Traditional British values

Under the proposals, all 11 to 16-year-olds will learn about free speech and democracy in the UK, as well as about the contribution of different communities to building a modern, successful country.

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  What are “core values”?
  
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  Do you think core values should be taught at schools?
  
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  Should governments promote "traditional values" in their societies?
  
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  How in your understanding are core values learned?
  

Now, if there is one thing that most people will accept (happily in some cases, unhappily in others) about a country like ours in the 21st century, it is that the old nation state no longer comfortably embodies the people who inhabit it - call that the Tebbit test or the melting pot according to choice. But it's a fact that we all know we live in interconnected and weakened nations. So I'm very sceptical that a dose of shared national values are really the answer to any of these issues. I fear they might merely be a source of fresh divisions and disagreements.

I'd be more in favour of kids being taught Core British Values if I knew what CBV actually were. But in every discussion I've ever been involved in on this subject (and I've been in a few) it's not long before someone (sometimes me) makes the blindingly obvious point that fairness or ingenuity or respect or love of the countryside - or whatever virtue some other speaker has identified as essentially British - isn't in fact uniquely British at all. If I were French, I would have no trouble claiming that all these qualities were French Values too. Or if I were American. Or Chinese. And so on around the world. It is just daft to pretend that we British, however polite or pastoral we may imagine ourselves to be, are uniquely defined by them.

I'm not going to pretend that there isn't something worthy of the name that I would want to call Britishness. I think it's a fascinating challenge to define what, if anything, really differentiates one group of human beings from another. But this is an incredibly slippery and elusive subject and too much of the debate is owned by scoundrels.

Yes, some aspects of what I would define as truly distinctive Britishness are rather admirable, like our pride in our particular independence, or an inherent scepticism towards theory and authority and a rumbustiously creative and adaptive use of language. But there are other British values, like drunken aggression and a seemingly unquenchable appetite for smut, that do less for me. And in any case, as I've said, a lot of what we tend to pass off as British is actually common to all humankind, while quite a lot of the rest is more accurately labelled, I suspect, as English.

So my view is that we should abandon the rather quaint and daft (and perhaps rather British) idea of trying to define the Britishness of core values, and should concentrate instead on the Core Values themselves, without trying to plant the Union Jack on any of them. I'm all for kids being taught about good citizenship and the principles of democracy, about respect for others, about non-violence, the rule of law, the ethical life, respect for the environment, individual freedom and the ties of community - and about how we can reconcile them.

The first use of the concept of immigrants "melting" into the receiving culture is found in the writings of J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. In his Letters from an American Farmer (1782) Crevecoeur writes, that the American is one who "leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labour and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world."

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  How important are the shared national values according to the author?
  
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  What qualities does the author define as distinctively British?
  

WHAT ARE BRITISH “CORE VALUES”?

Archbishop Cranmer

www.dailymail.co.uk

February, 2011

In recent years, we observe that ‘Britishness’ for Margaret Thatcher was about individual responsibility and industry - the Protestant work ethic; the place of the United Kingdom in the world; the maintenance of democracy; the flourishing of liberty; the importance of the family; respect for Parliament, Church and Monarchy; and a patriotism which was not ashamed to fly the Union Flag. For John Major it was concerned with warm beer and cricket on the village green; ‘back to basics’; traditional values. For Tony Blair it was about social justice and rebranding for the postmodern era: ‘Cool Britannia’; of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States in support of an interventionist foreign policy to rid the world of evil dictators. For Gordon Brown it was... well, he never quite got there, but he did talk an awful lot about tolerance and fairness.

David Cameron hasn’t yet synthesised his views, but in 2007 he observed: “It is mainstream Britain which needs to integrate more with the British Asian way of life, not the other way around.” On social cohesion, he said that ‘integration is a two-way street. If we want to remind ourselves of British values - hospitality, tolerance and generosity to name just three - there are plenty of British Muslims ready to show us what those things really mean’. He was, of course, on the campaign trail, but he could scarcely have said anything more provocative to the indigenous peoples of these islands than to laud Islam as the paragon of family and community values to which all Christians must aspire. And yet he was right to observe that many British Asians do value what it means to be British far more than many of those with a genetic heritage going back millennia, and they have achieved an admirable level of integration within just one generation. But these developments have caused something of an identity crisis in the nation, spawning numerous books and articles which seek to define what is meant by ‘Britishness’.

