Nationalism and Ethnic Politics

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British National Identity and the Dilemmas of

Multiculturalism

Eva-Maria Asari , Daphne Halikiopoulou & Steven Mock

To cite this article: Eva-Maria Asari , Daphne Halikiopoulou & Steven Mock (2008) British National
Identity and the Dilemmas of Multiculturalism, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 14:1, 1-28, DOI:
10.1080/13537110701872444

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13537110701872444

Published online: 29 Feb 2008.

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Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 14:1–28, 2008
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C Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 1353-7113 print / 1557-2986 online

DOI: 10.1080/13537110701872444

BRITISH NATIONAL IDENTITY AND THE DILEMMAS OF

MULTICULTURALISM

EVA-MARIA ASARI, DAPHNE HALIKIOPOULOU, and STEVEN MOCK

London School of Economics and Political Science

Nationalism and multiculturalism are often perceived as polar opposites with

the former viewed as the disease and the latter the cure. Contrary to this view,
this article argues that a strong national identity, albeit of a particular kind, is
prerequisite to a stable and functioning multicultural society. The article seeks to
identify both the causes and the implications of the absence of an overarching,
civic national identity in Britain, further to the goal of seeking a meaningful
solution. It is our contention that the problem lies in the difficulty involved in
reconciling current pressures on British identity with a coherent narrative of
British history, especially its imperial past.

In 2006 May, the British Minister of Education announced

plans to review whether the teaching of “core British values”
should be made compulsory in the curriculum between the ages
of 11 and 16. According to the BBC, this review, which lasted
for six months, “asked how all children can develop a strong
sense of British identity by learning about Britain’s culture and
traditions.”1 According to Sir Keith Ajegbo, a former headmaster
and Home Office adviser, the investigation found that British
identity is hardly touched upon in the curriculum and that
much more needs to be done to provide the “essential glue
that binds people together.” This initiative highlights one of the
major problems faced by British society today: the failure to
produce a discourse that integrates various ethnic groups under
the umbrella of a common British identity.
According to the education minister, the review was in part a
response to the terrorist attacks of 7 July 2005, and the perception
that it was the failure to forge a unifying British identity that led
some to give greater priority to ethnic and religious signifiers,
with significant consequences. The July 7th London bombings

Address correspondence to Eva-Maria Asari, H808, Connaught House, Houghton

Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK.

1
2 E.-M. Asari et al.

illustrate the problems created by the absence of a civic British

identity. It was frequently noted that unlike other terrorist attacks,
such as those in the United States on 11 Sept. 2001, the London
bombings were perpetrated by British citizens whose loyalties
evidently lay with their ethnic and religious identities over and
against the British state. Thus, the lack of a successfully mobiliz-
ing, inclusive civic British identity came to be seen as the cause
of large-scale divisions within the United Kingdom that could
increasingly serve as a source of friction and conflict.
This article will seek to identify both the causes and the im-
plications of this absence of an overarching, civic British national
identity further to the goal of seeking a meaningful solution. It is
our contention that the problem lies in the difficulty involved in
reconciling current pressures on British identity with a coherent
narrative of British history. We will begin by proposing a theory
tracing the source of the problem, then illustrate this point by
showing two contexts in which this dilemma has manifested itself:
first in the way that history is taught in the British education
system at present and then in recent efforts to revise citizenship
law and immigration procedures.

Nationalism and Multiculturalism: Definitions and Ideals

At the outset, it must be clarified that this paper approaches the

problem from a perspective that views a functioning multicultural
nation to be theoretically possible, and not at all beyond Britain’s
capacity to achieve. Nationalism and multiculturalism are often
perceived in liberal, antiracist circles as polar opposites, with the
former viewed as the disease and the latter the cure. However, it
is our view that, on the contrary, a strong national identity, albeit
of a particular kind, is prerequisite to a stable and functioning
multicultural society. By national identity we are referring to
what Anthony Smith defines as “the maintenance and continuous
reproduction of the pattern of values, symbols, memories, myths
and traditions that compose the distinctive heritage of nations
and the identification of individuals with that heritage and those
values, symbols, memories, myths and traditions.”2 In functional
terms, it is the “process whereby a nation is reconstructed over
time.”3
In order to explain this contention, two points must be
understood. First of all, “multiculturalism,” as an ideal, is not
 British National Identity and Multiculturalism 3

absolute. Given that race and culture are themselves social con-
structs, there can be no truly objective standard for racial or
cultural homogeneity, and therefore no national society that does
not, at least potentially, contain subgroups distinguishable by nu-
ances that would fell under the rubric of “culture.” In effect, then,
all nations are “multicultural” to some degree. Multiculturalism
as a policy therefore amounts to the means taken to broaden the
definition of national identity so as to incorporate as diverse an
assortment of cultural differences as possible.
That being said, if indeed all societies are to some degree
multicultural then the reverse is also true: that all nations require
a defining and unifying principle deemed distinct and universal
to the nation in question, conformity to which stands as the
measure of inclusion or exclusion. This unifying principle must
be some signifier or set of signifiers that define and distinguish the
nation and that all members of the nation must claim in common
as a part of their identity. This can be a cultural characteristic,
such as a common language or religious tradition; a sense of
shared history such as common descent, a “golden age” or a
formative traumatic event; or a political mission, such a distinct
form of government or conception of “freedom.” Whatever else
the nation is, it is a form of social order—a mechanism by which
a mass of otherwise autonomous individuals agree to accept the
rules and authority of the collective. They need a common reason
to make this sacrifice, and a common symbol of the group’s
agreement to be a group, to sacrifice for the group, and to refrain
from violence within the group. To the extent that an individual
cannot accept this reason, relate to this symbol, they are and are
perceived to be an outsider.
We would argue, then, that the extent to which a nation
can be deemed multicultural lies in the degree to which this
unifying principle is itself inclusive. Which is to say, how many
diverse individuals and groups within a population can easily
incorporate, adopt or identify with it without compromising their
own distinctive cultural values.

