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'By dint of being the more powerful partner in the Union, England lacks this sort of resentful focus.' (Photo by Tim Graham Photo Library / Getty Images)
As Conservative politicians continue to insist that “England’s national identity” is being undermined — while remaining scrupulous in their unwillingness to describe what they mean by that term — it turns out that, as usual, foreigners know exactly who we are. Some of them are even quite fond of us. An article in The Times this week brought us the story of “Old Dry Keith” — real name Keith Brown — a recently deceased Englishman famous in China for posting videos of his miserable homemade sandwiches.
Though most Chinese viewers have apparently treated the sight of an elderly man painstakingly making ham and tomato sandwiches as a kind of inadvertent food horror, some have exoticized it as something more glamorous. “Middle-class” supermarkets in China are now stocking “Old Dry” sandwiches in Keith’s honour. For others, his daily battles with inexplicably pallid ingredients have come to exemplify the Sisyphean struggles facing humanity.
Said one commentator: “We watch him struggling to saw apart two slices of dry bread, as hard as weapons-grade steel, slicing off a few thin streaks of yellow from a block of hardened butter, and then placing two slices of pre-smoked salmon on top… He bravely faces all of life’s blows.”
By a process of extrapolation, this image of “Old Dry Keith” seems as good an answer as any to all the current hand-wringing about who the English “really” are, though it is understandable that few tourist boards would wish to put it on a poster. For it affectionately describes someone most of us know: a hobbyist distracting himself from the mediocrity of life by finding solace in a few modest pleasures, inexpertly but enthusiastically pursued. Think of the love affair with the garden shed; Basil Fawlty trying and failing to listen to Brahms; teabags placed in a plastic bag in the holiday suitcase. As Bill Bryson observed, albeit of the British generally: “[They] are so easy to please. It is the most extraordinary thing. They actually like their pleasures small.”
Admittedly, this version of us reads a bit like one of the narratives of self-deprecating mundanity gathered at Very British Problems, and for that reason will appear disappointingly anticlimactic to many. A recent, much-mocked, attempt to summarise “Britishcore” in The Guardian left commentators thirsting for a less self-abasing, more red-blooded story of who “we” are. (I say “we” for the sake of argument: I was born and raised in Scotland to English parents, making my grasp on the contours of my own national identity as slippery as it gets.)
The consensus seems to be that there is now a great need for a settled narrative of admirable traits and daring achievements that the English people can claim as their own. According to Tory leadership candidate Robert Jenrick, Scottish and Welsh people already have this, but “woke culture” has taught the English to be ashamed of the past and “we can’t possibly forge a united country around an identity we aren’t proud of”.
But while serving a bit less shame with our history would be no bad thing, I’m not so sure the Scots and the Welsh really do have such a firm grasp on the magnificent deeds of their forebears. What they have instead is a pronounced animus toward their larger neighbour — and there is nothing like the spectre of a much-disliked outgroup to bond an ingroup. By dint of being the more powerful partner in the Union, England lacks this sort of resentful focus. Nor is there even a satisfying hatred of France or Germany to get people going any more, international football fixtures notwithstanding.
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Subscribe“[They] are so easy to please. It is the most extraordinary thing. They actually like their pleasures small.”
In all seriousness, pleasure in small things is one of the secrets to a contented life.
I also think that reducing your focus to fewer things but doing them well and thoroughly without getting distracted is a source of great pleasure. Not to mention being an expedient path to the twin satisfaction of being good, if not excellent, at something.
There are just too many options and too many distractions today, attention gets scattered and things are often done sloppily. It is disheartening.
Life and our country would be much better if more was good even at the expense of losing a bit of the excellent. Consider buildings for example. There are a few new excel,ent ones among the poor ones but it is the mass of mediocre of shabby ones that is so dispiriting.
Similarly with people. A few dress well and some exceptionally so. The problem is the bulk of people today dress so badly, especially men.
The same observation could be repeated about almost everything.
Isn’t Paddington Bear Peruvian? Once again, an example of foreign bears coming over and taking jobs from hardworking British bears.
The bear took his integration seriously: he liked marmalade sandwiches and always clothed himself appropriately for the weather.
And you see – if you blend in and make your contribution, at some point you might end up having tea with the Queen!
More than the other well-known Peruvian immigrant Daniel (now Lord) Hannan ever achieved.
This is the core of our identity: the humorous self-effacement, or at least, the ability to do so.
It also points up the failings of “Britishcore” which has the hallmarks of something very unBritish – trying too hard. KS also alludes to this; effortlessly, of course.
You have a crucial point, indeed!
Trying too hard is not only un-British but thoroughly inelegant: the subtle art of understatement requires a certain nonchalance…
I agree, but neither understatement nor nonchalance are particularly notable aspect of the vast majority of Britons, of whatever race, today!
Sadly, this is true.
We live in an era of drama queens, whingeing nepo-babies and cry bullies…
These people are utterly – and wrongly – convinced that nothing is greater than themselves.
And eating all the marmalade
I have always wondered whether Mr Gruber was an anti-Nazi – or perhaps Hungarian – refugee.
This is fascinating, and a great starter for ten. Our traditions are geared for a Britain that disappeared decades ago.
Possibly Prof. Stock is unaware of how carefully the Victorians invented Christmas, and how the Georgians invented childhood and the kilt. The ‘go-to’ text here, is Hobsbawm and Ranger’s “The Invention of Tradition.”
