Patriotism: the refuge of a scoundrel or the tie that binds?

Dr Johnson wasn't as sceptical as commonly believed, but how do we instil pride in our country without it becoming toxic and negative?

British people who like to consider themselves sophisticated are deeply uncomfortable with patriotism. The shudder which famously ran down the spine of Labour frontbencher Emily Thornberry when confronted by the cross of St George in Rochester was an extreme example of a feeling with which many are familiar: that the expression of pride in Britain or in being British is vulgar, crude and possibly a gateway to racism. Some argue that the English flag, as well as the Union flag, has been co-opted and hijacked by the far right like the BNP and even UKIP. Being proud of one’s nation and its history and achievements is simply not done.

This sensation is not new. George Orwell, in his 1941 essay “England Your England”, remarked that “almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during ‘God save the King’ than of stealing from a poor box.” Only eight years before, the Oxford Union, that cradle of leaders and thinkers, had passed the motion ‘This House will under no circumstances fight for its King and country’ by 275 votes to 153. It had caused a worldwide stir and shocked the establishment: the Daily Telegraph carried the headline “DISLOYALTY AT OXFORD: GESTURE TOWARDS THE REDS”, while the Daily Express wrote in tones of disdain which would be familiar to a modern reader.

There is no question but that the woozy-minded Communists, the practical jokers, and the sexual indeterminates of Oxford have scored a great success in the publicity that has followed this victory.... Even the plea of immaturity, or the irresistible passion of the undergraduate for posing, cannot excuse such a contemptible and indecent action as the passing of that resolution.

It is not an affliction which affects our American cousins nearly so severely. Although lurid paintings of patriotic scenes and baseball caps pledging to Make America Great Again have come to be seen as locating the owner well below the salt, it is de rigeur for US politicians to wear a Stars and Stripes lapel pin, and to disrespect the armed forces would be career suicide across the ideological spectrum.

This delicate balance was demonstrated by the 1989 song “I Am A Patriot” by Jackson Browne, an inveterate supporter of chicly leftist causes. Although it is an eloquent lament for the condition of the nation (“I said what I believe in my soul/Ain't what I see with my eyes”), it is careful to proclaim the singer’s love of America, from its very title to its refrain that “I love my country”.

I am, as Browne declared, a patriot. By that I mean that I am proud to declare myself British, and Scottish (and will accept Englishness as I was born and raised here). I enjoy, albeit with a half-smile of self-awareness, the pomp and pageantry of the Last Night of the Proms. I think and will proclaim that the UK, in its constituent parts, has made a disproportionately large and extraordinary contribution to the world: Shakespeare, Heaney, Burns, Milton. Newton, Lister, Jenner, Darwin. Turing, Crick, Hawking, Berners-Lee. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Smiths. Anyone who wants to be reminded of more reasons to be cheerful about Britishness should read a new volume by Penny Mordaunt MP and Chris Lewis, Greater: Britain After The Storm. It is stirring and uplifting stuff.

So I am in agreement with the now-unfashionable Cecil Rhodes when he said that to be born an Englishmen (let us finesse that as appropriate) is to have won first prize in the lottery of life. I was reminded of this in a taxi recently as we drove past Horse Guards on the way to a book launch. I looked at the neo-classical glory of the collection of government buildings, from the Admiralty past Dover House to the back of Downing Street. It was a wonderful spectacle, where I have watched Trooping the Colour twice, and it did make the heart swell.

I accept that I’m a romantic. I loved working in the Gothic splendour of parliament, and when in other famous government buildings I have a tendency to ask geeky and no-doubt-annoying questions like “Which is the office that has two doors so that maharajahs could enter simultaneously without either losing face?” (It’s one of the ministerial offices in the FCDO now but was once the home of the secretary of state for India.) I organised a conference for the NATO Parliamentary Assembly back in 2014 and it was held in the Locarno suite of the Foreign Office. I was as happy as a pig in the proverbial, looking at the long, gleaming table at which the Treaty of Locarno was signed.

That is not to say I am not a realist. I know that the United Kingdom has much in the debit column as well as in credit: although we helped abolish the slave trade, we were complicit in it for decades; the Irish famine was caused as much by British actions as by the potato blight; while our colonial presence was not as brutal as that of some European countries, we certainly exploited Africa and Asia and Australasia for our own benefit with little thought of the indigenous populations. In the burgeoning culture wars I find myself in an uncomfortable and shell-pocked no-man’s-land, instinctively against the historically illiterate and angry revisionism of Rhodes Must Fall but unable to swallow the unmixed draught of the bombastic right wing.

We all, I suppose, feel that the world would be a better place if everyone was as sensible and pragmatic as we are individually: but how do we, as a nation, square this circle? After all, I believe that a country must have a shared identity and a national sense of self for it to be happy and comfortable and to prosper. But we must not lie to ourselves about the blemishes on our character.

