Resentment,class and social sentiments about the nation: The ethnic majority in England

Abstract

The concepts of ‘class trajectory’ and ‘secondary properties of classes’, drawn from Bourdieu, are deployed in an attempt to explain orientations to nation. Interview material forms the basis of two characterisations of these orientations: the resentful nationalist and the liberal cosmopolitan. These two orientations are seen as being associated with declining and rising class situations.

Keywords

Class nation English national identity ethnic majority class trajectory welfare and citizenship

In the present paper I characterise and theorise two distinct ethnic majority orientations to nation in England, the ‘resentful nationalist’ and the ‘liberal cosmopolitan’, drawing links between these orientations and the social locations of those who express them. The balance of the paper is towards theory and argument, supported by illustrations from empirical work (on this work see Mann, 2011; Mann and Fenton, 2009). The theoretical argument sets out to connect up classes, or fractions of them, and national identity by two linked lines of argument. The first line of argument is social-historical and suggests that in post-war Britain ‘ordinary people’ achieved a sense of national attachment through the extension of social citizenship in a broadening welfare state (Bauman, 2004; Turner, 2001; Williamson, 1998). This is followed by a theoretical exploration of classes, modes of thinking and modalities of orientation to ‘nation’, relying principally on Bourdieu’s Distinction (1984) and the concept of class trajectory.

After the Second World War, it has been argued, the welfare state created a pact between working people and the nation, but this pact has been broken (Turner, 2001), leaving in its wake a set of resentful views of welfare and social benefits. In the same period (1950 to the present) sections of the working class have experienced a long decline, reflected in work, neighbourhoods and loss of solidarity (Williamson, 1998: 180; see also Sennet, 1998). Particular resentments in these milieux, I will suggest, become ‘generalised’ into a ‘resentful nationalist’ view of people’s incorporation into the social whole. In speaking of ‘sections of the working class’ I am thinking of ethnic-majority working-class men and women in those areas where there has been a steep decline in traditional industry, and among them typically older workers or former workers who have experienced this decline or seen it around them.

At the same time some professional middle classes – seen as ‘rising’ and ‘new’ classes in a knowledge economy – are, I will suggest, less likely to express these social-resentment sentiments, will hold a more positive view of their place in the social order and tend to adopt a liberal and ‘distancing’ taste for nationalist sentiment. As with the ‘working class’, so with the ‘middle class’ it is unsound to characterise the whole class without being aware of significant intra-class differentiation (Brint, 1984; Gerteis and Savage, 1998; on the importance of differentiating within the ‘white working class’ see Rhodes, 2011). Cultural and political liberalism has been particularly linked to professionals, and, among professionals, those in knowledge-industry and cultural occupations, as against professionals tied into capitalist business and management (Brint, 1984). Possibly because of marked divisions within the ‘middle class’, education has been reported as a better predictor of liberal attitudes (e.g. towards immigration and multiculturalism) than class (Blinder, 2011).

In the empirical section of the paper I will draw on conversational interview material (Mann, 2006) to establish and illustrate the two orientations to nation. The first orientation is one grounded in social resentment and a sense of frustration at the direction of social change. Typically someone giving voice to this type of orientation will speak about a decline in civility in the neighbourhood or the country at large; will view the presence of immigrants with suspicion; will look on the government, or more broadly ‘elites’, as failing ordinary people; and will be sceptical about the claims of a ‘multicultural England/Britain’. The attitude to ‘nation’ will be expressed with frustration: ‘we’ should be showing more pride in England, but at the same time the reasons for that pride have diminished; or ‘we’ are discouraged and even prevented from ‘being English’ (see Mann, 2012). Welfare and benefits are no longer ‘for us’; ‘others’ benefit and we are berated or ignored. These characteristic orientations I have termed ‘resentful nationalist’.

The second orientation is mostly free of this sense of frustration and decline and is a broadly more liberal view of nation and society. Some aspects of social change may be regretted but the orientation to society is largely positive. Immigrants and minorities may be viewed as ‘problems’ but these can be overcome with a balanced attitude and sensible, tolerant, and ‘integrative’ policies. People in this second orientation also look for greater acceptance of ‘diversity’ at home and more open attitudes towards the wider world. They may accept that they ‘are’ English, but prefer the civic notion of being British; in general they speak cautiously about ‘national pride’ and have a lukewarm and ‘take it or leave it’ view of expressing English or even British national identity. This second set of orientations I have termed ‘liberal cosmopolitan’. These two orientations to ‘the nation’ and ‘this country’ are largely distilled from our interview material. I will illustrate them by drawing on these 100 interviews with ‘ethnic majority’¹ respondents in the South-West of England in which people spoke about their neighbourhood and place of residence, and their working lives, as well as their orientations to England and Englishness, Britain and Britishness.

