So back in the days of good old-fashioned xenophobia, nationalism was when you believed your country to be superior to any other country and hung your nation's flag over your balcony to prove it. Other countries were sly, untrustworthy, useless or dangerous. THEIR judges were corrupt and/or stupid, THEIR politicians on the take and/or useless and THEIR whole system of government and public service overpriced, weird, ineffective and convoluted.
Somewhere along the line though, that all changed, though it took 2016 (the year of Trump and Brexit) to make that fact clear.
You see, what the brexiteers had in common with Trump was their populist nationalism, to the extent that the two campaigns seem to have come to define nationalism for the 21st Century. And the thing is, it is actually a very weird sort of nationalism indeed when you come to think about it, because to 21st Century nationalists it's not THEIR judges, politicians and public services that are shit, it's OURS!
Take the brexiteers. British Nationalists they may be, but look at the range of things they are willing to turn against: British judges (aka Enemies of the People); the British civil service (foot-dragging Remoaners, every one); British ambassadors ("emotionally needy", according to Theresa Villiers, and expressing sour grapes, according to IDS); the British Parliament (not to be trusted with any sort of decision on Brexit) and of course the Act of Union with Scotland, hence the United Kingdom itself.
Pretty much the full house, you might think, but still trumped by Trump, who has repeatedly described the entire system of government in the US as a swamp in need of draining. But that's not the weirdest thing. The xenophobic arch-nationalist has then turned on his own country's intelligence services whilst praising the leader of a foreign power who has been exposed as engaging in cyber-warfare against the US. You really couldn't make it up.
So it seems that 21st Century nationalism goes hand in hand with full throated attacks on pretty much every institution of that same nation. So what exactly is it that nationalists these days support? Even the flag is problematic, surely. Even more in the US than in the UK, the national flag is an inseparable symbol of the national institutions that Trump's nationalists attack with such gusto. The stars and stripes flutters constantly over the swamp they chant about (over every State building in the land, in fact), and if Russia is suddenly more to be trusted than the US's own intelligence agencies, then which flag should they be rallying behind anyway?
You see it seems that 21st Century populist nationalism is a very direct and emotional concept that bypasses systems of government and national institutions, so that the 'nation' becomes whatever any individual nationalist deems it to be. It's generally a pretty vague concept, but can be easily conjured by well-chosen three-word slogans, apparently: "take back control", "build the wall", "lock her up", "brexit means brexit" and "drain the swamp." Not that specific maybe, but they clearly work, and certainly a hell of lot simpler than the average National Anthem.
Showing posts with label Nationalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nationalism. Show all posts
Sunday, 8 January 2017
Friday, 3 June 2016
Why the British attitude to immigration is a bit different to other countries'
Immigration is a big deal, of course it is. For years we liberals have pretended it isn't - told ourselves that the obsession with immigration was a creation of the tabloid press and Nigel Farage - but it really is. Across the rich world people are becoming more and more exercised on the subject (with the enthusiastic help of the tabloid press and a range of demagogic populists in every country) and in a sense it is hardly surprising. What mass immigration does, apart from anything else, is remind us in the rich West that we are globally a tiny minority and that our relative affluence and geopolitical influence is the legacy of a colonial past whose influence is waning all the time. Time was if we fucked up in some byzantine Middle Eastern conflict the repercussions were felt there and there alone while we walked away relatively unscathed. Not any more.
In some countries 'concerns' about immigration have led to the rise of genuinely scary neo-Nazi parties and thin-skinned childish demagogues with silly hair, but in Britain we generally don't like extremism. For all that Nick Clegg's description of Boris Johnson as 'Trump with a thesaurus' is a good soundbite, at least Boris isn't advocating building a wall, banning immigrants on religious grounds and torturing the families of enemy combatants.
But to say that the British people are entirely sanguine with the concept of immigration would be to put our middle-class left-liberal heads in the sand. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the tireless efforts of such as the Daily Mail to whip it up, suspicion and fear of 'uncontrolled immigration' have taken root. However it is my contention that that fear and suspicion has a particular British flavour here that isn't quite the same as that encountered elsewhere.
So why have the British begun to react as they do to immigration? Let's examine the predominant theories:
1) Because immigrants will stretch our public services (education, health, housing) to breaking point. This one is often trotted out, and many people clearly believe it to be their primary concern (partly perhaps because it is a view one can hold without bearing any animosity towards any of the individual immigrants involved) but it really doesn't stand up to scrutiny. First, everyone knows that the public services are utterly dependent on immigrant labour (Australian teachers, African nurses, Polish builders) and second, this is a view often held by people who support a government that has taken a flamethrower to public services itself.
2) Because immigrants put downward pressure on wages. Probably second favourite, and it is an argument that has some merit. However again, a moment's thought makes it clear that it is not the immigrants but the combination of a neo-liberal government and global capitalism that have put downward pressure on wages (right on brother!) Seriously, does anyone believe that if immigration were to stop tomorrow, big business would suddenly raise wages and abandon zero hours contracts?
3) Because immigration undermines our country's cultural identity. A bit closer to the bone this one and it may well lie at the heart of some anti-immigration feeling, but to be honest it is hard to argue for the concept of British cultural identity when the films we watch are American, the cars we drive German or Japanese, our furniture Scandinavan (Swedish or Danish, depending on class) and our takeaways Italian, Indian or Chinese.
