You can still listen to Testing the Tebbit Test on BBC Radio 4 Extra in which Rajan Datar documents how many English people with ancestors who migrated from Asia, and maybe even from the Caribbean find the test deeply hurtful and offensive. This response is entirely apt — Tebbit must have known that it was hurtful and offensive, indeed that seems to have been the point.
I used to be flippant about the Tebbit test. It goes against the Englishness I was raised into. When I started watching cricket seriously, in 1974, India and Pakistan were the underdogs. I supported them against England, and, however naïve it sounds now, I assumed that everyone else in England did too. Supporting the underdog is what English people do (unless, possibly, the underdog is Australia, a contingency that hasn’t really arisen during my cricket-loving life). Quite independently I was taught that authentic celebration and enjoyment of the other side’s performance is intrinsic to both Englishness and the spirit of cricket. So, even in the cases, increasingly common as I grew older, in which England was the underdog and it was, therefore, consistent with my national identity to support England, that support had to be quite unenthusiastic.
In 1976 England’s captain Tony Grieg threw another consideration into the mix. I don’t believe Grieg was racist, or even bad (and, in retrospect, the Packer revolution was great for the sport), but when he said of the West Indies, in an accent which, at that point, I’d only ever heard from supporters of apartheid, that “we’re going to make them grovel”, he made it impossible to want England to win. Throughout the subsequent decade or so in which that extraordinary West Indies team dominated world cricket, I could never support England, even as underdogs, against them and, again, I didn’t see how any self-respecting English person could. (My dad took me to the day of the Oval test in which Richards made that magnificent double century, and cheered every boundary with delight). Yes, I longed for England to play well; but every WI victory was a small poke in the eye for the racists. Again, naïve it may have been, but racism, to me, seemed not only wicked, but also a betrayal of the kind of Englishness I’d been raised to.
The Tebbit test, then, seemed to condemn English people of Pakistani and Indian origin for behaving in exactly the way that any other self-respecting English person, wherever their ancestors came, from would (even if too few did). It was incoherent.
I say this response was flippant because, although it represents my sincere, if naïve, beliefs growing up, by the time Tebbit formulated the test I knew perfectly well that plenty of English people actually and sincerely support England even when they play against underdogs. It’s completely reasonable for them to do so, and is compatible (just) with an appropriately inclusive understanding of Englishness.
On, then, to my non-flippant point. The test is offered in bad faith in this sense: Tebbit would not want to make a principle of the idea that underlies the test. I have come to understand this because, following earlier advice from the same Norman Tebbit, I got on my bike to look for work and migrated from the UK to the US. (Well, I didn’t literally get on my bike to migrate to the US, obviously; I got on a plane, but I’m sure that Tebbit, a former pilot, meant ‘on your bike’ metaphorically).
I’ve met some emigrants – Brits even — who despise the country they left and want to assimilate into the new country as soon as possible. But they’re rare: most people retain affection for and identity with their country of origin. They like, and are grateful to, the country that accepted them, and are willing to integrate if that is welcomed, but they do not want to assimilate fully because the national identity they brought with them is deeply part of who they are. They miss the culture, the gestures, the habits, the smells and tastes of home. An elderly Irishwoman I knew early in my time here commented that “When you’ve been here long enough nowhere is quite your home. You can belong here, but it will never be part of you; and after 10 or 15 years England will still be part of you but you will never quite belong there”.
And that was exactly what happened. Despite, eventually, becoming an American citizen, I retain a deep sense of connection with my country of origin. Its reflected in my media consumption (a lot of BBC radio), my cooking habits (I recently made Bakewell Tart for my daughter’s wedding), my reading habits (a lot of English crime, and British history), and even the way I dress (I think someone here once said I dress like a Grammar School History teacher from the 1970s, which I was perfectly happy with – certainly I haven’t changed how I dressed since the summer of 1976.)
Tebbit’s test applied to subsequent generations, as well as to emigrants themselves. The problem is this: parents share their values and enthusiasms with their children, often inviting them to adopt them as their own. And in healthy, happy families children often take up the invitation. (This is, incidentally, how cricket survives as a sport). For emigrants this means, inevitably, exposing their children to their home culture. They raise their children so that they are able to see the country from which their parent came as a second home: a place that feels familiar, the history and culture of which they feel special attachment to, when compared with other countries they weren’t raised in. My children love Morecambe and Wise, The Clitheroe Kid, and the Beano. The two with good taste love watching cricket with me. The wedding Bakewell Tart was not an imposition, but my daughter’s request (this same daughter when she was 5 came up with the idea of topping Bakewell Tart with icing made just with icing sugar and lemon juice, which is excellent!). That many descendants of emigrants from the subcontinent would support India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh when they play cricket is a symptom of the normal tendencies of emigrants to retain connection to their original homelands combined with their ability to have healthy and close families. You’d expect it even without the perpetual alienating racism that I know so many non-white children growing up in my generation (which was Tebbit’s target) experienced.