In the next two sections of the paper I will set out the argument, found in several commentators, that, after the Second World War, welfare rights created a ‘social citizenship’ which brought working people fully into the nation, a pact which was later weakened. Subsequently I will draw on Bourdieu’s arguments regarding class, class trajectory, secondary properties of social classes and ‘taste’.

Theoretical orientations to class, state and nation: Welfare and mutuality

In the post-Second World War period, Britain witnessed an extension of social welfare which Marshall (1950) and others (Tilly, 1995; Turner, 2001) have described as a basis of social citizenship, an extension of citizenship or ‘national membership’ beyond the civic rights and political rights granted earlier. In particular, working-class people gained an incorporation into the nation and full membership of society through a history of extended rights, of which the social rights of the welfare state were the culmination. A more widely applicable statement of this ‘welfare-citizenship’ argument relies on the principle of mutuality, a sense of obligation which is necessary for what Ignatieff refers to as a willingness to pay for meeting the needs of strangers (Ignatieff, 1984). Miller (1995) has described a similar position:

In acknowledging a national identity, I am also acknowledging that I owe a special obligation to fellow members of my nation which I do not owe to other human beings.

(1995: 49)

This mutuality is then grounded in relationships with the state: military service, taxation and the provision of welfare. Williamson (1998) cites Titmuss as arguing that ‘the development of the welfare state (was) the price paid by the state for the involvement of the civilian population in total war’ (1998: 163, citing Titmuss, 1950).

This thesis has, as Tilly argues, ‘attracted renewed attention as throughout the West financially-pressed states have started to restrict, dismantle, or divest entitlements to welfare, health care and unemployment compensation long thought to be ineradicable perquisites of citizenship in Western countries, both capitalist and socialist’ (Tilly, 1995: 3). Bauman too argues that there is ‘a re-thinking of the traditional compact between nation and state … when the weakening states have fewer and fewer benefits to offer in exchange … [for] loyalty’ (Bauman, 2004: 56) The state is no longer ‘the natural depository for people’s trust’ (2004: 45) and so attitudes to welfare benefits have been transformed:

from a safeguard of individual security into a noxious drain on individual resources; from something ‘that is our right’ to something ‘we cannot afford’.

(Bauman, 1997, cited in Bonnett, 1998²)

Similarly, Williamson, in his account of popular sentiments in Britain in the post-war period, speaks of ‘the issue of citizenship and … how through the public institutions of the welfare state, people construed the nature of their interdependence and made sense of their obligations to one another’ (Williamson, 1998: 163). In Williamson’s argument, national identity must be studied through an understanding of popular sentiments, themselves rooted in routine social experiences, and shaped by patterns of social change. Attitudes to welfare are one example. Class was a central part of Williamson’s account of popular sentiments, like the ‘sense of moral worth’ which working people felt during and after the war (Turner, 2001, 2009; Williamson, 1998). This sense of moral worth came from working for the country, whether in military service or in what were seen as major important areas of production, such as shipbuilding, aircraft and coal mining, and services (such as the railways) that contributed to the ‘national effort’ (see Mandler, 2006: 214).

If Williamson is right in his assessment of changes in ‘structures of feeling’ in Britain since the Second World War, then the solidarity of war-time and the sense of entitlement which followed have given way to a consumption-oriented individualism (Williamson, 1998: 177; see also Bonnett, 1998) in which welfare beneficiaries are viewed as taking advantage of the middle mass of working people (Blinder, 2011). The loss of mutuality is also experienced in neighbourhoods and everyday life; the weakening of security and civility are seen as ‘national failings’ in narratives of decline (see, for example, Daily Telegraph, 2 June 2007).

Theoretical orientations to class, state and nation: Class and class trajectory

The failing of the welfare pact is only one part of a theoretical account of classes and orientations to nation. A more complete account requires an understanding of changes in the social fates of classes in a wider sense. Where the direction of change – what Bourdieu calls class trajectory – is downwards, a set of connected class experiences (and by this I mean, for example, in employment, sense of security, health and neighbourhood) also contribute to the possibilities for resentment, just as an upward class trajectory (a rising class) contributes to an ‘open’, liberal and positive view of the social order and one’s place in it.

Since Scheler’s (1961) original deployment of the term ressentiment in his analysis of envy, the wish for revenge and the unassuaged feelings linked to a sense of loss of power, it (or the English term ‘resentment’) has found a place in the sociology of sentiments and emotions (Barbalet, 1992; Melzer and Musolf, 2002). Significantly, it has been applied in the sociology of nationalism, and of classes who make use of appeals to nation in response to a felt loss or lack of power (see Brown, 2000, 2008; Fenton, 2010; Greenfeld and Chirot, 1994; Mann and Fenton, 2009). This ‘resentment-nationalism’ can be found in different classes but in recent decades we have seen across Europe new and usually xenophobic nationalisms, with significant support in working-class groups. Certainly in areas of white working-class decline, we find the typical ingredients for support of extremist ‘nationalist’ parties (Fenton, 2010; Hainsworth, 2008). This should not obscure cross-class support for xenophobic nationalism and significant differentiation within the working class (Rhodes, 2011).

