Tony Blair's Britain speechguardian.co.uk,
Tuesday 28 March 2000 10.08
My argument today is this.
• Britain is stronger together, than separated apart.
• True Britishness lies in our values not unchanging institutions.
• The Constitutional changes we have made and a new attitude of engagement with Europe are not a threat to British identity but on the contrary are the means of strengthening it for today's world.
My manifesto for the leadership of the Labour Party in 1994 was called change and national renewal. A lot has changed since then. But those words remain central to my vision of what politics in this country must be about.
We have to recognise the huge changes we are living through and the challenges they present to this country. But also the opportunities for renewal that they offer.
Standing up for our country means standing up for what we believe in. It means standing up for our values and having the strength to realise them in the modern world. It means standing up for the core British values of fair play, creativity, tolerance and an outward-looking approach to the world. It does not mean an unthinking resistance to change. It does not mean railing against the outside world.
Modernisation is the key. It has driven everything this government has done - whether in our constitutional reforms or our reforms of the health service or the education system or the system of criminal justice or our relations with Europe.
To fail to modernise would be fundamentally to fail Britain. But we modernise according to our core values as a country. And we do so on the basis of one key belief. That the United Kingdom is stronger together than apart; all the constituent elements of the Union: its great cities, regions and nations are stronger united than separate, stronger together than the sum of their parts.
Our national identity is not some remote and abstract issue.
National success is not a matter of pushing buttons and pulling levers. Long-term growth and prosperity and stability depend on a clear sense of shared objectives and shared responsibilities.
Our failure in the post-war period to generate a clear sense of national purpose has hindered us.
It left space for a culture to develop in which sectional social and economic interests have fought to secure rights for themselves without a corresponding sense of their obligations to work for the wider public interest as well.
Indeed, I believe that the origins of one of the greatest failings of the economy in the post-war period - short-termism - can be located in our lack of a clear national purpose.
Throughout the post-war period, in the absence of a shared long-term vision of where we were going, successive governments often succumbed to the temptations of boom-and-bust, successive generations of managers often focused on their own pay awards instead of the long-term performance of their companies and successive generations of workers often sought pay increases unjustified by productivity increases.
We are living through a period of unprecedented change. The exponential growth of information and communication technologies is transforming the world's economies and making them increasingly interdependent. The breakup of the postwar international order and globalisation are calling into question systems constructed around the nation state. New ideologies of personal liberation and opportunities for self-fulfillment, made possible by social and economic change, are transforming traditional social structures and turning some inwards to themselves rather than looking outward to the nation and the state.
In this new world, it has become increasingly fashionable to predict the death of the nation-state. A world in which capital crosses national frontiers at the push of a key, where air travel has made the outside world personally familiar to millions, where television has brought it into the homes of millions more, a world where supra-national organisations like the EU and WTO play an increasingly important role is a world where questions are inevitably going to arise about the continuing significance of national identity.
What is the answer to such a challenge? Not to retreat into the past or cling to the status quo, even if it cannot sensibly be justified; but to rediscover from first principles what it is that makes us British and to develop that identity in a way in tune with the modern world.
What makes Britain and Britishness important, valid, as necessary today as ever is a powerful combination of shared values and mutual self-interest. We are stronger together, economically and politically with the nations of the UK able to maximise their collective will and authority. In defence, foreign policy, economic weight, we are better off and stronger together.
But, more important, our identity is not threatened by change. Our identity lies in our shared values not in unchanging institutions.
It is when our values fail to be reflected in the institutions that govern us that Britain and British identity is under threat. When we came to office, the Party of no change - the Conservatives - were left without any seats in Scotland or Wales. Forces for change were left with no alternative but status quo or separatism. Devolution at long last offered a sensible modernisation of the partnership in the UK. Let Scotland and Wales do what they do best locally. Let the UK do what it is right to do together.
The Conservative Party, in the Tory policy document on five guarantees for Britain, proposes "English votes for English laws". While rejecting a proposal to set up a wholly separate English parliament and now today re-affirming that they support devolution, they propose to exclude the Scots, Welsh and Irish from any discussion of laws defined as "English". The rest of Britain's MPs would, in effect, become second class citizens in the UK Parliament - voting on some issues but not on all of them - and the make-up of the executive would have to reflect the possibility of defeat on English issues even if a majority was available for British issues.
But what their proposal reflects is a complete misunderstanding of reality.
The measures needed to protect a minority are not always the same as the measures needed to protect a majority. England can if it chooses outvote Scotland, Ireland and Wales at any point. English MPs are in an overwhelming majority in voting through the money for Wales and Scotland. It is the recognition of this that makes devolution a fairer settlement for the future.
The growing pressure for regional change in England - decentralisation in London, the first steps to better local government in our cities - are a logical consequence of the policy of modernisation.
In Northern Ireland - if, as I do, we value the Union - we had to make progress on fairness and a recognition of nationalist aspirations. What we then are left with is an identity not shaped by institutional rigidity, but by values and common purpose. That purpose is a Britain that is stronger, fairer, modernised to be fit for the new world we live in. That is a constant recurrent theme in all the Government does: modernisation based on values. The NHS is not just a necessary part of a civilised society where need not wealth should determine health care. It is a unifying force. It is a true British service. It represents the best of British values in action. But it has to be updated and reformed to take account of the new opportunities and challenges of today.
On Europe, standing up for Britain does not mean being anti-Europe. It is not pro-British to be anti-Europe. The EU is part of the modern world. Britain is part of the EU. Standing up for Britain means fighting for British values, getting the best for Britain, whether it is economic reform, moving Europe closer to the USA or protecting the British rebate.
