This furore happened last year but I never got around to writing much about it. This is just a placeholder, more to come because I need to do more research.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/21/black-country-flag-britain-colonial-past-slavery
It's the clearest example of the American race-based identity politics which has taken over the middle class left in this country erasing the working class, not really considering class of much concern anymore. Of course Black British people should have their history and voices heard. But here? The native English working class must have their own history silenced in order to do so.
The working class celebrating their industrial heritage is NOT the same thing as a celebration of empire or colonialism. They were cogs in that machine and lived in brutal conditions. Much of Britain's wealth during that era came from the exploitation of their labour. How offensive to erase this history and call it imperialist.
There's a kind of PTSD in England's decaying industrial regions after infrastructure and community was kicked away with no real attempt to compensate for that, by the political class. Sometimes the past is romanticised but I do not believe that this is done out of bigotry at all. The idea that these people want to take over the world again is so offensive I could spit, it enrages me so much.
There's an expectation among the middle-class liberal left, here an academic, that we should all wallow in shame over history, as a badge of being right thinking. I often say that the working class are used as "whipping boy" by these middle classes and this is the perfect example. This smug self-flagellation, for the academic, is a source of pride and status. For the people of the black country, expecting them to do so is to exacerbate a void left by the destruction of a world. There is nothing they are allowed to be proud of without being accused of bigotry. This void is what the far right loves to try and fill.
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