Boundary Mechanisms and Symbolic Resources

It has long been standard in the field of nationalism studies to

classify nations according to what manner of principle serves to
4 E.-M. Asari et al.

unify the nation. It is a distinction that goes back to Ernest Renan

and Friedrich Meinecke in the difference between the Staatsnation
and the Kulturnation as conflicting bases for legitimate claim over
Alsace and Lorraine. This dichotomy was systematized by Hans
Kohn in 1945 in the distinction between a Western, political type
of nationalism associated with France, and an Eastern genealog-
ical type epitomized by Germany. This dichotomy has remained
influential in the field; though various theorists have cast a critical
eye towards refining it, first of all by confronting the implicit value
judgment it contains. Whether phrased in terms of Eastern vs.
Western nationalism, ethnic vs. civic, or cultural vs. political, it
always has something to do with the extent to which the national
community is deemed inclusive or exclusive, with inclusiveness
naturally being the normative ideal.
But it has also long been recognized that distinctions between
these ideal-types are not so clear-cut. Oliver Zimmer (2003), for
example, has addressed this complexity, along with the issue of
implied value judgments, by phrasing the distinction in terms of
“voluntaristic” and “organic” components to nationhood, both of
which can serve in the capacity of either mechanisms to establish
boundaries or symbolic resources to enable mass mobilization.
Further, echoing Rogers Brubaker, Zimmer argues that one
should not view this system as the fixed product of deep social
trends in economy, politics, and culture but rather as a construct
that reinvents and reconfigures itself constantly in response to
prevailing social circumstances and that will even show variation
between different subgroups within the nation.
Generally speaking, the more open, voluntaristic, and civic
the unifying principles of a nation are, the more inclusive and
multicultural, and therefore just, it is considered to be. At the
inclusive extreme of the scale, the simple fact of citizenship or
even residency in a given territory is taken as the sole unifying
principle, after which groups within the state are left entirely
to their own devices in terms maintaining their own cultural
distinctiveness. Any attempt to assimilate immigrant groups to
any common principle deemed necessary to national inclusion
is rejected as a form of intolerance, even if that principle is the
very value of tolerance and diversity itself. This paradigm, once
thought to represent the pinnacle of multicultural tolerance, has
since come under criticism. Recently, for example, an article in
 British National Identity and Multiculturalism 5

The New Yorker on multiculturalism in the Netherlands labeled this

“the Dutch Model,” a form of pillarization the origins of which
are not to be found in modern waves of mass immigration but
in the historical separation of Catholic, Protestant, and secular
communities under the umbrella of the single state.4 It is a
system that had already begun to unravel in the face of modernity
and is now being recognized as a perfect recipe for second and
third generation alienation as the children and grandchildren
of immigrants lose touch with the values of their parents and
grandparents, yet they find no coherent local culture prepared to
present itself as an alternative in the land where they were raised;
a problem brought recently into the public spotlight in the Dutch
case by the murder of Theo Van Gogh, or in the British case by
the attacks of 7 July 2005.
Indeed, the notion that this paradigm is the very definition
of multiculturalism has served to undermine the concept, as illus-
trated by right-wing, anti-immigration parties who have achieved
electoral successes over the past decade (most notably in the
Netherlands and Switzerland) by means of rhetoric that ironically
identifies the mass immigration of people from foreign (mostly
Muslim) cultures as a threat to the nation’s traditional values of
liberalism and tolerance. In Britain, a report published in 2004
April by the Commission for Racial Equality attributed the failure
to promote Britishness and integration to multiculturalism. Ac-
cording to the Head of the Commission, Trevor Phillips (2005),
“we are sleep-walking into segregation” because multiculturalism
breeds separatism. Phillips went as far as to argue that the term
itself must be scrapped, since though multiculturalism may have
been born out of a “desire to recognize that diversity is a good
thing and to appreciate the many qualities newcomers brought to
Britain,” in practice it has resulted in alienation, isolation, and dis-
tancing between communities. It has become “ridiculous or worse
still a dangerous form of benign neglect and exclusion . . . ”.5
In 2005 September, a publication by the conservative think-tank
Civitas supported this argument: failure to establish unity in
Britain has been largely due to the implementation of multi-
culturalism. In “The Poverty of Multiculturalism,” Patrick West
(2005) argued that multiculturalism encourages racial hatred and
sectarianism, ultimately causing segregation when members of a
6 E.-M. Asari et al.

given society, rather than subscribing to a set of core values, are

instead encouraged to see themselves as “separate.”6
But if the sort of multicultural model that denies the need
for unifying values or symbols has proven unworkable, what are
the alternatives? The most exclusive models of national identity,
which policies of multiculturalism are designed to reject, are
those in which unifying principles include ascriptive signifiers. If
a particular biological characteristic such as skin color or a line
of blood descent is required in order to be a full member of a
nation, then the nation inherently excludes those without this
characteristic. Sliding back toward inclusiveness, we have other
signifiers, increasingly less ascriptive, that may or may not be
taken as part of a nation’s unifying principle such as, for example,
religion. One can, in theory, change religions in order to be
accepted as a national insider, even if we agree one should not
necessarily have to do so in order to enjoy the full benefits of
civic inclusion. Then there are more ambivalent traits, such as lan-
guage. On the one hand, the notion of accepting any immigrant
willing to learn the national language is inherently inclusive as
language is learned behavior, and justifiable insofar as a common
language is necessary to a functioning society and economy. Yet
there are cases where the use of language as a unifying principle
has been used as a means of exclusion against targeted cultural
groups. Then there are political institutions and values that might
be taken as principles common to the nation. Again, these are
signifiers that, in theory at least, can be adopted and assimilated
by anyone. Yet political principles and values are themselves
derivative of particular cultures and may pose more of a challenge
to some cultures than to others, thereby excluding selectively.
It is here we reach the contact point—the fundamental
dilemma of multiculturalism: where each national unit must draw
its own judgment as to where the appropriate trade-off between
political unity and multicultural inclusiveness lies. The Parekh
Report put this dilemma succinctly, “How is a balance to be
struck between the need to treat people equally, the need to treat
people differently, and the need to maintain shared values and
social cohesion?”7 And since nations constantly reinvent and re-
configure themselves in the face of shifting social circumstances,
this judgment will itself change over time. Though each nation
might introduce unique local circumstances to this dilemma, the
 British National Identity and Multiculturalism 7

dilemma itself is one confronted by every multicultural nation-

state, which could arguably be expanded to mean every state in
the world. It is an issue that has been brought to the forefront
not only in Britain due to recent events but also throughout
Europe. Going back to the classical distinction between France
and Germany, the French republican model has traditionally
been regarded as the ideal of inclusivity, with its willingness to
extend full citizenship and civic participation to anyone who
identifies with the nation and its values. However, in practice,
this amounts to confronting minorities with highly assimilationist
demands in terms of language and cultural mores and refuses
public recognition of cultural diversity. All claims of immigrant
inequality are phrased in socioeconomic terms, and while cultural
diversity is not denied, it is required that it be confined to
the private domain. The question, however, as to whether the
dominant secular national ideology of France is not itself the
product of a particular religious culture and set of cultural values
has been brought into relief by the riots in of 2005 and the
highly publicized affaire des foulards. Germany, on other hand, is
often depicted as the polar opposite of the French model, with
an “ethno-cultural and differentialist” conception of nationality8
that fully recognizes the cultural difference of the minority but
in doing so denies them equal political participation. It is only
recently that the German citizenship legislation has been liberal-
ized to accommodate second generation immigrants who have, in
many cases, assimilated German language and culture. Another
interesting example, Denmark, has come to the attention of
scholars of multiculturalism following the “Mohammad cartoon
affair” of early 2006. Until then, Denmark had cultivated the
self-image of a small, relatively homogeneous yet highly developed
and tolerant country. The cartoon affair triggered an important
debate over the balance between freedom of expression and
political correctness. In other words, does the former include
the “license to offend,” or should we mutually limit the extent to
which we subject each other’s fundamental beliefs to criticism?9
How, then, is this balance currently being struck in British
society, what are the social and historical factors that have influ-
enced it, and are there reasons to change it?
8 E.-M. Asari et al.

