Real England - The Battle Against The Bland

Some day my plinth will come

2009-07-09T11:07:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke up to an email from a splendid lady called Daisy who had just been given 24 hours notice that she was to appear on the Trafalgar Square plinth for an hour. She told me she'd like to tell people about Real England and could I send her a few words. I did, though I don't know whether they got there on time.

But more power to Daisy! Here she is doing her piece. I've done a good few public events in my time, but nothing this intimidating. I'm very impressed.

Nor shall my sword

2009-07-08T08:39:00.001-07:00

A month or so back I received a curious email from the Royal Court theatre in London. They were preparing a new play centred around the changing nature of Englishness, and in particular the English countryside. Would I like to come in and talk to the cast about Englishness, what it means to me and what it might mean to them?

It was obviously too good an invitation to turn down, espeically when I discovered that the cast includes not only MacKenzie Crook but also the brilliant Mark Rylance, who I have worked with before on a theatrical project that is possibly still brewing. So in I went, having read the script, and we had a great conversation about today's England. I hope they found it useful; I certainly did.

Anyway, the play - Jerusalem - begins its run this Friday, when I'll be in the audience. I haven't seen it yet, obviously, but from what I know and have read it promises to be something well worth seeing. What really struck me about my conversation with director and cast was how the whole idea of Englishness as a previously 'forbidden' identity is increasingly being reclaimed (see, for example, what Crook says in this recent interview). If you can get a ticket, I'd recommend it.

Idle pleasures

2009-06-24T05:52:00.000-07:00

Another day, another book launch. Yesterday I was swanning around in Soho at the launch of the latest issue of the Idler, which was combined with a seminar on how medieval economics can save the world. Met some brilliant, eccentric, inspiring and radically idle people over pigeon pie and ale. The Idler's editor, Tom Hodgkinson, is a terrific man - a kind of slimline Chesterton for the 21st century, and if you've not read any of his books I'd recommend them. As practical manifestoes on how to free yourself from the slavery imposed by 'the Thing', they can't be beat. They're also very funny.

Anyway, the latest issue of the Idler, entitled 'Smash the System', is out now, and includes an essay by yours truly on the need to revive our ancient English tradition of getting angry and staging abortive revolutions. It seems particularly pertinent now. Also there is much other excellently thought-provoking stuff, perfect for a revolutionary summer. The Idler is typeset and created by the same team who have produced my Dark Mountain manifesto. Hopefully both will be equally influential.

Caught by the river

2009-06-22T11:06:00.000-07:00

Last week, just before I had a few days off on the south coast, I attended the launch of a new book, Caught by the River: a collection of words on water. It hardly needs me to plug it, since it has been all over the media in the last week or two, but suffice it to say it is a collection of musings on our relationship with this island's rivers, written by a fragmentary collection of individuals from journalists to rock musicians, via salmon-tickling lords and creatively-inclined teachers. Oh, and I wrote something for it, which is what I was doing there. And the illustrations are beautiful.

This is the etching which illustrates my piece, which is about the wonders of the upper Thames. Anyway, I'd urge you to get hold of a copy of this book if you have any interest at all in rivers, swimming, fishing, Jarvis Cocker's childhood, how to tickle a trout or just reading some fine writing about the best of our urban and rural waterways.

The South Bank

2009-06-08T07:45:00.001-07:00

For anyone who's at a loose end in London on Wednesday evening, I'll be speaking about Real England and the issues around it at the Southbank Centre. Should be an interesting discussion. Watch out for the promised tube strike though...

A vote for England

2009-06-02T23:59:00.001-07:00

These are the first elections to be held since Real England was published. Everywhere I go, people ask me 'what can I do?' about the many issues highlighted in the book. There are many answers to this, but clearly the ballot box must be at least one imperfect part of the solution, if there is one.

The problems I highlight in the book are many, but they come down in essence to the erosion of independence, community and character in England. This stems, in my view, from an over-mighty state-corporate machine, which crushes the life out of the individual and the community, out of spontaneity and creativity, in the name of growth and shareholder value and state power.

Voting is a deeply imperfect method of changing anything, especially in this sclerotic democracy where very few of our votes actually count. But what voting can do, especially in elections like this one, is send a message: a message about what you don't like as much as what you do. Millions of people will be doing this today, because since I wrote the book the machine has begun to cough and stutter and reveal its many flaws. People are furious and will be out there in droves showing it. These are, in my view, exciting times. I love watching the government collapse, and the banks, and the system they prop up, because out of the chaos of a failed system may come something better, if we choose to make it happen.

This time around, in protest at the very existence of what I increasingly regard as an illegitimate system, I was tempted not to vote at all; to state my case by refusing to be involved. But lately I have changed my mind. I think that today's ballot, especially as some of it is under a PR system, gives us a great opportunity to express our anger about what is happening to England at the hands of the machine.

So I have just been to vote. And I thought it might be interesting to some people to lay out how, and why.

Firstly, I obviously didn't vote Labour. I want this party obliterated at the next general election for its many crimes against England in particular and the UK in general. For a decade of toadying to corporate power, a decade of insane over-regulation, a decade of criminalising dissent and spying on its own people, a decade of illegal wars, a decade of crushing local democracy and local initiative, a decade of over-centralisation, a decade of anti-English constitutional change, a decade of rising inequality, a decade of public service privatisation, a decade of... well, you fill in the gaps. Anyone voting for this shower this time around would have to be criminally insane or in their pay.

Then there are the Tories. They make nice noises about decentralisation of power, which I am genuinely intrigued by. They have a vague and unsatisfactory answer to the 'English question' created by devolution; but at least they have one. Environmentally, their policies are actually pretty good in some areas. They talk about saving the English pub, which I'm always a sucker for. If they win power at the next election, they probably won't be any worse than Labour and may in some ways be better.

But ... they're still Tories. What that means is that a love of the global corporate economy is deep in their bones; even deeper than in the bones of NuLabour, if that is possible. I can't see a cabinet full of millionaire, expense-fiddling Etonians reining in the City. I can't really see them giving away significant power either (Labour said the same before they got into government.) More likely I can see a clean passing of power from one Establishment party to another, and most things carrying on as before. No thanks.