For that matter, the Normans, in the shape of Geoffrey of Monmouth, invented powerful myths in the guise of history. The most famous is King Arthur. That has acted as a social glue ever since.
If the Normans, Victorians and Georgians could do it, so can we. But we need a good debate first.
Incidentally, I fear Prof. Stock confuses multiethnic with multicultural. The former is a fact of life, the latter is a political choice.
In my opinion Hobsbawm was a fraud and his argument was an imposture – and he knew it was. It was an ontological ‘enclosure of the commons’, a coup by the Pharisee-Professariat to estrange intelligent and well meaning students from a candid engagement with their own inherited traditions.
The English didn’t learn about King Arthur because an obscure Anglo-Welsh monk ‘invented’ him. Nor did the Georgians ‘invent’ the kilt. One might as well contend that Burns ‘invented’ Auld Lang Syne or Percy ‘invented’ The Ballad of Chevy Chase’ because they first collected, edited and printed them. The tradition precedes the compiler – not the other way around.
The most cursory investigation of these subjects would show that the earliest literary references to Arthur reach back to the Welsh Y Gododdin of the 6th Century and, in Scotland the Falkirk Tartan dates from back to Roman Britain and the fèileadh-mòr, or Great Plaid Kilt is attested at least as early as the 16th Centiry.
Hobsbawm deliberately gets it the wrong way round. Because his instrumental role and instinct as an ideological Marxist is to undermine national collective identity.
Collaterally to that the ‘invention of tradition’ has served, ever since, as a short-cut for clever, shallow students to dismiss and evade engagement with the primary sources.
Those who take up Hobsbawms cup of oblivion and estrangment are “Like rats that ravin down their proper bane, A thirsty evil; and when we drink, we die.”
Hobsbawm was a Marxist. It does not make his books worthless. He was an excellent scholar, so he is still worth reading. Only a fool though, would accept his arguments uncritically. Scruton was a Conservative, but we should not read him uncritically.
All history books are written for a reason – fresh evidence, new interpretation, etc. Geoffrey of Monmouth, I would argue, wrote his to reconcile the Normans and Saxons to each other, to give them a history they could both subscribe to. So he plucked the Arthur legend from Welsh obscurity precisely for this purpose. He invented a common history.
And the modern kilt is generally credited to Thomas Rawlinson in the eighteenth century, and popularised by George IV in the 1820s.
Thank you for taking the trouble to respond.
I would urge you to have a look at the paintingThe Grant Piper by Richard Waitt of 1714.
https://nms.scran.ac.uk/database/record.php?usi=000-000-579-757-C
It shows William Cumming (c. 1687 – c. 1723) who belonged to a family of Strathspey Pipers who served the Lairds of Grant for about 170 years through seven or more generations.
He would have been surprised to find out that the traditional attire he is wearing wouldn’t exist for at least another 100 odd years.
Similarly the figure known as ‘Nennius’ would have been surprised to learn that the legends of Arthur which he collected, compiled and transcribed in the early 9th century wouldn’t be ‘invented’ for another 400 years.
I don’t say that Hobsbawm’s work was worthless – although I think he will be little read in generations to come. I merely contend that he was actively dishonest in his own working methods and simply read that into earlier historians.
A guilty man will often fall back on cynicism to involve his sins in a universal rule. ‘Evil he who evil thinks’.
I fear that Hobsbawm is highly likely to be read in future generations, because his neat and erroneous narrative suits the sort of account promulgated in schools where engagement with contemporary sources and comparative historiographical thinking have been replaced by neat theories that fit together but do not fit the inconvenient facts.
Interesting article.
May the Conservatives be saved from Robert Jenrick, we need an effective opposition, but perhaps the conversation he has generated on “English identity” is not so bad.
I am against any kind of indoctrination of any kind in schools, there is already far too much with climate catastrophism, feminism and post-modernism headlining. A bit more of a sympathetic, open-minded and accurate approach to British history would be good for all of us, but how you are going to achieve that when universities are under the same undermining influences I don’t know.
Now there is pushback, outspoken and well argued, against the cultish ideologies which have developed so insidiously in education over the past 50 years, to the point now that the National Curriculum is full of them.
I think the resulting culture wars are positive, in fact, very ‘English’, we are thrashing it out as we been for centuries, combative and belligerent bunch that we are.
We are not just a bunch of Old Dry Keiths you know Kathleen.
I confess I had to read the beginning of your second paragraph twice.
I thought that “May the conservative” was Theresa, then I noticed that you had “conservatives” and the sentence started to make sense 😀
Sorry about that, I forgot about Theresa, I seem to have swept her out my consciousness.
This is so tortuous. Do the Chinese or Norwegians or Turks have such problems knowing who they are and what their identity is?
Do the Turks, whose ancestors arrived in Anatolia in the 11th century, have to regard themselves as a nation of immigrants?
No, colonisers.
A few weeks ago I was enjoying a quiet pint in a pub round the corner. I noticed a fairly attractive woman having a glass of wine and reading her book. There was also a rather handsome man, working on his laptop and (gasps) nursing a cup of tea. Nobody bothered them, they (like me) were left alone.
It struck me that the willingness with which the British leave each other alone is unusual. Of course, it’s no always so but I think we see that leaving people to their own devices is an ideal.
