Cross Ban Reviewed, Veil Ban Confirmed: A Bad Day For Multiculturalism

Reconsideration Of the Cross Ban, Confirmation Of the Veil Ban –

A Bad Day For Multi-Culturalism

Yesterday, BA – the UK airline – caved into the barrage of criticisms that had been directed at it for its decision on Monday (20 November) confirming that it would not allow one of its employees, Nadia Eweida, to visibly wear a cross pendant during her duties as a check-in operative. On the same day, it was reported that the school-classroom assistant, Aishah Azmi, who had been suspended from her duties for refusing to remove her full veil (niqab) in front of male teachers, had finally been sacked on the alleged grounds that her veil made communication with her pupils difficult.

I have written extensively on the veil issue, particularly during the controversy in the UK in October over calls for Muslim women not to wear the full veil (see http://blog.myspace.com/culturalcritique). On Wednesday of this week, I also discussed the case of Nadia Eweida and concluded that, while on the face of it, BA’s actions had been discriminatory, it was a complex situation and there were in fact some legitimate grounds for BA’s decision. In particular, BA’s response could be viewed as that of a Western-style ‘liberal-Christian’ organisation acting to prevent an ‘inappropriately’ overt expression of Christian faith on the part of a front-line employee: as it were, a disciplinary action carried out by individuals some of whom would consider themselves (perhaps justifiably) to be acting in a Christian way, within a ‘broadly’ Christian corporate culture, towards another Christian employee; not a monolithic secular organisation acting from outside the bounds of Christianity to clamp down on an open expression of that faith within the workplace.

What is disturbing about the fact that BA’s decision to review its uniform policy and Kirklees Council’s decision to dismiss Aishah Azmi were reported on the same day is the links that this suggests between two superficially unrelated cases. Far from being a vindication of the multi-cultural right for individuals of any faith to openly wear symbols of that faith, BA’s original decision and about-turn has been seized upon as a cause célèbre by supporters of moves to define Britain’s identity and values as Christian. And supporters of this cultural trend include many of those who have made statements criticising the full veil.

Those who have celebrated BA’s uniform-policy review have said that it puts Christians on an equal footing with Muslims at BA, who are allowed to wear the head veil (hijab) in positions such as Nadia Eweida’s. But would they say the same about the niqab, or full veil? If a BA employee had been suspended for refusing not to wear a niqab, it is clear that many of the voices that were indignant about Ms Eweida’s case would have backed BA 100%. That’s not to say that it would necessarily be appropriate for a BA check-in operative to wear the niqab; although in a genuinely multi-cultural society, what are the real reasons (not the pretexts, e.g. being able to communicate with and reassure passengers; putting off passengers who have chosen BA because it is supposed to somehow represent Britain in general) why it would not be appropriate in some circumstances?

The point is that defenders of Nadia Eweida have argued that BA does in fact symbolise Britain and that, because Britain is historically and culturally a Christian country, the company should allow its employees to wear symbols of the Christian faith which – I argued in my previous blog – associate the cross with BA’s uniform in a way that subliminally puts across the message that ‘BA is a Christian company’; or at least, ‘a company that represents a Christian country’. This point of view was quite explicitly set out in the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu’s, defence of Ms Eweida earlier in the week. The opposite is also true: that BA’s banning of open cross wearing has seen it labelled as anti-Christian and as a representative of rampant secularism.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams’, statement on the matter on Thursday was more impartial: basically, criticising BA for denying Ms Eweida a fundamental freedom to express her religious conviction openly, in this instance through the wearing of a symbol of the Christian faith. But we are not in fact talking about a private individual here, or even an employee wearing standard smart clothing of their choice when at work. We’re talking about a uniformed representative of an organisation that clearly is taken as a symbol for Britain as a whole. I would argue that what is evoked, associatively or symbolically, by a uniformed BA member of staff openly wearing a cross is quite different from what is connoted by a similar employee wearing a hijab or a Sikh turban. In the latter instances, I think how most flying passengers would react would be to think that this was an example of Britain being a tolerant, multi-cultural society that is prepared to bend uniform rules in order to allow its employees to act in a manner that is consistent with their faiths, which are minority beliefs in the UK. In the case of an employee visibly wearing a cross, many of BA’s international customers, I am sure, would think that BA had actively encouraged its employees to wear crosses to proudly testify to Britain’s status as a nation of Christian heritage, where the Christian faith is the ‘majority’ religious belief.

It is a similar – though not entirely identical – case to other organisations where uniforms directly or indirectly symbolise the British state, e.g. the army, police, emergency services, etc. I’m sure that these organisations also have uniform policies that ban the open wearing of crosses and other forms of jewellery with a symbolic function (e.g. Stars of David). But you don’t hear a chorus of demands for members of these organisations to be allowed to wear crosses openly. Why? Because – apart from pretext-type arguments around health and safety – soldiers, policemen, etc. are supposed to represent the impartiality of the state and the law to all its citizens of whatever faith; and clearly, in certain sensitive operational situations that confront the army or police, it would be detrimental for the organisation as a whole to be identified as Christian by the fact that a single individual had exercised their freedom to openly wear a cross. Similarly, I have previously argued, there may well have been unspoken security considerations of this sort behind the request made to Nadia Eweida that she wear her cross under her uniform, in order not to identify herself and her airline as Christian, thereby making herself and it more vulnerable to attack. It is consistent with such impartiality (i.e. the desire not to identify an organisation with the majority Christian constituency in the UK) for BA to ask its employees not to signal themselves – and, indeed, single themselves out – as Christian, while at the same time making a compromise that allows members of other faiths that make stricter dress-code demands of their adherents to be true to their beliefs while at work.

