tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/britishness-10936/articlesBritishness – The Conversation2023-06-09T12:26:06Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2067292023-06-09T12:26:06Z2023-06-09T12:26:06ZHow the Windrush generation changed stories of Britain forever – ten recommended reads<p>The <a href="https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/windrush-histories/story-of-windrush-ship">800 West Indians</a> who walked down the gangway at Tilbury to make new lives in England in June 1948 had been encouraged to think of the country as their motherland. The literary contribution of the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43782241">Windrush generation</a> is just one example of how Caribbean-British people enriched the nation, but it offers an important opportunity to witness the transformative moment when empire came home, changing stories of Britain forever.</p>
<p>With their colonial education, these British subjects were already familiar with Big Ben and Buckingham Palace, and could likely have recited poems by Wordsworth, Shelley or Keats. Many were <a href="https://www.bl.uk/windrush/articles/windrush7">returning servicemen</a> whose valiant contribution to the war effort had given them a strong affiliation with Britain as a land of freedom fighters. They were keen to contribute to the progressive reconstruction of their post-war homeland.</p>
<p>When Pathé News handed the microphone to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/feb/12/guardianobituaries">Lord Kitchener</a>, the suave young Trinidadian calypsonian, his homecoming serenade, London is the Place for Me, began a post-war tradition of Caribbean-British voices confidently bringing a new style and substance to expressions of belonging and nationality.</p>
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<p>Given what we now know about the ongoing hostility towards the legal and personal claims of West Indians on Britishness, it is perhaps no surprise that the stories told around what became known as the “Windrush generation” were conflicted from the start.</p>
<h2>A new story of Britain</h2>
<p>The Daily Worker ran the headline: “Five hundred pairs of willing hands”, and chronicled Windrush as a moment of greater national unity, with skilled British subjects sailing home to help rebuild the nation. But antagonistic voices were loudly <a href="https://www.readingmuseum.org.uk/explore/online-exhibitions/windrush-day/windrush-day-enigma-arrival/4-caribbean-resettlement">raising fears around immigration</a>.</p>
<p>Prime minister <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/attlees-britain/#introduction">Clement Attlee</a> tried to dismiss these with his view that “it will be shown that too much importance – too much publicity too – has been attached to the present argosy of Jamaicans”.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528239/original/file-20230525-19-6vicuz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528239/original/file-20230525-19-6vicuz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528239/original/file-20230525-19-6vicuz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528239/original/file-20230525-19-6vicuz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528239/original/file-20230525-19-6vicuz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528239/original/file-20230525-19-6vicuz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528239/original/file-20230525-19-6vicuz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>This article is part of our <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/windrush-75-139220?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=Windrush75&utm_content=InArticleTop">Windrush 75 series</a>, which marks the 75th anniversary of the HMT Empire Windrush arriving in Britain. The stories in this series explore the history and impact of the hundreds of passengers who disembarked to help rebuild after the second world war.</em></p>
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<p>In fact, Windrush, and what it has come to symbolise, has turned out to be a more and more defining moment in telling the story of Britain. Writings by and about the Windrush generation have been fundamental to revealing the realities of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/summary/British-Empire">British empire</a>.</p>
<p>Black Britons had been part of the nation for <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-black-people-britain">centuries before 1948</a>. But the post-war wave of migrants from the British Caribbean meant the colonial order through which labour, resources and profits were generated out of sight, by exploitation and violence, could no longer be concealed or denied.</p>
<p>The incisiveness and originality of the insights Caribbean-British writers brought to questions of identity and belonging was recognised at the time. Writers like <a href="https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/wilson-harris">Wilson Harris</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/17/books/george-lamming-dead.html">George Lamming</a>, <a href="https://www.peepaltreepress.com/authors/roger-mais">Roger Mais</a>, <a href="https://www.caribbean-beat.com/issue-100/edgar-mittelholzer-dark-one#axzz7leaSX66C">Edgar Mittelholzer</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/V-S-Naipaul">V.S. Naipaul</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Salkey">Andrew Salkey</a> and <a href="https://www.caribbean-beat.com/issue-11/play-it-again-sam-remembering-sam-selvon#axzz82zVU3pEn">Samuel Selvon</a> were reviewed in major newspapers.</p>
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<img alt="The red and gold cover of a book called The Emigrants by George Lamming." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529376/original/file-20230531-23-ollm9w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529376/original/file-20230531-23-ollm9w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529376/original/file-20230531-23-ollm9w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529376/original/file-20230531-23-ollm9w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529376/original/file-20230531-23-ollm9w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529376/original/file-20230531-23-ollm9w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529376/original/file-20230531-23-ollm9w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">George Lamming’s book tells of how migrants to England found it far from the ‘motherland’ they had been led to believe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-emigrants/george-lamming/9780472064700#:~:text=First%20published%20in%201954%2C%20it,and%20displacement%20caused%20by%20colonialism.">University of Michigan Press</a></span>
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<p>Their writing rendered Caribbean people and places in ways that challenged traditional colonial views and gave descriptive power to the complicated realities of migrant lives. And just as they offered distinctive and compelling stories on what constituted Britishness, they also brought a new idea of literary English into circulation. The Caribbean language and episodic form of Selvon’s <a href="https://www.bl.uk/works/the-lonely-londoners">The Lonely Londoners</a> are absolutely crucial to its poignant and pointed account of male migrant life in England.</p>
<p>Although women’s narratives of this time are only just being recovered, <a href="https://www.bl.uk/people/beryl-gilroy">Beryl Gilroy’s</a> 1976 <a href="https://www.bl.uk/windrush/articles/woman-version-beryl-gilroys-black-teacher">Black Teacher</a> and <a href="https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/03/brown-face-big-master-joyce-gladwell.html">Joyce Gladwell’s</a> 1969 <a href="https://neglectedbooks.com/?p=1248">Brown Face, Big Master</a> are two memoirs that powerfully narrate the realities of Windrush women’s lives. They also reveal West Indian women’s experiences of migration, and their particular struggles for recognition in the colonising “motherland”. </p>
<h2>Ongoing conflict</h2>
<p>Most profoundly, Windrush writings across the generations have established that Britain needs to reckon with its colonial history and recognise all subjects in the extended nation made by empire. Yet when Guardian journalist Amelia Gentleman told the most significant Windrush story of our time, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/23/windrush-betrayal-amelia-gentleman-homecoming-colin-grant-review">The Windrush Betrayal, Exposing the Hostile Environment</a>, the persistent and brutal refusal of this reckoning became clear.</p>
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<p>It is no surprise that Windrush history and literature are not included in the British school curriculum, but it is a regrettable omission. The huge success of <a href="https://www.andrealevy.co.uk">Andrea Levy’s</a> 2004 Windrush novel <a href="https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/an-introduction-to-andrea-levys-small-island">Small Island</a> suggests the recognition of this moment as laying the foundations for what we know as post-colonial Britain. But it also makes clear that a celebration of what West Indians have contributed remains vital.</p>
<p>Yet Levy, in common with many literary descendants of the Windrush generation, has also written of the second generation’s experience of a hostile homeland. Her first novel <a href="https://www.andrealevy.co.uk/books/every-light/">Every Light in the House Burning</a>, published in 1994, reveals the everyday realities of racism and the different perspectives between migrant parents and their British-born children.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.carylphillips.com/biography.html">Caryl Phillips</a>’s brilliant debut novel <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/358282/final-passage-by-phillips-caryl/9780099468585">The Final Passage</a> also explores the pulls of migration and the strains for a young family settling in Britain from the Caribbean. These tensions gave tremendous creative energy to <a href="https://lintonkwesijohnson.com">Linton Kwesi Johnson’s</a> work, including the 1975 <a href="https://www.readingmuseum.org.uk/explore/online-exhibitions/windrush-day/windrush-day-enigma-arrival/4-caribbean-resettlement">Dread Beat An’ Blood</a>, which expressed the frustration and struggle of black youth against the hostile British establishment. </p>
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<p>Perhaps the fact that Kitchener’s London is the Place for Me was revived as the anthem of the Paddington movies while the Windrush scandal was making headlines, speaks to the ongoing conflict. That is, between seeing Caribbean voices as central to Britain’s character as a convivial multicultural nation, and the real narrow nationalism of the conservative Britain we live in.</p>
<h2>Ten great reads on the Windrush experience</h2>
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<img alt="Bright red cover of a book called Waiting in the Twilight, showing a sad-looking black woman and a cup of tea." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529391/original/file-20230531-15-xts2tu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529391/original/file-20230531-15-xts2tu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529391/original/file-20230531-15-xts2tu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529391/original/file-20230531-15-xts2tu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529391/original/file-20230531-15-xts2tu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1223&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529391/original/file-20230531-15-xts2tu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1223&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529391/original/file-20230531-15-xts2tu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1223&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/waiting-in-the-twilight/joan-riley/9780704340237">The Women's Press</a></span>
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<p><strong>1. Waiting in the Twilight</strong>
Joan Riley’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1661159.Waiting_in_the_Twilight">1987 novel</a> offers a moving Windrush story of Adella, who spends the last day of her life in her Brixton sitting room “travelling back home” through her memories of Jamaica. </p>
<p><strong>2. The Housing Lark</strong>
Sam Selvon’s <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/315545/the-housing-lark-by-selvon-sam/9780241441329">1965 novel</a> tells the story of a group of friends who come together to buy a house with Selvon’s characteristic blend of humour, tenderness and truth-telling. </p>
<p><strong>3. Connecting Medium</strong>
Dorothea Smartt’s <a href="https://www.peepaltreepress.com/books/connecting-medium">stunning collection of poetry</a> from 2001 explores the connections between the Caribbean and Britain. </p>
<p><strong>4. Familiar Stranger: A Life between Two Islands</strong>
The <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/300224/familiar-stranger-by-stuart-hall/9780141984759">posthumous memoir of Stuart Hall</a>, published in 2018, tells a highly personal story of the life between Jamaica and Britain that animated his brilliant insights into diaspora identities and post-colonial Britain.</p>
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<img alt="A cover of a book called Mr Loverman showing a smartly dressed elderly Caribbean man in straw boater, suit and fancy waistcoat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529383/original/file-20230531-27-mwsyoi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529383/original/file-20230531-27-mwsyoi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529383/original/file-20230531-27-mwsyoi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529383/original/file-20230531-27-mwsyoi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529383/original/file-20230531-27-mwsyoi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529383/original/file-20230531-27-mwsyoi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529383/original/file-20230531-27-mwsyoi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.akashicbooks.com/catalog/mr-loverman/">Akashic Books</a></span>
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<p><strong>5. Mr Loverman</strong>
Bernadine Evaristo’s <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/187884/mr-loverman-by-evaristo-bernardine/9780241996577">2013 novel</a> narrates a queer Windrush story and a poignant tale of belonging to Britain that unfolds in later life for her protagonists, Barrington and Morris. </p>
<p><strong>6. Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation</strong>
Colin Grant’s <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/438097/homecoming-by-colin-grant/9781784709136">2020 publication</a> offers an extraordinarily detailed and diverse portrait of the Windrush generation through oral histories.</p>
<p><strong>7. Beyond Windrush: Rethinking Postwar Anglophone Caribbean Literature</strong>
Edited by J. Dillon Brown and Leah Reade Rosenberg, this is an <a href="https://academic.oup.com/mississippi-scholarship-online/book/30169">unmissable read</a> for those interested in knowing more about the literary history of this period.</p>
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<img alt="A yellow, blue and white cover of a Ladybird book about the Caribbean Windrush arrivals." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529382/original/file-20230531-25-yru5xe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529382/original/file-20230531-25-yru5xe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529382/original/file-20230531-25-yru5xe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529382/original/file-20230531-25-yru5xe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529382/original/file-20230531-25-yru5xe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529382/original/file-20230531-25-yru5xe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529382/original/file-20230531-25-yru5xe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/445870/a-ladybird-book-windrush-by-dyer-colin-grant-and-emma/9780241544204">Penguin</a></span>
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<p><strong>8. A Ladybird Book: Windrush</strong>
Colin Grant, Emma Dyer and illustrator Melleny Taylor’s <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/295598/melleny-taylor">book</a> is a recent addition to this favourite series and a fabulous way to introduce the Windrush story to young children. </p>
<p><strong>9. A Place for Me: Stories About the Windrush Generation</strong>
Published in 2021, <a href="https://shop.birminghammuseums.org.uk/products/a-place-for-me-stories-about-the-windrush-generation">this collection</a> draws on materials from the <a href="https://blackculturalarchives.org">Black Cultural Archives</a> to tell 12 stories inspired by real people of the Windrush generation.</p>
<p><strong>10. The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing</strong>
Edited by Susheila Nasta and Mark U. Stein, this offers a <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-history-of-black-and-asian-british-writing/AAA5AF72CD834346C3040A947FD40D7F">brilliant historical and critical context</a> for appreciating Windrush writings.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206729/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alison Donnell receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust, Arts and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>Windrush has turned out to be a defining moment in telling the story of Britain, with writing by Caribbean migrants fundamental to exposing the realities of the British empire.Alison Donnell, Professor of Modern Literatures in English, University of East AngliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1997132023-02-14T16:29:55Z2023-02-14T16:29:55ZGrayson Perry’s Full English shows why England’s regions are crucial to its identity<p>In his Channel 4 series, <a href="https://www.channel4.com/programmes/grayson-perrys-full-english">Full English</a>, artist Grayson Perry travels around England in a white van searching for an answer to the question: “Is there a viable version of England and Englishness that will feed my soul?”</p>
<p>What Perry discovers in his encounters with people from across the country, is a version of Englishness that draws on a subjective sense of local or regional identity, rather than a uniform idea of the nation.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for Grayson Perry’s Full English.</span></figcaption>
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<p>For football fan Jay, England is first and foremost the borough of Lambeth. For grime musician Jaykae, England is Birmingham’s Small Heath, where he lives and finds inspiration for his lyrics. For fashion designer Pearl Lowe, England is evoked through dinner on a Somerset lawn.</p>
<p>Perry’s observations on regionalism (giving greater weight to viewpoints from people belonging to regions rather than the capital) chime with debates about what it means to be English. They are also in keeping with <a href="https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/arts-culture-news/it-feels-like-were-being-26147394">growing calls</a> from politicians, cultural institutions and the public to give greater recognition to the contribution of England’s regions to the political, cultural and social fabric of the nation.</p>
<p>Full English confronts unease about English nationalism and the racism, chauvinism and the selective and nostalgic view of a national past <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781351047326-22/racism-nationalism-politics-resentment-contemporary-england-james-rhodes-natalie-anne-hall">that has often accompanied it</a>. </p>
<p>Numerous <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/englishness-racism-brexit/">articles</a>, <a href="https://www.economist.com/britain/2020/01/30/brexit-and-english-nationalism">commentaries</a> and <a href="https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/the-factors-underlying-english-nationalism-resentment-racism-insecurity-47817">opinion pieces</a> have connected these views with the outcome of the 2016 Brexit referendum. At the same time, scholars and politicians have predicted a rethink of what it means to be English in response to the <a href="https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/05/scottish-independence-will-impact-uks-global-role">independence movement in Scotland</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44306737">Surveys</a> show that <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-44142843">younger generations are less proud to be English</a> and the latest census data indicates that <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/is-englishness-out-of-fashion-most-people-identify-as-british-in-census-f7bf07cl8">fewer people are identifying as English</a>, opting for the more inclusive “British” instead.</p>
<p>The regionalism celebrated in Full English reflects cross-bench support in Westminster for strategies to overcome persistent geographical disparities in wealth and opportunity. </p>
<p>The government’s <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1095544/Executive_Summary.pdf">levelling up white paper</a> promises to realise “the potential of every place and every person across the UK”, but its strategy of making regional areas compete for funding controlled by Whitehall has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/30/tory-mayor-andy-street-says-levelling-up-policy-should-trust-local-people-more">criticised</a>.</p>
<p>The Labour Party’s <a href="https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Commission-on-the-UKs-Future.pdf">Brown Report</a> puts forward ambitious plans to scrap the House of Lords in favour of a second chamber called the Assembly of the Nations and Regions. The report concludes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The United Kingdom will only succeed economically, politically and socially if it harnesses the talents and listens to the voices of all its people, ensuring that no part of the country is left behind, ignored or silenced.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>All the while, calls for more <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/commentisfree/2023/jan/29/the-guardian-view-on-english-devolution-an-idea-whose-time-has-come">devolution</a> (moving decision making out of London) in England are growing, with a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-64107989">new north-east mayor created as part of £1.4 billion deal</a> announced in December 2022.</p>
<h2>Victorian visions of the nation</h2>