I live in a small group of flat and we successfully arranged for some work for our mutual benefit. However, while we pass the time of day, our interactions are usually trivial. We leave each other alone.
The stereotype of the cold Englishman has some truth but it’s a good thing. We live in a society where we believe that others should just (quietly) get on with their lives (even if we might tut-tut at a few life choices).
I’ve got an anecdote to add here: two weeks ago I went out for a drink in Vienna’s Museumsquartier with a Croatian lady I met at a networking event earlier in summer. Soon after we arrived, a middle-aged man arrived accompanied by two very glamorous blonde ladies.
(Side note: I will admit that my Nasty Old Cat Brain switched itself on and said “He must be wealthy – why else would those women be keeping him company?” Nasty Old Cat Brain is completely out of control and very rude and judgmental.)
My company knew the man – it turned out he is English too. She was very excited at being able to bring two English people together and was rather surprised at the cool interaction between the two of us.
Apparently, if Croatians see each other abroad, it’s the start of a long-lost-buddies type of conversation. I told her this is not the English (or British?) way – if we see each other abroad then the encounter tends to be friendly but distanced and rather cool.
Perhaps a facet of what you well describe?
I’m Northumbrian born and bred. If I meet a fellow ‘Geordie’ on holiday my day is made! I hail them like long lost relatives. It’s almost like a home coming with a real sense of belonging. No cool encounter for me! Maureen Newman.
My Northumbrian mother (Bedlington born and bred) would have been horrified to be called a Geordie.
Do you have the same reaction on meeting someone from Cornwall, The Fens, Nottingham?
As an English ‘expat’ I consciously avoid interacting with other English expats. It is, after all, what most of us are trying to get away from.
Absolutely!
As an almost but not quite British person – an immigrant with fairly extensive British ancestry – and as a speaker of foreign languages, I love interacting with English people abroad, because I don’t see Englishness as something to be ashamed of.
Were the women his ‘nieces’ or were you too polite to ask?
An American friend once observed to me that when two Brits meet abroad, they behave rather like dogs – sniffing each other’s bums (“where did you go to school?” “Do you go back often?” and so on) – before deciding whether to engage or ignore.
He was bemused because in similar circumstances, two Americans would automatically welcome one another unreservedly.
If only the political class could wake up to this realisation and accept that we do not need to be guided, advised, cajoled or bribed to live our lives and be happy.
Concur largely with the Author and would add the beauty of being English is we don’t get so worked up about this national identity stuff. We have innate self confidence and more likely to see the humour and comedy in it. When patriotism is needed, as opposed to nationalism, it’s there.
Orwell wrote something about the familiar and marked sensation of breathing a different air when you return to England after being abroad. is this still the case? I think so.
Let’s see how the comments go before we decide the English don’t get worked up over identity.
Not sure the regulars here a good representative sample of the English but I grant you some do get worked up – albeit struggle to describe what exactly they are getting worked up about beyond the ethnic element. On civics they tend more to not saying much IMO.
Less different as we have as much cannabis around our streets as the Dutch and Californians.
“Inate self-confidence”. Nailed it! Thanks J Watson.
Or, as we foreigners say, smugness.
But I agree that getting worked up about “national identity” is a waste of time (at best, and sinister at worst).
Why no up or downticks or replys allowed on my comment ?
I managed to downtick you
Ha ha, I meant the longer comment, as you very well know.
My complaint is out of date now anyway, the reply etc section has appeared.
That’s the funniest thing I’ve read all day.
It’s early, mind.
From whence does a nation’s self image arise? In modern times it is probably fair to say that it arises primarily from certain sections of its middle class; from journalists, artists, academics and celebrities. Whilst it is inherent in any country’s news media to hone in on the downside of anything and everything, the English chattering class is unique in the degree of it disdain for the patriotic. With say Deutsche Welle or Le Monde orThe New York Times one senses an underlying protectiveness towards the national brand. This is something quite absent in the attack-dog culture of our London-based media. Englishness as a Brand: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/englishness-as-a-brand
England’s lower middle class (its petite bourgeoisie) are the great missing piece of the Bayeux Tapestry of Englishness. It is they who, in the early to mid 20th century, when mass-mediated national stereotypes were first being projected worldwide, perhaps took self-effacement to an extreme; seeing this as merely what good manners dictated. In my young days in the ‘60s this lower middle class, white-collar stock was perhaps England’s model of decency and sobriety. Most would have missed out on a university or polytechnic Progressive sheep-dipping and so missed out too on ‘The System’ needing to be smashed etc etc.
All these periodic, usually Conservative, attempts to describe English identity end up as nostalgia for a society which was far more culturally monolithic than we now have: remember John Major’s “warm beer and old maids cycling to Church in the early morning mist”? When I grew up most people watched the same TV (only three channels) and ate the same kind of food: plain cooked meat and veg, with a curry as an exotic treat. It was possible to guess how most of one’s fellow citizen’s lives looked behind their front doors.
All that has gone, leaving the civic question: what more are we entitled to ask of our citizens other than that they obey the law?
Major was quoting George Orwell (from “The Lion and the Unicorn” IIRC).
Thanks! I didn’t know that.
I don’t think an English self image is necessary or ever has been, we are what we are. and other countries and cultures have viewed us in a myriad of different ways depending on their own idiosyncrasies.
