National 'Britain Day': Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Eight)

They were at it again on Monday: Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly and Immigration Minister Liam Byrne called, among other things, for a national 'Britain Day' (our equivalent of Australia Day or America's July 4^th) as part of the drive to promote a stronger sense of Britishness – what the ministers called Britain's 'citizenship revolution'.

Anyone who has read any of my previous blog entries sub-titled 'Inventing Britain For the 21^st Century' will know that I am extremely sceptical about such 'Britology': essentially, the politically driven attempt to define core British values which – it is assumed or argued – will provide a framework for the people of the UK to become more culturally integrated and socially united.

For now, let me just pose a few questions (with some possible answers) and raise a few points concerning this agenda:

1. What date shall we have this 'Britain Day' on, then? Possible candidates: VE Day – a true celebration of a triumphant Britain having defended its values of freedom and tolerance (no, too historically and ethnically narrow); Trafalgar Day (are you kidding?); a date commemorating the end of the Battle of Britain (again, too militaristic and backward-looking); 1 May, which apart from being a traditional English feast associated with Morris Dancing, maypoles and the like (too English) is also the date when the 1707 Act of Union joining England and Scotland together to actually form Great Britain took effect (aaarghh!).

2. What actually are the core values that British people supposedly already have in common, and to which their adherence needs to be further fostered? I have argued before that these boil down to quite abstract, universal ideals, such as various flavours of freedom and equality, democracy, tolerance, decency, etc. One might call these values that the British are said to have in common the 'highest common denominator': they're the most top-level, general philosophical concepts that any reasonable person can buy into, whatever their faith, politics or ethnicity. But as such, do they really provide any additional force for unity, in the sense that people already in theory assent to these principles as expressed in their different cultural and religious traditions? And in any case, what is distinctively British, if anything, about these values? One might even say that by asserting these values as the core components of Britishness, Britishness is defined in relation to an abstraction away from specific, narrow ethnic and religious traditions to a sort of 21st-century global liberal humanism – as Britain typifies the coming together of all the nations of the earth in a new universal, secular culture and economy.

3. If Britain's identity is essentially a modernist abstraction away from historical divisions between races, nations and religions, then perhaps this is the underlying cultural basis for the bizarre design of the logo for the 2012 London Olympics, unveiled on the same day as the ministers' call for a Britain Day (see picture above). This logo contains very little that is recognisably British in any iconographic or representational sense: no historical monuments, geographical landmarks, national identifiers. It's a piece of abstract art reminiscent of the type of non-referential / conceptual works that annually compete for the Turner Prize. It does have something of the quality of commercial art of the type familiar from the British advertising industry, a sector in which Britain does indeed lead the world. It also suggests graffiti art: a manifestation of youth or pop culture which, perhaps it is true, is the nearest thing there is to a genuinely global culture embraced by people of all backgrounds.

4. While we're on the subject of the Olympics, these are one of the few major international sporting occasions when Britain actually competes as Britain, rather than in separate teams for each of the component 'nations' of Britain: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. For the sake of encouraging greater identification with Britishness, rather than with separate national entities, would the ministers propose abolishing the separate football teams and associations for the four British nations? Not a chance! Well, if that's a non-starter, what chance the objective of winning hearts and minds to a reaffirmed Britishness?

5. Because that really is the problem: 'ethnic British' people tend to identify more as English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish than as British. Statistics from the UK National Statistics Office confirm this: more 'white British' people define their identity as English rather than British; while many more UK ethnic Asians and Afro-Caribbeans define themselves as British rather than English, Scottish or Welsh. So doesn't that show that we should be encouraging the newer ethnic and national communities coming into the UK to see themselves as English / Scottish / Welsh in the first instance? In fact, it is only in that way that they can really become British because they will be British in the way that indigenous British people are British: through the filter of national and regional traditions, culture and history that have all contributed towards the Britain of today. Moreover, if communities that still refer to themselves as Pakistani or Bangladeshi started to be accepted and accept themselves as English, then this would really mark a turning point of deep integration and the forming of genuine multi-ethnic nationhood.

