Page 175 - White Lives The Interplay of 'Race', Class, and Gender in Everyday Life

8 Conclusion

I write this concluding chapter in the last weeks of the 2005 British gen-
eral election, when ‘race’ has reared its head in a very explicit manner. The
Conservative Party launched its initial election campaign with the slogan:
‘Are you thinking what we’re thinking?’. This included a poster with the
statement, written like graffiti over advertising hoardings: ‘It’s not racist to
impose limits on immigration’. This of course leaves open the question of
who the ‘you’ is. The slogan appears to be directly targeting those white
voters who feel hemmed in about what it is permissible to say because of a
desire not to appear racist. This opens a Pandora’s box of other, now permis-
sible, statements along the line of ‘I’m not racist but . . .’. It would seem that,
for the Conservative Party at least, the commonsense Everyman of Britain
retains a white face.
At the other end of the political spectrum, leading Labour party politicians
David Blunkett and Gordon Brown also took time in the election period to
intervene in ongoing debates on Britishness. Gordon Brown promoted a
move away from racialised conceptions of national identity towards the idea
of shared values. While there may be some merit in this attempt to reimagine
national identity and belonging, the argument skirted around issues of race,
rather than attacking them head on. Brown argued that ‘I think the days of
Britain having to apologise for our history are over. I think we should move
forward. I think we should celebrate much of our past rather than apologise
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for it and we should talk, rightly so, about British values’. Brown wanted
a sense of common identity that is not bound by race, but it is not clear
whether he is prepared to do the kind of ground-clearing work that would
be involved in reimagining such an embedded notion. Nor is it obvious that
the poets he draws on for inspiration (Wordsworth, Shelley and Milton) will
communicate to all.
The interest among mainstream politicians on questions of identity during
this election did not arise in a vacuum and reflects a political culture in which
questions of national identity and particularly immigration have steadily
gained increased attention. The debates have also been fuelled by racialised
and Islamophobic reactions to what has become known as 9/11, but also
have a longer history. In 1998, the Runnymede Trust set up a commission on