Their Patriotism & Ours; From the French Revolution to Peterloo, Which Side Are You On?
There has been a debate about whether Labour styling itself as patriotic and waving the Union Jack will win or lose votes and, just as much, whether it’s something a social democratic party should be doing anyway.
From the New Labour period Labour has had at best an inconsistent approach to working class history but it is important when it comes to matters like patriotism because it was a contested term. Sometimes it appeared in service of the forces of reaction and some times it might be part of causes that challenged reaction.
E P Thompson noted in the Making of the English Working Class that those who opposed the French Revolution and Jacobinism in the 1790s clothed ‘patriotism, nationalism, even bigotry and repression’ in the ‘rhetoric of liberty’.
However by 1795 a series of Patriotic Societies- perhaps the biggest being at Norwich- which were pro-Jacobin had been formed. After the Napoleonic Wars, which saw an upsurge of reactionary patriotic sentiment, we find in Manchester before Peterloo in 1819 a Patriotic Society that supported Henry Hunt, the speaker on the Manchester day in August 1819.
William Cobbett’s Freeborn Englishman could appear on the political right or left depending on the context and issue and that is the question for Labour. If the question is, which side are you on?, both doesn’t really work.
Leave a Reply