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Britain needs bank holiday in November to build national identity

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27 August 2007

Gordon Brown should establish a British national day as an extra bank holiday on the Monday after Remembrance Sunday (12 November, this year), according to new report, published by the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) next month. ippr says that Gordon Brown’s attempts to build a British national identity would be boosted by having a new bank holiday which would act as a national ‘thank you’ for community heroes and as a national ‘ask’ for people to give back to their communities.

ippr argues that the day should be the single focus of awarding honours and that the focus should be on ordinary people who have made a significant contribution to their communities, such as:

the baggage handler who intervened in the Glasgow airport attack, the traffic warden who spotted the London car bomb and other ordinary people who showed bravery and vigilance during those attacks in July;
emergency service workers who helped people stranded by July’s flooding; and
people nominated by their local communities for their tireless contribution to community life.

The report says that the honours system should be simplified to just three different grades instead of the current 21 honours and that titles should no longer refer to the British Empire. It argues that the awarding of civic honours should no longer be mixed up with political appointments and that the link between elitism and the honours system should be broken by ending the tradition of awarding automatic honours to senior civil servants.

Kate Stanley, ippr Director of Research, said:

“We need a day when people ‘give something back’ to their communities and celebrate the diversity and pluralism of modern Britain. Awarding civic honours on a single national day would be a national ‘thank you’ for the many thousands of citizens who go out of their way to help others.”

ippr’s report recommends that the day should celebrate the diversity and pluralism of modern Britain. The report shows that while 25 per cent of Britons say they want to live in an area where ‘almost nobody is of a different race, colour or ethnic group from most people living in this country’, this actually makes the UK one of the most tolerant places in Europe given the comparable percentages for other countries:

Switzerland 17 per cent
Sweden 20 per cent
Luxembourg 22 per cent
Germany 22 per cent
Norway 23 per centFrance 23 per cent
UK 25 per cent - joint 5th
Italy 25 per cent
Finland 31 per cent
Spain 31 per cent
Netherlands 32 per cent
Poland 33 per cent
Ireland 33 per cent
Austria 33 per cent
Slovenia 34 per cent
Czech Republic 34 per cent
Denmark 36 per cent
Portugal 38 per cent
Israel 40 per cent
Belgium 41 per cent
Greece 44 per cent
Hungary 60 per cent

European Social Survey 2002 http://ess.nsd.uib.no

The report shows that the majority of people in the UK identify most strongly with their locality or town over regional, national or global identity: 56 per cent of the population identify with locality first, compared with 25 per cent that identify with the nation, and this is something that cuts across the generations. The report argues that a new national day should allow people to celebrate their local as well as national identity.