What are “British Values”?

Nigel Atkinson looks at what we, and the Government, might mean by “British Values”

In November 2014 the Department of Education issued some “departmental advice” to assist Maintained Schools fulfil their obligations to “promote the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical developments of pupils”.

Specifically this means that “fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs” should be promoted; and, naturally, “opinions or behaviours... that are contrary to fundamental British values” should be “challenged” and not be allowed to “undermine” foundational mores.

All this, of course, is well and good, coming as it did after the Trojan Horse scandal in Birmingham, where certain state schools were taken over by governors seeking to impose an Islamic ideology on impressionable pupils. Clearly in the eyes of the apparently tolerant and benign Department of Education, this assertion of a different “faith and belief” could not go unchallenged. For, as Mr Obama and Mr Cameron were to say just a few weeks later after another militant assertion of Islamic ideology in Paris, “our freedoms” now need to be defended along with the “values that we cherish”.

Seen in this light, the Department of Education’s advice can be seen as a panicked overreaction to a situation that was rapidly spiralling out of control.

Be that as it may, their “advice” raises more questions than it answers. Sadly, it points to a loss of confidence in what used to be Britain’s overarching moral narrative. Who gives the Department of Education the right to decide what are core British values in the first place? Are they different from Chinese, European, or American values? If so how? And why?

Setting that question aside for a moment, the values that they wish to champion are mutually contradictory. On the one hand, it is claimed that “democracy” is a core value. Yet, as is becoming increasingly clear, democracy can only properly work if it is agreed that all who come to the table are radically equal and no appeal can be made to a source of authoritative teaching (such as Bible, Pope, or Qur’an) that is located outside the consensus of the group.

This is logical, but it springs from a deeply, value-laden, religious presupposition that there is no access to the voice or mind of God— which is a faith-commitment as intransigent as anything that was ever taught in Birmingham.

On the other hand the DofE goes on to claim that “mutual respect and tolerance” must be promoted with regard to those with “different faiths and beliefs”. But how exactly is this mutual tolerance and respect going to be expressed, given the democratic assumptions held?

There are a number of examples that one could chose from, but let us take the right to life. According to the 1967 Abortion Act, abortion is legal up until 24 weeks (although if there is a substantial risk to the woman’s life or foetal abnormalities, there is no time limit). Yet according to the Christian conscience, not only is abortion the taking of a human life, but the 24-week limit is also completely arbitrary. Why not 23 weeks or 25 weeks? Or, indeed, up until the moment of birth? Or indeed after birth, as the Princeton moral philosopher Peter Singer has argued.

Now, whatever you may think about that issue, it certainly does not “respect” or “tolerate” religious belief. Indeed it rides roughshod over it and roundly declares to all in society, including the mosque and the church, that individual human life — my life and your life included — has no intrinsic value other than what the state (accidentally) allocates to it.

So how is this impasse to be avoided? This is a crucial question. If it is not faced, the Department of Education guidelines are set to achieve nothing, other than to dismay and antagonise religious groups with all the social upheaval and sadness that will flow in its wake. This will only serve to further stoke religious extremism.

The first thing, I think, that needs to be said is that it is incumbent upon the Department of Education to admit that the policy they are advocating is far from neutral. It is in itself a religiously motivated agenda driven by secular ideals and beliefs that cannot be “blasphemed.”

Of course they do not yet recognise this.

But they should admit that the very values they have chosen to champion have of necessity meant that they have to make a choice — and that choice has been motivated by the deepest religious and ethical dispositions of their hearts.

Secondly, having completed that exercise, they should be more open to see that the fundamental British values that they so want to champion are actually the values instilled into the soul of the nation by the Christian Church since before Magna Carta.

Nick Spence in his illuminating book Freedom and Order (2011) has argued that it was the Church wielding the spiritual sword of the word of God that gave birth to the British understanding that those who rule do so by grace, and not by arbitrary might. This in turn led to embedded values of justice and peace, care for the poor and needy, and personal (biblical) morality being upheld and promoted.

These are the values to which we should return. For they are our long-held and deeply established native values that spring from Scripture itself.