In February’s edition of Progress I wrote a piece provocatively entitled England shirt Labour. I called on Labour to embrace positive English patriotism – or at the very least to recognise that it exists. I added the obligatory caveat that, while we can compromise with the electorate, we cannot compromise with the EDL. I bashed the BNP. I referred to Orwell and Attlee (no mean patriots, both of them). Yet still, for some, the notion of Labour as the party of England was deeply troubling. James Macintyre tweeted that embracing the notion of Englishness was the ‘worst place for Labour to be’.
If that is true, then are we saying that a sense of Englishness should not be part of the DNA of our party? If so, then we have a bit of a problem, because it is certainly part of the DNA of many of our supporters, as well as many of those who might vote for us, and many of those who used to vote for us. And this has absolutely nothing to do with race or class. I have been chided just as strongly for my Jubilee year republicanism by middle-class Asian grandmas in my ward as by my own working-class white grandma.
It appears that some in Labour refuse even to admit that most English people feel English, and that feeling English won’t make you flinch like a coward and sneer like a traitor to the red flag. Does a patriotic Irishman have to follow up his declaration of love for the Emerald Isle with, ‘of course, I don’t agree with the IRA’? No, and rightly so. So why do many on the left think that any declaration of affinity for England puts the speaker in a box marked ‘EDL, BNP, racist’?
We should never cede Englishness to the racist part of the rightwing – that gives the racists all the power in the world to appropriate our national symbols and story, and to call them their own. If we should reject Englishness because the EDL is ‘English’, should we also reject competitive sport because the EDL is a ‘League’? The EDL don’t represent England – we know that, and so do most people in England. By rejecting England because the EDL have claimed it, we do their work for them. We also find ourselves in a position of sneering at 90 per cent of people in England. That’s not only rude – it’s political suicide.
A conversation with a liberal leftwing acquaintance last week summed up this attitude. I told them that we were raising the English flag at the town hall in Walthamstow on St George’s Day and that I thought this was a good thing. They made an appalled sound as if I had just passed the port to the right. I then said that, as we have a large Pakistani population in the borough, we raise the Pakistani flag on Pakistan Independence Day and that, again, I thought this was a good thing. After some thought, they declared that, while it was fine to raise the Pakistani flag, raising the English one seemed a bit racist.
Some may agree with this attitude; it should be obvious by now that I do not. It smacks of condescension – exactly the trait that we dislike the most in the Prime Minister. It denies any possibility of a leftwing, progressive patriotism. Just because we hate Nick Griffin’s perversion of patriotism, doesn’t mean that we can’t wrap ourselves in the flag of Orwell’s ‘My country left or right’ (which should be required reading for anyone who uses any service paid for from the public purse). This attitude says that patriotism is fine for other nations (including the Scots, Welsh and Irish) but not for the English. Is this English self-loathing or English self-aggrandisement? Either way, it’s nonsense and, in an era of Scottish and Welsh nationalism, potentially disastrous. And, finally, the attitude rules out any hope for positive, decent, Englishness developing from the devolution of proper power to Labour politicians in English cities and regions.
That attitude really does sound to me like the ‘worst place for Labour to be’. When we sneer at Englishness, we send out a loud signal to the whole country: we don’t represent England, but we think that the EDL do.
—————————————————————————————
Mark Rusling is a Labour and Cooperative councillor in the London borough of Waltham Forest and writes the Changing to Survive column
—————————————————————————————
Why do you not mention English governance? IPPR’s recent paper suggests that the English are crying out for an English dimension to government – an English voice. Devolution to cities and regions treats England as a collection of disparate entities rather than as a nation in its own right.
If national government is right for Scotland and Wales (and practically every other nation in the world) why not England?
You rightly castigate those who sneer at Englishness, but you’re a sneerer yourself for refusing to countenance English national government.
You’ve distorted what I said. I did not say “embracing the notion of Englishness” was the wrong place to be. I said “England shirt Labour” was. It is. Especially when the party is in crisis in Scotland, which helps the SNP break up the UK, which in turn would probably lead to Labour being wiped out as a general election winning force. Forever. Nor, by the way, did I “sneer” at Englishness, though it would be easy to at a political party basing itself on a a football shirt. Grow up.
You hit the nail on the head – your concern is not about England/Englishness but the electoral performance of the Labour Party, particularly in Scotland. Keep the Union together so Labour can get a majority at Westminster.
Actually Labour can win a majority in England, and has done so, so I am not afraid of the challenge – at the end England is a reality so the party needs to deal with it rather than deny it.
Mr Macintyre, as you are probably aware (or ought to be), Labour has usually won the largest share of votes (if not seats in the Commons) in England at general elections. The last time the Tories won an outright majority of votes in England was in 1955 (they also won an outright majority of votes in Scotland that day, which hasn’t happened since). The idea that England is completely Conservative and conservative is one which people on the Left should have buried long ago. England has a long history of radicals, protestors and reformers who have done things whose benefits have been felt far from England’s borders.
The idea that Labour cannot win without its block of MPs from Scotland and Wales is another fallacy. Blair’s seats in England alone were enough for a comfortable majority in the Commons in 1997.
If Labour have become unelectable in England, which is doubtful, thanks to the cyclical nature of politics in England, it’s because they’ve made themselves unelectable, thanks to their racist, xenophobic attitude towards the English people. No party deserves the votes of a nation it’s hated and persecuted for generations.
I think part of the problem here is that the ‘English identity’ we see trotted out in bull necked, red cross on the white van England football hooligans is an entirely artificial creation. I’m old enough to remember a time before ‘Engerlund’ flags abounding and the ugly side of this coming to the fore.
It’s rare also because the vast majority of people flying flags of any nation in their gardens are unlikely to be our core vote, to be honest.
English identity such as it is, is highly regional – much more so than Scottish and Welsh identity, and a Geordie will have – football aside – very little in common with a Devonian or a Fenlander. Personally, I see no need for an English parliament that would replicate in miniature much of what happens in Westminster – given that 90% of the UK’s population lives in England. What we need is a greater degree of regional autonomy – Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cornwall, East Anglia having a greater say in their locality.
You’re obviously not aware of the major regional differences in Scotland and Wales. Scotland also has the sectarian problem to deal with. You opening sentence shows that you clearly like to stereotype anyone you don’t like. The crude, thuggish types, if anything, tend to be BNP, and they’re British to the core (the clue’s in the name). They are definitely not English nationalists.
Whether we want an English parliament or not should be decided by a referendum of voters throughout England. If democracy is good enough for voters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, it’s good enough for voters in England. After all, we all have the same citizenship and pay the same taxes.
Well argued. Billy Bragg’s “Progressive Patriot” made the same case as the article a few years ago.
Ryszard ‘s comment about regional identify is not really backed up by the facts (remember the referendum on regional gov’t) .