4) Because immigration dilutes our ethnic identity. Getting more visceral still now, and it's an unspoken argument that probably eats away at the psyche of many a (reasonably) tolerant middle-Englander. The thing is, it is nothing like such a strong argument in Britain as it appears at first glance. First, we never were particularly ethnically uniform as a nation. The mashup of our earliest inhabitants (Picts, Celts and Saxons) led to a far wider range of ethnic types (from swarthy dark-haired Welshmen to pale-skinned, freckled Scots or brawny fair-haired English ploughmen) than was ever the case in, say, Norway. And then our colonial legacy has led to peoples from across the globe becoming far more integrated than in many countries, with third and fourth generation Afro-Caribbean or Asian families now so English that they complain about immigration as much as anyone. Plus the newest waves of immigrants are quite likely to be ethnically similar to 'us', whoever 'we' are.
Arguments number 3) and 4) are probably the root cause of anti-immigration feeling in many (possibly most) other countries, no matter how much arguments 1) and 2) are trotted out. However I don't believe that even they get under the skin of the specifically British reaction to immigration. So what does?
Easy. Language.
You see, what really marks the UK out from most of the rich world (Australia and New Zealand apart) is our national unwillingness to engage with other languages than English. Look at our popular culture: even in the US you will occasionally have the gum-chewing detective coming out with a few words of Spanish as he gets down widd da kidz on the dilapidated basketball court. In British popular culture the only foreign language you will hear will be from the mouths of the devilish German, Russian or (nowadays) Arab villains. Across the rest of Europe a huge proportion of popular culture is actually IN a foreign language (English). Virtually everyone in Holland is completely fluent in at least three languages, apparently from birth.
So it is pretty much uniquely in the UK that other languages than our own sound quite so alien and thus disturbing. In most of Europe it is quite normal to see shops with foreign (English) names or even billboards written entirely in a foreign language (English), but here in the UK many see even the occasional unassuming 'Polski Sklep' above a grocer or 'حلالا' on a butcher's door as weird and vaguely threatening. And as for hearing a couple speaking in Romanian on a bus...
So that's my theory. British people worry about immigration because immigrants (generally) speak foreign languages, and foreign languages are alien and scary and FOREIGN. If we'd grown up in Flemish Belgium, where people in our town all spoke a foreign language (French or Dutch or German) and the songs we listened to and the films we watched were in a different foreign language (English) then maybe we wouldn't feel like that (and we'd concentrate on other markers of foreignness like ethnicity and religion). Or maybe even if we had taken language learning seriously at school and not been told that it didn't really matter because everyone speaks English anyway.
But we are where we are, and maybe we need to recognise it better. Especially since English is already only the second most widely spoken language in the world, and may be overtaken by Spanish in the not too distant future.
Of course, in a sense our language-based xenophobia is a lot less unpleasant and scary than the sort of purely ethnic/cultural xenophobia of much of Europe and we should be proud of that. The BNP has died a death here and I can't see troupes of neo-Nazi vigilantes hunting down anyone of an Arabic appearance here in the way they do in much of central Europe. But where the left have been going wrong, I think, is to see all fear and distrust of immigration as being (at root) racist xenophobia. Sure that exists, but our lack of confidence in foreign languages is a genuine cause too. And one that we could, in time, do something about.
In some countries 'concerns' about immigration have led to the rise of genuinely scary neo-Nazi parties and thin-skinned childish demagogues with silly hair, but in Britain we generally don't like extremism. For all that Nick Clegg's description of Boris Johnson as 'Trump with a thesaurus' is a good soundbite, at least Boris isn't advocating building a wall, banning immigrants on religious grounds and torturing the families of enemy combatants.
But to say that the British people are entirely sanguine with the concept of immigration would be to put our middle-class left-liberal heads in the sand. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the tireless efforts of such as the Daily Mail to whip it up, suspicion and fear of 'uncontrolled immigration' have taken root. However it is my contention that that fear and suspicion has a particular British flavour here that isn't quite the same as that encountered elsewhere.
So why have the British begun to react as they do to immigration? Let's examine the predominant theories:
1) Because immigrants will stretch our public services (education, health, housing) to breaking point. This one is often trotted out, and many people clearly believe it to be their primary concern (partly perhaps because it is a view one can hold without bearing any animosity towards any of the individual immigrants involved) but it really doesn't stand up to scrutiny. First, everyone knows that the public services are utterly dependent on immigrant labour (Australian teachers, African nurses, Polish builders) and second, this is a view often held by people who support a government that has taken a flamethrower to public services itself.
2) Because immigrants put downward pressure on wages. Probably second favourite, and it is an argument that has some merit. However again, a moment's thought makes it clear that it is not the immigrants but the combination of a neo-liberal government and global capitalism that have put downward pressure on wages (right on brother!) Seriously, does anyone believe that if immigration were to stop tomorrow, big business would suddenly raise wages and abandon zero hours contracts?
3) Because immigration undermines our country's cultural identity. A bit closer to the bone this one and it may well lie at the heart of some anti-immigration feeling, but to be honest it is hard to argue for the concept of British cultural identity when the films we watch are American, the cars we drive German or Japanese, our furniture Scandinavan (Swedish or Danish, depending on class) and our takeaways Italian, Indian or Chinese.