I’m probably unusual in the extent of my identification after so long. Most immigrants to the US from our archipelago seem at least to have adapted to the local dress sense. But it is only the extent of my identification, not the fact of it, that is unusual. I don’t think that Norman Tebbit would want it any other way. Surely, he doesn’t think that emigrant English people do something wrong, or even something that makes them not belong to their new country, if they retain an English identity, and encourage their children to share it. I belong here, but England is still a (large) part of me. Tebbit, surely, approves of that.
In the unlikely event that England and the USA ever played an ODI or a Test match, I would, indeed, support the USA. But that’s only because I am English, and therefore support the underdog. In the even unlikelier event that England and the USA were to play American Football, or Basketball — well, I’d yawn with boredom and I’d have better things to do than watch it, but I’d want England to win. So would my kids. Norman Tebbit would approve of us. Because I don’t think he would apply his test to us. But if the Tebbit test doesn’t apply to English emigrants to the US, and their American children, it doesn’t apply to immigrants from the subcontinent to England, and their English children.
{ 35 comments }
Tm 04.16.21 at 4:11 pm
Is everybody in the world supposed to know the meaning of „Tebbit test“? Is this a test?
PatinIowa 04.16.21 at 4:35 pm
We emigrated from Canada to the US sixty-some years ago when I was five. I naturalized eight years ago.
I cheer for Canadian hockey teams in the Olympics and World Championships.
I like to think I’d have come to support universal government-provided healthcare by looking at the massive statistical and ethical advantages of such policies, but who knows?
Harry 04.16.21 at 5:14 pm
Tm: Sorry! There’s a rather good explanation in the link below, with a rather eloquent long quote from Stephen Pollard, for whom I generally don’t have much time.
https://www.facinghistory.org/civic-dilemmas/cricket-test
L2P 04.16.21 at 5:19 pm
I’d never heard of the Tebbit Test before. That’s one of the most racist thing I’ve heard in a week of multiple police shooting. The racism is immediately apparent to me, as an American. I’m several generations from immigration, but my family STILL roots for France, Germany, and Hungary in the Olympics, sometimes against the American team if it’s a place where we’re a powerhouse. And nobody would think of saying we weren’t sufficiently American. So I’m rooting for France to score 50 points in Basketball? Or Germany to get a hit in Softball? Not even Rush Limbaugh would have though that anyting about my patriotism.
notGoodenough 04.16.21 at 5:20 pm
Tm @ 1
Rather UK centric, I’m afraid.
This refers to Norman Tebbit [1] (UK conservative politician) and his comments regarding the loyalty of immigrants (e.g. who do they cheer for at cricket – the UK or their home team?).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Tebbit
notGoodenough 04.16.21 at 5:22 pm
Oh spherical objects – Harry beat me to it! Feel free to delete my £0.02….
Slanted Answer 04.16.21 at 6:28 pm
“In the even unlikelier event that England and the USA were to play American Football, or Basketball — well, I’d yawn with boredom and I’d have better things to do than watch it, but I’d want England to win.”
Against all odds…
J, not that one 04.16.21 at 6:30 pm
Is this because the UK never had to think about their expectations for people whose parents had been born in various other countries until very recently?
Or is it because of some kind of principled commitment to Brits never raising any matter that might distinguish themselves as different from other Brits, and strenuously denying any sense of the importance of any such that might happen to “accidentally present itself”? (Of course, that kind of roundabout way of talking, which I was once told was how all English people did it, is surely class-based.)
Neville Morley 04.16.21 at 8:33 pm
Tebbit would be entirely indifferent as to whether you cheered for England or the USA in basketball, as the whole point of the test is that it is applied only to non-white immigrants to the UK – no objection to ex-pat Aussies cheering Australia – and even if they pass on one occasion that’s never enough.
peterv 04.16.21 at 8:51 pm
Former Australian politician Robert Ray had an Indian grandfather. He is also a cricket tragic. Asked once by a journalist which cricket team he supported, he gave his own version of the Tebbit test, the Ray Test: He always supported Australia unless they playing India, in which case he supported India. He had no trouble being a loyal Australian Senator and Defence Minister.
Sumana Harihareswara 04.16.21 at 8:59 pm
Harry, I’m the US-born child of Indian immigrants and I thank you for this kind reflection this Friday.
