Reject the Nativist-Immigrant Dichotomy
I just saw an advert by a second generation immigrant-run business that was amusing but didn’t sit right.
In response to a racist comment, the owner took the mickey out of ostensible Britishness - talking of driving a German car to an Irish pub before returning home to a Kenyan cup of tea. It went on.
In many respects, it is a good message. It reminds xenophobes of the great contributions immigrants make (‘bloody immigrants, coming here creating jobs’, ran the caption), and the contributions from other cultures we enjoy through trade and sharing of information. No problem there.
However I disliked the implication from the size of the list that the entirety of Britishness is a melting pot of things that have come from abroad in just the last few hundred years. True, since the creation of British state in 1707, much of our apparent British things have come from abroad. Even our style of battered fish seems to be an Iberian Jewish innovation for keeping the fish ready for Shabbat.
Nonetheless, there is a lot distinctly British that is the product of the natives of many hundreds of years ago.
For one, our common law system dates over a thousand years ago and is now used by the most prosperous nations around the world. The English financial system was at the heart of the industrial revolution. Indeed, Britain was at the heart of the industrial revolution. England was the first nation to have a Bill of Rights - American ideals of freedom are an inheritance of English ideas.
But a lot of the modern cosmopolitan discourse acts as if the sole reason for British wealth is the taking of it from other places - ignoring that Britain’s trajectory was fastly upwards before the empire particularly took off.
A lot of Britishness is old and native.
Immigrants do contribute a huge amount. And the movement of ideas to Britain contributes a lot to the island.
But it is also true that immigrants come to Britain because Britain has a lot to contribute to them. She offers the political and economic system, the legal system, the culture that all allows for immigrants to put down roots and contribute to society. And the movement of British ideas abroad has been of great benefit to the world.
So I take an instant dislike to a cosmopolitan reply to xenophobia that goes completely in the direction of worshipping the benefits of immigration and denigrating the native achievements.
The second generation immigrant running the budding venture has made use of family traditions and British education and systems to build his company. This is the perfect example of a synergy of national institutions and new cultures.
I want a mantra of mutual help and benefit to resound. Immigration has contributed so much to Britain exactly because Britain is a place where immigrants can thrive.