Rowenna Davis

Because politics happens beyond Westminster

Can lefties do Britishness?

We shouldn’t be afraid to ground our political vision in an idea of Britain, of who we are and what kind of society we want to build.

By Rowenna Davis Published 15 June 2012 12:16

A royal supporter waits outside Buckingham Palace. Photograph: Getty Images

National pride? A royal supporter waits outside Buckingham Palace for the Jubliee concert. 4 June 2012. Photograph: Getty Images

Like most good teenagers, I had a lot of dramatic political revelations. This was one of them: we all have multiple identities. I might be a Londoner, a Brit, English and European. But the identity that matters most is our humanity. If everyone could realise that we’d all be ok. No more wars, prejudice or inequality. Everything would be great. Think kum ba yah with logic.

Now I’m older, I’m not so sure. Try loving everyone, and you’re in danger of loving no-one. There’s something cold about working from an abstract moral equation rather than natural affection. Reduce people to statistics, and we lose something important. So now I’m not ashamed of feeling a greater connection with the person next to me on the bus in Britain more than the stranger on a coach abroad; I’m proud that I do.

The left has always been wary of nationalism. Owen Jones tweeted last week “The more that nationalism rears its head, the less we talk about the tidal wave of austerity hitting working people across Britain”. People are worried about past atrocities we’ve committed in the name of the nation. About people carrying the flag for the wrong reasons. About the apologies we never made. There are good reasons to be skeptical.

But there are also good reasons to be positive about Britain. If you’re a lefty, you have to give people a reason to care for one another, to vote and pay their taxes even when times are tough. A collective national identity is one reason to do that. It’s a story we tell to bind us together. It wasn’t a coincidence that the National Health Service was born out of the spirit of the war. We wanted to care for each other. We continue to volunteer thousands of hours. It’s part of who we are.

If you want an example of positive nationalism, look at the picture Obama has painted in the United States. To him, national identity wasn’t bigoted or irrational; it was a reason to believe in green energy, health care and hard work (the Chrysler advert still sends lovely shivers down my spine). Nor was it about being introverted. To know what role you want to play on the world stage, it helps to know who you are and why you care.

So what is it that unites us? I’m not pretending the answer is easy. But there’s something about sharing space and time on an island in the middle of the Atlantic that pulls us together. Watch Britain in a Day, and you’ll see what I mean. You get this powerful sense of us living together, eating at the same time, sharing the same sunsets, the same holidays and working hours. Then there are our institutions. Our parliament, our football, our NHS. We’re struggling together.

And there’s something British about the way we approach this struggle. It’s not simple or easy to articulate, but there’s the gentle way we don’t give up. The quiet determination and common decency, the “caring as well as competing”, as Ed Miliband put it last week. The tolerance, the awkwardness, and the humour.

We’ve made great global contributions too. We continue to invent and innovate way above what our population and landmass might predict. We were the first country to industrialise. We invented the rubber band, the pencil and the combustion engine. We created the lawn mower, the jet engine, crosswords, water desalinisation, the magnifying glass. We unveiled the typhoid vaccine and the structure of DNA. Football. Hell, we even discovered Uranus.

Today, our creative industries continue to inspire the world and our universities to educate it. We still touch and influence the world from our tiny corner. Even if we don’t always get it, the people outside do, as Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi so eloquently explained earlier this week.

The left worries that putting one nation above another is immoral. But that’s what we do with family. Someone once told me that family is not who we share blood with, but who we’d give up blood for. In Britain, we share blood for one another, whether that’s through the army or donating through drips on the NHS. It doesn’t mean we’re justified in treating others badly. It just means there are bonds we just can’t break.

And people care. Do we really want to dismiss the 6 million people who participated in the Jubilee as suffering from false consciousness? Or the military wives that got to number one? They brought more people together than politics has recently. Dismissing the thousands turning up in the rain at the Thames doesn’t sound like the love and respect the left should show others. The Olympics. Team GB. The Euros. We should try and understand and work with it.

I don’t know what my teenage self would say to all this, and I’m not saying anyone who disagrees with me is naïve. I’m not even advocating a list of policy prescriptions. What I’m saying is that we shouldn’t be afraid to ground our political vision in an idea of Britain, of who we are and what kind of society we want to build. Maybe then we can have a Britain that lefties can be proud of.

Special Offer: Get 12 issues of New Statesman magazine for just £12

Tags: What does it mean to be British?

More from Rowenna Davis

View the discussion thread.

35 comments

Fri, 2012-06-29 20:22 — thewestisthebest (not verified)

Can the British do with lefties?

