Hundal:

While lefties love to talk about economic issues, I think we avoid cultural issues like the plague.

Really?

The entire territory of the study of popular culture – from Hoggart’s Uses of Literacy to blogging – has been a fertile territory for the liberal/left, whether in the academy, in journalism or in actually creating stuff. That’s why Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem went from the Royal Court to the West End to Broadway. That’s why Robin Cook came up with the so-called ‘chicken tikka masala’ speech. I suspect PJ Harvey might have something useful in her new album Let England Shake. The fact that New Labour stuffed all that up by the time of Brown’s misguided ‘British Jobs for British Workers’ soundbite and the apotheosis of Phil Woolas when it came to immigration policy suggests not that ‘we’ have avoided cultural issues like the plague, but rather that key political figures were neither brave nor imaginative enough to come up with anything new or distinctive.

“We are an immigrant nation.”

We are?

@1

Romans, Normans, Saxons, Celts [etc]

Do you wish me to go on?

That isn’t to say such an identity should exclude newcomers or settled immigrants, or force them into anything.

I think it should definitely force them into some things (or, at least, the state/law/society should). It just shouldn’t force them into things that it wouldn’t expect of everyone else in society too (or the equivalent).

Romans, Normans, Saxons, Celts [etc]

Do you wish me to go on?

And how will we bind our fractious Norman and Saxon identities together, whilst allowing these cultures the space to flourish?

@4

Err, you queried the use of “we are an immigrant nation”, not “we are historically a multicultural nation”. Two different things.

Bob B is fond of quoting Daniel Defoe’s “True Born Englishman”, I suggest you peruse it http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173337

Good article. One problem is that people who are fine with multiculturalism (or whatever you want to call it) probably won’t agree on what our culture really is – I myself fail to see who has the authority to define “Britishness” even if they try to do it in an inclusive way.

Another is that many (NOT all) of the people who see multiculturalism as a curse will probably invoke it regardless of how good immigrants are at adapting to the UK. People see what they want to see, so if an Asian guy behaves in a way they consider rude they’ll generalize it into “immigrants not understanding British manners” or similar.

The debate around immigration isn’t just about housing and wage levels. It is also about people’s worry that their way of life will change for the worse.

Glad you’ve belatedly come to that conclusion.

Now will the Left apologise for creaming “eeeevil racist” at anyone who dared to say the same at any point up to now?

Romans, Normans, Saxons, Celts [etc]

Do you wish me to go on?

It’s an over-statement to refer to England as an immigrant nation. The incoming Romans, Celts, Vikings, Normans, Huguenots etc. were all proportionally tiny. Even the Anglo-Saxon influx from the 5 century on is now believed to have been more on the lines of the Norman Conquest than any wholesale replacement of the existing population.

In reality there is a historically remarkable stability in the English population. When they found the remains of Cheddar Man in Somerset a few years ago, they discovered (through DNA testing) that his direct descendant was a history teacher. In Cheddar. That’s 9,000 years of continuous occupation.

We are an immigrant nation. There is no going back and we must find ways of living together and creating a new vision of England. We demand that migrants must be like us. But who actually are we? They must share our British values.

I see that Cruddas has caught Baldwinitis, and is unsure of which country he wants people to be proud.

@9

tl;dr: what did the Romans ever do for us?

The trouble with the article and this arguement too is that it suggests the answer is to pander to the mistaken perception of multiculturalism (which it has been pronounced has failed, under what criteria?) rather than meaningfully attempting to address inequality.

Doesn’t culture spring from our social-economic configuration? We’ve become more fragmented, differentiated from people in our community when 30 years ago we would be more similar to people in our area. Isn’t this because of more a diversified economy and an abundance of (highly differentiated) things to consume? It seems an intractable problem as this reified conception of the self, encouraged by a rampant (lucrative) ideology of individualism, flatters us and is one of the last things we would ever think of relinquishing (despite many problems regarding the impermanence and dependence of the self.)

Sorry to leave more questions than I answred. Good to see LibCon publish more articles like this,

@ Flowerpower

“Now will the Left apologise for creaming “eeeevil racist” at anyone who dared to say the same at any point up to now?”

Sure, just write to Captain Left, the democratically elected leader of the Homogenuous Nation of Lefties and representative of every left-wing person ever, and he’ll get right on it.

Every now and then we get to kick this tired old scabby football around for some reason. Yet every time we do it the same old canards come up. Asking if ‘we’ should be pro or anti ‘Multiculturism’ is as relevant as asking ‘are male pattern baldness, soil erosion and super nova explosions good ideas’.

Multiculturism is what you get from having a free, open society. Yesterday some economic migrants to this Country celebrated the birth of their Nation, two hundred and twenty five years ago. Did the cultural purity police knock down these doors of these anti British celebrations and arrest the interlopers because they were ‘glorifying terrorism’? Or, did we just, er, well let them get on with it?

I would not be surprised if some traitors on here even went to barbeque, party or something to join in.

Anyway, no-one finds it unusual that Americans here feel perfectly comfortable celebrating Independence day, thanksgiving, watch the Superbowl, the World Series or whatever, because we are a free Country.

People in this Country have the right to follow any religion they want. They have the Right to practically limitless freedoms to live their lives as they see fit. That is what ‘Multiculturalism’ means; it means we are free.

How could anyone describe themselves as ‘anti multiculturalism’? What would that actually mean? They did not believe in the to follow the religion of their choice? They did not believe in the right to follow the belief system of their choice? They do not believe that people be allowed to decide their own cultural norms.

We do not have a dress code in this Country. We do not ban ‘non British’ clothing or anti British food or religious books. We simply do not ban anything that might be construed as ‘Multicultural’ in outlook. Why should we though? Who gives a fuck whether or not a celebration is ‘British’ or not?

You want to talk about ‘patriotism’? Yes, let us talk about patriotism. Let us demand that finical institutions that want to do business here be forced to place their call centres here. Let us ban foreign companies from snapping up British rivals, asset stripping them and dust their hands free of the detritus as they walk away with huge profits. Let us ban foreign working practices and ban companies sacking British workers, off shoring the work and flooding us with imported goods? Let us ban British people from being extradited to face trumpted up charges in backward Countries, even when the so-called ‘crimes’ they have committed where committed in this Country.

Not the same thing? Oh, silly me, this isn’t about putting British people first, this is about putting the prejudices of a few mindless bigots first.

Jim @ 14

Presumably from your last but one paragraph you would advocate leaving the EU? Because that’s the only way you can implement any of these patriotic acts.

The fact that New Labour stuffed all that up by the time of Brown’s misguided ‘British Jobs for British Workers’ soundbite

redpesto – I broadly agree that New Labour stuffed it up. But I also think there wasn’t a language or a tradition they could draw from. Cruddas has been about the only person to bang on about this, and he’s been good on immigration and welfare, while also being good on the need to talk about solidarity and togetherness.

Your references aside, when I do talk about Englishness or the need for an inclusive form of patriotism, a lot of lefties start shuffling their feet. Hell, I wrote about the need for Britishness years ago and even then a lot of people were telling me there was no need to talk about Britishness or what defines us.

The history might be there, but the present is a barren landscape on the matter I think.

flowerpower – actually I partially agree with you! I do think people are too quick to use the insult ‘racist’ very quickly in this discussion and it annoys me sometimes. That isn’t to say some of the language and sentiments aren’t sometimes motivated by racism either…

“Err, you queried the use of “we are an immigrant nation”, not “we are historically a multicultural nation”. Two different things.”

Yes I did, and you wheeled out one of the enduring clichés of the immigration debate. By extension, in that sense, every nation is a nation of immigrants, since every nation comes from somewhere else geographically and chronologically and did not spring fully formed from Zeus’ head at the dawn of time.

But such a concept is of no use analytically, and in any case is quite obviously not what people mean when they talk about nations of immigrants. Do we have no native population? Is it all really immigrant? No I think not.

Of course, the inability of our political class to enunciate some kind of “British identity” is hardly surprising, given that they don’t believe we exist. A nation of immigrants, indeed.

@9 Very good point.

“We are an immigrant nation. ”

Not a good way to start. That in itself is enough to annoy the hell out of me. Immediately launching into a deception. If politicos like Cruddas want to have an honest debate about this, then they need to be honest.

I can trace my family back hundreds of years, and the most exotic it gets is Cornish. If I’d found someone called Diego Garcia or Vladimir Boromov I would have not been shocked or horrified or undergone an identity crisis, I would have found it fascinating, but I didn’t. My ancestors lived here in this country, their bones are in this earth, and my attachment to this place is very different to someone who turned up yesterday.

I’m not for one minute denying that people have come here throughout time and settled, and that some of our greatest figures had shallow roots here, Isembard Kingdom Brunel to name but one, nor am I denying that people can be patriotic without a long family history here, but I most certainly object to being called an immigrant, because I am not an immigrant. It is a word. It has a meaning. It doesn’t apply to me. Indeed I expect someone who was born and raised here of immigrant parents would equally object to being called an immigrant.

I don’t need a ‘new patriotism’ because I already have a patriotism, because this is my patria.

@16

“Yes I did, and you wheeled out one of the enduring clichés of the immigration debate. By extension, in that sense, every nation is a nation of immigrants, since every nation comes from somewhere else geographically and chronologically and did not spring fully formed from Zeus’ head at the dawn of time”

Well yeah. The USA for example is an example of very recent (in human history terms) immigration. I don’t see how that somehow demolishes my point..

