There’s nothing
new about the Tories’ commitment to ‘British values’, or about them trying to
find new and interesting ways of ‘enforcing’ them, but I’m as vague as ever
about what these values really are. Or
rather, what I’m unclear about is what makes them specifically British.
There’s nothing
wrong with valuing tolerance, democracy, freedom of speech, and the rule of
law, but these values seem to me to be shared with many other countries. The only thing uniquely British that I can
see about them is the uniquely British belief that they are uniquely
British. It’s a reflection of that
casual superiority which the (largely English, in this context) establishment
possesses without seeming even to realise the fact – Johnny Foreigner and those
upstart colonials may profess to value the same things, but they are either
aping ‘us’ or else completely insincere.
My first
reaction to the latest pronouncement by Sajid Javid, that he wants all civil
servants and elected officials (and perhaps all BBC staff and other public
sector workers as well) to swear an oath of allegiance to this set of values
was that there was actually something profoundly un-British about it. Oaths are all very well for Americans, and
perhaps some of those European chappies, but they’re not the sort of thing ‘we’
do.
But then I
thought about it a bit more, and realised that it’s actually very British –
just not in the twentieth or twenty-first century. But in the past – which is where most of the
current government seem determined to reside – it was very much the norm. And for Cabinet Ministers, who seem to think
that kneeling and kissing the hand of some unelected woman whilst swearing
undying allegiance to her and her heirs rather than the electors is an entirely
normal thing for grown-ups to do, it is not as strange as it otherwise appears. (And that’s without even mentioning that many
in the establishment engage in the strange rites of freemasonry as well.)
But what is
perhaps most ‘British’ about it all is the touching belief that having sworn
such an oath, people will then abide by it.
Because that’s what we do, right?
I mean, no 'decent chap' would ever swear an oath to get a job and then
proceed to challenge those who have a divine right to rule, would he?
My real
objection to this sort of approach is that it seems to be increasingly the case
that ‘tolerance’ is limited to tolerance of orthodoxy, and ‘freedom of speech’
is limited to freedom to agree with the government. Faced with an uncertain future (and having
themselves contributed greatly to that uncertainty), their only response seems
to be to attempt to return to the certainties of the past. I suppose it’s a possible response, but
it belies their oft-stated confidence about a great new future for Britain
post-Brexit. If the only future is the
distant past, then perhaps Private Frazer was right after all in his assessment
of the capability of those in leadership positions - and we really are all
doomed.
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