Table Of Content“Essential reading for all trying to navigate the choppy waters of post-Brexit Britain.”
– RUPA HUQ MP
“Brexit was a long time coming. Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson in the exquisite and timely Rule
Britannia get that and know that the responses must be as big, if not bigger, than the tsunami the vote to
leave has created. Here is that rich but rare mix of profound analysis and hope for something better.”
– NEAL LAWSON, CHAIR OF COMPASS
“A much-needed mirror through which Britain and what it means to be British is explored with razor-
sharp nuance and detail. The book’s contents should form the basis of the humanities curriculum at
schools – equipping our future generations with a more truthful and grounded understanding of what
Britain really is.”
– SHAISTA AZIZ, JOURNALIST, WRITER AND STAND-UP COMEDIAN
“Leaver or Remainer, if you think Brexit might affect you or your children or your children’s children,
read this book.”
– PETER FLORENCE, DIRECTOR, HAY LITERARY FESTIVAL
“The single most important book about Brexit. Meticulously researched and clearly written, Rule
Britannia exposes the racism, ideology and narrow self-interest behind the Brexit rhetoric.”
– PROFESSOR DAVID GILLBORN, DIRECTOR, CENTRE FOR RESEARCH IN RACE AND EDUCATION,
UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
“Absolutely brilliant. Extremely insightful and thought-provoking.”
– DIMITRIS BALLAS, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY, UNIVERSITY OF GRONINGEN
“Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson’s Rule Britannia makes for essential reading on the connections
between Brexit and Britain’s colonial history. It is a highly readable book and, despite the gravity of its
content, a joy to read in being replete with humour and anecdotal gems. A re-education in itself, the
book convincingly argues that changes to education policy, schooling and curricula are essential to
challenging and averting the disastrous consequences of Britain’s imperial nostalgia and ignorance.”
– NADINE EL-ENANY, SENIOR LECTURER IN LAW, BIRKBECK
To Bronwen, Danny’s mum, who taught him what the Suez Crisis
meant when he was more excited about the idea of pyramids than
power games, and to Sally’s children, their partners and her
grandchildren, who are all citizens of the world, including Europe.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
List of figures and tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: Why Brexit?
Chapter 2: Britain’s immigrant origins
Chapter 3: From empire to Commonwealth
Chapter 4: High inequality and ignorant politicians
Chapter 5: The fantasy and future of free trade
Chapter 6: How not to treat immigrants
Chapter 7: Imperially rooted education and bigotry
Chapter 8: A land of hope and glory?
Chapter 9: Why not Brexit?
Index
About the authors
Copyright
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
FIGURES
Figure 0.1: The most generous political donors from the Rich List of 2018
Figure 1.1: Voting by age group in the 2016 EU referendum
Figure 1.2: Voting by region in the 2016 EU referendum
Figure 1.3: Voting by local authority area in the 2016 EU referendum
Figure 2.1: The Britannia 2017 UK five-ounce gold proof coin
Figure 2.2: The ‘British nation’ from 55 BC to 1912 – the making of a myth
Figure 2.3: EU overseas territories and outermost regions 2018
Figure 2.4: Chris Patten, his daughters and Prince Charles in Hong Kong,
1997
Figure 2.5: Britain’s Royal Navy message to families and children fleeing
Syria
Figure 3.1: Darwins, Wedgwoods, Galtons and Barclays family tree, 1573–
1914
Figure 3.2: A map of the British Empire with area in proportion to current
population
Figure 3.3: Home locations of UK students at Oxford University in 2012
Figure 3.4: Once a German, always a German – The British Empire Union
Figure 4.1: How proud or embarrassed are you about identifying as English?
Figure 4.2: ‘John Bull’ locking the door, Daily Express, first published in
1901
Figure 4.3: A cartoon printed in the wake of the 1905 Aliens Act
Figure 4.4: William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte dissect the plum pudding
Figure 4.5: Imports to the UK in billions of US dollars (2017)
Figure 4.6: Exports from the UK in billions of US dollars (2017)
Figure 5.1: Productivity growth in the UK, 1999–2023, actual and forecasts
Figure 5.2: The share of manufacturing in eleven major economies, 1990–
2010
Figure 5.3: What do the British manufacture in 2015?
Figure 6.1: Enoch Powell in 1987 – the man who spread hate and fear
Figure 6.2: The boy at the bus stop, the danger of the school census, May
2017
Figure 6.3: Go home or face arrest – Operation Vaken, July 2013, London
Figure 6.4: Theresa May opening a church fête in 2007, six years before
Vaken
Figure 6.5: Stop Immigration Start Repatriation – National Front Banner
2016
Figure 6.6: Referendum outcome and body weight, England local area
percentages
Figure 6.7: Association of Leave vote with people with unique surnames
2016
Figure 7.1: Theresa May’s ‘Scream’ Cabinet of 2016 – the worst ever
Cabinet?
Figure 7.2: The Bullingdon Boys – who have never used a Co-op!
Figure 7.3: Dominic Cummings in ‘awe at his own strategic brilliance’
Figure 7.4: Matthew Elliott – chief executive of Vote Leave 2015–2017
Figure 8.1: Deprivation levels by constituency and voting Leave, 2016
Figure 8.2: Deprivation versus voting by political party in England, 2017
Figure 8.3: Vote Leave and deprivation by local authority in England, 2016
Figure 8.4: Countries projected to be most harmed by a UK exit from the EU
Figure 9.1: The UK was alone among advanced countries in the world in
2015
Figure 9.2: How the UK could break up – as predicted in 1992
TABLES
Table 5.1: The fifty-eight industries written about in a secret report on the
effect of Brexit
Table 6.1: Districts in England at the Brexit extremes and rates of obesity,
2016
Table 9.1: Share of the vote to parties to the right of mainstream
Conservatives, UK in all European elections 1979–2014
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many thanks to Ailsa Allen for drawing up all the graphs and maps in this
book so carefully and to Claire Hann for helping ensure that the final
manuscript was internally consistent and presentable! Thanks to Olivia Beattie
at Biteback for taking this project on when there were already so many ‘Brexit
books’ out there. We promised this one would be different, and we hope it is.
We are extremely grateful for her editorial advice and especially for her
editing the final text so diligently, diplomatically and deftly.
Our profound thanks for help with this book are also due to all those who
commented on earlier chapters, including Becky Alexis-Martin, Shaista Aziz,
Dimitris Ballas, George Davey Smith, Alison Dorling, David Dorling, Philip
von Hausenchild, Stacy Hewitt, Benjamin Hennig, Aniko Horvath, Sebastian
Kraemer, Carl Lee, Bill Lodge, Chris Lynch, Deborah Outhwaite, Jan Rigby,
Paul Scarrott, Robbie Shilliam, Brian Tomlinson, Dariusz Wojcik and Vicky
Yiagopoulou. Rebecca Carter of Janklow & Nesbit valiantly found us a
publisher when all were heartily sick of considering any more writing on
Brexit. We don’t hold any grudges against those publishers who turned the
opportunity down, save to say – if you are reading this now it probably did
better than you thought possible. Thanks also to all our other family and
friends who argued from both sides of the Brexit divide, but who are still
talking to us.
We are also grateful for all the thoughts of the people who turned up to our
public lectures during the writing of this book in Bath, Belfast, Birmingham,
Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Changchun, Cheltenham, Coventry, Dublin,
Durham, Edinburgh, Eton, Groningen, Guildford, Hay-on-Wye, Hong Kong,
Hull, Leamington, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Loughborough, Manchester,
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northampton, Ottawa, Oxford, Portsmouth, Sheffield,
Stoke-on-Trent, Swansea, Weston-Super-Mare, Weymouth, Winchester, York
and several smaller towns and rural villages. Apologies for only making it the
once to Scotland while writing this book, but you seemed to know very well
what you were doing north of the border without our intervention or thoughts!
Finally, we should thank all those who gave permission for the
photographs they took to be included, their song lyrics to be quoted or for
their images to be included. The artist Joseph Kelly very kindly allowed us to
reuse his illustration as a frontispiece here. It was first included in the 2016
March/April issue of Strike! magazine. Benjamin Hennig allowed us to
reproduce his maps shown in Figures 1.3 and 3.3; the Royal Mint gave
permission for Figure 2.1 to be included; Trinity Mirror, Mirrorpix, and
Alamy Stock Photo for Figure 2.4; the Jewish Museum for 4.3; the British
Library for 4.4; Allan Warren for 6.1; Wasi Daniju for 6.2; Ian Burt for 6.3;
Andre Burdett for 6.4; Daniel Watson and Emma Foster for 6.5; Zoe Norfolk
for 7.1; Steve Bell for 7.2; FE Week magazine for 7.3; Matthew Elliott for 7.4;
Daniel Gordon Watts for 8.1; and Alasdair Rae for 8.2 and 8.3. We are very
grateful for all their help.
Illustration by Joseph P. Kelly
The authors are very grateful to Joseph for permission to use this image.
Description:Books on Brexit explaining how and why parts of Britain voted to leave the European Union are falling hot off the press. Some promise the full story of the political manoeuvring that got us to this point, others promise to make sense of the vote, with a couple focusing on the supposed evils of immig
