Movement 103

Looking for a New England
John Hughes argues that for the ENGLISH national identity is a probtematic idea.
When your heritage is steeped in imperiatism, what positive images are there [eft?
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rather than gaining in our identity. Some
would argue that this is because we've
always had our own government and have
never been ruled from 'abroad'. ln a sense
the problem with the Union was that it was
always clear who was in the driving seat.
Likewise it seems that the supposed British
culture was really mainly an extended
English culture, and so its apparent
dismantling leaves the English with
something of a cultural vacuum. 'English'
identity has been built upon images of the
Queen, Empire and military success, which
mean little to anyone under fifty. Did Major's
more cosy 'cricket, evensong and warm ale'
come any nearer the mark? Can there be a
post-British and post-lmperial Englishness?
Should we even be thinking in terms of
national identities any more?
Some think not. Devolution to them is
the end of the era of warring nation states
each with their own (usually aggressive)
identities. ln this view we are building a
glorious cuddly new world, with shades of
Star Trek, where we all live together and
nobody mentions jokes about stins/ Scots
or the Welsh and sheep. ln fact most of the
supporters of devolution have rallied
enthusiasm by appealing to their history
and the same old kilts, leeks and songs
about thrashing the Sassenachs/ Saeson.
ls this a bad thing? Yes and No. Frankly
I think the Scots and Welsh are right to
affirm some sense of 'who they are', of how
they are different from others. The old fluffy
liberal bollocks about us all being the same
humans underneath really and how everyone
should just forget past differences as we all
grow more alike, is actually just another
form of totalitarianism that tries to suppress
the different and particular and create a
bland, flat sameness. So history(ies) do
have to come into it somewhere - identities
are formed of memories. This seems to me
to be a problemwith the Blairite'New'
Everything: You can't keep trying to forget
the past and start again, without ending up
with a completely superficial identity that
has no depth and so blows in every
direction. Witness the recent Becks-Posh
'Royal Wedding' and the abortive love-tryst
between Britpop and Tony's Boys.
But is the only alternative to Lefty
sameness and newness right-wing
nationalism and war mongering? This is the
Liberal argument against cultural identity:
That it leads to hating the other against
which your identity is defined - result:
Balkanisation. lt certainly looks this way
from England, where, unlike our neighbours,
nationalism is almost entirely confined to
the political right, whether in the form of the
pompous imperialism of High Tory values or
the crass aggression and intolerance of the
football hooligans.
'lt ain't necessarily so!' Contemporary
feel-good English icons need not be banal,
as Austin Powers has shown. Likewise there
is no one account of history, all versions are
loaded with specific agendas, and so we
don't have to take the militarist story of
Empire, conquest, and victory as the only
one. The huge challenge for the young who
find the old images don't
resonate any more is to reappropriate
the past in
ways that are fruitful in the
present (like the feminist
project of 'discovering'
positive models in past
women saints), rather than just abandoning
it to the conservatives. For the English this
might mean developing a sense of our
cultural achievements in terms of our
contributions to literature and technology,
our great saints and social reformers, rather
than on how well we thrashed the frogs/
wogs,/ Hun. For the Scots and Welsh it
means moving beyond a purely reactive
sense of identity defined negatively by their
oppressors, because, however true this is, it
will only leave the English feeling
threatened.
Tradition, as Christians should know, is
not something fixed, unified and certain (as
conservatives treat it), but living, changing
and open-ended. People also never have
simply one identity but are made up of
complex layers of identities: I am British,
English (and part-Welsh), European (?),
Christian, a Student, etc. Early Christian
writers noted this shifting, many-layered
nature of identity and insisted that to avoid
making idolatrous absolutes of any of these
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movement 7
allegiances we should live as pilgrim
nomads amidst them ('Citizens of all
nations they belong properly to none' - the
Epistle to Diognetius, 3rd century). Likewise
Christian identity has striven (not always
successfully!) to resist the temptation to
bolster identity in fundamentalist fortresses
defined by clear boundaries against the
enemies. Most difficult of all, we have this
weird idea that someone truly lives by dying,
that identity is found by being given away
and poured out - an emptying which
paradoxically leaves us more full! ls this too
heavenly for politics?
ldentity is foun
given away -
d by being
is this too
heaventy for potitics?
ls it really so impossible to imagine a
nation rejoicing that it contributes more to
international aid than others and being
proud that its asylum policy is more humane
even though both these things cost it more?
A Wales happy to give its water to Liverpool,
a Scotland happy to give its oil to England
and an England happy to give the wealth of
the South East to support its neighbours?
Given that our physical location means our
identities are inevitably intermeshed with
one another in thousands of ways, this
must surely be so. At their best I think the
SNP and Plaid Cymru have come pretty
close to achieving this bizarre path: A
genuine 'third way' between totalitarian
sameness and militaristic nationalism; a
social vision of positive difference in
harmony. There seems little of it around on
this side of the borders at the moment
though...
John Hughes is co-ordinator of Cambridge
SCM and a member of General Council.
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