Opinion
7th June 2026
American answers for American problems
Messrs Vance and Hesketh’s attempts to influence British politics highlight the issue behind the entire Diverse Diversity project. They apply American solutions for American problems to countries where those problems do not exist. That is as true of their anti-EDI backlash as it is of the EDI initiative itself. Put simply, the social and cultural context in the UK is not that of the US. We are a different country with a different history, and we need to develop our society independently of theirs. For too long American ideas have been imported into Britain and other European civilisations failing to recognise this important difference.
Britain was the imperial power. America was part of the empire. Britain developed and administered the Triangular Trade, which included the Slave Trade as its Middle Passage, but we never had slavery itself at home. The Southern states of America had slaves, moreover, the slaves in America were clearly distinct from the free people in appearance, giving rise to a concept of race and implying a racial understanding of the institution which had not previously existed and did not exist elsewhere. In Africa the slaves looked just like everyone else. Only after the British traders bought them from their rulers or merchants did the difference in appearance become an issue. The concept of race only arose when they were trafficked across the Atlantic to be forced to serve their white masters. The terrible injustice these people suffered was inflicted by a combination of British businessmen abetted by the British government of the day, African rulers and dealers (who doubtless worked hard to find unfortunates to serve the burgeoning opportunity), and British colonisers owning (or more accurately claiming to own) huge tracts of land in America which needed large amounts of labour to exploit them.
We can hardly consider ourselves innocent in that endeavour but, dealing with both African rulers and African victims, as well as Anglo-American plantation owners or trading agents at the other end of the voyage, we could hardly have viewed the trade as essentially racial in nature. Cruel it was, and it was to our shame it took about 150 years to recognise that and end the trade, but it was not about race. Moreover, the mill owners were not particularly kind toward the mill workers in this country at the time either. Human greed results in inhuman acts.
In America, where the people arrived already enslaved and distinctively different from those buying them, race became the lens through which they were viewed and strong racist attitudes developed. There people came to be seen as sub-human not because they were poor, but because they were dark-skinned and facially different. This understanding became utterly embedded in the American consciousness to the point no one questioned it. Even American abolitionists did not lose that perspective. In the Gettisburg Address Abraham Lincoln condemned the idea of one race of men enslaving another, missing completely that this had not been the original basis and was merely an accident of history and geography which made American slaves so easily identifiable. Slavery is now generally considered an immoral institution, but people do not have to be racially different to be caught up in it. That was merely the American expression at that time.
This is important because it exposes the locality of the issue as seen through American eyes and the inapplicability of American analyses to other contexts. It would be foolish to suggest there was not an element of racial or civilisational superiority behind the imperial projects of European powers, but this was quite different in nature from the intense indignation of the American experience. Though there was a great deal of variation in the way British colonial officers treated local people, sometimes cruel and humiliating and at other times according extensive rights, it varied on an individual basis. There was not the same kind of systemic racism which existed in America. There were no laws defining people differently as in America. In fact, British citizenship in theory came to be accorded to the entire population and was only withdrawn with independence. The Windrush scandal occurred precisely because those who arrived in the UK in the 50s and early 60s were full British citizens and therefore had no need of documentation to prove the fact beyond their Birth Certificates. A later generation of civil servants forgot that and started deporting people because the papers now required did not exist then but that only serves to demonstrate the lack of legal distinction which existed before.
British racism was essentially a private attitude. In America it was institutionalised in the infamous Jim Crow laws. When laws recognise false distinctions between people it becomes difficult for people to recognise the falsehood.
It follows that institutional procedures designed to counter institutional injustice in America are not the appropriate way to address attitudes in Britain. A different problem needs different answers. Our situation is less extreme and less extreme measures are therefore needed. American-style EDI is inappropriate because the attitudes to be resisted are less entrenched and less formalised requiring a less formal response. Equally, we don’t want hard-line American race or other community hatreds here where they would simply destabilise an otherwise functional society. We don’t need people here duped into the attitudes and beliefs they have there, so American politicians really need to stay out of our discourse. We do not want their problems. We have enough of our own.
American society is inherently more dangerous than ours because of the availability of lethal force. We have a problem with knives. They have a problem with guns. Knives are dangerous, but not so dangerous at a distance as guns. This makes rage and hatred more dangerous in America. Danger breeds danger, as we see everywhere America influences, where revenge feuds escalate out of control. That is not a world I think the average person in Britain wants to see, and we certainly don’t want it here.
Rather, let us try to live together in harmony, not elevating pointless divisions either in hatred or celebration, but in tolerance and fairness. We do not need to play the American game.