A Fue Respectable Friends 
John Lloyd
- The British Brass Band: A Musical and Social History by Trevor Herbert
George Orwell saw the patriotism of the British working class as an almost unconscious link with the middle and upper classes: ‘Just because patriotism is all but universal and not even the rich are uninfluenced by it, there can be moments when the whole nation suddenly swings together, and does the same thing, like a herd of cattle facing a wolf’ (The Lion and the Unicorn, 1941). Many working-class practices and institutions which embodied both this ‘universal’ patriotism and a desire for self-improvement were forged from a sturdy amalgam of tradition, religious observance, deference, support of the military, pride, dislike of change and adherence to class and community. The brass band movement in particular conformed to Orwell’s view of things: it was very class-conscious, but it subscribed to ideologies which socialists believed were those of the ruling class.
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John Lloyd is a former labour editor of the Financial Times and the author of An Anatomy of Russia and Loss without Limit, about the miners’ strike of 1984-85.
Other articles by this contributor:
Why Georgia matters · John Lloyd reports from Abkhazia
Just Another Western Journalist · John Lloyd in Romania
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