From English Empire to British Nation

The story of British multiculturalism begins in the year 1066.

More accurately, it begins with the peculiar way the English
remember and commemorate the event that took place on this
date, widely considered a defining moment in English history.
When one visits the English Heritage site where the Battle of
Hastings took place, one is given an audio guide, somewhat
different from the sort available at most historical sites in Britain.
At each point on the tour of the battlefield, one can key in
a different code to hear the perspective of either a Norman
or an Anglo-Saxon participant in the battle, and at the end of
the tour both narrators, while still advocating staunchly for the
justice of their side, concede that in the final analysis it didn’t
really matter who won as there remains no distinction between
Norman and Anglo-Saxon today, nearly one thousand years later.
This sentiment is reinforced by a plaque adjacent to the spot
where King Harold died: “This stone has been set in this place
to commemorate the fusion of the English and Norman peoples
which resulted from the great battle fought here in 1066.”
This representation is peculiar not because it is historically
inaccurate. On the contrary, it is a far more nuanced presentation
of history than one would expect from a nation commemorating
an event such as this—quite openly perceived as a moment when
a foreign force defeated and subjugated a local, indigenous one.
Could one imagine an audio guide at the site of Masada in Israel
providing the option of the Roman point of view on the last
battle against the Zealots (“those backwards religious fanatics just
couldn’t understand the value of Roman civilization”)? Could one
imagine a plaque on the Field of Blackbirds celebrating the birth
of the Serbian nation as the fusion of a Slavic Orthodox peasantry
with an Ottoman high culture as a consequence of the Battle of
Kosovo?
Ernest Renan famously quipped that getting its history wrong
is part of being a nation. Does England’s perplexing failure to get
its history wrong call its status as a nation into question?
One would think that a nation that proudly celebrated itself
as the product of a merging of cultures would be conducive
to multiculturalism. One need only expand the parameters, a
notion exemplified, albeit satirically, in Defoe’s famous poem, A
 British National Identity and Multiculturalism 9

True-Born Englishman: “Thus from a mixture of all kinds be-

gan/That het’rogeneous thing, an Englishman.” It is due to
sentiments such as these that the field of nationalism studies has
generally classified both English and British nationalism as civic
rather than ethnic, political rather than cultural, when compared
to most European nationalisms.
But one must look deeper into the unique structure of
English national identity, the peculiar circumstances under which
it developed, and the true functional purpose of these sorts of
sentiments in context to understand why an assimilationist model
of national community has nonetheless proven problematic in
Britain in the present day. Krishan Kumar’s recent book, The
Making of English National Identity, contains a key insight toward
such an understanding. That insight lies in the pivotal and unique
role that Empire played in the formation of British and English
national identity. The unions of Great Britain and the United
Kingdom and the project of Empire were the key political devel-
opments during the very time when the ideology of nationalism
was first gaining saliency in the rest of Europe. Mobilizing the
whole of the islands toward the imperial project necessitated
creating an identity whereby one could retain one’s distinctiveness
in ethnic and even national terms, yet at the same time share in
the political identity made possible by the formation of the new
British state.10
This British political identity engendered a loyalty that was
to many the primary signifier of their identity, even where it
existed along-side enduring ethnic, local, and national identities.
Some have dismissed the historical importance of British imperial
loyalty, viewing it as a fragile political patriotism in contrast to
a deeper English or Scottish ethnic nationalism. But to do so
is to essentialize the categories of the cultural and the political
too sharply, for political constructs can come to be sources of
considerable cultural pride. Political institutions such as, for
example, a British monarchy and Parliament, a British navy and
army, a British empire were, for many, far more important than
local cultural signifiers, arousing deep feelings of loyalty.
However, while for the Scots and the Welsh, having a strong
British political identity meant cultivating an equally strong
Scottish or Welsh cultural identity to balance it, the same was not
true for the English. Conscious that Britain and the Empire were
10 E.-M. Asari et al.

largely their creatures, rather than making the English assertive

it made them cautious about developing, and thereby associating
these creatures with a cultural identity distinct to them. As Kumar
puts it, “when you are in charge, or think you are in charge,
you do not go about beating the drum.” The development of
unifying cultural signifiers was precluded by the centrality of
England in larger structures that relied on cultural diversity for
their continuity.11 Playing up Englishness and English cultural
superiority would have threatened the unity and integrity of the
very structures on which this sense of pride and superiority was
built.
This explains the unusual take on the Battle of Hastings.
Hastings cannot be commemorated in the same way as most
nations commemorate their national defeats, because if it is
considered a great historical injustice for them to conquer and to
rule us, then what right do we have to conquer and to rule, say,
India and Africa—or, for that matter, Scotland and Wales.
Indeed, there was a period in English history when the Battle
of Hastings was perceived in exactly the way one would expect a
nation to perceive what is collectively understood as a moment
of its own defeat and subjugation. During the English Civil War,
prior to the unions and the empire—when idea of nationalism was
barely in its infancy, and hardly a major sociopolitical force—the
concept of the “Norman yoke,” of Anglo-Saxons reclaiming their
original freedoms from foreign Norman oppressors, was preva-
lent, thereafter only to appear in the rhetoric of radicals up until
around the 19th century, and to disappear almost completely
in England by the time the concept of the nation was in full
bloom elsewhere in Europe.12 It is in this rhetoric we see what the
cultural and political content of a more narrow English national
myth might have looked like had it followed the trajectory of a
typical nationalism.
Instead, the boundary mechanisms of Britishness were vol-
untaristic, as evidenced by the fact that the Scottish and Welsh
could and did key into them enthusiastically, even while they
did not associate with the dominant English ethnicity primarily
responsible for defining the symbolic content of that identity.
They could draw upon the symbolic resources of Scottishness
and Welshness to mobilize for a nation with British political
boundaries. The common mission of empire was in large part
 British National Identity and Multiculturalism 11