“But such a concept is of no use analytically, and in any case is quite obviously not what people mean when they talk about nations of immigrants.”

Sure it’s useful. It shows from a historical perspective human beings have always – by your own admission – moved from place to place & settled in different communities across the globe. I find that quite interesting and useful when discussing immigration today. I’m surprised you don’t (or I would be if I’d not read your previous postings on this site).

Also: Cruddas didn’t say we are nation of immigrants. He said we’re an immigrant nation. It’s an important nuance – shitloads of our cultural heritage – things that we see as quintessentially British – are foreign imports. I see that as a fantastic thing, & that’s how I read Cruddas. *shrug*

I agree. It’s important to keep in mind that the main problem is inequality and wealth distribution. However I believe there are real problems in some areas that have experienced rapid increases in immigrant populations. I have great sympathy for people who feel bewildered at the pace and extent of the change they have experienced.

Let’s also try to avoid trying to define what constitutes our culture in the same terms as have failed previously. I would suggest that what we hold dear we have in common with many other nations, but that we contributed significantly to them in the past. I’m thinking of the legacy of the Enlightenment, people such as Tom Paine and John Stuart Mill and the culture that allowed them to develop such ideas.

So defined we are better able to identify real threats: Not immigration but rapid, unmanaged change that makes people feel powerless. Not Islam but religious conservatism.

NW @ 15

Whether we leave the EUis not the point, because even if we leave the EU tomorrow, no one is going to implement any of that because being ‘Patriotic’ does not mean preventing greedy bastards from coining it in while fucking the poor, being ‘patriotic’ is about banning the hajib and not printing leaflets in arabic.

Cherub @ 20

So defined we are better able to identify real threats: Not immigration but rapid, unmanaged change that makes people feel powerless.

Yes all those miners/manufacturers who had ‘rapid change’ foisted on them and where forced to give up well paid skilled labour jobs into de-unionisd, rubbish paid work. Those people where not called ‘bewilderd’ and allowed to take time to settle in. They were called dinosaurs who had better shape up and forget the past.

Same as the disabled who were now passed ‘fit for work’ no-one is talking about respecting the fact that they might feel it a bit ‘strange’, nope thrown straight to the wolves and left to get on with it.

@21

This is clear indication that you don’t understand what patriotism is, and thus why patriots are not going to take lectures from John Cruddas on what it is either.

Perhaps if you read ‘My country, right or left’ by that great plagiarist George Orwell it might help.

If every nation is an “immigrant nation” then “immigrant” has no informational content–it is redundant, tautological. And it would be irrelevant to the argument Cruddas and Rutherford are making.

Of course, neither thinker is capable of solving the mystery. It’s like asking the flea to cure the dog’s itch.

I’m reminded of a rather nice poem by Han-shan quoted in the Tao of Pooh:

A scholar named Wang
Laughed at my poems.
The accents are wrong,
He said,
Too many beats;
The meter is poor,
The wording impulsive.

I laugh at his poems,
As he laughs at mine.
They read like
The words of a blind man
Describing the sun.

Hundal:

Cruddas has been about the only person to bang on about this, and he’s been good on immigration and welfare, while also being good on the need to talk about solidarity and togetherness.

In the words of Robert Wyatt: ‘Everyone needs to feel at home/Nobody wins who fights alone.’

What do you mean ‘your references aside’? You need tangible examples – invented traditions, if you like – to articulate a sense of identity, let alone a patriotic one. Either it gets created – e.g. May Day as the workers holiday – or it emerges more haphazardly. For example, if the government simply gave the whole of England St George’s day off, people might invent their own celebrations (which might involve anything from dragon-slaying to reciting Shakespeare, or something no-one’s thought of yet) rather than simply being a chance for a bunch of thumbheads to kick off. It can’t be summoned up to order, and no-one’s yet found a new unifying or common myth (or ‘narrative’) that resonates.

New Labour had plenty of tradition to draw on – it just chose not to not least because it wasn’t ‘modern’ enough for Blair.

@22 True. It’s notable that facing the same economic problems, Germany decided to maintain state support for heavy industry as it was wound down and to have a managed change to the kind of manufacturing they are now famous for.

Of course, we had a market-fetishising grocer’s daughter leading us on her blinkered path to a rosy future that still hasn’t happened for most.

TT @ 23

Then, what is Patriotism? In the sense we are using the word today, rather than a classical definition? Does it mean ‘putting our Country first’ in the sense we are talking about? Does putting 1500 British people out of work, whilst saving Germans count as being Patriotic? What about putting 300 call centre jobs to India? Would that be Patriotic?

I fully understand that people on the Left have a difficulty with this concept because it means defending people who some on the left feel do not feel deserve to be defended, but the Right merely use the term as a code to hide deep seated prejudices.

This is where I have a problem with the term. It is one of those words that has simply lost all meaning because it is thrown around like confetti and the dictionary definition should read:

Patriotism: A term used by people who wish to hide naked self interest and/or racism.

@27 Jim,

“Then, what is Patriotism? In the sense we are using the word today, rather than a classical definition?”

No, let’s stick with the classical definition. The problems begin when people start playing Humpty Dumpty with the meaning of words. It means a love for your country, your nation.

Instead your saying:

“Patriotism: A term used by people who wish to hide naked self interest and/or racism.”

or that it has lost its meaning through mis-use. Well, this is true of many words used in political discourse. What perhaps you should do is reflect on the classic, as you call it, meaning and then ask what this should signify. Then you can answer your own questions on whether the award of the train contract or out-sourcing is patriotic.

I would also note that the famous maxim; ‘patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel’ is a critique of scoundrels, not patriotism.

tl;dr

Incidentally, that post was two paragraphs long. Some Ritalin for your ADD?

We are an immigrant nation.

An immigration nation whose people spent centuries learning to accommodate and integrate eachother’s cultures and desires. Want mass migration? Fair enough. But don’t pretend it can be balanced with some idea of national identity.

Why the shit would anyone want to be like us, have we not improved this nation by taking on what is good within the immigrants communities.

I agree that one law within a nation I watched a program yesterday about Sharia law, a Muslim solicitor stated if a Muslim women went to a British court to get divorced she would not be divorced until she asked a Sharia court, that should be sorted out, and although Sharia are not technically courts under labour they were given some forms of regulations thats unfair, one law for all.

But of course labour did cause serious problems by not building enough social housing to rent, trying to make us all house owners caused the shit in America and here, so renting is OK and why not.

Never seen the point of patriotism in a winner takes all, get what you want capitalist market economy.

Everyone is out for themselves so fuck patriotism.

TT @ 28

A simple love of your Country is a solid definition, but within a political context it is absolutely meaningless. I am not knocking what you are saying, but a ‘love of your Country’ can be used to justify anything you do.

Take GWB’s Wars. No doubt among some quarters his unadulterated slaughter of Muslim, men woman and children is seen as a Patriotic act. However, I think we have all seen the video of his total incomprehension when he was having the State of New Orleans’ flood defences explained to him. Would it be right to describe his complete failure to act to save New Orleans from mass destruction as unpatriotic? How could someone ignore a known threat to a major city in your own Country and consider yourself a Patriot?

I will always be initially suspicious of people when they describe themselves as a ‘Patriot’, not because I am ‘un-Patriotic’ but because I normally see pretty base beliefs hidden behind the concept. However, when a politician starts using the word ‘Patriotic’ I am pretty sure that he (or she) has something pretty nasty up their sleeve.

@29

It was a joke, hence the winky-dude – sorry if your Serious filters are set too high.

But the point remains: even if immigration to this country was as small as you say* immigrants still had a massive influence on just about everything “British” from religion to language to archetecture to music to technological advances etc.

[*Links or sources would be nice, I'm always willing to learn]

Patriotism and foreigners became lively public issues in England after Parliament in 1688 invited William of Orange and his wife Mary to rule as joint sovereigns in place of James II who had fled and, by implication, abdicated as monarch. In response, Daniel Defoe wrote this epic-length satirical poem: The True-Born Englishman (1703):

A true-born Englishman’s a contradiction,
In speech an irony, in fact a fiction . .

Dutch, Walloons, Flemings, Irishmen, and Scots,
Vaudois and Valtelins, and Hugonots,
In good Queen Bess’s charitable reign,
Supplied us with three hundred thousand men.
Religion—God, we thank Thee!—sent them hither,
Priests, Protestants, the Devil and all together:
Of all professions and of every trade,
All that were persecuted or afraid . .
http://www.luminarium.org/editions/trueborn.htm

After successive invasions by the Celts, the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons and Jutes, the Vikings and the Danes and then the Normans, the ethnic roots of the English have never been transparently defined. Within a few hundred metres of where I sit is a bricked up cave which the London Encyclopaedia reports as having contained evidence of human habitation extending back at least as far as the middle stone age.

A few years ago, an archeological dig in the neighbourhood uncovered the foundations of a substantial Roman villa. The place name, like most hereabouts, has a Saxon ending and five miles or so away in Kingston, seven Saxon monarchs were crowned before the Norman Conquest in 1066. The local Parish church is part Norman and the local manor house has Norman foundations.

Personally, I tend to go for Samuel Johnson’s reputed observation: Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

@35

See @6…

@ 31 Robert

“I agree that one law within a nation I watched a program yesterday about Sharia law, a Muslim solicitor stated if a Muslim women went to a British court to get divorced she would not be divorced until she asked a Sharia court, that should be sorted out, and although Sharia are not technically courts under labour they were given some forms of regulations thats unfair, one law for all.”

