A striking fall in pride in Britain’s history, but widespread support for the arts, shows the public are choosing “Shakespeare over invasion, exploitation and occupation”, a leading historian has said.
The findings from the British Social Attitudes survey, published this week, show that while levels of pride in Britain’s achievements in sport and the arts remained high over the past decade, there was a 22-point fall in the proportion of people saying they were proud of Britain’s history.
Prof Alan Lester, the editor of a new book on empire featuring guest essays from the eminent historian Liam J Liburd and the journalist Sathnam Sanghera, described the results as an “encouraging sign” that the public were becoming more discerning about Britain’s past.
“It shows an awareness that history is complicated, that Britons have done both admirable things and deplorable things in the past, and we need to break down history into the kinds of things that we see as sources of pride and those which we need to move beyond.”
He credits this shift in public consciousness to the Black Lives Matter movement and Britain’s changing demographics.
The demonstrations that erupted in the US in 2020 after a white police officer killed George Floyd were a catalyst for the largest wave of anti-racism protests in British history, taking place in more than 260 towns and cities that summer.
Statues of slave traders, such as Edward Colston’s in Bristol, were toppled, streets renamed, and venerable British institutions such as the Bank of England were forced to reckon with their ties to the slave trade.
“Black Lives Matter helped to crystallise the issue of slavery, antislavery, and ongoing racism in British society,” said Lester.
“There is still pride, virtually unchanged since the last survey, in artistic and cultural achievement, and in sporting achievements. And what that suggests to me is discernment about how we look back on our past; that we’re choosing Shakespeare over invasion, exploitation and occupation.”
Lester, the editor of the new book The Truth About Empire: Real Histories of British Colonialism, believes some of this trend is also down to the UK becoming more ethnically diverse since the last survey. Those who are descendants of people who were enslaved or colonised by Britain may have a different relationship to its past than many other British people.
Others have suggested that the decline in the number of people alive today who lived through or fought in the second world war may have also contributed to the drop in pride in Britain’s past.
But Lester believes this would have had a minimal impact, as the survey show a decline across age demographics and a broader shift in public consciousness, “thanks, in no small part, to the activism of Black Lives Matter and others who keep drawing our attention to the complexities of the past”.
The Black Lives Matter movement was met by a ferocious response from the right, who attacked protesters and historians alike for interrogating Britain’s imperial past. Lester said: “Sathnam Sanghera wrote the foreword for The Truth About Empire, in which he talks about how unacceptable it is that we’ve reached this stage of fervent denialism about the past, and such a fervour about Britishness and patriotism, that historians just doing their job are being called woke and attacked.”
The historian David Olusoga had to employ a bodyguard at some speaking events; Prof Corinne Fowler, who co-authored a report for the National Trust in 2019, was often forced to call police for protection, and Sanghera stopped doing public events with adults due to the severity of the abuse he received on a regular basis.
The survey also showed a decline in the proportion of people who believed that Britain was better than most other countries, or that people should support their country even if it was in the wrong.
People were also less likely to express pride in Britain’s democracy, its economic achievements and its political influence in the world.
While the report authors note these survey results have happened despite Brexit and the toxic debates around immigration, Lester suggested they might be a reaction to it.
“Pride in the British political system and pride in the British economy have both taken a big hit. I suspect that’s because of disillusionment directly as a result of Brexit,” he said.
“People have simply had enough of what Brexit has done to Britishness, to the identity of Britishness and to the reputation of Britain overseas, and they’ve had enough of the hatred and the bile being directed towards people seeking asylum.”