One of the self-appointed defenders of Ms Eweida on Thursday of this week was Jack Straw, the former UK Foreign Secretary: the same Jack Straw who sparked off the veil controversy in October by stating that he asks niqab-wearing constituents who meet him at his weekly ‘surgeries’ to remove their veils – in the presence of another woman and of their husbands – in order to facilitate better communication; and by arguing that, in general, the veil served as an impediment to better relations between the mainstream British community and the Muslim community.

Mr Straw stated on Thursday that he shared the concerns of about 100 MPs who had signed parliamentary motions calling on BA to reverse its cross ban, and he indicated that he was expressing only a personal sharing of those MPs’ concerns, not the opinion of the government, which did not have a particular position on the issue. Methinks he protests too much. Mr Straw claimed that he was expressing only a personal point of view in the original veil row; but after a succession of interventions – again, only personal – from government ministers, the prime minister eventually chimed in, stating that he thought the veil was a visible “mark of separation” between Muslims and the rest of society; thereby conveying the distinct impression that the whole controversy was a campaign deliberately orchestrated from the very top. Similarly, I think it’s almost inconceivable that Mr Straw – a close confidant of the PM – did not consult with him over what position to take with respect to the BA row and Labour MPs’ protests against BA’s actions. The two positions – defence of an individual’s right to wear an item of jewellery that symbolically associates BA with Christianity, and rejection of the full veil as something that supposedly sets Muslims apart from British society – are intimately interlinked, and are so at the highest level of our society. They are both part of a drive to reaffirm and redefine ‘common British values’ as being ‘essentially’ (one might say, fundamentally) Christian (more precisely, liberal-Christian) in a way that is increasingly intolerant to overt expressions of difference of any kind (including religious difference), which are interpreted as divisive, radical / extreme and even aggressively hostile.

This is not a victory for multi-culturalism, at least not the inclusive model of it, which does not seek to ‘officially’ identify the national culture with any one religion, while recognising the traditional pre-eminence of particular forms of belief and customs. In this instance, of course, the UK government is trying to cut it both ways: not taking an official position of support for Christianity, while it is clear what its actual position is. No, this is what I have referred to as exclusionist multi-culturalism: minority faiths and cultures must accept integration on terms dictated by the majority culture, or be excluded. And the minority and majority cultures – as the differential responses in the cases of Aishah Azmi and Nadia Eweida demonstrate – are increasingly being framed as Muslim and Christian.

Creating Britain: Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part One)

Creating Britain: Inventing Britain For the 21st Century

I was one of those who opposed Britain’s bid to host the 2012 Olympics. I felt it would involve a siphoning off of precious resources that would be better used for many other development projects – other social and infrastructure needs – throughout the UK. In addition, I could see the Olympics becoming a golden opportunity for politicians to lay claim to all the benefits that were thought to have accrued from this once-in-a-lifetime event, and to showcase the marvels of modern, prosperous, regenerated Britain.

Think of it: by 2012, we could be one year away from the end of the second term of a Cameron-led Conservative government; or the Labour Party could be celebrating 15 glorious years of power, only three years away from equalling the previous Conservative post-war record, and able to point to the Games as the symbol of all its many achievements and of the restoration of Britain’s pride and self-belief the Labour government had brought about. Almost enough to make you want to emigrate!

It does seem as though a process is afoot to redefine the role, identity and values of 21st-century Britain. And this process points naturally to the 2012 Games as its apotheosis – the moment when Britain’s renewed sense of its mission and achievements is offered up to the world – just as the 2008 Games will be the moment when China stakes its claim to be the present century’s leading superpower.

Conversely, pessimistic voices have expressed the fear that the 2012 Olympics could become the occasion for a horrific playing out of the War on Terror. Significantly – or it seemed so at the time – the terrorist attacks in London on 7 July 2005 came just one day after the IOC awarded the Games to the city: a terrible slap in the teeth to the UK’s pretension to be a beacon of multi-cultural social inclusiveness, which the British team running the bid had made the focal point of their successful presentation.

The Olympics, in this light, present a fabulous opportunity for terrorists to strike Britain at the moment when it occupies centre stage in the world’s admiration. By the same token, they set a sort of deadline for the War on Terror to have been ‘won’, so that Britain’s showcase can be the occasion for the nation to celebrate the triumph of the British values, characteristics and abilities that have defeated the negative values of the terrorists – just like the Festival of Britain was the moment when the country looked forward to a dazzling future that would be achieved through the same qualities that had enabled it to win the Second World War.

The War on Terror, on this vision of our near future, will be won by the same values that will re-unite the British nation around a sense of its destiny and identity in the contemporary world. For many of those – politicians, church leaders or cultural commentators – who are backing the effort to redefine, and achieve social cohesion around, core British values, it is almost as if those values were universal. They may have arisen historically within Britain and be ‘uniquely’ suited to the British ‘national character’; but they are at the same time authentic values for the whole of humanity to follow – and indeed, they are the values that will secure a lasting peace and a sustainable future for our planet.

What are these ‘British values’? What is their specificity in relation to Western liberalism and to the Western cultural tradition in general? And does Britain – or some of its leaders – really see itself as having an important (indeed, crucial) role to play in standing up and being counted for those values, whose triumph it will one day celebrate in front of the whole world? These are questions I will be exploring in subsequent instalments of this blog.

Is BA Within Its Rights To Ban the Cross?

Is BA Within Its Rights To Ban the Cross?

