failed official initiatives designed to boost British national identity, the reader was left in no doubt that the authors were convinced that they occupied the moral high ground.10
It is evident that school children have internalised Hand and Pearce’s outlook. In April 2001, pupils at Pimlico Academy in South London protested against their school’s policy of flying the Union Jack. Following the pattern of defeatism of recent decades, the school swiftly caved into the children’s demand to take down the ‘racist’ Union flag. What is truly remarkable is not merely the moral cowardice of the school leaders, who refused to uphold and defend this symbol of Britishness but also that the headteacher apologised and praised the students’ behaviour! ‘Our students are bright, courageous, intelligent young people, passionate about the things that matter to them and acutely attuned to injustice. I admire them hugely for this though I regret that it came to this’ wrote Daniel Smith, the headteacher.
Smith and some of the other school leaders were likely aware of the serious implication of a state of affairs where a school in England is forced to take down the Union Jack. But instead of addressing this issue, Smith deflected the problem by stating, ‘we acknowledge that this symbol is a powerful one which evokes often intense reactions’! That’s another way of saying that expressing hatred for Britain is an understandable ‘intense reaction’! In effect, the school's response to this incident indicates that it is prepared to live in a world where expressions of hatred for the nation's symbol exist on the same moral plane as that of British identity. At the very least, that means that Britishness has become one identity among the many. And that’s a big win for the politics of identity.
At least for now, identity politics exercises a greater influence over schools than ideals associated with a common national culture. Schlesinger knew that when it came to schooling, the stakes were high, and no doubt he would be appalled at the defeatist sensibility that now prevails amongst adherents of British culture.
Yet the public’s reaction to death of Queen Elizabeth indicates that not all is lost. There is still time to repair the damage caused by the corrosive impact of identity politics on society. We have no time to lose if we are confront this challenge,
Schlesinger, A.M. Jr (1998) The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society, Norton: New York, p.146.
Wolff, R.P. and Gitlin, T. (1973) 1984 Revisited; Prospects for American Politics, Knopf: New York.
Posnock, R. (1995) ‘Before and After Identity Politics’, Raritan, vol. 15 (1).
p.99.
Lott, E. (2000) ‘After Identity, Politics: The Return of Universalism’, New Literary History 31, no. 4.
See Nicholson, L. (2008) Identity Before Identity Politics, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.p.4.
Leonard, M., Small, A. and Rose, M., 2005. British public diplomacy in the ’age of schisms'. London: Foreign Policy Centre. p.11.
Prins, G. & Salisbury, R. (2008) Risk, Threat and Security; The case of the United Kingdom, RUSI: London.p.4.
Prins, G. & Salisbury, R. (2008) Risk, Threat and Security; The case of the United Kingdom, RUSI: London.p.4.
Cited in ‘Patriotism “should not be taught in schools”’, The Daily Telegraph, 1 February 2008.
Hand, M. and Pearce, J., 2009. Patriotism in British schools: Principles, practices and press hysteria. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 41(4), pp.453-465.p.465.