Whatever Became of the British?

Much of the debate about ‘being British’ is driven by the politics of the constitutional future of the United Kingdom. This has led to assertions about the declining impact of Britishness, and how, in the interests of the Union, it might be revived. Data from British and Scottish Social Attitudes surveys show that ‘Britain’ remains an important and meaningful frame of reference, even though people in England and Scotland may not define their prime national identity as British. The relationship between national identity and constitutional preferences is complex. Being ‘strongly Scottish’ is a weak predictor of constitutional preferences because almost all Scots are at the ‘strong’ end of the Scottish scale, whereas saying you are ‘British’ (or not) is a better guide. It is not a matter of choosing to be Scottish or English over being British, but recognising the complexity and inter‐relationships of diverse territorial identities.     

Being British: A Crisis of Identity?

An assumed decline in Britishness has rekindled concern over the 'break up of Britain'. The creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 is taken as the cause and the effect of Scots having come to feel more Scottish and less British. Using data on public attitudes from British, and Scottish Social Attitudes surveys, this paper shows that, despite a strengthening sense of Scottishness over the last thirty years, the sense of being British is still widespread and similar in Scotland and in England. Even those who describe themselves as Scottish and not British are not hostile to the idea of Britain. The relatively weak association between national identity, party support and views on constitutional change suggests that being Scottish is more cultural than political. Recent attempts by politicians and others to mobilise Britishness ignore the complexity and diversity of meanings it has both north and south of the border.     

How can ‘Britishness’ be Re‐made?

Modern Britishness is widely seen to be based on shared values like ‘fair play’, ‘tolerance’, and respect for ‘diversity’. Can such a ‘values‐based Britishness’ be effective as a national binding agent in an era of devolution and globalisation? The idea that a uniquely ‘British’ character is based on shared values of some kind is not new. The contemporary debate is framed by decisions made over a century ago in the Victorian era—when the decisive shift occurred from a British identity based on religious difference to one based on shared moral values. Through political rhetoric, legislation, and the courts, Victorian governments shaped and changed the character of Britishness. The same tools remain available to contemporary lawmakers in shaping a twenty‐first century Britishness that embraces modern universal values, but also defines some more uniquely British emotional connection points around which national identity can be built.     

‘Playing for fascism’: sportsmanship,antisemitism and the British Union of Fascists

Taking recent developments in the study of fascism as a cultural system as a starting point, Spurr examines the interrelationship between notions of race, sportsmanship and Britishness in the subculture of the British Union of Fascists (BUF). More specifically, by focusing on the BUF’s understandings of Britishness and sportsmanship, he highlights the self-reflexive qualities of the movement’s subculture in which a fascist world-view shaped not only explicitly political programmes but also the ways in which this variant of European fascism mirrored particularly English modes of defining national identity and cultural difference in the rhetoric of sportsmanship. In addition, Spurr outlines one of the many ways that this fascist culture shaped social practice in the fascist community, so reflecting an assumption that fascism was as much a lived experience as it was a world of ideas and political philosophy. In so doing, he examines the implications of the BUF’s distinctly English notion of sportsmanship for its followers’ self-definition as Britons, and how this understanding functioned in the construction of the counter-image of the Sporting Jew. As a metaphor, while seemingly rather innocuous, this characterization of the Jew enabled Mosleyites to express a multilayered critique of Jews in a manner that encapsulated their wider ideological concerns and in an idiom readily recognized in the wider context of British inter-war culture. In adopting this approach, Spurr rejects suggestions that the BUF mimicked Nazi models of antisemitism and moves beyond revisionist historiography’s concern with origins and forms to explore the cultural functions of racism in the movement’s subculture.     

Resources, Group Conflict and Symbols: Explaining Anti-Immigration Hostility in Britain

This article analyses the causes of variation in attitudes to immigration policy in the UK. The key theoretical approaches emphasised are: the role of self-interest; group conflict over resources; and group conflict over important symbols of Britishness. The connection between perceptions of immigration and crime is also investigated. Based on the 2003 British Social Attitudes Survey, the findings indicate that self-interest has very little bearing on opposition to immigration and that British citizens instead appear to be most concerned with threats to ingroup resources posed by immigration, threats to the shared customs and traditions of British society (particularly those posed by Muslims) and – to a lesser extent – the potential for increased crime that may result from immigration.     

