In Our Time - The Nation State

Episode Date: October 14, 1999

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Nation State. When we speak of our island story which island do we mean? When did England elide with Britain and why does it sit uneasily alongside the United Kingdom? At the end of the 20th century, the identity of one of the most forceful countries of the millennium is subject to scrutiny, doubt and criticism. What is England now? When did it act as England and not Britain, or the UK, or the British Isles? And how does its new role fit in with the idea of the Nation State which has dominated the internal and, more dramatically, the external behaviour of many powerful countries over the last few centuries? Yet despite its mighty past the Nation State itself can now seem powerless against the forces of globalisation. With Norman Davies, Emeritus Professor, London University and author of The Isles: A History; Andrew Marr, former editor of The Independent and author of Ruling Britannia: the Failure and Future of British Democracy.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, as we end the century, the identity of one of the most influential and forceful countries of the last millennium, our own,

is subject to scrutiny, doubt and criticism. What is England now? Or do I mean Britain? When did it act as England and not Britain? or the UK or the British Isles. And how does this new role fit in with the idea of the nation-state, which has dominated the internal and more dramatically the external behaviour of many powerful countries over the last few centuries? Yet despite its mighty past, the nation-state itself

can now seem powerless against the forces of globalisation. To discuss this, I'm joined by Norman Davis, Emeritus Professor at London University, whose massive book, Europe, a history was a well-deserved and great success. He takes up the story of our country, our Isles with an equally impressive and fascinating book called The Isles, a history. I'm also joined by Andrew Marr, former Eddivin Independent, and author of Ruling Britannia, the Failure and Future of British Democracy.

He's just finished a BBC TV series The Day Britain Died, that'll come out in January. Let's try to divide the programme into two parts. First of all, talking about our national story, and then the nation's state. Norman Davis, what are the founding stories of British inhabitation and the creation of the nation of Britain? I see you assume that there is a British nation to begin with. Well, I'm trying to provoke...

I'm trying to have to crack this nut rather than making an entire meal of it. That occupies a lot of your introduction. Indeed, but the BBC sent out instructions this year in a brochure called the Changing UK not to use the word nation in connection with the United Kingdom. You're not supposed to be doing this, Melvin.

And there are people, the Oxford companion. to British history. It starts off by saying there may have been a British state. There's never been a British nation. There's a complete conceptual morass here about Britishness, the British nation, the English nation, which is something which came up to earlier, the Scottish nation,

the Irish nation, the Welsh nation. I personally... United Kingdom, the British Union? I believe there is a British nation. It was fostered in the context of the British Empire. it is now in very serious decline. There's always a competition about nationhood.

In this country, in these aisles, there's a competition between the state-backed British nation and the popular grassroots nations in Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and very soon in England as well. So I'd still come back to my original question because the answer took us on a little bit further than I wanted, never mind that's not important. Do you think that this British nation has any deep founding myths behind it?

Do you think it reaches back in any way more than pre the empire? Do you think it reaches back in the Irish book? You mentioned a 12th century account of the founding of Britain where Brute is supposed to arrive from the Battle of Troy. We know about the British from when the Romans come. Is there any reaching back to that in the idea of Britishness, or is that all not only passed but forgotten and irrelevant? I think that all that is forgotten and relevant.

There was, of course, an ancient Britain, and at various stages the English, who took over the former Britannia, the Roman province of Britannia, and they eventually renamed it England. They attempted to legitimize themselves by harking back to King Arthur and the ancient British. That was almost dead.

There was a second round of that in the 18th century, but that is not really the origin of modern Britishness at all. Andromar, what's your view of this? Do you think there's a morassus as sticky and trickly as Norman presents it? I may say that in his book, well, you can't unravel a morass, what it would be? He clarifies it much more. He picks his way through the morass. Very, very neatly.

I don't think you pick your way through a morass either. Never mind. Whatever it does with the morass is. He does the morass. He does the morass. Not much of a morass when he's finished. Well, I mean, I do agree with that. I think that it's perfectly clear, first of all, that there is a difference for almost everybody living in these aisles between the idea of Britain,

which is a kind of official, public, political definition that we're used to in terms of empire and the institutions of state and so on, and what people feel in their hearts. I was very, very strong. I was taught to be British, really, when I was a kid in a Scottish school. people are not taught to be British in that sense anymore. Very, very few people in Scotland would identify themselves as British first. They'd say there were Scots. And I think the interesting thing at the moment is increasingly that's the case in England, too. People are talking about Englishness. I'm English, I'm English, I feel English.

