Editor's blog July 2007

July 14 is, of course, Bastille Day. French flags will fly across the country and virtually every commune will have a fete and some fireworks.

This comes just ten days after the 4 July mass barbecues, national anthems and stars and stripes waving all over America.

Other people have national holidays. And it’s huge fun, of course, to join in if you happen to be in the right place at the right time. But do we envy them? While the Irish have made St Patrick’s Day an international event and a handful of Welsh sport a daffodil on March 1, there’s rarely any bunting and streets parties in Britain these days. We only see the cross of St George just before England loses a football match and the Union Jack has been largely highjacked by the far right.

Now, however, there are calls to reclaim the flags and get out, if not the maypoles, the trestle tables at least.

In the wake of the July 7 London bombings and the shock of discovering they were carried out not by foreigners but by British citizens who felt so alienated that they wanted to blow up fellow Brits, the left has started to take a healthy interest in patriotism. First Gordon Brown mooted the idea of a British Holiday. Recently Jack Straw wrote an excellent article in favour of creating a “British Story” that would allow all citizens understand why we are allowed to feel proud to be British. Now two more cabinet ministers are calling for a national holiday.
And it is true that as Britain grows more culturally diverse the idea of defining and celebrating an inclusive sense of Britishness is persuasive.

America, a country largely made up of immigrants, all of whom share an equal right to swear allegiance to the flag and proclaim themselves American, is always held up as a great example of a successful “melting pot”. In France, municipal workers are forever running up and down the flagpoles to deck the streets for the latest jour férié - indeed even socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal toyed with making it compulsory for every French household to keep a tricolour in the cupboard.

But have these celebrations of national pride achieved anything? Recent rioting in the suburbs of France’s main cities reveals an underclass of alienated, largely immigrant, youth. The hurricanes in New Orleans exposed a shocking mass of Americans living entirely outside the system.

But perhaps the reason that a British national holiday just doesn’t grab the imagination is that the idea is just so... unBritish? Our reputation - apart from those beer & football matches - is that of a modest, self effacing, undefined lot. We don’t have a written constitution, we don’t carry identity cards (yet), we are masters of irony, or, the “British” sense of humour.
Britain is still viewed - not my words, but those of numerous diplomats I have interviewed across the world - as an experiment in democracy that began in the 1200’s, the first since the Ancient Greeks. And that is worth treasuring. But how do we celebrate it?

July 14 is a perfect opportunity to mix with your neighbours, try out your French and make new friends. Meanwhile, if you have any thoughts about whether or not Britain should have a national holiday send them to editor@therendezvous.info or La Vincendière, 14500 Truttemer le Grand.