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its people had inherited a colonial mentality that would have repercussions for decades to come.
By the time you read this, the claims and counter-claims about Britain’s greatness that were so much the norm in 2017 and 2018 should have greatly diminished. This rhetoric was never going to improve the image of Britain in the eyes of much of the rest of the world’s people, who looked at us, sighed, shrugged and waited for us to grow up and get over it.
Many went to schools which had been designed to produce men who could run an empire. These schools are still instilling feelings of superiority today, but with no empire to absorb the urges that creates.
the EU referendum showed up the last throes of empire-thinking working its way out of the British psyche.
Whatever kind of Brexit occurs – hard, soft, or even a cancellation and staying in the European Union – Britain will be much diminished by the Brexit process.
More additional money had to be found to pay for Brexit in the November 2017 Budget than could be found for the NHS.
Britain, and even Brexit, has its deepest roots embedded firmly in the ashes of the British Empire.
The last of the major invaders of the British Isles, the Dutch, who had been living in the richest and most powerful country in the world before the British Empire emerged, invaded England in 1688. That invasion was rebranded ‘The Glorious Revolution’, in one of many misrepresentations of ‘British’ history, pandering to the egos of the English, who like to pretend to themselves that they have never been defeated in (almost) 1,000 years.
The whole idea of being just one of twenty-eight European states, and of having to co-operate and compromise, rather than lording it over them, had never gone down well with the manufactured British psyche.
The Scots were assured that remaining in the Union was the only way to guarantee their membership of the EU. Then the English voted to exclude them from the EU and showed no respect at all!
The Empire Exhibition in London in 1924 was aimed at persuading people to buy the empire’s goodies and not ‘foreign muck’. A life-size statue of the Prince of Wales made of Canadian butter melted at the event.
The most innovative forms of education, the best-funded healthcare systems, the highest quality of housing, the greatest job protection and productivity, and the lowest rates of poverty are all found in parts of the mainland of Europe, not in Britain.
London had become ‘ruined’ by 1991 because the money had run out. A new way to bring money in was then found, no longer through the tribute of unfair terms of trade, but by becoming the supreme financial juggler for the world. The 1986 Big Bang of the City of London was born out of the ruins. The Big Bang was shorthand for deregulation, initiated so that enormous profits could be made – profits large enough to emulate the tribute of the past. For the following twenty-two years, the City laid golden eggs for the British (or rather, the southern English) until, in 2008, the banks fell apart and
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it was not long ago that the UK Independence Party was telling us that ‘outside the EU, the world is our oyster, and the Commonwealth the pearl within’.
English people rarely know much of their real history, having been taught a version which was largely manufactured in the time of the British Empire. School curricula were then changed and began to present an ever more glorious past to try to justify how large the empire was becoming and how owning it was Great Britain’s rightful role.
‘Once we owned the whole world, but now we’ve only got a little piece. I think there are too many coloureds in our country.’
Even ardent Remainers sometimes suggested it was possible for Britain to become the richest country in the world again, as George Osborne claimed would happen by 2030 if only the country kept to his ‘long-term economic plan’. There were fantasists on both sides of the Brexit debate. The past, present and likely future of Britain was not, is not and will not be what they currently imagine.
‘rote learning of patriotic stocking fillers’,
As Simon Schama put it, much of our teaching is still ‘1066 and All That but without the jokes’.
To understand how the British got so much so wrong you need to go back to their schools, colleges and universities; to what they were taught of history and how they were not taught even their most recent history well.
The British class system and gross economic inequality is designed to make those at the top feel superior and those at the bottom feel inferior. But after that early lesson in their station in life, what better means to raise their morale than by convincing them that at least they are superior to everyone else in the world?
‘Froggies, Eyties, Dagoes… the only way we’d describe them was that they was all beneath you.’
racism helped deflect attention from the school children’s own precarious position in the economic structure.
Britain today is more a land of doubt and hatred than one of hope and glory. A place becoming ever more bounded, weak, small, powerless and globally less important. No wonder the country is completely split on Brexit and so much else. Its people do not know what or where they are now. But it is not their fault.
That is what happens at the decline and fall of an empire; so much ends up leading back to it when the ghosts of the past remain unconfronted. When its people fail to adapt, an empire mentality remains for a long time.
Britishness – at least this patriotic, defensive, glory-addicted version of it – seems to be in a highly fragile place. It cannot withstand being problematized or critiqued.
Farage preferred a fanciful reincarnation of empire.
The British lorded it over so many peoples that it went to the heads of a few. Of the present 193 members of the UN, Britain conquered or invaded at least 90 per cent (171) of them.6
Primogeniture is dreadfully opposed to natural selection; suppose the first-born bull was made by each farmer the begetter of his stock.’