And it's partly... Even more local, even I'm Lancashire in the case of Norman, Cumbrian in the case of myself. Well, one of the big questions here, of course, I think, opened by Norman Davis's book, is what is England itself. You know, how far back does this rollback come, you know, you lose the empire,

the inner empire of Wales and Scotland begin to go, and then you find in England there is quite a big imaginative difference between the southern home counties English, the old Wessex English in a sense, and the Dane Law. I mean, you're from the Dane Law, and there's a different texture

to the north of England and the south. I'm trying to get it, because this book is such a magnificent history, and I just want, although you're saying the history is the first stage of the rocket, in a way it's dropped off. Could we just take it back for a second? If we can't, we'll want something else.

When the Romans eventually colonised Britannia, there were four parts. It was the free area north of Hadrian's wall. There was the unoccupied, more or less, by the Romans. Aura, there was the occupied lowland south and east, and there was a militarised zone of the north and west. Now, you think those four parts still somehow linger with us now? Do they still help to define us now?

I think they do. And there was also the island of Ireland. The Romans never got to at all. That's what I said. Aero, unoccupied. Certainly there's a big difference between the Highland Britain and Lowland Britain. They followed very different routes,

both in what became England and what became in Scotland. Scotland itself was seriously divided between the Lowlands and the Highlands. And still is. Well, up to a point. Well, the Lowlanders, of course, brought in the English in the 18th century to put down these Highlanders. They couldn't cope with themselves.

But yes, those divisions which you can see in the early centuries of the first millennium have never completely died away. Do you see a real continuity? I mean, you've just written this, you've taken a thing through, you've dwelt on it for years. Do you see continuity applying to political and almost daily behavior? I'm just fascinated by the idea. Is if what the Romans did, we're still, that buttermark goes right through for centuries, Do you see it really going through? Or are you just being a sort of historical narrator

who likes the idea that it goes through because it makes nice patterns? No, there are some elements of continuity, one of which is geographical. You talked about Highlands and Lowlands. That's true. But I think one of the four or five great myths of British history concerns continuity.

This myth that nothing in these islands has really changed. You can still go on calling everything England because there are more English people than anything else. In fact, the state in which we live has been transformed time and time again. The United Kingdom, as at present, was set up in 1922. It changed radically in 1801 when they took in Ireland. The British state itself only goes back to 1707

when England was united with Scotland. and Scotland with England. So I'm not a great admirer of the myth of continuity, although some things, such as the existence of the channel, the insular nature of the islands, the highlands and the lowlands, these things haven't changed. For some time there's been, there seems to have been, the idea that British values are synonymous with English values.

How do you unravel that, Andromar? Well, if you look at what is distinctive, British rather than English or anything else, then you look at clearly the 300 years of Britishness. So you look at things like empire and you look at war. But coming much closer to home, I think that for most people alive today, the core facts of Britishness were really the Second World War. Our sort of myths in the non-pejorative sense are the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, Dunkirk. That wasn't a myth.

Britain happened. I said in the non-Badjoic. But those are the, as it were, the modern founding stories of whatever Britishness is, plus the welfare state. And what happened after the war in the sense that there was a new dispensation. Now, one of the interesting is, of course, is so much of that itself has come under assault. Through the European Union, we are now bound to the countries that we spent so many hundreds of years, identifying ourselves against for a very, very long period of time

and this is the famous Linda Colley Point this was the Protestant Island defining itself against the great Catholic empires of the continent. Now with the end of that we've also seen a very radical demolishing and privatising

of the traditional welfare state so that aspect of Britishness is under assault too and I just everywhere I look around and I say, if you ask, what are the core British values now that hold us together above all else? It's very, very hard. You can say there's a British economy up to a point.

And you see people like Gordon Brown, Chancellor, trying to redefine the great British society, but it is an uphill struggle. Sorry, just to add one. There are 17 sections, actually, on factors of Britishness, but Andrew mentioned, I think, the most important ones, except, of course, the monarchy. which is now in great disrepute.