So we come to the Lib Dems, the one mainstream party that genuinely impresses me at the moment. On civil liberties, a key issue, the Lib Dems have been really impressive and genuinely principled. If they got their hands on power I think we could expect a roll-back of the database state, and also constitutional change. We could also expect PR for Westminster, which would be great. They've been good on green stuff and local democracy for quite some time.

And yet ... Nick Clegg is a shameless schmoozer who is taking his party further and further to the corporate right at precisely the wrong time. And then there's Europe. I am deeply suspicious of the EU, because I am deeply suspicious of any body which centralises political power, particularly when it does it without the permission of the people whose power it is centralising. The Lib Dems are gung ho supporters of further EU centralisation, and for me, though I am not anti-EU in principle, that's precisely the opposite of the kind of localisation of power I want to see and which England needs.

I also think that, at this time in history, what is needed is a big showing at the ballot box against the political establishment. If things are going to change in any significant way - always a long shot - the political classes need to feel that the voters are completely rejecting them. Only that will they be forced to rethink their direction of travel. We should all be voting for the kind of party which the political and media establishments dismissively refer to as 'fringe.'

There are, of course, a clutch of such parties which claim to speak for England. Firstly, there's the BNP, which despite its name is mainly an English party; it builds its key support on anti-immigrant sentiment and there are very few immigrants in Scotland and Wales. The only justification for voting for one of the 'big three' today, in my view, would be to keep the BNP out of the European Parliament. Despite this, they may get some MEPs. The traditional reaction of the left to the BNP is to jump up and down and scream 'fascist', but I think a more mature response is required. Not necessarily to the party itself, which is genuinely nasty and whose vision for the UK is one of apartheid and racial conflict - but to those who may vote for it.

If tens of thousands of people vote BNP today it will not mean we suddenly have tens of thousands of neo-Nazis in England. It will mean that people feel their concerns are being ignored by all the establishment parties. Those concerns will be about identity and power- about large numbers of immigrants at a time of economic stress, about a multicultural model which is widely unpopular, about what capitalism does to working people, about the fact that 'nobody speaks for us' - the refrain you hear time and time again all over the country and which today may even make Nick Griffin an MEP. That would be a grim result for all of us, but if it happens our reaction to it should be to ask why so many people in England feel so cut off from, and so unheard by, the political elite that they are prepared to vote for a racist party to make their point heard.

There are other right and far-right parties out there who claim to speak for England, or Britain, too. There's UKIP, which wants us out of the EU. UKIP are not a racist party, and a few of their points about Europe are well-made - not least our lack of a referendum on the Lisbon treaty, which democracy demands. But they are blazer-wearing reactionaries whose ranks are swelled by some dodgy characters and whose expense claims don't stand up to much scrutiny despite their anti-establishment pose. Then there are the English Democrats, who for a while looked promising. This is an non-racist English nationalist party dedicated to creating a parliament for England. They're a bit too right-wing for me overall, but nonetheless I could perhaps have seen myself voting for them because on the big political picture in England they are often broadly right. Unfortunately it seems that the party is run by some very stupid people who seem to find it perfectly acceptable to make alliances of convenience with racists for electoral gain; so they've blown it.

So who did I go for? Who's left?

Well, I voted for two different parties today; not my original plan, but I changed my mind when I got into the booth. Tempted though I was to vote for the Roman Party, a local one-man operation whose slogan is 'Ave!' and whose policies may or may not include compulsory togas, in the end I voted at the local elections for the Greens. I've voted Green for years and was once a member. They're not perfect; they are swinging a bit too far to the fringe left for me, and I am queasy about their gung-ho support for onshore windfarms and their enthusiasm for English regional devolution rather than an English parliament. But I know the local candidates and I know that the Greens deliver at local level. Perhaps most crucially, the Greens stand for the kind of deep devolution of power to local people that would solve a lot of the problems I highlighted in Real England.

In the Euro elections I intended to vote Green too. But I when I got there I did something eccentric. I decided I wanted to register a protest at the continual and unasked-for centralisation of the European Union. I like the European project, in principle; I like the idea of a union of independent nations working together. But I don't like what the EU has become: a behemoth which has taken powers from independent nation states (for which we can't blame the EU itself but our own politicians) and used them to strip-mine the oceans and the farmland, bombard us with absurd over-regulation and hand too much agency to the global corporate machine. So I found myself voting for a new lefty alliance called No2EU Yes to Democracy, which aims to highlight these things. I don't know if that was the right decision or not, but know I want to say something firm about the need for a relocalisation of power and that was the way, this time around, that I chose to say it.

I'd be interested to hear what others voted and why, or even if.

What am I to think about this?

2009-05-31T05:54:00.000-07:00

From today's Amazon ratings. Should I be proud or ashamed? Answers on a postcard please.

The paperback arrives!

2009-05-30T10:01:00.000-07:00

This week, the small format paperback of Real England is published. It looks great, and if you don't own the book already, there is really no excuse now. Not least because it's half the price it was before.

And if you still need persuading, maybe today's excellent review in the Guardian will make your mind up. It certainly made my day. How's about this for an opening paragraph:

I occasionally say of a book that it is important, and that everyone should read it; this time I say so more emphatically than ever. I would like Gordon Brown to be strapped into a chair and have it read to him. And not let out of it again until he has given Paul Kingsnorth a powerful position in government.

Can't see this happening, I must say, and I think it would be a pretty suicidal career move anyway (though I wouldn't say no to the allowances.) But it's the thought that counts. And this thought is even better:

Kingsnorth follows in the tradition of Cobbett (who first identified the crushing of the spirit of place by the impersonal and often corrupt rapaciousness of the profit motive as "the Thing") and Orwell, united by a love of ordinary humanity.

I shouldn't be boasting really (it's not very English) but I've waited fifteen years to be compared, even fleetingly, to Orwell, and it probably won't happen again. So what the hell.

