The Albatross of the Past: Colleys Britons and early

Twenty-First Century Britain

Francis Graham-Dixon

DPhil Candidate, University of Sussex

(Brighton, UK)

Abstract
This article attempts to address some of the many contradictions that
characterise modern Britains self-image. Is Britain the thriving and
progressive democratic nation it projects to the world, one that embodies
long-established values of liberty, justice and tolerance, or is it increasingly
struggling to reconcile social aspirations of the majority within a growing and
sometimes misunderstood multi-ethnic society that fears growing poverty and
political disenfranchisement? Is individualism the new conformism; is
consumerism the new religion? Is the public media a representative voice for
the populus? What is the continuing relevance of the British monarchy, once
synonymous with the nations sense of self? With Britain a leading combatant
and occupying power in Iraq, what, if any, are the links between overseas
conflict and commerce? How does the world view Britain and we punching
above our weight as a nation? Many questions surrounding these paradoxical
relationships between nation and state were prefigured in Linda Colleys 1992
Britons - Forging the Nation 1707-1837. Colleys thematic analysis of how
Britain came to define itself through religion, overseas conflict, commerce,
Empire, the monarchy and latterly parliamentary reform, show how such roots
were laid down, and suggest that 21st Century Britain has yet to engage
meaningfully with its past. By combining Britons as a historical template with
the observations of other post-war historians and contemporary thinkers, this
article suggests that this peculiarly British historical albatross can
nevertheless be of benefit within a modern culture of lifelong learning,
offering an opportunity to rediscover usable pasts in an uncertain present.
Keywords: Britishness, citizenship, empire, identity, the Other, public sphere.
Introduction
Britain appears a nation ill at ease. Despite the devolution of power to
Scotland and Wales, and renewed hopes for a lasting peace and power
sharing in Northern Ireland, bullish self-assurance that has underpinned a
progressive image of nation rebuilding since the late 1990s, is now more
muted as Britains reputation for embodying and upholding core values of
liberty, tolerance and fair play has become tarnished. The self-image we
aspire to project seems more irreconcilable with recent social statistics
revealing that Increasingly, Britain is segregated by inequality, poverty,
wealth and opportunity It is also argued that the major threat to social
cohesion is the growing divide between rich and poor.1 As a result, many
within society feel disillusioned and increasingly disconnected from politicians
who talk of shared values. Definitions of national identity and the individuals
relationship with the nation state are thus ever more elusive. Tocqueville
Francis Graham-Dixon
The Albatross of the Past: Colleys Britons and early Twenty-First Century Britain
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 9 (2005)

noted it was one of the ironies of modern democracy, that once it becomes a
mass philosophy, individualism almost inevitably mutates into a new form of
conformism.2 Mass consumerism, often referred to as the new religion, has
been concealed within a proliferation of niche markets, each of which cater for
and sustain the refined illusion of individuality.3 This is unsurprising in a
world of rapidly increasing literacy4, information access and economic
opportunity. This conformism suggests why Britain faces difficulties in reforging a renewed common purpose in an interdependent but paradoxically
fragmented world, and tackling its multiplicity of social, economic and cultural
challenges. Thus, Britains desire to speak with one voice on the world stage
is constrained by its inability to recognise and reconcile the needs of its
rapidly evolving population of disparate communities.
Linda Colleys Britons has made a significant impact in framing these
prescient debates about the troublesome relationship between nation and
state. Her thematic analysis of how Britain invented and came to define itself
helps explain some of the complex problems in modern Britains transnational society. Many of Britons chapter headings suggest how a similarlystructured book on early 21st century Britain might replicate peculiarly British
themes, and provide clues to how factors that once forged Britain have
become its burden; for Peripheries, substitute nostalgia for Empire, for
Protestants, religious and multi-ethnic tensions in a secularised society, for
Profits, overseas conflict and commerce, for Victories?, citizenship and
parliamentary reform, for Majesty, an anachronistic monarchy. A transformed
public sphere is another influential factor that needs discussion.
Having outlined these links, neither Colleys conclusions nor this paper
claim those same predictions of historical destiny that Popper regarded as
sheer superstition.5 Rather a misunderstanding of and lack of interest in the
past contributes to our present distorted and troubled self-image. Selective
memories and ignorance can too easily aggrandise a nations past
achievements into misplaced notions of superiority or elicit unjustified current
claims of modernity from those who argue the past is irrelevant. Such
mythmaking has exacerbated a schism in the body politic. This paper argues
why Britains troubled preoccupation with its past powerful status, galvanised
in the eighteenth century, may threaten its dissolution. How do the other major
factors that forged early Britain affect modern Britain? Finally, how might
shared values, if one accepts Carrs hypothesis of history as social progress,
enable todays Britons to arrive at a more informed, realistic view of their role
as citizens? Comparative philosophical and historical discourses place the
following arguments in their wider context.
Usable pasts
Since the 1980s, British historiography of the eighteenth century has
emphasised early Britains continuities over its disruptions, dwelling on the
longevity of that centurys political, social and religious stability; less on the
fractured England of rebellion and dissenting voices, more on its patrician
power. This shift in emphasis mirrored a 1980s background of enduring
political conservatism, record unemployment and an ever- increasing gulf
between rich and poor.6 It is widely acknowledged that this social gap is
widening further, reflecting a loss of national cohesion that may undermine the
promise of extensive public service reform and increased consumer choice
Francis Graham-Dixon
The Albatross of the Past: Colleys Britons and early Twenty-First Century Britain
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 9 (2005)