The United Kingdom, among others, has spent 20 years or more including pupils with special educational needs and disabilities into mainstream schooling. The argument was that whatever specific provision was needed could be provided in most mainstream schools, they could be taught separately for some tasks, and that it was better to allow them to socialise and gain educational experiences with their non-SEN peers. It is hard to see why exactly the same argument does not apply to the most able students in each area.17
Being simultaneously ‘ever so clever’ and at the same time ‘extremely stupid’ is a trait the British elite came to excel in. Believing that you are the descendants of the most superior of human races, which themselves are the most superior of all animals, is a good recipe for delusions of grandeur.
No one is ‘second grade’, but a few people are embarrassing fools.
Boris Johnson declared that ‘as many as 16 per cent of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2 per cent have an IQ above 130’. He presumably thought that his was at the higher level. A popular newspaper reported this as ‘Thickos born to toil’.21 In fact, it was Johnson who was being a little slow, but at the same time appearing super-confident and able (at least to those of his friends and supporters who were easily impressed). Johnson did not understand that IQ distributions are specifically defined to always find 16 per cent with an IQ below 85 and 2 per cent with an IQ above 130,
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Francis Galton’s life’s work was erroneous. But he was much worse than a waste of time; he helped propagate a myth of Great Britain among its Great British hereditary families. It is a myth that is especially kept alive in many parts of the Conservative Party today, where people believe that a few deserve to be rich because they have inherited the more able genes of their more able forebears.
Unfortunately, in Britain today, many of those who consider themselves top dogs and have the power to influence the lives of the rest of the population also sincerely believe in their own superior intellect and intelligence, and know little or nothing of all the work just listed. For all their acquisition, display and cultivation of social and cultural capital, they are an embarrassment.
being born in Britain today is now less advantageous than being born elsewhere in Europe when it comes to being free to think intelligently and imaginatively.
countries with more equal education systems around the world, including almost all of the rest of Europe, have better-functioning economies and appear to produce a happier, healthier, more able, more productive population.
The old British canard about the inherent ability of children is a comforting myth. It comforts those who are uneasy with the degree of inequality they see but would rather seek to justify it than confront
It is actually a privilege not to have been sent to a boarding school or taught old-fashioned arrogant ideas. It is a privilege to get to know your mum and dad as you grow up rather than seeing the nanny and house master as your substitute parents.
In fact, an obsession with social mobility doesn’t deal with inequality; social mobility is just about trying to get a slightly different group of people to the top. In contrast, focusing on reducing inequality has always increased social mobility. One of Britain’s problems before the Brexit vote was a lack of recognition of the importance of inequality, along with a denial of economic inequality’s effects.
The UK is not normal, and many widely held views within the UK are also not normal. Living with high inequality seems to make some people more stupid, especially the affluent.
‘a man in a constant state of awe at his own strategic brilliance’.
the data from the OECD shows is that states which encourage greater competition between schools end up with worse results overall, with children learning how to pass exams but not how to retain what they have learnt just a few years after taking those exams. Exams really matter in very unequal countries because different jobs pay such different salaries and wages.
Our poor performance in the international leagues is largely a product of the underlying economic inequality in the UK.
grants are cheaper than tuition fees in the long term, in part because the government so rarely recoups the fees in full. But rather than taking this into account, or listening to the arguments from the smaller countries, the government tried to move the agenda even further towards education extremism and talked of re-introducing many grammar schools. So far, they have thankfully largely failed.
The real level of unemployment in Britain, when properly measured, was 2.3 million, not the 800,000 reported by the government.
Theresa May, in saying, as she did in July 2016, that she would be prepared to push the nuclear button, stated that she would be prepared to slaughter hundreds of thousands of people in a nuclear war. And so did Donald Trump. But no one called the people in white coats to take them away. They should have done. Saying you would be prepared to commit a holocaust is not the act of a sane person.
If the UK does not acquire some more able political leadership quickly, we may still be blaming others for our poor educational outcomes, our schools, our housing problems, our low wages, our underemployment and our trading problems for years to come – unless we learn more about ourselves now. False patriotism is a dangerous cloak to wear.
The British have not lost a war for a very long time. The British elite have never had to confront their belief in eugenics in the way the German elite had to. They have not had to address the failures of their prestigious selective private schools, schools of the kind that are rare in the large majority of more equitable affluent countries worldwide. The British have inadvertently chosen to learn about themselves through the process of Brexit. It is a better way to learn than going to war.
When Britain joined the European Community in the early 1970s, Sweden was the only large European country to have lower income inequality than the UK. By the time the British chose to leave the European Union, they had the highest income inequality of any country in Europe.
