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Wednesday, October 11, 2006
So too the idea of a common British identity...

I found this news very disturbing for me and my ideas of 'Britishness'. I am proud of my heritage and culture, but it gets harder and harder as the state denies such an identity and ignores its own past.

An 83-year-old widow who was interned by the Japanese because she was British is now fighting the UK government to recognise her as such. The government claims that she has no 'ancestral connection' to the land of her passport and is therefore not eligible for compensation.

The issue here is whether to qualify as British an individual must have a 'blood link' through birth or ancestry. Diana Elias was born in the British Empire (HONG KONG) and has always held a British passport, but the fact that her parents were Indian and Iraqi made the Ministry of Defence claim that she did not qualify for any payment scheme for individuals held in Japanese prisoner camps because her parents did not come from Britain.

The court's verdict will reignite the debate on British citizenship, while raising fresh questions over Britain's relationship with the Commonwealth.

As Elias herself said, 'What this "blood link" means is that being British is not good enough. Being interred because you were British is not good enough. You only count if you were born here in the UK, or your family originates from here. If not, then you are another type of British. A type of British whose suffering and rights do not matter one bit. I was born British. I have always been British. My grandparents were British. My father was British and so was my mother. I can remember my father taking great pride in the fact he was British and so was his family. And I was proud to be British. I still am.'

'One of the things that makes me proud to be British and to make this country my home is that people of different races, origins and backgrounds have mixed here and made a success of that. There could not have been more of a mix at my 80th birthday party, but almost all of us were British.'

Our greatest strength are the ties that bind us with worldwide links and common ideals. The British government would deny this strength and its heritage because of short-term monetary considerations.

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