heralded by the changing political landscape of the late 1990s. Colleys

synoptic approach is innovative in neither accepting pre-1980s scholarly
assumptions, nor much of the revisionism that followed it. She synthesises the
symbiosis between events and people with a more Annales-grounded
analysis of economic and social factors. For example, she demonstrates how
the demographic differences between Britain and France with the latters
much larger population, benefited Britains rulers during the famine and in its
continuing conflict with France. This approach elicits parallels between factors
that helped to construct the nation, and others that may now fracture its
stability. Colley was as interested in articulating the experiences of women as
men, and to excavate testimonies on the part of the poor and the
unsophisticated as well as the prosperous, the educated and the powerful.7
What she discovered was cohesion as well as conflict, and patriotism as well
as protest.8
These contrasting pictures show the importance in interpreting Britains
past, rather than being overly seduced by selective versions or dismissing it
as irrelevant. Colleys 1999 10 Downing Street lecture suggested the British
should know more history. They would then discover that Britain has much to
be proud of from its past that did not entail the brutalities of imperialism, and
that it co-existed with far-reaching social and political change.9 In the context
of rising public disquiet over Iraq and Britains relationship with America, she
later wrote, presciently as subsequent events have shown, Tony Blair does
not understand history. If he didhe may have been able to avoid the mess
his government is in. It is hardly surprising that a popular culture of historical
misinformation is perpetuated, when we learn that for Blair, the past is
irrelevant, because this is a new world facing entirely new dangers.10
Colley reinforces her counter argument from Britons, asserting that all
nations need usable pasts.11 Her premise is that religion, commerce, war and
the monarchy in particular, cemented a sense of Britishness or national
cohesion that survived continual conflict with France and the loss of the
American colonies, and was to have a lasting impact in shaping our selfimage today. As important a development for 21st century Britain, was the
transformation of the public sphere in the eighteenth century This heralded
the rise of a politically active and informed public, whose role declined with the
emergence of modern social-welfare states.12 Toynbee identified a source of
disharmony between societys institutions as the introduction of new social
forces which the existing set of institutions was not originally designed to
carry, labelling this condition New Wine in Old Bottles. He argued that new
dynamic forces should accompany a parallel reconstruction of existing
institutions, observing that in developing societies, a constant readjustment of
the more flagrant anachronisms is continually going on. His sobering
conclusion, however, was that such realignment was unlikely as vis inertiae
tends to maintain the status quo.13 Contrasting the relative impacts between
an emerging press in the eighteenth century and the global reach of the
contemporary media helps to explain this continuing inertia.
Distorted mirrors
I. Public and private spheres past and present
The emergence in the eighteenth century of a public sphere in the
political realm helped Britons define themselves as citizens, part of Colleys
Francis Graham-Dixon
The Albatross of the Past: Colleys Britons and early Twenty-First Century Britain
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 9 (2005)

