Britain is not yet embroiled in a US-style culture war

Almost as telling as the topics that have dominated public discussions over the  pandemic year are the topics that could have done, but didn’t: the dogs that, for whatever reason, failed to bark.

One of these was England. Where, among all the forecasts that the UK could break up – a process that seemed to be accelerating, as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all pursued their own Covid policies – was any mention of the so-called English question?

The prime minister, the UK health secretary and their advisers made pronouncements from a podium with union flags, yet their power in most health matters stopped at the English border. Was there any talk of a new constitutional settlement, any voice speaking specifically for England? Almost none.

The other was the lack of any counter to the Black Lives Matter movement and everything that suddenly burgeoned around it. A huge protest march through lockdown London received only light-touch policing.

Like leading sportspeople, supposedly apolitical Metropolitan Police officers “took the knee”. Statues were defaced, even toppled. Almost every institution you could name started to scour its archives for evidence of immoral earnings and promised to do penance. The academic world set about “decolonising” its curricula. The London mayor set up a commission to review everything from monuments to street names.

The great British public, or so it seemed, took all this in their stride. Counter-protests were minimal (but for one, with far-right involvement, that was broken up by police). And, yes, the pandemic was front and centre; the NHS was at its limits, hundreds of people were dying and the government had yet to get a real grip.

But still, the extent to which this country’s social relations and history were suddenly being seen through a US-style cultural conflict lens, and even more, the extent to which this was passing apparently unnoticed and unnoted at the grassroots, seemed quite remarkable.

The only objections, it seemed, came from the usual contrarian suspects – and they were individuals. There was no wider resistance to this wholesale revisionism, no defence of what most of the population had been brought up to see as its heritage, bar a few words from Boris Johnson in support of his hero, Winston Churchill, and some eminent good sense about history. “We cannot now try to edit or censor our past,” he tweeted. “We cannot pretend to have a different history.”

For the rest, there was silence. Or was there? And if there was, what did that silence mean? Almost a year on from the death of George Floyd, something of a discussion has broken out, even if it is limited so far to the worlds of the universities, the opinion pollsters and the media.

The central question here is whether this country has become embroiled in a US-style culture war, with supposedly enlightened people on one side who are aware of all manner of, but especially racial, injustice, and those who – to put it gently – are not.

In the US, this division is nothing new. In the last two US elections, it was manifested in the more cosmopolitan and better educated versus Trump voters, and then in the upsurge in support for Black Lives Matter following the killing of George Floyd. But it is a conflict that has raged on and off since the 1960s. The current term for “enlightened” is “woke”.

Having lived and worked in the United States, I recoil from the whole idea that this destructive US phenomenon should transfer – or already have transferred – itself over here. Social relations, race relations, policing – and, indeed, history – are all very different. To insist, as many BLM supporters do, that our ills are the same is, to my mind, dangerously misleading and outright wrong.

Two studies – one based on a detailed YouGov poll gauging opinion in the so-called “red-wall” constituencies in England, the other, Culture Wars in the UK, from Ipsos-Mori and King’s College London – provide fascinating glimpses into the state of UK opinion over the past year, and on some points reach similar conclusions.

They concur, for instance, that talk of a US-style culture war is exaggerated. They also find that opinion is more consistent across the country than might be appreciated. It transpires, for instance, that red-wall voters hold attitudes on social issues that are very similar to those of Britons elsewhere – that is, they are not significantly more (small-c) conservative or less tolerant of racial difference.

The King’s College London research programme also finds that a large majority of people have only a hazy idea, if any, about many of the concepts and terms that are associated with “culture wars”, and few strong feelings either way about many of the related touchstone issues.

Even the 50 per cent or so familiar with the word “woke” are uncertain as to whether its connotations are positive or negative. In other words, the “culture war” and its concerns seem – so far at least – to be confined to a small minority. A minority, it might be fair to add, that tends to live and work in big cities and university towns that are more diverse – especially ethnically – than in other parts of the country.

To conclude from this, however, that there are no serious divisions here, and that, even if there are, they present no real danger to the social fabric of the country, I would argue is also wrong.

On 25 May, the Metropolitan Police put out a clearly well-intentioned – and “woke” – tweet, saying: “The murder of George Floyd was an appalling incident that shocked the world. We are working to improve the relationship, trust and confidence between the police and the communities that we serve”, and directing readers to posts about “how the Met has changed” in the year since.

Interested in what people thought of this statement that went, for me, a little beyond the call of duty, I looked at the responses. They were almost universally virulent, and boiled down to this: the Floyd case was all about America. It had nothing to do with the Met, which should get back to policing the streets and stopping crime. “Still kneeling?” asked one.

Now, you – and I – can have misgivings about the uses and abuses of social media. But what you can’t argue, I think, is that people do not speak their mind. They might defer to political correctness or watch their words in another forum or context, but not here. And what you had here was just the faintest snarl of protest from a hitherto mostly silent majority.

It is a majority that is mostly white, does not live in the diverse heart of an inner city, wants a “Bobby on the beat”, and sees nothing wrong with government ministers appearing beside union flags, while expecting monuments to stay up and street names to remain the same.

Thus far, the majority have been quiescent. They have – mostly and often generously – accepted newcomers, they respect equal rights and they like people, however different, to be treated the same. All the polling agrees.

Lean too far towards the demands of one or other vocal minority group, however, and that equilibrium risks being upset. Then – and it could happen quite suddenly – the majority could be silent no more.