So what are your markers of national identity? Do you see yourself as Scottish, Engilish, British, other? It can be complex. Me, I’m German-born, Northern Irish raised, Scottish by residency. Oh and fond of northern English pop and poetry and a London football team. What does that make me?
Confused, you might say. I like to think it makes me complex. The fact is, academics Frank Bechhofer and David McCrone, argued at the book festival yesterday, national identity, or rather our ideas of national identity, tend to be nuanced.
Even mutable to a degree. And so Gaels might see themselves first as Gaels but change the context and they identify as Scots. Many Scots are happy to call themselves Scots but are equally happy to call themselves British.
In Scotland –less so in England – the idea of hybridity has also been embraced. And so the large Pakistani community are happy to describe themselves as Pakistani Scots.
Age, the two academics suggested does not seem to be a variable in how we decide questions of identity. Nor religion, for that matter. Even the political context, they suggested, may not have quite as big an impact as we may think. That said, the most interesting question for the next generation of sociologists investigating national identity in the UK in the coming years may well be the question of Englishness.
One man in the audience identified himself as coming from Berwick upon Tweed. Living there, he said, had apartness built in, describing the experience as the equivalent of “being in no man’s land holding the coats while the other two fight.”
Then again, he did have an English father and a Scottish mother.
He didn’t tell us if they had been helicopter parents, one of the problems facing young people today. According to authors Chloe Combi (who has a background in teaching) and Georgia Gould (whose dad the late Philip Gould was one of the key political strategists of the New Labour era) the millennial generation lack private spaces. Babyboomers are even taking over their social media networks (basically even mum’s on Twitter these days).
That is just one problem for young people today. There is a class and income divide growing. Technology is transforming their relationship with the world (when it’s not taking the low-skilled jobs), and politicians have been ignoring them for years.
That’s not a healthy recipe. Worse, older generations either cosset them or condemn them. The reality is kids today are not the feral creatures beloved of some media reports. Rather, according to Combi they are “generally nice people who work hard and like their parents and go to school”. They are politically engaged, more entrepreneurial than any previous generation.Oh yesand they’re consuming less drink and drugs. Even sexually transmitted infections s are falling among the younger generation. They’re rising among the over-50s though. It’s the middle aged you need to watch out for.
In the sparkiest session of the afternoon (there was even the odd rude word) Jean Seaton and Charlotte Higgins discussed the past,present and future of the BBC. Chaired by Kirsty Warke, they painted an image of an organisation with a heroic past and an embattled present. Would the BBC be as brave as BBC Scotland was in the Thatcher era to refuse to co-operate with Special Branch during the Zircon affair,Higgins asked?
It did rather turn into a pro-BBC rally to be honest. Maybe understandable (the book festival audience, you suspect, is a very Radio 4 crowd). Higgins did raise questions about the BBC’s commercial ambitions (what we might oncehae called the Jeremy Clarkson strategy) when set against its public service remit. And there was at least some recognition that sometimes the organisation’s worst enemy was itself. (So, yes, the spectre of Jimmy Savile was raised at one point.)
But on the whole both writers believed that on the whole the BBC was a good thing. Seaton railed against “commerce dressed up as opposition” in terms of the BBC’s critics.
And she pointed out that the BBC has few friends in parliament these days and so it’s up to the public to protect it. “If you lose it, it’s gone,” she added.
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