Nice to have a Christian religious discrimination case to discuss for once! On Monday (20 November), an internal hearing at the UK airline BA concluded that the company had been acting fairly to suspend a Christian employee, Nadia Eweida, from her duties for refusing to stop openly displaying what was described by some media as a ‘crucifix’, but was in fact a rather small cross pendant. BA’s uniform policy is that such items may be worn but must be concealed beneath employees’ clothing. However, Sikhs are permitted to wear bangles and Muslims are allowed to wear the hijab on the basis that it would be impractical for such items to be concealed beneath the uniform.

On one level, BA is indeed acting perfectly within their rights. If that is their uniform policy – one which Ms Eweida was aware of when she started working at BA – then it is legitimate for the company to enforce it. Ms Eweida has been offered an alternative job in a non-uniformed role at BA, where she would be entitled to wear her cross openly; but she has turned this down on principle.

On the other hand, BA’s policy itself appears discriminatory, if not perhaps in law (which would have to be proven) at least in fact. Ms Eweida’s argument is that it is her religious duty, as she sees it, to wear her cross openly to testify to the truth of the Christian Gospel. In this sense, the cross is no different from any other religious symbol that members of the religions involved believe it is their duty to wear openly.

In order to test whether BA’s decision is motivated by purely practical considerations, as they claim, or whether the Christian faith is being discriminated against relative to other religions, it would be interesting to see how BA would handle a) symbols from other religions that could be concealed beneath the uniform (e.g. pendants) or b) symbols of Christian faith that it is equally not practical to hide beneath the uniform (e.g. head coverings as advocated by some Baptist or Brethren fellowships). One suspects, though again this can’t be proven, that in case a), the employee would not be suspended like Ms Eweida, owing to fears of the resultant outcry about discrimination; whereas in case b), it might be thought to be more ‘optional’ for an employee to wear such a head covering than for a Muslim to wear a hijab, although in fact wearing the hijab is thought by many to be purely a matter of individual choice.

I feel that behind BA’s decision is an assumption that Christians in secular Western society should not openly bear witness to their faith in their public roles. It is OK for Ms Eweida to be a Christian so long as she keeps her faith to herself: private and hidden beneath her uniform. Displaying her cross – the symbol of her faith – openly would associate it with her public role as a BA check-in operative, symbolised by her uniform. If you will forgive the pun, it is feared that there might be a ‘cross-over’ in the minds of people encountering Ms Eweida, whereby they could fuse the cross and the uniform, and come to the view that BA was a Christian organisation.

Interestingly, the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu – who has leapt to Ms Eweida’s defence – has taken a stance which, precisely, reminds BA of the Christian heritage of the country of which BA is nominally the national carrier: "British Airways needs to look again at this decision and to look at the history of the country it represents, whose culture, laws, heritage and tradition owes so much to the very same symbol it would ban".

On the contrary, I would argue, BA has banned open wearing of the cross by uniformed staff precisely because it does not wish to identify itself publicly with ‘Christian Britain’. Would it be stretching things too far to suggest that a specific reason for this reluctance – in addition to the general reason of viewing open witness to Christian faith as inappropriate within a secular context – is that BA fears that by doing so it would make itself more of a target for terrorists? After all, Ms Eweida is a check-in operative, in the first line of defence against luggage that could contain a bomb or some other terrorist weapon. The suspension of Ms Eweida (also, interestingly, of Egyptian Christian origin) came in the wake of the hand-luggage terrorist scare. Could BA have been afraid that a potential suicide bomber could be tempted to let off a device concealed in a bag at the check-in counter, which they might otherwise have been able to smuggle into the plane?

But even without this specific context, it is possible that terrorists could adopt the tactic of blowing themselves up at crowded check-in desks before anyone has carried out any inspection of their luggage. And it would not be surprising that BA would be reluctant for its uniformed employees, especially one in such a high-profile and vulnerable role, to mediate an identification between the airline and the Christian faith that could make it more of a target for terrorists. By contrast, if BA allows Muslims and Sikhs to proudly display the symbols of their faith alongside the BA uniform, this creates the kind of public image that could make it less likely for terrorists to single out BA. BA was, after all, supposed to be one of the airlines that would have been directly targeted by the hand-luggage plot that was thwarted in August because of its association with a Britain that is thought by some Muslims to be anti-Islamic.

If this is the unacknowledged context for BA’s banning of Ms Eweida from openly displaying her cross pendant, then it clearly is discriminatory, even if from a security point of view, it is understandable though something of an over-reaction. But it is discriminatory, even excluding that context, if you accept that Ms Eweida’s choice to wear her cross in this way is as valid an exercise of the freedom of religious expression as the choice of Muslim or Sikh employees to wear the symbols of their religions.

But BA appears not to accept that it has denied a human right to Ms Eweida that it does not deny to employees of other faiths. Rather than seeing this as another case of a cultural secularism that is increasingly prejudicial towards Christianity in a way that it is not towards non-Christian faiths (on the grounds of political correctness and respect for minorities), perhaps it is after all possible to view this as the action of a ‘Christian’ organisation. This would be in the broad sense that our secular liberal culture nevertheless views itself as more Christian with respect to religion and the origins of liberalism itself than anything else. As an integral part of this ‘secular-Christian’ culture, precisely, it is held that more definite, doctrinal Christian beliefs and opinions belong to the private domain and should not be ‘imposed’ on other people in public situations where they have a reasonable right not to be confronted by those opinions. Hence, the public representative of an organisation which does symbolise modern Britain, whether it wants to or not, should not use her role to testify to her Christian faith; whereas no one would object to her doing so in a church meeting, at home or in a non-public-facing work role.