6. Equally, it has historically been true that British identity has been most positively upheld only when the English identity that was, and still is to some extent, its heart was affirmed proudly and confidently. Any attempt to re-define Britishness in a way that implicitly or explicitly denies the possibility of an official or politically acceptable expression of English values and culture (Britishness as an abstraction away from narrow national traditions) is actually set on a course away from the traditional wellsprings of Britishness and is unlikely to command the assent of the English people (not defined in a narrow ethnic way but as those who identify as English).

7. Ultimately, the Britology project could be seen as striving to create a united nation (or should that be United Nations) of Britain that has never really existed in the past. This is one of the things that is evoked by the phrase 'citizenship revolution' used by the ministers in their opinion piece. The last time we had a 'citizenship revolution' in Britain (well, actually, it was in England) was in the English Civil War in the 17^th century, when our forebears got rid of the monarchy and we all became citizens of a Commonwealth (in today's terms, a republic). It's only really under a republic that one could imagine this project as having any chance of enduring success. A republic would finally sever the link between the Church and the state, as the monarch currently is both head of state and head of the Church of England (but not of Scotland). Thus, if the monarchy were done away with, Christianity could be denied any privileged claims to being the core faith and value system of England / Britain; and England could be removed from its effective status as the centre of the United Kingdom – the monarch being in the first instance King or Queen of England but certainly not of Britain.

8. Indeed, the more the talk is of Britain rather than the United Kingdom, the more there are grounds to suspect the presence of an underlying republicanism. A Republic of Britain would be one where its citizens now owed primary allegiance not to the outdated specifics of narrow nationalism, Christianity and indigenous ethnicity but to universal secular-progressive principles, and the global market economy and cultural market place. But would it be a nation that belonged to the politicians and the marketing guys more than to the people of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland?

The Amoral Market and the Randomness Of Reward: Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Seven)

The TV show ‘Big Brother’ is a competition: “only a gameshow”, as the contestants of the first ever, non-celebrity version of the programme chanted out at one point. But as such, it is a metaphor for contemporary British society – reality TV.

In the second of this blog series on ‘Britology’ (the cultural project to define and unite around ‘British values’), on 3 December, I listed one of the most important contemporary British values as ‘free competition (of ideas, individuals, businesses, economies)’. This is the form that freedom takes in modern Britain: not the high-minded Enlightenment concept of Liberty (although it is a practical development of it), nor the Christian idea of moral freedom. It is essentially what happens to freedom when the model for society as a whole is the market. Freedom becomes the right to compete fully in the market place, as it provides the fundamental condition for the market place to be genuinely a market: one where goods and services are allowed to find their true ‘value’ based on the principles of supply and demand – the matching of our desires with the conditions for their realisation.

This is not to say that freedom in the pure meanings defined above is not also thought to be an essential British value. But, strictly speaking, freedom is not a value in itself: it is the very condition for objects, desires and actions to be of value to us, and to be perceived as good or bad, because then they are things that we have chosen. Cultures endow freedom with their own meanings and ‘purpose’: freedom is the possibility of choosing and embracing something that a given culture or society holds dear. In modern Britain, the exercise of ‘choice’ has become associated more with consumer choices (choice as a fundamental condition and characteristic of the market-society), rather than with informed moral choice, or even with choosing a form of society on the basis of some notion of the collective good or other ideological belief.

In this context, in contemporary British culture, the value or merit of ideas, individuals or physical objects is increasingly not perceived to be intrinsic (related to their moral status, beauty or ability to serve real human needs, for instance) but depends on their desirability and marketability: their ability to appeal to our free choices, to compete successfully in the market (to ‘participate fully in society’), thereby vindicating the efficacy of the free market itself to deliver what we want (to ‘realise our aspirations’). This model for society admits of an egalitarian dimension when it is allied to the goal of bringing about the inclusion of previously marginalised and disadvantaged groups, such as gays and lesbians, ethnic minorities and disabled persons. In the society-as-market paradigm, the condition of these groups is transformed when they are ‘freed’ – enabled – to participate in the market as fully as any other groups or individuals: trading themselves and ‘what they have to offer’ in exchange for society’s recognition that this has a value.