<p>Nineteenth century literature shows us that England and Englishness have long been interpreted through the lens of regional cultures and communities.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509497/original/file-20230210-30-ibe6wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A sepia side profile portrait of Charles Dickens. He has a beard which covers only his chin and not his jawline." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509497/original/file-20230210-30-ibe6wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509497/original/file-20230210-30-ibe6wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509497/original/file-20230210-30-ibe6wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509497/original/file-20230210-30-ibe6wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509497/original/file-20230210-30-ibe6wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1039&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509497/original/file-20230210-30-ibe6wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1039&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509497/original/file-20230210-30-ibe6wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1039&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Charles Dickens (1850).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://viewer.library.wales/4671094#?c=&m=&s=&cv=&manifest=https%3A%2F%2Fdamsssl.llgc.org.uk%2Fiiif%2F2.0%2F4671094%2Fmanifest.json&xywh=-1104%2C-152%2C4086%2C3033">National Library of Wales</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To modern debates, this writing provides valuable insights about the ways regional voices have been repeatedly sidelined, subjugated or overridden by decision makers at the centre.</p>
<p>Charles Dickens is widely recognised as <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20151204-the-25-greatest-british-novels">one of Britain’s greatest novelists</a> but it is the geography of his adopted home, London, that is in sharpest focus in his work. His <a href="http://repository.bilkent.edu.tr/bitstream/handle/11693/51265/Dickens_and_Englishness_A_Fundamental_Ambivalence.pdf?sequence=1">ambivalence</a> towards “Englishness” can be seen in the extreme patriotism of <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mono/10.4324/9781315256542-7/introduction-angelia-poon">John Podsnap</a> from Our Mutual Friend, for example.</p>
<p>Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is perennially crisscrossing the moors of the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/030977601794164295">Pennines</a> familiar to her author. Settings like Thornfield Hall and Morton School are situated first and foremost by their remote regional locations, rather than in relation to the geography of a wider England. </p>
<p>This foregrounding of regional characteristics complicates the status of both these places because they are sites where Jane, as both school mistress and governess, is responsible for teaching an English education that takes for granted the unity and cohesion of the nation. </p>
<h2>Thomas Hardy’s ‘partly dream country’</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509499/original/file-20230210-24-dlbcea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A portrait of Thomas Hardy with a twiddly moustache." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509499/original/file-20230210-24-dlbcea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509499/original/file-20230210-24-dlbcea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=871&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509499/original/file-20230210-24-dlbcea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=871&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509499/original/file-20230210-24-dlbcea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=871&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509499/original/file-20230210-24-dlbcea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1094&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509499/original/file-20230210-24-dlbcea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1094&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509499/original/file-20230210-24-dlbcea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1094&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Thomas Hardy (1910).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thomashardy_restored.jpg">United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the relationship between regionalism and national identity that Grayson Perry discovers in modern England has its clearest parallel in the writing of Thomas Hardy.</p>
<p>In Hardy’s Wessex poems, tales and novels, readers are immersed in a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/travel/on-englands-coast-thomas-hardy-made-his-world.html">“partly real, partly dream country”</a> that is both distinct from and connected to 19th century England.</p>
<p>Hardy’s blurring of fiction and reality sees that <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/map-of-thomas-hardys-wessex">Wessex</a> (his fictional county) is granted an importance and degree of autonomy beyond that normally afforded to real regional settings. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, readers are invited to construct versions of England and Englishness through the lens of Wessex. </p>
<p>Take, for instance, this extract from Hardy’s novel, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, where Tess and Angel Clare reflect on the journey of the milk they just brought to the railway station:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>‘Londoners will drink it at their breakfasts tomorrow, won’t they?’ she asked. ‘Strange people that we have never seen … Who don’t know anything of us, and where it comes from; or think how we two drove miles across the moor to-night in the rain that it might reach ’em in time?’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In this passage, Hardy reorientates the power dynamics of the map, showing the dependence of the people in the capital on the frequently overlooked and stigmatised people of the region.</p>
<p>In this sense, Grayson Perry’s Full English is a modern take on the significance of regional cultures and communities described in 19th century literature. Perhaps such a timely celebration of regionalism has the capacity to provide a basis for the productive version of Englishness Perry seeks.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199713/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Blackmore receives funding from the AHRC via the South, West & Wales Doctoral Training Partnership. </span></em></p>Grayson Perry’s Full English is a timely celebration of regionalism and its capacity to provide a basis for a productive version of Englishness.John Blackmore, PhD Candidate in English Literature, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1910592022-09-21T02:18:43Z2022-09-21T02:18:43Z‘An obsession with order, hierarchy, and one’s place within it’: what The Queue says about Englishness<p>As we have seen from coverage of “The Queue” – capitalised and thus now, apparently, a proper noun – the English are proud of their queuing prowess.</p>
<p>The Queue for the queen lying in state is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/15/queen-queue-coffin-westminster/">portrayed</a> as testament to the English ideals of civility, duty and sacrifice. </p>
<p>David Beckham’s 13-hour wait in the crowd was widely praised, while TV hosts Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield’s <a href="https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/royals/british-tv-hosts-holly-willoughby-and-phillip-schofield-address-claims-they-skipped-queue-to-see-queen-lying-in-state/news-story/b90ebcf98b827c8a5b9f694d3ec127da">alleged (although denied)</a> “push-in” has been admonished.</p>
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<p>But The Queue is part of a bigger picture. Like class, the English propensity to celebrate queuing illuminates a peculiar national obsession with order, hierarchy, and one’s place within it.</p>
<h2>Queueing as a form of ceremony</h2>
<p>Let’s address something important: are we talking here about Britishness or Englishness? What is seen to define an English person, British person or person
of the United Kingdom is a matter of considerable debate. Our choice of the word “English” over “British” in this article reflects the fundamental Englishness of the British national project, to which the monarchy is central.</p>
<p>The English proclivity for queuing has been the subject of cultural commentary for decades. </p>
<p>In 1946 Hungarian humourist George Mikes reportedly <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/slightly-blighty/202209/the-psychology-queuing-pay-respects-the-queen">noted</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one […] [queueing is] the national passion of an otherwise dispassionate race. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>British anthropologist Kate Fox, author of <a href="https://www.bookdepository.com/Watching-the-English-The-International-Bestseller-Revised-and-Updated-Kate-Fox/9781444785203?redirected=true&selectCurrency=SEK&w=AF7YAU9611TN4FA8VT6K&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI8Nisqb6i-gIVEZpmAh3FuAt1EAAYAiAAEgIEJfD_BwE">Watching the English</a>, wrote that in the 2011 London riots:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I witnessed looters forming an orderly queue to squeeze, one at a time, through the smashed window of a shop they were looting.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Queueing as a form of ceremony, such as seen in London this week, is perhaps a particular type of queue.</p>
<p>In defiance of the typical English reservedness, The Queue has been credited with fostering cameraderie and even <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/queen-elizabeth-ii-queue-romance-b2169693.html">chance meetings</a>.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/queen-elizabeth-ii-capturing-the-worlds-most-photographed-woman-in-life-and-death-190490">Queen Elizabeth II: capturing the world's most photographed woman in life and death</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Queuing in England and around the world</h2>
<p>Of course, it’s not only the English who queue. Regulating the flow and order of people is a universal human need. </p>
<p>Saving space in densely populated urban milieu, Japanese people form tight zig-zags. </p>
<p>In Spain, the penultimate person to arrive for a bus merely nods to the last person to let them know whom to follow. </p>
<p>In both cases, what appears to be anarchy is, in fact, tightly regulated.</p>
<p>However, there is something culturally distinctive about the English queue. The English seem to have a fondness for publicising their queuing ability.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1570067806028464128"}"></div></p>
<h2>Queuing and deficiency</h2>
<p>While much of the recent coverage has emphasised the egalitarianism of The Queue, researchers such as <a href="https://academic.oup.com/tcbh/article-abstract/16/3/283/1698382?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Joe Moran</a> have noted queuing has endured a chequered past.</p>
<p>In economically impoverished postwar Britain, food queues became a source of national resentment.</p>
<p>Many felt the queue was an unfair method of distribution – especially for older people, mothers with young children or working women, who faced more difficulty to wait in line for essential items.</p>
<p>In the late 1940s and early 1950s Winston Churchill seized on the unpopularity of queues to <a href="https://www.academia.edu/20514598/The_Oratory_of_Winston_Churchill">argue</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We [The Conservatives] are for the ladder. Let all try their best to climb. They [Labour] are for the queue. Let each wait in his place till his turn comes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Queues, he <a href="https://academic.oup.com/tcbh/article-abstract/16/3/283/1698382?redirectedFrom=PDF">argued</a>, were socialist, and that, should a Labour government have its way, the country could become “Queuetopia”. </p>
<p>In the 1960s and ‘70s the English faced recurrent queues at banks and post offices. The queue was widely depicted as a symptom of inefficiency of the national economy, something one might expect on the other side of the Iron Curtain, but not appropriate for Britain.</p>
<p>Throughout the late 1970s and the 1980s, associating queues with incompetence and disorganisation was a constant theme in politics. </p>
<p>Advertising firm Saatchi and Saatchi <a href="https://www.open.edu/openlearn/people-politics-law/howe-labour-isnt-working-did-the-job-the-conservatives">produced</a> a 1978 election poster for the Conservatives depicting a queue outside the unemployment office and the slogan: “Labour isn’t working”.</p>
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<h2>Queues and queue-jumping</h2>
<p>More recently, as <a href="https://disaster-sts-network.org/system/files/artifacts/media/pdf/strangers_in_their_own_land_anger_and_mourning_on_the_american_right_by_arlie_russell_hochschild_z-lib.org_.pdf">observed</a> by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, the queue and queue-jumping have been weaponised in political discourse regarding minorities. </p>
<p>As one of us (<a href="http://notebooks.drustvo-antropologov.si/Notebooks/article/view/55/40">Andrew Dawson</a>) has noted, many of Britain’s white working class perceive the British policy of multiculturalism as a relegation of their status. </p>
<p>The benefits that flow to immigrant ethnic minorities are often presented as an unfair “push-in” for the social mobility ladder, allowing them to effectively “jump” Britain’s class queue. </p>
<p>That queuing for social occasions such as the queen’s death has been reimagined in recent years as a positive phenomenon is curious.</p>
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<p>Whether in a queue or a ladder, however, such appeals to social organisation are about knowing one’s place – a particularly English preoccupation.</p>
<p>Ask any Englishperson about their position in society. Depending upon their class, they may be embarrassed or affronted by the question, but they will have an answer, whether they share it with you or not (determined, again, by their class).</p>
<p>To this end, the reaction to Willoughby and Schofield’s alleged transgression speaks to the ability of this class system to reassert itself in the face of celebrity and fame. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485758/original/file-20220921-22-2g7jll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People queue to see the queen lying in state." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485758/original/file-20220921-22-2g7jll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485758/original/file-20220921-22-2g7jll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485758/original/file-20220921-22-2g7jll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485758/original/file-20220921-22-2g7jll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485758/original/file-20220921-22-2g7jll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485758/original/file-20220921-22-2g7jll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485758/original/file-20220921-22-2g7jll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People queued for hours to see the queen lying in state.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps The Queue helps to explain why Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, has experienced such hostility upon entering British society. Not just because of discriminatory and racist attitudes based on her biracial, divorcee, actress status, but also because she is American.</p>
<p>Queuing is seen by some as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/is-there-anything-more-british-than-the-queue/2022/09/16/3da02baa-357d-11ed-a0d6-415299bfebd5_story.html">antithetical</a> to America’s rampant individualism – where your place is often imagined as malleable rather than rigid, dependent on achievements, popularity and wealth. </p>
<p>Australians also may recoil at suggestions of one’s place in society, with some insisting that in contrast to the stuffy British “motherland”, we are a classless society.</p>
<p>While “The C-word”, as the Australian author <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2013/december/1385816400/tim-winton/c-word#mtr">Tim Winton called class</a>, of course very much exists in Australia, we have far less of a vocabulary or understanding of class than the English.</p>
<p>While it may be less obvious in Australia, or railed against in America, many English people continue to embrace these systems even as the wider world moves on in seemingly disordered ways.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-does-class-impact-on-australians-love-lives-new-research-brings-a-complex-issue-into-the-open-163893">How does class impact on Australians' love lives? New research brings a complex issue into the open</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191059/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cynthia Sear receives funding from the Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship Grant. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Dawson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Appeals to social organisation are about knowing one’s place, a particularly English preoccupation.Cynthia Sear, PhD Candidate, The University of MelbourneAndrew Dawson, Professor and Chair of Anthropology, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1445132020-08-17T15:37:01Z2020-08-17T15:37:01ZWhen hope is a dinghy in the Channel: how racism in Britain is a crisis of belonging<p>Fourteen years ago I came from Syria to study in Edinburgh, and because of the war there, Scotland is now home. As I watch the latest wave of desperate refugees try to make for the British coastline, I witness with a heavy heart how they are demonised in a now-familiar narrative by both the UK government and some parts of the media.</p>
<p>In a talk I gave last year, I discussed what Brexit means for Britain’s cultural and national identity and what its alienating stance means for immigrants like me.
As I shared my reflections as an academic and a new British citizen on how Brexit was not only a political issue but also a social challenge requiring urgent debate, a woman in the audience protested, saying she could not understand why Brexit mattered to me.</p>
<p>My critique of British politics was clearly not welcome. The woman’s dismissal of my Britishness was also a dismissal of my views as illegitimate. Was it my accent? My skin tone? Or was it my inescapable association with the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/12/demonisation-migrants-tories-scapegoat-covid">dangerous migrant</a>” discourse that has permeated British politics over the past ten years?</p>
<p>Did I cross a line because I dared to say Britain, my country, was wrong about Brexit, just like it was about the Iraq war and Windrush and the handling of the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/refugee-crisis-britain-and-other-rich-countries-failing-syrian-refugees-report-warns-a6957216.html">Syrian refugee crisis</a>? </p>
<p>I explained how politics does not escape people like me: every Syrian person is political. I explained how I was unable to distance myself from the social and political responsibility I feel towards Britain and its people, now my country and my people. I talked about the belongingness I feel to Britain, which I discussed in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/syrian-scottish-british-how-i-came-to-belong-before-i-became-a-uk-citizen-108226">previous Conversation article</a>. I said it mattered to me because as an academic, I am paid to think and be critical. She might not have said “why do you stay in this country?”, but I heard it. </p>
<h2>Faux Britishness</h2>
<p>During the recent <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com/">Black Lives Matter protests</a>, one debate that particularly resonated with me was the writer Afua Hirsch’s <a href="https://twitter.com/afuahirsch/status/1270331795557486592">calling out</a> of Britain’s racism on the Sky News discussion show <a href="https://twitter.com/thepledge?lang=en">The Pledge</a> and LBC’s <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/nick-ferrari-accused-of-making-racist-bigoted-comment-to-muslim-caller-a6736686.html">Nick Ferrari</a> demanding: “Why do you stay in this country?”</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1270331795557486592"}"></div></p>
<p>Hirsch was born to a British father and raised in London and yet Ferrari felt entitled to say what he said. What does that mean for me, an immigrant-turned-citizen? What happened to Hirsch was appalling not just because of what was said but the casualness of it, as if it was a white man’s right to say it and be heard.</p>
<p>This is not new and that is the problem. This issue has become pervasively cultural: an ingrained culture of impunity where some people feel entitled to use language to inflict emotional damage and derail a person’s sense of belongingness to this country.</p>
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<img alt="Tweet from Dr Zubaida Haque about racism and xenophobia in Britain" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353159/original/file-20200817-14-1ogh2gt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353159/original/file-20200817-14-1ogh2gt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=216&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353159/original/file-20200817-14-1ogh2gt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=216&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353159/original/file-20200817-14-1ogh2gt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=216&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353159/original/file-20200817-14-1ogh2gt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353159/original/file-20200817-14-1ogh2gt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353159/original/file-20200817-14-1ogh2gt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=272&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>If the Pledge incident says anything, it is that systemic racism is an issue that touches the lives of all those “plagued” by otherness in Britain. Hirsch raises these issues in her book, <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/brit-ish/afua-hirsch/9781784705039">Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging</a>, that debates, with courage and elegance, identity and belonging in 21st-century Britain.