It might not have mattered when we all had a similar cultural window on life. Today we are being undemined at every level and systematically replaced as a people. That is bound to create a demand for a better awareness of who we are and the elites simply reply that we are defined by diversity. Vacuous, as they well know.
This obsession with English-ness or British-ness is getting boring. I would ask all of the contributors to define what is German-ness or Belgian-ness or Dutch-ness, Austrian-ness, Irish-ness – easier from the outside but impossible from the inside.
Yes, Welsh-ness and Scottish-ness was tribal but now it means anti-English-ness. IMO, American-ness has hardly ever existed and if it has, it means Hollywood-ness. I was once touring Europe with my American boss and after a few drinks, he said, “I’m proud to be American.” No answer. So, he continued, “Why aren’t you proud to be British?” I said finally, “But I am proud to be British but I don’t have to keep saying it.”
Basically, pride in British-ness or English-ness or Anything-ness is based on being taught to say so at an early age. You just keep saying it like a mantra and there you have your pride. But in Britain we don’t have to say it, do we?
Pretty much spot on for me there CW.
Just an aside, I think Americans say they are American unless they’re Texan!
Yes, but only the native Texans (they have their own bumper sticker). A rapidly decreasing percentage of the population there – huge internal migration from other states as companies relocate to Texas.
We used to conquer and do and build things we could be proud of.
Don’t get too excited about anything – including not worrying too much about what it means to be English.
Well it’s an abstract question isn’t it. It probably explains why the progressive left are so keen to destroy something that supposedly doesn’t exist.
Er, “progressive” Left please.
I understand the political issues about national identity. But that’s no excuse for pretending there isn’t an underlying reality.
We English don’t need to “work out who we are”. Politicians & commentators only witter on about nebulous things like ‘identity’ or ‘national character’ because they are petrified of stating the obvious: that the English are a *people* who have lived in a unified nation for over 1,000 years. The ‘identity’ of the English is *whatever English people do*.
If you replaced everyone in England with a load of Japanese who were ‘fond of small pleasures’, it wouldn’t be England any more, would it? No more than if I went & lived in China & adopted a few Chinese customs, would I “become Chinese”. The whole premise is idiotic.
Yes, mass immigration since 1945 has changed the face of the country & there are many problems arising from this. But are we going to pretend that English people don’t exist?
If you don’t look Chinese, you are not Chinese.
Couldn’t agree more!
Well Said!
No, but English identity, as with British, has changed enormously over the past few decades, and is also foolish to deny that, which commentators on the Right are prone to do. This is not only, or even mainly, to do with immigration: there has been a mass breakdown of deference for example, which has both good and (many!) bad aspects. Stiff upper lip anyone?!
In the London Borough of Tower Hamlets there are at least 90 different languages spoken. The English language may have become like Greek in the ancient world but that didn’t mean that the Gauls became Greek.
There were many tribes present among the fifth and sixth century peoples who only later were called Anglo-Saxons. All these very alien clans are only now dimly traceable in place names. What they thought of themselves is wholly unrecoverable.
As for Jenrick, would it be too cynical to suggest that he is primarily concerned with saving the Tory Party? Or would that suggestion be typically disputatious, mocking and contrarian?
England’s glories are still brought out of the cupboard of the yesterdays and draped over our shoulders as an invigorating mantle when politically expedient. In the face of a threatening continental military power, the scriptwriters of the 1930s film The Scarlet Pimpernel included Shakespeare and his sceptred isle; lines rendered by Leslie Howard’s character in self-depreciating style.
At present, British media report the interception of Russian military aircraft as if the Battle of Britain had never ended. The smaller Britain becomes, the bigger the flag at party conferences.
Though in contrast, and to confirm what Ms Stock has concluded, in 1939 Betjeman wrote Margate 1940.
The very idea that any of our current crop of hapless politicians could successfully sell their concept of Britishness is absurd. Nailing a jelly in a wall would be an easier task for them to waste their time on. Even the estimable Kathleen Stock flips between the English and the British and sees Scottishness and Welshness as primarily the result of hatred of the English ( whoever they are!). Presumably this means that none of us can truly be British as this hatred is surely inimical to that very concept.
If we are to be defined by anything it should be by our deeds in the here and now, including how we shoulder our own responsibilities. In that regard we are currently rather a sorry and timorous lot . A society comprised mostly of victims looking for someone else to blame for our supposed misfortunes or to help pay our way . I don’t see any of our current leaders doing much to change that state of affairs either. They prefer to play at nailing jellies to the wall.
Well said. “The desire to be spoonfed, have our problems for us, to be given short snappy answers has sunk deep into our culture”. Former Archbishop of York.
If we rely on left-wing academics to help us discover who we are as a nation, then we really are up merde creek without a paddle.
It seems to me that this relatively new surge in English self reflection is a mirror of what Kathleen has described as the ‘in group’ response of the Welsh and the Scottish. It’s basically a threat response. A response that has been triggered by the relatively recent and rather drastic demographic changes and the development of ‘out groups’ in some of England’s biggest cities. In a thousand years, it seems like it’s only been these last few decades that we’ve needed to generate any sort of American style ‘melting pot’ effort on our own soil. Perhaps the last serious internal threat we had was the Normans – and William paid Danes go home and brutally genocided half of the north to cement his position. But now we are essentially relying on propaganda.
