There'll always be an England, but am I English?
Notepad #2
One school assembly, held exactly 17 years ago today, 23 April 2008 will always stick in my mind.
It followed the usual pattern: hymn, announcements and talk from the headmaster.
We were asked to turn to hymn no.7. The school band played the opening bars to Jerusalem. For those who don’t know, it’s an English patriotic hymn, which reminds everyone that “countenance divine” shone forth on England’s “clouded hills”.
Being St George’s Day, the headmaster reminded us of the value of patriotism. Of course, we were all British, but in particular because we were in England, we should celebrate England.
The assembly also stands out is because the headmaster, Mr Jones, was Welsh.
Like most Welshmen, he was outwardly and proudly Welsh. His accent was thick, he often wore Welsh rugby tops and was delighted when Wales won the grand slams most recent Six Nations.
He was also very different from previous, English, headmaster. That headmaster was expressed his Englishness through his mild-manners, decency and love of the written word.
Or in the words of another patriotic hymn, I Vow to Thee My Country, he exuded a kindness and confidence that “soul by soul and silently (England’s) shining bounds increase” by through “ways of gentleness.”
But in a way, this story is a metaphor for England’s national debate about what it means to be English and whether we should even celebrate it.
Perhaps it’s because Englishmen eschew bombastic displays of patriotism, especially English patriotism but England actions take for granted that there’ll always be an England. Perhaps it’s also because some elements of English nationalism are racist and so the mild-mannered types don’t want to be seen to embrace it.
But because such debate is avoided, nobody knows what it means to be English, and whenever that topic is raised, so many people act as if it’s a bit late to start.
Who is English?
St George’s Day can bring up an idealised version of England, like in Orwell’s England Your England of old maids bicycling to communion, or in John Major’s Back to Basics speech of warm beer and cricket grounds.
St George’s Day is also a good time to ask the question, “who is English?”
It was discussed by Konstantin Kisin and Fraser Nelson in a recent episode of Triggernometry and caused a considerable backlash across the public sphere.
Is Englishness a civic identity? Or an ethnic one? To put it another way, can Rishi Sunak or I, both brown Hindus, be English?
For me it’s a difficult question. In my case at least, I think the answer is no.
I’m a child of the Empire. I’ll say I’m Indian in all those diversity surveys, but I’m Sindhi, from a part that is now Pakistan. And then each generation of my family has dug up their roots and planted them somewhere else, usually in some other part of Her Majesty’s dominions.
My mother was born in Ghana (then a constitutional monarchy with Elizabeth II as Queen). My father lived in Hong Kong between the ages of 4 and 44. And my formative years were in Hong Kong, having been born under a Union Jack in a British colony.
Personally, too, I’m culturally British. Even though I’ve lived in England for 21 of my 23 years in the British Isles, saying that I am English feels both like an intrusion on a culture that isn’t quite mine but also like a denial of my background as someone with ties to many formerly pink bits of the map.
Britain conquered a quarter of the world, spread its values and, crucially, saw itself as a defender of those values and of those subjects of the British Crown, regardless of their ethnic background.
It can be summed up by Lord Palmerston during the Don Pacifico Affair:
“as the Roman in days of old, held himself free from indignity when he could say civis Romanus sum, so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England1will protect him from injustice and wrong”
My Britishness is because I am from that former colony.
Hong Kong wasn’t just an English colony. It was a British one that owes its present existence to three Scotsmen2, a Welshman3 and an Ulsterman4 and several Englishman including its last Governor Chris Patten.
Culturally, Hong Kong was influenced by the Scots as well as the English. My lasting memory of British rule is the Band of the Pipes and Drums of the Black Watch at the Handover and an unusual aspect of some Indian weddings in Hong Kong during British rule was for a bagpiper to lead the bride and groom in their baraat (wedding procession) into their marriage ceremony.5
And because Hong Kong was part of the wider British Empire, its own history took on aspects of other British realms including India, calling myself English feels like a denial of the fact that I am British because I am from outside the British Isles.
This is not to say I dislike England. I love England and support, with real enthusiasm, England over the other home nations in sport. And I would pass the Tebbit test by gladly supporting England over India in cricket even though there is a natural tension between the land of my heritage and my adopted home.
But yet, there’s an element of Englishness which hinges on heritage and ethnicity as well as culture and values. It’s Konstantin Kisin’s “Brown Hindu” question. I suspect this is why many middle class Englishmen avoid the subject because to do so would align them with the thugs of the National Front.
On some basic civic level, I am English. Were the United Kingdom break apart, I would join whatever political entity contained England. But that feels like Englishness by default rather than by descent or design.
I guess I can only really answer Kisin’s question for myself. In my case, calling myself English would feel like an intrusion on a culture to which I understand, love and intimately know, but to which I don’t fully belong.
And that’s okay. Like any nation England should be able to celebrate itself on its own saint’s day, welcome to those who wish it well, but also be comfortable to not feel the need to call everyone Englishman to make its wellwishers feel welcome.
Despite these discussions about whether I am English or not, England is a great nation that has given so much to the world whether alone or together with the rest of the United Kingdom.
England and its people should be celebrated on every St George’s Day with gusto because Englishmen need reminding that “countenance divine” does indeed “shine forth upon our clouded hills.”
And, by the way, it shouldn’t take non-Englishmen like my Welsh headmaster to remind England of that.
England has often been used as a byword for the whole of the United Kingdom.
Traders William Jardine and James Matheson, founders of Jardine Matheson, and financial secretary Sir John Cowperthwaite, the architect of prosperity whose “positive non-interventionism” is credited for turning Hong Kong into a thriving financial centre.
Sir Edward Youde was the Governor who negotiated the Sino-British Joint Declaration with the People’s Republic of China which handed Hong Kong to the PRC.
Sir Henry Pottinger, our first Governor.
My aunt and uncle did this in 1976 and their daughter did this 40 years later in 2016.
Substitute Hong Kong for Cyprus, and these are almost exactly my feelings on the subject. Britishness feels more suitable because it's a compendium of nationalities - English, Irish, Welsh, and Scot - plus all the nationalities within the Empire. Which makes it easier, as someone whose family aren't from these islands, to feel included under the umbrella of Britishness, as opposed to the specificities of Englishness.
'I am British *because* I am from outside the British Isles.' 👏
It's good to know that this among other Brits with roots in the Commonwealth. I also love that you describe Britishness as a "compendium" of nationalities. It feels easier to slot yourself into that identity than, say, English