We are, however, considering not simply ‘class’ in the sense of class location, but also the historical direction of change in a class, precisely the idea captured by Bourdieu’s concept of class trajectory. Bourdieu’s Distinction (1984) aims to trace the relationships between classes, ways of thinking (habitus) and one particular set of subjectivities that he captures under the term ‘taste’. Two sets of observations that Bourdieu makes in this volume can, I think, be applied to our question: these are observations about class trajectory, classes in decline and rising classes; and observations about what he calls ‘secondary properties of social classes’.

Bourdieu is able to show, throughout Distinction, that class locations have a consistent bearing on the styles, consumption choices and political orientations that members of classes express, and that this relationship is mediated by class trajectory (cf. Ball, Reay and David, 2002). The downward trajectory of the older working-class man who has been made redundant from his job in manufacturing in a well-unionised industry, in which most of his friends and age-mates have worked most of their lives, is marked by his current unemployment or employment in a less skilled, less prestigious and poorly remunerated service job. In Bourdieu et al.’s (1999) Weight of the World, M. LeBlond, one of the case studies, notably displays some of these features. In this case we see a downward individual trajectory but also a collective downward trajectory: the decline of a class – in Bourdieu’s examples, industrialists, farmers and ‘craftsmen’. We would add all those skilled and semi-skilled occupations associated with the once revered industries, now declining in an era of de-industrialisation.

Classes in a collective downward trajectory have specific social and political characteristics. For example, members of classes in decline, it is argued, tend to hold conservative views on political and social or moral questions (see Trigg, 2001: 112). The occupation or class develops an older age profile (Bourdieu, 1984: 108) with new members coming from ‘lower-status’ social strata including women and migrants. Older workers in these occupations may be resentful about the difficulties in the later parts of their careers; even if they have escaped the worst of the effects of the changes, they are still affected by collective decline (periodic lay-offs, changes of ownership of the business, market uncertainties). In their later careers or retirement they can only look back in disenchantment at the fall in prestige of the industry, profession or business to which they gave most of their working lives. Those who are the direct victims of a downward class trajectory – the redundant coal miner, the unemployed steelworker, the shipbuilding craftsman, subsequently forced to work in an unskilled service job, the farmer who can no longer make a comfortable living from his work – these are the classic cases of class decline experienced individually and collectively.

A second observation about tastes, modes of thinking (i.e. habitus; see Bourdieu, 1989) and social class, refers to what Bourdieu calls the ‘secondary properties’ of classes.

The individuals in a class that is constructed in a particular respect (that is in a particularly determinant respect) always bring with them, in addition to the pertinent properties by which they are classified, secondary properties which are thus smuggled into the explanatory model [my emphasis]. This means that a class or class fraction is defined not only by its position in the relations of production, as identified through indices such as occupation, income or even educational level, … but also by … a certain distribution in geographical space (which is never socially neutral).

(Bourdieu, 1984: 102)

Thus, ‘geographical space’ is a critical subsidiary feature of a class. In Britain we can think of the significance of geographical space in the fates of workers in the north-east and north-west of England, or south Wales. Working people in shipbuilding, cotton industry and coal-mining areas have seen those industries weakened or closed down altogether and others living in the area are affected by the sense of general decline. People themselves, policy makers and others come to view these regions, towns and cities and localities and neighbourhoods within them (see Lupton et al., 2011) as ‘places in decline’.

These two ideas – class trajectory and the secondary properties of classes – can be seen to have a bearing on a possible interpretation of the ‘resentful nationalist’ and ‘moderate cosmopolitan’ responses to national identity questions in our research. As social spaces, the three areas in our research roughly match areas of decline (Northville), of upward class trajectory (Westown) and with characteristics of both (Southdown). (For comments on the characteristics of each research site, see Table 1 and its footnote.)

South-west England: Ethnic majority interviewees talking about the nation

We began this paper by describing two orientations to England/Britain: the resentful nationalist and the liberal cosmopolitan. These are distilled over many months of reading and re-reading 100 interviews from a small country town (Westown) outside Bristol (50 cases), a ward (Southdown) in central Bristol (25 cases) and a ward (Northville) in South Gloucestershire on the edge of Bristol and part of the Bristol conurbation (25 cases). Full details are given in Mann (2011: 113).