recurrent theme that societal structures are essentially fluid and not
impervious to change. The great proliferation in the printed press - almanacs,
newspapers and popular prints, revolutionised the way people communicated
with each other, helping them to identify with or dissent nationalistic appeals,
such as calls to arms. There were new platforms for people to make their
voices heard, for example through the formation of a variety of patriotic
societies.14 From the 1780s, challenges to the power lites legitimacy and
authoritarian over-confidence entered mainstream British political discourse.
The writings of Paine and Cobbett led the vanguard of calls for political
accountability with Wades 1819 documentation of the folk cynicism of politics,
Black Book: or corruption unmasked.15 The years between Waterloo and 1837
were the only period in modern British history in which people powerplayed
a prominent and pervasive role in effecting significant political change.16
Popular energies, consumed by the final great wars against France were
subsumed into post-war politics, leading to parliamentary reform in 1832,
albeit without securing formal political rights for the majority.
By contrast, the ubiquity and ephemeral nature of todays modern
global print and virtual media, with news and comment often prioritised to
reflect news proprietors political biases and circulation-driven news values,
have paradoxically diffused serious debates, consequently increasing public
apathy. Tocqueville saw that in England above all other European countries,
one could find the greatest freedom of thought and the most entrenched
prejudices.17 He attributed this to the freedom of the press. By contrast,
todays interactive television, radio, online debates and newspapers letters
pages, public conduits for approval or opprobrium, succeed more in trivialising
circular polemics into talking shops rather than acting as catalysts for change.
This illusion of public participation mirrors the marginalized private
individual within the public arena, where public opinion was denounced by
Marx to be false consciousness.18 Politicians, nevertheless, often seem
unduly preoccupied with opinion manipulation, in a futile effort to please all
sides despite the most careful management of the media.19 An apparent
tendency to resort to spin to impart political messages only succeeds in
alienating much of the public from a dialogue they perceive as stagemanaged. Single-issue groups, indicative of a more isolated electorate, resort
to older forms of popular dissent such as demonstrations and marches to
awaken and coalesce greater political consciousness and unity on issues
buried from public scrutiny. Such direct action rarely reverses recent
unpopular policy, a notable exception being the Poll Tax protests in the late
1980s. Instead, British cultural predisposition to lampoon or resist authority
often subsides into diffidence, redolent of public disenfranchisement. The
remit of the long-awaited Freedom of Information Act has done little to
reassure many, highlighting tensions between those seeking greater
government and public bodies transparency, and those who will be able to
claim protection through a wide range of exemptions from any such
disclosure, including ministers with the power of veto. We also know the Act
was preceded by large increases in the volume of government documents
destroyed.20
This links Colleys argument that protest easily turns to acquiescence
and Habermas view that private civil autonomy leads every man to see in
other men, not the realization, but rather the limitation of his own liberty.21 In
Francis Graham-Dixon
The Albatross of the Past: Colleys Britons and early Twenty-First Century Britain
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 9 (2005)

this sense, British idealism, rooted in the English and Scottish

Enlightenments, has ceded to 21st century Realpolitik and self-interested
pragmatism. Habermas showed how Marxs critique of the political economy,
class society and public opinion demolished all fictions to which the idea of
the public sphere of civil society appealed.22 Tocqueville too, argued that a
common level of uniformity is likely to lead to mans readiness to trust the
mass, and public opinion becomes more and more mistress of the world. Mill
deplored the moral means of coercion in the form of public opinion.23 In this
wider context, Colleys account in Britons of the emerging public sphere is
important, as by charting the problematical nexus of private and public,
modernity can address these other pasts to which Colley refers, and ask
whether their modern application may suggest a nation in a state of
dissolution or merely one that as Robert Colls put it, is living through a period
of incomprehension.24
II. Nostalgia for Empire (Peripheries)
Gordon Brown wrote of the recognition of the importance of and the
need to celebrate and entrench a Britishness defined by shared values strong
enough to overcome discordant claims of separatism and disintegration.25
Claims as to shared values continue, redolent of a political and media-led
discourse that over-emphasises issues of identity or generalises claims about
Britains past, present and even its future world role. Though still one of the
worlds economic high-achievers, much of the globe, (e.g. China and India)
appears to be adapting to change faster. Repeated challenges to the moral
probity of our much-vaunted democratic system suggest a structure under
strain. Calls from Colley and others for a redefinition of citizenship26 with
corresponding rights as well as responsibilities, have not always been
matched by a concomitant increase in accountability by those elected to
public office.
Britains self-image has become further coloured by how it is viewed by
non-Britons. There is now broad agreement that we need to see ourselves as
much through understanding how others view us. Colley counsels against
allowing obsessive navel-gazing to distract us from evolving a broad-angled
view of the world.27 She emphasises the diminishing relevance in glorifying
Britains imperial history, and increasing acknowledgment of the need to
understand its legacy. Many challenge British claims of anachronistic global
influence, attitudes perhaps shaped by imperial historiography that for many
years, was coloured by the political and methodological conservatism of its
practitioners. This emerged in the late nineteenth century as an ideological
adjunct to empire.28 Colley argues against such conservatism in Captives,
which sought through the experiences of British captives, to supply both a
work both of individual recovery and imperial revision.29 This revisionist trend,
in tune with calls from imperial historians for less ideological and more
balanced accounts from a global perspective, was underlined by Saul Dubow,
who in identifying that Empire provided an [sic] broad stage for the
expression and performance of Britishness in all its indigent nationalisms,
cited a new generation of British historians who have stressed that British
identity cannot be understood by sole reference to the United Kingdom. He
summarised British difficulties in reflecting upon the meaning of identity with

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The Albatross of the Past: Colleys Britons and early Twenty-First Century Britain
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 9 (2005)

Kiplings question: What should they know of England who only England
know?30
It seems then, that responsibility for much current distortion of Britains
collective memory about its world role is attributable to older ideological and
hubristic myths about Empire now firmly cemented within national
consciousness. Said showed the significance of these insular approaches to
history by transforming the term orientalism from an arcane field of
academic study to a synonym for Western imperialism and racism.31 He also
acknowledged the difficulty but stressed the potential rewards of thinking
concretely and sympathetically, contrapuntally, about others than only about
us. This means not trying to rule or classify others, and above all, not
constantly reiterating how our culture or country is number one.32
Indifference to world opinion that detects such British attitudes, whilst
exaggerating our global influence, is hubris, as is seeking solace in simplistic
interpretations of the past to define our national identity.
That Britain still sees itself as a major player and a model of Western
civilisation might be interpreted as a form of false consciousness. Colley asks
us to consider the issue of British smallness, whose power and reach can
easily be overemphasised by over-reliance on past propaganda, evidenced by
allusion to the infamous nineteenth century map of the British Empire,
coloured in pink to suggest a monolithic empire. This created the erroneous
impression that the only substantial empire existing at that time was Britains
own. Such cartographic sleight of hand, as Colley puts it, distracts the eye
from the smallness of the metropolitan power itself.33 She recalls the naively
malevolent representation of British officers in Mel Gibsons The Patriot,
symptomatic of a schizoid post-colonial gaze, at once diminishing the former
imperial power and simultaneously exaggerating its coercive influence.34
Thus, echoing conclusions to Britons, she suggests roots of imagined preeminence are engrained in earlier fictions.
Colls has recently shown how successive generations of Britons brought
up after 1945, whilst retaining exaggerated perceptions of Britains position in
the world, were slow to acknowledge Britains progressive loss of its erstwhile
military, imperial and manufacturing power and were therefore increasingly
driven back on their own resources, of which identity was a part. And so by
the 1990s, he argues, our sense of national identity was unravelling with
astonishing speed[and] our deepest structures of identityfor so long
driven deep into the ground of our being, are decaying now from within.35
Kumar too, has highlighted the problematic nature of how the revival of
nationalist movements in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales together with
the large influx of immigrants who, for example, do not see themselves as
English, has made the term British seem all the more necessary to preserve
the UKs political and social unity.36 Colley, too, argues for a deeper, longer
view of history. They all may have agreed with Lieven that there is virtually no
aspect of England and British history that was (and is) uninfluenced by the
countrys insular position.37 Parochialism, nationalism and racism, partly
legacies of our island isolation, illustrate some of these challenges and
threats, and show how Britains obsession with imagined identities needs
balancing with these longer perspectives.

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The Albatross of the Past: Colleys Britons and early Twenty-First Century Britain
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 9 (2005)