The significance of Hirsch’s book, to me, is about her trying to establish a sense of belongingness in spite of the racism and bigotry that exist in British society, and what these things can do to a person’s sense of who they are. </p>
<p>I know that as someone who has ideals drawn from multiple cultures and whose identity and belonging are disrupted every time I proudly proclaim my Britishness, I always think that my Mediterranean looks might be overlooked, and then someone demands: “No, where are you <em>really</em> from?”</p>
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<h2>Let down by government</h2>
<p>Questions like that become even more problematic when linked to harmful narratives such as deserving versus undeserving immigrants and the government’s hostile immigration policy. Or home secretary <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/07/uk-plan-to-use-navy-to-stop-migrant-crossings-is-unlawful-lawyers-warn">Priti Patel’s intention</a> to use the British navy to stop migrant crossings. Or a photo-opp-ready <a href="https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/brexit-party-leader-ridiculed-on-twitter-over-migrant-spotting-pic-1-6791192">Nigel Farage sitting on a cliff-top</a>, looking out for migrants in the Channel.</p>
<p>In addition to being a <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/uk/publications/brochures/450037d34/rescue-sea-guide-principles-practice-applied-migrants-refugees.html">violation of</a> the UN Refugee Convention, Patel’s calls for navy intervention add to the rhetoric that presents migrants and refugees as a threat to Britain. But these refugees and migrants in dinghies, people looking for a better life, are not the only group affected.</p>
<p>Such harmful narratives affect the rest of us, once refugees and migrants and now citizens contributing to building this country, as we watch these people demonised by right-wing scaremongering and callously left in distress at sea. These narratives become a threat to our sense of humanity and belonging, and provoke feelings of not being accepted by a country we now call home.</p>
<p>But perhaps offering sanctuary to those fleeing persecution is too much to ask of a morally bankrupt government whose politics have been consistently disappointing in recent times. A government that was slow to engage with the BLM movement, has let down the Windrush generation, watched as Grenfell happened and dealt with COVID-19 with such incompetence, does not appear to be one that can protect those who are British, let alone those who are not. </p>
<p>Hirsch’s face during that exchange with Ferrari is a look I never want to see on my son’s face. In a future Britain, I imagine him, a boy born and raised in Scotland, being asked, “Where are you from?” but never “Where are you <em>really</em> from?”. I hear him uttering an unapologetic “I am British” without being made to question his identity or having to parse reasons for being a brown-skinned, brown-eyed British man. Or worse, being told to leave.</p>
<p>A future Britain would give all of us immigrants a chance, just like it has given singers Freddie Mercury and Rita Ora, architect Zaha Hadid, novelists Dina Nayeri and Judith Kerr, artists Mona Hatoum and Lucien Freud and filmmaker Hassan Akkad – individuals who have shown what a creative force refugees and migrants can be. A future Britain would be a safe home for us all and stable ground beneath our feet – not a Grenfell tower, not a refugee camp, not a patched-up dinghy sinking slowly within sight of the English coast.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144513/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lina Fadel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Can you only ever truly ‘belong’ in Britain if you aren’t white?Lina Fadel, Assistant Professor, Business Research Methods, Edinburgh Business School, Heriot-Watt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1287522019-12-18T14:49:20Z2019-12-18T14:49:20ZBoris Johnson’s British Christmas story – Love Actually in politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306658/original/file-20191212-85386-1y8dx0c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C2805%2C1289&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A still from the Conservatie party Love, Actually parody campaign video, Brexit, Actually</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Boris Johnson/Twitter</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Boris Johnson’s landslide election victory confirms, in case there was any doubt, that populist politics go <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/06/johnsons-get-brexit-done-strategy-resonates-with-marginal-focus-groups">hand-in-hand with populist messaging</a>. The Conservatives kept their message <a href="https://time.com/5749478/get-brexit-done-slogan-uk-election/">simple, emotive and repetitive</a> and barely let the focus slip from the personality of their leader.</p>
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<p>But straightforward does not mean simplistic. The Conservative campaign revealed that its understanding of contemporary media extended beyond political messaging and included an awareness of a much broader landscape of cultural references. In particular, the power that comes from using some of the most emotive associations of popular culture. </p>
<p>This is exemplified in the video advert which, for all its apparent frivolity and jostling for space amongst the myriad of other short clips and ads online, epitomises the successful Conservative media strategy and its ability to “own” Labour. Released last week, as part of a late-campaign Google and YouTube blitz by both main parties, it was a parody of the infamous “card scene” in the 2003 movie Love Actually.</p>
<p>In the original, the character Mark tells Juliet he loves her in secret by showing her statements written on cards on her doorstep. while her husband, Peter, stays inside, unaware. The parody featured Johnson in the role of silent seducer, using the cards to persuade a woman on her doorstep to stick with him and his determination to “get Brexit done”. Johnson’s version wasn’t without a characteristic whiff of disrepute, as it echoed an earlier parody of the same scene released a few weeks earlier by <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-love-actually-election-campaign-video-rosena-allin-khan-labour-a9240146.html">the Labour MP Dr Rosena Allin-Khan</a>.</p>
<p>But despite this – and despite the original clip’s rather dubious ethics – closer examination of the Love Actually associations used by the advert, demonstrate the daring willingness of the campaign to sweep up even negative perceptions of Johnson into a portrait of someone who could be relied on. </p>
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<h2>Love and fidelity</h2>
<p>Besides the obvious association with Christmas, Love Actually stands for two main things in the British cultural imagination. Firstly, it signifies Britishness, or at least one particular variety of Britishness. This is affluent, metropolitan Britain, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2003/nov/13/britishidentity.uk">celebrated in many of Curtis’s films</a>.</p>
<p>Johnson was in fact the third prime minister to be linked with the film’s positive affirmation of Britishness. Both <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3617425/Blair-and-Bush-will-find-little-to-agree-on-at-Gleneagles-.html">Gordon Brown</a> (in 2006) and <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/10290835/David-Camerons-Love-Actually-moment-as-he-defends-Britain-against-small-island-jibe.html">David Cameron</a> (in 2013) had their own “Love Actually moment” – referencing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mc2IWZOWXA">the speech</a> that the film’s prime minister (played by Hugh Grant) gives about UK/US relations – when standing up for Britain’s significance compared to other countries.</p>
<p>Secondly, the film is a warmhearted portrayal of what is genuine about relationships. It affirms that love is the force uniting people in the UK, both as human beings and as British people. Its title is subtly double, bringing both these features together. Love Actually is about the actuality of love, in all its forms. But the film gives us real love as seen through a British lens. This is indicated by its title phrase, which somewhat ironically evokes the speech patterns of the very <a href="https://inews.co.uk/opinion/defence-theresa-mays-hated-liberal-metropolitan-elite-534074">“liberal metropolitan elite”</a> scorned by Brexiteers. </p>
<p>By selecting the card scene for a Christmas election campaign, both the Allin-Khan and the Johnson versions were able to clothe themselves in the film’s overall connotations of warm, humorous, reasonable Britishness. It was an association which lent itself to promoting an approach to Brexit: To remain, in Allin-Khan’s case – to leave, in Johnson’s.</p>
<p>Yet, while Love Actually is about love, its most famous scene is actually about fidelity. Mark’s actions express his desire for Juliet but also the fact he covets another man’s wife. His silent declaration makes her complicit in the deceit by commanding her to tell Peter she has answered the door to carol singers. Her response is ambivalent as she returns to Peter, but only after giving Mark a consoling or encouraging (depending on your personal interpretation) kiss.</p>
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<p>In the same spirit, Allin-Khan’s suggested people secretly wanted to vote for another party, those that comprise the ruling class (one of her cards included unflattering photos of Johnson, Rees-Mogg, and Nigel Farage, among others). Her campaign was ultimately successful, resulting in her comfortably holding her <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/E14000998">Tooting seat with 52% of the vote share</a>. </p>
<p>Yet on a nationwide scale, the idea of persuading voters to ignore what many saw as an inviolable commitment to leaving the EU, as rubber-stamped by the 2016 referendum, proved much less effective. In contrast – and rather ironically for a man associated with lies and infidelity – Johnson’s video conveyed the values of loyalty, of sticking to one’s principles.</p>
<p>This double message, the acknowledgement of Johnson’s dishonesty and the assurance that he can be trusted, is what made his Love Actually parody so effective. It subtly referred to his reputation as a man who is not <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-shameless-pathological-liar-21077915">necessarily as good as his word</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-should-look-closely-at-britains-decision-to-elect-a-man-so-renowned-for-his-untrustworthiness-128733">We should look closely at Britain's decision to elect a man so renowned for his untrustworthiness</a>
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<p>One of the cards he holds up referred to the fact that he may, once again, be unable to keep his promise to get Brexit done: “If parliament doesn’t block it again.” Even more daringly, by presenting an image of Johnson creeping around London after dark, trying to keep things secret, the clip even evoked the recent speculation surrounding his relationships – notably with US businesswoman <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/08/boris-johnson-failed-to-disclose-meetings-with-jennifer-arcuri-in-diary">Jennifer Arcuri</a> and his girlfriend <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/21/police-called-to-loud-altercation-at-boris-johnsons-home">Carrie Symonds</a>.</p>
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<p>Relaying a message about Brexit quietly, after dark, traded on the idea of it being a radical force – something discussed knowingly by like-minded groups of people, and perpetrated by the kind of “<a href="https://badboysofbrexit.com/">bad boys</a>” who conspire in the night, rather than a responsible governing power. It acknowledged that Brexit might not make logical sense – a message Allin-Khan conveys outright in her video – but is a choice to be made from the heart not the head.</p>
<p>The advert’s overall impression was of Johnson speaking directly to his supporters, bypassing – as was his tendency throughout <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-speech-cancelled-protest-police-general-election-rochester-a9235821.html">the campaign</a>) – conventional public declarations. <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-love-actually-hugh-grant_uk_5def8252e4b00563b8576155?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAA4T5c1uELiioYPyqsqWzxEpjSU94pTDGKgaIjfPSIxrDY_cTg74ogvV8LKVnlvqelrOJhUz_gur8YlnCsbeZaJtQYFmXkwT52dX2CbymdqnsyKpYZIFnf0Mw5gJCcy9E0saeSqlSPaendI0Ih_lpux-GtQsDIjVB4Ia0HvX-KGb">Hugh Grant responded to Johnson’s advert</a> by noting that in the original, one of Mark’s cards stated: “Because at Christmas you tell the truth.” </p>
<p>The Johnson who appeared in the video may not be being fully honest. But for all his slipperiness, its success, like that of the Conservative campaign as a whole, was because – actually – it did not shy from the truth about Johnson and Brexit at a deeper level, while still persuading voters that Johnson was committed to doing what he says in private and public. That is, he will “get Brexit done”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128752/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bran Nicol does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The “card scene” from the much-loved Christmas film was parodied by both parties. Boris’ use of it of it showed a keen awareness of the allure of an awkward British bad boyBran Nicol, Professor of English, University of SurreyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1093902019-01-21T15:08:21Z2019-01-21T15:08:21ZRefugees and family migrants more likely to feel British than other immigrants<p>Public anxiety over immigration was a <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-latest-news-leave-eu-immigration-main-reason-european-union-survey-a7811651.html">key factor</a> in the Brexit referendum result. The government’s recent proposals for a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46613900">new post-Brexit immigration system</a>, which will put an end to the free movement of people from the EU, are intended to ease this same anxiety. </p>
<p>Yet, the emphasis of the new proposals is on meeting the future skills requirements of the domestic labour market. Commentators quickly pointed out that concerns over immigration are not always strictly economic in nature, and perceived <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/9f8bfe2a-0471-11e9-99df-6183d3002ee1">threats to British culture and identity</a> may be equally important.</p>
<p>The perception that people in some minority groups lack a sense of belonging in the UK has led successive governments to introduce policies <a href="https://theconversation.com/promoting-british-values-opens-up-a-can-of-worms-for-teachers-27846">explicitly promoting British values</a>. Unease around these issues has arguably also increased opposition to the admission of <a href="https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/reports/thinking-behind-the-numbers-understanding-public-opinion-on-immigration-in-britain/">refugees and family migrants</a>, who tend to arrive from countries that are culturally quite distinct from the UK. </p>
<p>Official nervousness around refugee arrivals was apparent during the refugee crisis in the <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/11839283/David-Cameron-Britain-should-not-take-more-refugees.html">summer of 2015</a>, and again in recent weeks, as the government declared a “major incident” over the small number of people trying to reach the UK in <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46705128">boats across the English Channel</a>.</p>
<h2>Feelings of Britishness</h2>
<p>My recent <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11150-018-9439-8">research</a> suggests that people who came to the UK as refugees or family migrants are much more likely than economic migrants to feel that they have a British national identity. A family migrant is anyone who said they originally migrated to accompany other family members, or to join family members who are already here. My analysis was based on data from the UK Labour Force Survey, which contained interviews with more than 76,000 migrants between 2010 and 2017. While 25% of economic migrants reported feeling British, this rose to 53% for refugees and 62% for family migrants. </p>
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<p>Even when comparing only migrants who came to the UK from the same countries of origin, and accounting for differences in their age at arrival, time since migration, ethnicity, and educational background, refugees and family migrants still stood out as the most likely to say they felt British. </p>
<p>This type of descriptive research only attempts to analyse patterns of British national identity over the relevant time period. It cannot be used to establish definitive explanations for these patterns, or to make predictions about what would happen in different future immigration scenarios.</p>
<p>Yet, the most simple and general explanation for my finding is that refugees and family migrants are more likely than economic migrants to plan to stay in the UK long term. The defining characteristic of an economic migrant is their pursuit of employment, which may or may not be viewed as a long-term arrangement. In contrast, a family migrant is defined by their attachment to family members in the country, and a refugee is defined by their having arrived in the country after fleeing war or persecution. In both these cases, a migrant’s anticipated length of stay in the UK is likely to be longer term.</p>
<p>It’s possible to more or less eliminate some other possible explanations for this finding. For example, I show in additional <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11150-018-9439-8#Tab3">analysis</a> that the result is not driven purely by a higher uptake of legal citizenship among refugees and family migrants, or by a higher proportion of family migrants arriving from countries in the British Commonwealth. Although citizenship and Commonwealth origins do seem to matter for identity, among people who are not British citizens, refugees and family migrants are still more likely to report a British identity. The same is true among migrants who come from countries outside the Commonwealth.</p>
<h2>Longer stays</h2>
<p>A large body of <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jel.54.1.98">previous research</a> suggests that other important aspects of migrant life – such as language learning or completing new qualifications – are shaped by how long a person intends to stay in their new country. This makes sense: learning the language to an advanced level or completing a qualification that is only recognised in the new county may simply not be worthwhile if one intends to leave before long. </p>
<p>The same logic could apply in the case of adopting a new national identity: for many who intend to stay for the foreseeable future, it is natural to develop a sense of feeling “British”, while for others it isn’t. A change in national identity may be more difficult than physically crossing an international border. </p>
<p>There’s no need for the UK to wish all migrants to feel British. All sorts of people migrate to the UK for different reasons, hopefully improving their own lives in the process, as well as contributing to the domestic economy and culture in different ways. It would be strange to suggest that a short-term migrant should or could adopt a British national identity, though it would perhaps be a sign of a healthy, inclusive national culture if a proportion of longer-term migrants did so. These matters of culture and identity are worth considering alongside strictly economic criteria in response to public anxiety over immigration.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109390/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This article is based on research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. The author declares previous research contracts at the UK Home Office, and data access at the UK Home Office relating to an earlier version of this research.</span></em></p>New research suggests that refugees and family migrants are more likely to report a British identity than economic migrants.Stuart Campbell, Research Associate, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1076562018-11-30T14:34:23Z2018-11-30T14:34:23ZGibraltar: how Brexit could change its sense of British identity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247928/original/file-20181129-170250-1eb2hs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gibraltar has its own kind of Britishness. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/1206050233?src=9H4uIddkf17xlSS9awWKhg-1-72&size=medium_jpg">Ben Gingell/Shutterstock </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The people of Gibraltar are famously proud to be British and still display strong loyalty to the crown and the UK. Yet Gibraltarian identity has long rested on two pillars of economic and political security the territory enjoys from its association with the UK. Brexit now threatens both of these pillars. If they are shaken, or crumble, so too may Gibraltarians’ attachment to Britain. </p>
