My own early thoughts about Britishness owed a great deal to my post-war middle-class rural upbringing. My father, who fought in the war, was a deeply but unshowily patriotic man, whose sense of national identity sprang from the fact that his family had lived for several generations in the same small north Essex village (a family I have recently been writing about in a memoir to be published later this year).
When I was appointed poet laureate in 1999 I was forced to think more deeply. The laureate is meant to write poems on royal and national events, but how could anyone expect my single voice, with all its particularities of background, education etc, to speak for a whole society which prided itself on diversity?
I could only do my best to rise to the occasion, with a sense that my approach was just one among many possibilities. I have sometimes looked at my predecessors and envied their confidence in seeming to speak for all. Tennyson, especially, writes his public poems with a seemingly unshakable sense of centredness.
Last week I was part of a round-table discussion organised by the Fabian Society to consider three big questions: why do we need a definition of “new Britishness”; can we learn from comparative examples elsewhere; and how does government stimulate this debate without undermining it?
David Lammy, the minister for culture, Deborah Mattinson of Opinion Leader Research, Sunder Katwala, general secretary of the Fabians, David Edgar, the playwright, and Sadiq Khan, the MP, came to the Reading Room of the British Academy and the discussion that followed was smart and equable — old-style “British”, perhaps.
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So what did we come up with? Was Britishness a shared belief in a moral and legal code? Was it somehow enshrined in sport or food or DIY superstores? In fact, does Britishness mean much of anything when so much of our lives are about being Scottish, English, Welsh, Irish or other? What does Britishness amount to anyway — isn’t it just a feeling in our guts?
Safe to say, we did not come up with a clear definition — but perhaps that’s part of the point. Britishness is a permanently evolving thing and not the product of a diktat.
What you can say about the British, however, is that we have been a belligerent people, generally conservative in our tastes and opinions, prone to grudge-bearing and suspicion, introverted and (for geographical reasons among others) insular. At the same time, we have prided ourselves on our willingness to act as peacemakers, on our sense of fair play, on our tolerance and on our dynamism as inventors and creators of every kind.
What we all aim to do is to generate a sense of cohesion, to develop a society which is not just diverse but also respectful and properly integrated. Whatever function we might expect a new definition of Britishness to perform, it needs to stretch well beyond occasional outbursts of flag-waving at football matches, or at golden jubilees, or at times of great national grief or rejoicing. It needs to be a spirit which is inspirational and everyday, proud as well as modest, definite as well as flexible.
When the poet Edward Thomas was asked why he was going to fight in the first world war (he was old enough to be exempt), he picked up a handful of earth. “For this,” he said. The act bore witness to a deeply sympathetic kind of belonging — the kind which transcends jingoism and might usefully be called the foundation of all the best conversations about Britishness, new and otherwise.
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So let’s keep them coming. We’ve only just started and we should never want to stop.