4) Because immigration dilutes our ethnic identity. Getting more visceral still now, and it's an unspoken argument that probably eats away at the psyche of many a (reasonably) tolerant middle-Englander. The thing is, it is nothing like such a strong argument in Britain as it appears at first glance. First, we never were particularly ethnically uniform as a nation. The mashup of our earliest inhabitants (Picts, Celts and Saxons) led to a far wider range of ethnic types (from swarthy dark-haired Welshmen to pale-skinned, freckled Scots or brawny fair-haired English ploughmen) than was ever the case in, say, Norway. And then our colonial legacy has led to peoples from across the globe becoming far more integrated than in many countries, with third and fourth generation Afro-Caribbean or Asian families now so English that they complain about immigration as much as anyone. Plus the newest waves of immigrants are quite likely to be ethnically similar to 'us', whoever 'we' are.
Arguments number 3) and 4) are probably the root cause of anti-immigration feeling in many (possibly most) other countries, no matter how much arguments 1) and 2) are trotted out. However I don't believe that even they get under the skin of the specifically British reaction to immigration. So what does?
Easy. Language.
You see, what really marks the UK out from most of the rich world (Australia and New Zealand apart) is our national unwillingness to engage with other languages than English. Look at our popular culture: even in the US you will occasionally have the gum-chewing detective coming out with a few words of Spanish as he gets down widd da kidz on the dilapidated basketball court. In British popular culture the only foreign language you will hear will be from the mouths of the devilish German, Russian or (nowadays) Arab villains. Across the rest of Europe a huge proportion of popular culture is actually IN a foreign language (English). Virtually everyone in Holland is completely fluent in at least three languages, apparently from birth.
So it is pretty much uniquely in the UK that other languages than our own sound quite so alien and thus disturbing. In most of Europe it is quite normal to see shops with foreign (English) names or even billboards written entirely in a foreign language (English), but here in the UK many see even the occasional unassuming 'Polski Sklep' above a grocer or 'حلالا' on a butcher's door as weird and vaguely threatening. And as for hearing a couple speaking in Romanian on a bus...
So that's my theory. British people worry about immigration because immigrants (generally) speak foreign languages, and foreign languages are alien and scary and FOREIGN. If we'd grown up in Flemish Belgium, where people in our town all spoke a foreign language (French or Dutch or German) and the songs we listened to and the films we watched were in a different foreign language (English) then maybe we wouldn't feel like that (and we'd concentrate on other markers of foreignness like ethnicity and religion). Or maybe even if we had taken language learning seriously at school and not been told that it didn't really matter because everyone speaks English anyway.
But we are where we are, and maybe we need to recognise it better. Especially since English is already only the second most widely spoken language in the world, and may be overtaken by Spanish in the not too distant future.
Of course, in a sense our language-based xenophobia is a lot less unpleasant and scary than the sort of purely ethnic/cultural xenophobia of much of Europe and we should be proud of that. The BNP has died a death here and I can't see troupes of neo-Nazi vigilantes hunting down anyone of an Arabic appearance here in the way they do in much of central Europe. But where the left have been going wrong, I think, is to see all fear and distrust of immigration as being (at root) racist xenophobia. Sure that exists, but our lack of confidence in foreign languages is a genuine cause too. And one that we could, in time, do something about.
Sunday, 10 August 2014
What defines a nation state?
Many of the world's crises recently have revolved around the question of nation states and how they are defined. Ukraine's turmoil is caused in part by being a pawn in power games between Putin and the West, but in part too by the history of Ukraine as a nation state, and the way that Crimea was allegedly added to it by Khrushchev when he was drunk. The ability and right of the Palestinian territories to function as nation states is of course central to the Gaza conflict, and we appear to be witnessing in Iraq the demise of that country as a nation state at all. And in a more domestic (and far less serious) context, both the Scottish independence referendum and the EU debate centre around the changing nature of the nation state.
All of which cases lead me to ponder on how a nation state can be defined. We tend to think of the concept as being inevitable and permanent but it is in fact a relatively recent phenomenon: Germany and Italy for instance only came into existence in the late 19th Century. In reality in many cases nation states are pretty arbitrary constructs: many do not have a unifying language (look at Belgium for instance), religion (think of Iraq) or ethnicity (virtually any African nation) or even coherent shape in terms of borders. On the face of it France seems to have very regular and logical borders (mainland France is called "the Hexagon" by the French), but look at the country's actual geography:
All of which cases lead me to ponder on how a nation state can be defined. We tend to think of the concept as being inevitable and permanent but it is in fact a relatively recent phenomenon: Germany and Italy for instance only came into existence in the late 19th Century. In reality in many cases nation states are pretty arbitrary constructs: many do not have a unifying language (look at Belgium for instance), religion (think of Iraq) or ethnicity (virtually any African nation) or even coherent shape in terms of borders. On the face of it France seems to have very regular and logical borders (mainland France is called "the Hexagon" by the French), but look at the country's actual geography:
What is more, in today's world there are often more connections between individuals and groups in different countries than those within the nation state itself. Jet travel is no respecter of national boundaries and neither is the internet. Multinational companies (as the adjective implies) ignore differences between nation states, except for reasons of minimizing tax. A high street in London is now more similar to a high street in Brisbane than it is to one in Lerwick and it is almost impossible to discover where the goods we consume have actually been produced.
