The Strategies of Ultranationalist Discourse: This Is England and Brexit
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Open Cultural Studies 2018; 2: 50–60 Research Article J. Rubén Valdés-Miyares* The Strategies of Ultranationalist Discourse: This Is England and Brexit https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2018-0006 Received July 24, 2017; accepted April 3, 2018 Abstract: A speech given by the skinhead Combo in the film This is England (2006) provides the ground for an analysis of far-right nationalism. This article uses Critical Discourse Analysis and the idea of the nation as a discursive construct to explain Combo’s strategies to gain dominance over his gang by means of rhetoric, body language, building up an ethos based on Christian and epic mythologies with ethnic connotations, drawing boundaries, and discrediting and excluding his opponents. These strategies are then compared to those of the UKIP leader Nigel Farage in his “Brexit victory” speech delivered in June 2016, which was based on a mystification of territorial boundaries, symbolic allusions to a defensive war, and a verbal construction of an ideally independent nation and a promising future. Thus, the article argues that analysis of a scene from the film set in the Thatcherite Britain of 1983 can still illuminate the articulation of later nationalist discourses. Keywords: critical discourse analysis, English nationalism, discursive construction of nations, multimodal analysis, film studies, This is England, Brexit My article looks at the representation of far-right nationalism in Shane Meadows’s film This is England (2006) set in 1983. It will focus on the scene in which the character called Combo defines his political position for his younger skinhead friends through a dramatic speech. In a four-minute spellbinding performance, the character played by Stephen Graham provides viewers with an outstanding text sample for the analysis of British ultranationalist discourse. As the scene is rather complex and sufficiently self- contained, it deserves scrutiny in relative isolation from the plot of the film as a whole and from its three television sequels. Furthermore, the discourse strategies which are deployed in this filmic text are, as I will finally argue, representative enough to serve as a model for a brief comparative analysis of actual, non-fictional instances of British populist-nationalist discourse, such as Nigel Farage’s “Brexit victory” speech. The discursive resemblance between Combo and Farage implies a similarity between the 1980s ultranationalism portrayed by Meadows and the nationalist populism of Farage’s UK Independence Party (UKIP). My approach combines various forms of discourse analysis and cultural studies theories to examine the art of delivering political speeches and their relations to power. Critical Approach and Context I am examining the texts of Combo and Farage’s speeches from the point of view, above all, of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). It is a methodology which, according to a classical definition (van Dijk), centres on three issues: the role of discourse in the (re)production of and resistance to dominance; social cognition as the nexus between power and discourse production; and the way discourse may legitimize social inequality as well as access to structures of communication. This approach is combined with a theoretical *Corresponding author: J. Rubén Valdés-Miyares, Departamento de Filología Inglesa, Francesa y Alemana, University of Oviedo, Oviedo 33011, Asturias, Spain, [email protected] Open Access. © 2018 J. Rubén Valdés-Miyares, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License. The Strategies of Ultranationalist Discourse: This Is England and Brexit 51 perspective on the idea of “nation” as “an unstable and decentred complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle,” with the effect that “nations” are “political artefacts called into being by nationalist ideologies and movements” (Jenkins and Sofos 11). The “nation” is thus an empty signifier on whose ideological surface a nationalist discourse may inscribe all sorts of demands, hopes and aspirations (Torfing 195-196). In Hobsbawm’s words, “the idea of the ‘nation’, once extracted, like the mollusc, from the apparently hard shell of the ‘nation-state’, emerges in distinctly wobbly shape” (190). Combo’s brand of extreme nationalism, detaching itself from the official state nationalism of Thatcherism, is, therefore, the more pliable to discursive construction. This is England, set in a grim small town in the north of England, is about twelve-year-old Shaun who has recently lost his father in the Falklands War, and, during his summer holidays, finds a new sense of belonging and fresh male role-models joining a skinhead group led by Woody. The teenage pranks and wanderings of the band acquire a new dimension when Woody’s friend Combo, who has just come out of prison, introduces his political ideas. The dramatic turning point