what enabled this, because whatever else Empire might be, it

is multicultural. Its multiculturalism may be predicated on the
hierarchical principle of one group claiming legitimacy to rule
over another, but, regardless, its legitimating ideology is one that
fundamentally rejects the ethno-nationalist principle that cultural
homogeneity is the primary basis of political legitimacy.
And here lies the bitter irony of British multiculturalism:
all of the civic, assimilative signifiers upon which a multicultural
British or for that matter English national identity could poten-
tially draw from the existing historical-cultural matrix of myths
and symbols are deeply implicated in the project of empire—a
political project that is not only past but conceptually discredited;
associated, and not unjustly either, with hierarchy and racism. The
norms, values, myths, and symbols that could potentially serve
to enable an inclusive, assimilating nationalism were employed
as ideological enablers to imperial domination and, at worst,
have come to be intrinsically associated with ascriptive traits like
whiteness and blood descent.
Instead, the symbolic resources upon which a non-British
non-imperial identity could be formed (important for the
prospects of a potentially post-British post-imperial identity) were
late in coming and weak when they did appear. According to
Kumar, this cannot be said to have occurred until the beginning
of the period between the World Wars when the project of Empire
was already widely seen to be in inexorable decline. Even then, it
was never a dominant force on the political landscape, developing
as it did not during the 19th century when nationalism was
associated with liberal progress, but during the 1920s and 1930s
when it was already widely deemed responsible for the continent’s
descent into war. Hence what developed could better be described
merely as “Englishness” rather than English nationalism, whereby
the English prided themselves on being quaint and unassuming in
their patriotism, in contrast to the nationalist hysteria engulfing
the continent in the form of fascism and Nazism. The signifiers
on which it relied were the sort best articulated by John Major
when he spoke of “long shadows on county grounds, warm beer,
invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pool fillers and. . .old
maids cycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist.”13
It is this weak, tentative set of signifiers that ultimately served
as the only body of cultural symbolic resources upon which
12 E.-M. Asari et al.

Britishness had to draw, once the political projects of Britain and

Empire had dissolved.
England once defined itself almost entirely through its asso-
ciation with the “noble causes” of Empire and Great Britain. Once
those noble causes began first to decline in political salience,
and then lose their aura of nobility, the reverse came to be true,
and Britishness was left with only the relatively weak signifiers of
Englishness to draw upon. Britishness, once the proud mark of
the in-group, rich with symbolic content, has now been reduced
to an empty signifier, which as such has now become a mark of an
outsider. If someone goes out of their way to identify themselves as
“British,” it tends to be only because he or she has no other basis
to claim local, in-group identity. Ironically, the two categories of
people who experience this problem most acutely are immigrants
and visible minority descendants of immigrants, and the English.
The shortcomings of current approaches to multiculturalism
have been largely attributed to the fact they tend to focus on the
cultural recognition of minority groups without giving enough
attention to the insecurities this might entail for the majority.
Policies of multiculturalism cannot, however, be successful unless
both minority and majority are willing to accept them as viable.
The current system disfavors the English. The 1998 Labor De-
volution initiative brought into practice an asymmetrical model
granting differing degrees of autonomy to Scotland, Wales, and
Northern Ireland. Thus far, devolution has been confined to these
three regions, bypassing the 85% of the population that resides
in England. The West Lothian question—the controversy that has
arisen from the fact that Scottish and Welsh representatives have a
say in matters concerning England while English representatives
no longer have a say in Scottish or Welsh affairs—has served to
strengthen English nationalism, giving rise to demands for an En-
glish parliament (favored by 61% of the English, according to the
Act of Union Poll, BBC14 ). By ignoring the majority group, devo-
lution has therefore weakened identification with Britain and un-
dermined the consolidation of an integrated civic British identity.

The Absence of a Civic Mythology in Britain Today

Today Britain is home to a wide diversity of distinct ethnic

and cultural groups. According to National Statistics, Britain’s
 British National Identity and Multiculturalism 13

minority ethnic population grew by 53% between 1991 and 2001,

from 3.0 million in 1991 to 4.6 million in 2001. In the last
UK census, conducted in 2001, the minority ethnic population
was 7.9% of the total population of the United Kingdom. This
segment of the population includes a vast diversity of racial,
cultural, and linguistic groups. Indians and Pakistanis were the
largest groups represented followed by Black Caribbeans, Black
Africans, and Bangladeshis. Each of the remaining distinct groups
accounted for less than 0.5% but together amounted to a total
1.4% of the population. Minority populations were concentrated
primarily in London and in the North of England, in places
such as Yorkshire and Humber.15 And the latest census does not
account for demographic changes that have occurred since EU
enlargement in 2004, leading to an influx of immigrants from East
European countries such as Poland.
The lack of symbolic content to the concept of Britishness
is what has led to difficulties in developing a civic mythology
capable of unifying a multicultural Britain. The result has been
the implementation of policies of multiculturalism divorced from
any notion of national unity. Although the United Kingdom is
largely perceived as a civic nation, recent developments have
cast a doubt on the civic nature of British national identity.
Trevor Phillips has suggested stressing the civic elements of British
national identity in order to achieve unity. “We need to remind
people that we are equally British regardless of race and religion.
Our claim for equality in an integrated society is founded on the
certainty of our citizenship.”16 But if the civic elements of British
national identity no longer engender the pride they once did, how
can they be presented in such a way as to enable mobilization?
In absence of such elements, the development of a multicultural
national discourse appears to be having the adverse effect: the
pursuit of multiculturalism is reinforcing ethno-cultural elements
of identity.
Indeed, the way multiculturalism has been implemented
in Britain has proven problematic, with the unintended conse-
quence of causing segregation and disunity. Multiculturalism in
the United Kingdom has translated into the exacerbation of dif-
ference, and therefore to tension between various cultural iden-
tities and ethnic groups. In the absence of unifying principles,
14 E.-M. Asari et al.

these various ethnic, cultural, or religious identities produce

stronger attachments than does British national identity, thus
enhancing division within Britain. At present, for the most part,
people feel stronger about being English, Scottish, or Welsh then
they do about being British.17 This has resulted in a context in
which loyalty is broadly seen as being owed first and foremost
to the individual’s respective ethnicity or religion rather than
to the British state. In the case of individuals for whom their
British identity is foremost, the symbolic content of this identity
is more insecure and ambiguous than in the case of other civic
nationalisms such as the American.
This is not to say that multiculturalism as a concept is
inherently flawed, nor that it is a principle that cannot function
in the United Kingdom. To the contrary, a successfully applied
multicultural framework should be able to serve as a factor
to eliminate division and hostility between ethnic and cultural
groups. However, the framework can only be successfully applied
when accompanied by a civic/inclusive national identity core.
We will now examine how the absence of such a civic mythol-
ogy, as well as of any palpable effort to develop one, is reflected
in two institutional mechanisms of the state: the education system
and citizenship tests.

