Remember when 'Britishness' turned out only to apply to England ?
It looks as if our rulers are giving up on 'Britishness' and worrying more about 'Englishness'. John Denham MP on England :
So it's all a matter of good PR, you see. The trouble is that the most convincing tale about where we have come from will definitely not provide a positive and optimistic story about where we go next.
"the next election will be determined by which party has the most convincing story about our society and our country. Who has the most convincing tale about where we have come from: and the most positive and optimistic story about where we go next."
These stories work because we have a sense of who we are; what our society represents. Put a different way, people ask politicians to pass the ‘people like us’ test.
Keep digging.
"... at once progressive and patriotic ... Billy Bragg ... Morrissey ... multi-ethnic identity ... white working class ... disconnect ... zzzz"
This is the nub. Been here before, of course.
The problem of multi-culturalism was not its insistence on respect for those of different cultures, or of their freedoms to express themselves as they wish: it was the neglect of the glue that binds us together; it was the failure to recognise a multi-cultural society can only work if there is equal engagement and activity in building and developing shared values and the framework of a shared identity which enables us to be multicultural within a cohesive society.
Or to put it another way, the problem of multi-culturalism comes when people don’t have shared values and identity. In other words, one common culture.
Someone tell me - what does ‘multi-’ mean again ?
PS - one of the comments at Socialist Unity - you can see the confrontation here :
At yesterday’s confrontation, the EDL demo was composed overwhelmingly of young working class men. The UAF demo consisted mainly of palpably middle class students.
Which group is “our class”?
Another comment :
It was said the EDL chanted at UAF ‘you're not English anymore’, and this much to Mark P’s annyance is actually true. Once you become a socialist your first self identity is as a worker, part of an international class, that has more in common with workers from abroad than with bosses here.
I wouldn't mind that so much were it true. But the trouble is, the UK left mostly "has more in common with workers from abroad than with workers here."
