The left’s attempts to invoke a new progressive patriotism will end in tears
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Version 0 of 1. With a ruthlessness to be expected from the Conservative party, Scottish voters’ saving of the union has resulted in the call for “English votes for English laws”, as if in parody of union saviour Gordon Brown’s own moral nadir, “British jobs for British workers”. There is an evil genius in capitalising on Labour’s work and using it as a way of crippling a future Labour government, which could be unable to pass English-only legislation, such as the promised repeal of the health and social care bill, without the votes of its bloc of Scottish MPs. Instead of the aftermath of the referendum being contrition and the promised “devo max”, a Scottish question has become an English question. It turns out to be all about us. It was equally inevitable that, with Ukip supposedly playing the role in Essex that the SNP plays in Dundee, the result would elicit a call for the left to make a similar shift. From now on, the issue is going to be England, England, England. Those advocating such a shift will talk as if they are trailing controversial ideas in the face of political correctness. However, there’s been a huge amount of it in the past decade or so. It stretches from Billy Bragg’s call for “progressive patriotism” to the coinage of Blue Labour as a riposte to the briefly popular concept of the Red Tory. “Progressive patriots” like to recall the forgotten histories of English radicalism – those popular histories that Michael Gove would prefer we forget, from the Diggers to Captain Swing, from the Chartists to William Morris – and remind us that English patriotism was part of their political make-up. In The Making of the English Working Class, EP Thompson argued that the myth of the “free-born Englishman” (always, in reality, a royal subject) mobilised social protest, as 19th-century labourers felt they were losing age-old liberties in becoming factory workers. In this way, nationalist myth can, in the right circumstances, shift left. If Nigel Farage taps into the tale of the free-born Englishman losing his rights at the hands of EU regulators, then why can’t the left produce its own version of the same, a south-of-the-border version of the rhetoric of “our union, our NHS, our welfare state” that Gordon Brown barked at his Scottish audience to such impressive effect? Like a lot of bad ideas on the left, progressive patriotism derives from the work of George Orwell. It is doubtful that many British soldiers in the second world war were carrying Orwell’s The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius in their knapsacks. Much more popular was less flag-waving fare, such as JB Priestley’s English Journey or Robert Tressell’s The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. But this book has dominated the left’s interpretation of the “people’s war” ever since. Orwell imagined that certain aspects of the English character – decency, privacy, hypocrisy – had inoculated England (not Scotland or Wales, which go almost unmentioned) against fascism. When an Englishman sees a goose-step, we’re told, he laughs. Orwell linked patriotism and revolutionary bravery, as did the 19th-century radicals. “Those whose heart has not leapt at the sight of the union jack”, Orwell wrote, “will shrink from revolution.” You might almost forget that the same writer had previously written that the English had “exploited their fellow creatures with a callous selfishness unparalleled in history”. Orwell’s winning combination of whipcrack prose and rampant flattery has helped turn 1945 into the English left’s eternal benchmark, an era when war led to the left’s greatest electoral triumph. That this combination is unable to be repeated is seldom considered. Supposedly, if the left can talk unembarrassedly about how great England is, then Ukip’s nastier appeal to post-imperial bitterness will evaporate in the face of our more inclusive, more humane version of “socialism and the English genius”. The problem in any possible switch from “regressive” to “progressive” patriotism is context. In 1945, however tenuous and hypocritical it was, socialism and English identity were linked, through the exceptional circumstances of total mobilisation and wartime nationalisation, in a moment of real existential danger, which enforced both equality and patriotism. In the Scottish referendum, most yes voters were motivated by a desire to escape England’s economic dominance and its inflicting of Tory governments on Scotland. Support for yes was concentrated not in the traditionalist shires, but in Glasgow – Scotland’s biggest, most multiracial city. The appeal to “patriotism” was interpreted by yes voters – rightly or wrongly – as a call to social democracy. On the other hand, if you look at the appeals being made by English nationalists, like those in Ukip, it’s hard to imagine a “left” version. Resentment at overseas meddling and uppity minorities makes up at least as large a part of their rhetoric as a generalised disgust at politicians. It’s impossible to imagine such resentment being oriented to the future, rather than to an imperial past. Progressive patriotism assumes Ukip voters are just dupes, that a hatred of migrants is just misdirected hatred of bankers, that racism is some sort of mistake to be rectified by a tweaking of rhetoric. But there is no leftwing way to convey English resentment at the various groups that are imagined to be having it better than the English. By all means, invoke the radical history of England – it exists, and some have living memory of it – but don’t forget that fighting on conservative turf will only benefit conservatives. This is one battle that the left can only lose, and that’s precisely why it’s being lured into it. |