‘Progressive patriotism’ cannot distract from fight against the far-right

With all due sympathy to Saint Andrew – crucifixion is no way to go, though anyone who requests that the piece of wood they will die on be shaped like an X out of respect for the messiah should probably check their priorities – I never really cared for the saltire.

Explanations of Andrew’s connection to Scotland are somewhat conflicting, but I’m most fond of the story that an angel instructed the Greek monk St Regulus to carry his remains to “the ends of the earth”, which Regulus intuitively took to mean Fife; there, Reggie promptly dumped an arm-bone, a tooth, a kneecap and a couple of fingers (out of deference to Fifers, you probably shouldn’t try that kind of thing today). In 1385, the Parliament of Scotland declared that all Scottish and French soldiers fighting against Richard II’s invasion would “have a sign before and behind, namely a white St Andrew’s cross”. The rest is history, or at least vexillology.

I will not pretend a wholesale aversion to flags – there are some that mean a great deal to me. Encapsulating ‘Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité’ in a simple tricolour is a far more compelling use of red, white and blue than certain other nations which have used the same colour scheme; to see the flag of the old Spanish republic is to think, unavoidably, of that republic’s death and those who died in its defence. Yet for whatever reason, even as a supporter of Scottish independence, I have no particular attachment, positive or negative, to the flag so often used as the emblem of that cause and nation (and don’t get me started on the ‘Lion Rampant’ – quite apart from its royalist connotations, it’s difficult to feel inspired by what appears to be a werewolf on bath salts).

So you can imagine how thrilled I was when Britain plunged once again into the familiar, fetid swamp of Flag Discourse.

Others, reasonably enough, do not share my indifference to Scotland’s standard, and recent events have left them vexed. In her column for the Herald earlier this month, STUC general secretary Roz Foyer wrote: “The country I believe Scotland to be – a welcoming, inclusive, tolerant and respectful nation – is symbolised by Saint Andrew’s cross.”

Understandably then, Foyer found herself distressed by the flag’s presence in ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ and its appropriation by the anti-asylum protests that have spread with disturbing rapidity from England to Scotland. Foyer warns that “we must all be on our guard to ensure the saltire does not and cannot become associated with those who seek to divide and other.” Such sentiments were echoed by First Minister John Swinney, who told press: “Our saltire is a flag of welcome – and refugees are welcome here.”

These arguments denote an urgent and justified awareness of the very present danger the far-right represents, which is to be welcomed; in the past, too many in Scotland have complacently presumed the country enjoys some rare national immunity to fascism and the instincts which feed it. We may hope the ongoing correction of this attitude becomes permanent.

Swinney, Foyer and many others are concerned not just by what is occurring in Scotland however, but with what can be seen unfolding across the border, which they fear may become a preview of coming attractions.

To hear some tell it, England has rediscovered pride in itself. This does not, it transpires, bear any similarity to the ‘narrow’ nationalism we in Scotland have been so sternly instructed to be wary of, nor – explain this one for me, please – should pride in national identity be mistaken for anything resembling ‘identity politics’.

As the St George’s cross began to drape the nation, Daily Telegraph pundit Isabel Oakeshott described the raising of British flags as “not an act of aggression, but a cri de coeur from a ‘native’ population that feels subordinated and unheard”, before adding as an afterthought that “it is not British flags but Palestinian ones that should be removed […] The flying of foreign flags should be banned altogether.”

This was echoed in the Spectator by the never non-frothing Brendan O’Neill, who gloated: “The Raise the Colours people are pushing back against the noise and the nonsense. Against the hyper-individuating flag of Pride, which promotes the sin of pride in the self, and the anti-Western flag of Palestine, which is really about expressing a frothing hostility to our great ally of Israel, they are waving the unifying flags of this nation […] to counter the divisive, separatist drift of British life under the unforgiving boot of multiculturalism.”

Obviously, it would be outrageous to suggest that this epidemic of flag-shagging might be anything other than organic, even if it was allegedly instigated and organised by members of Britain First and the English Defence League. Never mind the fact that turnouts at the anti-immigrant protests which spurred the campaign have been almost uniformly dwarfed by the pro-Palestine marches of the past two years. This, apparently, is the true grassroots voice of England. Pay no attention to that fascist behind the curtain.

That all of this led to the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally in London – orchestrated by Tommy Robinson, backed by Elon Musk, redolent with tributes the late white supremacist Charlie Kirk – should be a surprise to no-one, nor should the reaction it has inspired from their apologists: whenever the far-right prosper, the Left have no one to blame but themselves. Oddly, this never seems to work the other way around.

A consistency runs through those most delighted by the sudden inescapability of the St George’s cross: they demand not only an enthusiasm for the flag, which you can never really force, but a deference to it, which given the right circumstances and power dynamic, you absolutely can. This is because it is not the flag itself they care about, but rather what they seek to use it for.

This is also why, as Keir Starmer has haplessly discovered, it really doesn’t matter to them whether his living room is festooned with the St George’s cross or not; it only matters if he gives them license to use it as a cudgel against non-white foreigners, which – true to invertebrate form – he has promptly provided.

Plaintively and predictably, some liberal observers have wondered if and how the English flag can ever truly be divorced from the far-right which has so successfully adopted it. Unfortunately, the problem is that those who now profit from painting England red and white are not doing so because they hope to provoke a civil discussion about how multiform and infinite nationhood may be. They resent multiculturalism not because it has failed, but because they never wanted it to succeed in the first place; because a land in which many cultures co-exist and intermingle threatens the dubious supremacy of the only one they recognise or respect. Their argument – “this is our flag” – does not function as they would wish it to without the addendum “and it’s not yours”.