The scent of a green carnation: A review of the queer year

The “Blitz spirit” is a popular story about the British public during the Second World War, uniting together with defiance and resilience to overcome the threat of invasion from Nazi Germany. Previous work has revised this wartime story as a propagandistic construction of national identity and popular memory. Therefore, this paper reviews the Blitz spirit as a myth. A critical discourse analysis (CDA) then examines how this myth was retold in British newspapers after the July 7th bombings in London. I examine how this myth was constructed and the ideological role it played after the attacks. Similar to previous revisions of the Blitz myth from 1940, I argue that social and political complexities after July 7th were often suppressed by messages that sought to evoke a sense of “Britishness” defined by a previous generation. Whilst the July 7th bombings were not a case of traditional warfare or attacks carried out by a foreign force, I argue that wartime analogies often supported military responses in the war on terror and evoked a foreign threat.     

The Measure of a Nation

In his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, and in several speeches in subsequent years, Enoch Powell claimed that immigration was an ‘issue of numbers’. Britain could not, he believed, accommodate a significant number of non‐white people without threatening the existence of the nation. I argue that Powell's opposition to immigration, and his numerical framing of it, rested upon his racialised conception of British, or English, nationhood. As he was shunned by political elites, Powell articulated an increasingly populist nationalism. Drawing repeated references to Britain's wartime experiences, Powell claimed that the British, or more often the English, were being attacked by an immigrant enemy without, and betrayed by an establishment enemy within. I conclude with some reflections on the similarities between Powellite nationalism and contemporary discourses about national identity during and since the European Union referendum.     

Multiculturalism in one country?

Abstract

This review is persuaded by Modood's account of what multiculturalism should look like in the early twenty-first century underpinned as it is by well-made critiques of liberalism and radical secularism. But is far less convinced that Modood has successfully charted a strategy that will achieve his desired outcome of a flexible process of integration and a Britishness to which all can belong.     

ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM IN NEW SOUTH WALES UNDER GOVERNOR DARLING

As a governor, Ralph Darling is remembered more for his authoritarian behaviour and harsh rule than for his administrative achievements. Only recently have historians shown much awareness of the important reforms which he made in the machinery of government. Yet, although attention has been drawn to this aspect of his work it has not been adequately examined. The tendency is still to concentrate on the colourful and controversial features of his regime, pushing to one side its more mundane developments. Admittedly, there are exceptions. J. W. Cell included an interesting section on Darling in British Colonial Administration in the Mid-Nineteenth Century , as did J. J. Eddy in Britain and the Australian Colonies. The first of these treatments is too brief, however, and the second concentrates on those aspects affected by the attempts of the British Treasury to exert more influence over colonial administration. Despite these books, the valuable thesis on the Colonial Secretary's Office by G. D. Richardson and the helpful prefaces that appear in the various guides to the records of government departments, prepared by the State Archives of New South Wales, much remains to be done. Most of the departments that existed under Darling still await detailed treatment both in themselves and in relation to the overall changes that were made between 1825 and 1831. As matters stand, there is a gap not only in what was a vital era in the administrative history of New South Wales, but also in Darling's own record. The present paper attempts to repair this omission.     

Opposing Islamification or promoting Islamophobia? Understanding the English Defence League

ABSTRACT

The emergence and growth of the English Defence League (EDL) in the past two years as a socio-political mass movement are unprecedented in the British setting. Initially dismissed and duly condemned as a racist and Islamophobic far-right organization, little is known about the EDL. Allen's article begins by tracing the development of British far-right political groups that were trail-blazers in campaigning against the alleged threat posed by Muslims and Islam since 2001. The rise—and subsequent fall—of the British National Party is considered as a vehicle for understanding the climate in which hostility to Muslims has become increasingly apparent. It is in this context that the messages and discourse of the EDL are explored, as well as in regard to the organization's roots in the English football hooligan fraternity and specific events in Luton in the spring of 2009. Allen looks at the EDL's innovative use of social networking—in particular its use of Facebook—to support its street marches and protests, as well as its recognition of the economic impact it has had, given the costs associated with policing its marches and protests. Having established how the EDL is supported both actively and passively, not least through a somewhat unique coalition that brings together sometimes disparate groups on the basis of ‘the enemy of my own enemy is my friend’—including groups that have historically been discriminated against by the far right—Allen considers the the arguments for recognizing the EDL as a multicultural movement. He concludes that the messages of the EDL are indeed Islamophobic—understanding Islamophobia as an ideological phenomenon—in that they create a form of order that clearly demarcates Islam as the Other.     