III. Religious and multi-ethnic tensions in a secular society (Protestants)

Societies apparent incapacity to readjust their flagrant anachronisms
echoes how religion and fear of the other became linked with the forging of
British identity in the eighteenth century. From Elizabeth I onwards, a
characteristic of English national identity was the application of the Calvinist
doctrine that had produced the idea of an elect nation that had withstood the
threat from international Catholicism led by Spain.38 Religion, in particular the
beleaguered Protestantism39 that now defined British identity, was a rallying
call to defend Britain, the elect nation, from its enemies. Colley argues that
religious hatred during the Napoleonic Wars became secondary to fear of
French invasion. For disparate national groupings to redefine themselves as
Britons, they needed a common enemy against which they as Scots, Welsh
and English could bury their national grievances and mutual enmities in
common cause against a perceived other, France.
In todays more secularised society, a new religion of fear has
impregnated popular consciousness with many reactions to perceived threats
of terrorism directed disproportionately towards religious extremism. An
apparent need to identify the other has often redefined itself in alarmist
language used in reference to the war on terror and in particular, as has
been suggested, against Islam. Tony Blair, in the wake of the July 7 London
bombings, called on British Muslims to confront the perverted and
poisonous doctrines of Islamic extremism in their midst. Facing up to the
international challenges of terrorism needed international cooperation to pull
up this evil ideology by its roots.40 Such targeting of an amorphous enemy,
never mind equating the doctrines of extremism with Islam, (generalised
claims refuted by many Muslims), only succeed in exacerbating those very
impulses of vulnerability in modern Britain that government terrorism policy
aims to quell. A revived religious impulse has subconsciously been
transformed into a fantasy of salvation through politics,41 hence the powerful
influence of the media discussed earlier. More attention needs focusing on
how to replace this new culture of fear with what Joanna Bourke recently
described as a culture of ethical responsibility and civic engagement the
only viable long-term responses to terrorism.42
Although the far right is still fragmented in Britain, both media and
government have often failed to dispel tensions between white Britons
arguing for a white Britain and a growing multi-ethnic British population often
erroneously and collectively categorised as outsiders. Although there now
appears to be growing popular understanding of the benefits and diversity of
multiculturalism, intolerance of otherness still manifests itself in
discrimination against immigrants and refugees - the term asylum seekers is
still widely and pejoratively used to imply work-shy non-Britons depriving
citizens of employment or living off state benefits, symptomatic of a racial
ambivalence that frequently panders to popular stereotypes, often
exaggerated by certain sections of the print media and exploited by such
political parties as the BNP. Media coverage of Islam has long irritated many
British Muslims.43 Such misconceptions obfuscate many other agencies
efforts (Campaign for Racial Equality, Liberty and the Refugee Council to
name but three), to persuade governments to tackle the moral, socioeconomic and cultural issues that could help alleviate the many problems of
poverty, integration and assimilation experienced by migrant populations. For
Francis Graham-Dixon
The Albatross of the Past: Colleys Britons and early Twenty-First Century Britain
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 9 (2005)

Britains aspirations of achieving multiculturalism to gain credibility, society

first may have to recognise the need for greater tolerance in its cultural
attitudes for example, towards different faiths and customs. However,
debates over hopes for a more integrative social policy reflect a national
ossification of attitudes towards ethnicity and Britishness that proponents of
religious tolerance or social inclusiveness cannot easily shift. Wallersteins
instrumentalist approach defines a basis for disparate communities and
nation-states to co-exist more satisfactorily, his organisational principle of a
world-economy showing itself to be a predominant social system useful in
elucidating the functioning of social systems.44
Colleys analysis of Britons eighteenth century perspectives towards
the other has much to tell us about the differences and similarities between
early and modern Britain, and how such self-perpetuating definitions of
British identity have outlived their original purposes. A phenomenon that
helped Britain establish itself in the past can no longer be usable in a rapidly
changing modern society; understanding this process enables us to see the
past more clearly.
IV. Overseas conflict and commerce (Profits)
The challenge of war in the eighteenth century produced an
increasingly homogenised ruling class, with greater access to wealth and
power. The British army proved an effective recruiting sergeant to nurture
Scottish, Welsh and Irish ambitions within the military profession. Protestant
patriotism and complacency comfortably co-existed with economic growth.45
Money, contacts and proven loyalty offered unlimited possibilities for
advancement. Becoming a patriot was a political act.46 This still holds true.
Wars of Spanish and Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War proved
commercially attractive to many who benefited from a record rise in export
levels accompanying huge expansion in British colonization. This last conflict
marked the high watermark of the nexus between commercial interests and
British imperial aggression. Trade also united the different regions of Britain,
but war in the American colonies that resulted in their loss and later conflicts
with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France hurt British commercial interests.47
Colley identified the patriotic promotion of commerce as a route to greater
political respectability and cachet.
The end of Empire contributed to Britains greater reluctance to wage
war to increase its global power, but is yet to diminish our capacity for profiting
handsomely from other countries conflicts. Britain has adopted a pragmatic
arms length approach to the commercial profitability of warfare by accruing
revenue through arms sales. Claims to justifying its credibility for tolerance
and fair-play are thus eroded when military governments, armed during the
Cold War by what Hobsbawm termed declining capitalist states such as
Britain48, are ostracised as rogue states for failing to uphold the democratic
principles that supplying arms helps to destabilise. Ironically, though Britain
still claims to have invaded and occupied Iraq to bring about its
democratisation, it is its long-established democratic principles at home that
are so under threat, as the following section suggests. Many would agree with
Nairn, who in identifying a recognisable pattern of nation-state anachronism,
argues the Iraqi project is an attempt to revive the nation-states fortunes and
popularity by means of a deliberately stoked-up nationalism.49 Flag-waving
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The Albatross of the Past: Colleys Britons and early Twenty-First Century Britain
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 9 (2005)

