On Hating Britain

            My name is George Twigg, and I hate Britain.

            

            Whoa, slow down!  Put the pitchforks away, dismantle that portable gallows, take the oily rag out of that empty bottle of Grolsch.  There is a context and a good reason for that statement, I promise.  Recently, context is something most of this nation’s media seem to have forgotten or (much more likely) wilfully ignored as, in a quest to paint new Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn as the second coming of Lenin, Stalin and Citizen Smith all in one big beardy bundle, they report headlines such as “Corbyn: Bin Laden’s Death Was ‘A Tragedy’”, omitting the part where he explained that the “tragedy” was that he wasn’t brought to trial to answer for his appalling crimes before the public.  Which is a bit like if someone filmed me saying “Hitler did a fantastic job…”, and then switched the camera off before I could say “…of destroying the German nation-state”.  So when I tell you, “My name is George Twigg, and I hate Britain”, think of it as a multifaceted unburdening; like at an AA meeting, though obviously much less serious.  As Homer Simpson once said, “I’m a rageaholic!  I just can’t live without rageahol!”

            There’s been a lot of accusations of Britain-hating flying around in the last few days like so many poorly made paper aeroplanes.  Corbyn copped a bombardment from the press just today for not singing the national anthem at a ceremony to commemorate those who died in the Battle of Britain.  While a spin doctor may have advised him against such an act on the grounds of avoiding the very flak with which he was subsequently sprayed, I can’t help but sympathise.  I mean, let’s look at the words;

            

            “God save our gracious Queen
            Long live our noble Queen
            God save our Queen.
            Send her victorious
            Happy and glorious
            Long to reign over us
            God save the Queen.”

Using my skills in closely reading poetry (a category for which I would say our national anthem qualifies, if only on a technicality), developed during many a happy A-Level English lesson imbibing the principles of I. A. Richards and applying them to endless turgid volumes of our nation’s (somehow) Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, I’m going to see if I can unpack for you exactly why Jeremy Corbyn might not have wanted to sing the national anthem.  I understand Mr Corbyn to be a man of religious faith, so it’s probably not the concept of God that gives him grief.  But he is a republican.  And so he might be forgiven for wondering why his God should save the Queen in the first place.  Or, indeed, why God should destine her to “reign over us”, particularly for a long time (a question I imagine Prince Charles asks himself from time to time).  Gracious?  I’ll give the lyricist that, though I remember Elizabeth looking distinctly sour-faced during the unexpectedly joyous opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics.  Noble?  That one’s inarguable, though one wonders why nobility should be celebrated in a song which ostensibly encapsulates our national identity, rather than, for example, being regarded as a signifier of a retrograde class system that some idealistic people like to think we’ve done away with.

            I’m probably only scratching the surface, and I haven’t even got to the old verse about crushing the Scots.  Not only is the tune of our anthem a bigger dirge than a 20-minute performance of “Hey Jude”, the lyrics are utter tosh.  Quite frankly I applaud Jeremy Corbyn’s decision not to sing such fatuous, antediluvian pap, and his courage in refusing to do so even in public.  He’s a republican; why should he be expected to sing words with which he disagrees?  And if you say, “well, it’s only words”; words are always overburdened with signifiers, and Zombie Derrida would like a word with you.  Don’t worry about him taking your brains, he’s already got enough.  I don’t sing the national anthem either, much for the same reasons as Corbyn.  I don’t sing any words with which I disagree when I’m in a communal setting in which these words form the basis of a collective affirmation of identity.  I’m not a Christian, but sometimes I go to church with my girlfriend, who is.  I’ll happily sing songs like “All Things Bright and Beautiful”, because it’s all about how God created the world, and I’m undecided on that score.  Christmas carols?  Sure thing, most of them are harmless enough.  Words like “every knee shall bow”?  Get out, and take your cassocks with you.  And my girlfriend understands and accepts this, because she’s a mature human being, which is more than I can say for our fourth estate.

            So we’ve established that Jeremy Corbyn won’t sing the national anthem because he hates the national anthem.  And he hates the national anthem because he hates the monarchy.  Does it then follow, as so many political commentators and twitterati have suggested, that he hates Britain?  I’d argue that it does.  And, moreover, that that’s a good thing.

            Listening to the accusations levelled at Corbyn puts me in mind of a notable Daily Mail hatchet job that was amateurish even by their standards, in which, presumably thinking it’d render the man’s son guilty by association, they called Ed Miliband’s late father Ralph “The Man Who Hated Britain”.  Ralph was an anti-British Marxist, they explained.  During World War Two he traitorously wrote,

            The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist
            people in the world . . . you sometimes want them almost to lose (the war) to
            show them how things are. They have the greatest contempt for the Continent
             . . . To lose their empire would be the worst possible humiliation.

Fanning themselves to recover from the shock, they detailed his disdain for the country’s establishment, which to him meant

            Eton and Harrow, Oxford and Cambridge, the great Clubs, The Times, the Church,
            the Army, the respectable Sunday papers . . . It also means the values . . . of the
            ruling orders, keep the workers in their place, strengthen the House of Lords,       

            maintain social hierarchies, God save the Queen, equality is bunk, democracy is    

            dangerous, etc. . . . 

