The BBC Reith lectures began under Atlee’s Labour Government in 1948 — alongside incidentally the National Health Service.  It was a time of proud and creative post-war nationalism, when the

idea of public services that aimed to enrich the intellectual and cultural life of the nation, and its health, had traction.  Public sentiment was much influenced by the recent solidarity

of wartime and shared expectations of a better, less class-ridden life. This year’s Reith lectures, given by Professor Ben Ansell, a political scientist based at Nuffield College and Oxford

University, takes place in a very different climate; the notion of “treason of the intellectuals”, for example, puts academics in the tumbrils alongside experts and urban elites.   Ansell is

has all the admirable, sometimes irritating, fluency and jargon-free presentation — give or take some flat jokes — of the American academic. But how pleasing to find the word “solidarity”,

and the values it carries, making a comeback — beyond its use by Polish trade unionists, the Polish Pope and veterans of the 1960s.  Even more encouraging is listening to someone who not

only diagnoses the pathology of our contemporary them-and-us nationalism and divisive politics, but is making a good fist of exploring a remedial strategy. Despite plenty of evidence-based

policy making – Ansell presents surveys of attitudes and opinions of different categories and geographical populations – there is an underlying flaw.  He almost touched on it with his

reference to people’s feelings.  He’s an academic.  His arguments are based on facts not feelings.  What he is hoping to remedy is based on emotions cultivated, as he clearly analyses, by

powerful and manipulative forces in unaccountable social media and by canny populist politicians.  The many who share those feelings will not be won over by facts. This point is made

compellingly by Ash Amin in his impressive new book _After Nativism: Belonging in an Age of Intolerance _(Polity Press).  Since populism points to a particularly potent form of belonging —

he calls it nativist — what set of affective experiences might begin to replace it? Based partly on research in a very poor peri-urban community in Delhi, the book detracts from the acuity

of his vision by an inexorable flow of academese.  “Affordances”, “Phatic”, “Semiotic Associations”, and so on, evoke that retro-claim of the old _Reader’s Digest_: “It Helps to Improve your

Word-Power”.  This is a pity because Amin suggests a terrain of social relationships, conviviality, cohabitation, shared travails, in which a different nationalism based on acceptance of

diversity and universal values might grow.  This would be built on a recognition of the many “border crossings” created by a specific history of colonialism, reaction to it and its

consequences, a plural and multicultural society. There is so much in the UK which is the antithesis of a nativist them-and-us, the rejection of the experts and the urban elite, or blaming

migrants for the results of political choices beyond their control.  Here, from my own experience, are two examples of the negotiation of identity and relationship in the rich, ever-changing

diversity of life in Britain.  Readers will recall their own. I remember some years ago the elders of the Somali community in Ealing worrying about the vulnerability of some of their

children who were troublesome in school.  Their initiative resulted in an expert in psychology and religion being asked to put on a course for them.  It seemed a good idea to have Somali pop

music playing as everyone arrived, a symbol of mutual acknowledgement.  The most popular star was recorded and played.  Big smiles all round, except for one or two elders from the

puritanical wing of Islam.  Aesthetics matter.  Expertise and local knowledge matter too. Then there was the Catholic school I visited where some of the Muslim girls “went to Confession”. 

They explained:  “We don’t say ‘Bless me Father for I have sinned’.   So he knows we are Muslim.  We just like having a space where we can talk privately.” There are more ways of enriching

the cultural life of a nation than conceived by Lord Reith.  And they are all built on mutual trust. The texture of much of British society consists of networks redolent of a relational

civic nationalism.  Despite the partial decline of the trades unions and churches, NGOs, large and small, volunteer associations and choirs have shown a comparative resilience.  Add to their

role in civil society countless sponsored individual activities, and the great urban marathons and half marathons.  Yes, London’s nine million people have an _average_ income way above the

rest of the country, but Londoners show how to live with diversity as a creative force.  How can this be built on elsewhere? Life during the worst of the Covid pandemic, the popular

re-evaluation of the value of people’s jobs contained in the concept of “key workers”, the self-sacrifice of bus drivers, hospital workers, nurses, doctors, all made up of many different

ethnic identities, and the universal recognition of how they gave their lives for the common good, spoke of a new relational national identity.  But within a couple of years, it had

dissipated: business as usual again, with low paid wage earners increasingly dependent on food banks, the Government removing the cap on bonuses to assuage corporate greed, and the poor with

zero job security in the gig economy. We are not going to regain a healthy, open nationalism easily.  The power balance is dramatically against it.  But the BBC still enriches the

intellectual and cultural life of the nation, as Reith wanted.  And beyond the nation, too, as the outstanding work of the BBC World Service demonstrates daily – or nightly if you are a poor

sleeper.   Advent is supposed to be a time of waiting, of hope and patience.  It is no time to let nativism have the last word. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s

committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one that’s needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing throughout these hard

economic times. So please, make a donation._