This print from the 1790s, “French Telegraph Making Signals in the Dark”, shows the British statesman Charles James Fox signalling to a French fleet heading towards an undefended south coast of Britain. It is not difficult to imagine a modern day politician being similarly pilloried in a newspaper cartoon, this time over the issue of the European Union. And it is not just EU-enthusiasts whose attachment to Britain might be called into question. Scottish and Irish nationalists would openly acknowledge their indifference or antipathy to Britishness, as would many among ethnic minorities who remain attached to their homelands and continue to participate in politics there. Less obviously, many “Euro-sceptics”, supposedly the most patriotic Britons, are emotionally attached and committed to causes that do not always coincide with Britain’s interests.
Hardly any of the last group, who see their adherence to the Anglosphere and the special relationship with the United States as an extension of their British identity, would accept that their Britishness is in any way compromised by their outlook. It would be absurd for an American to insist that the United States’ history begins with the American Revolution. Many American traits of which its citizens are so proud can be straightforwardly traced back to the former mother country; the two countries have a common history. It would be just as foolish for people in Britain to deny this fact, which is why so many here see in the United States the expression of all that is (or was) best about Britain. Largely because of this common history, the two countries’ interests often coincide, so when Brits express strong support for America, they are often doing so because they see it as a means to further Britain’s interests.
But pro-American Atlanticists do not always see the special relationship in terms of Britain’s interest. It is often seen as a friendship, a relationship that pretty much by definition cannot be based on selfishness. They may not advocate a political union of the kind supported by Euro-federalists, but clearly the idea of the special relationship and close ties with other Anglosphere countries goes beyond a simple alliance of convenience. The potential for the special relationship to damage British interests while advancing those of the United States becomes apparent when one considers that the Americans have been among the most enthusiastic proponents of European integration; the gulf between Euro-enthusiast Atlanticists and “Euro-sceptic” Atlanticists may not be as wide as is sometimes suggested. In both cases there is a strong commitment to the defence of “the West” and an internationalist strand with the potential to clash with Britain’s narrower interests. NATO, the military alliance that arose at the beginning of the Cold War but seems to have become permanent, against George Washington’s famous advice about avoiding permanent alliances, is more or less the military wing of the European Union. So the European integration so loathed by the most vociferous Euro-sceptic Atlanticists, is in fact an important aspect of the special relationship.
The potential for the special relationship to damage Britain’s interests becomes even more apparent when you consider that the United States’ foreign policy is often influenced by the many ethnic lobbies that are active in that country and so cannot even be seen as acting in America’s, let alone Britain’s, interest. In some cases these lobbies’ aims are so integrated into the general thrust of US foreign policy that few question whether there is any divergence with America’s national interest. Cuban Americans get a free pass thanks to their staunch anti-Communism, which dovetails nicely with mainstream American patriotism, but whether America would still pursue the same policy toward Cuba if there wasn’t such a large Cuban community in America is an interesting question. American support for Israel is tied up with the defence of “the West” in general but is at least in part a consequence of the large Jewish population in the United States. These cases do not obviously affect Britain, but consider the following. The United States played a significant role in shaping the 1990s “peace process” in Northern Ireland and this was largely due to the influence of Irish America. Americans’ equivocation and –and in some cases support – in the face of Irish Republican terror has been well documented, but worrying aspects of their role in shaping the peace process are sometimes overlooked. Before the September 11 atrocities, the New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, now feted as an enthusiastic supporter of the special relationship, welcomed the Sinn Fein president Gerard Adams to New York’s City Hall. According to the New York Times: “’I think President Clinton should greet him,’ declared the Mayor, joining the Irish visitor's own campaign for the Clinton Administration to honor him with a personal White House visit, which would add to the pressure on London for peace talks open to leaders of Northern Ireland's militant republican movement.” You might think that Americans were right about Northern Ireland and that we benefited from their prodding, but the damaging potential of their influence, not just over our foreign policy but in our internal affairs, is clear.
The most obvious impediment to Britishness is dual citizenship. While many dual nationals simply have a foreign nationality for convenience or because they haven’t bothered to renounce it, others see it as an important part of their identity and play an active part as a citizen of the foreign country. Even Michael Portillo, the former Conservative politician who used to dream of being prime minister of Britain, used his Spanish nationality to vote in that country’s last general election. How does a dual national decide how to vote if the interests of one of his countries of citizenship are in conflict with those of the other? (An example in Mr Portillo’s case would be over the issue of Gibraltar.) Countries have many areas of common interest, but there are other spheres where they can only be in competition and where competition – as in the corporate world, for example –adds to human prosperity. Such competition can only thrive when states command the full loyalty of their citizens.
