Defining Britishness
What we preach
Summit decides our values
Declining Britishness in England and Scotland
Searching for a definition of Britishness, USA
Islamophobia: resisting prejudice
An odd political project
Speaking for themselves
Britain Searching for Its Soul
See also
answers.yahoo.com. Feb 2008
I totally reject the offensive label 'British'. Labour's disastrous (and I hope politically fatal mistake) uncontrolled immigration policies have had a negative effect on our National Identity.
Now, in a thinly veiled attempt to force some social cohesion they are suggesting a summit to define 'Britishness'. As has (unfortunately) been proven countless millions of times, anyone granted a British passport can be 'British'. I am not 'British' I am white, indigenous ENGLISH, but once again we are ignored in favour of propaganda to promote multi-cultural 'Britishness' instead.
How much longer will they continue to ignore the wishes of the indigenous population, and does anyone considering themselves patriotic English intend to vote to re-elect the traitors at the next election?
redpepper.org.uk 9 Feb 2008
Salma Yaqoob says that how we build a political alternative is as important as what we build
It was five years ago that my frustrations with mainstream parties prompted me to get involved in party politics. At the time I felt that the political process simply did not reflect the broad values of most people I knew – and especially those engaged in the anti-war movement.
These values were reflected in an opposition to imperialism and neo-liberalism, although most people I came into contact with very rarely, if ever, used these words to express their concerns.
Instead they asked why our foreign policy could not be based more on cooperation instead of conflict. They wanted a better quality of life for them, their friends and families, and felt people in other parts of the world were entitled to the same as well. Instead what people see today is war and instability abroad, and increasing discontent at home despite an apparently wealthy society. People are worried about the future of their children. They are concerned at widening inequality, the increase of stress and depression, the record levels of binge drinking, drug abuse, violence and vandalism. How could it be that after a decade of uninterrupted economic growth our society could feel more fractured, unequal and unhappy? Why are our kids reported to be the unhappiest in Europe?
The answers to these concerns lie in a critique of the way the way free market fundamentalism has increasingly invaded and distorted our lives, and the need for society to be protected from its all consuming appetites.
The challenge for those of us who aspire to live in a more humane and just society is to be able to explain the source of people’s everyday concerns in a language they immediately understand, and point to solutions that are immediately realisable.
There is a lot of talk in government circles about the need for a ‘national conversation’ about what ‘Britishness’ means in the 21st century. If we are to have such a conversation, it would be well served by looking back to the future.
The ideas of universal healthcare; a living wage; participatory democracy; public services that are accountable to the people who use them; food, medicine and shelter as a human right; these are not particularly radical ideas. They are common sense ideas enshrined in the UN Charter.
Add to that list a foreign policy that places a premium on diplomacy, and international cooperation, plus more decisive action on climate change, and there is the basis of a manifesto a sizeable slice of the British public would sign up to.
Why are these ideas so radical today? At one stage most would have been regarded as the bread and butter of social democracy. They appear radical now only because of the way neo-liberalism has shifted political discourse to the right over the last 20 years. All the while the gap between what the politicians do, and what people want, has widened.
The challenge of building political organisations that can bridge that gap is best realised and tested through day-to-day engagement in the practical struggles and frustrations of people’s everyday lives. Electoral politics, despite its pitfalls, forces such an engagement. Effective campaigning does likewise. Engagement with politics of a mass character is essential. It forces you to absorb the experience of the people you aim to represent, and it puts your views to the test.
It is also essential that we practise what we preach. How we build is as important as what we build. Our political organisations must embody the values that we wish to see reasserted in broader society. Our culture should be one in which disagreement is not seen as disloyalty and where inclusivity is not confined to those who sympathise completely with your own views. Whatever our forms of political organisation they must be places where we bring the best out of people, where the instincts that brought them into politics are raised to a higher political and moral plane.
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Press Assoc October 11,
2007
A "citizen's summit" of 1,000 people will take place next year to help decide a new definition of British values, a conference has heard.
