Interested in politics, history, music, cricket, football, racing, arrers. SAFC fanatic. Love Cheltenham and Glastonbury. Proud North Easterner.Opinions my own.

Apr 23, 2016

Let’s celebrate St George’s Day and make sure that politics genuinely speaks for England.

It’s St George’s Day today. And it’s a day worth celebrating. We should use every St George’s Day to celebrate our sense of shared identity and what brings us together. It also gives us an opportunity to consider whether our politics is really bringing us together and whether, on both left and right, it’s genuinely rooted in the language, communities and patriotism of the people.

I’d very happily start celebrating Englishness properly – why not make St George’s Day a bank holiday for starters. We’ve got fewer public holidays than anywhere else in Europe, so it wouldn’t hurt to introduce a holiday that celebrates what brings us together.

What Englishness Is. And Isn’t.

I can imagine some people sputtering in their granola at the very concept of celebrating Englishness or making our national day a bank holiday. For some, the idea of Englishness or even national identity is an alien one. Little has changed from when Orwell talked about, “the really important fact about so many of the English intelligentsia – their severance from the common culture of the country”. But to the vast majority of people living in England, Englishness is both real and a sense of genuine pride. We shouldn’t have to wait for royal weddings, World Cups or jubilees for shared national occasions that bring us together.

A poll for British Future showed that 61 per cent of people think that the St George’s flag should be flown more often, but 67 per cent think that St Patrick’s Day is celebrated more than St George’s Day at the moment. Those who think that Englishness is somehow ‘exclusive’ should reflect on that fact that only 12 per cent of BME voters don’t agree that St George’s Day should be a bank holiday, and 54 per cent of voters believe that paying more attention to Englishness would unite communities.

Celebrating Englishness is entirely consistent with a strong belief in the Union and the United Kingdom. A recent poll showed that 70 per cent of people in England regard themselves as both English and British. Celebrating Englishness shouldn’t be seen as a reaction to the rise of Scottish Nationalism either.

And this patriotism isn’t of a rowdy Last Night of the Proms variety. As Owell said, “in England all the boasting and flag-wagging, the ‘Rule Britannia’ stuff, is done by small minorities. The patriotism of the common people is not vocal or even conscious.”

To most people in England, Englishness exists; it’s a positive force and being English is something to be proud of. What does this clear sense of Englishness really mean? Orwell called it an “unconscious patriotism,” less vocal than other patriotisms. In The Lion and the Unicorn, probably the greatest essay written in the English language, he said that “there is something distinctive and recognizable in English civilization… It has a flavour of its own. Moreover it is continuous, it stretches into the future and the past, there is something in it that persists, as in a living creature… And above all, it is your civilization, it is you. However much you hate it or laugh at it, you will never be happy away from it for any length of time. The suet puddings and the red pillar-boxes have entered into your soul.”

The Freeborn Englishman

English identity, of course, has more to it than suet puddings, pillar boxes or even tea. But there’s so much that we have to be proud of. For me, fundamental to this is the concept of the “freeborn Englishman” – an idea popularised by the Levellers, with its roots in the Magna Carta. It’s a romantic but important conception that Englishness is rooted in freedom and liberty, something ingrained in the soil and the people, given voice by Levellers, Chartists, suffragettes. To go back to Orwell:

“The liberty of the individual is still believed in, almost as in the nineteenth century. But this has nothing to do with economic liberty, the right to exploit others for profit. It is the liberty to have a home of your own, to do what you like in your spare time, to choose your own amusements instead of having them chosen for you from above.”

These liberties are expressed, of all the institutions, through the House of Commons. Michael Foot argued that, “no comparable institution… has shaped so continuously the life and society of any Western European state.” John Lilburne, the great Leveller, talked of. “the free Commons of England – the real and essential body politic.” To remember Rainsborough’s phrase, the great English radicals, who inspired people around the globe but are often forgotten in their own country, “the poorest he that is in England has a life to live as the greatest he.” The greatness of England lies in its ordinary people, not in its aristocracy.

1966 And All That

The English language, from Shakespeare, whose birthday is also celebrated today, and the Authorised Version through to Byron and Blake is also a source of enormous pride. 89 per cent of English people told YouGov that they felt proud of the English language, and think it plays an important part in their sense of Englishness. And this uniquely English use of language is still very clear in the lyrics of people like Alex Turner, Ray Davies, Joe Strummer and Pete Doherty as it is in English music, architecture and culture, which has spread English identity globally; and more locally, in the English pub, English humour, the unique beauty of the English countryside and the great games of football and cricket that England has given the world.

We’ll see this in the excitement around Euro 2016, when I’m sure we’ll try to convince ourselves again that we’re world beaters at the beautiful game. And we can also use the 50th anniversary of the triumph of Moore, the Charltons and all the other heroes of ‘66 to remember what brings us together. It might be 50 years since we last won the World Cup, but that’s still a crucial national touchstone.

Englishness and the left

A sense of pride in this positive sense of Englishness is still missing from politics. Too many, wrongly, regard national identity as divisive, where it is actually unifying and important. The metropolitan Left think that the St George’s flag is somehow a divisive symbol and some seem to feel a sense of shame in the flag, giving the impression that they must choose to leave the country during major football tournaments.

The left used to instinctively understand this sense of Englishness. Attlee quoted Blake about, “building Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land”; the idea of a new Jerusalem was fundamental to his Government. As Brian Brivati suggests in his terrific biography of Hugh Gaitskell, a sense of patriotism was crucial to a whole generation of post war Labour figures, believing that their country was “special because of its history and political system” and also, as Brivati argues, because they believed there was something special about the English working class. The post war Labour generation was not going to cede the ground of patriotism to a Tory party that they believed was associated with depression and appeasement and would have chosen Halifax over Churchill in 1940.