Mon, 2012-06-18 10:19 — Paul Flannery (not verified)

For the writer to say that she feels 'prouder' sitting on a bus in her own country as opposed to another is interesting, as this possibly says more about her own cognition and the inculcation processes which have shaped them. The deixis of small words ('us', 'our', 'here') plays a very important role, both in this article and in banally recreating the nation (Billig), and is a crucial element in the discourse of nationalism (Calhoun) which shapes our cognition of the world and our place in it. Sharing the same sunsets (as we do with everyone on the same meridian line), watching the same programmes, eating dinner at the same time...these are illusions which contribute to the imagining of the nation (Anderson).

There is nothing natural about nations, and there is nothing special about 'our' nation. In fact, the nation the writer talks about, Great Britain/the United Kingdom, is in fact not a nation at all, but rather an economic and social union between four nations. An interesting aspect of modern British life, for me, concerns our major club football teams. Football is particular and powerful reproducer of the discourse of nationalism, at national level but also local, yet most of the major football clubs in Great Britain are composed of multiple nationalities and have worldwide support networks. Does this make them less English/Scottish? Even international teams have people playing for them who were not born in that country. The GB Olympic squad has athletes competing for it who are not British and who until recently competed for other nations. Yes, institutions such as the NHS and Parliament contributed to constructing a UK national identity, but as the situation now shows they can just as easily de-construct it.

There is currently a battle waging between the SNP and Unionists over the constitutional question in Scotland, ostensibly two civic nationalist projects, but underlying both conceptions of the nation are very cultural nationalist foundations, very firmly rooted, not in 'a vision for Britain', or for Scotland, but in the discourse of nationalism which creates (and recreates) the modern world.

Wed, 2012-09-05 16:23 — Mark Stewart (not verified)

Background:
The conservatives outflanked labour by appealing to working class aspirations in 1979. Thatcher secured her position by dressing up her puerile jingoism as nationalism during the Falklands conflict. By promulgating British nationalism the conservatives have managed to associate themselves with the notion of Britishness which has proven successful in an era when many working class people feel threatened by the demographic impact of globalisation.

Fabian dominance
While top down egalitarianism has achieved much, it has failed to unite the working classes which would facilitate a collective focus on the neoliberal agenda being forced upon the middle and working classes. This failure is attributable, I believe, by the educated classes on the left wing, to bring the working classes with them. By dismissing working class fears regarding immigration as 'racism' and simaltaneously asserting the importance of multiculturalism the intellectual-left has alienated its own power base. Working class people created the labour party and the unions which buttress it, is it too much to ask that this same group within our society are listened to?
The French have a cultural connection to both socialism and nationalism why can't we have the same.
We need to acknowledge our national identity in order to unify and defend ourselves from the neoliberal economic programme currently underway. Begotry gestates in the womb of poverty and desperation. Free people from the rat-race of freemarket economic servitude by providing free education, a living wage, NHS and social housing and I believe they will have the requisite time and energy to contemplate the grotesque irrationality of racism whilst maintaining a sense of their British identity.

A guess
I am Afo-carribbean and as such during my youth I always felt threatened by any expression of British patriotism as I wrongly assumed it to be a reassertion of the racism that accompanied it during the 1970s.
However as I've grown and returned to the carribbean on holidays I began to notice I had acquired some of the traits which I had associated with Britishness. For example: a visceral destain for arrogance; tolerance; cueing and the consumption of gallons of tea. This realisation enabled me to see a benign side to Britishness as well as stoking a nostalgia for it.
In addition to the uk's principled strand in both world wars the plethora of scientific and technological advancements contributed by this country is admirable. I'm a socialist and proude to be British and I see no conflict between the two.

Mon, 2012-06-18 09:09 — test-test (not verified)

I thought Rowenna Davis wanted the left to "ground its political vision" (whatever that means) amongst pious middle-class Labourites telling the proles not to drink, to smoke or to have a bet? All while taking up council housing which was meant for the aforementioned proles, not for well-paid journalists/councillors/think-tank wonks.

Sun, 2012-06-17 18:56 — Tesco Shelf Stacker (not verified)

I don't think the ordinary British working classes of the left persuasion have much of a problem with their 'Britishness' - who they are and where they are from - faith, flag and family and all that. They know that not everyone who proudly flies the flag and shows some national pride is a bigoted right-wing fascist. Most of them are aware of Britain's ugly side but they also see the positive side to their Britain too which they try to celebrate...when allowed to.

