There are stories that nations like to tell themselves. The 'imagined community' tells a story about who it is, where it has come from, and where it is going.
Sometimes, this story is harmless and self-deprecating. The British? Why we're the bumbling, apologizing, tea-sipping chaps. We're Hugh Grant. We can bake, though. We're Mary Berry.
Sometimes, we'll get bold and make the story more inclusive. It isn't just about white, middle-class, English, suburban safe-ness. Sometimes we'll be daring and declare our favourite meal is Chicken Tikka Massala! How multicultural. How sensitive. How right on.
Other times, we'll tell ourselves a dangerous, deluded fantasy.
When the hour came, we tell ourselves, we alone stood against the scourge of fascism. We alone came to the aid of the persecuted peoples of Europe. We alone were a safe haven for Jewish people fleeing Hitler's gas chambers. We alone had the ethical integrity to say no to Nazism and racism.
It isn't that there aren't parts of this last point that are true. But it's dangerous because it's far too simplistic a picture.
Before the Americans entered the Second World War, we were almost alone in Europe in standing up to the evil of the Third Reich. But we stood alongside Russia. We also could not have prevailed were it not for the countless soldiers from countries which had been subjugated and colonised by Britain over the previous 300 years.
The 89,000 South Asian forces who were killed have been all but forgotten. The 134,000 who came from British colonies in the Caribbean and elsewhere to fight a war very far from home whose contribution has barely been recognized. The many millions of people who longed for their own freedom across the British Empire but put their dreams on hold to pull together and fight the Nazis.
How were many of them repaid? Over a million perished in the calamitous British partition of India. They became victims of British response to the Mau Mau uprising. They were treated as second class citizens when they answered the UK's call for workers in the post-war period – victims of institutional as well as casual racism.
None of this is to say that we should only be ashamed of our country. Like any imagined community, the UK has a mixed history and should be proud of the tolerance, pluralism and religious freedom which have been hard won over the generations.
We must, however, be realistic. We should now, rightly, look back with horror that more was not done to protect Jews fleeing from the Nazis. 'So much more could have been done to support the Jews – especially as the British knew what was happening in Nazi Germany,' argues one scholar. 'Many refugees were well treated, but many weren't. There is a degree of complacency about our recent past so it's important to dispel that myth.'
This complacency is what should drive us on today as we digest the horrific news that the British Government has opted to close a route into the country for unaccompanied child refugees. Last year the Dubs Amendment, fought for by Lord Dubs - himself a child refugee from Nazi persecution - alongside churches and other faith groups, was agreed. It said 3,000 lone child refugees would be resettled in the UK. Now it seems the government has backtracked – after only 350 were accepted.
What depth of craven moral cowardice is this? Have we learned nothing from our shameful failures of the past? The Home Secretary claims it is 'due to fears it was encouraging people traffickers'. Critics have been quick to dismiss this fear – the Archbishop of Canterbury chief among them. The Most Rev Justin Welby described himself as 'saddened and shocked' in a strong statement about the decision.
For such a careful diplomat as Welby to use this language shows the true extent of the feeling that exists on this issue. Welby, who recently reflected on the depths of the depravity of the Holocaust during a visit to Auschwitz, expresses better than most public figures the deep moral convictions at the heart of the Gospel.
It is our duty as Christians to call our country not to cave in to the obscene and selfish pressure to keep child refugees out. We tell ourselves a lie if we imagine that our story as a nation is universally good. It absolutely is not. But at our best, we can aspire to being a truly moral force for good in the world.
Not if we keep child refugees out. We fail not only them, but ourselves. We belittle ourselves by responding to such suffering with such indifference. Edmund Burke's old saying is almost worn out from overuse. Yet it bears repeating on this most inauspicious day for our country. He is reputed to have said: 'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.'
We can start by signing the Citizens UK petition on the issue, writing to our MPs, joining in with Bishops and other faith leaders in calling on the government to reconsider. Most important we mustn't close our eyes. Not now. Not ever.
Follow Andy Walton on Twitter @waltonandy
