An ecological Englishness

Citation

Pond, A. (2001), "An ecological Englishness", European Business Review, Vol. 13 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.2001.05413fab.003

An ecological Englishness

New European

An ecological Englishness

Allan Pond

Allan Pond is based in Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear, UK

Keywords: National culture, England

Something rather interesting has been happening recently. People are re-discovering the ability to talk openly about English identity as something distinct and different from the notion of the UK. Books and articles appear with titles like England is Mine: Pop Life in Albion from Wilde to Goldie (Bracewell, 1997), In Memory of England: A Novelist's View of England (Vansittart, 1998), England, This England: In the Steps of J.B. Priestly (Ramsay, 1998), Consider England (Proud and Petts, 1994), England for the English (Body, 2001), "Flying the flag for England" (Cox, 1995) and, perhaps reflecting the feelings of doubt that sometimes accompany this new mood of reflection, Myths of the English (Porter, 1997) and "Land of the lost: where is England now?" (Barker, 1997).

We seem to be picking again at this question of what Englishness is like an old sore that we thought had been cured but has irritatingly returned at the same time as there is much talk of re-branding the UK as cool, modern and forward-looking. Is this concern with being English merely an indication of loss of confidence? After all, it has long been the convention to regard nationalism as unproblematic for the English. Other people, like the Irish or Welsh, may feel the need to be constantly introspective about their identity and have built a public and literate culture on the strength of that search for a national selfhood, but that is because they have had to define themselves in terms of English cultural and political domination, or oppression, depending on your viewpoint. But the English, having been "top nation" for so long, have had the luxury of being comfortable with our nationalism, not needing to be strident about it, or even acknowledging that it exists. While we might have invented nationalism we have been able to forget about it while forging the UK and acquiring an empire.

This insouciance is ingrained. You only need to spend a few minutes in the company of many English writers, poets, artists, historians and cultural critics to see the extent to which meditations on Englishness are the skeleton on which the flesh of their work is built. Even the argument that we have displaced our nationalism into a UK identity is only part of the truth, though not an unimportant part. In many senses, Englishness has been defined as much by the UK as by England. John Wilkes may be taken as illustrative, if not, thankfully, representative, of this attitude, combining a radical and civic republicanism with a rabid and distasteful, "Scottophobia". Opposition to the Union and advocacy of popular democracy were, for Wilkes, one and the same. Radicals in their criticisms of nationalism, especially its English varieties, who quite happily use Dr Johnson's quip about patriotism being the last refuge of the scoundrel, should remember the provenance of his politics – a conservative defence of auld corruption. English patriotism has often been as closely linked to a radical critique of the existing order, a hostility to court and "the quality" in the name of a radical and popular politics, as it has been to its defence[1].

There is a renewed interest in questions of English identity which reflects the fact that the traditional idea of a unitary UK is being challenged from a number of developments, not least the recognition of a new mood of national self-confidence in Scotland and Wales.

Although the question is being raised, one wonders whether the English possess the same self-confidence as the Scots and Welsh about their nationhood and whether, indeed, they really feel comfortable about discussing the issue at all. Many people feel that to let the genie of English nationalism out of the bottle is to court disaster, unleashing subterranean forces of xenophobia and authoritarianism. This fear crosses the political divide and links Conservative supporters of the Union with many on the radical left of politics. Both are united in their hostility to the re-awakening sense of nationhood in these islands.

Even among those who accept that we should welcome this re-awakened sense of nationhood and want to meet the challenge it raises with contemporary imagination rather than dismissal, the question of what "makes" English identity remains a problem. It often seems a difficult notion to get hold of without simplification. However, a central theme that has been present in many discussions of Englishness has been the sense in which it is linked to the countryside and the natural world, a kind of pastoral view of England as best represented in its landscape. Indeed, there are very few discussions of what it means to be English that do not, at some point, settle on this point of view.

This English pastoralism has itself often been criticised for being backward-looking, presenting a mythical picture of an English past of rural contentment that can tell us little about the England of today, rather in the same way that nationalism itself is often criticised for creating mythical pasts and false unities which try to justify, but end up distorting, the present.