But there is an amorality and randomness about all this: the value of something becomes equated with the extent to which we want to have, do or be it; and the principal criterion by which we judge the merits of a person or action is by how they are rewarded, or not, with market / social acceptance = economic success. The reason why ‘celebrity culture’ has taken off in the way it has is because celebrity (popularity and commercial success, fame and fortune) has acquired pseudo-intrinsic value as a symbol of the power of the market to realise the dreams of nobodies (people of no value) and turn them into somebodies (valuable commodities).

Big Brother is in this sense a microcosm of modern Britain. It is a show that specialises in taking nobodies and turning them into instant celebrities and valuable commodities simply by exposing them to a mass-market audience and a democratic (and highly lucrative) popular vote: less of a mirror to society than a metaphor of our society as shop window. It is no accident, in Blair’s Britain, that Big Brother’s success in endowing supposedly ordinary individuals with enhanced social-market value has been such an influential egalitarian fast-tracker, helping to bring a whole variety of previously ‘undervalued’ groups into the socio-economic mainstream through the democratic acceptance their symbolic representatives have attained through the show. Gays, lesbians, women, transsexuals, racial minorities, disabled people and, yes, even Christians have either won Big Brother or done extremely well in it – expressing the social will that these previously discriminated groups should be allowed to enjoy the rewards of the market-society as fully as any other sections of it.

If the value of individuals, lifestyles and social groups is measured in terms of their right and ability to participate on level terms in the social market, what this means is that the morality of those individuals and lifestyles becomes secondary to their socio-economic value (their ‘contribution to society’). Moral choices become a series of ‘lifestyle options’, and the moral good is equated with what is ‘good for society’: with whatever contributes to greater social inclusion; greater participation in the free (and liberating) market; and the encompassing of ever more aspects of life within the market, resulting in their legitimisation. Ultimately, this leads to a sort of moral neutrality or equivalence: the moral good converges with the concept of equality, such that the good is no longer a factor of differentiation (setting apart right from wrong), but, on the contrary, the good is whatever contributes to the greatest lack of ethical discrimination between ‘competing’ choices and lifestyles. In this context, the ‘common good’ (associated with the idea that that there are certain actions and choices that can be of benefit to the whole or greater part of the community and of society) is replaced by a belief that all individuals and choices are of equal value (equivalent, ‘equally valid’, as good as one another). Instead of the qualitative idea of the common good, we have a quantitative notion of the ‘best’, which is whichever lifestyle, product or individual is most successful in the social market – whichever becomes the most widely adopted and most commonly accepted (common goods, indeed). The reversal of traditional morality is completed when it is the centres of resistance to this commercialisation and equalisation of values – such as the Catholic Church, nationalism and Islam – that are vilified and morally condemned.

The recent row over gay adoption was a case in point. One of the most interesting – and least commented – aspects of the controversy was the way adoption was framed as a sort of commercial service offered by adoption agencies to would-be parents. The whole context of the discussion was the sexual orientation regulations in the forthcoming Equality Bill, which set out the bases for ensuring equal access to goods and services irrespective of sexual orientation. But is adoption a commercial service in this way? If that is the case, then adopted children become a sort of product that gay couples are allowed to purchase on the free market on equal terms with straight couples, married or not; and adoption agencies’ ‘services’ are offered to the parents, not the children, and consist essentially of matching children with suitable parents in rather a similar way to the pairing of individuals carried out by dating agencies or the matching of potential employees to vacant positions provided by recruitment agencies.

But this is not really what adoption is all about: it should be a service of love towards the children, whereby the agencies are dedicated to finding parents who in turn will serve the children with their life-long love and support. Beneath all the rhetoric and position taking on both sides of the debate, the issue was very much one of a conflict between a traditional Christian ethic focused on the needs of the children and the demand of the market society for an equal supply of children to fulfil the desires of all would-be parents, irrespective of their lifestyle choices. This in part accounts for the fact that the perspective of the needs of the children was relatively absent from the arguments of the pro-gay adoption side: these needs were secondary to the demand for equal ‘rights’ to access adoption services – the rights of adopters being implicitly prioritised over what is right for the children. Maybe also, as most of the people defending the cause of equality for gay people in this area were straight, there was an element of not wanting to delve too deeply into the question of the needs of the children; as the majority of straight people perhaps secretly feel that adoption by a stable heterosexual couple is in fact the best option for children, despite the social market-equality agenda.

