ABSTRACT
George Orwell produced probably the best-known, i f hardly the most consistent or coherent, modern attempt to negotiate the tensions between the aspirations o f the Left in Britain, the emotional pull o f patriotism, and the experience o f Empire. In his prewar writings he persistently reiterated the view that Britain’s imperial role, and its pervasive influence on British culture and society, made it fraudulent or delusory to enlist patriotic sentiment in support o f democratic, anti-fascist or socialist ends. That enlist ment and the claims which supported it were valid, he argued, only with the unspoken proviso ‘Not counting niggers’ .2