hubristic nationalism seems inappropriate during an extended era of relative

peace in Europe post-1945, but, as Colley ruefully reflects, Britain is a
cultureused to fighting and has largely defined itself through fighting.50
V. Citizenship and parliamentary reform (Victories?)
Political ambitions associated with reviving the nation states fortunes
present further dangers to Britains democracy. Parliament, in its mission to
defend Britain against its enemies, is now increasingly criticised for riding
roughshod over sacrosanct principles of law enshrined in Magna Carta and
Habeas Corpus. Many argue such cornerstones of British justice, well
articulated by Hume in 1797, are being progressively eroded by the legislature
with no formal written constitution and a reduced government majority that
has, thus far, failed to signal the rebirth of an effective parliamentary
opposition. Parliaments duty to protect its citizens is used to justify
introduction of repressive laws contrary to civil liberties and human rights
principles affecting citizens and non-citizens alike, (reduction in trial by jury,
the detention of terror suspects and proposed new anti-terror legislation
being three recent examples).51 Many therefore feel disengaged from
identifying with the political process and authority in general, fracturing hopes
for a socially cohesive Britain that respects common law rights. The Home
Offices Journey to Citizenship, the new citizens guide to integrating within
British society, is instructive in its stereotyping of supposedly British manners
and customs. Immigrants are incongruously required to swear an oath of
allegiance to the crown, to undertake to respect the rights and freedoms of
the UK and uphold its democratic values, but the state has no such
reciprocal duties towards Britons.52
Interestingly, the state became increasingly aware of its reciprocal duty
to engage with and respect the popular will, evidenced by the radical
constitutional and social change won in the period between Waterloo and
Queen Victorias accession, particularly in the late 1820s and early 1830s
(note 16). Colley shows how political reform could not have been achieved
without the direct influence of large numbers of men and women from
throughout Britain who participated in marches, demonstrations and petitions.
When the Whigs assumed power in 1830 they were overwhelmed with 3,000
petitions demanding parliamentary reform. Nor could Parliament in 1833
afford to ignore the 5,000 petitions calling for the abolition of slavery.53 The
lesson for 21st century Britain seems obvious that despite the ever more
painstaking management of the news agenda by political parties, as has been
discussed, dissatisfied voters may conclude unwisely - that the harder it
becomes to make their individual voices heard in an age of 24 hour news
access, the easier it is to follow a path of least resistance. Consequently the
fundamental principle of political accountability is further eroded by those who
surrender a right to engage in peaceful protest or to shows of public dissent in
the face of proposed legislation or government actions they perceive to be
unjust or undemocratic. Thus, civic inertia tends towards governments only
becoming more unaccountable to and distanced from their electors.
VI. An anachronistic monarchy (Majesty)
The State no longer presumes popular loyalty to a constitutional
monarchy to inculcate a mood of British common purpose. In modern Britain,
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University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 9 (2005)

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less confident below the surface and searching for a role in a less stable
world, the Queens longevity provides little more than a comfortable illusion of
the patriotic symbol of stability the monarchy and nation once enjoyed. The
role of the Commonwealth is anachronistic in the context of Britains more
immediate preoccupations with its future status in Europe and beyond. The
diverging roles of monarch and state, whose unification was celebrated by a
fledgling British nation, represent a break with the past, when the process of
state- building unifying crown with parliament was deliberate. George IIIs
longevity was a symbol of his nations relative stabilitythe king became a
lucky charm.54 Fewer could suggest that the theme adopted by the Queen for
her 2004 Christmas Day Message, Tolerance and respect for others,
emanated from a national figurehead still regarded as a lucky charm. For a
majority, her advocacy of diversity a strength not a threat remained
unheard, as declining viewing figures show.55 The novelty of being seen in
person in the eighteenth century seems to have made members of the Royal
Family more remarkable to the public, not less.56
Indifference to their ubiquity is paradoxical in an age where the cults of
celebrity and youth have reached their apotheosis, a product of the
imperatives of the entertainment economy interacting with the values of a
democratic society.57 Both help explain the publics adopting the Princess of
Wales as a symbol of caring Britain, suggesting modernitys capacity to adapt
certain more usable pasts to the Zeitgeist. This is not inconsistent with a
monarchy by 1820, more securely at one with the politics of unreason and
emotionalism.58 Echoing current cost benefit analysis debates around the
Royal Family, Colley shows although George III was applauded by someas
the guarantor of British prosperity and stability [he was] consistently
dismissed by a republican minority as an expensive irrelevance.59 Official
patriotic celebrations became synonymous with the celebration of the
monarch, Georges Golden Jubilee coinciding with the anniversary of
Agincourt.60 Such links now might appear inappropriately jingoistic in a society
that often prefers to defines nationhood by celebrating sporting conquests.
Reinvention
Following Scottish and Welsh devolution, the State, by offering
concessions, has succeeded in buying off nationalist dissent and retaining
powers at Westminster. Without the old commercial partnership incentives of
Empire, Britain may even break down into separate states.61 Continuing
political problems in Northern Ireland serve to remind of long-standing
unresolved conflicts. In many ways, Britain as an entity is the anachronism.
Negotiating these and manifold social, economic and cultural challenges at
home and abroad, is likely to stretch our collective intellectual capacities to
the limit into the future. As argued, restoring British self-belief can be reestablished by developing a partnership of trust between those who govern
and those who are governed, as well as reconciling the complex
contradictions of our more Anglo-Saxon universalist principles with those
differentialist attitudes, elucidated by Todd.62 A reduction in centralised
powers and fostering mutual citizenship are prerequisites in the process of
reinventing and reviving Britain.
The present government, largely unopposed, but with growing internal
fissures, faces mounting challenges in prioritising, reconciling and delivering
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University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 9 (2005)

