A NEW public holiday to celebrate "Britishness" and a coming-of-age ceremony to mark students' transition to adult citizenship are among recommendations
to boost national pride in Britain.
The review was conducted by former attorney-general Lord Goldsmith, who today said measures were needed because Britain had become a more "divided country" with less sense of "belonging" over recent years.
"Certainly there is not a crisis of national identity - I'm sure we would all see it if there were but certainly the research does tend to show that there has been a diminution in national pride in the sense of belonging and it is a particularly generational thing, " Lord Goldsmith said on the BBC Radio 4
Today program.
Lord Goldsmith said the coming of age ceremony - which would be held at the end of schoolchildren's studies - could include, for example, an oath of allegiance to the Queen.
"We already teach schoolchildren what citizenship means," Lord Goldsmith said.
"But it would make sense to have a coming of age ceremony which marks the moment they move from being a student of citizenship to being a real citizen in themselves."
Lord Goldsmith, who was asked by Prime Minister Gordon Brown last July to conduct the review of British citizenship, said a national day had worked extremely well in other countries such as Australia.
"It would be something we don't have at the moment, which is an opportunity to celebrate ... that we do belong to a nation."
He said it would be up to the Government, if it accepted his recommendations, to decide the details of the ceremony, such as whether it should include an oath of allegiance to the Queen.
But he said he personally was in favour of such an oath.
"The point is to find a raft of different ways that we can create a greater sense of shared belonging in this country ... for people to understand more clearly what it means to be a citizen of this country, what the rights are and what the responsibilities are as well."
With Reuters
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23359881-38200,00.html