The problem with English(es) and linguistic (in)justice. Addressing the limits of liberal egalitarian accounts of language

Van Parijs’s Linguistic Justice for Europe and the World furthers a nascent examination of multilingualism within political philosophy, drawing on continental European contexts where multilingualism is the norm. Van Parijs argues, in effect for linguistic cosmopolitanism via English as the current world language, and this seems ostensibly to be a considerable improvement on ‘the untrammeled public monolingualism’ of Anglo-American political theory. However, Van Parijs’s account is flawed in four key respects. First, there is the fundamental problem of his reductionist account of language – by which language is viewed only in terms of its communicative uses and reach and not in relation to its symbolic and identity functions. Second is his simplistic advocacy of English as a global lingua franca, which ignores issues of power and inequality, along with related delimited access to high-status English language varieties. Third are the inherent limitations associated with his advocacy of linguistic territoriality, which recognizes state-sanctioned languages but little else, thus failing to mitigate existing linguistic hierarchies. Finally, the wider argument for English as a global lingua franca is inevitably underpinned by a monolithic/hegemonic view of English itself. This monolithic conception of English stands in contradistinction, not only to the actual plethora of Englishes in the world today, but also, more importantly, to their widely varying status and use in furthering cross-communication and related notions of social and economic mobility. The latter thus fatally undermines Van Parijs’s central argument linking social and economic mobility ineluctably to access to English.     

Owning the issue agenda: Party strategies and vote choices in British elections

Explanations of party competition and vote choice are commonly based on the Downsian view of politics: parties maximise votes by adopting positions on policy dimensions. However, recent research suggests that British voters choose parties based on evaluations of competence rather than on ideological position. This paper proposes a theoretical account which combines elements of the spatial model with the ‘issue ownership’ approach. Whereas the issue ownership theory has focused mainly on party competition, this paper examines the validity of the model from the perspective of both parties and voters, by testing its application to recent British general elections. Our findings suggest that as parties have converged ideologically, competence considerations have become more important than ideological position in British elections.     

The antisemitism of Henry Wickham Steed

ABSTRACT

Henry Wickham Steed (1871–1956), then editor-in-chief of the London Times, adopted an ambiguous position with regard to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion when the tract first appeared in English in 1920. He neither endorsed nor rejected it but instead mused in the editorial pages of The Times about whether it might be authentic. The following year, when The Times correspondent in Istanbul brought out proof that The Protocols was a forgery, Steed accepted his correspondent's findings and publicly retracted his earlier ambivalent position. This incident reflects on Steed's (deserved) reputation as an antisemite but it also suggests something of the complexity of his position. Steed's denunciations of Jewish influence, discovered, by his own account, through his experience as a foreign correspondent in Vienna before the First World War, are recurrent in his writings. At the same time, Steed lent strong support to Zionist aspirations at the time of the Balfour Declaration and thereafter, and, in the 1930s, he was among the very first English critics of Hitler's antisemitism. In this article, I propose to offer some hypotheses regarding Steed's antisemitism. Strange as it may sound in the wake of the Second World War, it was Steed's visceral Germanophobia that lay at the heart of his antisemitism. Until the advent of the Third Reich, Steed identified Jews with Germans and with German interests. As an ardent exponent of the ‘principle of nationality’, however, Steed consistently extended his advocacy of statehood for various Eastern European nationalities to the Jewish national cause. A final factor that helps to explain Steed's suspiciousness and gullibility is that, by disposition and as a lifelong journalist, he was drawn to conspiracy theories. He created a number of sensations in his career and, to return to the example of The Protocols, he was loath to discount so spectacular a conspiracy story.     

Hide seek and negotiate: Alfred Cope and counter intelligence in Ireland 1919–1921

British intelligence in Ireland between 1919 and 1921 has been characterized as a toxic mix of incompetence and mendacity. This article will challenge this judgement by examining the activities, impact and consequences of a British civil servant, Alfred Cope, who between 1920 and 1921 was an Assistant Under Secretary in Dublin Castle. Using the three criteria of counter-intelligence operations: the ability to locate, identify and neutralize a target, it will be shown that within months of his posting to Dublin British intelligence, albeit inadvertently, had located and identified him as passing classified information to Sinn Fein. Political patronage meant the ability of the intelligence community to neutralize his impact was nugatory. Latterly Cope recognized the consequences of his actions reverberated beyond the period of his time in Ireland.     

