James McFarlane

Believe it or not, I had an old school friend on today’s marches in London. He sent me some photos from the crowd. We went to middle school together and grew up on the same Eastern District council estate in Northampton. I asked him why he was there. He gave me two answers: 1.“The government doesn’t listen to us.” 2.“I want to feel proud of my country again.” He wore a Union Jack, not a St George’s Cross as he said that one had been hijacked by racists. He wasn’t there for Hopkins, Musk, or any of the professional ‘grifters’ as he put it. He was there to feel part of something bigger, though he admitted there were a lot of, in his words, “assholes” there. He’s an electrician. He’s smart. He’s not racist, but he’s not “PC” either. He’s not a fan of Keir Starmer but he also believes Farage would be a disaster. Oh yes, he’s a bundle of contradictions! But aren’t we all? I don’t know what ‘box’ we put him or the millions like him in. And I think pretending they’re all racists or fascists would be a massive mistake. Some were. But not all. This is about something bigger than immigration slogans or GDP numbers. For decades we’ve hollowed out our national life, underfunding and undermining the very institutions that once brought us together. Karl Polanyi, writing in The Great Transformation, argued that when markets are “disembodied” from society, when land, labour, and life itself are treated as commodities society pushes back. He called this the “double movement”: people seeking to protect themselves, to reclaim dignity and meaning when everything solid seems to melt into air. That’s what I saw in my friend’s photos. Not just anger, but a demand for belonging. We’ve replaced collective experience with atomisation. Without getting too nostalgic, programmes like the BBC’s Generation Game once pulled in millions every Saturday night, giving us something we could all talk about on Monday morning. Now we watch Netflix, Disney+, Prime, or Paramount, alone, in algorithmic silos. Football used to be affordable and rooted in community; now it’s millionaires playing for the profitability of billionaires. The NHS, the post office, the railways - all chipped away, run down, sold off or centralised, leaving people feeling powerless and disconnected. And don’t get me wrong: some kind of “Hovis Labour” nostalgia for the 1950s isn’t the answer. The country back then was often intolerant, grey, and deeply unequal. But what we’ve built since is a society that gives people little to hold in common, no collective story about who we are or what we’re for. I reckon that’s partly why my mate marched. Not because he wants to turn back the clock. But because he wants to feel pride again. Pride in a country that is inclusive, fair, and offers a role for everyone. Pride in a nation that has a respected place in the world, tackles grotesque inequality, and gives people something real to believe in. Polanyi warned that when democracies fail to provide a humane alternative, the backlash can turn authoritarian. This is how fascism grew in the 1930s, not because everyone became a true believer, but because millions felt abandoned and looked for strength, identity, and meaning wherever they could find it. If Labour and progressives don’t offer that story of renewal, if we don’t rebuild our national institutions, restore collective pride, and re-embed markets within society, the far right will do it for us, in their own image. And by then, it will be too late.