Mrs Thatcher was elected three times, and won a landslide three years after the strike. But that does not matter, because, obviously, you are not one of “the people” if you voted for the Tories.

Aaron you seem to forget the archers of England were volunteers. In fact the archers of Sussex once killed 300 of the Kings Bodyguard because of an insult.

The ships captains who fought against the Armada came from a wide range of ackgrounds.The Agricultural and Industrial Revolution were started by farmers and craftsmen. In fact what made Britain successful was the fact that it was far more egalitarian and open to social mobility than any other country in Europe. Rousseau or Voltaire was amazed that we erected a statute to Newton and buried him in Westminster Abbey.

Under the Royal Navy of Nelson , what was incredible was how many Commanders and Captains had started as ratings .In fact the Royal Navy was remarkably egalitarian . Captain Cook FRS and winner of the Gold Medal started as a rating in the RN.

Perhaps what we should be patriotic about is the fact that we have had a degree of freedom of speech, rule by law and a level of social mobility far in excess of any other country in the World. The present Labour government has reduced and continues to do so our historic freedom of speech,rule by law and democratic accountability of the executive..

I just happen to like us and believe in us.

As do I! If we can’t make progressive change happen here then we can’t make it happen anywhere. If I didn’t believe in Britain I wouldn’t try so hard to improve its politics. There’s just so much potential…. of course, there is also so much shit, as I was reminded today by a talk show on LBC on the subject of OK Magazine’s Jade Goody “in loving memory” tribute-to-her-as-if-she-was-dead-even-though-she-is-still-alive special. But hey, I reckon the British people know good stuff when they see it: they just need to be given some of it to counter-act the tripe they are fed most of the time.

I do complain but it’s only because I want things to change. However are there are some huge cultural barriers that have arisen from a combination of Britain’s chequered history and the more contemporary privatisation-reality-tv-tabloid culture we find ourselves lumped with. Great post Laurie!

Nationalist, I think, implies blind love for the flag and the state. I’m a patriot; I think an important part of being a patriot, particularly when you’re of the left, is about holding the state to account, willing it to live up to the best of its own ideals. I don’t love the state, I don’t even trust it; I think the flag is a clever piece of branding, and accordingly love it in the same way that I love Diet Coke – with suspicion.

But I can’t help thinking that the British and all the non-British who live here are great, I can’t help thinking that Britain is a good place to live and can be a better one, truly. That doesn’t mean that I think we’re better than anyone else, I don’t. I just happen to like us and believe in us.

*runs away before someone calls me a fascist*

Nationalist. Patriot. All just as bad as one another. Have some respect and love for your tribe and you forefathers, by all means, but leave any love for a flag and the state at the door.

Amen to that. Once you’ve personally experienced what happens when you don’t fit into someone else’s idea of what it means to love the flag, despite it being as much your flag as theirs, you realise flags are just tools to rally the dumb.

Gee, she’ll be quoting GK Chesteton next.

There’s also the sarky utopia, like Michael Young’s The Rise of Meritocracy where a dystopia is presented as if it is a utopia, something lost on those who adopted Young’s term.

I suppose I meant to imply that utopias do not have quite the same dramatic possibilities as dystopias (as you have already suggested).

It’s hard to think of a book that has entered the public consciousness in quite the same way as 1984 (I’m not a fan of big brother, the channel4 TV offering, though).

The character who most mirrors the British public is “Parsons”.
I wonder if the torturers at Guantanamo were as enigmatic as O’Brien ?

Also, what they got when they butchered their king was a religious nut-job dictator. Be careful what you wish for, huh?

Ms. Gore is right. The British generally do as they’re told. Even if it means suiting up and going off to die.

Nationality has always been about rule and obedience. A bullshit construct.

I’d recommend the Kropotkin-inspired anarchist utopia of Le Guinn’s The Dispossessed, Samuel R Delaney’s ‘ambiguous heterotopia’ Triton or Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy as attempts at utopian world building.

As to dystopias, there are any number but Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We is a classic (apologies for probably misspelling his name)

No matter how many snazzy new technologies emerge 20th centuary writers seem to have little faith in the ability of governments to use them wisely.

I must admit I can’t think of many influential literary “utopia’s” though.

– sort of. However, I do believe there’s such a thing as a collective character, something that expresses itself most clearly in group contexts. I don’t think nationality is an accurate predicter of character. I think that where you grew up sometimes. is

ukliberty: I have also just re-read Brave New World.

I think it is worth emphasising that the UK’s ID card scheme is a world leader in terms of how much information it is to collect. Indeed, the French Government proposed copying it.

I believe that you can no more tell the character of an individual from their nationality than you can from their race, their sex or anything else.

Laurie is right about privacy . In France under Louis 14 , the minister of the interior boasted that where every 3 Frenchmen met , one was an informer. It was the information on the card registry fro the ID cards which were captured by the Getapo in the HQ of the Suretee in Paris which meant controlling France was made so much easier. The Prussion secret police dates back to the 1680s and could be said to the forerunner of the Gestapo.

We in Britain have been fortunate in not having a secret police until 1909- MI 5.

I would suggest the monarch of England and Wales has replied upon the loyalty of the people ever since the mainstay of the Army were free born archers and not the usual continental mix of aristocrats forming the cavalry and mercenaries being hired as archers.

The fact that so much of our wealth and freedom depended upon the sea, meant that people had to work together, be good at their tasks and trust each other otherwise the ship would be lost. The term “shipmate” indicates the loyalty and trust which binds people who work together on ship and cuts across rank. Need to work together and trust each othe is common factor in many dangerous heavy industries/construction activities.

The fact that Britain has has greater freedoms and rule by law for longer, than any other country in continental Europe appear to have have been removed from the history syllabus. In the Middle ages the Magna Carta was read out once a year in villages to ensure people knew their rights.

It would be appear that Governments wish remove our collective memory of our historical freedoms. The concept of ” Fair Play ” has long been part our traditions which tends to stop extremism and misuse of power. Kiping refers to in his poem about the Saxons and Normans.
The rewriting of history which seems to be a regular function of government has become very like 1984- inorder to remove our memory of the traditions of privacy, freedom of speech and rule by law, not diktat of the monarchy or government.

Govenments try to look tough because as individuals, politicians are not. Since about 1990, it is the first time that we have had a H of Commons with no members who have experience of war. If an MP has won a medla for gallantry( Whitelaw, Pym and Carrington all won the MC in WW2), then they do not need to appear tough. The only politician who does not need to appear tough is Asdown; consequently he can decide on the merits of the case and can ignore calls to be tough if these are inappropriate without being accused of being personally soft. If Labour had a Home Secretary who was actually tough and whose bravery had been proven, then they would not have to worry about being criticised for being soft by newspapers. As Mark Twain said “Someone who has the reputation for getting up at dawn can afford to get up at middday”.

Christ no, I’m not a nationalist. I’m a patriot. That’s different.

Great line(s)!!

This is a mantra the bureaucracy has been pushing for decades – ever since the WWI identity register was disbanded. Michael Howard agreed to it in 1994 and it is only their electoral rout that kept it from happening back then.

However what is sinister and worrying about this government is its attitude to technology – that the great liberating phenomenon that is the internet for example makes it possible to track and spy on vastly more numbers of people than old analogue communications systems and so they should. If they were proposing opening all our snail mail before it got to us we’d be horrified, but simply because it’s digital communications and it is possible to snoop on it surreptitiously we seem willing to let them on all sorts of excuses.