First and foremost, Britishness is about tolerance: it is the attribute which has enabled five million immigrants and their descendants to comprise a tenth of the country’s population. This pluralism is a priceless ingredient of the nation’s culture, and it is incumbent upon people of all creeds, philosophies, ethnicities and political ideologies to tolerate those with whom they do not agree.

But British culture cannot be cohesive when there is diversity of language, laws, traditions, customs and religion. As far as England is concerned, foreign encroachments have been fiercely resisted since the Reformation, yet the accommodation of Roman Catholics has developed of necessity to the extent that they agreed to abide by the laws of the state. A logical corollary of this is that Asian immigrants to the UK ought now to adapt their cultural traditions and religious expression to accommodate ‘British toleration’ or conform to those aspects of ‘Britishness’ which make society cohesive. And so a Briton has the right to oppose or support British policy in Iraq and may campaign to that effect, write, agitate and stand for election towards the chosen end. But it is also elementary that he does not have the right to stone adulterers to death, hang homosexuals or blow up the underground or an aircraft. Toleration of the intolerant is distinctly un-British.

And so, secondly, we observe that the rule of law and equality under the law are core British values. There is no doubt that some religious practices may coerce some. But mindful of minority ethnic voting communities, politicians have trod carefully along the via media between religious liberty and cultural prohibition.

Over recent centuries, it is Protestantism which has defined the character of Great Britain: from the Armada, through the Act of Union in 1707 to the battle of Waterloo, Britain was involved in successive wars against Roman Catholic nations. It was a shared religious allegiance that permitted a sense of British national identity to emerge. Of course, history is peppered with myth, sentiment and flights of fancy - notions that somehow God had chosen England, and the nation is singularly blessed by virtue of the purity of Protestantism over the discredited and sullied Catholicism of continental Europe. This selective sense of religious history and an idealised perception of the moral purpose of the United Kingdom in the world are part of our ‘Britishness’. We have a cohesive religious base, which is intrinsic to the national psyche: essentially, whilst acknowledging the liberties of atheists and rights of secular humanists, to be ‘religious’ is to be British.

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  Can a culture be cohesive when there is diversity of language, laws, traditions, customs and religion?
  

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  How do you understand the words of the author: “… statutory patriotism is an intrinsically un-British notion”?
  
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  In what way are the British ‘core values’ different from the core values of other nations, or are they?
  

Ex.1 In the text find words and expressions that match the following definitions:

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  shared by most people and regarded as normal or conventional
  
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  to praise highly
  
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  sth regarded as a perfect example of a particular quality
  
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  to produce or generate a large number of
  
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  a component part or element of something
  
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  to be necessary for (someone) as a duty or responsibility
  
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  a gradual advance beyond usual or acceptable limits
  
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  to accept or act in accordance with
  
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  a proposition that follows from one already proved
  
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  to campaign to arouse public concern about an issue in the hope of prompting action
  
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  to persuade (an unwilling person) to do something by using force or threats
  
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  loyalty or commitment to a superior or of an individual to a group or cause
  
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  to damage the purity or integrity of
  

Ex.2 Continue the strings of synonyms to the words in bold. Write 10 sentences to illustrate the collocations you could find for the words:

1. 
   a patriotism which was not ashamed to fly the Union Flag
   
2. 
   For John Major it was concerned with warm beer and cricket on the village green; ‘back to basics’;
   
3. 
   For Tony Blair it was about social justice and rebranding for the postmodern era: ‘Cool Britannia’;
   
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   integration is a two-way street
   
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   He was, of course, on the campaign trail…
   
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   But British culture cannot be cohesive..
   
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   Toleration of the intolerant is distinctly un-British.
   
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   …politicians have trod carefully along the via media between religious liberty and cultural prohibition.
   
9. 
   It was a shared religious allegiance that permitted a sense of British national identity to emerge.
   
10. 
    Of course, history is peppered with myth, sentiment and flights of fancy..
    
11. 
    We have a cohesive religious base, which is intrinsic to the national psyche
    
12. 
    It is not British to be subject to foreign parliaments or alien courts - temporal or spiritual
    

shared national values

intrinsic, enduring, fundamental, moral, spiritual ~

to adopt / embrace / acquire ~

to cherish / foster ~

to encourage national ~

to sacrifice one’s ~

to be committed to democratic ~

1. 
   In pairs make a list of personal values.
   

2. 
   The following is a list of values characteristic of either western or eastern culture. In pairs define which belongs where organizing them into opposing pairs: