Home >> Europe >> Great Britain

     Email   Print 

Britishness I: Testing Times For British Identity

Kevin Massy - 10/20/2005

On November 1 this year, the British Government will phase in citizenship tests for all new immigrants to the UK. The tests are aimed at ensuring that those wishing to be naturalized British citizens meet certain minimum requirements on English language proficiency, cultural awareness, and knowledge of British government practices.

In the aftermath of the London bombings, and the revelation that the perpetrators were not imported Jihadists, but legitimate British citizens, there has been much soul-searching into the nature of what it means to be British. The concepts of integration and multiculturalism – never far beneath the surface of the British sociological consciousness – have been revisited with renewed urgency, and what Tony Blair calls the "Britishness Test" is a broad attempt to define a certain set of unifying national characteristics.

In a speech to the British Council last year, Mr Blair's heir apparent, Gordon Brown, said that the only way to meet the economic and security challenges facing the UK was for British citizens to recognise the "shared values that bind them together" and for those in the UK to realise "who we are as a country".

Mr Brown said he envisaged a “golden thread” running through the Britain of past and present, binding its citizens together with a “strong sense of duty and fair play”. Michael Howard and Trevor Phillips, leader of the opposition Conservative party and the Chairman for the Commission for Racial Equality respectively – and the two unlikeliest of political bedfellows – both plump for the less poetic, but essentially similar “core of Britishness” sound-byte to deliver the same message.

So much has this conservative doctrine of a common Britishness taken hold, that the erstwhile darling of the sociologist – multiculturalism – is now a dirty word to whisper in dark corners; according to Mr Phillips, the m-word is now a divisive and outmoded ideal that “suggests separateness”.

The concept of a single British identity provides a convenient political bargaining position for the lawmakers at Westminster. Traditionalists are mollified by a doctrine which endorses good old British values, Rule Britannia, and Pimms and lemonade, while those who would feel at the margins are welcomed in under the Union Jack umbrella.

From the government's perspective, the new citizenship test – complete with a ceremony of swearing allegiance to the Queen and receipt of a commemorative medal – is intended to prepare any newcomers for entry into the proudly unified Britain. Through the implementation of the tests, Britons of every stripe are being told they are a people united by a set of common values which they all share.

But how much will this arbitrary set of entry conditions change things? Will it ensure that all newcomers to the UK feel a sense of common ground with existing citizens? And how will the new legislation affect integration and acceptance of existing immigrant minorities in the UK?
History suggests that the new tests will not be the panacea the government is hoping for.

In 1999 and 2000 the then secretary of state for culture, Chris Smith was making very similar noises to those being made today. He spoke of people “imagining Britishness from a profoundly more inclusive point of view”, and hailed of a reappraisal of British identity “through more than one pair of eyes”.

Five years on, Mr Smith has changed his tack and concedes that Britishness is “almost impossible to define”. While he is still a staunch advocate of cultural integration, he thinks that there is little point in aiming for a single national identity.

“You will never and should never aim for everyone from different cultures and ethnic backgrounds to assimilate under an identikit British model,” he says. “Let’s have a varied culture, but let’s have some common principles.”

Mr Smith, who was a member of Tony Blair's original cabinet, says that Trevor Phillips is “right and wrong” in the abandonment of multiculturalism in favour of a one-Britain policy.

“If we accept [George] Orwell’s vision of the Britain of cricket on the village green, we must also include African writers, Asian music and the Notting Hill carnival,” says Mr Smith . “The traditional icons of British culture – fish and chips, warm beer and church clocks – are now only a small part of it.”

However, while the politicians quibble over the integrative policy du jour, there are those who are less convinced that any discussion on shared British identity is valid without first consulting the people most likely to be affected or to disagree.

Dr Andrew Thompson, senior history lecturer at the university of Leeds, thinks the claim of universal British identity bears a little more interrogation before it can be taken seriously.

“There is a danger of metropolitan politicians and media types telling communities how they feel that they’re British or how they should feel that they’re British,” he says.

Through a series of in-depth interviews conducted with Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani communities in the Ashton and Hyde districts of Manchester, Dr Thompson and his team at Leeds have conducted research specifically into Asian views of Britishness, principally in the respondents’ first language.

“The idea of core British values is an empty one unless we ask Asian people what their perceptions of these are, and what aspects of their culture and religion they feel need to be recognised and accepted,” says Dr Thompson. “I think before we get to that stage we actually need to hear from these communities themselves what Britishness means to them.”

Will their views chime in with Orwell and former prime minister John Major in their affection for a Britain of long shadows on country grounds and old maids cycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist? Will they feel an affinity with the Britain of Empire and royal heritage? Or will they turn up a whole new perspective on what it is to be British?

The Leeds research is a pioneering study, but by necessity is narrow in its remit. Although it gives a valuable insight into Asian perspective on Britishness, it does not consider members of the other ethnic minorities who between them count for nearly five million Britons.

Before anyone can start generalising about a common British identity and a collective sense of identity in the UK, the views of this significant section of the population surely need to be heard and considered.

The following four articles are an attempt to gauge the feelings of members of Britain’s ethnic and religious minorities who have hitherto been spoken for by others. Addressing a range of fundamental issues, from nationalism and patriotism to feelings on civil responsibilities and representation, they constitute an investigation into the validity of a common British identity through the views and experiences of those at the heart of the debate.