The reverse curse of Real England

2009-05-17T12:16:00.000-07:00

Over the last few months, I've had occasion to report some good news stories about some of the campaigns featured in Real England. Now, two more developments are beginning to make it look like a trend. It seems that featuring in the book bestows on a campaign a reverse curse; a weird kind of gypsy blessing. It's starting to look like more than a coincidence. I mean, look at the evidence:

Queens' Market
I wrote in Real England of the campaign to save this ancient, diverse street market in east London from predatory developers. Yesterday, I was told that London's mayor, Boris Johnson, has turned down the developers' planning application, against all expectations. The campaigners are understandably thrilled.

The pubs of England
Years of determined campaigning by landlords, some of them featured prominently in Real England has led, this week, to a damning parliamentary report which recommends the government takes action against the power of the Pub Companies which are driving so many pubs to the wall. Just watch those share prices plummet ...

Castlemill Boatyard
Oxford's last public boatyard has successfully fought off two advances by developers since featuring in the book. Now locals hope to buy it for the community.

Sheringham vs Tesco
Despite the fears I wrote about in the book, one of the last towns in England without a superstore has comprehensively rejected the advances of Tesco.

Saving Chinatown
A fierce campaign by residents and shopkeepers put paid to an attempt at creating a 'Chinese themed shopping mall' that wouldn't have involved any actual Chinese people.

Now we just have to hope that the wider trends start to be counteracted. A tougher battle, that one, but with global recession and the ongoing collapse of parliament, everything is starting to look possible after all...

Climbing the Dark Mountain

2009-04-17T05:24:00.001-07:00

Over at my paulkingsnorth.net blog, I am announcing the launch of a new literary project - or perhaps challenge. Come and take a look.

I am a Champion of England

2009-04-06T05:16:00.001-07:00

Odd things are happening to me on a regular basis right now. Fresh from my appearance on Richard and Judy, I have now been nominated as a 'Champion of England', in a nationwide contest to find and reward someone who is working in their own way to champion all things English.

Now, I'm not sure whether I would be a worthy winner or not, but it's very nice to be recognised. What happens now is that all the nominees are put before the public's stern gaze, and the one who receives the most votes is named, on St George's Day, of course, as the winner. Oh, and the beer company Bombardier, whose idea this all is, hopes that it sells more pints as a result.

I think this is a great idea and, myself aside, there are some great unsung people being nominated. I'd strongly recommend that you go to the website and vote for your favourite, whether it be me or anybody else. Press the buttons on your keypads now.

I cut my own legs off ... and I've never been happier

2009-04-02T04:01:00.001-07:00

Apparently, that was the title of one of Jerry Springer's shows, back in the day. I only mention it because last night I found myself sitting on the famous Richard and Judy sofa, with Jerry (we're now on first name terms) and some other people too unfamous to mention, talking about St George's Day. It was a pre-recorded thing which will be going out on R&J's show on Monday 20th April, I'm told. That's three days before St George's Day, for those of you who haven't been paying attention.

This would be slightly more exciting if the duo were not these days consigned to an obscure satellite channel, but nevertheless ... it's only a few weeks since I was being interviewed by John Humphrys on Today about canals. Clearly I have arrived, in spectacular fashion. John Humphrys and Richard Madeley in one short month: what more can a man expect to achieve in his life? From here on, my existence is surely going to be a series of dark, empty anticlimaxes.

English liberty: still with us?

2009-02-17T01:47:00.000-08:00

George Monbiot writes interestingly today in the Guardian about the need for an English parliament. And I don't just say that because he mentions me.

It's good to see people on the left picking up on what is generally (and wrongly) assumed to be something of a 'right wing' issue. As George points out, it's actually an issue of democracy for the people of England.

I'll be speaking on this and doubtless some other things in ten days at the Convention on Modern Liberty, a day-long event which I reckon would be worth a visit if you're nearby. Might see you there.

Conversations about England

2009-01-29T01:32:00.000-08:00

Gareth Young, who has been working for years to alert those in power to the biases in our current constitution, in which England is the only UK nation without a political voice, has just launched a campaign for an English 'national conversation' on the subject. Why? Because:

In Wales the ‘All Wales Convention’, a cross-party initiative, is looking at extending legislative competence to the Welsh Assembly. In Scotland the SNP Government is conducting a 'National Conversation' to enable the people of Scotland to ‘decide Scotland's constitutional future’, with the aim of bringing forward a referendum on independence or enhanced devolved powers. And alongside the Scottish Government’s initiative there is the ‘Calman Commission’, a unionist cross-party consultative body, tasked with reviewing the present constitutional arrangements to enable the Scottish Parliament to better serve the people of Scotland (within the union).

Not to be outdone by the peripheries the government at Westminster has launched a 'Governance of Britain' initiative to ‘help us define what it means to be British’, an initiative that may well result in a British Bill of Rights and various policies to strengthen our feeling of Britishness.

But what about England; what about our feeling of Englishness? Unlike the other nations of the United Kingdom we have been offered no national consultation, nor a referendum, on how we wish to be governed. None are planned, nor even proposed. Instead we watch as our partner nations in the Union are consulted again and again, with the indulgence of the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, with a view to further referenda which may again alter the very nature, balance and working of the Union state.

So in light of devolution and the growth in English national feeling, how should England be governed?

It's a good question, and one that will be heard louder and louder, I think, in coming years. Its latest guise is on this website, with which Gareth is trying to reach the ears of our current masters in the Labour Party, notoriously unsympathetic though they are to English matters. I recommend that you sign up to support it. After the next election, we can then work on trying to make the Tories listen instead.

Or forever hold your peace

2009-01-13T10:29:00.000-08:00

Andrew O'Hagan had a very interesting piece in Saturday's Guardian Review about the decline, if not the fall, of the English working class. The questions he poses could as well be asked of the English of all classes.

As a Scotsman, O'Hagan reflects on the absurdities of modern Scottish nationalism, which 'exploit[s] a ridiculous pretension: that their country is an occupied territory, occupied by a devilish England bent on colonisation.' But he goes on to observe that:

A good nationalism has to depend on a principle of the common people, on myths of a struggling commonality. It is strange that Scottish nationalism and Irish nationalism and Welsh nationalism - for all their faults - are still seen by a great many as healthy, colourful movements, while English nationalism continues to make people think of football hooligans, Enoch Powell, Oswald Mosley and the BNP. Why?

It's a good question, and I wonder often about the answer myself. Are we still wallowing in post-Imperial guilt? Has 'political correctness', whatever that exactly is, made us afraid of talking about 'nationalism', and even the English nation itself? And who are 'we', anyway? As O'Hagan's piece points out, the 'common folk' of England are not especially reluctant in coming forward with their views about England: it's only the bourgeoisie who find it distasteful.

O'Hagan comes, in the end, to the same conclusion I came to while working on Real England (a conclusion I lay out in its wider historical context in the next issue of the Idler): the English are too passive, too respectful of authority, still too willing to tug the forelock. Our past is studded with episodes of glorious resistance and rebellion, but they remain episodes. World-straddling for so long, who did we have to push against?

I've been reading a lot recently about the creation of England, back in the 9th and 10th centuries, for a project I'm working on, and what becomes clear is how 'England' as both notion and nation was forged in adversity. If this island hadn't been ravaged by wave after wave of Viking armies, 'England' might never have come about. Identity is forged through resistance. The Scots and the Welsh define themselves at least partly by what they're not, by what they're supposedly against: England. Some of their mythology of resistance is demonstrably false, but they make it work, for now.

But the poor English: what do we stand against? Speed cameras? Immigration? Taxes? Where is our fire? Why we can't we be more ... well, French? My view is that if we don't start burning soon we will have precious little left to fight for: 'England', in any meaningful cultural sense, will come to an end this century. It will have had a good run - 1100 years is impressive by any nation's standards. But what will we be letting it slip away for? What will replace it? A global mall, featureless and cultureless, open all hours, primed for growth. Who will we be? What, in both senses, will we be for?

G. K. Chesterton's famous poem The Secret People tried, nearly a century ago, to define the English in the context of the sweep of their history. Like O'Hagan, and like me, Chesterton was both entranced and frustrated by our inability to speak out. He hoped that this would change:

We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest
God's scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

Well, maybe. But how long do you wait for someone to speak before you conclude that they don't actually want to? How long before you conclude that it's fine to forget, that beer is indeed best, that Friday night outside All Bar One is all we really have to offer? O'Hagan seems to feel the same way:

One slant on the English would be to see their dim view of political upheaval as a good thing, a guarantee of the kind of individualism that makes for eccentrics and self-excluders; but silent obedience of the English working-class sort is more often antithetical to eccentricity. It usually comes out as a completely individual conviction that difference is suspect and resistance means trouble. The English don't say "what can be done?" - they say "what difference does it make?"

Indeed. And the answer is 'none, if you don't want it to.' This 'quiet, invisible business of the people being walked over, and saying nothing, and thinking that's just the way it is', O'Hagan calls it. Not all of us think that way. But I wouldn't bank on much changing any time soon, because, as ever, a lot of us do.

Shopping schmopping

2009-01-08T05:30:00.000-08:00

Welcome to 2009. This is the year that Real England is published in paperback. There'll be more talks and events around the country to accompany this, of which more here.

In the meantime, some heartening news from the real Wales, where the response of some to the credit crunch and the ensuing demand that we all immediately go shopping is very cheering indeed. That's what I call direct action.

Now that's what I call coffee

2008-12-19T03:07:00.001-08:00

Those Italians: they know what they're about.

More of the Italian spirit in England please! And less of the feeble 'coffee.'

Some good news for Christmas

2008-12-18T09:55:00.001-08:00

Over two years ago, I wrote, in the Telegraph and the Ecologist, about a heroic local struggle in Oxfordshire between a multinational energy giant and a group of local villagers. German mega-corp RWE NPower, which runs Didcot coal-fired power station, not a million miles from me, was planning to dump its toxic waste ash - coal-burning produces a huge amount of this - in a local lake, which doubled as a beauty spot and a wildlife haven.

Having visited this lake a few times, I was gobsmacked that this kind of thing was still going on in the 21st century. It was yet another side of the coal-burning process that we're not aware of. Anyway - the local campaign to save Thrupp Lake was long and hard-fought; and it's just been announced that it has been successful. The lake has been saved, NPower have retreated and the people of Radley have been delivered a great Christmas present.

It's always worth dwelling on successes like these, because they show that determined and well-run campaigns can turn the tide against things that seem inevitable. Hurray for that. And happy Christmas.

Mysterious ways

2008-11-11T01:47:00.000-08:00

In the latest example of the strange places your writing can get to without you realising it, former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey has been quoting me from the pulpit in Ely Cathedral. This follows on from David Cameron quoting from Real England in one of his speeches. I could do with Gordon Brown now, to get the set, but I've got a curious feeling it won't be happening.

Ten days ago I had a great session at the Edinburgh Radical Book Fair with Richard Wilson, author of the entertaining new book Don't Get Fooled Again. That's me done for events this year - and after doing about 20 of them I deserve a break - but next spring I'll be booked in again for, amongst other things, the Bath Literature Festival. And come June, when the paperback appears, I'm sure I'll be on the road again. I'll keep you posted.

Triumph by the canal

2008-10-09T00:55:00.000-07:00

Castlemill boatyard in Oxford has been saved - for a second time - from stupid, unnecessary 'development' by heroic local campaigners who deserve several medals for all the work they've put in over the last few years.

The campaigners hope that now they might be looked on sympathetically as they try to put together a bid to buy the land and turn it into a community boatyard.

First Sheringham, now Oxford ... I'm hoping my book brings about a kind of 'inverted curse', whereby every battle I wrote about will end up being won by the good guys. I'll keep you updated on that one.

Triumph by the sea

2008-09-09T09:28:00.000-07:00

In Real England I followed the on-off tale of whether or not the Norfolk town of Sheringham, one of the last towns in England without a superstore, would be able to fight off a giant Tesco planned for its outskirts. At the time the book was published, it looked like being bad news. Tesco had stitched up the local council good and proper; for the full story, of course, you need to read the book.

