What Does It Mean to Be English? (part 1 of 4)
Identity, Reform, and the Work of Reckoning
The rise of Reform necessitates quick and urgent response. Thousands of people across the country are pouring energy and care into standing in solidarity with communities most affected by racist attacks, and figuring out how we can possibly turn the political tide before it’s too late. But I feel something deeper and more uncomfortable is also being asked of us: to invest in the quieter work that surfaces both our nation’s ghosts and our neglected traditions of care, so as to tend to the soil that keeps growing Farages.
Content Note
This piece names difficult and unpleasant things: racism, violence, empire, entitlement, and the ghosts they’ve left in our national psyche. Please take care of yourself as you read, pause if you need, and know that alongside grief, this piece also carries threads of joy, nourishment, and possibility.
Prefatory Note
I have tried writing this piece so many times. The questions of Englishness - what it is, what it has done, what it might become - are heavy, haunted and deeply contested. I know what I write today can only ever be partial, flawed and open to misunderstanding, and I will inevitably fall short of what the subject deserves. And yet, silence feels like another kind of harm. Englishness itself has rarely been examined honestly, and if we wait for the perfect words or flawless analysis, we may never begin. So what follows is not a conclusion, but one attempt to open a space for reckoning. I offer it in the spirit of messy complexity, very much an unfinished thought, which I would love others to build on.
I grew up in Harlow, Essex, a few miles from Epping, which has recently been the site of a number of violent far-right, anti-migrant protests. Over my lifetime, the area has seen its fair share of far-right activity. The neo-Nazi terrorist group, Combat-18, was founded in Harlow in 1992. In the 2000s, nearby Loughton saw the election of a number of council seats for the fascist BNP. Between 2013 and 2014, Harlow was said to be the site of a hate crime every two days, largely targeting Polish migrants.
A place I know well and visit often, Harlow and the surrounding areas are unfortunately not unique. More overt displays of racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia are springing up across the country, emboldened by the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform party. In the last few weeks, the country has been awash with St George’s flags, being flown from lamposts, hung from motorway bridges and graffitied on roundabouts; supposedly under the guise of ‘national pride’, but funded and orchestrated by far-right groups.
Understandably, many people are feeling terrified in the wake of what’s happening. Counter efforts are beginning to build momentum, which aim to stand with those being targeted, exert a narrative of solidarity and belonging, and strategise about how best to turn the political tide. This work is vital, and in some cases a literal lifeline. There is no doubt that we need more of it.
But solidarity and campaign messaging will always be reactive. They tend to wounds after they’ve been inflicted, fighting to win dominance over the story of today. All the while, they leave the roots of the challenge intact, from which tomorrow’s crises can grow.
Reform understands this. They speak constantly of identity - Englishness, or its softer mask, Britishness.1 They know identity is the root system and galvanise support through calls to defend it, stocking up feelings of insecurity and nostalgia.
Most progressive actors avoid the terrain of national identity altogether, perhaps wary of fueling its poison. We speak instead of being ‘citizens of the world’, committed to futures with no borders. When we do speak of national identity we tend to rush straight to goals of narrative replacement - how can we create and build support for a kinder Englishness, a more progressive story of Britain?
There is a part of me that desperately wants a kinder Englishness to appear fully-formed, to take the place of the version we now have - like if we could just flip some kind of national-identity switch and all would be well. I experience work which focuses on co-imagining a happier, more inclusive future of England (or Britain, which tends to be more common) as a great relief and a great comfort.
But another part of me knows this desire for relief is a trap. It tempts me to skip past the harder, more uncomfortable work of reckoning with my country’s past and present. It tempts me into believing that if we could only swap out one story of Englishness for another, if we could just find the narrative that persuades folks not to vote Reform, and wins them over to ‘our side’, all would be well.
And yet, I know that what it means to be English is not something we can simply change. It is a quagmire of histories and deep narratives - pride of empire and feelings of supremacy, nostalgia, violence, extraction, and yes, also tenderness, resistance, solidarity, creativity and punk spirit - all of which affect how we treat one another and the other-than-human world.
