TRISTRAM HUNT has edited a new volume of brief essays on patriotism. Most of the contributors are in the New Labour area of politics, shading over in some cases to what is termed Blue Labour.

The book is not a dispassionate investigation of or exposition on patriotism. Rather, it is pushing a particular political agenda. However, that is no reason not to engage with it seriously.

There are a couple of considerable contradictions in the general approach.

First, Hunt claims that there is concern among working-class communities about the scale of immigration into Britain, although he agrees that fears that migrants take jobs from people already here are wrong.

Welcoming immigration, however, was one of the more praiseworthy aspects of New Labour, yet this is unacknowledged here.

Second, the working class referenced here — a possible implication being that it is mainly white, which is far from the case — is precisely that group in society that New Labour thought was no longer really a significant element of society.

One might say therefore that if there are some sections of working-class people who are disillusioned with Labour, it is probably the kind of New Labour politics that many of the contributors to the volume support that is concerned. Again, this is not addressed.

I make these points to underline that the matter, as patriotism itself, is more complex than Hunt the politician seems to allow for.

If we heard more from Hunt the historian here this might have been obvious.

EP Thompson in The Making of the English Working Class discussed the “freeborn Englishman,” the archetypal British patriot.

Thompson makes the point that the English patriot can be on the political left or the political right, depending on the specific times and context.

He identifies some key characteristics. The first he notes is “freedom from foreign domination” which in a modern context is a feature of the current EU referendum campaign, although not for most contributors to Hunt’s volume who are In supporters.

Many others relate not to economic or social liberty but political liberty. These included, freedom from arbitrary arrest, trial by jury, equality before the law and freedom from the home being arbitrarily entered by the authorities.

Thompson also indicated the notion of some specific political freedoms around elections, free thought and speech and parliamentary opposition.

The bottom line, however, was what Thompson called a “moral consensus” of limits beyond which the patriotic Englishman would not be pushed. In short, the freeborn Englishman wanted the right to be “left alone.”

It was a constitutionalist individualism that perhaps did not and does not sit well with political collectivism and certainly not political change directed or imposed from above.

Here we can see how Hunt’s points about how disaffected Labour voters feel that things occur which make a significant impact on their lives but over which they have no personal control does fit into the historical sense of patriotism. These people are not being “left alone.”

A number of contributors to the volume make the very good point that many people see things locally and resent agendas imposed from central government.

But again there is a contradiction because in the labour movement, as a generality, those championing political liberties and opposing the overbearing power of the state have tended to be those on the left.

When it comes to the modern system of police spying on activists and the blacklisting of workers in construction, Jeremy Corbyn has a strong record of protest. It is not a feature of Hunt’s volume.