The Mystery of the Disappearing ‘English’
The Mystery of the Disappearing ‘English’
Where are they all hiding when there isn't a football tournament on?
It’s been a bad week to be English after we came so near, yet so bloody far… again… in yet another major football tournament. Whilst a fair-weather fan, I felt the depths of disappointment around me amidst a 1000-strong sea of red and white at a family festival as faces dropped and the tears flowed amongst the under 10s. Football apparently wasn’t, and isn’t anytime soon ‘coming home’.
England supporters get a bad press and often rightly so when seen barrelling out of pubs, chucking lager and starting fights on the continent... but when faded popstrel-turned-podcaster Lily Allen waded in on them this week, sharing the image below, she was derided as classist, snobby… and ignorant (flag-wise). One particularly biting repost ‘I guess working class accents are more useful than working class people’...
Because yes, pride in English identity does seem to have become a working-class thing or at least restricted to the ‘somewheres’. And football now seems to be the only time the St George’s flag is allowed to display anything akin to national pride (unless you’re a black cab driver - the Palestine flag is apparently fine, the St George not so much - although the one-sided press coverage of Sadiq Khan’s ‘woke’ ban also shows the class divide here).
Whilst the UK (London especially) turns green for St Patrick’s Day, April 23rd is merely another date in the calendar, one that many English wouldn’t even know is St George’s. Want to celebrate being English? Just shush. You must be ‘far right’ or will at least be accused of it… gammon, Brexiteer, nationalist etc.
Where exactly is Englishness amidst Britishness now that all the other Brits have dropped it in preference for their Scottish, Welsh and Irish identities? (Even the Cornish seem more inclined to their local identity than Englishness these days). As a result, the two are now frequently conflated, with the English the only nation to wave the Union Jack - and pretty much only during royal occasions, Wimbledon or at the Last Night of the Proms.
It often gives me pause for thought as my husband is Scottish and proud - kilted and sporranned-up for every formal occassion - and now I have ‘dual-identity’ children. This makes the occasional football or rugby match difficult, but really little else besides. And for all the Scottish-English rivalry (which let’s be honest, only goes in one direction), I love that my children have Scottish heritage. Indeed, their Scottish family has much more interesting ancestry than my own, descended from Stevenson lighthouse builders and more recently, a successful female author.
All ‘minority’ nationalities are allowed to be celebrated in our multicultural age of inclusivity, but we now lack any coherent umbrella under which we can all identify. In the US, immigrants (I believe!) are still required to pledge their allegiance to a flag that flies across the nation, with the national anthem played at every major event, but in the UK, we do neither and make little attempt to unify the various nationalities now on this island.
Harking on about Britain’s illustrious past is now frowned upon. Too much controversy with regards to power-plays and empire. Modern Britain is no longer one evoked by Hovis adverts, ‘Last of the Summer Wine’, or John Major’s 1993 speech, where he said:
Fifty years from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and – as George Orwell said – “old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist” and if we get our way – Shakespeare still read even in school. Britain will survive unamendable in all essentials.
But is it, only 30 years on? It is, at least in the main, still a ‘green and pleasant land’ as of the famous ‘Jerusalem’ lyrics, but perhaps only for as long as we can protect the green belt or keep the solar farms at bay.
The outdoors lover in me adores the very ‘English’ Lake District, with my coast-to-coast walk across the North of England one of my most precious memories. The history student in me loves the beauty and traditions our history has bequeathed us: gorgeous cathedrals and stately homes - built over generations, not just lifetimes; well-planned towns, poetry, literature, philosophy and art. And for some reason this tiny island (and the English especially) has gifted the world some of the best music of the last century.
And the love of all-things-British survives abroad, as the queues of tourists queueing for a photo outside the red phone box in the shadow of Westminster tower attest. A second cousin is the son of a GI-bride who adores British history and has written a history of York Minster over successive visits; a good friend in Canada sends me frequent forwards about British humour, conventions and history; all our overseas guests marvel at our history and generations-long traditions and would delight in my father regaling them with Shakespeare’s Henry V ‘St Cripsin’s day’ speech at parties. Which begs the question, what, if any of this, is worth us feeling pride in….? Even the monarchy itself is faced with the existential threat of a rising tide of republicanism and the National Trust seems hell bent on apologising for who we were throughout history.
Last week, I saw an arresting tweet by Gad Saad, a Canadian Professor of Behavioural Science which stopped me in my tracks.
World history is defined by the following simple rule. There are two groups on either side of a river. Each covets various resources from the other group. The only thing that stops a perpetual conflict between the two groups is the realization by each group that the other will respond in equal measure (or worse) if attacked.
Now imagine that the West has decided to throw away this defining dynamic that shapes this fundamental historical reality. Defending what is ours is rooted in our genes; it is a central feature of our human nature. But the West has said that we are so progressive, so empathetic, so enlightened that we are not bound by pedestrian biology. Hence, we will not defend our culture; we will not defend our heritage; we will not defend our religion; we will not defend our women; we will not defend our children; we will not defend our values. According to our Western leaders, only barbarians worry about such defensive concerns. We are open, tolerant, kind, compassionate, welcoming. No amount of evidence can convince us that other groups might do us harm. And hence, we brainwash our children who become our politicians; we rejoice in the rape of our societies because this proves that we are kind…. But how can you change anything when your society is hellbent on committing orgiastic suicide?
Ouch. Whilst somewhat apocryphal, I tend to agree that our inability to foster any sense of shared identity amongst the disparate groups that make up modern Britain is a serious error and yet another reason why modern Britain is so polarised. It strikes me that for a society to survive, let alone thrive, the people must feel proud of themselves, their culture, their values, their ideas, their history, and that they must pass that pride on to their kids. Yes, a reconciliation of the worst aspects of our past is hugely important - with many lessons to be learnt - but we seem hell bent on throwing out all the good with the bad and blaming ourselves for the mistakes of our ancestors.
I’ll leave the last, more eloquent diagnosis of what might be going on to Thomas Sowell:
“Despite a tendency in some intellectual circles to see the nation as just a subordinate part of the world at large — some acting, or even describing themselves, as citizens of the world — patriotism is, in one sense, little more than a recognition of the basic fact that one’s own material well-being, personal freedom, and sheer physical survival depend on the particular institutions, traditions and policies of the particular nation in which one lives. There is no comparable world government and, without the concrete institutions of government, there is nothing to be a citizen of or to provide enforceable rights, however lofty or poetic it may sound to be a citizen of the world.”
God save the King! Ing-er-Land!