Engineering identity

Gordon Brown is famously strategic and his recent speech on constitutional reform revealed a number of long term political ambitions. One is clearly to restore trust in the political process, following the spin and perceived deceptions of the Blair years. Another is a genuine desire to democratise the political system - despite his reputation as a classic Fabian centraliser, this is a politician who has long supported the basic Charter 88 prospectus that Blair took half way and then abandoned. However, a third objective that came across was that of fostering a renewed sense of national identity - a widely shared understanding of who we are and where we are going as a society.

This 'Britishness' agenda speaks to a number of contemporary concerns. One of course is the 'West Lothian Question' - the Tories are demanding English votes on English laws, a constitutional innovation that would make it difficult for Labour ever to govern in England again (Labour has only ever won more votes than the Tories in England three times - 1945, 1997 and 2001). This is not so much addressed at Scottish voters (for whom 'Britishness has long since lost any real affective hold) - it is rather aimed at 'middle England' whom he fears may be increasingly susceptible to English nationalism and the financial benefits of a 'velvet divorce'.

The other concern is of course community relations - the rise of immigration up the list of public concerns, the growing vote for the far right, worries about growing alienation among young British muslims. Brown wants Britishness to be understood as something anchored in values we can all share, not in race, faith or ethnicity - a site of common ground with which we can all identify, from whatever culture or background.

Finally there is some attempt in Brown's speeches on this subject to link this widely shared sense of national identity to the need to motivate people to contribute to the 'common good' through public service. This is identity as a motivator - fostering a feeling that we are all part of something wider and through that fostering a desire to contribute.

So there is the rationale. But how can states, particularly in the age of the internet, consumerism and economic globalisation, forge identities? As sociologists like Anthony Giddens and Manuel Castells pointed out in the 1990s we have moved into an age where the ties of locale and tradition have a much weaker hold than they once did - this is a world in which the 'global' penetrates at every level, in which we can choose from a wider range of identities than in the past. What place nation or neighbourhood in the world of My Space and Facebook?

The global cosmopolitanism thesis put forward by Giddens and others has been shown to be overstated: in poll after poll the most popular territorial identities remain local areas (first) and nations (second). International travel and the internet may have loosened these ties - younger people are much more cosmopolitan in outlook than older people - but they have not prized us free from them entirely.

Indeed it is precisely the fact that national identities retain this potency that has led people like Brown into this difficult territory - they do not want the left to abandon the nation, as it is naturally inclined to do, as they fear this allows it to be monopolised by the poisonous discourse of the racists and the xenophobes. The left needs to articulate an inclusive, pluralist narrative about what modern Britain is and where it is going, one that embraces cultural diversity and makes it part of its self-understanding.

But what can the state do? Quite obviously identities cannot (and of course should not) be imposed - identification requires agency - we have to want to identify with something.

Brown has come to the view that the constitution can play a role. A civic identity based on allegiance to the constitition can be inclusive of all citizens precisely because it is not culturally 'thick' in content - its not about warm beer, cricket and spinsters cycling down country lanes, or whatever it was that John Major said (misquoting Orwell incidentally). It is rather based on shared values, a common political culture and common public institutions that embody those universal values.

This is Jurgen Habermas' constitional patriotism: liberalism demands little in the way of citizen commitment, except some degree of loyalty to the institutional framework that sustains our liberty. We can say and believe what we like, demonstrate against our rulers, organise to peacefully depose them, go where we please - but there is an expectation that as citizens we should support the framework that makes that liberty possible. So we should vote, we should make a civic contribution where we can, support the system when it is in peril, and so forth. A civic identity based on support for those basic democratic parameters is pluralist, open, inclusive and in theory at least provides the common ground Brown is looking for.

So much for the theory - what of the practice? Brown's inspiration in this, as in a good many areas, is the United States. Habermas' constitutional patriotism is made flesh in the United States: here was a nation founded on a set of political principles, a nation of immigrants that of course could not be bound through ethnic or religious bonds, but rather through commitment to a set of constitutional declarations and democratic institutions.

Other countries share such 'founding myths': especially those that won their independence from colonial powers or, as in France, established a new republic following popular revolution. But of course Britain lacks both a foundational moment and a written statement of the principles underpinning its system of government. Of course there were moments of political upheaval - the English civil war, the Glorious Revolution, the enormous popular mobilisations of the 19th century. But each of these resulted in a democratic adjustment rather than a 'foundational moment', a day on which a new nation was born.

This in part explains the difficulty British politicians, like Brown, have had in trying to establish a new 'national day' - there are no obvious candidates. The anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta? Too English. The execution of Charles I? Too republican. The 5th November? Too sectarian. Remembrance Day? Too emotive, too sombre. Canada Day marks independence, Bastille day marks the revolution. We have no such day.

Could a process of constitutional reform somehow engineer the renewed sense of national identity and common belonging Brown is looking for? I doubt it: foundational moments confer their emotive power and meaning precisely because of their violent, cathartic nature. Brown of course understands this - and I suspect he eyes the Scottish constitutional convention of the mid 1990s as a model. This was a broad based attempt by civil society to craft a new constitutional relationship between Scotland and the rest of the UK that had widespread popular support. But again in that case meaning was conferred because of the confrontation with the Thatcher government, the bitter experience of pseudo-colonial English rule during the 1980s - there was an enemy, there was a powerful political motivation that resonated with the great majority of people.

The kind of process currently envisaged to craft a new British Bill of Rights (and, mysteriously, 'Responsibilities') and even a written constitution is unlikely to do the job precisely because it lacks those underlying popular energies, that hunger for a constitutional break with the past. Citizens' juries, ministerial road shows, even a referendum - in the absence of a political crisis or struggle of some kind it all just feels too politically contrived.

That is no reason to abandon reform nor the deliberative democratic processes that it is proposed should underlie it - these have their own rationale. It is simply to be realistic about what such a process can do at the level of identity. Perhaps the most we can expect of a new constitutional framework in the terrain of identity is that by expunging some of the most anachronistic features of our current arrangements (the role of the church and the monarch's perogatives for example) and renewing politics (through new forms of direct democracy, reform of the electoral system and devolving greater power to local government) it can provide a more pluralistic reference point that over time might become an inclusive source of identity.

Identification is a long term, organic process - the state can only ever set a framework. There is space for being more explicit than we have in the past - emphasising the meaning of citizenship for young people, for instance, through the citizenship curriculum, through some form of modest community service alongside GCSEs or through new civic rituals (building on school leavers' days for example).

More funding could be provided through the Heritage Lottery Fund to celebrate our democratic heritage - why are our public squares dominated by celebrations of capitalism and military conquest - where are the commemorations of those who struggled for our democratic rights? There could be new public holidays to celebrate democratic struggles - the Peterloo Massacre, the widening of the franchise to women and the working class.

Reforming the honours system such that it genuinely marks what we value as a society would be an important change - they should be expunged of imperial references, they should no longer be awarded by committees of civil servants but by representative committees of citizens, they should reward local service on equal terms with national service, they should be totally detached from the conferrment of 'social status' and the reinforcement of hierarchy as at present.

So, there are innovations that might do useful work here - that might overtime help foster a shared identity at the civic level, rooted in a common democratic political culture. But there is ultimately only so much the state can or should do in this territory - and outcomes cannot be engineered in the way they can in other areas of public policy. The grand Fabian levers of the state machine have much less traction in the arena of attitudes, values and culture than in social or economic policy. In the meantime Brown should pursue constitutional reform for its primary purpose - to expand and deepen popular control over our political institutions.