Posted on 09/01/2007 6:22:49 AM PDT by Jakarta ex-pat
At some point in the Second World War, R.A. Butler came to see Churchill to voice his anxiety about the failure of the education system to instill patriotism in the nation's youth. He wondered what could be done about it.
"Tell the children that Wolfe took Quebec," advised the Prime Minister. It remains good advice, with the qualification that "the children" should now be interpreted to cover the entire population. In a poll of 2,000 adults conducted two years ago, more than 60 per cent did not know in which war D-Day occurred. They probably know even less about Wolfe, Clive of India, Pitt, Wilberforce, Nelson, Wellington, Florence Nightingale, Captain Oates or Churchill himself.
This national ignorance of our own history, of our heroes, is perhaps the single most important element in the current crisis over "Britishness". Nations and states seem to be formidable and permanent structures, but they are rooted ultimately in such sentiments as pride, loyalty, fellowship and a sense of common destiny. It is hard to feel these things towards something you know nothing about. Yet impressive structures can crumble rapidly, as the USSR and Yugoslavia both illustrate by their absence.
Symptoms of the crisis of Britishness are as yet less drastic, but they are serious enough: the 7/7 bombings, the rise of Scottish nationalism, the spread of cultural customs incompatible with the liberalism of British life, and even the shooting of Rhys Jones, which in its own extreme way revealed the disintegration of a distinctive British (or English) society marked by gentle manners, self-discipline, and dispersed informal authority.
This society had heroes, but it was sustained not solely by them, but by ordinary members of the public who daily upheld common standards of decency and good behaviour. It is customary to quote Orwell at this point, but perhaps a more impressive testimony might be that of the many foreign visitors who were enraptured by the Britain/England of those years. The Czech writer Karel Capek, in his 1924 essays, Letters From England, wrote: "Wherever on this planet ideals of personal freedom and dignity apply, of tolerance, of respect for the individual and inviolable human rights, there you will find the cultural inheritance of England, which is the home of civilised people. If you were a little boy, you would know that you could trust them [the English] more than yourself …"
Nirad Chaudhuri says the same things 30 years later. Such writers tend to praise the police, but the police of those years could uphold order with a light hand because they were supporting (and supported by) the entire corpus of respectable adult society. This was a social consensus that excluded only the criminal, the ideologically extreme (fascists and communists), and intellectuals too sheltered for their own perception.
The gradual deconstruction of what the sociologist Christie Davies calls "Respectable Britain" and its replacement by "Permissive Britain" began in the 1960s. Crime began to rise, family breakdown to accelerate. These trends had deep causes, but they were not discouraged by either government policy or official attitudes.
Cultural liberalism eroded authority, especially the informal authority of respectable adults and traditional morality. Police no longer automatically sided with the adult enforcer against the delinquent. Parents no longer supported the teacher against their child. Men no longer married their pregnant girlfriends. And if there were casualties as a result, the welfare state picked up some of the tab, thus lowering the barrier to future delinquencies. As society was relaxing, the nation went on a European holiday.
Political and other elites increasingly saw Britain's future "in Europe". Except during the Thatcher interregnum, both the symbols of Britain's political identity and its economic ties to the Commonwealth were downplayed or re-oriented in order to promote among the British what Chris Patten called "an emotional attachment to their European identity". Britain's national identity was devalued by this - ignorance of British history developed in those years - but the promised European identity never "took". The devaluation of what remained of British patriotism was completed by multiculturalism, which went so far as to deny the validity of a common British culture and to describe the British identity as inherently "racist".
Mass immigration plays a part in this story, but the deconstruction of Britain was overwhelmingly the work of locals. Until the 1960s or thereabouts, immigrants arriving in Britain wanted to be British or, in the case of West Indians, thought they were already. It was a proud identity and one that invited assimilation. By 2005, however, the British "brand" was so weak that competing identities, such as a radical Islamist identity, could seduce even assimilated young people away from it and into a barbaric, self-confident alternative.
The Tube bombings finally alerted the elites to the problem they had created. Tony Blair announced second thoughts on multiculturalism. Gordon Brown, who was already re-thinking "Britishness", began to talk of flying flags and holding national days. The Government established lessons in national identity and values for immigrants and would-be citizens.
Going to Labour for lessons in patriotism, however, is a little like ordering a steak dinner in a restaurant run by vegetarians. You won't like what you get. Labour's official lessons in Britishness contain almost no history - and certainly no heroic history. As a result, the "British" values it celebrates, mainly tolerance, have nothing distinctively British about them. They are all abstract principles of political niceness that, among other disadvantages, have to be compatible with our continued absorption into a "European" destiny.
The Tories, who are supposed to know about national pride, proved disabled by their fear of racism and "nastiness". They responded to Brown's appeal for flag-waving with a superior sniff, arguing that such practices were vulgarly un-British. Their reaction was reminiscent of nothing so much as Michael Flanders's satirical crack: "We never went around saying how marvellous we were. Everyone knew that." Unfortunately, neither they nor we know it any more. And if we are to relearn it, that will involve at least a certain amount of the gaudy, buoyant, vulgar flag-waving that has been part of British (and Tory) patriotism since Disraeli and Kipling. The difficulty over which both parties choke is one that was brilliantly laid out on this page by Mihir Bose after the London bombings: " …the vast majority of non-white immigrants to Britain have come from our former colonies, and bring not only their own cultures but also their own versions of our shared history. So, in trying to construct a single coherent narrative for this island, we are faced with trying to marry two historical streams: the 'home' version and the 'export' version."
Gordon Brown thinks that this means that any inclusive British identity must rest on glossing over the imperial past. The Tory leadership may well agree. In fact Bose's problem may well be its own solution. It is imperial history that unites the British with their former imperial subjects (many of whom did not think of themselves simply as subjects at the time). The empire is where we first met each other, sometimes as enemies, more often and more recently as comrades in arms.
Consider such matters as the number of VCs won by Indian soldiers. Or the fact that there were three Indian MPs elected to the Commons between 1880 and 1914 - a Tory, a Liberal and a Labour man, as good luck would have it. Or the volunteer regiments from the West Indies in the Second World War. Or, as Churchill might also have said: Tell them how Wilberforce ended the slave trade.
Don't be daft,
What about Paris Hilton, and fill in the blanks.
Very few care anymore.
Keep smiling,
Philip.
It’s happening here too, and it is by the design of the LEFT. If you don’t know history, you can be led in any direction, for you have nothing to compare the future path with. Also, ignorning or downplaying past wars and territorial acquisitions would lead the unschooled to think “the US now is as it always was.” Of course, those who have studied history know better. The US was built on the blood and gristle of brave men and women, and by victories in war.
For example, the La Raza crowd who would take the SW from the USA—they know their (twisted version) of history, and are not afraid to tell listeners how all the West was once Mexican. “Once” is actually a good word because Mexico had “nominal” control of the west for all of 30 years, and during that period did nothing to settle it. But from La Raza’s mouthpieces and a pliant press one would think Denver, Salt Lake, Las Vegas, Pheonix, LA and SF were once thriving Mexican cities.
Conservatives can counter 99% of Liberal lies by schooling the populace in History. We need to teach our fellow citizens, especially the younger ones if we are to counter the Leftist liars.
Unfortunately, the classroom was given to the opposition long ago.
Well said!
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