UK Uncut's 'Great British Street Party': kitsch nationalism?
As if last year had not been enough, 2012 is to be awash with examples of pomp and pageantry; from the Queen’s jubilee celebrations to the Olympics and Paralympics – as well as the run up to these events. Britain is to celebrate itself and its achievements all year round and will certainly not be reserved about it. However, in reality, there is little to celebrate: government plans to sail the National Health Service towards privatisation have been signed off by parliament, welfare caps and cuts to disability benefits have begun to take effect, the criminalisation of squatting has passed into law and will soon mean many homeless find their attempts to find shelter criminalised, unemployment has continued to rise and is currently at 2.67 million and the economy may well be back in recession.
So perhaps then UK Uncut are trying to highlight the absurdity of this juxtaposed celebration and deprivation through their latest action ‘Great British Street Parties’, which appeals to the aesthetic and mode of celebration of 1948 – the year the NHS, welfare and even generalised squatting became realities for Britain. Here it seems UK Uncut seeks to draw attention to all that we are losing through this government’s efforts, or perhaps more accurately: that the working class is losing the very concessions they fought and won after World War II. But of course, this is in itself a fallacy. Claims that the working class fought for and won these basic provisions is historically not the case at all; there was no homogenous Labour movement that coordinated industrial action even close to that seen in 1926 and whilst many were just back from war, there was no risk to the ruling elites of a violent uprising.
Instead the reality facing the Beveridge government was a class that suffered greatly from illness with no ability to pay for care – apart from the occasional availability of voluntary hospitals – and thus not able to fill the jobs needed to get the British economy growing. In fact, plans to universalise the war-time emergency hospital service after its demobilisation had been in place since 1944. Similarly, plans for the beginnings of welfare provision as we understand it today were first drawn up in the Beveridge report of 1942, which along with eliminating ‘Disease’ and ‘Want’, also set its eyes on ‘Idleness’. So we see that rather than being a victory of the working class, a welfare state was a gift given to them in order to keep Britain working.
Admittedly, UK Uncut are not celebrating the achievements of that year in particular, just what the future looked like in 1948 compared to the bleak future we face now. But with the benefit of hindsight we understand that whilst welfare may have been positive in improving material conditions for the working class right up until the present day, it has also played its role against them ensuring that capitalism stayed unthreatened and arguably pacified any meaningful resistance, allowing for the inevitable destruction of welfare institutions now in 2012. The future may have looked good in 1948, but we now know otherwise.
The historical inaccuracy of what UK Uncut is proposing isn’t the most concerning part of this action however, but rather the appeal to a nationalist aesthetic. Shows of pageantry and calls to celebrate ‘Great Britain’ at events such as the Diamond Jubilee or Olympics are often thinly veiled attempts to supplant solidarity of a dissenting nature with one based around a blind allegiance to the nation. For example, it is entirely convenient for the coalition government to utilize the Olympics to label the bosses of unions – and by extension union members themselves – as ‘unpatriotic’ for threatening industrial action. This is unsurprising as both right-wing and nominally left-wing governments often appeal to patriotism to stifle dissent, but that UK Uncut seems to have joined in with mainstream politics’ nationalist consensus is highly concerning.
This is perhaps most evident when you consider the ‘all in this together’ mantra used since the global financial crisis to foster a sense of homogeneity and getting on with things as we supposedly move towards recovery. UK Uncut and its activists originally set out to illustrate precisely that we are not ‘all in this together’ at the current moment, but now seem to suggest in the call-out for their latest national day of action that “Britain back then really was ‘all in this together’”. This falsely hints towards the existence of a golden era where capitalism worked; falsely, because in reality this never existed – it is but a national myth. Beyond this however and apart from the hopefully obvious factors of gender, race and sexuality that would mean exclusion from any notion of ‘together’ at all, let alone in 1948, the mantra is no truer of then than now: whilst a Keynesian economics prevailed in the post-war period, the working class were clearly, as always, the exploited class.
UK Uncut finishes their call-out by suggesting “The future’s not what it used to be – let’s get it back”, but we have already surpassed much of the wildest and most dystopian ideas in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four of what a future may look like. This, incidentally, was written in 1948, the year we are supposed to believe gave the British so much to look forward to. In reality, 1948 played its historical role in getting us to where we are now. This is something no amount of nostalgia and kitsch nationalism will change, but when we have so much to fight for why would we look back anyway? The criticism of UK Uncut’s ‘Great British Street Parties’ is not that it is activism in the guise celebration, but that it is celebration in the guise of nationalism, supported by a fictitious history. This can be all too tempting as a form of popular activism, but in reality is dangerous and simply plays into the hands of exactly what we seek to oppose.
Wail Qasim is a London student of Politics and Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London. He blogs at isthisday.com
I’d just like to point out how great it is that readers of Bright Green Scotland are having this discussion, instead of mindlessly supporting everything UK Uncut does. I love UK Uncut and I don’t think that this event is harmful, but we have to talk about these things to make sure we stay on track.
