The Sunday Times - UK (2022-05-01)

The Sunday Times May 1, 2022 25

COMMENT

Without patriotism, wars are lost. Britain must never be afraid to be proud of itself

between James Watt, born in Greenock a

few decades after the Act of Union,

Thomas Newcomen, an ironmonger and

Baptist lay preacher born in Dartmouth,

and Matthew Boulton, the son of a

Birmingham manufacturer, who

provided the business brains. When

solidarity stretches across space and

time, miracles happen.

And that is why, today, we need to be

more clear-eyed about the dangers

posed by the enemies of the nation.

On the one hand we might point to

the metropolitan left, which harbours

unrealistic ideas about immigration and

asylum. There are perhaps a couple of

billion people on the planet who would

come here if they could, often fleeing

sectarian conflict. If they were all

allowed to enter in the name of

compassion, the miracle in which

they were seeking to partake would

vanish. Nations without borders are not

nations. I disagree with significant

details of the Rwanda policy, but I am

confident that offshoring of a more

humane kind is the only coherent

solution to the challenge of mass

migration. Asylum and immigration

offer huge benefits but only when they

are controlled to ensure assimilation

and consent.

On the other hand are the super-rich

who accrue wealth by taking advantage

of the intricate tapestry of social

obligations upon which nations depend

and then illegally offshore their tax

liabilities. I would include in this

category aggressive tax-avoiders, even if

it has become fashionable to argue that

using shadowy tax havens is smart and

legal. We should remember that it was

also legal to claim conscientious

objector status during the war. It is legal

for Ukrainians living in the UK to stay

here rather than go back to fight. If the

only obligations owed to our fellow

citizens are those encoded in law, the

nation state is dead and excessive

individualism has won.

As we face up to an uncertain future,

national solidarity will prove our

greatest asset, just as in the past. With an

independent nuclear deterrent, we are

unlikely to see mass conscription any

time soon, but we may have to make

sacrifices in the teeth of aggression from

Russia and, in time, China. Freeloaders

who place themselves above the

collective at times of trouble are not

merely irritants but threats: culture

warriors who inflame division in pursuit

of followers; train drivers who

unreasonably use strikes to hold the

public to ransom; lawyers and

accountants who make money in

cahoots with those gaming the system.

You can doubtless think of many others.

A healthy sense of nationalism is not

just precious to its citizens but has other

benefits too. It makes international co-

operation easier, not harder, and

restrains the chauvinism that led to such

dark places in the first half of the 20th

century. Right-wing populism is not an

expression of national identity; it

emerges from a crisis in national

identity. Look at the rise of Trump,

Bolsonaro, Orban and others, all of

whom exploited public unease about

porous borders. As the political pundit

David Frum has put it: “If liberals won’t

enforce borders, fascists will.”

My dad died a year ago last week, and

I have been thinking about him a lot. He

was a patriot; an impassioned defender

of this nation and its institutions. I think

this is true of many who come here from

outside because they perceive so keenly

the blessings that national identity

bestows. This is something we should all

open our eyes to, because, to quote Joni

Mitchell, you don’t know what you’ve

got till it’s gone. Britishness is our

greatest and most precious asset.

@MatthewSyed

Tax avoiders

and those

with foolish

ideas about

immigration

are enemies

of the nation

A

miracle is unfolding across

Europe. It is a miracle rarely

remarked upon, but I think it

holds implications for us all. I

am talking about the

willingness of Ukrainians who

could have continued to live in

comfort in Germany, Britain

and beyond to travel back to their

homeland and risk their lives for what

some on the left call a dangerous

abstraction. The nation.

We see it in Oleksandr Usyk, a

champion boxer worth millions who

hot-footed it back from London to fight

alongside his countrymen. We see it in

Sergiy Stakhovsky, who memorably beat

Roger Federer at Wimbledon in 2013: he

has left his wife and children to risk

street-to-street fighting in his homeland.

We see it in an estimated 66,000 others

who have taken grave personal risks to

travel to Ukraine to defend a concept we

diminish at our peril.

My late father often eulogised

national identity, something that

seemed an eccentricity when I was

growing up. Only over time did I realise

that his passion was a consequence of

his background: he was a man who

hailed from Pakistan via India, whose

ancestors stretched back to the nomadic

tribes of Arabia and who had seen the

dangers of a national identity fractured

by sectarian interests. To live in a nation

— the UK — that had transcended these

divisions was, to him, a miracle.

The willingness to fight and die for a

nation may seem odd to us today after

decades of relative peace, but it merits

renewed consideration. In the Second

World War millions took up arms when

they could have faked illness or

pretended to be conscientious objectors

and thereby freeloaded upon the risks

taken by others. Had they not done so,

we might now be speaking German as

part of the offshore reich.

In Afghanistan the opposite happened

when the “national” army melted away

within minutes of the American

withdrawal. The problem was not a lack

of courage among the troops but an

absence of solidarity. Their allegiance

was not to Afghanistan but to the

sectarian groups — Pashtun, Uzbek, Tajik

— that have been in conflict for centuries

and into which they instantly fractured.

