ABSTRACT
The national identities, and many of the socio-cultural traditions which express those identities, are characteristically constructed, products of evolving economic forces and manipulation by powerful interest-groups and parties. As British national identity was progressively woven from diverse strands: anti-Catholicism, industrial expansion, economic imperialism and monarchism, so the concept of French national identity has meant something different in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The creation of Frenchness was inseparable from the creation of citizens in a democracy of republican, universal values. Like many of the traditional industries from which it drew its support, the French Communist Party, which literally schooled a previous generation of immigrants has declined as a serious political force for integration. However, there have been some attempts to react positively to the changing situation, and to develop more diverse and pluralist forms of French identity which, without surrendering the central role of state institutions, would afford greater freedom of cultural practice.
