Searching for an identity
James Forsyth 3:56pmThis week’s Newsweek has a piece on what it calls “Britain’s post-Blair identity crisis.” Most of the article is about Gordon Brown’s current obsession with Britishness but this fact in it stood out: “every second child in London is now born to an immigrant mother.”
This isn’t a problem if these children are being brought up in a way that leaves them feeling part of society rather than in opposition to it. (On that front, it is not encouraging that “only 26 percent of the 1.3 million British residents of Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent are fluent” in English). But it does show how imperative it is that we articulate a sense of identity that the population as a whole can appreciate.
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albert hammond bootleg
July 30th, 2007 4:16pm Report this commentof course the problem Gordon Brown has, together with many in the government, is that as soon as they start to talk about Britishness it sounds like a desperate attempt to divert attention from their own Scottish identity.
James T Kirk
July 30th, 2007 4:23pm Report this commentThe article is incomplete without reference to the place the devolution settlements for Scotland and Wales have in Brown's spiel about Britishness. It also misrepresents the history of multiculturalism, a creed opposed since the 1960's, at least by people in Midlands and northern towns suffering directly from its consequences, but shouted down and branded racist by bien-pensant, ascendant liberals.
richard v
July 30th, 2007 6:17pm Report this commentI think it is a very striking figure but is it correct? I think 40% of London's school children come from ethnic minorities but a lot of them will have British born mothers. I think 50% of births being to immigrant mothers sounds too high. But Newsweek have legendary factchecking don't they..
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