<p>On November 24 the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, <a href="https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/11/26/inenglish/1543222571_685671.html">touted</a> a last-minute concession from EU leaders and British prime minister Theresa May over the future of Gibraltar ahead of final agreement on the Brexit deal. The most obvious – although contested – interpretation of what happened is that the EU recognised Spain’s interest in Gibraltar and that no future deal between the UK and the EU will cover Gibraltar without Spain’s prior consent. </p>
<p>Yet, despite <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-latest-theresa-may-gibraltar-spain-summit-brussels-withdrawal-agreement-a8650346.html">claims</a> that May “caved in” to Spain over Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo, Gibraltar’s chief minister, responded with passion and conviction in a televised <a href="https://www.gibraltar.gov.gi/new/sites/default/files/press/2018/Press%20Releases/720-2018.pdf">address</a> in Gibraltar the same evening. He stated that: “The United Kingdom has not let us down,” adding that Gibraltar enjoys “an entirely British future that will suffer no dilution”.</p>
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<p>Underpinning Picardo´s address are three longstanding elements of UK-Gibraltar relations. First, that in times of crisis Gibraltar sticks ever closer to the UK. Second, that unwavering loyalty to the UK will be returned. And third, that the UK has the political and economic power to protect Gibraltar. As historian <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03086530500411266">Stephen Constantine</a> has shown, pledging loyalty to the crown in order to finesse an economic or political advantage has been a strategy of Gibraltar’s since at least the 19th century. Brexit now puts all of these three assumptions in doubt.</p>
<h2>Less Spanish than ever</h2>
<p>As a group of researchers <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319993096">demonstrate</a> in a forthcoming book I’ve edited, there is clearly a deep attachment to Britain and British culture in Gibraltar, even as there is a growing sense of a specifically Gibraltarian British identity. There is no question these feelings are sincerely held but our research shows there there is also a pragmatism to this loyalty. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247930/original/file-20181129-170253-1x4unge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247930/original/file-20181129-170253-1x4unge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247930/original/file-20181129-170253-1x4unge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247930/original/file-20181129-170253-1x4unge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247930/original/file-20181129-170253-1x4unge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247930/original/file-20181129-170253-1x4unge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247930/original/file-20181129-170253-1x4unge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gibraltar: a small territory, at the centre of Brexit negotations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/1206050269?src=SlJc9RW-UPNKYyt5MrxMxA-1-2&size=medium_jpg">Ben Gingell/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, Gibraltar is certainly more anglophone than it ever has been in its history – as my colleague Dr Edward Picardo argues in our book. Although Gibraltarians’ outlooks are not necessarily unambiguously British, they are certainly less Spanish than ever. The implacable resolve of many Gibraltarians against Spanish sovereignty is illustrated by the words of a young Gibraltarian woman I spoke to shortly before watching Picardo’s speech:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We may be a small country and connected to Spain but they still have nothing to do with us. So we voted 96% Remain to be sold off to Spain? Over my and 30,000 other dead bodies. They can try … there would be riots and I think we would actually start a war and physically fight against Spain’s politicians it if came to it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Gibraltar is a place that brings back the Britain of yesteryear. It receives a steady stream of MPs (often invited by the Gibraltar government) and others who visit to warm themselves on the faint glow of the <a href="http://embersofempire.ku.dk/">embers of Empire</a>. MPs such as Jack Lopresti, the chair of the all-party group on Gibraltar, are fervent defenders of Gibraltar’s interests but, at the same time, passionate advocates of Britain leaving the EU.</p>
<p>Given that Gibraltar voted 96% to Remain in the EU this would seem as something of an irony. Yet because part of the Brexit momentum was fuelled by an <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/brexit-britain-may-johnson-eu/542079/">imperial nostalgia</a>, which included a vision by some in Whitehall for an “<a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/775399/empire-2-uk-improve-trade-links-african-commonwealth-nations-after-brexit-theresa-may">Empire 2.0</a>”, then Gibraltar emerges as an obvious icon of Brexit Britishness. Yet, ironically, Brexit threatens Gibraltar´s attachment to the UK.</p>
<h2>Anxiety for the future</h2>
<p><a href="http://borderingonbritishness.net/">Research</a> my colleagues and I have carried out shows that in the second half of the 20th century, Gibraltarian went from from being Spanish-speaking colonial subjects to identifying themselves as equal British citizens. This does not, however, mean that the “British forever” mentality is written in stone. Today some Gibraltarians are worried that loyalty to the crown will not be enough to protect them from Spanish claims. In recent days, a number of Gibraltarians have expressed the anxiety about being “sold out” or, as someone put it, that the UK is willing “to sacrifice the few (Gibraltar) for the many”.</p>
<p>Even as one retired teacher said to me recently: “Britain is our parent and we are the children” there are many others – not perhaps so vocal or as public – who are anxious about Picardo’s “jingoism”. One member of a labour union expressed his concern to me that Picardo’s uncompromising rhetoric gets in the way of constructive relations with Spain and reminded me that “the whole economy collapses if the Spanish worker doesn’t work here”. Others ruefully pointed out that it is a little odd to see the Gibraltarian government claiming the virtues of May’s Brexit deal when no one in the UK seems to agree with her. While others still express a concern that this closeness to the UK will “threaten” Gibraltar’s economy if it leads to “Spanish and other cross-frontier workers not being able to work here.”</p>
<p>Despite the chief minister’s assertion that the UK government is standing by Gibraltar, there is growing anxiety that Britain can not be guaranteed to do so and people point to Northern Ireland as an example of how trust in the UK Government can be misplaced. “If they do that to the Irish, what will they do to us?” as I was told. And opposition leader, Keith Azopardi, <a href="http://chronicle.gi/2018/11/azopardi-questions-euphoric-reaction-brexit-deal/">pointed out</a>: “"We must… be conscious as a community that the UK’s national interests are different to ours.” </p>
<p>This divergence of interests is one issue that is causing tremors in the Rock but much more important is surely the fact that the UK will no longer be in the EU to defend Gibraltar against Spain which was obliged to recognise British Gibraltar (and open the border Spain shut in 1969) when it joined the EEC in 1986. Brexit inverts this situation. Now it is the UK that is obliged to recognise Spain’s interest over Gibraltar, an historical irony <a href="https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/11/24/opinion/1543083223_152768.html">not lost on Spanish commentators</a>. Not only does Spain have a veto over any future trade relationship with Gibraltar after Brexit, it will also have a veto should the UK ever consider rejoining the EU. In this context, it seems likely that Spain would use its position to leverage more control over Gibraltar. </p>
<p>If it is indeed the case that Brexit means the UK is not only unwilling but unable to protect Gibraltar politically and economically, then this points to an existential crisis for Gibraltarian Britishness. Few in Gibraltar today are willing to consider ceding sovereignty to Spain. Under the Brexit scenario, however, it seems reasonable to wonder if Gibraltarian pledges of loyalty to the UK will become historical footnotes as Gibraltar is forced to seek a more pragmatic relationship with its increasingly powerful neighbour. Only time will tell whether the cry of “British Forever” will be reduced to an echo of the past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107656/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Canessa received funding from the ESRC for part of the research presented here. He is a member of the Green Party. </span></em></p>Gibraltarians are famously proud to be British. But amid the uncertainty of Brexit, some are having an existential identity crisis.Andrew Canessa, Professor, Department of Sociology, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1055162018-11-27T12:43:08Z2018-11-27T12:43:08ZHow children describe their national identity in the age of devolution<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246248/original/file-20181119-76160-1xnvubb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Welsh through and through.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/portrait-child-painted-welsh-flag-on-1060605857?src=9D7M2g-oQi3W5Kyg494Z5A-1-1">Djem/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>National identity is <a href="http://qisar.fssr.uns.ac.id/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Qisar-Yasir-Suleiman-The-Arabic-language-and-national1.pdf">difficult to define</a>. It is connected to other concepts, such as ethnicity, nationality and nationalism, so it means something different to everyone. </p>
<p>In Britain, national identity has been an important topic for many years, but particularly since the Labour government introduced devolution in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in 1997. These reforms not only gave new legislative powers to the devolved nations but also made citizens feel more affiliated with the separate countries. The UK has also become <a href="https://theconversation.com/britain-is-becoming-more-diverse-not-more-segregated-68610">more ethnically diverse</a> in recent decades. And research has found that people from ethnic minorities <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/future-identities-changing-identities-in-the-uk">are more likely</a> than white people to identify with Britain as a whole, and much less likely to identify solely with one of its four nations. </p>
<p>But what of the country’s children? How do those who were born post-devolution feel about their own nationalities? The relationship with one’s nation has long been established as <a href="http://ijhssi.org/papers/v3(5)/Version-3/B0353010014.pdf">starting in childhood</a>. But there is very little research which examines how younger children relate to the idea of nation and national identity, and the influences which affect this relationship. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246251/original/file-20181119-76154-1rdbko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246251/original/file-20181119-76154-1rdbko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246251/original/file-20181119-76154-1rdbko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246251/original/file-20181119-76154-1rdbko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246251/original/file-20181119-76154-1rdbko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246251/original/file-20181119-76154-1rdbko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246251/original/file-20181119-76154-1rdbko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Child’s play.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/british-seaside-traditional-sandcastle-on-beach-433642039?src=wikSQPa1zMYIOAm9OoMi6w-1-5">Claire Fraser Photography/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/chso.12252">My recently published study</a> examined children’s ideas about national identity and Welsh national identity, and what affects these notions. Many of the existing studies have mainly focused on adults’ views of what it means to be Welsh, but I wanted to investigate things from the child’s viewpoint. I also looked into both the personal perspective of national identity as well as looking collectively at ideas of Welshness. </p>
<h2>Being Welsh</h2>
<p>Between 2011 and 2013, I worked with 79 children aged between nine and ten years old from south east Wales. They were pupils at three different urban schools, two English medium and one Welsh medium. The study incorporated writing, drawings and interviews to capture the children’s insights.</p>
<p>My findings demonstrated that the children were able to define their national identities in clear and discerning ways. Welsh was the most cited national identity for this group – both in singular and multiple definitions for example, Kurdish Welsh. The children identified family, birthplace and residency as influences in determining their sense of their own national identity. </p>
<p>When reflecting on being Welsh and Welshness, the children’s drawings often portrayed stereotypical views of rugby and football players, with figures dressed in red shirts, as well as girls in traditional Welsh costumes. Similarly, the children frequently said that Welsh people had white skin tone, were Christian and played football or rugby. In this part of the investigation, the school, sport and the media were influential in shaping the children’s perceptions of a Welsh person. </p>
<p>Interestingly, while language was not highlighted as a significant feature when considering their own national identity, the children’s perceptions of a Welsh person placed an emphasis on the Welsh language. They said that people in Wales spoke Welsh and English, or Welsh or English – the latter implying that there was a choice.</p>
<p>This study gave insight into how children see their own national identity in a devolved nation with a lot of national pride such as Wales. It reveals their personal perspectives on their own identity and their understanding about what it means to be Welsh, a topic which has not previously been investigated in depth with children of primary school age.</p>
<p>The notion of Britishness in the post-devolution era is evidently quite complex. Neither adults nor children see themselves as just “British”. Nor is there just one type of Welsh – or English, Scottish, or Irish – identity that they see themselves or others as.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105516/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alison Murphy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Since 1997, the ways people in the UK define their nationality has rapidly changed.Alison Murphy, Academic Manager/Head of Early Years and Social Work, University of South WalesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/978352018-07-23T14:12:55Z2018-07-23T14:12:55ZBritish Remainers across continental Europe left with feelings of shame and loss after Brexit<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228430/original/file-20180719-142408-1c9m000.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A shifting sense of national identity. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/home">from www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Stereotypes of “Brits abroad” usually centre on retirees sat in pubs draped in the Union Jack flag. Britons living overseas are well aware of these, and for the most part, they’re keen <a href="https://theconversation.com/britons-reluctant-to-appear-part-of-a-british-expat-community-in-france-brexit-could-change-that-86166">to avoid being seen to live</a> in a “little Britain”.</p>
<p>In contrast to the staunch attachment to Britain and Britishness implied by this stereotype, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/area.12472">my survey</a> of 909 pro-Remain Britons living in other EU countries, found a more ambivalent relationship to their nationality and home country one year after the June 2016 referendum.</p>
<p>People took part in the online survey from 20 countries across the EU in June 2017. The largest share of respondents (48%) lived in France, followed by Spain (34%). Respondents were predominantly recruited via advocacy groups for citizens’ rights set up in the wake of the referendum, such as <a href="https://britishineurope.org/">British in Europe</a>. This meant that the survey was far more likely to engage with those who were against the result of the referendum, who made up 97% of respondents. </p>
<p>The responses to the survey expressed a wide register of emotions at the EU referendum result, from anger, through hope, to indifference. But two emotions were especially prominent: shame and loss.</p>
<p>Respondents were asked about their national identities, plans for the future and reflections on the EU referendum. Many of the Remain supporters described a common shift from a feeling of pride in their nationality to one of shame. Following the EU referendum, they felt that the UK was characterised by increasing xenophobia and insularity. One British woman in her fifties, who’d been living in Greece for 11 years, said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m ashamed of being British given the xenophobia and racism that has been unleashed by the referendum. This is not who ‘I’ am.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A ‘kick in the gut’</h2>
<p>Many respondents used dramatic language to convey a visceral sense of loss. There appeared to be a rupture between what respondents thought the UK was and what it had become. A man in his twenties who had been living in Spain for less than a year said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I feel like the country I belong to has gone. Call me dramatic but the referendum vote was a real kick in the gut, I feel as though mean-spirited people have robbed me of my country and my future. England isn’t the country I always thought it was. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another woman in her 30s who had been living in Belgium for nine years said she used to feel a very close link to the UK, until the referendum vote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>After I felt like this link had been broken – I did not understand the reasons behind the Leave vote and felt like the outcome, as well as its subsequent implementation in policy, did not reflect my understanding of the UK. I no longer felt British, if this is what being British meant. This actually caused me to have a strong identity crisis. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Many respondents also grieved the potential loss of their European citizenship and identity. A small minority told of having their European registered cars keyed when they travelled back to the UK or feeling uneasy about speaking another European language in public. This group felt that being perceived as continental Europeans was met with hostility in the UK. In contrast, most reported that neighbours and colleagues in the other EU countries where they lived were overwhelmingly supportive, bar a few jokes along the lines of: “I suppose you’ll have to leave now?”</p>
