The recent publication of the historian David Edgerton’s book, the Rise and Fall of the British Nation, is, therefore, a timely one. It argues that Britain was only convincingly a nation for a period between 1945 and the 1970s, which took in the end of Empire and the start of our membership of the EU, and was finished off decisively by the miners’ strike. Of 1950, Edgerton writes: “the new British nation increasingly knew only itself…politics was now national interest, based on the politics of class, of production and of national social services.” [...]
The book outlines the distinct form of national coherence that was generated after the war – helped, no doubt, by the unifying effect of shared trauma and victory, but also by policies consciously designed to boost British industry, agriculture and social cohesion. In 1951, the Festival of Britain was advertised as ‘A Tonic For The Nation’ (a billing quite unlike that of previous events such as the 1938 Empire Exhibition). [...]
While the 70s, for example, may have been beset by strikes, cultural argument and unemployment, it was also a time when “British social democracy and the welfare state were to be at their peak”. Yet, economically, “by the 1970s British was no longer best…the products of British genius went unsold”. Even so, the benefits of greater integration with Europe were not universally perceived, particularly by those on the Left. When Heath took Britain into the EEC, “the majority of Labour MPs voted against joining”. They were, perhaps, mindful of Hugh Gaitskell’s earlier 1962 speech warning that with EEC entry would come “the end of Britain as an independent nation state”. [...]
Another question is whether Britain – with the weight of its historical role – can bear to step back from seeking greater influence, and consciously become a smaller player on the world stage. Post-Brexit there will be no going back to the past, but there must surely be a conscious effort to reshape a future British identity: not one that plays out to nostalgic strains of Land of Hope and Glory, but a benign, inclusive form of Britishness that fits a modern, multi-racial society, one that operates with humility in the national interest rather than swaggers in the interests of nationalism.
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