Education

The importance of a centralized, state education system to the

construction and maintenance of national identity is widely ac-
cepted by scholars in the field of nationalism studies.18 According
to Anthony Smith, it is through compulsory, standardized public
mass education that “state authorities hope to inculcate national
devotion and a distinctive homogeneous culture, an activity that
most regimes pursue with considerable energy under the influ-
ence of nationalist ideals of cultural authenticity and unity.”19 In
particular, it is the subjects of language, history, and geography
that promote the homogeneity of the nation, as these subjects
elevate a particular vernacular, define the territorial dimension of
national identity and highlight common historical memories and
myths of common descent. The more centralized the education
system, the more successful the promotion of nationalism is likely
to be.
 British National Identity and Multiculturalism 15

At present, the British education system is highly decen-

tralized and subjects key to shaping national identity are not
compulsory beyond a certain age. While there is one curriculum
per subject, there is no single textbook commissioned by the state.
In addition, the curriculum contains various choices, and many
of the decisions as to what is and is not to be taught are left to
the individual school. For example, in A-level politics there is a
choice between American politics, International Institutions, and
Political Ideologies.
History is compulsory in schools between the ages of 5 and
14, and statutory requirements for the subject are set out in the
national curriculum programs of study for key stages 1–3. Beyond
the age of 14 pupils can chose to continue the study of history
through General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE)
and A-level, Short for Advanced Level, Advanced Supplementary
levels (AS/A) level examination courses. Although GCSE and
AS/A level history remain popular option choices with pupils
at 14 and 17 (according to the 2004/5 annual Qualifications
and Curriculum Authority report on curriculum and assessment
for the subject of history, published in 2005 Dec.), this is still
problematic in that it leaves open the possibility that a large
number of pupils, and perhaps entire categories of pupils, may
not study history at all past the age of 14.20 The same report
recognizes that “there is growing interest in history’s potential to
contribute to young people’s awareness and appreciation of the
notion of ‘common’ identity and sense of ‘Britishness’ ” (p. 4).
Gordon Brown’s recent reference to the issue as reflecting “a loss
of national self-esteem,” and Guyver’s21 insistence on stressing the
need to promote a common sense of Britishness, clearly reflects
the UK Government’s awareness of this problem. The structure
of the education system has been a causal factor in the failure to
forge an overarching civic British national identity.
The option choices made by schools and colleges at the GCSE
and AS/A levels lead to the content of post-14 history being domi-
nated by topics such as the Tudors and 20th-century dictatorships.
Pupils are taught extensively about the events of World War II, the
Russian revolution, and the era of Hitler and Stalin. The so-called
“Hitlerization” of post-14 history is exacerbated by the unitization
of A level courses, which has fragmented the overall learning
16 E.-M. Asari et al.

experience for pupils and reduced the time available for wider
reading and reflection on history.
Pupils are taught little about the history of the British Em-
pire, largely because it is viewed as a discredited part of British
history and a negative influence that ought not be remembered.
Center-left discourse in the United Kingdom tends to associate
the nation with imperialism and therefore sees nationalism as
reflecting a doctrine of the supremacy of the English over other
ethnic elements in Britain. This view is reflected in the elimina-
tion of the history of the British Empire from the curriculum; the
intent being to remove the divisive consequences of Britain’s im-
perialist past from the national memory. However, the unintended
effect of this is that the curriculum obscures the contribution
of multiethnic elements in British history, thereby undermining
the civic historical narrative. Such focus is restricted to isolated
events or themes such as slavery, postwar immigration, and Black
history month. In accordance with the Macpherson report22
pupils should “be taught about the social, cultural, religious and
ethnic diversity of the societies studied, both in Britain and the
wider world.”
According to a subject report for primary history published
by the Office for Standards in Education (henceforth Ofsted)
in 2005 Feb., “primary history continues to disappoint, with
lower achievement and weaker teaching than in most subjects.”23
Formal assessment of pupils’ progress is frequently lacking. Too
often, the focus is on developing pupils’ in-depth knowledge of
specific topics in history at the expense of making explicit links
and connections between the different historical periods studied.
Citizenship has a notoriously weak presence in British
education.24 It is only recently, in the aftermath of the July 7
attacks, that citizenship has become something of a buzzword in
the debate surrounding the “re-branding” of Britishness. Policy
innovations across a range of areas, from the national curriculum
to social exclusion, have been organized and justified with ref-
erence to citizenship, with the goal of increasing the visibility of
citizenship both for new citizens (through citizenship tests and
ceremonies) and existing ones (through citizenship studies in
schools). This initiative is driven by the awareness that British
society is becoming increasingly segregated. Spatial segregation
is manifested in residential isolation, segregation in schools and
 British National Identity and Multiculturalism 17

color-coded universities, but also sociocultural isolation revealed

in studies such as those conducted by the Commission for Racial
Equality that show that Britons still tend to live with and are
friends with people of their own “racial” group.25
In 2002 citizenship classes were introduced into the cur-
riculum as compulsory for pupils aged 11–16. The purpose of
these classes was to enhance “the knowledge and understanding
of being informed citizens” and to “promote participation and
responsible action.”26 The curriculum also emphasized the impor-
tance of stressing “the diversity of identities” and how this diversity
is reflected in the institutional set-up of the United Kingdom,
including the relationship between central and local government,
and the electoral system. However, citizenship classes are thus
far proving problematic as a means toward fostering shared civic
values. According to a 2003 Ofsted Report, “standards are often
low and teaching quality varies widely, with a lot of unsatisfactory
management of the subject” (though admittedly only a small
sample of schools was inspected).27 Part of the difficulty lies in the
ambiguity inherent in the citizenship curriculum, as well as the
decentralized nature of British education. The overall curriculum
is very broad, leaving a lot to the interpretation of individual
schools and teachers, thus undermining the goal of providing a
unifying influence across the United Kingdom.
More recently, in 2006, Ofsted found that although citi-
zenship classes are improving throughout the United Kingdom,
provision is still inadequate in at least one quarter of schools.28
The problem lies in the fact that the curriculum fails to connect
citizenship, and the institutional framework that accompanies
it, with British history. The teaching of citizenship has failed to
become an integral part of the school culture as a whole. While
it presents the institutional framework of citizenship, it has not
succeeded in promoting the ethos that underpins this framework.

Citizenship Tests

A second sphere in which the difficulty in reconciling British

identity with British history is evident in the area of citizenship law,
and in particular the recent introduction of citizenship tests to the
immigration process. In a secular society, especially where social
inequality is intensified by economic rationalism and deepening
18 E.-M. Asari et al.

cultural diversity, shared citizenship functions as a major founda-

tion of social solidarity.29 Citizenship includes (legal) rights and
obligations that, once institutionalized as formal status positions,
translate into formal entitlements to scarce resources in society.
These include economic resources such as social security and
healthcare entitlements, as well as, within a liberal framework,
access to culturally desirable resources or goods such as the
right to speak one’s own language in the public arena, or rights
relating to religious freedom. In this way citizenship reflects the
basic values of inclusion and exclusion within modern democratic
states.30 Thus citizenship tests could be seen as a unique moment
for the articulation of these basic values, pivotal to enabling
an individual to cross over the distinction between insider and
outsider.
While citizenship has been commonly understood as a legal
bond between the polity and the individual, actual language
and citizenship tests used as preconditions for obtaining citizen-
ship tend to incorporate several cultural elements. These only
become problematic in culturally diverse states where common
principles are a matter of contention. Citizenship and general
culture tests are common requirements for naturalization in many
states. But at the same time, due to their ethno-cultural compo-
nents, they run the risk of becoming yet another, subtle mech-
anism for cultural boundary maintenance further to excluding
minorities—sometimes even select minorities—from the nation.
In order to “measure” the integrative potential of the British
citizenship test, we have notionally classified the questions used in
such tests as either “civic” (that is, questions focusing on political
principles such as the flag, anthems, form of government, duties
and responsibilities of citizens, knowledge of the local regions
and leaders), “ethno-cultural” (questions focusing on religion,
customs, and language), or as not relevant from the point of
view of supporting the formation of national identity (questions
relating to practical elements of daily life).
A comparison between the recently introduced British citi-
zenship test and those of other nations whose unifying principles
can be variously placed on the ethnic-civic scale elaborated earlier
will enable us to critically assess their integrative potential. The
civic model is conventionally understood to be based on political
principles or values that are accessible to a larger number of
 British National Identity and Multiculturalism 19

