The Ben Pimlott Essay Prize 2006 -entry by

Paddy Briggs

A distinctive aspect of Britishness, one that influences and explains many other of the distinguishing elements in British identity, is the conceit that we are not only different, but in some way “special” and even “unique” and that that, by implication, makes us better than the rest of the world. This vanity is present at the often crudely nationalistic or xenophobic level of the tabloid press, and it is also an eccentricity mocked by humourists (for example in the Flanders and Swann song, with the lines "The English, The English, The English are best, I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest"). But more importantly this presumption of pre-eminence is also present in the rhetoric and actions of our elected elite not just in the past but up to and including the present day.

On the 19th September 1946 Winston Churchill delivered a famous speech at Zurich University which proposed the formation of a united Europe. Prescient though Churchill was about the need for political unity to replace conflict in Europe, there was some ambivalence about the part that Britain was, in his view, to play in this development. “We British” he said “have our own Commonwealth of Nations”. In a later speech in the House of Commons in June 1950 Churchill developed the theme that whilst Britain should play an active part in European integration we were different because we had a “unique position in the world” as a member of three groupings; the “special relationship” with the United States, the Commonwealth, and Europe. Churchill had been wounded by the marginalising of Britain as an inevitable consequence of both the rise of the two superpowers of the USA and the Soviet Union and of the gathering pace of the withdrawal from Empire (notably the granting of independence to India). And so he sought to establish a continued special place for Britain uniquely as a player in three supranational alliances.

Churchill was a Victorian by birth and upbringing and had himself fought in an imperialist war in South Africa and there was no doubt that he saw the British as different not least because they, unlike any other nation, had presided over an extensive Empire. But even as that Empire was being dismantled Churchill’s successor as Prime Minister, Attlee, and his Foreign Secretary Bevin, were just as unwilling to surrender the pretension that Britain was worthy of a place at the very top table. This led to the hugely expensive development of an independent British Atom bomb and to a substantial commitment of British troops in the Korean War in 1950. This war commitment required extensive rearmament and was a further huge financial burden on a Britain which at home was struggling with austerity.

There has always been the suggestion that there is something special about being British, and that this permits us to have a role in world affairs that other nations cannot. More than forty years after Dean Acheson told us that we had “lost an empire and not yet found a role” our leaders have clung on to this belief. In a speech in November 2004 Tony Blair said “We have a unique role to play… our job is to keep our sights firmly on both sides of the Atlantic, use the good old British characteristics of common sense and make the argument. In doing so, we are not subverting our country both into an American poodle or a European municipality, we are advancing the British national interest in a changed world …and we should be optimistic and confident of an ability to do it”. Whilst, unlike Churchill, Blair did not use the existence of the Commonwealth as another reason we are different (perhaps he forgot) he certainly, like Churchill before him, saw us as simultaneously Atlanticist and European.

The problem with this rhetoric, be it Churchillian bombast or Blairite self-justification, is that whilst it might be comforting to some of us at home, there is no evidence that it plays well elsewhere in the world - try and find a speech by a foreign leader that sees Britain as having a “unique role to play”. It is a delusion, brought about by the confusion caused, above all, by the decline and fall of empire. Another irony is that over most of the post-war period this clinging on to a delusion of grandeur has been politically unpragmatic. The funding of the Korean adventure and British nuclear weapons diverted scarce resources from reconstruction and the re-equipping of British industry. It split the Labour government, helped the Conservatives back to power in 1951 and diverted attention from what was really necessary which was the need to establish a successful post war British economy as part of Europe. The defeated Germans concentrated on their economy and prospered. In 1956 Britain continued to try and act like a great power with Anthony Eden’s Suez adventure at a time when there were far more pressing matters at home for his attention. The same might be said for Margaret Thatcher in 1990 at the time of the first Gulf War. Similarly Tony Blair’s Iraq war involvement has diverted resources from public services and preoccupied him during much of his second term when there were many serious home issues to address.

So what are the roots in history of this British presumption of superiority? Britain as a political entity is a very modern phenomenon indeed and therefore, in theory, the pure concept of “Britishness” can only date back three hundred years to the Act of Union of 1707 or two hundred years when Ireland was also incorporated in the subsequent Union of 1800. But this ignores the fact that, for the English at least, Englishness and Britishness have often been interchangeable. Nelson’s call to arms in 1805 was “England expects” not “Britain expects” and when in 1914 Rudyard Kipling warned that the “Hun was at the gate” he asked ‘Who dies if England live?”. To this day the words that foreigners often use to describe Britain are Angleterre, Inglaterra, Inghilterra, Engeland etc. and the idea of the British as being somehow distinct from the English is unlikely to occur to them, although many will perhaps have a view of what it is to be Scots, or Welsh or Irish. If you took two matched samples of English people and asked one to define what being “British” means to them and the other to do the same about being “English” I doubt that you would see much difference.

Kipling’s call to arms and his “who dies if England lives” was put in perspective by George Orwell when he commented that “…it sounds like a piece of bombast, but if you alter ‘England’ to whatever you prefer, you can see that it expresses one of the main motives of human conduct.” Orwell was suggesting that English (or British) values are much more universal than Kipling would like us to think. And this brings us to the nub of the issue. Every nationality is different, but to claim for Britain a special exclusivity which gives us, as of right, a special place in the world, requires us to find aspects of our character other than those which are commonly seen as being present in any nationality ( at its best). A study of our history is essential to see whether a millennium or more of the existence of an English nation (of sorts), and two or three hundred of a British, have created a special character and identity that really is unique and whether, as Messrs Churchill and Blair have each suggested, that this somehow gives us a exceptional role to play in world affairs.

To try and define Britishness we have to look not just at events in the British Isles but, and especially, at our imperial past. The establishment of an Empire was not, of course, a uniquely British obsession but an objective also for other Europeans. But whereas Spain and other countries began to get rid of their colonies in the early years of the nineteenth century Britain was still empire building at that time and the only, very reluctant, loss of Empire was in North America in 1776. The Victorian era was a time dominated by peaceful revolution at home and imperial expansion and exploitation abroad and this Victorian prominence conditioned us in our policies and our attitudes throughout the twentieth century and perhaps still does so even today. We still sing “Wider still and wider, Shall thy bounds be set,” a verse written not as you might think at the height of Victorian imperialism but the year after the old Queen’s death in 1901. That we could presumably unselfconsciously sing of the glories of Empire at the new monarch’s coronation shows that at the time there was every expectation that they would endure. In other words that most definitions of “Britishness”, at that time at least, was inclusive of our Empire. In 2006 our empire may have gone, but somewhere in the DNA of our Britishness it remains. Indeed the fact that Tony Blair thinks that we are “unique” in our ability to influence world affairs can only really be attributable to the presence of this DNA in his personality and beliefs.

Blair’s commitment to the Iraq war in March 2003, flying in the face of opposition not only from most of Britain’s European partners but also the United Nations and millions of British people, seems to defy explanation until we look at the post war precedents. Iraq for Blair was Korea for Attlee, Suez for Eden and the Falklands and the first Gulf War for Thatcher - all adventures that were, in part, a hangover from Empire. This suggests that it is an element of Britishness to be prepared to carry some highly moral torch of honour, and rather sententiously to orate about it. At the end of his speech to the “House of Commons” on 18th March 2003 Mr. Blair said “Tell our allies that at the very moment of action, at the very moment when they need our determination that Britain faltered. I will not be party to such a course. This is not the time to falter”. Whilst not exactly Churchillian this has clear echoes of Churchill and there is an unmistakable rhetorical connection with the words used to justify military adventures by many of his predecessors. Perhaps Blair should instead have taken as his model Harold Wilson who avoided getting dragged into the Vietnam War and whose instinct was, as Ben Pimlott wrote in his biography of Wilson “…stronger than that of Atlee in 1950, Eden in 1956, or Mrs Thatcher in 1982 and 1990…to keep out of regional conflicts, whatever the cost in terms of offending an ally, on the grounds that the course of such wars was unpredictable”

Blair’s claim for Britain having a special place in world affairs was also seen in his article in “The Times” on April 30th 2004 about Britain and the new EU members States. He wrote: 'Having just escaped from the dead hand of communism they share the British view that their future prosperity rests on a liberal, competitive economy. They are also keenly aware of the role that the United States has played in helping them to achieve their freedom’. Note the conceit that these states “share the British view” – it is not a view, of course, that they could have developed independently themselves! Note also the gratuitous presumption that they will make a nod of thanks to (Britain’s friends) the Americans.

