Patriotism, the Flag & the Freeborn Englishman. The alternative tradition of internationalism is better.
Once again (1st September 2025) Keir Starmer has backed the display of the Union Flag with a sort of lower case nod that those who are painting roundabouts or adorning lamp posts with the Union or more often St George’s flag may not quite be the patriots they claim to be.
In fact the flag campaign is organised by the far right, although at least some of those involved may not be aware of that
The Freeborn Englishman of William Cobbett, that EP Thompson wrote about in the Making of the English Working Class (1963/8) is a deeply contradictory figure.
Thompson’s focus on the Freeborn Englishman suggests that he (and it was always a he) was a complex figure who was identified neither fully with left or right but could appear in either space depending on context.
For example Thompson notes that the Freeborn Englishman claimed a right to riot against oppression founded in the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688.
The Freeborn Englishman did not however claim many rights but what he did not like was authority telling him what to do, or restricting his activities. Hence things like freedom from arbitrary arrest, jury trial and equality before the law were very important matters.
The British Government of the early nineteenth century, referred to by William Cobbett as The Thing, liked, as Thompson notes, to flatter the Freeborn Englishman by claiming that it held to these principles, whereas OTHER COUNTRIES did not.
Certainly the Freeborn Englishman was not an internationalist or an enthusiast for what happened in other countries.
In reality of course, for example at Peterloo in August 1819, the gap between the appearance of some kind of liberty and the reality often led to the Freeborn Englishman and the defence of his liberties to appear on the left rather than the right.
I’m not sure that Englishness has moved on all that much in the subsequent 200 years. There are numbers who cheer on an England football team notably more inclusive and more explicit in its anti-racism than some of recent decades. There are others who note that some of England’s support are be fans of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon the far right troublemaker.
Bridging that contradictory divide is no easy matter and it remains a question of whether in any case it is a prudent project where promoting a genuine internationalism might be a better option. It is one which the British left has in fact a proud history of. EP Thompson commenting on criticism that the left had not become more hegemonic or developed more theory suggested this might have been because there had been ‘so bloody much to oppose’ when it came to the activities of British imperialism. And the current Government’s record does not suggest much familiarity with the internationalist traditions of the labour movement and the left
There may be an additional complication. Unequal exchange between Britain and Empire might mean that the British working class has benefited from imperialism in the form of higher wages and higher standards of living. Class struggle may not be just about the division of the national product between the main classes. Imperial spoils help the ruling class to make concessions when faced with class struggle. Could it be this common interest in imperialism that underpins a common national identity between the classes and explains working class support for Thatcher’s Falklands war that consolidated Thatcher’s power?
not a new argument & it has been rebuffed but these discussions perhaps have not been had in this generation and need to be had giving particular attention to what is ‘new’ in the present crisis
Further there is of course plenty to discuss but I think within the context of an active movement to oppose racism and British support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza
Indeed, but the diversity of the working class created by immigration facilitates this task in comparison with the old industrial class.
Also, the unequal exchange argument has been contested, but not refuted. A 2019 academic article reviewing the debate concludes that the consensus has become:
‘(i)n terms of income distribution, unlike Emmanuel’s thesis on Northern workers as exclusive beneficiaries of unequal exchange, value transfers are reflected in both higher profits and higher monetary wages…’
Ricci, A. (2019) ‘Unequal Exchange in the Age of Globalization’ Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol. 51(2) 225–245,
See: https://alvarodemiranda.com/black-lives-matter-and-the-contradictions-of-representative-democracy/