One Britain, One Nation? Photo by Aleks Marinkovic on Unsplash, CC BY
The UK authorities has formally endorsed the celebration of June 25 as One Britain, One Nation (OBON) Day. Part of a marketing campaign to advertise British patriotism, the day is a long-standing endeavour that a couple of months in the past barely anybody outdoors a gaggle of colleges in West Yorkshire had heard of. Yet it has since garnered movie star assist, been mentioned in parliament and now gone viral.
The video for the OBON anthem, written by pupils and their music instructor at a main faculty in Bradford, options youngsters waving union flags and singing lyrics akin to “Strong Britain, Great Nation”, and has been seen over 3 million instances.
This sudden flurry of curiosity was prompted by the training secretary, Gavin Williamson, praising the marketing campaign. With such Whitehall enthusiasm, we’d be forgiven for considering the federal government itself had give you this complete factor.
The precise historical past of OBON Day is extra advanced. But the federal government’s endorsement of the celebration is a part of a wider, controversial drive to make use of faculties to advertise “British values”.
OBON Day 2021 Anthem – Official Video.
This is, in truth, the ninth 12 months an annual One Britain One Nation Day has been celebrated. In 2005, former police inspector Kash Singh established OBON as a community-interest firm. Singh got here to the UK from the Punjab when he was six years previous, unable to talk English.
He has defined that he needed to see “all people feeling a part of this nice nation”. His undertaking, he mentioned, aimed to “utilise the energy of all our individuals to construct a proud nation, the place everybody has a powerful sense of belonging and aspires to play an vital function within the lifetime of our nation”.
At Singh’s instigation, OBON Day celebrations have since taken place in Bradford and West Yorkshire. This 12 months, the marketing campaign caught the eye of notable MPs, together with former cupboard member Esther McVey, who prompted Boris Johnson to assist it at prime minister’s questions in May. An official endorsement adopted, with a put up on the division for training’s Twitter account encouraging faculties to have a good time the day.
While sure MPs have echoed the Department for Education’s assist of the undertaking, others have criticised it for supposed nationalistic undertones. The tune has been roundly mocked on social media. Memes have drawn a comparability with totalitarian regimes. Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon has mentioned she thought the entire thing was a spoof.
The Welsh Football Association in the meantime has prompt Welsh pupils sing their nation’s anthem as a substitute, Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau. It’s a delicate dig at how the marketing campaign fails to acknowledge devolution. It additionally neatly illustrates the heated debate the marketing campaign prompts, round questions of patriotism and nationwide identification, and what we educate our kids.
It is placing that the federal government has couched its assist for OBON Day inside a push for what it has dubbed elementary British values. In 2012, it launched a requirement for faculties to advertise democracy, rule of legislation, particular person liberty and mutual respect and tolerance.
Though concepts of respect and tolerance clearly have broad enchantment, this authorized responsibility for lecturers has been controversial. Research has critically examined its motivations and hyperlinks to the counter-terrorism Prevent technique. Overall, the division for training’s encouragement of extra faculties to have a good time OBON Day might be seen as the newest in a collection of strikes over the previous decade to advertise values, virtues, morals and character training.
In my forthcoming guide I hint these curriculum initiatives and associated extra-curricular actions. The division for training’s give attention to character-building programmes of sport, music and volunteering for schoolchildren has grown alongside a push to implement army ethos schemes and cadet items in faculties. Seen on this context, Gavin Williamson’s assist of OBON is hardly stunning.
Which nice nation?
A latest ballot discovered there are nonetheless deep divisions alongside the strains created by the Brexit referendum. In which case, you may ask if the sentiment of one thing like OBON Day may really be restorative.
The drawback is that the UK shouldn’t be one nation, however a union of 4: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the latter of which isn’t a part of Great Britain. The undeniable fact that this celebration is being held on June 25 sidelines Scottish faculties, lots of which have already closed for the vacations by this date. Education can also be a devolved difficulty, and the Welsh authorities highlighted that it had “not been engaged on this undertaking”.
This incoherence within the marketing campaign seems to have been neglected by the federal government. And comparable dynamics might be seen in different initiatives it has backed. The National Citizen Service, for instance, is a state-funded youth volunteering scheme however which solely operates in England and Northern Ireland. My analysis reveals how its title and model neglected devolution and the way this in the end hampered its potential for being applied in different elements of the UK.
It is unclear what number of youngsters will participate in OBON actions. Indeed, it seems its attain continues to be largely restricted to the colleges in West Yorkshire who knew about it earlier than the tune went viral. Nevertheless, the division for training’s endorsement is critical. It demonstrates a continued drive from Westminster to advertise elementary British values in faculties, at a time when training is more and more embroiled in a wider tradition conflict worthy of far higher consideration.
Sarah Mills has acquired funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and Arts and Humanities Research Council.