The row over the supposed racist bullying of Celebrity Big Brother (CBB) participant Shilpa Shetty by Jade Goody and other contestants was another example of a clash between the Big Brother model of social-market equality and more traditional ideas of cultural separation. I’ve written about the CBB controversy in previous blog entries. In brief, Shilpa was not a victim of racism but of a sort of jealousy and bitchiness that is capable of being read, to some extent, as representative of a not uncommon English-nationalist resentment and resistance towards people of other nationalities and races taking advantage of the British free market-society and competing successfully within it, to the apparent detriment of those who were born here. In the discussions on the show, Shilpa was clearly seen as a representative of the ideals of social-market integration: that people of all nations and races should be allowed to compete freely, equally and fairly in British society and its cultural-economic extension – the global market. But Jade Goody’s behaviour – for all its aggression and crudeness – could be seen as the expression of a wish for England to be for the English and India to be for the Indians: a defence of separate, distinctive national-cultural identities. This is not just jingoistic and racist: the wish to maintain differences between cultures can, on the contrary, be seen as proceeding from a concern to hold on to things that are precious and distinctive about one’s country and background, and not for everything to be absorbed into the globalised free market in which all cultures are equally valid to one’s own, and have an equal right to exist in – and compete against – one’s own culture.

Similarly, Shilpa Shetty’s own aspiration to compete and achieve success in a Western market (symbolised and actualised by her participation in CBB) could be seen as symptomatic of how the success of ethnic Indians and of the nation of India in the global economy is actually contributing to a loss of distinctive aspects of Indian culture, rather than being an affirmation of them. Shilpa Shetty – the Bollywood star – was not setting out to bring Bollywood to a mass market in the West, but rather to leave behind her Indian background and to forge a career in Western films and TV: on Western terms. This is perhaps one of the meanings of Jade’s suggestion to Shilpa that she should go and visit some of the slums in her country: not so much an insult to India as a poor and backward country, but an implication that Shilpa was so concerned to make a career for herself on the global market that she was indifferent to the continuing hardships faced by the people – Indian filmgoers – who’d given her the opportunity in the first place. In this context, Shilpa could be seen as representative of an individualistic, free-market-competitive notion of equality superseding a true concern for social equality, opportunity and solidarity on a more collective level.

Shilpa Shetty was a convenient symbol of ‘pure’ racism, uncomplicated by other factors that might have made the unpleasant language directed towards her more recognisable: appearing to have more in common with generally held opinions and ordinary behaviour. Ethnic Indians constitute one of the most successfully integrated racial minorities in British society, and this is what made it easy to view Shilpa’s treatment as simply racist: motivated by prejudice, ignorance and race hate rather than by broader socio-economic and cultural factors. But if a Polish or Lithuanian immigrant had taken Shilpa’s place and received the same treatment, would it have been possible to present it as racist? If so, then all the many people up and down the land who resent the way in which low-paid jobs have been given to Central and Eastern European immigrants – pushing down wages and, so the argument goes, reducing opportunities for British people – are also merely racist and bigoted. And how different the arguments would have been if Shilpa were a burka- and niqab-wearing Asian Muslim! Then her victimisation could not have been described as racist, not only because it would have been more obvious that it was more accurately viewed as the expression of socio-cultural insecurity and defensiveness; but also because many of those decrying the ‘bullying’ of Shilpa Shetty would actually agree with at least the ‘philosophical’ basis for strong suspicion of the Muslim veil, if not the overtly aggressive expression of that hostility that might have been provided by Jade Goody! After all, what does the veil symbolise? One of the things it symbolises – at least from the point of view of Western onlookers – is the resistance of orthodox Islam to the Western market-society in which all have a right – indeed, a natural inclination – to trade themselves, their goods and services freely, openly and equally: women as much as men. And this resistance of course has a spiritual and moral foundation: ethical differentiation between right and wrong lifestyles, and between the expected roles and behaviour of men and women, versus the social-market-egalitarian view that all have a right – and therefore, it is right – to lead a full, independent and active socio-economic existence.

