In a recent New Statesman essay, Jeremy Seabrook pointed out that provincial life, as it was once commonly understood, is almost extinct in Britain. Once, a region and its inhabitants derived identity both from history and from local industry: we thought of the cotton towns of Lancashire, the mines of south Wales, the shipyards of Glasgow, the small hosiery and shoe factories of the east Midlands. Now, as Seabrook put it, the distinctiveness of the provinces has been melted down "into common patterns of consumption and identical town centres"; there is "only the life of the global suburb". Likewise, class identities have eroded; so too, with the decline of jobs for life and of active trade unionism, have many occupational and professional identities.
All this may be of little concern to members of the cosmopolitan elite, whose friends, sexual partners and professional contacts are drawn literally from across the globe. A top multinational company executive, a City banker or a McKinsey consultant, whether white, black or brown, derives a sense of identity from his or her lifestyle: the expense account, the first-class travel, the luxury hotels, the weekend breaks. Such people, as the late Christopher Lasch pointed out, have no need of allegiance to any national, much less regional, community, as they are likely to use private schools, private health and private pension schemes. Being so peripatetic, they have no reason to care about social stability, community spirit or public safety in, say, London or Liverpool. But to the large majority, a sense of belonging matters much more. And as so many sources of identity and community wither away, the people fall back on the only identities left to them: colour of skin, ethnicity, nation. International travel, far from broadening the mind, may well lead only to more aggressive assertions of such identities, as the behaviour of English football fans abroad suggests.
This is why the report from the Runnymede Trust's Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, chaired by Professor Bhikhu Parekh, with its demand to "rethink the national story", raises such acutely sensitive issues. To many black or brown people, the history of Britain, as conventionally told, must seem deeply offensive. The European colonial powers established their hegemony over the rest of the world through mass murder (for one example, see John Pilger's column on page 17 of this issue) and slavery, ruthless economic exploitation and authoritarian rule. If Britain's behaviour was more tolerable than, say, Belgium's, this may bring a glow of pride to its indigenous white population; it is hard to see why it should impress those of different ethnic origins, whose ancestors are still cast in the role of victims, and who, it is implied, ought to be grateful for what was done on their behalf by upper-class Englishmen such as William Wilberforce and Lord Mansfield. Equally, however, it is hard to see how any account of Britishness can be separated from whiteness and how that can be separated from the history of imperial expansion. The difference between black and white is not primarily a question of different cultures or different achievements. Over the past three centuries, at least, it has been mainly a question of a difference in power: one dominated the other. To pretend otherwise is to delude ourselves.
The rise of ethnic minorities to prominent and glamorous positions in society does not really solve the problem. As more black people get to the top, showing that barriers can be broken, those left behind are all the more open to suggestions that they have only themselves to blame. In America, it seems, many blacks have given up on meritocracy, resigning themselves to a life of drugs and crime, to the extent that these have become almost the standard expression of black identity. Over a lifetime, a male African American has a one-in-three chance of spending at least a year in prison, against a one-in-23 chance for a white male. Here in Britain, blacks are six times more likely than whites to be in prison.
A redefinition of nationhood, even if it were possible and desirable, would not make any significant difference to such depressing realities. The goal of public policy must be to revitalise local communities, invigorate unions and other voluntary bodies, and reduce inequality; in other words, to move beyond recent neoliberal triumphs. The national identity will then remake itself, to the benefit of all racial groups. Too often, in the recent past, the left has been content to fight cultural battles, leaving the tough questions of economic power to the right. It must not make that mistake again.
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