The questions that prompted direct and indirect responses about ‘the nation’ and ‘this country’ were (1) a question about whether ‘the country is getting worse or better (as a place to live)’, (2) a question about multicultural society and (3) a question about their sentiments towards identifying as English and British. I will draw on this whole range of questions in order to illustrate the characterisations of types of national sentiment and social location that I have described early in the paper. Each selected interview contains biographical information about the interviewee, who was asked about the places where he or she had lived; about attitude to the place of current residence; and about work history, and related questions, such as whether the person felt he or she had got on in life. This provides a basis for characterising the social origins of the interviewee, in attempting to link ‘orientations to nation’ and social location.

Overall, the ‘resentful’ and ‘liberal’ appear in broadly equal numbers across the great majority of interviews. A third group are indeterminate and mixed in national orientation. In what follows I will draw on our interview material to illustrate first the ‘resentful nationalist’ orientation and second the ‘moderate liberal or cosmopolitan’ orientation.

The resentful nationalists

Northville 17

This man, in his late fifties, comes from a working-class family, his father having worked as a fitter at Rolls-Royce. He himself has had a number of jobs, which included keeping a store, being a pub landlord, some time in the army, being a brick worker, and a job as a supervisor at British Aerospace. He is retired on grounds of ill-health but his wife continues to work, as a catering assistant at a local factory. Their children work as a warehouse operative, a bank clerk and a supermarket check-out assistant. He is very much both a family man and a ‘local man’, having lived in Northville all his life and being involved in local affairs. He contrasts the discipline he knew in his own family and the indiscipline you now ‘see everywhere’. He speaks of the local area as being marred by the traffic passing through, a consequence of the building of a huge shopping mall a couple of miles away. As well as this, ‘there’s a lot of foreigners coming in this area … You say good morning to them and they don’t nod’. He is sad to see that ‘patriotism is disappearing’ and he himself takes a real part in the local British Legion. For this reason he is more interested in flying the Union flag than the flag of St George.

He considers the area in which he lives to be in decline through loss of amenities and sense of community. In addition to his sense of his home locale changing, he sees Britain ‘getting worse’, society failing and young people lacking discipline. He is opposed to ‘Europe’ and speaks of his discontent at ‘too many people coming into the country’, the ‘soft touch’ government that lets them in, and the expectation that ‘we’ should change for ‘them’ rather than what he would expect: that ‘they’ should change for ‘us’.

Yeah they do that, they come in the country and they [by implication ‘should’: SF] do what we do … I don't go in their country and preach, preach, preach their whatsaname, or whatsaname all round there and English, so they shouldn't come over here and tell us how to, and tell them they got to cover up and all the rest of it, if they come over here, they expect that we are, we're Roman Catholic or Church of England, not bloody Muslim …

This is one example of the assertion of the ‘do as we do’ argument, typically coupled with anger at ‘them’ telling ‘us’ what to do; these types of statement are repeated many times in a significant proportion of our interviews. Then he refers to the government being a soft touch and to immigrants coming and taking advantage of welfare benefits:

It’s definitely wrong to let all these people come in, and, and they just, well they're just laughing see, they're just coming out here, how they, how they manage to live and get on the benefit … why are they, why are they making a bee line for this country, because it's an easy touch …

Finally, he has an uncomplicated pride in being both English and British.

[I’m] definitely English, I’m you know I’m very proud of being English.

His suspicions about benefits are repeated through many of the interviews, much along the lines of Southdown 10:

I mean I’m not racist [laugh]. But umm I do find that our government now seem to give more to people coming in from other countries. More so than looking after our own people. Like the elderly, they’re shutting down the old sort of day centres and this and they’re making places for more like asylum people coming in and that whereas they should be looking after our own people more so.

Northville 35

He has lived in Northville for 40 years, having moved there when he returned to England after a brief period in Australia. His parents were poorly educated, his mother illiterate, and he himself left school at 14, joining the army at 16. After a spell in the army he worked for a plastics company connected to Weston helicopters, followed by his spell – working as a boat builder – in Australia. Since then he has worked as a ‘production supervisor’ in a local company before retiring five years ago. His wife is also retired and both are now 70 years old. Their children are in similar working-class employment. Although they have lived in Northville a long time – in rented accommodation – and it is his wife’s family’s area, he doesn’t think much of it. He is wary of going out at night and speaks of violence and yob culture; the area is deteriorating.

No I think the whole thing’s starting to go down hill now because um people don’t care anymore, that’s the problem, it’s the small things they’re doing I mean you get abuse from, from different people, you know, the road just as I said down there you go down at night and they park cars right on the pavement, nobody bothers …

On the whole he speaks of the area and its people as depressed, with ordinary working people struggling to make their way. He himself thinks that he could have done better in life, perhaps with more education.

