Alternate Reasons To Be Proud Of Being English?

Since moving to England I have come to the regrettable conclusion that Britain as an entity is over. The reason is that I'm now convinced that too many English people are incapable of separating England from Britain and vice versa and that too many either never bought into the concept or have never understood it in the first place. The NHS isn't English.

My family is Scottish, and I've been raised with this idea of "Britishness". I, however, was born in England, and now live in England. What can I look at, or point at, and say "that's *our* cultural heritage!" Are the English just this bastard mongrel nation with nothing of their own?

If you moved to England from Scotland, surely there was a reason.

So, it feels weird to be proud of specific things that other English people have done. After all, they're not MY achievments, they just happened to have been made by people who share the same nationality. I do wish we made a bit more of a fuss about Newton and Darwin sometimes, but that's my science roots showing I suppose.

Why is it weird to feel proud of specific things that other English people have done? If there wasn't a vaccuum, some kind of need for it, I don't think there would be such a rise of English nationalism (small n) in the form of football supporting.

British (fruits of empire):
Victorian Engineering, the National Grid, the NHS

Dunno:
The Magna Carta, the Tate Gallery...

Magna Carta DEFINITELY English. Tate Gallery probably a holdover from British, but as most (if not all? Britain, Modern, Liverpool and is there one in the Southwest somewhere?) are located physically in England, I think the English can claim them.

x-post...

There are still a lot of British people in the British Isles, though I'm doing my best :)

If there's no need, ever, for the idea of cultural or national pride, then what *is* all that flag waving at football pitches about? Clearly *someone* is feeling a some kind of vacuum. Is the idea of the vacuum wrong, or is the pride just misplaced?

that's just Londonness, rather than Englishness. Please don't confuse London with England.

During lots of parts of the dark to middle ages, even many of the smaller Islands were not considered British - any island you could get a boat around belonged to the Danelaw, not the English *or* the Scottish.

Is cultural pride *always* nationalism?

I know we had a thread about this earlier in the week, but seriously. I don't think they are. But it's a fine line between celebration of your own culture and denial or denigration of other cultures, and noone quite knows where the fine line is.

I have difficulty with pride because as a crypto-hippy I believe that 'Shakespeare' could have been born elsewhere.

Xpost Archel, it's the United Kingdom of GB&NI, as I understand.

Also this sounds (a bit) like a thread I was going to start called '100 English Heroes' which I never did because I was convinced it'd go off the rails immediately. It would have started '1. Tom Baker'

I think that's fantastic, and not far off the idea of my thread. Tom Baker is a good answer - Dr. Who is a fantastic fictional English role model or cultural icon. It would be good to avoid the usual "Robin Hood, Winston Churchill, George Best" answers and come up with examples like Dr. Who/Tom Baker.

I am very happy with a sense of community, but I don't think each community has to score achievement points in order to be comfortable with itself, so I don't really feel the need for 'pride'.

Well, what are the achievement points of your particular community, then? I think that's part of the reason that so many of my mates have gone wild for The Streets. They think the band encapsulates something about their particular community or notion of Englishness.

However, on the plus side...

English ingenuity and boffinry as exemplified by those people at Bletchley Park cracking codes and parachuting dummies into Pas de Calais.

The fact that at the end of WWII we voted out the person who had led us to victory in the war in favour of the party that would create the welfare state.

The welfare state. as was

English humour

English pop music.

our appreciation of camp. In spite of all the violence that young english men get up to we are not a macho people.

Maybe it's just easier to FEEL pride when you're standing on a football terrace with thousands of other people. Right now on a greyish Friday morning when we're all at our separate workplaces or whatever, what sense can we really have of belonging to something bigger? I LIKE being English, but right now I'm not PROUD of it.

yes, and that's about the only thing to be proud of...

also archel OTM.

i have something else to add, but i'm trying to phrase it correctly...

What WOULD make me proud to be English would be things like an ethical foreign policy and a welfare state that still worked. So near and yet so far. Similarly, I long to be proud of national characteristics like open-mindedness, grace under pressure, and respect for/love of nature. But I don't know that we really do have these any more. Maybe our sense of humour?

Beautiful. Ideals are part of a national culture, and these are great.

Also, maybe the traditional English spirit of fierce independence and resistence authority? This is a double edged sword in many ways, but I do think that it's a national characteristic. Joe is always talking about the English "culture of deference" and I don't think that's necessarily always true.

A case in point. I think you'll find that he would definitely consider himself British!

