Red Flag and Union Jack: Englishness, Patriotism and the British Left, 1881-1924

Examines the relationship between the British left and national identity in socialism's formative years.

It is generally assumed that the language of patriotism and national identity belongs to the political right, but the emergence of socialism in the 1880s shows clearly that the left also drew on such ideas in its formative years to legitimate a particular form of socialism, one presented as a restoration of an English past lost to industrial capitalism. The First World War dealt a severe ...