Instilling 21st Century Britishness
In light of Labour’s poor Local Government results, Gordon Brown has returned to the theme of establishment parties inhabiting the political ground of a patriotic Britishness. In the Sunday Times, Lord Skidelsky argues that one way to instill this is to teach a historical narrative in schools rather than the present disjointed “Henrys and Hitler” approach. Lesley White spends time with the youth of a British religious minority, Muslims, to see what identity they are forging for themselves. She argues they are a confident, dynamic group generally at ease with the society they are in.
Conor Gillespie
given that you “associate” with “educated” and “conscientious” people I would expect you to adopt the classical sense of any words you care to deploy – as you did so eloquently when discussing Rhodes.
Siochan
the pomposity of that sentence alone must raise a smile.
Pakman,
Step outside of your comfortable Orange Order Lodge for a second and you’ll see that the vast majority of your former colonies despise the legacy that you brats left in their countries. Republics are not a British invention and chances are they would have occurred on their own. To think otherwise demonstrates a euro-centric bias. BTW what was pompous about pointing out that most ex-british colonies look at your role in their history as a negative thing?
Siochan
first Conor Gillespie claims I vote BNP and now you assume I’m an Orange man. Would you feel more comfortable if I were?
Name the former colonies and the despised legacy.
What’s the point of your remarks on republics?
Cromwell,
“given that you “associate” with “educated” and “conscientious” people I would expect you to adopt the classical sense of any words you care to deploy”
You do know that when you put half of the words of your sentence in quotes it often detracts from the irony that you are probably trying to convey (: And when I said that I was using the word ‘Troll’ in a classical sense I meant three things i.e. that you probably live under a bridge, eat passing billy-goats, and get your news from a British National Party pamphlet. And thats no ‘cheap jibe.’ Your opinions concearning the role of the British Empire in world history actually do mirror the views expressed on their website.
Pakman,
“What’s the point of your remarks on republics?”
you claimed that a possitive effect of the BE was that those countires who had been conquered eventually constructed republican style governments.
Pakman,
“Name the former colonies and the despised legacy.”
Try the Republic of Ireland for starters Paky.
Siochan
no I didn’t.
I made no reference to republics; only to Westminster style democracy.
Now there are 53 members of the Commonwealth. If you take out the UK and add in Burma and Ireland that means that there are 54 former colonies of the British Empire. You claimed that the “vast majority of your former colonies despise the legacy that you brats [sic] left”.
Pick 28 of them for a simple majority and tell me what they despise.
Conor Gillespie
ah, the old BNP jibe again.
Go to bed. I suspect you have school in the morning.
Siochan
“Paky” ? The mask slips.
I understand that the Republic of Ireland has issues with its’ past although its’ legal system, banking system and parliamentary democracy are all still recognisably “British”.
We are still quite a distance from your “vast majority”.
“ah, the old BNP jibe again. Go to bed. I suspect you have school in the morning.”
no cheap jibes for you eh? just good old fashioned imperial apology right?
Siochan,
paky? bit of a freudian slip there pal. maybe you should be talking to cromwell here about the glories of Cecile Rhodes philosophy. just kiding pal.
That would be Cecil Rhodes the “dick”?
no that would be cecile rhodes the cultural imperialialist. as Freud would say, close but still no cigar pakman.
Conor Gillespie
Two references to Freud (and a cigar) within five minutes!! Hmmm…
BTW no “e” on the end of Cecil.
I find it truly enlightening that those who jump at any opportunity to demonise everything British accuse someone who believes the empire was on balance a good thing of membership of a fascist white-supremacist mob, while ignoring the one post I noticed on this thread that implied minority races are something inherently un-English.
“English, Scots, Welsh, Irish, Pakistani’s, Indians, Bangladeshi’s, Afro-Carribean’s etc – non of whom would call themselves British”
Which aside from being a complete and blatant lie, has disturbingly racialist undertones. In fact it even makes it look to me like the recent rise in English nationalism could possibly be related to the fact that ethnic minorities (in England) are much more comfortable describing themselves as British than English – a new way of defining them and us. Then again, as long as they’re having a go at Britishness we can overlook that, can’t we?