In the eighties my military husband was posted to Texas on a three year accompanied exchange. The level of what appeared to be overt patriotism in the USA ( the school day beginning with the Pledge of Allegiance) and the countrywide flag flying and the ‘welcome to the greatest state in the greatest country’ etc etc that we observed from Texas right up to Montana … well let’s just say it was bemusing. And it was a while before I understood. The Americans were trying to create what it meant to be an American from the assorted people who founded and subsequently filled – and continued to fill – a vast country. It has to be said, though it seems harder for them now, they did a great job. They were undeniably different from us in certain outlooks but it was a wonderful time and we are still in touch with several of the friends we made there. Our daughter-in-law is American.
Our great job was done many more centuries ago and the method by which we subsequently became a nation, a people, was not a self-conscious process.
Nobody asked questions about Englishness per se when I was growing up immediately post war. We just were – like the green fields and the trees and the rivers, we just were. We were English. We were England. The historian Robert Winder suggested that, temperamentally, we were a product of our landscape and the weather. A green and pleasant land with a temperate climate. No purple mountain majesty, no burning deserts no predisposition to tornadoes. Based on that, we were never going to have overt national characteristics. Knowing that in animal breeding temperament is highly heritable – breed specific bans on certain dogs – I would suggest that there has to be a little more to it. Nevertheless, in spite of the effect of the temperate, if moody, weather on our souls we got a hell of a lot done. Did we ever look around asking how, what aspect of our culture or our inherent temperament made that possible? I doubt it.
Now, with a changing country/demographic, we are looking around. It’s not comfortable and the current efforts, including some absurd listicles seem superficial, almost ridiculous. But, if we want to assert ourselves as the umbrella culture for this country, does it have to be done? You tell me. The Americans seemed to think so. Somebody else here suggests that obeying the law is all we can expect from people. Would that be enough?
I am a first generation born in England offspring of Irish and Italian parentage: am I British or English merely because I was born here? No! Being born in a stable does not make one a horse! Merely having a British passport does not make me as British or English as many, and I respect that, and the fact that England gave my parents sanctuary in 1939, as mothers Irish family had to flee Burma due to war, as did my Italian family.
And very welcome your parents were; which makes the author’s reference to “anti-refugee riots” all the more offensive. Not a single one of those inclined to protest would’ve had the slightest problem with the arrival of your parents in their hour of need.
Whike I appreciate journalists’ need to keep up with the latest emanations from Westminster and TikTok, notions like “values” (when used of culture rather than commodities) and “identity” (as community feeling not name and address) are so much middle manager BS.
Seriously, if you are *a politician* concerned about integration, the solution is simple but not easy: everyone learn to speak the local language, really well, so that they understand the locals and the locals understand them. This is hard work (for adults) but works pretty much everywhere on earth.
Flanders & Swan had it right:
“The English are splendid, the English are best, I wouldn’t give tuppence for all of the rest” (ROFL emoji)
I’m not sure this is exclusive to England. It appears to be an affliction that spans much of the West. It’s prevalent in the State, practically a tenet of the progressive catechism of denouncing the entirety of the nation’s history and legitimacy over things that, in their day, were hardly unusual. And there is the ritual memory-holing of anything positive that has happened since then.
It’s why people fixate on slavery but ignore emancipation. It’s why they fixate on ‘systemic’ such and such while this decades-old speech about character over color sounds more like folklore than an actual event. It’s why feminism remains driven by pretending life is a handmaid’s tale while social media is full of professionally successful young women declaring through bitter tears how happy they are
In my view, “progressive” should always be in quotes when referring to the Left.
Your first sentence says it all. Why does it matter how we or others view and describe us (the English people)? Surely what matters is that many of us perceive that our national values are being undermined. As a result our country no longer feels like it did to many of us; our collective identity is being undermined by people who no longer hold, or never held, the values we believed to prevail in the past. Jenrick should be referring to traditional English and British values but he’s too scared of being labelled far-right, etc.
A post-imperial hot-air balloon – well supplied with hot air (low CO 2) and draws the tourists
Why do we need a National Identity in the first place? With cheap international travel and instant communication with the rest of the world most of us have more shared interests and value with friends and colleagues in other countries, cultures and Continents than people who happen to live in the same country.
Put simply, we want to defend our values of family, community and country. I take your point about many people across the world having similar values but I don’t have shared interests with those who want to undermine our values. National identity is a way of describing those values.
Such an elite opinion. Most people do not travel internationally and have “friends” in all sorts of different countries. Most normal people do have a national identity that they are proud of.
The cultures from different civilizations really *are* different. We are forced to live on one planet, so there will be similarities. How many “civilizations” do you think are on Earth?
Who said international travel will be cheap in the future? The substitute for oil will be more expensive than the natural stuff we use now, so enjoy the cheap rides while they last.
We, and others, used to know us from our deeds? We used to build, do, and conquer stuff to be proud of, to be looked at with awe for. All this identity stuff assumes a being to be proud of regardless of a doing. For merely posturing, consuming, or putting on a badge, or for not being something or someone? The very importance of identity and ‘us’ suggests a sensitivity tantamount to impotence now. Do something to be proud of if you want to be proud, or shut up.
