Britishness since 1870

by Paul Ward (2004)

A review by Joseph Hardwick
Outline

Britishness since 1870 is an academic history book which seeks to show how
Britishness has been a more adaptable and resilient (rugalmas) national
identity than is sometimes thought.
Paul Ward disagrees with those historians and commentators who have tried to
define or capture the 'essence' of Britishness. Ward is not interested in the ways in
which an 'unchanging Britishness, forged long in the past' (172) has been passed
down from one generation to the next; rather, he is interested in how the
meaning of Britishness has changed and evolved throughout the course of
the twentieth century. He is interested in how 'people have been actively
engaged in the construction of British national identity', and how this 'has made
Britishness a resilient force' (9). His book attempts to rebuff (visszautast) those
advocates of the 'end of Britain' who tend to assume that the inhabitants of the
United Kingdom 'ought to be acting in particular ways, that they should be becoming
more Welsh, Scottish or Irish' (169).
The book is organised thematically, with each chapter focusing on a particular
theme to show how Britishness has continued to be redefined in a number of
different contexts. The seven chapters cover the issues of 'monarchy and empire',
'gender and national identity', 'rural, urban and regional Britishness', 'spare time',
'politicians, parties and national identity', 'ethnicity and Britishness', and 'outer
Britain' (which looks at the strength of Britishness among the unionist communities
in the 'Celtic fringe'). Each chapter emphasises the resilience of the forces which
have operated to ensure that the inhabitants of Great Britain continue to consider
themselves to be - at least in part - British.
Analysis
For the past two decades politicians and journalists have been predicting the
collapse of the United Kingdom and with it the decline of British national identity.
Ironically, these anxieties about the imminent end of Britain have stimulated
historians to take a deeper interest in the history of Britishness and national identity.
In general, historians have followed politicians and journalists in charting the decline
of British national identity from a perceived heyday in the period between the two
world wars. It is significant that the foundational text of British national identity

historiography - Raphael Samuel's three-volume work Patriotism - was subtitled 'The

making and unmaking of British identity'.

Paul Ward's Britishness since 1870 is an example of a work which attempts to

emphasise the durability and longevity of British national identity. In the introduction
and conclusion to the book Ward points out that there has been a tendency in the
existing scholarship to view Britishness as a static and fixed identity which was
imposed on the Celtic fringe (or 'outer Britain' as he calls it) by the English state.
Scottishness, Welshness and Englishness, by contrast, have been wrongly seen as
organic or bottom-up identities which are somehow 'more real and permanent' (7).
There has also been a tendency for scholars to follow in Linda Colley's footsteps and
see British national identity as defined through the monarchy, the established
Churches, the experience of war, and loyalty to the empire. When seen in these
terms it is not difficult to chart the decline of Britishness since the end of the Second
World War. By contrast, Ward argues that to search for a single and definite
definition of Britishness would be to miss the ways in which Britishness has been
continually redefined and refashioned through history. Alternative constructions
of Britishness have always existed alongside one another. Ward's book charts
how a more flexible, inclusive and pluralist definition of Britishness has
gradually replaced the static and fixed conceptions of British national
identity which existed in the first half of the twentieth century. In recent
years new arrivals to the UK have begun to lay claim to Britishness and
have called for the adoption of a civic, rather than cultural, Britishness that
was not coupled with whiteness (139). Rather than being a sign of the imminent
dissolution of the British state, these changes suggests that Britishness will continue
to evolve as a collective identity.
Each of the chapters focuses on a particular theme to show how Britishness has
continued to be redefined in a number of different contexts.
Chapter one emphasises the integrative role played by the monarchy in bringing the
Scots, the Welsh and the English together, and
chapter two shows how women have been as willing as men to participate in the life
of the nation. This was in spite of the fact that the relationship between women and
the nation was ambiguous: until 1948 women marrying aliens were, in Ward's
phrase 'dispossessed of their Britishness', and it was not until 1983 that the children
of marriages between British women and foreign men were defined as British.
Chapter three downplays the links between Britishness and the rural idyll, while
chapter four argues (perhaps controversially) that spectator sports have reinforced,
rather than diminished, feelings of national identity in Britain.

Chapter five argues that the emergence of political parties with a national reach and
appeal have served to reinforce a sense of unity among the inhabitants of the
Britain and Ireland.
Chapter six, which looks at the relationship between ethnicity and national
identity, shows how the belief that Britishness is a fixed identity (revolving around
ideas of respectability, the home and the 'quiet' suburban neighbourhood) was
steadily developed during the course of the twentieth century. Ward argues that
immigration has challenged this closed and fixed idea of national identity,
forced the British to reconsider 'who they are', and opened up space for
the articulation of a civic, rather than cultural Britishness that recognises
and encourages diversity. To what extent these ideas or the Britishness issue is a
concern of non-white and white immigrant communities more generally is not
addressed in any depth.
The final chapter argues that Britishness was never an English imposition, but
instead it has been a positive identity which those on the 'Celtic fringe' have held
simultaneously with other regional identities.
Britishness since 1870 therefore encourages us to think about the instability of
British national identity. What he is most interested in is showing how people have
been engaged in the construction of British national identity, and how this has
'made Britishness a resilient force' (9). The fact that many immigrants and their
descendants desire what Tariq Modood calls a 'hyphenated Britishness' (i.e. to be
black-British and black-Indian), indicates that Britishness will continue to be reimagined and reconstructed into the future.