In this way, it is maybe ironically because Christianity continues to occupy a privileged place in the beliefs and culture of modern Britain that Ms Eweida’s stance was viewed as an abuse of privilege and of the unspoken cultural code that requires a separation of religious expression from public life that does not apply in the same way to other faiths such as Islam or Sikhism.

Is Banning the Veil Compatible With Liberalism?

Is Banning the Veil Compatible With Liberalism?

Yesterday, the Dutch government agreed to put together legislation that would ban the wearing of all full face coverings – including the Islamic burqa and full veil (niqab) – on grounds of security. Another justification that has been brought forward for the ban is that the full veil is an obstacle to the integration of Muslims into Dutch society, in that it prevents proper communication with the women concerned.

One absurdity about the whole situation is that the Muslim community in the country estimates that only about 50 women actually wear the full veil there. So that largely invalidates the argument about security, unless the Dutch government is seriously concerned about a specific terrorist plan to use the veil as a form of disguise to carry out an attack. But no official, as far as I know, has made this claim.

In terms of the argument about integration, it should be obvious that one effect of introducing a legal prohibition against the veil would be to make many Muslims feel alienated and victimised. One opposition politician, who is also a Muslim, was indeed quoted in the press as saying that if the new law is passed, it will lead many young Muslim women to start wearing the veil as a protest.

The Mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen [now, would I be wrong to assume he is Jewish?], even said that women who were turned down for employment because they refused to wear the veil should not expect to receive welfare benefits. How does that square with integration? This is more the ‘exclusionist’ model of integration: either you accept integration on our terms, or you are excluded. On this model, society becomes integrated on the basis that certain groups or individuals that don’t fit in are simply not counted as members of that society.

The terms for social integration that are being proposed, or imposed, in the Netherlands could be called liberal, in a general philosophical sense. Is it appropriate to use the expression ‘liberal intolerance of non-liberal values’ to describe what’s going on? Is the increasing Islamophobia – in the sense of fear of Islam as much as dislike of Islam – we see in supposedly liberal Western European countries an example of how liberal societies react when they feel their values, and the institutions that support those values, are under threat? We see so many examples of this throughout the continent, another one being the argument that is adduced in the UK to support illiberal detention laws: that it is better that we accept derogations from the liberal principles that underpin our laws in order to protect our liberal society and institutions as a whole. I have previously argued [MySpace blogs of 11 November and 13 November: see http://blog.myspace.com/culturalcritique] that this is an illogical position: once the instruments of power and law enforcement start acting in an illiberal way, then they are by definition no longer fully liberal and cannot be said to be protecting liberal society.

What we are coming up against here is the question of limits and limitations: are there limits to liberalism? How should liberal societies take action against minorities that supposedly do not accept their values and who push those societies ‘to the limit’? Should we accept limitations to our own liberty to ensure its survival? Is wearing the full veil ‘the limit’ that liberal society can’t tolerate? Should specific individuals’ liberties be subject to limitations – e.g. UK-style Control Orders – to ensure the freedom of others in society?

In the specific Dutch case, the pretexts for the proposed law’s limitations of the freedom to wear what one chooses, and the freedom of religious expression that is at work in wearing the veil, are invalid, as I have argued above. There is little or no real security threat involved in 50 women throughout the Netherlands wearing the niqab in public places in general (specific public places like banks or public transport could be reasonably accepted as a special case). The proposed legislation makes a ludicrous but revealing equation between the niqab and other face coverings such as motorcycle helmets: as if women wearing the niqab for religious reasons represented a threat equivalent to that of people walking around public places wearing motorcycle helmets! I don’t know: maybe the atmosphere of Islamophobia has grown so intense in Holland that women going about in veils are genuinely suspected of being potential suicide bombers. But then those in authority should try to defuse and counteract those fears by promoting better understanding and greater interaction between mainstream society and the Muslim community; not reinforce those fears, and the barriers that sustain them, by officially suppressing the differences that arouse suspicion and forcing them to go underground.

In fact, the experience of suicide bombings around the world – including in London in July 2005 – has been that it is far more effective as a tactic if the attackers blend in with their surroundings and adopt a Western appearance. The hostility towards the veil merely seizes upon a visible “mark of separation”, to quote Tony Blair’s words last month, viewed as a symbol of a defiant Islam that insists on maintaining its adherence to orthodox teachings that are at variance with Western liberalism and which, by association with the terror threat, evoke the fear of violence.

In order for laws that restrict certain liberties to be tolerable within liberal societies, there has to be real evidence that the behaviour or actions that are limited in this way pose a serious threat to the enjoyment of freedom and the security of other members of that society. As I have previously argued [blogs of 11 and 13 November], the trouble about the UK government’s detention legislation is that it has not presented convincing evidence to justify some of the measures either on principle, or in practice, in terms of actual examples where – without the application of those detention provisions – a terror attack would probably have occurred. In the case of the proposed Dutch legislation, it seems clear that – as applied to the burqa and niqab – the restrictions are motivated more by fear (by actual terror, if you like, rather than real terrorism) than by a calm, evidence-based assessment of the real risks.

And also, of course, there are other motivations behind the shallow pretexts for the Dutch legislation, such as prejudice, racism, an anti-religious liberal agenda, and a social liberalism (including feminism and advocacy of free sexual expression) that perceives traditional Islam (symbolised by the veil) as the ‘enemy’ but won’t openly say so. But is modern Dutch intolerant liberalism (which you could also perhaps call ‘radical liberalism’) really liberal any more, in the sense of tolerating and embracing diversity of expression and belief, so long as those practices and beliefs accept the same freedoms in others? And are Mr Blair’s ‘common British values’ – in the name of which Muslim veil wearing has recently come under attack – truly liberal values?