In this context, it was highly invidious when – in a speech on multiculturalism at the end of January 2007 – the UK Conservative Party leader David Cameron compared Muslim ‘extremists’ with members of the hard-right British National Party (BNP). Not many commentators seem to have pointed out how conceptually screwball and insulting towards Muslims this comparison is. Islam is one of the bugbears of the BNP, and the party’s supporters in its strongholds have been linked with campaigns designed to fuel prejudice and even violence against Muslim communities. It’s about as accurate as equating Nazis with Communists: OK, their actions might have been similar but not their philosophical justification. This is no better than when President Bush condemned ‘Islamists’ as ‘Islamic fascists’. It’s an example of just how prejudiced and extreme in its turn is the tendency for moral equalisation inherent within the social-market-egalitarian point of view. Just as any lifestyle and form of economic activity that promotes a dynamic free market is capable of being seen as ‘good’, anything that opposes the amoral, global market is seen as ‘evil’; and therefore, fascists and ‘Islamists’ are somehow equivalent.

The problem is the definition of what is an ‘extremist’, and Mr Cameron’s view appears to be that anyone who is in favour of the introduction of Shariah law is an extremist. Promoting such a thing through violence and insurrection could certainly qualify for the epithet of ‘extremist’; but holding Shariah law as an ideal for the whole of society is probably something that the majority of Muslims around the world regard as integral to their faith. So is it a form of extremism merely to be a devout, committed Muslim who attempts to structure his or her daily life around the dictates of Shariah; and who regards the commitment to Islam as fundamentally more important, morally and ontologically, than any commitment to a secular state and to the material benefits of economic life? The ‘racist’ (BNP) and the ‘Islamist extremist’ are facile categories with which anyone who resists the desired unification of Britain around an optimised and globalised free market-society can be readily assimilated. The views that are stigmatised in this way can then be condemned as promoting social division rather than merely standing for a different society and way of life than the competitive free market-society into which the unifiers would have us all fully engaged: to be different and separate from the market society is therefore simply equated with divisiveness.

There is perhaps no more compelling symbol of the way the British political establishment is wedded to the idea that market forces are inherently good, and can always be channelled to serve the cause of economic regeneration and social inclusion, than the government’s enthusiasm to allow the development of so-called ‘super-casinos’: Las Vegas-style ‘gaming’ (=gambling) complexes. On announcing recently that the first of these casinos was to be built in a deprived area of the city of Manchester, the government attempted to justify this choice on the basis that the new gambling venue would bring employment and regeneration to a place where it was desperately needed. But no consideration was given to the broader harm to individuals and society as a whole that will inevitably come from more people being drawn into gambling addiction by the lure of such places. Instead, the emphasis was placed on gambling being just another form of entertainment choice, which consumers (gamblers) were entitled to have the opportunity to make or not to make.

In this way, gambling stands as another metaphor for the way in which the amoral market, and the random nature of success or failure in it, has come to replace traditional moral judgements of right and wrong, and of reward being linked to true merit (as opposed to success being viewed as meretricious in its own right). There are winners and losers in the lottery of the market society – but that’s just life, isn’t it? You pays your money and takes your choice. Just as gay couples, so the argument goes, have the right to choose – and it is right that they can choose – whether to spend their money on adopting children. Just as paying TV viewer / voters have the right to choose / it is right that they did choose to support an Indian Bollywood star who was trading on her sex appeal as the innocent victim of racism; rather than choosing a more random celebrity – Jade Goody – on whom those same viewers could vent their envy of the coveted fame and fortune they’d not been able to achieve. Just as senior politicians have the right to – it is right that they should – brand Muslim traditionalists as extremists because they resist the encroachment of the market into every aspect of life; thereby adding fuel to the fire of British-nationalist Islamophobia, and then adding insult to injury by comparing Islamic supporters of Shariah to their very enemies in the BNP.

