Changing the system through confronting our history

Photo taken by Tess Cooper - looking through doorway of Alexander Haus at people engaging in dialogue over dinner

Last month I was offered the opportunity to attend a community dialogue practitioners retreat at Alexander Haus in Berlin alongside 20 other people working in socially-driven organisations across Germany and the UK. I learnt so many practical tools which I am now able to put into practice in my own facilitation and community work but for now I want to talk more about the emotional and spiritual journey I went on. 

I set up Collaborative Future with the aim of bringing people together to create inclusive spaces and workplaces where everyone is empowered to thrive. A lot of my work is about looking to the future - whether that's upskilling and supporting individuals to become their best selves, or coaching and facilitating teams or diverse groups to envisage a better future and take action together to create a better workplace, community or society at large. But what struck me most about the retreat was the way in which we were encouraged to focus so deeply on the past.

I've always been someone who's felt very few ties to the past and I've prided myself on that in many ways. On a personal level I feel it has allowed me to freely grow and change as a person, to adapt to my surroundings, and thrive in any given context. On a work level I've always been able to challenge those people who say "But it's always been this way." or "we tried that before and it didn't work". With no nostalgia for what was, nor regrets about what could have been, I am able to galvanise people around a vision for the future. To make people feel like there is a possibility of a fresh start and together we can make anything happen. I operate in the present and I always strive to make progress towards something new. 

But when the Alexander Haus team opened the retreat by sharing the history of the house, with all of the rich narratives and complex conflicts that it had been a part of, for the first time in a very long time I felt deeply moved. From that point onwards I was repeatedly struck with revelation after revelation as both my history and my vision for the future finally slotted together like puzzle pieces. 

Revelations about my identity and personal history 

One of the first exercises we were invited to take part in at the retreat was about exploring our own identity. We were asked to create a ‘cupboard’. On the doors we had to write the things we believed others perceive of us when they first meet us, in the centre we had to write what someone might discover about us within the first hour of talking to us, and then on the back of the doors we had to write the things that only our closest loved ones knew about us.

Aside from ‘woman’ and ‘white’, most of the descriptors I wrote on the front and in the centre of the cupboard were articulated as ‘either/or’ - queer or heterosexual, secular or spiritual, radical or dull, strong or weak, confident or meak, superficial or deep, well-off or broke. Perhaps this is partly due to the different circles and contexts I often find myself switching between. Mostly I realised it’s down to either trying to be everything to everyone or due to having suppressed who I really am because of my deep desire to be included or hide my true identity to avoid being hurt.  

I came to the realisation that there are many defences I deploy to protect myself that are learned behaviours from historical trauma (both my own and those passed down to me from parents). I realised I was still holding onto behaviours that were no longer useful or healthy. It felt good to recognise this and hopefully be able to take steps to start dismantling these behaviours but at the same time it made me  wonder why it had taken this long for me to unearth such core parts of my identity and history. I realised it was due to privilege. Although I had grasped much of my white privilege a long-time ago, and have spent many years being conscious of the doors and opportunities that my race and ethnicity might unlock for me in comparison to others, I hadn’t quite comprehended just how easy my privilege makes it for me to hide and to not have my identity brought into question.

Revelations about White British identity and history 

Photo by André Wagner “my privilege makes it easy for me to hide and to not have my identity brought into question.”

This retreat was the first time I’ve been in a group where that “privilege” of being able to go unseen seemed to fall away. Not only did our facilitators, Yasmeen (Director at Alexander Hayes) and Julia (Translator-trainer), curate a truly safe space where everyone was invited to be curious and open, but the attendees had also been carefully curated: I was one of the only White British people in the room. 

In many ways I found the experience of being amongst such a varied group of people deeply rewarding. The diversity of life experience and backgrounds within the room made for deeper, more meaningful conversations where it was perhaps easier to be more ourselves than with those with whom we find ourselves assimilating every day. During the very first warm-up activity we were invited to share what ‘home’ meant to us, and from that point onwards I found myself in many conversations about our respective upbringings. 

