On English identity and Labour
The language of human ‘identity’ often misleads us into
thinking about it as something out there
which matches something in here – a literal
‘it’ which is identical in both, rather like in a mathematical equation.
In this way you would have
an English identity for example if you somehow matched up to a list of English
identifiers which we can measure you against. There is an ‘it’ of Englishness out
there in this sort of account, and whoever has access to it can decree how
English you are by comparing their checklist to you and your likes, dislikes, activities
etc.
My point here is that someone
else other than you can carry out this operation of identity without involving
you at all. It is an authoritarian relation, attained by someone with authority
matching their knowledge of what an identity is against you and coming up with
a result on their terms of what these
‘its’ - of identity and you - are.
The same goes when we measure up any sort of identity –
to Englishness, to the Labour Party or to the left more generally for example –
it is our ‘it’ we are measuring up to
and it is us doing it. The activity of measuring up and prescribing
what measurements apply is what makes the identification.
 |
| John Denham |
For the Labour Party now, Englishness and England have become
live issues that many in and around the party have started to concern
themselves with – better late than never we might say. During the week I
attended the first seminar of a series at Westminster being run by the former
Labour MP John Denham, who has been on the case for a while now and is pushing
it further from a new position as Professor of English Identity and Politics at
Winchester University. You can see John’s reflections on this first seminar (entitled Does England Matter?), on his website the
Optimistic Patriot.
There were some interesting contributions from Labour
politicians including Lisa Nandy MP, Camden Council leader Sarah Hayward and
other MPs including Caroline Flint, Jonny Reynolds and Gavin Shuker – plus others
like the academic Mike Kenny and the Labour research expert Lewis Baston. I
also garbled out a few words offering caution on getting too prescriptive about
identity and favouring a new English national anthem as a great way to open up
the space of identity - in terms of something to be explored in a democratic process rather than administered from above. Toby Perkins, another Labour MP, has a Private
Members’ Bill on a new anthem going through Parliament, but there was little if
any mention, let alone support for this, from our gathered politicians.
It is early days, and the whole point of such processes
is to get where you’re going through discussion and reflection and further
discussion. But I couldn’t help but feel that old politician’s instinct and drive
to administrate hanging in the air. We can’t quite help ourselves in trying to
nail these things down – to assert and administrate who we are, what it (our version of Englishness or England) is
and see who goes along with it and who doesn’t. It therefore becomes subsumed
into the political process of drawing dividing lines between ‘us’ and ‘them’,
friends and enemies, demarcating who belongs and who doesn’t. In turn this
defeats what should surely be the object of letting more positive, inclusive
versions of Englishness flourish (than those which are commonplace at the
moment).
There are significant dangers for the wider Labour and
liberal-left families here, for Englishness as identity at the moment often manifests itself as a negativity (both in relating others and ourselves to it), a
defensiveness and as victimhood. Moreover, that defensiveness and victimhood is
largely directed at things that the dominant factions in Labour and the wider liberal-left
world uphold –particularly continual mass immigration. Labour’s tendency in talking
to itself and fixing its own identity relations is often one which goes directly
against a large body of the population. Simply positing those on to England and
Englishness and saying that what we are is
what England is/should be would be disastrous.
In that respect I think it’s important that we shouldn’t
be in the business of fixing what Englishness
is. However you try and do it, what you fix would not accord with what a great
many people feel about themselves and their world – indeed it could easily
alienate broad swathes from the start. Rather it is best to seek to open it up,
challenge narrow definitions where and when they appear but not fall into the
trap of prescribing or defining ourselves around particular alternatives. Among
other things this means avoiding the tendency to always revert back to how
important immigration and immigrants are to Englishness. There is certainly
some truth in this account, but unless you emphasise how important those of non-immigrant
backgrounds are too, you find yourselves inevitably narrowing to an ‘us’ and ‘them’
that excludes as well as includes and defeats the whole purpose.
These existential questions are inherently delicate and
difficult to deal with, but for Labour they are fraught with difficulty, which perhaps
partly explains why so many in the party want to avoid them altogether.
Nevertheless, with polling showing how a consciousness of English identity has
risen significantly in recent years, they need to be taken on by any political party
with national pretensions, let alone one like Labour which has been showing signs
of possible extinction across much of England.
1. I agree with you in rejecting a 'tick box ' approach.
ReplyDelete2. I think you can self-define yourself as English.
For example, Irish immigrants may live 'here' for a long time but never call themselves English whereas their children might do so(but still referring to their parents' nationality)
3.Immigrants may be integrated,anglicised but not 'English' ???
4.English/British society at large will take its own,varied,views on 'strangers'.5.English/British ?
Astute as ever.
ReplyDeleteI keep up with John Denham's blog and have had some interaction with him via email. As you have noted, the attempts by numerous Labour pols to try to tell us what 'Englishness' is, is deeply irritating. They simply cannot stop their control tendencies. A tendency which tends not to go down that well with the English!
Lisa Nandy is no bright spark.
To me, this smacks of deathbed repentance and assumes that none of us have memories that stretch back further than 2010. The last Labour government clearly loathed the whole idea of Englishness and English patriotism, Emily Thornbury’s Rochester tweet was, to my mind, no aberration but the fairly accurate representation of how Labour’s elite really feel. Over the last 30 to 40 years the liberal left has thrown bucket loads of crap over anyone who even vaguely suggested the English might have a) an identity and b) the right to protect or even manifest their own culture. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve read or heard that there are no such people as the English and no such thing as English culture. There is a limit to the amount of times you can insult people’s identity before they will turn on you and that limit was passed some time ago. If you want to see how far the rot has progressed imagine the Guardian's reaction to Orwell’s “The Lion and the Unicorn” if it were published today. Watching most Labour politicians talk about Englishness has the same slightly cringe making appeal of watching senior management doing one of their ‘let’s get down to the shop floor and talk to the real workers’ stunts. People know they’re faking it and they, rightly, feel patronised. As the late great Bill Hicks used to say about rock stars ‘Play from your heart’ but most Labour politicians can’t do that because, deep down, they don’t feel they are, in any real sense, English. Reactionary politicians in Weimar Germany used to say "Treason against the Republic is loyalty to Germany”. Modern Labour politicians give every appearance of thinking that loyalty to the liberal left entails despising England and the English. I know your reasons for staying in the Labour party and admire your determination to change it from within but I feel, more and more, it’s a lost cause. Perhaps after the referendum is over and everything has been shaken up a new mildly patriotic left of centre party can emerge from the ashes.
ReplyDeleteI was watching Matthew Goodwin, psephologist type bloke @GoodwinMJ on some impartial programme the other evening, on differences between remainers and leavers.
ReplyDeleteLeavers "do like their tabloid newspapers" (sic) whereas leavers "tend to read the mainstream press". Explaining that remainers tend to self-identify as British, while leavers tend to self-identify as English, his intonation and demeanour barely concealed his contempt.