Wings of Pride, Chains of Folly: Watching the Skies for Patriotism, Not Nationalism

There are few sights as stirring as a Spitfire banking low over the Cambridgeshire fields, sunlight catching its elliptical wings as though even the air itself were bowing in respect. That was the spectacle at Duxford during the Battle of Britain airshow: a living memory of a time when the skies above Britain were the thin line between survival and surrender. To stand there, neck craned and ears ringing from the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, is to feel—if only briefly—that heady mixture of gratitude and awe. Patriotism, if it has a sound, surely hums somewhere between that growl and that whistle.

And yet, patriotism is not nationalism, just as admiration is not obsession, and pride is not paranoia. One can look up at the planes of Duxford and feel the joy of belonging to a country with history, sacrifice, and stubbornness in its bones, without immediately declaring that one’s neighbours, should they speak another language or eat another spice, are the enemy within. Unfortunately, the flag—our ever-flexible piece of cloth—has a way of being both a symbol of collective memory and a weapon of individual resentment.

Take, for instance, the English flag, often recruited for every pub wall and front garden during any major football tournament. On one hand, it is a cheerful backdrop for beer and sausage rolls, a symbol of shared hope that this might, finally, be ‘the’ year that football comes home. On the other, in less forgiving contexts, it becomes a semaphore for exclusion: a way of declaring that England, and by implication the English, are under siege. Immigrants, the story goes, are not just neighbours or workers or friends but unwelcome intruders gnawing at the very timbers of the house. The flag flaps over them like a warning sign.

That is the chain of folly. The flag, instead of flying above us all, gets wrapped around the idea that Englishness is a fortress under attack. The result is not unity but suspicion, not pride but defensiveness. We start to hear “take back control” as though control were an heirloom misplaced under the sofa by sheer carelessness, rather than a shifting, negotiated reality in a world where planes, people, and ideas cross borders whether we like it or not.

At Duxford, nobody looked up at the aircraft gracefully wheeling over the crowd and shouted, “Foreigners out!” Instead, they watched with moist eyes as engine sounds carried the echo of crews who were, in many cases, barely out of school when they took to the skies. They flew not because of what they hated, but because of what they loved—family, home, the right to wake up tomorrow with a chance of living in peace. Patriotism is that: the love of something enough to defend it, not the fear of everything else.

But nationalism? That’s different. Nationalism takes the same symbol—the same Union Jack or St George’s Cross—and drains it of love until only suspicion remains. The Nazi flag in 1930s Germany was not terrifying because it was red and white and black, but because it became shorthand for an ideology that made entire populations disposable. The Confederate flag in the US still sends a chill down the spine because, for many, it isn’t history but a continuing whisper of racial supremacy. Even the proudest banners can curdle into warnings when wielded to exclude.

The Spitfire teaches the opposite lesson. It was, ironically enough, designed by a man—R.J. Mitchell—who worked closely with European ideas in engineering, and whose plane was flown not only by British pilots but by amongst others (see below) Poles, Czechs, Canadians, Australians, and even Americans who slipped across the Atlantic before their own country entered the war. The “few” were never so few as we like to imagine, nor so exclusively English. The Battle of Britain was won not by closing England off but by opening her arms to those willing to fight alongside her.

Which brings me back to the flag at Duxford, the RAF ensign fluttering against the September sky. It was uplifting, not terrifying, because it spoke of shared memory rather than exclusion, of gratitude rather than grievance. Patriotism, at its best, is like that flag in the wind—visible, confident, and above all generous enough to wave for everyone. Nationalism, by contrast, is when the same flag is nailed to a stick and jabbed in someone’s face.

So perhaps the task is this: to reclaim our symbols not by hiding them away in embarrassment, nor by brandishing them in aggression, but by letting them fly as reminders of what was fought for at such cost. At Duxford, I watched children look skyward with mouths open, hearing the same sounds their great-grandparents once did. It was a reminder that pride does not have to be weaponised, and history does not have to be hijacked.

Patriotism lifts the eyes. Nationalism narrows them. One is wings; the other, chains. And on a breezy afternoon at Duxford, I knew which sky I’d rather be under.

As a side note, it is worth remembering that during the Battle of Britain, brave airmen from a number of countries flew above the skies during the summer of 1940

Great Britain - 2,342, Poland - 145, New Zealand - 127, Canada - 112, Czechoslovakia - 88, Australia - 32, Belgium - 28, South Africa - 25, France - 13, Ireland - 10, USA - 9, Rhodesia - 3, Jamaica - 1, Barbados - 1 & Newfoundland - 1

During the Battle 544 lost their lives and a further 795 were to die before the end of the war.