Do Gay Marriages Undermine Straight Marriage?

The South African parliament voted yesterday to legalise gay marriages: the first African country to do so. Clearly, this is an issue that provokes passionately opposing points of view in many, while doubtless leaving many others feeling fed up with it all and wishing they’d just get on with it. It is not my purpose in this brief comment piece to set out my own opinions on the matter. What I wish to open up is a different perspective on the charge that is often made by social conservatives – usually but not necessarily from a religious perspective – that gay marriages undermine traditional, straight marriage.

The argument, as put by such traditionalists, might run as follows: marriage is intrinsically the union – formally recognised by the state and the couple’s religion, if any – between a man and a woman. Marriage thus defined, and the family that it is also an intrinsic purpose of marriage to create and sustain, is the bedrock of social stability. It is the foundation stone, as it were, of the whole social edifice, which relies on profound bonds of altruism and mutual commitment – particularly in relation to the care of children and other dependents – in order to survive and prosper over against the forces of individualism, violence and other forms of selfishness (which a religious person might call ‘sin’) that risk otherwise to tear society apart and create chaos.

Marriage, so the argument goes, is already under threat from these forces and, particularly, from a hedonistic culture that has progressively ‘divorced’ sex from marriage and actively encourages the free expression of sexuality outside of marriage, thus leading not only to the break-down of respect for the privileged status of marriage in general, but the growing frequency of marriage break-downs and divorces. Defined as being by definition extra-marital, gay sex and relationships are inevitably viewed as being part of this free-for-all sexual culture and thus as one of the things that undermines marriage.

The condemnation of gay marriage, while often being coloured by sexual disgust, prurience or homophobia, is thus on one level simply derived from first principles and is, to that extent, circular: sex is intended for marriage; marriage is the union between a man and a woman; therefore gay sex and gay marriage are ‘wrong’ – the moral condemnation being wrapped up and confused with the epistemological denial, i.e. that gay marriage is a misnomer or contradiction in terms. It is possible to deny gay marriage on these cognitive or descriptive grounds without morally condemning it; equally, it is possible to have no such terminological scruples (‘why can’t a gay union be called a marriage if that’s what they want?’) while still harbouring unease about the moral and social implications of according the marital status to gay relationships. And it is this area of disquiet that I wish – very briefly – to touch upon.

I feel that there is a rather subtle way in which the legalisation of gay marriages can undermine straight marriage; but not in any external or philosophical sense (i.e. by undermining married partners’ faith in the uniqueness and importance of their mutual commitment), but rather from within the conceptual underpinning of marriage and the individuals’ self-image.

What I mean is that marriage – as defined and upheld throughout the Christian era and beyond – as inherently a union between a man and a woman bolsters and reinforces the very separation that is made between heterosexuality and homosexuality, and between an individual’s self-perception as straight and the uncertain terrain of their Other: the subconscious realm of impulses that contradict the coherence we try to give to our conscious selves. If marriage is reserved solely for heterosexuality, and if one has chosen to marry, one has also traditionally made a definitive, and indeed defining, choice to view oneself and be viewed by others as heterosexual. Now, if marriage can also be the place of homosexuality, this weakens the divide that straight marriage has placed between the different forms of sexuality, and between gayness and social legitimacy: ‘if homosexuality can be a part of marriage per se, should this change the way that I – as a ‘straight’ person – view my marriage and my sexuality? And if I - as someone who has always longed to get married to the one I love – have previously by definition assumed that meant I had to be straight, can I now express previously denied alternative desires, which are now able to find a socially accepted expression in marriage?’

I feel that in this sense, gay marriages could be said to undermine straight marriage. This is because they could cause people who have previously assumed they were 100% - or near enough – straight to question their sexuality and aspirations with respect to marriage. Gay marriage could in this way be said to undermine straight marriage because it challenges the very divide between gay and straight. That could ultimately be no bad thing if you believe it’s better to try to accept the truth, even if it hurts. Straight marriage could even emerge from this re-examination as a stronger force for the good.

Ways Of Saying the Same Thing

Ways Of Saying the Same Thing

When the trees are bare,

We see the beauty of buildings.

That beauty was always there,

It was just the green that drew your eye.

I can’t bear those leafy trees now,

But I wish we’d been green for longer.

She always spends loads of money

When the prices drop.

Volume discounting, old chum:

The oldest trick in the book –

They won’t turn over a new leaf

When the Januaries kick off the New Year.

Another rip-off Christmas draws near;

Correction: the seasonal surge in sales.

But it doesn’t seem much like the season;

Will it be winter that fails?

Nor much goodwill to all men

In the land of Jesus’s birth.

Flares point the way now

Where, once upon a star,

A light drew the Kings of the earth.

We aimed our missiles precisely

At non-civilian targets;

We knew there’d be a slaughter of innocents,

But didn’t intend them to die.

We, too, came from afar,

Like lords of all the earth.

We came in search of terror;

And terror found us out.

Our leaders sold us a lie

And beggared our belief.

They must be even greater fools

Than they clearly took us to be.

They keep saying the same old nonsense,

Making up reasons as they go along.

But it all tells me just one thing:

Our future’s not safe in their hands.

So it’s just as well

It's not.

New Englishness: Re-expressing the Relationship Between England and the UK

The following is an article I've written on questions of English national identity, republished from my MySpace blog of 20 September (see http://blog.myspace.com/culturalcritique). It's intended as a contribution to the debate about multi-culturalism and the integration of multiple traditions, value systems and ethnicities into a cohesive sense of nationhood.

