The UK is a country with people from many places. We
have no choice but to try to get on with each other. Brexit may enable the UK
Government to have greater control over immigration, but lots of people are
going to continue to come to Britain from Europe and elsewhere. This is a good
thing. We need them. We have an aging population and our economy depends on
being able to attract skilled workers from abroad. I didn’t vote for Brexit in
order to prevent anyone living here, nor indeed to prevent anyone coming here.
I just wanted the issue to be controlled by the UK Government and the UK
electorate. But given that the UK is and will continue to be a country with
many languages, faiths and identities how are we going to create the necessary
sense of unity that enables us to have an identity we can all share?
We all remember the tragic story of the Glasgow
Muslim shopkeeper who was murdered because he wished his friends a Happy
Easter. In response to this Khalil Yousuf a spokesman for the Ahmadiyya Muslim
community has suggested that “Not only should we raise the flag, but everybody
in the Muslim community should have to pledge loyalty to Britain in schools. There
is no conflict between being a Muslim and a Briton.” He is of course correct. Muslims in fact are
statistically more patriotic than UK citizens in general. One of the great things about the UK is that
everyone who is a citizen is equally British. It doesn’t matter at all where
your parents came from.
But how about the idea of children pledging loyalty
to the Union Flag? There are a number of problems with this idea. Clearly it
would be wrong if this only applied to Muslim children. It has to apply to
everyone or no-one. There is a difficulty also in what these children would be
pledging loyalty to. In the United States children repeat:
"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for
which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
A variant on this no doubt could be devised for the
UK. But what of the idea of our being one nation indivisible? This is something that I absolutely agree with. But
lots of people who live in the UK don’t agree with me. Who are these people?
Well obviously all those people who want a part of our country to become
independent or to join another country. Also people like David Cameron who were
in favour of giving Scotland a referendum on independence. Likewise Scottish
politicians like Ruth Davidson and Kezia Dugdale, who think the SNP should be
allowed to have a second independence referendum if they want it, clearly do not think
that that the UK is indivisible. These people may hope that the UK is not split up, but their attitude is quite different to that of an American.
It’s worth remembering that the Pledge of Allegiance
was written quite shortly after the United States had fought the Civil War.
Children repeated every day that the war was over and secession was no longer
an option. There is a case for us in the
UK doing the same. Our country was never closer to breakup than in September
2014. If the SNP had won they would have done what no one else could have done
in the course of our 300 year history. No-one else could have broken the bonds
that until the independence referendum campaign began, most of us had considered
to be indivisible. The very act of having such a referendum was to introduce
instability into our country and to imply that it faced an existential threat.
It did. If the SNP had won, we would no longer be what we are now a United
Kingdom. How could we even have used that name?
William Faulkner famously wrote that every Southern
schoolboy got to replay the Battle of Gettysburg with the chance of winning. But he only got to replay it in his mind. He didn’t
get to replay it in reality. What the Scottish nationalists want is to replay
their “Lost Cause” whenever they please and until whenever they win. But how
can we maintain a United Kingdom and a common identity under those
circumstances? Better by far, of course,
that we settle these matters with a ballot box than with a box of bullets, but
no country can live with the perpetual threat of dissolution.
The difficulty we have is this though. Imagine that
a UK Government thought that it would be a great idea to have such a pledge of
allegiance. I can imagine lots of children being encouraged not to repeat such
an oath in certain parts of the UK. But this is our problem really. The UK is
nation of people with complex and mixed identities. Most of us have family from
other parts of the UK or other parts of the world. What unites us is that I can
say that I am Scottish and British. Someone else can say that he is Polish and
British while someone else can say he’s Jamaican and British. Our shared
identity depends on the fact that we are all British. Without it we don’t even
have a shared country let alone a shared loyalty.
Everyone who becomes a UK citizen in fact does have
to take an oath: “I will give my loyalty to the United Kingdom and
respect its rights and freedoms. I will uphold its democratic values. I will
observe its laws faithfully and fulfil my duties and obligations as a British
citizen.” But why should this oath only apply to those who
become UK citizens? Should it not apply to everyone who is a British citizen? It is clearly discriminatory to expect a promise
from someone who comes to live in the UK that we would not expect of someone
already living here.
What do you call someone who makes a pledge to a
country and then breaks it? What do you call someone who is not loyal to their
country? The UK Government in requiring new citizens to pledge an oath is
trying to maintain the cohesion of the UK and trying to show that such people
are equally British as anyone else in the UK. It is only in this way that we
can forge a common identity amongst people from many places. The problem is
that these attempts are being continually undermined by those British citizens
who deny that they are British and who have no loyalty whatsoever to the UK.
Anyone who pledges to give his loyalty to the UK who
subsequently campaigns to break up the UK is obviously a liar. But if we think
this through then this oath really applies to all of us. How can an oath be
expected of one set of British citizens, who happen to come from elsewhere,
that is not expected of others, who happen to have been born here? The
condition for receiving a UK passport ought to be that everyone has to make
this promise. Anyone who can’t pledge allegiance to the UK or who feels no
loyalty to our country would of course be free to renounce their UK
citizenship. If you don't feel British, then why should you expect to receive any of the rights that go along with being a British citizen? Accepting those benefits under those circumstances makes you a hypocrite. Campaigning to destroy the UK while accepting its protection is an act of perfidy that simply would not be tolerated in most countries of the world. Try threatening the existence of the United States or insulting their flag and you'll quickly find out how Americans respond to that sort of behaviour.
We live in dangerous times and our country needs
unity in order to face together the challenges and the threats that we all share equally. It is right and proper that the Government requires people who arrive
in the UK to be loyal to our country. It is dangerous if they are disloyal. But
the problem is not so much with those who have come to Britain. Most of them do
feel British. They love the UK and are just as loyal to our country as someone
who can trace his ancestry back generations. But those hundreds of thousands
of people who have always lived in the UK but refuse to accept that they have a
dual identity ought to reflect on the sort of example they are giving to those
who have just arrived. How can someone who denies that he is Scottish and
British expect someone from Pakistan to say that he is Pakistani and British? How can such a Scottish nationalist expect a
British citizen who has just arrived from Nigeria to respect the Union Flag
when he himself doesn’t respect it?
It is in this way that the various nationalisms in
the UK undermine the cohesion that we so desperately need. How can we expect
new arrivals to be loyal to our country if those who have been here for
centuries have no loyalty, no patriotism and in the end no honour. Whether it
is a good idea to have children, or indeed the whole population, recite an oath of allegiance is another matter, but Scottish
nationalists could certainly learn a lot from the Ahmadiyya Muslim community.