Justice minister Michael Wills said the panel - chosen to be representative of the public at large - will be able to take evidence from witnesses during its deliberations.
Once a "statement of British values" has been devised, the summit will also look at how the statement should be used across the country, he said.
"There will be a representative body of 1,000 people or so that will meet, debate and take evidence from people," Mr Wills told a debate in Westminster organised by Morgan Stanley. "Then they will decide for themselves on this question of what should the British statement of values be, and how it should be used.
"A representative of that summit will go to Parliament, and Parliament will have a final say on it." He added: "We want something that is owned by the British people and not by the Government."
The statement - intended to encapsulate the rights and responsibilities of British citizens - could be included in passports and even printed on every benefits statement or tax demand, Mr Wills suggested.
Morgan Stanley's "Great Britons" debate, supported by the Daily Telegraph, seeks to name the most influential living Britons.
Historian and broadcaster Dr David Starkey, speaking in the debate, mocked the idea of a citizens' summit as an "extraordinary process", saying: "It is profoundly un-British to talk about Britishness."
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OurKingdom 24 January 08
.Only 13% of people born and living in England, and 3% of people born and living in Scotland, describe themselves as ‘only’ or ‘mainly’ British.
Meanwhile, nearly half of those born and living in England say that they are ‘equally English and British’, and only one in five born and living in Scotland describe themselves as ‘equally Scottish and British’.
Gordon Brown’s premiership has once again brought national identity, and ‘Britishness’ in particular, to the top of the political debate. The report shows that fewer people now describe themselves as British:
- When asked to choose just one national identity for themselves, four in ten people (39%) in England say that they are British, down from over six in ten (63%) in 1992. Then three in ten (31%) said they were English; now nearly half (47%) do so.
- The main shift took place between 1997 and 1999, and so predates Scottish and Welsh devolution.
- In 1974, three in ten people (31%) in Scotland said they were British, now half this proportion (14%) do so. The proportion choosing Scottish has gone up from 65% to 78%.
- But when people are allowed to choose more than one national identity, seven in ten (68%) in England choose British, as do four in ten (43%) in Scotland.
- Few English or Scottish natives think of themselves as ‘only’ or ‘mainly’ British: 13% in England and 3% in Scotland.
- Nearly half of English natives (46%) say that they are ‘equally English and British’. One in five (21%) Scottish natives describe themselves as ‘equally Scottish and British’.
- The most popular response from Scottish natives is to describe oneself as being ‘only’ or ‘mainly’ Scottish, chosen by nearly three-quarters (73%) of people.
- Far fewer – 37% – English natives describe themselves as being ‘only’ or ‘mainly’ English.
- Just over a half (56%) of supporters of the Scottish National Party say that their national identity is important to them when they think of themselves.
- Around one in four people (22%) born and living in England think that an English Parliament would be the best way to govern England, rising to 28% among those who define their national identity as English and not British.
Anthony Barnett 26 Jan 2008
One of the pleasures of getting the International Herald Tribune delivered every morning is that in addition to reading a real newspaper it carries occasional stories about this country from a refreshing perspective and you can see how strange the UK remains.
This morning’s is even on the front page. By Sarah Lyall it covers the debate about Britishness. Highly recommended even if she has not caught up with the debate here on OK or elsewhere on the web and British blogland. However she did find out about a hilarious micro-debate in the House of Lords on 6 December last year which I think went unreported in the native press. I say hilarious and there is a self-conscious and self-depreciating poking of the government’s desire but there is also something appalling, is there not? See for yourself. Here it is in full:
Baroness Warsi asked Her Majesty’s Government: Whether they have received any proposals for a national motto; and, if so, whether such a motto will improve community relations.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Hunt of Kings Heath): My Lords, the Government have never proposed a British motto and, as announced in The Governance of Britain Green Paper, are focused on developing a question on whether a statement of British values would be useful.
Baroness Warsi: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response. What is the basis of that consultation and is there evidence to suggest that a motto—that term has been used—or a statement of values would have a positive impact on community relations? If so and in light of Minister’s experience in the area, could he give the House his motto, his six words, that would encapsulate this great nation?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, first, I express my warm appreciation to the noble Baroness and to my noble friend Lord Ahmed for their magnificent work in Sudan, which is appreciated by the whole House.