New Englishness: Re-expressing the Relationship Between England and the UK

The ambiguous overlaps and interrelationships between the national identities referred to as 'English' and 'British' are familiar to us all – to say nothing of the extra layer of confusion concerning the use of the terms 'Great Britain' and 'United Kingdom'. Generalising a bit, we could say there has been a tendency – on the part of the English, at least – to merge the meanings of the terms 'English' and 'British'. When referring to British values and culture, the English have often viewed these as an extension to the whole of the UK of what are essentially cherished English characteristics. Similarly, naïve usage has often involved substituting the word 'English' for 'British' when referring to all the peoples of the UK. Children and foreigners frequently ignore the distinction to this day – getting muddled up, for instance, between English and British sporting teams; or referring, as do the French, to the culture of the British Isles and North America as 'Anglo-Saxon'. (A parallel and, in fact, even more anachronistic mislabelling sees us referring to French culture as 'Gallic'.)

This identification of the English with the whole of Britain has now been largely repudiated: by the politically correct classes, which view it as exhibiting the kind of cultural and political imperialism which did, in the past, lead to the projection of the English-British identity across a worldwide empire; by the Scottish and Welsh who, with their own national parliamentary bodies, are reaffirming their identities as distinct from the English-British; and by ethnic and religious minorities, some of whom define themselves as 'British + ethnicity/religion' (e.g. British Asian, black British, British Muslim) rather than English – even if they live and work in England, and enjoy (to some extent, at least) social and economic opportunities that the English of whatever race have struggled to achieve and uphold over the centuries.

Partly in reaction to this rejection of shared English-British values, there has been a popular attempt to reclaim a distinct English identity, one of whose manifestations is the mass display of flags of St. George and of patriotism around major sporting events such as the football World Cup. Interestingly, in the 1970s and 1980s, English football supporters tended to demonstrate their patriotism by parading the Union Jack (while Scottish fans – even at that time, it has to be said – mostly carried the St. Andrews Cross and the Royal Standard of Scotland (red lion on yellow background)). Nowadays, hardly a Union Flag is to be seen, as the sporting competition concerned is taken as a relatively harmless opportunity to celebrate the English identity and nation, as distinct from that of the British as a whole.

There is always a risk that this sort of patriotism could cross over into a more aggressive nationalism, characterised by racism and xenophobia, and indeed Islamophobia. This is partly because, in some people, it involves an element of hurt pride and anxiety about the perceived threats to the integrity of the English identity and the country's prosperity and security. But just because of those concerns, the aspiration to affirm and be proud about what it is to be English should not be dismissed out of hand. Few countries, in fact, have been less nationalistic and given over to pompous displays of national pride than the English – at least as the English and not via their alias as the British. And it is arguably necessary to the cultural and political health of any nation to take pride in being a nation, with the caveat that that pride must be prevented from spilling over into contempt towards other cultures and peoples.

And this is the point: the English have historically defined their national identity – in a formal, political and institutional, sense – as British; while their sentimental national identity has remained English. This is one explanation for the emotional infusion of Britishness with all things English, on the one hand, and the technical misnomer of referring to officially British entities as 'English', to which I referred above. Now that the sentimental projection of Englishness on a Britain-wide scale is rejected by many of those upon whom that proxy-Englishness has been foisted, perhaps it is time also to change the official, public discourse: to actually allow the English to develop a language to express their Englishness that is neither culturally insensitive to the Scots, Welsh and other British minority peoples; nor is formally inaccurate, in that it uses the 'wrong' term – 'English' – to refer to what is technically British. But to enable this to happen fully, it would almost certainly be necessary to change some of the highest institutions in the land, so that an English nation as such could come into being.

At this stage, it is worth taking a step back in time to consider the origins of some of these terms. Originally, 'Britain' and 'British' referred to the pre-/non-Anglo-Saxon island and its peoples. The Latin 'Britannia' – precursor to our 'Britain' – derived from a Celtic word that is seen to this day in the Welsh 'Prydain'. In a sense, then, it is ironic that 'England' has projected itself historically into an identification with the whole of Britain – an entity that originally did not have England as its centre – and that the non-Anglo-Saxon Britain has increasingly withdrawn from the project, leaving Englishness with, almost literally, nowhere to go.

One of the purposes served by the assimilation of England to 'Britain' was to find a way of not actually calling the English-dominated state 'England' – as, for instance, the centrist state of France originally drew its name from that country's own Germanic invaders, the Franks. Calling the nation 'Britain' or 'Great Britain', from the 17th century onwards, was a way to invoke a 'united kingdom' through reference to the unified geographical territory that that kingdom encompassed – neatly eliding the fact that this was a nation ruled by the Kings, Queens and Parliament of England, albeit with a grafting on of Scottishness through the Stuarts. (The name 'Great Britain', by the way, was not originally a reference to some idea of a Greater Britain – a greater political union of all the nations and islands of the state – but merely a term distinguishing our Britain from the 'Little Britain' that is Brittany: in French, 'Grande Bretagne' versus 'Bretagne'.)

But has there ever really been a unified British nation as such? Even Roman Britannia did not encompass the whole of this island but was more a forced political union of foreign invaders with the Celts of what are now England and Wales, in which the vigorously independent, non-Celtic Picts of Caledonia (Scotland) declined to participate.

'Britain', as a political concept, has always been more of an idea than a reality: the idea of a political, national and – in the post-Reformation context – religious union encompassing all the British Isles that has been driven and to some extent imposed by peoples coming originally from outside the actual island of Britain – the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, the Normans. In a similar way, the very identity and existence of the nation of England has for centuries been parasitic on the British project: the raison d'être of 'England' has been to bring about, uphold and embody the union of Britain. Perhaps this mission is the particular way England has striven to reconcile the tensions from which it was born: the pull between an identification with the authoritarian centre of power in the land, on the one hand, and an identification with the people of the land on whom that rule – coming from the outside – has been imposed.

