University of Huddersfield Repository Swift, Ryan The Labour Party and the 'Politics of Englishness' Original Citation Swift, Ryan (2017) The Labour Party and the 'Politics of Englishness'. Masters thesis, University of Huddersfield. This version is available at http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/32670/ The University Repository is a digital collection of the research output of the University, available on Open Access. Copyright and Moral Rights for the items on this site are retained by the individual author and/or other copyright owners. Users may access full items free of charge; copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided: • The authors, title and full bibliographic details is credited in any copy; • A hyperlink and/or URL is included for the original metadata page; and • The content is not changed in any way. For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at: [email protected]. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/ THE LABOUR PARTY AND THE ‘POLITICS OF ENGLISHNESS’ RYAN SWIFT A thesis submitted to the University of Huddersfield in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science by Research in Politics and International Studies January 2017 Copyright Statement i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns any copyright in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Huddersfield the right to use such copyright for any administrative, promotional, educational and/or teaching purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts, may be made only in accordance with the regulations of the University Library. Details of these regulations may be obtained from the Librarian. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of any patents, designs, trademarks and any and all other intellectual property rights except for the Copyright (the “Intellectual Property Rights”) and any reproductions of copyright works, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property Rights and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property Rights and/or Reproductions 2 Abstract This thesis examines how the Labour Party has engaged with the so called ‘politics of Englishness’. It does so by considering the extent to which Englishness has been politicised and through discussion of the way in which the Labour Party has responded to it. An analytical framework based on politicisation and the importance of identity, governance and political conflict on it is used for this task. The thesis then considers the Labour Party’s relationship with the ‘politics of Englishness’ through analysis of primary data gathered from semi- structured interviews with leading national and local Labour politicians in England. This analysis enables the thesis to conclude by detailing the current state of the Labour’s relationship with the ‘politics of Englishness’ and allows it to consider how the party might engage with it in the future. 3 Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 5 Methodology .......................................................................................................................... 9 Thesis Structure .................................................................................................................... 12 Chapter 1: Literature Review ................................................................................................... 13 Devolution and the Impact of Multi-Level Politics ............................................................. 13 Analytical Framework .......................................................................................................... 17 Chapter 2: The Politicisation of Englishness ........................................................................... 20 Identity ................................................................................................................................. 20 Governance........................................................................................................................... 23 Political Conflict .................................................................................................................. 27 Conclusions .......................................................................................................................... 33 Chapter 3: The Rise of English Labour?.................................................................................. 35 Identity ................................................................................................................................. 35 Governance........................................................................................................................... 41 Political Conflict .................................................................................................................. 45 Conclusions .......................................................................................................................... 49 Chapter 4: Labour in England: The Research Findings ........................................................... 51 Identity ................................................................................................................................. 51 Governance........................................................................................................................... 56 Political Conflict .................................................................................................................. 63 Conclusions .......................................................................................................................... 67 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 69 Index ........................................................................................................................................ 73 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................ 74 Word Count: 27,716 4 Introduction This study examines the emergence and development of the so called ‘politics of Englishness’ (Mycock and Hayton, 2014) and its resonance and impact on the Labour Party. The ‘politics of Englishness’ is associated with changes to English identity construction, governance and the resulting ‘recalibration of party politics’ amongst Westminster-based unionist parties in an attempt to engage with these issues (Mycock and Hayton, 2014, p. 251). The primary aim of this thesis is to consider the impact of the ‘politics of Englishness’ and to examine how and in what ways the Labour Party has engaged with it. This raises several key issues that the study addresses. Firstly, it considers the main drivers of the ‘politics of Englishness’ and examines the extent to which national identity in England has been politicised. It then considers how the ‘politics of Englishness’ has impacted upon the Labour Party and analyses the views of Labour politicians on its implications in terms of party organisation and policy-making. The thesis addresses these issues by applying an analytical framework developed from the work of Hooghe and Marks (2009). The framework is based around the importance of politicisation and the impact of identity, governance and political conflict on it. Analysis of the party’s engagement with Englishness through the prism of these three key themes enables the study to discuss how the party has reacted to the ‘politics of Englishness’ and explore the implications of it. In its conclusion, the thesis considers how Labour might engage with the ‘politics of Englishness’ in the future. Contextually, there are four key drivers of this study. Firstly, an increased affiliation to English national identity has been emerging since the early 1990s (Kenny, 2012, p. 156). This may have been driven by a number of factors including the end of empire and the impact of this upon the English’s sense of belonging (Wellings, 2011, p. 12). It may also have been influenced by a sense of ‘dislocation and anxiety’ associated with the rapid shift to post-industrialism in the 1980s (Kenny, 2015a, pp. 358-359). More recently, UK devolution and Euroscepticism can be seen to have contributed towards an increasingly politicised English national identity (Jeffery et al, 2014). Some survey data suggests that forty per cent of the population in England now prioritise their English identity above all others, compared with just sixteen per cent who prioritise their British identity (Wyn Jones et al, 2012, p. 5). Furthermore, sixty per cent of those in England 5 believe that the English have become ‘more aware of Englishness in recent years’ (Wyn Jones et al, 2012, p. 5). Wyn Jones et al (2013, p. 32) argue that there is now strong evidence that ‘England is emerging as a distinct political community’. Jeffery et al (2014, p. 3) suggest that