<p>A small number voiced a new sense of humility about their previous understandings of social divisions in Britain. There was some empathy for compatriots who had voted Leave because they felt excluded or marginalised. One woman in her sixties who’d been living in France for 15 years, but who’d lived in areas of the UK where a majority voted to leave the EU, said she didn’t “condemn those whose lives were badly affected by austerity”. She added:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some of my feelings of being born into a reasonably fair-minded, tolerant and charitable society have been rocked: perhaps those feelings were based on myths and the truth is that UK society is no better than many others and it is necessary to understand each others’ positions, to listen with some humility and to work and fight for the future of the young of the UK and EU and the rest of the world.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Renegotiating national identity and belonging</h2>
<p>On the face of it, expressions of shame and loss in relation to their national identity distanced the survey respondents from the UK. But, conversely, I think the intensity of their responses showed their ongoing investment in the country. There was a deep and ongoing concern about the UK and its affairs among Britons who had emigrated to live elsewhere in the EU.</p>
<p>Expressions of shame and loss among those surveyed are perhaps a way of reorganising their attachment to the UK in the face of a political landscape they are uncomfortable with – something that has also been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global/2016/jul/01/susie-orbach-in-therapy-everyone-wants-to-talk-about-brexit">tracked</a> among <a href="http://societyandspace.org/2016/08/23/national-atmospheres-and-the-brexit-revolt-angharad-closs-stephens/">Britons in the UK</a>. In this way, the findings highlighted some of the adjustments and accommodations around national identity and belonging that Remain supporters went through in the year following the EU referendum.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97835/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katie Higgins does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A survey of British Remain supporters living elsewhere in the EU after the referendum found feelings of shame and loss about what they felt their country had become.Katie Higgins, Research Fellow, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/757142017-04-04T14:32:53Z2017-04-04T14:32:53ZHow the people of Gibraltar came to feel British<p>With red phone and letter boxes and Bobbies on the streets, Gibraltar offers a glimpse of a bygone age when Britishness was confidently exported. Now, amid renewed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/02/britain-and-eu-worse-off-without-brexit-deal-says-michael-fallon">controversy</a> over the status of the territory, the phrase <a href="http://www.westmonster.com/gibraltar-will-be-british-forever/">“British forever”</a> has been heard once again in Gibraltar. </p>
<p>In the recent <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-04-03/gibraltar-dust-up-puts-brexit-tensions-on-display-quicktake-q-a?cmpid=BBBXT040417">debate</a> about Gibraltar and its future after Brexit, British and Gibraltarian ministers alike have stressed the very British nature of Gibraltarians. When asked by the BBC what would be so bad about joint sovereignty, Gibraltar’s chief minister, Fabian Picardo, replied: <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08ltrzw/the-andrew-marr-show-02042017">“It would strip us of who we are.”</a> </p>
<p>In research my colleagues and I have been conducting for the last four years in the <a href="http://borderingonbritishness.net/">Bordering on Britishness</a> project, we have found that the contemporary sense of Britishness of Gibraltarians is much more recent than the Rock’s 300-year history as a British territory might suggest. </p>
<h2>Being Gibraltarian</h2>
<p>Most Gibraltarians do not have their origins in the UK but are, rather, a mixture of Genoese, Maltese, Spanish, Moroccan Jewish and other peoples. Gibraltarian nationalism is still, however, tied to Britishness. As a Gibraltarian in his 70s told me (speaking in Spanish):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Yes, I speak English with an accent, but so does someone from Scotland or Wales. We are British in the same way they are. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Gibraltar has a local identity with its own flag and anthem, but this identity is bound with the UK. Not all Gibraltarians, however, are comfortable with this sense of Britishness. As a man in his 50s put it: “What’s happened now is that we imagine ourselves to be blue-eyed, blond Brits; and we are not!” </p>
<p>There are few Gibraltarians today who imagine a future independent from the UK – although <a href="https://theconversation.com/brexit-causes-anguish-on-gibraltar-74426">Brexit</a> has certainly focused the minds of some on this matter.</p>
<p>The overwhelming majority of people we have interviewed see themselves as British Gibraltarians – with a varying emphasis on each of those terms. Although the journey from colonial subject to citizen took time, since 1981 there has been no legal difference between UK British citizens and Gibraltarian ones. Today, many Gibraltarians imagine themselves as having the same status as people in Wales vis-a-vis the UK: certainly not English but British nevertheless. </p>
<p>Yet, there is a collective amnesia at play about what this identity meant in the past. When prompted, many Gibraltarians can recall what it was like to be second class citizens in Gibraltar. Until the 1960s, the Royal Naval Dockyard had separate toilets for British (of UK origin), Gibraltarians and Spaniards – as did the offices of Cable and Wireless. Gibraltarian’ wages were different from other British people based on the rock well into the 1970s. Many people we interviewed remember when “English” people were always served ahead of Gibraltarians in shops. They recalled feeling that they were not regarded as “one of us” by other British peoplee. </p>
<h2>Forging Britishness</h2>
<p>Going back further in time, for much of the 20th century Gibraltar’s civilian population was <a href="http://borderingonbritishness.net/humbert-hernandez-gibraltarian-became-british-britons/">overwhelmingly Spanish speaking.</a> There was not much difference between working class Gibraltarians and their neighbours immediately across the border: no difference in language, the music they listened to or the religion they practised. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163819/original/image-20170404-5713-1d0lemg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163819/original/image-20170404-5713-1d0lemg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163819/original/image-20170404-5713-1d0lemg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163819/original/image-20170404-5713-1d0lemg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163819/original/image-20170404-5713-1d0lemg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163819/original/image-20170404-5713-1d0lemg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163819/original/image-20170404-5713-1d0lemg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">All roads lead to Spain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">betta design/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When pressed to identify differences in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, our older interviewees said that Spaniards wore inferior footwear or “smoked different cigarettes” – essentially economic differences. When this generation was asked who were the Spanish people when they were young, they talked about the fishmonger, the hawker, the grocer, the barber and so on. But no one mentioned mothers, aunts, grandmothers who were born in Spain – almost a third of marriages before the war were between Gibraltarian men and Spanish women. </p>
<p>Today’s sense of Gibraltarian Britishness was primarily created by a Spanish campaign to “take back” Gibraltar which began in 1940. This developed with increasing intensity until the death in 1975 of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco’s. It saw the <a href="http://borderingonbritishness.net/category/border/">closure of the border between 1969 and 1985</a>. Much of contemporary anti-Spanishness in Gibraltar has its roots in this period. There continues to be a profound mistrust of the Spanish political class with the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/10222461/Gibraltar-minister-Spain-acting-like-North-Korea.html">chief minister likening Spain to North Korea</a>.</p>
<p>In Gibraltar, the argument is often made that Gibraltarians became a specifically British people through the experiences of wartime evacuation of most of <a href="http://borderingonbritishness.net/category/evacuation/">Gibraltar’s women and children</a> to the UK. There were, however, important continuities before and after the war, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43F_1KjUUfg">during which</a> most men stayed on the Rock and women and children lived in Spanish speaking communities, first in London and later in camps in Northern Ireland. </p>
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<p>It was during the war that the UK government decided Gibraltarians needed to be made more British and a plan was developed to promote the learning of English in Gibraltar and strengthen the “imperial connection” with the UK. Since then, Gibraltarians have studied the UK curriculum in English and currently all 18-year-olds have access to free university education in the UK, meaning the Gibraltar government covers fees, subsistence, and flights home. </p>
<h2>Spanish speaking falling away</h2>
<p>The result is a much greater familiarity with British than Spanish culture. Gibraltarians are becoming increasingly English speaking and whereas in the recent past they shared a language with their Spanish neighbours, for young Gibraltarians this is now a social barrier. One woman in her 70s told us:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My grandparents could … only speak Spanish … Even though my father spoke English, at home we spoke Spanish as my mother was Spanish … When I went to school I did not know any English, but luckily I learnt it … Now … everyone speaks in English … When we go to Spain to visit the parents of my son-in-law, they cannot understand a word of what my niece says … Today most children do not learn Spanish anymore.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Brexit threatens Gibraltarians’ sense of Britishness. Gibraltar’s economy requires membership of the EU to ensure the border remains open for people and goods and its financial and gambling sectors also depend on access to the EU. Despite some of the recent jingoistic posturing, Gibraltarians are concerned that the UK is neither willing nor able to defend Gibraltar’s political interests if it is outside the EU. Britishness itself is radically changing and there <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-british-medias-progressives-are-coming-round-to-scottish-independence-75412">may not even be a United Kingdom in a few years</a>. This suggests an existential crisis is brewing for Gibraltarian Britishness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75714/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Canessa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Gibraltarians have their own unique sense of Britishness, but in many ways it’s a recent development.Andrew Canessa, Professor, Department of Sociology , University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/694822017-01-31T09:09:33Z2017-01-31T09:09:33ZNot long ago, there was a British European identity – so what happened?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154739/original/image-20170130-7675-1rsiwd6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Can Britain be European without the EU?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/european-union-united-kingdom-flags-waving-363077531?src=BYFHItCl-Uwe-UFdN4mgyQ-1-12">www.shutterstock.com/Fresh Stock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>National identity is a double-edged sword. It can give a <a href="http://www.historytoday.com/robert-colls/british-national-identity">shared sense of belonging</a> to something bigger; inspiring and helping people to band together. It can equally lead down a path of mistrust, exclusion, and xenophobia. In times of change it can be hard to maintain the balance, and is no doubt something many Britons are struggling with post-EU referendum.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://time.com/4636141/theresa-may-brexit-speech-transcript/">her big Brexit speech</a>, Prime Minister Theresa May spoke of how she wanted Britain to be “truly global”: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the best friend and neighbour to our European partners, but a country that reaches beyond the borders of Europe too. A country that gets out into the world to build relationships with old friends and new allies alike.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Certainly a sentiment that many were hoping for, but it was not so long ago that Britons were encouraged to realise the value in being part of the European family. Indeed, in the wake of World War II, the idea that both British and European identity should be embraced made an enormous amount of sense. </p>
<h2>Lessons from the past</h2>
<p>Since the war, national affairs have seen many peaks and troughs, but nothing compared to the crisis currently unfolding. Though a global view should not be ignored, we still need to cultivate and nurture European-ness going forward, especially when the union bonds are cut.</p>
<p>I recently came across <a href="http://www.britishpathe.com/video/the-people-next-door-reel-1/">news footage from 1948</a> which sheds some interesting light on how British-European identity developed. Among other things, the film features a group of British children, orphaned by the war, boarding a ship for a sponsored holiday to Belgium. The narrator explains that through such travels, “our children will be more than British: they’ll be Europeans”. </p>
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<p>In the period after World War II, insular nationalist perspectives were largely discredited. Extreme nationalism, after all, had been <a href="https://www.mtholyoke.edu/%7Eghost20j/classweb/ghost20j/Perpetrator%20Motivations%20Behind%20the%20Holocaust%20German%20Nationalism.html">one of the root causes</a> of the war. Many viewed integration and fostering a sense of European identity as a way to <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/david-held-kyle-mcnally/europe-eu-and-european-identity">move beyond nationalism</a>. It was a chance for Europe to start afresh, with a renewed political, economic and social order.</p>
<p>This European consciousness worked well as a replacement for discredited nationalism in places such as divided Germany. However, in countries with less compromised pasts and presents, such as Britain, it had to be actively fostered and promoted. </p>
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<p>Citizen-led initiatives such as cultural exchange schemes, student mobility projects, <a href="http://www.alda-europe.eu/plus/public/publications/71-CITIES-final-publication-EN-web-31012011.pdf">town twinning</a>, and cross-national professional organisations <a href="http://isj.org.uk/the-ideology-of-europeanism-and-europes-migrant-other/">were part of a wider movement</a> that helped to build a sense of European belonging for ordinary British people. It is not a coincidence that many of these programmes focused on the young: here was a future-oriented vision of an emerging British citizen who would see him or herself as belonging to, and leading in, a democratic European project. </p>
<h2>Identity in the nuclear age</h2>
<p>This is not to imply that the British government had a straightforward relationship with European integration, however. Though Winston Churchill called for the <a href="http://www.cfr.org/europe/churchills-united-states-europe-speech-zurich/p32536">“United States of Europe”</a> in 1946, Clement Attlee’s government, which came to power in 1945, was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/21/brexit-euroscepticism-history">opposed to integration</a>.</p>
<p>By 1948, perspectives were changing. The Cold War was developing in earnest; the US was <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Q3S_63sGvPYC&pg=PT103&lpg=PT103&dq=america+favoured+%22united+states+of+europe%22&source=bl&ots=EJldeNctkD&sig=0g2TWvreX8DPNcalttlI4hyRMl8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwic6qWbpbzRAhWKDcAKHbmhAtE4ChDoAQg5MAU#v=onepage&q=america%20favoured%20%22united%20states%20of%20europe%22&f=false">increasingly in favour</a> of a federalist structure for western Europe, to act as a bulwark against the Soviet sphere. The May 1948 Hague Congress prompted considerable <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Q3S_63sGvPYC&pg=PT103&lpg=PT103&dq=america+favoured+%22united+states+of+europe%22&source=bl&ots=EJldeNctkD&sig=0g2TWvreX8DPNcalttlI4hyRMl8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwic6qWbpbzRAhWKDcAKHbmhAtE4ChDoAQg5MAU#v=onepage&q=america%20favoured%20%22united%20states%20of%20europe%22&f=false">enthusiasm for the European project</a>, both among policymakers and in popular opinion. Greater European integration was increasingly seen as an answer to national vulnerability in the nuclear age. </p>
<p>It was in this context that the orphaned British children of the newsreel made their voyage to Belgium, to become a new breed of European citizen. If these children are still alive, they would now be in their eighties – and potentially part of the 64% of British voters over 65 years of age that <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/06/27/how-britain-voted/">chose to leave the EU</a>.</p>
<h2>Fostering identity</h2>
<p>You may be asking at this point what went wrong? It is not easy to say whether the social and cultural projects aimed at fostering a collective sense of European identity were a success or not. In 1948, they were experiencing a boom moment, and though some initiatives dried up over time – not many orphans are still sent for holidays in Belgium – others, like the <a href="http://www.erasmusprogramme.com/">ERASMUS student and teacher exchange programme</a>, founded 30 years ago, have flourished.</p>
<p>If integration programmes had more effectively reached areas where the Leave campaign had the greatest influence, would the referendum have been different? There is no research to back this up at present, but it is an interesting point to consider.</p>
<p>European integration was a response: an endeavour built on the shared desire for cooperation, unity, and protection from the threat of war. Without it, Britain will truly be diminished. Though there is nothing wrong with the global outlook that May suggested, neither should we rush to undo the years of European integration.</p>
<p>The British European spirit is still alive and can thrive, if there is commitment to build it. Just look at what happened when English astronaut Tim Peake went to the International Space Station on behalf of the European Space Agency: Britain responded with a great swell of pride. Indeed, the head of the European Space Agency said that it had delivered a fresh boost of “<a href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjM-YLS6OnRAhUnK8AKHdBSBMEQFggcMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ibtimes.co.uk%2Ftim-peake-esa-boss-claims-british-astronaut-represents-european-spirit-1566098&usg=AFQjCNEoVjLB9OzVM_h-teJ8DfnD_aMWJQ">European spirit</a>”.</p>
<p>Perhaps the best way forward is fostering European spirit through such large-scale projects, rather than community initiatives. But without trying, Britons will never know.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69482/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Clifford receives funding from the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust. </span></em></p>Children in the 1940s were brought up believing that European identity was the way forward – so what went wrong?Rebecca Clifford, Associate Professor of Modern History, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/708412017-01-04T16:26:28Z2017-01-04T16:26:28ZBrexit, comedy and ‘Britishness’ – what to do when parody becomes real<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151728/original/image-20170104-18659-dg6db3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A local shop, for local people.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If as it is said <a href="http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/06/25/comedy-plus/">comedy is tragedy plus the benefit of time</a>, sometimes time allows things to come full circle. When in 1999 Edward and Tubbs, characters from the BBC’s <a href="http://www.leagueofgentlemen.co.uk">The League of Gentlemen</a>, declared their Royston Vasey village store “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meF7NmfnXZ0">a local shop for local people</a>” I laughed because their narrow-minded localist zeal seemed so grotesquely out of step with the UK’s global and multicultural attitudes. But in the aftermath of the Brexit vote, where not being “local” became a figurative, legal or literal stick with which to beat others, Edward and Tubbs have lost some comic lustre and gained an eerie relevance. </p>