So the common theme that links Churchill, Atlee, Eden, Thatcher and Blair amongst Post War British leaders is their conviction that to be British is to be different. And the rhetoric that they use and the actions that they have taken can only be explained by this conviction of uniqueness. The present writer lived in The Netherlands at the time of the Falklands war and my Dutch friends without exception were utterly bewildered as to why we were sending a task force to liberate some barren rocks and a couple of thousand people. In the main they quite admired us for the action but they clearly thought it was slightly mad. There were those in Margaret Thatcher’s government who were also doubtful, but she is known to have responded to these doubters by quoting the words that Shakespeare gave to Henry V: ‘He that hath no stomach for this fight, let him depart’. So for Thatcher, as for Churchill, Attlee and Eden before her and Blair since, the British role is still seen in a line from Agincourt, through Trafalgar and Waterloo – no wonder there is a reluctance to embrace a French-led European Union as just an ordinary member! This attitude also leads to our retention of our position as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and our continued place as a Nuclear power. The charge of “folie de grandeur” as an element of Britishness is not difficult to make.

But whilst some of our leaders see our history as giving us a special, even unique, role in the world, to what extent is that a reflection of the beliefs and attitudes of the British people as a whole? Have these leaders in their actions been responding to what they see as a truly British characteristic which wishes to place us apart from other nations, especially European ones? Is it because chauvinism of this type plays well with the electorate that political leaders indulge in it? And, if so, is this because there is a deeply-ingrained element of the British psyche which needs to demonstrate our differences and which welcomes actions which reinforce our “special place”? Is there a unique brand of British patriotism at the heart of the British character to which our leaders sometimes pander, often, as Dr Johnson said, as the “last refuge of the scoundrel”?

Travel through most of the members of the European Union and you will see the European flag prominently on display alongside national flags on many official buildings. This is symbolic of an unselfconscious embrace of the concept of being part of a united Europe which is virtually unknown in Britain. Indeed for a Briton to be enthusiastically pro European, in favour of Britain adopting the Euro, for example, is today a minority belief which many find as certifiable. And yet there are more British people living outside their home country in Europe than any other nationality - 150,000 in Spain, for example, by far the largest foreign nationality in that country, and over 500,000 private homes in France are British owned. But this phenomenon seems not to have made the British character more tolerant or inclusive and anti-Europeanism seems just as rife amongst those with homes abroad as it is with the rest of us.

Politicians being what they are in the main they will usually find it necessary to talk and act in such a way that they respond to the deep seated attitudes and prejudices of the majority of their electorates. Thus any search for the core elements of Britishness can usefully look at what British politicians are saying. On the Euro, for example, at the last General Election Labour hardly enthused about the idea, saying that there would be a “common-sense approach” with a referendum, and the Conservatives were unequivocally against - “We will not join the Euro” they said. Even the notionally more pro Europe Liberal Democrats were deliberately vague saying “[we] should work to create the right economic conditions to join the Euro (subject to a referendum)”.

Anti-Europeanism is an element of the British character which today’s politicians ignore at their peril. There are no votes in being pro Europe - unless the rhetoric is about how Britain can “uniquely” contribute to Europe and, of course, how as Britons we will all benefit from this. The “economic conditions” which had to be met for Britain to join the Euro were a chimera designed to convey messages about British self-interest and about our “common sense” to the electorate. There were no votes in declaring support for moves towards greater European unity, of which the Euro is both a practical and symbolic expression, even though a study of the history of the first half of the twentieth century in particular should show us the dangers of division rather than unity between European nation states.

It is said that people get the government that they deserve and if this is the case then we can only conclude that we must have deserved successive governments over the past sixty years which have had an inflated view of Britain’s role in the world. To be British must, therefore, mean to see ourselves as special even “unique” and, therefore, to be unwilling to be enthusiastic partners in a united Europe. The rhetoric about the “special relationship” with the United States is too often used to explain why we are different and therefore less able to be pro European. Shortly before his untimely death Robin Cook said “the special relationship should be consigned to history along with our empire.” Were this to happen then the new Britishness that might eventually emerge would have less of an island race mentality, less of a hankering after the imperial glories of the past, and less of a preference for Anglo-Saxon rather than Gallic, Germanic or Latin friends. It would be a Britishness that acknowledges our obvious differences from other countries in Europe but does not presume that these differences make us a better. But there is a long way to go if this is to be achieved, and maybe it is beyond us. Remember the words of Churchill to De Gaulle: “When I have to choose between you and Roosevelt, you should know that I will always choose Roosevelt. And when I have to choose between Europe and the wide open seas, you should know that I will always choose the wide open seas."

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