Guy Aitchison (London, OK): Should the left embrace English nationalism? This question is now being asked with an urgency and seriousness that was previously unthinkable (see recent posts by Gareth Young, Mark Perryman and Arthur Aughey for a sample). The collapse of the Labour Party in local elections across the UK and Wendy Alexander's decision to back a referendum on independence will surely play into the hands of those that think it should.
But a note of scepticism has been sounded by Genevieve Maitland Hudson, an academic at Birkbeck; first in an article on CiF and then in a follow up on Pickled Politics. She questions the way nationalism is being linked to "localism" and environmental politics by Kingsnorth and others and warns of the dangers in trying to pin down "real" Englishness. It's worth checking out both articles but also the vigorous debate in the comments.
Comments
"Should the left embrace English nationalism?"
Yes - but I think for far too long, the word "nationalism" has been associated with a subset of it, namely the far right expansionist variety. There are other types of nationalism, and not all are necessarily exclusivist.
I just hope that Billy Bragg's ideas on English nationalism escape from between the covers of his books.
Funny how people like her only crawl out to denigrate Englishness. Any other culture and we wouldn't hear a peep out of her in all likelihood.
“Should the left embrace English nationalism?”
Hell no - left/right dogma is what we need to escape from.
I know a great many crtics of the left-right spectrum. However not one has been able to come up with a better alternative, IMHO. The nearest would be a spectrum between totalitarianism at one end, and anarchism at the other, describing the amount of governmental control of the state and people.
Post new comment