The project to create a British identity fit for the 21st century has failed.
The recent results of the UK referendum about whether the nation should exit the EU have shone a light on a country that is divided. It’s clear that this was more than about the country’s political situation. Instead, many voters have said this was finally the chance to have their voices heard. And what they said has revealed a nation that has little vision for itself and even less shared idea about what it means to be British and where the nation needs to go.
The metropolitan urban populations voted to remain. Outside London the vote was overwhelmingly to leave. The generations have been split, older voters wanting to leave, younger ones seeing their future as remaining in the EU.
The fracture has been aggressive and hostile. The Leave campaign believes it is taking its country back. The Remainers think it is taking the country backwards.
What is widely accepted is that the huge spike in incidents of physical and verbal abuse against minorities in the days since the referendum is a result of people who hold racist views being emboldened to express their hatred. Instead of seeing the Leave vote as their own choice to exit Europe, they have interpreted this to mean an enforced exit on those of other races already living happily in Britain, as British as they are.
People have lost their own sense of identity – they have no idea who they are, or what they stand for. There is no cohesive understanding of their history and their place in it, and therefore how to go forward. There is only the other, and if the other is got rid of then this will apparently be a panacea to all their woes. It is not a new idea that identity is defined in respect to the other. But with the rise in explicit hatred, we see here again why it is such a loathsome idea and one on which it is dangerous for a nation to found itself.
I feel this particularly acutely, because the past 15 years have been predicated on telling British Muslims that they must adopt British values, become more British and integrate. When we argued that there was no clear definition of being British – and nobody came up with one – we pointed out that this wishy-washy attempt was being applied only to Muslims. What about the rising far right, we asked?
It is the failure of this project – because actually there was never any real heart in it, it was just a tool with which to beat Muslims – that has caused the cataclysmic social rift we are witnessing. Social woes were blamed on Muslims, upon whose obedient integration the country’s well-being was predicated.
Nothing was done to address the nation and its cohesion. And now we have its fruit. Except all that the leaders are doing is asserting empty platitudes that do nothing to address the core issue. The lack of solidarity is no surprise, that’s what happens when you create a nation that believes that one group, with fingers pointing at it, is to blame for its troubles.
It’s up to ordinary people now to work out how to create solidarity from the hatred that is flourishing.
Instead, we need to form coalitions of interest across divided communities, with genuine authenticity and vision to explore what it means to be British again.
Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is the author of Love in a Headscarf and blogs at www.spirit21.co.uk