I’m pretty sure that’s wrong. If you’re divorced under law, you’re divorced under law. The lawyer may have been stating what he DESIRED to be the case, or he may have been claiming she would still be married under Sharia – but Sharia isn’t law in this country, so there’s nothing for us to sort out.

I could be wrong and would be interested to read evidence one way or the other, but I think if Muslims were immune to British divorce law we’d have heard about it by now, given that a large section of the press devotes itself to reporting on Muslim-centric laws that don’t even exist.

Johnson was criticising false-patriotism there.

Might I suggest instead, “the first Whig was the devil”? No?

@33 Jim,

I understand what you’re saying. You mention GWB, but don’t refer to this classic example: ‘The Patriot Act’ (renewed without fanfare under Obama I might add).

I do think we need to try hard not to be misled by the manipulation of language. To generalise, leftwing people talk about society, but shy away from references to the nation, (patriotism being such a reference to the nation), but what is this society leftwingers talk of, if not the society, the people, here in this nation? This is not to say that society is a synonym of nation.

If someone (e.g. a politician) claims to be patriotic, then it is right to question whether the case in point is for the good of the nation, or rather the people that comprise the nation. With something like ‘British jobs for British workers’ or economic protectionism in one form or another, it could be justified on the grounds of patriotism, but others will argue that such policies are not in the (longterm) interests of the people (ergo not patriotic). Usually protectionism has been to the benefit of a few of the people and to the detriment of everyone else.

There is another important element to this issue of patriotism, where what I’ve said above about society doesn’t really hold, and that is the move towards ‘global governance’ and supranational institutions such as the EU. Here we are seeing the hand-over of decision-making from national instititutions. This is a diminution of national sovereignty, and as such the patriot cannot support it. Someone else, who may care about society but doesn’t identify with the idea of a nation state or doesn’t feel an attachment to the ‘patria’ will not necessarily be bothered by such developments. If I was arguing with them, I would not try to persuade them by playing them ‘Last Night of the Proms’, in the hope that this would stir their hearts, but rather point out the dangers of losing even the idea of democratic accountability.

Fun fact, the USA Patriot Act is an acronym for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. Abuse of language indeed.

34 – I think the important question to statements such as Cruddas’ is: “Yes, to some extent, but — so?” I mean, no one beyond the fundamentalist fringe is anti-immigration. It’s the kind of immigration and amount of it that are important.

@40 sheesh. If only language was the only thing it abused.

TT @ 39

Yes, the Patriot act is a none to subtle way of using the language as a battering ram for pretty evil acts in the name of a ‘love of your Country’. They might as well have called Stop the civil rights movement shagging your mother.

If someone (e.g. a politician) claims to be patriotic, then it is right to question whether the case in point is for the good of the nation, or rather the people that comprise the nation.

I see where you are coming from but for me it is not ‘the people’ of the Nation, I worry that such a policy is being done, but the little section of the population. Mrs Thatcher and the Tories were quite adept at describing anything they did as for the good of ‘the Nation’ when clearly they meant the part of the population that voted Tory.

That is why I feel so angry when people on the Left start hoisting words like ‘the Nation’ and ‘Patriotism’ around. It is a meaningless term, because there is no such thing as ‘the Nation’ because we have became several separate ‘Nations’ and I do not mean in the geographical sense i.e. Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales.

We are several Nations that happen to share the same physical space and live cheek by jowl. Over the last thirty years the gap between the haves and the have nots has grown beyond anything we have seen in over a hundred years.

People are disconnected from each other to the extent that we have little clue on how the other half live.

Every day on this message board and a few others I look into from time to time I see a total ignorance of the lives of millions of our fellow citizens. I have heard people with long term disabilities being describes as parasites, the long term unemployed as lazy etc. I have heard people say things like ‘if we cut their benefit, they will take a job on’ and things like that. I sometimes wonder if these people are aware that there are areas of the Country where there are so few jobs that every job advert generates hundreds of applicants. It seems that they have no clue about the reality of areas of this Country.

I bet it was similar a hundred years ago, but it seems all too palpable now and perhaps less forgivable now as well.

The Great War was perhaps the first time we as a Nation really felt ‘as one’ and perhaps by the replay we did feel that ‘we are all in this together’, but I can tell you this, when Osborne used that phrase, it did not sound a call to arms for me, it sounded like a sick joke.

I shun terms like Nation (speaking as both a Scot and British) not because I have lost a love of my Country and Nation (if those are the correct terms), it is simply because there are great swathes of this population who I share nothing with.

TT @ 39

I do think we need to try hard not to be misled by the manipulation of language. To generalise, leftwing people talk about society, but shy away from references to the nation, (patriotism being such a reference to the nation), but what is this society leftwingers talk of, if not the society, the people, here in this nation?

That is why I feel so angry when people on the Left start hoisting words like ‘the Nation’ and ‘Patriotism’ around. It is a meaningless term, because there is no such thing as ‘the Nation’ because we have became several separate ‘Nations’ and I do not mean in the geographical sense i.e. Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales.

We are several Nations that happen to share the same physical space and live cheek by jowl. Over the last thirty years the gap between the haves and the have nots has grown beyond anything we have seen in over a hundred years to the extent that people are disconnected from each other to the extent that we have little clue on how the other half live. Every day on this message board and a few others I look into from time to time I see a total ignorance of the lives of millions of our fellow citizens. I have heard people with long term disabilities being describes as parasites, the long term unemployed as lazy etc. I have heard people say things like ‘if we cut their benefit, they will take a job on’ and things like that. I sometimes wonder if these people are aware that there are areas of the Country where there are so few jobs that every job advert generates hundreds of applicants. It seems that they have no clue about the reality of areas of this Country.

I bet it was similar a hundred years ago, but it seems all too palpable now and perhaps less forgivable now as well.

The Great War was perhaps the first time we as a Nation really felt ‘as one’ and perhaps by the replay we did feel that ‘we are all in this together’, but I can tell you this, when Osborne used that phrase, it did not sound a call to arms for me, it sounded like a sick joke.

I shun terms like Nation (speaking as both a Scot and British) not because I have lost a love of my Country and Nation (if that is the correct terms), it is simply because there are great swathes of this population who I share nothing with.

Is there something wrong with the comments section?

Why do a significant proportion of immigrants come here expecting to change things rather than integrating into the host community? This phenomenon can be seen in the local mosque that wants a minaret with amplified calls to prayer to second-generation immigrants like the Millibands devising programmes of national change, while enjoying the advantages of residence in he host country….If I emigrated to another country, I’d want to integrate and be largely unobtrusive. Many immigrants — eg Chinese — seem to hold exactly this attitude; others less so.

@38: “Johnson was criticising false-patriotism there.”

James Boswell is the source for Samuel Johnson’s observation about patriotism and scoundrels and Boswell doesn’t offer any illumination as to what might have motivated Johnson to say what he did.

It has since been speculated that Johnson was referring to the widely recognised practice in his time of petty criminals, insolvent debtors, unmarried fathers-to-be and reluctant husbands to sign up for the army or the navy to carry them away.

The Duke of Wellington famously referred to his (victorious) army in the Napoleonic wars as comprising the “mere scum of the earth” and on inspecting his troops before a battle: “I don’t know what they do to the enemy but by G*d they certainly frighten me.”

It seems amazing now but by accounts, Admiral Collingwood, who lead the southern most column of ships at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 in his flag ship the Royal Sovereign, didn’t get back to England for 10 years.

Bob B- 1688 was a nationalist project of merger with the Dutch ( who were the cutting edge of European capitalism) especially in naval and trading matters ( East Indies notably). There was a slight awkwardness in that we had been at war three times with our cousins since 1652 and we were running out of cash. Defoe ,a political pen for hire, is laughing at the English people to make light of it and can only do so because the idea is so secure.
It was also, of course, a rejection of Catholicism and continental absolutism. Much the same cocktail is there in the 13th century at the time of Simon De Montfort showing a remarkable continuity over the centuries. A Popish King, the City, religious reform ….When we look to day at how much less we like the EU than anyone else and its big state , …well need I go on.
Given the remarkable coherence of the English people its odd that Sunny should consider our identity as a cheap suit he can wear or discard for some political purpose. I wonder ,if these identities are interchangeable, why I should not be a British Asian. I know quite a few and I live in the right place. That’s all it takes as I understand it.
Englishness and race has a weak association .It was soon forgotten by the English abroad until the late stage of Empire, horizontal integration is going ahead full steam right now but that does not mean you can choose to have an identity any more than I can sit in Calais and call myself French ( quelle horreur )

The problem you have is this : In the sentence ,“ We are an immigrant Nation” the word” We” is meaningless and the word ‘nation’, means bit of land some people governed by the same laws happen to live on. If that’s the answer then I have no interest in the question.
On the other hand I have no objection to Sunny infuriating the EDL

Newsnight last night had an interesting debate on what it means to be english – in the context of what is very likely to be increasing Scottish independence.

Michael Portillo made an interesting point – Englishness is centred on an opposition to extremism: e.g. within Europe we have twice stood up, at cost to ourselves, to fight wars against extremism (Napoleon and Hitler).

And that Britishness and Englishness are both opposed to extremism.

“And that Britishness and Englishness are both opposed to extremism”

But that presupposes “extremism” is some definable, widely recognised point.

What is regarded as “extreme” at one moment can become accepted as mainstream later – like the adoption of the principle of universal adult franchise, the abolition of capital punishment, the welfare state or tolerance of homosexuality.

@47. Bloody hell. It’s not much to rally round, is it? No thank you.

TT @ 39

I do think we need to try hard not to be misled by the manipulation of language. To generalise, leftwing people talk about society, but shy away from references to the nation, (patriotism being such a reference to the nation), but what is this society leftwingers talk of, if not the society, the people, here in this nation?

That is why I feel so angry when people on the Left start hoisting words like ‘the Nation’ and ‘Patriotism’ around. It is a meaningless term, because there is no such thing as ‘the Nation’ because we have became several separate ‘Nations’ and I do not mean in the geographical sense i.e. Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales.

We are several Nations that happen to share the same physical space and live cheek by jowl. Over the last thirty years the gap between the haves and the have nots has grown beyond anything we have seen in over a hundred years.

People are disconnected from each other to the extent that we have little clue on how the other half live.

Every day on this message board and a few others I look into from time to time I see a total ignorance of the lives of millions of our fellow citizens. I have heard people with long term disabilities being describes as parasites, the long term unemployed as lazy etc. I have heard people say things like ‘if we cut their benefit, they will take a job on’ and things like that. I sometimes wonder if these people are aware that there are areas of the Country where there are so few jobs that every job advert generates hundreds of applicants. It seems that they have no clue about the reality of areas of this Country.

I bet it was similar a hundred years ago, but it seems all too palpable now and perhaps less forgivable now as well.

The Great War was perhaps the first time we as a Nation really felt ‘as one’ and perhaps by the replay we did feel that ‘we are all in this together’, but I can tell you this, when Osborne used that phrase, it did not sound a call to arms for me, it sounded like a sick joke.

I shun terms like Nation (speaking as both a Scot and British) not because I have lost a love of my Country and Nation (if that is the correct terms), it is simply because there are great swathes of this population who I share nothing with.

@ 50 Bob B

“But that presupposes “extremism” is some definable, widely recognised point.”

Very true – and even if we did have a universally agreed definition of “extremism”, I don’t see how we could justify the claim that “Britishness” is opposed to it. As British people have been involved in many acts that would be labelled extreme by most people (7/7, the IRA bombings*, any hate-crime or vigilantee attack you care to name), then I think you’d have to invoke No True Scotsman (No True Brit?) to justify the claim – ok, that British guy did something extreme, obviously he’s not a proper Brit.

To be honest, saying Britain is against extremism is a bit like saying we’re “fairminded” or “passionate” as a people – it sounds nice, and people generally won’t disagree, but ultimately it’s a platitude that doesn’t actually tell you anything about the world.

“Britishness”, while not quite meaningless, is certainly a vague enough concept to resist any attempt to pin it down to a definition. If you were to define it, you’d have to create an arbitrary meaning for it, like “what the majority of UK citizens agree with when surveyed” or “attitudes and tastes that have evolved within Britain rather than being imported from another country”.

*Of course the IRA would reject the label “British”, complicating things further.

The term ‘multi-cultural’ should probably be ditched because it uses ‘culture’ as a synonym for enthnicity. Britain doesn’t have a problem because it is multi-ethnic, it has a problem with particular cultures (imported or domestic) which are illiberal.

Why not celebrate particular values – such as equal rights for men and women, straights and gays, white or black – without having to dress those values up in the George Cross or Union Flag?

As British people have been involved in many acts that would be labelled extreme by most people (7/7, the IRA bombings*, any hate-crime or vigilantee attack you care to name), then I think you’d have to invoke No True Scotsman (No True Brit?) to justify the claim – ok, that British guy did something extreme, obviously he’s not a proper Brit.

I think it would be perfectly fair to say that murdering innocent people in an attempt to destroy the United Kingdom is a fairly unBritish thing to do. I equally suspect that Martin McGuinness et al would readily concede that they aren’t proper Brits.

@ 54 Tim J

“I think it would be perfectly fair to say that murdering innocent people in an attempt to destroy the United Kingdom is a fairly unBritish thing to do. ”

Um, I don’t remember mentioning anyone who did that. Murdering innocents, yes. Attempting to destroy the UK, no.

55 – The IRA were aiming to remove the British presence from Northern Ireland. “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”. It’s a shorthand, but not a terribly opaque or misleading one.

@ 56 Tim J

“The IRA were aiming to remove the British presence from Northern Ireland. “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”. It’s a shorthand, but not a terribly opaque or misleading one.”

It’s misleading if you’re accusing people of being un-British on the basis that they want to “destroy” Britain. What you actually have there is people who want to change Britain, in this case by removing its control over Northern Ireland. If wanting Britain to change is un-British, then you’d be pushed to find a single “proper” Brit within the entire population. Don’t like the current government? Un-British! Fed up with the BBC’s offerings on Friday night? Un-British!

This is kind of my point: terms like “un-British” don’t really mean anything, they’re just a way of adding non-valid weight to the fact that you dislike something. There are plenty of ways to criticise or condemn the 7/7 perpertators, the IRA and vigilantees, so why throw terms like “un-British” at them?

I struggle to see that calling the IRA un-British is anything other than the under-staed truth.

It’s misleading if you’re accusing people of being un-British on the basis that they want to “destroy” Britain. What you actually have there is people who want to change Britain

Oh, and Wednesday afternoon geek points. This reminded me of that bit in Red Dwarf where Lister is told he is some Fascist secret policeman. (Back to Reality, I think):

“You change them Comrade Commander”
“Change them in what way?”
“From being alive, to being dead”

A new patriotism sounds a bit far fetched. As not everyone will buy into it and many people would still prefer the old kind.

I imagine trying to have ths discussion with young people at an inner city London or Birmingham further education college. Or with people in the high streets of our most diverse boroughs. Outside McDonald’s in Croydon for example. Or in Whitechapel market.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwgz0UbtPD8

A lot of people wouldn’t even get the idea of partiotism I’d say, they’re just trying to make a living and get by.

@ 58 Tim J

“I struggle to see that calling the IRA un-British is anything other than the under-staed truth.”

Is that because you’re now defining “un-British” as anything you don’t like? Remember, this isn’t the same as “anti-British”: when people call other people “un-British”, they mean (AFAIK) that they’re behaving in a way seen as being unlike how “proper” British people behave. That was certainly the context of my original post.

You could call the IRA “anti-British” as they want to divide the UK, or because you think their ideals are against UK interests, but they ARE currently British and their behaviour isn’t inherently any “less British” than yours or mine.

“You change them Comrade Commander”
“Change them in what way?”
“From being alive, to being dead”

“Be a government informer. Betray your family and friends. Fabulous prizes to be won!”

“accusing people of being un-British on the basis that they want to “destroy” Britain.”

Mods–lock the thread please, we have a winner.

@ 62 vimothy

“Mods–lock the thread please, we have a winner.”

If you’d bothered to read the whole comment, you’d have seen that I was pointing out that the claim that they wanted to “destroy” Britain was untrue. Look up “quotation marks” on the internet and apprise yourself of their usage.

Actually, it was even better than that. You were saying that Irish nationalists in the IRA are not “un-British” even though they may be “anti-British” (cos they’re still British, see?), where “anti-British” is really a euphemism for “pro reform of Britain”.

It’s like Douglas Hofstadter does doublethink.

@ 64

“Actually, it was even better than that. You were saying that Irish nationalists in the IRA are not “un-British” even though they may be “anti-British” (cos they’re still British, see?)”

Um, repeating my argument back at me isn’t actually a killer point, especially as you clearly have no arguments of your own.

“where “anti-British” is really a euphemism for “pro reform of Britain”. ”

It’s rather hilarious that, while attempting to backpedal after misinterpreting me by failing to read, you once again misinterpreted me by failing to read! Do they not teach basic logic in the Troll Kingdom?

Chaise

I see others have shot you down already, but actually, your first comment on this was flawed from the start:
> As British people have been involved in many acts that would be labelled extreme by most people (7/7, the IRA bombings…

That suggests that attributes must be shared by 100.00 % of Brits if those attributes are to be considered ‘British’.

That’s daft.
Of course some Brits haven’t acted in line with British values.

Just like

@ 66 Just Visiting

“That suggests that attributes must be shared by 100.00 % of Brits if those attributes are to be considered ‘British’.

That’s daft.”

I haven’t found a definition of “Britishness” yet that isn’t either arbitrary or too vague to be applied to anything. I’m just wondering what logic people use when saying something is un-British, and pointing out the flaw in one of the more obvious explanations. Frankly I think it’s a meaningless concept that people invoke to suggest that their attitudes are intrinsic to the nation.

Chaise

stop circling the issue.

A) It was a 100% red herring of you to mention the IRA as proof that Britishness does not involve opposition to extremism.

B) Time for you to make some substantive response to what you’re responding to.

I quoted Portillo who argued that Englishness is centred on an opposition to extremism: e.g. within Europe we have twice stood up, at cost to ourselves, to fight wars against extremism (Napoleon and Hitler).

Do you agree regards Hitler and Napoleon?

@ 68 Just Visiting

“stop circling the issue.”

Gosh, I apologise for responding substantively to your post. Next time I’ll take a leaf out of vimothy’s book and shout non-sequiturs at you…

“A) It was a 100% red herring of you to mention the IRA as proof that Britishness does not involve opposition to extremism.”

No, it wasn’t. No justification was given for labelling “anti-extremism” as a British value. I was pointing out that, as Britain has its own share of extremists, I don’t see what’s so especially British about opposing such people. This is in lieu of an actual explanation being given for Portillo’s claim.

“Time for you to make some substantive response to what you’re responding to.”

When I do you complain.

“I quoted Portillo who argued that Englishness is centred on an opposition to extremism: e.g. within Europe we have twice stood up, at cost to ourselves, to fight wars against extremism (Napoleon and Hitler).

Do you agree regards Hitler and Napoleon?”

Don’t know enough about the political background to the Napoleonic War to comment on that one. I do agree regards Hitler, but bear in mind that, while we indeed fought Hitler at great cost to ourselves, we did it to defend our own interests, not only because of ideological opposition to his extremism.

Two things here:

1) The fact that we stand up to extremists when we need to does not mean we are centred on anti-extremism (whatever “centred” actually means in that sentence). We also have a history of invading and/or exploiting weaker nations to fill our breadbaskets, but I wouldn’t say we were centred on bullying either.

2) We’re not the only country to stand up to extremists; we had allies in WWII, and other countries and peoples have fought their own wars. So even if you convinced me that (1) above was not the case, I still don’t see what’s so inherently British about this sort of behaviour.

@ 68

Having looked back, I see you did justify Portillo’s claim – I was responding to Bob’s post, not yours. Fair enough though. Bob’s point stands as well – it’s easy to say that Britishness is opposed to extremism because we define “extremism” by our own standards”.

We might label Saudi Arabia extremist because of its oppression of women. Saudi might label us extremist because of our lack of oppression of women. I’m not saying those are equivalent – Saudi is blatantly in the wrong on this one – but the point is that pretty much any nation would collectively say “we’re not extremists, unlike those foreign lunatics”.

@52 Chaise: “I don’t see how we could justify the claim that ‘Britishness’ is opposed to it”

Quite so. Try, for instance, the Opium Wars 1839-42 and 1856-60 when the administration of ruling Qing Dynasty in China unreasonably obstructed the claimed inalienable right of British traders to sell opium to the Chinese.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars

The first of the wars ended with the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 when Britain acquired the island of Hong Kong, which duly became a Crown Colony, as well as other concessions in settlement for the unacceptable outrage to Britain’s Imperial standing.

In a previous thread here, I ventured to suggest that Britishness is most appropriately defined in terms of the unique historical tradition of British philosphers who contributed their reflections on the theory and practice of politics and government: Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, JS Mill, Walter Bagehot and Isaiah Berlin.

Arguably, the high point of British patriotism was during WW2 when we stood alone against Nazi Germany after the fall of France in June 1940 through to the German invasion of the Soviet Union towards the end of June 1941. As Von Runstedt – C-in-C West of the German high command at the end of the war in Europe – observed after the war in Europe had ended, the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 was the decisive strategic battle as its outcome kept open the option of a western front.

For a flavour of patriotic sentiment from those times, try this essay by George Orwell: England, Your England (1941) written during the London Blitz:
http://orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/e_eye

“Did we listen to people on crime”

Unfortunately the majority of people are wrong about crime. The left really has no option but to ignore them if we’re to remain ethically correct.

“did we hear the widespread anger about a culture of entitlement and about immigration?”

Again, this anger may be widespread, but it’s wrong and we can’t pander to it.

@72: “Unfortunately the majority of people are wrong about crime. The left really has no option but to ignore them if we’re to remain ethically correct.”

One of the more remarkable if unheralded achievments of the Blair-Brown New Labour government was to create the largest per capita prison population in western Europe, which doesn’t exactly mesh well with the claimed British tradition emphasising personal liberty:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn1page1.stm

Whatever else, that is a costly policy option try this PQ from earlier this year:

Philip Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what the average cost of a prison place in (a) England and (b) Wales was in the latest period for which figures are available. [32311]

Mr Blunt: For 2008-09 (latest period available), the overall average cost per place in England was £45,000 and, in Wales was £53,000 (figures to nearest 1,000).
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm110111/text/110111w0003.htm

Chaise 69

You’re circling again!

Your mention of the existence of IRA terrorists was, you say:
> pointing out that, as Britain has its own share of extremists, I don’t see what’s so especially British about opposing such people

But that’s like saying that some french people don’t drink wine, so wine can’t be part of french culture!

The existence of IRA terrorists sheds no light on whether Britishness is anti-extremist or not.

Unless you believe that something can only be correctly called a British characteristic if 100% of Brits live by it! Which you surely don’t believe.

If by “extremist” you mean “people who are crazed and/or imperialistic enough to want to conquer us and our allies” then, yes, “we” did fight Hitler and Napoleon because they were extremists. But that would be to abuse language more than Basil Fawlty abuses a car.

After all, total world domination was not an unworthy national ambition and at one time the British Empire did extend to a quarter of the land area of the Earth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgd9nYqVz2s

What’s extremist about that?

@ 74 Just Visiting

“You’re circling again!”

I’m not – but I think we may have our wires crossed to an extent.

“Your mention of the existence of IRA terrorists was, you say:
> pointing out that, as Britain has its own share of extremists, I don’t see what’s so especially British about opposing such people

But that’s like saying that some french people don’t drink wine, so wine can’t be part of french culture!”

I never said anti-extremism wasn’t part of British culture! I just said that it doesn’t seem especially British, considering that almost any other nation would also call themselves “anti-extremist”, and many could provide anecdotes to back that up.

To use your analogy: while wine-drinking is evidently part of French culture, is it particularly “French”, aside from the stereotypes? Is drinking wine really any more a French activity than a British or American activity? And, if so, would that mean a teetotal Frenchman could/should/would be castigated for being “un-French”?

“The existence of IRA terrorists sheds no light on whether Britishness is anti-extremist or not.”

Depends how you’re defining “Britishness” in the cultural sense – and my whole point is that nobody seems to have a definition we can agree on. Does it mean something most present-day Brits do, or agree with? Does it mean something Britains historically have done or agreed with? Does it mean something Brits do more than the peoples of other nations? Or does it mean the values that the speaker would like to THINK of as “British”? And who decides which, if any, of the above is correct?

Meanings of words matter. For a term to be meaningful, it should be able to provide you with information that you didn’t before have. If I was a foreigner who knew nothing of Britain, and someone said “well, it’s anti-extremist”, I honestly don’t see how that would inform my view of Britain in any way. It’s just too vague a term. This last bit is the centre of my point, really.

@ 77:

“I never said anti-extremism wasn’t part of British culture! I just said that it doesn’t seem especially British, considering that almost any other nation would also call themselves “anti-extremist”, and many could provide anecdotes to back that up.”

Anti-extremism certainly isn’t unique to British culture, but I’d still argue that it’s nevertheless part of it. Sort of like the Aztecs weren’t the only culture in history to practise human sacrifice, but human sacrifice was nevertheless an important part of Aztec culture.

As for “British culture”: I’d say that we evidently have one, because when we visit other countries we can contrast their culture with what we have back home, which would only be possible if there were a culture to contrast it with. I’d also say that, in isolation, lots of practices and atttides are found in lots of cultures, and that what constitutes a culture is therefore the mix of such practices and attitudes. So, values like anti-extremism, small-c conservatism, pragmatism, and so on, are all aspects of other cultures; but, when combined in a certain way, they make a uniquely British culture, which is different from other cultures. It might help to think of culture as like a cake: the ingredients used in a particular kind of cake are all used in other kinds as well; what makes one type of cake different to another type is the amount used and how they’re mixed together.

@ XXX

I like the idea of throwing common ingredients into a “cake” to get a unique culture. But I still wouldn’t go so far as to call the resulting gateau “Britishness”, not if people are going to extrapolate the idea of “un-Britishness” from that.

Basically, any explanation of culture should describe, not define. If we use the fact that chicken tikka masala is the most popular dish in Britain as an ingredient in your cultural cake, that’s fine, but I don’t see why I should be labeled “un-British” simply because I think chicken tikka masala tastes rubbish.

“Do they not teach basic logic in the Troll Kingdom?”

Nah, school in the Troll Kingdom is focused on the higher level, Tier 1 stuff—deception, subterfuge, explosives, etc. I learnt basic logic in MATH10101. You?

“repeating my argument back at me isn’t actually a killer point”

Well, that all rather swings around how you understand your argument, wouldn’t you say?

Some of us don’t need to have obvious fallacies explained in depth. And some of us don’t get our kicks from huffing gas. I’m not saying the two sets are equal—just throwing it out there with my other “non sequiturs”.

Perhaps I should stop teasing the other exhibits and say what I mean.

I think it will be extremely difficult to have a conversation about this issue for reasons amply demonstrated throughout this thread.

While the questions asked by Cruddas and Rutherford are good ones, it is asking a lot of the liberal-left to identify and correct its own maladaptive behaviour. How can it be patriotic? The liberal-left doesn’t believe that the British exist in any meaningfully distinct sense. Of course, it’s not hard to infer from that belief the probable fact that we will never get a sensible immigration policy. There’s nothing unique about the native population, and so what difference can it make if we allow rates of immigration such that 10% are migrant stock, or 20%, or any ratio. We are an immigrant nation, after all. Weren’t we invaded by the Romans, and by the Vikings, and by the Normans? Didn’t Defoe say something or other about this when he was defending William III—and if Defoe isn’t right in all things, who is?