They’re all working class round here yeah … some have got on a little bit better than others and some haven’t got off the floor but yeah they’re all working class … I never got what I deserved, I don’t think I did anyhow, almost from the, I’m a little bit biased on that, er in general yeah unless you’re born lucky, if you work for it you’ll get it with a bit of luck yeah.

However, for workers in the present era, the employment which provided a basis of stability in the past is no longer available. The two industries he mentions are situated very close to where he lives and have provided stable employment for a long time:

Well the, the employment’s gone from here now isn’t it I mean BAC is shut down virtually and Rolls-Royce, there’s not much here at all, you used to have families years ago, then all the families as they grew up they went to work in there and then it was a stable, stable area, it’s not anymore, not now there’s nothing in there except supermarkets and er the stores in the area, there’s no employment round here …

His sense of national identity is primarily British but he realises that Britishness is weakening – much to his dismay – and reluctantly accepts an English identity. He tells us that Britain (‘that should be “Great” Britain’) has achieved a lot in the past and should be proud of it (‘even if we have oppressed a few’) instead of being told to apologise for it. This applies to Bristol too.

There’s not a lot of pride left in Bristol I don’t think so, alright you can, forever you hear now what Bristol did wrong years ago, you don’t hear what Bristol did right, and they’re always apologising or somebody wants us to apologise for the slave trade …

So he has a frustrated wish to be proud of being British, frustrated because there is less to be proud of and because Britain is breaking up into separate nations. At the same time ‘immigrants keep coming in’ and ‘spread everywhere’. He is opposed to ‘Europe’ and proudly flies the flag of St George. We should, he argues, celebrate Britain and its history, rather than see celebration impeded by political restraints.

Well yeah I mean there you got your own history, you got all the things that stemmed from the Magna Carta all the way up through, um that’s English, you’ve got your composers, you’ve got your historians, you’ve got Churchill, you’ve got Nelson which they wouldn’t even allow us to celebrate I understand in Portsmouth, it’s got to be a red fleet and a blue fleet, it can’t be a French fleet because it might offend the French, what the hell’s the matter with this country …

In a subsequent question he was asked about ‘ethnic monitoring’ forms and whether he belonged to ‘an ethnic group’. This he regarded as absurd:

No I’m not an ethnic group, I’m um I’m English, how can I be ethnic group, this is, this is England isn’t it?

Southdown 15

A man in his fifties, he lives in a house in Southdown with his wife (who is quite a lot younger), who is confined to her bed with serious ill-health. He has been in the army and worked as an agricultural mechanic, a forklift truck mechanic, a guard with British Rail, a roofing contractor and now a bill-poster. They think the area they live in has deteriorated and there is no longer any ‘community spirit’. The neighbourhood and Britain are getting worse and the government is a soft touch for letting in immigrants who drain ‘our’ resources.

It’s getting er it’s getting worse in the way that er we’re not able to actually rule England, um I feel that we’re becoming a, we’re becoming a sub-state of the EU and they’re actually dictating to us telling us exactly what we can and cannot do, and um you know I’m British and I’m proud of it and I want to be British not a sub-state of Europe, um also we’re get, I’m not racist as such but I am becoming because I feel that the white people are becoming victimised because they’re white, because you know the um all the political correctness, saying that you know if you’re, if you’re white you can’t discriminate against a black person but if you’re black you can discriminate against a white person, um so it in that aspect you know we are going downhill you know, but you know England’s still England you know, still love it but I would, give me, if I won the Lottery I’d be gone tomorrow because I can see where it’s going you know and I don’t want to be in here.

These interviews illustrate not only ‘resentful nationalist’ responses, but a concatenation of social attitudes which form a recognisable whole. The interviewees are and want to be proud of Britain and England but feel their pride is frustrated and disallowed; they see the government as too soft and failing to look out for them; the government has permitted too many immigrants to come in, who fail to conform and even expect ‘us’ to change. They speak of the loss of industrial jobs, as once ‘the basis of stable families’ in the area. These frustrations are part of a piece with dismay at the changing of neighbourhoods, the lack of security and the threat of yobs.

The moderate liberals or cosmopolitans

The ‘liberals’ or ‘cosmopolitans’ are almost the opposite of the resentful nationalists, as if indeed they were defining themselves in contrast to them. What they say has a significantly different tone, as well as content. If they offer the view that there should be greater immigration control, it is offered in moderate terms, if they ‘admit’ to being proud of being British-English, it is suggested in quiet and almost reluctant tones. They will give broad support to ‘multiculturalism’ even if this is qualified by saying that minority communities should not became ‘segregated’. As well as accepting that they are English-British they may add that they also think of themselves as European or as non-nationals, conceiving of themselves as part of a broad human community.

