Everywhere We Look is a Sense of Fracture – The Antidote is Radically Reasserting Britishness

There is a pervasive sense of societal fracture these days. Politics has become defined by dramatic narratives of battle between the Greens and Reform UK based on story rather than rooted in reality. Culture seems increasingly guided by a furious rejection of tradition, establishment, and imperialist pasts, or a righteous confabulated nostalgia for them. Compare Kneecap with a far-right AI generated rapper, or indeed the culture of the Oscars with the culture of “Looksmaxxing” communities. 

The distal cause of this societal fracture is rooted in the 1990s, when the UK was ruled by a sense of optimism and general acceptance of liberal internationalism. The events and crises which have accrued since the 1990s have destroyed trust and confidence in that system, namely through foreign wars, examples of mass inequality or greed and corruption, and rapid changes in society both technological and relational. 

I do not think we have yet reached any proximate cause for a full-on societal “break”, contrary to the emotional and rational whiplash one receives every time they open the news. We are probably not far off. There can be no return to the imperfect and seemingly superficial liberal internationalism of the early 21^st century – it has lost legitimacy long ago in a social climate now defined by a mass emotional hijacking. 

In the same vein, while the social critiques provided by progressive culture and politics are more often quite insightful than not, there is no satisfyingly coherent identity offered within these critiques which grants a shared path out of fracture for most everyday communities in the UK, who are not by and large defined by extreme beliefs, nor by intense interest in politics and culture. 

Instead, the antidote lies in radically reasserting what it means to be British. For those on the left, “British” is anathema as an identity, because of associations with an imperialist past riddled with atrocities. For those on the right, “British” is a territorial identity based on religion, “acceptable ethnicity”, and traditional socio-familial relations. Both are wrong. 

It is true and undeniable that British identity has been unavoidably tied with past atrocities and colonialism since its inception under King James I. As a person descended from British settlers in Ulster, I am all too aware of the consequences of those tendencies – I live surrounded by some of the consequences in my everyday life.  

Yet colonialism, atrocities, and imperialism are not historically unique deficits to “Britishness”. They aren’t even unique to major Western powers. The Gaelic Lords who ruled Ulster prior to the arrival of King James’ armies were themselves guilty of the central charges of atrocities, conquest, and a lack of respect for human rights, for example. This reality is often papered over with a mythos, a Rousseauian state-of-nature story. 

It is true that in the past, that British identity was strongly tied to the Established Church, loyal submission to the Monarch, an ethnic component tied to Englishness and Scottishness, and a suppression of all else – see Welsh, Catholics, Quakers, Presbyterians and Huguenots. Yet 400 years later after both non-violent and violent struggle, British identity has massively loosened its associations with these dimensions and objectively become more inclusive.  

Britishness is no longer defined by its authoritarian and bloody past, nor by specific elite institutions, cultural rituals, or any one ethnicity. Britishness is defined in statute by the intrinsic and immovable values we all should hold dear. Those values are respect for democracy, respect for the rule of law, respect for individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance for those with different faiths or beliefs. 

This should make Britishness a perfectly acceptable and even honourable identity, despite its horrid history. In practice, the United Kingdom of today has struggled to uphold many of these values. We saw poor democratic accountability with Mandelson’s appointment as US Ambassador and poor protection of the right to protest vis-à-vis Palestine Action. 

We have failed to respect the dignity and human rights, when we placed asylum seekers into limbo hotels and paid fortunes to profit seeking companies for it, or threatened to make refugees’ status “temporary”, and extended Indefinite Leave to Remain to 10 years. 

We certainly lacked respect for tradition when King Charles III was crowned, yet most of us chattered on the streets about “anachronistic pomp” instead of watching. 

We lacked respect for diversity when we supported politicians talking about “whites” being overrun in London or Birmingham, and we do not respect the rule of law when we avoid tax and rationalise with a supercilious arrogance after the fact. 

These failures have happened as our leaders became self-interested and people-pleasing. We increasingly allow the toxic talk of outsiders to define us. Irish nationalists say Britishness is for stuffy losers, too bloated by colonial past to keep up with Irish charismatic zeal. Americans say Britishness is “Little America”, a role consigning us to mimic their whims and meet their demands. Russia defines us the psychopathic head of a conspiracy to destroy the non-West. Leftists say Britishness means to serve the kleptocratic elite, and Scottish or Welsh nationalists reject Britishness as mere Little Englanders upset about migration. 

To cure the fractures which we face in our society is to start by reasserting our values to ourselves and living them honestly and accountably, to develop positive self-image. We must listen and empathise with those external to our values, to foster understanding and see things from their point of view. Finally, we must strongly, stoically, and procedurally reassert to them what it actually means to be British, in spite of their perceptions. 

If British people cannot remember what it means to be British, they are to be reminded. If “politics is downstream of culture”, then reasserting our identity, not least to ourselves, is essential before we can introduce the necessary spread of policies to rebalance power and prepare our everyday communities for the tempestuous futures ahead.

Image: Flickr/notcub

Licence.

No image changes made.