But here comes some good news. For it seems that, at the long-awaited public enquiry, Tesco has been told in no uncertain terms to stay away.

As ever with these situations, it may not be over yet. Tesco has a history of grinding down local opposition. But this looks like it could turn out to be a test case and - who knows - maybe even a turning point in the battle to stop the destruction of England's high streets by the global behemoths. Fingers crossed.

New events coming up

2008-09-01T09:36:00.001-07:00

I've just posted news of some new speaking events on the website. Have a look and see if any of them grab you. If you're in London, the highlight of this little batch is the debate at the ICA about whether the new' green' Tory party is for real, with Tim Yeo, George Monbiot and others. It promises to be a fun bash. Possibly literally.

Walls of Jericho

2008-08-15T01:28:00.000-07:00

Comments on this blog are becoming more occasional than regular at the moment. Still, it is August. Doubtless I will be up to speed again soon but, pleasingly, it's been a really busy summer, and in a good way.

Those of you who have read the book will remember the story of the battle to save Castlemill Boatyard in Oxford from a heinous new development of 'executive apartments' which would have ruined the Oxford canal. That battle was won when the developer was denied planning permission. Now, though, another developer, having bought the site, is trying much the same trick. This week another planning enquiry is under way to scrutinise their equally hideous plans. Meanwhile, the local community has alternative plans for a community-owned and controlled boatyard and public space. In microcosm, it's the kind of battle for the soul of England that's going on all over the country. You can read more about it on their website - and you can also make a donation to help in the fight. it would be money very well spent.

Places to visit

2008-07-24T02:39:00.000-07:00

Spent last weekend at Camp Bestival in Dorset, where I was giving a talk. It's a great little festival, and the sun stayed out. One of the musical highlights was the Imagined Village, who I've mentioned here before: a reinvention of the English folk music tradition with any number of strangely contemporary influences. Well worth a listen if you've not come across them.

In the last few weeks I've also come across a couple of new things which are worth exploring. Firstly, this blog - We English - is a real panoply of all things English, from any number of angles. it also has some great links and is well worth exploring.

Secondly, Albion magazine is similarly eclectic, and contains some thought-provoking stuff about the future of England. And I don't just say so because they've just interviewed me. Honestly.

More soon.

Return of the Native

2008-07-06T09:19:00.001-07:00

Hello again. I'm back.

All sorts of things have been happening in my absence, most notably the writing of God knows how many articles. The book seems to have made commissioning editors look at me afresh, so that has to be a good thing (at least for me). I'll be updating my website in the next few hours, so it will all be there, and a fair bit of it relates to the themes of the book, not least this - on the 'English question' - and this - on the erosion of freedom in England.

I'm also restarting my other blog which will, like this, get up to speed intermittently over the next few weeks. In the meantime, here are a couple of other good local campaigns from around England that I have been alerted to: the campaign to stop a bypass through an ancient hillside (sigh; I have deja vu); and the effort of some locals in Brighton to fight off a new Starbucks. More power to their elbows.

Citizen Dave

2008-06-12T10:51:00.000-07:00

I'm back. Thanks for your patience.

One of the things which I regret, in retrospect, not having written a bit more about in the book was the erosion of our basic liberties over the last ten years by this increasingly noxious government. I touched on it, but didn't go into depth.

Yesterday's 42-day detention vote was the last straw for me - and not only for me, it seems. David Davis's resignation today gives me some small spark of hope that the old radical concept of the 'freeborn Englishman' is not quite dead. That it should take a Tory to highlight this, in the teeth of opposition from a supposedly left-wing government, is a dark irony indeed.

Anyway. I have written about this at greater length in the Guardian today. See if you agree.

May flower

2008-05-20T02:39:00.000-07:00

Spent Sunday walking part of the upper Thames near Kelmscott, home of the great William Morris. if I had my way I would be somewhere like that every day this month. England in May is a wonder. Well, parts of it: Swindon I can take or leave at any time of the year. But somewhere like the upper Thames, with the spring flowers in boom, the cygnets on the water, the air full of insects and the smell of water and blossom - it can't be bettered. Living in Oxford, one of the signatures of the month is the flowering hawthorn - the ancient, mythical May tree - which grows all over the landscape round here. Just seeing this tree in flower seems to lift the heart.

Tomorrow, after my evening event, I'm off to make the most of it. I'm away for two weeks, so there'll be no blogging until early June. See you then.

Sent to Coventry (and London)

2008-05-17T08:32:00.000-07:00

I've added a new event to my talks schedule for next week, for all of you lucky people who live in the midlands. I'll be speaking in Kenilworth, near Coventry, on Wednesday evening: details here.

The night before, on Tuesday, I'll be in Newham, speaking about the book with some of the campaigners to save Queen's Market, who feature in it. Fortunately, they seem quite pleased about it (you never know how people are going to react to you writing about them, even if you're trying to be nice). Those of you who've read the book might remember market trader Danny Woodards and green campaigner Saif Osmani. Here they are expressing approval of the result:

Phew!

This should be a lively event: come along if you're in the area. There's more about it here.

What's Dave up to?

2008-05-13T10:30:00.000-07:00

Some news just in: David Cameron, in a speech about localisation yesterday, quoted extensively from Real England.

This is intriguing; and, of course, flattering. Does he mean it? Leaving aside both my ego and my doubts - the Tories have never been my cup of tea - the speech is full of intriguing suggestions: not least the idea of shoring up local shops against the supermarket onslaught. Mood music or potential policy it is, either way, a sign of how the political landscape is shifting. Watch this space.

Bedding in

2008-05-12T05:36:00.000-07:00

It's a hot day and I have been planting beans on my allotment. May is my favourite month, just edging out October. It seems a crime to be inside.

Still, here I am. And I've enjoyed some of the book-related stuff that's been happening in my absence. In the next few days I'll post up more local campaign news that I've been sent from around the country from readers and activists. There's so much going on, it's actually quite exciting. If we could get together we'd be unstoppable.