Mike Furlan 04.16.21 at 9:27 pm
” Throughout the subsequent decade or so in which that extraordinary West Indies team dominated world cricket…”
Heard on BBC World Service many years ago:
An West Indies Fan, during a bad day for England:
“West Indies…can be beaten”
“But not in your lifetime!”
At which point the English batter attacked the crowd.
At least that is how I remember it.
Philip Koop 04.17.21 at 12:29 am
I am a Canadian. A white Canadian. And while I am ready to be corrected on this point, I suspect that Norman Tebbit could bear the prospect of my emigration to the UK with equanimity.
But asking me which cricket team I support is a category error. Like, my answer is “say ‘ice’ hockey again, motherfucker, I dare you”.
And so it is difficult for me to believe that this “Tebbit test” is proposed in good faith.
John Quiggin 04.17.21 at 2:13 am
One point about the Tebbitt test is that the UK allows dual citizenship. As far as I can tell, this provision was introduced by the Conservative government of which Tebbitt was a member, in 1981. If we are to take Tebbitt even minimally seriously, he’s saying that this provision ought to be revoked.
This seems to be the case in lots of countries where people complain about “dual loyalties”, but don’t seem to be bothered by dual citizenship.
In Australia, by contrast, you can’t be a Member of Parliament even if you are merely entitled to become a citizen of a country you may never have visited. This leftover provision in our Constitution rigidly interpreted by our moronic High Court has been the source of much pointless disruption.
Matt 04.17.21 at 3:06 am
In Australia, by contrast, you can’t be a Member of Parliament even if you are merely entitled to become a citizen of a country you may never have visited. This leftover provision in our Constitution rigidly interpreted by our moronic High Court has been the source of much pointless disruption.
I moved to Australia just after this started to become a big political issue. I thought for sure that there would be a move to amend the constitution. (The Australian constitution is somewhat difficult to amend, but less hard than the US constitution, which has of course been amended many times.) The rule, especially as written and interpreted by the High Court, was obviously dumb, and I didn’t see anyone speaking in favor of it, at least in its current form. And yet…nothing at all happened. There was no serious move to amend the constitution. People agreed that it was bad, but seemed to say that they’d just have to accept it. It was what it was. I found this really surprising, but in time it has come to seem distinctly Australian, in a way that I still have a hard time assimilating to.
J-D 04.17.21 at 3:25 am
I began reading thinking ‘What is the Tebbit test? Why is this not being explained?’ However, by the end of the post I’d pretty much figured it out.
In Australia dual citizens can’t be MPs, but Australia doesn’t have a general ban on dual citizenship.
John Quiggin 04.17.21 at 4:16 am
Matt @15 There were a surprising number of people who defended the rule on the merits and a much larger number whose response was driven by schadenfreude, given general dislike of politicians.
On the other hand, the members affected were (AFAICT) all re-elected once their situation was regularised, and Senators were replaced by someone from the same party. Fixing things that way, and putting up with the silly hoops seemed easier than fixing the constitution.
J-D 04.17.21 at 6:42 am
ALP governments have made a number of unsuccessful attempts to secure approval for a variety of constitutional amendments. I have no evidence for this, but I have a sneaking suspicion that many politicians on the other side have come to perceive amending the constitution as a Labor kind of idea and therefore to oppose the idea of constitutional amendment in general; and another sneaking suspicion, also without evidence, that many of them are reluctant to support even the most anodyne of constitutional amendments because they feel that once the general population gets a taste of that kind of power to change the system they’ll want more.
CasparC 04.17.21 at 7:03 am
So if being English doesn’t necessarily mean you would support England in a sporting contest, what is the words or words to describe someone who is English and Supports England. Am I an ‘England supporting Englishman’?
Peter T 04.17.21 at 7:41 am
Tebbit was just being his silly reactionary self (and from the interview, has not changed). A moment’s reflection on his boyhood – when Empire was fading but still a thing – would have shown him a great many British with multiple loyalties (which cricket side would a British Indian Army officer cheer for?)
My grandmother (3rd generation, never left Australia) could fiercely hold that Australia was the best country in the world, hate the English in Ireland generally and Cromwell in particular and respect the monarchy.
Saurs 04.17.21 at 10:29 am
That’s as it may be for the cricket, but I have long labored under the impression that reflexively rooting against one’s national* team—or at least resenting their victory—captures the very essence of English character (that is, the casual fan by strictly English terms is a little Lillelien at heart, and not a Wolstenholme).
