The Last Refuge

No, not something from an apocalyptic drama in which the final girl/boy/other has to find the final remaining beacon of life as we knew it. 

Far worse. 

Proverbially, the last refuge of the scoundrel is patriotism. Except that I think the proverb is wrong. The real last refuge is nationalism; a truly pernicious and harmful doctrine used as a cover all justification for all actions and ideas ('my country, right or wrong').  

So what's the difference? It's been probed away at for decades; one of the most famous expositions being Orwell's The Lion and The Unicorn. For me the basic distinction is relatively clear but of fundamental importance for the current depressing set of exchanges around the place of the UK in the world and in particular in Europe. 

Patriotism is fundamentally about why I like living here including the long standing mongrel nature of the country, far removed from all of the nativist nonsense and white identity politics which increasingly taints discourse about these issues.  

In contrast, nationalism is about being better than anywhere else, exclusivist, chauvinistic, inward looking and increasingly xenophobic.  

One of the most outrageous statements by our egregious Prime Minister was the infamous: '“If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere".

Where to begin with this arrant and dangerous nonsense. You can certainly take the piss out of it as this rather wonderful article does. 

However, it is also critical to challenge the notion that there is some kind of absolute dichotomy as she suggests. Many people feel absolutely no difficulty in describing themselves as having manifold identities. They see huge value in solidarity at the global level as well as at a local level. They are concerned about both exclusivist chauvinism and the kind of indifferent globalism that neoliberalism has inflicted where the gains accrue to tiny elites at the expense of the many (and which is indeed close to the heart of the resentment fuelling the politics of grievance being experienced in many countries).

We all benefit from wearing multiple hats; from seeing solidarity with others arising in various forms. A civic patriotism which is focused on the bonds between us is wholly different to a chauvinistic nationalism which emphasises difference and which for English people can never fully escape the connotations of empire, religion, war and class. 

As an unashamed left wing liberal who believes that political discourse should be led by values and principles and founded on equal respect for all human beings, the essentially arbitrary groupings of people on parcels of land that have arisen over the centuries are, for me, of much less importance. I know I'm an extreme example of this view but bear with me. 

It seems absolutely self evident that co-operation, inter dependence and facing outwards are the only way to make headway on the most important challenges facing humanity - economic, environmental and on security. Backward looking reactionary attachments to a little island at the expense of all else is wholly perverse. 

Yet the reason that it is so pervasive is largely down to the collective failure to come to terms with our history - particularly Empire and war - and in particular to stop mythologising some kind of inherent virtue of 'standing alone' on the basis of what was in retrospect a lucky escape in the second world war in which we were bailed out by our allies. 

The right lesson to learn is that we stood up to the most vile genocidal regime imaginable and made a huge contribution to defeating it. The wrong lesson is that we are somehow still a top dog. The British Empire was primarily a mechanism for exploitation and expropriation. Many in the 18th and 19th centuries would have been quite happy to accept that description because they felt that Britain had indeed come as close to perfection as it was possible to be. Our so called constitution and the mother of parliaments was as good as it got. Heap on some pretty nasty eugenics and the 'white man's burden' and you have a delicious brew of self justification. 

The Empire was nothing of which to be proud but it retains a hold over may of the posh white men and women that still wield disproportionate influence. Many of those who led the Leave campaign were actually brought up in what would have been described as the 'colonies' and harbour some ridiculous notions about the sceptred isle as a result. 

So when we translate some of this baggage into the current highly charged and polarised climate there are some very clear dangers. Polarisation has been massively exacerbated by the obscenity of the referendum on the European Union. There is now a real danger that beliefs come to be seen as cultural issues associated with identity and are manifest most obviously in antagonism towards people who are not from this 'nation' - obviously immigrants but indeed increasingly anyone from anywhere other than England.

In other words, language about change, about class and about identity, particularly white identity, has now become heavily imbued with a sense that it must be accompanied by a stridently nationalistic outlook ('take back control' anybody?) and that anyone questioning it is somehow a traitor. 

This is, however, a development that has been led by the very same posh white men and women who harbour extreme views about class and nation, well captured in this article which ends by saying : 

Xenophobia and racism are real, but not congenital. They can be overcome by treating working-class communities as places of worth and value, investing in them over the long term rather than through a constant churn of here-today-gone-tomorrow interventions.

The complex reality of the working class is that it’s white and brown, Muslim and Christian, builds cars and works at McDonald’s. Only by having a broad, nuanced understanding of this, and rejecting simplistic just-so stories, can we find solutions that will improve material conditions for everyone.

The War is again instructive. It led to the formation of close bonds in communities facing an external threat on an unimaginable scale. Listening to people from my parents generation who lived through it was also illuminating. The men who were in the army but had what might be described as an 'if it moves salute it, if it doesn't paint it white' experience of boring mundane life largely removed from the main theatres of war talked endlessly about their common experiences usually accompanied by raucous laughter.  The men who had seen serious action never spoke of it at all.  

All of them after the war were clear about the need for international co-operation to stop more of the same happening again. My parents and their friends were members of the international friendship league which pretty much did what it said on the tin. 

These were the very people who had just been through the war and survived it. Unlike the latter day maniacs from Leave who never had these experiences but feel somehow able to pontificate as if they have a ghostly direct line to Winston. 

Being patriotic means wanting a good way of life here with an economy and a society that do as well they can for as many people as possible. 

On that basis alone leaving the European Union out of some crazy and hazy notion that we can be top dog again is utterly absurd. 

Indeed it is the example par excellence of where petty nationalism flies in the face of true patriotism.