Young UK and Ireland Programme 2010

Reason and treason
The winning paper
by Kris Anderson

A few years ago I went to a Last-Night-of-the-Proms event down in Oxfordshire. It was a sweltering evening, and as a middleweight soprano came on to lead the audience through Jerusalem, I remember looking at the field filled with flag-waving, white, middle-class, middle Britons, some with tears in their eyes, and feeling a distinct chill. At the time I found it difficult to imagine ever feeling strongly enough about my country to weep in patriotic fervour. But then Obama was elected, and as I watched his acceptance speech, I felt a telltale moistening. Patriotism is an odd thing: at times, a guttural warmth; at times, a reasoned pride; at times, both.
     For me, Obama's victory was a rare moment in which democracy, meritocracy, and common sense overlapped. What moved me was that I was watching my nation progress, a feeling absent from the Fourth of July or the Proms. Even in that benign Cotswold meadow, fireworks and anthems sat ill with me because of the nationalism such rituals often mask, particularly as the frenetic, febrile nature of identity politics in America and Britain means that patriotism and nationalism edge ever closer together. The difference is important: as George Orwell notes, 'Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power'.
     Nationalism certainly informs the ongoing dispute in US politics about who can claim the deepest patriotism. Some say that patriotism is a rational respect for America's foundational principles, including the virtues espoused by classical democracy, Enlightenment philosophy, and humanistic thought – that is, the universal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This patriotism is progressive, celebrating the nation not as it is but as it could be, and dutifully critiquing any policy that does not advance these values.
     Others say that patriotism should be neither critical nor intellectual – that love for country should be unconditional and instinctive. I disagree: at its most anodyne, this reflexive patriotism is complacent, using emotive, nostalgic symbols as kitschy stand-ins for progress. Identity shouldn't be determined by accessories – patriotism must advance the nation, not fossilise it in bumper stickers and flag-pins. Moreover, at its most sinister, emotive patriotism channels passion into aggression, birthing the kind of triumphalist nationalism that tramples dissent.
     I raise these points because patriotism, nationalism, and emotionality are hot topics in Britain, too. Not just in the ascendancy of UKIP and the BNP, but in the recent calls for radical Muslim groups such as Islam4UK to be tried under treason laws. Islam4UK's plans to protest at the repatriation of slain soldiers has sparked a widespread outcry, and understandably so. But threatening this group with treason awakens a complicated nationalistic instinct that imperils liberal values.
     Although Britain hasn’t tried anyone for treason since the Second World War, America has. The past decade has seen two high-profile trials of California surfer-boys who caught the wrong wave. One, John Walker Lindh, was given 20 years in prison for fighting with the Taliban. The other, Adam Yahiye Gadahn, railed against the West in Al Qaeda videos and was sentenced in absentia to death for treason. Although both men committed legal 'treason' – that is, they gave 'aid or comfort' to an enemy of state – seditious speech trumps brute force here: the pen, at least in America's courts, is mightier than the sword. But their respective charges were also politically expedient: Lindh was captured early in the war and treated as a misguided child. Gadahn, conversely, eluded capture and broadcasted during President Bush's lowest period of popular support, placidly preaching an ideology of violence and conveniently presenting himself as precisely the kind of loathsome symbol that a population can unify against, a Lord Haw-Haw for the YouTube generation. And so Gadahn's hateful speech becomes treason, while Lindh's hateful actions become the foibles of youth.
     That treason is applied so erratically, politically and unjustly is nothing new to Britain, of course. Executed under its aegis were Thomas Paine, for championing the rights of man; worn-out royal spouses like Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard; the leaders of the Easter Rising in Ireland; Charles I; and of course Guy Fawkes, who was executed with a glee still remembered on bonfire night.
     That glee is telling, too. Not only is treason a political accusation ('an excuse made by the winners to hang the losers', goes the old quip), but it is also an emotive charge focused on revenge, not reform. Treason relies upon that reflexive, irrational patriotism that politicians love to manipulate and that is bedfellow to an our-way-or-no-way nationalism – witness Dick Cheney, who recently called Obama a traitor for upholding a 9/11 suspect's legal right to a public trial. As such, crying treason invites a public hysteria that grates uncomfortably against contemporary notions of individual rights and justice. As Thomas Jefferson observed, 'the unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason laws in all countries'.
     In short, treason is an illiberal law enshrined by a liberal society, and it is the one statute on today's books that, by its very nature, waives a defendant’s right to a fair trial. For an alleged traitor to be tried by a jury of his peers means that the defendant is being tried by his alleged victims. Even at the 1946 trial of Nazi broadcaster William ('Lord Haw-Haw') Joyce – a traitor if ever there was one – the jury was so aware of their subjectivity that his conviction was much debated. It's no coincidence that no Briton has been executed for treason subsequently.
     Perhaps, then, it's time to reclaim patriotism from the gut, where it resides perilously close to nationalism, and re-establish it in the mind, where one can advocate for national perfection instead of avowing it. A good place to start would be to repeal treason from the statute books: it is tarnished by the miscarriages of justice in its name; its precedent is so broad as to be totalitarian; it sullies legal objectivity with the histrionics of populism; and most of all, it is intrinsically illiberal.
     Failing that, at the very least then let me echo the advice of writer Rebecca West: 'All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft...' Personally, I'd say it's our patriotic duty.