Michael Gove has bravely undertaken the task of defining “Britishness”.
It was a typical politician’s knee-jerk reaction to manage the “Trojan Horse” scandal. He’s hoping that the more we argue about what constitutes Britishness, the more we will forget the actual issue.
Cameron would have us believe that said definition of Britishness will be taught in schools. Oh yes? And who will monitor it? How will it be quantified? How will it be assessed? What sanctions will there be for non-conformance? It’s a joke and I’m sure everyone can see it.
However, since he has chosen to employ this distraction, many people are joining the game of definitions. Why should I be denied the same fun? Fortunately, the answer is very simple.
- It isn’t democracy – many countries are democratic but they would never be described as having British values. France and Germany anyone?
- Rule of law? Many countries have it and some to a much greater degree.
- It isn’t economic freedom. Countries such as Malaysia and Estonia have much more than we do and no-one would describe them as British.
- Freedom of speech? Nope. Our American cousins have it enshrined in law. There’s nothing specifically British about it.
I could go on but it would be pointless, and for a very good reason. Britishness involves all of the above and more, but we don’t need to define them as part of Britishness because they all fall under the one category that does define us – fairness.
It is our belief in fairness that defines us.
We believe in the fair application of the rule of law – which is why we want the police to catch criminals and not to harass people for breaking arbitrary speed limits or quoting Winston Churchill in a built-up area.
We believe in fair economic freedom – the ability of individuals and companies to reap the benefits of their labour but without exploitation.
We believe in a fair definition of tolerance – equality for all and not a tolerance that favours one section of society over another.
Every British person knows what is and isn’t fair. It is cultural, in that it is absorbed from those around us.
It is enduring. It has been borne out of a thousand years of struggle between interests. It has allowed us to live in a largely violence-free society for centuries (Civil War notwithstanding).
Sadly, it is under threat. It is ironic that the most Europhile party – the party that would more than any other to destroy Britishness – is the one that has raised this question.
Photo by mdda 
Photo by Defence Images
Patriotism is not an optional extra
Robert Henderson
Contents
1. What is patriotism?
2. The roots of patriotism
3. Nations are tribes writ large
4. The importance of a national territory
5. The democratic value of nations
6. What the individual owes to the nation
7. The liberal internationalist
8. How to move from multiculturalism to patriotism
9 No patriotism, no enduring society
1. What is patriotism?
By patriotism I mean the sense of belonging to a people, of owning a land, having a group identity, of feeling at ease with those belonging to the group in a way which meeting those outside the group never engenders, of naturally favouring your people above foreigners, of knowing that the interests of the “tribe” must come before that of any outsider. By this definition patriotism is something which the vast majority of human beings can understand because it is not an ideology but an innate human quality whose origins lie buried deep within the evolution of social animals.
The only people who may genuinely be unable to understand patriotism are the severely mentally retarded or those with a personality disorder such as autism which reduces their ability to understand social contexts. Despite their incessant repudiation of patriotism even latterday liberals understand the pull of patriotic inclinations, although of course they would never recognise the nature of their inclinations. These drive them to live in a manner which is directly at odds with their professed ideology. Look at the life of a white liberal and you will find that they overwhelmingly arrange their lives so that they live in very white, and in England, very English worlds. They do this in two ways. They either live in an area which is overwhelmingly white – the “rightest of right-on” British folk singers Billy Bragg chooses to live in the “hideously white” and English county of Dorset – or reside in a gentrified white enclave created on the outskirts of an area such as Islington in London which has a significant ethnic content to its population– the Blairs lived there before moving to Downing Street. The latter tactic allows the white liberal to luxuriate in the faux belief that they are “living the diversity dream”, whilst in reality encountering little if any of the “joy of diversity” they are so vocally enthusiastic about. A splendid example of white liberal ghettoization is the drippingly pc TV presenter Adrian Chiles who described in a BBC programme The Colour of Friendship (18 August 2003) how he looked at his wedding photographs which were taken only a few years before and saw to his dismay and astonishment that it was in the words of the one-time BBC director-general Greg Dyke “hideously white”. With a guest list of several hundred he was unable to find a single non-white face staring out at him. The only ethnic minorities he had equal or extended contact with were those he met at work, who were of course middleclass and westernised.
The ease and near universality of understanding of patriotism sets it apart from ideologies such as Marxism and liberal internationalism. The majority of the followers of any ideology with a large number of adherents will have little understanding of it, either because they are intellectually lazy or because they lack the intellectual wherewithal to master the creed. Few Marxists have ever had a grasp of such ideological niceties as the laws of dialectics and even fewer modern liberal internationalists understand the relationship of laissez faire economic theory to historical economic reality. The tendency for those who ostensibly support an ideology to be ignorant of it beyond the grasping of a few ideas which can be reduced to slogans is greatly inflated where, as has happened with political correctness, it becomes the ideology of the ruling elite. In such circumstances people give lip service to an ideology , even if they neither understand its theoretical basis or even agree with it out of expediency, whether that be driven by fear or ambition.
Read more at
http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/patriotism-is-not-an-optional-extra/
Indeed – and the funny thing is that the continental Europeans still don’t really get it.
Kipling in his poem “Norman and Saxon” pinpoints it delightfully:
“The Saxon is not like us Normans. His manners are not so polite.But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right.
When he stands like an ox in the furrow – with his sullen set eyes on your own,
And grumbles, ‘This isn’t fair dealing,’ my son, leave the Saxon alone.”