Southdown 9

This respondent is a young woman in her early thirties who lives with her parents in Southdown. Although Southdown is quite diverse in population, she views her area as more ‘white’ although becoming more multicultural. She thinks of the area as boring, pleasant and comfortable. The interviewer’s notes describe the street as an ‘avenue with a suburban feel’. She is university-educated and has a professional job but thinks of herself as working-class: ‘I grew up in a working-class area, my mum and dad are working-class and I consider myself to be working-class.’ She adds that she feels a bit distant from her former schoolmates, most of whom did not go to university, and from her work colleagues, who are unmistakably ‘middle-class’. Since graduating she worked briefly in the civil service and then as an editor for publishing companies. Her present publisher-employer publishes legal texts which she sees through to publication.

She expresses ‘left-liberal’ views on opportunity and privilege, saying, for example, that there is a widening gap between rich and poor, with people (the wealthy) not paying tax who should. She is hesitant when asked about her national identity:

Sometimes I say I’m British and sometimes I say I’m English and I think it depends who I’m talking to, like if I’m abroad and someone says, where do you come from, I say England but then on my passport, I put British, but I don’t really know why I do that, so and then sometimes I think actually no I’m European so, um, [laughs] it’s all really not a straight answer is it?

Asked about the importance of her national identity she says:

Mmm, mmm, yes I think it probably is even though I don’t, sometimes I’m not very proud to be English, when I see like football fans behaving like, you know, hooligans and then when I go abroad and I see that nobody can speak any other languages apart from English, I feel really ashamed then …

She is prepared to describe herself as English but is also a proud Bristolian, and a pro-European who welcomes the country becoming closer to Europe. When asked what things might make her proud of Britain she laughs and says she can’t think of any, and certainly not the monarchy, who are ‘a drain on our society’. When she is asked about the flying of the flag of St George and a seeming rise in English identifications, she is sceptical:

Yeh, see I didn’t like that, I felt really uncomfortable with that because … Yeh I think I probably associate the St George flag with hooligans and the whole football thing, um, yeh, I felt really uncomfortable and that’s probably why and also I don't think that football was the right reason to be proud to be English.

When she had earlier lived for a period in a predominantly white area of Bristol, she noticed the all-whiteness and ‘didn’t like it’. She welcomes multiculturalism as long as people integrate, and feels concern about ‘separate communities’: ‘I feel uneasy when I've seen that Muslims want to have their own schools and they want to have their own little community away from everything else’.

Westown 15

This respondent lives in Westown, where he was born (of an English father and Swiss mother) and lived until his late teens, when he moved on to live abroad, and subsequently returned to UK to do an engineering degree. As part of his engineering studies he did two placements, the second of these in Switzerland. On graduating he lived and worked in Switzerland, eventually becoming a Swiss citizen. However, after 18 years abroad he returned to England, and latterly to Westown itself, back to his roots, where his family can be ‘traced to the sixteen hundreds’. His and his wife’s families were skilled craftspeople and ‘well-respected workers’, such as a carpenter and a farmer and small businessman. He was the first in his family to get a degree and from there developed a career in engineering and especially information technology. This prompted wide travel, his career in Switzerland with an international company, and eventually the ability to choose a home and to settle in Westown.

Now he is pleased to be back in Britain, which he regards highly for its civilised attitudes and personal freedoms. He sees Westown as thriving, partly thanks to the energies of incomers and partly because of new industry – especially a leading local company of which everyone in our interviews spoke highly: ‘I think also one of the things that I have seen in my lifetime is the impact that [Company] has had on the place because that has brought employment, money and things into Westown that to a large extent weren’t there before’. This is all part of a positive view of Westown as a whole, a place they chose and to which they have a strong sense of belonging.

He later speaks of England’s insularity and class privilege, whilst English people go abroad and want to find England there. So, ‘we [meaning English people] ran around the globe and we took England with us everywhere, we tried to make everywhere into bloody England’. The English abroad are avoided, he says – ‘look out, the English are coming’ – and he speaks, like many other respondents, of embarrassment at his fellow countrymen abroad. He speaks of reservations of what he calls ‘mass migration’ but welcomes multicultural Britain, which he contrasts with what he sees as the much bleaker (multi-ethnicity) situation in Germany.

His English identity is complicated by his other attachment – to Switzerland:

Yes, say that as it is, I’m a bit mixed up. No I do consider myself to be English. I am probably English before British although nothing against the rest of the United Kingdom …

His judgement of the English nation is similarly positive. When he thinks of English characteristics:

I think an idea of fairness, a pragmatic attitude, a nation that is open to change but also one that is fairly class driven but also quite insular in some ways.

Westown 32 a (woman) and b (man)

They are both in their late forties and, separately and together, have lived in a lot of different parts of the country. Ten years ago they moved to Westown, partly because it was an area they knew from having walked in the surrounding countryside. They are able to work in nearby cities or towns and enjoy the semi-rural attractions of their home. Both have ‘intellectual’ occupations, with the woman working in a university research post and her partner as a policy advisor for a housing association, with occasional visits to London advising the government on housing questions. Both feel that they have got on in life and he says that he feels ‘privileged’ to be in his current position. They live in a large Georgian terraced house with a ‘middle-class feel and decor’.

They like the town in which they have chosen to live, with its local facilities, which they later contrast with the global economy of the supermarkets and malls:

Well it’s friendly; it was very easy to settle here, um. Quite a few people like us that have moved up from Bristol … I think it’s really important that it’s got its own high street, it’s a real, that gives it a real sense of community.

The town they think has changed because of the in-moving professionals and now:

a lot more people are professional – who’ve moved out of London, Bristol or other big cities or a lot of big towns and er, commute long distances.

They both exhibit hesitancy about identifying as English or British:

I suppose, it’s a funny one isn’t it really because British things become sort of associated with the right wing hasn’t it you know the sort of British National Party I don’t know I think I’m English, er … European [laughter].

(32 a)

The man distances himself from being English and Englishness:

And often, you know, we’re really happy when we’re not identified as English. You know being identified as Dutch, you know, was a real high point for me for me when I was in France this year, I was so happy, you know [laughter].

This distancing is because of the distasteful associations with Englishness:

there’s nothing that’s very positive about being English, I think that’s the problem, other than the violence, thuggery, racism, er you know, these are all the negative attributes that are left.

Thus they mark themselves off from what they call Daily Mail ‘nationalism’

Sorry, yeh um, but we’re in a tiny minority here I mean the majority of the people read the Daily Mail and are very very proud to be English and behave en masse as the Americans now um, behave, you know the kind of arrogance and belief that we rule the world still.

Concluding comments

The two types of orientation, the resentful and the liberal or moderate, are illustrated by the cases we have cited. The dispositions we find in these two sets of cases are represented throughout a majority of interviews, and are found together in broadly the same way in many. Thus the welcoming attitude to multicultural Britain usually sits alongside a moderate view towards immigration, and a low-key or indifferent view of English/British national identity. Socially this set of views tends to be expressed by people who see themselves as having done reasonably well in life, are content with and have chosen the place where they live, may have travelled in their employment, and have occupations associated with higher education and a middle-class lifestyle. On the whole they are younger and university educated. They are frequently reflexive about their place in the social order, at a local level or beyond, and about nationhood and globalisation. Conversely a hostility to multiculturalism, opposition to immigration, and a sense that the state does not ‘look after us’ and is a ‘soft touch’ for scroungers are found alongside a resentful view of English national identity in which pride in being English/British is frustrated by political correctness. Resentful nationalists say they are proud of being English and British but are not ‘allowed’ to express this pride; or they view the ‘decline’ of Britain as having undermined the occasions for pride. Socially this set of views tends to be expressed by people who express anger and frustration about the area or neighbourhood in which they live (and about ‘crime’ and ‘yobs’), are less satisfied with their economic position (have had a succession of non-‘progressive’ jobs) or have retired, thinking that ‘industry’ has declined and that ‘working people’ are ignored. Among many in this latter group attitudes towards welfare and the deserving and undeserving use of welfare are also notably angry and resentful. This comprises the view that people get benefits that they do not deserve, and that other people get things that ‘we’ can’t get.

There are, of course, cases that are not a perfect fit with the above combination of orientations and the personal life situations of those who express them. In one case, for example, a respondent had most of the ‘resentful’ views and the concomitant social characteristics (older, poorer neighbourhood, sense of local insecurity) but was favourable towards ‘multiculturalism’, partly explained by being friendly with Muslim neighbours. This was a striking case, and unusual. However, even in the cases where one factor was a ‘non-fit’ with the ideal cases, most or all of the other features of that case had a close plausibility fit to the general argument.

The evidence cited in this paper suggests the possibility of significant connections between class trajectory, ‘status’ and orientation towards nation. In the first instance ‘collective decline’ of an older working class is reflected in a mode of thinking (a habitus) which frames a wide range of orientations. It seems to me that the foundational ‘declining working class’ frame of thinking (or class habitus) incorporates the idea that ‘we’ are left out of consideration, ‘we’ tend to lose out, others get things that we can’t get, and other people try to tell us how to behave and how to think (cf. Hewitt, 2005). This forms the basis of a resentful orientation that is grounded in objective class conditions – all those things experienced by people who have been part of a class in a collective downward trajectory. These ‘decline’ experiences are reflected in job histories, poor health of themselves or family members, being stuck in a neighbourhood which is, or they see as, deteriorating, and being unable to do much about it. They speak of ‘others’ urging them to ‘think’ or ‘behave’ differently (less nationalistically, more ‘correctly’), and hence their ‘nationalist’ sentiments are overlaid with references to others (‘liberal elites’) who frustrate their national sentiments (‘We’re not allowed to be English’; see Mann, 2012). Furthermore I would suggest that ‘nation’ and ‘national belonging’ have potential appeal for people in this class position, as a way of framing ‘our interests’ and ‘our view of the world’. The nation could be for ‘us’ but too often fails to offer either material (i.e. welfare, employment, security) or psychic rewards. The orientation of ‘frustrated pride in nation’ fits this condition.