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<p>In much film and television comedy of the New Labour years – such as the Simon Pegg film Hot Fuzz (2007), where <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiYvyIltqcs">civic pride concealed satanic rituals of local “cleansing”</a>, or Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), where the threat to local produce instils villagers with a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7MDXFiMMGQ">mob mentality</a> – it is an inclusive, plural, playful sense of “Britishness” that is the implied alternative to these excesses. When I recognised the Britishness of these films and how I identified with it, I realised that, to a large extent, this Britishness did not really exist – or at least, it only existed as an ironic gesture or parody. The alternative, of course, was to assert the sort of cultural and racial essentialism that has long been among the unpalatable myths used by nationalists the world over.</p>
<p>In laughing along, I feel that Britishness is here defined by not taking the concept of Britishness at all seriously. This isn’t itself an innately British quality, but it could be thought of as a certain post-imperial tendency in the comedy that has shaped a prevalent part of British culture since the 1960s. The sort of comedy that is as much obsessed by historical myths of Britishness as it is derisive of them: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZaBbH4bCjY&list=RDZZaBbH4bCjY#t=31">Beyond the Fringe</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrzMhU_4m-g">Monty Python’s Flying Circus</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeE133Wu96c&list=PLPaC5ts4ofWMj9av8dGQR45H7AZ0Ve38c">Ripping Yarns</a>, Blackadder, and The League of Gentlemen.</p>
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<p>This comic playfulness regarding Britishness has become a key vehicle for promoting British culture abroad through hugely successful rom-coms such as Notting Hill or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdzH6a-XEGM">Love Actually</a>. That the UK <a href="http://portland-communications.com/pdf/The-Soft-Power_30.pdf">tops recent indexes of global soft power</a> owes much to the self-effacing and metropolitan charms of films such as these. It is also apt that Rowan Atkinson’s Mr Bean persona, Britain’s most exportable comedy brand, should have found a central role in the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics. </p>
<p>The inspired choice to have Atkinson’s weary keyboardist daydream his way through <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwzjlmBLfrQ">a travesty of Chariots of Fire’s opening scene</a> – a film more often associated with flag-waving jingoism – helped rework the ceremony’s traditional cultural remit towards less aggressively nationalistic or historically essentialist terrain. Recall also that the show began with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AS-dCdYZbo">Her Majesty jumping from a helicopter</a> strapped to a Union Jack parachute. Yet this same send-up of British iconography also served in the context of the ceremony as a form of soft patriotism: one that while drawing a line under Britain’s imperial past, was no less assertive even through parody of its new cultural standing in the world.</p>
<p>But that was 2012. The events of 2016 point towards political isolationism and more tightly prescribed notions of national identity, with significant repercussions for British comedy. How do we reconcile, for example, the divergent comedic impulses to leave or remain? The League’s village of Royston Vasey is taken from the birth name of Roy “Chubby” Brown, a foul-mouthed and anarchic British comedian who has mined cultural and ethnic prejudices to perennially popular effect. The uncomfortable potency of the League’s dark comedy comes from their willingness to flirt with sentiments that have clearly not been banished to the past, but which still churn away just under the surface.</p>
<p>The lessons of “Chubby” Brown and a whole other tradition of British comedy dating from the 1970s (oddly enough, the decade that Britain entered the European Economic Community), such as the Carry On films, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2133506/It-Aint-Half-Hot-Mum-screened-BBC-deem-racist-modern-society.html">It Ain’t Half Hot Mum</a>, and Mind Your Language, are that comedy can as easily reinforce exclusive and culturally fixed notions of national identity as it can dispel them. Nor can we simply laugh away such comedy’s potent appeal, however much it might make us squirm.</p>
<p>The role of comedy in negotiating not only a hard or soft Brexit, but hard and soft conceptions of Britishness, will be a pressing concern both for comedy producers and those who write about it. It was perhaps fitting that this of all summers should see the BBC attempting, in an evidently nostalgic gesture, to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p045jktf">revive popular sitcoms from the 1970s</a>, and just as apt that the week after the EU referendum saw the release of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj3ZWhlmexw">Absolutely Fabulous</a> – a very knowing comedy portrayal of national self-denial. The wider impact of the events of 2016 on the cultural and comedic tendencies to come remains to be seen.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70841/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Neil Archer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>British comedy has always revelled in self-reflexive parody. Now, following Brexit, perhaps the re-nationalisation of British comedy is nigh.Neil Archer, Lecturer in Film Studies, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/643282016-08-24T08:22:45Z2016-08-24T08:22:45ZThe Great British Bake Off vs the Presidential Cookie Poll: who comes up trumps?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135186/original/image-20160823-30257-11kivov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 12 contestants about to duel by sourdoughs and shortbreads in series seven of The Great British Bake Off have now been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-37083631">unveiled by the BBC</a>. Given the show’s phenomenal success – some <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/08/the-great-british-bake-off-final-nadiya-jamir-hussain-gbbo">13m viewers</a> tuned in to the season finale in 2015, making it the most-watched show of the year – levels of cake-related excitement in the UK are running high. </p>
<p>But in the preamble to the new season of Bake Off, starting on August 24, you might have missed another notable piece of baking news, this time from the other side of the Atlantic. Observing an American electoral ritual inaugurated in 1992, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/the-2016-first-lady-cookie-contest-is-just-as-weird-as-the-rest-of-the-election/2016/08/17/2c0fb4fa-63c9-11e6-8b27-bb8ba39497a2_story.html">voting has opened</a> in the Presidential Cookie Poll, pitting Melania Trump’s star cookies against Hillary and Bill Clinton’s chocolate chip offerings.</p>
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<p>The temptation, perhaps, is to dismiss these two competitions as mere soufflés, affording the cultural analyst no nutrition. But this would be a mistake. Just as “the purchase of a sponge cake” was a matter of profound interest <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/recipes/jane-austens-food-inspiration/">to Jane Austen</a>, so the contemporary making of baguettes, biscuits and brioches is ripe with intellectual possibilities. Nestling beneath the glaze of a pie is not only an enticing filling for immediate consumption but an array of social meanings to ponder.</p>
<p>National identities, not just competitors’ scores, are up for grabs in baking contests such as the Presidential Cookie Poll and The Great British Bake Off. One way of grasping the issues at stake is to review the troubled history of attempts to clone Bake Off for the American market.</p>
<h2>Incompatible ingredients</h2>
<p>In 2013, under the title of <a href="http://www.cbs.com/shows/american-baking-competition/">The American Baking Competition</a>, CBS attempted to re-purpose Bake Off for the US. Multiple elements of the British original were transposed, including the three-challenge format. Paul Hollywood, one of the two judges of the UK series, was also imported. But the show refused to rise. Having begun with the <a href="http://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/the-american-baking-competition-season-one-ratings-28628/">worst-rated Wednesday evening premiere in CBS’s history</a>, the series struggled for an audience, making its recommissioning inconceivable.</p>
<p>Various explanations have been offered for the show’s failure. One centres upon the naked ambition exhibited by the contestants. In the UK, an engraved cake stand is awarded to the victor of Bake Off; the winner of The American Baking Competition, meanwhile, received $250,000, plus a book contract. Unsurprisingly, then, the US competition was barbed.</p>
<p>Yet we should be cautious about distinguishing hobbyist British baking from a thoroughly capitalistic American counterpart, since to remove Bake Off itself from the realm of economics would be naïve. Not only has the show proved highly exportable to overseas markets, boosting the BBC’s entrepreneurial credentials, it also offers significant commercial opportunities to winners and runners-up. <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-great-british-bake-off-became-the-great-british-identity-battle-48851">Nadiya Hussain</a>, last year’s winner, exemplifies this most spectacularly, having earned numerous TV, magazine and newspaper deals since her victory in 2015. </p>
<p>The failure of The American Baking Competition is more attributable to queasily incompatible ingredients. Gentility was combined with abrasion, kindness with cutthroat competition. The effect was one of situating Downton Abbey in an American cityscape.</p>
<p>Comparable mistakes were made in 2015 when ABC tried to replicate Bake Off. This time Mary Berry was involved, paired with a US chef to judge <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCCsXeKkUjs">The Great Holiday Baking Show</a>. Copying of the original was even more slavish, extending to use of the same English setting. Again, however, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/nov/30/great-holiday-baking-show-british-bake-off-abc-copy-fails?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other">viewing figures were poor</a>. The deficiency, once more, was incomplete anglicisation. The Great Holiday Baking Show also suffered from the fact that, from 2014, PBS had begun to screen Bake Off itself to American audiences, making any ersatz substitutes superfluous.</p>
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<h2>Baking the nation</h2>
<p>The terms in which Bake Off itself has been received in the US imply a sense of Britain as unchanging, picturesque, pleasingly quaint. Writing in The Atlantic on the Great Holiday Baking Show, Sophie Gilbert <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/12/the-great-holiday-baking-show/418506/">argued</a>: “baking is nostalgia, baking is home, baking is a warm, cinnamon-scented sense of security”. But while true, this is only a partial insight. Bake Off reveals that baking is many other things as well, including money.</p>
<p>Conversely, the series actually contests a nostalgic Britishness. Geographers David Bell and Gill Valentine have <a href="http://www.academia.edu/718528/World_on_a_Platter_Consuming_Geographies_and_the_Place_of_Food_in_Society">argued</a> that “the food which we think of as characterising a particular place always tells stories of movement and mixing”. These “stories” are brought to the fore in Bake Off by contestants’ recipes from multiple cuisines: Ugne’s Lithuanian honeycake in 2015, for example, or Alvin’s Filipino-inspired jelly bar. With the new series set to feature culinary influences <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-37083631">from Cyprus to Ghana</a>, it can confidently be expected not to amount to The Great Brexit Bake Off.</p>
<p>But such open embrace of multiculturalism in baking is not apparent in current choices for the Presidential Cookie Poll. The Clintons adopt a conservative, even nativist stance by choosing America’s favourite cookie. And while Melania Trump’s use of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/the-2016-first-lady-cookie-contest-is-just-as-weird-as-the-rest-of-the-election/2016/08/17/2c0fb4fa-63c9-11e6-8b27-bb8ba39497a2_story.html">sour cream</a> hints at her Slovenian origins, she remains careful not to overstate non-US influences. </p>
<p>So the America conjured up by the cookie contest is, in fact, more traditional than the Britain of Bake Off. If the poll’s regressive gender politics have eased slightly from its initial iteration as the First Lady Cookie Bake-Off, the sense of nostalgia lingers. The Cookie Poll – along with the prevailing American response to Bake Off itself – fantasises about an older, artisanal world, failing to acknowledge that baking can also teach us about modernity and change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64328/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Dix does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Baking offers some interesting insights into the state of the modern world.Andrew Dix, Lecturer in American Studies, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/636742016-08-23T09:34:59Z2016-08-23T09:34:59ZAfter Brexit, nationals could take a lesson in integration from immigrants<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134955/original/image-20160822-18711-e79iop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">pcruciatti/Shutterstock.com </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hate crimes in England, Wales and Northern Ireland <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-36869000">reached a new peak</a> after the UK’s Brexit vote. This was sadly predictable, considering that one of the Leave campaign’s key arguments in favour of exiting the European Union was the prospect of getting tougher on migration and border controls. </p>
<p>Anti-migration sentiment is not a “British only” phenomenon. Alternative for Germany, a nationalist party which recorded the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-local-elections-far-right-groups-merkel-afd-npd-huge-gains-a6917246.html">strongest increase</a> in three federal state elections in 2016, <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/wahlen-2016-die-ergebnisse-der-landtagswahlen-im-ueberblick-a-1082093.html">proclaimed</a> “<em>Einwanderung braucht klare Regeln</em>” – migration requires clear rules. With <a href="http://guardianlv.com/2015/05/donald-trump-wants-to-build-a-wall-between-u-s-and-mexico/">his call for a wall</a> to be built along the US-Mexico border, US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has taken anti-immigration rhetoric to the centreground of American politics. </p>
<p>The message from these politicians is clear: migration is not only an economic threat but also a cultural one – the more we accept different ways of life in our own neighbourhood, the more our own way of doing things is under existential threat. But <a href="http://ccr.sagepub.com/content/early/recent">our recent research</a> has shown how a zero-sum trade off between national and other cultures does not really reflect the reality. </p>
<h2>Integration goes both ways</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.victoria.ac.nz/cacr/research/mirips/MIRIPSprojectdescription-August-2013.pdf">Psychologists, anthropologists</a>, and <a href="http://www.mipex.eu/">political scientists</a> have studied how migrants can integrate – maintaining the heritage culture of the country where they were born, while simultaneously adapting to a host culture. So a German migrant living in the UK can have German friends, speak German and cheer for the German football team while at the same time be fluent in English, hang out with British friends, and wear a poppy in November. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134952/original/image-20160822-18718-h84y3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134952/original/image-20160822-18718-h84y3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134952/original/image-20160822-18718-h84y3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134952/original/image-20160822-18718-h84y3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134952/original/image-20160822-18718-h84y3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134952/original/image-20160822-18718-h84y3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134952/original/image-20160822-18718-h84y3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The streets around Markazi Jamia Mosque in Bradford.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/tjblackwell/7761133946/sizes/l">tj.blackwell/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Overall, migrants who identify with, and participate in both their heritage culture and the host culture <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/0022-4537.00225/abstract">have better overall well-being</a> and their children even do better at school. </p>
<p>But what about nationals – non-immigrant people, who live alongside immigrants in their own country? Are they also able to adapt to immigrants without losing their national culture?</p>
<p>In <a href="http://ccr.sagepub.com/content/early/recent">my recent research</a> with colleague Tara Marshall, I tried to answer this question by changing the wording of <a href="http://www.midss.org/content/vancouver-index-acculturation">a questionnaire</a> usually given to migrants. The original questionnaire uses ten questions to ask migrants how much they maintain a link to their birth, or “heritage” culture, and another ten questions on much they have adapted to their new “host” culture. </p>
<p>We adapted this for nationals: asking them ten questions about how much they link to their birth culture – what we call “national culture maintenance” – and another ten about their adaptation to cultures of immigrants, their “multicultural adaptation”. For example, do they have neighbours, friends, colleagues or students who they know who are immigrants, and do they identify with them. </p>
<p>We gave this questionnaire to 837 nationals in two different studies in 2012. First, we asked 218 US nationals to complete our modified questionnaire online. For example, on a scale from 1 “strongly disagree” to 5 “strongly agree”, we asked them if: “I believe in my American cultural values” and “I believe in diverse cultural values.” </p>
<p>Not only did the data show that American nationals can integrate towards other cultures but also that both maintaining one’s national culture while adapting to cultures of immigrants were significantly and positively linked. When our participants scored high on the ten questions addressing national culture maintenance they were more likely to also score high on the other ten questions addressing multicultural adaptation – and vice versa. This would indicate that building a wall between cultures as Trump advocates might actually diminish America’s own national culture rather than encouraging people to endorse it more.</p>
<h2>Why immigration is good for culture</h2>