11

its own domestic and escalating foreign policy aims. Britain has for too long
tried to punch above its weight, for example in handling the dilemma of its
problematical relationship with America.63 In 2005, Britain assumed the joint
presidency of the G8 and the E.U. Blair outlined Africa and climate change
as the global issues he hoped to tackle.64 Some criticise over-ambitious
political rhetoric, arguing that Africas poverty is a symptom of its malaise, not
the cause, which is its unstable politics. It has little to show for past Marshall
Plans.65 It remains to be seen whether growing consciousness in Britain of
the need to put global humanitarian needs before self-interest will prevail.
History, as Colley demonstrated, shows the British capacity for fighting just
causes and records its achievements, whether it was those seeking improved
access to civil rights after 1789 in return for their increased participation in the
war effort, or the campaigns in favour of or against Catholic emancipation in
1828-9, parliamentary reform and the abolition of slavery.66 Britons continues
to be instructive in underlining the importance of memory and historical
awareness as a counterweight to societys complacency.
As Colley says, Britain may or may not implode in the near or distant
future. If it does, this will be because it can no longer function adequately as
a unit or command sufficient support or belief from its varied peoples.67 There
are Britons who see their nation as a model elect society, but who do not yet
set benchmarks of mutual citizenship that would underpin such claims. This
requires taking a far longer- term view of how society can coexist. We aspire
to achieve this more peacefully, but as Said wrote, Peace cannot exist
without equality; this is an intellectual value desperately in need of reiteration,
demonstration and reinforcement.68
Intellectual engagement with the
particular circumstances that helped define Britain from the early 1700s, might
help to offer usable pasts that can re-educate and illuminate the present.
This should be attainable in a society more committed to lifelong learning.

Francis Graham-Dixon
The Albatross of the Past: Colleys Britons and early Twenty-First Century Britain
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 9 (2005)