But I want to argue that this pastoral patriotism has a positive side, in that it links directly with contemporary ecological concerns and that, therefore, this form of Englishness is due for rehabilitation at a time when concern about the environment is so central. An English ecology can offer us a sense of national purpose that is not inward-looking, nostalgic or hostile to the national aspirations of others but which connects with some of the most important issues that all of us who share this earth now face. England can be most true to itself when it is ecologically alert and an ecological nationalism, through insisting on the importance of conserving our own natural environment, can contribute to the overall quest for sustainability and environmental justice throughout the world.

An ecological Englishness can provide an alternative to those definitions of the national identity that rely on notions of racial and cultural homogeneity while at the same time remaining relevant to the great public issues of the day. As an alternative to racially – or culturally – exclusivist ideas of England, many have opted for a more harmless notion of England as a place of tea shops and fish and chips. This is a quaint England, an interior and essentially private one, that can be harboured and savoured in quiet moments but makes no claims to public significance and has no importance for forging a new political identity.

This sense of England is, without a doubt, infinitely preferable to any notion of an England of racial or cultural purity. It asks for no oaths of allegiance, no displays of nationalist fervour, only quiet pleasure in the known and familiar, the small, even insignificant, moments of remembrance of everyday things gently enjoyed. Yet neither sense of England, whether of nationalist superiority, or the much more pleasant one of private pleasure, are adequate foundations for constructing a renewed sense of English identity that will serve us in the present. To work, the sense of our identity as a nation has to link directly with the great issues of the day. It has to be a public doctrine as well as a private feeling and something that connects with institutions and communal practices as well as individual emotion and sensibility. It will have to link a desire to enjoy and protect our own distinctiveness, the particular, with the need to conserve the general. It will have to be concerned with the fate of the earth.

Greens have tended to share radicals' suspicion of nationalist sentiments. This means that any argument in favour of ecological nationalism is likely to be highly heterodox among environmental activists and supporters of green politics. This is partly because of a perfectly legitimate feeling that ecological issues know no boundaries. Nature cannot be forced to fit purely man-made notions of cultural or political identity. Lines of demarcation drawn on a map, between one nation and the next, bear no relation to differences in natural habitat or land form. What relevance ecologically has the border between England and Scotland for instance? Therefore, many Greens would claim, distinctions of nationality are unimportant when dealing with threats to habitat, species, climate change, deforestation, pan-continental pollution, the spread of new and dangerous genetically engineered mutations and so forth. In fact, the argument might continue, these artificial national divisions actually get in the way of dealing with these ecological issues because they prevent the emergence of the one world perspective that will be required. National particularisms, except perhaps for the purely private kind that might continue to be expressed in differences of cuisine, music or dress, are increasingly irrelevant in the area of global environmental consciousness.

This is a powerful argument and is certainly a necessary counter to purely selfish forms of nationalism that are only concerned with their own citizens' welfare to the exclusion of others, both human and non-human. But if it denies the need for any kind of borders or boundaries at all it goes too far. Both psychological health in humans and environmental wellbeing depend on there being recognizable distinctions, boundaries if you like, between one thing and another. The ecosystem is not an undifferentiated mass with no distinction, but a finely wrought network of interacting sub-systems, chemical and organic compounds, gene pools, food webs and varieties of habitat forms that serve a variety of functions in the maintenance of the ecological process of growth, decay and renewal.

The human need for ordered pattern and distinction is a necessary prerequisite for us behaving in ways that do not undermine the wider ordered patterning of nature through upsetting our own place within it. An important part of this patterning process is the human trait of distinguishing territory, a cultural universal. Our own ways of demarcating space, which includes a notion of national distinctiveness and difference, help us to feel at home in the environment and inculcate a sense of fruitful order and belonging. This sense of national identity remains central to the way we, as human beings, think about the world and, rather than simply trying to deny it, we should attempt to incorporate it into an ecological vision and broaden the important need for national distinctiveness and difference to include a feeling for the natural environment[2].