Over the course of my lifetime, numerous attempts have been made to ‘reclaim’ both the English flag and the Union Jack from the ugly political currents that seem most attached to them – to render them positive, non-threatening, even hip. Each of these cringe-worthy, try-hard undertakings have been met not just with failure, but with second-hand embarrassment for the sort of sweaty desperation that could motivate anyone to ascribe significance to the butcher’s apron being wrapped around a Spice Girl. ‘Cool Britannia’ is a song by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band – not a national identity.

The notion that flags might be divorced from old associations or invested with new meaning is a nice enough idea – it would certainly simplify a few things – but it runs into unavoidable difficulties. One does not have to be intimately familiar with Strafgesetzbuch section 86a to understand why there are cases where a flag is more than a piece of fabric, and therefore emphatically not open to interpretation. If some look askance at British flags, it might have something to do with what has been done in those banners’ name, and who is currently waving them.

Of course, there are those who refuse to accept that. Efforts must be made to reclaim these symbols, we are told – most recently by our prime minister, who vowed to “never surrender” the English flag (a poor choice of words, someone might have told him, when discussing the matter of flegs) – not just to deprive the far-right of their utility, but because any who do not may be accused of lacking love for their country. And so, like the Flag Discourse itself, the ectoplasmic spectre of ‘progressive patriotism’ rises once again from the grave.

In the Telegraph, James Kirkup warns that “the Left must rediscover its love of Englishness if it is to recover”, and suggested that “a strong patriotic leader who sought to claim the English flag and the votes of the English could end Labour’s knee-jerk aversion to ‘England’.” Naturally, only the basest cynic could imagine that a Daily Telegraph columnist could have anything but the best interests of the Left at heart.

With grim inevitability, Kirkup cites George Orwell, whose unexorcisable ghost you just knew would join the party at some point, and whose 1941 essay ‘England Your England’ is invariably dragged out whenever the question of left-wing patriotism is dug up.

England, Orwell wrote, “is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful about being an Englishman and that it a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse-racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it unquestionably true 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.”

Even if you accept this characterisation, one may be tempted to ask: Who gives a shit?

Orwell was many things, and a hectoring little puritan ever-ready to wag the finger at those bohemians and cosmopolitans he felt were insufficiently attached to Albion ranks high among them. Orwell would sneer that English intellectuals got their cookery from Paris and their opinions from Moscow; from the dutiful Orwell, on the other hand, the British government got a handy list of alleged communist sympathisers. If that is progressive patriotism, you can keep it.

More to the point, anyone on the contemporary Left still tempted to give Orwell’s argument the benefit of the doubt should remember that the kind of patriotism he advocated has – with the possible exception of Ian Dury – never come anywhere close to materialising in England. As the scholar of nationalism Mark McGeoghegan argued in the Herald recently, “the English left has singularly failed to articulate a coherent, inclusive vision of Englishness that would allow them to reclaim symbols of English national identity, and that is why it is so easy for the far right to co-opt those symbols, under the cover of patriotism, as tools of intimidation in their campaigning.”

Meanwhile, as Orwell’s legacy has seen him become every red-baiting conservative’s favourite socialist, the ‘Europeanized’ cosmopolitans of whom he was so dismissive are in fact the ones who have done pretty much all the heavy lifting on the British Left for the better part of a century. In Scotland, we have no excuse to forget this – the thought of Tom Nairn and Neal Ascherson was developed in France and Italy as much as Glasgow and Edinburgh.

“If you want to feel pride in your country, you must first turn your country into something worth being proud of. In that regard, England and Scotland both still have a long way to go.”

I can understand why those in Scotland, raised on that intellectual heritage and now looking with horror at how the St George’s cross and the Union Jack are being used, might feel the urge to hug the saltire protectively. Yet flags will always be exploited – whether by punk rockers or supermarket chains – and endeavours to prevent this rarely succeed. We should not let those flags matter more than the nations they supposedly represent.

I am an actively unpatriotic Scot; some days, I’d be content to keep the haggis, the whisky, the complete works of Stevenson and McIlvanney, and maybe a few of the choicer landscapes – the rest, you can junk. When an independent Scotland arrives, I would like it to feature the drug laws of Portugal, the nuclear-free weapon zone of New Zealand, the medical internationalism of Cuba, the unashamed republicanism of Ireland and yes – apologies, Mr Orwell – the culinary culture of France.

More immediately though, I would like a national immigration and asylum policy rooted in solidarity, compassion and dignity, entirely unlike that of the current UK government, or anything darkly envisaged by those who wish that British flags represented a place with far fewer people in it.

Something else worth bearing in mind – every moment we spend on these tortuous and perennial debates about flags and patriotism is one not spent considering the suffering or basic humanity of migrants and refugees, about what we as a society owe them, and about how best to brandish arms against racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia when the only mask they wear is a piece of cloth. It is hard not to wonder if that is precisely the point.

Still, should you turn from this debate and think instead of those who have come to our shores, now subject to little but anger and bile from the communities in which they have been deposited, who can expect nothing from our government except an oscillation between indifference and malice, ask yourself this: even if you were able to finally cobble together a progressive patriotism the passes the laugh test, what good would it do them?

If you want to feel pride in your country, you must first turn your country into something worth being proud of. In that regard, England and Scotland both still have a long way to go.

Failing that, we could take inspiration from our friends in the United States. If you can no longer stomach what your flag inspires? You can always burn it.

Main photo credit: Craig Maclean