The shift in our thinking and language about English nationality I am advocating essentially involves re-centring our current concepts of Britishness on the English. It involves accepting that the British project was always primarily an English undertaking and, to the extent that they have shared and participated in it, the Welsh, Scots and Irish have identified with a Britain and with a cultural and political entity that was essentially 'made in England'. We should then start to use 'England' and 'English' to refer to all of these ultimately 'anglo-centric' aspects of our history, culture and political life, i.e. those aspects that reflect the strategic interests, values and socio-cultural characteristics of the inhabitants of England in previous centuries and today. We could, for instance, refer to the British Empire as having been really an English empire (an extension of the English dominion of Britain across a vast geographical expanse). Our democracy could be thought of as a mainly English – rather than British – creation; 'British values' should be viewed as synonymous with 'English values', where those values clearly reflect characteristics, conventions and a historical heritage that are generally accepted as rooted in England.

We could then perhaps develop a language about Britain that is differentiated to some extent from the idea of Britain, i.e. from the English-British political project that I have described. 'Britain/British' could be used to refer – historically – to the pre-English peoples of the land (the Celts, Picts, etc.) and – in the present – to all the 'indigenous' peoples of these islands: the continuing nations, cultures, ethnicities, and Christian and liberal-humanist traditions that have inhabited the geographical territories of Britain over a long historical period. Insofar as the Welsh and the Scots wish to define themselves as culturally and ethnically distinct from the English – as well as being merely geographically demarcated from England – they could define that ethnicity, perhaps, as 'British' in the first of those senses. Of course, they would have to work out in their own way how to resolve the problem of defining their national identity in any kind of ethnic way, with respect to integrating the minorities in their lands.

The English, on the other hand, could now turn the unworkability of defining their own identity in ethnic terms into a considerable virtue. By this, I mean that the English should now be free to appropriate to themselves the 'British' values they have previously sought to extend to the whole of Britain. One could therefore consider oneself to be English almost by virtue of a conscious identification with, and espousal of, English culture and civilisation seen as something that embraces and holds together the very diversity of the national and cultural influences that have shaped us over the centuries. Not an England as an island-nation Britain but as an inter-national civilisation that we took to the world in the past and to which the whole world now contributes. Is English who lives or is born in England (or considers England to be their home while dwelling abroad) and identifies both with English personal and social characteristics, and with English civic and cultural values, as the ground on which their rights and responsibilities within the nation are based. So we could now easily talk of 'English black' and 'English Muslim' (indeed, 'English Indian' or 'English Irish') people because, in fact, we now see it as being the English civilisation that has given these groups their hybrid cultural identity – their cultural home as part of England, as much as their physical one. 'England', in this acception, can be viewed in relation to a core 'mission' as a 'bringer together' of nations and cultures, not the byword for an ethnically homogenising, dominating civilisation.

So in a sense, we are talking about a reversal of conventional values: 'Britain' becomes associated more with a narrow, insular and possibly ethnically restrictive focus; while 'England' is articulated as the place of an international, cosmopolitan culture – open to the global culture which it arguably has done more than any other nation to create. This does not mean that we forget or disown the mistakes and misdeeds of the past by, for instance, attributing all the negative aspects of our imperialist past to a domineering and racist Britishness that is somehow opposed to Englishness (whereas, I've argued, it is an intrinsic and ambiguous part of the English historical heritage). By the same token, we should not pillory ourselves pruriently about our past imperialism. This is because the internationalist values and culture we wish to own as an important part of our 'new Englishness' – and which are expressed in the post-imperialist context in terms of freedom, democracy and cultural openness – would be unthinkable without the English and other European empires that largely created the modern world and our 'multi-cultural' societies.

And just as the new English identity can positively affirm its international outlook, there is an opportunity to give greater voice to the regional identities and communities of England, now that Englishness in all its guises is no longer a dirty word and need no longer hide behind the supposed inclusiveness of Britishness. This would involve, on the one hand, reaffirming traditional, rural English identities, lifestyles and economies, insofar as they actually survive in the present. These should be viewed not as the domain of socially anti-progressive, economically backward and racially exclusive communities, as some with a more urban outlook might have it. On the contrary, they must be affirmed as absolutely vital in preserving traditions reaching far back into the precious history of our land, and in maintaining a connection to that land – through labour, cultivation and mutual dependency – that is more than merely economic and industrial, but ecologically and spiritually vital. But equally, the various vibrant urban regional identities and cultures of England should be affirmed and valued. Gone for ever should be the contempt of the political, social and economic elites – concentrated around the capital and the richer regions of the south – for the diversity of other English voices and cultures they have often sought to exclude: the contempt, in other words, of the very class that has driven the British project for an English diversity it sought to suppress. And, by the same token, even the oft-dismissed middle- and upper-class culture of the wealthy home counties can surely also find a cherished place, somewhat like an Agatha Christie novel, in the newfound pride we take in Englishness.

The English language in all its diversity should of course take pride of place in the articulation of the new Englishness – a language with so many rich regional, international and class variations that encapsulate the history and contradictions of English expansiveness in Britain and throughout the world. It often seems that as the English language becomes ever more the global lingua franca – a term which, when applied to our tongue, must really irk some people in France! – it belongs less and less to us in England. But now, if we reclaim that history of passionate engagement with a new world (albeit a world which seemed to the English of our past to be 'there to be conquered') as English history, we can also reclaim the multiple global forms of English as our language – to be embraced, loved, understood and cultivated in all its rich variety. My word-processing package's spell checker gives me 18 varieties of English to choose from, ranging from Australian to Zimbabwean: they are all mine, they are all English.