So how can a nation state be defined, if not by the companies trading in it, the ethnicity or religion of its peoples or the language spoken. Even social groupings won't do the job, as social media creates and maintains social groups that transcend national boundaries, and if the neo-cons have their way government won't either, as all the erstwhile government services are outsourced to (multinational) private sector companies. In the UK we already have a significant proportion of our public services delivered by French, German or American companies, and China is to be developing our new generation of power stations apparently.
It seems that all we are left with to define a nation state are the following: the national anthem and the flag. Both are on display (in the event of victory) at games such as the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics, and the visual image of the victorious athlete mouthing the words of their anthem in front of their nation's flag is about the strongest symbol of nationhood one gets to see.
So what of these national anthems and these flags? Most were chosen some time ago of course, so one might think that they are too out of date now to tell us anything meaningful about the nation states they symbolise, but in fact there are some surprising insights to be gained just by looking at them more closely.
Take for instance the flags and national anthems of Britain, the United Sates and France- three countries locked in a long history of mutual support and distrust since the American Revolution itself (it was France that donated the Statue of Liberty to the nascent United States). The flags are an interesting comparison as they all use the same three colours: red, white and blue, but the use made of these colours is very different:
The French flag is by far the simplest and boldest. To the French it speaks of clarity of thought and the Age of Reason that saw the creation of the Republic. It is the one true Tricolore, and as such the pattern for countless flags that followed, whilst remaining unique and archetypal. The problem is that to everyone else, France's flag is that one with the red, white and blue stripes, but are they horizontal or vertical? Or is that Hungary anyway. And which colour is it on the left? Who bloody cares anyway. They all look the same.
The British flag speaks of unity in diversity with its complex of overlaid crosses, and of the centrality of our great nation in the converging lines of power and influence that reach across the globe. Except that it is a bugger to draw, is probably hardly ever hung the right way up (which is the right way up? Does anyone actually know?) and shouldn't even be called the Union Jack at all.
The US flag is both powerfully simple and somehow on a different scale to the other two. It is instantly recognisable and would be the easiest to win Pictionary with, even without coloured pens, yet it has an unfeasibly large number of elements that always make it look bigger than it actually is. And its visual symbolism is on an epic scale: the red lines representing the lands and oceans and the stars the overarching skies. The earth beneath and the skies above- all are ours, the flag seems to say.
The anthems are just as different one from another, and the connotations of their words just as telling. The Marseillaise, for all its warlike evocation of revolutionary struggle is also surprisingly intimate and familial in its language. It refers to enfants (children), bras (arms) and fils (sons), and evokes a rural scene of campagnes (fields) and sillons (furrows). What is more, however defiant its tone there is an air of defeatism about the song. It is the citizens the chorus calls to arms, not the soldiery, and it calls them to put up barricades- surely a futile last-ditch attempt to resist the inexorable march of the feroces soldats who are approaching to égorger (slay) our sons and our companions.
The British national anthem is almost ludicrously overblown. One use of an adjective such as "gracious" one could maybe get away with, but in the first verse alone (the only one anyone knows) we have "gracious," "noble," "victorious" and "glorious." And what is telling is what the song in the end wishes for. Unlike the French and US anthems, the British national anthem positively invites subjugation. "rule us," or "be our Queen" would be one thing, but the anthem actually asks for the monarch to "rule over us."
So if the Marseillaise encapsulates France's parochial yet truculent defeatism and God Save the Queen manages to sum up Britain's pompous subservience, what of the Star Spangled Banner? Like the Marseillaise the US national anthem is an evocation of revolutionary struggle against a tyrannical oppressor, and if its depiction of "the rocket's red glare, [and] the bombs bursting in air" is nowadays more reminiscent of Hamas or the Taliban than of the all-conquering US Army then that is simply one of history's ironies.
In essence the Star Spangled Banner is a simple yet powerful summation of a myth that has kept the US at the top of the heap for a very long time. For a start it is a song about the nation's flag, so the two symbols work hand in hand. Secondly its imagery is actually quite surprisingly uplifting. There is a great deal about light ("the dawn's early light," "twilight," "gleaming", "gleam," "morning's first beam," "reflected," "shines," and of course the "star spangled banner" itself). There is powerful evocation of place too, with "the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep," "the breeze," "the towering steep" and "the stream." Together these give a strong sense of the land as the first European pioneers found it: unsullied, vast and shining. The people in the song are "brave" and "free" and this is their "land" and their "home."
Small wonder then that Americans have seen themselves as the undisputed leaders of the free world. The Star Spangled Banner is an anthem that can really only be sung with one's fist held over one's heart, unlike God Save the Queen which must be droned out in an embarrassed dirge and the Marseillaise which can only really be bellowed whilst in a state of inebriation.
So does any of this matter at all? Do these symbols prove that there is some indefinable essence to nationhood that was somehow captured by the designers of flags and the composers of anthems, and that still holds true today? Or is this some variation of nominative determinism, and a country's people learns over time to live up (or down) to that country's national symbols?
Who knows? What I would say though, to my fellow Scots is this: if you do vote for independence then think long and hard before you officially adopt Flower of Scotland as the national anthem.