When you speak with people who weren’t brought up in the same country, the same family make-up, or with the same beliefs you quite quickly start to notice the parts of your history that are unusual for others. At one point a group were talking about their family roots, sharing stories about great-great grandparents and family traditions. And it suddenly struck me that my own understanding of my roots is extremely limited - perhaps because both of my Grandfathers’ were adopted, with one also being entirely estranged from his children. Plus we are also a relatively secular family which means there are no religious traditions that weave through our histories.

“Why do you wear the Hamsa necklace then?” a few people asked me. In response I talked about having an appreciation of religion, and in particular how I’d been drawn to the Hamsa because of the fact that it spanned so many religions and cultures. Ultimately when I learnt about it at 18, it had given me meaning.

But by the end of the retreat my adoption of the Hamsa held a very different meaning for me. One thing I’d noticed about being the only White British person was just how much everyone seemed to turn to me to speak on behalf of ‘my people’. For example I was asked under various guises to explain why the British people had voted to leave the EU. Once I got over my defensiveness on the topic and stopped feeling the need to prove the point that I wanted to stay in the EU, for the first time in years the conversations led me to start much more deeply understanding the motives of those who had voted differently to me, and importantly my own role in allowing history to potentially repeat itself. 

For example whilst I have always understood Britain’s imperial history as problematic, I had failed to see just how much that history continues to affect the psyche of average British people today. I’d never quite grasped the loss or emptiness that White British people may feel without the power that Britain used to exert within the world. I recognised for the first time that the entire White British identity and culture is built on extraction. That is we have a history of repeatedly extracting land, resources, traditions or successes and claiming them as our own. Of course I’ve acknowledged this for a long time, and this is why I’ve so often wanted to distance myself from being perceived as British. But now I actually felt the bearing this has had on real people.

Much like how insecure men cling onto toxic masculinity, Britain’s strength and identity often exists solely in relation to ‘the other’. Our history has caused many to feel (unconsciously?) that our identity can only exist through oppressing the 'other’. If the main thing that defines us is our exertion of power over others, who do we become when others claim strength and space for themselves?

Perhaps it’s that feeling of loss and emptiness that has left so many White British people wanting to ‘take back control’.

I realised that I am not unfamiliar with that feeling of emptiness. By the end of the retreat I accepted that the reason I was struck by the meaning of the Hamsa at 18 was because it spoke to a part of my life that felt incomplete. I wanted to fill my life up with the abundance that other cultures seemed to possess. In many ways I have been appropriating parts of other people’s cultures to make myself feel more alive and grounded - and my actions are part of the same problem.

Building for the future 

In some ways this realisation of mine is nothing new. I am an advocate of multiculturalism and inclusion because I’ve always wanted to create a more vibrant, tolerant and joyful future, where everyone is valued. Alongside that, for much of my adult life I’ve felt an obligation to make amends for Britain’s imperial, racist and intolerant past through seeking justice and equity for those who are often marginalised in our society. But what’s new is seeing what connects the two. And how they are both important for accepting my identity and consciously deciding who I want to become.

Some of the group stood outside of Alexander Haus at the end of the retreat

We need to stop shying away from our history, otherwise we will continue to build a future based on isolation and individualism. We need to embrace the parts of our history that we are proud of, and make amends for the parts that we are not, so that we can create a society filled with compassion, connection and collaboration. I know now that it is not enough for me to simply distance myself from those who do not share this vision for the future; after all, my past is more rooted and intertwined with bigots and white supremacists than I might wish to accept. It is my responsibility to confront the separation, the inequality and the intolerance that exists in our society and support those people to build deeper connections with those that are different to them.

Thanks to the team at Alexander Haus I feel more determined and equipped than ever to curate and hold spaces where individuals are encouraged to learn about their own identities and what grounds us, whilst also developing a greater appreciation of our shared humanity and what binds us.