Dave's Book Blog: "Another England" by Caroline Lucas

Friday, 26 September 2025

"Another England" by Caroline Lucas

From 2010 until 2024, Caroline Lucas was Britain's first and only Green MP (others were elected in 2024, when she stood down). This book is an attempt to create a blueprint for a better society in England.

But while I agreed with her whenever she analysed the problems we face, I felt her suggested solutions would be unlikely to convince one of her opponents.

For example, at one stage she discusses alternatives to the nation state: the religious community and the dynastic realm. Neither appeals! The problem, it seems to me, is that we equate a community with its territory. This is why I have started to redefine my ethnic identity. If I am asked my ethnicity from a medical point of view, I understand that they need data about my physical body and so I am prepared to respond 'White British' if that is the appropriate option. But otherwise, for example on the most recent census, I choose the 'other' box and self-define as 'English speaker'. Because for me, the most important thing about being English is the language and the culture.

Furthermore, she states her intention is to consider English literature to show that England is, fundamentally, deep down, the society to which she aspires. But this is window-dressing rather than the focus of her arguments. Furthermore, her choice of authors sometimes seemed to undermine her points.

For example, when she is discussing rural England she makes the point that the countryside is always held up as the ideal environment even though most people live in cities. “The England of roads and railways, urban housing and shipyards ... are relegated to second place, as are the people who live and work there, in all their rich and diverse reality.” (Ch 6) She goes on to criticise the nostalgia implicit in Jane Austen, George Eliot and Anthony Trollope, as well as (more explicitly) George Orwell. Great, I thought. Now she will praise authors who write about the urban environment, and she does indeed mention Zadie Smith's novel NW, as well as Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway (really? it may be set in London but isn't exactly urban). But then she goes on to talk about the profoundly rural William Cowper, Chaucer, Wordsworth and John Clare, as well as the anonymous author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Hasn't she just relegated urban England to second place?

[I acknowledge that it is difficult to find urban authors. James Joyce's Ulysses is Dublin through and through, and the Vernon Subutex trilogy by Virginie Despentes does something similar for Paris but what about England? Suggestions please!]

[When I was writing my third novel Bally and Bro I wanted to depict my protagonist Bally as so much a product of his city environment that he couldn't even think in proverbs such as 'Make hay while the sun shines'. But it is very difficult to find town-based alternatives!]

Equally, when she is discussing the plight of the poor in our society, by her own admission Charles Dickens is a strange choice. The whole point of Oliver Twist, despite its clothing of workhouses and thieves kitchens, is to demonstrate that a well-bred lad would triumph over the naturally lower-class oiks.

There are hard-hitting moments, such as when she shows that the difference in life-expectancy between Kensington and Middlesborough “is comparable to the difference between the UK on the one hand and Guatemala, Iraq and Syria on the other.” (Ch 4). But I was unconvinced that she had the answers.

Selected quotes:

“The moment Englishness took a political form it became anathema. The English flag was acceptable fluttering from a church tower in a picturesque village, but was instantly interpreted as a form of racism if hanging from someone's window on an estate.” (Preface)
“The top 1 per cent ... have an average monthly income ... a full twenty times that of the lowest 10 per cent. It is impossible to justify this: though this doesn't stop a surprising number of the better-off from complaining that the poor have made ‘bad decisions’ or ‘lifestyle choices’, or from handing out patronising advice about how to cook on a budget, just as their Victorian predecessors did.” (Ch 4)
“Work is not in itself a good thing. If it gives people a sense of purpose ... then this is generally very positive. ... But not all jobs provide these things.” (Ch 4)
“Ours is an age in which the financial rewards of work and the autonomy of the employee have little connection to the demands of the role or the value they provide to society.” (Ch 4)
“The Thatcherite ideal of a property owning democracy [is based] ... on the nasty implication that if you do not own your own home, you have a lesser stake in society, are more likely to be a burden, and are less committed to your community.” (Ch 5)
“By any measure - life expectancy, human capital, infrastructure, economic development, democracy ... - the vast majority of England's former colonies are far better off now than they were under the Empire.” (Ch 7)
“For all the talk of shared values and a common loyalty to the crown ... the empire remained a profoundly racist endeavour. If you were English, you could serve in the administration in Burma or Uganda, but if you were Burmese or Ugandan, you could not do the same in England. The British Empire was unlike the Roman, where if you adopted the language and culture, you could go to Rome and become an official, even a senator, even Emperor.” (Ch 7)
“When you believe your military commanders should be appointed because they come from the right social class, not on ability, then it is no surprise if you are outfought, as in the Crimea.” (Ch 8)