Perhaps the most terrifying revelation to come out of the internet drama between Sargon and Metokur was the news that Sargon is working on a definition of Englishness for UKIP.
One of the great things about being English is that it’s pretty much optional.
We don’t have a national costume: though it should be noted that at the time the Scots were re-inventing themselves as kilt wearing Celts, there were suggestions that a similar thing should be done in England. The proposed costume being a puffy Cavalier style shirt, and dark blue velvet knickerbockers.
We don’t have a national dish, though depending on who you speak to various suggestions will be offered: the Sunday Roast, Fish and Chips, and Chicken Tikka Masala. A case can be made for each of these, and plenty of other things, but none of them really count. Because if we are to follow the rules for re-creating history in order to define national characteristics, whatever is chosen must be vaguely ethnic, less than appetizing and practically never eaten: think haggis or lava bread.
Anywho…
What I find odd about the whole notion of defining Englishness, is that it stems from a rather pseudo-debate that claims there is no English culture; or in the terms of the debate, the culture is not inclusive enough. And, generally when one engages in the debate it devolves into all kinds of absurdist claims: like Morris Dancing isn’t English, because it is an adaptation of Moorish Dancing from Spain…. at which point I am reminded of quote by Thomas Beecham…. and would point out the inclusiveness inherent in cultural appropriation, but…. meh….
It is a perennial problem, and if you are linguistically minded you might notice that we have cows, sheep and pigs, but eat beef, mutton and pork. Which by extension would suggest that the English worked the land, while the Anglo-Norman aristocracy,concerned as they were with their Anglo-French Empire, ate the produce.
A similar problem faced the revolutionaries in America, who saw themselves in part, and to a greater or lesser extent, as English — obviously not those whose origins were from elsewhere. They sought to solve the problem by adopting German as the national language — in much the same way as Hebrew, Irish, Welsh, and a host of other languages have been adopted in order to define national characteristics. Unluckily for the English, particularly, in the age of the internet, they didn’t adopt this change: meaning that school-children these days have atrocious spelling thanks to American-English spell checkers.
Throughout history, and literature, examples can be found of people and politicians seeking to define, re-define, and otherwise project their own prejudices onto a notion of Englishness. Occasionally, these memes catch on.
For instance, if you go and look up the history of the Sunday Roast you will inevitably find reference to ‘the roast beef of Merry Olde England’. And by implication you will be encouraged to believe that the Beefeaters in the Tower of London all sat down to Yorkshire Puddings, carrots, cabbage, peas and mashed potato, all juicily covered in mouth-watering Bisto. That they didn’t, is neither here nor there. They were more likely to have had the beef with bread and a salad of herbs and flowers such as primrose or violet.
But we like to kid ourselves, and as with anything, the more you appeal to antiquity the more truthful it sounds.
Perhaps one of the more famous attempts to seek a defintion, and one much derided, was attempted by John Major when he said,
“ Fifty years on 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 will still be read even in school.”
He uses the term Britain, but for all intents and purposes he is talking about England. This is clearly the case because it is from this quote that the current usage of the pejorative phrase ‘Little Englander’ sprang, and particularly the reference to ‘warm beer’- and ‘warm beer values’.
And thus the political slanging match in the 1990’s became centred around this quote. It was complicated by the Labour seeking to use the question of devolution for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to gerrymander their relative weakness in England. At the time the Scots had the ‘oh so Scottish’ Mel Gibson and and Irving Welch giving them the rallying cry to lead them into the nirvana of endless Labour rule in Scotland. While in England, using Britian as a proxy-term, the battle was between the Major government’s hard-line Europhilia and the Bastards: or ‘Little Englanders’.
It is interesting when considering the Brexit vote, the similarities between the Remain campaign, and the tactics employed by the Major government to whip his party back into line. For those of politically nerdish bent, it is also interesting to consider the way the politics of this debate played out in Wales. With the Welsh barely voting for devolution, and then voting for Brexit. Given that the rationale of the Labour party was that Wales would be as keen as Scotland to endlessly vote them into power, thus giving them a wedge at general elections. And, foolishly Tory-Remainer Theresa May thinking she could pick up Welsh votes at the last general election — the obvious clue her being Tory and Remainer.
The upshot of this political battle in the 1990’s was that when Tony Blair won the 1997 general election he faced the problem of a very divided country.
This aspect is usually either ignored or down-played in the popular narrative. Or it is massaged to try to claim that the issue was one of class — as illustrated by the story of Peter Mandelson being asked if he wanted anything on his chips in a chip shop, and pointing at the Mushy Peas and saying he would have some of the Guacamole — or of race.
