TARIQ MODOOD'S SPEECH AT THE LAUNCH OF THESE ISLANDS

As a theorist and advocate of multiculturalism I have always considered multiculturalism and national identity, identification and pride in a minority identity and in a British identity as mutually dependent upon each other. That is why I have argued for multicultural Britishness: a multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-faith plural Britishness which can go hand in hand with the older idea of a multi-national Britain encompassing the nations and identities of the people of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Indeed this older idea paves the way for today’s multicultural Britishness, for rethinking handed-down notions of our country and re-making our national identities. If this was not a realistic option we would have a problem. We cannot both ask new Britons to integrate and go around saying that being British is, thank goodness, a hollowed-out, meaningless project whose time has come to an end. This will inevitably produce confusion and will detract from the sociological and psychological processes of integration, as well as offering no defence against the calls of other loyalties and missions.

Indeed, surveys have repeatedly shown that ethnic minorities in this country express high levels of identification with Britain and British identity – indeed, higher than white people do. Yet the Britishness that is being embraced is a Britishness capable of extension and hybridity, a country happy to accept as Britons those for whom hyphenated identities, such as Black-British, British-Muslim, British-Indian and so on are sources of pride.

That is what I mean by saying that multiculturalism is about renewing and remaking British national identity. It is my positive reason for a forum like These Islands.

I also have a negative reason. I worry about the emergence of majoritarian, populist, exclusivist nationalisms, mono-nationalisms, whether at the level of Britain or England, Wales or Scotland. I mean forms of nationalism that reject hyphenation amongst the national identities of Britain but which, for example, see being Scottish and British as a zero-sum game. I worry also about a resentful, sullen, angry anti-multiculturalist English nationalism that is becoming a feature of our identities landscape.

So for both these reasons, positive and negative, we need to intellectually and politically think what Britishness means to us, to forge an imaginative vision of what Britain is and what it can be, and what we would lose if we allowed this national identity to be devalued or lost.

We cannot have a multicultural Britishness without having a Britishness first and I hope that will be central to the message of These Islands. As this title implies, we are talking not about a Britishness with hard borders or conceived in legalised terms, not a monistic jurisdiction but rather – and I speak here as a rugby enthusiast – in the image of one of our several complementary rugby national teams, the British-Irish Lions.