Two years ago, I began a project to try to understand better the beliefs and values of the English—their "folk philosophy"—from religious views to their conceptions of the good life. But it was what I learned about the political beliefs of "ordinary" people that I found most interesting, and most significant for the development of liberal democracy.
No one who wants to advance a progressive political agenda can dismiss the values of mainstream society. Whereas elected politicians have to pay attention to what people want, intellectuals are usually, at best, uninterested. This is one reason why intellectuals and commentators rarely remain friends of governments. As the philosopher Jacques Rancière points out, the line between hatred of populism and hatred of democracy is thin, and often unwittingly transgressed.
But how can we know what people really think? We are constantly being polled, but interpreting the results is not straightforward. Sociologists have identified "doorstep opinions": views made up on the spot by people asked about a subject they don't usually think about. Television maverick Chris Morris provided a demonstration of this in his satirical news programme The Day Today when he asked members of the public nonsense questions like, "Soul reversal—is that a good or a bad thing?" The obliging citizen would answer, straight-faced.
In an attempt to dig beneath polls and surveys, I spent six months living in a completely typical part of England. I was looking for an "Everytown" with the same mix of young and old, rich and poor, married and single as the country as a whole. The demographic calculator I used threw up the postcode S66, on the fringes of Rotherham, South Yorkshire.
I chose England as my unit. The English comprise 85 per cent of Britons, so surveys about the British tell you mainly about the English. Furthermore, I suspect much of what I found out applies to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland too, so I will venture to talk of the British, allowing that there will be some exceptions to my general conclusions.
To help find the wavelength of the British mind, I turned the dial from Radio 4 to Radio 2. I read only the Sun and the Mail. More importantly, I talked and listened. And what I found was this: that what looks from the viewpoint of the liberal intelligentsia like ignorant and inconsistent intolerance is actually something more coherent and challenging.
Nowhere is this more clearly exemplified than in attitudes to liberty and freedom of speech. On the one hand, the British see freedom as central to their identity. One survey, carried out by the Telegraph, asked people to identify from a list phrases they considered important "in defining Britain and what it is to be British." The top answer (61 per cent) was "British people's right to say what they think." In third place, after the bulldog spirit that stood up to the Nazis, came "British people's sense of fairness and fair play" (54 per cent). This suggests a country in which liberal values hold sway, where fairness and freedom rule.
But move on to specific issues, and you find a more illiberal perspective. Despite the Telegraph findings, 52 per cent of people told the BBC that they wanted to "limit freedom of speech to prevent the spread of radical Islamist views." As for fair play, 30 per cent agreed that, "Given the threat to Britain from terrorism, we should be less concerned about ensuring the rights of ethnic minorities are protected." That's a large minority prepared to reduce the rights of a sector of society solely on the basis of ethnicity. Similarly, the Human Rights Act has been consistently pilloried by the most popular newspapers, even though it does little more than enshrine in law basic rights that almost all liberals would consider inviolate.
Article two of the universal declaration of human rights, which institutionalised this framework in 1948, reads, "Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status." This is modern liberalism's tablet of stone. Yet many, possibly most, British people do not accept the fundamental principle of inalienable human rights. Popular hostility to the Human Rights Act reinforces this point.
It is easy to dismiss opposition to inalienable rights as mere prejudice. In fact, there is a coherent way of understanding this opposition—the British are not classical liberals, but communitarians.
Communitarianism's most famous slogan was borrowed by early New Labour: "No rights without responsibilities." This statement contradicts the fundamental premise of the European and UN declarations of rights, in that it makes rights conditional rather than absolute: if you don't fulfil your responsibilities, you lose your rights. This is exactly what Sun readers say in their letters, albeit in less academic prose: "We shouldn't worry if terrorists are executed when they are sent home, as they don't worry about what happens to us." Sober academic theories—such as those of the sociologist Amitai Etzioni—find a strong echo in such populist cries of outrage. But while the former are granted respect, the latter are dismissed as ignorant rants.
Another strand in communitarian thinking is the importance of history and tradition in shaping values. In place of the universal human nature which is at the core of the post-Enlightenment conception of political morality, communitarianism emphasises particularities of time and place. Someone raised in a north London Orthodox Jewish home may share values with someone brought up in Catholic Ireland, but there will also be important differences that make it hard to impose one value system.
Within a communitarian framework, the apparent contradictions of the British make sense. The rights and liberties held dear by mainstream Britain are not abstract rights and liberties that apply to all; they are specific to Britain's history and traditions, and do not apply to those who stand outside the British political community. To enjoy those rights, you must be a full member of the club that grants them. That is an illiberal position, but it is not an incoherent one.
Liberalism, in contrast, stresses the universal nature of basic rights. Just as the communitarianism I have described is not an academic one, so by liberalism I mean the liberal current in popular thought. The kind of universalism this liberalism aspires to is usually an unstated, shared assumption rather than an explicit creed. Indeed, this is why liberals sometimes contradict themselves, since universalism can conflict with toleration of difference, another key feature of liberalism. Hence liberals will, in some circumstances, assert the right of women and homosexuals to be treated equally to heterosexual men, yet in others appear curiously sanguine about some cultures' rejection of such principles of equality.
The communitarian-liberal distinction is arguably now more important than the old division between left and right. Indeed, left and right have always been divided within themselves along communitarian and liberal lines.
People sometimes talk of the "left-liberal" consensus, but many of the left are not, and never have been, liberal universalists in the sense I have described. A strong strand of the left has based itself not on universalism but on the interests of the working classes, who are bound together in solidarity by their traditions, values and place in society. Class warriors are certainly not liberals.