In truth Labour had only itself to blame. They had won the election by stoking the Conservative divisions over Europe. But the only way they could do so was by masking the divisions within their own party over Europe, and particularly the Mastricht treaty.
They were also faced with the issue of devolution, which they had promised, but had not really considered much. Why should they? Scotland always voted Labour, so what did it matter if power was devolved?
But just to be safe they set out to define Britishness.
It was all rather odd.
Labour politicians were popping up all over the place telling anyone who would listen what it was like to be them.
According to Robin Cooke, the national dish was Chicken Tikka Masala. Which was news to vast swathes of the country who had probably never heard of it, let alone eaten it.
There was another side of this. In additional to hectoring people about what they liked, they became increasingly censorious, telling people what they shouldn’t like, say, do, wear, or be: if they wanted to be a good Briton.
In a sense this all came to a head with the Millennium Dome, and the new Festival of Britian.
When the project was announced there was some excitement. Drawings were produced showing roller-coasters and grinning people enjoying a jolly day out. But as time went on, and the hamburgers were banned, and the roller-coasters disappeared, the whole thing became as preachy as the government.
Instead of a family fun day out, people were invited to a exhibition of ‘who you are’. Complete with an invitation to walk up the rectum of some giant human body and see how their kidneys work. Plus there would be a wall of pictures showing just how diverse and multi-cultural Britain had become.
It was all under-whelming.
And it rather missed the point.
Had they made it like Blackpool Pleasure Beach, they wouldn’t have needed a wall of pictures to show this because you would have seen it as you queued for the rides, or wandered around.
Go to any fete/gala/fun-day in any reasonably sized town, and you will find stalls selling curry, hot dogs, pizza, tacos, donuts, whatever. You will see people of all shapes and sizes. What you won’t see, is a wall of pictures of people who aren’t there, that somehow are meant to better reflect the people who are there.
This idiotic approach, was nothing more than a desperate effort to hold their party together. Because shortly after the devolution settlement it became clear to English Labour MPs just what a pup they had been sold.
The Barnett Formula was still in place. The West Lothian Question remained, and made more complicated by MPs in devolved constituencies not voting on matters devolved to the regional parliaments, i.e. not voting on matters affecting their constituents, but having the right to vote on matters in England for which no one could hold them accountable.
Oh and there were people like Lord Steele,who was both an MSP and had a seat in the House of Lords.
Plus there was the unresolved issue of Europe.
Eurosceptic Labour MPs may well have been happy to go along with the party’s tactical policy to weaken the Conservatives over the Mastricht vote. But now they were on the government backbenches, with a Europhile Labour government on the verge of ditching the pound and talking about a federal European government.
Austen Mitchell was certainly one such MP. Another was the current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
And another was an ex-Labour MP turned Talkshow host Robert Killroy-Silk,who in 2004 was elected to the European parliament as a UKIP MEP. The party secured 16% of the vote.
Suddenly the ‘Little Englanders’ were back in the political lexicon.
The government may well be able to ban smoking, or turkey twizzlers, but trying to a ride the two-headed horse of Englishness and Britishness in a devolved United Kingdom is not something you can legislate. Particularly when at the same time you are trying to force them to be European.
At the end of the day, Mushy Peas are not Guacamole, no matter how much you wish it to be.
One of the funnier stories to emerge from this period in which New Labour was wearing a ‘Kiss Me Quick’ Sombrero, was a much hyped regeneration project in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, that was supposed to turn the town centre in something akin to a Tuscan plaza, replete with men in flat caps sipping glasses of wine, while telling witty bon-mottes about their ferrets.
Like the roller-coaster pictures of the Millenium Dome, the architect drawings looked nice: the reality was somewhat different.
Which brings me to how I would define Englishness.
In the wonderful Ealing comedy, Passport to Pimilico, Connie Pemberton says,
“ Don’t you come that stuff, Jim Garland! We always were English, and we’ll always be English, and it’s just because we are English that we’re sticking up for our rights to be Burgundians!”
Or maybe it’s writing a poem, while walking in the autumn mists and thinking of Keats.
Whatever it is, I wish politicians would stop buggering about trying to define it, and then getting stroppy when they get called out. They would be far better off trying to resolve the political mess they created for short term gains. es, Major’s vision was in some ways ludicrous, but in other was it is far more in touch with the reality of the life people actually lead — small pleasures and all that — than some grandiose fiction based on ticking boxes on forms.
Still rest assured that whatever Sargon comes up with, no doubt it will be Liberalist and based on the theories of Locke and classic English Liberals… or some such nonsense.
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