Very English swipe at patriotism

I have been wondering what it means to be English. This should be easy because to the best of my knowledge I am thoroughly English. There's a bit of Hampshire in here somewhere, and the East End of London. Bristol too, and Manchester. Family connections there and elsewhere. Three children now share this Englishness, two born here in York, the other in London. So what does it all add up to?

It is difficult to find a snap description of England. So perhaps it is easier to say what it is not. It is not Scotland or Wales for a start, which is obvious but still needs saying. Scotland is an image of separateness, given a head start by geography. Wales is less apart, but can still claim its own identity, even if the present notion of "Cool Cymru" is faintly ridiculous.

So if you are Scottish or Welsh, you have a better chance of knowing who you are. You are not English for one thing. Certain in this knowledge, you can cling to your roots and feel pride. Which is another way of saying you will probably resent the English and blame them/us for any number of long-held grievances.

St George will be dusted off for his day tomorrow, but most English people will hardly notice, thanks to a traditional inclination to apathy. This is despite the efforts of the card company Clinton, which is attempting to raise St George's profile with a series of Happy St George's Day cards. A daft, dull idea.

To be English is more than not being Scottish or Welsh, but still the ready definition proves elusive. This is especially so if you don't at all mind being English but feel uneasy, quite possibly repulsed, at the thought of keeping company with the true patriot. Such creatures so often prove to be pop-eyed, flag-waving bores that you end up feeling embarrassed about being English.

Alan Ford was on television the other night, banging on about why he was proud to be a white Anglo Saxon Englishman. Mr Ford believes that "Englishness has become the race that dare not speak its name", as well as a lot of other inflammatory old flannel.

I wonder if anyone has ever told Mr Ford that the Anglo Saxons were Germanic tribes. Or that St George couldn't have killed a dragon as dragons never existed, and the fire-spouting lizard was merely a handy allegory of good over evil. This is why all manner of saints are said to have inflicted cruelty on dragons.

Next week another television programme, BBC2's Think Of England, will explore Englishness, largely, so it is reported, through rural images. We often think of England as rural, and yet most English people live in cities, and some very fine cities too, so there is a clash between the idealised picture and the less poetic, urban reality.

England has so many elements that it is hard to stick a preserving pin through one defining aspect. We have extremes of good and bad, exciting and dreary, inspiring and sapping. The English can be tolerant and forgiving or intolerant and unbending; literate and witty or illiterate and witless. We can be inspiring or obstinate, friendly or hostile.

We have a wonderful language, given to the world; some good television, great literature, and more fine ales than all but the most bloated of belly could drink in a lifetime.

England is changing - too fast for the old-style patriots, not quickly enough for those of us who feel that the new England has as much to offer as the old.

But we can surely agree that the creation of separate parliaments for Scotland and Wales has made us look again at England, and at its most extreme might even see the unravelling of the United Kingdom as all the different regions settle into their own corner and shut the front door.

Sometimes it is possible to worry too much about who we are.

22/04/99

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.