16
ISSUES: Citizenship
Chapter 1: Citizenship in the UK
How the Great British BakeOff became the
great British identity battle
An article from
The Conversation
.
By Clara Sandelind, Lecturer, University of Huddersfield
O
f course Nadiya Hussain won
the
Great British Bake Off
because she is a Muslim. For
those unfamiliar with Islam, Victorian
baking skills are a key element to this
faith. Naturally she had an advantage.
Yes, bizarre as it may appear for those
who have been following the show and
marvelling at the precise judgement
of Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry,
accusations are being thrown at the
programme for choosing its winner on
the basis of political correctness rather
than merit.
None of us knows if Nadiya was the best
baker. After all, only a few lucky people
of the BBC crew have actually tasted
the bakes. She may have fashioned a
peacock entirely from chocolate and
produced a perfect trio of wedding
cakes while her opponent forgot to
actually add sugar to his final bake, but
some have nevertheless suggested that
the BBC wanted a Muslim to win; that
the broadcaster has a hidden politically
correct agenda.
In a column in
The Sun
, Ally Ross dubbed
the show “full-scale ideological warfare”.
He wrote:
“Turnupwithout abox tick toyour name,
some viewers reckon, and you can bake
an exact replica of the Taj Mahal using
shortbread fingers and meringue nests
and it still won’t be enough to win this
most PC of BBC shows.”
Others have, on the contrary, celebrated
the variety of contestants battling it
out over cakes and breads the past
few months. The multicultural blend of
bakers has been seen as the epitome of
Britishness.
There are two competing understand-
ings of Britishness at stake in this debate.
One views the British identity as having
been hijacked by a politically correct
elite, which has forced multiculturalism
upon an eroding Christian or secular
British culture. Another sees British iden-
tity as a celebration of a kind of differ-
ence that finds no difficulty in uniting
around shared values, such as the virtue
of a delightfully crisp pastry.
In its encapsulation of so-called banal
nationalism– the everyday things that go
to make up national identity – the
Great
BritishBakeOff
has become thebattlefield
of national identity.
This battle includes a regrettable fixation
with identity that characterises much of
British politics more generally. Who you
are is more important than what you do.
Your class background matters if you are
on the left; your gender matters for your
views on feminism and your religious
background matters for your views on
terrorism. Have the wrong background
combined with the wrong opinions
and you will be betraying the working-
class, abandoning women or simply be
incomprehensible. We attach so much
content to a specific identity that when
someonedeviateswe cannot understand
them.
The fact that we are having this debate
at all is evidence of just how much is
attached to a specific identity. Nadiya is
also amother of three and a student. Why
are those identities not as important as
her Muslim identity? Both on the left and
the right, cultural and religious identity in
particular has been elevated to a level at
which it promises to explain everything
about someone.
The battle of national identity is defined
by the sentiment that a new kind of
Britishness is being imposed fromabove
by a corrupt elite. The BBC, as part of ‘the
establishment’, is duping the population
into accepting a multicultural Britishness
that no one has chosen.
Yet national identity is constantly
evolving. Those longing for a time of
‘undiluted’ Britishness are longing
for an illusion. It is not uncommon
for older generations to resent
the culture of the new
one, but culture is always
changing.
Immigration
is one contributing factor
to this change, but it is hardly the
only one. Just think of the impact that
smartphones have had on the way of life
inmodern Britain.
Discussions of whowe are, on Britishness,
are inevitable. The
Great British Bake Off
has a seemingly enormous unifying
effect, precisely because of its expression
of an inclusive Britishness. So identity
is not redundant and it may even be
necessary.
Yet the fixation of particular kinds of
identities is debilitating for Britain as a
society. Focus on identity and you may
miss a good argument from someone.
Focus on someone being a Muslim and
you may miss a pretty tasty looking
chocolate peacock.
8October 2015
Ö
The above information is reprinted
with kind permission from
The
Conversation
. Please visit www.
theconversation.com for further
information.
©2010–2017,
The Conversation Trust (UK)