comes when Combo persuades the group to help him put his ultranationalist politics into action, which leads to a split in the group. Shaun’s experience of violent extremism in Combo’s faction brings him a disappointment, which he expresses in a final sequence by throwing a St George’s flag which Combo had given him into the sea. The film had three sequels in the form of subsequent TV series. The most notable feature of the sequels is that the character of Combo acquires many redeeming traits. In the film, it is hinted at that he is fundamentally a loyal person that will stand up for his friends if the situation arose. In the first TV sequel, set in 1986, he heroically takes criminal responsibility for Lol’s killing of her abusing father (Lol is Woody’s girlfriend in This is England) and goes to prison for her. In the third series, set in 1990, Combo becomes a tragic victim of the revenge of Milky (a youth of Jamaican background in the original skinhead group) and his family. While this complete reconfiguration of Combo’s character in the TV series adds an intriguing complexity to his characterisation, there is no need to consider this later transformation in order to understand Combo in the original film as a personification of extremist nationalism in the early 1980s. Moreover, as the focus of my analysis is on the interface between language and culture, I will concentrate mostly on the scene in which Combo’s ideas are fully developed in the form of speech. All the later events in this film can be said to derive directly from bringing his discourse into action. In this particular speech, Combo is trying to gain dominance over the group, taking it over from the younger, more moderate apolitical leader Woody. The controversial issue Combo initially offers for discussion is that he, Combo himself, has been bullying “Milky”, the only non-white member of the pack. Thus in an attempt to gain acceptance from his audience, Combo begins by apologising, but he soon turns to accusing Woody of doing nothing to defend his mate Milky when he was being abused. He further discredits Woody by branding him “a snake in the garden,” thus suggesting that he is a traitor to his own people. Next, Combo delivers a long political speech, criticising Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands War, which makes Shaun protest as his own father was killed in that war. Then Combo turns apologetic again, only to instrumentalise the young boy’s feelings and urge him “to stand up and fight this fucking fight that’s going on the streets” so as to make sure that his dad did not die for nothing. Combo is thus deploying a rhetoric of warfare which was common at that time when the Falklands War was often contrasted with the “race riots” and clashes between the police and miners led by the National Union of Mineworkers. As Gilroy noted (51), Thatcherite discourse established clear connections between the “Argies” (as people from Argentina were called in the tabloids) and the miners on strike. Through such discourse Combo is trying to persuade the members of Woody’s group to join his agenda of violent action (“this fucking fight”) whose most likely target, given the description of England’s problems in his speech, will be “Pakis.” He sees Pakistanis and other immigrants as bent on taking the jobs and welfare resources rightly belonging to the English. This call to arms against immigrants, based on a rigid, ethnic distinction between British natives and foreigners, was the mark of ultranationalist discourse from the Blackshirts in the 1920s and 30s (Valdés Miyares), to UKIP’s campaign for Brexit. Characteristically, Combo fends off any allegations of racism by asking Milky whether he considers himself Jamaican or English and simply accepting him with congratulations and praising his “pride” as soon as Milky replies “English.” The choice is turned into performance through Combo’s drawing of a line with his own spittle 52 J. R. Valdés-Miyares on the floor, a symbolic border between what is England and what is not. Those who agree with him are supposed to signal it by standing on his side of the line. The Text: Linguistic Analysis of Combo’s Speech A linguistic analysis of the properties of Combo’s speech with the aid of CDA can further elucidate the meaning of the scene. In CDA (Fairclough), such analysis would include, in the first place, control of interaction. Combo, who always has behind him a hefty bearded skinhead, a fellow ex-convict called Banjo, is in full control of the situation from the beginning to the end: he is the one to summon the meeting and to call it off by stage-managing a split between the participants. While the rest are sitting and using very little body language, he is moving around and his turns are much longer. He is in command of turn-taking most of the time, and keeps standing, supported by Banjo’s imposing figure, or walking about and moving his arms to add meaning to various deictic phrases in his speech that otherwise could not be fully understood.