- guardian.co.uk, Thursday October 12 2000 17.02 BST
Mr Straw declared himself proud to be British and insisted that he did not accept the arguments of some on the liberal left or the nationalist right that the idea of Britain as a cohesive nation was dead. The existence of people happy to be known as "black British or Chinese British" demonstrated that "Britishness" had a future.
The modern challenge now, said Mr Straw, was to meld the enormous range of races, accents and attitudes in the country into a single shared identity. "This is made even more difficult by the way those on the left turned their backs on the concept of patriotism and left the field to those on the far right," the home secretary said.
He was speaking at the launch of the controversial report of the commission on the future of multi-ethnic Britain, which has put a question mark against the future use of the term "British" because it has racial connotations of "white colonialism". It calls for a formal declaration that Britain is a multicultural society, and it has been accused of wanting to rewrite British history.
Mr Straw said that while he welcomed some of the recommendations of the Runny mede Trust sponsored commission, which was chaired by the Labour peer and political scientist Lord Parekh, he parted company with the report over its view of Britishness. "Unlike the Runnymede Trust, I firmly believe there is a future for Britain and a future for Britishness."
Mr Straw said George Orwell's observation 50 years ago that in leftwing circles it was felt that there was something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman still applied to day. "Orwell wrote that 'it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during God Save the King than of stealing from the poor box'.
"Given the tendency of some of the left to wash their hands of the whole notion of nationhood, it is perhaps not surprising that some people's perception of Englishness and Britishness became a narrow, exclusionary, conservative one. That's a view of British ness that I don't recognise. We all benefit, economically and socially, from our diversity and difference. We should be celebrating that, not bemoaning it."
Lord Parekh insisted that his commission wanted to reform and redefine what it means to be British. "We do not denigrate British history. There is a very important role for a common national culture and a common civic nationality," he said. "But we are requesting that this common culture needs to be discussed and renegotiated. It does not imply that it is not a coherent idea."
Lord Parekh said that too often minority ethnic groups were seen at best as "welcome tenants" and not as common owners of the country.
"The British national identity should be so defined that we all feel comfortable with it and we all feel proud to be British," he said.
The wide-ranging report is the biggest review of British identity and racial equality since Labour came to power three years ago. Its recommendations include scrapping the asylum voucher and dispersal system and setting up a human rights commission.
• The Future of Multi-ethnic Britain, The Parekh Report, Profile Books, £10.99
