Weeks before the present election campaign began, Keir Starmer raised eyebrows when he called for Labour candidates to “fly the flag” on St George’s Day, in an attempt to displace the Tories as the party of patriotism. But in truth, British patriotism is no longer the potent force it once was. For all the vision and ambition with which both the Brexit and Scottish independence movements announced themselves, these national revivals are faltering.
Come 4 July, the Scottish Nationalists are in danger of losing badly, having become bound up with a militant current of minoritarian social liberalism which undermines the collective and civic basis of classical nationalism, as it has historically existed on the Left. Meanwhile, the national project of the Brexiteers, which lives on the Right, fell short of its own lofty expectations: its architects in the Conservative Party (set to fare even worse than the SNP) proved unable to deliver on their promise of a Britain secure from the ravages of economic and cultural globalisation.
In short, Britons seem unable to do nationalism with any success or conviction, that is, to put it into practice beyond its merely performative aspects. So, as the election day approaches, where can the British political establishment look to form a coherent nation-based system?
There is, one place that anyone aspiring to a functional nationalism, in Britain or elsewhere, can take notes from: a forgotten corner of its former empire, where the people happen to do a decent job of maintaining themselves both as a nation and a state, even if it isn’t actually a state in the Westphalian sense. I’m talking about Quebec, a Canadian province that is also a nation unto itself, and one with its own fraught history of holding referendums. Today is Quebec’s own Fête nationale: Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day. And what better occasion to survey the trajectory of nationalism there?
The animating fact of Quebec politics and history is that of survivance, the desire of its people to survive as a distinct society of Francophones in the midst of an overwhelmingly Anglophone continent. Though Quebec’s identity is rooted in the French language and descends from a heritage that stretches back to New France, modern Quebec nationalism was forged in the Fifties and Sixties, in a time of immense social change known as la Révolution Tranquille (The Quiet Revolution). It saw the conservative and pro-clerical regime of Maurice Duplessis replaced by the reforming government of Jean Lesage, which nationalised utilities and took over education and welfare services from the Catholic Church; these measures established the modern contemporary incarnation of l’etat québécois or the Quebec state, looked to by its people as the supreme institutional expression of the Quebecois nation.
In the Seventies, desires arose among both the political-intellectual elite and the broad populace to make that Quebec state sovereign: their leader was journalist-turned-Lesage cabinet minister René Lévesque, who executed the utilities nationalisation scheme. His Parti Québécois (PQ) would lead the push for independence from Canada with the referendum of 1980; though it was rejected by a 60-40 margin, Lévesque’s government nonetheless largely shaped the character of Quebec nationalism for decades to come: Left-wing, pro-union, secularist, feminist, environmentalist, and aligned with global anti-colonial currents. It was under Lévesque as well that Quebec passed legislation to enshrine French as its official language, cementing the Quebec state’s role as defender of the national character.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe