| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
I suggest that the cultural traditions of education which promote freedom of thought are one of the greatest gifts of western liberal tradition and have been one of the greatest British contributions to the developing world. It therefore grieves me that so many of our young people do not appreciate this; perhaps this is another fruit of the destructive harvest originally sown in the 1960s and 1970s.
When my children were in state schools in those days, in the people’s republic of Brent, they were not taught our heritage of English literature. My second son, in two years of English literature in the critical run-up to GCE, was given only two essays in those 18 months—they were on rock music. When I challenged the teacher at a parents’ evening and said, “Are you ever going to teach them any English literature?”, he said that it was mixed ability teaching and he was not sure who was going to learn what. I said, “We happen to live in the land of Shakespeare, Keats, Wordsworth and Graham Greene. Are they ever going to learn anything of our English literary heritage?”. He said that he had not yet decided who was going to learn what. My daughter had a radical teacher who would not teach maths, but set essays on subjects including green ping pong balls. Naturally, I raised these concerns with the authorities, but it made no difference.
Our children's comprehensive school in Brent was not typical of every school in the country at that time, but it was deemed to be one of the best schools in the borough. It is a very different school now. Given that experience and the experience of many children who were in similar schools, it is perhaps no coincidence that many of that generation left school with little or no appreciation of the value of Britishness and of our
19 Jun 2008 : Column 1149
When my son Jonathan left school, he went to work in healthcare in Africa. He returned to England after a year. He was so shocked when he came back by the vacuum in the lives of many of his peer group, with drugs, drink, promiscuity and the frequent use of that dreadful word “boring”. They said that they had done everything. There was nothing left for them to do in their mid-20s. He decided that the needs were greater here in Britain than in the so-called third world, where the values and traditions of British education and institutions were still cherished. So he established a charity, Adventure Plus, which last year gave more than 5,000 children some introduction to the best of British in spiritual, ethical and outdoor education. This has been running for some years and every year those young people love those experiences and come back enthusiastically.
That is just one example of an effective response to the lack of identity and the vacuum of values affecting too many of our young people in Britain today. We have an indescribably rich heritage of Britishness in our constitution, our culture and the ethical values which we have inherited. We have an obligation to preserve these and to pass them on to our children and to their children. I am, therefore, deeply grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor for enabling us to remember this heritage, to affirm the many precious, valid and valuable characteristics it enshrines and to consider how we may more worthily cherish and convey it, undiminished, to those who come after us, as their rightful legacy.
12.14 pm
The Lord Bishop of Norwich: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Warwick, for prompting this debate. I am especially glad that the Motion puts Britishness in several contexts, though I notice that religion is not specifically mentioned in the frame of reference. In a world in which, as we have heard, an increasing number of people define their identity through their religion, the religious history of Britain, may be a more important guide to who we are today than we often realise. It certainly cannot be compressed into the narrower confines of ethics.
Who are the British? As the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, demonstrated, they are emphatically not one ethnic or religious group. But were we to reflect on our religious history a bit more seriously, we may be able to tell our national story in such a way that today's multiculturalism seems unexceptionable. One of my predecessors as Bishop of Norwich 400 years ago gave the chapel of the bishop’s palace to French Huguenots fleeing persecution. They were both religious and economic migrants, welcomed and provided for by a bishop when they themselves did not believe in bishops at all; it is one of the reasons they came here, to get away from them. Perhaps that is why men and women with Huguenot names and proud of their Huguenot ancestry are now found among Norfolk’s church wardens, local councillors and public figures.
19 Jun 2008 : Column 1150
The existence in a city such as Norwich of a medieval strangers hall and a modern Strangers Club is evidence of a long tradition of hospitality and integration, even if we are a bit more politically correct now in our description of new arrivals. Migrants, of course—new strangers—have arrived again in East Anglia in big numbers in recent years. They are mostly European; they are mostly Christian. Anglican services in Norfolk translated into Polish and Lithuanian would have been unthinkable a few years ago; they are not now. We are enlarged, enriched, and we are certainly changed by such developments. They remind us in themselves of very long historic links between the churches in this country and churches in Europe, sometimes links that we had rather forgotten partly because of the huge influence of the English-speaking union with the United States over the past 250 years; and now it seems to me that the British are looking in both directions, and rightly so, because our identity is always determined in relationship to others.
My parents when asked what their nationality was would always say Cornish, not because they denied being British—though it is partly because they thought that the Cornish were the real British, of course—but because they belonged at various levels to contemporary society as it was then. As a Cornishman in East Anglia, I am conscious of plural identities and plural relationships.
One of the complicating factors about Britishness is the legacy of empire; we cannot avoid it in this debate and we have not so far. There seem to me to be two fallacies to avoid. The first is to imagine that the recovery of such former power is either achievable or desirable; that sort of nostalgia can be insidious. The second is to imagine that the legacy of empire has been dealt with satisfactorily. A bishop of the Church of England may recognise that some of the tensions in the worldwide Anglican Communion are fashioned in part by our imperial legacy and we cannot really get away from it.
People sometimes lament that the absence of a written constitution in Britain is a disadvantage to us, but is there not something valuable in the pragmatism that our unwritten constitution permits? Perhaps in the rest of this brief speech I can sound a note in favour of the British habit of avoiding rigidity in our national identity, even a note in favour of muddling through. The Church of England has plenty of experience here to offer despite the turmoil that we are supposed to be in as I read our newspapers. There is a positive characteristic of this church to which I belong, which is a product of these islands, which I think has relevance for this debate.
The Church of England has long regarded herself as both Catholic and reformed. In other words, she has tried to embrace both sides of the Reformation divide, even though she has contained within herself people who have wanted to veer only one way. This leads to plenty of unresolved tensions in our life, but actually expresses something important: embracing difference within a single, accommodating story is more important than cut-and-dried definitions that include some and exclude others. A debate about Britishness has a lot to offer, so long as it does not end
19 Jun 2008 : Column 1151
The word “tradition” appears in the Motion. That is always a risk these days; it is an unfashionable word suggesting the imposition of something from the past. However, the hallmark of a living tradition is a continuing debate about what it means to be part of it. If we leave a tradition alone, or if we think that we have settled it, it will gradually wither and die. There is little value in discussing Britishness to define who is in and who is out. This cannot be a debate about border control and immigration, about flag-waving or the transformation of our political or religious culture into something more suitable for the Wembley Stadium or Euro 2008—except that we are not in it. Surely it is about fostering good citizenship. It is about people recognising that their story and the national story are somehow held together. The moral philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre once wrote:
“I can only answer the question, ‘What am I to do?’, if I can answer the prior question, ‘Of what story do I find myself a part?’”.
Living within a tradition—a story that may include others—as the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, says, causes us to learn how we ought to live. Belonging within a national story, complex and contested though it is, shapes our moral behaviour. The atomised individualism of a consumerist society simply cannot teach us what is right and wrong. It separates us from our traditions and leaves us with nothing but our own desires to guide our moral sense. That is one of our current problems, and why the Motion is so much to be welcomed.
Whatever I have said, I am not arguing for the return of Christendom; that would be both nostalgic and futile. However, if we take our history seriously, think about the legacy of empire and reflect upon our relationships with the United States and Europe, we might recognise something worthwhile about being British. Then there will be a story that people want to know, to which all can contribute in writing the next chapters.
12.23 pm
Baroness Verma: My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Taylor on securing this debate. Once again, it offers an opportunity to speak openly of the difficulties that arise if artificial debates are held by politicians seeking a commitment from people of immigrant backgrounds—I dare to push the barriers a little further and add, “especially those from Afro-Caribbean, south Asian and Middle-Eastern backgrounds”—to prove that they have signed up in principle to the values and culture of Great Britain.
19 Jun 2008 : Column 1152
I shall emphasise a number of points raised by my noble friend. I start by drawing on the Cantle report on the riots in the north of England in the summer of 2001. The report found that communities from the largely Muslim community and those from the white population were living “parallel lives”. As my noble friend pointed out, more recently Sir Trevor Phillips said that we were “sleepwalking to segregation”. These two findings are deeply worrying since they illustrate that different communities are leading increasingly separate lives.
The debate over Britishness can be seen as a backdrop to these findings and more generally as a response to the increased numbers of immigrants and the threat of terrorism, particularly after 9/11. The term “Britishness” is designed to promote a common identity and so cultivate a sense of belonging and commonality between citizens. Yet I question the relevance of the term in this context. Britishness for me is not an objectively definable concept, which can be applied as a label. I understand Britishness as an identity that one feels and interprets in one’s own way.
I illustrate this with an admittedly crude and completely non-scientific investigation of the concept. I asked my mother, who was born in India and came to Britain when she was 19, what Britishness meant to her. She replied, “Opportunity, freedoms, economic betterment and for women to be equal to men”. I contrasted this with the response from my English manager and supervisor, who were born in this country. When I asked them what Britishness meant to them, they looked at me and said that they did not know. In fact, they did not understand the question. Then I asked my 24 year-old administrator, a Muslim girl born in this country. She felt that part of the British culture was to get drunk and that marriage and family life did not matter. These responses are crude but illustrate that Britishness is not a clear concept.
The CRE's examination of the concept further illustrates this. Its 2005 research came out with no fewer than eight dimensions of what constitutes Britishness. These eight were then further divided into sub-categories of examples. Moreover, different individuals put different emphasis on these eight dimensions. Defining Britishness, then, seems to be an irrelevant consideration in promoting a sense of belonging.
The challenge, though, is in fostering a sense of British belonging and identity within individuals. This challenge is greatest in areas that Sir Trevor Phillips has termed “ghettos”. These are areas where a single ethnic group accounts for at least two-thirds of the population. Sir Trevor Phillips has exemplified a number of these areas as showing racial, ethnic or religious segregation with south-Asian “ghetto” communities. They include my home city of Leicester and Bradford. Segregation can be seen in both the workforce and the education system. For example, according to the CRE, nine out of 10 African-Caribbean children are in black majority schools.
On top of this residential and education segregation, there is evidence of what Sir Trevor Phillips terms “soft segregation”; that is, where individuals move in social circles made up of people with similar backgrounds to their own. Shockingly, the research found that
19 Jun 2008 : Column 1153
This finding was echoed by the ethnographic study of refugees entering Britain by the Refugee Council. It found that refugees tended to stay within a comfort zone in the locality. While feeling integrated on the national level, this was not the case in the workplace or education establishments.
Such ghettos can be seen to have formulated for a number of reasons. A large part may be due to self-segregation—communities choose to stick to what they feel is closest to them—but it is partly institutionalised. As highlighted by the Cantle report, funding provided by local government for faith schools with the aim of supporting different racial groups adds to the possibility of greater divisions. The obvious problem of polarised, segregated communities is that minority communities may view themselves as identifying with one heritage and not the other. This identification, as mutually exclusive heritages, deeply troubles me. Diversity is, of course, greatly to be valued. Indeed, the ease with which new communities can be accepted makes Britain a great nation. This was reflected in my mother's perception of what Britishness meant to her. While there is no doubt that foreign cultures, languages and traditions should be embraced, in so far as they are compatible with the law, this should not be at the expense of a feeling of belonging in the nation as a whole. Rather, there is a need to bridge differences between communities, so that differences are experienced. That can contribute to a broader experience than one that is within the confines of the educational and cultural networks of one’s own community.
Yet in promoting a sense of belonging and commonality within Britain, individuals must be free to hold on to their historical and cultural roots. Taking my example, I am able to enjoy identifying myself both as British and as having an Indian cultural and historical heritage. That kind of gap-bridging is crucial in young children. As the future of this country, for them to have an outlook and experience in life wider than that of their own community is vital in making them rounded individuals. However, if the statistics that have been quoted regarding friendship groups and educational institutions continue, children especially will be sleepwalking into segregation. That is deeply worrying, and it is a key challenge in Britain today to give people access to a network wider than their own. Feeling that they can draw both on their British and historical cultures is deeply important.
I hope that the Minister will tell your Lordships why there is still a drive by the Government to provide funding to groups that show little accountability on what and where that funding is spent. It would appear to be much wiser to spend money to address the serious and common issues of poor education, housing and unemployment that affect populations across the board. That they are not addressed gives rise to the suspicions and misunderstandings that allow a festering of ill will and segregation.
19 Jun 2008 : Column 1154
I am truly troubled by the direction that the Government have taken in trying to address disenfranchisement and disengagement by parts of the British community. The consequences of this problem—namely, the outbursts of mob violence that we have already experienced, as well as social and educational deprivation—are worrying. Let us always bear in mind who the victims of these failed debates will be.
I will finish with a quote that has inspired and driven me from the great personality, Dr Martin Luther King:
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character”.
As a proud British citizen in the UK, I have seen Britain and the USA move a long way since that speech. There is still much to be done, but for me that inspiration remains. As a British citizen of Indian origin, I have enjoyed the rich history of both Britain and India, of ballet as well as bhangra, opera as well as qawwali, English cinema as well as Bollywood. I have enjoyed belonging to a country that will protect me regardless of my gender, ethnicity or colour. To me, that emulates in my mind all that is good and British.
12.33 pm
Lord Haskel: My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, on introducing this debate, which I thought he did in a particularly thoughtful and sensitive way. Sensitivity is important, because identity is a very personal matter, especially for immigrants such as me who want to be British. Fortunately, I was naturalised before you had to answer all those difficult questions that the noble Lord told us about.
For me, finding Britishness is a journey. Looking round your Lordships’ House, I see that many of us have travelled the same path. I found the start of my journey pretty easy. You learn the language, respect the Royal Family, be kind to animals, stick to the rules of fair play and, most important, know your place in the class structure. After a while, it appeared to me that there must be a bit more to it than that.
What about history? British history is a source of great pride. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, that we immigrants can take pride in the fact that throughout its history Britain has been the product of many outside influences. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich reminded us of the religious aspect of those influences. To me, our history, as well as being a source of pride, also speaks of patriotism. But patriotism has two sides. There is pride on one side, but there is a rather ugly other side, which the fascists and the British National Party use as a means to express hostility. Patriotism will wither unless it is progressive and forward-looking. Putting a duty on someone is rarely a solution. Patriotism has to be forged, not forced; only then can we be comfortable with it.
The next stage of my journey was education. Is it possible to learn what Britishness is and how to be British? The answer is that what you seem to learn is citizenship, which I do not think is quite the same as
19 Jun 2008 : Column 1155
On the next stage of my journey, I discovered that Britishness had suddenly become one of the most important debates in British politics. Immigration, race relations, multiculturalism and people’s right to be here were top of the political agenda. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, spoke about that. Britishness, instead of being an identity that we all shared, had become a framework for uniting us in our differences. It was something to bring us together that was stronger than the things that were holding us apart. It was a kind of social contract, so that we could all live in the same space together.
As if that were not enough, we also have the devolved settlement, so that kind of social contract also has to be an umbrella under which the English, Scots, Welsh and Irish can all get. There is more. One of the things that our children value most is their freedom to travel, work, study and live in any part of the European Union without any formalities or hindrance. Presumably, they would want to carry some of their Britishness with them. How do we do all that? Certainly not by diktat and certainly not to or for people; it has to be with people. That makes it something rather subtle. Britishness does not need to be a dominant part of our identity. If it is, it becomes a bit of a farce.
It seems to me that Britishness has to be both inclusive and aspirational, both social and economic. Although we are a market economy, part of Britishness must be equality in life’s chances. If some groups are destined always to live in poverty and inequality, they will be excluded from Britishness. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, that equality must be seen as a foundation stone of the notion of Britishness. That applies to social equality, too. It seems to me that the Human Rights Act provides the basis for social equality, in that it provides the non-negotiables. That framework provides something that can be part of everyone’s identity.
| Next Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |