billy's values debate and bill(y) of rights

just finished reading billy bragg's book, 'the progressive patriot - a search for belonging'.
i enjoyed it, even though i've had sod-all of a history with billy bragg. i remember hearing him for the first time on the radio in the car in australia, circa 1997. i'd heard of him by reputation through friends, but never bought an album or followed his career.
i saw him for the first time 2 summers ago at greenbelt festival, in cheltenham. i think he was there for pretty much the whole festival, and shared podiums discussing globalisation etc with such luminaries as dame anita roddick. he also was the headlining act for the last night on the mainstage, and played a great night - just him and his guitar. i remember him commenting that he really liked greenbelt, as it was 'a festival that had real soul'.
anyway, his book seems well researched. i say 'seems', because i'm no great shakes on history, but what he writes seems to ring enough bells for me to ring true enough. his own family history is very important to him as he unwinds his thesis on what being british, and english, means today. the history ranges from pre-roman times when his own backyard was an impressive hill fort that was important for international trade, through the purpose and signing of magna carta, the industrial revolution, the early dockers strikes that led to the early unions, the 2 world wars, his own musical journey, right down to today's debates about values, and his own desire to see a formal bill of rights that he wants to see on the back of the (inevitable?) identity card.
and that's where he gets to really: wanting a debate on what he sees as the traditional british values of fairness, tolerance, and decency; along with a debate on this country producing its own bill of rights.
perhaps i'm naive, but as an outsider, born and raised in the one-time 'colony' of australia, yet someone whose own history is directly connected to the mills of yorkshire, and whose family fought at gallipoli, i think billy is onto something. he's wanting to more readily define what britain is 'for', as opposed to having about it a history and air of what it stands against. for newcomers to anything, let alone a new country in which to settle, surely its a helpful, nay, needful thing for the newcomers to have a clear understanding of what the new place stands 'for'.
in my post last month on 'beneath the veil', is a link to a doco in which a muslim woman experiments in wearing a veil, as she doesn't normally do so. at the end of the doco she makes a marked plea to, 'not tell us what you're against, but please, tell us want you want us to be part of.'
we're finding out about this stuff in microcosm in our church in our current process of redefining our purpose, values, and vision.
here's a brief view of how we're going about it:
part 1: your purpose. this is about what you are for.
part 2: your values. this is about what you are like.
part 3: your vision: this is about what you do.
its a bit like a cake really:
the purpose of a cake is to be eaten and enjoyed. there’s nothing outstanding about that, as its probably true for all cakes.
the values of the cake are about its ingredients. the ingredients give the flavour and texture. highly important.
the vision of the cake is what the cake actually turns out like. (remember that metaphors have limited use...)
your purpose and values will determine your vision. what you are for, and what you are like will be worked out in a concrete context.
for example, if your group and my group had exactly the same purpose and values (and its quite possible for that to be true), but we were in different parts of the country with radically different contexts, then the ways in which our purpose and values are expressed in concrete terms would be very different because of the differences in context. but people who encounter us in our different contexts would encounter a deep and noticeable similarity in what we say we're for (purpose) and what that feels like (values) to be part of, even though the way that's worked out in concrete life will necessarily be different because of the different contexts.
it seems to me, that a real problem with the idea of debating 'values', is that for a country like this with such a long-established history, the inhabitants with a long historical connection with the country think that the established values are 'obvious'. but the problem is, that for newcomers, those values are not obvious because they're not actually written down and its very hard to get a consensus on exactly what they are.
you could say something similar about the way churches operate too.
anyway, there's another review of billy's book here by john davies, someone more erudite and intelligent than me.
but whatever you think of what i've written here, i reckon billy bragg's book is well worth a read, and offers something of substance, and a realistic suggestion for taking the current public debate on being british and english, forward.