Afghanistan is poor in no small part

because its people fight with one

another rather than co-operate.

You see the same picture in Yemen, in

Lebanon and beyond. When the hated

Alawite government looked under

pressure in Syria in the early stages of

the Arab Spring, there was an immediate

surge in sectarian loyalties and divisions:

Arabs, Kurds, Druze, Turkmen and

Palestinians, as well as Christian, Sunni,

Shia and Yazidi. “Syria” is not a nation in

any meaningful sense. In Nigeria

democratic institutions do not work for

the common good but as a mechanism

for competing tribal groups to gain

power so they can loot the state.

This is why our greatest inheritance as

Britons isn’t wealth or prosperity but the

solidarity upon which it all depends.

According to Joseph Henrich, professor

of human evolutionary biology at

Harvard, the tribal allegiances of the pre

and post-Roman periods — Brigantes,

Iceni, Angles, Saxons and so on — were

dissolved by the Christian ban on cousin

marriage (a prohibition that extended to

sixth cousins by the 11th century). This

edict forced people to marry across

tribal lines, thus blurring and ultimately

dissolving sectarian divisions and paving

the way for a nationwide identity. By the

time of the Norman invasion, England

already had a common coinage, land tax

and justice system.

It’s the secret of our rise as a great

power. The steam engine wasn’t an act

of God but an act of co-operation

Matthew Syed

National pride is the magical force

fortifying Ukraine. Where is ours?

W

hen I was a kid, my mum,

a foster carer, often took

us to Styal prison, near

Manchester. I would sit in

the car for a couple of

hours staring at the high

fence while she took the

babies she was caring for

to see their locked-up mothers.

Visiting prisons is now something I

regularly fit in my diary. Most weeks I

walk the wings, talking to inmates while

looking for great personalities to join my

business. For years I had a free rein,

picking the best of the best. But now I’ve

got competition. Other employers have

cottoned on to this great way of finding

talented staff and giving people a second

chance. For years companies didn’t

want to be associated with ex-offenders;

now the reverse is true. In fact a few

weeks ago our recruitment team was a

week too late: Greggs had already signed

up all the best candidates.

More than 10 per cent of my Timpson

colleagues joined straight from prison.

In fact many are still inside and come out

on day release to work in our shops. Last

week I met one colleague who had been

a finance director before jail, one who

had been a lawyer and another, Janice,

who had run a large call centre. With a

criminal record it’s hard to secure work,

but we find that “returning citizens” are

the most loyal, honest and hard-working

colleagues of all.

Reoffending is a blight on our society.

Over 40 per cent of prison-leavers are

back behind bars within a year, and it

isn’t difficult to work out why. Prisons

are full of people who’ve failed society,

but more often than not society has

failed them too. If you leave prison with

a roof over your head, someone who

cares about you and a job, it’s likely you

won’t go back. Timpson, like many other

employers, does the job bit.

Prison governors aren’t natural

entrepreneurs and seldom have

connections with the local businesses

that could employ prisoner-leavers.

Fortunately Dominic Raab, the justice

secretary, and his team were receptive to

my idea to create an employment

advisory board in each release prison,

with an entrepreneurial chairman

We were a week

too late: Greggs

had already

signed up all the

best candidates

leading a group of employers to support

the governor and get people into work.

So far 40 boards have been set up, and

entrepreneurs such as John Murphy,

head of the Murphy Group, are working

with prison teams to tackle the barriers

between inmates and employers.

Being an entrepreneur myself, I knew

my volunteers would not enjoy having to

follow detailed instructions, so I set

three simple goals.

First, we need to establish a long-term

culture of employment in prisons,

where everyone knows that the primary

goal of those who live and work there is

to help people get a job. Prison

governors can be like Premier League

managers: they move around a lot and

have a disproportionate impact on the

success or failure of the prison. This

doesn’t help to nurture a consistent

culture and long-term relationships, but

our boards can help.

Second, the boards must help

prisoners become “job-ready”, with CVs

completed, applications sent and

interviews arranged. This sounds

simple, but in a prison environment

managing so many moving parts can be

difficult.

And, finally, if the prison can develop

links with local employers keen to

recruit talented people, it is easier to

match prison-leavers with a full-time job.

With so many prisons now having

boards in place, we hope to see a big

increase in the number of prison-leavers

finding work. The early signs are

encouraging, but there is a lot still to do.

On Friday we had our first “annual

conference”, in which the prisons

minister, Victoria Atkins, reiterated the

government’s goal of focusing prison

regimes on solving the employment

conundrum for good, and of helping

more companies to recruit ex-offenders.

Instead of being a drain on the

economy, ex-offenders can, with a bit of

help, get a job, earn a salary and pay

their taxes. Society and businesses both

win when we find great people to work

with us, especially those who need that

second chance.

James Timpson is chief executive of the

Timpson Group

James

Timpson

Good news

for prisoners

but, sadly,

now I’ve got

competition

“You need to slow down —

go work in the Passport Office”

“I’ll rob the food bank, you

drive the getaway cart”

NEWMAN’S

WEEK

“Not as good as Amber and Johnny”

“Angela Rayner is distracting me

from watching pornography!”