English Must Hard

This morning I decided it was high time to throw on my galoshes and take an extended stroll around the local community. No sooner had I removed my electronic tag and opened my Knife Crime Wound Spotters Guide, when some playful local oik approached me; “Dear Mr Savage, have you a copper to spare, I’m right on my uppers? I’ve n’er a single groat to spare for Special Brew.”

Post haste I replied, “Ahh, my sweaty, overweight, greasy, ugly, dim-witted friend. Fear not, for this is England. In this land of hard workers and strong backs you shall not go hungry. Go forth and work a day’s toil in my field, then thou shalt find me a generous master”.

When I woke, I continued my stroll to the nearest hospital to be treated for head wounds and report the theft of my almanac, my galoshes and everything I own.

Whilst making my way back to reservation towers, bandaged but proud, chomping on a cox’s and sporting a tweed bandana over my newly minted stiches, I took the chance to reflect on my Englishness.

I recently read an article about the national burden those German fellows feel in relation to their recent past and their desire to cover up their own history: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/16/bernhard-schlink-germany-burden-euro-crisis

Historian, philosopher and former judge Bernhard Schlink argues that the European project presented Germans with a chance to whitewash their history and replace it with the colours of the European dream. For Germans, the burden of shame stemming from the War and more specifically the holocaust, could be dissipated so long as their identity remained tied to a central European, rather than national, experience.

The faltering of the Euro has led to some describing German foreign and economic policy as dictatorial and ugly wounds have been reopened. If the European dream goes sour, Germans will be forced to confront their past once again.

Whilst the German experience has been examined and dissected, in no small part due to the West’s continuing obsession with Hitler as a kind of psychological bogeyman, I wonder how the English public would respond if they were to sum up their sense of nationality.

Many people seem to classify their relationship with their country as the same as their relationship with their flag – either hanging it out of the window to ‘reclaim’ it from the far right, or wincing at the sight of cars daubed with national emblems. This seems to be restricted to the English flag as there was something altogether more jolly about the Union Jack’s roger, which seems to be viewed as the kindly old aunt to the George’s Cross ASBO gathering teenager.

I can’t speak for the Scottish, Irish or Welsh relationship with their identity, but there seems to be an easy pride in the flying of the flag at least, something which English people seem to regard as a frontline in their national identity.

I hope that it is too simplistic to boil down the English experience to flag waver, flag hater, flag burner or flag ignorer, because a bit of cloth seems a rather pointless way to demonstrate your relationship with your country.

Whereas Germany has tried to position itself as part of a wider, cooperative community within Europe, the English have adopted the position of social pariahs, lurking at the fringes of the party, smiling at the host, but dissing their CD collection and stealing beers from the fridge when his back is turned.

The English seem to have a curious sense of false entitlement which stretches back to the chastening experience at the end of the war when foreign territories were handed back and the Empire was consigned to history. As my American friends ceaselessly remind me whenever a certain ‘George W’ is brought up, there isn’t many corners of the world that the English have failed to fuck up royally, something which we have never really been held account for.

Whereas Germans retreated from themselves by hurling themselves into the European Project, the English acted like spoilt adolescents, drunkenly swaggering around and picking fights whilst silently guarded by an American older brother, ready to knee the rest of the world in the balls if we get in a tizz, so long as we lend them our pocket money when they need to buy petrol.

English people seem to revel in our dominant ‘otherness’ and being viewed as eccentric or cynical while the rest of the world is emotional, excitable or moody. We position ourselves as above reproach, whilst going slightly bonkers, tortured by the memory of how we used to be contenders, a Miss Havisham of a country, jilted at the altar of history.

Looking online at the reaction to the opening ceremony of the Olympics, I tried to find comments to describe why so many people regarded it a success, especially as it was so individual. It was precisely its lack of a homogenising ‘one world’ corporate approach that seemed to make it so palatable. We know we’re odd, so you just have to go with it. And they did, American press reports gleefully passed the time commenting on the unique vision being somewhat baffling, hinting that it might have been a joke that the rest of the world simply didn’t get.

In spite of a spate of articles reflecting on what it means to be British, the English have so far remained immune to self-reflection or chastisement in relation to its sins and its responsibility to the rest of the world. All attempts to recognise ourselves as the cause of our own problems have been resisted, perhaps in fear of what we might find. Fingers have been placed in ears and we’ve started humming the theme to Super Ted.

Rioters remain chavs, protesters idealists and politicians fuckwits and everything is neatly explained away into its own little box, but sooner or later we are going to have to get to grips with ourselves or we might find that the after party has already started and no one gave us the address.

I guess it won’t matter. We seem to like it that way.

Goodbyeeee