Every conservative must, I think, agree with Mr Baron’s attack on multiculturalism, on, at least, the forced and inorganic form it has taken in Britain (The New Conservative, 28/11/23). But not every conservative will warm to his list of the “shared values” that, in his view, make our “British identity”: liberal democracy, free speech, the scientific method, tolerance, the rule of law and whatever-and-whoever creates and conserves these things. Mr Baron’s is a variation on similar lists made by others.
It was Gordon Brown, I think, who first made such a list, in a speech to the Fabian Society on January 14, 2006. Being first in the field, he found only a poor three British Values–Liberty, Responsibility and Fairness—and nobody took much notice … until on June 7, 2011, the Conservative-LibDem Government rediscovered them for its Prevent Strategy. It didn’t find Responsibility or Fairness but (perhaps under the influence of the Equality Act 2010) it did find lots of others, including Equality of Opportunity, Freedom of Speech, Gender Equality, Equality before the Law, Tolerance of Other Cultures, Rights of Different Faith Groups, Right to Live Free of Persecution, Encouraging Participation and Interaction, Full Participation, Universal Human Rights, the Rule of Law, Democracy and (under the influence of Ali G) Respect. Mr Baron, though, has the distinction of being the first, as far as I know, to discover that the Scientific Method is a British Value too.
Enoch Powell wouldn’t have warmed to the list. When Mrs Thatcher said the Falklands war was fought (in the canting phrase that is now everywhere) “for our values”, he corrected her: “We do not fight for values. I would fight for this country even if it had a communist government.” In the same spirit he wouldn’t hear of that war being justified on the grounds that Argentina was a military dictatorship. Would the invaders have been welcome, he asked with beautiful sarcasm, if only they’d been sent by a Quinquennial Parliament?
And Roger Scruton wouldn’t have warmed to it either. Such, he said “are really Enlightenment values, with no intrinsic connection to the history, loyalty and shared experience that define our country;” and then again, “values are matters of practice not of theory. They are not so much taught as imparted. You learn them by immersion.” And if you do learn them, you will not only have no need to state them but, if asked to, will rightly find yourself embarrassed by the difficulty of doing so. As Michael Polanyi more than once said, “We know more than we can tell.” And, we might add, trying then to tell ‘our values’–as we see in these lists of abstractions–misrepresents them. It misrepresents us.
As I said myself (in “British Values”, What is Wrong with Us”, eds. Eric Coombes and Theodore Dalrymple–a book much praised by Scruton in The Church Times):
But do these so-called values sum up what is both distinctive and worth valuing in the peoples of Britain and their way of life? That they vote? And are law-abiding? Does no one else vote? Is no one else law-abiding? Were we not British when we believed in kings, kingdoms and kingship? Is Shakespeare unBritish? Did we not begin to be British until 1832? Is it unBritish to pray “Thy kingdom come”? Ought it be “Thy (or Our) democracy”? Were we less British in the days of the Border Reivers (now much admired on both sides of the Border)? Would we be any less British if we lost or gave up the vote in some unlikely but possible political revolution? Were we less British when we believed that only a man and a woman could marry? Or that the woman should obey and serve the man as well as love and honour him? Or when Cavaliers fought Roundheads? Or Protestants Catholics? We were undeniably different when we could say “Wogs begin at Calais” (able simultaneously to show prejudice and mock it) but were we fundamentally less British? Germany today is no less a democracy, no less ruled by law, possesses no less individual liberty and, arguably—judged by the Merkel government’s invitation to refugees—has more mutual-respect-for and-tolerance-of than Britain. Does that make it fundamentally more, or less, German than it was in 1933? Does it, perhaps, make the Germans, today, arguably, a shade more British than the British?
I not only don’t warm to these lists myself, I don’t even warm to the word ‘British’ at their head. It is a necessary word, of course; and there are state-wide institutions and businesses properly called ‘British’, such as the Army, the Broadcasting Corporation, the Home Stores and the Meat Processors Association but the British people–the English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh–those here before about , say, 1997–don’t typically and naturally think of themselves as ‘British’ but as English, Irish, Scottish or Welsh. In fact, I think we can say that that they do so is one of their defining characteristics, something than which nothing could be more British. Of course, we all equally want to see the British Lions beat the Wallabies and All Blacks but we do so as English, Irish, Scottish or Welsh rather than British. I want to see the British Lions prevail in Auckland for much the same reason and in much the same spirit that I want to see England prevail in Dublin, Edinburgh or Cardiff. And I do so in the confidence that I have compatriots who like nothing better than to see England beaten at Twickenham (or Dublin, Edinburgh or Cardiff or, perhaps, come to that, Paris or Rome). There are some British values for you (though not ones having much in common with the scientific method.)
The attraction of the word ‘British’ (especially for our governors) is just that, compared with those others, it is hollow and might be filled with anything from anywhere. The combination ‘British’ and–let us say–‘Chinese’ doesn’t throw up the mental difficulties that the combination–let us say–‘Welsh’ and ‘Chinese’ does. It’s not that you can’t be genetically Chinese and culturally Welsh. The Americans have shown us that a people need have no difficulty melting widely different genes into one people and a single culture. I was in Freetown in the sixties when a boatload of American Black Power activists came to town, identifying as African and looking for their roots but finding themselves jeered at in the streets as “Piss Cor! Piss Cor!” (Peace Corps), as just another lot of rich young Americans, with ridiculous haircuts. Our governors prefer the word ‘British’ over the words ‘English’, ‘Irish’, ‘Scottish’ and ‘Welsh’ just because it lets them avoid the question of whether any ‘melting’ is, or ought to be, going on.
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One remembers the disaster that was and is Gordon Brown, announcing in an interview in America, that he was from “North Britain”. Perhaps the first time a Scot has denied his homeland.