*certainly true of some club teams, too, in spite of the soppiness and jingoist nature of the anthems which are presumably more about glorifying the hooliganism adjacent to field play
Philip 04.17.21 at 11:53 am
I started following cricket in the 90s when England were the undedogs, so there was no tension there. Durham are my county team so really my expectation of cricket was that my team would lose most matches. It always seemed to me that English thing was to support the underdog if you were neutral between the teams but would support ‘your’ team even if they were favourites. I thought the cricketing thing to do was support England while admiring and respecting the brilliant play of West Indies and Australia. The Tebbit just seemed an obviously wrong expectation and hypocritical as it was clearly not intended to apply to British expats. Also Fire in Babylon is a great documentary about the West Indies team in the 70s if anyone wants to know more about it.
CasparC 04.17.21 at 5:28 pm
If you want to get your head round the complexity of race and identity, just Google up Anthony Ekundayo Lennon.
Tom Hurka 04.18.21 at 12:32 am
Americans don’t even pretend to root for the underdog. If an NBA all-star team were playing a collection of midgets from San Marino the American crowd would be screaming “USA! USA!” and demanding an even greater pummeling. Americans fawn over “winners” and so root for the overdog. Brits at least make a pretense, and sometimes the reality, of the opposite. (In international sports except hockey we Canadians are always underdogs and so get to root for ourselves.)
Re West Indies cricket: my first exposure to the game, as a recently arrived grad student in the UK, was the 1976 test matches and you couldn’t help rooting for the WI team they were so classy. Not underdogs athletically, but certainly politically, so I think that was OK.
And was that team the inspiration for using “Soul Limbo” as the theme music for BBC-TV cricket coverage? Great tune!
Matt 04.18.21 at 8:00 am
Americans don’t even pretend to root for the underdog.
I take it you’ve never met any Chicago Cubs, or NY Mets, or Cleveland Indians fans, Tom? (I assume there are similar situations for other major sports, but the baseball ones are the ones I know best.)
reason 04.21.21 at 3:05 pm
sI’m an Aussie who has lived in Germany for over 30 years. When the Australian football (soccer) teams plays against the German teams. I support the Australian team (who invariably loses). Otherwise I support the German team. But my daughters I think would support the German team or be neutral. I would think this is normal.
But it is difficult for the lots of people of Turkish because players of Turkish descent who are German born play both in the German team and the Turkish team, so it is not just their identity that is an issue, but the identity of the team.
Boyo 04.21.21 at 9:07 pm
Really interesting read. There are two Englands. England of the seas and England of the shires. Both have good sides and bad sides. But Tebbit is a man of the shires and his Tebbit test reflects that mentality. So too, I feel does your comment about Grieg: he’s as Anglo-Saxon blooded as Tebbit himself and his “South Africanness†the result of a period in British history when poor Black Country people were sent to the eastern cape to form a buffer between warring Afrikaners and Xhosa. The accent which you mention is Black Country derivative – not a Dutch accent. Tebbit failed to realize we were all linked through Empire (for better or worse) and I can’t help but feel that you do to with a view of England rooted in a shire mentality, rather than the globalist mentality that forged the global game.
J-D 04.22.21 at 12:05 am
When the Australian national team plays cricket, I am indifferent to the outcome. I do hope nobody gets injured or killed, though.
oldster 04.22.21 at 1:11 am
Tom at 24:
“Americans don’t even pretend to root for the underdog.”
I don’t deny that there is a character-flaw of roughly this shape in America’s attitude towards foreign teams.
But as Matt points out, Americans can and do root for underdogs all of the time on the domestic scene. Can, do, and must. Even if we are world-beaters in basketball, not every team in America can beat every other team in America in every match — on average, American teams lose to American teams about half the time they are matched against them.
So American fans are quite accustomed to losing, and to rooting for losing teams, and we have our own rituals and postures and protocols for how to root for underdogs and how to suffer along with perennial under-performers and sad-sacks and disappointments. In all of our national sports there are multi-year dynasties of gleaming success and anti-dynasties of wincing failure and fans who line up behind both sides, year after year.
It’s a shame that we don’t show this more openly on the international stage, but it is most definitely an aspect of our national character.
Kenneth Oliver 04.22.21 at 10:19 am
Jd@28 – “When the Australian national team plays cricket, I am indifferent to the outcome. I do hope nobody gets injured or killed, though.”
What? Even if they’re poms?
Phil H 04.22.21 at 11:44 am
I haven’t thought about this for years. And I agree that in its original formulation, the “Tebbit test” was probably nothing more than a bit of racist nonsense.
