St George in the 21st Century: Watch the essay

Billy Bragg is looking for a new England, or at least a new sense of Englishness. In this St George's Day essay Bragg says he wants to see an England where anyone, of any race, will be happy to call themselves English.

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Transcript of Billy Bragg's essay:

St George in the 21st Century

The death of the Queen Mother marks the beginning of the end of the British monarchy as we have known it all our lives. Crowned Queen Empress in 1937, she was our last surviving link with imperial Britain and her death heralds the passing of the generation that fought valiantly and suffered greatly during the Second World War.

What she and the King represented in those dark years was a sense of Britishness born out of the stark reality that, in the face of Nazi invasion, the fates of England, Scotland and Wales were the same.

It's no coincidence that the arch Euro-sceptic Margaret Thatcher is so fond of harking back to the 1940s, for it was then that the contemporary British identity was forged. We emerged a mono-cultural people who identified strongly with the monarchy, the Union Jack and the Empire.

However, the notion of three countries with one united destiny no longer rings true. The Scots, in voting recently for their own parliament, made a psychological break with the British Empire and set their sights on the future, daring the Welsh to follow and leaving the English to scratch their heads in puzzlement.

Have you ever wondered what will happen if Scotland decides to become independent someday? Well, England will be independent too.

Like it or not, these issues of identity will come to the fore in the inevitable euro referendum. Those in England who believe that there are votes to be won in stirring up xenophobia will exploit the ambiguity that exists between being British and being English in the hope of generating a mood of English nationalism that can be converted into votes at the following general election.

For those of us on the progressive side of the political spectrum, this will present a new challenge. In the past we have favoured an internationalist, multi-cultural approach to identity. Yet, by refusing to put forward any alternative notions of what it can mean to be English, we have made it easy for the racists to claim Englishness as their own.

Consequently, when the subject of English identity comes up, it is the violent, swaggering football hooligan who first comes to mind and the flag of St George, most often seen, not flying from a flag pole but stuck to the back of a white mini-van, becomes a symbol of intimidation.

The death of the Queen Mum, Scotland¿s new aspirations and the debate over the euro all give us the opportunity to ask who we are, now, rather than continually hark back to who we were.

The England that most of us live in is a diverse society that cannot simply be shoe-horned into one mono-cultural pigeonhole. Furthermore, jumping to a conclusion on the definition of Englishness is pointless as inevitably it will be narrow and many will feel excluded.

Surely what we need to do is each re-evaluate what it is to be English in the 21st Century and so establish the foundations of a collective sense of Englishness. Only then can we take a step back from this big picture and see the common elements that give us, the English, a sense of belonging.

However, this cannot be achieved simply by promoting multi-culturalism at the expense of the host culture. Multi-culturalism can be used as a get-out clause by politicians who are only prepared to pay lip service to notions such as equality and diversity. If chicken tikka marsala really is the most popular dish in the country then multi-culturalism is Englishness and vice versa

This is not to say that England is a country without racial prejudices. Black football players still have to suffer shameful abuse from racist fans. But ask yourself this - does Emile Heskey only become an Englishman when he pulls on his England shirt or is he still an Englishman when he goes home to his family after the game?

If you believe the latter, then the implication is that Englishness is less about ethnicity and more to do with the space we occupy together today; that where you are is more important than were you are from.

This doesn¿t mean that we all have to celebrate St George's Day with a rose in our lapel, but at a time when the sun is setting on the mono-cultural British identity, it does offer us a basis on which to construct an inclusive English identity for the third millennium.