Tuesday, 29 July 2014
National identity and sporting success
The success of GB in sport (whether as one nation or several) over recent years has been a puzzling rollercoaster, from the glorious overachievements in London 2012 and the 2013 summer Ashes to the humiliations of Brazil and back up to Glasgow 2014. Much of this wild variation is down to chance of course: the margins are so fine in elite sport these days between success and failure that it really doesn't take much to tip the balance. By contrast with 2013 UK riders had a disastrous Tour de France in 2014, but had both Froome and Cavendish not been involved in serious crashes then who knows what might have happened.
However there is another possible explanation for the variation that occurs to me: GB's self-image as a nation and the effect this has on those who represent it in sport. Yesterday's performance in the India test notwithstanding it is in cricket and football that England's recent slump has been most embarrassingly acute. And I do not think it any coincidence that it is these sports that are most affected by a particularly narrow-minded and jingoistic image of British national identity. Support for the English football team seems inextricably bound up with flags of St George (the Palestine-born patron saint of Bulgaria, Romania and Iraq) and evocations of the memories of 1966, 1945 and 1918. In this year's final the debate in England seemed to centre around which of England's wartime foes (Argentina or Germany) one was to hate least. This despite the fact that one war ended over 30 years ago and the other nearly 70.
Cricket is perhaps less overtly jingoistic, but did not Norman Tebbitt propose the so-called cricket test to define which immigrant communities subscribed best to his narrow view of Englishness? Certainly in cricket as in football, supporters of the England team seem almost exclusively mono-ethnic: the classic close-ups of the crowd from test matches being of portly white men, whether elderly and snoozing under straw hats or younger, more sunburnt and balancing unfeasible numbers of pints of lager as they wend their way through the seats.
So it seems to me that in both football and cricket the nation's dominant self-image is an important factor in the success or otherwise of the national team. And in both of these sports it is the nation of England (rather than GB or the UK) that is in question. Not that Scotland and Wales don't have football teams, but... well, you know what I mean. The thing is that it seems to me that England's overt self-image has shrunk and darkened over the last year or so in a way that cannot possibly be helpful to the establishment of a positive and optimistic ethos of success in the national teams.
Although less than 10% of the UK electorate (4.3 million from a total electorate of 46 million) voted for UKIP in the 2014 European election, to listen to the media and politicians you would think that Britain had spoken with one voice in support of a narrow, petty-minded and negative view of the state of the nation today. UKIP's policies seem to me defined by negativity: anti-Europe, anti-immigration and anti-liberalisation. They may not be openly racist or homophobic but the implication is there- they promote an exclusive sense of national identity predicated on hatred and distrust of "the other."
Far from challenging this view of ourselves politicians from the major parties have seemed keen to pander to it, banging on about how tough they are going to be on immigration, or how isolated within Europe. David Cameron's position on the appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker was a humiliating embarrassment, but it seemed to play well in the tabloid press.
The thing is that this small-minded, inward-looking view of our national identity cannot possibly act as a motivating force for national teams. And sure enough, whilst teams like Holland or Columbia in the World Cup seemed empowered and liberated by the opportunity to play for their country, England looked introspective, unsure and out of their depth. They looked as if, far from relishing the challenge of mixing it with the greatest players from every continent, they couldn't wait to get back on the flight home for a decent cup of tea and a proper English breakfast.
So if British (and specifically English) national identity is such a negative force in sports like football and cricket, why such conspicuous success in London 2012 and Glasgow 2014? The core reason, I believe, is that at the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games athletes have been able to harness a different, more pluralist and less constricting view of their national identity. Carol-Anne Duffy put it beautifully in her poem Translating the British, 2012: "we say we want to be who we truly are,/now, we roar it. Welcome to us." There is less jingoism in athletics and less mono-ethnicity. One of the undisputed stars of 2012 was the daughter of a Jamaican immigrant, another born in Mogadishu. The Olympic opening ceremony celebrated a vision of Britain that had most UKIPers and right-wing Tories spluttering into their fine french wines and the spirit of the entire Games was founded on openness, welcoming of foreigners and celebration of diverse national and cultural identities. Small wonder that the British athletes found this inspiring in a way that England's footballers and cricketers could only dream of.
The Commonwealth Games, I am delighted to see, has captured this same inclusive spirit, and with it the boost to the performance of Home Nations sports(wo)men. In fact in the Commonwealth Games there is another dimension of pluralism. British competitors represent their home nation, rather than GB, yet seem to be doing so in the context of a larger feeling of pride in the country as a whole. So a Commonwealth Games athlete can be Scottish (or English, Welsh, Northern Irish, Manx, Jersey or Guernsey) and British, as well as perhaps being Muslim or Sikh and of Asian or Caribbean ethnic origin too. And the crowds go along with this too. I witnessed Scots cheering on English athletes for God's sake!
These are inclusive, empowering and uplifting identities to celebrate and it is hardly surprising to me that they seem to give competitors a boost, enabling them to over-achieve in a truly impressive way. Just as it is hardly a surprise that a narrow, introspective and negative prevailing national identity hamstrings our footballers and cricketers.
However there is another possible explanation for the variation that occurs to me: GB's self-image as a nation and the effect this has on those who represent it in sport. Yesterday's performance in the India test notwithstanding it is in cricket and football that England's recent slump has been most embarrassingly acute. And I do not think it any coincidence that it is these sports that are most affected by a particularly narrow-minded and jingoistic image of British national identity. Support for the English football team seems inextricably bound up with flags of St George (the Palestine-born patron saint of Bulgaria, Romania and Iraq) and evocations of the memories of 1966, 1945 and 1918. In this year's final the debate in England seemed to centre around which of England's wartime foes (Argentina or Germany) one was to hate least. This despite the fact that one war ended over 30 years ago and the other nearly 70.
