The US forged groups of strangers into a nation. But Britain is different

Telegraph

17-05-2025

The Prime Minister has expressed anxiety about the future of Britain as it comes under pressure from unprecedented levels of migration. We were in imminent danger, he said, in what became a highly controversial remark, of turning into an 'island of strangers '. What he meant by this was clear enough: a once-cohesive country with shared values and a common history was now faced with a huge influx of outsiders whose social attitudes were profoundly different and seemingly irreconcilable.
The fact of this phenomenon – the huge increase in numbers – in itself, is indisputable. What provoked the wave of outrage was the implicit accusation that these incomers were not, and might never be, prepared to adapt to the new land in which they had settled. They would refuse, in effect, to become British. So they would be permanent 'strangers', maintaining an alien culture which failed to integrate, forming isolated communities which would be cut off from the wider society and destructive of national identity.
This is, as things stand, a plausible outcome but it is not unavoidable. I come from a country whose population consists entirely of people who were once strangers. The United States began as a nation of displaced people. Its founding mission was to take in the persecuted and those in despair – the 'tired and poor' – who willingly left behind their hopelessness to adopt a new life. Their descendants, even those who now believe themselves to have a strong sense of a national bond, have never known the Old World experience of local ties which may go back a dozen generations or more.
My family, like many others fleeing the Russian pogroms, arrived at Ellis Island at the turn of the last century with very little English, and just the name of a relative who would vouch for them and an address where they could be housed for the moment. They relied on their own extended family and the wider Jewish community to see them through, to help them into employment and offer some sort of security in the new country. The Italians, the Irish, the Poles and the Chinese did much the same.
The major cities of the East Coast all had what were effectively isolated communities of a single ethnicity. My father, growing up in his Jewish neighbourhood in Boston, did not speak English until he went to school. On New York's Lower East Side, the shop signs were in Yiddish and that was the language spoken in the streets. Slightly higher up in Manhattan, Little Italy, immortalised in the 'Godfather' films, perpetuated the customs and, unfortunately, the mafia connections of the Sicilians who had settled there. The Irish had the advantage of knowing the language of the New World but still remained tightly cohesive through their Catholic observance.
Even though the children who were the first generation born outside the Old Countries became American with remarkable alacrity, there was still considerable pressure on them to remain true to their families' origins. You were Italian-American or Irish-American (as Joe Biden always described himself) and there was always an understanding that your roots lay somewhere else. And yet somehow America managed to create a sense of common purpose and identity which unleashed the potential of these disparate peoples to astonishing effect, producing a dynamism and power that was without precedent in the modern world. How this was achieved – and whether it could be accomplished in the same way in this country – is worth considering.
The fact that this was the intentional project of the nation from its inception – that the country saw its moral mission as offering a new home to the unfortunate and dispossessed – made it unique. It is very important to remember this: America's experience of taking in migrants is quite unlike that of the old countries of Europe with their established populations and inherited historical traditions. (Note: the indigenous native Americans did not resent the arrival of the settlers in the original colonies. It was only with the aggressive settlement of the West that the conflict began.)
To come to America meant that you had deliberately signed up for this project of building a new nation whose ethos was a conscious commitment to democratic principles and self-determination. American schoolchildren were inculcated in the principles of the Constitution: 'We the people…' and accepted the social contract in which the law was obeyed in return for the government's protection of your rights. I remember being taught precisely those words like a catechism, along with the Pledge of Allegiance which was recited in every classroom. (This is why, incidentally, it is so shocking that Donald Trump seems to know so little about his responsibility to protect the Constitution.)
You had to be taught, in a literal and deliberate way, how to be American because it was a national entity that had never existed before, and your decision to do this was a conscious, informed choice. It is significant that the group who had most difficulty in being incorporated into this venture were those who were descended from the one ethnicity which had not come to America by choice: the African slaves.
What you got through your formal schooling was reinforced by popular culture. From comic books with their quintessentially American superheroes (Superman's motto was, 'Truth, justice and the American way') to 'Honey-I'm-home' sitcoms with their idealised picture of family life, there was a whole apparatus of instruction in how to live the dream of a model citizen. That was what it took to meld millions of disparate people into a new nationality.
What faces Britain now is very different. This country is not a blank slate and it is not an 18th century invention. Its people rarely enunciate what constitutes their national character. They would find such an exercise rather absurd because they are not given to conscious self-examination. Among their notable characteristics are a proclivity for irony, self-deprecation and an enormous respect for personal freedom. All of which would make any programme of indoctrinated patriotism seem ridiculous and un-British. But those are hugely admirable human traits which, given half a chance, should win out against social isolation and repression within a generation.