There was new research this week which found that British national pride has declined sharply in the last ten years or so. The number of Brits who feel proud of the nation’s history has taken a particular dive, from 83% in the 90s to 64% now, and there are some observers who seem to be concerned by this. But I say: good. National pride is a weakness and a trap. I am not proud to be British.

One of the possible explanations for the apparent drop in people feeling proud of Britain’s history is obvious. In the wake of Black Lives Matter, many national institutions – galleries, castles, museums – looked more critically at their history and collections. And although the students who chucked the statue of Edward Colston into the river in Bristol in 2020 are profoundly irritating in every way (not least for their names: Milo, Sage, etc), it’s certainly a good idea to look at history in a critical way.

For example. When I was growing up in the 70s, most of my history came from Ladybird books or older books from the school library and all of them had a pretty uncritical way of looking at famous figures in British history like Churchill, Admiral Nelson and General Gordon (of whom there was a statue at our school gates). Forty years on, my admiration for those men is still high, but I’m more aware now than I was of their faults and mistakes. To feel proud of them is also, as Tim Walz might say, weird. My only real connection to Churchill and Nelson is that we happened to be born in the same country many years apart.

The other problem with national pride is obvious, or at least it should be. If you take great personal pleasure or satisfaction in your country and its history and the achievements of other Brits (or Scots – all of this applies to Scotland as well as Britain), there’s a chance you won’t react well to criticism of the country or its history and take it all personally, and in extreme cases it can get out of hand. Look at the carnage of the past, the chaos, the blood, and you’ll always find someone in the middle of it whose sense of national pride has been offended.

But do the people who took part in the research on national pride get it? I have my doubts. Yes, the study for the National Centre for Social Research showed that there’s been a big drop in the number of people who feel pride in British history, but it also showed that there’s been a big rise in the number feeling pride in British culture, arts and literature. And the same applies to sport. When asked, around 80% of people said they felt “very proud” of these things.

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The same problems apply though. Last week, I visited Charles Dickens’s house in King’s Cross in London and very interesting it was. You can see the desk where he wrote A Tale of Two Cities; there’s also a brilliant little exhibition on the animals in Dickens’s life including his pet raven Grip and if you love Dickens, you’ll love the house. But to say ‘I love Dickens’ is not the same as saying ‘I am proud of Dickens’; his achievements have nothing to do with me and, as the exhibitions in the house make clear, as a man he had flaws. If pride in Churchill makes no sense, neither does pride in Dickens. Or Adele or Andy Murray for that matter.

The problem, I think, is that the new survey shows that the figures on national pride have changed in the last ten years but not in the way we think they have. More people may well have worked out in the last decade that national pride is a piece of nonsense (especially after surviving the referendums on Scottish independence and Brexit). But I suspect that, on British history in particular, what’s actually happened is that national pride has morphed into something related but different: national shame.

Here’s what I would say to that: both are damaging. We should not be proud of Churchill or Nelson or Gordon or Dickens, but we should not be ashamed of them either. Some of their behaviour and attitudes are a product of their time and some of it’s a product of human weakness and fallibility. But just as their achievements are not my achievements, so their faults are not my faults. I do not feel pride but I do not feel shame either.

(Image: Edward Colston's statue)

As I’ve already said, all of this applies to Scottishness in the same way it does to Britishness. There’s a particular type of Scot for example who’s proud of being Scottish and not proud of being British (I know this because it’s always me who ends up next to them in the pub). This is despite the fact that Scottish history has all the same issues as British history: war, empire, violence. I was staying with some English chums the other day and we got into some banter about how often the English have been horrible to the Scottish and how often the Scottish have been horrible to the English. Conclusion: we’re as bad as each other.

I hope the picture's changing. I hope fewer people feel pride in British history because they’re taking a more nuanced view of its positives and the negatives. But I can also see what we’ve been through in the last ten years: the rise of popular nationalism; the referendums; politicians, in Scotland and England, who rock up, erect a few flagpoles and tell us how proud we should be. The danger of it is the same as it’s always been: that the pride leads to anger, or worse. So I will try to resist. I will try to be realistic. And I will say it again: I am not proud to be British.