The Mystery of the Disappearing ‘English’

It’s been a bad week to be English after we came so near, yet so bloody far… again… in yet another major football tournament.   Whilst a fair-weather fan, I felt the depths of disappointment around me amidst a 1000-strong sea of red and white at a family festival as faces dropped and the tears flowed amongst the under 10s.  Football apparently wasn’t, and isn’t anytime soon ‘coming home’.  

England supporters get a bad press and often rightly so when seen barrelling out of pubs, chucking lager and starting fights on the continent...  but when faded popstrel-turned-podcaster Lily Allen waded in on them this week, sharing the image below, she was derided as classist, snobby… and ignorant (flag-wise).  One particularly biting repost ‘I guess working class accents are more useful than working class people’...

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Because yes, pride in English identity does seem to have become a working-class thing or at least restricted to the ‘somewheres’.   And football now seems to be the only time the St George’s flag is allowed to display anything akin to national pride (unless you’re a black cab driver - the Palestine flag is apparently fine, the St George not so much - although the one-sided press coverage of Sadiq Khan’s ‘woke’ ban also shows the class divide here).  

Whilst the UK (London especially) turns green for St Patrick’s Day, April 23rd is merely another date in the calendar, one that many English wouldn’t even know is St George’s.   Want to celebrate being English?  Just shush.   You must be ‘far right’ or will at least be accused of it… gammon, Brexiteer, nationalist etc. 

Where exactly is Englishness amidst Britishness now that all the other Brits have dropped it in preference for their Scottish, Welsh and Irish identities?  (Even the Cornish seem more inclined to their local identity than Englishness these days).  As a result, the two are now frequently conflated, with the English the only nation to wave the Union Jack - and pretty much only during royal occasions, Wimbledon or at the Last Night of the Proms. 

It often gives me pause for thought as my husband is Scottish and proud - kilted and sporranned-up for every formal occassion - and now I have ‘dual-identity’ children.  This makes the occasional football or rugby match difficult, but really little else besides.  And for all the Scottish-English rivalry (which let’s be honest, only goes in one direction),  I love that my children have Scottish heritage.  Indeed, their Scottish family has much more interesting ancestry than my own, descended from Stevenson lighthouse builders and more recently, a successful female author.   

All ‘minority’ nationalities are allowed to be celebrated in our multicultural age of inclusivity, but we now lack any coherent umbrella under which we can all identify.  In the US, immigrants (I believe!) are still required to pledge their allegiance to a flag that flies across the nation, with the national anthem played at every major event, but in the UK, we do neither and make little attempt to unify the various nationalities now on this island.  

Harking on about Britain’s illustrious past is now frowned upon. Too much controversy with regards to power-plays and empire.  Modern Britain is no longer one evoked by Hovis adverts, ‘Last of the Summer Wine’, or John Maj