One of the
problems with words is that they can mean one thing to the person using them, but
be interpreted to mean something else by those hearing them. Sometimes, that difference is entirely
intentional; it’s a way of twisting what someone has said to mean something that
they haven’t said.
The word ‘nationalist’
is a case in point. When I use the word,
I mean someone who seeks the same status and rights for his or her own nation
as are granted to other nations. In the Welsh
context, I’m referring to those of us who believe simply that Wales should take
control of its own future by becoming a free and independent state. However, some people use the term to refer to people
who have an excessive sense of patriotism and pride in their own nation,
whilst yet others use it as a term to refer to those who believe that their nation
is somehow better or superior to any other.
One of the
problems is that it’s impossible to say that any of those definitions is either
right or wrong; dictionaries will quite happily give all three definitions as
valid. But that doesn’t mean that anyone
falling into one of those categories must automatically fall into the others as
well; they’re alternative definitions rather than different aspects of a single
definition. That confusion does cause
problems, though.
Over the many
years that I spent canvassing, I lost count of the number of times someone
would say to me on a doorstep something along the lines of “I’ve seen what nationalism does and I want no part of it”. It’s an entirely natural reaction to one of
those definitions coupled with a difficulty in understanding that there are
alternative definitions. I won’t argue
that it hasn’t been difficult dealing with this confusion between different
meanings, but for decades I’ve felt that the tide was, slowly, turning; as the
worst excesses of one type of nationalism receded into the past, so it was
becoming easier to reclaim the term for the meaning which I give it.
Sadly, I feel
that things are now moving the other way.
We’re seeing a rise in the sort of nationalism which I thought had been
confined to history, and it isn’t pleasant to see. ‘America First’ seems to be a catchy slogan
whose real meaning is that ‘what we say goes’, and it is tinged with elements
of white supremacism and religious discrimination to boot. In several European states, we’re seeing the
rise of parties expressing hostility to people who are in any way ‘different’
from the perceived ‘norm’. The US
actually wants to build a wall to delimit itself from its neighbour and here in
the UK, we now have a government led by people who want to close the borders,
and who take pride in the idea that we should ‘punch above our weight’ when it
comes to determining the world order.
By and large,
British – or, in this context, mostly English – politicians love to say that
they are not nationalists. But as R
Tudur Jones put it in “The Desire of
Nations” in 1974: “An Englishman never calls himself a nationalist. This is one of the characteristics of English
Nationalism.” English/British
nationalism has always been there on the right of UK politics, in that attitude
of superiority which so sets them aside from those mere Europeans and
foreigners. But the Labour Party has often
been little better. I found the speech
by Keir Starmer in the Article 50 debate to be a particularly powerful
expression of Labour’s hypocrisy on the question. He said, “We
are a fiercely internationalist party. We
are a pro-European party. We believe
that through our alliances we achieve more together than we do alone. We believe in international co-operation and
collaboration. We believe in the
international rule of law. These beliefs
will never change.”
Having said
that, he went on to say that the majority of Labour MPs would be voting against their unchangeable and unshakeable beliefs and for the British
exceptionalist and nationalist stance being proposed by the government. And they went on to do precisely that,
despite the fact that the majority of people who voted for Labour MPs were opposed
to what those MPs were voting for.
I am finding it
increasingly difficult to justify using the word nationalist to describe my own
position when the worst type of nationalism is rearing its ugly head all around
us. In Catalunya, there is a potential
solution; the word often used there is independentista
rather than nacionalista.
Independentist doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue in English (although annibyniaethwyr has a certain ring in Welsh), but
perhaps we could get used to it?
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