Indeed, this should be a reason for Greens to support nationalism. I have already claimed that central to a sense of English identity has been a concern with nature, landscape, and habitat, and this is not just true of discussions of Englishness. In many of its other expressions nationalism has reflected a positive valuation of the land, the landscape on which the nation stands. The nation's nature is what partly helps to define the national identity for its members and therefore if they care about the nation, they will care about the nature it contains. This claim that the nation is, at lease to an extent, defined by its nature will often be used to present an alternative and oppositional sense of the nation, against other narratives that are more aggressive and militaristic. As Landau (1939, p. 349), criticising the Nazis, put it:

… you cannot really be fond of nature and like parading in uniforms.

Yet, paradoxically, this close connection between nationalism and the land which should make it an attractive vehicle for green hopes has been the very reason why some greens have shied away from nationalism, because of its "tainted" association with right-wing or even Fascist movements of national renewal. In some contexts, such as post-war Germany, this is understandable. That the Nazis stressed nature conservation has presented a problem of distinctiveness for the Greens since it has been very easy for their political rivals on both right and left to smear them with accusations of being just like the Fascists. This partly explains why the political Greens in Germany have tended to be less interested, at least in public, in issues of nature conservation or overpopulation, than green movements in other countries and have tended to present a much more watered-down and socially-based form of environmentalism. In many respects, the German Greens have been indistinguishable from traditional left-wing movements. Many leftists and student radicals of the 1960s have, therefore, graduated in green leadership.

However, in other contexts, particularly in the USA, accusations of "eco-Fascism" have been used, often in a highly unprincipled way, by some members of Green parties in their internal battles for power and control as a way of silencing those who take a different view of green politics. Particularly disreputable in this regard has been the activities of Murray Bookchin and his followers, such as Janet Biehl. In their use of the label eco-Fascism, some radical greens have simply adopted the same tactics as the communists and Marxists who have made similar loose and profligate use of the term to divide and rule rather than to clarify or understand (for a particularly obnoxious example of this name-calling, see Biehl and Staudenmaier, 1995).

These accusations, understandably perhaps, have been an even stronger reason why many Greens have sought to reject any possible link between ecology and nationalism. But this is to make the same mistake as those who reject any discussion of English identity or English nationalism simply because some discussions of it might be racially tainted. Because Nazism combined elements of "nature" and "nation" in unsavoury ways, it does not follow that linking nature with national feelings is always or necessarily Fascistic. Indeed, the tradition of writing about nature and England with which I am concerned, a tradition represented by major writers, novelists, poets and political thinkers like Cobbett, Ruskin or Morris. It is represented perhaps even more by those literary naturalists that have played a smaller but no less important role in English cultural life, such as Richard Jefferies, W.H. Hudson, Edward Thomas, H.J. Massingham, Gordon Benningfield or Richard Mabey, who present no racial element in their discussion. This tradition is absolutely hostile to an ethnically pure conception of England which is regarded as a simple irrelevance. Anyone can come to love the contours of the place where they live whether it be through birth, adoption or residence. Familiarity, not "filiality", is all that is required for a sense of an England located in the particulars of nature and a wish to preserve these particulars from threat or destruction.

In fact, I want to argue that what makes an ecological nationalism necessary is not just the ecology but the nationalism, since a sense of the importance of national diversity and difference is the best way, politically and culturally, of protecting the natural world against the twin loss of cultural and natural diversity that results from global marketisation and homogenisation – the McDonaldisation of the world. An ecological nationalism is necessary as a counterweight to the increasingly overheating and unsustainable economy that is laying waste to large parts of the earth for short-term material gain.

The emphasis in nationalism on the value of the land should be encouraged and expressed more, rather than dismissed as irrelevant or outdated, by those who support environmentalism.

The various representatives of this tradition do not easily fit into the traditional Left/Right divisions of normal politics. Cobbett has been seen as both a Tory and a radical and he railed equally against both Whigs and Tories of his time; Ruskin described himself as an old Tory and the reddest of the reds; Jefferies supported the unionisation of agricultural labourers; Massingham was a liberal, though not of the Manchester school, while Morris's libertarian socialism is well known. What they all shared (in addition to a sense of the closeness of English sensibility to an appreciation of nature) was a feeling for the local, the unique and distinct. Along with that, they share a hostility to centralism and mechanism, to power that was unaccounted for and wealth and position that lacked responsibility and compassion for the people as a whole. They have nothing whatever in common with the machine and power worship of the Fascists.