As I suggested above, it would almost certainly be necessary to modify the constitutional relationships between England and the rest of the UK in order to give full expression to this new sense of England and the English as a distinct nation. This would not necessarily entail the break up of the UK but it might involve finally differentiating the UK from Britain: the UK would become a political alliance of distinct nations and not a merging of them into a nebulous synthesis – a 'Britain' that has never been a true nation as such in the people's hearts, other than when it was effectively another name for England. The implications of a change such as this are potentially vast; but moving towards a legally and politically distinct England might at last bring some clarity into the constitutional titivations and partial devolutions of the past decade. And it could potentially revitalise English civic and political life in some unexpected ways because it would be a process of restoring the nation to the people: giving the English a sense of ownership over their nation, political institutions and democracy that appears for the present to be in ever greater decline – and arguably has been since the sense that the destiny of English people was inseparable from a Britain that was Great began to be eroded.

I am no constitutional or legislative expert. But let's take a moment to imagine what forms the new English constitutional settlement could take.

· Separate parliaments or assemblies could be instituted, complementary to the current bodies in Scotland and Wales, for a number of English regions grouping together counties with shared historical links and economic interests, e.g. the North-East, the North-West, the Midlands, East Anglia (including Essex, Herts and possibly additional counties), London, the 'Home Counties' and the South, and the South-West. These could be essentially federal assemblies with responsibilities for managing the public-sector purse, social policy, and law and order in those regions (while the Scottish Parliament would preserve its legislative role). The UK parliament would retain its responsibility for economic, security, and (excluding Scotland) fiscal and legislative issues affecting the UK as a whole. The upper house of the UK parliament (perhaps a new proportionally elected body) could exercise oversight over the actions and decisions of the regional parliaments, examining their implications for the whole of the UK.

· An alternative arrangement would be to allow the House of Commons to act as a second house in relation to decisions from the regional/national parliaments affecting the UK as a whole; while the regional/national parliaments could exercise second-house-type scrutiny of the national parliament's legislation. Indeed, a new second house could be drawn from the regional/national assemblies, with members elected by those assemblies or voted for by the electorate using a proportional system as part of the elections for the regional/national assemblies

· Alternatively again, if the people of England did not wish to have separate regional parliamentary bodies, arrangements similar to the ones above could be put in place with just a single national English parliament, rather than multiple regional parliaments. This would probably do better justice to a revitalised sense of England as a distinct nation. In this case, full legislative – as well as merely administrative – powers could possibly be transferred to each of the three (or four, if Northern Ireland were added) national parliaments. The Union would then be preserved and protected by a proportionally elected 'upper' house with responsibility for safeguarding the economy, integrity, legal rights and responsibilities, international relations, and security of the UK as a whole. This body would be something half-way between the current House of Commons and House of Lords, with the difference that, together with the national parliaments, it would more accurately reflect public opinion. It would have to have real power to refer or veto legislation and decisions from the national parliaments in order to truly function as a guarantee of the Union.

The role of the prime minister would become more akin to that of an elected president: heading up the Executive, and driving forward policy and legislation through the national bodies – but with more limited direct power to dictate policy and legislation, which would be dependent on greater democratic consensus, and checks and balances. The prime minister could be chosen on a slightly modified basis from the present arrangements: (s)he would be the leader of the party with the greatest representation across all the national parliaments or, alternatively, the leader of the party best able to form a coalition of support across the parliaments. The Cabinet would become more like a company Board of Directors, while executive management of 'UK plc' would be delegated to the individual national administrations.

These are just a few bare outlines intended to suggest how our political and cultural life could be radically transformed and reinvigorated by allowing the peoples of the UK – English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh – to take renewed pride in their nations and retrieve a sense of ownership over the institutions and political processes that are supposed to give voice to their wishes and fears, their values and ambitions.

Given its ineluctably 'multi-cultural', multi-ethnic and multi-faith character, England in particular has an enormous opportunity – one could even consider it a duty – to redefine and revalorise its identity: to affirm what is distinctively English, including the very openness to cultural, ethnic and national diversity within its territory and beyond. This is particularly essential in the light of some of the major challenges facing us today: the need to absorb large waves of new immigrants, and the need to present a strong alternative set of national and civic values with which alienated minorities (particularly, Muslim youth) can identify. This new English identity would be one that seeks at once to accept and understand Muslims' faith background, but which sets that inclusion within a broader context of common English values, both traditional and modern. 'Britain' and Britishness are now too abstract and disputed to provide a set of shared values and aspirations, and too tainted in the eyes of many minorities with associations with our imperial past. Indeed, one could go further and say that encouraging minorities to define their identity in relation to supposedly common British values actually offers them a 'cop out': it allows them to limit their commitment to this country to the level of formal legal nationality (to consider themselves legally British but, in their hearts, Asian, Muslim, Polish, etc.) – rather than to a strong tradition and civilisation that is concretely grounded in the places where they live, i.e. in England. But while 'England' remains too timid to assert itself as a nation freed from the shackles of an idea of Britain that is no longer relevant or meaningful to possibly the majority of the inhabitants of these islands, it also cannot serve as a sufficiently attractive focus for people's identity, ambition, pride and respect.

England has indeed much to reproach herself for, in the past and the present. But the country has in many ways been as much of a victim of the attempt to impose the domination of 'Britain' as have the other nations of our islands and former empire. It is time for the flawed but also vibrant and diverse civilisation and identities of England to find their voice and become a nation.