Is he think it's in great disrepute? I've no doubt at all that it is. The Protestant ascendancy, this country, whether the United Kingdom or England, is no longer a Protestant country, and yet there was a bedrock of Britishness. Absolutely. I think you're saying you're more Muslims than Methodists.

In Wales. No, in Britain's a whole, more Muslims than Methodists. Sea power has completely evaporated, the empire, and I could go on. If you analyze this Britishness and the pillars on which it was built, all of them have either gone or are crumbling. Do you think that the fact that we are devolving

into Scotland and Wales, and one hopes of much more independent Ireland, is actually a rather cunning, instinctive, self-preserving way to continue? I'm sure the strategy behind devolution is to preserve the United Kingdom, but it is 20 or 30 years too late. If that had been instituted in the 1970s,

there was this report whenever in 1973, but then voted down in the referenda, if it had happened then, then we will be in a much healthier state now. The United Kingdom would be. But I fear that devolution has come too little, and to unequal. It's a very serious thing

that Wales doesn't have the same powers as Scotland, that Northern Ireland has a different remit than... But there's also, I mean, there's the great yawning question of the English. Absolutely. You know, that seems to me to be the biggest inequality of it all. And it's a totally unresolved question as to whether the English can be somehow dealt with, with regional assemblies, which I personally doubt,

or whether England now has clearly the right, but it's the time for England to step up with her own. Parliament. I know this has to be elliptical, but never mind. Let's take what Andrew said a moment or two ago about the Battle of Britain, which was actually you can say, slightly more English than British, if you want to play it that way, but never mind, that the Battle of

Britain and the winning or the staying through, the only country that started and finished the war, and we did stand alone, and these things can be too easily dismissed and it wasn't all that long ago, and then the formation of the welfare state, and the great British affection for the welfare state, a lot of values which came out of that Now, are you saying, Norman, that that was one more resurrection of Britishness? Are you saying that?

A, I are you saying that? And B, are you saying, but already, a mere 50 years on, that has been eroded. And we are no longer, we don't no longer have that Britishness as a rock to build on. I am saying the Battle of Britain was a great reinjection of British consciousness. I'm also saying that consciousness of the Second World War is eroding for all sorts of reasons among many that children no longer talked about these things in school. Too remarkable, is that.

I thought it amazing that you should say the Battle of Britain was more English than British. It took place largely over England. Actually, the photograph, which is in the illustrations I chose, was of a Polish spitfire. The Polish Air Force was a critical element in the winning of the Battle of Britain, almost totally forgotten. Yeah, but I mean it was, and I'm not dismissing it in the slightest, but the percentage of Polish pilots was, I would have sort of.

10%. 10%. And the pilot that shot down the largest number of German planes was a Czech. So, yes, that was in a way a European, obviously the Royal Air Force was a British, he wasn't an English. Air Force. It happened over the... Nevertheless, the idea is, I mean, the problem with this is slightly rushing.

I would like to argue that at length with you about that, but I think it's slightly more English and British, but that's for another occasion now, because what I'm trying to get at is that there was a, you yourself said, a kind of re-energising of the idea of Britain and the Second War,

taking it from Andrew said, what I, what Andrew said, and what I'd like to know is, do you think that has peter out or do you think it's being overwhelmed? We have to reinvent it again. I mean, that's, you know, there is clearly a difference between the Britain that was ruled

by the wartime generation and immediately post-war generation, who took very different lessons out of the war. I mean, I'm very, very struck by the fact that our most vivid nationalist speaker, as it were, at the moment, is still Margaret Fatcher. And she's the one who talks about Winston, as if they were close friends.

And yet it was Churchill who took out of the war, like Willie Whitelaw and Heath and many other people, a very strong sense of the need for some kind of more European Union and closer European destiny. The Battle of Britain was, of course, the great moment of a war, and Britishness was built, among other things, on war. And we don't... Not only do we not want more such wars,

we couldn't afford to fight another major war. That's all in the past. We can't count on another Battle of Britain. written to bolster our identity. The great staging posts are wars, aren't they, of the last millennium? If you look at them, yes, from 1066 to 1939, we're looking at... But once the British Empire gets going, I mean, if you actually run through all the wars from the kind of the seven-year wars to the Ashanti Wars to the Imperial,

is unbelievable and largely forgotten saga of war year after year, decade after decade after decade, it goes on and on. One of the most things that I'd love to have talked about is the depressing thing about this largely forgotten that you keep saying and you keep saying, Norman, almost wholly untaught. History, the fact that history is being erased from the curriculum is... Apart from Norman Davis, I mean, you know,

he's sitting here, always... When you look around for big narrative histories, it gives you the whole story of something or other, there are very few of them around at the moment. Can I just ask Norman, why do you think England seems to have so much more of a problem seeing itself as a country, and let's say, in relation to Europe, just use this an example,

than Scotland do with the Republic of Ireland or one assumes when it gets cracking Wales. As Wales is cracking now, absolutely so. I think the root of the problem is that England, from an early stage, was an imperial power. First of all, within the Isles, the conquest of Ireland in the 12th century, the conquest of Wales in the 13th century,

the union with Scotland, on rather unequal terms in the 18th century, the English established, as it was. The United Kingdom was run predominantly by English people, not exclusively. They never had to think of who they were. They identified with the monarchy, subjects of the crown, and of course the rulers of the empire. Englishness has got all mixed up with the empire. It's exactly the same that the Russians don't know who they are once the Soviet Union. Russia was only one of 15 republics of the Soviet Union.

And yet, now the Soviet Union has gone, the Russians don't know whether they are Soviets or whether they're Russians. Most English people don't know whether they're English or British. I sat on a plane the other day with a man who said he had an English passport. And I said, you know, could you show me that? You know, it's not quite a rare historical document. And he opened it and he showed me the letters, B-R-I-T-I-S-H, and he said, there you are, English. Spelling was never a very strong point, I'm sure. Andrew.

Well, I was just going to say, doing this television series, I was talking to a French MEP about this very subject of all things, who said, made the argument in a slightly French intellectual way that there is a particular problem with any big ex-imperial power when the order shifts, because they've defined themselves so much in terms of the external and the powerful. And it might be the same crisis that hit Austria, at the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,

Russia and in some respects is hitting France as well. He said it's a bit like men. Men used to be powerful and have a very clear status. And now, with the rise of feminism, men are starting to ask, well, what, you know, what is it really to be around? You know, when all these, the employment roles and the traditional family roles are under threat, the man feels hollowed out. Now, as I say, it was a slightly French intellectual way of putting it, but I can see what he meant.

too far, yeah. But still, can we move on to the nation state in the sense that our events overtaking is so quickly. There are now 400 international companies in Great Club before the First World War there were about half a dozen or something. We know that the Shell Group, for instance, has got a turnover bigger than that of Denmark. We could play these, 400 people in that, and say so worth as much as the whole of the income of China. We can go on like this. are they just knocking the nation state down like nine pins and are they the rulers, are they the masters now, Norman? I think there is a very important theme of globalisation,

the power of supranational organisations. But if we're talking about these aisles mainly, the first things to be said is the United Kingdom is not and never has been a nation state. I think it's too late to turn it into one. There are many European countries or several European countries are very clearly nation states and will not be affected in the same way.

Germany is a nation state. The best example is probably Poland, which is artificially turned into a nation state because of the Second World War. France is a nation state. Italy, rather more dubious, Spain also. I mean, it should be said that even these countries, however, are becoming more regional at quite a fast rate.

In Paris they are very, very worried about the kind of conversation in the southwest between the Catalans and the Long Dock and the north of Italy. You know, we look at France as being completely unitary, but from Paris it's beginning to feel not quite that way, certainly Germany. I absolutely agree, but I think the United Kingdom is the most vulnerable from these outside pressures, exactly because we never got to the point of a homogenous national state. Can you describe wherein the vulnerability lies in particular? I think that because of the creation of a European community, those elements of the aisles which were never properly integrated into, if you like, British consciousness, are now looking to Europe as a new source of legitimacy.

