Prof Pippa Catterall 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇪🇺

Prof of History and Policy @UniWestminster editor of National Identities. Queer space, religion & politics, constitutions, heritage, Girly swot. Trans. She/her.

[Prof Pippa Catterall 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇪🇺 @catterall_pp]

If @EdwardJDavey and the @LibDems want more news coverage maybe they should do something newsworthy…like announcing they are going to campaign to #Rejoin? In today’s political climate offering decency and competence is not enough. Set the agenda why don’t you!

[Prof Pippa Catterall 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇪🇺 @catterall_pp]

I'm looking forward to talking about how to make public space more inclusive (in Westminster) at Westminster City Archives on 12 November at 5.00pm. See https://t.co/bvo4G9rd80

[Prof Pippa Catterall 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇪🇺 @catterall_pp]

Call for Papers for the 'Popular Culture and National Identities' conference upcoming in Bangaluru in June 2026. Details can be found at https://t.co/gRrg2lEzII

[Prof Pippa Catterall 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇪🇺 @catterall_pp]

@JohnGower1 @EdwardJDavey @LibDems That’s why I said he should campaign to do so

[Prof Pippa Catterall 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇪🇺 @catterall_pp]

If @EdwardJDavey and the @LibDems want more news coverage maybe they should do something newsworthy…like announcing they are going to campaign to #Rejoin? In today’s political climate offering decency and competence is not enough. Set the agenda why don’t you!

[Harry Eccles @Heccles94]

Can we get this story about Farage and his dodgy tax Retweeted 10,000 times?

#NoTaxNigel #FarageOut
#FarageTheFraud

https://t.co/2bwATYQRPS

[Prof Pippa Catterall 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇪🇺 @catterall_pp]

It feels like we’re already at the C21 version of the Reichstag Fire moment. I hope that it’s not just a matter of time before those who have prosecuted a certain person suffer the same fate as Hans Lödén last century

[Prof Pippa Catterall 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇪🇺 @catterall_pp]

It seems many people don’t grasp the difference between free speech and hate speech (nicely defined in Art.10 of the ECHR)

[Prof Pippa Catterall 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇪🇺 @catterall_pp]

Just published, including my chapter on the Manchester North West by-election of 1908 (one of Churchill’s several election defeats!).

[Prof Pippa Catterall 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇪🇺 @catterall_pp]

How to hang flags tastefully and inclusively

[Prof Pippa Catterall 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇪🇺 @catterall_pp]

And there’s also plenty of people’s history that can help as well @NationalIdenti4

[Prof Pippa Catterall 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇪🇺 @catterall_pp]

I agree wholeheartedly we need to rebuild a national narrative. Durkheim, a pioneer in studying national identity, warned of anomie, the atomisation of society that for us has been turbocharged by Thatcherism. Time to rebuild our institutions and identities and communities

[Clive Lewis MP @labourlewis]

Believe it or not, I had an old school friend on today’s marches in London. He sent me some photos from the crowd.

We went to middle school together and grew up on the same Eastern District council estate in Northampton.

I asked him why he was there. He gave me two answers:
1.“The government doesn’t listen to us.”
2.“I want to feel proud of my country again.”

He wore a Union Jack, not a St George’s Cross as he said that one had been hijacked by racists.

He wasn’t there for Hopkins, Musk, or any of the professional ‘grifters’ as he put it. He was there to feel part of something bigger, though he admitted there were a lot of, in his words, “assholes” there.

He’s an electrician. He’s smart. He’s not racist, but he’s not “PC” either. He’s not a fan of Keir Starmer but he also believes Farage would be a disaster.

Oh yes, he’s a bundle of contradictions! But aren’t we all?

I don’t know what ‘box’ we put him or the millions like him in. And I think pretending they’re all racists or fascists would be a massive mistake.

Some were. But not all.

This is about something bigger than immigration slogans or GDP numbers. For decades we’ve hollowed out our national life, underfunding and undermining the very institutions that once brought us together.