<p>In our second study in 2012, 619 participants across the UK, Germany, China, India and the US also answered our questionnaire online. Across all the countries we again found that scoring high on one set of the ten questions had no or a slightly positive impact on how nationals answered the other set of questions. This “slightly positive impact” was found for the American and European nationals who answered our questionnaire whereas the “no impact” was found for the Chinese and Indian participants.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134936/original/image-20160822-18725-v6vka7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134936/original/image-20160822-18725-v6vka7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134936/original/image-20160822-18725-v6vka7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134936/original/image-20160822-18725-v6vka7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134936/original/image-20160822-18725-v6vka7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134936/original/image-20160822-18725-v6vka7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134936/original/image-20160822-18725-v6vka7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Getting ready for Diwali in High Barnet, north London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/npmeijer/6286671131/sizes/l">npmeijer/flickr.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In other words, those British nationals who engaged in cultural practices from immigrant communities such as Diwali were no less likely to engage in British cultural practices such as Bonfire Night. Nor were they less likely to strongly endorse British values such as <a href="https://geert-hofstede.com/united-kingdom.html">individualism</a> – the preference of the “I” over the “we”. </p>
<h2>Fitting in</h2>
<p>In this second study, we also analysed how nationals’ cultural adaptation to immigrants’ culture in their own country affected their well-being and daily life. Our results showed a clear message – when you adapt to other cultural groups in your own country you feel less stressed about their presence and experience a sense of “fitting in” or being comfortable in multicultural environments. </p>
<p>All this comes back to Brexit. Leave campaigners argued that by exiting the EU, and reducing immigration, British culture would be safeguarded. But our research shows that people’s likeliness to endorse British culture is not at threat – and it can be even higher when they also endorse the cultures of immigrants. </p>
<p>Our research <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/alexander_betts_why_brexit_happened_and_what_to_do_next?utm_campaign=social&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=t.co&utm_content=talk&utm_term=global-social%20issues">echoes</a> work by Oxford migration expert Alexander Betts, who argues that the vote for Brexit grew out of “a deep, unexamined divide between those that fear globalisation and those that embrace it”. </p>
<p>Integration is not only a task for immigrants. Nationals that integrate towards other cultures around them will thrive more too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63674/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katharina Lefringhausen is affiliated with SIETAR Europe. </span></em></p>Research shows how locals thrive from adapting to the heritage cultures of their new neighbours.Katharina Lefringhausen, Lecturer in Psychology, Brunel University LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/616922016-07-15T11:28:29Z2016-07-15T11:28:29ZBritain after Brexit: steadily becoming more Swiss<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129869/original/image-20160708-24060-c3fm8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">esfera/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/06/can-uk-have-deal-eu-switzerland-or-norway">comparisons</a> were made between the UK and Switzerland in the lead up to Britain’s EU referendum. Switzerland has long been employed as an example of a supposedly self-assured, stable democracy that stands on its own within Europe – a position many Vote Leave campaigners admired. </p>
<p>In her poem “Our lives are Swiss”, written in the 1800s, <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/113/1123.html">Emily Dickinson</a> spoke to an insulated status quo, and an exceptional moment in which “the Alps neglect their curtains, And we look farther on” out towards Italy. I am not suggesting that Switzerland is actually insular, or that the Brexit referendum result necessarily means that Europe will recede from regular view – I sincerely hope not. </p>
<p>But now that the UK has voted for Brexit, the similarities between the UK and Switzerland have become all the more striking. </p>
<p>In the 21st century, the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) has mobilised voters and turned national referendums into a vehicle for anti-EU, anti-immigration politics, much like the UK Independence Party has done in Britain. </p>
<p>When I took up my post at the University of Bern in 2014, a Swiss referendum on immigration <a href="https://theconversation.com/swiss-vote-for-cap-on-migrants-has-government-tied-in-knots-23164">had resulted in 50.3% voting</a> in favour of quotas for all immigrants, setting Switzerland on a collision course with the EU over its treaty on freedom of movement. This percentage was the same as the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/07/world/swiss-reject-tie-to-wider-europe.html">Swiss 50.3% vote against the country</a> joining the European Economic Area in 1992. Both times there were splits between the city and the countryside, and between linguistic areas. These were not dissimilar to what happened in the voting lines in the UK’s referendum: the French-speaking cantons were like Switzerland’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/scottish-independence-back-in-play-after-brexit-shock-with-a-note-of-caution-61457">Scotland</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/northern-ireland-prepares-to-enter-a-post-brexit-quagmire-61590">Northern Ireland</a>, so to speak, and Zurich the UK’s London. </p>
<h2>Universities on edge</h2>
<p>Following Switzerland’s 2014 referendum, the EU swiftly put a stop to Erasmus+ student and academic exchange agreements, and university colleagues feared for the future of research funding and pan-European collaboration. Less than a year after starting work in Sheffield, my UK university colleagues are currently voicing <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-uk-leaves-the-eu-36719923">similar concerns</a> about the future of EU research. </p>
<p>In the aftermath of the 2014 referendum, Switzerland is <a href="http://www.sbfi.admin.ch/aktuell/medien/00483/00586/index.html?lang=en&msg-id=60389">only partially associated</a> with the EU’s Horizon 2020 initiative of the European Research Area. The Swiss government stumped up the cash to replace Erasmus+ with the <a href="https://www.ethz.ch/en/studies/non-degree-courses/exchange-and-visiting-studies/programmes/exchange-programmes/swiss-european-mobility-programme.html">Swiss-European Mobility Programme</a> for university students. It is more or less the same scheme as before, under a new name: except that Switzerland funds the students visiting from abroad as well as those leaving Switzerland for an international partner university.</p>
<p>As post-Brexit negotiations begin, universities will strongly be making the case to maintain the status quo.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129865/original/image-20160708-24084-1uorowk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129865/original/image-20160708-24084-1uorowk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129865/original/image-20160708-24084-1uorowk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129865/original/image-20160708-24084-1uorowk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129865/original/image-20160708-24084-1uorowk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129865/original/image-20160708-24084-1uorowk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129865/original/image-20160708-24084-1uorowk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Our lives are Swiss.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pranavian/5024333080/sizes/l">Pranavian/flickr.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Negotiated position</h2>
<p>After the vote for Brexit, the UK’s negotiations with Europe will take a while. Switzerland is still struggling to reconcile the 2014 referendum outcome with the EU’s stance. The deadline for the Swiss referendum’s implementation is February 2017, but the Swiss government sees Brexit as a hindrance to those efforts, worrying that its own negotiations will become a <a href="http://www.swissinfo.ch/directdemocracy/swiss-weigh-up-consequences-of-brexit-vote/42248946">lower priority</a> for Brussels. </p>
<p>If the Brexit referendum stokes <a href="https://theconversation.com/britain-is-leaving-the-eu-will-other-countries-follow-61460">calls for referendums</a> throughout Europe, Britain’s dealings could also drag on further. The UK and Switzerland could enter into negotiations with the EU <a href="https://next.ft.com/content/b2d07188-441f-11e6-b22f-79eb4891c97d">together</a> – though this might be perceived as going against the spirit of the rhetoric of the winning referendum camps in both countries, which argued for each nation to take charge of its own negotiation.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, some in the Remain camp are <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36777494">shouting in Britain for a re-run</a> of the vote, taking their cue from Ireland’s “Lisbon II” referendum on a new EU treaty in 2009 after it was rejected at the ballot box on a previous attempt the year before. As the complexities and consequences of Brexit become clearer, more referendums may be no bad thing, in the style of Switzerland’s direct democracy. Turnout on June 23 was 72.2%, higher than in any general election over the past 20 years. Issues fire up the British electorate, while enthusiasm for party politics is fading.</p>
<h2>Identity crises</h2>
<p>Switzerland has a long tradition of debating “Swissness”, of which Britain should take note. Admittedly, the Austrian writer Robert Musil complained in 1941 that the Swiss liked to talk about nothing else. Swissness today can still seem obsessive, to be sure: the national library not only collects material published in Switzerland (as the British library <a href="http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/quickinfo/facts/">collects</a> material published in Britian), but also all works by Swiss authors, from all over the world and across all media. And there is the danger that Swissness can mean nationalistic kitsch. </p>
<p>Yet discussions about Swissness have also supported a broad range of perspectives – to the extent that much of contemporary Swiss literature, in the German language anyway, engages with questions of Swiss identity, Europe and wider immigration issues. Authors such as Martin Dean, Dorothee Elmiger, Micieli Francesco, Ilma Rakusa and others contribute to a multifaceted debate.</p>
<p>The Brexit referendum has given a voice to divergent views about what it means to be British in the context of Europe. It is imperative that whatever happens in the near future, in negotiations or in the financial markets, the many voices of Britain continue to be heard, and are engaged with critically. That entails engagement through politics, and of course education. Cultural engagement, through literature and the arts, can be productive too. </p>
<p>The British people may have decided on June 23, but they must keep on deciding on what the future holds for the UK-EU relationship.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61692/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Seán Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Euroscepticism, referenda and debates about national identity: the similarities betwen Switzerland and the UK are striking.Seán Williams, Vice-Chancellor's Fellow, School of Languages and Cultures, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/596482016-05-28T09:49:00Z2016-05-28T09:49:00ZWhat is the National Citizen Service?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123376/original/image-20160520-4451-bzp0oq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Making citizens. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sarah Mills </span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It describes itself as the fastest growing youth movement in the UK for a century. Launched in 2011, the <a href="http://www.ncsyes.co.uk/">National Citizen Service</a> (NCS) is a government funded voluntary youth programme for 15 to 17-year-olds. </p>
<p>A further <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36320412">£1.2 billion pound investment was announced in the 2016 Queen’s Speech</a> as part of a new permanent statutory footing which will mean that all schools have a duty to promote NCS. But what is it, and what impact has it had on young people’s lives? </p>
<p>NCS is a two to four-week programme that has so far reached over 200,000 teenagers in England and Northern Ireland. It starts with an adventurous outdoor camping experience, followed by “skillsbuilding” activities and a social action volunteer project. NCS costs participants £50 to complete, with bursaries available for those unable to meet the cost.</p>
<p>These activities may sound familiar. The Duke of Edinburgh Award, Scout Association and other youth organisations have always focused on outdoor education and “active citizenship”. In 1908, the original subtitle of <em>Scouting for Boys</em> was “<a href="https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/handle/2134/12149">an instruction in good citizenship</a>”.</p>
<p>NCS marks a shift change. Its activities – as a form of youth work and <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137027726">informal education</a> – were once the traditional purview of the voluntary sector and local authority youth clubs. Yet NCS is not driven by the collective will of a voluntary base, but Whitehall.</p>
<p>The Conservative party presented and piloted early ideas for a “<a href="http://conservativehome.blogs.com/interviews/files/timetoinspire.pdf">school leaver programme</a>” in opposition. The NCS further developed during 2010, alongside David Cameron’s vision for a “<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-923X.2011.02166.x/abstract">Big Society</a>” and was showcased in the coalition’s 2011 <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/78915/giving-white-paper2.pdf">Giving White Paper</a> to foster a new culture of philanthropic values. This seems to be working. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations recently reported a <a href="http://blogs.ncvo.org.uk/2016/04/11/sharp-increase-in-young-peoples-volunteering/">dramatic rise in volunteering among 16 to 25-year-olds</a>, naming NCS as one of the likely “pushes”.</p>
<h2>Impact on young people</h2>
<p>In 2011, the House of Commons <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmeduc/744/74410.htm#a26">Education Select Committee</a> asked if NCS was a “good principle” but had “bad timing”. Its growth has occurred in austere times of public sector cuts to local youth services. The youth worker union UNITE – understandably bruised – states that “<a href="http://b.3cdn.net/unitevol/f9b7f490fdc5efe8c4_2rm6b3l63.pdf">young people are not just citizens in the summer</a>”.</p>
<p>A series of <a href="http://www.ncsyes.co.uk/our-impact">Ipsos MORI evaluations</a> show the positive impacts NCS has in young people’s lives: nine out of ten of its graduates in <a href="http://www.ncsyes.co.uk/sites/default/files/NCS%202014%20Evaluation.pdf">2014</a> felt they have developed useful skills for the future. </p>
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<p>My own <a href="http://www.geographiesofyouthcitizenship.com/">research</a> with my colleague Catherine Waite has also explored young people’s experiences. Interviews with NCS participants who graduated in different years were full of testimonials about the scheme’s impact in boosting confidence and inspiring futures. One 17-year-old said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s been the best year of my life … I think it will be difficult to beat, whatever I go through!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We have also interviewed former and current delivery providers who do NCS on the ground. These are a complete mix of private sector partnerships, social enterprises and voluntary sector charities who bid for fixed-term contracts from the Cabinet Office. While the majority of people interviewed spoke about the benefits of collaborative working, several smaller organisations faced challenges. One manager said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The actual programme is fantastic, it’s exactly akin to what we do … What’s been challenging is … probably the bureaucracy and structure we’ve had to work with. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s also clear that this competitive model has created tensions – and winner and losers – in the wider voluntary youth sector. The recent merger of <a href="http://www.cypnow.co.uk/cyp/news/1156336/ambition-and-ncvys-confirm-merger">NCVYS and Ambition</a> as a representative “umbrella” body for the sector in England is a sign that there is demand for a united “voice” that supports both young people and organisations in this shifting landscape. </p>
<p>The government’s newly announced <a href="http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/national-citizen-service-gift-aid-small-donations-scheme-figure-queens-speech/policy-and-politics/article/1395417">National Citizen Service Bill</a> means that all state secondary schools, academies, private schools and councils will be required to promote NCS. This is a significant moment in re-shaping the <a href="https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/handle/2134/13795">“boundaries” of formal and informal education</a>. </p>
<p>There will now be a duty for schools to champion NCS as part of pupils’ holiday time – with volunteering opportunities for <a href="https://www.teachfirst.org.uk/news/prime-minister-announces-new-partnership-between-teach-first-and-national-citizen-service">trainee teachers</a>. </p>
<h2>Which nation?</h2>
<p>The UK prime minister, David Cameron, <a href="http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/national-citizen-service-gift-aid-small-donations-scheme-figure-queens-speech/policy-and-politics/article/1395417">stated</a> that the government is “making NCS a permanent feature of British life”. This raises an interesting question about NCS, devolution and “Britishness” and which nation is the focus of a “national” citizen service. </p>
<p>NCS is active in England and now Northern Ireland, but the Welsh government’s report on a <a href="http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/25751/1/160301-research-national-citizens-service-pilot-en.pdf">recent pilot</a> was lukewarm, citing “overlaps” with existing opportunities. There is also no NCS presence in Scotland.</p>
<p>NCS has an ambitious goal to reach a million graduates by 2020. To achieve this, it will need to build bridges with smaller charities, youth workers and demonstrate flexibility with devolved administrations. The <a href="http://www.iwill.org.uk/the-value-of-youth-social-action-and-impact-of-ncs/">impassioned call from NCS’s chief executive</a> to “support the next generations of citizens to be more confident and capable, connected and compassionate” is easy to support. The wider state infrastructure, funding and delivery model of NCS is more difficult to champion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59648/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Mills currently receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). She has previously been funded by the ESRC, AHRC, Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), Institute for Historical Research and Eric Frank Trust. This article does not reflect the views of the research councils. </span></em></p>An extra £1.2 billion of public money is going to a volunteering scheme for teenagers.Sarah Mills, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/471782015-09-08T11:30:27Z2015-09-08T11:30:27ZAga saga reaches boiling point with US suitors in pursuit<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94138/original/image-20150908-4361-ojnrf4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Quintessentially British?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/philchambers/9541299/in/photolist-QUia-cngu2s-aBjhgM-8Xqdwp-iHjHVE-69ebD2-bdXxur-7uWWAQ-5gdnHJ-bdXxhV-bdXxCV-8xGCtD-jQZEn-kkEwKF-9Yysgu-pecBWQ-cuZtu-owFe8G-ofdksx-4Yrj8K-nEnX-dz2dA3-9Yvy2K-o1UoqX-ofe31K-omfNJ-aVp7fV-d7qH6-ncTwsN-8p1GDY-h5MwpD-pecC1N-ofdjRn-a8BU1X-pKNy2P-9chVfR-bfMN4Z-81rhEd-owFcH7-ouFbeb-817CJk-817x2Z-81riej-817CbD-81aLch-81aGHo-81aLUj-81o9w2-81aNhd-apehFU">Phil Chambers</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In its home territory of the UK, a mention of the word “Aga” immediately conjures up an image of middle-class, middle England, where the Aga cooking stove is the aspirational kitchen feature. No country house is complete without one. They have even featured in a series of stories – <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/may/30/books.guardianhayfestival2003">the Aga Sagas by Joanna Trollope</a>.
