The Problem With Patriotism

A group of World War Two airmen posing in front of a Lancaster Bomber of the type flown by my father throughout the summer and autumn of 1943 Picture from https://raf-pathfinders.com/other-pff-sqds/ He and they were proud patriots in an unquiet world.

It was the Dublin born playwright and Nobel prize winner George Bernard Shaw who said “You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.” (Misalliance, 1910).

I could not agree more. Others might dismiss the statement on the grounds that Shaw was a Socialist: member of the Fabian Society, present at the founding of the British Labour Party and apologist for Lenin, Stalin and Mussolini.

Ignoring Shaw’s sometimes inconsistent political views, I want to examine the quotation in the context of global history in the 110 years since they first appeared.

I am proud of my father’s war record. I have no doubt that he believed his service in one of the most dangerous and controversial forces of the war — a Pathfinder squadron within bomber command — was a powerful demonstration of his patriotism.

I have no way of knowing what my father believed he was fighting for when he flew nightly bombing raids on German cities, because he never made it back from the 18th November 1943 raid on Mannheim. I choose to believe it was for a better world rather than merely ‘King and Country’.

Looking at 1930s Britain from the perspective of almost 80 years of lived experience, would I find it possible to be patriotic about my country in 1939? My answer is ‘no’.