The connection between the two references to Freud and the cigar joke was pretty obviously implied pakman.
Thanks for the correction regarding Cecil.
Beano,
to be honest I didn’t even notice that post. Yah, that’s pretty scary stuff. pakman, I take it ALL back.
Pakman,
“I made no reference to republics; only to Westminster style democracy.”
I don’t think that the Australian Aboriginals who lost their land to British colonists before being driven back to the most uninhabitable regions of their former country were so thrilled about the declaration of a ‘Westminster style government’ by a country they didn’t even run anymore.
Pakman,
I was reading some of the earlier posts that you and Conor made and I was appaled: do you really have “a lot of time for Oliver Cromwell??”
The British Empire truely ended with the ‘hand over’ or should that be ‘hands up’ in Hong Kong in 1997.The people in Macau were all given Portuguese passports when their turn came.
Most kids in Britain today couldn’t tell you anything about the Empire today.
There was one group that didn’t welcome its end. The Indians who lived in its territories outside of India. I know one Tamil from Malaysia who is more British than the British but he will never be given a British passport!
You have tea time in Ireland and there is no such thing as an Irish sandwich.
There has always been two nations in England.When people say the British,they really mean the Tories.
One thing that always intrigued me about teh whole British-ness thing was the facility with which people could become British, or English, or Irish, or Afro-Caribbean or whatever. For example, a case of football violence in Europe involving Scottish fans tended to be described as just that: Scottish football hooligans. Whereas English fans were often described as British, although I am not saying that this was done to share the blame or anything. Likewise, the inclusion of U2 as a “British” band whenever certain magazines decide to run best British albums of all time lists. My favourite incidence of this was a while back when an ITV reporter was interviewing Samuel L Jackson. Sam was having difficulty with the news that his co-star in Swat, Colin Farrell, was in fact British. ITV interviewer KateThornton asked Jackson just how he was getting on with “our” Colin.
Jackson, not one to mince his words, wasted no time in setting the record straight.
The interview played out like this:
Thornton: “What was it like working with Colin? ‘Cos he is just so hot in the UK right now…”
Jackson: “He’s pretty hot in the US, too!”
Thornton: “Yeah, but he is one of our own.”
Jackson: “Isn’t he from Ireland?”
Thornton: “Yeah, but we can claim him, ‘cos Ireland is beside us.”
Jackson: “You see, that’s your problem right there. You British keep claiming people that don’t belong to you. We had that problem here in America too. It was called slavery.”
Nice one Sam. And without meaning to add any further fuel to the marvellously childish row between Conor and Pakman, might I remind Pakman that when it comes to slavery, Oliver Cromwell transported the surviving women and children of Drogheda to the West Indies as slaves.
manfarang,
“When people say the British,they really mean the Tories.”
Well Pakman, at least we can both agree that this claim is a right pack of bollocks. (:
Donnacha,
You missed out the key conclusion to the conversation:
KT: Well Colin is a very well paid slave.
SLJ: Ok good.
KT: As are you.
SLJ: Yeah all right.
Which sort of puts it in perspective, and makes you think a bit about the image of the British Empire. It is roundly condemned by most, including most English (see how much mumbling you get if you ask any of them about it – other than a few starry-eyed grannies and mental blokes with shaved heads).
However, the legacy of Empire has proved remarkably endearing in the former colonies. It’s like the bad bits (political and militatry occupation/oppression) are now gone, but the good bits (tea, cricket, papers) have remained. The fact that almost all the ex-colonies are friendly to Britain, or members of the Commonwealth, suggests that the past was not all bad and, especially, that the bad bits are now in the past and only the good remains. That’s what is left to be proud of about being British – a shared set of values and cultural identifiers throughout the world. As Britain itself gets an increasing number of immigrants, this trend will only increase.
I’m proud to be British, not for the various wars and colonisations or any perceived value these may have had (and not all were bad); but rather for the values and institutions that have survived and new ones being created that bind me to a large number of people outside of these Islands.
Are you too young to remember Enoch Powell, Siochan?
The history of the British Empire is a catalogue of some the worst deeds and acts humanity is capable of: genocide, murder, rape, starvation, drug dealing and slave trading, plunder and even ecological carnage in Australia.
The ‘orderly end of empire’ has resulted in the instability in the middle east. Who ruled Iraq and Palastine? Burmah’s current problems directly stem from British rule. The partition of India wasn’t particularly orderly.
Westminster style democracy? Why then did Hong Kong not have universal suffrage at the handover back to China.
Why didn’t Hong Kong have universal suffrage BEFORE the handover, Fraggle?
at/before… same thing. HK never had universal suffrage under British rule.
Quote “Oliver Cromwell transported the surviving women and children of Drogheda to the West Indies as slaves.”
LOL, obviously you haven’t been over to ATW lately. They’re still advocating that method of dealing with the Catholic population of Northern Ireland.
One point about colonialism is the context of it – it seems that the way of things when colonialsm got going in the 18th and 19th centuries was that you either got into it, or got colonised yourself!
So Britain was unlikely to have held back and, being an island, was able to put more resources into it than those on the continent who had to maintain large armies to deter/invade one another. The only serious competitor to Britain might have been the US, but they had their own internal colonising to do and weren’t really powerful enough until it was virtually too late to join in.
If Britain hadn’t got into colonising, then Britain (and Ireland) would likely have ended up colonies of some other power. Not that this excuses colonialism, but it does put it into context. Below is the key quote from the article:
“I have always been struck by the opening sentence of L P Hartley’s novel The Go-Between: “The past is a foreign country — they do things differently there.” The great thing about history is that it releases us from the tyranny of the present. Through its study one learns that at other times people thought and felt differently in many ways from what they do today, not that they were wrong, just different. This saves us from the hubris of believing that the latest beliefs are always correct.”
Another interesting point is about ethnic/religious minorities defining themselves as Molem-British, Black-British. It is always British, never English. Although in Scotland or Wales (or Ireland), then you could be Black-Scottish etc.
Does this mean that “English” only exists as an ethnicity and not as a nationality? Is this a fault of the government for promoting regionalism, except in the case of England which is supposed to remain British. Or is there a fear of opening the Pandora’s box of England as a nation – with the resulting removal of the (labour) heartlands of Wales and Scotland.
If the English are to remain an ethnicity and not a nation, what is their future? It seems that one aim is to reclaim “British” as a term for all on the Islands. If the immigrant communities, which are overwhelmingly based in England, refer to themselves as British then by extentsion, maybe the other, more established, ethnic groups (Scottish, Welsh, English) could see themselves as British too. So “England” will be no more. Just the larger of the many British groups residing on these isles.
“However, the legacy of Empire has proved remarkably endearing in the former colonies. It’s like the bad bits (political and militatry occupation/oppression) are now gone, but the good bits (tea, cricket, papers) have remained.”
Liking football does not endear you the Empire, and your whole post is one of the most patronising things I’ve ever read, there.
As ever this thread has degenerated into Britain and Britishness bashing. To contextualise the empire using 21st Century standards of human rights, racism and interstate politics is a tad unfair.
Now I am in no way saying that the empire’s record is not littered with racial stereotyping, profiteering and over zealous use of military force, but they were common place at the time and in terms of 17th, 18th and 19th century perspectives the UK was one of the most liberal states out there, especially amongst the larger powers.
In the 20th Century look at the other types of empire that were being pushed from other powers, Nazism in Germany – illustrated by the Final solution and Belson, aggressive nationalistic empire building in Japan – illustrated by the rape of Nanking, Soviet social engineering in the east – Gulags and 20 million killed before the second world war, and Italian fascism – crap hats and a penchant for running away with white flags raised.
In terms of its contemporaries the British empire was a shining light of virtue and tolerance, and only by having an empire was Britain able to face down (with allies – the biggest of which being an ex colony) the might of Germanic aggression twice (both times Irish Republicans have sided with Germany) and left the world with a liberal democratic character rather than a fascists one.
Kensei,
Liking football does not endear you to the Empire. Obviously! I think that I tried to suggest that the bad things are gone, but some good lingers on. Or can there be no good, ever?
These are supposed to be points for discussion, but your post reminds me how full of hate some have become that discussion is not possible, only cheap insults. Man not ball anyone?
Beano -
“I find it truly enlightening that those who jump at any opportunity to demonise everything British accuse someone who believes the empire was on balance a good thing of membership of a fascist white-supremacist mob, while ignoring the one post I noticed on this thread that implied minority races are something inherently un-English.
“English, Scots, Welsh, Irish, Pakistani’s, Indians, Bangladeshi’s, Afro-Carribean’s etc – non of whom would call themselves British”
Which aside from being a complete and blatant lie, has disturbingly racialist undertones. In fact it even makes it look to me like the recent rise in English nationalism could possibly be related to the fact that ethnic minorities (in England) are much more comfortable describing themselves as British than English – a new way of defining them and us. Then again, as long as they’re having a go at Britishness we can overlook that, can’t we? ”
I agree completely – “English’s” racial-segregatory nonsense contrasts sharply with for example what is said in the actual article (have any of the various critics including “English” actually read it?!) :
————————-
Rimla Akhtar is a tall, powerfully built young woman in a navy tracksuit with a Union Jack on the front and “United Kingdom” printed on the back. You get the feeling she wears it a lot. Rimla is captain of the British women’s futsal team, futsal being an indoor, five-a-side form of football, played by Brazilian baby footie stars and women with veils. Hers was the first team from a non-Muslim country to compete in the Islamic Women’s Games in Tehran, playing in both 2001 (they came last in their group) and 2005 (ditto, but hopes are high), where they played bare-headed in T-shirts and shorts, because all men are barred, even from spectating. They were easily outclassed by the well-trained and well-funded Muslim countries, but Rimla and her bouncy vice-captain, Aisha, are driven to improve.
Today a female coach from the Football Association is teaching 12 women to dribble and kick in a school sports hall. This is the first in a series of national “tasting sessions” organised by the Muslim Women’s Sports Foundation, chaired by Rimla, inviting women to try five sports including futsal. “In Islam you will be answerable for your body,” she says, “so you have to look after it. One of the Prophet’s wives, Aisha, raced with him every week, and they competed to beat each other. I love sport, so why can’t I do something to help keep our women healthy, and make them proud to be British?”
————————-
What does it mean to say of an entire people “they should be ashamed”?
What would count as evidence?
Thousands walking around, heads hanging? Weeping in the streets?
When did a nation last express shame for anything?
Have Irish people never done anything, anything at all to be ashamed of? Mythologising terrorists perhaps? Encouraging generation after generation to believe that another nation was utterly, irredeemably bad?
DK
I think that the reason why you don’t hear the people describing themselves as Black-English, Muslim-English etc. is because England has nothing on a political level for people to attatch themselves to whereas the other nations do. England only exists on a sporting level and until that changes there will be confusion between what British means and what being English means. In a sporting context what is English and what isn’t is clearly defined and people of all colours and creeds get behind our teams accordingly. Politically Englishness will remain a blurred concept until England has her own political institutions.
Nick J
“(with allies – the biggest of which being an ex colony)”
really? When was the Soviet Union, or Russia for that matter, a colony of Britain? Or are you using some other definition of ‘biggest’?
Being a part of the alliance to defeat Nazism does not excuse Britain all it’s various crimes against humanity. Being better than Nazis doesn’t necessarily make you good.
Britain was not a shining light of virtue and tolerance to those killed and raped in Kenya, those addicted to British opium in china, those west africans who died in slavery in the Caribbean or the Tasmanians who, as a race, were all but wiped out in one of history’s most complete genocides, the remnants of Tasmanian aboriginals being decended from rape-victims.
Those who claim to be proud of the British Empire should look into the history and reality of it and be ashamed.
6) orderly end of Empire – no British Dien Bien Phu.
1. IRISH WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 1919- 1922 (enough said here)
2. Kenya ‘Emergency’ 1952-1960 (20,000 died in combat. 100,000 died in ‘detention’ [concentration] camps. 32 white settlers died)
Thrown off their best land and deprived of political rights, the Kikuyu started to organise – some of them violently – against colonial rule. The British responded by driving up to 320,000 of them into concentration camps(3). Most of the remainder – over a million – were held in “enclosed villages”. Prisoners were questioned with the help of “slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging until death, pouring paraffin over suspects who were then set alight, and burning eardrums with lit cigarettes.”(4) British soldiers used a “metal castrating instrument” to cut off testicles and fingers. “By the time I cut his balls off,” one settler boasted, “he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket”(5). The soldiers were told they could shoot anyone they liked “provided they were black”(6). Elkins’s evidence suggests that over 100,000 Kikuyu were either killed by the British or died of disease and starvation in the camps. David Anderson documents the hanging of 1090 suspected rebels: far more than the French executed in Algeria(7). Thousands more were summarily executed by soldiers, who claimed they had “failed to halt” when challenged.
3. Aden 1964-1967 (the city was founded in the basin of an extinct volcano. In one atrocity, British snipers lined the top of the crater and for 5 hours, shot anything that moved on the streets, man, woman, child)
4. Malaya – 1950′s Fighting against communism. Foreign Office correspondence described the war as being fought “in defence of [the] rubber industry”, then controlled by British and European companies.
Collective punishments were inflicted on villages for aiding insurgents. A shoot-to-kill policy was promoted, tens of thousands of people were removed into “new villages” and used as cheap labour, and British soldiers had themselves photographed holding guerrillas’ decapitated heads. The idea that the revolt was ended through “winning hearts and minds” is a myth; it was crushed by overwhelming force, such as massive aerial bombing.
5. Oman 1957 – The British army commander in Oman later noted that “great pains were taken throughout the Command to keep all operational actions out of the press”.
systematic bombing of civilian targets such as water supplies and farms. These attacks “would deter dissident villages from gathering their crops” and ensure “denial of water”, officials stated in private. Bombing was intended to “show the population the power of weapons at our disposal” and to convince them that “resistance will be fruitless and lead only to hardship”.
Indeed it was an orderly end of empire…..
I blame the whole thing on the closure of the Antwerp markets to the English mid 16th Century. It meant they had money and ships, but nowhere to go.
Fraggle
Obviously not biggest in terms of deaths, but in terms of leand lease – about $50 billion and also amount spent on the war effort.
(not sure how to do links http://members.aol.com/forcountry/ww2/wc1.htm
Also looks a bit of a shonky website, perhaps others can find out how much the war cost the individual allies.)
Your lists of wrongdoing is of course unaceptable, but in global terms, the alternative were far more oppresive, rascist and overpowering empires.
The fact that Britain was the best of a bad bunch may not be a reason to celebrate, but it was still the best, and that is shown today by those states who still have very British institutions and links, whether, culturally, economically or politicall with the UK
The point about the end of empire being a disorderly scramble is very true, especially here in Ireland where the whole process of small countries freeing themselves from the European empires, especially the British one, really began.
An undisciplined out of control general staff accustomed to think of themselves as above the law had made such a good job of ‘divide and conquer’in India , Iraq, the Pacific Islands, large parts of Africa, the Far East and elsewhere that they had to ignore natural boundaries in some places and impose unworkable borders in others.
One thing they have learned however is to get out quickly when they do start withdrawing. In Cyprus they were assuring the local population that they were staying up til 2 years before their retreat which was an improvement on India where they took all of six months.
Now that demilitarisation is becoming a fact of life and British fronts like the UDA are being terminated with prejudice can it be long before the end?
Nick, I think the true cost to each country was in lives, not $$$.
http://www.faqfarm.com/Q/How_many_soldiers_were_killed_in_World_War_2
Nick J,
“…those states who still have very British institutions…”
…like the large and increasing number of countries which have embraced republicanism? Don’t forget that even those parts of the ‘white Empire’ such as Canada and Australia which the Brits regarded as being especially close were ready to vote for Britain’s exclusion from the Commonwealth in the 80′s over Margaret Thatcher’s attachment to the South African apartheid regime – another British legacy, by the way.
Nick J,
I forgot to mention that the only reason why the Commonwealth hangs on at all is because the Brits fund it in a desperate effort to claim an influence they no longer have in the real world.
lib2016: I forgot to mention that the only reason why the Commonwealth hangs on at all is because the Brits fund it in a desperate effort to claim an influence they no longer have in the real world.
So do you reckon it os open to a buyout by the French or the Russians then? How much would it cost?
Lib2016
‘the Brits fund it in a desperate effort to claim an influence they no longer have in the real world.’
Balls
‘The Secretariat and its activities are supported by an assessed budget and two specialised funds. The assessed budget, to which all full members are obliged to members contribute, covers the Secretariat’s core functions, such as organisation of Commonwealth summits, ministerial meetings, and promotion of consultations on political, economic and social matters.’
http://www.thecommonwealth.org/Templates/FAQs.asp?NodeID=20706&int1stParentNodeID=20596#skipTo33535
Oh and Mozambique (an ex portuguese colony) was admitted in 1995 as well, which shows how everybody hates the Brits (the bastards).
PHIL :I think that the reason why you don’t hear the people describing themselves as Black-English, Muslim-English etc. is because England has nothing on a political level for people to attatch themselves to whereas the other nations do.
Another possibility is that immigrants, and maybe the first generation after that, would see themselves as British initially. Later generations, with the accents, and the common interests, and the friendships, would be much more likely to see themselves as English. (Just need to stop the racists from setting the agenda)
“Liking football does not endear you to the Empire. Obviously! I think that I tried to suggest that the bad things are gone, but some good lingers on. Or can there be no good, ever?
These are supposed to be points for discussion, but your post reminds me how full of hate some have become that discussion is not possible, only cheap insults. Man not ball anyone? ”
Man? I didn’t mention you.
Essentially, what you are saying is that the bad stuff doesn’t matter because, well, the colonies all love that we gave them tea and cricket and football. And the bad lingers on a smuch as the goood – cf Africa, Ireland, Israel…
Hate? I have no hate, I just find the suggestion that because a lot of former colonies have managed to get past the oppressive past Britain fostered on them and that because they like tea and football or cricket that makes th Empire ok stupifyingly patronising. We civilised all those savages.
Was the Empire all bad? No, and some of it’s acheivements, particularly in engineering, were indeed great. But that does not balance or expunge the fact that a great deal of the world’s problems today have root in the Empire, or the amount of blood on the Union Jack.
I’d like to see a mature view, and an appreciation of how different the Empire looked from the natives perspective. I just see no evidence of it, merely attempts to dress the thing up as a Glorious past and people have said that repeatedly on this thread, and you are not listening.
So do you reckon it os open to a buyout by the French or the Russians then? How much would it cost?
I’m sure they won’t waste the cash.
But seriously, if it ended tomoroow, would anyone care?
Reader,
I’ve read that the members of ethnic minorities in Britain do consider themselves ‘British’ rather than ‘English’. The nature of ‘Britishness’ seems to be changing although previous comments on this board and elsewhere seem to agree that there is a ‘from the top down’ element where the old British identity was constructed and imposed from above as a part of building the Empire.
This contrasts with, for example, Irishness or Englishness which is a more people-based thing. It’s going to be interesting to see what emerges – Wales now has so many inhabitants with English roots that independence is a lost cause which the Brits are trying to kill with kindness. The contrast between state support for the Welsh language and support for the Irish language is very instructive.