Yes … the design is clearly needed to be changed 🙂
What would be brighter , nebudu (
Dan – your comment about reaching out to “Middle England” seems apt, because really, the NHS issues that UK Uncut are focussing on at the moment primarily affect England. Of course there are indirect consequences for the rest of the UK, but the general perception in Scotland (where we have an entirely separate branch of the NHS) is that it’s an English issue, so most people file it under “none of my business”. The destruction of the NHS is absolutely something that people should be taking action on, but it’s not going to inspire people on the streets of Edinburgh.
As an outreach action, the retro-kitsch street party only works if this is something your community can relate to – and in the community that Ali and I live in, a “Great British Street Party” just doesn’t provide any draw of nostalgia. If we tried to organise something like this in our area, it would feel like an imposition, because this isn’t something that belongs to our community. We didn’t have street parties in Edinburgh for the Royal Wedding last year because it didn’t capture many people’s imagination, so a street party blocking a road as a form of protest would just be seen as a nuisance.
I agree with what Ali has said about symbols being difficult to re-appropriate, and would suggest that those who think we should just join in for the sake of unity should try to understand the many meanings that these symbols have. For me, the language of “Britishness” and the union flag are associated with sectarianism and football violence, and this association was formed long before I had learned any of the reasoned critiques of nationalism. If you’re comfortable with these symbols, then go ahead and use them, but telling me not to be squeamish about them is quite frankly insensitive.
Ali – “and I don’t think this bridges the gap between activists and the working class in general”
I had no thoughts that it would.
I thought it would reach more towards the far larger group of people in the middle classes, or “middle England” if such a thing can be said to exist. If it makes them less indifferent and more supportive of movements like UK Uncut, it will make the state trying to undermine and demonise such movement all the more harder.
I do love me a bit of pragmatism.
I agree with all of your points, but I don’t think it is productive to pick apart the details and semantics of these things in too much detail. I don’t believe UK Uncut are genuinely proposing a move back to all aspects of 1948 and least of all celebrating the monarchy.
Regardless of the circumstances of the creation of welfare institutions, What is wrong with celebrating their existence, wanting to protect them and acting against those who wish to see them dismantled?
When I read the original copy, I interpreted its imagery it as tongue in cheek. I thought this was obvious, given UK Uncut’s history. They aren’t really an organisation that can be accused of being too kitsch.
I applaud UK uncut for being one of the few protest groups actually coming up with vaguely engaging themes for actions, and parodies of current events are a great way to do this.
I’m sure there are many (who are in the grand scheme of things “few”) who will feel uncomfortable with these events, and won’t want to participate. I hate pomp and ceremony myself, but if I were in the UK I’d be happy to join in. The events themselves are meant to be light-hearted and mildly satirical I’d imagine. This post is a massively over the top analysis (though the fact-checking is welcome on the NHS).
Could it be that, although some of you are “uncomfortable” with what is a harmless throwback, this action could actually help UK Uncut engage with a lot more of the population who look fondly on such displays of community revelry and wouldn’t think there was an issue? The problem with lots of left-wing social movements in the UK is less that they alienate lots of nice left-wing activist types, as they most certainly often do, but that they alienate the slightly larger majority of everyone else.
I for one welcome attempts to bridge that gap.
See I don’t think that nationalism (even ostensibly ‘progressive’ nationalism) or thinking that everything was great in the past are harmless Dan. I think they play into a narrative that I want to undermine, not promote and mislead us about what we want to achieve (well what I want to achieve, some of us do just want to return to social democracy I guess – though personally I don’t think that possible, but perhaps we shouldn’t get into that now).
I don’t think this action will reach out to thousands of new people, maybe I’m wrong but there’s no real evidence to suggest it will, and I don’t think this bridges the gap between activists and the working class in general. I do think there is a significant gap there, which we need to address, but as Alyson says in Scotland this definitely won’t help and in fact in general I think this widens the gap not narrows it. You can’t just re-appropriate these sorts of symbols and completely change their meaning and hope that that somehow carries people with it, and you can’t bridge that gap without a lot of work building community and showing people that you understand them and that we can work together to change society and materially improve their lives. I think we do far too many actions with no strategy or deeper thought about why we are doing them or what the immediate and longer term goals are, and this sort of analysis is very much needed (though of course that analysis shouldn’t be at the expense of real action as well).
Andrew – I agree that the organisers will have their own influence, but think that the “patriotic” ethos of the whole event might put off some people who’ve previously been involved in Uncut actions. A lot of us who live within the geographical boundaries of the UK don’t think of ourselves as British; in Scotland, a Great British Anything is likely to be met with vague disinterest.
Even amongst those who do identify as British, the kitsch nostalgia isn’t everyone’s thing, because it glorifies a time when overt sexism, racism and homophobia were socially acceptable. Given the rise of right-wing nationalist groups in recent years, there may be many people for whom the symbolism of “old-fashioned Britishness” feels rather sinister.
I wish UK Uncut all the best for this action, as it has obviously been organised with good intentions. However, I don’t know that I would feel comfortable participating in something which (indirectly) celebrates the monarchy, and borrows the current trend for sanitising 20th century history so that it can be used to sell us things.
I’m sure like many other UK uncut actions, the event will be what the individuals involved make it.