Where does Britain’s Culture War come from? And what is it about?

Britain is suffering from a Culture War. Taking the knee, bringing down statues, campaigning for healthier food, booing other national anthems, Brexit, Corbynism, mask-wearing, climate change, identity politics, vaccine scepticism — the Culture War swirls with its own unnerving energy. But who are the combatants in this war? What do they want?

As with so many cultural and political trends, culture warfare is an American import. Problems in US society are at times overdone, amplified by social media antagonism and the excesses of cable TV news. Even so, the divisions are real. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, while life expectancy for the average white American is 78, for the average black American it is 72.

One side in the American Culture War proposes that government has an obligation to help its less well-off citizens, and President Obama’s fight to expand public healthcare was an example of that. The other side dismisses the idea of state assistance as Marxism, insisting that the government has no obligation to help anybody. In this view, everyone has an equal shot and if they don’t make it and if they end up stuck in the ghetto, that’s their problem, not the taxpayer’s. This view gained ground under President Trump.

But when George Floyd was murdered by a policeman on a Minneapolis street and when a video of that killing went viral on social media, the US Culture War gained new impetus. Those terrible images revealed the callous reality of American society: some people do not have an equal shot. The status of black and white people in American society is not the same. The ensuing Black Lives Matter movement spread across America and the world.

The England football team’s decision to “take the knee” before each game at the Euros was a direct follow-on from the Black Lives Matter protests. Football has always been a sewer of racism and it was natural that players of conscience should publicly oppose the abuse suffered by black sportsmen and by black people more widely.

Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, saw things differently. “I just don’t support people participating in that type of gesture,” Patel said in an interview. She continued: “I just don’t subscribe to this view that we should be rewriting our history — pulling down statues. The famous Colston statue and what’s happened there. Toppling statues is not the answer. It’s about learning from our past. I maintain my point that we learn from our past and we don’t rewrite it.”

The Home Secretary’s remarks revealed two things. First, they showed that whereas America’s cultural argument is predominantly a fight over the present, Britain’s is a fight over the past. Second, it was instructive to see how Patel’s line of reasoning moved from footballers’ taking the knee, to the anti-racism demonstrations such as those seen in Bristol, to the idea that Britain’s history is somehow at risk. As Boris Johnson put it: “Those statues teach us about our past, with all its faults. To tear them down would be to lie about our history and impoverish the education of generations to come.”

That Britain’s Culture War comes down to history is itself instructive. The Prime Minister is an amateur historian, having written among other books a biography of Winston Churchill — a work that received mixed reviews. But the urge to claim ownership of Britain by laying claim to its past gives an uncomfortable sense that the past is somehow more consequential for the British government than the reality of the present. The present is messy and complex and Britain’s current position in the world is uncertain and — whisper it — perhaps a little diminished. What better antidote could there be than to retreat into the warm glow of a glorious, unchanging and inviolate past? Brexit, with its promise to “take back control”, was a manifestation of precisely that impulse.

But history is not sacred. It does not come to an end. The idea that it does have an end is, ironically, part of the Marxian analysis that the culture warriors claim to detest. Free societies exist in a constant state of flux and history is not exempt — Britain’s Culture War comes down to a contest over this very point. It is between those who accept the changing view of history and those who do not.

The idea that history exists in a constant state of evolution is not such a remarkable thing. Events can only be properly understood once their consequences are known. This requires time and as more time passes, so more consequences become apparent. Take the invasion of Afghanistan, for example, which took place 20 years ago. Only now that the last western troops have left can we begin to understand what has been achieved by that intervention. Our present assessment would be very different to the view of December 2001, when US forces had broken the Taliban and were close to cornering Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora.

Would the Prime Minister object to such a shift in our appraisal of the Afghan conflict? It would seem unlikely. So why is he, along with the other Culture Warriors in his cabinet, so touchy about taking the knee and toppling statues?

Part of it is down to the (small-c) conservative instinct that wants to conserve and protect British culture. Fine. But it is the aggression of the Government’s Culture War interventions that is so remarkable. When the National Trust told its members that some of Britain’s great stately homes were built using profits from the slave trade, the Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden attacked the organisation. The National Trust should be “protecting our heritage,” he said, instead of doing it down.

Dowden noted with horror that one of the buildings being linked to the slave trade was Chartwell, the former home of Winston Churchill. “Churchill is one of Britain’s greatest heroes. He rallied the free world to defeat fascism. It will surprise and disappoint people that the National Trust appears to be making him a subject of criticism and controversy.”

It is hard to see this as the response of a strong, confident Government, especially when you consider that the National Trust had its facts straight. When taken alongside its other somewhat shrill Culture War activity, this denial of the facts begins to look desperate, like fear, even. But fear of what? Of the suggestion that some of Britain’s old houses were built with money from the colonies?

No — it’s a fear that Britain’s history is somehow being stolen and distorted by an unpatriotic rabble, or what the Culture Secretary Robert Jenrick has called “a baying mob”. One wonders whether Jenrick would regard Harry Kane, Marcus Rashford and other England footballers who took the knee as being part of that “baying mob”. If an interviewer were to ask him, Jenrick would surely say no.

But a remark by the Conservative MP Natalie Elphicke proved unfortunately revealing. After England lost to Italy in the final, Elphicke sent a message to fellow Tories about the footballer Marcus Rashford, who had previously forced a government u-turn on its policy towards vulnerable children. “Would it be ungenerous to say Rashford should have spent more time perfecting his game and less time playing politics,” Elphicke wondered.

It was one of the more unpleasant moments of Britain’s Culture War. The idea that certain people should know their place is outdated at best and somewhat at odds with the essential ideas of Parliamentary democracy. But it also showed unease at the idea that the wrong sort of person was gaining a little too much influence in British public life nowadays. It is this unease that best explains the acidity of the government’s Culture War interventions.

That, then, is Britain’s Culture War. It is a contest over Britain’s history. The government has sought this Culture War, perhaps seeing in it a way of promoting its patriotic bona fides. But surely there is a less confrontational way of going about that task. In his “Dear England” message Gareth Southgate showed that patriotism does not need to be clad in the nationalist rhetoric of threat and division. The England manager’s words showed that patriotism can be inclusive and all the stronger for it.

The Johnson Government, however, does not seem to agree. Instead it has adopted the hooligan logic that says patriotism doesn’t count unless it comes with a fight. America’s Culture War has been pushed to terrifying excesses by that idea. It’s one of their imports we could do without.

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