Proud of Britain

Proud of Britain is a website and accompanying campaign launched on 23 November 2004 by the British Labour Party. Visitors to the website, www.proudofbritain.org.uk, are invited to "Tell us what makes you proud of Britain". The project serves the dual purpose of promoting a patriotic image for the Labour Party and collecting a corpus of positive quotations from the general public on which Labour politicians can draw.

It is viewed as a direct successor to the Big Conversation, a similiar web-based project where members of the public were encouraged to "tell us what you think is the best way forward for Britain". The Big Conversation is now seen as a mixed success, having been met with derision in some sections of the British media. The web address for the Big Conversation now forwards browsers to proudofbritain.org.uk.

The self-conscious flag-waving patriotism of the website and the party political broadcast which launched it led Josie Appleton of Spiked Online, which is associated with the libertarian LM group, to comment: "The government's 'Proud of Britain' initiative is the ghost of Cool Britannia walking... This is a feeble attempt to renew that feelgood wave that rose in 1997 around Blair's promises of a 'New Britain'".

And Catherine Bennett of The Guardian suggested that the website "should certainly be consulted by anyone thinking of joining the record numbers of Britons planning to emigrate to Australia... Long before Mr Blair's triumphal procession into No 10, it was obvious that his promoters were eyeing up the Tory iconography: this week, with the flag-waving broadcast, the party as good as announced that not only has it already appropriated everything the Tories could ever think of, it has bagged their best symbol too." 

Within days of the website's launch, at least two derisive parody websites with similar addresses had been created: http://www.proudofbritain.net/ and http://www.proud-of-britain.org.uk/.

The slogan "Britain is working. Don't let the Tories wreck it again" features prominently on the Proud of Britain website. Labour is tipped to use the slogan in the forthcoming British General Election 2005. 

SourceWatch resources

 * Alan Milburn
 * Britain is working. Don't let the Tories wreck it again
 * British General Election 2005
 * Labour Party
 * Labour Party conference
 * Labour Party General Election Manifesto
 * Security and opportunity for all
 * TBWA/GGT
 * Tony Blair

Articles

 * Michael White, Alan Travis and Patrick Wintour, "Labour unveils security gambit", The Guardian, November 24, 2004.
 * Josie Appleton, "Proud Britannia", Spiked Online, November 24, 2004.
 * Catherine Bennett, "How New Labour hijacked the union jack", The Guardian, November 25, 2004.
 * Joe Lepper, "Labour claims Britain is working in latest ad campaign", Brand Republic, November 29, 2004.