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Dilemmas of Devolution: The ‘Politics of Britishness’ and Citizenship Education

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Abstract

Recent calls for British values to be promoted in citizenship classes raise as many questions about civic and national identity in the UK as they purport to answer. In particular, to what extent is talk of promoting ‘Britishness’ in schools any longer relevant in the post-devolution era? It is increasingly apparent that British values and culture have a variety of meanings for the multitude of social groups across and within the devolved state. Moreover, while the introduction of statutory Citizenship lessons in England was undoubtedly an important event in British political history, citizenship education is treated very differently within the curricula of each home nation. This paper explores the relationship between the ‘politics of Britishness’ and attempts to promote civic and national identity through citizenship education in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The implications of this policy divergence for the future of British citizenship are then considered, before the paper concludes by arguing for greater joined-up thinking on citizenship education across the UK.

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Notes

  1. By eulogising broad values such as ‘decency’ and ‘fair play’, the ‘politics of Britishness’ elides aspects of the ‘snobbery’, ‘insularity’ and ‘dishonesty’ which have often been associated with Britain in the past. Indeed, the professed decency and fair-play of Britons is challenged by a number of studies suggesting that many citizens are intolerant of each other, and especially so towards those they perceive to be ‘foreigners’ (e.g. Rothon and Heath, 2003; McLaren and Johnson, 2004).

  2. Despite Gordon Brown's assertion that Margaret Thatcher's brand of Anglo-Saxon individualism was an attack on collective ‘Scottish values’ (Brown and Alexander, 1999), his attempts to delineate Britishness arguably conflate it with Englishness (Lee, 2006).

  3. By equating citizenship with British national identity, politicians and policy-makers frequently overlook problems of inequality, racism and social exclusion associated with such ‘essentialist’ categorisation (Faulks, 2006). For example, ethnic groups may begin to view the state as an enemy rather than a host, as the rioting across French cities in late 2005 amply illustrated (Marinetto, 2007).

  4. Frazer (2000, 96) suggests that there are four key reasons for the pervasive influence of this anti-political culture: (i) citizenship is a ‘foreign concept’ to many British citizens who have understood themselves to be subjects of the crown; (ii) it is also a concept associated with a deferential class identity; (iii) there are no historical narratives or supporting texts for citizenship in Britain (unlike, for instance, the Declaration of Independence in the US or the Declaration of the Rights of Man in France); (iv) there is general antipathy to ‘politics’ and politicians among British citizens, particularly with the abrasive adversarial political system and its polarisation around ‘party-politics’.

  5. Indeed, the role of citizenship education has proved to be remarkably malleable and responsive to political fads and fashions. For example, it has increasingly been seen as a panacea to the decline of social capital during Labour's time in government (Kisby, 2006).

  6. The necessity of the two reviews has been questioned by some members of the Advisory Board who have argued that many of the recommendations made were already covered by the Crick Report (author correspondence with David Kerr, 30 January 2007, and Professor Sir Bernard Crick, 11 February 2007).

  7. Jeffery and Wincott (2006, 12) note that ‘citizenship in the United Kingdom has always been more differentiated than the dominant unitary myth suggests’.

  8. As the shadow Education secretary, David Willetts, has stressed, ‘we believe citizenship shouldn't just be taught in the abstract, but linked very closely to narrative British history’ (BBC News, 25/1/07).

  9. Gordon Brown and David Cameron both propose more emphasis on British history within the curriculum, without considering the differing national curricula now in place.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Michael Marinetto, Chris Bryant and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper.

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Andrews, R., Mycock, A. Dilemmas of Devolution: The ‘Politics of Britishness’ and Citizenship Education. Br Polit 3, 139–155 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1057/bp.2007.36

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