What Does it Mean to be British?

This essay poses a question through a lens from the North American side of the Atlantic. It is written by one who spent more than a few years in Britain and received much of his graduate education in its institutions. It is hoped justice is done in responding to the essay’s title.

There exists in Britain a fragile sense of moral unity between the people and the government.

Since the Allied victory in WWII, a kind of “moral tension” has existed between the British people and the British government. The “Crown” and its subjects – together — were victorious in what they perceived as an existential threat to their Britain. The effect of this sense of unity has fostered a feeling amongst the populace that the government generally attempts to represent what is in their best interest. And yet, today, this feeling may have morphed into a false sense of security.

Beginning in the 1960s, academia on both sides of the Atlantic came under the sway of postmodernism, multiculturalism and thence, globalism. Generations of British elite have become indoctrinated into these new ideologies, and British governments since then have been moving progressively toward manifesting these ideas in government policy initiatives. The sociopolitical upheavals (e.g. Unite the Kingdom) playing out today in Britain are testament to the problem with these ideas and the reaction to them by a good measure of the British public.

A new moral culture

The British populace has yet to appreciate that a new moral culture has taken control of British government(s), and the latter employs this to advance political agendas with which the bulk of the people themselves are not in accord. The country continues to be immiserated with deliberate government immigration policies that began years ago. And communities have been inundated with immigrant populations which the government fosters and protects in order to legitimise both its foreign and domestic policies. The populace-at-large tends to view this as something that is just a short-term aberration because of the incompetence or inefficiency of the government and will eventually be brought under control – with the next election.

The problem is that the British people do not see it as an ideology-driven policy initiative that was consciously conceived and now requires government policing to enforce in order to address structural problems in the British economy — low natality rate, shortage of cheap labor, excessive public debt and a burgeoning debt service. Several governments on both sides of the aisle developed immigrant policies that were “sold” to the public as a way, ostensibly, to increase the population and tax revenue.

It seems as though this new moral culture is not shared by a majority of the British populace; unfortunately, the awareness by the people that the government has set itself up against the will of the majority has yet to “achieve consciousness”; thus, the British people remain in a kind of “moral holding pattern,” unable to form a serious collective resistance to what is being foisted upon them and uncertain of what else they can do to stop it.

A British identity?

It has been 220 years since Nelson, at the Battle of Trafalgar, famously transmitted “England expects every man will do his duty.” And so, it seems that the people of Britain today may find it difficult to collectively identify and connect their modern communities with the historical continuum of what it means to be British. Generations have had “British values” informally inculcated into their educational experience, but there is controversy today over whether a 2014 law which defines these values and requires their inclusion into curricula are harmful to minorities in that it promotes — “Britishness.”

Britain is a country that seems under siege by postmodernism’s rejection of objective truth and metanarratives like British traditions and cultural history – multiculturalism’s bias towards globalism rather than national sovereignty; it seems unable to reclaim centre stage of its own public life, or even articulate that there should be an objectively and quintessential British locus of affairs.

The primary concern for the people of Britain is not necessarily the substantial influx of migrants to its shores; rather, it is the ideology of the political elite on both the left and right which no longer promote the national sovereignty of Britain, its people and their understanding of what it means to be British.

The good people of Britain must never lose their sense of what it means to be British – or God forbid, have it taken from them.

Dr. Wolf is director of The Fulcrum Institute (n.b. the website will be live late October 2025), a new organization of current and former scholars, which engages in research and commentary, focusing on political and cultural issues on both sides of the Atlantic. Our interest is in American foreign policy as it relates to the economic and foreign policies of the NATO countries, the SCO, the BRICS+ nation-states and the Middle East.

After service in the USAF (Lt.Col.-Intel) Dr. Wolf obtained a PhD-philosophy (University of Wales), MA-philosophy (University of S. Africa), MTh-philosophical theology (Texas Christian University-Brite Div.). He taught philosophy and humanities in the US and S. Africa before retiring from university.

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