Among my favourite things online at the moment, and possibly worth reading once the sun goes down are a review of the book on openDemocracy - the latest in a gratifyingly long line - a bizarre reference in a theatre review in the Guardian (maybe I should be writing plays instead) and - best of all - what is apparently supposed to be some sort of attack on me.

This latter is published on the Guardian's site too, and is written by an academic who - judging by her surname - needs to be a bit more careful with the class analysis. I confess that I can't actually work out what her point is, but perhaps this is because I don't know what 'normative' means. What I do like is how she has bracketed me with Billy Bragg as one of two people who clearly need to be taken on. Little does she know how flattered I am!

Finally, my next speaking event is coming up this Friday, in Bristol. Come along, if you're in the area. A few people have emailed me asking why I'm not doing many events in the north of England. To which I reply: I'd love to, but no-one's invited me to do one yet! If you'd like to, let me know.

Culture in decline

2008-05-08T07:21:00.001-07:00

I'm back, trawling through emails and post. Much to post here, which I will do soon. But just for now, I notice someone has written a nice review of the book on Amazon, to which they tag on some lyrics which turn out, on investigation, to be by Joni Mitchell:

In every culture in decline
Watchful ones among the slaves
Know all that is genuine
Will be scorned and conned and cast away

We are, I suppose, the 'watchful ones among the slaves.' Somebody's got to do it. It's not a bad job.

Break in transmission

2008-04-16T01:30:00.000-07:00

I'm off on a well-deserved holiday tomorrow - via a speaking event in Grasmere. I'm back in early May, when this blog will spring back to life again. Until then, there will be a short break in transmission.

There are a few things to watch out for in the meantime, though. This coming Friday, the 18th, I'll be appearing on You and Yours on BBC Radio 4, to talk about the privatisation of our public streets. I also have a feature in next week's New Statesman (also published Friday) about the need for a new, radical variant of English nationalism. And on Saturday, I have a St George's Day feature in the Daily Telegraph.

Next week, of course, is St George's Day itself - on Wednesday 23rd. I'll be popping up on a few radio programmes around the country on the day, though I'm not yet sure which ones. If you want to avoid me it's probably best to watch the TV instead.

Finally, if you want to amuse yourselves until I return you could always pop over to Amazon and write a review of the book. Though only if you like it, of course ...

Keep those local campaign stories coming in while I'm away. I'll post any new ones up here on my return in a couple of weeks.

Battle lines

2008-04-15T00:36:00.000-07:00

Begun the Clone War has

Over the last few weeks, as extracts from the book appeared in the press, the book itself was published and I started giving talks around the country, I've been contacted by people from all over England with stories to tell. Many of the issues in the book, from the privatisation of city streets to the death of small farms, have touched people - and many of them, of course, are happening where they are too.

What I would really like this book to do is give people all over England a sense that they are not alone; that what they thought was an isolated local incident - a new superstore; the destruction of an old boatyard; the demolition of a pub - is actually part of a national trend. That there are reasons for it and ways to stop it.

Perhaps this is starting to happen already. Either way I would like this blog to encourage the process. So if something is happening in your area - good or bad - which relates to the themes of the book, do let me know. I'd like this blog to become something of a compendium of local and national campaigns and news, good and bad, which help define the battle against the bland.

Here are some cases I've been told about since publication:

Here in my home town of Oxford, people are mobilising in an attempt to fend off the arrival of a vast new shopping centre - three times the size of the current model - which threatens to finally convert this medieval city into a clone town par excellence. More about that here.

In Crystal Palace, London, the local Community Association is fighting Ken 'green' Livingstone's plans to flog off parts of Crystal Palace Park to private developers, who want to build - surprise, surprise - 176 luxury flats (quick thought: the looming credit crunch and ongoing collapse in house prices might turn out to be a rather good thing in two ways: it could make rural properties more affordable to local people, and it might stop the insane 'luxury apartments' boom in its tracks). More on their struggle here.

Also in London, artists and actors in Covent Garden are fighting plans to clone the ancient market. Covent Garden Market has got itself a new corporate 'branding director' who wants it to attract 'high level shoppers' rather than the sort of people who like little market stalls and chaotic buskers. You can sign a petition about that here.

In Lancaster, a Carnival of Culture was held last month both to celebrate the city's character and to protest about a coming cloning project. Our old friends Centros Miller (more about them in the book) are planning a huge corporate 'regeneration' scheme. There's a film of the carnival here. The campaign's website is here.

The rapacious Centros, meanwhile, are after the Somerset city of Wells too - here's what locals are doing about that. Maybe, like the noble knights of Bury St Edmunds, they should resort to extreme measures.

Finally an honourable mention to a non-English but nonetheless excellent and important local campaign to save a valuable community pub in Cardiff from redevelopment. Visit the community's website and lend your support to the fight to save the Pantmawr Inn.

Keep 'em coming...

Networking

2008-04-15T00:08:00.000-07:00

For those who aren't already members, I should mention that Real England has its very own Facebook group, which you can join here.

You can also sign up to my mailing list by sending a blank email to lists@paulkingsnorth.net, with the word 'subscribe' as the subject.

Decline is official

2008-04-14T09:41:00.000-07:00

The front page of today's Telegraph highlights an Oxford University study which confirms in general - with facts attached - what Real England notes in the particular: the ongoing and precipitous decline of rural England.

At this stage the response is often to throw up hands and shriek 'but what can be done'? The answer is: plenty. Some of it is in the book so I won't repeat it here. The real question is: who is going to do it? Not New Labour, that's for sure. Anyone else prepared to step up to the plate? Before it's too late?

The word spreads

2008-04-14T00:48:00.000-07:00

Even the New York Times can appreciate the value of a good English pub (and they quote from a piece I wrote in the Guardian three years ago!) All we need now is a bit more appreciation from the authorities in England.

All the news is good

2008-04-12T10:37:00.000-07:00

A whole clutch of reviews has come rolling in this weekend - and they're all good! Some of them, in fact, are great. The Guardian, for example, is fulsome, as is the Times. The FT is good too, even if it does gently chide me both for not being an economist (guilty: I got a D at A Level) and for failing to include a chapter on the 'financial services industry'. In London, Metro make it their book of the week, while in Glasgow the Sunday Herald enthusiastically draws parallels with the situation north of the border.