Now, in a plot that could almost have surfaced from one of the tales, the Aga Rangemaster company is being fought over <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/whirlpool-fires-up-counterbid-for-british-oven-maker-aga-1441104470">by two American suitors</a>. They are hoping to save the brand whose fortunes have been weighed down by the recession <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a564c1fa-150b-11e5-a587-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3l2JbR8bo">and a big pension deficit</a>, even though the cookers cost between £5,000 and £16,000 (US$8,000 and US$25,000).</p>
<p>Despite its oh-so-English image, the Aga was actually <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/8518512/A-history-of-the-Aga-cooker.html">invented in Sweden</a>, by Nobel Prize winning physicist Gustaf Dalén in 1922. Made of cast iron, the cooker stays on, heating the kitchen and two large hot plates and two ovens continuously. A few years after its invention the licence was sold and since then Agas have been made <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/property/interiors/the-secret-history-of-the-aga-cooker-2016367.html">exclusively in Britain</a>, becoming a quintessentially British brand. </p>
<p>But Agas have faced a saturated market – not surprisingly, as Agas are limited to the affluent and they also last for decades. </p>
<p>Quirky sales blips can occur thanks to sudden housing booms, or new products like a cheaper mini-Aga on wheels designed for city dwellers, and the electric Aga that can be switched on and off. But generally a kind of steady state of decline eventually prevails. In 2013 only 10,300 Agas were sold, a major fall from a pre-recession peak in 2007 of 20,000. Revenues fell by 2.5% <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/acfc394c-ada8-11e2-a2c7-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3krx1Y4Rt">to £244.6m in the same year</a>. This resulted in a cut of 750 jobs, although things picked up slightly in 2014. </p>
<h2>Marketing headache</h2>
<p>This presents a classic marketing headache: how to increase profits from a premium priced product, popular and well-known, but with declining sales. The marketing planners at the Warwickshire-based company must have been saying it was high time to take Aga to new markets such as China or the US. But the money to make it happen seemed destined for addressing the underfunding <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-15/aga-sells-to-middleby-for-202-million-to-escape-pension-anchor">of their employees’ pension scheme</a>. </p>
<p>So two US corporations with the ability to open up new markets have come along just at the right time. Middleby Corporation, a US food services business were first in with an offer of £129m, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015%20/jul/15/aga-sold-to-us-firm-middleby-129m-pound-deal">accepted by Aga in July</a>. But now US homewares giant, Whirlpool, has also made an approach with a possible cash offer. If Whirlpool makes a firm bid for the company before Aga and Middleby enter a binding “sanction” agreement on September 16, they may yet win the Aga brand. </p>
<p>So why have these takeover bids arrived and what does it mean for the Aga brand? It is after all <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a564c1fa-150b-11e5-a587-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3krjPysgi">an iconic British brand</a>, that has positioned itself at the centre of traditional English country life. Fans – both British and foreign – swear by its method of slow cooking. </p>
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<p>While Middleby Corporation may be an unfamiliar name to most British consumers, Whirlpool are makers of the Artisan Kitchen Aid, which is used extensively <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/aug/19/nigella-lawson-confessions">by Nigella Lawson</a> in her TV cookery programmes. Already the world’s largest home appliance company, Whirlpool has announced <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/09/04/whirlpool-reveals-plans-global-expansion/71725440/">plans for global expansion</a>. Taking over Aga would fit squarely with that.</p>
<h2>Going global</h2>
<p>Daniel Wong, Aga’s director of business development in China, sees the changes in Chinese society as an <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3014285/Gamble-British-oven-manufacturer-AGA-launches-traditional-kitchen-staple-wok-burner-country-s-new-middle-class.html">important incentive</a> for Aga: “Five years ago in China, when people got money they just dined out in expensive restaurants … but affluent people have started cooking at home more, showing off to friends, saying, ‘I can cook’. We’ve seen a rise in cooking schools and sales of cooking magazines.”</p>
<p>So Aga has developed an upmarket oven with wok burner for the Chinese market. They will be hoping to capitalise on the same heritage value that has seen fashion brands like Burberry prove so popular with Chinese consumers. </p>
<p>There was a time when the notion of British companies being bought up by foreigners could cause nationalistic outrage and consternation. But now it seems normal that another British company gets added to the list of names like Jaguar, Cadbury, Weetabix and Rolls Royce. Will this dent the image of the brand?</p>
<p>Some commentators are concerned about quality compromises, comparing Aga’s future to that of the Cadbury Creme Egg <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/11339559/6-ways-Cadbury-has-been-trashed.html">following its takeover by Kraft</a> (who quickly reduced cocoa content). There have been suggestions that American innovations might include integrated coffee machines operated from your Apple Watch or <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/11683600/What-will-become-of-the-Aga-if-it-goes-American.html">even a built-in doughnut maker</a>. </p>
<p>But their fears are probably unfounded. A big part of Aga’s selling point is its unique technology and place in British heritage. Even Martha Stewart, queen of the American kitchen, called it the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHRDXZp1k5Q">Rolls Royce of cooking stoves</a>. If Aga continues with its quintessentially up-market British image, using models such as Daisy Lowe as its brand ambassador and with product placements in global films such as the James Bond hit Skyfall, it probably has little to worry about and will continue to have owners not only from Chiswick and Chipping Norton but also from Boston and Beijing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47178/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
In its home territory of the UK, a mention of the word “Aga” immediately conjures up an image of middle-class, middle England, where the Aga cooking stove is the aspirational kitchen feature. No country…Isabelle Szmigin, Professor of Marketing, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/284652014-06-26T05:06:53Z2014-06-26T05:06:53ZFor many minorities, Britain is not living up to its own values<p>The controversy over the Trojan Horse allegations of “extremism” at a number of Birmingham schools has provoked much discussion concerning the need to teach and <a href="https://theconversation.com/promoting-british-values-opens-up-a-can-of-worms-for-teachers-27846">assert British values</a> to children. There has been a quick turnaround from the government, and <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/322296/Consultation_Document_23_6_-_independent_school_standards.pdf">a two-month consultation has</a> now been launched on proposals to promote British values in schools. </p>
<p>The proposals come about as part of <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/322297/Draft_standards_changes_PBV_FV_23_6.pdf">changes to the department of education’s Independent School Standards</a>, expected to come into force in September 2014. One of the new standards being proposed requires owners of independent schools to: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Actively promote the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance for those with different faiths and beliefs; and encourage students to respect other people, with particular regard to the protected characteristics set out in the Equality Act 2010.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The draft proposals also include new clauses that say schools must “encourage respect for other people, paying particular regard to the protected characteristics set out in the Equality Act 2010”
and “encourage respect for democracy and support for participation in the democratic processes, including respect for the basis on which the law is made and applied in England”.</p>
<p>On the surface the general guidance seems reasonable, but a closer analysis reveals it is slanted and directed toward Muslim schools. For example, the proposed new standards seek to enable the secretary of state for education to utilise the Equality Act 2010 to take action against schools that breach equality provisions in regards to gender, sexual orientation and lack of tolerance for other faiths in its teaching. The consultation document specifically refers to girls sitting at the back of the class as an example of poor practice – a clear indication that it is directing its attention to Muslim schools.</p>
<p>But the guidance is silent on measures to tackle institutional inequality in schools. It offers no guidance on recruitment of staff, or on monitoring and taking action on any performance disparities between groups of students such as between males and females, or Muslims and Christians. Nor does it offer guidance on any other forms of discrimination that break the Equality Act and hinders student development. Equality is outlined solely in terms of values.</p>
<h2>Framed by white male politicians</h2>
<p>The question here is whether an understanding of the ideas of Britishness as outlined in the proposed new independent school standards would really resolve issues of social inclusion and equality in schools and the wider society. I’d argue that the appeal to “British values” is a smokescreen that hides a multitude of issues concerning inequality and justice not dealt with by other British institutions.</p>
<p>Political philosophers such as Michael Sandel, John Rawls and others have long-debated what values and mechanisms are required for arriving at the common good when you have a diversity of competing interests operating in society. Martin Luther King Jnr and other theologians have spoken of <a href="http://www.thekingcenter.org/king-philosophy">the “beloved community”</a> and explore the values, principles and ways of belonging that are required to create and sustain an ideal community. So it is legitimate to ask what type of communities we want to live in.</p>
<p>The problem with the current debate and the proposals emanating from them is the context in which “British values” are being framed. It is being done by powerful white male politicians who in talking about “values” in relation to British Muslim minority communities turn “British values” into a racial marker or label of racial differentiation. </p>
<p>The unspoken assumption here is that certain behaviours are labelled as Muslim and that these are not compatible with being British. Hence it is not your passport or the taxes that you pay, that determine whether you can participate in British public life. But now it’s your “values” that determine how British you are and the degree to which you can run and influence institutions in this country.</p>
<h2>Institutions under the spotlight</h2>
<p>Britain needs more than this. It needs a discussion on whether its institutions, from the NHS, to the police to schools, are genuine purveyors and defenders of equality and justice for all. Britain needs an honest and genuine reflection on whether its institutional and policy mechanisms are capable of delivering genuine justice and equality in a 21st century multicultural society. This society needs to incorporate Muslims rather than racialises them as an “other” to be dealt with differently. </p>
<p>A discussion about values needs to focus on all British institutions and the degree to which they genuinely reflect and represent the diversity of the country. Too many British institutions are woefully unrepresentative of the communities that they serve. And too many members of minority communities bear the scars of discrimination, poor service delivery and injustice that they have received from schools, hospitals, the police, the media and other so called venerable purveyors of “British values”. </p>
<p>Where is the public outcry over the lack of “British values” being put into practice on behalf of these citizens? Many black and minority ethnic citizens are still waiting for those proposals, rather than yet another piece of guidance that seeks to tell us how to be British, when much of the rest of Britain is failing to live up to its own values.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/28465/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Ackah does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The controversy over the Trojan Horse allegations of “extremism” at a number of Birmingham schools has provoked much discussion concerning the need to teach and assert British values to children. There…William Ackah, Lecturer in Community and Voluntary Sector Studies, Birkbeck, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/278462014-06-11T14:25:34Z2014-06-11T14:25:34ZPromoting ‘British values’ opens up a can of worms for teachers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/50835/original/g44r83nh-1402484449.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A full English. Is that British?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ilgiovanewalter/2865216681/sizes/o/">ilgiovaneWalter</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Following recent allegations of Muslim extremism in some Birmingham schools and <a href="https://theconversation.com/trojan-horse-snap-school-inspections-will-not-solve-wider-governance-issues-27824">Ofsted putting five of them in special measures</a>, Michael Gove, the secretary of state for education announced that schools in Britain will be required to “actively promote British values”. </p>
<p>Gove’s announcement is not surprising. In 2012, his department <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/301107/Teachers__Standards.pdf">revised qualifying Teachers Standards</a> required newly qualified teachers [NQTs] not to undermine “fundamental British values” in their teaching and to show tolerance of other cultures and respect for the rights of others. </p>
<p>But what is meant by British values? In the teaching standards, the government defined British values as “democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs”. This definition of British values coincides with <a href="http://www.ethnos.co.uk/pdfs/9_what_is_britishness_CRE.pdf">findings by the former Commission for Racial Equality</a> in 2005. But it is questionable whether democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs are actually unique to Britain. </p>
<h2>Are British values shared?</h2>
<p>How are British values constructed and can they be taught in schools? The previous Labour government in 2007 commissioned colleagues and I to <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130401151715/https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eorderingdownload/rr819.pdf">conduct a study</a> around these issues. In part, the research was concerned with understanding teacher conceptions of British values and contentions of shared British identities which could be explored in schools as part of the citizenship education curriculum. </p>
<p>As part of developing a wider understanding of teacher practice in relation to promoting shared British values through citizenship education, teachers and headteachers were asked about their understanding of shared British values. For the majority, the shared nature of British values was difficult to articulate. Many even had reservations about whether all Britons do in fact share the same values. This scepticism led one primary school head to state: “You start worrying me when you say shared”. </p>
<p>Expanding on his concern that British values are not shared by all members of society, a secondary headteacher of a London school argued that tolerance of and inclusion of different groups only had “real value” and meaning in London, which as a city is “very ethnically diverse”. He added that “the further you move away from London, the less those values have any impact on the way people interrelate” and integrate with each other. </p>
<p>This perception is supported by the 2011 UK census and <a href="http://beta.scie-socialcareonline.org.uk/crossing-the-line-white-young-people-and-community-cohesion/r/a1CG0000000GKSZMA4">Paul Thomas and Pete Sanderson</a> at the University of Huddersfield. Their research into community cohesion in the north of England suggests that white young people were less likely than Asian young people to self ascribe themselves as British. Instead, they identified themselves as English.</p>
<h2>Who measures who has them?</h2>
<p>In promoting an understanding of shared British values, the citizenship curriculum in 2007 was widened to include “identity and diversity: living together in the UK”. Keith Ajegbo, Dina Kiwan and Seema Sharma <a href="http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/6374/1/DfES_Diversity_%26_Citizenship.pdf">emphasised in their diversity curriculum review</a> of citizenship education that in order for young people to explore how they live together in the UK today and to debate the values they share with others, it is important they consider issues that have shaped the development of UK society.</p>
<p>However, the teachers we interviewed argued that there was a danger in trying to “over-analyse” or “discuss” British values and “Britishness”, especially if such analysis resulted in teachers trying to discover “how close they [pupils] are to that [British] value and how far away they are”. Therefore these teachers implied that honest debates about British values and whether they are shared or not were what was required in citizenship education. </p>
<p>A real difficulty these teachers envisioned in teaching about shared British values was that cultural values when internalised are durable and become difficult to change. They were concerned that where pupils or teachers disagreed with the idea that British values are shared, such disagreements would “be used” by the government and school governing bodies to exert compliance. As one head teacher put it, this could be “as a stick to beat some groups of people over the head with”; and by “people” he meant both teachers and pupils.</p>
<h2>Resistance to stoking division</h2>
<p>In his book <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2839981-the-genesis-of-values">The Genesis of Values</a>, Hans Joas makes clear that governments need to consider whether values are “consensually shared and internalised as value(s)” by everyone – including the majority population. He also contends that: “any attempt to make a certain value system obligatory would be more likely to provoke counter movements than achieve its goal without entering resistance”. </p>
<p>This view was shared by the teachers we interviewed. Several expressing resistance to educating about British values, particularly where they had concerns that minority ethnic cultural values were not being respected in the wider society or included within the umbrella of British values. </p>
<p>Such fears led one head teacher to openly state that she would “worry about how to teach it”. She was concerned that a focus in citizenship education teaching on shared British values would lead to minority ethnic cultures and values being “ignored or dismissed”. This is more likely to occur where teachers bring uninformed views about particular ethnic groups to the classroom. Such views could be regarded as racist and demonstrating a lack of understanding and tolerance of minority ethnic groups.</p>
<h2>Work ahead for teachers</h2>
<p>Before the government requires schools to promote British values, it is incumbent on teachers to have an understanding of Britain as a multi-ethnic population with diverse cultural values. It’s also important that these understandings are sensitively explored so as to illustrate the ways in which minority ethnic groups also fit within notions of “Britishness”. </p>
<p>As one PSHE cordinator told us in our research, very often schools “get NQTs who haven’t really got very much idea at all” about Britain’s ethnic diversity. With the lack of focus on issues to do with ethnicity, culture and religious beliefs in the new <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/301107/Teachers__Standards.pdf">Teachers’ Standards</a>, newly qualified teachers are less likely to be well informed about Britain’s diverse population.</p>
<p>All teachers will need opportunities through continuing professional development (CPD) to recognise that <a href="http://books.google.fr/books/about/Race_Culture_and_Difference.html?id=3NZonSikZPcC&redir_esc=y">British identities are multiple, fluid</a> and will continue to change. Individuals move between identities in different contexts and times, and this may affect their perceptions of <a href="http://www.runnymedetrust.org/publications/29/74.html">Britishness and shared British values</a>. Teachers will also need to reflect on and challenge the stereotyped views about different ethnic groups they and students might hold, and the labels that might apply to them. This matters as much to white British groups as it does to minority ethnic communities.</p>
<p>Teacher CPD is salient as, without an agreement as to what “Britishness” and “British values” are, teachers’ efforts not to undermine British values might actually serve to accentuate “differences” and create racial tensions. As one pupil put it to us, even if everyone is “the same on the outside” it does not mean they feel “the same on the inside”. </p>
<p>And finally, teachers will need to recognise and appreciate how perceptions of “race” and notions of “belonging” are constructed. And in turn how these concepts along with racism, structure some pupils’ understanding of “Britishness”, notions of “otherness” and experience of intolerance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27846/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Uvanney Maylor received funding from the Department for Children, Schools and Families under the previous government. </span></em></p>Following recent allegations of Muslim extremism in some Birmingham schools and Ofsted putting five of them in special measures, Michael Gove, the secretary of state for education announced that schools…Uvanney Maylor, Professor of Education, University of BedfordshireLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.