A lesson in how to be English

THE new Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has urged us to stop beating ourselves up about being English and learn to be proud of who we are.

Ugandan-born Dr Sentamu, Britain's first black archbishop, said multiculturalism had left English people embarrassed about their own national identity. But he said as a nation we had much to celebrate.

"The English are somehow embarrassed about some of the good things they have done," he said.

"They have done some terrible things, but not all the Empire was a bad idea.

"When you ask a lot of people in this country 'what is English culture?', they are very vague.

"It is a culture that, whether we like it or not, has given us parliamentary democracy... It is the mother of arguing that if you want a change of government, you vote them in or you vote them out.

"It is a place that has allowed reason to be at the heart of all these things, that has allowed genuine dissent without resort to violence."

Dr Sentamu, who fled Idi Amin's regime in 1974, urged English people to rediscover and reclaim their national identity by properly celebrating occasions such as St George's Day.

"Multiculturalism has seemed to imply, wrongly for me, let other cultures be allowed to express themselves, but do not let the majority culture at all tell us its glories, its struggles, its joys, its pains," he said.

"I am simply telling the English, it is now my job to remind you of what you taught me."

But do we need reminding what a great nation we are? And is it really true that our national habit of putting ourselves down stops us celebrating our achievements?

Dr Andrew Tudor, a sociologist at the University of York, sees little evidence of that.

You only had to look around during the last football World Cup to see plenty of English flags flying, he says. He saw little to support the claim the English were embarrassed about who they were. "Quite the opposite!"

It is true, however, that we enjoy putting ourselves down. Even when a national sporting team does well - such as our footballers against Argentina recently, or our cricketers against Australia - we are all waiting for the natural order to reassert itself. "It can't last," we grumble. "They'll be thrashed in the next game."

You only have to look at the constant tabloid headlines telling us how awful our teenagers, our politicians, our dress sense or our food are, or the rush of books (such as the Lynne Truss bestseller Talk To The Hand) beating us over the head about what a rude and impolite bunch we have become, to know we love nothing more than knocking ourselves.

So self-effacing are we about singing our own praises that we have even neglected our English national flag. Instead of being a banner of national pride, it has been hijacked by louts and extremists so that it has become associated in many people's minds with racism and hooliganism.

That's something Shaun Collinge, landlord of The Maltings pub in York, wants to put right.

When he draped English flags outside his pub one St George's Day he came under fire from people who tried to put a racist slant on it.

There was nothing racist about it, he says indignantly. "We should be entitled to celebrate our national identity!".

Anne McIntosh, Scottish-born Conservative MP for the Vale of York, agrees. Being truly multicultural should involve respecting all cultures and traditions, she said. And how can you truly respect the traditions of others, if you don't understand or respect your own?

Being confident in your national identity was very important, because a confident nation was a secure one. It was when nations and groups lacked confidence that they became insecure, allowing extremism to flourish.

It is unfortunate the English flag had come to be associated with lager louts and jingoism, Ms McIntosh said - but English people should not allow it to be hi-jacked in this way. It was possible to be proud without being jingoistic - and it was not something anyone should be ashamed of.

"As a Scot living in Yorkshire, I am proud of my nationality," she said. "We celebrate St Andrew's Day, and I see no reason why English people shouldn't be proud of St George's Day."

It is possible that one reason why we English make so little fuss about national identity - one reason why, in Dr Sentamu's words, we are so vague about our culture - is that we are secure in who we are. It may be that the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish all have to bang the drum more because in the larger nation that is Britain, they are minorities who fear their voice could be drowned out by the English majority.

When trying to understand the mystery of what is Englishness, an outside perspective often helps.

What made Dr Sentamu's comments so powerful was that they came from someone who, by his own admission, spoke "as a foreigner, really".

If he, as a foreigner, can see things of beauty and value in Englishness, then surely they must really be there?

Dr Lily Chen, a lecturer in Chinese Studies at Sheffield University who lives in York with her English husband, said she saw much in English society of which we should be proud.

Dr Chen, who was born and brought up in China, says some of the top private schools in her native country tried to instil in their pupils qualities associated with being an English lady or gentleman. "To have the manners or standards of behaviour of an English gentleman is still held up as a kind of measure of good behaviour," she said.

Having lived in England for many years, she did sometimes worry the codes of behaviour associated with the English gentleman were becoming a thing of the past. Drunkenness and rudeness seemed to be becoming more common, she said.

But there were many reasons to feel pride. British parliamentary democracy, while not perfect, was, in its separation of powers and its system of checks and balances, possibly the best in the world at combating corruption, dictatorship and the abuse of power.

And we had contributed in so many other ways too, she said. "In science, in literature - look at Darwin, Newton, Shakespeare. I read somewhere that of the 100 most important scientific discoveries ever made, something like one fifth were made by British people. That is hugely disproportionate in terms of the population.

"Even in sport, you invented games like football and cricket that have spread over the world. You do have lots to be proud of," she said.

Ten reasons for British pride

OKAY, so we're a nation of loutish binge drinkers who behave dreadfully when we holiday abroad, turn a funny pink when we're exposed to the sun, can't play football even though we invented the game and don't know how to express our emotions (unless we're plastered).

For all that, there are still plenty of reasons to be proud of being British (we'll include the Scots, Welsh and Irish here for reasons of fairness) if only we could overcome our shame at boasting long enough to recognise them. Here are ten:

1 Britain is the home of parliamentary democracy. If you're unlucky enough ever to catch a glimpse during Prime Minister's Questions of the juvenile snapping and snarling that passes for debate in the House of Commons, you may wonder whether that's something we should be proud of. It is.

2 Charles Darwin. A great scientist, who changed mankind's view of where he fits in the scheme of things.

3 Sir Isaac Newton. An even greater scientist, who laid the foundations for the modern world.

4 William Shakespeare. Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Sir John Falstaff and half the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. What more needs to be said?

5 The BBC - no, not for the appalling series Rome, or those dreadful adverts plugging upcoming attractions. But for the likes of Bleak House.

6 The English Gentleman. A dying breed, but the world would be a less civilised place if he had never existed.

7The Blitz spirit. We stood alone and single handed (well, apart from the free French, and the free Poles, and the Canadians, and the Chinese and, quite late on, the Americans) in defence of freedom in the Second World War.

8Cricket/Freddie Flintoff. The sound of leather on willow, and a big blond boy blasting the Aussies for six over midwicket. What joy.

9 Queues. We love them. And they're fair.

10 Diffidence. Few things are more appealing about Englishness than saying "mustn't grumble" and talking about the weather. Long may this continue.

Updated: 10:16 Wednesday, November 23, 2005