people, such as governmental procedures or the constitution,

while the ethnic model is based on principles and values rooted
in culture or religion that are less accessible to outsiders and
take more effort to assimilate. Keeping in mind the complications
already discussed in classifying a particular nation on this scale
in practice, Estonia and Japan on the one hand, and the United
States and Canada on the other, could be said to represent op-
posite extremes of the continuum, with the former representing
the ethno-cultural ideal and the latter widely deemed to represent
the civic ideal. A comparison between the citizenship tests used by
these countries against the British one can serve as a measure by
which to locate the United Kingdom on the civic-ethnic scale, at
least in terms of the ideal articulated by the state.
Canadian and American tests prove to be fairly similar,
with the overwhelming majority of questions falling under the
civic category. The main themes of the questions include the
structure of government and the legal framework, the rights and
responsibilities of citizens, and the flag and anthem. In addition,
the Canadian test contains questions about the geography and
natural resources of the country and draws attention to protection
of the environment and recycling. Although scholars like Will
Kymlicka31 argue that any attempt by a modern nation-state
to be ethno-culturally neutral in the process of nation-building
is illusory, the questions asked in these tests do not present
remarkable ethno-cultural barriers to newcomers when compared
to the demands put forward by Japan and Estonia analyzed below.
Ethno-cultural accentuation is confined to an emphasis on the
European origins of the United States and Canada. The tests also
contain a section on history, which could be placed at the border
of the civic/cultural division. These questions focus mainly on
the history of state formation, for example, when relevant treaties
were signed, when various states/provinces joined the union, etc.,
downplaying cultural elements.
Japan and Estonia are characterized by the locus classicus
of strong ethno-cultural conditions for admission to the nation.
Japan does not operate an exam-based system of admittance.
Instead, integration into Japanese society is measured by the
appearance of the applicant’s home (examiners take photographs
of candidate’s house) and the social relations he or she has
been able to establish (interviews with friends and colleagues).
20 E.-M. Asari et al.

Therefore, being culturally different becomes a remarkable obsta-

cle to becoming a Japanese citizen. Similarly, Estonian citizenship
is based on the principle of jus sanguinis, whereby it is passed on
through descent, in contrast to the model adopted by the United
States and Canada based on jus soli where citizenship is attributed
to any individual born in the territory of the state. The Estonian
naturalization process is based on two exams: a citizenship test
and a separate language test. The questions in the citizenship test
resemble those in the U.S. and Canadian tests. They are mostly
civic, based on knowledge of the content of the constitution and
the citizenship act. The obstacles to non-Estonians obtaining Es-
tonian citizenship lie in the bureaucratic procedures surrounding
the language test. The ethnic conception of the Estonian nation is
therefore not so much manifested in the citizenship and language
test itself, as in the historical understanding that membership to
the nation is preconditioned by cultural affinity. Citizenry and
nation are seen as two distinct categories. Although passing the
test increases the sense of one’s loyalty in the eyes of Estonians,
it does not guarantee non-Estonians equal membership to the
nation.
The British citizenship test was first introduced in 2005
November. It consists of 24 multiple-choice questions with a pass
mark of 75%. Those who fail can take it again as many times as
needed until they pass. The questions are based on the candidates
having read the government’s publication, “Life in the UK,”32
designed to give them working knowledge sufficient to enable
them to settle in the country. Approximately 35,000 people have
taken the test to date, with a pass rate of about 57%.33
What is peculiar about this test is that contrary to what one
might expect the sort of questions normally considered formative
of a civic national identity, such as are found in both the Canadian
and American tests, is less prevalent in the British test. Topics such
as the flag and the anthem are missing, and the constitutional
system is barely mentioned. Conventional civic topics covered in
the test include the workings of government, the party system, the
electoral process, and rights and duties of citizens. The test also
brings in the European dimension by asking applicants to define
the governing bodies of the EU and to differentiate between
regulations and directives.
 British National Identity and Multiculturalism 21

In contrast to its North American counterparts, where details

demanded include the date of Independence Day or Confeder-
ation, there are no questions on British history in the UK test.
The preparatory pamphlet does contain a history section, but
applicants are not tested on it. According to Home Office the
reason history was not included in the compulsory part of the
test was that there is a lot of British history and therefore it
would be unfair on migrants to do so.34 The absence of history is
balanced with a focus on religion, national holidays, and sports.
The cultural element to the UK test is noticeably greater than
in its North American counterparts. Prospective British citizens
are required to list, chronologically, the national days of the four
constituent countries of the United Kingdom (a task not easily
managed by most Britons). They are also tested on rules for
appropriate pub-behavior and for the treatment of pets and are
required to be familiar with the country’s major sports events.
The test also includes a group of questions that fall outside
of the ethnic-civic dichotomy altogether, containing few signifiers
that are important from the point of view of measuring a shared
identity. These questions are of a practical nature, such as tele-
phone numbers of emergency services, workplace rights, hiring
a solicitor, requirements for a TV license, film classifications,
and voltage in British homes. Another group of questions refer
to social statistics that characterize British society, and although
they are meant to reflect the current social reality of the United
Kingdom (issues of social concern such as low participation of
women in labor force, children living in single parent families,
etc.), they do not point to anything that could be considered as
representing a core national value.
Based on this assessment we could place the United King-
dom somewhere between the United States/Canada and Esto-
nia/Japan in terms of its emphasis on either ethnic or civic
signifiers. The main public criticisms of the test and of the process
of citizenship education in general have been directed at the
history section of the “Life in the UK” pamphlet, due to errors
and inaccuracies noticed in its depiction of key events in the
nation’s history.35 The Times Educational Supplement dubbed the
guide a “bizarre tour of British history” full of “typos, factual
error, sweeping generalizations and gross misinterpretations.”36
For example, the test places Hadrian’s Wall in Scotland,
22 E.-M. Asari et al.

incorrectly states the years in which Prime Minister Harold Wilson

was in power and confuses the dates in which Great Britain and
the United Kingdom came into being. The response to these
criticisms offered by Sir Bernard Crick, one of the pamphlet’s
editors, summarized the situation well: errors crept in because the
pamphlet was “done fairly quickly,” and the Home Office will take
these comments into account for the next edition.37
History plays an important role in fostering and reinforcing
national identity. In multinational states, however, this becomes
complicated as certain moments in history can be points of contes-
tation and therefore sources of resentment between groups. The
persons and events that spark pride in the majority often generate
a sense of betrayal among the minority and vice versa.38 This is
one of the main factors underlying debates as to how, or whether it
is even necessary, to teach the history of the British Empire. As this
period contains events and episodes offensive to certain groups,
as well as carrying racial connotations, it has been removed almost
completely from official constructions of history. In contrast to the
United States, whose citizenship test includes a series of patriotic
questions rooted in American history containing the implicit
assumption that new immigrants are proud to become Americans,
the British seem reluctant to assume that new immigrants might
be just as proud of their prospective Britishness. All countries
have episodes in their past they wish to forget. The United States
and Canada include sections on negative aspects of their national
history in their citizenship tests, with the American test including
a section on slavery and the Canadian test containing a section
on the First Nations and their rights to self-government. They
confront the “shameful” episodes of their histories in order to
illustrate how they have learned from their mistakes and have
tried to improve upon the system. Britain, on the other hand,
has not been able to make peace with the excesses of Empire
and to include it in articulations of official history in a way that
would reveal how this history has contributed, or at least could
contribute, to the diverse and culturally open current reality of
the British nation.
On the contrary, the content of the UK citizenship test
suggests the lack of a strong shared civic identity in Britain, as
evidenced by the superficially civic questions on national statistics
and guidelines to daily life in the United Kingdom. It is also
 British National Identity and Multiculturalism 23

unusual to have a special section in a citizenship test devoted to

religion. Especially when one considers that Britain is one of the
most secular societies in Europe at present, this would appear
to contradict the emphasis the pamphlet places on religious
tolerance. Though the questions on religion are superficial in
that they do not refer to the deep dogmas of Christianity, they
nonetheless focus on Christmas and Easter and the traditions that
accompany them. This raises the question of whether the test
unfairly targets Muslims. In Germany, the tests proposed by two
states are already being called the “Muslim tests” due to questions
evidently designed to probe an applicant’s compatibility with local
values, including questions on forced marriage, homosexuality,
women’s rights, and Israel’s right to exist—all things that relate to
specific cultural issues that have caused tension between Germans
and the large Muslim immigrant population.39 These themes
could be replaced with more culturally neutral and inclusive
topics such as Britain’s economy (natural resources, articles of
export), geography (rivers, mountains and lakes), and current
leaders of the country (the Prime Minister, the Mayor, the party
in power, and so on).
The introduction of citizenship tests could be seen as part of
an ongoing process of transition from a multinational/imperial
to a national model of citizenship. But while the attempt to
institutionalize national citizenship by means of these tests may
have derived from the best of intentions, it has produced a result
neither anticipated, nor desired, nor expected. The inclusion of
cultural elements in the test indicates that, in the British case, this
transition process is engendering an increasing ethnicization of
British identity, and therefore tending toward a greater exclusivity.
In its present format, the citizenship test does not reflect or
contribute to the development of civic British identity, but rather
to an identity based on the weakly articulated cultural and reli-
gious signifiers discussed earlier that have come to characterize
“Englishness” since around the turn of the last century.

Conclusions

The newly introduced UK citizenship tests illustrate the con-

tradictions inherent between the national identity-construction
process and the attainment of multicultural goals in Britain today.
24 E.-M. Asari et al.

Although the introduction of the test represents a move toward

the adoption of a civic framework, the test itself contains several
cultural elements that function as ethnic delineators, such as the
questions on religion, thereby failing to utilize this mechanism’s
full integrative potential. Clearly, then, providing an institutional
set-up for civic inclusion is not enough. More attention has
to be paid to noninstitutional factors that converge to shape
a society’s values. As a multinational state with an increasingly
diverse population but no strong tradition of substantive citizen-
ship discourse, Britain has failed “to identify a distinct national
notion of belonging.”40 A cohesive notion of multicultural society
cannot be based simply on the idea that we should respect other
people’s values. It also requires a positive articulation of the
values underpinning such as society to which we should all aspire,
promoted by institutional and noninstitutional means. Such a
view was suggested by David Goodhart when he commented in
the 2006 June issue of Prospect that “a more practical sense of
citizenship arises from an intersection of interests, institutions,
and ideals.” In other words, Goodhart argues that to create “the
model British citizen” will involve a number of civic measures—he
suggests making voting compulsory and the introduction of iden-
tity cards—as well as stressing common values including tolerance,
representative democracy, British liberalism, the individualist tra-
dition, multiculturalism, the Westminster model of government,
as well as historical and cultural signifiers such as Cricket, and the
commemoration of British heroes who fought against a common
external threat like Nelson and Gordon.41
In other words, if Renan was correct that part of being a
nation means getting history wrong, perhaps Britain, in its effort
to develop a more cohesive nation, multicultural or otherwise,
should be less timid about getting its history wrong. Which is
not to say that it should construct a false history, but rather
that it should not shy away from a more conscious and explicit
process of mythmaking. To begin with, mass public education is
widely recognized as a primary national mythmaking institution.
The question, then, is just what kind of mythmaking should the
education system engage in if the goal is to create model British
citizens whose loyalty will be to the British state. Mythmaking is
a selective process. Thus the first step toward instilling national
“core values” through education is determining what those core
 British National Identity and Multiculturalism 25

values are in a well-functioning multicultural society and where

they are best reflected in the national history. This is always
a contested process, but in our view an important step is the
reintroduction of a systematic teaching of the history of the British
Empire.
It is paradoxical that, from the point of view of policy makers,
the Empire was one of the most shameful episodes in British
history, yet at the same time it constitutes one of the best examples
of a common historical experience associated with Britishness,
containing many of the values and signifiers most conducive to an
inclusive model of civic participation that allows room for cultural
distinctiveness. A well-rounded teaching of British history should
include teaching of the contributions of Empire, both positive
and negative, including the history of the colonies from a colonial
prepsective, but also with an emphasis on the ways that the
Empire has contributed to the multicultural reality of modern-day
Britain. According to Goodhart, “the nation-state, the idea of a
national story, even the idea of the British people, have all been in
retreat in recent years. That is partly because the things associated
with the first 250 years of Britain—Protestantism, empire, world
wars—have faded from memory or in importance.”42 This is
by no means meant to provide justification for British imperial
motivations or actions. But exploitative dynamics within Empire
notwithstanding, Empire is by definition a multicultural polity.
One of the most important legacies the imperial experience can
be seen as having bestowed on the British are lessons on how
(and how not) to coexist with people ethnically and/or religiously
different.
Thus the solution is not to eliminate Empire from the
mythmaking process, but rather to disentangle from this era of
British national history a coherent narrative: on the one hand,
acknowledging and making peace with shameful aspects of this
episode, while at the same time focusing on political signifiers
and values capable of serving as unifying principles that can be
assimilated and adopted by the broadest possible range of citizens.

