Governance of Britain

When discussing Britishness, there is a danger of smugly and complacently championing the esteemed British virtues of fair play, tolerance and community-mindedness without acknowledging that all these attributes have their flip-sides in vulgar displays of vast wealth and tax evasion, small-minded xenophobia and hostile racism, and in consumerist individualism.

But instead of these well-worn clichés, I suggest that above all, being British is an exceedingly mundane matter.

It is not primarily located in the grand set piece occasions (the Cup Final), national(ist) ceremonies (the Changing of the Guard) and sacred sites (Westminster Abbey), but in the places and practices of everyday life.

Britishness surrounds us in the familiar fixtures, atmospheres and practices that we share, in the commonplace environments we move through and inhabit. Ordinary privet hedges, the textures of chewing gum spattered pavements, grids and drains, garden furniture, fire hydrants and post offices are part of everyday landscapes. And as we walk through our localities we might hear the muffled sound of a pub jukebox, sniff the aroma of Sunday lunch, greet a lollipop lady or glimpse a fluttering blackbird.

‘Rarely consciously apprehended’

The ensemble of familiar elements is what gives us a sense of place, and while these features are witnessed in the immediate locales of the places we live, they are also found in streets, homes and gardens, shopping districts, roads and workplaces throughout Britain.

These minutiae provoke familiar, homely sensations but these are rarely consciously apprehended. Yet when we visit another country, everything immediately feels unfamiliar because the sounds, sights, smells and textures of the everyday are absent. The street sounds are strange, the light seems unusual and the food smells peculiar. People seem to move, talk and socialise differently. Our senses become attuned to the dissimilarity with home. And it’s often hard to know how to get things done. The taken-for-granted skills we possess – how to catch a bus, buy stamps, or use a payphone - are initially mysterious and have to be learned.

‘Shared national culture’

Besides this everyday, habitual apprehension of the nation, we also experience Britishness through our unremarkable consumption of popular culture, and despite globalisation, there are enough recognisable aspects to consolidate a widespread, shared national culture. The soap operas and sit-coms, news and sports programmes, still scheduled at regular times, even if they are foreign-produced, are still discussed in workplaces and school yards. And popular cultural practices such as playing Sunday morning football, going to jumble and car-boot sales, visiting the seaside or shopping mall, and strolling in the local park form instantly recognisable patterns of shared activity.

Accordingly, Britishness is certainly not imaginary, for these everyday cultural forms – television programmes, films, magazines, pop songs – continually recycle images, ideas, characters, places and phrases that form a national compendium of familiar elements. There is then, both in the experience of place, and in the consumption of popular culture an almost infinite matrix of interrelated aspects of Britishness.

For instance, let’s take gardening. Lawnmowers, roses, green wellies, compost heaps, allotments and lawns are characteristics which relate to each other and these recognizable entities feature in our own gardens and those of our neighbours, and in popular gardening programmes and a host of other media forms. Moreover, they can also be linked to certain birdsongs, sports or drinks, for example, to conjure up the rich and diverse experience of the British garden.

‘Britishness expands’

Globalisation is believed by some to herald the end of national identity, but in my view, it means the redistribution and expansion of what Britishness can mean. To be sure, images of Britain flow through the internet and other global media, often serving diasporic Brits as well as providing an image of Britishness to others. This massive global expansion of flows of people and ideas however, does not diminish a sense of Britishness but facilitate the forging of even more connections and linkages, so that the very idea of Britishness expands.

Happily, this proliferation of ways of being British and understanding Britishness also means that it cannot be fixed by ideologues who want to imprint their own meanings through offering a definitive version. This expanding galaxy means that Britishness is not weakening, but it is difficult to pin down because it is ever-changing, supplemented by numerous new associations and identities.

‘New tradition’

Yet like the spaces of our towns and cities that are often talked about as becoming soulless and the same everywhere, changes usually take place against a relatively stable background so that, for instance, yet another new outlet for Starbucks nestles next door to an old pub or co-operative store. Similarly, the networks of cultural association I have discussed tend to absorb new influences and elements.

Consequently, we should not underestimate the extent to which initially strange and seemingly threatening new features of everyday life become domesticated. An obvious cliché here is the way in which ‘going out for a curry’ has become a routine part of the weekend, a new tradition in British life. In the same way, new forms of popular music emerge in areas of rich ethnic mixing, exemplified, for instance, in ‘New Asian Dance’ and Two-Tone’ movements and bands as varied as Afro-Celt Sound System, the Dhol Foundation and Transglobal Underground.

To summarise, Britishness cannot be captured in grandiloquent claims about all encompassing virtues, or in the identification of great national icons or persons. Instead, Britishness is multiple, ever-changing and fluid whilst simultaneously being grounded in everyday places, habits and rituals and in the mundane consumption of popular culture.

Dr Tim Edensor is a reader in Cultural Geography at Manchester Metropolitan University.