In Review

04 December 2008 04:51 BST

The Progressive Patriot by Billy Bragg

Published by Bantam, out now, hardback, 304pp, £17.99.

In a nutshell…

Folk. Songs. Rebellions. Britain. Scattered.

What's it all about?

After being Labour controlled since the creation of the borough, in May this year the people of Barking gave the BNP their first seat as official opposition. In response to this, self-styled Bard of Barking Billy Bragg sets out to prove that you don't have to be a red-faced retired colonel or a skinhead to love your country through a mix of family history, autobiography and a potted history of modern (well, modernish) music.

Rejecting the idea that Britons are defined by well-to-do individuals from our past who ruled most of the world, he tries to trace it through a national character that has always accommodated immigrants and is still with us today.

Who's it by?

Billy Bragg is best known as an outspoken singer, with A New England (about a woman, not the country) among his most popular hits.

Not a stranger to making his views public, he backed the miners in the 80s and opposed Mrs Thatcher. He has carried on since with projects to unseat the Tories, through the Red Wedge and other campaigns.

He's called for total reform of the British constitution but can be an enigma to some. As Deborah Ross said of him in the Guardian: "He's a socialist - but he once bought a £1,000 guitar. He doesn't like globalisation - but he drinks coffee from Coffee Republic. He has a street named after him in Barking - but he lives in a posh Dorset house by the sea."

As an example…

"Long before white English kids began speaking like Jamaican yardies in order to seem tough, public schoolboys were adopting cockney accents for the same reason. And looking at all the merchant bankers slumming it at Premiership football matches, you have to ask who has assimilated whom."

Likelihood of becoming a Hollywood blockbuster

Doubtful Ken Loach would touch this as its criticism of the United Kingdom is constructive, while a bit too rambling for a Channel 4 movie. However, Bragg probably doesn't care, he's too busy singing on the themes he writes about. However, don't be surprised if the people at the BBC stick him on Who Do You Think You Are.

What the others say

"By turns charming and engaging, aggravating and exasperating, his book mixes the archaeology of Barking, family lore, the influence of traditional English ballads on Simon and Garfunkel and Bob Dylan, 17th-century political history, seeing The Clash for the first time and the importance of football." - The Times.

"Unless you surrender to Bragg's discursive-going-on-tangential style, and the book's big leaps from the personal to the socio-political, the walk can prove exhausting and not a little frustrating…. The Progressive Patriot often reads like two books welded together: one, a memoir, the other a wide-ranging meditation on belonging." – The Observer

So is it any good?

The book starts with a seemingly-racist murder and you expect it to build to a climax, but instead you get a rambling discourse on the Bragg family and Britain.For someone who spends much of his book railing against government that ignores the will of the people, you would think one or two Essex voters would be asked how every candidate the BNP fielded in May 2006 got elected.

Instead, a generalist history of Britain – particularly England and Barking – is meant to suffice as a description of a national character which it appears means that the racist parties are the exception, not the rule here.

The first half of the book may as well be ignored unless you want to know the history of the Bragg family and what words Billy found in the thesaurus, yet the book does finally find some purpose. However, while the history of folk and punk music can be interesting, there are far too many cases of grand statements that this "must" signify.

Overall, Bragg's heart is in the right place with his belief that patriotism need not be divided along left-wing/right-wing lines. Yet the book reads like a draft of a student's essay on identity and patriotism, making it too vague and rambling for the casual reader. This is a shame as good arguments are in the book, but it could really have done with better editing and the axing of half the work.

4/10

Jonathan Richardson