By contrast the middle-class professional people reported above have a different story to tell, one in which they have chosen their careers and their places to live, have retained a kind of control over their fates, have a reflexive view of their ‘place’ in the world, and display an element of disdain for the vulgar expression of national identity. Here is a frame of thinking (a middle-class, professional habitus), grounded in reflexivity fine distinctions (‘I’m not sure whether I’m English or a European, or neither’), and a distancing from racism, nationalism and any unqualified ‘attachment’ (cf. Fenton, 2007). The disdain for vulgar nationalism illustrates how this group’s orientations are framed by a view of others from whom they distinguish themselves. They have more positive attitudes towards multiculturalism, indicated by an open attitude towards ‘other cultures’ and the benefits of new ideas.⁴ This set of ‘ways of thinking’ reflects the lives of people who feel ‘in control’ of their destinies, have succeeded in education and employment, and choose where they live, as a place to suit their needs.

The two sets of views are thus ‘interactive’, with one marking itself by marking itself off from the other (cf. Lawler, 2005). The resentful views are in part directed towards a ‘liberal’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ view of the world that supports multiculturalism and ‘political correctness’ whilst deriding ‘English nationalism’. The moderate views are in part directed towards xenophobic attitudes, parochialism and a vulgar English national identification. This ‘interaction’ of views of the world is, we can speculate, part of a social dynamic of class, lifestyle and social mobility.

The themes of mutuality and class trajectory also find significant echoes. Among the resentful respondents, welfare is overwhelmingly seen as taken advantage of by ‘others’ and failing ‘ourselves’ (Mann and Fenton, 2009); the idea that a benign state acts as provider for the mass of ‘ordinary people’ has little appeal for these respondents and cannot therefore form the basis of a social compact (for some survey evidence on this point see British Social Attitudes: The 21st Report, 2004, Table 1.13, p.17). Similarly there is seen to be a decline in good manners and civility, another failing source of social belonging. Northville as an ‘area of decline’ (South Gloucestershire Council, 2007), along with Westown as a site for mobile professionals, resonates with Bourdieu’s arguments about place as a secondary property of social classes.

Table 1.

The three areas of the research: socio-economic characteristics³

Ward	% white^a	% managers, professionals^b	% highest qualifications^c	Average weekly income^d
Westown	97.7	31.4	27.3	£550
Southdown	82.4	26.0	25.5	£480
Northville	97.5	16.3	10.6	£470

Sources: The figures in this table derive from the UK Population Census for 2001: a, Census 2001 Population by Ethnic Group; b, Census 2001 Employment by Occupation; c, Census 2001 (Table CAS032); d, Office for National Statistics for period April 2001 to March 2002.

I am not suggesting that the ‘resentful nationalist’ and the ‘liberal cosmopolitan’ exhaust the orientations to nation and national identity. However, I do suggest that these two ‘typical orientations’ present themselves quite markedly in our interview materials. Nor does ‘declining sections of the working class’ exhaust the possibilities of this model which I have presented: class decline and social resentment, alongside socially and politically resentful attitudes. Other social classes have well exhibited these characteristics, notably a resentful petite bourgeoisie (see Wells and Watson, 2006) and an aristocracy in decline (see Cannadine, 1990: 546; on resentment and nationalism see Brown, 2000: 67). Last, I suggest that a model incorporating a historical account of class trajectory, welfare and nation – a theoretical account of ‘working-class-in-decline’ and rising-class liberal professional ‘modes of thinking’, rooted in material experiences of work and neighbourhood, and their views of each other – offers a potentially fruitful way of understanding national orientations, which have commonly been interpreted in quite different ways.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

In writing this paper I benefited a great deal from discussions with Alex Fenton of the London School of Economics, who made very valuable suggestions. The paper was also read in various drafts by Dr Jon Fox (University of Bristol) and Professor Susan Condor (University of Lancaster), who made important and helpful critical comments.

Funding

Research into migration and ethnicity funded by the Leverhulme from 2003 to 2009. Carried out by University Research Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship at the Department of Sociology in the University of Bristol and the Migration Research Unit at the Department of Geography in University College.

Notes

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