ABSTRACT
Identity: The rapid social, political and cultural changes that are transforming most societies throughout the world are compelling us to ask ourselves questions about our identity as a people.
In politics today few questions are as vexed or as elusive as that of national identity. The issue of Englishness and Britishness erupts in passionate disagreements about the place of Britain in Europe. But it is wider than that. It touches on race and the visceral fears of what it is to be alien and to experience not the richness of diversity but the threat of difference.