(the streets are representational, but I don't feel the need for them to reprazent, if you know what I mean)

Funny, cause that's one of the things I was going to bring up. Perhaps the reason WWII stuff is so popular on English television is the more academic version of football flag waving. LOOK! It's the plucky English! Fighting off the Nazis with their sheer pluckiness and ingenuity! The Germans have money and manpower and bigger guns, but by gum, we're more plucky and independent!

An English person above has just said that makes them proud to be ENGLISH.

I didn't *say* they made *me* proud to be English, I was trying to brainstorm and think up a whole bunch of random things which *could* be seen as making a person proud to be English. You've raised your reasons why they should be struck off the list, and they've been struck. Like I said, I was going to say "Watson and Crick" and then realised that half the team was American. Does that mean An English Person is trying to co-opt the achievements of America?

and another x-post, I said George Best because he was the only footballer I could name. It's ignorance of FOOTBALL fullstop not ignorance of his exact birthplace.

it was both, really.

haha

I mentioned it to Mark S and he said "no! he's my least favourite Dr. Who!".

So, '2. Mark Sinker'

There are clearly advantages to Empire on the personal level as well, the classical catholic British education creates people with a freedom to be interested in everything, because everything is within the reach of Empire. These people are connectors.

I think the 'culture of deference' is a British thing as well.

Surely that's British rather than English? England doesn't _have_ a foreign policy.

I thought he was an alien.

Is the feeling of pride at an England game qualitatively different from the feeling at a Leeds game? Or a Trumpton United game?

Haha, GILES FROM BUFFY!

But don't they say HURRAH SCOTLAND or HURRAH WALES in Scotland or Wales rather than HURRAH BRITAIN? I don't know; for a start, I don't follow sport, and for a second, I've never lived in Scotland or Wales.

As far as Newton goes, I think so highly of him that I am proud of belonging to the same SPECIES, never mind the same nation. He seems almost godlike and above any question of nationality. Same goes for Shakespeare although the fact that he wrote in English brings him home a little. Whereas Edison, say, is always portrayed as a specifically American inventor. (The American brand of pride in their icons is often so focused on their Americanness that it's almost as if they're saying the person succeeded DESPITE being American. I think this is odd.)

(Hence why the Magna Carta, not just what it says, but what it symbolises, makes me proud to be English.)

most depressing statement evah (cos is surely true)

Whatever...I'm happy to be what I am and to be a product of the country in which I was born. I seek to give people a good impression of Brits when I meet people from other countries and I'm sad and angry when I see people giving us a bad name. I've grown to realise that I *am* quite patriotic, but I don't see it as a question of "pride" or "shame", more a question of caring about it.

It is a good question Kate. I'm racking my brains. I'd rather not say something like Shakespeare as he is a wildcard and I've complained about him before.

Churchill? Sure he was pivotal in helping with the war effort, but he also had some other pretty messed up agendas that often get swept under the carpet, hence the defacing of his statue during a May day protest a few years ago. Also, I'd rather not be proud of war, no matter how benevolent the outcome.

I think that the English language is something of which one can be proud. I love the fact that we have a cornucopia of different accents and that other nations have adopted English as an almost universal language. I like the way each region has it's own unique way of speaking and that you can travel only a short distance and everyone speaks differently. It is even thought that in some towns, locals can tell which side of the street you grew up on according to the way you speak. I know this is an English student cliche, but a lot of people see this diversity as a bad thing, citing that people who don't speak RP speak "bad" English. I am proud of this quirk to be honest, as no other country is quite so varied. Whereas the French are defensive of having their language soiled by outside influence, the English embraces it and absorbs - I like this and I think this could well be one of the reasons English has become so much more appealing to the rest of the world (apart from the American influence, I'll grant you).

Another thing I am proud of is England's comedy and it's rock and pop music. The English are excellent popular artists and entertainers, maybe even more so than the Americans. I still don't think anyone will beat Python or the Beatles for making forward thinking so accessible. England has more talent in these fields per square mile than any other country - guaranteed.

Our beer comes in pint glasses - that's another good thing.

What about tea? Fish'n'Chips? The thrill of London? Manchester as a centre of modern culture? Really you have to look at England from an outsiders point of view to appreciate it. Why do people come to England (apart from to do the whole tourist-y stuff)? What do shows like the Simpsons pick up on when they visit England?

Incidentally, did anybody see Viz's top 50 "Best of British"? Number 1 was "Aldi carrier bags stuck on tree branches" and number 14 was "The French". Catherine Zeta Jones was also quoted as saying she always gets her mum to send her a jar of 9 month old sandwich spread to put at the back of the fridge, just to make it feel more like home.

why more specifically london?