Best of all, though, has to the be the Independent review. According to this, Real England is 'a watershed study, a crucially important book; the most significant account of today's England I have read.' As a writer, I can tell you that during the dark, dark days of writing the damn thing, all alone but for your thoughts, and wondering if anyone will ever read it, this is the kind of reception you fantasise about. Thank you Nick Groom. And I didn't even pay you.

Finally, if anyone is interested, here is a film of me introducing my book/begging you to read it. It might be good, it might not. I hate watching myself, so I don't know.

I'll be back soon with that promised catalogue of local campaigns around the country, just so you're assured that it's not all about me.

Real America?

2008-04-09T05:26:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the slight blogging lull. My book tour began last night with a very successful evening in Oxford and there's another event tomorrow in London. This, plus writing plenty of related articles, plus the fact that I'm going on holiday next week, is leaving little time for anything else.

In the next couple of days, though, I'll be reporting here on some of the new stories I've heard about since my extracts started appearing and the book started to sell. I've been contacted by people from all over the country with stories of their own local battles to save their own little slices of the real England. I plan to mention these up here as they come in, as well as add them to the permanent list of links on this site. With any luck it can become something of a directory of the many battles to save the local, the particular and the diverse all over England.

Speaking of which, I was today sent a link to this fascinating website, which charts and beautifully illustrates a process of spectacular decline in Detroit, in the US, where a decades-long economic collapse is razing the city's character on a heartbreaking scale. It puts what's happening to England in a wider context and is well worth a look just to marvel at some of the architecture.

Anyway - more very soon when I get some of my head back. In the meantime, I'm told that the Guardian and the Times will both be reviewing the book this Saturday. This is the one part of the creative process that the author really has no control over. Pray for me ...

Roll up, roll up

2008-04-02T03:59:00.000-07:00

I'm hungover this morning (oh, hang on - it's the afternoon already) after a very successful book launch last night. Now comes the start of the promotional tour!

For anyone in Oxford or London, I will be doing two events next week. First off, on Tuesday evening, I'll be speaking at the Corner Club in Oxford, at 8 o'clock. You can find more about that here. Then, on Thursday lunchtime, there's a session at the RSA in central London: more details here. That one's free, so you'd be a fool to miss out!

Come along, tell your friends ... and I hope to see you there.

The time has come

2008-04-01T10:44:00.000-07:00

Real England is officially launched today. You can celebrate with yet another Guardian article. You lucky things.

Wish me luck!

Two pieces

2008-03-30T03:06:00.000-07:00

For those who missed it, yesterday's Guardian book extract can be read online here.

And today I have a piece about the thorny old 'English question' also up on the Guardian's website here.

Keep your eyes peeled

2008-03-28T10:28:00.000-07:00

As the tension mounts (really) in the buildup to the official launch of Real England next week, there'll be some more media this weekend to look out for.

First off, the Guardian's Weekend magazine will be running an extract from the book on Saturday 29th. Over the weekend, and on Monday, the Guardian's Comment is Free website will also be running two articles by me which pick up on subjects covered in the book.

Meanwhile, my list of speaking engagements is growing, with new events added in Oxford, London and Grasmere. Hope you can make one of them.

The eyebrows alone would be reason enough

2008-03-26T09:22:00.000-07:00

Following on from my various posts about pubs, below, I though I should share the heartening news that Alastair Darling is being barred from an increasing number of locals across the land.

Though something tells me he's probably a wine bar man anyway.

Institutional identity

2008-03-25T10:18:00.000-07:00

There are very few national newspaper columnists who are regularly worth reading, but Simon Jenkins is one of them. In my view, this is because he turns his gaze often onto subjects that his peers consider beneath them. Most columnists tend to think of themselves as Very Important People. They write about what cabinet ministers said to them in corridors, what the opinion polls tell them about the latest political wheeze and what the real story is behind the PM's relationship with his chancellor.

They mistakenly imagine that this makes them not only important but relevant, and they are usually wrong. Most people, I would wager, don't give a stuff about such things. What they do give a stuff about is how political decisions actually affect their lives. On this subject, our 'opinion formers' are often curiously silent. This may because they don't actually know.

Anyway, Jenkins had a piece in the Guardian a few days ago which took on the current wave of Post Office closures with gusto. It interested me because his findings were very similar to mine: rising anger all over the nation about the destruction of local communities by an alliance of big government and big business - and a rising tide of resistance to it. Also, and crucially, a recognition that the small, the local and the everyday matter hugely to people - because it is where we all live. Jenkins, for me, sums it up nicely in his last paragraph:

The government's Orwellian hostility to the institutional identity of British communities can only promote alienation and indiscipline. It turns communities into bleak, car-reliant dormitories, devoid of places of casual association. It removes the informal leadership of the resident teacher, doctor, police officer, shopkeeper. What central government may think it saves in the general, it loses in the particular. It is in the particular that people live.

Talking points

2008-03-16T11:02:00.000-07:00

I'm getting plenty of responses to my Daily Mail extract yesterday. There'll be another one along tomorrow, Monday 17th, so look out for that.

All of the emails and comments I've had so far have agreed with my take on the homogenisation of England. Expats from Brazil and the USA have written in sadness to agree, one saying that he left England fifteen years ago because he 'saw it coming.' Others have asked what can be done: there are some thoughts about this in the book, though I can't claim to have any comprehensive manifesto or batch of easy solutions.

Emigration is certainly tempting sometimes. I often wonder what the country will look like in another fifteen years. How many more roads, runways, power plants, housing estates? How many remaining pubs, local shops, small farms, marketplaces, hidden spaces? Will there be any sense of English folk culture remaining, or any feeling for the genius loci? Or will there just be thousands more pointless 'celebrities' being shuttled around in 4x4s proudly run on biofuels?

But emigration is no escape. One of the points I make in my book is that the forces affecting England are affecting the world. The spread of the global consumer economy leaves none untouched: in this sense I am taking up where my last book, which explored forces of resistance to that economy worldwide, left off.