Cricket is perhaps less overtly jingoistic, but did not Norman Tebbitt propose the so-called cricket test to define which immigrant communities subscribed best to his narrow view of Englishness? Certainly in cricket as in football, supporters of the England team seem almost exclusively mono-ethnic: the classic close-ups of the crowd from test matches being of portly white men, whether elderly and snoozing under straw hats or younger, more sunburnt and balancing unfeasible numbers of pints of lager as they wend their way through the seats.
So it seems to me that in both football and cricket the nation's dominant self-image is an important factor in the success or otherwise of the national team. And in both of these sports it is the nation of England (rather than GB or the UK) that is in question. Not that Scotland and Wales don't have football teams, but... well, you know what I mean. The thing is that it seems to me that England's overt self-image has shrunk and darkened over the last year or so in a way that cannot possibly be helpful to the establishment of a positive and optimistic ethos of success in the national teams.
Although less than 10% of the UK electorate (4.3 million from a total electorate of 46 million) voted for UKIP in the 2014 European election, to listen to the media and politicians you would think that Britain had spoken with one voice in support of a narrow, petty-minded and negative view of the state of the nation today. UKIP's policies seem to me defined by negativity: anti-Europe, anti-immigration and anti-liberalisation. They may not be openly racist or homophobic but the implication is there- they promote an exclusive sense of national identity predicated on hatred and distrust of "the other."
Far from challenging this view of ourselves politicians from the major parties have seemed keen to pander to it, banging on about how tough they are going to be on immigration, or how isolated within Europe. David Cameron's position on the appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker was a humiliating embarrassment, but it seemed to play well in the tabloid press.
The thing is that this small-minded, inward-looking view of our national identity cannot possibly act as a motivating force for national teams. And sure enough, whilst teams like Holland or Columbia in the World Cup seemed empowered and liberated by the opportunity to play for their country, England looked introspective, unsure and out of their depth. They looked as if, far from relishing the challenge of mixing it with the greatest players from every continent, they couldn't wait to get back on the flight home for a decent cup of tea and a proper English breakfast.
So if British (and specifically English) national identity is such a negative force in sports like football and cricket, why such conspicuous success in London 2012 and Glasgow 2014? The core reason, I believe, is that at the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games athletes have been able to harness a different, more pluralist and less constricting view of their national identity. Carol-Anne Duffy put it beautifully in her poem Translating the British, 2012: "we say we want to be who we truly are,/now, we roar it. Welcome to us." There is less jingoism in athletics and less mono-ethnicity. One of the undisputed stars of 2012 was the daughter of a Jamaican immigrant, another born in Mogadishu. The Olympic opening ceremony celebrated a vision of Britain that had most UKIPers and right-wing Tories spluttering into their fine french wines and the spirit of the entire Games was founded on openness, welcoming of foreigners and celebration of diverse national and cultural identities. Small wonder that the British athletes found this inspiring in a way that England's footballers and cricketers could only dream of.
The Commonwealth Games, I am delighted to see, has captured this same inclusive spirit, and with it the boost to the performance of Home Nations sports(wo)men. In fact in the Commonwealth Games there is another dimension of pluralism. British competitors represent their home nation, rather than GB, yet seem to be doing so in the context of a larger feeling of pride in the country as a whole. So a Commonwealth Games athlete can be Scottish (or English, Welsh, Northern Irish, Manx, Jersey or Guernsey) and British, as well as perhaps being Muslim or Sikh and of Asian or Caribbean ethnic origin too. And the crowds go along with this too. I witnessed Scots cheering on English athletes for God's sake!
These are inclusive, empowering and uplifting identities to celebrate and it is hardly surprising to me that they seem to give competitors a boost, enabling them to over-achieve in a truly impressive way. Just as it is hardly a surprise that a narrow, introspective and negative prevailing national identity hamstrings our footballers and cricketers.
Saturday, 24 May 2014
The erosion of trust and the Scottish Independence referendum
Looking back on the first 14 years of the new millennium (or 13, depending how you measure the starts of millennia) it seems clear that one of the predominant trends of this time has been the extraordinary erosion of public trust in institutions and prominent individuals, from the Press to the Church and everything in between. The list is seemingly endless: Government intelligence agencies, the banks, politicians in general and the Liberal Democrats in particular, Radio 1 DJs, children's entertainers (Rolf Harris, for God's sake!), the police, the staff of old people's homes, multinational corporations from Amazon to Starbucks... I could go on. Indeed the erosion of trust seems to have become government policy. There have been concerted (and unfortunately often successful) efforts to undermine our trust in the NHS, the State education system and the British impulse towards supporting the underdog (from penniless immigrant to destitute benefits claimant).
Of course most of this erosion of trust has been brought about by the exposure of iniquitous and self-serving behaviour on the part of individuals and organisations that it is vitally important has been brought to light. The Public Interest Disclosure Act of 1998 introduced powerful protections for whistle-blowers and it is in part this that has led to the exposure of wrongdoing that had remained hidden often for decades. The time was that power and privilege bought secrecy and the opportunity to exploit others with impunity and it is of course wonderful that those days are gone. We are cannier now, empowered by social media technology and the availability of information. To quote the Who, we won't get fooled again.