There is no suggestion by the Government for a motto. On a statement of values, I think that most of us would understand the core British values, yet there is an advantage in expressing them, so that all people in this country understand them, because they are so cherished by the nation. We can all come up with adjectives, such as justice, freedom, democracy and fair play, to describe what we sense it means to be a British citizen.
We think it is valuable, particularly in terms of community cohesion, in taking that work forward. There is much to be done over the next year, but I hope the noble Baroness will contribute her very great talents to that process.
As for a motto, I do not think I will go down that route, but I will say that the motto of Birmingham City Football Club is, “Keep right on till the end of the road”.
Baroness Whitaker: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it would be very easy to have the statement brought into schools so that all our children knew what our values were, including those who have recently come to this country?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, the noble Baroness put rather better than I could why this might be valuable to the country.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, if the Minister finds it difficult to provide a motto for the whole country, would he be prepared to consider a motto for your Lordships’ House: “Questions and Answers ought to be short”?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, yes.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine: My Lords, from these Benches, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, on her efforts last week. I have been acquainted with the noble Baroness for some years, and what she did was entirely characteristic of her. She is a credit both to the House and her community.
It is a relief to hear the Minister say that there are no plans for a motto, and that, under the Goldsmith review, his department will be examining the possibility of a British statement of values. Will the Minister confirm that, once the exercise is complete, the resources will be provided for this statement of values to be taken out both to newly arrived communities and existing communities? As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, has confirmed, social glue and a sense of identity need reinforcing all round.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, I am not convinced that it is a question of resources. It is best for us to get this right. We have the review of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, which runs in parallel. Clearly, if that comes to a successful conclusion, we will then need to look at how it may be promulgated among citizens of this country, whether new or those who have lived here all their lives. I certainly take the value of schools in that to heart.
Lord Trimble: My Lords, the notion of a statement of shared values is obviously of considerable importance. Equally important, however, is a shared historical experience. Obviously, with regard to those who have recently come to these shores, that will be limited. The thing to do there is to encourage them to integrate fully into our national life so that they can have a shared experience with us today.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, I am sure that that is right. The noble Lord implied an understanding of the history of this nation and its interrelationship with other countries. I strongly agree with and endorse that.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester: My Lords, in view of the splendidly robust answers from my noble friend Lord Bach to the previous Question, would not the most suitable six-word motto be “Play up, and play the game”?
The Earl of Mar and Kellie: My Lords, does the Minister agree that the word “British” is, in fact, a multinational description, and that the Scottish heraldic motto, “Nemo me impune lacessit”, which can be translated as “Do not sit on a thistle”, is more than adequate?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, I feel the Barnett formula coming upon us very quickly.
Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, what is wrong with the excellent words which face us daily, “Dieu et mon droit”, and “Honi soit qui mal y pense”?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, as the noble Lord will know, that represents the divine right of kings. While it is of course a well known phrase, one would need to reflect on whether that would be entirely relevant to a motto that we are not going to have.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno: My Lords, is there not something intrinsically wrong with the Question? It is not a motto for one nation. Are we not four nations? Is it not time that we said to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies—I do not know who would represent England in this matter—that they must sort out their own mottos? It is not for us to decide on.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, I am sure that the importance of the union will be a major factor in all we do in this area.
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Socialistworker.co.uk 5
Feb 2008
Nahella Ashraf writes that Islamophobia is the last “acceptable” racism
in Britain. To combat it means opposing the “war on terror”Most of us do not need to read the many reports coming out of the European Union, government departments and think-tanks to tell us there has been a rise in Islamophobia in Britain since 9/11 and the beginning of the “war on terror”.
When governments kill thousands of innocent people in Iraq and elsewhere they have to justify it. One way they do this is to blame Islam for creating “fanatics” who are attempting to stop Muslims from accepting Western democracy.
The attacks on Muslims abroad are accompanied by increasing government attacks on Muslims in this country.
But it isn’t just ministers and the right wing press who feel confident to come out with Islamophobic comments.
Some supposedly on the left have also been happy to contribute – from those writing in the Independent about how the sight of Muslim women wearing the veil on the streets of Britain offends them, to Martin Amis talking about how “all Muslims must expect to pay” for terrorism.
And then we have the Oxford Union – one of the pinnacles of the establishment – inviting British National Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin to talk on “freedom of speech”, echoing the same line we heard from sections of the left around the printing of offensive cartoons in Denmark.
Islamophobia seems to be replacing antisemitism as the principal Western statement of bigotry against the “other”. The pre-war Blackshirts attacked the newly arrived East End Jews, and today we have their modern equivalents going “Paki-bashing”.
This isn’t to say that we didn’t have racism pre 9/11. I’ve been called a “Paki” for as long as I can remember – but now it is about being a Muslim. “Polite society” no longer has to worry about seeming racist, or sounding like the BNP, if they are talking about Muslims.
The BNP have long tried to scare people with the idea that the country is being overrun by foreigners. But now you no longer have to be a member of the BNP to talk about these ideas – especially if you are talking about Muslims.
So Amis recently told the Independent, “It’s not unreasonable to suppose a [Muslim] majority is going to assert itself. How thoroughly, in what form, how fundamentalistically, we won’t know... But it has to be discussed.” Many of Amis’ supporters have since praised his “courage” in opening up the discussions.
So what does this Islamphobia mean for Muslims?
It isn’t just the questions, the staring and the constant public debate that we have to put up with.
We’ve had children being bullied in the school playground, women having their hijabs and veils torn off. Mosques have been vandalised – and there have been some violent attacks on those attending prayers.
The overriding effect of all this is to make Muslims feel that they have to prove their Britishness. It seems that be a “good Muslim” in Britain today you can’t have a political opinion.
It is as if to complain about the government’s foreign policy or its attacks on our civil liberties is an indication of our lack of Britishness.
Never mind that it is our very Britishness that gives us the right to speak out about what the government is doing in our name.
And Muslims are speaking out – and not just those who happily parade as the so-called leaders of the Muslim community.
I’ve lost count of the times I have sat with other Muslims in anger as we have been presented with yet another press conference by these “leaders” who tell us how much they agree with the government and what they plan to do to address the problem of “extremists within the Muslim community”.
These “leaders” may accept the government’s views but the thousands they claim to speak for do not.
You only have to look at the vast numbers of Muslims involved in the anti-war movement to see Muslims fighting back.
We also have organisations such as those campaigning for the closure of Guantanamo Bay and justice for the Palestinian people.
Many of these are led by second and third generation Muslims who are showing they have the confidence to lead the struggle against the last acceptable form of racism in Britain today.
But there is one thing that is going to stop this growth in Islamophobia – that is to bring an end to George Bush’s war on terror.
This is just one of the reasons we must ensure that the Stop the War demonstrations are as big and as loud as possible. Make sure you join us in London on 15 March.
Nahella Ashraf is chair of Greater Manchester Stop the War Coalition and a founder member of the Stop the War Muslim network. Go to » www.stopwar.org.uk
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Martin Kettle 21 Jan 2008
All the political parties have flirted with ideas of a British bill of rights. But doesn't the Human Rights Act cover most of what's being proposed?
What with one thing and another we seem to have heard rather less from the Labour government just lately about human rights, bills of rights and Britishness. In 2007 Gordon Brown and his ministers were forever bubbling with ideas on all three. So far in 2008 things have been somewhat quieter. But don't be fooled. As the justice secretary Jack Straw made clear this morning in a speech to a seminar organised by Justice and the Guardian, the slow metamorphosis from bright idea to legislative reality is now well under way.
It's an odd political project, this one. It doesn't follow the traditional pattern in which lobby groups plug away for years with an idea that eventually gets taken up by sympathetic ministers before finally emerging as a new law or regulatory body. In this case, indeed, the dynamic is almost the reverse of that pattern. The British bill of rights is being promoted from the top, by the political parties themselves, not by the pressure groups. In fact, as the pressure groups made clear this morning, they still remain to be convinced that Westminster's eagerness for change won't do more harm than good.
This unconventional dynamic shouldn't, of itself, be a reason for sneering at the various British bill of rights proposals coming from Westminster. In their different ways the political parties all genuinely want changes that make this a society more at ease with itself - even the British exceptionalists. Yet the fact remains that this whole idea of a British bill of rights was only put on the table in modern times (earlier debates about a bill of rights were different) because Tony Blair made common cause with Tory Eurosceptics and the Europhobic press by wrongly (both in law and in principle) denouncing the Human Rights Act after a high court ruling on the Afghan hijackers case in 2006. Until that time, Conservative demands for a distinctively British bill of rights could be dismissed as simple Tory Europhobia. But Blair sold the pass - an astonishingly ill-judged thing to do.
Since then, all the parties have flirted with ideas of a British bill, either to replace the Human Rights Act (the Tory option) or alongside it in some way (the preference of Labour and the Lib Dems). With Blair gone, Labour's view of a British bill is now less objectionable and less alarming than it once was. Brown, like Straw, has been at pains to stress that a British bill does not imply resiling from the Human Rights Act or the European convention on human rights which informs it. But Brown is engaged in a piece of triangulation on the issue too. He promotes a "British" bill because he thinks the "European" reputation of the Human Rights Act makes it effectively indefensible in political terms and because he is sincerely keen, for good and sometimes less good reasons, to promote a unifying ideology of Britishness.
The case against the Tory version of the British bill is therefore easily made. The plan is confused, backward-looking in rights terms, and threatens British commitments to the Council of Europe and the EU alike. The case against the Labour version is less straightforward. It too is confused - it is not yet clear if the Labour bill will be justiciable, ie whether it can be tested and enforced in the domestic courts. But Straw's assurances mean that it is not backward-looking on rights - Britain would still be faced with the consequences of European court of human rights rulings just as it is now. Moreover the Labour bill, with its statement of British values, rights and responsibilities, may also be a useful tool in creating a stronger sense of shared societal values.
Personally I remain to be convinced. I understand what a fundamental human right is and how it can be enforced in the courts. I don't so clearly understand what a fundamental human responsibility is supposed to be or how it could be enforced - and Straw hasn't set that out yet. I think a statement of British values of only marginal use, and it runs the risk, as Justice's Roger Smith suggested today, of triggering a statement of Scottish values or Welsh values or any other values, and this becoming a source not of harmony but of difference. In my view the Human Rights Act does most of what I think a bill of rights can reasonably be expected to achieve - so my preference is to defend it more stoutly and to give it more time to work its way into the civic bloodstream.
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Roger Hardy 7 Feb 2008
Reviewing: Young, British and Muslim by Philip Lewis There are moments when, by some strange osmosis, everyone wants answers to the same question. For the past few years, that question has been: why do young, British-born Muslims become radicalised to the point where some become suicide bombers?
Philip Lewis would insist, and rightly, that he has not written a book about al-Qaeda or, for that matter, radicalisation. That more specialised task, incidentally, is performed admirably by Marc Sageman's new book, Leaderless Jihad. But what Lewis has done, with skill and understanding, is to set out the context in which we can begin to understand what it means to be "young, British and Muslim". The rest is up to us.
In the wake of the Rushdie affair of the late 1980s, Lewis's first book, Islamic Britain (1994), became the indispensable guide. Taking Bradford, where he lives and works, as his central case study, he provided a calm, clear and dispassionate account of how a significant Muslim minority - one that has grown in half a century from 21,000 to 1.6 million - has put down roots in this country and he anatomised some of the issues this has put on our national agenda. Since then, partly in response to the 11 September 2001 attacks and the more recent Madrid and London bombings, and partly because young Muslims have become the focus of such attention, the need for informed analysis has become even more urgent.
Lewis says the aim of his new book is neither to demonise nor to sentimentalise Muslims. Given the highly polarised nature of the current debate (think of the Muhammad cartoons affair), that is not easy. He tries to meet the challenge by making full use of a wide range of academic research, while letting young Muslims speak for themselves - through interviews, through novels, through their contributions to television and radio, and through blogs and websites.
What comes across is a vivid picture of young Muslims' struggles to navigate the sometimes conflicting currents of school and work, family and mosque. The overall picture is grim (the statistics for educational underachievement and unemployment are by now well known) and Lewis fleshes out the consequences in stunted lives and what he terms a "communications crisis" across the generations. The communities he describes are still shaped by the cultural practices of rural Kashmir, from where so many of the first-generation immigrants originally came. Now, increasingly, young Muslim men and women no longer accept the authoritarian patriarchy that earlier generations took for granted.
This is producing a range of very different effects - resistance to the more coercive forms of arranged marriage, a greater acceptance of the English language and Britishness, and, at the same time, a search by many young Muslims for a form of Islam very different from that of their parents. Lewis profiles the new breed of savvy professionals associated with groups such as City Circle, the Muslim Youth Helpline and the magazine Q-News, which are seeking to shape a consciously British Islam and are opening up debate about hitherto taboo subjects. At the same time, in a chapter on extremism, he helps explain the appeal of radical, isolationist groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir.
I have two reservations. Although it is natural for western liberals to empathise more readily with young Muslims than with their fusty elders, I found myself feeling just a twinge of sympathy for the much-maligned first generation. To be sure, their main failing is to have held on to the reins of communal power for too long, thereby disenfranchising women and the young. But not to give due weight to the hardships and dislocations and clashes of culture they faced, transplanted from south Asia to the dark, satanic mills of Yorkshire and Lancashire, is to neglect an important dimension of the story. (To be fair, Lewis's earlier book devotes more space to the period of settlement.) First-generation Muslims were for the most part ill-equipped for the challenges they faced, not least in bringing up a new generation to cope with the novel pleasures and pains of a secular western society.
Finally, one might ask whether Lewis touches rather too lightly on the foreign policy dimension that has been so hotly debated of late, especially since the disastrous intervention in Iraq. Perhaps he feels this has been dealt with exhaustively elsewhere. Or perhaps he has made a conscious choice to focus on the need for Muslim self-criticism and the all-too-apparent dangers of a culture of victimhood: blaming the west is certainly an easy way out. But, in the process, he arguably downplays the fact that indignation over foreign policy is not the preserve of the radical few. It is precisely because such grievances are widely shared that the battle for Muslim hearts and minds is being lost.
Roger Hardy writes about
the Middle East and reports on Islamic issues for BBC World Service
topPeter Hinchliffe 9 Feb 2008
The
nation is no longer confident of its place in the world
The map of the world on the classroom wall convinced us that Britain really was Great. From end to end there were huge swathes of pink, the color of the British Empire.
Canada, Australia, India, New Zealand, large areas in Africa -- all pink. All enrolled in the greatest empire the world has ever known.
At the heart of this empire was little Britain, an insignificant collection of islands with a population at that time of no more than 50 million.
There was no official policy to brainwash us into Britishness. We simply accepted that we lived in the best country in the world.
We were governed by the Mother of all Parliaments, the rock of true democracy. Our laws served as a model of justice for all.
At the time I was sitting in that classroom, glancing at the wall map with its generous splashes of pink, a chap called Adolf Hitler was trying to impose his rule on Europe, and perhaps the world.
And little Britain, under the leadership of its inspirational Prime Minister Winston Churchill, was the bulwark of freedom, gallantly standing up to the hordes of fascist storm troopers seeking to destroy civilized life.
In the early 1940s patriotism was fashionable. We were all proud to be British.
Now, according to a poll featured in the Daily Mail a week ago, a quarter of Britain's population think that Winston Churchill never existed.
One in four says that Churchill is a mythical figure. The confusion could arise from the TV adverts for an insurance company called Churchill, which feature a jowly talking dog.