One of the commenters on my Mail piece took me up on this. 'Paul doesn't seem to have grasped', he writes, 'that the Economy is a voracious, completely invulnerable monster that is ravaging everything human and humane that lies in its path.' Hopefully he'll read the book, where he'll see that I have grasped it, and all its implications. After Cobbett, I call it 'The Thing' - it stalks the world, devouring people and places and spitting out money, and I really don't know what to do about it. But I'm open to ideas.

Media whoring

2008-03-14T04:15:00.000-07:00

Anyone out there who has not yet pre-ordered a copy of the book (shame on you) will be pleased to know you can cheat by reading some extracts in the media instead. And then buying it.

First off, the Daily Mail (yes, really) are running the first of two extracts tomorrow, Saturday 15th. I say 'extracts' - 'rewrites' would actually be more accurate. But they get the point across, which is the main thing.

If that's not quite your cup of tea, then you can buy the Guardian instead which, on Saturday 29th, will be extracting the book too.

It's interesting to me that two papers with diametrically opposed politics have bought the rights to the book - and very pleasing. I've deliberately written a book which aims, in its language and approach, to appeal across the political spectrum rather than to a specific narrow interest group. My message is a fairly radical one - certainly one that the political establishment doesn't want to hear - but it's also one that appeals to people on a local, human scale, whether they consider themselves to be left or right or neither. In that sense, the subject matter is political, but not Political.

It works for me. But does it work for anyone else? I am about to find out.

Preserve beerdiversity

2008-03-13T11:13:00.000-07:00

As predicted by others on this blog (see below) the Chancellor decided to use his budget to raise over a billion from new alcohol duties. Apparently this is to tackle 'binge drinking', by making drinks more expensive.

This might be more convincing had the government decide to tackle the places and the drinks that cause genuine problems in towns on Saturday nights. That'll be the vast corporate booze sheds known as 'high volume vertical drinking establishments' (for reasons I go into in the book); the cheap supermarket booze; the mega-cheap shots and those who encourage mass drinking of them for quick profit before they turf the drinkers out into the vomit-stained streets.

Instead they've decided to hit every drink going, and the impact on the traditional pub will be great. CAMRA reckons it will add up to 20p to a pint of real beer. Cue more pressure on landlords, in addition to those catalogued in the post below and in chapter 2 of my book. Cue more pub closures.

The irony being that a traditional community pub is the last place you will get hordes of anti-social 'binge drinkers'. Real pubs foster community spirit; closing them destroys it. But the government seems to have its heart set on finishing off the traditional English local. Where will we drink then? Yate's Wine Lodge? Mine's a triple Bacardi Breezer. And a fight. With Alastair Darling.

Summer tour

2008-03-10T08:48:00.000-07:00

The Real England sumer book tour is beginning to take shape, as you can see here. I've just added a fun date at Camp Bestival in Dorset in July, on top of events in Devon, Bristol, north Wales and Herefordshire already announced. Grasmere, Oxford, London and a few other places are looking likely too. Keep popping back for updates.

It's fun this. If I close my eyes I can pretend to be a rock god. If you're lucky you may even get some extra dates due to unprecedented public demand. Though you would have to demand them first.

The death of the English pub

2008-03-06T08:01:00.000-08:00

A landlord activist I know (how many of them can there be?) today sent me this link to a deeply depressing story about the current fate of the English pub. Chapter 2 of my book focuses on the decline and potential fall of the English pub and it's not a cheery story.

Forget the monarchy, the church, the House of Commons - if you want an institution which truly represents and distills England, it's the pub. But for how much longer? This article suggests that the anti-democratic (and classicly NuLabour) smoking ban has added to the ongoing woes of the local boozer - woes that include inflated beer prices, changing demographics, an increasingly puritanical culture (how the English love to revert to their Roundhead tendencies every few decades) and predatory pub companies. As a result, a shocking 27 pubs are going out of business every week. It's enough to make you turn to drink

Read more about this in the book - but don't forget to do something about it too. For starters you could lend your support to CAMRA and to Freedom For Pubs. But you should also take direct action by going down to your local and drinking as much beer as possible. Real beer, mind. Carling or Fosters will only make things worse.

Hurray for the media. No, really.

2008-03-05T03:45:00.000-08:00

Good news for people who'd like to read some of my book but don't want to buy it (hang on, why would I be telling you this?) Towards the end of this month, two separate newspapers will be running extracts from it.

Even better, these newspapers cover the entire political spectrum, so you can buy whichever one you feel least embarrassed being seen with in public. First off, the Daily Mail will be serialising the book over two weeks, sometime between the 15th and 24th of March - I'll let you know if and when I have something more specific. After that, the Guardian will also be running an extract in its magazine on Saturday 29th March.

There is more media stuff in the pipeline too, and I'll let you know when it comes out of the other end, as it were. The theory behind all this is that excited newspaper readers, having been tempted by my silky prose, will then rush out and buy the book. Naturally, I like this idea. Let's see if it translates into reality.

Welcome

2008-03-03T01:48:00.000-08:00

My name is Paul Kingsnorth, and I'm a writer, environmentalist, journalist and poet. My new book, Real England, is published on 10th April, and this site is its cyberspace companion.

The book is an account of a journey I took through my home country - a country that is being colonised and homogenised by corporate power, an over-centralised state, money and indifference. It's a nation of clone towns, second homes, superstores, privatised streets and disintegrating local cultures. But it's also a nation of people resisting these trends, and of places that stubbornly refuse to have their character erased in the name of progress. I went searching for the real England: I found it, and my book is about how it can survive and why it should.

I'll be updating this blog regularly - not just with news about the book itself and accompanying events and articles, but with discussions, arguments, links and doubtless a few rants relating to the issues covered in the book. I'd like it to turn into a place to talk about all things English: political, cultural, geographical, historical. Come and help make it happen.

In the meantime, the links on the left allow you to read an extract from the book, have a look at some of the early reviews (many more to come I hope), catch up with events planned around it (ditto) - and, of course, buy it (which is obviously the most important bit).

More from me soon as this blog gets up to speed.