Yet this erosion of trust has not been without its downsides, and perhaps the clearest illustration of this is what has been happening in UK politics of recent years. The whole MPs' expenses debacle, combined with the revelation of the poisonously cosy relationship between political leaders and the Murdoch press and the Liberal Democrats' abandonment of their manifesto pledges have led to a catastrophic destruction of public trust. In a poll in 2013 93% of those surveyed said they would not trust politicians to tell the truth when in a tight corner. What this has led to in England has been a quite extraordinary rise in support for UKIP- a party without MPs or indeed discernible policies. Why? Principally it seems because they are not in any meaningful sense politicians. It is not that anyone trusts Nigel Farage, it is simply that he, like the rest of the UK population, doesn't trust politicians either.
This way of course madness lies. You do not trust politicians, so you choose people about whom you know virtually nothing (beyond their uninformed, narrow-minded and xenophobic attitudes to foreigners) to become... politicians. The same applies to that other public-school educated "anti-establishment" (I hate ironic quotation marks, but what option do I have?) figure, Boris Johnson. Londoners continue to elect him because he shares their cynical, world-weary distrust in anyone and anything. Plus he's good for a laugh.
On a wider level the habit of distrust has a corrosive effect on any notion of State-provide services, so playing into the hands of the neo-cons who want to tear such institutions down. We no longer automatically assume that hospitals, schools or social services departments will be acting in our interests. And should you think that this attitude affects only the neo-Thatcherites amongst us, consider even those who work in such institutions. Most, it seems, no longer trust their own higher tiers of management, or assume that the whole institution is broadly working together in their common pursuit of a worthwhile goal.
Bizarrely the bankers, whose betrayal of trust was the most flagrant and expensive of anyone's, seem to have been the least affected by the erosion of that trust. Maybe self-serving cynicism has for so long been engrained in them that they barely noticed that no one trusted them any more. Presumably they always knew that no one should, and were just astonished that up until the great financial crisis of 2007-8 people seemed to. Nowadays they function just as they always did, paid just as much as they ever were and gambling just as recklessly, only this time with money given directly to them by the taxpayer under quantitative easing.
So does any of this matter? Surely it is better that at least now we know when we have been shafted, unlike the forelock-tugging proles who preceded us. Well, yes and no. The problem is that to a certain extent any social organisation is based on trust: an act of faith in the fundamental decency of other human beings on whom we can rely to act broadly in the public interest. Without such trust there really is (to echo Thatcher) no such thing as society. A complete erosion of trust can have only one destination: the assault-rifle-wielding sociopaths of the American right wing. Which surely most sentient and rational humans would regard as a bad thing.
So how do we square the circle? When recent revelations have taught us that people in public life up and down the country (and the world) have been venal, corrupt, self-serving and deceitful how do we retain trust in institutions, even where we believe them to be essential to the civilised functioning of our world?
Partly I think the answer goes back (for me) to a lesson I learned in many years as a headteacher: adults and children are fundamentally exactly the same, it is just that children are generally more transparent in their childishness. Thus what we know about children's behaviour can be applied wholesale to adults too. And one thing that I have learned about children is that if you distrust them they will behave in such a way as not to be worthy of trust. The converse may not always be the case (children are capable of lying even to people who offer them complete trust) but distrust inevitably gives rise to lack of trustworthiness. If a child knows they will not be believed whatever they say then they will always lie. If you give them a genuine chance of telling the truth and being believed then they may possibly live up to that belief. If you subject children to a behaviour-management regime based on distrust then they will find sneaky ways to misbehave and not get caught. Give them trust and a positive sense of responsibility and they just might live up to it.
So what possible lessons can be learned from this? Am I suggesting that so long as we trust David Cameron and [shudder] Michael Gove they will, in the end, do the right thing? Ummmm, No.
Where this is relevant though is in the question of the Scottish Independence vote. Although still barely rippling the political waters south of the border the upcoming referendum is clearly building towards a political reawakening in what was North Britain of which a vote for independence may not be the most profound outcome. Poorly informed as I am it does seem to me that what seems to be gathering momentum is a sense that just maybe Scotland can make a leap of faith away from the narrow-minded, UKIP-centric, anti-cosmopolitan politics of England towards a more egalitarian, demilitarised, pro-European vision of an independent nation state.
The thing is, if the Scottish people are to vote for independence then that will require a great deal of the quality which this millenium seems so profoundly to have eroded: trust. They need to trust that Alec Salmond is not just a politically astute media-junkie. They need to trust that all the bluster about not letting Scotland keep the pound was just bluster. And most of all they need to trust in each other, that independence will take them not towards jingoistic introspection but away from it, and towards a fairer and more enlightened society.
And I say all power to their elbows, though I will be profoundly sorry to see them go. In fact if it wasn't for the weather I'd be contemplating a move right now.
And the lack of availability of ethnically diverse food shops.
And the sheer bloody DISTANCE from anywhere.
And did I mention the weather?
Of course most of this erosion of trust has been brought about by the exposure of iniquitous and self-serving behaviour on the part of individuals and organisations that it is vitally important has been brought to light. The Public Interest Disclosure Act of 1998 introduced powerful protections for whistle-blowers and it is in part this that has led to the exposure of wrongdoing that had remained hidden often for decades. The time was that power and privilege bought secrecy and the opportunity to exploit others with impunity and it is of course wonderful that those days are gone. We are cannier now, empowered by social media technology and the availability of information. To quote the Who, we won't get fooled again.
Yet this erosion of trust has not been without its downsides, and perhaps the clearest illustration of this is what has been happening in UK politics of recent years. The whole MPs' expenses debacle, combined with the revelation of the poisonously cosy relationship between political leaders and the Murdoch press and the Liberal Democrats' abandonment of their manifesto pledges have led to a catastrophic destruction of public trust. In a poll in 2013 93% of those surveyed said they would not trust politicians to tell the truth when in a tight corner. What this has led to in England has been a quite extraordinary rise in support for UKIP- a party without MPs or indeed discernible policies. Why? Principally it seems because they are not in any meaningful sense politicians. It is not that anyone trusts Nigel Farage, it is simply that he, like the rest of the UK population, doesn't trust politicians either.
This way of course madness lies. You do not trust politicians, so you choose people about whom you know virtually nothing (beyond their uninformed, narrow-minded and xenophobic attitudes to foreigners) to become... politicians. The same applies to that other public-school educated "anti-establishment" (I hate ironic quotation marks, but what option do I have?) figure, Boris Johnson. Londoners continue to elect him because he shares their cynical, world-weary distrust in anyone and anything. Plus he's good for a laugh.
On a wider level the habit of distrust has a corrosive effect on any notion of State-provide services, so playing into the hands of the neo-cons who want to tear such institutions down. We no longer automatically assume that hospitals, schools or social services departments will be acting in our interests. And should you think that this attitude affects only the neo-Thatcherites amongst us, consider even those who work in such institutions. Most, it seems, no longer trust their own higher tiers of management, or assume that the whole institution is broadly working together in their common pursuit of a worthwhile goal.
Bizarrely the bankers, whose betrayal of trust was the most flagrant and expensive of anyone's, seem to have been the least affected by the erosion of that trust. Maybe self-serving cynicism has for so long been engrained in them that they barely noticed that no one trusted them any more. Presumably they always knew that no one should, and were just astonished that up until the great financial crisis of 2007-8 people seemed to. Nowadays they function just as they always did, paid just as much as they ever were and gambling just as recklessly, only this time with money given directly to them by the taxpayer under quantitative easing.
So does any of this matter? Surely it is better that at least now we know when we have been shafted, unlike the forelock-tugging proles who preceded us. Well, yes and no. The problem is that to a certain extent any social organisation is based on trust: an act of faith in the fundamental decency of other human beings on whom we can rely to act broadly in the public interest. Without such trust there really is (to echo Thatcher) no such thing as society. A complete erosion of trust can have only one destination: the assault-rifle-wielding sociopaths of the American right wing. Which surely most sentient and rational humans would regard as a bad thing.
So how do we square the circle? When recent revelations have taught us that people in public life up and down the country (and the world) have been venal, corrupt, self-serving and deceitful how do we retain trust in institutions, even where we believe them to be essential to the civilised functioning of our world?
Partly I think the answer goes back (for me) to a lesson I learned in many years as a headteacher: adults and children are fundamentally exactly the same, it is just that children are generally more transparent in their childishness. Thus what we know about children's behaviour can be applied wholesale to adults too. And one thing that I have learned about children is that if you distrust them they will behave in such a way as not to be worthy of trust. The converse may not always be the case (children are capable of lying even to people who offer them complete trust) but distrust inevitably gives rise to lack of trustworthiness. If a child knows they will not be believed whatever they say then they will always lie. If you give them a genuine chance of telling the truth and being believed then they may possibly live up to that belief. If you subject children to a behaviour-management regime based on distrust then they will find sneaky ways to misbehave and not get caught. Give them trust and a positive sense of responsibility and they just might live up to it.
So what possible lessons can be learned from this? Am I suggesting that so long as we trust David Cameron and [shudder] Michael Gove they will, in the end, do the right thing? Ummmm, No.
Where this is relevant though is in the question of the Scottish Independence vote. Although still barely rippling the political waters south of the border the upcoming referendum is clearly building towards a political reawakening in what was North Britain of which a vote for independence may not be the most profound outcome. Poorly informed as I am it does seem to me that what seems to be gathering momentum is a sense that just maybe Scotland can make a leap of faith away from the narrow-minded, UKIP-centric, anti-cosmopolitan politics of England towards a more egalitarian, demilitarised, pro-European vision of an independent nation state.
The thing is, if the Scottish people are to vote for independence then that will require a great deal of the quality which this millenium seems so profoundly to have eroded: trust. They need to trust that Alec Salmond is not just a politically astute media-junkie. They need to trust that all the bluster about not letting Scotland keep the pound was just bluster. And most of all they need to trust in each other, that independence will take them not towards jingoistic introspection but away from it, and towards a fairer and more enlightened society.
And I say all power to their elbows, though I will be profoundly sorry to see them go. In fact if it wasn't for the weather I'd be contemplating a move right now.
And the lack of availability of ethnically diverse food shops.
And the sheer bloody DISTANCE from anywhere.
And did I mention the weather?
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