I just want to say that that's not a feature unique in the english language/or in england.

I'm very glad my forebears set up the welfare state, but that's not pride - more admiration that they did something I now benefit from. The same with D-Day - I'm amazed at the courage, I weep at the slaughter but pride doesn't come into it.

I think pride's exactly the wrong vibe. I like living in England, I heart the colour green, I like rain and not too much sun. That's nowt to be proud of - just an accident of latitude. I can enjoy it though, and be glad I'm here. Surely that's all we need - we're bonded not through pride but through a shared recognition that here, where we are, is good enough.

But these things make me simply proud to be alive rather than getting all nationalistic about things. Weird that no-one else has really mentioned the landscape. That as much as anything else represents 'England' for me.

But it's very versatility and ability to absorb other languages and cultures and change its identity is its greatest strength! We're talking about a language which managed to eat another langage whole (medieval French, the language of their imperial oppressors) and still come out being called the same thing and functioning in the same way.

If you do that I'll deffo come to your club night btw.

(I am laughing at my grandparents as well, D, it's not malicious laughter...)

King Arthur was *British*. He *fought* the English.

And I want to visit Stockholm more than I want to visit Manchester.

But then, do you *have* a sense of national or cultural identity? Do you see your culture or nationality as having *any* part of your own identity, or do you definte your identity in completel different ways?

If you do have a sense of national or cultural identity (perhaps I have more of a distinct awareness of it because I've spent so much of my life in other nations and other cultures) then what exactly *defines* that culture or nationality? Is nationality *really* just an accident of what latitude you were born in, or is it something more?

PS I was always told that my gandmother's maiden name (Macarthur) meant that I was descended from King Arthur and he was a Scot. Which is obviously bollocks.

The Turin Shroud of mystical bollocks.

Well, maybe, but in that sense, isn't *all* identity an accident? You don't even chose your own genes or your own family, yet these things shape you and help define you. The culture you are raise in, surely that has an effect on you, and although it was accidental, does it not shape you in some way?

Itself an incorrect statement as the Welsh were descended from the Galatians. I think.

Anyway! As fun as this all is, back to Englishness and cultural identity, please. Unless any of you would like to talk about your "Celtic" cultural identity.

The accident part - that I'm in it. What 'it' is is no accident - it's the carefully ideologically contested set of signifiers that have political resonance on a daily basis.

The only time I feel English - when I'm in Scotland or Wales, or when England are playing football.

I feel British all the time in a low level way, but notice it more and more. I also feel it massively when I'm not in Britain.

Well, forget about the pride thing, then. It's very easy to pin down exactly who parents are or what your childhood experiences were, but your culture or nationality, especially for such a mongrel nationality as the English, it's quite hard to pin down. I'm trying to figure out what it is. And then I can figure out how or if it shaped me.

xpost

(Yes, I know the Vikings didn't really wear horns.)

Even when standing on a chair in a pub belting out the national anthem before the football.

When I was in Athens a couple of months back I had an enlightening conversation about the Greek stereotypes of the British. Apparently British men are mostly gay, we never clean our houses and (the old chestnut) we are completely undemonstrative.

What Does It Mean To Be English? Provide Examples, Please (Which Are Not Sport).

You can't really define something like a culture or nationality. But you can give examples of what, exactly, you think typifies that culture. Even the most rendered down stew has ingredients. Please point at a metaphorical lump of carrot and say "that's Alfred the Great!" or a metaphorical lump of gristle and say "that's Tom Baker!"

only what you choose to make it. fish n' chips, real ale or cricket on the green have as much footing as Tracey Emin or grime in this respect because it's all subjective. so take whatever examples you want, as long as they're things that emanated from this country (even indirectly).

Comedy (or 'irony' or something) really does stand out as English. But chicken and egg: did we produce Wodehouse and Vivian Stanshall and Monty Python and the rest because comedy is very English, or is comedy seen as very English because of a handful of funny individuals who happened to be English?

As Eric Blair would have it.

Plus, anyway, you can get a boat round the Hebrides, and therefore they are Danelaw anyway! Hah!

Brits are generally seen as pretty insular and xenophobic. I lose count of the number of times I've met people who are surprised I can speak another language, or even that I'm polite - "Are you sure you're British?"

Tag: they thought you were polite? Blimey!

although if there was a bridge..

x-post: fair point kate, lindisfarne's causeway not passable at high tide.

You better have a good answer up your sleeves of instruction.

looks surrounded by water to me!