The radical and far right didn’t invent the shadow side of English identity, but it does metabolise it into political fuel and continue to stoke the flames for its own benefit. If those who don’t wish to see the country descend into fascism only fight at the surface level, without facing what Englishness has meant and done, we risk pruning branches, while the roots of the challenge remain intact, ready to sprout another Reform party tomorrow.
National identity as wet clay
While working at the Common Cause Foundation, I came across a study2 by long-time collaborator, psychology professor Tim Kasser, that left a strong impression on me.
In 2011, Kasser and his colleagues in the United States found that when people were reminded of the most caring, intrinsic parts of being American, they tended to show more support for environmental policies. In contrast, when encouraged to think about their American identity in relation to money and power, their support for environmental policies decreased. Most strikingly, a control group - asked simply to reflect on themselves as ‘Americans’, with no further prompt - responded much like those primed to think of money and power in relation to their national identity. In other words, when left unqualified, reflecting on American identity tended to skew people towards self-interest - perhaps in line with dominant myths of global dominance and the ‘American dream’.
Most of the time, research like this gets used to offer messaging advice: “Frame national identity this way and you’ll win more support for your cause.” But what struck me wasn’t the advice. It was the provocation. If identity can be nudged so easily, doesn’t that tell us something about its fragility? Doesn’t it reveal that what we call “national identity” is not bedrock but wet clay that is shaped and reshaped by the stories we allow ourselves to tell?
If that is true for American identity, might it not be true for Englishness too? If people were simply asked to reflect on ‘being English’, what assumptions would surface by default? We don’t yet have a study that tells us for sure, but I would proffer that history - and what we see currently in our streets - suggests that when left unqualified, Englishness often carries echoes of empire, entitlement and exceptionalism. These are the assumptions Reform draws on and amplifies.
What other stories - of solidarity, welcome, connection to land, sorrow, accountability - have we refused to tell about ourselves?
If the dominant story of Englishness is this unstable, perhaps it is ready for composting - to use the language of Vanessa Andreotti and the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective.
End of part 1.
I am English. Throughout this piece, I am writing about Englishness rather than Britishness. The two are often used interchangeably - usually by English people - and Reform themselves pivot between them, invoking ‘Britishness’ to broaden their appeal while still drawing heavily on tropes of English identity, entitlement, and nostalgia. This slippage is part of the story: ‘Britishness’ collapses the distinct struggles and complex cultural identities of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, masking English dominance and historical extraction.
No national story is simple or unblemished, and neither are the stories of its constituent communities. Each carries its own dynamics of entitlement and pride, grievance and survival, renewal and solidarity. We need to take that historical complexity seriously. It ripples through all parts of the UK, reminding us that the psyche of these islands is not singular. There are other rhythms of belonging, other ways of telling history, that England might learn from - if it has the humility to listen.
Sheldon, K. M., Nichols, C. P., & Kasser, T. (2011). Americans recommend smaller ecological footprints when reminded of intrinsic American values of self-expression, family, and generosity. Ecopsychology, 3(2), 97–104.
Great piece Ruth: hard to write I imagine but very necessary. It reminded me of the interviews Zadie Smith gave on her last book tour where she pointed out that there were many English people who, for example, actively opposed colonialism. And it suits the far-right that we forget them just fine. https://www.npr.org/2023/09/05/1197627635/zadie-smith-on-the-fraud
And similarly, there were Irish people, for example, who participated in the colonial project. This is all rather complicated nuanced stuff to bring up in a comment, but your piece is a great start at bringing some complexity to these categories. thanks.
Thanks so much for writing this Ruth, I've been having very similar reflections, we urgently need to invoke and work with the positive traits of the English national character! I actually just wrote a long letter to the Newstatesman on this, which I think I might post here on substack....
I think you are totally right about the priming, the wet clay aspect..