The Centre For Social Cohesion

The relevant passage in the speech occurred towards its end. Here the Minister enquired as to what use the Government could legitimately put Britain’s publicly funded museums, libraries, art galleries and stately homes in helping to create a shared sense of common cultural identity.

She introduced her question so:

‘If … integration (not assimilation) and community cohesion (not separatism) – are vital to forming nations and neighbourhoods that are at ease with themselves, then we have to ask ourselves what are we expecting people to integrate into or express cohesion with? Finding a shared sense of common cultural identity is a key part of answering that question and it is right we think about the Government’s role in helping people to shape that identity.’

To this end, Hodge claimed, there was much Britain’s civic buildings could and should be used for than merely as venues for citizenship ceremonies for immigrants undergoing naturalisation. She said

‘We have some of the best and most impressive spaces in the country – museums, galleries, theatres, libraries, historic houses and castles… Being made a British citizen in those kind of surroundings allows people to associate their new citizenship with key cultural icons, and then offers the chance to build a longer term engagement.’

Hodge argued the buildings could be put to still more effective use. ‘I want to see our cultural institutions playing a fuller part in that.’

In her view, the Proms and other unnamed iconic cultural events fell down by not being sufficiently inviting to newcomers, especially when seeking to represent or celebrate the nation.

Hodge said:

‘All too often our sectors aren’t at their best when embodying common belonging themselves. The audiences for many of our greatest cultural events – I’m thinking of the Proms, but it is true of many others – is [sic] still a long way from demonstrating that people from different backgrounds feel at ease in being part of this…. [I]f we claim great things for our [culture and heritage] sectors in terms of their power to being people together, then we have a right to expect that they will do whatever they can wherever they can.’

Personally, I can see no reason why any exception needs or should be taken in the name of community cohesion to how overwhelmingly white the audience at the last night of Proms tends to be. Nor do I to the fact that it should choose to celebrate in such a visceral and uncompromising a manner a version of Britishness that draws so heavily upon the country's military and imperial past when it was far less inclusive than it is today. It is, however, these facts about this audience that Hodge makes clear she finds of such anathema and a sign the event to be unwelcoming to newcomers.

She said:

‘The values that… embody Britishness ... have to be articulated in a way that doesn’t reflect the imperialist traditions of our past where we sought to impose our values on conquered territories. They need to embrace the diversity of the present with all the richness and added value that our mixed communities can bring to a renewed sense of common purpose.’

This takes us to the root of the problem. The present government would have the country believe its imperial past is something of which the nation should be ashamed rather than take pride in. Above all, they want Britain’s white population to feel a debt of reparation is owed to those whose ancestors at one time may have been ruled by their ancestors.

I do not see the British Empire in so negative a light. Nor can I see how the country’s present-day inhabitants can possibly be made to feel at ease with themselves or each other so long as its imperial past is portrayed in such a negative way as that in which Hodge presents it.

This is a huge topic to which justice can hardly begin to be done in a blog posting. However, by way of affording the kind of perspective on the British Empire that I think would do far more to unite the country than would turning the last night of the Proms into an up-market version of New Labour’s nightmarish multicultural celebration of the Millennium, I should like to end with a brief quotation from a book by Ludwig von Mises written and published in 1944.

While by no means exonerating, let alone applauding, every aspect of colonialism, Mises seems to me get things essentially right about the British Empire when he wrote:

‘In the fifteenth century the Western nations began to occupy territories in non-European countries peopled by non-Christian populations… They had no moral inhibitions in their dealings with the heathen….

‘British liberalism has fundamentally reformed the meaning of colonial imperialism. It granted autonomy – dominion status – to the British settlers, and ran the East Indies and the remaining Crown colonies on free-trade principles. Great Britain acted virtually as mandatory of European civilisation in countries whose population was, as the Britons believed, not qualified for independence. The main blame which can be laid on British East Indian policies is that they respected too much some native customs – that, for example, they were slow to improve the lot of the untouchables. But for the English there would be no India today, only a conglomerate of tyrannically misruled petty principalities fighting each other on various pretexts; there would be anarchy, famines, epidemics.’

Mises does not deny that, in all too many cases, the self-perceived cultural superiority over the natives went to the heads of the British colonials. He writes:

‘The marvellous achievements of the British administration in India were overshadowed by the vain arrogance and stupid race pride of the white man. Their snobbishness poisoned their personal contact with the natives. Asia is in open revolt against the gentleman for whom socially there was but little difference between a dog and a native… India is, for the first time in its history, unanimous on one issue – its hatred for the British…. This resentment … is a tragic situation and a menace to the cause of the United Nations. But it is at the same time the manifest failure of the greatest experiment in benevolent absolutism ever put to work.’

[ Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government, first published 1944 (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1969)]

Mises here offers a far more balanced and nuanced assessment of British imperial rule, although clearly there is much more that could and should be said on the subject.

The musical celebration of Britain offered by the last night of the Proms is no less inherently inclusive than is the Notting Hill Carnival. That fewer non-Caucasian faces are to be found among the audience there than Caucasian faces are to be found in the crowds at the Carnival probably has as much as anything else to do with the fact that the former event makes an admissions charge, whilst attendance at the latter event is free.

It possibly also could have not a little to do with the likes of people like Hodge, who occupy positions of power and influence, forever choosing to rubbish the British Empire and all things traditionally British.

As Culture Minister, it is not her job to knock any popular cultural event or institution. By so doing, she has definitely forfeited her entitlement to her job, just as arguably Rowan Williams did his by making his as equally ill-judged recent call for the incorporation of Sharia into British law.