Some British citizens who are not dual nationals act as if they are. When the Conservative politician Daniel Hannan, ahead of the 2008 election in the United States, wrote: “I am a lifelong Republican, and have, over the years, felt a far more uncomplicated loyalty to that party than to my own,” was he not calling into question his loyalty to Britain in the same way as Mr Portillo? A more blatant example of loyalty to foreign causes entering British politics is the success of the JFK (Justice for the Kashmiri Community) party in Birmingham, which in 2000 successfully pressured the city council to pass a resolution supporting the self-determination of Kashmir. More recently, in the East London borough of Tower Hamlets, which has a large Bangladeshi population, the council has also waded into the foreign policy arena, calling for a boycott of “the pariah state” of Israel. In 2009 elections for the European Parliament, a candidate campaigning on the issue of Tamil rights in Sri Lanka won nearly 3% – in some boroughs more than 7% – of the vote in London.
Britishness does not preclude support for foreign causes as long as these are not in serious conflict with the interests of Britain, but if we accept the contention that one can have many different loyalties and identities but can only have one national loyalty, the above examples are problematic. The political scientist Samuel Huntington in a book about American identity compares dual citizenship to bigamy. That is not as harsh as it first appears if one considers that in a free country, citizenship is just one part of a person’s identity, independent of religion, family and many other aspects of life. To expand on the familial analogy, isn’t it best for Britain to be a family of peoples with a common loyalty rather than a vague geographical and political arrangement whose citizens are only there for convenience and feel little affinity with the soil they inhabit? The family unit, in which parents are devoted to their children but also encourage them to behave with compassion towards others, has over time been a source of immeasurable human happiness. The same may be true of states. Perhaps a better analogy is religion; as Huntington writes, it is difficult to be half Muslim and half Catholic. The divisions between countries are equally rigid. The author Noel Malcolm points out in his pamphlet ‘Sense on Sovereignty’, “sovereignty cannot be divided up into percentage units.” Sovereignty, like religions, is indivisible. Perhaps the same should be true of citizenship.
Hardly any of the last group, who see their adherence to the Anglosphere and the special relationship with the United States as an extension of their British identity, would accept that their Britishness is in any way compromised by their outlook. It would be absurd for an American to insist that the United States’ history begins with the American Revolution. Many American traits of which its citizens are so proud can be straightforwardly traced back to the former mother country; the two countries have a common history. It would be just as foolish for people in Britain to deny this fact, which is why so many here see in the United States the expression of all that is (or was) best about Britain. Largely because of this common history, the two countries’ interests often coincide, so when Brits express strong support for America, they are often doing so because they see it as a means to further Britain’s interests.
But pro-American Atlanticists do not always see the special relationship in terms of Britain’s interest. It is often seen as a friendship, a relationship that pretty much by definition cannot be based on selfishness. They may not advocate a political union of the kind supported by Euro-federalists, but clearly the idea of the special relationship and close ties with other Anglosphere countries goes beyond a simple alliance of convenience. The potential for the special relationship to damage British interests while advancing those of the United States becomes apparent when one considers that the Americans have been among the most enthusiastic proponents of European integration; the gulf between Euro-enthusiast Atlanticists and “Euro-sceptic” Atlanticists may not be as wide as is sometimes suggested. In both cases there is a strong commitment to the defence of “the West” and an internationalist strand with the potential to clash with Britain’s narrower interests. NATO, the military alliance that arose at the beginning of the Cold War but seems to have become permanent, against George Washington’s famous advice about avoiding permanent alliances, is more or less the military wing of the European Union. So the European integration so loathed by the most vociferous Euro-sceptic Atlanticists, is in fact an important aspect of the special relationship.
The potential for the special relationship to damage Britain’s interests becomes even more apparent when you consider that the United States’ foreign policy is often influenced by the many ethnic lobbies that are active in that country and so cannot even be seen as acting in America’s, let alone Britain’s, interest. In some cases these lobbies’ aims are so integrated into the general thrust of US foreign policy that few question whether there is any divergence with America’s national interest. Cuban Americans get a free pass thanks to their staunch anti-Communism, which dovetails nicely with mainstream American patriotism, but whether America would still pursue the same policy toward Cuba if there wasn’t such a large Cuban community in America is an interesting question. American support for Israel is tied up with the defence of “the West” in general but is at least in part a consequence of the large Jewish population in the United States. These cases do not obviously affect Britain, but consider the following. The United States played a significant role in shaping the 1990s “peace process” in Northern Ireland and this was largely due to the influence of Irish America. Americans’ equivocation and –and in some cases support – in the face of Irish Republican terror has been well documented, but worrying aspects of their role in shaping the peace process are sometimes overlooked. Before the September 11 atrocities, the New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, now feted as an enthusiastic supporter of the special relationship, welcomed the Sinn Fein president Gerard Adams to New York’s City Hall. According to the New York Times: “’I think President Clinton should greet him,’ declared the Mayor, joining the Irish visitor's own campaign for the Clinton Administration to honor him with a personal White House visit, which would add to the pressure on London for peace talks open to leaders of Northern Ireland's militant republican movement.” You might think that Americans were right about Northern Ireland and that we benefited from their prodding, but the damaging potential of their influence, not just over our foreign policy but in our internal affairs, is clear.