Likewise, at a time when individuals have been becoming increasingly empowered in their personal lives and increasingly aspire - and rightly so - to the prerogatives of citizenship, how could a healthy body politic defend the political privileges of hereditary peers and deny the right to freedom of information and to the protection in British courts of the European Convention on Human Rights ?
I believe few would disagree with the qualities that go towards that British identity: qualities of creativity built on tolerance, openness and adaptability, work and self-improvement, strong communities and families and fair play, rights and responsibilities and an outward looking approach to the world that all flow from our unique island geography and history.
If these values are what makes us British, rather than unchanging institutions, the devolution is a necessary part of keeping Britain together; more regional decentralisation in England makes sense, City mayors with real power have their place; hereditary peers in the House of Lords don't; and a constructive engaged attitude to Europe reflects the best of British values of openness and leadership in the world.
Of course, there will always be those who argue the consequences of change will always be worse than the consequences of sustaining the status quo.
But, I think this is as much a cast of mind as a political analysis. And this criticism usually falls into one of two broad categories - both of which play essentially on atavistic fears of the future.
The first category of criticism is a traditional Tory one - based on the claim that the pre-devolution, pre-reformed House of Lords, political institutions have been a uniquely important part of British national identity. Changing them, in this view, destroys something quintessentially 'British'.
Of course they have been historically significant, but they have never been anything more than a reflection of the needs of the British people at any one time. They are not eternal expressions of the British character. To change them does not mean that something quintessentially British has been destroyed, that a part of 'Britain has gone.
On the contrary, it is quintessentially British, it is one of our distinguishing characteristics as a people, that we have always been willing to adapt our institutions to changing circumstances. In the 19th century, in response to tumultuous economic and social change, we reformed the suffrage not once but three times.
This first critique amounts to little more than sentimental nostalgia.
The second critique is more argued: that somehow a process has been unshackled which will not run its course until the Union has disintegrated - that the institutional recognition of complex and enriching plural allegiances will somehow lead - inevitably - to their replacement with simpler and more excluding identities.
And, of course, there are those, like the SNP, who argue that this would be positively desirable and that the Union has had its day and the sooner it is unravelled, the better.
Of course, the great currents in our national life which have produced the climate in which such radical constitutional reform became necessary and was implemented will not suddenly cease. Of course they will continue to flow.
But this does not dictate a retreat from an inclusive British identity to more exclusive identities, rooted in 19th century conceptions of territory and blood? It is actually just not possible to construct any practical and meaningful national identity on such a basis. Why should we want to?
20 per cent of the population of Wales was born in England 7 per cent of the population of Scotland was born in England
745,000 people born in Scotland live in England: equivalent to 15% of the Scottish population.
Why should anyone want to say to all these people that they should suddenly become foreigners in the land they live in ?
This nation has been formed by a particularly rich complex of experiences: successive waves of invasion and immigration and trading partnerships, a potent mix of cultures and traditions which have flowed together to make us what we are today.
Blood alone does not define our national identity. How can we separate out the Celtic, the Roman, the Saxon, the Norman, the Huguenot, the Jewish,- the Asian and the Caribbean and all the other nations that have come and settled here ? Why should we want to ? It is precisely this rich mix that has made all of us what we are today.
Both current critiques of our constitutional reforms, I believe, are rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between a democratic people and the institutions they consent to have rule over them. New institutions do not necessarily create new feelings. They can just give longheld feelings new - and often better - expression.
'This government's progressive programme of constitutional reform is now moving us from a centralised Britain, where power flowed top-down, to a devolved and plural state. A new Britain is emerging with a revitalised conception of citizenship, as the House of Lords finally is reformed to remove the democratic anomaly of the hereditary peers, as the European Convention of Human Rights is incorporated into British law and as we bring in, for the first time, rights to Freedom of Information.
This is a complex journey towards a revived sense of ourselves, applying to modern life historic British values and qualities.
I entered politics to fight for the changes I believe are necessary to modernise this country. I believe in the importance of preserving our British identity and I will fight to strengthen the Union. I will fight against all those who would weaken the Union, whether those forces of conservatism who oppose change on principle or those separatist nationalists who wish to see Britain die.'
Our vision is of a Britain that thrives on optimism, on shaping its own destiny not cowering before the might of the global economy.
For us Britain succeeds when we ally our courage to our imagination. The courage that won wars. The imagination that built the NHS.
Ours is a vision of Britain where pride comes from a strong economy that can compete in the world, and rising living standards that benefits all.
A Britain where pride comes from a modern constitution that strengthens the nations of the United Kingdom.
Where pride comes from strengthening British values - creativity helping us build a knowledge economy, fairness guiding our fight against child poverty, reward for hard work helping us return to full employment, rights matched by responsibilities guiding us in the fight against crime and the reform of welfare.
Ours is an outward looking vision that believes in Britain's place in Europe, but believes Britain will always be much more than that. A "pivotal" nation - a bridge between East and West between the United States and the EU.
In this new world, a new modern patriotism is needed. That is what we offer.
See Britain as it is seen from abroad today. An economy gaining in strength. A society seeking to combine enterprise with investment in public services that bind the nation together. A politics that from relations within the UK, to pursuing peace in Northern Ireland, to engaging with Europe, is prepared to change to overcome the problems of the past and rise to the challenges of a changing world.
We can have confidence in our future. Britain is no longer in decline. We are rediscovering our strength and values. We are uniting those values to a common purpose: modernising the nation for the 21st Century. If we succeed, Britain will be stronger and fairer, on the road to providing opportunity and security for all.