Karl Polanyi, writing in The Great Transformation, argued that when markets are “disembodied” from society, when land, labour, and life itself are treated as commodities
society pushes back. He called this the “double movement”: people seeking to protect themselves, to reclaim dignity and meaning when everything solid seems to melt into air.

That’s what I saw in my friend’s photos. Not just anger, but a demand for belonging.

We’ve replaced collective experience with atomisation. Without getting too nostalgic, programmes like the BBC’s Generation Game once pulled in millions every Saturday night, giving us something we could all talk about on Monday morning. Now we watch Netflix, Disney+, Prime, or Paramount, alone, in algorithmic silos.

Football used to be affordable and rooted in community; now it’s millionaires playing for the profitability of billionaires. The NHS, the post office, the railways - all chipped away, run down, sold off or centralised, leaving people feeling powerless and disconnected.

And don’t get me wrong: some kind of “Hovis Labour” nostalgia for the 1950s isn’t the answer. The country back then was often intolerant, grey, and deeply unequal. But what we’ve built since is a society that gives people little to hold in common, no collective story about who we are or what we’re for.

I reckon that’s partly why my mate marched. Not because he wants to turn back the clock. But because he wants to feel pride again. Pride in a country that is inclusive, fair, and offers a role for everyone. Pride in a nation that has a respected place in the world, tackles grotesque inequality, and gives people something real to believe in.

Polanyi warned that when democracies fail to provide a humane alternative, the backlash can turn authoritarian. This is how fascism grew in the 1930s, not because everyone became a true believer, but because millions felt abandoned and looked for strength, identity, and meaning wherever they could find it.

If Labour and progressives don’t offer that story of renewal, if we don’t rebuild our national institutions, restore collective pride, and re-embed markets within society, the far right will do it for us, in their own image.

And by then, it will be too late.

[Prof Pippa Catterall 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇪🇺 @catterall_pp]

Now we know that a bigot was killed by someone even more bigoted can we start talking about how we socialise such people into caring about others rather than wanting to kill them

[Prof Pippa Catterall 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇪🇺 @catterall_pp]

Really looking forward to giving this talk (related to my research on Queering Public Space) in Bath on Tuesday https://t.co/k5P6RKxlNr

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

Nigel Farage says he hates Europe but all his children, which have European mothers, have EU passports not British ones.

He is a disgraceful fraud everything he says is a lie.

[Adam @AdameMedia]

Her name was Paige Chivers

She was just 15

She was groomed, abused and kiIIed by a member of Tommy Robinson’s EDL party. Another member of Tommy’s party helped dispose of the body.

There were no riots. No marches.‘Tommy’ was silent, he didn’t even ask for donations

RIP Paige

[V. 🇫🇷🇬🇧🇪🇺🇺🇦 PhD @inlimbov.bsky.social @InLimboV]

This is the result of the vile racial attack in a parc yesterday by a couple of English racists against a Philippino NHS nurse. Proud to be British?
#farage

[Prof Pippa Catterall 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇪🇺 @catterall_pp]

I hear that the areas which have become marked by flags have seen house values falls. I wonder if there will be similar effects on investment in those areas?

[Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) @RGS_IBG]

Join our lecture with Pippa Catterall (@catterall_pp) who will explore the nature and history of public space and the kind of interventions that might help to make public spaces work for all.

📍 Bath and online, 9 September
👉 https://t.co/YqK96pvGXd

[Prof Pippa Catterall 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇪🇺 @catterall_pp]

Rhetorical question: why has this platforms algorithms taken to sending me the vapourings of various (unfollowed) far righters and their fellow travellers to give me a rude awakening every morning

[Larry the Cat @Number10cat]

The Coldstream Guards Band performed Black Sabbath's masterpiece Paranoid outside of Buckingham Palace as a tribute to Ozzy Osbourne on the day of his funeral. Don't let anybody tell you this isn't a great country.
https://t.co/bDPUnVkAKu