It has been almost 20 years since the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London, which killed 52 people. A suicide video filmed by the British-Pakistani ringleader of the attacks, Mohammad Sidique Khan, sought to justify his terrorism as retaliation for “the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people”. It was an instructive moment about where we found ourselves in modern Britain then – and where we still find ourselves today.
After all, who were Khan’s people? He was born and educated in Leeds. He claimed to be angry about the war in Iraq – a country he had never visited and whose language he did not speak. In truth, the people he killed in London were “his people”: UK citizens on their way to work. Yet in the years that have followed, we have seen countless young men and women simply opt out of British society, choosing to identify with something else. After all, no one destroys what they feel connected to.
There is a case for Keir Starmer’s government to be more proactive now in promoting Britain’s highly malleable and inclusive civic identity. Our national story around seminal events of the 20th century demonstrates the promise of such an identity. During the First and Second World Wars, for example, Britain raised the largest volunteer army in history from across its empire; that is to say, those who joined it were not conscripted. The British Indian Army alone stood at 1.3 million people, of whom around one third were Muslim. Indeed, the trenches were filled with men from across the Empire – Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Jews and others, all pulling in the same direction.
It might be tempting to dismiss these volunteers as irreligious or otherwise passive colonial subjects, but such a view belies their experiences. Scores of their letters are stored at the National Archives and British Library, revealing a rich, complex picture of people prepared to serve King and Country when it mattered most. The archives illuminate the ordinary concerns of those in the trenches – requesting information about how to perform burial rites for fallen comrades, what to do if halal meat was unavailable, how to fast in the trenches, along with any number of curious observations about the French.
During the Second World War, Noor Inayat Khan was recruited into the Special Operations Executive to perform vital spy duties in support of the French resistance. Ultimately, she was betrayed and given up to the Germans, who tortured her. Nonetheless she refused to give up any secrets before being executed at the brutal Dachau concentration camp. There are countless such stories that could be told from these conflicts, and these examples are merely illustrative.
Here lies the antidote to our predicament: our country is awash with examples of precisely the kind of shared enterprise and common endeavour that agitators of the current unrest claim we lack. Our actual experiences together, through Britain’s most perilous moments, show a country very much capable of pulling together when it really matters.
Among those feeding into the febrility of the moment is Matthew Goodwin, an academic based at the University of Kent. He claims he is concerned about “uncontrolled” or “mass migration”, but his writings belie this. That much is clear from a recent article he published on his Substack about our current troubles titled, “What did you expect?”
In a tweet published on X, the Economist’s defence editor, Shashank Joshi, called out the dangerous premise of Goodwin’s piece, which was published on 1 August following the tragedy in Southport. “These poor children thought they were going to a Taylor Swift-themed dance class; they ended up being murdered,” Goodwin writes. “And who murdered them? The son of immigrants from Rwanda.” Reflecting on this passage, Joshi noted, “For these people, we’ll never really be British.” (In the interests of disclosure: Joshi is a visiting fellow in the Department of War Studies, where I work, at King’s College London).
Reducing the Southport murderer – a British citizen – to the “child of immigrants” challenges the very premise on which our civic identity is based in modern Britain. It also creates a two-tiered model of citizenship. Goodwin’s Britishness therefore exists into perpetuity, unconditionally. By contrast, immigrants, their children, and their children’s children are being told their Britishness is contingent and conditional.
In this hostile environment, people will turn elsewhere for belonging. For young Muslims, the stakes are particularly high, given the epochal convulsions in which global Islam currently finds itself; there are a bewildering number of alternative identities to choose from. In this context, the allure of the Islamist alternative is particularly enticing. It is bold, self-assured, confident and transcends the arbitrariness of ethnic, racial or regional identities. Its promise is of something supra-cultural: what matters is that you’re Muslim, nothing else.
I know this from personal experience, having lived in the north of England during the 2001 race riots when I was 20. I had already been going through my own journey of self-realisation as most young people do at that age, asking myself who I was and where I belonged. Things became even more polarised later that year after the 9/11 attacks. Like thousands of others at that time, I decided that if my skin colour meant I couldn’t be British, I’d fall back on my Muslim identity for safety and security; an identity that hitherto been wholly unimportant to me.
Looking at the madness that has unfolded this week I worry about the next generation who might now decide that being part of our great country – its traditions, history and institutions – is not for them. “This is the modern-day equivalent of Norman Tebbit’s “cricket test”,” Goodwin tweeted during the riots, referencing the Tory politician’s suggestion that South Asian and Caribbean immigrants were not loyal to the England cricket team. “If Britain really is the happy, integrated multicultural country that Labour and liberals tell us it is, then why are mobs of Muslims chanting Allahu Akbar rather than waving the Union Jack?”
Yet, an incident during the recent football European Championship illuminates just how irrelevant Tebbit has become. An India-Pakistan cricket match (not of the national teams) was taking place at the Oval during England’s knockout game against Switzerland. When the football game went to penalties, the stands emptied as fans retreated to the concourses to watch England instead. Videos on social media show both sets of fans – usually bitter rivals – cheering on England. These scenes reveal a much more modern, forward-facing understanding of what Britishness entails in 2024. Indeed, episodes like this are the antidote to Goodwin’s dangerous, lazy questioning of the next would-be Mohammad Sidique Khan looking for his people.
[See also: Can Elon Musk influence the US general election?]
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