Suddenly, expressions of patriotism by the English are again permissible. The displaying of the national flag is not met with curled lips or scorn. Pride in one’s own Englishness is even deemed rational. The English are free to exhibit their allegiance to nation without fear of being accused of “exceptionalism” or “chauvinism” or worse. For now, at least.
It has — as usual — taken a football tournament to achieve this momentary tolerance, and there is no guarantee that it will hold. It hasn’t previously. But, while we may, let us enjoy it. Let us, against the background of not only this gruesome past 15 months but the bitter polarisation that has gripped our country over the past few years, appreciate the uplifting sense of solidarity and belonging that have emerged with the successful march of the England football team to the final of Euro 2020. Such sentiments, as most of us have always known, may be harnessed as positive forces if only the liberal establishment and assorted high-minded progressives were to abandon their own longstanding prejudices against them.
That we lost the final in the most cruel manner will not dampen the fervour. Not yet, at any rate. The feelgood factor generated by England’s advance through the tournament, as well as the admiration the players and manager have drawn for the impeccable manner in which they have conducted themselves, have given rise to unabashed displays of English national pride — the kind which, outside of a sporting context, are usually resisted and discouraged by those who know better.
St George’s flags affixed to cars and adorning houses; outpourings of support for “our boys”; the massed ranks of fans belting out “Football’s Coming Home”; the invocation of a history and culture that, by and large, has been a force for good; the spirit of openness that says that, irrespective of whence and when you came, you may be part of all this if you wish to be: these are not the divisive manifestations of a hostile or exclusionary nationalism or sense of superiority, but instead the benign and unifying expressions of national consciousness, born of a recognition that we are part of something greater than ourselves.
Everything we have seen in recent weeks has been the best of what it means to be patriotic: a spirit of reciprocity, common values and identity, the nurturing of associative bonds that give meaning to life and transcend cold economic calculus. When communities which would normally live parallel existences unite in pursuit of the same desire – on this occasion to see a team of eleven young men win some silverware on behalf of the nation – we all have cause for celebration. That’s what football has the capacity to achieve, and no politician dare mock it.
Only the truly cynical would have sneered at the unbridled joy displayed by students at an Islamic school in Blackburn when Harry Kane scored the winner against Denmark in the semi-final, or the Bhangra flash mob dancing through the streets of Wolverhampton to their own version of the Three Lions anthem. Who could have failed to identify with exactly how these groups felt at those moments? What separated them from the residents of the Bermondsey housing estate which was festooned in St George’s flags for the entirety of the tournament? During the past few short weeks, not much at all. For all the incessant and patronising establishment lectures force-feeding us a diet of “diversity” and “tolerance”, it often takes the simplest things to break down barriers.
I predict, however, that it won’t be long before we are back to normal. Those members of our political and cultural elites who are instinctively hostile to any overt demonstration of Englishness — seeing it as an inherently reactionary and destructive force — will regroup and seek to ensure that the phenomenon does not take firm root. Not for nothing did George Orwell say that England was perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals were ashamed of their own nationality.
The sense of English national dispossession which has been in evidence since the advent of devolution and has intensified in more recent years, coming to a head over the issue of Brexit, will continue to be ignored — but it won’t go away. Those living in our post-industrial and neglected coastal towns, where a heightened sense of Englishness exists — not by coincidence, but because it is in those types of places that citizens are most likely to feel a disconnect with an ‘unEnglish’ liberal establishment — will continue to see national identity as a tool of resistance. The sentiment will remain inchoate and uncoordinated, but it will not abate. And it will continue to develop outside of normal political structures, not least because none of the major parties has any serious plan for giving the English a dedicated voice in the institutions of our democracy, nor for addressing the democratic imbalances created by devolution.
This patriotic sentiment will continue to be misunderstood by many of our cultural influencers. It is dismissed as the fruits of unenlightened and nativist English mentality which refuses to be persuaded of the merits of a global cosmopolitan liberalism – almost certainly synonymous with white superiority and a longing for the age of Empire. It was this patronising attitude — a refusal to recognise the legitimate grievances of England beyond the cities, or to understand the motivation behind an instinctive affinity for country that is considered normal in most other nations — that has created so many of the faultlines in our recent politics.
It has taken a team of 11 multiracial young men to show these people why they are so wrong. Let us savour the moment.
Paul Embery is a firefighter, trade union activist, pro-Brexit campaigner and ‘Blue Labour’ thinker
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SubscribeAnd as usual the headlines are all about lurid negativity focused on the behaviour of a few – the few who are always morons, in all countries, plus some no doubt who have had a year of soul sucking hell and poured all of that emotion into this game. The desire to demonise England, the English and particularly the working class, continues. If you treat people like animals, eventually some will become animals. But in my pub, the singing and the dancing was loud and boisterous, good humoured, then the defeat was crushing followed by magnanimous applause for the winners and a good natured if somewhat deflated walk home. No problem at all. But that doesn’t sell newspapers does it.
Excellent comment. I’m sure the experience in your pub was replicated in gatherings – large and small – right around the country, but they’ll get no coverage because narrative trumps truth.
And, sadly, the narrative is that English football yobs are xenophobic scum and anyone who tries to say different is covering their own xenophobia with cries of “Patriotism”.
The comments pages over at the Guardian are full of it this morning. It’s almost as if they enjoyed the loss, just so they could indulge in denigrating their own countrymen.
that England is racist is a foregone conclusion in Guardianland, England’s loss is now evidence but they had already covered that if England won that too would be evidence of racism.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/09/euro-2020-england-gareth-southgate
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The Guardian really is a miserable, English-hating rag (but its readers don’t always adopt the same stance, judging by the comments section at least; many commenters call out its anti-Englishness). I stopped reading it years ago ’cause I was sick of being told I live in a benighted, small-minded, hateful country when my own experience of being English is that is (for the most part), a positive experience.
“The comments pages over at the Guardian are full of it this morning. It’s almost as if they enjoyed the loss, just so they could indulge in denigrating their own countrymen.“
Almost?
The Guardian is in the same stable as the New York Times and the Washington Post; they’re all English hating rages; yellow journalism at it best. The comments section of the latter two especially would have the world believe that England (Wales, Scotland and Northern Island get a free pass) was a Nazi state where BAMEs, POC or ‘people of color, or whatever the current term is, are regularly abused, shot, incarcerated on a daily basis because of their color.
I hope and trust they booed the “knee-taking”.
Good news doesn’t sell newspapers; the same can be said for a the race industry in the UK; no significant race issues and tolerant country won’t pony in the donations from billionaires or funding from government or supranational organisations; the same can be said for the so-called ‘dingy people’; each one is a cash cow for someone.
Patriotism has always been a dirty word on the “Liberal” Left. To show pride in your country is treated as almost akin to joining the BNP. That attitude, skewered so well by Orwell, is the default setting for the BBC, the Guardian and the bien pensant Left.
It is the idea that any and every culture is to be celebrated – but not British culture or certainly not English culture – one can celebrate the Celtic parts of Britishness (separately) but celebrating Englishness, whatever that might be, is seen as proof of latent racism.
In their heart of hearts how many Guardian readers were not with Emily Thornberry when she tweeted her sneering white van and Cross of St George picture? As though such low-brow, working class patriotism was worthy only of scorn?
These people have infected any debate involving patriotism with a national self-loathing, the idea that patriotism is xenophobic at heart, the idea that British history is something only to apologise for.
The head-banging nationalist, convinced the British Empire was a force of unalloyed good for the world, sits at one end of the spectrum. Afua Hirsch and her cohort sits at the other end, convinced it was simply an endless parade of atrocities and depredation. Both seem as monocular and impervious to nuance as the other. Both seemingly obsessed with Empire.
Any sensible person can see that the truth lies somewhere in between those two extremes.
I’m very proud to be British. As a student of history I am well aware of terrible things that happened (usually hundreds of years before I was born) but I am still unapologetically proud to be British. This country has had an enormous impact on the world – some of it very good, some bad.
But it is our history. It for the most part happened in our ancestors’ day. Nothing I can do or say will change that history. My pride has no more bearing on it than my guilt would. Nor, for that matter, the Guardian’s disapprobation.
The Left’s line seems to be that anyone who has pride in being English has somehow admitted to something unhealthy and ‘problematic’. Why? If an Italian is proud of being Italian, would they immediately mistrust his motives in the same way? I’m willing to bet they wouldn’t.
If a Tongan speaks of his homeland with tears in his eyes, (they are, on the whole, the most deeply patriotic people I’ve ever met) would they be suspected of xenophobia and a misplaced pride? Again – I’m fairly sure they wouldn’t.
So, what is so different about a British person expressing pride in their nationality? Why does the Left automatically suspect anyone who has pride in being English of some sinister subtext?
There have been so many articles written in the last few weeks about the “rehabilitation” of English Patriotism – but that is because most of these articles were written by journalists who live in a metropolitan bubble.
Gareth Southgate raised the hackles of the Liberal Left commentariat by talking up our history. It only seemed strange to them because – thanks to the BBC and the widespread Leftist takeover of our national institutions – the prevailing attitude is that anyone who shows any pride in Britain’s wartime past is jingoistic and somehow laying claim to glories that belonged to another generation.
Yet many of those very same people who push this miserabilist bilge, also waste our time bleating that we should all shoulder the guilt for anything bad done by this country in its imperial history.
Admiration for heroes in the very recent past is backwards looking, yet we’re somehow on the hook for reparations to the colonised 200 years later? It doesn’t seem a consistent position.
Why should the statute of limitations for guilt run so much longer than that of glory?
But the first specimen is hardly to be found. For years, the only mention of Empire was in the Guardian, the writers utterly convinced that that’s all anyone in this country talks about. But it was only them.
You come across it elsewhere on occasion now, in rebuttal of a Guardian-esque tirade, but even then, it’s usually a measured response pointing out the good and the bad of British history.
You are right. There is an obsession about the Empire in this country. But this obsession is nowhere but in the minds of the hyper-liberals and anti-patriots.
But, as obsessives are prone to doing, they project their own strange fancies into the minds of others: they imagine that they are surrounded by millions (eek! the racists! the Brexit voters!) yearning for the days of Empire to return.
Thing is, when was the last time you met anyone who even thinks about a return of Empire, let alone anyone who would find that a desirable notion?
Good article. Even cheered me up a bit, so thank you.