The whole purpose of “multiculturalism” is to destroy any national identity. It was in any case gradually disappearing for many years with the advent of large-scale class politics, decline in the national religion, and the early stages of digital globalisation. Multiculturalism and the official end of trying to assimilate immigrants was simply the final nail in the coffin. Sadly, though entirely predicable from the vey start of multiculturalism, the attempt to make all cultures of equal standing and hence all individuals feel included has spectacularly backfired. Instead, we have become bitterly divided along cultural and ethnic lines, victim cultural identity has become ingrained in society, individuals feel increasingly isolated and ignored, and the only people to gain from it are lawyers, human rights activists, politicians and a significant proportion of academics; the elite. Nice one Marx et al: your dreaming has made the elite even more exclusive and left ordinary people with little of which to be communally proud.
“Nor is there even a satisfying hatred of France or Germany … ”
What are you talking about, France the country can go fornicate itself.
The French, however are mostly lovely in my experience.
I’d like to explore what Englishness could be, or should be.
We recreate it every generation after all.
National identity should simply be linked to territory. To be English then is to want to protect English territory including maintaining its ecological sustainability in terms of our ecosystem services and our wildlife. Also English identity would mean wanting to protect English people.
Thus national identity should be rooted in the national land and those that live upon it. This then opens the door to the values that cohere the English people to the English land and to each other including our random idiosyncrasies like the love of HP/brown source.
Stayed out of convo although Father and family born in England and immigrating between the wars. Odd very little convo about Christianity and the Muslim world that has moved in. Who are you?
Stock shows the typical left wing effete intellectual view of England- despises British culture, patriotism and courage. Completely ignores the development of the idea of consultation between ruler and ruled from the time of Aethelbert in about 650 AD to The Parliament of 1295 where the House of commons decides on the taxation rate of wool: the rise of the yeoman archer and merchant archer who constitute the armed middle class of the Middle Ages; the massive increase in freedom, prosperity and self belief under the Tudors.
The adventurous spirit of the English first demonstrated by Francis Drake, then by people such as Captain J Cook RN FRS; willingness to fight for parliamentary sovereignty( Civil War ); growth of science with Francis Bacon, R Hooke, Wren and Newton, Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions: willingness to fight for others in order to defend their freedom- for Dutch against Spain, against Louis XIV, against Napoleon, against Wilhelm II and Hitler.
The promotion of women writers such as Austen, C and Bronte GK Elliot, Gaskell. Providing women with far more opportunities than
other countries such as Elizaeth Fry, F Nightingale, Gertrude Bell, and all those who participated in WW2 from factory workers to SOE agents ( 3 won the GC and 2 won the GM).
Continuing to develop leading technologies and making significant scientific discoveries: computing ( Turing and Flowers) Whittle – Jet Engine, atomic energy, DNA, medical biochemistry – Sanger and Max Perutz and the Cambridge Molecular Biology lab which has won 14 Nobel Prizes; Berners Lee and WWW, Higgs Boson.
England’s identity was based upon robust common sense, humour and physique- the yeoman and sea captain. A combination of individualism, teamwork and fair play it’s not cricket, do not kick a man when he is down, yet considered the boxing ring as the nursery of manliness etc,. A willingness to stand up and defend freedom including that of foreigners.
Basically all the qualities the effete left wing intellectual lack.
A capacity to integrate opposite characteristics such as individualism and teamwork, the advanced mathematics and physics of Cambridge with the practical craftsmanship of G Stephenson; a non military country ( officers did not wear uniforms off duty unlike other countries ) where power was invested in the Royal Navy but with the capacity to fight if required – the creation of Commandos, Special Forces – LRDG, PPA, SAS, SBS and SOE being good examples.
Far less violence than other countries and until recently, far more honest – my word is my bond. Wellington said England’s greatest asset was her honesty.
A nation of opposites but which has done more than any other to create the modern World yet understatement was the norm perhaps best exemplified by Group Captain L Cheshire VC, OM, DSO and 2 Bars, DFC who after WW2 set up homes for the disabled. Cheshire was a warrior in war and a saint in peace; perhaps the Greatest Living Englishmen of his generation.
Well said, thank you.
But all in the past.
Perhaps. When a tree dies it collapses and allows new growth.
A massive pruning of the public sector and clearing out of dead wood would encourage vigorous new growth. The woods of England are managed. To bear fruit the tree of wisdom needs to be pruned and watered. We have over watered the public sector producing luxuriant soft sappy growth , rather than hardy and robust growth. This means the public sector is vulnerable to disease such as the mind virus of cultural marxism. Oak, a slow growing hardwood has high tannin levels in the bark which gives it an a high immunity to disease.
The English oak, grown on iron rich clays are the strongest in the World and hardens with age. The timbers of the roof of Westminster Hall, the roofs of cathedrals and keel of ships are built with English oak. The Anglo Saxons held their Witan meeting beneath an oak as it symbolises sagacity and sovereignty.
Perhaps, but overly romantic, almost an echo of The Romantic poets, again the past.
What we have become is very localised not only physically, but intellectually and with regard to experience; writers especially. One reads about the urban upper middle class university educated office worker types being scared witless by Covid while tough rural men who worked in construction or on the land thought the fear overdone; and they were correct.
The upper middle class university graduate appears to have lost all common sense and backbone, they are scared of their own shadows.
