Lord Palmerston was the only one of our Prime Ministers who would have been played by Roger Moore in a biopic. Beloved by the public, fond of the ladies, and known for declaring war on the Chinese in defence of Britain’s right to ply them with opium, he proved, 160-odd years before Boris Johnson, that a cad could reach the top, and be enjoy themselves whilst there.
That canny old Whig has crossed my mind because it is St George’s Day. A Frenchman once sought to charm dear old Pam by telling him that if he were not a Frenchman, he would wish to be an Englishman. I imagine Palmerston looking at the chap someone askance, before replying: “If I were not an Englishman, I should wish to be an Englishman”. It is a sentiment I’m sure many readers share.
Or do they? Gloomy as I am, the words of Cecil Rhodes have been ringing in my ears. He once suggested that to be an Englishman was to have won “first prize in the lottery of life”. Can that still be said today? One can resort to the Hugh Grant defence. Whatever our current failings, we are still the country of Winston Churchill, William Shakespeare, and David Beckham’s right and left feet.
But such a rundown is guilty of the same sins of sentimentality as the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. A reading from Henry V here, some dancing nurses there. James Bond, the Sex Pistols, Mr Bean: aren’t we a funny, clever, silly lot? “The Great British Dream factory”, in Dominic Sandbrook’s phrasing. Exporters of pop and James Corden, worshipping at the altar of the NHS.
Forgive me if I’m not entering the spirit of the occasion. But doesn’t it all seem rather hollow? It’s all very jolly patting ourselves on the back for Jeeves and Wooster and the Beatles. But facile wallowing in pop culture, coupled with token gestures at great days gone by, leads directly down the mad path that culminates in us serving as one giant Bicester Village for our looming CCP overlords.
Before I go any further in lamenting in our current position, it is perhaps best that we work out what we mean by England. The paradox of Englishness is that we have been writing about ourselves since the Venerable Bede yet have long been swallowed up in a succession of larger entities: the Norman Empire, the Angevin Empire, Britain, the United Kingdom, the British Empire, and the European Union.
There was a time when England and Englishman were used to refer to inhabitants of these islands. But with the unfortunate growth of Celtic nationalism, such a looseness courts the ire of one’s Scottish, Welsh, or Northern Irish compatriots. Britishness has been promoted as a more inclusive and appropriate formulation for a multi-racial, multi-cultural, and multi-national society.
Yet the growth in Celtic assertiveness has courted Newton’s Third Law in England itself. Time was when a St George’s cross was only found atop an Anglican church. Compare the footage from the 1966 World Cup and the 1996 Euros to see how rapidly the wider use of it has grown. Prepare for it to descend again this summer, in its new pink and purple guise, before Southgate’s men go crossing out at the quarter-finals.
Since Tony Blair failed to killed nationalism stone dead, the Scots and Welsh have got their “Parliaments”. If England has the same, it would only see the emergence of an English Yeltsin – most likely also called Boris – and spell immediate doom for the Union. We have an English parliament, in Westminster. The UK is something of an English empire. The spirits of Athelstan and Edward I live on in our constitutional architecture, even if the average English politician is too craven to admit it.
The heady mixture of conquest, coercion, and contract that produced the modern UK is now strained not only by constitutional confusion, but by changing demographics. Younger people are embarrassed by patriotism, and are unwilling to fight in their country’s defence. Ethnic minorities feel less of a tie to English and British history and identity. Unfortunately for Morrissey, to be English is still to be shameful.
Point the finger where you like. Economic stagnation. Despair that one will never get a slice of the good life leaves many without a buy-in towards their country’s future, whatever they call it. Over-educated youngsters without a grasp of our island story have little chance of buying into a common culture in the age of Tik Tok and Netflix. Brexit wars, declining C of E attendance, globalisation – the usual suspects.
Hence it’s no surprise if we feel a little bit confused. Polling by Lord Ashcroft has shown that 44 per cent of English people see the Union flag as representing them better than the Cross of St George, with only 10 per cent picking the latter. By contrast, the Scots and Welsh chose their own flags by 51-17 and 46-24. Even if a majority find English identity inoffensive, it is not something we celebrate.
Celtic nationalism seems sexy and progressive. English nationalism is associated with racists, football hooligans, and Oliver Cromwell. We find St George’s Day embarrassing. Yes, we can point to some pretty countryside, impressive cathedrals, and inspiring poetry. But a fulsome nod to Magna Carta or a toast to Jude Bellingham are not the stuff of which nations are made.
Can an England that can’t keep its Channel clear of young men on their way to Deliveroo really claim a commonality with that of Alfred? To suggest Englishness was a white preserve alone would be racist and absurd (and offensive to the Prime Minister, amongst many, many others). But are nations be like the Ship of Theseus? As our foreign-born or descended population grows higher, are our ties loosening?
English nationalism is trapped. It cannot assert itself too greatly without further pulling at the ties holding the UK together. Even if many Conservative voters might hardly lament this – forgetting the Unionist that forms half our party’s name – Scottish and Welsh independence would leave a rump England diminished on the world stage, as much as it might be a boon to the Treasury.
But there is an England out there, existing beyond fry-ups and the weirder bits of Twitter. I feel it when I walk through the countryside or listen to Elgar. I know it when I read about Dunkirk, when I attend a service at St Bartholomew’s, or swap a nice cup of tea for something light and hoppy. Even if it has not spoken yet, England is now, and is not history. It is the duty of those of us who love it to find it.
Every St George’s Day, including this morning, I return to George Orwell’s classic essay The Lion and the Unicorn. Written during the Blitz, it is an attempt to define Englishness not only under the threat of its total elimination, but in order, that, in a post-war world, the way could be paved for an English revolution. One does not have to share the author’s socialism to appreciate his sentiments.
We are still the most class-ridden country under the sun. Our leaders are not that old, but they are still very silly. Old maids no longer bicycle to holy communion through the morning mist, and America now joins us in being a great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. But one still gets the sense, arriving back from another country, that England is somehow different.
I spent the last week in Singapore. The inheritors of Lee Kwan Yew are awfully impressive. The streets are clean, the public services affordable, and debates on race, crime, and national identity refreshingly honest. But I still spent every day missing home, even as my travelling companions urged me to try the beef rendang. My kingdom for a Yorkshire pud.
Whatever we call ourselves, whatever the union’s fate, and whatever the myriad terrifying changes and challenges we face steaming down the path, there will always be those of us sufficiently silly and sentimental – not too far different from Cotterll-Boyce, Curtis, and co – cheering on L’Angleterre profonde. I believe in England, and I believe that we shall go forward.
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Author: William Atkinson
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