After all, we live in a free society in Britain, don’t we? And the purpose of freedom is to create a competitive, dynamic market society, in which all individuals, goods and services can realise their true value. But this freedom isn’t made available so that ‘extremists’ can abuse it – in the name of so-called ‘free speech’ – by daring to question its morality and socio-cultural consequences. So cultural conservative, Catholic traditionalist or devout Muslim beware. Speak out, criticise the morality of the global market ideal at your peril. Because in Britain, Big Brother is watching you.

Is Tolerance Enough? Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Five)

Is Tolerance Enough? Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Five)

In my blog of 14 December, I examined the question of whether Britain was a tolerant nation, in relation to some of the philosophical and judicial implications of the term. This was in response to recent attempts – by Tony Blair and senior Anglican churchmen among others – to place tolerance at the heart of the new ‘Britology’: the set of core, shared British values that are being advocated as the basis for greater cultural integration and social cohesion in the UK.

In that previous entry, I argued that Britain was not really a tolerant nation in the full sense of the word; but that tolerance on a whole range of cultural and social issues was limited by a moral framework inherited from Christianity (which I am now calling Christo-liberalism, or ‘evangeliberalism’). In particular, this fusion between liberalism and the Christian tradition endows the criticisms of, and potential legal restrictions on, the Muslim veil with a tremendous degree of ambiguity: the veil as a symbol of an intolerant (anti-liberal) culture at odds with ‘our’ tolerance; or the veil as the symbol of radical Islam that provokes fear in us as Christians, and unites us in wishing to exclude that Islam from our culture and even from our land.

Tolerance also refers to personal and, by extension, national characteristics, and these are what I wish to focus on today. As discussed in the entry of 14 December, referring to somebody as a tolerant person can carry a number of implications, some more negative than others. It can imply being over-indulgent towards other people’s foibles; being too passive and timid in accepting anti-social behaviour. Conversely, a tolerant person can mean someone who is possessed of the positive philosophical quality of tolerance: who has strong liberal principles making them a stout defender of the rights of people both to live their lives as they wish and not to infringe the same liberty in others.

Both of these implications are at work in the recent advocacy of tolerance: we Brits are tolerant in a liberal sense but perhaps have tended to be somewhat too indulgent towards other cultures, which may need to change. In addition, both aspects are presented as being fused within the British character, whereby British people are viewed as ‘naturally’ tolerant towards people of different ethnicities and cultures in a broad sense that also includes Western sub-cultures. This tolerance comprises an acceptance of other people in their difference, and a genuine willingness to accord them the right to live and express their culture in Britain. But it also involves qualities of reserve, detachment and fear of difference, whereby different people may be allowed to live in Britain but not really embraced as British: welcomed into British people’s land but not their hearts. These are understandable reactions, and British people are far from unique in being reserved towards in-comers and nervous about the changes to the receiving nation’s traditions and way of life that successive waves of immigration may bring.

Tolerance in the sense just described is predicated on separation and a hierarchy of values, both of which imply a form of rejection of difference at an emotional level. One can be tolerant only towards people whose values and behaviour are different to one’s own. So, on the one hand, tolerance is acceptance of others, but only as other: ‘we will accept you but only so long as your culture remains distinct and does not impinge on, or seek to change, our own’. On the other hand, when our ability to assimilate different cultures and value systems is viewed as founded on tolerance, this involves subordinating them to our pre-existing values: ‘if your traditions and behaviour fundamentally transgress our principles, they are not welcome here; you must modify your culture to fit in with the overall principle of tolerance’. When tolerance is also taken as a personal and emotional characteristic of British people, this enables qualified tolerance of difference to be supported by an appeal to ‘reasonableness’, fairness and moderation: ‘we’re tolerant people but don’t push us too far as we won’t tolerate extreme and intolerant behaviour from you’.

The two faces of tolerance – separation and hierarchy – described above could serve as basic descriptions of different forms of multiculturalism. The established British multicultural model that is increasingly being questioned and dismissed involves the former approach: enabling the different cultures within Britain to continue to express themselves and prosper side by side, which ultimately involves them remaining separate. As part of this approach, traditional British culture (discuss) has been deliberately under-emphasised. But this does not really equate to greater acceptance of diversity, precisely because it perpetuates separation and difference: ‘keep your culture and express it openly in the public domain, and we’ll keep ours to ourselves’.

