Defining or redefining Britishness was an early goal of the Labour government. As the millennium approached, policy-makers and opinion-formers tried to pin down a new identity for a country whose globally recognised symbols often belied a quiet confusion. "Cool Britannia" became the brand for those optimistic times. How quaint that feels now.
The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 shattered the delusions of inexorable enrichment and permanent invulnerability that the 1990s had produced in the United States. This anxiety transmitted itself to Europe, but the threats to our security and way of life were perceived as purely external. The events of 7 and 21 July have brought to the fore questions that, as a nation, we have posed only irregularly and casually, and rarely answered. What are the values that we most prize? Or, as we ask in our cover story, what is it that makes Britain great?
Some might bridle at the choice of words. In doing so they play into the hands of those who argue that patriotism and national pride are the preserves of the right. If that was ever true, then it is time the left reclaimed them. As Tristram Hunt points out (page 12), principles such as tolerance and free speech are integral to the way we are. Neither is uniquely British. Neither is as ancient as some of our jingo-historians would claim. Nor, at the moment, is either as entrenched as we would hope. The realignment of the tortured relationship between state and individual continues apace. There are no absolutes. Tolerance and free speech, by their nature, are contained within boundaries that are increasingly fixed by circumstance rather than precedent.
A third definition of British is one that is assumed to be little rooted in our history: the diversity celebrated by Ekow Eshun on page 14. This diversity has sat awkwardly with the patriotism as defined by conservatives through the flag, monarchy, class and other traditions. But, as the writer Robert Winder points out in his book Bloody Foreigners, the definition of Britishness or Englishness through ethnicity is one of our great myths. Our United Kingdom has always been a collection of tribes on a small island seeking accommodation with each other, epitomised by our English-by-adoption royal family. And yet, be it with the dispossessed Huguenots of the 17th century, the Jews of the late 19th century onwards, or the subsequent generations of Africans and West Indians, that accommodation was usually, if uneasily, reached. We have, to use that quintessentially English phrase, managed to "rub along".
The challenge we now face is of a different order. There is little benefit, beyond bland reassurance, in asserting otherwise. How far the decision to invade Iraq has contributed to our insecurity - and that question has been discussed at length in previous editions - Britons of all persuasions, races and political hues have to recognise the existence of a significant minority of young Muslim men (so far only men) who seek redress or gratification through mass murder. In percentage terms, this might seem small. In actual numbers it is frighteningly large. The immediate task is one for our security and intelligence services. The longer-term challenge involves each community.
In order to persuade the unpersuaded to embrace rather than undermine our values, we need to display them as universal and not exclusive. To get to that point we need to agree exactly what values citizens and government should espouse, and how they should be put into action. This applies to clearly defined areas such as foreign affairs and education policy, as well as to more inchoate issues such as where tolerance of diversity begins and ends. Continental Europeans, with their more codified law, seem to find it easier to formulate such questions, even if the answers do not come any easier to them.
Just as traditionalists can no longer find solace in the England of flag-waving on the Mall, warm beer and sun setting on village cricket pitches, so those who embrace the multicultural societies of our major cities now find to their horror that the solutions elude them, too. The narrow-mindedness of the provincial bigot is no less damaging than the narrow-mindedness of the so-called modernist who seeks to deny us a past.
The atrocity of 7 July and the grim forebodings that have followed show that an attempt to reconcile the new Britain with the old goes far beyond the rebranding of the flag. We need to be clear about what we hold in common and what we will not allow to be compromised. Only when we identify the values that we truly cherish will we be best placed to resist the terrorists. This is a battle as much of the mind as it is of the bomb and the gun.
Blessed Brian
What on earth do the tourists think? We know what the politicians think as they run the gauntlet of Brian Haw's four-year protest outside parliament. With his dishevelled placards and incessant amplified barrage of slogans, Britain's most durable anti-Iraq demonstrator has done little for the aesthetics of one of the UK's major landmarks. One can only imagine Tony Blair's irritation as he is driven at top speed past this eyesore of dissent and through the gates of the much more quiescent Palace of Westminster.
As Mr Haw challenges his eviction - part of the government's imposition of a protest-free zone - he can pride himself on his contribution to our free speech. We hope he is allowed to stay. If not, then at least we can pride ourselves that few other countries would have allowed the campsite protest to continue for so long. Gawd bless 'im.