Notes

1. Julie Henry, “Britishness and the Class System,” Sunday Telegraph, 22 Jan.
2007.
26 E.-M. Asari et al.

2. Anthony D. Smith, “The Sacred Dimension of Nationalism”, Millennium, Vol.

29, No. 3 (2000), p. 796.
3. Oliver Zimmer, “Boundary Mechanisms and Symbolic Resources: Towards
a Process-Oriented Approach to National Identity,” Nations and Nationalism,
Vol. 9, No. 2 (2003), p. 173.
4. Jane Kramer, “The Dutch Model,” The New Yorker , 3 April 2006.
5. Trevor Phillips, “After 7/7: Sleepwalking to segregation” (2005). Website of
Commission of Racial Equality. http://www.cre.gov.uk/Default.aspx.LocID-
0hgnew07s.RefLocID-0hg00900c002.Lang-EN.htm [accessed 25 March
2006].
6. Patrick West, The Poverty of Multiculturalism (London: Civitas, 2005).
7. Parekh Report, The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain (London: Runnymede
Trust, 2000), p. 40.
8. Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992).
9. Kenan Malik, “Free Speech in A Plural Society,” Eurozine, 23 Nov. 2006.
10. Krishan Kumar, The Making of English National Identity (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 145.
11. Ibid., p. 179.
12. Ibid., p. 48.
13. Ibid., p. 227, see also p. 232.
14. BBC News, ‘Most’ support English Parliament, 16 Jan. 2007.
15. See National Statistics, Census 2001: Ethnicity and Religion, http://www.
statistics.gov.uk/census2001 [accessed 10 February 2006].
16. Trevor Phillips, “What Now for Multiculturalism?” (2004), Website of
Commission of Racial Equality, http://www.cre.gov.uk/publs/connections/
articles/04wi whatnow.html [accessed 19 April 2006].
17. For details on identity perceptions in the United Kingdom see SN 4766,
ESRC Devolution and Constitutional Change (2001), UK Data Archive.
http://www.dataarchive.ac.uk [accessed 5 March 2006].
18. See, for example, Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (Verso, London,
1983); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Blackwell, Oxford, 1983);
Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
19. Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (Penguin Books, London, 1991), p. 16.
20. Qualifications and Curriculum Authority report 2004/2005. Website of
the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority http://search2.qca.org.uk/
search?q=annual+report&ie==&site=qca&output=xml no dtd&client=qca
&lr=&restrict=qcaorguk&proxystylesheet=qca&oe= [accessed 17 April
2006].
21. Robert, M. Guyver (2006). More than just the Henries: Britishness and
British history at Key Stage 3, Teaching of History (1 March 2006).
22. For further details on this see the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, Re-
port by Sir William MacPherson, the Official Documents Archive Web-
site, http://www.archive.official-cocuments.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/
4262.htm [accessed 15 October 2006].
 British National Identity and Multiculturalism 27

23. Ofsted Subject Report, (2005) website of the Office for Standards in
Education http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/portal/site/Internet/menuitem.
eace3f09a603f6d9c3172a8a08c08a0c/?vgnextoid=41bac30f8636c010Vgn
VCM1000003507640aRCRD&vgnextchannel=3db0394adaa3c010VgnVCM
1000003507640aRCRD [accessed 26 April 2006].
24. James Hampshire, Citizenship and Belonging: Immigration and the Politics of
Demographic Governance in Post-War Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2005), p. 12.
25. YouGov Survey (2004, 2005), Website of Commission for Racial Equality,
http://www.cre.gov.uk/media/YouGov researchfindings.html [accessed 25
February 2006].
26. See National Curriculum Online (2006), http://www.nc.uk.net/webdav/
harmonise?Page/@id=6004&Subject/@id=4164 [accessed 17 March
2006].
27. Ofsted Report, “Annual Report of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools
2003/2004” (2003). Web site of the Office for Standards in Education
http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/portal/site/Internet/menuitem.eace3f09a603f6d
9c3172a8a08c08a0c/?vgnextoid=5e8f2a5f74f3c010VgnVCM1000003507640
aRCRD&vgnextchannel=78f0394adaa3c010VgnVCM1000003507640aRCRD
[accessed 17 March 2006].
28. Ofsted Report, “Towards Consensus? Citizenship in Secondary
Schools” (2006). Web site of the Office for Standards in Education
http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/portal/site/Internet/menuitem.75d4ee5e2788f0
64728a0d8308c08a0c/?vgnextoid=864a04a9d590e010VgnVCM100000350
7640aRCRD [accessed 26 April 2006].
29. Fahri Isin Engin and Bryan S. Turner, “Citizenship Studies,” in E. F. Isin and
B. S. Turner (eds.), Handbook of Citizenship Studies (London: Sage, 2002), pp.
1–11; David Miller, “Differentiated Citizenship,” in A. Laius, I. Proos, and I.
Pettai (eds.), Estonia’s Integration Landscape: from Apathy to Harmony (Tallinn:
Jana Toni son Institute, 2000), pp. 56–64.
30. Brubaker, 1992.
31. Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2003).
32. The Life in the UK: A Journey to Citizenship (Home Office: Stationary Office,
2005).
33. Keith Dovkants, “We trap the immigration cheats,” Evening Standard, 1 June
2006.
34. James Slack and Quentin Letts, “The citizenship test But there’s no British-
ness . . . and you can’t fail it anyway,” Daily Mail, 1 Nov. 2005.
35. Andrew Tolmie, “How Hadrian’s Wall was built to create the Kingdom of
Scotland. Er, isn’t it in England? History booklet for new British citizens
littered with embarrassing errors,” Daily Mail, 29 April 2006.
36. Dominic Hayes, “Oops! History guide to UK is full of howlers,” The Evening
Standard, 28 April 2006.
37. William Stewart, “Citizen’s booklet is past a joke,” The Times Educational
Supplement, 28 April 2006.
28 E.-M. Asari et al.

38. Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights,

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 189.
39. Judy Dempsey, “Civic test in Germany draws fire,” International Herald
Tribune, 14 February 2006.
40. Hampshire, 2005.
41. David Goodhart, “National Anxieties,” Prospect, Issue 123 (June 2006).
42. Ibid.

Eva-Maria Asari is a Ph.D. candidate in the government department at

the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her thesis is on
minority rights and multiculturalism in Estonia. She is the chair of the
Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism and the member of
the editorial board of Nations and Nationalism.

Daphne Halikiopoulou obtained her Ph.D. from the London School of

Economics and Political Science in September 2007. Her thesis is on
interaction between religion and national identity in Ireland and Greece.
She is a former chair and current member of the executive committee
and the international advisory council of the Association for the Study of
Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN).

Steven Mock is a Ph.D. candidate at the London School of Economics

and Political Science. His thesis is on images of defeat in national identity.
He is a former chair of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and
Nationalism (ASEN) and current member of the editorial board of
Nations and Nationalism.