Sunday 28 March 2010

Let's not be beastly to the English

All successful people are targets for being shot down by their detractors and those who are jealous of them. It has happened to me recently by certain self-important busybodies at a university where I was until recently injecting some badly-needed motivation and charisma into their rather humdrum, banal and ineffective courses. Some just didn't like the fact that I had a good relationship with the students and that my courses were over-subscribed. Oh yes, and one of the lesser staff members (whose whole philosophy on life is already a little backward-thinking) was investigating my private life, trying to find something to prove I was unsuitable for the position. Eventually they got me on the fact that I didn't have the word "doctor" before my name... As if a higher qualification matters to the overall ability to train and nurture 90 university undergraduates. All the qualifications in the universe do not make a good coach. I wrote a departure letter to my colleagues and left them to stew in their own self-obsessed juices. Still, whatever floats their boat.

And now, to my disbelief, I need to come to the aid of a group of people whom I have not considered to be a part of, but are the indigenous tribe to the place I was born, the English. I have forever classed myself as a British citizen. I think the word "British" is an inclusive, universal term for people who live in the British Isles and even beyond. You can be Scottish first and British second, or the other way round. Same for English, Welsh and dare I say Irish. But you can also be Jamaican and British, Kenyan and British, Canadian and British, Pakistani and British and even Polish and British, why not? It is an advantage we have over other countries in Europe, and makes us more ethnically versatile, tolerant and multi-faceted than the United States.

And this is why I consider it a crying shame that now the English (let's face it, the central pivots on whom their co-inhabitants spin) are feeling threatened, intimidated, spurned and unloved in their own backyard as well as far away.

There is firstly the West Lothian Question, the term coined by Enoch Powell about the paradox that Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish MPs in Westminster have as much say over what happens in England as an English MP, but the same is not afforded to the English themselves as their own local questions are debated in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Stormont. This was tolerated until recently but more and more English people are becoming disenchanted with this situation. Why can that be?

It is simple. For ages now, the Scottish have always enjoyed support from the other Home Nations when competing in sports tournaments. The same for Wales and Northern Ireland, but the English have always been out on their own. This year, one Edinburgh company has made some t-shirts for the World Cup called "ABE", meaning "Anyone But England", a blatant message to those down south about where the Scottish loyalties lie. The English kind of know who they are and are quite comfortable with this, unlike the other areas of the UK, so they could swallow this type of tongue-in-cheek banter.

But the fact that the English are starting to feel that the Scottish are creaming state funds away from English areas to support their own projects, with a cry of indignation and a new round of discussions over independence if they don't get their wish is making the average English a little tired of the continual barrage of anti-Sassenach rhetoric. Taking into account that a person resident in Scotland can go to any university in the UK for free whilst English residents must pay (often running into ten thousand pounds of debt) is forcing English hearts to turn to stone.

And who can blame them?

But it is not just the Scots who are cranking up the anti-English sentiment. The Australians are playing their part too. In the recent Olympic Games in Beijing, the Australians fell behind the British in terms of medals and that made them determined to do something about it. So, as the British won a lot of cycling medals, the Australians have invested hundreds of thousands of their Australian dollars into building up their cycling unit, to the extent that only two years later they have gained three times more medals at the World Cycling Championships as the British team. OK, this is aimed at the British in general, but deep in their minds, it is because the English make up most of the team. The truth of this can be seen in the final of the Australian Open tennis in Melbourne, where the crowd took to singing support for Andy Murray. When asked why this should be so, many said because he's a non-English, English speaker, and therefore one of them.

How cynical.

So, let me tell you this: I have always stuck up for the underdog, if the cause was justified. That means even French and Russians, Poles and Americans, when being needlessly picked upon. The English have put up with others' detractions for a long time but nobody has defended them. This has caused a notable rise in the amount of English people who, even only ten years ago would have never considered the dissolution of the United Kingdom, see it as a necessary step in their rights to reclaim some dignity. You can impose yourself on one nation's hospitality and tolerance for only so long, before they tell you to go off and bother someone else. That is where England happens to be today.

Beware, the Scottish National Party, you may just get your wish, and then who will subsidise your lavishly extravagant social democratic state?

Reasons to be proud of being British:
1.
The BBC.2. The tolerance and open-mindedness afforded to all-comers of any nation if they are prepared to work.
3. Religious freedom, even to the point of being over-tolerant to fundamentalists.
4. British philanthropy and charity rundraising - Comic Relief, Sport Relief, Band Aid, eccentric events and feats to raise money for worthy causes.
5. Christie, Hardy, Thomas, Burns, Austen, Rowling, Pratchett, Bateman, McDermid, etc...
6. John Cleese, Rowan Atkinson, Billy Connolly, Dawn French, Tommy Cooper, etc...
7. Sir Chris Hoy, Jenson Button, Gareth Edwards, George Best, Ryan Giggs, Sir Steve Redgrave.
8. The pound Sterling.
9. The Commonwealth.
10. The English language.
11. Keynes, Rutherford, Newton, Macadam, Darwin, Berners Lee, Brunel, Adams, etc...
12. Flower of Scotland, Land of my Fathers, Danny Boy, Land of Hope and Glory
13. The Sunday trip to the garden centre
14. Womens' Institute, Scouts, Girl Guides, Salvation Army, etc...
15. Rugby, Curling, Tennis, Golf, Snooker, Badminton, Bobsleigh, Cricket, Darts, Table Tennis.
16. Sir Mick Jagger, Sir Elton John, Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Tom Jones
17. The Industrial Revolution.
18. Common Law and precedence
19. Sir Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, Margaret Thatcher, Benjamin Disraeli
20. Fair play.

These are just some reasons why we should be immensely proud of our heritage, why we need to put our differences behind us and start working again as a team. Because although the British saved the world from the ravages of totalitarianism, nobody will save her from herself.