However, it does seem that since around 1997 our successive elected governments and the media have been hell-bent on deriding, dividing and destroying anything linked with a sense of national pride among the working classes. I'm comfortable with the patriotism among the local working classes here and like them I don't feel the need to keep apologising for our past - instead preferring to celebrate Britian's positive achievements. I like George Orwell's kind of patriotic socialism - socialism but with a devotion to Britain and a particular British way of life. Well anyway, it seems to me that only the sneering and flagellating puedo-intellectuals of the left are ashamed of Britain and their 'Britishness' - and attempts to suppress it everywhere else has only led to the ugly side of patriotism.

I'll flag wave with the British working classes any day of the week thank you very much - we need our roots! lol :-)

Cue Plonk ....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqQRphZtv1M

Sun, 2012-06-17 17:59 — Herbert (not verified)

'If you’re a lefty, you have to give people a reason to care for one another, to vote and pay their taxes even when times are tough. A collective national identity is one reason to do that.'

Ah, volksgemeinschaft, Herr Strasser.

Mon, 2012-06-18 11:06 — test-test (not verified)

Oh, grow up. I call Godwin. If Labour cannot realise that - what used to be - its core support are the same people who fly the St George's Cross from their bedroom windows during World Cups, then it'll be sunk. Not that I'd mind that.

Sun, 2012-06-17 15:58 — Bob Catalogo (not verified)

Im with John, Campbell can never be labeled as war criminal. If there is a person whose forehead has crime writen all over, that person is mr Blair.
Desenhos de UNhas decoradas

Sun, 2012-06-17 15:48 — Brett (not verified)

If ANYBODY from ANWYHERE can be ENGLISH, then who ARE the English? What about the people who are English already? If someone asks in the future who are you? and what are you? and you don't have an answer, then all life would've come to an end. Nationalists such as The BNP's MEP's believe that you don't just 'become/pick up' a national identity when you arrive off a plane, it's inherited through your ancestors generations and genetics and biology.

Right-Wing ideas are about DIFFERENCE, they're about DISTINCTION (that men and women are physically, emotional and biologically different), they're about IN-EUQALITY, the left loves equality it believes we are all equal and the SAME it belives that as a moral good that shall be imposed!

Sun, 2012-06-17 18:01 — Herbert (not verified)

No, equal doesn't mean the same. It's the right that wants everyone the same - the extreme that loves one voice directing the masses with one thought. Libertarians of left and right feel and think and act differently.

Sun, 2012-06-17 14:36 — www.barometerbisnis.com (not verified)

Funny. do you think too much, it can be said that mere wishful thinking. not too sweeping is [...] [Read More]

Sun, 2012-06-17 13:50 — Mike45 (not verified)

I would not count Rowena Davis or any of her New Labour colleagues as remotely 'left' so them arguing about the left and nationalism is somewhat odd.

My own take is summed up in some lyrics I once heard 'better the pride that resides in a citizen of the world than the pride that divides when a colorful rag is unfurled'.

That is true internationalism. The New Labour crowd are far removed from such ideals

Sun, 2012-06-17 18:02 — Herbert (not verified)

I couldn't agree more with every point you make.

Sun, 2012-06-17 18:07 — Herbert (not verified)

'Democratic socialism is more aligned to leftie, radical ideology, social democracy is more in tune with centre left tradition. They are not the same.'

So when Rosa Luxemburg led a party called the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania she was merely a 'centre left'? And Lenin, when he led the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party he too was a 'centre left'. Isn't it the meaning of the term 'social democracy' that has been bastardised?

Sat, 2012-06-16 17:49 — harryhart (not verified)

I still don't really get why everyone's proud to be whatever nationality they happen to be - be it British, Polish, Korean, Mexican, Latvian, etc. Just once I'd like to hear someone say, "Y'know I'm really fed up ,bored and ashamed of being a Klingon, in fact I think we're a bloody disgrace to the whole human race".

Sat, 2012-06-16 14:53 — Clockwork Angels (not verified)

Id suggest Rowena that you read Billy Bragg's excellent peice in the National Trust magazine, he covers what you're trying to articulate with much wisdom and sense. And yes, he's a proud Brit.

Sat, 2012-06-16 13:28 — duck soup

To debate the definition of Britishness without even mentioning the ongoing contest for the arrangement of political power in the UK state places this article in the category of silly journalism. What is becoming very noticable is the Labour attempt to stop the drift of power away from London and keep the UK as one of the most centralised states in Europe by playing the British Nationalist card. With the emphasis on Britishness being the benignly overarching facilitator of a multi-cultural society and the only possible way to sustain it. In an interdependent world in which most countries,and most definitely including Scotland,are multi-cultural it is a strange line to take. Not that I'm saying that Labour are not genuinely pro multi-culturalism. But what they are doing is cynically disguising their attempt to help the Tories keep power,wealth and influence in the UK centred on London by issuing these calls to Britishness. It is the inevitable regression of a party that launched an illegal war and allowed the bankers to do what they did.

Sat, 2012-06-16 10:25 — Robert Taggart

The Left have one 'faith' - Socialism - to varying degrees.
As for National Socialists - SNP, PC, SF - they do more - more harm than good !

Sat, 2012-06-16 10:22 — frances smith

surely if someone enters politics with the aim of assisting the party they support becoming the government of that country, then they have a responsibility to take seriously that role as government of the country are within.

and therefore the welfare of those who live in it.

all this airy fairy nonsense about what is britishness, and whether we can love people in other countries as well as our neighbours is just your own personal issues, the job of a government is to run a country for the benefit of those within it, therefore a politician should recognise that responsibility.

whereas the job of a teenager in struggling to understand their emotions and the world, is an interesting struggle worthy of debate amongst family and friends, but not of great interest beyond that.

Sat, 2012-06-16 02:12 — Schirt Trausers (not verified)

I am glad to finally have members of the Left join me and fellow members of my political position in their view of the Nation. The Nation is, after all, a marriage of blood and soil - a bond that as Rowenna Davis correctly refers to as "unbreakable".

This organic unity and singularity of purpose that can come through the unbreakable national bond is something to be grasped and cherished - and as the right entirely abandons their traditional values for the protean and twisted values of the market, perhaps the future for a truly strong and united nation comes through Ed Miliband, marching on London at the head of a column of small business owners and concerned roofing contractors.

Fri, 2012-06-15 21:23 — Briar (not verified)

Why limit oneself to one tiny group. We belong to a species with an extraordinary history (probably not much of a future, if we can't start thinking of ouselves as united on one small planet currently being choked by our unrestrained greed, aggression and foolishness).

Fri, 2012-06-15 20:41 — simoned

I don't really know if nationalism is going to help if it's just on the surface, if it manifests itself only when they see the queen on the streets or when they hear the concerts made in the Queen's honor.
But if they go home and say: Tomorrow, I am going to work hard at my job because I want my country to be better, then it can help a lot (look at the Japanese they managed to get over WW2 restrictions and punishments by national commitment to help the country). jocuri

Fri, 2012-06-15 16:58 — j h g (not verified)

Very well-written piece and I'm inclined to agree. I certainly think the left hasn't a hope unless it develops a meaningful sense of nationhood. However, I've got one question. Doesn't nationalism (even as you depict it) inherently involve the exclusion of others? I ask because that seems problematic when you consider the asylum issue, and I don't think 'tolerance and compassion is part of our British identity' is good enough. Thanks!

Fri, 2012-06-15 16:09 — David J (not verified)

"there’s something about sharing space and time on an island in the middle of the Atlantic that pulls us together"

It's not really "in the middle of the Atlantic" is it - that's Iceland. Britain is closer to France than to the island of Ireland.

Nothing wrong with embracing British identity - and nothing wrong with also being European.

Also nothing wrong with being both British and Welsh/Scottish/English - the differences are really very small and mostly pretty vague.

All these overlapping identities are really about shared experience and living together

Fri, 2012-06-15 15:29 — Clovis Morgan (not verified)

It wasn't the "Spirit of War" that created the NHS. It was the threat of Revolution in the Post-War period that built it.

Sat, 2012-06-16 08:07 — Kif Bowden-Smith (not verified)

There was no threat of revolution here in the post war period and the population were happy and docile. You kid yourself if you think revolution was in the air then. Read some history books. It was the post war settlement that created the NHS and a really good labour government.

Fri, 2012-06-15 15:23 — DanBrown180 (not verified)

"We were the first country to industrialise. We invented the rubber band, the pencil and the combustion engine. We created the lawn mower, the jet engine, crosswords, water desalinisation, the magnifying glass. We unveiled the typhoid vaccine and the structure of DNA. Football. Hell, we even discovered Uranus. "

We did none of these things. Someone did. We - you and I, had nothing to do with it.

Fri, 2012-06-15 13:45 — Sense (not verified)

This is amazingly wrongheaded. You want to anchor your nationalism in an "idea" of Britain. Why not contend with Britain as it is.