And let’s remember that Orwell’s patriotic essay was also about his democratic socialism. Many on the right are happy to quote the lines about the English intelligentsia, but happily miss out the rest. The essay was subtitled “Socialism and the English genius” for goodness sake and for Orwell, they were fundamentally associated. To paraphrase David Cameron on gay marriage, Orwell wasn’t a socialist despite being a patriot, he was a democratic socialist because he was a patriot. He put it like this:

“A Socialist movement which can swing the mass of the people behind it…wipe out the grosser injustices and let the working class see that they have something to fight for, win over the middle classes instead of antagonizing them…bring patriotism and intelligence into partnership – for the first time, a movement of such a kind becomes possible.”

Robert Coll recently called Orwell a Tory Radical. I’d use a different term and use the term “Tory Socialist”, which was used by David Pugh in his great ‘Speak For Britain’ about those politicians, from Ernie Bevin to Denis Healey, to describe those politicians who combined instinctive patriotism with a belief in social justice.

It’s a reminder that for the left, patriotism and social justice could go hand in hand. Orwell regarded it as unpatriotic that “a country in which property and financial power are concentrated in very few hands.” Today’s left could talk more about the importance of community and how it is unpatriotic to see talents squandered, inequality unacceptably wide and so much decided on the accident of birth. Talking about social justice in the language of patriotic national reconstruction is always when the British left are at their best.

There are still some figures on the left who understand. Jon Cruddas, for example, has spoken about the importance of Englishness and tradition: “a respect for settled ways of life; a sense of local place and belonging; a desire for home and rootedness; the continuity of relationships at work and in one’s neighbourhood. England once had this kind of conservative, common culture; it acted as a counter to the commodification of labour and to social isolation.”

Englishness and the right

Many Conservatives too have lost the ability to speak for England and lost a faith in common bonds that tie us together. Patriotism can’t be entirely nostalgic and politics shouldn’t reduce people to the level of powerless economic actors – homo economicus.

Some on the Right have retreated into a libertarian individualism, and others have reduced politics to little more than an extension of market liberalism, which weakens national identity as much as it strengthens it. The rampant individualism and utopianism. of economic libertarianism doesn’t have time for the common bonds that hold communities and nations together. Hayek’s motto was “movement for movement’s sake” and that is not something that protects communities or patriotism. For many on the neo-liberal right the nation state is a powerless actor in the face of globalisation and market forces.

Others on the right, although not entirely bound up with market utopianism still only identify their patriotism narrowly. For many, patriotism is about the crown not the people. Standing up against Brussels is seen as patriotic in itself, rather than considering the positive case for patriotism and England.

It’s important that the right start talking again about shared values that go beyond economics and aren’t defined purely by those institutions, such as the Brussels bureaucracy, that they’re against. Conservatives need to move beyond discussing Englishnesss purely in terms of things like EVEL and the constitutional settlement and should consider more about the importance of communities and what brings us together, speaking positively about Englishness and the English.

A patriotic, communitarian, socially just politics

For many in the country, party politics has become something that doesn’t really touch on their lives. Active engagement in party politics is a minority activity. Party membership is not representative of the politics of England and the social make up of the House of Commons remains scandalously unrepresentative, with a notable shortage of working class voices. With this in mind, is it any wonder that politics fails in so many ways to speak the language of the people or to understand the instinctive belief in community and patriotism that most people feel.

Many people have seen the industries that gave them economic security destroyed in the past few decades and feel that politics doesn’t touch upon their everyday lives or understand their concerns. Little wonder that turnout in some constituencies barely tops 50% when many voters see their economic concerns ignored, their instinctive patriotism mocked and are often told that they have little real power to change things.

The denial of this Englishness amongst parts of the Westminster commentariat is reminiscent of a conversation between Hugh Dalton and GDH Cole, recorded in Dalton’s diary. Dalton suggested that “Labour would only win power with the votes of the football crowds.” In response to this, “Cole shuddered and turned away.”

Some people in the Westminster bubble may not like the concept of Englishness. But shuddering and turning away cannot be an option for politicians struggling to win the trust of the patriotic football crowds. If mainstream politics ceases to be relevant to great swathes of people then either apathy will win the day or latter day hucksters with simplistic solutions will gain ground.

We should use this St George’s Day to celebrate with a glass of fine ale. But also to reflect that, to many, our politics has ceased to be rooted in our understanding of our communities and has ceased to be relevant to too many people. A patriotic, socially just, communitarian politics, truly of the people that speaks the language of the people, could be something that recaptures the imagination of lost voters. Having a Commons that is truly representative, a politics that makes a real difference to people’s lives and a discourse that has an instinctive understanding of common culture could help to make politics relevant again to most people.

Given I’ve merrily pilfered the Lion and the Unicorn throughout this blog, it seems only right to give Orwell the last word:

“The heirs of Nelson and of Cromwell are not in the House of Lords. They are in the fields and the streets, in the factories and the armed forces, in the four-ale bar and the suburban back garden; and at present they are still kept under by a generation of ghosts… There is no question of stopping short, striking a compromise, salvaging ‘democracy’, standing still. Nothing ever stands still. We must add to our heritage or lose it, we must grow greater or grow less, we must go forward or backward. I believe in England, and I believe that we shall go forward.”