            Also respectability, good taste, don't rock the boat, there will always be an England,

            foreigners, Jews, natives etc. are all right in their place and their place is outside . . .

Answering the Mail’s charges, many on the left defended Ralph Miliband, pointing out that while he might at times have idly wished for Britain’s defeat in the Second World War, he fought enthusiastically for his adopted nation in said war.  Even some right-wingers got in on the action, with Tory MP Zac Goldsmith pointing out that it was a bit bloody rich of the Mail to attempt to besmirch Ed Miliband by traducing his father, considering that the grandfather of its current proprietor wrote numerous editorials praising Adolf Hitler.  How could Ralph Miliband have hated Britain?, these people asked.  While their arguments were well-intentioned, seeking only to preserve the memory of a dead man with no right of reply, they didn’t quite get to the heart of the matter.

            Just as Jeremy Corbyn hates Britain, Ralph Miliband hated Britain.  And just as Ralph Miliband hated Britain, I hate Britain, for many of the same reasons that he did.  I hate Britain’s national anthem.  I hate the enduring public-school old-boys-club sensibility of so many of Britain’s corporations and professions.  I hate Britain’s xenophobic island mentality.  I hate the British media and its racist demonisation of immigrants, Muslims and refugees.  I hate Richard Littlejohn with every fibre of my being, and I hate his legions of braying fans even more.  In case you haven’t got the impression already, I hate Britain’s monarchy.  I hate the fact our taxes pay for their upkeep when they could easily finance themselves, and I hate the deference and adoration shown towards them by the majority of Britain’s public.  I hate the fact that bishops of Britain’s national church can sit in the House of Lords and bring their opinions to bear on legislation purely because of an ancient ecclesiastical privilege.  I hate that Britain has a national church at all.  I hate Britain’s seeming inability and lack of will to care for its homeless population.  I hate the woman-hating lad/rape culture that permeates Britain’s schools, Britain’s universities, Britain’s football terraces.  I hate the Last Night of the Proms and its conservative, complacent figuring of British national identity.  I hate the fact that millions of Brits sit glued to trash like The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent, but nearly nobody’s seen Black Mirror.

            A lot of these gripes are not exclusive to our country.  But Britain contains the attitudes that inform them.  It nurtures them, allows them to fester.  And so I hate Britain, loudly and proudly.  And guess what?  Unless you’re completely happy with the way this nation is run, with the way it looks after its people, with the way we look after each other, then you hate Britain too.  In some way, or in many ways, you hate Britain.  Whether you’re a soppy leftie like me who thinks we ought to be doing more to help the Middle East’s refugees, or a right-winger who think we should be doing less, you hate Britain.  There’s no escaping it.  For the love of all that is holy, do not complain about this country until you’re blue in the face and then deny that you’re driven by hatred.  You hate Britain.  Yeah, you.

            Guess what else?  That’s just fine.  Better than fine, in fact.  Those people who like things just the way they are?  Worthless bastards, all.  Complacency and stasis kills a nation, and kills its political culture.  People on the left – accept your hate, embrace it, channel it, make it mean something.  Use it to make this country what you want to make it.  Hate Britain, hate it with all your heart and soul, just like I do.  Because hatred is quite the motivator, and quite frankly it gets shit done.  Jeremy Corbyn hates Britain.  He hates Britain and British culture as it is, and he wants to make it better, fairer, more decent.  That’s what we need to do, however much our patriotism may be questioned.  Those people who claim ownership of what Britain and Britishness mean are your enemy.  People like Peter Hitchens, a very clever man who is sadly an inveterate right-wing blowhard and who regularly defines policies he agrees with as “pro-Britain” and ones he disagrees with as “anti-Britain”.  Remember Joseph McCarthy and his “UnAmerican Activities Committee”?  Same difference.  National identity is not immutable.  What we are as a country is not immutable.  When we hate British culture as it currently stands, that’s not anti-British.  That’s us affirming that we don’t have to like this country the way it is, and we don’t have to accept it either.

            My name is George Twigg, and I hate Britain.  And, like Jeremy Corbyn, I hate Britain because I love Britain.  I love the kindness and decency of so many of Britain’s people.  I love Britain’s sardonic humour.  I love Britain’s legacy of helping the vulnerable from all nations, not just our own.  I love Britain’s sense of fair play.  I love Britain’s history of labour movements, and the workers’ rights we clawed from the establishment piece by piece.  I love the National Health Service.  I love the fact that British TV screens multiple quiz shows with the philosophy of “Fuck you, you probably aren’t going to know any of this shit”.  I love the creativity of so many British artists, musicians and writers.  I love Britain’s local wrestling scene (if that Will Ospreay isn’t a huge star in five years, there’s no justice).  I love every single British person who is out there, in whatever part of the world, trying to make it a fairer, nicer, more equitable place to live.  I want our country to be more like that.  I want a Britain characterised primarily by the list of things I love, not by the list of things I hate.  And so that’s why I say, one more time, “My name is George Twigg, and I hate Britain”.  And I pledge that my hatred is going to make this country a better place.