The confusion is evident in the more harebrained responses to immigration and the failure of multiculturalism. Why don’t we make new migrants answer a check list on what it means to be British? We could ask them about binge drinking, football and whether they think “chav” is a valid term or merely the latest expression of the ruling class ideology. Of course, the possibility exists that after we invent some feel good property or criteria, call it “British”, and have the BBC make up a load of fancy idents, the British people themselves would not identify with it. What if they couldn’t pass the new migrant test? Woops, that would be embarrassing.

In fact the very idea that there might be some obligations in there with your rights is anathema to the liberal-left. It makes no sense to ask immigrants to refrain from anti-social behaviour when we do not ask this of the native population. Be consistent, comrades! If we start telling immigrants how to behave, we might have to extend the model to the rest of the unwashed hordes. I can imagine the op-eds in the Guardian now. Polly Toynbee would be apoplectic! Owen Jones might write another book! Far better to keep that head buried in the sand; at least by now the position is familiar.

The true progressive response is the one (inadvertently?) partially delineated by Chris @ 72: If the majority disagree then the majority are wrong. They must be made to understand this, or, if that is not possible, ignored.

@ 80

“Some of us don’t need to have obvious fallacies explained in depth.”

The fact that you can’t follow simple sentences doesn’t mean those sentences are fallacious, little troll. Done with you now – there’s some human beings up-thread who are actually interested in a grown-up conversation!

@ 80:

“Basically, any explanation of culture should describe, not define.”

I’m not sure why it couldn’t do a bit of both. Dictionary writers, for example, define words based upon how they’re commonly used; perhaps culture should be defined in a similar manner?

“If we use the fact that chicken tikka masala is the most popular dish in Britain as an ingredient in your cultural cake, that’s fine, but I don’t see why I should be labeled “un-British” simply because I think chicken tikka masala tastes rubbish.”

Well, to return to the cake analogy, there are several recipes for baking each cake. If you’re making, say, chocolate sponge, each recipe will include slightly different ingredients and in slightly different proportions, but the end result of all of them will still be chocolate sponge cake. Similarly, there are several combinations of attitudes and practices which result in slightly different cultures, but those cultures are similar enough to justify calling them all “British”.

@ XXX

“I’m not sure why it couldn’t do a bit of both. Dictionary writers, for example, define words based upon how they’re commonly used; perhaps culture should be defined in a similar manner?”

In that case you just end up with different words: one meaning “Britishness (broad)” and several meaning “Britishness (narrow”).

“Well, to return to the cake analogy, there are several recipes for baking each cake. If you’re making, say, chocolate sponge, each recipe will include slightly different ingredients and in slightly different proportions, but the end result of all of them will still be chocolate sponge cake. Similarly, there are several combinations of attitudes and practices which result in slightly different cultures, but those cultures are similar enough to justify calling them all “British”.”

We’ve just moved the problem, then – instead of one cake being British culture, we have a batch of cakes being British culture. For all those cakes to belong to a single group, there must be certain ingredients/techniques that they share (otherwise, your group is “all conceivable cakes”). Whereas I’m not sure there’s such a thing as a universal “ingredient” in British culture that isn’t universal elsewhere.

As far as analogies go, we seem to be overegging the pudding somewhat… I’ll return to my central point here: Attempts to define “Britishness” will either be narrow enough to exclude many Britons, broad enough to be meaningless, or based on a suspiciously arbirtrary factor.

@ 85:

“We’ve just moved the problem, then – instead of one cake being British culture, we have a batch of cakes being British culture. For all those cakes to belong to a single group, there must be certain ingredients/techniques that they share (otherwise, your group is “all conceivable cakes”). Whereas I’m not sure there’s such a thing as a universal “ingredient” in British culture that isn’t universal elsewhere.”

But, as I said in my original post, when we go to other countries we notice cultural differences there, so clearly we have idea of “British culture” to compare it to, even if we have difficulty putting our finger on what exactly it is that comprises it.

As for the one cake vs. batch of cakes problem, I don’t think that the idea that there is a British culture necessitates the idea that every Briton shares the same set of norms and values, any more than the idea that there is a type of cake called chocolate sponge cake necessitates the idea that every such cake has exactly the same ingredients. All it requires is that they share more in common with each other than they do with people from other cultures/different types of cake.

@ 86

We’re at cross-purposes, then, and this is why I was drawing a distinction between “British culture” and “Britishness” earlier. The first is fine – it’s probably impossible to describe exactly, but everyone here has a rough feel for what it is. The second to me seems to be an attempt to set up a “correct” form of British culture, so if people act in a way you [not YOU] disapprove of you can dismiss them as “un-British”.

The phrase “British values” tends to be used in the same way – again, there are values more prevalant in Britain than elsewhere, but when people use the phrase “British values” they’re more often (in my experience) talking about THEIR values, trying to add weight to them by claiming that a) they’re representative of Britain and b) that this makes them right, or at least gives them the right to tell anyone who doesn’t share such values that they “should just leave if they don’t like it”.

You can pull the same trick with any state or cause that people want to support – I remember a post on here recently about a new NGO that wanted to tell people what “true feminism” is.

Patriotism remains the last resort of scoundrels. We need better ways of valuing our fellow citizens than how fervently they salute the flag.

@79: “Anti-extremism certainly isn’t unique to British culture, but I’d still argue that it’s nevertheless part of it. ”

I’m amazed than anyone can seriously claim that in face of the historical evidence of the Opium Wars (cited @72) or the extent of the British Empire which was uniquely large by the standards of world history. Note that the words and music of “Rule, Britannia!” pre-dated Nelson’s victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 – which established Britain’s naval supremacy through the 19th century beyond question – by more than half a century:

“Rule, Britannia!” is a British patriotic song, originating from the poem “Rule, Britannia” by James Thomson and set to music by Thomas Arne in 1740. It is strongly associated with the Royal Navy, but also used by the British Army.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule,_Britannia!

A more convincing and appealing case can be made on behalf of the famous British tolerance of eccentricity – within limits, of course.

We tend to overlook nowadays that Karl Marx and family settled in London as asylum seekers after he was hounded out of mainland Europe in 1848. Thereafter, he lived off occasional journalism and subventions from his friend Friedrich Engels, who managed a commercially succesful family textile business in Manchester.
Marx wrote his seminal work: Das Kapital in the reading room of the British Museum. In fact, London became a regular stopping-off point for a series of Russian revolutionaries, often because they had escaped from sentences to excile in some remote part of Imperial Russia:

“The founder of the world’s first socialist state, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, visited London six times between 1902 and 1911, and on at least five of these occasions found the time to call into the British Museum whose Library collections were in his view unparalleled. At the time of his 1907 visit he said:

“‘It is a remarkable institution, especially that exceptional reference section. Ask them any question, and in the very shortest space of time they’ll tell you where to look to find the material that interests you. ..Let me tell you, there is no better library than the British Museum. Here there are fewer gaps in the collections than in any other library.’”
http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpsubject/history/history/lenin/lenin.html

“Trotsky’s escaped from Siberia and fled to London in 1902. Why London? It was a magnet for Russian exiles and other personae-non-grata. Lenin had also escaped to London . . ”
http://theforvm.org/diary/blaisep/leon-trotsky-part-second-london-1903

Chaise

> “British culture” … probably impossible to describe exactly, but everyone here has a rough feel for what it is.

I agree with you Chaise – but I’m not sure many on LC do – I recall many threads where this was hotly denied.

> “Britishness” … to me seems to be an attempt to set up a “correct” form of British culture, so if people act in a way you [not YOU] disapprove of you can dismiss them as “un-British”.

Can’t British Culture be also (mis)used as a way to dismiss those who don’t share that culture?

Can you expand?

Bob 89

> I’m amazed than anyone can seriously claim that in face of the historical evidence of the Opium Wars (cited @72) or the extent of the British Empire which was uniquely large by the standards of world history.

Wrong on two levels.
i) the British Empire is not identical to Britishness.
ii) To name one case where the British Empire was extremist, cannot shed light on whether it was overall. (Men are on average taller than women, finding a few tall women does not change that)

We’re talking here about Britishness, not British Empire – but even the Empire acted in surprising ways: eg in India, for a long time it did not attempt to change local customs – but when later it opposed the practise of widows being burned alive on the funeral pyres of their husband (done for surely the best, non-self serving motives), it created popular hostility against British Rule.

Or in Africa – in french colonies, children were forced to learn in french from the moment they started chool = less literacy achieved. In British colonies, small children were taught in their local tribal language for the first years of schooling.

Just anecdotal I know – but interesting examples of a willingness towards flexibility and award from the normal forcefulness (extremism) that goes with power.

Just Visiting

“Can’t British Culture be also (mis)used as a way to dismiss those who don’t share that culture?”

Not so easily, at least not if you draw the distinction between “British culture” and “Britishness” as separate concepts as I’m doing here. And no, I’m not claiming that I’m using the correct interpretation of either phrase, I just think it’s important to distinguish between the ability to talk about the overall tendencies of a people (such as an interest in football) and an attempt to claim that there is a “proper” version of that culture that all “true Brits” should adhere to.

This is personal experience only, but I find that people who throw around phrases like “true Brit”, “British values” and “un-British” tend towards the latter. They might say “anyone who dislikes the monarchy is un-British!”, or “true Brits believe in freedom and would never agree to be subjects of a monarch!”. Whereas someone describing British culture would say that Britain has a monarchy, and that some people are strongly for it, and some are strongly against it, and some aren’t politically for it but enjoy the spectacle and tradition, and that some just don’t care either way.

Like I said before, it’s No True Scotsman: if a British person disagrees with me, he or she is obviously not a proper Brit.

