St George’s day and the St George’s cross arouse discourse around patriotism in England, historically and today. Last week, far-right party Britain First organised a march to “celebrate” St George’s Day. Leader Paul Golding had said they were protesting against the “extinction” of Britain due to “invaders entering our country”. Sentiments not too dissimilar from Labour leader Keir Starmer’s comments last year about the risk of the UK becoming an “island of strangers”. Far-right, reactionary racist ideology is on the rise in Britain along with the rest of the western world. Unsurprisingly, these sentiments are being shrouded in false ideas of patriotism and love for one’s country.
We live in a system of decay and war, waged by imperial powers such as the US as they lash out to try and maintain world dominance and hegemony. Our own government takes heed to whatever wishes the US demands, such as the use of military bases and an increase in defence spending that has only proven to take money away from public services. While material conditions worsen each day for the working class of Britain, through cuts to public services, poverty wages, youth unemployment, and soaring food and bill prices, disillusionment and hostility are finding expression in far-right rhetoric that propose false and nationalistic fixes to people’s material issues. The result is these expressions of racism under the guise of patriotism.
This so-called patriotism is what Lenin speaks of: as instead of being patriotism in the sense of a love for one’s country, culture, language and people, it is a bourgeois nationalism that serves only to benefit the ruling class. He talks of this in the context of 1914 Russia but much still applies:
“We see before us an extensive and very deep ideological trend, whose origins are closely interwoven with the interests of the landowners and the capitalists of the dominant nations. Scores and hundreds of millions are being spent every year for the propaganda of ideas advantageous to those classes”
This is the “patriotism” of the far-right and ruling class. One used to celebrate and condone the reactionary elements of English bourgeois politics, militarism, racism and a delusional view of a past glory days of empire. With the horrors of slavery, brutality and wealth extraction conveniently left out. One example of this appeal to past glory days is recalling the Britain of World War 2. Many on the right, not just the far-right, draw on heroic notions of the fight against the fascists, while at the same time – though often not fascists themselves – perpetuate the same anti-communist, anti-union, anti-semitic, and other racist ideas that fuelled the very fascism we fought against.
As communists we must engage with this conversation. We should not write off ideas of patriotism like many liberals and others on the left do, as they lean into an idealistic and immaterial discourse around “NO borders”, and a disdain and writing-off of the English working class. Neither of which is going to get us anywhere and is just going to deepen the divide of our class. As Lenin said:
“Is a sense of national pride alien to us, Great-Russian class-conscious proletarians? Certainly not! We love our language and our country, and we are doing our very utmost to raise her toiling masses (i.e., nine-tenths of her population) to the level of a democratic and socialist consciousness. To us it is most painful to see and feel the outrages, the oppression and the humiliation our fair country suffers at the hands of the tsar’s butchers, the nobles and the capitalists. We take pride in the resistance to these outrages put up from our midst”
Rather, we should strive to offer an alternative progressive patriotism that celebrates the working class in this country in all our diversity, and one that doesn’t forget our history. A history that places us in the predicament we find ourselves in today: where a growing section of our working class are being captured by far-right reactionary politics that serves no one except the bourgeois establishment.
Instead, we can foster a culture of progressive patriotism for working class history, such as the working class victory that was the Battle of Cable Street, the 1926 General Strike, the Suffragette movement etc. We can ensure education and commemoration of this rich history of struggle in our country – from the Diggers and Levellers to the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass and the Peasant’s Revolt – whilst simultaneously remembering England’s colonial and brutal past of plundering the global south. We should be able to articulate a distinction between bourgeois nationalism on the one hand, and a love for one’s country and desire for the prosperity, dignity and power of the working class on the other. While doing so, we should always be aware that as communists we remain steadfast in our conviction that, above all else, we are an international working class and any patriotic pride relies on the reality of a working class struggle against capitalism, towards socialism, for the benefit of all the working class regardless of borders. As Lenin says, no country is free when it oppresses another nation.
If we can do all this, then we can claim the title of patriot and shine a light on the hypocritical notion of the far-right patriot, of the “patriots” in power who drag our working class into war and divide us with our brothers and sisters across borders for their own gain, reducing us to the indignity of a life of servitude.
The real patriots are the ones who care to dream of a future where our beloved countries’ working class prosper and move ever forward into progress for the benefit of humanity and not a select few.
The real patriots fight for a policy of progressive federalism: one that will take power back from Westminster and distribute it to regional assemblies across the districts of England, and replace the unrepresentative House of Lords with a democratic Senate of Regions and Nations (England, Scotland, Cornwall, and Wales).
Communists do not erase the history of workers’ struggle in England but celebrate it.
We are the real patriots.
Annie Cogan-Thomas, is a member of the YCL’s Merseyside Branch
Read more below:
The St George’s Cross is our flag: let’s embrace it | Morning Star
There is no contradiction between patriotism and socialism | Morning Star
- “On the National Pride of the Great Russians” (1914):
Britain’s Road to Socialism | Communist Party of Britain
