There's nothing wrong with celebrating Englishness. But the political right had a habit of using the imagery of the old British Empire that made many people suspicious of any kind of nationalism from the English. It wasn't that long since the political right had taken nationalism to its furthest and vilest extreme in other parts of Europe. Also, anyone of a socialist bent (especially in the 1980s) would recognize the skepticism towards any national identity that overrode what they saw as the primary identity - of class. I just think that nowadays people in general are a lot more subtle and can see that it's not an "either-or" situation : you can have many kinds of identity that are equally valid and can intersect.

Art Thieme - yes, it's a code! It's one of the ways we hold on to our little bit of Northernness - whey lad, if we diddent dee that, we'd aall be taalkin' the Queen's English and then we wad be completely against national identity (on the basis of it being complete bollix), man.