Many of those polled also thought that the Duke of Wellington and author Charles Dickens were also fictional characters.
On the other hand they thought that the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes was a real person.
The poll suggests that young Britons lack basic historical knowledge.
However, a leading British educational institution recommended this month that patriotism should not be part of school lessons because British history is "morally ambiguous."
The Institute of Education said that loyalty to Britain should not be part of history and citizenship lessons. Teachers should not encourage pride in what are considered to be great events in the story of Britain because more shameful aspects of the nation's history, such as imperialism and involvement in the slave trade, may be downplayed.
Mindful of the large number of immigrants from all parts of the world that have settled in Britain, Gordon Brown's government is eager to use citizenship lessons to encourage pride in being British and a sense of belonging to the country.
The prime minister said, "There is a golden thread that intertwines the unshakeable British commitment to liberty with another very British idea: that of duty and social responsibility."
But the institute's report counters, "It is hard to think of a national history free from the blights of warmongering, imperialism, tyranny, injustice, slavery and subjugation, or a national identity forged without recourse to exclusionary and xenophobic stereotypes."
The institute's comments brought a flood of responses to news Web sites from people in most parts of the world -- most of them in favor of the teaching of patriotism.
"Great Britain has a lot to be proud of," said one. "They discovered Natural Rights, which is as important as the Greeks' discovery of Democracy."
Yesterday the Archbishop of Canterbury, the nation's leading churchman, triggered another flood of antagonistic Web site comment when he said that the adoption of some Sharia law in the U.K. seemed "unavoidable."
Dr. Rowan Williams, head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, said on BBC Radio 4 that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law could help social cohesion. For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court.
He pointed out that some citizens do not relate to the British legal system.
Williams' views were attacked by politicians from all parties and by community relations officials.
Home Office Minister Tony McNulty said, "To ask us to fundamentally change the rule of law and to adopt Sharia law, I think, is fundamentally wrong."
For the Conservatives, shadow community cohesion minister Baroness Warsi, who hails from the same Yorkshire town in which I went to school, said the archbishop's comments were "unhelpful." "Dr. Williams seems to be suggesting that there should be two systems of law, running alongside each other, almost parallel, and for people to be offered the choice of opting into one or the other. That is unacceptable."
Trevor Phillips, who chairs the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said, "The implication that British courts should treat people differently based on their faith is divisive and dangerous."
The old British certainties have dissolved into the sands of time in the 65 years that have elapsed since I gazed at that classroom wall map with its abundance of imperialistic pink.
The nation that established citizens' rights with a 13th-century charter, the land that gave birth to the Industrial Revolution and became a leader in international trade is no longer cockily confident of its place in the world.
Citizens do not instinctively stand to attention when the national anthem is played. The likeliest candidates to brandish the national flag are football fans.
A recent article by Michael Leung in Australia's newspaper, The Age, would strike a chord with many a 21st-century Briton.
It's Australia Day and all the flags and words are flying in the breeze," wrote Leung. "It is a day of fantasy, because nobody really seems to understand what it's all about and nobody seems to care too much, either. Perhaps it suits the temperament of the bewildering Australian landmass that the national song, the national day and the national flag are all rather wonky and not up to the task of nationalism somehow, and seem quite naturally and pleasantly just a bit insignificant.
The citizens, in their wisdom, seem mostly content with this quaintly ramshackle situation, sensing that the failure of earnest nationalism to take root in Australia is a blessing that constitutes for them a very special and delightful freedom.
Many Australians regard their flag and song and national day, not so much with awe, but rather, a casual, bemused affection, in the way that we may regard an eccentric uncle or a peculiar spinster aunty. They are ours but they are not us.
Would Britain perhaps be a friendlier, more hospitable country if more of its citizens shared this bemused attitude to patriotic flag waving?
Might the nation rediscover its "soul"?
See also
Being British
A beacon to the world
Teaching nationalism
Brown: Why I support British history museum
Stop endless lessons about Nazis. Tell us our national story instead
Readers please email comments
to: editorial AT
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