The most obvious impediment to Britishness is dual citizenship. While many dual nationals simply have a foreign nationality for convenience or because they haven’t bothered to renounce it, others see it as an important part of their identity and play an active part as a citizen of the foreign country. Even Michael Portillo, the former Conservative politician who used to dream of being prime minister of Britain, used his Spanish nationality to vote in that country’s last general election. How does a dual national decide how to vote if the interests of one of his countries of citizenship are in conflict with those of the other? (An example in Mr Portillo’s case would be over the issue of Gibraltar.) Countries have many areas of common interest, but there are other spheres where they can only be in competition and where competition – as in the corporate world, for example –adds to human prosperity. Such competition can only thrive when states command the full loyalty of their citizens.
Some British citizens who are not dual nationals act as if they are. When the Conservative politician Daniel Hannan, ahead of the 2008 election in the United States, wrote: “I am a lifelong Republican, and have, over the years, felt a far more uncomplicated loyalty to that party than to my own,” was he not calling into question his loyalty to Britain in the same way as Mr Portillo? A more blatant example of loyalty to foreign causes entering British politics is the success of the JFK (Justice for the Kashmiri Community) party in Birmingham, which in 2000 successfully pressured the city council to pass a resolution supporting the self-determination of Kashmir. More recently, in the East London borough of Tower Hamlets, which has a large Bangladeshi population, the council has also waded into the foreign policy arena, calling for a boycott of “the pariah state” of Israel. In 2009 elections for the European Parliament, a candidate campaigning on the issue of Tamil rights in Sri Lanka won nearly 3% – in some boroughs more than 7% – of the vote in London.
Britishness does not preclude support for foreign causes as long as these are not in serious conflict with the interests of Britain, but if we accept the contention that one can have many different loyalties and identities but can only have one national loyalty, the above examples are problematic. The political scientist Samuel Huntington in a book about American identity compares dual citizenship to bigamy. That is not as harsh as it first appears if one considers that in a free country, citizenship is just one part of a person’s identity, independent of religion, family and many other aspects of life. To expand on the familial analogy, isn’t it best for Britain to be a family of peoples with a common loyalty rather than a vague geographical and political arrangement whose citizens are only there for convenience and feel little affinity with the soil they inhabit? The family unit, in which parents are devoted to their children but also encourage them to behave with compassion towards others, has over time been a source of immeasurable human happiness. The same may be true of states. Perhaps a better analogy is religion; as Huntington writes, it is difficult to be half Muslim and half Catholic. The divisions between countries are equally rigid. The author Noel Malcolm points out in his pamphlet ‘Sense on Sovereignty’, “sovereignty cannot be divided up into percentage units.” Sovereignty, like religions, is indivisible. Perhaps the same should be true of citizenship.
3 comments:
It does not sound as if abolishing dual citizenship would have the desired effect. After all as you note some who hold British citizenship are ambivalent about their supposed Britishness and some who are British citizens only nonetheless identify with other nations.
Perhaps it would be better to recognize the truth that actually citizenship does not define nationality. For many people citizenship is a matter of convenience, with little to no bearing on something as important as one's national sentiment. Making the issuing of citizenship more restrictive is not going to change this simple fact.
Also, is not the expectation of the British state that all who hold its citizenship must think of themselves as Britons and part of the British nation in some sense tyrannical? Why should the state determine the nationality (the most important identity of our time) of its subjects as opposed to they themselves?
Thanks for your comment. I enjoy your blog.
I don't propose abolishing dual citizenship because, as I pointed out, many dual nationals are not meaningfully citizens of both states because they only participate in the affairs of one. My problem is with the actions of people such as Daniel Hannan and Michael Portillo who do wish to be meaningfully citizens of two states. I would like to see a change in attitudes rather than legislation.
Is not the expectation of the British state that all who hold its citizenship must think of themselves as Britons and part of the British nation in some sense tyrannical? I did not say that British citizens "must" think of themselves as Britons. I just think it would be better if they did (leaving aside Scottish, English etc identity, which, unless one favours the break-up of Britain, has nothing to do with citizenship).
"My problem is with the actions of people such as Daniel Hannan and Michael Portillo who do wish to be meaningfully citizens of two states. I would like to see a change in attitudes rather than legislation."
I see, I didn't realize this. Thanks for the clarification.
I did not say that British citizens "must" think of themselves as Britons.
No, I don't think you did, but it is an implication of civic nationalism. Anyway it's a moot point now.
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