Re, England’s identity, I can see England being one of the first in the West to go Marxist. That’s not something I can explain.
A nation’s identity is inextricably linked with its awareness and appreciation of its history and culture, Britain no less. Once a nation vilifies and shames its history and culture, its identity is destroyed, Well done the Woking Class!
Your comment suggests that identity is a permanent thing over time.But I suspect identity is a contemporary idea that is itself meaningless. How could the coal miners of England have the same sense of identity as the aristocracy who owned so much of the country? How could there be a unified identity?
Fair point – up to a point. But are you suggesting or implying that ‘national identity’ or a sense of it is non-existent in the UK or any country?
Well maybe it’s an idea everywhere that has no substance. I suspect it’s something contrived to suit the actions of those in power.
It’s a pity that Kathleen Stock sounds so off key in her facile dismissal of a Hungarian style ethnic nationalism. Is she unaware that in the 19th century ethnic nationalism was the basis for throwing off foreign, feudal, imperial states – Hapsburgs, Ottomans etc and replacing them with democratic (aspirationally) nation states – Greece, Italy, Hungary etc? And in the 20ct does she forget that European colonialism was rejected by Asian and African nationalists – Gandhi, Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Mandela etc? All essentially liberal stuff. National people groups are made up with peoples with a common history, common culture and broadly common ‘race’ – none of which are fungible and shouldn’t be liquified by delinquent elites intent on open borders in order to get cheap labour and make them feel progressive. It is after all the feeling you belong in a country by being part of its people, the English, the Brits etc that enables you to have a democracy – rule by the, a, demos or people. But then perhaps elites don’t want democracy or be made accountable? Yes, an ethnic nationalism can become extreme, a psychotic uber nationalism, we know that, but it is possible to have a moderate nationalism, with no people group/nation better or worse than any other but just distinct and something to respect rather than sneer at – English, British identity. If we can have a moderate socialism, the Labour Party, rather than extreme and murderous communism why not a moderate nationalism as well? The USA might say ethnicity is irrelevant being a relatively new country based on immigration but that is their experiment and a difficult one. Do we have to imitate it?
I believe I can translate much of this. “Courgettes” are zucchinis, much like “aubergines” are eggplant, and “coriander” is cilantro.
“Lorries” are trucks, “torches” are flashlights, and “spanners” are wrenches.
Also “rubbers” are not prophylactics, but erasers, though they are often found on the end of a pencil.
The suicide of white, European countries was set in motion in the 1960’s as a result of the takeover of the culture by the New Left. White guilt will result in the annihilation of whites in Europe, but maybe not Russia because they are “xenophobic” enough to resist their own destruction. We don’t need “multicultural countries” unless we want to fight race wars in what used to be our own lands.
confused by the picture outside Buck House of the solicitor, IT orofessional and reinsurance broker?
Everything would be much better with less immigration, and with the woke scum told to eff off out of it.
Apologies for upsetting English readers here, but the outside view of the English is that you’re just so boring. I mean really, really boring.
How could a people noted for their eccentric characters be all that boring?
Because they’re not all eccentric, otherwise they wouldn’t be eccentric.
It’s not that we’re boring, it’s just that you Americans aren’t bright enough to understand the subtleties of English behaviour. Unless it’s loud and brash you yanks don’t understand it
Wrong assumption there.
Hmm, A down vote, For what?
It’s not an assumption, it’s an opinion born of experience.
In my younger days I spent a few years working on the American Air Force bases in England, and I can say with confidence that 90% of the yanks just couldn’t understand the sarcasm or general more low key demeanour of the Brits working there, unless the joke was very “in your face” as it were it simply sailed over their heads.
Likewise I took one to the football and he was amazed there was no “entertainment” at the game, he couldn’t understand that thousands just watched the match without cheerleading and all the other nonsense.
Just because you don’t understand something it doesn’t make it boring
Your wrong assumption was calling me a yank and judging my comment on that error.
Aussie then? Basically wannabe Americans
Wrong again. But possibly right about Australians. So everyone’s right about the yanks and right about aussies but wrong about the English.
I’m intrigued then. What are you?
…
Cantonese?
Are you saying you’re Cantonese, or are you asking me?
Depends where you go, I suppose. At Millwall you can always be guaranteed filthy chanting, goading of opposition fans and free potential violence if you need any off pitch entertainment.
Millwall are more punchy than most but I’d be disappointed going to any football match that didn’t involve sweary chanting and winding up the opposing fans
Yea, judging the entirety of the United States from a few G.I. Joe’s is very bright indeed.
A few GI Joes and also the ones I met whilst staying in various hostels in SE Asia snd the Antipodes yes
He’s absolutely not wrong – he’s nailed it, irrespective of your nationality.
But i’m not defending Americans. I’m not saying he’s wrong about them.
Interesting how you accept, as an outsider, the identity of Americans that BB put up, But you can’t accept the view of the English from an outsider.
Jealousy will get you nowhere.
It ‘is’ getting you nowhere
Jealousy? For what?
If you don’t like Yanks, why are you called – or why do you style yourself – Billy Bob?
William Robert…..
Well, you could equally have styled yourself Will Bobby, or Bill Robbie.
Billy Bob makes you sound like the goodest and ol’est of good ol’ boys.
Perhaps you’re one of those Australians who’s a wannabe Yank?