You can see this tension within the trade union movement. On the one hand, unions have a strong tradition of internationalism, which seems to fit the universalist aspirations of liberals. But on the other, unions often promote the interests of one group of workers against another—opposing the outsourcing of work to developing countries, say, or preventing traditional male jobs from being taken by women.
This ambiguous attitude towards traditional communities has often been seen in Britain. During the miners' strike, one of the main complaints about closing pits was that it would destroy settled working-class communities. Yet at other times, the British left has had no qualms about tearing up the existing social fabric and building new communities from scratch—for example in the rush to clear slums and provide decent houses for the masses after 1945.
The right has also been divided between its communitarians and liberals. Traditionally, the British Conservative party has been communitarian in orientation. But Margaret Thatcher was more of a laissez-faire libertarian than a communitarian. And although the Liberal Democrats and their predecessors could claim to be a more truly liberal party, even they have their communitarian leanings, especially at local level. The big surges in support for Liberal Democrats have usually been born of frustration with the big two parties, not because of any real love of liberalism. The truth is that we live in a predominantly communitarian country, a fact power-seeking progressives have had to come to terms with.
The increased interest in multiculturalism and its alleged failure has helped to focus attention on the communitarian-liberal divide. Prospect editor David Goodhart, for example, has argued in these pages that a sense of national belonging continues to be necessary if we want a sufficiently developed sense of mutual obligator to pay for the welfare state.
But in many of these debates, people avoid confronting the profound differences between communitarian thinking and liberalism. Many on the left talk about the importance of social cohesion, assuming that it naturally underpins liberalism. In fact, tighter-knit societies tend to be communitarian in character. The closer embrace of those within necessarily excludes outsiders. In that sense, the communitarian streak in the British psyche will always pull away from the universalist aspiration of liberals.
But the prognosis is not entirely negative for liberalism. The British version of communitarianism also allows for a simple live and let live tolerance, as I discovered in Rotherham. Nor are these limits quite as narrow as they can sometimes sound. Go into any pub and challenge people's prejudices about Muslims, for example, and you'll probably be told something like, "I don't care what colour people are or what their religion is, just as long as they pull their weight and fit in with the rest of us."
This insistence that people "fit in" can sound like the kind of strong communitarianism liberals would abhor. But "folk" communitarianism is not so dogmatic. For instance, you rarely hear anyone say, "The problem with these bloody Chinese is that they don't want to fit in." The Chinatowns of London and Manchester are overt symbols of difference, yet are rarely the cause of irritation among white Britons. This is because they are not perceived as a threat to mainstream culture, whereas, rightly or wrongly, Islam is.
The British do not want to impose cultural uniformity. All they require is that people obey the rule of law, do not ask for major exemptions from the rules that apply to everyone, and do not seek to change the way of life of the majority. Within these parameters, there is a willingness to allow a great deal of diversity. This is what provides the soil for liberal policies to grow.
How should progressive politics deal with the liberal-communitarian tension? We have to accept that the tension is real, and that abstract universalism simply cannot inspire the cohesion of close communities. In theory, of course, it is possible for everyone to be part of a global community in which values are universal because we all belong to one species. But in practice, this is utopian. Just look at how unwilling people are to see themselves as part even of a European community, where the gaps between the values of member states are relatively small.
There are three ways liberal progressives can thrive in a communitarian culture. The first is by making sure that the fragile tolerance people have for difference is not shattered by well-meaning but counterproductive attempts to push people to embrace more difference than they are willing to. It is a triumph of democratic society that people are prepared to live alongside people of very different cultures and histories. It would be better if they did more than just put up with each other, but while gentle attempts to encourage understanding are worthwhile, asking people to show more love and respect for things they neither love nor respect is only likely to create tension. People become angry if their lack of interest in minority beliefs is interpreted as latent racism. Unfortunately, liberal sensitivities often lead to this misapprehension.
Moreover, traditional liberal sensitivities about minority cultures have too often not extended to marginalised groups on the fringes of the ethnic majority. People who would not dream of saying "Paki" or "chinky" talk of "pikeys" and "chavs" without compunction. For people to feel comfortable enough to accept diversity, they have to be reassured that their own way of life is not under threat. Proponents of diversity have to be careful not to inadvertently send that message in their pro-minority campaigning.
Second, there is a need to accept that there are truths in communitarianism. Certain social benefits can only be conferred by cultures in which there is a shared sense of belonging. Liberal individualism may offer the best all-round model within which to structure society, but there are losses associated with leaving the more communitarian way of life behind.
Part of this recognition of communitarianism's insights is a respect for protests which spring from them. For example, many poor white working-class people believe that they are being pushed down housing waiting lists by immigrant families. If this were true—and it is not clear that it is—there would be a respectable communitarian argument to be made that this is wrong. So instead of dismissing these fears as racism, we need to address them, perhaps—as Trevor Phillips, head of the Equalities Commission, has suggested—through an inquiry.
Third, we should nonetheless be prepared to argue for certain universal, liberal values, even if they conflict with those held by some traditional cultures. Accepting the truths in communitarianism does not mean rejecting the truths in liberalism. The trick is in extracting from both traditions those things which together enable us to create a society that is more equal, more tolerant and less divisive.
Liberalism needs to assert a small number of core values, leaving room for different communities to live their own lives within these parameters. Equality of the sexes, for example, is not a value that can be suspended in the name of allowing each community to follow its own way. But as long as that principle is accepted, people should be free to identify with communities and traditions they feel at home in.
The idea that we must choose between soft and hard liberalism therefore rests on a mistake. What we need is a flexible liberalism with a hard centre, around which people can be free to live within communities that give their personal lives meaning. How this is to be done I do not yet know. But for the sake of progressive politics, it must be done.