@ 92 Just Visiting

Sorry, to give an example of how British culture couldn’t be used to condemn someone as an outsider in the way a concept of “proper Britishness” might, here’s the way the two might talk about religion:

Someone talking about British culture: “Britain is predominantly Christian, but includes a sizeable number of non-believers, as well as many followers of other faiths.”

Someone with an ideal of “Britishness”: “Britain is a Christian country! If you don’t believe in God then you have no place calling yourself British!”

That’s just one rather easy example, no commentary on Christianity or Britain’s relationship with religion is intended.

@91: “Wrong on two levels. i) the British Empire is not identical to Britishness.”

Try not to be silly. Just consider the question: What motivated and enabled we British to successfully seek out and acquire a uniquely large global empire against competition with other European states, notably France and the Netherlands?

“ii) To name one case where the British Empire was extremist, cannot shed light on whether it was overall.”

It’s not difficult to come up with other examples of national “extremism”:

- As I recall, Wellington’s army was outnumbered in every major battle he fought.

- The charge of the Light Brigade led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War. This was an insane and futile military manoeuvre. Cardigan’s military peers considered him a fool but he was celebrated as a national hero back at home. Woolly cadigan’s are so named after him.

- The Nazis, claimed with historical justification, that Britain devised and implemented the concept of “concentration camps” to contain insurgents during the Boer Wars.

– General Dyer and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar in 1919.

- Try this on Churchill’s views on the use of poison gas as a war weapon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_British_use_of_gas_in_Mesopotamia_in_1920

Rather than haggle over how given to extremism we British are, consider the hugely distinguished scientific heritage from British scientists from Newton onwards and that at least up to the 1960s, British scientists had been awarded more Nobel prizes per head of population than other countries.

The distinctive characteristic of outstanding scientific discovery is that it breaks with the inherited legacy of “conventional wisdom”. In that sense, scientific discovery is an “extreme” event because it challenges what has hitherto been generally accepted. Recall that British scientific discoveries include the unification of the theories of electro-magetic forces – the high point of 19th century science, the electron, splitting the atom, antibiotics, anti-matter, DNA . .

Similar arguments can be made regarding Britain’s uniquely innovative contributions to the theory and practice of government, to political economy (Smith, Ricardo, JS Mill, Marshall, Keynes), to developing accurate marine navigation with John Harrison’s marine chronometer and to nurturing an exemplary literature. And we can add the proof of Fermat’s last theorem.

Trying to impose a “national culture” on a country is like trying to impose roots on a tree.

@ 95 BenSix

“Trying to impose a “national culture” on a country is like trying to impose roots on a tree.”

Well said!

@ 94:

“Just consider the question: What motivated and enabled we British to successfully seek out and acquire a uniquely large global empire against competition with other European states, notably France and the Netherlands?”

What motivated us was, in general, profit and security. What enabled us to acquire such a large empire is more complex, but included luck, good leadership and a fortunate geographical position.

“It’s not difficult to come up with other examples of national “extremism”:

- As I recall, Wellington’s army was outnumbered in every major battle he fought.”

I don’t see what that has to do with extremism.

“- The charge of the Light Brigade led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War. This was an insane and futile military manoeuvre. Cardigan’s military peers considered him a fool but he was celebrated as a national hero back at home. Woolly cadigan’s are so named after him.”

Military leaders occasionally cock up. People admire bravery. Again, I don’t see why this counts as an example of extremism.

“- The Nazis, claimed with historical justification, that Britain devised and implemented the concept of “concentration camps” to contain insurgents during the Boer Wars.”

The British concentration camps were just that — camps for concentrating the civilian population in one place to make it easier to keep an eye on them. They weren’t intended to kill people like the Nazi camps were. (Which doesn’t mean that nobody died; just that their deaths were due to bad organisation, not deliberate policy.)

“– General Dyer and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar in 1919.”

Shooting protestors wasn’t official policy, so you can’t extrapolate from this incident to say that Britain was “extreme” in this matter.

“- Try this on Churchill’s views on the use of poison gas as a war weapon:”

Tear gas, not poison gas.

“In that sense, scientific discovery is an “extreme” event because it challenges what has hitherto been generally accepted.”

Only if you define “extreme” so broadly that it effectively loses meaning.

Extremism? Quoting Churchill from his official memo in 1919:

“I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHU407A.html

The cited source is Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s researcher and biographer.

That link also says that gas wasn’t actually used. So any extremism from gas use was Churchill’s, not Britain’s as a whole.

“That link also says that gas wasn’t actually used. So any extremism from gas use was Churchill’s, not Britain’s as a whole.”

C’mon.Churchill was our great war leader, celebrated author of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Nobel laureate, and prime minister again from 1951 through 1955. He had a state funeral in 1965.

Britain’s history includes many examples of tolerated extremist behaviour. In Mary Tudor’s reign (1553-58), over 280 people were burned at the stake for heresy. We cut off the head of a king (Charles I) in 1649 long before the French copied the idea in 1793. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 was about repudiating the prevailing doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings. Newton’s theories of a heliocentric universe were heretical according to the doctrines of the Catholic Church – in Italy, Galileo had been sentenced to permanent house arrest for publicisng his ideas of a heliocentric universe.

@100 To be fair the human race as a whole is pretty fucking violent and petty. Like many primates. We’re not quite as violent as chimpanzees and not quite as peaceable as bonobos. Course we’ve evolved to a point where we can look at ourselves and in stern headmaster mode utter – Must try harder.

@ 100:

“C’mon.Churchill was our great war leader, celebrated author of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Nobel laureate, and prime minister again from 1951 through 1955. He had a state funeral in 1965.”

That doesn’t mean that people agreed with every single thing he ever said.

“Britain’s history includes many examples of tolerated extremist behaviour. In Mary Tudor’s reign (1553-58), over 280 people were burned at the stake for heresy.”

Killing people for heresy wasn’t particularly extreme in the sixteenth century.

“We cut off the head of a king (Charles I) in 1649 long before the French copied the idea in 1793.”

Only a minority of people actually supported the regicide.

“The Glorious Revolution of 1688 was about repudiating the prevailing doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings.”

More like safeguarding Protestantism in Britain.

“Newton’s theories of a heliocentric universe were heretical according to the doctrines of the Catholic Church – in Italy, Galileo had been sentenced to permanent house arrest for publicisng his ideas of a heliocentric universe.”

And how many people actually paid attention to that part of the Church’s teachings?

@101: “To be fair the human race as a whole is pretty fucking violent and petty”

True enough.

@102: “And how many people actually paid attention to that part of the Church’s teachings?”

The Catholic Church didn’t officially exonerate Galileo for publicising his heretical heliocentric theory of the universe until 1992. By implication, Newton was also a heretic until then.

The whole point of major scientific discoveries is that these overturn hitherto accepted, conventional wisdom and Britain has an outstanding heritage of scientific discovery so I can’t understand this insistence that we reject “extremism”.

@ 103:

“The Catholic Church didn’t officially exonerate Galileo for publicising his heretical heliocentric theory of the universe until 1992.”

That’s not what I asked.

“By implication, Newton was also a heretic until then.”

By implication, Newton still is a heretic, because he wasn’t a Catholic.

“The whole point of major scientific discoveries is that these overturn hitherto accepted, conventional wisdom and Britain has an outstanding heritage of scientific discovery so I can’t understand this insistence that we reject “extremism”.”

Because you’re the only person who thinks that coming up with a new scientific theory is inherently extremist.

@104: “Because you’re the only person who thinks that coming up with a new scientific theory is inherently extremist.”

What a really silly comment – because it fails to address the distinguishing feature of a major scientific discovery, which is that it overturns accepted, conventional wisdom. In that sense, it is bound to be “extreme” because it rejects what has hitherto been the consensus.

Your silly argument amounts to saying that Einstein was wrong because no one had previously come up with the theory of relativity.

@ Bob B

“Your silly argument amounts to saying that Einstein was wrong because no one had previously come up with the theory of relativity.”

Jeez, Bob, that’s not what he’s saying at all. XXX hasn’t expressed any opposition to ground-breaking scientific ideas. What’s he’s saying (and XXX, please feel free to correct me here) is that violently opposed political opinions and exciting new scientific developments are two totally different things.

And yes, I’m sure you can find plenty of examples where violent politics have erupted due to the expression of new scientific concepts. But that’s not the same thing either. It certainly doesn’t justify you claiming that XXX’s argument “amounts to saying that Einstein was wrong”, which is just total nonsense.

“Jeez, Bob, that’s not what he’s saying at all”

Rubbish. That is exactly the logic of XXX’s argument that I’m wrong because no one else is suggesting that major scientific discoveries amount to extreme hypotheses precisely because such hypotheses overturn the previous consensus.

An argument isn’t “wrong” just because others haven’t come up with it. If that principle is accepted and extended, no one could be allowed to make an original suggestion . . . If anything, British philosophers, scientists and economists have a well-established historic tradition of being startlingly innovative and original and we should celebrate that as a national characteristic rather than pretending that we are hidebound by conventional thinking.

Try the Channel 4 series on: Genius of Britain
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/genius-of-britain/episode-guide/series-1

@ Chaise:

“What’s he’s saying (and XXX, please feel free to correct me here) is that violently opposed political opinions and exciting new scientific developments are two totally different things.”

Yes, that’s exactly it. When people say “British people are anti-extremist”, they usually mean “British people oppose extreme politics”, not “British people are against anybody questioning received wisdom and coming up with new ideas.”

