July 10th is
the British Grand Prix. In celebration of that fact, Sky is running adverts
where the British drivers and team members are asked to name three British
things. The answers are, for the most part, predictable: fish and chips; tea;
weather; queues; the full English. Only Rob Smedley is an outlier, favouring
Black Sheep's Ale and "Middlesborough". Nonetheless, that the same
things should spring to mind so, apparently, uniformly in people living such cosmopolitan
lives begs another question in light of the Brexit vote: what is it about
Britishness that we fear is being lost?
The
referendum campaigns were never about the EU. True EU issues were not properly
engaged with, discussed, or debated by either camp, but there is a feeling in
the aftermath of the vote that some, if not many, communities have, for some time, feared the loss of
their cultural (British) identity as a direct result of migration. Why?
Britain is an
island nation. Our history is one of invasion, cultural overhaul and adaptation.
We have never been easy to subdue completely. The Romans first arrived in 54BC:
history tells us that the natives didn't take to them, hence the primary school
child's familiarity with Boudica. Yet the Romans imparted something of
themselves to Britishness: the founding of two great cities, Londinium (London,
in 43AD) and Deva (Chester, in the mid 70s AD). Both retained their strategic
significance, London longer than Chester, and have played significant roles in
the ongoing saga of the British Crown. The Romans also gave us lovely straight
roads, the routes of some of which still survive, for example parts of the A6
in Lancashire. And they gave us a wall, Hadrian's, designed to keep people out,
an exclusionary idea that also continues to have a place in the British
mindset.
Yet the
Romans have not been alone. Invasions and the danger of invasion have been a
constant threat, right up to the 20th century. We have seen Anglo-Saxons,
Vikings and Normans invade and their impact on our country has provided some of
the most exciting history lessons going: battles that have determined Royal
Houses, folktales like Robin Hood and a world famous tapestry. Not to mention countless novels, dramas and
movies. For much of our formative history, invasion has played a key role in
determining our development. It has shaped our language, a mongrel affair with
Romance and Germanic overtones that continues to grow and change as it
encounters modern challenges. But it is a mongrel language spoken the world
over. Why?
It seems
that, far from cowering in the wake of invasion, our society grew stronger for
it. We have invaded places and domesticated peoples far bigger than our
homeland. We are famous for it. A child of the late 19th century would have
looked at an atlas and seen vast swathes of it painted red: the British Empire.
At its height, the Empire covered parts of America, India, Australia and Africa
and our trading powers extended further. We brought back the things we found
and today, they are considered British: a cup of tea, anyone? A kebab or curry
on a night out?
We must,
therefore, return to this question: what feature of 'Britishness' are we afraid
of losing? It remains hard to fathom. We have been colonists, a notion
belonging to different era: happy to impose our government, law-making and
social systems on wildly different societies and to expect the imposed-upon
nation to accept it. Until the 1950s we remained a colonial power and enjoyed
ongoing wealth from that position for many years. Much of the vox-pop coverage
pre-referendum displayed a certainty that we would resume that position upon
'achieving' Brexit. But the world has moved on since then and our place in it
has, outside the EU, not kept pace - we are not an Imperial power any more:
that is one reason why Remain supporters fear what is to come.
Tabloid
newspapers have long decried the loss of Britishness: the irony being that they
use the language of invasion to give the impression that Britons are a minority
'in their own country'. The facts do not bear this out. A House of Commons report from May 2016 states that, as of December 2014, some 5.3m non-UK
Nationals (2.94m from the EU) are living in the UK. 5.3 million of 65 million.
It also states "The UK's migrant population is concentrated in London"
- which voted Remain. There are other high concentrations in the South,
stretching to the Midlands. Yet it was the North and Wales the rejected Europe,
almost completely. If 'Britishness' was truly threatened, it would only make
sense that London should have rejected the EU, in line with the rest of the
country.
Nonetheless,
protecting, or retaining Britishness, "taking back control", formed
part of the Leave platform that resonated with voters. The largest, ugliest,
aspect of the Empire's success was indeed 'control' - control of others. Yet
those other things that made Britian great to begin with, right down to our
language, have come about as part of our interaction with other cultures and
our capacity to absorb and utilise the best aspects of those interactions. The
biggest irony, then, of the Brexit vote is not that losing Britishness led to
Brexit, but that Brexit may well lead to the loss of those characteristics that
made us Great Britain.
