A "Britain Day" To Strengthen British Identity?
I’m not sure what to think about the idea of a “Britain Day“, currently being pushed by Ruth Kelly (Communities Secretary) and Liam Byrne (Immigration Minister). What, precisely, would it’s point be? Ruth Kelly says that “[t]he point of it would be to celebrate the contribution that we all make to society.” But why does that need a specific day to do so, and how does that point even connect specifically with Britain?
I support the idea because we should celebrate the history of our nation, though we have to be careful that if we say Britain, we deal with British historical events [after all, Britain is only 300 years old, having been formed by the Act of Union in 1707] - or at least ones that affected the entire British Isles then and since. What event(s) should we pick? The date of the Act of Union itself? But that was not particularly popular at the time anywhere, and caused “rioting in the streets of Edinburgh and almost every town from Inverness to the borders.” And most historical events which most people immediately think of with these things were English victories, not British ones - well, either that or Empire-related, and that wouldn’t be allowed by the PC mob. Picking the wrong event would be disastrous to the whole idea, as it would automatically make it appear that Britain is nothing more than an extension of England, which it is not, and cannot be.
As much as I like the idea of day in which being British is celebrated, I’m not sure if there is actually any point to it. Being British isn’t something that should need to be created through a specific day’s celebrations. It should be part of who and what you are. And the best way for this to happen is for it to be taught in school, primarily, but not exclusively, in History lessons. We should teach our children to be proud of their nation’s past - Empire included. No-one can argue that what Britain did was perfect by our moral standards, but neither can they argue that Empire was not an essential period of history, and in fact it was the extreme speed with which the era of Empire ended/was forced to end that did more damage than colonialism itself. If we taught our children that British history is something to be proud of, we wouldn’t need a “British Day”, especially if immigrants to Britain decided to integrate with our customs.
In the end, however, I think that I have to come down as pro a “Britain Day” - but only if the right date is chosen for the right reason, and it is not allowed to be high-jacked by extremist groups of any persuasion. Any “Britain Day” must be for every person living in Great Britain, regardless of race, ethnicity, origin, religion, or anything else. We should fly the Union Flag* with pride, and not use it as a mark of exclusivity, but of inclusiveness.
* It’s not the Union Jack unless it’s on a ship.
Sources: BBC, The Telegraph
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Hmmm, TD, “celebrate” our history? Surely, to “know” it is as much as we can hope for, and even then there is the question of whether all history is in fact interpretation.
As for essential stages of history, that almost sounds Marxist. As someone with relatives by marriage in Vietnam, I’ll need a bit more persuading that it was the end of Empire that was to blame for the dim light in which empires are now seen. What do you think forced this ending?
All history is interpretation, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not right. By “celebrate” I meant more “not degenerate” than throw a party. The problem is that the history of the British Empire is seldom taught with the good points of the Empire being stressed - such as the slave trade is taught a a bad thing, yet the fact that Britain was the first major nation to outlaw it, and then stopped others from trading in slaves, is ignored or just skipped over.
No, Marxist history focuses on class. If you can’t say that the class system made it happen, most Marxist historians aren’t bothered about it. I was referring primarily to Africa rather than South-east Asia, and especially Vietnam, since there there was interference after the empires left.
India came out of the Empire in a good shape because there was already a home-grown civil service in place by the time the British left, and because when it had been taken into the British Empire, it was already pretty much a whole piece. Africa, on the other hand, didn’t have any of this. Countries were formed based on how far one army could get, with little or no attention paid to the traditional organisation of the land. Due to the speed at which the era of Empire ended, Africa was not re-drawn to take account of these “tribal” and cultural differences, leading to genocides, such as the Tutsis and the Hutus. And this speed also meant that there was no professional civil service set up in much of Africa, leading to dictatorships.
The speed of the end of the eras of Empire can be put down primarily to the effects of the World Wars, both of which weakened the European Empires and strengthened America and weakened the Empires in their colonies whenever they lost a battle. It meant that the white man lost his aura of invincibility. Because America was anti-colonial due to its history as a colony, it put a lot of effort into “national self-determination” and the like.
Right, I now see what you mean about celebration/non-denigration. I would echo your call for a rounded presentation of history.
I’m still not sure about the “good parts” of Empire though. French actions in Indochina were deliberately calculated to destroy Vietnamese culture and hence morale. The course of action was brutal, but I have no reason to believe it was atypical. Surely your comments about the effect on Africa of the colonial powers’ withdrawal are an implicit indictment of the way conquered territory was administered in the decades before withdrawal? However, I share your view of the way in which local political systems were simply ignored during the initial conquest.
I am also cautious about your concluding paragraph: surely, the world wars did weaken the various imperial powers. Yet isn’t it less a case of “the white man losing his aura of invincibility”, and more a case of the various independence movements simply redressing the imbalance in military equipment.
And I believe that American involvement in Vietnam arose out of their desire to prop up the French regime, admittedly as a bulwark against Communism. In practice, at least in that part of the world, it was hardly anti-colonial in its actions.
BTW, a minor point: according to my limited understanding of Marxism, I thought states had to go through stages, e.g. you couldn’t attain socialism without first necessarily going through capitalism. So the application of Marxist ideas to an agrarian empire was theoretically incorrect, let alone disastrous in practice…