The new Britology is built on the hierarchical method: ‘your culture can be integrated with ours but only if you tolerate others as we tolerate you; radical deviation from our values will not be tolerated’. But again, this implies really that the different cultures remain different: both united and separated by mutual tolerance.

The cultural integration that the hierarchical method of tolerance aims to foster is one that is effective only at the level of publicly articulated, politically correct values. We can all do lip service to having shared values; but at a visceral, emotional level, this tolerance is built on ambivalence: a fair-minded willingness to give others a chance to make a life for themselves alongside a fear of change and a rejection of diversity.

The new tolerance is a ‘many-into-one’ model for cultural integration: the multiplicity of in-coming cultures merges into our pre-existing set of values that ultimately remains unchanged because those values are timeless. The now much-despised multiculturalism is a ‘one-in-many’ model: the idea that a new British culture could be fashioned from a multiplicity of cultures, with the traditional British culture assuming no hierarchical precedence. But again, this ultimately involves cultural separation. What is needed is a ‘many-as-one’ model: the creation of a new culture based on a genuine coming together of and dialogue between cultures and traditions, in which all must be prepared to embrace change or remain rooted in separation. The traditional British culture must of course continue to occupy a central role; but cultural integration will not be real and will remain only an abstract ideal unless that culture, too, is willing to learn from and be changed by the cultures of those whom it wishes to call British.

The many and the one cannot remain many nor be united in the one. They must evolve into the new.

Season's Greetings

Season’s Greetings

Or should that be ‘happy Christmas’? This year, there seems to have been an increase in the politically correct tendency to replace explicit references to Christmas with alternative expressions that are non-specific to any religion. ‘Season’s Greetings’ is the favourite term of this sort. The trend has been particularly in evidence in the world of commerce, with stores keen to encourage all customers – not only those who would consider themselves to be personally or culturally Christian – to participate in the seasonal orgy of debt-fuelled consumerism.

There have been numerous complaints, too, about schools not doing anything special to mark Christmas, such as carol singing; using the non-specific circumlocutions to refer to it; and not adequately teaching children about the Christmas story.

This is ironic, as there has been a strong backlash this year against inclusive multiculturalism, of which this could be interpreted as an example: not wanting to cause offence to persons of other faiths or none by forcing them to participate, directly or indirectly, in a Christian celebration.

But is this inclusive or exclusionist? Isn’t it more inclusive to let Muslim children and those of other faiths participate in the joyful Christian traditions of the festive season and the celebration of the nativity, of which even many more established British ethnic communities (Christian or not) no longer believe in the literal truth? So long as this is done in a non-proselytising way (and, let’s face it, not even many Christian schools could justify the epithet of proselytising), it is almost discriminatory to deny that cultural experience to non-Christian children living in this country.

Similarly, when Christmas is de-christianised for the sake of commerce (with the magic face of present buying – Father Christmas – conveniently emphasised almost to the exclusion of the actual Christmas story), is this not in fact also denying the opportunity for people of other cultural and religious backgrounds to share in the specifically Christian features of the feast? We wish each other a bibulous Merry Christmas and enjoy our family Christmas traditions; but effectively turn our backs on our non-drinking Muslim neighbours by wishing them only Season’s Greetings. The inclusive thing to do would be to invite them into our homes to take part in the Christmas feast, and so learn more about the things that are different about each other, but still more importantly about the values we hold in common.

Muslims believe that Christ was a prophet (the last great prophet before Mohammed) and believe in his virgin birth from his holy mother Mary. How many of ‘us’ Christians believe even that much?

So happy Christmas to all my readers (whoever you are out there), and a more inclusive and genuinely tolerant New Year to everyone!

Tolerance Makes Britain: Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Three)

Tolerance Makes Britain: Inventing Britain For the 21st Century (Part Three)

In a high-profile speech yesterday, Tony Blair set out his vision of the new multiculturalism based on a set of common British values to which everyone must be expected to conform. The heart of these values was tolerance: tolerance is an essential part of being British; tolerance is “what makes Britain”.