@ Bob B:

“Your silly argument amounts to saying that Einstein was wrong because no one had previously come up with the theory of relativity.”

I’m sorry, could you run that by me again, please? I don’t think I quite follow the logic there.

“I’m sorry, could you run that by me again, please? I don’t think I quite follow the logic there.”

Try re-reading @107 slowly with cold towels.

Innovative ideas, by definition, challenge conventional wisdom.

Britain’s scientific heritage is a more evident and unique national characteristic than any notion that we British are especially inclined to oppose “extremist” sentiments when many examples can be found in Britain’s history of extensive support for sentiments and actions that most folks nowadays would regard as “extreme”,

At the time, taking the Pound off the Gold Standard in September 1931 was regarded as an extreme measure, which it was, given the prevailing consensus in 1925 about putting the Pound back on the Gold Standard at the pre-1914 parity.

@ 110:

You’re missing the point. Challenging scientific orthodoxy isn’t the same as supporting an extreme political position. When people say that Britain is “anti-extremist”, they mean “anti-extreme political movements”, not “anti-challenging scientific orthodoxy”. And I think it would be fair to say that British people are, in general, anti-extreme politics. Just look at how successful Oswald Mosley was compared to Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco or Joseph Stalin, for example, or how many revolutions Britain’s had in the past three hundred years compared to how many France has had.

@ 110 Bob B

“Try re-reading @107 slowly with cold towels.”

Oh, grow up. You’re missing the very obvious point that, while hardline political philosophies and crazy-sounding new scientific ideas could both be labelled “extreme”, the word is being used in very different ways.

Given that the context of the conversation is “extremism”, which is very widely understood to refer to particular political beliefs and/or ways of furthering those beliefs (e.g. terrorism), it’s positively churlish to point out that you could bend the term “extremism” to refer to a completely different concept then try to force the debate to stagnate over this non-issue.

“You’re missing the point”

No. YOU are totlally missing the point. The widespread uproar and hostility which greeted the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of the Species in 1859 is an indication of how “extreme” his theory of evolution was generally regarded. By many accounts, the theory of evolution is still not accepted by a large part of the American population even now.

Keynes’s macroeconomic theories are still regarded as controversial even though these are treated as mainstream in most economics texts.

British thinkers and scientists have left us with an outstanding heritage of innovative reflections and hypotheses in philosophy and science and that heritage is a far more noteworthy national characteristic than silly stuff claiming the British are opposed to extremist ideas – mainly put about by folk who are (manifestly) ignorant about Britain’s history.

@ 109 XXX

“Yes, that’s exactly it. When people say “British people are anti-extremist”, they usually mean “British people oppose extreme politics”, not “British people are against anybody questioning received wisdom and coming up with new ideas”

Y’know, I used to argue pointlessly with this guy on the Channel 4 forum who admitted being racist but claimed to be a “nice racist”. When you queried this, he’d tell you that “racist” means someone who “discriminates based on race”, and “discriminating” means “showing good taste”, and argue that therefore his racism was just a positive result of his excellent taste. Insofar as I could work out, he was totally serious.

Bob B isn’t like that guy, who was evidently either very stupid or simply insane, but he’s following the same tactic of switching the meaning of words midsentence.

@ 113

Wow, anecdotes of how scientific ideas could be considered extreme, even though nobody’s denying that! How very useful!

You are not so much missing the point now as ignoring it: scientific ideas and political ideas are different, and conventionally “extremism” refers to the latter. If you use it to refer to the former you are being deliberately obtuse.

YES, there is crossover, but that’s normally because a scientific idea causes political fallout. There’s no scientific debate over the existence of evolution, for example: just political problems with people who refuse to believe the science because it causes trouble for their worldview.

@ 113:

Firstly, I suggest you look up the Fallacy of Equivocation.

Secondly, since you get all superior to “folk who are (manifestly) ignorant about Britain’s history”, how’s about some evidence that Britain is historically politically extreme?

@114: “Yes, that’s exactly it. When people say “British people are anti-extremist”, they usually mean “British people oppose extreme politics”, not “British people are against anybody questioning received wisdom and coming up with new ideas”

You have only just introduced that major qualification to salvage your ludicrous position.

Even so, the political theories of John Locke in his Two Treatises on Civil Government (1689) underpinned the revolutionary declaration of independence by the American colonialists in 1776. This was the same year in which Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations was published with its demolition of the prevailing Mercantilist doctrines and spinning the notion of the invisible hand of the market, an entirely novel idea for the time.

The influence of Smith’s book on William Pitt and his associates explains why Britain’s pioneering industrial revolution was allowed to flourish with the laissez-faire ideology of British governments from late 18th century through into the 19th century. Locke and Smith produced revolutionary texts.

The laissez-faire ideology which came from Smith’s Wealth of Nations was in direct opposition to the prevailing Mercantillist and dirigiste ideologies of French governments in this same period – and France was the leading alternative global power at that time. The controversy still survives and continues in the form of the recurring attacks made in recent years from mainland Europe on “Anglo-Saxon economics”.

Your trouble is that you know too little of Britain’s illustrious history to sensibly debate these issues.

@ Bob B

“Your trouble is that you know too little of Britain’s illustrious history to sensibly debate these issues.”

I see it gives you pleasure to be patronising, but the fact is that you need zero knowledge of British history to notice when someone is using one word in two different ways to try to make an invalid point.

@116: “how’s about some evidence that Britain is historically politically extreme?”

How protestantism came to prevail over the preceding dominance of the Catholic Church in the 16th century; a civil war between the armies of the king and Parliament in the 1640s leading to the execution of the king in 1649; pioneering Parliamentary government; rejection of the Divine Right of Kings with the Glorious Revolution of 1688; Queen Anne in 1707 was the last monarch to refuse to sign an act passed by Parliament; the emergence of an independent judicary willing to curb the arbitary powers exercised by ministers of the Crown – see the history of John Wilkes; the ascendancy of laissez-faire with the resulting pioneering industrial revolution; the sheer size of Britain’s empire, acquired in competition against other other European states – read up the conflicts with France over America, Canada and India.

Add to that Britain’s outstanding scientific heritage in which prevailing conventional wisdom was overturned by successive generations of scientists.

All of that is more worthy of being considered characteristic of Britain’s national character than claims that we reject extremist politics.

@ 117:

“You have only just introduced that major qualification to salvage your ludicrous position.”

I’ve only just introduced that qualification because most people know the difference without needing to be told.

Anyway, if Britain is so prone to extremism, why is it that far-right and -left parties have tended to do worse here than in most other European countries?

@ 119:

“How protestantism came to prevail over the preceding dominance of the Catholic Church in the 16th century;”

What exactly is it about the process that you consider to be politically extreme?

“a civil war between the armies of the king and Parliament in the 1640s leading to the execution of the king in 1649;”

In the years immediately before the Civil War, Parliament had tended to couch its arguments in terms of defending their existing liberties, rather than gaining new ones. The execution was extreme by the standards of the time; however, it wasn’t supported by a majority of people in the country, and anyway one extreme event four hundred years ago isn’t enough to rebutt the claim that a country is in general anti-extremist.

“pioneering Parliamentary government;”

Done very gradually, over a period of many hundreds of years.

“rejection of the Divine Right of Kings with the Glorious Revolution of 1688;”

More about safeguarding Protestantism and the pre-existing rights held by the British people than rejecting the Divine Right of Kings. If anything, the GR was a conservative revolution, rather than an extreme and radical one.

“Queen Anne in 1707 was the last monarch to refuse to sign an act passed by Parliament;”

What are you saying is extreme here, the fact that she refused to sign the act, or the fact that no-one else has refused since?

“the emergence of an independent judicary willing to curb the arbitary powers exercised by ministers of the Crown”

Like the emergence of parliamentary government, this was done gradually, over a period of hundreds of years.

“the ascendancy of laissez-faire with the resulting pioneering industrial revolution;”

I’m not sure what this has to do with political extremism.

“the sheer size of Britain’s empire,”

That’s a sign of success, not extremism.

“acquired in competition against other other European states – read up the conflicts with France over America, Canada and India.”

So Britain has fought wars in the past. So what? Lots of countries fight wars. That doesn’t make them all extremist.

“Add to that Britain’s outstanding scientific heritage in which prevailing conventional wisdom was overturned by successive generations of scientists.”

As Chaise and I have said multiple times before, that’s not what people mean when they say “extremism”.

“Anyway, if Britain is so prone to extremism, why is it that far-right and -left parties have tended to do worse here than in most other European countries?”

Because they exhibit obviously daft and/or authoritarian traits?

The claim often (correctly) made on behalf on behalf of Thatcherism in the 1980s is that it explicitly rejected and broke with the previously prevailing post-war policy consenus. The Thatcher government pioneered the privatisation of state-owned industries which had mostly been created by the post-war Attlee government. We can add to that, removing exchange controls on capital movements, introducing monetarism (MTFS), the Big Bang on the Stock exchange, the poll tax, a national curriculum for schools, taking Britain into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism etc.

So this is what grown-ups talk about? Fascinating–I hope to scale such dizzy heights of colloquy myself one day.

Meanwhile, I offer the following argument in the spirit of troll-logic:

I am extremely slow on the uptake,
And also, what is more, a Briton;
So are some other people;
Therefore, by induction on n, all Britons are extremists.

Q-E-to the mother fscking-D homeboy, as Cyprus Hill once sang. I believe that settles it.