Nationalism – A Sense of Belonging

This is the story of an idea that has radically shaped our lives over centuries. It has fostered freedom and democracy and destroyed oppression but, it has also inspired some of the most horrific acts that human beings have ever committed. This idea is still at the heart of some of the biggest challenges that the world faces today; Immigration, Asylum and Racism. This idea is Nationalism.

David Blunkett, the MP for Sheffield, Brightside and former Home Secretary and Education Secretary shares his views on nationalism.

Over the past 10 years I’ve become a champion of British National Identity. There is a certain irony to this, because when I started out in politics, over 40 years ago, it was the last thing I thought I would end up doing. My political career has been a journey from a young man deeply sceptical about nationalism and all that it meant in the 20th century through to the present day where I’m now convinced that a sense of identity and belonging is crucial to our well-being.

My own sense of nationalism led to me introduce a number of reforms which I hoped would strengthen a wider national identity, including controversial exams, in English and the British way of life, for everyone who wants to join our country. In 2003, I introduced laws which ensure that all those seeking British citizenship had to take an examination in English and in British values. To obtain a British passport they have to go through a citizenship ceremony and swear allegiance to our country and Queen.

Growing up as a child in post-war Britain made national identity very simple, it was the spirit of the 1940s. For my generation, the war had defined our national identity very clearly. We, the British, had had won the battle against the Germans; we knew who we were.

Today it’s all very much more complicated, our country has changed beyond recognition. Substantial numbers of new migrants have changed the face of Britain and, of course, Britain’s role in the world has changed. All of this has has meant that defining who we are has become much harder. We clearly need a new definition that suits our age. To find one, I believe we need to explore the idea that lies behind national identity; Nationalism.

At the heart of the discussion is a shared human need for a sense of belonging. If you delve into the history books, you can see that people have always yearned for a sense of belonging; to the family, to the tribe, to the people. We’ve always had a fierce passion for the culture of the people we belong to. some of these cultural identities have been around for 2,000 years or more. These passions, strong as they are, are not what we define as nationalism today Quite simply, that’s because the nation state, as we think of it, didn’t exist.

Although people saw themselves as German, Italian or Dutch, in fact, most nation states didn’t come into being until the last 200 years. Until the 16th century, most of Europe was made up large empires, small kingdoms or principalities.

Our relationship with ‘the state’ was also very different to the one we have today. People, literally and legally, belonged to their ruler. They were subjects who could be passed around, like property, between royal families. Changing hands for inheritance, marriage and war. People held duty to their local squire through to the duke or monarch in their region.

French Nationalism

In 1762, the French philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau shocked the ruling elite of Europe. He argued that countries should not belong to all-powerful monarchs but, to the people themselves. It was a revolutionary idea and the French Revolution was the result. Between 1789 and 1799, the French revolutionaries abolished the power of the king and gave it to the people.

In a literal sense, the people became the nation of France. The fact that the French now felt that they owned their nation gave them a deeper sense of belonging. For the revolutionaries, this was not enough. They created rituals of modern nationhood, in order to foster national identity. They created the world’s first national anthem; La Marseillaise. They developed the French flag and a national slogan; Liberty, Freedom, Fraternity. At the heart of this movement was a radical principle. It was that anyone, from any country, could become a citizen of the new French nation as long, of course, that they swore allegiance to it’s values. This type of nationalism is called civil nationalism and is the foundation of many modern nation states.

Civil nationalism wasn’t the only type of nationalism. Around the same time, a more visceral form of nationalism was developing in Germany. It sought to argue that human cultures were as different as species of animal. It argued that those with a similar cultures should live in defined nation states, in order to live fulfilled lives. In it’s most extreme form there was an insistence that the nation should be purified of all foreign cultural influences. A nation had to share a racial or ethnic origin. This king of nationalism is called ethnic nationalism. It became more exclusive and, inevitably, divisive than civil nationalism.

Over the next two centuries, a combination of these ideas spread, like wildfire, across Europe and the Americas. The result was a string of new nation states, many of the modern ones we recognise today. Empires crumbled, people rebelled and rulers were tumbled. The idea of nationalism fundamentally changed the way in which we saw our world.

The question of national identity has always been more complex in Britain than in most other countries. For one thing the boundaries of England, Scotland and Wales have been fixed by the sea, so we had a sense of political nationhood ahead of some other countries. The British nation state only came into being 300 years ago when, in 1707, the Act of Union merged the English and Scottish parliaments. Our national identity is also unusual because, right from the beginning, we started to develop a vast multinational empire. The British ruled a significant proportion of the world giving us a common sense of purpose and of pride.

German Nationalism

The Nazis took the idea of German ethnic nationalism to absolute extreme. They set out to create the, so-called, pure ethnic Arian nation. In that nation they saw no place for other races or cultures including, as we know notoriously, the Jews.

In the UK today, around 10% of the population have their origins in other countries. We now have a whole variety of languages, food and cultures. Gradually assimilating, but still with their own identity. This has changed the nature of how people feel about themselves. We, on the liberal left, welcome these people to the United Kingdom; and quite rightly. They’ve provided much needed labour and brought economic prosperity to our nation.

But, we failed to recognise the incredible change that this brought about on particular communities as well as the nation as a whole. People feared losing their jobs and their sense of identity. We accepted that all cultures could live alongside each other without the common bond, the glue, of having something in common. Because we drifted into a kind of woolly multiculturalism, we failed to take on the challenge of developing a real and progressive sense of national identity.

A recent poll showed that only a third of Britains now define themselves as British. First and foremost, people define themselves as Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or English, so we developed a Welsh Assembly, a Scottish Parliament, and a devolved assembly in Northern Ireland. This was seen as addressing the political rise of nationalism in the parts of Britain. But as, historically, the most dominant force in the United Kingdom, the English haven’t felt the need to define their identity for many years. English people felt that Englishness and Britishness were synonymous. With devolution, with the emergence of cultural, not just political, nationalism in other parts of Britain, that has all changed and with it has changed the perceptions of the English.

Thankfully, it is now possible to celebrate Englishness again, to celebrate St George’s Day and to wave the English flag. This is a good thing. But, we’re still working on how to define a modern English identity within our British identity.

CREDITS: All of the above information was taken from the UK’s Channel Five series “Big Ideas”

Further Reading