One way is to be forensic and clear about our meaning. We can think that the invasion of Iraq was a catastrophe, even an “illegal war” (I do not wholly subscribe to that thesis), while still honouring the soldiers, sailors and airmen who served in Operation TELIC and especially those who made the ultimate sacrifice while serving under our colours. That is not cognitive dissonance but a careful evaluation and a recognition of exactly what it is that we are celebrating or commemorating. We can respect Her Majesty The Queen for her careful and diplomatic stewardship over the past 70 years while believing we should have a republic (I do not) or thinking that the Duke of York is at best an avaricious scoundrel and a worst a morally bankrupt child abuser (I do).

More importantly, we can seek to come to some kind of shared understanding about what makes us good, what is noble and admirable about the British character, and try to project that into the world of tomorrow rather than fighting viciously over that of yesterday. Everyone will have differently nuanced views, but I think—and there is some evidence for this—that we are a reasonably tolerant, fair-minded, generous, hospitable lot, eager to help in small ways and big where we can, and instinctively hostile towards extremism in all forms.

Even if these qualities are not as evident as we might like to think, we can make them so: after all, if we believe it and act accordingly, then we are it. This is why the recent cut in overseas aid spending has been such a sensitive issue, as I have written here and here. It is a matter of pride for many that we spend money on helping the world’s least fortunate, and our levels of aid are high by international comparisons; but at the same time we are cautious and bruised by the Covid-19 pandemic, and we are conscious of the poverty and injustices which still exist in our own country. We need to agree how we can best support global development, and make sure we are effective in doing so.

I return again and again to the government’s ‘Global Britain’ slogan. At the moment, it is hard to fill it out much beyond a catchphrase, and certainly there is no-one in the government currently capable and imaginative enough to give it strength and form (except, perhaps, the aforemetioned Penny Mordaunt, paymaster-general, of whom I am an unapologetic fan). But with care and thought and nourishment, it really could be the springboard of our identity, our cause and, yes, our patriotism as we move into the future.

Think what we have to offer. The BBC has its critics, for better and worse, but it is an extremely powerful global brand. A recent study showed that it had a reach for nearly half a billion people, and was a very trusted source of news (the most respected in the US bar none, interestingly). Along with bodies like the British Council, it is a vital cultural ambassador for our country, and if we can mend its faults and agree on what is best about it, we can surely leverage its reach and reputation to broadcast Britishness to the world.

Of course we have the English language. We live in an Anglophone world: nearly a billion people, 13% of the global population, speak English as their first or another language, and while that is now primarily American English, because of the US’s unchallengeable hegemony, we can surely ride in the sidecar of the tongue we helped forge. I mentioned the inevitable Shakespeare earlier, but English is also the language of J.K. Rowling, J.R.R. Tolkein, Agatha Christie, Friends, The Sopranos, The Wire, Disney, The Masked Singer, The Bachelor, the NBA, the NFL, Hollywood. It is how Apple and Microsoft and Facebook communicate. It is the dominant language of Twitter. Every TV and film hit from another language soon has producers circling to make an English or US version, the better to broadcast it to the world. It is Netflix and Amazon Prime and HBO.

Our sporting prowess may be as often the subject of brickbats as bouquets these days, but football, cricket and rugby were invented and codified by the British, we dominate Formula 1 and hockey, tennis and golf are heavily indebted to the Anglophonie. Old Trafford, Anfield, Lord’s, the Oval, St Andrews, Royal Troon, Wimbledon: these are British sporting bastions which have a global existence.

Then there is the Commonwealth. It may be regarded by many as an ineffective club of former colonies, but it is still home to 2.5 billion of the world’s people, it operates in English and it is run from Marlborough House on Pall Mall by a secretariat with a British-Dominican head, Lady Scotland of Asthal. It is a body with huge potential to trade within itself and to champion ‘British’ values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

That rule of law is also important. Sceptics may think it is somewhat battered and diminished in this country, but it is still a stretch to say we do not have a free and impartial judicial system, a venerable and extensive body of law and highly practised advocates and legal scholars. The International Criminal Court is heavily influenced by English jurisprudence, and it is no accident that many of the foremost human rights lawyers are British or British-trained: Michael Mansfield, Philippe Sands, Helena Kennedy, Cherie Blair, Amal Clooney.

So let us try to make the best of patriotism. Our country is not perfect, and we do it no service by pretending that it is. But there is much to be proud of, and much we should seek to export and expound to the world. We have a good story to tell, and it can direct us towards a good future. So long as we are clear-headed and we avoid dangerous mythologising, Global Britain can be a powerful and beneficial force, helping us punch well above our weight. We will not agree on everything—it wouldn’t be very British if we did—but if we can cohere around some basic principles and work together while acknowledging and respecting our differences, then being born British still looks like quite a good result from that lottery of life that Rhodes knew so well.