Clearly, a minor revision is needed to what I referred to in the last entry of this blog as ‘Blair’s Britology’: the set of supposedly shared British values that are being promoted as the basis upon which all the peoples of Britain should unite, politically and culturally. In this list, I included ‘respect’ – a previous mantra of Mr Blair’s – rather than tolerance; although I regard tolerance as an implied sub-category of respect, as I was going to clarify in subsequent blogs. It is clear that Mr Blair links the two concepts closely, too, as his list of “our essential values” in his speech yesterday makes plain: “belief in democracy, the rule of law, tolerance, equal treatment for all, respect for this country and its shared heritage”. Tolerance towards diversity goes hand in hand with respect for the pillars of the shared socio-cultural edifice: equality of all under the law made by democratic government.

Nothing objectionable about that, one might say. However, in Blair’s new Britain, tolerance towards those of different faiths or from different cultural backgrounds is accompanied by zero tolerance towards those whose faith and cultural practices are perceived as being fundamentally at odds with the British tradition and the shared British norm. In particular, Mr Blair singled out “extremist” Islam as his example of a minority viewpoint and cultural grouping that would no longer be tolerated. Accept and conform to our shared values and way of life, or else you are not welcome here was Mr Blair’s message. The prime minister stated that the “duty to integrate” and take on these common values should now take precedence over any particular religious practice.

In what appeared to be a reference to the recent debate over the Muslim full veil, or niqab, Mr Blair indicated that the Equal Opportunities Commission would be looking at concerns about women's status inside Muslim communities. So, extrapolating from Mr Blair’s speech, if the view were taken – and, indeed, legislation to that effect were passed – that wearing the niqab did represent a religious practice that ran counter to the aims of integration (and that it was also based on unequal treatment of some Muslim women), then the duty to integrate and conform to the British value of equal treatment for all would override the religious duty that some Muslim women sincerely believe they have to wear the veil.

This can surely not be right. Where do you draw the line between the demands of social conformity and those of obedience to the tenets of religious faith? There are many faith symbols worn about the person that mark out their wearer’s adherence to a set of religious values that may be at variance with the norms and traditions of British society. But it is clear from the row over the BA employee suspended from her post for refusing to cover up her cross pendant – a position clearly supported by the UK government (see my blog of 25 November) – that there are some symbols and religious beliefs that can be tolerated within the new Britishness, and some that can’t. But there is actually no difference in kind, only one of degree, between the different faiths of Britain: every religious faith puts obedience to its teachings and laws ultimately above those of the society in which the individual lives. If there is a fundamental conflict between the two, then it is the religious law that takes precedence.

Mr Blair’s singling out of certain Muslims in this regard is in fact a threat and a warning to all faiths. And as there is no inherent justification for differentiating in all circumstances between veil-wearing Muslims, turban-wearing Sikhs or cross-wearing Christians, the real reason for doing so is merely political and tactical. It involves simplistically identifying the communities that support women wearing the niqab with those that are sympathetic towards, even actively supportive of, Islamic terrorism; and it is a way to signal to these ‘extremist’ Muslims that the government means business and to put pressure on Muslim communities to reform from within – or else.

The fact that Mr Blair is acting in such a menacing way towards one religious community, but not towards others that might also have fundamental qualms about putting conformity to social norms above some of their religious practices, betrays the fact that this stance is politically motivated. This is evident in that, ironically, Mr Blair is transgressing the very British values he claims to uphold when he singles Muslims out in this way: he is treating them unequally and is displaying intolerance towards diversity because he identifies a particular type of Muslim (at least, rhetorically) with a fundamental challenge to those values, and by extension to his authority and ‘righteousness’ in his dealings with Muslims in Britain and other parts of the world. Therefore, the Muslims who – in Blair’s view –place themselves outside British values no longer deserve to be treated in a way that is consistent with those British values: they must be excluded from the new British culture.

But they’re here; they’re British. What are we ultimately supposed to do to those who won’t conform? ‘Repatriate’ them?

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.