The Scots, Andrew knows a lot more than that. They could not have broken through without Europe. Their slogan is Scotland in Europe. Now, Applied Cymaries is well. in Europe. Soon we'll no doubt have the Cornish in Europe. And I think the north of England is going to resent the increasing domination of the southeast. And we'll have Cumbria and Lancashire, New Yorkshire, in Europe. The north is a sort of very, if I can use the word completely incorrectly the phrase, a very

solid state for a long time. And there is a strong feeling in the north that people are from the north. Yes. People will start. They are, they are, can't define themselves against. London. It's now campaign for Northern Assembly. There's a campaign for Yorkshire democracy, I think headed by the Archbishop of York. I mean, there's a lot happening outside London

that is very rarely reported in the London media. I still want to sort of nail why we are particularly vulnerable to globalisation from you too. And you related to the nation state. Couldn't it seem that maybe the centralised nation states such as you were talking about in the European mainland are more vulnerable

because they're unitary in a way which we are? Why are we going to, why are we sort of first in line to be attacked? I mean, the Frank was attacked, just as powerfully as our currency was attacked? First of all, most of the continental states are not unitary. The German Federal Republic has extremely decentralized system. Federalism incidentally means decentralised. This is another of this conceptual morass that we're in. All the terms are upside down.

took to regionalism in the early 1980s under Mitterrand, and they are much earlier and better prepared than we are with an even regional structure which can absorb these outside pressures. I think there's one other very obvious thing, which is that we are infinitely more porous to the world economy, the most European countries, A, because we possess both our great opportunity and our cultural threat a world language. The effect of world culture on us goes deeper and faster than it goes into France or Germany,

but also because we have an abnormally open economy. We own far more of other parts of the world than most other European countries, and we have much more inward investment. We are just more open and perhaps always have been. Could I dispel that out? This so-called special relationship with the United States is a great threat. to our further existence as we are. We are open to, if you like, globalisation, supernational organisations, many of which actually are coming from the United States. Can you just spell it out a little more?

Why are we... Will you say open? It seems to me that you're saying threatened. Threatened. Andrew used the word porous. That American influences can come into this country more easily than they can, into France.

Most people in this country were brought, a lot of people in this country, were brought up with Winnie the Pooh, with a whole series of children's stories, the Jungle Book, which our children, now, my children, think a character's speaking with American accents. They have been re-imported to us as American cartoons.

And that's a tiny example of a process which is constantly happening. Now, I mean, I don't feel personally particularly threatened by it, but certainly in terms of Britishness, Englishness, it has a big, big daily effect. So are you talking about the effect on the culture

or the effect on the economy both, I presume, no one? I'm more interested in culture than economy quite a bit. Yes, but both spheres are affected. Let's go back to the title of your book, The Isles. You backed a long way off for that. It seems to me are taking out an awful lot of insurance, not Britain, not Great Britain, nor the story of England.

You mentioned Trevelyan in your opening remarks. You're talking about the aisles. You're sticking first to the aisles. I'm sticking to it. Every chapter in the book has a different adjective added to the aisles because I do want to convey this picture of a constantly changing situation. But it came actually from a meeting in Dublin. After publishing Europe, I went to Dublin.

And they said, what are you writing about? And I said, well, I'm thinking about a book on the British. And there was an audible silence. And you can't call it that anymore. The Isles ceased to be British in 1922. And they suggested, yes, you should call your book These Islands. Well, I thought that wasn't. History of These Islands wasn't.

But the Isles is what I came up with. But we can't be Islish. We can't be Irish. So what do you think happening now? Are you an optimist that you think this? because you talk animatedly about regionalism as if you were energising, which I think it might be, where Norman seems to think we're sort of fragmented and vulnerable.

You seem to think we're breaking up but perhaps dynamic. Well, I'm not a pessimist. I think that whatever is going to be happens next is going to be fine. I'm pro-European. I don't see anything to... That's almost banglossian. Whatever happens next is going to be fine. I mean constitutionally, Melbourne.

I mean, it's not going to be some ghastly, poisonous, rancorous, bitter break up with new borders erected everywhere, I think that's most unlikely. But I do think that if Britain is to be held together and to be re-energized, then that is the big project. And I'm somewhat alarmed that politicians are so relaxed about it. You know, if you go to most politicians, certainly in government, and say, is Britain okay, they'll say yes and they're wrong.

Well, we have our basic text. It's Norman Davis's Book the Isles, and we'll have your serious to look forward to. You're talking about the day. Britain died, so that's cheerful enough. Anyway, I enjoyed it. Hope you did. Thanks for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programmes about history, science and philosophy

at BBC.com.ukuk forward slash radio 4.