12

D. Dorling, Why Trevor is wrong about race ghettos, The Observer, 25/09/05, pp. 14-15.
See D. Dorling, B. Thomas, 2001 Census Atlas of the UK, (Bristol: The Policy Press, 2004).
2
J. Gray, Heresies - Against Progress and other Illusions, (London: Granta, 2004), p. 207.
3
Idem.
4
E. Todd, After the Empire - The Breakdown of the American Order (London: Constable,
2003), p. 35.
5
K. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (London: Routledge, repr., 2004), p. 3.
6
L. Colley, The Politics of Eighteenth-Century British History, Journal of British Studies, 25,
4, (October 1986) 359-379, pp. 365-368.
7
L.Colley, Britons - Forging the Nation 1707-1837, (London: Pimlico, rev edn, 2003), p. xii.
8
D. Snowman, Todays History: Linda Colley, History Today (January 2003), pp. 18-20.
9
H. Young, What is Britishness? The Guardian, 28/03/00, p. 22.
10
L. Colley, The past is a foreign country, The Guardian, 29/07/03, p. 8.
11
L. Colley, What is Imperial History Now? in D. Cannadine (ed.), What is History Now?
(London, Macmillan, 2002), p. 142.
12
J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, (Cambridge: Polity,
1989), pp. 57-67.
13
A. J. Toynbee, A Study of History, abr. edn, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp.
279-280.
14
Colley, Britons, pp. 88-98.
15
Colley, p .152.
16
Ibid. pp. 362-363.
17
A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, (repr. edn, London: Penguin, 2003), p. 217.
18
Habermas, p. 124
19
Gray, p. 13.
20
M. Woolf, Shredded, The Independent, 23/12/04, pp.1 & 4, and R. Hazell, Fear of
information stalks corridors of Whitehall, ibid. p. 29; A. Travis and R. Evans, Falconer rejects
risk to information act, The Guardian, 01/01/05, p. 13.
21
Habermas, p. 125.
22
Ibid. pp. 123-124.
23
Ibid. pp. 133-134.
24
R. Colls, Identity of England, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 6.
25
G. Brown, The Guardian, 08/07/04, p. 29. Contrast with D. Aaronovitch, True Brit. A
migrants guide to fitting in, The Guardian, 16/12/04, p. 7.
26
st
L.Colley, Britishness in the 21 Century, Millennium Lecture, 08/12/99, www.number10.gov.uk (viewed 29/12/04); Young, What is Britishness?, ibid.
27
Colley, Britons, p. xviii.
28
D. Kennedy, Imperial History and Post-Colonial Theory, in Journal of Imperial and
Commonwealth History, 24, 3, (November 1996), 345-363, p. 345.
29
L.Colley, Captives. Britain, Empire and the World 1600-1850, (London: Cape, 2002) p. 3.
30
S. Dubow, The New Age of Imperialism? Professorial Lecture, University of Sussex,
19/10/04.
31
Kennedy, p. 347.
32
E.W. Said, Culture and Imperialism, (London: Chatto and Windus, 1993), p. 408.
33
Colley, What is Imperial History Now? ibid. p. 142.
34
Idem.
35
Colls, Ibid. pp. 4-5.
36
K. Kumar, The Making of English National Identity - Englishness and Britishness in
Comparative and Historical Perspective, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p.
6.
37
D. Lieven, Empire - The Russian Empire and its Rivals, (London: John Murray, 2000), p.
126.
38
D. Smith, Oliver Cromwell and the Protectorate Parliaments, research paper, University of
Sussex, 09/12/04, p.14. Forthcoming in 2006 in a collection on the Cromwellian Protectorate,
edited by Patrick Little.
39
Colley, Britons, p. 322.
40
M. White, A. Travis, D. Campbell, Blair: Uproot this ideology of evil, The Guardian,
14/07/05, p.1.
Francis Graham-Dixon
The Albatross of the Past: Colleys Britons and early Twenty-First Century Britain
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 9 (2005)

13

41

Gray, p. 2.
J. Bourke, The politics of fear are blinding us to the humanity of others, The Guardian,
01/10/05, p. 28.
43
V. Dodd, Radical plan to stop Muslim extremism, The Guardian, 17/09/05, p. 1.
44
J.K.J. Thomson, Decline in History - The European Experience, (Cambridge: Polity, 1998),
pp.18-23.
45
Colley, Britons, pp. 43 & 369.
46
Ibid. pp. 126 & 372.
47
Ibid. pp. 99-100.
48
E. Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991, (London:
Abacus, 1994), p. 254.
49
T. Nairn, Out of the Cage, London Review of Books, 24 June 2004, 11-14, p. 14.
50
Colley, Britons, p. 9.
51
R. Verkaik and C. Brown, Belmarsh: a new affront to justice, The Independent, 18/12/04,
p. 1; A. Sampson, Civil Liberties in Britain, The Independent, ibid. p. 37; A. Howard, Lord
Woolf v The Home Secretary, The Times, 09/03/04, p.3; M. White, R. Norton-Taylor, D.
Campbell, MPs may force retreat by Clarke The Guardian, 17/09/05, p. 11.
52
Life in Britain - Journey to Citizenship, (London: The Stationery Office, 2004); N. Cohen,
Without Prejudice, The Observer, 07/09/03, p. 29.
53
Colley, Britons, p. 362.
54
Ibid. pp. 223-224.
55
2004 figures were 5.5 million, 2003, 6.5m, 2002, 9.3m. www.news.independent.co.uk,
(viewed 28/12/04).
56
Colley, Britons, p. 235.
57
Gray, p. 207.
58
Colley, Britons, p. 231.
59
Ibid. p. 229.
60
Ibid, p. 216.
61
Cohen, see note 52.
62
Todd, pp. 103-107.
63
Ibid. p. 190.
64
T. Blair, A year of huge challenges, The Economist, 01/01/05, pp. 22-24.
65
R. Dowden, Worldview, The Observer, 09/01/05, p. 25.
66
Colley, Britons, pp. 323 &362.
67
Colley, Britons, p. xiv.
68
E.W. Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism, (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2004), p. 142.
42

Francis Graham-Dixon
The Albatross of the Past: Colleys Britons and early Twenty-First Century Britain
University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 9 (2005)