‘Culture’ is hard enough to define; it’s even harder
to prescribe it. Yet that,
apparently, is what the Tories under Badenoch are proposing to do. If only a
single, universalised form of British culture could be inculcated into young
people, the British nation would be more united, resolute and generally happy
than it is today. Allegedly. How this would be achieved is not entirely clear,
but there would be something called an ‘integration and cohesion plan’, and
schools would play a role in teaching a single ‘national story’. I’m struggling
a little, though, to distinguish between what she is proposing and what Russia
is doing, not only in its own territory, but also in occupied areas of Ukraine.
It is, of course, heavily Anglo-centric. Whilst the
culture warriors of Britishness are generally keen on promoting Shakespeare and
the benefits of Empire across the whole of the UK, they’re not usually so keen
on introducing Dafydd ap Gwilym or Robert Burns to English pupils. It also
takes us into the realm of those ‘great British values’ which distinguish – in their
eyes – the people of these islands from everyone else in the world. Things like
deference to the rule of law (except international law, obviously, given
Badenoch’s complaint
yesterday that Starmer was too slow in supporting Trump’s illegal war against
Iran). Things like parliamentary democracy (unless ‘silly people’
in parliament might dare to vote the wrong way). Things like due process
(unless that process gets in the way of the government doing whatever
it wishes).
Harri Webb’s somewhat irreverent caricature of
English culture (“tuneless songs and tasteless jokes and blowsy bags
undressing”) was not particularly complimentary; nor was it the sort of language
a serious politician would use today. Refuting it, though, requires a
definition of what exactly English culture is, and that is something which
sound-bite Badenoch hasn’t even attempted. We shouldn’t be surprised, though.
Defining culture is hard – and it’s a moving target, because no culture stands
still. That statement might, however, go to the heart of the problem with Badenoch’s
proposals. It’s a good rule of thumb that any politician seeking to inculcate a
particular view of the world – whether it be based on values, culture, history
or whatever – is usually espousing an idealised or romanticised version of how
things were in some unspecified golden age in the past. Invariably, it wasn’t
even accurate then.
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