Those left/liberals who have come over all nationalist love to pick and choose what makes up this left nationalist identity. They pick the NHS usually. So a vital part of identity was created by act of parliament as late as 1948. But if you are to use this as a marker of identity and pride why not use the legislation passed by the Tory government this year. They say they were to improve the NHS, why wouldn't that be my marker for identity? If you are to align nationalism with national policy why not those of Thatcher? Politics. At the first hurdle your idea of nationalism and what we should be proud of would be lost in party politics.

Why is Britain's version of caring for one another any different from say Sweden's? How can this be a marker of nationalist pride when other countries clearly do societal caring-for-one-another so much better? What makes Britain's version of caring and sharing better than that done in an unheralded village somewhere?

You mention Obama and his speechifying. The image he now projects in certain parts of the globe is that of a "kill list" purveying drone master. Is this your choice of nationalism? Is this to be ignored? Is his NDAA law passed to detain US citizens indefinitely without trial part of positive nationalism? Extension of the Patriot act? Extension of intrusive wiretap laws?

You repeat achievements of certain people and then add a "we." But you or I didn't create the lawn mower, jet engine or discover um, Uranus. Particular people did. It wasn't a national effort anymore than getting me out of bed was.

Nationalism is rooted in a feeling of superiority vis á vis other nations. For this country it is historical based in very successful imperial past, winning wars and a sense of exceptionalism in language; its not "our Football" (wtf), our shared sunsets or creating the NHS (which could easily be destroyed in the coming decades, would that damage your nationalism?)

Your weird sense of British nationalism actually ignores Britain. You say "we shouldn’t be afraid to ground our political vision in an idea of Britain, of who we are and what kind of society we want to build." But why have our head in the clouds searching for "an idea" when the reality is so stark.

I have no problem with the nationalism of the people standing on the Thames; most of them would probably be a lot more honest than you are being here. They may say they like a system that gives prominence and vast riches to people who just happen to be born into a family. They may have no qualms about Britain's history and believe the British are just that bit better than other people.

That's fine.

But don't then try to twist this textbook case of nationalism into a form of left/liberal political correct policy points because you want to feel comfortable at the party. Its you who dismiss the thousands of people who turned up in the rain at the Thames not those who dismiss nationalism for what it is.

Fri, 2012-06-15 13:28 — deaky? (not verified)

@Kathleen

You forget that journalism takes place in London, about London. To expect the author to distinguish between 'English' and 'British', not least with regard to international football, is expecting quite a lot. She's just a journalist.

Fri, 2012-06-15 12:52 — Larry Sportello (not verified)

The problem with Britishness definitions / discussions is that they are either exclusionary or they are banal. A lot of people could give a flying toss about football but that doesn't make them less British. Decency and good humour are great but I've met a lot of decent and good humoured people outside of the UK.

I've never seen it defined well - so is either a terrible concept or it is like trying to describe the colour red to a blind person. And if you can't define it, you can't prescribe it, nor can 'policy' do anything to reinforce it. My friend took the 'Britishness' test recently - he had to learn that water rates are included in council tax in Northern Ireland...in fact they aren't anymore, they are funded through a block grant. Things change.

Fri, 2012-06-15 12:48 — Kathleen (not verified)

How absurd to have an article on modern-day UK 'Nationalism' without even referring to the nationalist movements in Scotland and Wales. And again, we see the great totem of the 'NHS' held up as something 'British'. Is this writer, like so many others, completely unaware that the NHS in Scotland is now a completely different institution run by the Scottish Parliament and taking a very different way forward in terms of management and reform? There is no one NHS any more. Hasn't she realised?

Her list of events - Jubilee, The Euros, etc. . . she is aware that the Euros does not have a 'British' team playing? It has England, and good luck to them. I'd love them to win. But they win as 'England', not 'Britain', and how little do you have to have thought about this not to have realised the difference and simnply lumped them all together?

Indeed, throughout that article, replace 'British' with 'English' and the sense of it remains totally unchanged.

She's right; there's nothing wrong with Nationalism. The SNP and Plaid Cymru, for example, have shown us how profressive it can be. But she should really have another wee think to herself about whether she means 'English' or 'British' nationalism. Lazy journalism.

Fri, 2012-06-15 12:37 — Charlie Mansell (not verified)

In evolutionary terms 'co-operation' seems to comes in 5 forms: Family, Identity, Reciprocation, Reputation/Trust and Social Networks. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Super-Cooperators-Evolution-Altruism-Behaviour/d... All have a role. Progressives tend to prefer some and the political right others. In the end, though, you can't disinvent a form of co-operation! We need to work with them all and respond to all the differing values sets that are derived from them