Summary
This week the Prime Minister is touring the devolved nations of the UK as she prepares to trigger the Brexit process. Her message to the people of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is clear: we are better as one nation - the United Kingdom. Brexit has whipped up a complex and (some would say) toxic mixture of politics and patriotism. While Theresa May and others champion the national credentials of the UK, she's having to shout down the voices in the devolved nations that say their economic, cultural and democratic interests would be best served by independence. At the same time, nationalist political parties across Europe are growing in strength, with electoral challenges in France and Germany on the horizon. Is nationalism a moral force for good, because there's no better vehicle for the exercise of freedom and self-determination? Does it encourage a sense of belonging, community and culture? Or is it the worst kind of identity politics - exclusionary, divisive and populist, with sinister currents of "us" and "them"? Are we entering an age when trans-national ideas of the "Brotherhood of Man" are being replaced by loyalties closer to home? At the heart of the debate on nationalism there is an acute moral tension - between solidarity with oppressed national groups on the one hand and revulsion from the crimes perpetrated in the name of nationalism on the other. How and where should we draw the line? The morality of nationalism. Witnesses are Sophie Gaston, Simon Winder, Prof David Conway and Hardeep Singh Kohli.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a programme from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:03.6 | Good evening. If ever there was an acceptable face of nationalism, |
| 0:07.5 | it was splashed across the white cliffs of Dover this week, |
| 0:10.6 | Vera Lynn, whose voice was the sentimental soundtrack to British nationalism's finest hour, |
| 0:16.1 | bravely at bay to the cruel, conquering nationalism of Nazi Germany. |
| 0:20.7 | She's 100 now, but nationalism, for good or ill, is a force in the world again, |
| 0:25.5 | securing Donald Trump the American presidency, |
| 0:28.1 | fueling populist movements in continental Europe, driving Brexit. |
| 0:32.4 | How neatly paradoxical that Theresa May should be spending much of the week |
| 0:36.3 | before she pulls the trigger to |
| 0:37.6 | break us away from the European Union, campaigning to stop the devolved nations breaking away |
| 0:42.7 | from the UK. Empires fall, federations split apart, nations survive. Are they a moral force for |
| 0:49.6 | good, the largest, most effective political unit to which we can truly belong in a community and a culture? |
| 0:55.6 | Or is it just a way to split the world up into us and them, divisive, excluding, dangerous? |
| 1:01.8 | A source of identity and cohesion, a place to call home, |
| 1:05.3 | or a structure for rivalry, resentment and conflict, |
| 1:08.2 | and a way of defining most of our fellow men and women as the other. |
| 1:12.5 | The morality of nationalism. That's our moral maze tonight. |
| 1:15.8 | Our panel, Claire Fox from the Institute of Ideas, Anne McElvoy, senior editor at The Economist. |
| 1:20.4 | Mona Siddiqui, professor of Islamic and interreligious studies at Edinburgh University, |
| 1:25.1 | and the chief executive of the RSA Matthew Taylor. |
| 1:27.9 | Anne McElvoy, you a patriot or nationalist? |
... |
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