Greens who shy away from any positive discussion of the relationship between national identity and ecological concern not only misread this tradition, they cut themselves off from one of the major resources they need to make use of if they are to influence the public mood in modern England. This mood remains, beyond the intellectualisation of green philosophy or political theory, based in the popular appreciation of the natural world[3].

We must never forget Fascism or give up trying to understand how it came to be that millions of people, not evil or crazy people at all, but ordinary, normal, even good people, came to give it their support. But it is time we stopped using it as a device to close down any discussion of green nationalism and to oppose the disreputable way in which some socialists and anarchists in the green movement, such as Murray Bookchin and his followers, use accusations of Fascism to silence those who take a different view of green politics. Indeed, this has now become such a fine art that the accusation that nature worship equals Fascism can now be used to damn the whole Green movement from without, not just some parts of it from within. This was recently shown in a television documentary on Channel 4 made by an obscure group of Trotskyists. Even a cultured and sensible critic like the French liberal political philosopher Luc Ferry seems to get very near to this position at times in his book, The New Ecological Order, and I say this even though in other respects I have considerable sympathy with many of his criticisms of green politics, particularly the "hairshirt puritanism" which remains one of the greens' less agreeable characteristics (Ferry, 1995). But puritanism, however disagreeable, is not Fascism, and one would hope at least that a professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne would be able to see the difference without too much difficulty.

I have been an ecologist for far longer than I have been an English nationalist and, until recently, used to think that my ecologism entailed being an anti-nationalist. Note that I use the term "anti-nationalist", not internationalist. Once I assumed they meant the same, now I realise they entail very different views. Anti-nationalism and internationalism are not the same. An internationalist is someone who, understanding what it feels like to love one's own country, respects and welcomes that same feeling in others. An internationalist wants nationalism for everybody, not just himself. An anti-nationalist, though he seems to hate all nationalisms, really hates his own. Feeling homeless, he wants to level everyone to his state of mind. His cosmopolitanism, his "tolerance" of other ways are really expressions of a sneaking wish for almost any kind of nationalism rather than his own. This he elevates into a general principle a "line" or a position. Identity is something abstract, intellectual and theoretical, to be imagined, taken up or abandoned at will, like the latest intellectual fashion, not a melody sung from the heart. He thinks that the general has some meaning outside of the particular. In that respect, the anti-nationalist is in the same state as Rousseau, who wanted to love the whole of mankind while hating his next door neighbour and abandoning his own children.

We might almost say that the same distinction exists among Greens. There are those who see nature as some kind of abstract illustration of a theory involving fecundity, balance, nature becoming conscious, or whatever. To love nature is too anthropomorphic for these Greens. They want to systematise it, generalise it and turn it into an ideological programme. Being concerned about a particular aspect of nature – a wood, a river and its banks, this flower or shrub, this bird's nest – is simply environmentalism, a wish to protect these small particulars from destruction "NIMBYISM" (not in my back yard). Nature, like history, has a trajectory, and like the proletariat of old, a mission to fulfil.

But for others, the majority from which an effective green politics has to come, nature is its particulars, and love of nature flows naturally from familiarity with an identifiable and known part of it. My back yard is the start of my wisdom[4].

Note

1. 1.

   This aspect of Wilkes is well brought out in Colley (1992, pp. 105-17). For discussions of the radical uses of "patriotism" see Butler (1998), Joyce (1991) and Newman (1987).

2. 2.

   This seems to me to be the central, and positive, insight of "bio-regionalism" (see Van Andruss et al., 1990; Dodge ,1990; Snyder, 1990; for its application to ideas of Englishness, see Pond, 1998).

3. 3.

   This popular appreciation of nature is not only English, of course, although it is, I think, particularly strong here. For an insightful discussion of the role of nature imagery in a number of different national cultural discourses see Schama's (1995) delightful Landscape and Memory.

4. 4.

   For this "local wisdom" see the essays in Mabey et al. (1984), Clifford and King (1993) as well as Curry's (1997) ecological reading of Tolkien, Defending Middle-Earth: Tolkien, Myth and Modernity, in particular the conclusion, "Place"