The nation state has provided an organised context for the citizen's safety and well-being. It has gradually succeeded in building up institutions which have enabled its people to achieve much of their potential and to provide its weakest members with minimum levels of protection. No other form of political organisation - whether local, supranational, regional or tribal - has succeeded in achieving this. It is therefore a mystery to me why the Left has denied, or at least constantly played down, the importance of this institution and thus blinded itself to the undeniable truth that it is the only context in which socialism will ever be achieved. If you are not proud of your nation, you will never succeed in achieving popular consent for a programme which is predicated on human solidarity and equality.
There are four main reasons why the Left in general, and the Labour Party in particular, have eschewed patriotism as a political virtue. The first is the fallacy that patriotism necessarily implies the conviction that one's country is superior to others - in other words, the fallacious equation of patriotism with chauvinism. Whilst it is true that some self-styled patriots may harbour such sentiments, they are becoming an increasingly embattled minority as technological advances in communication enable people to make appropriate comparisons and thus reveal this belief as being no more than a mirage.
The second is the belief that patriotism means ignorance, and the ignoring, of the rest of the world. In fact, most patriots recognise that the citizens of other naitons also take pride in their nation and its achievements. Moreover, they appreciate that something precious will be lost if the diversity among the world's societies becomes submerged into a hegemonised and sanitised globalism, under which it will be hard to tell one part of the world from the other.
The third is the slavish incantation of certain theoretical dicta which have allowed to achieve the status of incontrovertible truth, regardless of the origin and contect in which they were made. The most (in)famous of these is the Marxist proposition that it is "impossible to achieve Socialism in one country". Those who continue to intone this slogan do so in blithe ignorance of the context in whcih Marx and Engels made this pronouncement. In the mid-19th century, the state accounted for less than 10 per cent of GDP, as opposed to the 40 per cent which applies in the majority of western states. This was also long before the state assumed the redistributionist, social democratic role which neither Marx nor Engels had anticipated.
The fourth reason is the belief that patriotism inevitably leads to warfare and destruction. It is therefore indelibly linked to fascism, with World War 2 being cited as the most horrific manifestation of this phenomenon. Those who so maintain blissfulyl ignore the fact that Nazism was in fact universal in its aspiration. To put it more simply: if Mr. Hitler had succeeded in his evil designs, we would all indeed have become part of united Europe!
It is therefore legitimate to conclude that patriotism and socialism are not mutually exclusive aspirations. In fact, they are a good deal mutually reinforcing than many socialists suspect and conservatives fear. First of all, the achievement of equality and social justice requires strong and tested institutions which only the nation state can provide. It also requires the economic clout and the ability to use this in order to achieve certain outcomes in which other levels of governance are seriously deficient. This is surely one asset of the nation state which the left, provided it has the necessary political will, can harness to its objectives.
Secondly, human solidarity - that indispensible ingredient of any form of Socialism - is best achieved among those who share a common culture and experience. This is the true meaning of "one nation" - a phrase coined by the Conservatives, but which they never deigned to put into practice. The more confident a nation is, the more its people share the aspirations of its leaders. But that confidence must result from true national independence. This means (a) British governments ceasing their slavish subservience to US foreign and military policy, (b) refusing to allow its monetary policies to be dictated by the purblind monetarism of the International Monetary Fund, (c) exercising proper controls over that globalist capitalist institution known as the City of London, and (d) making it clear to the EU that it will determine its own economic policy and steer an independent course regardless of its diktats - in the process refusing to finance the Common Agricultural Policy and reducing its budget contributions accordingly (if they don't like it, they can always throw us out - which of course they will never do).
I am confident that a Left-wing British government which has the political will to steer such a course will succeed in pulling behind it the mass of its people in a manner in which the Union Jack-waving jingoists of the Conservative Party will never be able to achieve.
