Britain needs a strong sense of national identity and national purpose to get through the current recession, Gordon Brown said in an interview published today.

The prime minister said that the process of globalisation was forcing countries to be clearer about what they were as nations in order to provide a sense of rootedness and community in a fast-changing world.

And he warned that, without a strong national identity, the danger was that people defined themselves by race or ethnicity.

He said it was important to view British history in terms of the growth of ideas such as tolerance, liberty, fairness and justice as well as through the stories of individual people and institutions.

Brown was interviewed for a BBC Radio 4 documentary on Britishness by the editor of the Spectator, Matthew d'Ancona, who has edited a forthcoming book, Being British, with an introduction by the PM.

The Spectator reported that Brown said the financial crisis of 2009 was not a single event, but part of the process of global change going on all around the world.

"Any nation faced with a bewildering amount of change – opportunity, yes, but also insecurity – needs a sense of national purpose," he said.

"People need to feel that the country that they're living in has a clear idea of what it's becoming and what it needs to become for the future."

Brown added: "This most recent financial crisis has brought home to people that the values that govern our communities and societies, the values that people think important: rewarding and celebrating people who work hard, take responsibility, who are fair to other people, who show enterprise, people who work for their community – are the same values that should govern our economy as well."

And he said: "I think everybody wants to be rooted. Everybody wants to feel a sense of belonging. Everybody wants to feel that they're part of a community.

"Globalisation is something that is here to stay ... but it actually forces countries to be far more explicit about what they are as nations. People want to feel that sense of belonging in what is an insecure and changing world, as well as a great world of opportunity.

"What I'm really saying is: being British is, in a sense, about subscribing to these values that have endured."

Without a clear sense of national identity, "we give ourselves a false sense of who we are", said the PM. "We define ourselves by race or ethnicity – which would be a disaster for a country that has many people with different backgrounds as part of it. Or we just describe ourselves in terms of unchanging institutions, which would mean that we were frozen in the past."

• Britishness will be broadcast on Radio 4 on 31 March and 7 April. Being British, introduced by Gordon Brown and edited by Matthew d'Ancona, is published by Mainstream in May.