Britain Day - a superficial solution

Rob Knight — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 07:30:13 +0100

Faced with growing concern about social cohesion, integration and immigration, two government ministers have proposed the idea of a 'Britain Day' as part of the solution.

Said Immigration Minister Stephen Byrne:

"At a time when we face the threat of a new extremism, I just think it's important now for the law-abiding majority to stand up for the values that we've got in common.

"One of the ways that we can do that is just taking a bit of time out each year to actually celebrate what we're proudest of in this country."

I'm all in favour of celebrating common values, particularly those values which form Britain's liberal heritage. But does having a special day for these help to promote them, or relegate them to a perfunctory celebration once a year? I suspect that the latter is more likely. Even if it were made a public holiday, the effect would be minimal; people would appreciate the extra day off work far more than they would appreciate the supposed purpose of the day itself.

The Fabian Society think-tank has proposed some other ideas to help boost feelings of citizenship:

Other suggestions for how Britain Day might take shape, made in the pamphlet for the left-of-centre think tank the Fabian Society, include:

# Celebrating civic values, local heritage and opportunities to get involved in local life

# Holding local "citizenship ceremonies"

# Celebrating and promoting voluntary work in communities

# Showing a debt of gratitude to war veterans who helped to secure freedoms

# The Queen's state opening of Parliament speech could be followed by a "State of the Nation" address from the prime minister

These suggestions range from the blandly meaningless (how does one 'celebrate civic values'?) to the redundant (we already have a day for showing our debt of gratitude for war veterans and this should be promoted not sidelined) to the downright obnoxious (the notion that we should make the Prime Minister even more like the US President). Worst of all, they are all entirely ceremonial, promoting the image or appearance of citizenship, rather than actually promoting responsibility or civic power. There is something quite worrying about the idea of this government in particular talking about the protection of freedoms, civic values and local heritage when they seem to be determined to undermine these. I am reminded of Ralph Waldo Emerson's aphorism that "the louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."

If the government really wanted to promote citizenship, it could start by giving some power away to communities themselves. 'Communities' are another subject that the government talks a lot about, without doing the simple, real things which would actually empower these communities. British identities have always been multi-layered and local identities have always been the best route to identification with Britain as a whole. Let's make local democracy count for something again, and let local identities be the main route to integration and cohesion.

Instead of 'celebrations' of our rights, how about reinforcing those rights? Of course, this would require that the government stop trying to erode them first! Our rights, customs and values have to be something that we live with every day, not merely abstract ideas which we wheel out once a year to pretend that our country still observes them. Values must be real, practical and universally applied, not superficially recognised once a year.