Could have done, but I didn’t. Also I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a convict say wannabe before but I could be wrong
No, the English aren’t boring. No people is boring. I agree with Billy Bob that the English generally shy away from big displays of emotion, have more subtle codes of communication (which I know can annoy or confuse foreigners, especially in the workplace) – but I find that interesting.
A good thing to be known for, I’d say.
“Think of what our Nation stands for,
Books from Boots’ and country lanes,
Free speech, free passes, class distinction,
Democracy and proper drains.”
Known for what? Your comment isn’t clear about what you mean.
Having a reputation for being boring is a good thing. It seems to me that it is another way of saying: stable, traditional, ordered.
England: dull and rainy weather; old churches and judges in wigs; steak-and-kidney pudding and trifle; pubs with open fires; public schools; the Royal Family and Houses of Parliament; Radio 4 and Marks & Spencers; test cricket; the FA Cup; Wimbledon.
The danger from woke progressives, incompetent bureaucrats and economic libertarians is that they endanger this boringness.
So true. My comment was an identity observation from outside of the country. People have taken exception to it, but happy to call Americans loud and brash and Australians wannabe Americans. The problem with progressives is they think they can create an identity, But in some ways an identity is given to you by others.
Yes, you can no more choose your national stereotype as you can choose your own nickname.
Your last sentence resonants BH, and useful for us to ponder.
Blinkin heck MM, Radio 4! You are right of course.
Oops, a lot of agreement there. What happened?
The sole duty of the ruling class is to preserve and operate the institutions they inherit in a way that strengthens public respect for them. They should never think of them as playthings for their own interests and prejudices. They should never sell them off for personal profit or out of ideological fervour. Nor should they let them wither and atrophy from careless neglect.
Noblesse oblige, we used to call it.
Obviously, they also need to accommodate recent sociological changes but they must tread very warily indeed when doing so.
R4 in recent years has shown how not to do this. Every time I turn it on, they are either talking about global warming, race, sexuality, Palestine, etc, etc (you know the list as well as me). And they shoehorn these topics into every conceivable programme. All it does is turn the listeners off.
I am not one for burning things down and starting again from scratch. A sensible controller of R4 could stamp out the wokery and monomania and return the station to something similar to what you would hear in say 1995. It seems a pretty simple job to me. And it would be a great service to the nation.
You are remarkably lucky MM. I tune in regularly hoping to be delighted by exactly those subjects and I keep running into the Archers, Drama of the week, More of Less, In Business, The Bottom Line, In our Time, Great Lives, Inside Science or Inside Health, plus the News. What’s your secret?
Good points. The Chinese say putting armour on a chicken does not make a warrior. Putting ermine on a clerk does not make a noble unless they are of noble of spirit; then they have no need of ermine.
Churchill, O Hallowes GC and L Cheshire VC, OM did not need to be made nobles to be noble of spirit.
Does beg the question why you are here if that’s true ! Assuming you’re not English.
Why am I here? What do you mean?
Only that you implied that we’re all boring (since most commentators here are almost certainly English). So why hang out with us ?
Nothing personal in the remark. Don’t always agree with you, but you’re never boring. Indeed, very few, if any, people in the comments are.
I suspect that some English people hide behind a carefully constructed public facade of inoffensive dullness and self-deprecating humour. In fact, I now remember two of my nieces calling me “Mr Boring” when much younger …
Well thanks for including me in the gang, I don’t really know who’s who in terms of where they’re from, though some comments suggest location and politics.
Of course “boring” is purely subjective. T E Lawrence wasn’t boring, neither was Churchill, Virginia Woolf was bitchy, Vanessa Bell was not, John Lyndon was fun, so was Peter O’Toole, the Queen was cool, David Hockney’s a bit boring, Peter Cook was funny, so was Dud and so is John Cleese, Elizabeth 1 was tough, WW11 Spitfire pilots are the best, George Best was a magic, so was Bobby Charlton, Paul is more talented than John, but John wasn’t boring. England, what happened?
George Best was from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Also home of the similarly gifted, not-boring but self-destructive Alex Higgins.
My mistake and apologies.
If I’m not mistaken, don’t you work in tech, like me? However much we may disagree with the boring moniker for that particular industry, pretty much all outsiders see it that way.
Personally, I’m not sure if I’m boring because I work in tech, or I like working in tech because I’m boring. Either way, I’ll accept the allegation that I’m boring.
Yes, I’ve spent my entire work life (I’d hesitate to use the word career which seems increasingly meaningless) in what we now call “tech”. And I’ll freely admit it can sometimes be boring and doesn’t have the most interesting people in it.
Time for the Gerald Brenan quote then: “Everyone is a bore to someone. That is unimportant. The thing to avoid is being a bore to oneself”.
We’ll take it BH.
Boring is cool. Often goes with generally sensible,
We are indeed, often extremely boring and quite often proud of it. Pigeon fancying, cricket watching, stamp collecting, gardeners who don’t like too much fuss or bother.
We are, however capable, on occassion, of surprising and unanticipated feats of madness.
Tolkein’s Hobbits were well drawn..
And yet here you are, as am I, another bleedin’ foreigner.
A foreigner on an internet website. I don’t accept that.
I’d say the Chinese are more boring. If millions of them watch videos of a man making sandwiches, what does that say about them?
It says Marxism; the future of England.
Who is interesting and why?