The phrase “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel” is a well-known statement attributed to the English lexicographer and author Samuel Johnson. It suggests that individuals use patriotism as a flag of convenience as a last resort or a way to justify their actions. Nationalists like Nigel Farage like to portray themselves as being uber-patriots and dismissive of others who may not share their certainty about what is in the national interest.
Uber-patriotism and selective history
Recently, Labour has tacked towards safety by signing up to trade deals with India and the EU, and handing over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius by paying £101mn per year in rent as part of a 99-year lease to secure the Diego-Garcia military base.
All three deals have been called sell-outs and betrayals, with astronomically high guesstimates of cost in the case of Diego-Garcia. The Chagos Island deal has been portrayed by Reform UK as similar to handing over Gibraltar to Spain, even though I doubt whether many voters could describe where the Chagos Islands are on a world map.
This uber-patriotism has even changed the way that history is discussed, with Reform and some Conservatives complaining that the teaching of history in our schools has become woke, with too much emphasis on the slave trade and social emancipation in all its various forms, and too little about ‘our glorious past’.
What they seem to want is a return to history as a romantic pageant of Britain being top dog and exceptional, as written by Sir Arthur Bryant, who was not only an admirer of Hitler, which nearly earned him a spell of internment, but also a philanderer, plagiarist and toady (according to historian Andrew Roberts). He was, however, immensely influential with readers such as Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson, whose own legacies have varied over the past decades.
History’s dark and golden sides
A key touchstone was the pulling down and dumping into Bristol harbour of the statue of Edward Colston, which was a scene of delight for those protesting about the death of George Floyd in police custody and outrage from social conservatives, who felt it was demeaning ‘our heritage’.
In retrospect, I felt that dragging a statue, covering it in paint and unceremoniously pushing it into the harbour was an act similar to those carried out after the Restoration, when the dead bodies of the regicides such as Oliver Cromwell were dug up and hanged, and their severed heads put on public display. For me, it was an act of viciousness, and a better response would have been to add a plaque to the statue stating that while Colston might have benefited Bristol, his wealth was derived from slavery and was thus tainted.
For a while, there were similar campaigns to remove the names of Francis Drake, John Hawkins and others from signposts and buildings. Both sides in this culture war lacked tolerance and understanding, which up to now had been a key feature of being British.
The teaching of history where only the dark side or the golden side is on display not only lacks credibility; it demeans the past. We must understand that “the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there” (attributed to LP Hartley in the novel The Go-between). In our own lives, we have seen great changes in social attitudes that would have seemed astonishing some years ago, and this process will continue as long as human beings inhabit the earth.
World war two mythology
Britain’s social vision can sometimes be seen as trapped in a vortex of myth making in regard to the summer of 1940 and the second world war. How many times have football games between Germany and England been referenced by headlines about the second world war, or in discussions about the EU, Britain has been reported to be standing alone as in 1940? Even Brexit had overtones of world war two and the spirit of the Blitz. Successive prime ministers have styled themselves as being mini-me Churchills, sometimes even the female PMs!
We have recently commemorated VE day and Operation Dynamo; we will no doubt be commemorating the Battle of Britain in due course, but will we also commemorate Britain’s policy of internment during the second world war (‘Collar the lot!’) and the fate of internees on the SS Arandora Star or their treatment on the Dunera? Probably not to the same degree. Yet these events are also our history and must be kept in context to give the full picture of British history. Emphasising one side or the other only delivers a one-sided understanding of Britain.
Shaping a country’s destiny
Dr Johnson’s reference to scoundrels was his response to those in America in 1776 who portrayed their tax evasion and smuggling activities as being patriotic. I think there is an arguable case for tracing the present US tendency to global selfishness and isolationism back to the period of the revolutionary war. Tax, not the rights of man, drove that war.
There are events, which some call seminal, that shape a country’s destiny; with Britain, I would venture 1066 and the Norman conquest, 1215 and Magna Carta, 1649 and the death of Charles the First, 1815 and the Battle of Waterloo, 1916 and the battle of the Somme, and 1940, but we seem fixated on the last, as if that date and that alone were all important.
Flying the flag
Reform, which seems as fixated as anyone on myth and majesty, has made it a selling point to exclude all flags bar the union flag from being flown at buildings where it is in control. At one time, it looked as if county flags were also going to be forbidden, until there was a rapid change of heart.
All over Britain, there has been a tradition of flying flags of other countries in a show of solidarity, and there was an outpouring of that solidarity when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Now, for reasons of its own, Reform has broken that national consensus. If any country is standing alone against an authoritarian enemy, it is Ukraine, but within Reform there is a strain of Russophilia, which is not supported by British public opinion.
The truth about St George
In England, the flying of the flag of St George is seen as patriotic by some and redolent of the worst excesses of football hooliganism and racist rioting by others. Perhaps we need to reconsider St George, as he is not really a British or English saint. He is alleged to have been a Roman soldier from Cappadocia, which is now in Türkiye, during the reign of the Roman emperor Diocletian. We share him with 17 other countries, and he was not considered our patron saint until the reign of Edward the Third, who had an abiding interest in chivalry.
The Order of the Garter was instituted by Edward, and our previous patron saint St Edmund then fell out of favour. Re-adopting Edmund as patron saint of England would have the advantage of conferring sainthood on an actual person of known origin, who would be English and not Roman, while having the advantage of removing all the negative connotations built up with the flag of St George. England’s emblem would be a white dragon rather than a red cross. It won’t happen, of course, because tradition only seems to work one way, and that is with the status quo, no matter how shaky that might be.
Identity politics and free speech
Patriotism, of course, is the handmaiden of identity politics, where there are in-groups and out- groups. For some, the view is that we are righteous and you are not, even though you may have been born here or lived here for some time, because you do not conform to our accepted norm for national inclusion, and we reserve the right to say so.
Libertarian free speech advocates such as Toby Young are using their resources to castigate judges when a Conservative councillor’s wife loses an appeal over a race hate tweet or when Thanet Council has to redraft a public spaces protection order after a judicial review threat over foul language prohibition.
So, by that logic, it is ok to incite others to riot and attack migrants, but not ok to restrict the amount of foul-mouthed abuse used in some streets within Thanet. Would these same free-speech libertarians and patriots express the same sympathies if it were migrants rioting and using foul language? I would like to ask, but I don’t really want to invite endless rants from free-speech, patriotic culture warriors.
Patriotism, not belligerence
Can we be patriotic and not be belligerent and accusatory? Of course we can. We can be what I thought Britain was known as: a nation of tolerant, polite and understanding people, where strangers are not only tolerated but made to feel welcome; where free speech is defended but has reasonable limits.
No one has the right to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theatre, or to incite a riot just because they don’t like the cut of someone’s jib. A concern over immigration is reasonable, but not when it topples over into bigotry and deliberate, malicious misinformation.
