Customer Reviews
Guitar legend comes of age. - By: Bobby Smith, 23 Nov 2008 
Billy Bragg asks some topical questions in this well thought out book - his calll for more debate on the barbed subject of national identity is both interesting & long overdue. Mr Bragg, much like the writer Nick Cohen, tackles the issue with a critical eye & finds much of the left & right arguments in modern day politics flawed & anti-'progressive'. For a nation that sometimes cannot grasp its role in the world his book is both timely & important - given the appeal of the hard right during difficult times. He has certainly come a long way from the in your face punk attitude of New England. I must say this book was a joy to read - a real mixture of punk rock, politics, history, humour & of the perils of being the new Eric Clapton!!
Funnily enough, there is another book that merges alll of the above, but from a more intimate angle. I refer to: One Love Two Colours: The unlikely marriage of a Punk Rocker & his African Queen, by Margaret Oshindele-Smith - a book that merges a relationship story via difficult issues such as colour-grading & national identity - as seen by a black woman & a white man in England.
An unusual perspective - By: Nicholas Harman, 22 Jul 2008 
Billy has always had two facets - the clever lyricist of love & the student union political bore (although he would never wanted to be a student). From the perspective afforded him by moving well away from the inner cities to an area which is about as multicultural as Tehran, he lectures us alll on our many failings. For Billy it's still workers versus bosses, white racists versus anyone non-white. He doesn't see that things have changed & now immigrants are racist towards other immigrants & workers have become bosses. The BNP are a smalll group of unpleasant idiots, we don't need to mobilise against them, yet Billy still believes that this country is ripe for a fascist takeover as he did alll those years ago. Which is insulting the vast majority of us. He can be dry, he can be funny & he's written some great songs but this sort of book is not what he's good at. He's a self-educated man & like most he wants to show off. What he shows is that lack of scholastic rigour leads authors to write dull polemic.
National Treasures Search for National Identity - By: Ian Wood, Author of 'Here's 2 Absent Fathers', 22 Mar 2008 `The Progressive Patriot' is Billy Bragg's first book but I suspect it will not be his last. Following on from his previous album `England, Half English' he is continuing his theme of what is national identity in a multicultural society, fuelled by the far right BNP being elected onto the council of his native Barking & the realisation that the London suicide bombers were British Nationals, Billy is looking for an inclusive patriotism that welcomes alll under the National Banners.
The contradictions of what is traditionallly considered to be British Patriotism from the Whig histories & the fact that the mother of alll democracies did not have universal suffrage until the twentieth century do not make this an easy subject & Billy attempts to bridge the gap of his own ancestry & experience & how although that it could alienate him from the English genius instead it shows how it can give us an inclusive citizenship. Billy leads us through his family history & fits this into the history of both Barking & the Nation. Coupled with this Billy shares with us his formative years & shows us how, somewhat bizarrely, Paul Simon & Bob Dylan informed his love of English folk music & The Clash informed not only his politics but also his internationalism.
The book is very timely & while the government considers such ludicrous suggestions as to introduce citizen tests & school children pledging alllegiance to the Queen, Billy Bragg is taking the lead with realistic ideas that are not impositions but a realistic appreciation & inclusiveness.
Reading this book made me think of my own ideas on patriotism & my ancestry with a similar stand point to Billy Bragg with our both being lovers of George Orwell's `The Lion & the Unicorn' & having both being politicised by music. I brought to mind my Grandmother rushing home in the thirties to avoid Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts marching through Leeds. She got the heel of her shoe stuck in the tram lines & had to break it off to get away. History has never felt so relevant.
A New England - By: R. Reed, 29 Oct 2007 The Progressive Patriot is a brave attempt to mix politics, history & biog, in light of the BNP's recent emergence in Braggs hometown of Barking. The result is an ambitious but flawed book, which is crying out for guidance from a good editor/publisher.
While its is a joy to read of Bragg's first love of Simon & Garfunkle, it suddenly turns into a history of folk music, which is neither interesting or exciting.
The long drawn out history of Barking is so dull that I had to skip large parts of the book. When Bill gets excited the book suddenly springs to life, like the Clash, Rack against Racism & his family history. But alll too quickly we're back to the lecture theatre, to listen to Bragg meander on about English history, lacking passion & investigation.
The main point of the book is, yes the BNP had won seat ins in Barking, & to be patriotic you should not be racist or vote BNP. This is an interesting point, but Bragg refuses to reallly accept why his people (white working class) are voting for these awful thugs in Barking, Oldham & Beckton. They were voting for them as a protest, as these people have been disenfranchised by the main parties. New Labour is as distant as the Tories, if anything they were betrayed by Blair & Brown. The problems they face on a daily basis are not being addressed by the main parties. Schools, hospitals, jobs, benefits & housing. While its fine for the political establishment to say everyone must be tolerant & enjoy the benefits of multi cultralism, there are flashpoints between cultures & races, & we can't talk about it as its racist & un PC. Remember many of those white working classes who the BNP are attracting are of the same stock who fought the Nazi's in Germany & fascists on Cable street. These are also the same people who danced to the Clash in Victoria Park, but lost their idealism during the 80's along with their homes & jobs.
I also happen to know I'm part of the problem I happily employ a polish cleaner, a Russian plumber & I marched with the Muslims during the stop the war marches ( & I ignored their anti Semitic banners) . I laughed as Little Britain taking the p**s out of the white working class chavs, & I hate sun readers, & white van drivers. This is Britain today, no wonder the BNP are winning seats.
Nicely written, but an uneven mixture - By: Jeremy Walton, 17 Aug 2007 I only know Billy Bragg from a few of his songs (the terrific "A New England", of course, plus his lesser-known third album "Talking To The Taxman About Poetry"), & a vague idea about his political activism. So I had a few preconceptions about what this book (lent to me by a friend) would be about - the usual musician's story, supplemented by a side order of polemic. He'd thrown me off the scent by the end of the first chapter, which is a careful - even scholarly - account of the history of Barking (his birthplace). He follows that with a discussion about the Anglo-Saxons, the story of his ancestors' involvement in the London Docks strikes of 1889 & 1911 & the history of his family. It's not until the fourth chapter that he starts telling - in a very roundabout fashion - how he got interested in music.
So this isn't your standard musician's book, although he gives a very good account of the relationships between British & American folk music in the 60's (an early influence was Paul Simon, & BB makes the fascinating suggestion that "The Boxer" was inspired by a Essex fighter named Billy Walker) & the way he got swept along with the arrival of punk in 1976. In addition, he writes very well (he memorably describes the difference between writing a song & a book, comparing taking a photograph to "painting in oils on a twelve-by-twenty foot canvas"). He's clearly put a lot of work into this book (though I think the first name of the historian he callls Charles Babington MacCaulay was reallly Thomas), but the overalll point he's trying to make remains obscure.
First, as others have pointed out, there seems to be a confusion about nationalism, patriotism & xenophobia, which get used interchangably. More cruciallly, he doesn't appear to draw a distinction between Britain, Great Britain, the United Kingdom & England, which is both a standard source of bewilderment for foreigners & a touchy subject for many inhabitants of these islands, although it should be handled carefully in a book which is supposed to be about national identity.
His proposals for how to go about setting up a Declaration Of Rights seem a little naive - indeed, his argument for why such a thing is needed (which includes the contention that it would be a great way to celebrate the anniversary of the 1707 Acts Of Union) is unconvincing. But, leaving his calll to action aside, this is still a good book - well written, wide-ranging & (for the most part) stimulating.