But I wonder if there is a not unreasonable idea inside it. I think it would be something like this: If someone immigrates into my country, I would like to know that they are willing to be part of my community on some level. If someone were to immigrate to my country and in fact disagree with all aspects of my country – its culture, its laws, its policies – then I would regard that as odd. Because citizenship in general is treated as something of an identity, as well as just a legal relationship. Supporting the local sports team, if one abstracts away from the specific, would be something like: the immigrant expresses some kind of symbolic (cultural) attachment to their new home.
Now, in fact, I doubt that any reasonable version of the Tebbit test can be constructed, because even if I’m right, and it would be good for immigrants to form symbolic attachments to their new home, those attachments can be infinitely various, so any single version will just be silly. And I’d also be very sympathetic to the claim that any specific form of a Tebbit-style test will sound racist and unwelcoming, so should not be bandied about. But I still think that it can be motivated by a reasonable hope that the people in my country can be part of my cultural community.
J-D 04.23.21 at 7:25 am
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You’re so funny! Did you think of that one all by yourself or did you have help?
J-D 04.24.21 at 1:20 am
I think Phil H has thought through some of the issues that should be thought through, but I think something worthwhile can be added by thinking them through slightly more deeply.
I agree; but the point that the variation in possible forms of attachment is indefinitely large has further implications, as follows.
Just by itself, the fact that people have immigrated to my country is evidence that those people are willing to be part of my community on some level. Given that the variation in possible forms of attachment is indefinitely large, somebody who was not willing to be part of my community on any level would not immigrate to my country.
For somebody who disagreed with all aspects of my country to seek to immigrate here would be more than simply odd; it’s too odd to be plausible.
Abstracting away from the specific (which is the correct thing to do) leaves a condition so generic that the fact of seeking to settle here is by itself sufficient to fulfil it.
Phil H 04.25.21 at 2:58 pm
@J-D
Yeah, that’s probably right.
I think there are… three specific situations that Tebbit and other Brits have worried about. These are potential kinds of immigration that do not include cultural attachment.
(1) When someone immigrates purely for the sake of money.
This one seems to be a situation that people get riled up about (probably because they have some very mistaken views about how the economy works). If a person comes to a country only to benefit from its high wages, and seems to reject everything else about the country. I… don’t think that I personally can find any good arguments to support why this wouldn’t be OK. But it’s certainly the kind of fear that Tebbit was referring to: people from India and the Caribbean are coming here for the money, not for anything ele, and that’s bad.
(2) When someone immigrates as part of a family.
In Britain, the classic case was the wife from the Indian subcontinent who joined her husband in Britain, and then never left/was allowed to leave the house/cultural enclave, never learned English, never assimilated in any way. (I have no idea how often this happened, but that’s the stereotype.) British people seem to be against it because again, this is an immigrant who is not attempting to be culturally British despite coming an being a British resident & citizen.
(3) When someone immigrates for hostile reasons.
In the modern terrorists-under-the-bed era, the worry is that a person comes to Britain with the specific purpose of attacking it.
In each of these cases, the simple fact of coming (which I agree is very good evidence for thinking that someone wants to be British!) is apparently defeated by other evidence. And of the three categories, the biggest and perhaps most important is the first. Economic migrants are common, and if the story goes that economic incentives are a good reason to be suspicious that the immigrant is a non-fitter-inner, then anti-immigrant nonsense like the cricket test seems more plausible.
So I guess the right counter to this would be to build narratives where economic migration and cultural assimilation go hand-in-hand? … It sounds a bit grim to me, because personally I like multiculturalism, but I suppose politically I can see the point in it.
J-D 04.25.21 at 11:50 pm
I don’t think we’re substantially in disagreement, but again I think it’s worth probing a little more deeply.
I can distinguish usefully between three hypothetical categories of immigrants or potential immigrants. The first consists of people who are actively motivated to immigrate by a preference for the culture they wish to enter. The second consists of people who have other motives for migrating but who accept the culture they are seeking to enter as part of the package that goes with immigration. The third consists of people who seek to immigrate while still rejecting the culture they wish to enter. In the terms of the Tebbit test, the first category would include people seeking to migrate to England because they want to be supporters of England in cricket, the second category would include people who accept that supporting England in cricket in preference to their country of origin is part of the package that goes with migrating to England, and the third category would include people determined not to support England in cricket even after immigrating.
When I affirmed that everybody who actually does immigrate to my country accepts some aspects of its culture on some level, I didn’t mean that the second category is empty, only that the third category is empty. People who immigrate for economic reasons, for family reasons, or for hostile reasons won’t be in the first category, obviously, but they will be in the second: they will at some level accept some aspects of the culture, as part of the package that goes with immigration.
This leads to the question: would (some) people want to limit immigration to the first category and exclude immigrants from the second category and, if so, why?
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