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11-14-06, 8:41 am
"WRITING a book is nothing like writing a song," muses Billy Bragg towards the end of this release, timed to coincide with the release of two box sets of his music.
"Writing a book is like painting in oils on a 12-by-20-foot canvas."
And so to Bragg's part autobiography, part Britain's story, part music history and part political doodling.
To read The Progressive Patriot is to meander through the Bard of Barking's thoughts on all of the above. The key is whether you feel like joining him on the journey.
It starts off interestingly enough, with an introduction that bemoans the state of the English identity, all football hooliganism and ranting neonazis or "Eurosceptics."
His search for an alternative narrative on Englishness, which began in the wake of the British National Party's electoral gains in his home town, then trots off through history, from the Britons and the Saxons onwards, attempting to pull together the thread of events from the people's perspective.
He takes an accessible look at the struggle between state and Establishment, on the one side, versus the people on the other, taking in the Normans, the Levellers, the Chartists and the struggle between Parliament and the royals through the ages.
It's hardly revolutionary stuff, but, given the relative lack of a people's perspective elsewhere, the more that this story's told, the better.
Bragg never settles down for long, though. Recollections about his musical genesis make way for history lessons, which, in turn, make way for nuggets about his family. Eventually, he drops anchor at a somewhat unsatisfactory conclusion.
His answer to the image of Britishness propagated by the right? Challenge the narrative and, with a little more respect and tolerance for each other's differences, things will work themselves out.
And he argues that our response to our new absolute monarch Tony Blair and all the threats of liberty that have come with him should be to demand a bill of rights. That would make ID cards alright, reckons Bragg.
Particularly irritating to some will be his repeated notion that being Eurosceptic, which appears to be a swear word in his dictionary, by definition makes you some kind of little Englander.
For, despite complaining about the unaccountability of our Parliament to the people, he glosses over the fact that the EU is even less accountable.
However, while Bragg's 12-by-20-foot canvass may be imperfectly painted with lightweight oils, it is readable and, at the very least, it opens a rare and welcome window onto the real history of England.
From Morning Star
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