'A Single Truth': Mill on Harm, Paternalism and Good Samaritanism

On Liberty provides the classic defence of what has come to be known as Mill's harm principle and yet that principle is commonly believed to be at odds with Mill's equally famous discussions of paternalism and good samaritanism. Moreover, the alleged inconsistencies are often said to expose the inadequacies not only of Mill's anti-paternalism and good samaritanism but his harm principle as well. This paper offers a re-interpretation of these three aspects of On Liberty . It attempts to show both the unity of Mill's thought and how the contemporary relevance of his ideas has been misunderstood.     

Britain First: The ‘Frontline Resistance’ to the Islamification of Britain

The British National Party and English Defence League forged new frontiers in British political spaces in relation to anti‐Islam, anti‐Muslim ideologies. Whereas the former sought to do so in formal political arenas, the latter did so as a street‐level movement. With the subsequent waning of both, Britain First has emerged seemingly to fill the political void they left. In many ways, Britain First combines the strategies and actions of the parties that preceded it, at both the formal and street levels. This article considers what is known about Britain First, about its history, development and its ideology, and how this is manifested in terms of its political strategies and actions. This includes such activities as standing for European elections and also undertaking ‘Christian patrols’ and mosque ‘invasions’. The article considers how Britain First, while having some similarities with the BNP and EDL, is more confrontational and militaristic and is informed by apocalyptic Christianity.     

The Theory of Universal Human Rights: A Comment on Talbott

In this analysis of William Talbott’s important book, I note with appreciation his defense of universal moral principles and of moral justification as a “social project,” his focus on the critique of oppression, and his emphasis on empathic understanding in the account of human rights. I go on to develop some criticisms regarding: 1) Talbott’s traditional understanding of human rights as holding against governments and not also applying to nonstate actors; 2) his account of the interrelations among well-being, autonomy, claims for first person authority in moral judgment, and human rights; 3) his strongly rationalist and liberal individualist interpretation of moral judgment and autonomy; and 4) the lack of a role for intercultural dialogue about human rights, which nonetheless are held to apply to all human beings across cultures. In each case, I briefly consider what an alternative approach would look like.     

Integration of strategic and operational intelligence during the Peninsular war

Wellington is well known for his understanding of the importance of intelligence, but so far history has recorded that he presided over a one-man intelligence department, himself being the only analyst of what proved to be a massive quantity of raw information. New research highlighted in this article reveals that this has been an inaccurate interpretation. The British government also acted to establish a civilian network of correspondents and agents communicating with the British ambassadors to Spain and Portugal. Wellington's main priority was to integrate the ‘strategic intelligence’ collected by government agents with his own ‘operational intelligence’. Instead, analysis was conducted more by Wellington's subordinates in the field, applying their personal localized expertise to the information they received. In this way, an early and primitive form of the staff system later developed by the Prussians was created in the Peninsular War.     

Great Expectations: The Job at the Top and the People who do it

Anthony King thought and wrote a great deal about British prime ministers and political leadership more generally. But in contrast to the way in which single papers embodied his contribution to our understanding of ‘government overload’, ‘executive‐legislative relations’ and ‘career politicians’, his contribution to our understanding of the prime ministership was defined by a body of work. This essay explores that body of work and identifies some of the themes that characterised it. It then relates King's work to claims about the ‘presidentialisation’ of the office, as well as the importance of the expectations surrounding contemporary prime ministers. As Britain grapples with the challenge of Brexit, we should all take note of his counsel against expecting too much in the way of ‘strong’ prime ministerial leadership.     

A Higher Form of Intelligence: Hugh Trevor-Roper and Wartime British Secret Service

Throughout his distinguished career, the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper was known in many incarnations and guises: the ‘sleuth of Oxford’; Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford; the Spectator's Mercurius Oxoniensis; Baron Dacre of Glanton; and Master of Peterhouse College. In addition, he was to gain wider notoriety in the early 1980s as the man who helped authenticate the forged Hitler Diaries. Nevertheless, his wartime embodiment as a British intelligence officer is one facet of his personal history that has never before been addressed by scholars in any great depth. Using previously unpublished material from Trevor-Roper's memoirs and personal papers, as well as excerpts from the Guy Liddell Diaries, this article aims to highlight the fact that, contrary to the impression engendered by F.H. Hinsley's dry and depersonalized multi-volume official history, British Intelligence in the Second World War, Major H.R. Trevor-Roper, and many other intelligence officers like him, not only had a ‘good war’, but a rich and colourful one. If historians are to escape the late Sir Maurice Oldfield's indictment of that official history, namely, that it was written ‘by a committee, about committees, for a committee’, they might do worse than begin to reappraise the role of the individual in the context of Britain's intelligence effort during 1939–45. The late Lord Dacre, so this article argues, is one such individual requiring further study.