Merry England - Little England and Propaganda

Little England and Propaganda

In Angus Calder's re-examination of the ideological constructs surrounding "Little England" during World War II in The Myth of the Blitz, he puts forward the view that the story of Deep England was central to wartime propaganda operations within the United Kingdom, and then, as now, served a clearly defined political and cultural purpose in the hands of various interested agencies.

Calder cites the writer and broadcaster J. B. Priestley whom he considered to be a proponent of the Deep England world-view. Priestley's wartime BBC radio "chats" described the beauty of the English natural environment, this at a time when rationing was at its height, and the population of London was sheltering from the Blitz in its Underground stations. In reference to one of Priestley's bucolic broadcasts, Calder made the following point:

Priestley, the socialist, gives this cottage no occupant, nor does he wonder about the size of the occupant's wage, nor ask if the cottage has internal sanitation and running water. His countryside only exists as spectacle, for the delectation of people with motor cars." (Angus Calder, The Myth of the Blitz, London 1991)

However, in Journey Through England, Priestley identified himself as a Little Englander because he despised imperialism and the effect that the capitalist industrial revolution had on the people and environment.

Part of the imagery of the 1940 patriotic song "There'll Always Be an England" seems to be derived from the same source:

There'll always be an England

While there's a country lane,

Wherever there's a cottage small

Beside a field of grain.

The continuation evokes, however, the opposite image of the modern industrialised society:

There'll always be an England

While there's a busy street,

Wherever there's a turning wheel,

A million marching feet.

The song seems therefore to offer a synthesis and combine the two Englands, the archaic bucolic one and the modern industrialised one, in the focus of patriotic loyalty and veneration.