Our place on the high street

I still have to rate the program, "The Big Question", as one of the most thought provoking programs on television. I don't know if it is shown overseas but it should be. It portrays Britain, in so far as the people who live here as an assembly of many different hues and even more a multitude of sincerely felt opinions which are coloured by background and cultural variations.

The rich sub stream of humanity that parade down our high streets is confusing to a person of my age, who remembers a very different high street, one more inclined to my own experience of life and growing up with the various totems which I thought of as my identity but which have had to be put aside in an attempt to come to terms with the new society.
Change is unstoppable and we are told, is healthy but of course there are winners and losers and whilst we educate ourselves to cope with, not only the change but the reason and the background for change, it makes us insecure.  
Cultural norms, not so much based on the individual but on either a religious or a cultural basis have bubbled to the top and in our previously fragmented secular society which has developed post Thatcher we have no composite collegiate to fall back upon for sustenance or guidance.
Now, being agnostic both towards religion and my English culture (part of spending so much of my life's outside the country) I find being British confusing to say the least, particularly when comparing myself to those who now lay claim to being British with whom I have little in common, other than my humanism. Is the belief in the common man enough. Can I adapt to a universal brotherhood when the people I would normally share a train journey with come from a series of backgrounds that are clearly differently to my own.
My tribe has surrendered its position to take up the comfort of a pragmatic approach to virtually everything whilst around us "the others" are feeling more and more sure of their own tribal affiliations.
Do our traditions, not withstanding the onslaught of PC and the need to placate "others" at every turn, do they mean anything and are they worth fighting for ?