Last Saturday, Chancellor Gordon Brown gave a widely reported keynote speech at a Fabian Society conference on the Future of Britishness in which he was widely reported as having called for a new national public holiday to celebrate all that is good about Britain and Britishness.
That apparent call of Brown’s has sparked off some lively and often amusing letters in the broadsheets from those writing in to offer suggestions.
Many have rightly pointed out, Britain is less in need of any new ones, than appreciation of the value and meaning of existing ones like Guy Fawkes’ Night or the reigning sovereign’s official birthday.
The most amusing suggestion I have come across came in a letter in yesterday’s Times. N.L.Denton wrote to point out that, since the current government ‘has spent the past eight and a half years trying to eliminate any sense of Britishness or pride in Britain, [a]n appropriate day to celebrate the British way of life, culture and values would be the anniversary of the day when this government is voted out of office.’
Well, it would be, if the incoming government that replaced it was one that could be relied on to be more appreciative and protective of Britain’s institutions and culture than New Labour has been to date.
Sadly, given the extensive centrist make-over to which the Tory party has been so swiftly subject since David Cameron’s recent assumption of its leadership, that is a scenario which is fast ceasing to be one on which one can unhesitatingly rely any longer.
In any case, despite what, with the steadily accelerating unravelling of the economy, is fast emerging to have been his ineptness as Chancellor, Gordon Brown is starting to emerge as far more appreciative of the value of Britishness than his 'pal' next door in Downing Street. Certainly, Brown’s speech contained much with which those of a classical liberal outlook can whole-heartedly agree. Here is one such extract:
‘July 7th has rightly led to calls for all of us, including moderates in the Islamic community, to stand up to extremism… But, at another level, terrorism in our midst means that debates, which sometimes may be seen as dry, about Britishness and our model of integration clearly now have a new urgency.
‘[W]e should also think of what more we can do to develop the ties that bind us more closely together. The Olympics is but one example of a national project which is uniting the country. Perhaps Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday are the nearest we have come to a British day that is – in every corner of our country – commemorative, unifying, and an expression of British ideas of standing firm in the world in the name of liberty responsibility and fairness ….
‘[T]he flag should [also] be a symbol of unity, part of a modern expression of patriotism…. [T]he union flag is a flag for Britain, not for the BNP; all the United Kingdom should honour it, not ignore it; we should assert that the union flag is, by definition, a flag for tolerance and inclusion.
‘And we should not recoil from our national history – rather we should make it more central to our education. I propose that British history should be given much more prominence in the curriculum – not just dates places and names, nor just a set of unconnected facts, but a narrative that encompasses our history. And because citizenship is still taught too much in isolation, I suggest in the current review of the curriculum that we look at how we root the teaching of citizenship more closely in history.’ [my emphasis]
Not bad coming from someone who is soon to be the next Labour Prime Minister. He might well be presiding over a national economic recession largely of his own making, but at least he will not be afraid or unwilling to sing the National Anthem or extol the virtues of the country whose penury he will have helped to bring about. Not much of a consolation, but better than his impoverishing the country and then signing it over to Brussels.