Progressives have been reluctant, for noble reasons, to talk too much about Englishness. The vacuum is filled with post-imperial fantasies and delusions of grandeur, with belligerence and nastiness.īut England is better than that and so is Englishness.
And after that? Not very much beyond a cartoon of John Bull standing on the cliffs of Dover waving his fist at bloody continentals. To be Us is to be not Them.īrexit is, in large part, an expression of this negative idea of identity: English is not immigrant, not European, not the saboteurs and enemies within. When you don’t know what positive claims to make, the easiest way to define yourself is as a negative.
It has been buried in other constructs: the empire, the United Kingdom, Britishness. The problem with English nationalism is not that it exists – the English have as much right to nationalist sentiment as anyone else – but that it does not know what it should be proud of. One of the things that underlies the great Brexit upheaval is the resurgence of English nationalism – there are Scottish and Welsh and Northern Irish Brexiteers, but they are peripheral to the real action. It is the same kind of nation that gives way to the vanity of Brexit. And he would have insisted that doing so was an act of genuine English patriotism.Ī nation that allows a Grenfell Tower to happen has lost the sense of shame without which there is no genuine national pride. He would have written about Grenfell Tower with precision and searing clarity and with a coldness that did not conceal the savage indignation burning underneath. He would have known how much money was saved by using cheaper but flammable insulation tiles on a tower block: in The Road to Wigan Pier he tells us straight away why no hot water system was installed in miners’ houses: “the builder saved perhaps ten pounds on each house by not doing so”. It had nothing to do with wishful thinking about national greatness. England urgently needs it now – and so does Europe.īut Orwell’s patriotism was not rooted in “all the boasting and flag-waving, the Rule Britannia stuff” he so despised. It is a tradition worthy of any nation’s pride. He represents a great English tradition that is sceptical, egalitarian, independent-minded and gloriously awkward. Orwell’s name resonates around the world but it does so because he seems, at least to outsiders like me, so profoundly, wonderfully and characteristically English.
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