Page 176 - White Lives The Interplay of 'Race', Class, and Gender in Everyday Life

Conclusion 169
the ‘Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain’, which set out to produce a review of the
current state of multiethnic Britain. After 2 years of extensive consultation
and discussion, the commission produced a report which argued that Britain
in the year 2000 is at a turning point or crossroads with different potential
roads ahead:

will it try to turn the clock back, digging in, defending old values and
ancient hierarchies, relying on a narrow English-dominated, backward-
looking definition of the nation? Or will it seize the opportunity to cre-
ate a more flexible, inclusive, cosmopolitan image of itself?
(Parekh 2000: 14–15)

The report argued for a ‘purposeful process of change’ rather than ‘mul-
ticultural drift’ (Parekh 2000: 2). Part of this process was, the report argued,
a reimagining of British national identity and its history. An important ob-
stacle to Britain’s transformation into an inclusive, pluralist society was that
‘Britishness, as much as Englishness, has systematic, largely unspoken, racial
connotations’ (Parekh 2000: 38). The report further argued that ‘[u]nless
these deep-rooted antagonisms to racial and cultural difference can be de-
feated in practice, as well as symbolically written out of the national story,
the idea of a multicultural post-nation remains an empty promise’ (Parekh
2000: 38).
The report got widespread attention, particularly in the print media, and
drew an emotional and largely hostile response, which centred on the ques-
tion of reimagining Britishness. Hugo Young described the response as a ‘ti-
rade of anger based on the claim that there are not enough blacks and Asians
here to justify any such exercise’ (Young 2000). The analysis contained in
2
the report was widely misrepresented with, for instance, the Guardian (11
October 2000) editorial claiming that the report had suggested that Britain
should be renamed ‘community of communities’, apparently misunderstand-
ing that this was proposed as a model for society, rather than an actual name.
The Daily Mail (11 October 2000) argued that to suggest that national sto-
ries and identities might be rethought had totalitarian implications: ‘Such
were the means by which Stalin and Hitler twisted the past to suit their
own political purposes’. The report was critiqued as ‘an insult to history
and our intelligence’ (Daily Mail 11 October 2000). This response suggests
the destabilising potential of claims to reimagine Britishness. The report’s
argument that those who have hitherto been a marginalised presence on
the edges of the British identity should be placed at its centre prompted a
passionate defence of particular notions of Britishness and whiteness. The
strength of the uproar was an indication of just how unsettling it can be for
those who have occupied normative subject positions to have those positions
questioned or challenged. The argument that ‘race’ has nothing to do with
white people, or with Britishness, remains a deeply felt conviction on the
part of many white people. Gordon Brown’s call to ‘move on’ is likely to
strike a chord with many.