(Does this mean that this is an English national characteristic, or a Viking characteristic, to hash out such ridiculous arguments over trivialities?)

Back on topic, I was abroad when Diana died. Everyone I met kept saying how sorry they were. They were surprised that I couldn;t give a toss.

did you sail a ship round her island?

And steal their longboat while they were at it...

3. Chris Morris.

not quite true:

http://www.catharton.com/authors/812.htm

He was the son of an Army Officer posted to the Empire, and was born in (what was then British) India. Although he fought for the United Kingdom during the War and lived in England from 1933 until his death, in his later life he had so much bureaucratic flak about the official status of his citizenship that he took an Irish passport instead (his parents were Irish, although all of Ireland was part of Britain when he was born). He was offered citizenship through naturalisation, but Spike felt it ridiculous that a person who (but for a legal technicality to do with his date of birth) was British should be forced to take an oath with a room full of foreigners.

otm. lock thread.

But, reasons: I think, weirdly, the lack of national pride is one of my favourite things about England. I mean, the culture of muddling through. Slagging off national teams as a communal thing, rather than "USA #1!". The point about linguistic academies is spot on - I'm proud of a country that isn't trying to "preserve" some "uncontaminated" language. We're not even a proper country, and everyone just laughs at the "english parliament" people. There's a Dastoor post somewhere that expresses how I feel much better, I'll try and find it.

I like all the little absurdities that spring up through the gaps, the lack of a general scheme. All those inland lighthouse follies, The Great British Eccentric. Cambridge students living in the room where Byron kept a bear. School prayers in latin. Rounders. Y'know, the stuff that just undercuts any grand narrative of Englishness because it's just silly.

And Shakespeare and Chaucer, yeah.

As it happens, I think the long standing binge drinking of Britain is something which means you need a better licensing climate which says 'restrict the hours in which they can drink after work finishes'.

Would that be Dutch, from that spelling? ;-)

'Moderation request' haha.

Well, are you going to share with the class which nation it is?

Surely he'd still be on milk, or shandies at the most, at that tender age?

BTW are you going to try and pick holes in everything I say from now on?

http://www.vivalegre.com.br/duilio/dnb2/altern8/altern8/altern_08.jpg

(rats the "symbol of our nation" lyrics link takes you to a different song)

it's a top song though.

And also that the ideals enshrined in the song cover other nations at least as well (and indeed Ireland better).

I do kind of see what you mean though

xpost nothing is unwelcome when you're wankered. The world's your oxster!

I'm wondering why everyone ignored this rather intersting question from the redoubtable stevem

When I lived in the Mull of Kintyre I was told that it was Kintyre that the Danes dragged their boats over. Using logs or something.

Also, what do people who claim Chaucer as a reason for national pride think they share with him? It just seems odd that there could be some sort o continuum with people who would have had such a different idea of what englishness was, wouldn't have understood you etc.

Now this I can vote for.

DB's passion over the toilets is bemusing but understandable.

Good thread, this!

In terms of concrete things, the BBC, esp. the World Service.

And Big Brother 5, obv.

Well it wouldn't because you're not French. I think that idea of Britain as unique (certainly in the sense of being more 'unique' than somewhere like France) is dwindling pretty steadily outside Britain itself. Even in countries that were part of the Empire. I don't really think many people care. There are still Anglophiles but what is there to be fascinated with any more?

Well, no, but you got there first, no? And today, as a smaller and more cosmopolitan country, you may be closer as a matter of National culture to the globalist phenomenon.

But yeah, I feel like I'm changing too, lightening up about all this, sort of.

Yes. I agree with that, although in my case it's probably just an 'old armchair' thing rather than being proud of anything. I'd quite like to be American actually but that's kind of on the level of British cinema goers of the 1930s-40s yearning to be American. America just seems to have more life..and I prefer American music to British.

I think I find the whole idea of being proud of your home country to be a bit... not suspect, but alien? Loving it, yeah, I get that (although in the sense of crazy wild adoration London is more 'my home' than England could ever be, and indeed to me for a very long childtime London was England and I'd be all 'are we out of England yet?' in the back of the car going to Oxfordshire or somewhere) - it's often a despairing sort of love, but it's a love nonetheless.

I suspect that I am a Londoner first and British second and European third and 'English' really only gets a look-in when I'm saying, say, look at my obsession with class am I not too too terribly English, what? It's not that I'm unproud, ashamed, of the fact that I'm a native of England and brought up in its culture, it's that I don't see the need. My nationality, the bits of specifically English culture I grew up in, is and are part of me: why should I go around being proud that I am myself? It's enough, surely, just to be.