Wolfie

Citizen Smith, Wolfie, as we all remember was a member of the Tooting Popular Front. Who could forget his long-suffering girlfriend Shirley or his loyal friend Ken?

Problem for Wolfie Smith was that it was all too much of a mountain to climb. His enthusiasm and political commitment were lost on the denizens of Tooting. He wanted to liberate, they didn't know they needed liberating. You could feel his frustration.

Maybe Jack Straw (leader of the House of Commons) feels a little of that frustration. He was even in one of the Vancouver rags this week. Or last week. Apparently, Britain, home of Shakespeare, the Monarchy and a whole list of other things, just in case Canadian readers might think it were some other Britain, according to Jack Straw could take some tips in citizenship from Canada.

I have no idea where or when Mr. Straw expressed this, perhaps standing in the checkout queue at Sainsburys, as his Rowse's Maple Syrup trundled across the scanner, he suddenly exclaimed,
'If only the British had as much sense of Britishness as the Canadians have about being Canadian.

I would agree with him that there is a strong sense of being Canadian here. The Maple Leaf is everywhere, the expression, 'proudly Canadian,' is used often. And yet, and yet.....

It's not the same. The British government is trying to encourage a sense of Britishness over a sense of simply being English, Scottish or Welsh. And as a Brit living abroad, in some circumstances I am British, whilst in others, I am English. The problem I find here is that many Canadians will use the term British when they mean specifically English.

And then, honestly, I don't think that feeling Canadian or British is necessarily an indicator of citizenship.
I, for example, am a British Citizen and damned proud of it. But I live in Canada and the importance to me of being a good citizen isn't about the nationality of my citizenship, it's about where I live, wanting to be a positive member of the community I live in.

It's more like what we were all teaching kids in the fairly new - for Britain - school subject of Citizenship.
It's about respecting where you live and the people who live there. It's about taking responsibility for your own actions within that community, and it's about knowing and pro-actively engaging in that.

I don't think Canadians are any better at being citizens than Brits, I think that even though they know they are Canadian, they don't all embrace the whole country. There is HUGE antagonism towards the Québecois, not from all by any means, but from many.
There isn't even that much that is truly national as there is in Britain. Oh yes, I can go from coast to coast and use the loony, in Britain from top to bottom and use the pound coin, but here, driver licensing, school curricula, qualification recognition, newspapers, health care and even part of the taxation among other things, are Provincial. This certainly isn't so throughout Britain.

I think that Jack Straw, a politician I've always admired, might be a bit of a Wolfie Smith, trying to raise the awareness of an apathetic population.
Power to the People Jack - or maybe not, maybe that's too much to handle.